Pontificating about corporate "morality" might benefit from some historical analysis, particularly regarding the relationship between corporations and dictatorship. German corporations like Krupp and I.G. Farben certainly bankrolled and profited from the Nazi dictatorship until their factories got burned down.
If we restrict ourselves to U.S. corporations, then we can recall the handsome profits Ford and ITT made in Nazi Germany, even when the war was going on. Or we can recall the role of IBM supplying their Hollerith technology to aid the holocaust. More recently, we can look at the role of corporations like ITT (again!) and Anaconda copper in pushing for the Pinochet dictatorship in Chile, or United Fruit in Guatemala, etc.
War and dictatorship provide excellent opportunities for corporate profit. Just ask the board of Bechtel or Halliburton.
The only time this comes up is when the press/politicians talk about China or Cuba or Iran, etc. Hell, the same politicians who get on their high horse about prisoners in China used as slaves advocate exactly the same stuff here for American prisoners.
Where ever someone is being locked up, killed or tortured, someone else is making a profit. Take a look at the U.S. prison system if you don't believe me.
By the standards of today's GOP, the Republican Party of 1860 was a left-wing party. Take a look at what Lincoln had to say about corporations:
I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country. . . . corporations have been enthroned and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until all wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed."
-- U.S. President Abraham Lincoln, Nov. 21, 1864
That's why Karl Marx wrote favorably to Lincoln:
"From the commencement of the titanic American strife the workingmen of Europe felt instinctively that the star-spangled banner carried the destiny of their class. The contest for the territories which opened the dire epopee, was it not to decide whether the virgin soil of immense tracts should be wedded to the labor of the emigrant or prostituted by the tramp of the slave driver?"
The Republicans of today have nothing in common with the radical abolitionists of the 19th century.
OK, so will we start seeing fanatical Microsoft programmers, trained from childhood to memorize huge blocks of MS API code, start blowing themselves up at open source gatherings?
I recently switched from Mandrake 10.1 to Kubuntu. It's not as simple as you say. First, Ubuntu failed to get the graphics or network running on my laptop (Mandrake could do the grahics but not the networking). I knows it's a supported networking chip because earlier versions of Mandrake worked.
On my desktop, synaptic/apt-get gave me mysterious errors trying to install Gimp. It turns out the default us.* Ubuntu servers in the/etc/apt config file are flaky; so I had to waste time trying to see if it was because of a missing library, get on a mailing list, etc.
Sound? Sort of works, until I try and play an MP3, which causes the players to crash. Tried to upgrade to the latest kernel, but that means no graphics, because the Nvidia driver only seems to work on the older kernel. Downloaded the kernel source, but the driver still won't install. When I have half a day to spare, maybe I'll figure it out.
It's getting to the point that even otherwise slick distributions like Ubunto or Mandrake can become huge timewasters if stuff doesn't work out of the box. I'll probably go the OS X route pretty soon.
I have 10.0 running fairly well on an HP Pavillion notebook, but 10.1 and 10.2 wouldn't boot after installation, even with APIC disabled. Asking for help on the Mandrake forums and Mandrake Club wasn't too productive, usually just suggesting things I'd already tried. But I don't really expect Linux to work well on a laptop.
The kicker was when I upgraded my main machine to a Shuttle SFF box. This was a model that I knew would run Linux, based on what people had written about it, and used a generic Realtek network chip. Neither 10.1 nor 10.2 could get basic networking to run! I tried numerous suggestions off the Mandriva support list, but nothing could get the network running, even though the driver would load. Needless to say, Ubuntu just worked right off the install. At this point, it's unacceptible for a major distribution to cause this many headeaches on something so basic as networking with non-exotic hardware.
Come to think of it, I WON'T be giving the next release a whirl; life's too short, and Ubuntu just works.
I used Mandrake from version 7.2 up until 10.1. I found 10.1 to be problematic with various hardware, and 10.2 just impossible. So I switched to Ubuntu and everything works pretty well.
