``It sounds good to say that, but how do you actually do it? There's no real barrier to the creation of third (or fourth or fifth) parties here in the US, they just don't get votes of donations.''
That's because of the winner take all system. Suppose there are three parties. One party you hate, one party you hate less, and one that you like, but isn't likely to get a lot of votes.
Now, you aren't going to vote for the party you hate. So that leaves you with two choices: the party you hate less, or the party you like. If you vote for the party you hate less, it may win, but the party you like will get nothing. If you vote for the party you like, it will still probably get nothing, but you will have increased the chances of the party you hate most winning everything. So you would be foolish to vote for the party you like.
In a system with proportional representation, you could vote for the party you like most. You don't have to help some party win everything to keep the party you hate out. Your favorite party will still get only a small number of votes, but, with that, it will get a small number of seats, instead of nothing at all.
So, as you can see, it's the winner take all system that makes it impractical for more than two parties to exist.
Presedential elections, of course, are always winner take all - but you could have two rounds: a first round with multiple candidates, and a second round with only the two most popular candidates.
You seem to be assuming that the only way to get people to accept a government is by adjusting the government's actions to the will of the people. That is not the case. Adjusting the will of the people to the actions of the government also makes people accept the government. Never underestimate the power of propaganda.
What creates "legitamacy [of the government] in the eyes of the people" is anything that causes people to think their government is legitimate. It can be a belief that the king has had his power granted to him by a God who one should not argue with. It can be that the government is protecting you against the evil people out there. It can be that you need the government to prevent a the collapse of civilization and a cutthroat environment where it is everyone against everyone. It could be that you have heard that the majority voted for the government, and you believe the will of the majority should be followed. Or it could be that you are the government, and you were born to rule the lesser humans.
I am not claiming that any of these are better or worse than any of the others, I am just disputing your claim that democracy is the only form of government that people will accept as legitimate.
``As for the two party system: it can work sometimes. I'm not convinced that it's working in the US, and I'm not convinced that in general it's better than a three or four party system.''
There should not be a fixed number of parties. No outright ban on new parties joining the fold, and no conditions that end up having the same effect, either. Because that is exactly what matters: if none of the parties are doing a good enough job, can you (actually, not theoretically) start your own party and do a better job? If your party is outlawed or stands no chance of gaining power, you can't, and you're stuck with what you have, barring a revolution.
You mean like, information about what a candidate plans to do if elected, their general views on things, and well-reasoned arguments supported by verifyable references?
``democracy's greatest strength is that it creates legitimacy, no other form of government renews legitimacy in the eyes of its people.''
Only if you believe that democracy is the only way to go. And then you still need to agree with your country's brand of democracy. There are plenty of flaws in any government and in any democratic system, and various non-democratic governments have had no problems justifying their existence.
``it gives the people a real voice in their own government. remove that trust with black box voting, and you remove legitimacy and stability and faith in the government.''
Many people don't care a whit about that. Either because they believe the government will screw them over regardless, or because they have faith in the government and the process, no matter what anybody else says.
Not that your maint point isn't right, by the way: electronic voting has grave problems, and current implementations are an outrage. They're not even trying to get it right.
``It is unfortunate that the mono is so closely associated with Windows, if the mono team had created/implemented a completely new set of cross-platform libraries (that bore no relation to Microsoft's framework) it would be more accepted.''
muhttpd uses fork, yet it works on Windows, thanks to the excellent work of the Cygwin project (at least earlier versions of muhttpd worked under Cygwin; I haven't tested recently).
The allure of hybrid, in the Netherlands, is paying less in taxes. It isn't what I would have chosen otherwise. I was looking at straight vegetable oil. But the government working against that, and giving tax breaks on hybrids...eventually I decided to save money, get a bigger car, and put a fraction of the money that I saved into buying carbon offsets (for more than I actually use). I'm a happy man, now.
Isn't the definition of "black hole" something that is so heavy and small that even light cannot escape from it?
And isn't the definition of "event horizon" the boundary beyond which we cannot observe anything, because no light can escape from it?
Wouldn't it follow from those definitions that black holes must have an event horizon? I mean, if they didn't, that would mean there was no boundary beyond which we could not see. Ergo, light would escape from them. Therefore, they wouldn't be black holes.
