I realize that most people who post on slashdot do not actually read any articles or links which is why I included in the tag line for all those recall links the fact that these stuck throttle cables resulted in uncontrolled acceleration.
You and I would definitely have some agreement on proper design and manufacturing techniques for mechanical or electronic components, however, as far as the reliability of properly designed and manufactured mechanical components versus electronic components you are absolutely dead wrong.
If you or any of the many people who seem to agree with you bothered to research and compare electronic versus mechanical components for reliability and safety you would find they are not even close. Yes you will find all kinds of fun anecdotal evidence to throw at electronic components but for every grain of electronic related failure you find there are mountains of mechanical failures.
And by the way, if you and the others hadn't noticed yet, the repair component for the Toyota vehicles is on its way to dealerships and some of them will be open 24/7 repairing vehicles. Your not going to be happy to know the component that is causing the uncontrolled acceleration is........ mechanical. LOL
I guess we need to go back to the tried and true horse and buggy as these cable controls do not have a good history of reliability. But we may need to investigate the buggy brakes to ensure the can overpower the horses.
I'm not sure what happened in your bucking Bronco but O2 sensors do not control throttle position, worst case scenario would be an oscillating idle RPM as the computer adjusted fuel mixture from lean to rich. As long as your not touching the accelerator its not going to accelerate uncontrollably and will simply run like shit.
Wow, that is one massive chip you have there on your shoulder and your going to get carpal tunnel syndrome if you don't take it easy on the ranting, although looking at previous comments you could just cut and paste.
Much of your whining hasn't been applicable for years but there isn't much reason to correct you as the issue isn't as much linux as it is that chip.
Some friendly advice, load up Windows on your computer, leave the linux community alone, be happy. In case you haven't figured it out yet its likely nobody in the linux community really cares much about what you think or the relative size of the Windows desktop install.
If you find you cant stop incessantly typing the same diatribe over and over on/. and your not paid to do it then you may want to seek psychiatric help.
Unfortunately, as with the majority decision in the 1994 Tektronix appeals case, the tests provided to determine patent-ability of software algorithms continues to leave the door wide open to incessant lawyering not for the purpose of upholding the constitution and promoting "the Progress of Science and useful Arts".
No, instead we will continue to waste investment resources to stifle competition in the name of profit margins and monopolies.
Most people likely will not read the dissenting opinion so I'll quote the conclusion from the dissenting opinion here with emphasis added so others can see the prophecy for themselves:
The majority's holding is dangerous in the following way. First, it reasons that one can obtain a patent for a discovery in mathematics as long as some structure is formally recited on the face of the claim. Under this aspect of the holding, many of the requirements for patentability other than "newness," such as nonobviousness, make no sense and cannot be meaningfully applied. Thus, mathematical patents will be easier to obtain than other patents. Moreover, the patent law will now engage in the charade wherein claims directed to a particular method of calculating numbers (for use in a computer) are unpatentable, but claims directed to a computer (performing a particular method of calculating numbers) are patentable. (Mercifully, the majority leaves open the possibility that a claim reciting structure on its face can still be rejected under 101. The majority says that this will happen where the claim reciting structure on its face is merely a "guise" for a claim to a mathematical process. Although the majority finds that Alappat's claim to a rasterizer is clearly not a "guise" for a discovery of a mathematical process, the majority does not describe in detail how one distinguishes in general a "true" apparatus claim from an apparatus claim in "guise." Presumably, the way this is done is to determine what is the invention or discovery for which the patent applicant seeks an award of patent, and then to determine whether that discovery is the kind the statute was enacted to protect, as this dissenting opinion does.)
Second, the majority accepts the argument that all digital electronic circuitry is statutory subject matter when it performs a mathematical operation, and it is all equivalent when the particular mathematical operation is the same. Under this aspect, the mathematical patents will create an enormous scope of technological exclusivity. The lack of meaningful examination and the breadth of exclusive rights conferred by patents for discoveries of bare mathematical operations are repugnant to Congress's careful statutory scheme for the promotion of the useful arts.
As the player piano playing new music is not the stuff of patent law, neither is the mathematics that is Alappat's "rasterizer." And the Supreme Court has in its decisions required it so. Alappat's claimed discovery is outside 35 U.S.C. 101, and for this reason I would affirm the board's rejection. I dissent from the majority's decision on the merits to the contrary.
As with the AdMob survey numbers based on web browsing hits this survey is suspicious.
Looking through my web server logs the only smartphone browser hits I get are from iPhone clients...
"Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU like Mac OS X; en) AppleWebKit/420+ (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/3.0 Mobile/1A543a Safari/419.3"
But considering the iPhone has only 15% or so actual market share I found it curious that they seem to hold such a large share of web browsing as evidenced on my own server, so I looked closer at where these clients originated using a whois of the IP addresses of some clients, 72.44.57.255, 174.129.64.115, 174.129.143.218, 67.202.4.57, etc...