Since I still have a Mandrake club membership, I might give the new version a whirl, since the font rendering and desktop stuff from Lycoris looks interesting. I seriously doubt they'll get away from the bloated, buggy mess they've turned into.
I see that the independence movements of China are close to your heart. Tell us, where to you stand with respect to similar movements in the U.S.? For example, the struggle of the people of Puerto Rico, or the original inhabitants of Hawaii, or movements of the Navaho, Hopi, etc. for land, sovereignty, dignity and a recognition of historical injustice? Or does your outrage only extend to the colonization of people that don't directly effect your lifestyle?
As for Dell or Walmart, they are no different than Ford or IBM who made good money off Hitler's Germany, or GM's and ITT's profiteering off deathsquads and dictatorship in Latin America in the 1970s. Maybe you should think about the nature of industrial capitalism as a whole?
I'd use my Mac more if it weren't so noisy
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Return of the Mac
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· Score: 1
About a year ago my job gave me a dual-processor G4 Mac. Nice machine, and the interface is good once I got used to it; but it's incredibly noisy compared to my PC running Mandrake Linux. I find it easier to get free software running on the Linux box, KDE is a good enough interface, and DVD burning is smoother and more stable under Linux than it is on the Mac with Toast (which I regret paying for).
Sorry, I can't help but think the Mac is overhyped. I'd definitely get a Mac laptop though.
Every time there's a/. piece about the Hurd, it's seems like a majority of the comments are by naysayers of the why bother, it's wasted effort, it's just vaporware, why not improve Linux/BSD, etc. variety.
Don't any of those folks get the concept of R & D?
Think of the Hurd as a testing ground for cutting-edge OS ideas. Someday, it may result in an extremely scalable, secure and flexible operating system for servers that leapfrogs Linux, BSD, Solaris, OS X etc. Or it may languish as a mere experiment, providing valuable ideas and experience that trickle into existing operatings systems. Either way, everyone benefits.
"Compitition" also means scarce developer resources are squandered in duplicated efforts, rather than producing something new. Plus, new Linux users get to face a bewildering array of almost complete applications in each category (e.g. I was trying to explain to a friend how to copy a CD-ROM, only to find three different GUI front ends, none of which worked as well as the command line). How is this a good thing?
OK, so if trading with China is morally wrong because they use prison slave labor, do you advocate trade with the U.S. which also uses prison slave labor? Microsoft got called out for using prison labor in Washington state to shrinkwrap products; UNICOR produces most of the U.S. military's furniture and many of its unforms, to give a couple of examples.
What, you think everyone in a Chinese prison is another Thomas Jefferson? If it's OK to exploit the slave labor (at taxpayer expense, mind you) of two million or so prisoners in the U.S., why exactly is China so much worse?
Do any of these have PDA functionality?
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Neuros Review
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· Score: 1
Does anyone know if any of these drive-based MP3 players have data retrieval functions like a PDA? I'd rather not carry around two gadgets, and I'd use the music playback more than the PDA functionality.
Anyone who likes to study a subject in depth, and doesn't have access to a major academic library, is going to benefit hugely from this. Among other things, it will greatly facilitate the development of scholars independent of academia (think of Marx sitting in the British Museum).
Don't get me wrong, I enjoy the show, the character development, the witticisms, etc., but is it just me or do all the male characters seem emasculated? Even bad-boy spike had to get a chip taken out of his head to get his b*lls back, and was mostly a boy-toy for Buffy until the very end. Even the strong males like Angel essentially do whatever Buffy tells them. Forget about Xander and Giles -- you half expect them to start dressing like French maids, or something.
I'm also surprised the show didn't get attacked more by the Christian Right: good demons, black magic, flagrante lesbianism -- to say nothing of an evil, woman-hating preacher as the worst villian!
Of course, if the show really wanted to be subversive, the characters would all be overweight and pimply.
as a social historian. The late James Blaut's book "Eight Eurocentric Historians" (link to Amazon) has an excellent short critique of Diamond, ironic since Blaut was a geographer and Diamond uses almost purely geographical arguments to explain world history.
