This is good, and long overdue (I'm surprised it hasn't been around for years), but just how much testing is being done? Compiling? Booting? Or are there actual functional and reliability tests which are being performed?
Not only are things such as computers not thoroughly covered (leaving numerous loopholes for defence in a court of law), but the government has exempted themselves.
Why do you think computers aren't covered? Computers are covered just the same as anything else.
Clearly, they therefore do not take this seriously, and this law is all about people coming home, thinking "Look at the good the government is doing for my privacy!" and nothing about actually making a difference.
Isn't that what all laws are about, really? Well, I guess some of them are also about making money for some special interest group.
We've had plenty of federal laws for decades. Just about any law the government passes nowadays is 1) useless, 2) harmful, or 3) repealing some other law.
It applies to online records, but 1) it only applies to consumer credit reports, and 2) it only applies to disposal, not storage. From FTC.gov:
The Disposal Rule requires disposal practices that are reasonable and appropriate to prevent the unauthorized access to - or use of - information in a consumer report. For example, reasonable measures for disposing of consumer report information could include establishing and complying with policies to:
...
* destroy or erase electronic files or media containing consumer report information so that the information cannot be read or reconstructed;
This law only applies to consumer credit reports. AFAIK, Enron wasn't shredding any of those (even if they were, the credit report company has a backup anyway).
While this could be seen as a good idea, why not let people make the decision NOT to do business with companies that have bad business practices and lose your personal information?
The thing is, you've gotta have a baseline for commerce to properly function. You can't require a long contract for every single transaction. If you buy a piece of fruit, and it turns out it was rotten, and you wind up in the hospital, and the person who sold you the fruit knew it was rotten, well, there's a tort involved there. Sure, you can stop buying from that company, but that doesn't pay for your medical bills.
why force every business to abide by these wasteful laws because a few companies fuck up?
Hmm, are you saying that shredding someone's credit report is wasteful? I'm not sure I agree with that. That said, I think it's already handled properly by state law. I don't think the federal government has any need to get involved.
let the people decide who they do business with, company X loses peoples info, company X goes out of business because people lose faith in them.
But what about all the people whose info was leaked? If it turns out they suffer damages as a result, shouldn't they have a right to compensation?
I am going to point this article out to my boss first thing Monday and hopefully he will FINALLY decide to do at least minimal destruction of the paperwork we toss out.
Hopefully he won't notice that the law only applies to consumer credit reports...
Why the need for a new federal law? This is already adequetely handled by state tort laws. Looks like the federal government just wants to get its hands in the pie.
Anyway, fortunately this law only applies to credit reports.
As long as you don't violate the copyright (which you aren't, since the copy is transitory and for personal use only) or breaking any other laws, you can do what you like with the CD you own.
So as long as you don't break any laws, you aren't breaking any laws. Brilliant.
Perhaps in the US, but in Canada, it's around $35,000 (Canadian, at that!)
Wow, that's amazing. I guess even in the US most of the tech companies are concentrated in a few areas with high costs of living, but I'm surprised the difference is that big.
But more than monetary issues, there are never any deadlines, and the physical activity is nice -- I don't have to hit the gym, ever.
Personally I think the weather would bother me more than anything. I worked outdoors for a while, but it's nicer working in a nice air-conditioned office (in your case I guess it'd be a nice heated office).
Anyway, never any deadlines? Doesn't sound like a very reputable delivery company:).
Putting bacteria up there is not seeding the planet with life, its seeding it with little eating machines with no guarantee they will do anything except consume all the resources they can.
He's not even planning to build his startup right after high school. He's speaking of creating one later, during college.
Well, I didn't mean to imply that he's going to create the startup the day of his high school graduation. But presumably he's going to attend college right after high school, so it's going to be roughly "right after high school" anyway.
Given that, why are we spending so much time trying to knock down his apparent drive, instead telling him to work at a burger shop, or go party?