``As for ICE efficiency, Toyota says their Prius gasoline engine achieves 40% and Volkswagen determined their 3-cylinder Lupo diesel engines are at 50%.''
Peak efficiency or real-life efficiency? I've always thought that one of the reasons driving your wheels with an internal combustion engine is so wasteful is that you'll be running your ICE at sub-optimal efficiency practically all the time.
With a power plant, even a mobile plant on board of your vehicle, you could at least run it at maximum efficiency all the time. Plus you don't need an engine that can change speed quickly. Nor do you need to provide high torque at low speeds. Etc. etc. This _should_ enable you to get higher efficiency.
I don't have any numbers, though. Perhaps someone could provide some.
Actually, I think the open-source definition is great as it is. Thanks!
Especially the fact that it clarifies which things a license cannot prohibit if it is to be considered an open-source license is very helpful. I know many people have been tempted to say "but I don't want my software to be used by evil people or for evil purposes", with the best of intentions - but allowing such clauses would mean that _you_ or _your_ purpose could be disallowed by the license...and that's what we want to avoid.
``China is out of control. How can anyone compete if they have cheaper labor and can demand everyone hand over technologies.''
Well, for starters, they can "demand that everyone hand over technologies", too. That's a choice you can make. There is nothing preventing you from competing with China there. If the choice you make causes you to lose, it's not because something is preventing you from competing with China - it's because you competed, but China won.
That leaves the cheaper labor. And, frankly, if China has cheaper labor, that's an advantage they have. So if they win, based on that, it's not because something is preventing you from competing - it's because you competed with China and China won.
So, really, your "How can anyone compete?" is a bit misplaced.
Perhaps a more interesting question would be how to get desireable results, given what China is doing, but that would require you to, first of all, define what results are desireable.
``If ODF becomes a re-implementation of OOXML, who is going to use ODF?)''
The way I see it, ODF is an open format for storing data produced and handled by software like the programs in Microsoft Office. Compared to proprietary formats, it has the advantage of being open. Anybody can implement it, the documentation is available, etc. This is a great good.
On the other hand, I don't have a very high opinion of "software like the programs in Microsoft Office". And I don't have a very high opinion of ODF, either. Both are overly complex and bound to contain bugs. I believe in decomposition: small, simple parts, that can be put together to build anything you want. That goes for programs and for file formats (and several other things).
This story strikes me as a bit strange. Maine announces they won't be migrating to Vista, supposedly because it's bad. So far, so good. But then they announce that they _will_ be migrating to Windows 7, which isn't out yet. So there is the possibility that Windows 7 will be even worse (for whatever value matters to Maine) than Vista, but they will migrate to it anyway?
I think what they should have done is compare existing software. If they gain by migrating now, they migrate now, to whatever provides the best result. If they don't gain by migrating now, they don't migrate. Maybe they will migrate to Windows 7 once it's out, but that's a consideration to make once it's actually out.
Isn't there a simple solution to that? I mean, someone or some group could take it upon themselves to maintain the old incarnation of the language, and then old code would continue to run fine.
I think the real lesson here is that byte sequences and character sequences are not the same. Every character sequence can be encoded to a byte sequence (by using an appropriate encoding), and every byte sequence can be converted to a character sequence (by means of some decoding), but they are fundamentally different things. I wonder if we wouldn't be better off making this explicit, and providing distinct string (character sequence) and blob (byte sequence) types.
``I fail to see how Linspire was ever profitable. It didn't offer anything revolutionary and was basically Debian/Ubuntu with a few extra features that no one cared about.''
A lot of businesses profit by selling what someone else already does better for free.
``The freedom to use and modify software is simply meaningless to all but a vanishingly small percentage of humans.''
A vanishingly small percentage of humans that nevertheless seem to be bringing about a revolution of sorts. It used to be that companies and governments bought proprietary software or wrote their own. Now companies are grabbing open source software where they can, governments debate about open source software, and, in some places, having the source code available is starting to become a requirement.
``Thus the reason that Open Source, Free Software, whatever, while indeed meritorious for its ideals, will never gain widespread acceptance based on them.''