For example, I recently saw Diamond on CSPAN talking about his ideas. As an example of societies that failed/didn't fail to develop, he compared Paraguay to Switzerland. The irony is, Paraguay, under the 19th century dictator Francisco Lopez, was on its way to developing when it lost the devastating War of the Triple Alliance against Brazil, Uruguay and Argentina. Behind this war was the manipulation of British diplomacy, horrified by Paraguay's opposition to free trade and use of tarrifs against British good to stimulate local economic development; Paraguay was crushed by war, the same way Egypt's efforts to develop under Mohammed Ali were crushed by war with England three decades earlier.
Historians like Diamond will always find cultural or geographical explanations for development and underdevelopment, but they will never examine too closely the role of colonialism, war and politics. That might be hitting too close to home.
Let's take it to the logical conclusion
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DRM Helmet
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Nanotech chips on the optic and aural nerves that that would prevent you from seeing and hearing copyright-protected material, unless the wireless credit card chip in your head ponies up the money, of course.
Property rights, taken to their logical conclusion, make the word "freedom" utterly meaningless.
Some of the comments here make no disction between Einstein's socialist and pacifist views, and those of communism. Like many of his contemporaries, Einstein was a leftist.
Wouldn't it be great if your 1040 form had an extra page that broke down different areas of government spending, and you could fill in where your money goes (e.g. 10% military, 30% healthcare, 60% research) or a "leave it up to Congress" check box. Of course, that would be too much like democracy -- if Americans could decide how their money gets spent, our "representatives" might actually have to do some real work.
As for taxing science fiction to pay for space, if Congress taxed Hollywood 1% for every movie it made, we'd probably have golf courses on the moon by now.
Don't even start beating the old dead horse of "you owe us because your ancestors oppressed mine". Read your history and take a look at who was selling those slaves to the European -- yes, their own fellow Africans. Sorry, I think the slavery card was all used up long ago.
You are trying to portray African participation in slavery as somehow morally equal -- that's like saying Jews should pay reparations to the Nazis for the brave Wehrmacht soldiers who died in the Warsaw ghetto uprising.
This is hardly ancient history. The rotten elites who rule Africa today are frequently backed and armed by the U.S. and Europe, in order to keep the raw materials and profits flowing, or to use Africa as a dumping ground for toxic waste, etc. Furthermore, the enormous wealth and development of Europe and America has something to do with the long history of colonialism and unequal trade. Do you think the British built their empire for altruistic reasons? Do you think the U.S. props up, say, the Gulf regimes for humanitarian reasons? It's not only that "your ancestors oppressed mine"; it's that the developed countries today find all kinds of way to suck profits out of the underdeveloped ones, and people like you whine if anyone says "that's unfair".
Of course, if more people in Africa could afford to get online, such foolishness might not be so depressingly common
Perhaps you should crack open a book and learn something of history. American industrialization was done on the backs of the Irish, then the Italians and Poles (all honkeys, the lot of 'em). The south's plantation economy primarily traded via export. Do you honestly think our civil war would have happenned otherwise?
Well, I have. I never said American capitalism didn't exploit European workers (as did Europe). African slavery wouldn't have happened unless the plantation & mineral economy of pre-industrial hadn't been enormously profitable.
England's industrial revolution would not have been possible without the "Atlantic triangle" of slavery, sugar-cacao-cotton, and textiles. Slavery, along with the exploitation of English peasants, where key "human ingredients" in the birth of capitalism.
Later, England became anti-slavery when they sought to undermine the economies of their rivals France & Spain, and when their manufacturing economy had taken off.
Even when slavery ended, the exploitation of Africa hardly ended. Just look at the history of the Congo -- surely you're not going to suggest Belgium was out to "civilize" Africa, are you? Or that the CIA's assassination of Patrice Lumumba was purely the fault of Africans?
Slashdot Mirror
Is that personal enough for you?