[Querying whois.arin.net] [whois.arin.net]
OrgName: Amazon.com, Inc. OrgID: AMAZO-4 Address: Amazon Web Services, Elastic Compute Cloud, EC2 Address: 1200 12th Avenue South City: Seattle StateProv: WA PostalCode: 98144 Country: US
Uh, WTF! Every single iPhone hit is from the Amazon cloud computing cluster.
Amazon runs their EC2 cloud computing cluster off iPhones? Something really fishy is going on here.
- project/task list all on one screen CHECK - a Task List on steroids CHECK - hierarchical subtasks (not 100% sure on this feature in TaskFreak!) - attachments CHECK - prioritization CHECK - a locally-hostable web app CHECK
Not sure how secure TaskFreak! is for public internet access but it is multi-user with passwords and permissions.
semi-automatic installation of proprietary multimedia libs and hardware drivers
While these are not included in the Fedora package repositories there is the rpmfusion repository which is easy to setup. And once the rpmfusion repositories are setup I can tell you from experience that totem will automatically search the repository for the necessary packages to play any media file you open, you will be asked to enter the root password to install the packages, and once installed totem will start to play the media.
in earlier versions, ordinary (non-admin) users could install software on Fedora without access to the root password
huh?
I've used every version of Fedora linux and before that I've used Red Hat Linux from version 4.2 until Fedora Core 1. I don't recall ever having the ability to install software without providing the root password. In fact, when this type of insecure feature was implemented in Fedora 12 it caused a huge uproar and the insecure feature was removed in an update.
No that's not "Socialism" that's Social Democracy.
Socialism - the 100 year old ideology is a Hydra that encompasses from Communism to Fascism.
Your comment started out interesting, however, socialism dates back much further than 100 years, at least 200+ years if you consider Charles Fourier, and as I've stated over and over again in other threads...
Communism != Socialism and I'll add Fascism != Socialism.
While both utilized socialism they are not equivalent and, while it doesn't jive with the ridiculous propaganda that has been going on since the 1940s and maybe even earlier, Capitalism not only works with and is compatible with Socialism but they are both utilized today.
Sorry twostix, I didn't notice your comment and I've already commented on much of this in the interesting discussion with naasking. I provided many informative links in the other thread so I wont duplicate it all here.
What you describe is not Socialism, it's Keynesian economics
No, Keynesian economics is not concerned with social programs or the basic needs of the citizens, it deals with the variable inputs that can be used to address fluctuations in consumption, employment, investment, etc.
Controlling the interest rates is Keynesian, building roads is Keynesian, lending capital to automotive manufacturers is Keynesian, but these are all temporary means of controlling variables in the economy to control serious recessions. Social Security, Medicare, Unemployment Insurance, etc. are not Keynesian, they are Socialism.
What I am describing is a type of socialism more like that proposed by Fourier who suggested that in a socialist economy workers would be compensated based on there input, I am not describing the type of authoritarian socialism portrayed during the red scare and espoused by Babeuf, Engels, or anyone proposing communism.
I am not redefining Socialism the problem is you seem to only be aware of the type of Socialism that is meant to frighten people with visions of Gulags.
our standard of living is higher than ever because of the efficiency with which private goods can be produced in a capitalist economy
I'm not as familiar with the long term economic situation in Canada but I can tell you the standard of living in the United States is more than acceptable. So when I look at individual median incomes from the 1940s to today and see that, based on inflation measured by the CPI, in the United States the median income has decreased some 30% from the mid 1970s to today I wondered how this standard of living could be maintained.
The answer lies in personal debt. From the 1940s up to the 1970s personal debt in the United States was only a fraction of the GDP value, 30% or less, but after median individual income started to slide personal debt rapidly increased and today in the United States personal debt is equivalent to if not exceeding the national GDP. That is over $14 trillion in individual debt alone!
In some areas of the economy there are worker unions where the workers acting as one attempt to guarantee better wages and benefits for all. Usually the end result is not only better wages and benefits for union members but also for other areas of employment. And before anyone starts spewing the usual anti union rhetoric I suggest doing some research on the working conditions and wages of industrial workers in the United States prior to unions. And before bringing up GM versus Toyota note that Japan is even more socialist than the United States, their government is spending 30%+ of the GDP, so breaking the unions in the United States to pay for socialism in Japan is ludicrous.
I think any socialist system in which people are free to choose their own work to self-actualize, will suffer from a labour shortage in some sector, and so either people will be forced to work in a job they don't want to in order to compensate
That is communism and I believe you are correct, it doesn't work and it creates more problems than it solves.
Communism != Socialism
They are not the same thing. Socialism is practised at varying levels in virtually every industrialized western nation. People need to get over the propaganda they've been fed for decades. You can have socialism and still have private ownership of production, free market competition, compensation based on effort, skill and knowledge, etc. I know this to be true because its being done today.
Ah, the old "capitalism is exploitation" chestnut. Contrary to popular opinion, many people actually enjoy their jobs and are not being "exploited".