Given that I'm not one of the people who said any of those things, I won't speculate.
Stop trying to convince him not to, and find a way to help him. Any other discussion is off-topic, immaterial and irrelevant.
This is slashdot, not the homework help-line. We can talk about whatever we find interesting here.
Anyway, I suggested that he work on some open source projects. It's significantly easier to get involved with, and in fact I think it's his best chance of getting a job where he'll truly be able to use his talents. Plus, since he's pretty much guaranteed not to be paid his actual worth, at least he'll be exploited by the public rather than by some random corporation.
Hell, if he really can't find an internship, and he really is as talented as he claims to be, I'd be willing to give him some stuff to do for me. He'd get little or no pay, of course.
You seem to be comparing LLCs to sole proprietorships/partnerships. In that case, yes, there are tremendous advantages, and relatively few detriments. But if you're comparing the LLC to the Corporation the differences are much more minor.
That said, LLCs are popular with investment property owners - that's one of those few benefits I was referring to. It's really a legal issue rather than a taxation issue, and it has to do with what happens if a majority shareholder of an LLC/Corporation becomes liable for a debt that she can't pay. In the case of a corporation, the creditor could probably force the dissolution of the company (and in turn the sale of the house), whereas with an LLC the creditor could only sieze the distributions coming from the company. So it's really the opposite of what you said. In the case where something happens to the house, the Corporation and LLC will end up essentially the same.
XP is too dumbed down for me. They went and moved everything all over and made it so you have to go through 18 different steps to do something simple like access a control panel. Now don't get me wrong, I'm sure there's some lever or button I can push somewhere that changes behavior, but unless I can just push one button to enable "Win2K compatible mode" it's not worth it. I don't want to fight my operating system. If I wanted to spend the time reconfiguring everything I'd have switched to Linux already.
I'd like to go into more specifics, but I try to avoid the product as much as I can so I don't really remember all the specifics. Maybe I'm just being a luddite. But Win2K has worked well for me ever since I switched to it, and I don't see any need to change it, now or in the near future. Eventually some hardware will come out which doesn't support it, and that'll probably be what gets me to finally switch.
Oh yeah, and you say Windows XP is the best MS OS you have used, but you also say you jumped from 98SE to XP Pro. Well, I agree with you that XP is better than 98. And now that I think about it, maybe I haven't been using XP Pro, but XP Home Edition. In any case, I certainly don't see any reason to switch, support or no support. Especially as I have a laptop (with a small and full hard drive at that), so switching would be an enormous pain in the ass.
He doesn't base his statements on facts or experience, it is simply in vogue at Slashdot to rant against Bill Gates, Microsoft, and its products at every opportunity without providing any support for the claims made.
You definitely don't know me. I'm the first one to defend Microsoft and/or Gates when I get the chance. That doesn't make Windows XP not suck.
Bill Gates dropped out of high school to build a boat for sixty grand. He dropped out of college to found Microsoft. He did wonderfully, from a financial perspective, but I don't think that qualifies us to say that education isn't important to those who want to make it, out there in the real world. Gates got lucky, as you probably did to a certain extent as well.
Gates had rich parents, so he could afford to try and fail and try again until he succeeded. I don't say this to discount the Gates' intelligence, I think he was brilliant in many aspects. But I don't think it was so much luck as it was perserverence (which was facilitated by money). Now I don't know if the person asking slashdot has rich parents or not, but if not (and those two friends he's talking about aren't rich), I think trying to start a business from scratch straight out of high school is a horrible idea. Yes, it might succeed, but chances are it'll fail, and then you'll be in a really bad situation which it'll take a long time and a lot of work to get out of.
Get a crappy job (something hands-on with physical labor involved would be best - geeks don't get enough exercise, and it will do wonders for your sleep schedule and overall mental health). Whatever this big project is that you're envisioning founding a small company around with your two friends - do that on your own time while working at your crappy job.