If we restrict ourselves to U.S. corporations, then we can recall the handsome profits Ford and ITT made in Nazi Germany, even when the war was going on. Or we can recall the role of IBM supplying their Hollerith technology to aid the holocaust. More recently, we can look at the role of corporations like ITT (again!) and Anaconda copper in pushing for the Pinochet dictatorship in Chile, or United Fruit in Guatemala, etc.
War and dictatorship provide excellent opportunities for corporate profit. Just ask the board of Bechtel or Halliburton.
The only time this comes up is when the press/politicians talk about China or Cuba or Iran, etc. Hell, the same politicians who get on their high horse about prisoners in China used as slaves advocate exactly the same stuff here for American prisoners.
Where ever someone is being locked up, killed or tortured, someone else is making a profit. Take a look at the U.S. prison system if you don't believe me.
Not that it has much to do with Einstein's value as a scientist, but it shows he was multifaceted, to say the least.
How about "Someone's breaking the window"?
I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country. . . . corporations have been enthroned and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until all wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed."
-- U.S. President Abraham Lincoln, Nov. 21, 1864
That's why Karl Marx wrote favorably to Lincoln:
"From the commencement of the titanic American strife the workingmen of Europe felt instinctively that the star-spangled banner carried the destiny of their class. The contest for the territories which opened the dire epopee, was it not to decide whether the virgin soil of immense tracts should be wedded to the labor of the emigrant or prostituted by the tramp of the slave driver?"
The Republicans of today have nothing in common with the radical abolitionists of the 19th century.
Bad taste, I know, but I couldn't resist.
On my desktop, synaptic/apt-get gave me mysterious errors trying to install Gimp. It turns out the default us.* Ubuntu servers in the /etc/apt config file are flaky; so I had to waste time trying to see if it was because of a missing library, get on a mailing list, etc.
Sound? Sort of works, until I try and play an MP3, which causes the players to crash. Tried to upgrade to the latest kernel, but that means no graphics, because the Nvidia driver only seems to work on the older kernel. Downloaded the kernel source, but the driver still won't install. When I have half a day to spare, maybe I'll figure it out.
It's getting to the point that even otherwise slick distributions like Ubunto or Mandrake can become huge timewasters if stuff doesn't work out of the box. I'll probably go the OS X route pretty soon.
The kicker was when I upgraded my main machine to a Shuttle SFF box. This was a model that I knew would run Linux, based on what people had written about it, and used a generic Realtek network chip. Neither 10.1 nor 10.2 could get basic networking to run! I tried numerous suggestions off the Mandriva support list, but nothing could get the network running, even though the driver would load. Needless to say, Ubuntu just worked right off the install. At this point, it's unacceptible for a major distribution to cause this many headeaches on something so basic as networking with non-exotic hardware.
Come to think of it, I WON'T be giving the next release a whirl; life's too short, and Ubuntu just works.
Since I still have a Mandrake club membership, I might give the new version a whirl, since the font rendering and desktop stuff from Lycoris looks interesting. I seriously doubt they'll get away from the bloated, buggy mess they've turned into.
As for Dell or Walmart, they are no different than Ford or IBM who made good money off Hitler's Germany, or GM's and ITT's profiteering off deathsquads and dictatorship in Latin America in the 1970s. Maybe you should think about the nature of industrial capitalism as a whole?
Sorry, I can't help but think the Mac is overhyped. I'd definitely get a Mac laptop though.
Don't any of those folks get the concept of R & D?
Think of the Hurd as a testing ground for cutting-edge OS ideas. Someday, it may result in an extremely scalable, secure and flexible operating system for servers that leapfrogs Linux, BSD, Solaris, OS X etc. Or it may languish as a mere experiment, providing valuable ideas and experience that trickle into existing operatings systems. Either way, everyone benefits.
OK, so Gore's older by far than the average Slashdot reader; presumably most of us won't mind be referred to as "puerile readers"?
"Compitition" also means scarce developer resources are squandered in duplicated efforts, rather than producing something new. Plus, new Linux users get to face a bewildering array of almost complete applications in each category (e.g. I was trying to explain to a friend how to copy a CD-ROM, only to find three different GUI front ends, none of which worked as well as the command line). How is this a good thing?