Ah the old "I don't agree with this guy so I'll try some simple labels to suggest they fit in some culturally negative stereotype, communist should work."
And yet here we are in the United States arguing over basic health care for the public because 1) as a nation we can afford it and anyone who says we can't is either a liar, in denial or hasn't bothered to actually look at the numbers and 2) because we have many cases where even individuals who have health insurance end up denied coverage which sometimes results in death.
By its nature capitalism is exploitation, I know that word has negative connotations but only because in some cases exploitation can turn into victimization.
When wages of 95% of the work force are suppressed to
The biggest difference is that socialism seemingly has no feedback loop to discourage free-loading and encourage hard work.
Socialism is a vague way of describing an economic system as it has come to define a wide range of socialist systems but the idea that there is no incentive to work hard is simply false. I think what you are describing is communism where many aspects of the market and economy are dictated.
In socialism the worker gains more personally from their work and that is the incentive to work harder.
In capitalism, at least the capitalism in the United States, the incentive is to work hard at getting out of the lame job to start your own business so you can dictate the wages of the workers and maximize your personal profit at their expense.
Not that it has to be or is always that way. When there are labor shortages in the capitalist system there isn't much choice but to pay the workers a larger share of the profit they produce or they'll go work some place else.
Good ol' fair compensation for labor. Here's a bitter joke workers made when an entire huge nation actually lived under such circumstances: "So long as the bosses pretend to pay us, we will pretend to work."
Ah yes, setting aside the fact that the Soviet Union was a Communist Dictatorship and the fact that virtually every form of government and economy in use today involves socialism including the United States, the recent era of capitalism will definitely leave behind its share of laughable jokes in a sick kind of way...
Capitalism for Dummies American Capitalism: You have two cows. You sell one, and force the other to produce the milk of four cows. You are surprised when the cow drops dead.
Enron Capitalism: You have two cows. You sell three of them to your publicly listed company, using letters of credit opened by your brother-in-law at the bank, then execute a debt/equity swap with an associated general offer so that you get all four cows back, with a tax exemption for five cows. The milk rights of the six cows are transferred via an intermediary to a Cayman Island company secretly owned by the majority shareholder who sells the rights to all seven cows back to your listed company. The annual report says the company owns eight cows, with an option on one more. Sell one cow to buy a new president of the United States, leaving you with nine cows. No balance sheet provided with the release. The public buys your bull.
Perestroika Capitalism: You have two cows. You have to take care of them, but the government takes all the milk. You steal back as much milk as you can and sell it on the black market.
All kidding aside, while communism and its implementation has some serious issues one of them is not the people working. And the sooner people get over these stupid ideas that somehow nobody works when there is socialism or communism the sooner we can have intelligent discussions.
The Soviet Union went from a mainly agrarian society in the 1920s to a major industrial power with many technical achievements they will be remembered for throughout history. Could they have done better if they dumped the dictatorship and communism? I suspect so. But the people certainly did work.
I guess what I'm saying is that I never saw a problem with this model, other than the closed nature of the software post-sale.
And I'd have to agree that there is nothing inherently wrong with the model either. It definitely works out to the advantage of the developer or corporation that is the copyright holder and places the end user at a significant disadvantage but I don't find it to be wrong. And I suspect there will be instances where software will remain closed source and proprietary in order to maintain a viable balance between those initial development costs and the size of the market.
But I would add that in most cases the developer will be working for a company providing licensing and services around the developed software no different than if they worked for a company that provided hardware with services. In most cases its not going to make any difference for the developers themselves.
In my opinion open source has increased market potential for developers by lowering the licensing cost barrier for many end users. The only real threat here is to the 98% profit margins of some software licensing companies and their fat boards and management structures.
Re:laughable (Score:1, Insightful) Marx postulated working - socialists generally don't.
WTF, somebody actually modded this idiot coward insightful?
Socialism isn't that far off from Capitalism and it requires that people work, the biggest difference is in the compensation the workers are given for their labor. Socialism isn't necessary in a Capitalist society as long as the workers are compensated enough to meet their needs and be satisfied with their standard of living. When basic needs can't be met but are financially viable based on the economy their labor drives then you will see moves towards Socialism.
Its fine to disagree about what works and what doesn't but marking the village idiot as insightful because it makes you feel good doesn't make it insightful. It just means you've joined into the circle jerk.
It doesn't kill OSS, it kills the use of GPL'ed code.
Actually the troll's logic was on the right track. Upper management wont see the difference between GPLed code, BSDed, MITed, Apached, etc.
But the troll is wrong about this killing any OSS. If the knee jerk reaction of company A is to stop using OSS code while there competitor, company B, adheres to the licensing then company A will have to endure the additional burden of the profit margins necessary to support their proprietary supplier while their competitor company B will continue to reap the benefits of the open source code in their products simply by adhering to the licensing.
a) software developers cannot function as software developers in a capitalist society, they have to do something else to pay bills like sell hardware that uses their software, or mop floors at Wendy's
I suppose it may not be obvious but there are many more possibilities besides selling hardware and working at Wendy's. There are many developers today who are working as developers on open source projects as employees of companies like Red Hat, IBM, TrollTech, etc.