Have you ever actually tried this? I'm sure some people can do it, but personally I can't. Manual labor does have the advantage of giving you lots of time to think about whatever it is you're working on, but then again you usually can't bring along a pen and paper so a lot of what you come up with will be forgotten anyway. But it also takes a lot out of you, in my case by the time I was ready to do some work it was just about time to go to bed. Of course, I'd usually get started on something before it was time to go to bed, and before I knew it it was 2 AM and I had to wake up in 5 hours and go work in the hot sun carrying shit. Maybe some people can take that, but I'm much happier with my office job, though I still don't really have enough time to work on stuff.
Since you're probably already good to go on your raw talents and skills, try to focus on the more businessy and/or professional areas of the project than you would naturally.
A good suggestion, but I wonder if this is something which can be easily learned through books by someone who hasn't ever worked in a professional environment. I think you've pretty much have to have someone working with you who has already experienced this first hand, at least for a year or two. Now maybe one of this person's two friends have that kind of experience, if so it's important that you let them be in charge of those project management aspects at least in the beginning.
I actually gave up on my computer science degree when I realised I could make at least as much money just doing manual labour. I'm making $16/hr now driving a delivery truck -- or about $35,000 a year, which is all I could expect to make with a degree.
Umm, the averagestarting salary of a Computer Science graduate in 2004 was $49691.
I mean, if driving a delivery truck is what you want to do, hey, do it. Ever since I've worked on the financial statements for a few FedEx drivers I've been a little bit jealous myself. They get a pretty decent pay, and best of all, they're independent contractors. Some of them even have multiple trucks and do little of the work themselves, instead subcontracting it out to others.
But don't lie to yourself. If you stuck with your computer science degree and were able to graduate with decent grades and get a job, you'd almost surely be making more than $35,000 a year, and you wouldn't have to lift anything heavier than a mouse.
Money collected in a single lump sum can sit in the bank earning interest before it is spent.
And how would the government go about collecting taxes at the beginning of the year, before people even know how much income they're going to make?
The government runs on debt all the time anyway.
Exactly, and they pay interest on that debt. If they have to wait 15 months before they collect taxes due in January, then they're going to pay a lot more interest on the debt.
I am, no doubt, confusing the terms Republican and Capitalist.
Well, yeah, and you're most likely doing that because they want you to. "Socialism", and to a greater but less on-topic extent "communism", are scare-words that are usually thrown around by Republicans on just about any topic they disagree with Democrats over. Then again, the situation is rarely as simple as whether or not to allow someone to pollute without any reprecusions. The question is usually more one of just how much damage is caused by a particular pollutant, or in some cases, like CO2, whether or not there is any damage at all. Both parties have their own special interest groups, and both parties tend to decide their position first, and then come up with an argument for it later.
The laughable Clear Skies Initiative comes to mind, "using a proven, market-based approach" (quote taken from the web-site). Nevertheless, the primary problem with the CSI is not the approach, but the weakening of the target standards as well as delaying the enforcement of those standards.)
Exactly. Personally I think emissions trading is a good approach, and it has been adopted in more liberal-supported approaches as well, such as the Kyoto protocol. The biggest difference between the Republicans and the Democrats is not the approach, it's the value put on clean air (or put more cynically, the value put on corporate welfare).
I agree, however, that one could have a capitalistic economy that theoretically figures such things in.
I'd go a bit further, and say that one can't have a capitalistic economy that doesn't figure in negative externalities. Economists are still working on what exactly the best way is to develop this "free-market environmentalism", but it is an important part of any working system of capitalism. In case you haven't already figured it out, I'm a big fan of a lot of these ideas. I'm somewhat of a libertarian thinker, but I'm by no means a fan of the current Libertarian Party. I voted for Nader in 2000 and for Kerry in 2004, so I definitely don't see this as a Republican vs. Democrat thing.
You don't think auto manufacturers do this? Of course they do.