What, you think everyone in a Chinese prison is another Thomas Jefferson? If it's OK to exploit the slave labor (at taxpayer expense, mind you) of two million or so prisoners in the U.S., why exactly is China so much worse?
Does anyone know if any of these drive-based MP3 players have data retrieval functions like a PDA? I'd rather not carry around two gadgets, and I'd use the music playback more than the PDA functionality.
Anyone who likes to study a subject in depth, and doesn't have access to a major academic library, is going to benefit hugely from this. Among other things, it will greatly facilitate the development of scholars independent of academia (think of Marx sitting in the British Museum).
I'm also surprised the show didn't get attacked more by the Christian Right: good demons, black magic, flagrante lesbianism -- to say nothing of an evil, woman-hating preacher as the worst villian!
Of course, if the show really wanted to be subversive, the characters would all be overweight and pimply.
For example, I recently saw Diamond on CSPAN talking about his ideas. As an example of societies that failed/didn't fail to develop, he compared Paraguay to Switzerland. The irony is, Paraguay, under the 19th century dictator Francisco Lopez, was on its way to developing when it lost the devastating War of the Triple Alliance against Brazil, Uruguay and Argentina. Behind this war was the manipulation of British diplomacy, horrified by Paraguay's opposition to free trade and use of tarrifs against British good to stimulate local economic development; Paraguay was crushed by war, the same way Egypt's efforts to develop under Mohammed Ali were crushed by war with England three decades earlier.
Historians like Diamond will always find cultural or geographical explanations for development and underdevelopment, but they will never examine too closely the role of colonialism, war and politics. That might be hitting too close to home.
Property rights, taken to their logical conclusion, make the word "freedom" utterly meaningless.
Spiderman v. Pentagon
For Einstein's own thoughts on socialism, check out his essay at Monthly Review: Why Socialism?
Wouldn't it be great if your 1040 form had an extra page that broke down different areas of government spending, and you could fill in where your money goes (e.g. 10% military, 30% healthcare, 60% research) or a "leave it up to Congress" check box. Of course, that would be too much like democracy -- if Americans could decide how their money gets spent, our "representatives" might actually have to do some real work. As for taxing science fiction to pay for space, if Congress taxed Hollywood 1% for every movie it made, we'd probably have golf courses on the moon by now.
You are trying to portray African participation in slavery as somehow morally equal -- that's like saying Jews should pay reparations to the Nazis for the brave Wehrmacht soldiers who died in the Warsaw ghetto uprising.
This is hardly ancient history. The rotten elites who rule Africa today are frequently backed and armed by the U.S. and Europe, in order to keep the raw materials and profits flowing, or to use Africa as a dumping ground for toxic waste, etc. Furthermore, the enormous wealth and development of Europe and America has something to do with the long history of colonialism and unequal trade. Do you think the British built their empire for altruistic reasons? Do you think the U.S. props up, say, the Gulf regimes for humanitarian reasons? It's not only that "your ancestors oppressed mine"; it's that the developed countries today find all kinds of way to suck profits out of the underdeveloped ones, and people like you whine if anyone says "that's unfair".
Of course, if more people in Africa could afford to get online, such foolishness might not be so depressingly common
Well, I have. I never said American capitalism didn't exploit European workers (as did Europe). African slavery wouldn't have happened unless the plantation & mineral economy of pre-industrial hadn't been enormously profitable. England's industrial revolution would not have been possible without the "Atlantic triangle" of slavery, sugar-cacao-cotton, and textiles. Slavery, along with the exploitation of English peasants, where key "human ingredients" in the birth of capitalism.
Later, England became anti-slavery when they sought to undermine the economies of their rivals France & Spain, and when their manufacturing economy had taken off.
Even when slavery ended, the exploitation of Africa hardly ended. Just look at the history of the Congo -- surely you're not going to suggest Belgium was out to "civilize" Africa, are you? Or that the CIA's assassination of Patrice Lumumba was purely the fault of Africans?