I could be wrong but I suspect your concern is less about making money as a developer and more about making profits off control of distribution.
I understand that open source licensing requires new ideas on commercializing developer skills but at the same time I also understand that the closed source proprietary software method with licensing while profitable is a false market. After a product is developed the cost of reproduction and even distribution is virtually $0.00.
This creates a huge potential for profit margins as long as you can maintain a fake scarcity of product supply. With open source licensing these fake markets are coming under pressure to compete in ways that is going to hit those profit margins.
I agree that communism would be a huge mistake but I also disagree that open source, limited copyrights, or even a lack of copyrights would result in software developers being limited to selling hardware or working at Wendy's.
I support the GPL, I understand enforcement requires copyright law, and I am against piracy as I think it is actually detrimental to open source software and, well, I think people should be allowed to license their software any way they please. So I'm not sure what your piracy rant was about in your first post but your idea of limiting copyright is intriguing.
Software would then have no reason to be open, and because the original creator can't make it so (without copyright), it won't be
However, I have to disagree with you on this conclusion. There is more to the open source community than just having software open source. The community developing, testing, and using the software is a big chunk of the value in open source software. Once it becomes a bunch of fragmented proprietary closed source branches those branches will be the ones lacking value and will end up dead.
You could potentially have one vendor try to break the community by hiring up all the developers and branching off the code into a proprietary branch but I don't see that happening with the number of developers and their employers who gain value from participating in the community.
e) Doesn't the possibility exist for "open source trolls" who scour the world looking for GPL/Apache/BSD/whatever violations and sue the offender hoping to make a few dollars?
No.
Open source software is acquired through some method of distribution, that is a good portion of what the licensing covers.
You don't develop your own software and have some troll come along and take you to court for having the concept of their open source software that may or may not exist included in your code. If you are in violation of the open source license that made the code available to you its because you put it there.
I'm not so sure the parent post you are responding to is a supporter of open source or the GPL. Its not quite clear who "We" refers to in the post and to me suggests anti-GPL. In that context the sentence makes sense.
We (proprietary close source software developers) don't want people embracing open source...
We don't want people embracing open source if by "embrace" they mean "take this free code, create my own product, and sell it".
If by "We" you mean companies who license closed source proprietary software I guess you are absolutely correct.
There are many companies that use open source in their products that was licensed to them under the GPL as the open source method provides significant value beyond paying for a license to the closed source proprietary alternatives. Unfortunately for the closed source proprietary alternatives this means they have competition, I guess they'll just have to suck it up and compete in the free market.
On one hand the GPL violations are not so great...however action like this isn't going to encourage people to embrace open source...
The issue at hand is that they do not embrace open source. They are using open source code under a license that requires they embrace open source as a condition of the license. They are now in violation of that license.
If we were to accept your logic then companies like Microsoft and members of the MPAA/RIAA are screwed every time they enforce their copyrights and licensing contracts.
And yet I hear on the television almost hourly, "The Republicans ruined the economy." Funny how everyone thinks that's a-okay. Double standard.
As long as the Dems insist upon attacking me, just because I'm registered (r), then I'm going to strike back.
In other words your arguments have no credibility and your just acting out in anger. As is evidenced when you repeat claims that the Democrats somehow destroyed any hope of additional regulation of Fannie and Freddie in a response to a post where I gave you the links to GW Bush's response claiming he will not support a house bill that passed that provided for regulation. And while I didn't provide a link I did give you the information you would need to look into McCain's half assed support of the same while in the senate.
And the funny thing is, none of it matters because if you read any of the reports that looked into the meltdown all the nutso news headlines and talking head spin masters are full of shit. Poor people receiving mortgages did not bring down the economy, that has to be the dumbest conclusion anyone from any political party could ever proclaim. Complete idiocy.
A few notes, banks are not forced into lending to anyone, the CRA only applies to banks who sign up for FDIC coverage and even then only some banks fall under the CRA regulations. There are ways that banks can work around the CRA and guess what, they did.
"More than 84 percent of the subprime mortgages in 2006 were issued by private lending institutions." "Private firms made nearly 83 percent of the subprime loans to low- and moderate-income borrowers that year." "Only one of the top 25 subprime lenders in 2006 was directly subject to the housing law that's being lambasted by conservative critics." "Between 2004 and 2006, when subprime lending was exploding, Fannie and Freddie went from holding a high of 48 percent of the subprime loans that were sold into the secondary market to holding about 24 percent, according to data from Inside Mortgage Finance" "only commercial banks and thrifts must follow CRA rules. The investment banks don't, nor did the now-bankrupt non-bank lenders such as New Century Financial Corp. and Ameriquest that underwrote most of the subprime loans." "private non-bank lenders enjoyed a regulatory gap, allowing them to be regulated by 50 different state banking supervisors instead of the federal government. And mortgage brokers, who also weren't subject to federal regulation or the CRA, originated most of the subprime loans."