Now, granted, there is more competition among auto manufacturers than operating system companies, and auto parts are somewhat more modular than operating system parts. On the other hand, while all autos necessarily deteriorate over time, software stays exactly the same forever, it doesn't break. So even if Microsoft dropped all support for Win2K, that wouldn't force anyone to buy a new operating system. Sure, if you wanted to run the new software you might have to, eventually, but it's not like the auto manufacturers are required to retrofit cars from the 60s with anti-lock brakes, either.
Would we sit still for it? Or DEMAND Congress pass law that removes all patent and copyright protections from all unsupported intellectual property?
We would and do sit for it. And defining "unsupported intellectual property" for the purposes of this law would be impossble. And it wouldn't accomplish anything anyway. With all the effort you'd spend reverse engineering Microsoft's Operating System you could have easily created your own Operating System instead. And if you could manage to reverse engineer Win2K and create a patch, most likely applying and even distributing that patch would fall under fair use exemptions anyway. The people who make Wine did it, and as far as I know they haven't been successfully sued yet.
If you don't have a firewall, and you run Win2K, you're almost guaranteed to have tons of exploits anyway.
If you do have a firewall, then the only exploits you really have to worry about are with the software running on the operating system, not the OS itself. Yes, this includes IE, but anyone who cares about security doesn't run IE.
It is official -- eWeek confirms: Win2K is dying
One more crippling bombshell hit the already beleaguered Win2K community when Netcraft confirmed that Win2K market share has dropped yet again, now down to less than a fraction of 1 percent of all servers. Coming on the heels of a recent eWeek article which plainly states that Win2K will roll out the final Win2K update, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. Win2K is collapsing in complete disarray.
You don't need to be a Kreskin to predict Win2K's future. The hand writing is on the wall: Win2K faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for Win2K because Win2K is dying. Things are looking very bad for Win2K. As many of us are already aware, Win2K continues to lose market share. Red ink flows like a river of blood.
All major surveys show that Win2K has steadily declined in market share. Win2K is very sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim. If Win2K is to survive at all it will be among OS dilettante dabblers. Win2K continues to decay. Nothing short of a miracle could save it at this point in time. For all practical purposes, Win2K is dead.
Fact: Win2K is dying
With Win2K's death I don't think Microsoft has much to worry about regarding Longhorn being not successful anymore.
I disagree. For one thing, Win2K isn't dead, and won't be dead for a long long time. Microsoft might stop supporting it, but people won't stop using it.
For another thing, considering how crappy XP is, maybe Win2K's death will have more of an effect of moving people away from Microsoft rather than moving them toward Longhorn. Now I don't know anything about Longhorn, but I have my doubts I'm ever going to use it (and even then, it'll only be because I'm forced to by my work, like they force me to use XP now). I'm certainly not paying for any other Microsoft Operating System, and I doubt the lack of support is going to be enough of a problem to give me incentive to download a pirated copy. So for me, at least, Win2K is it. By the time Win2K really dies Linux will probably be good enough for me to use. In fact, it's probably already good enough, I'm just too lazy to do the installation.
This is a problem inherent in the capitalistic system. I'm not advocating socialism, but pure capitalism is not a valid economical system as these problems so simply demonstrate.
I wouldn't say that pure capitalism negates having people pay for the negative externalities of their behavior. Even in a purely laissez-faire system there are still laws against dumping hazardous waste in someone's backyard, as well as against dumping something in your own backyard which pollutes water sources that you don't own.
Now I suppose one could argue that going beyond that, and charging people for externalities before they actually cause them is outside the scope of pure capitalism. If that's what you're saying, well, I don't know if I agree or not, but it's not the only solution to the problem. In fact, most states rely on the "tell people not to do it and sue them if they do" solution.
"Charge them up front whether they do it or not" is easier to enforce, and if properly implemented with rebates for those who take care of the problem themselves it's probably mostly fair. And it's certainly closer to being fair than the alternative solution - "tax everyone to clean up the problem whether they're likely to be part of the cause or not".