Perhaps not based on the ideals that some people have (I don't think any current software has ideals), but the fact that the source is available and one is allowed to modify and redistribute the software makes all the difference in some places. More and more people understand that open source means (1) you can run as many copies as you want without cumbersome and costly licensing procedures, (2) you can modify the software to your own needs and fix bugs that are plaguing you, without having to wait for anyone else, and (3) you can verify, or have others verify, that there is no nastiness in the software. Not everybody cares about these things, but the advantage open source has here is very real, and very much a deciding factor in some places.
``The German car makers had no investment in soot filters at the time, so they were unable or at least unwilling to switch over that soon. Euro 4 was supposed to enforce the introduction of filters in 2005 by halving the particulate limits, but car makers managed to stay below those limits by adapting their engines. That's why it took until Euro 5 (2009).''
IMO, this is actually the way to go. Rather than methods, prescribe results. If you know it is possible to get to a certain level of emissions using some technology, set those limits. The car makers can meet the requirements by using the technology, or any other technology they wish.
I am sure I am not the only one who thinks that the consideration here shouldn't be "what do we do about these issues, given the date of the election?" but "what do we do with the date of the election, given these issues?"
Well, I can only speculate as to what Microsoft's reasons for cutting off XP are, but I would imagine they include a desire to eventually stop supporting it - preferably when not too many people are using it anymore. If they continue to sell XP, XP will supposedly continue to gain new users and keep existing users, which means Microsoft will have to support it longer.
``Please, don't fool yourself into thinking this has ANYTHING to do with market forces at all.''
It would, if there were an alternative. But there really isn't, for the most part. Once you have committed yourself to driving a petrol-powered car, you're just going to have to put petrol in it. You can't just decide one day that, from now on, you will drive an electric vehicle. It will cost you thousands of euros to make that change, so you will have to plan ahead. And good public transport isn't going to appear overnight, either. So the petrol industry pretty much has you by the throat.
Of course, individual cases may be different. You may bike to work. Or you may be just at the point where you are about to buy a new car. Or you might have a diesel engine that can be converted to run on straight vegetable oil. Or there actually may be good public transport where you travel. Or you may be rich enough to simply buy a new vehicle when you feel like it. But I reckon that, for most people who drive cars, none of these are true.
Slashdot Mirror
``It sounds good to say that, but how do you actually do it? There's no real barrier to the creation of third (or fourth or fifth) parties here in the US, they just don't get votes of donations.''
That's because of the winner take all system. Suppose there are three parties. One party you hate, one party you hate less, and one that you like, but isn't likely to get a lot of votes.
Now, you aren't going to vote for the party you hate. So that leaves you with two choices: the party you hate less, or the party you like. If you vote for the party you hate less, it may win, but the party you like will get nothing. If you vote for the party you like, it will still probably get nothing, but you will have increased the chances of the party you hate most winning everything. So you would be foolish to vote for the party you like.
In a system with proportional representation, you could vote for the party you like most. You don't have to help some party win everything to keep the party you hate out. Your favorite party will still get only a small number of votes, but, with that, it will get a small number of seats, instead of nothing at all.
So, as you can see, it's the winner take all system that makes it impractical for more than two parties to exist.
Presedential elections, of course, are always winner take all - but you could have two rounds: a first round with multiple candidates, and a second round with only the two most popular candidates.
You seem to be assuming that the only way to get people to accept a government is by adjusting the government's actions to the will of the people. That is not the case. Adjusting the will of the people to the actions of the government also makes people accept the government. Never underestimate the power of propaganda.
What creates "legitamacy [of the government] in the eyes of the people" is anything that causes people to think their government is legitimate. It can be a belief that the king has had his power granted to him by a God who one should not argue with. It can be that the government is protecting you against the evil people out there. It can be that you need the government to prevent a the collapse of civilization and a cutthroat environment where it is everyone against everyone. It could be that you have heard that the majority voted for the government, and you believe the will of the majority should be followed. Or it could be that you are the government, and you were born to rule the lesser humans.
I am not claiming that any of these are better or worse than any of the others, I am just disputing your claim that democracy is the only form of government that people will accept as legitimate.
``As for the two party system: it can work sometimes. I'm not convinced that it's working in the US, and I'm not convinced that in general it's better than a three or four party system.''