GW Bush was calling for reforms until they arrived...
http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=24851 Statement of Administration Policy: H.R. 1461 - Federal Housing Finance Reform Act of 2005 October 26, 2005 "H.R. 1461 fails to include key elements that are essential to protect the safety and soundness of the housing finance system and the broader financial system at large. As a result, the Administration opposes the bill. "
http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=74353 Statement of Administration Policy: H.R. 1427 - Federal Housing Finance Reform Act of 2007 May 16, 2007 "Any efforts to weaken the existing portfolio language contained in H.R. 1427 will threaten the Administration's support for this bill. "
The house actually passed H.R. 1461 but was never cosidered by the Senate and McCain's support for S190 came only after the report of corruption and bad management of Fannie and Freddie came out. And then what did he do? Nada, the Senate let it slide.
There is plenty of blame to go around but this idea that some how the Democrats in concert with lower income earning U.S. citizens caused the current economic crisis is dumb founding idiocy.
Slashdot Mirror
I realize that most people who post on slashdot do not actually read any articles or links which is why I included in the tag line for all those recall links the fact that these stuck throttle cables resulted in uncontrolled acceleration.
You and I would definitely have some agreement on proper design and manufacturing techniques for mechanical or electronic components, however, as far as the reliability of properly designed and manufactured mechanical components versus electronic components you are absolutely dead wrong.
If you or any of the many people who seem to agree with you bothered to research and compare electronic versus mechanical components for reliability and safety you would find they are not even close. Yes you will find all kinds of fun anecdotal evidence to throw at electronic components but for every grain of electronic related failure you find there are mountains of mechanical failures.
And by the way, if you and the others hadn't noticed yet, the repair component for the Toyota vehicles is on its way to dealerships and some of them will be open 24/7 repairing vehicles. Your not going to be happy to know the component that is causing the uncontrolled acceleration is ........ mechanical. LOL
Toyota starts shipped retrofit kits to repair accelerator pedals that stick when depressed due to friction in the mechanical housing in which the pedal pivots.
Let all the conspiracy theories begin. :)
1992 - 1995 Isuzu Trooper recall for accelerator cable stuck causing uncontrolled acceleration
2003 Ford Escape stuck throttle cables result in uncontrolled acceleration
2002 Ford Explorers investigated for stuck throttle cables in cold weather regions
1999 - 2004 Suzuki Grand Vitara, recalled due to fraying accelerator cables that result in uncontrolled acceleration and potential crash.
I guess we need to go back to the tried and true horse and buggy as these cable controls do not have a good history of reliability. But we may need to investigate the buggy brakes to ensure the can overpower the horses.
I'm not sure what happened in your bucking Bronco but O2 sensors do not control throttle position, worst case scenario would be an oscillating idle RPM as the computer adjusted fuel mixture from lean to rich. As long as your not touching the accelerator its not going to accelerate uncontrollably and will simply run like shit.
Wow, that is one massive chip you have there on your shoulder and your going to get carpal tunnel syndrome if you don't take it easy on the ranting, although looking at previous comments you could just cut and paste.
Much of your whining hasn't been applicable for years but there isn't much reason to correct you as the issue isn't as much linux as it is that chip.
Some friendly advice, load up Windows on your computer, leave the linux community alone, be happy. In case you haven't figured it out yet its likely nobody in the linux community really cares much about what you think or the relative size of the Windows desktop install.
If you find you cant stop incessantly typing the same diatribe over and over on /. and your not paid to do it then you may want to seek psychiatric help.
Definitely a move in the right direction to address the now prophetic "untold consequences" foreseen by Judge Archer and Judge Nies in their dissenting opinion in In Re Alappat, No. 92-1381 (Fed. Cir. July 29, 1994).
Unfortunately, as with the majority decision in the 1994 Tektronix appeals case, the tests provided to determine patent-ability of software algorithms continues to leave the door wide open to incessant lawyering not for the purpose of upholding the constitution and promoting "the Progress of Science and useful Arts".
No, instead we will continue to waste investment resources to stifle competition in the name of profit margins and monopolies.
Most people likely will not read the dissenting opinion so I'll quote the conclusion from the dissenting opinion here with emphasis added so others can see the prophecy for themselves:
As with the AdMob survey numbers based on web browsing hits this survey is suspicious.
Looking through my web server logs the only smartphone browser hits I get are from iPhone clients...
But considering the iPhone has only 15% or so actual market share I found it curious that they seem to hold such a large share of web browsing as evidenced on my own server, so I looked closer at where these clients originated using a whois of the IP addresses of some clients, 72.44.57.255, 174.129.64.115, 174.129.143.218, 67.202.4.57, etc...