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This is good, and long overdue (I'm surprised it hasn't been around for years), but just how much testing is being done? Compiling? Booting? Or are there actual functional and reliability tests which are being performed?
Not only are things such as computers not thoroughly covered (leaving numerous loopholes for defence in a court of law), but the government has exempted themselves.
Why do you think computers aren't covered? Computers are covered just the same as anything else.
Clearly, they therefore do not take this seriously, and this law is all about people coming home, thinking "Look at the good the government is doing for my privacy!" and nothing about actually making a difference.
Isn't that what all laws are about, really? Well, I guess some of them are also about making money for some special interest group.
We've had plenty of federal laws for decades. Just about any law the government passes nowadays is 1) useless, 2) harmful, or 3) repealing some other law.
It applies to online records, but 1) it only applies to consumer credit reports, and 2) it only applies to disposal, not storage. From FTC.gov:
This law only applies to consumer credit reports. AFAIK, Enron wasn't shredding any of those (even if they were, the credit report company has a backup anyway).
While this could be seen as a good idea, why not let people make the decision NOT to do business with companies that have bad business practices and lose your personal information?
The thing is, you've gotta have a baseline for commerce to properly function. You can't require a long contract for every single transaction. If you buy a piece of fruit, and it turns out it was rotten, and you wind up in the hospital, and the person who sold you the fruit knew it was rotten, well, there's a tort involved there. Sure, you can stop buying from that company, but that doesn't pay for your medical bills.
why force every business to abide by these wasteful laws because a few companies fuck up?
Hmm, are you saying that shredding someone's credit report is wasteful? I'm not sure I agree with that. That said, I think it's already handled properly by state law. I don't think the federal government has any need to get involved.
let the people decide who they do business with, company X loses peoples info, company X goes out of business because people lose faith in them.
But what about all the people whose info was leaked? If it turns out they suffer damages as a result, shouldn't they have a right to compensation?
I am going to point this article out to my boss first thing Monday and hopefully he will FINALLY decide to do at least minimal destruction of the paperwork we toss out.
Hopefully he won't notice that the law only applies to consumer credit reports...
Why the need for a new federal law? This is already adequetely handled by state tort laws. Looks like the federal government just wants to get its hands in the pie.
Anyway, fortunately this law only applies to credit reports.
So, if you download shareware that has features disabled pending activation, are you entitled to all the features without paying?
Damn right I am.
I fail to see a difference.
Me too.
As long as you don't violate the copyright (which you aren't, since the copy is transitory and for personal use only) or breaking any other laws, you can do what you like with the CD you own.
So as long as you don't break any laws, you aren't breaking any laws. Brilliant.
Perhaps in the US, but in Canada, it's around $35,000 (Canadian, at that!)
Wow, that's amazing. I guess even in the US most of the tech companies are concentrated in a few areas with high costs of living, but I'm surprised the difference is that big.
But more than monetary issues, there are never any deadlines, and the physical activity is nice -- I don't have to hit the gym, ever.
Personally I think the weather would bother me more than anything. I worked outdoors for a while, but it's nicer working in a nice air-conditioned office (in your case I guess it'd be a nice heated office).
Anyway, never any deadlines? Doesn't sound like a very reputable delivery company :).
Putting bacteria up there is not seeding the planet with life, its seeding it with little eating machines with no guarantee they will do anything except consume all the resources they can.
I thought that would be called "colonizing" Mars.
He's not even planning to build his startup right after high school. He's speaking of creating one later, during college.
Well, I didn't mean to imply that he's going to create the startup the day of his high school graduation. But presumably he's going to attend college right after high school, so it's going to be roughly "right after high school" anyway.
Given that, why are we spending so much time trying to knock down his apparent drive, instead telling him to work at a burger shop, or go party?
Given that I'm not one of the people who said any of those things, I won't speculate.