There should not be a fixed number of parties. No outright ban on new parties joining the fold, and no conditions that end up having the same effect, either. Because that is exactly what matters: if none of the parties are doing a good enough job, can you (actually, not theoretically) start your own party and do a better job? If your party is outlawed or stands no chance of gaining power, you can't, and you're stuck with what you have, barring a revolution.
You mean like, information about what a candidate plans to do if elected, their general views on things, and well-reasoned arguments supported by verifyable references?
``democracy's greatest strength is that it creates legitimacy, no other form of government renews legitimacy in the eyes of its people.''
Only if you believe that democracy is the only way to go. And then you still need to agree with your country's brand of democracy. There are plenty of flaws in any government and in any democratic system, and various non-democratic governments have had no problems justifying their existence.
``it gives the people a real voice in their own government. remove that trust with black box voting, and you remove legitimacy and stability and faith in the government.''
Many people don't care a whit about that. Either because they believe the government will screw them over regardless, or because they have faith in the government and the process, no matter what anybody else says.
Not that your maint point isn't right, by the way: electronic voting has grave problems, and current implementations are an outrage. They're not even trying to get it right.
``It is unfortunate that the mono is so closely associated with Windows, if the mono team had created/implemented a
completely new set of cross-platform libraries (that bore no relation to Microsoft's framework) it would be more accepted.''
But then they would just have done what various others have already done, wouldn't they?
muhttpd uses fork, yet it works on Windows, thanks to the excellent work of the Cygwin project (at least earlier versions of muhttpd worked under Cygwin; I haven't tested recently).
The allure of hybrid, in the Netherlands, is paying less in taxes. It isn't what I would have chosen otherwise. I was looking at straight vegetable oil. But the government working against that, and giving tax breaks on hybrids...eventually I decided to save money, get a bigger car, and put a fraction of the money that I saved into buying carbon offsets (for more than I actually use). I'm a happy man, now.
Thanks for posting those numbers. What can we conclude from them?
Isn't the definition of "black hole" something that is so heavy and small that even light cannot escape from it?
And isn't the definition of "event horizon" the boundary beyond which we cannot observe anything, because no light can escape from it?
Wouldn't it follow from those definitions that black holes must have an event horizon? I mean, if they didn't, that would mean there was no boundary beyond which we could not see. Ergo, light would escape from them. Therefore, they wouldn't be black holes.
``As for ICE efficiency, Toyota says their Prius gasoline engine achieves 40% and Volkswagen determined their 3-cylinder Lupo diesel engines are at 50%.''
Peak efficiency or real-life efficiency? I've always thought that one of the reasons driving your wheels with an internal combustion engine is so wasteful is that you'll be running your ICE at sub-optimal efficiency practically all the time.
With a power plant, even a mobile plant on board of your vehicle, you could at least run it at maximum efficiency all the time. Plus you don't need an engine that can change speed quickly. Nor do you need to provide high torque at low speeds. Etc. etc. This _should_ enable you to get higher efficiency.
I don't have any numbers, though. Perhaps someone could provide some.
Actually, I think the open-source definition is great as it is. Thanks!
Especially the fact that it clarifies which things a license cannot prohibit if it is to be considered an open-source license is very helpful. I know many people have been tempted to say "but I don't want my software to be used by evil people or for evil purposes", with the best of intentions - but allowing such clauses would mean that _you_ or _your_ purpose could be disallowed by the license...and that's what we want to avoid.
``China is out of control. How can anyone compete if they have cheaper labor and can demand everyone hand over technologies.''
Well, for starters, they can "demand that everyone hand over technologies", too. That's a choice you can make. There is nothing preventing you from competing with China there. If the choice you make causes you to lose, it's not because something is preventing you from competing with China - it's because you competed, but China won.
That leaves the cheaper labor. And, frankly, if China has cheaper labor, that's an advantage they have. So if they win, based on that, it's not because something is preventing you from competing - it's because you competed with China and China won.
So, really, your "How can anyone compete?" is a bit misplaced.
Perhaps a more interesting question would be how to get desireable results, given what China is doing, but that would require you to, first of all, define what results are desireable.
``If ODF becomes a re-implementation of OOXML, who is going to use ODF?)''