Uh, WTF! Every single iPhone hit is from the Amazon cloud computing cluster.
Amazon runs their EC2 cloud computing cluster off iPhones? Something really fishy is going on here.
TaskFreak!
- project/task list all on one screen CHECK
- a Task List on steroids CHECK
- hierarchical subtasks (not 100% sure on this feature in TaskFreak!)
- attachments CHECK
- prioritization CHECK
- a locally-hostable web app CHECK
Not sure how secure TaskFreak! is for public internet access but it is multi-user with passwords and permissions.
Nope, I've pretty much used Gnome since about RHL6.2 with a few forays into KDE and this was never a "feature".
While these are not included in the Fedora package repositories there is the rpmfusion repository which is easy to setup. And once the rpmfusion repositories are setup I can tell you from experience that totem will automatically search the repository for the necessary packages to play any media file you open, you will be asked to enter the root password to install the packages, and once installed totem will start to play the media.
huh?
I've used every version of Fedora linux and before that I've used Red Hat Linux from version 4.2 until Fedora Core 1. I don't recall ever having the ability to install software without providing the root password. In fact, when this type of insecure feature was implemented in Fedora 12 it caused a huge uproar and the insecure feature was removed in an update.
Your comment started out interesting, however, socialism dates back much further than 100 years, at least 200+ years if you consider Charles Fourier, and as I've stated over and over again in other threads...
Communism != Socialism
and I'll add
Fascism != Socialism.
While both utilized socialism they are not equivalent and, while it doesn't jive with the ridiculous propaganda that has been going on since the 1940s and maybe even earlier, Capitalism not only works with and is compatible with Socialism but they are both utilized today.
Sorry twostix, I didn't notice your comment and I've already commented on much of this in the interesting discussion with naasking. I provided many informative links in the other thread so I wont duplicate it all here.
No, Keynesian economics is not concerned with social programs or the basic needs of the citizens, it deals with the variable inputs that can be used to address fluctuations in consumption, employment, investment, etc.
Controlling the interest rates is Keynesian, building roads is Keynesian, lending capital to automotive manufacturers is Keynesian, but these are all temporary means of controlling variables in the economy to control serious recessions. Social Security, Medicare, Unemployment Insurance, etc. are not Keynesian, they are Socialism.
What I am describing is a type of socialism more like that proposed by Fourier who suggested that in a socialist economy workers would be compensated based on there input, I am not describing the type of authoritarian socialism portrayed during the red scare and espoused by Babeuf, Engels, or anyone proposing communism.
I am not redefining Socialism the problem is you seem to only be aware of the type of Socialism that is meant to frighten people with visions of Gulags.
I'm not as familiar with the long term economic situation in Canada but I can tell you the standard of living in the United States is more than acceptable. So when I look at individual median incomes from the 1940s to today and see that, based on inflation measured by the CPI, in the United States the median income has decreased some 30% from the mid 1970s to today I wondered how this standard of living could be maintained.
The answer lies in personal debt. From the 1940s up to the 1970s personal debt in the United States was only a fraction of the GDP value, 30% or less, but after median individual income started to slide personal debt rapidly increased and today in the United States personal debt is equivalent to if not exceeding the national GDP. That is over $14 trillion in individual debt alone!
Lets look at socialism in the United States.
The U.S. spends about 20% of the nations GDP.
85% of the revenue collected by the U.S. government comes from 15% of the population.
Note that that 15% also acquires 85% of the adjusted gross income after basic living expenses.
The U.S. spends that revenue on:
9% Welfare
12% Defense
14% Education
14% Pensions
16% Health
All of which are socialist in nature. The bulk of the expense is covered by 15% of the population but 100% of the population benefits.
In some areas of the economy there are worker unions where the workers acting as one attempt to guarantee better wages and benefits for all. Usually the end result is not only better wages and benefits for union members but also for other areas of employment. And before anyone starts spewing the usual anti union rhetoric I suggest doing some research on the working conditions and wages of industrial workers in the United States prior to unions. And before bringing up GM versus Toyota note that Japan is even more socialist than the United States, their government is spending 30%+ of the GDP, so breaking the unions in the United States to pay for socialism in Japan is ludicrous.
That is communism and I believe you are correct, it doesn't work and it creates more problems than it solves.
Communism != Socialism
They are not the same thing. Socialism is practised at varying levels in virtually every industrialized western nation. People need to get over the propaganda they've been fed for decades. You can have socialism and still have private ownership of production, free market competition, compensation based on effort, skill and knowledge, etc. I know this to be true because its being done today.
Ah the old "I don't agree with this guy so I'll try some simple labels to suggest they fit in some culturally negative stereotype, communist should work."
In 1980 the average CEO compensation was 42 times the average worker compensation, today its 319 times.
That is over 600% increase in compensation.
Median household income from 1980 to 2008 in 2008 dollars increased 14%, converted to current dollars for an accurate comparison thats a 173% increase.