Stop trying to convince him not to, and find a way to help him. Any other discussion is off-topic, immaterial and irrelevant.
This is slashdot, not the homework help-line. We can talk about whatever we find interesting here.
Anyway, I suggested that he work on some open source projects. It's significantly easier to get involved with, and in fact I think it's his best chance of getting a job where he'll truly be able to use his talents. Plus, since he's pretty much guaranteed not to be paid his actual worth, at least he'll be exploited by the public rather than by some random corporation.
Hell, if he really can't find an internship, and he really is as talented as he claims to be, I'd be willing to give him some stuff to do for me. He'd get little or no pay, of course.
You seem to be comparing LLCs to sole proprietorships/partnerships. In that case, yes, there are tremendous advantages, and relatively few detriments. But if you're comparing the LLC to the Corporation the differences are much more minor.
That said, LLCs are popular with investment property owners - that's one of those few benefits I was referring to. It's really a legal issue rather than a taxation issue, and it has to do with what happens if a majority shareholder of an LLC/Corporation becomes liable for a debt that she can't pay. In the case of a corporation, the creditor could probably force the dissolution of the company (and in turn the sale of the house), whereas with an LLC the creditor could only sieze the distributions coming from the company. So it's really the opposite of what you said. In the case where something happens to the house, the Corporation and LLC will end up essentially the same.
XP is too dumbed down for me. They went and moved everything all over and made it so you have to go through 18 different steps to do something simple like access a control panel. Now don't get me wrong, I'm sure there's some lever or button I can push somewhere that changes behavior, but unless I can just push one button to enable "Win2K compatible mode" it's not worth it. I don't want to fight my operating system. If I wanted to spend the time reconfiguring everything I'd have switched to Linux already.
I'd like to go into more specifics, but I try to avoid the product as much as I can so I don't really remember all the specifics. Maybe I'm just being a luddite. But Win2K has worked well for me ever since I switched to it, and I don't see any need to change it, now or in the near future. Eventually some hardware will come out which doesn't support it, and that'll probably be what gets me to finally switch.
Oh yeah, and you say Windows XP is the best MS OS you have used, but you also say you jumped from 98SE to XP Pro. Well, I agree with you that XP is better than 98. And now that I think about it, maybe I haven't been using XP Pro, but XP Home Edition. In any case, I certainly don't see any reason to switch, support or no support. Especially as I have a laptop (with a small and full hard drive at that), so switching would be an enormous pain in the ass.
He doesn't base his statements on facts or experience, it is simply in vogue at Slashdot to rant against Bill Gates, Microsoft, and its products at every opportunity without providing any support for the claims made.
You definitely don't know me. I'm the first one to defend Microsoft and/or Gates when I get the chance. That doesn't make Windows XP not suck.
Bill Gates dropped out of high school to build a boat for sixty grand. He dropped out of college to found Microsoft. He did wonderfully, from a financial perspective, but I don't think that qualifies us to say that education isn't important to those who want to make it, out there in the real world. Gates got lucky, as you probably did to a certain extent as well.
Gates had rich parents, so he could afford to try and fail and try again until he succeeded. I don't say this to discount the Gates' intelligence, I think he was brilliant in many aspects. But I don't think it was so much luck as it was perserverence (which was facilitated by money). Now I don't know if the person asking slashdot has rich parents or not, but if not (and those two friends he's talking about aren't rich), I think trying to start a business from scratch straight out of high school is a horrible idea. Yes, it might succeed, but chances are it'll fail, and then you'll be in a really bad situation which it'll take a long time and a lot of work to get out of.
Get a crappy job (something hands-on with physical labor involved would be best - geeks don't get enough exercise, and it will do wonders for your sleep schedule and overall mental health). Whatever this big project is that you're envisioning founding a small company around with your two friends - do that on your own time while working at your crappy job.