From 1980 to 2008 the United States GDP grew over 400%
And yet here we are in the United States arguing over basic health care for the public because 1) as a nation we can afford it and anyone who says we can't is either a liar, in denial or hasn't bothered to actually look at the numbers and 2) because we have many cases where even individuals who have health insurance end up denied coverage which sometimes results in death.
Health insurance coverage sponsored by employers has continually dropped.
From over 68% of employees covered in 200 to under 60% in 2008.
By its nature capitalism is exploitation, I know that word has negative connotations but only because in some cases exploitation can turn into victimization.
When wages of 95% of the work force are suppressed to
Socialism is a vague way of describing an economic system as it has come to define a wide range of socialist systems but the idea that there is no incentive to work hard is simply false. I think what you are describing is communism where many aspects of the market and economy are dictated.
In socialism the worker gains more personally from their work and that is the incentive to work harder.
In capitalism, at least the capitalism in the United States, the incentive is to work hard at getting out of the lame job to start your own business so you can dictate the wages of the workers and maximize your personal profit at their expense.
Not that it has to be or is always that way. When there are labor shortages in the capitalist system there isn't much choice but to pay the workers a larger share of the profit they produce or they'll go work some place else.
Ah yes, setting aside the fact that the Soviet Union was a Communist Dictatorship and the fact that virtually every form of government and economy in use today involves socialism including the United States, the recent era of capitalism will definitely leave behind its share of laughable jokes in a sick kind of way...
Capitalism for Dummies
American Capitalism:
You have two cows.
You sell one, and force the other to produce the milk of four cows.
You are surprised when the cow drops dead.
Enron Capitalism:
You have two cows.
You sell three of them to your publicly listed company, using letters of credit
opened by your brother-in-law at the bank, then execute a debt/equity swap with
an associated general offer so that you get all four cows back, with a tax
exemption for five cows. The milk rights of the six cows are transferred via an
intermediary to a Cayman Island company secretly owned by the majority
shareholder who sells the rights to all seven cows back to your listed company.
The annual report says the company owns eight cows, with an option on one more.
Sell one cow to buy a new president of the United States, leaving you with nine
cows. No balance sheet provided with the release.
The public buys your bull.
Perestroika Capitalism:
You have two cows.
You have to take care of them, but the government takes all the milk.
You steal back as much milk as you can and sell it on the black market.
All kidding aside, while communism and its implementation has some serious issues one of them is not the people working. And the sooner people get over these stupid ideas that somehow nobody works when there is socialism or communism the sooner we can have intelligent discussions.
The Soviet Union went from a mainly agrarian society in the 1920s to a major industrial power with many technical achievements they will be remembered for throughout history. Could they have done better if they dumped the dictatorship and communism? I suspect so. But the people certainly did work.
And I'd have to agree that there is nothing inherently wrong with the model either. It definitely works out to the advantage of the developer or corporation that is the copyright holder and places the end user at a significant disadvantage but I don't find it to be wrong. And I suspect there will be instances where software will remain closed source and proprietary in order to maintain a viable balance between those initial development costs and the size of the market.
But I would add that in most cases the developer will be working for a company providing licensing and services around the developed software no different than if they worked for a company that provided hardware with services. In most cases its not going to make any difference for the developers themselves.
In my opinion open source has increased market potential for developers by lowering the licensing cost barrier for many end users. The only real threat here is to the 98% profit margins of some software licensing companies and their fat boards and management structures.
WTF, somebody actually modded this idiot coward insightful?
Socialism isn't that far off from Capitalism and it requires that people work, the biggest difference is in the compensation the workers are given for their labor. Socialism isn't necessary in a Capitalist society as long as the workers are compensated enough to meet their needs and be satisfied with their standard of living. When basic needs can't be met but are financially viable based on the economy their labor drives then you will see moves towards Socialism.
Its fine to disagree about what works and what doesn't but marking the village idiot as insightful because it makes you feel good doesn't make it insightful. It just means you've joined into the circle jerk.
Actually the troll's logic was on the right track. Upper management wont see the difference between GPLed code, BSDed, MITed, Apached, etc.
But the troll is wrong about this killing any OSS. If the knee jerk reaction of company A is to stop using OSS code while there competitor, company B, adheres to the licensing then company A will have to endure the additional burden of the profit margins necessary to support their proprietary supplier while their competitor company B will continue to reap the benefits of the open source code in their products simply by adhering to the licensing.
I suppose it may not be obvious but there are many more possibilities besides selling hardware and working at Wendy's. There are many developers today who are working as developers on open source projects as employees of companies like Red Hat, IBM, TrollTech, etc.
I could be wrong but I suspect your concern is less about making money as a developer and more about making profits off control of distribution.
I understand that open source licensing requires new ideas on commercializing developer skills but at the same time I also understand that the closed source proprietary software method with licensing while profitable is a false market. After a product is developed the cost of reproduction and even distribution is virtually $0.00.