Have you ever actually tried this? I'm sure some people can do it, but personally I can't. Manual labor does have the advantage of giving you lots of time to think about whatever it is you're working on, but then again you usually can't bring along a pen and paper so a lot of what you come up with will be forgotten anyway. But it also takes a lot out of you, in my case by the time I was ready to do some work it was just about time to go to bed. Of course, I'd usually get started on something before it was time to go to bed, and before I knew it it was 2 AM and I had to wake up in 5 hours and go work in the hot sun carrying shit. Maybe some people can take that, but I'm much happier with my office job, though I still don't really have enough time to work on stuff.
Since you're probably already good to go on your raw talents and skills, try to focus on the more businessy and/or professional areas of the project than you would naturally.
A good suggestion, but I wonder if this is something which can be easily learned through books by someone who hasn't ever worked in a professional environment. I think you've pretty much have to have someone working with you who has already experienced this first hand, at least for a year or two. Now maybe one of this person's two friends have that kind of experience, if so it's important that you let them be in charge of those project management aspects at least in the beginning.
I actually gave up on my computer science degree when I realised I could make at least as much money just doing manual labour. I'm making $16/hr now driving a delivery truck -- or about $35,000 a year, which is all I could expect to make with a degree.
Umm, the average starting salary of a Computer Science graduate in 2004 was $49691.
I mean, if driving a delivery truck is what you want to do, hey, do it. Ever since I've worked on the financial statements for a few FedEx drivers I've been a little bit jealous myself. They get a pretty decent pay, and best of all, they're independent contractors. Some of them even have multiple trucks and do little of the work themselves, instead subcontracting it out to others.
But don't lie to yourself. If you stuck with your computer science degree and were able to graduate with decent grades and get a job, you'd almost surely be making more than $35,000 a year, and you wouldn't have to lift anything heavier than a mouse.
Money collected in a single lump sum can sit in the bank earning interest before it is spent.
And how would the government go about collecting taxes at the beginning of the year, before people even know how much income they're going to make?
The government runs on debt all the time anyway.
Exactly, and they pay interest on that debt. If they have to wait 15 months before they collect taxes due in January, then they're going to pay a lot more interest on the debt.
I am, no doubt, confusing the terms Republican and Capitalist.
Well, yeah, and you're most likely doing that because they want you to. "Socialism", and to a greater but less on-topic extent "communism", are scare-words that are usually thrown around by Republicans on just about any topic they disagree with Democrats over. Then again, the situation is rarely as simple as whether or not to allow someone to pollute without any reprecusions. The question is usually more one of just how much damage is caused by a particular pollutant, or in some cases, like CO2, whether or not there is any damage at all. Both parties have their own special interest groups, and both parties tend to decide their position first, and then come up with an argument for it later.
The laughable Clear Skies Initiative comes to mind, "using a proven, market-based approach" (quote taken from the web-site). Nevertheless, the primary problem with the CSI is not the approach, but the weakening of the target standards as well as delaying the enforcement of those standards.)
Exactly. Personally I think emissions trading is a good approach, and it has been adopted in more liberal-supported approaches as well, such as the Kyoto protocol. The biggest difference between the Republicans and the Democrats is not the approach, it's the value put on clean air (or put more cynically, the value put on corporate welfare).
I agree, however, that one could have a capitalistic economy that theoretically figures such things in.
I'd go a bit further, and say that one can't have a capitalistic economy that doesn't figure in negative externalities. Economists are still working on what exactly the best way is to develop this "free-market environmentalism", but it is an important part of any working system of capitalism. In case you haven't already figured it out, I'm a big fan of a lot of these ideas. I'm somewhat of a libertarian thinker, but I'm by no means a fan of the current Libertarian Party. I voted for Nader in 2000 and for Kerry in 2004, so I definitely don't see this as a Republican vs. Democrat thing.
You don't think auto manufacturers do this? Of course they do.
Now, granted, there is more competition among auto manufacturers than operating system companies, and auto parts are somewhat more modular than operating system parts. On the other hand, while all autos necessarily deteriorate over time, software stays exactly the same forever, it doesn't break. So even if Microsoft dropped all support for Win2K, that wouldn't force anyone to buy a new operating system. Sure, if you wanted to run the new software you might have to, eventually, but it's not like the auto manufacturers are required to retrofit cars from the 60s with anti-lock brakes, either.
Would we sit still for it? Or DEMAND Congress pass law that removes all patent and copyright protections from all unsupported intellectual property?
We would and do sit for it. And defining "unsupported intellectual property" for the purposes of this law would be impossble. And it wouldn't accomplish anything anyway. With all the effort you'd spend reverse engineering Microsoft's Operating System you could have easily created your own Operating System instead. And if you could manage to reverse engineer Win2K and create a patch, most likely applying and even distributing that patch would fall under fair use exemptions anyway. The people who make Wine did it, and as far as I know they haven't been successfully sued yet.
If you don't have a firewall, and you run Win2K, you're almost guaranteed to have tons of exploits anyway.
If you do have a firewall, then the only exploits you really have to worry about are with the software running on the operating system, not the OS itself. Yes, this includes IE, but anyone who cares about security doesn't run IE.
It is official -- eWeek confirms: Win2K is dying One more crippling bombshell hit the already beleaguered Win2K community when Netcraft confirmed that Win2K market share has dropped yet again, now down to less than a fraction of 1 percent of all servers. Coming on the heels of a recent eWeek article which plainly states that Win2K will roll out the final Win2K update, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. Win2K is collapsing in complete disarray. You don't need to be a Kreskin to predict Win2K's future. The hand writing is on the wall: Win2K faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for Win2K because Win2K is dying. Things are looking very bad for Win2K. As many of us are already aware, Win2K continues to lose market share. Red ink flows like a river of blood. All major surveys show that Win2K has steadily declined in market share. Win2K is very sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim. If Win2K is to survive at all it will be among OS dilettante dabblers. Win2K continues to decay. Nothing short of a miracle could save it at this point in time. For all practical purposes, Win2K is dead. Fact: Win2K is dying
With Win2K's death I don't think Microsoft has much to worry about regarding Longhorn being not successful anymore.
I disagree. For one thing, Win2K isn't dead, and won't be dead for a long long time. Microsoft might stop supporting it, but people won't stop using it.
For another thing, considering how crappy XP is, maybe Win2K's death will have more of an effect of moving people away from Microsoft rather than moving them toward Longhorn. Now I don't know anything about Longhorn, but I have my doubts I'm ever going to use it (and even then, it'll only be because I'm forced to by my work, like they force me to use XP now). I'm certainly not paying for any other Microsoft Operating System, and I doubt the lack of support is going to be enough of a problem to give me incentive to download a pirated copy. So for me, at least, Win2K is it. By the time Win2K really dies Linux will probably be good enough for me to use. In fact, it's probably already good enough, I'm just too lazy to do the installation.
This is a problem inherent in the capitalistic system. I'm not advocating socialism, but pure capitalism is not a valid economical system as these problems so simply demonstrate.
I wouldn't say that pure capitalism negates having people pay for the negative externalities of their behavior. Even in a purely laissez-faire system there are still laws against dumping hazardous waste in someone's backyard, as well as against dumping something in your own backyard which pollutes water sources that you don't own.
Now I suppose one could argue that going beyond that, and charging people for externalities before they actually cause them is outside the scope of pure capitalism. If that's what you're saying, well, I don't know if I agree or not, but it's not the only solution to the problem. In fact, most states rely on the "tell people not to do it and sue them if they do" solution.
"Charge them up front whether they do it or not" is easier to enforce, and if properly implemented with rebates for those who take care of the problem themselves it's probably mostly fair. And it's certainly closer to being fair than the alternative solution - "tax everyone to clean up the problem whether they're likely to be part of the cause or not".