This creates a huge potential for profit margins as long as you can maintain a fake scarcity of product supply. With open source licensing these fake markets are coming under pressure to compete in ways that is going to hit those profit margins.
I agree that communism would be a huge mistake but I also disagree that open source, limited copyrights, or even a lack of copyrights would result in software developers being limited to selling hardware or working at Wendy's.
I support the GPL, I understand enforcement requires copyright law, and I am against piracy as I think it is actually detrimental to open source software and, well, I think people should be allowed to license their software any way they please. So I'm not sure what your piracy rant was about in your first post but your idea of limiting copyright is intriguing.
However, I have to disagree with you on this conclusion. There is more to the open source community than just having software open source. The community developing, testing, and using the software is a big chunk of the value in open source software. Once it becomes a bunch of fragmented proprietary closed source branches those branches will be the ones lacking value and will end up dead.
You could potentially have one vendor try to break the community by hiring up all the developers and branching off the code into a proprietary branch but I don't see that happening with the number of developers and their employers who gain value from participating in the community.
No.
Open source software is acquired through some method of distribution, that is a good portion of what the licensing covers.
You don't develop your own software and have some troll come along and take you to court for having the concept of their open source software that may or may not exist included in your code. If you are in violation of the open source license that made the code available to you its because you put it there.
I'm not so sure the parent post you are responding to is a supporter of open source or the GPL. Its not quite clear who "We" refers to in the post and to me suggests anti-GPL. In that context the sentence makes sense.
We (proprietary close source software developers) don't want people embracing open source...
If by "We" you mean companies who license closed source proprietary software I guess you are absolutely correct.
There are many companies that use open source in their products that was licensed to them under the GPL as the open source method provides significant value beyond paying for a license to the closed source proprietary alternatives. Unfortunately for the closed source proprietary alternatives this means they have competition, I guess they'll just have to suck it up and compete in the free market.
The issue at hand is that they do not embrace open source. They are using open source code under a license that requires they embrace open source as a condition of the license. They are now in violation of that license.
If we were to accept your logic then companies like Microsoft and members of the MPAA/RIAA are screwed every time they enforce their copyrights and licensing contracts.
In other words your arguments have no credibility and your just acting out in anger. As is evidenced when you repeat claims that the Democrats somehow destroyed any hope of additional regulation of Fannie and Freddie in a response to a post where I gave you the links to GW Bush's response claiming he will not support a house bill that passed that provided for regulation. And while I didn't provide a link I did give you the information you would need to look into McCain's half assed support of the same while in the senate.
And the funny thing is, none of it matters because if you read any of the reports that looked into the meltdown all the nutso news headlines and talking head spin masters are full of shit. Poor people receiving mortgages did not bring down the economy, that has to be the dumbest conclusion anyone from any political party could ever proclaim. Complete idiocy.
A few notes, banks are not forced into lending to anyone, the CRA only applies to banks who sign up for FDIC coverage and even then only some banks fall under the CRA regulations. There are ways that banks can work around the CRA and guess what, they did.
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/251/story/53802.html
"More than 84 percent of the subprime mortgages in 2006 were issued by private lending institutions."
"Private firms made nearly 83 percent of the subprime loans to low- and moderate-income borrowers that year."
"Only one of the top 25 subprime lenders in 2006 was directly subject to the housing law that's being lambasted by conservative critics."
"Between 2004 and 2006, when subprime lending was exploding, Fannie and Freddie went from holding a high of 48 percent of the subprime loans that were sold into the secondary market to holding about 24 percent, according to data from Inside Mortgage Finance"
"only commercial banks and thrifts must follow CRA rules. The investment banks don't, nor did the now-bankrupt non-bank lenders such as New Century Financial Corp. and Ameriquest that underwrote most of the subprime loans."
"private non-bank lenders enjoyed a regulatory gap, allowing them to be regulated by 50 different state banking supervisors instead of the federal government. And mortgage brokers, who also weren't subject to federal regulation or the CRA, originated most of the subprime loans."
GW Bush was calling for reforms until they arrived...
http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=24851
Statement of Administration Policy: H.R. 1461 - Federal Housing Finance Reform Act of 2005
October 26, 2005 "H.R. 1461 fails to include key elements that are essential to protect the safety and soundness of the housing finance system and the broader financial system at large. As a result, the Administration opposes the bill. "
http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=74353
Statement of Administration Policy: H.R. 1427 - Federal Housing Finance Reform Act of 2007
May 16, 2007 "Any efforts to weaken the existing portfolio language contained in H.R. 1427 will threaten the Administration's support for this bill. "
The house actually passed H.R. 1461 but was never cosidered by the Senate and McCain's support for S190 came only after the report of corruption and bad management of Fannie and Freddie came out. And then what did he do? Nada, the Senate let it slide.
There is plenty of blame to go around but this idea that some how the Democrats in concert with lower income earning U.S. citizens caused the current economic crisis is dumb founding idiocy.