The way I see it, ODF is an open format for storing data produced and handled by software like the programs in Microsoft Office. Compared to proprietary formats, it has the advantage of being open. Anybody can implement it, the documentation is available, etc. This is a great good.
On the other hand, I don't have a very high opinion of "software like the programs in Microsoft Office". And I don't have a very high opinion of ODF, either. Both are overly complex and bound to contain bugs. I believe in decomposition: small, simple parts, that can be put together to build anything you want. That goes for programs and for file formats (and several other things).
What do we actually need standards committees for?
This story strikes me as a bit strange. Maine announces they won't be migrating to Vista, supposedly because it's bad. So far, so good. But then they announce that they _will_ be migrating to Windows 7, which isn't out yet. So there is the possibility that Windows 7 will be even worse (for whatever value matters to Maine) than Vista, but they will migrate to it anyway?
I think what they should have done is compare existing software. If they gain by migrating now, they migrate now, to whatever provides the best result. If they don't gain by migrating now, they don't migrate. Maybe they will migrate to Windows 7 once it's out, but that's a consideration to make once it's actually out.
Isn't there a simple solution to that? I mean, someone or some group could take it upon themselves to maintain the old incarnation of the language, and then old code would continue to run fine.
I think the real lesson here is that byte sequences and character sequences are not the same. Every character sequence can be encoded to a byte sequence (by using an appropriate encoding), and every byte sequence can be converted to a character sequence (by means of some decoding), but they are fundamentally different things. I wonder if we wouldn't be better off making this explicit, and providing distinct string (character sequence) and blob (byte sequence) types.
``I fail to see how Linspire was ever profitable. It didn't offer anything revolutionary and was basically Debian/Ubuntu with a few extra features that no one cared about.''
A lot of businesses profit by selling what someone else already does better for free.
Butbutbut...we want to use technology to make simple things complicated!!
``The freedom to use and modify software is simply meaningless to all but a vanishingly small percentage of humans.''
A vanishingly small percentage of humans that nevertheless seem to be bringing about a revolution of sorts. It used to be that companies and governments bought proprietary software or wrote their own. Now companies are grabbing open source software where they can, governments debate about open source software, and, in some places, having the source code available is starting to become a requirement.
``Thus the reason that Open Source, Free Software, whatever, while indeed meritorious for its ideals, will never gain widespread acceptance based on them.''
Perhaps not based on the ideals that some people have (I don't think any current software has ideals), but the fact that the source is available and one is allowed to modify and redistribute the software makes all the difference in some places. More and more people understand that open source means (1) you can run as many copies as you want without cumbersome and costly licensing procedures, (2) you can modify the software to your own needs and fix bugs that are plaguing you, without having to wait for anyone else, and (3) you can verify, or have others verify, that there is no nastiness in the software. Not everybody cares about these things, but the advantage open source has here is very real, and very much a deciding factor in some places.
``The German car makers had no investment in soot filters at the time, so they were unable or at least unwilling to switch
over that soon. Euro 4 was supposed to enforce the introduction of filters in 2005 by halving the particulate limits, but
car makers managed to stay below those limits by adapting their engines. That's why it took until Euro 5 (2009).''
IMO, this is actually the way to go. Rather than methods, prescribe results. If you know it is possible to get to a certain level of emissions using some technology, set those limits. The car makers can meet the requirements by using the technology, or any other technology they wish.
I am sure I am not the only one who thinks that the consideration here shouldn't be "what do we do about these issues, given the date of the election?" but "what do we do with the date of the election, given these issues?"
Well, I can only speculate as to what Microsoft's reasons for cutting off XP are, but I would imagine they include a desire to eventually stop supporting it - preferably when not too many people are using it anymore. If they continue to sell XP, XP will supposedly continue to gain new users and keep existing users, which means Microsoft will have to support it longer.
``Please, don't fool yourself into thinking this has ANYTHING to do with market forces at all.''
It would, if there were an alternative. But there really isn't, for the most part. Once you have committed yourself to driving a petrol-powered car, you're just going to have to put petrol in it. You can't just decide one day that, from now on, you will drive an electric vehicle. It will cost you thousands of euros to make that change, so you will have to plan ahead. And good public transport isn't going to appear overnight, either. So the petrol industry pretty much has you by the throat.
Of course, individual cases may be different. You may bike to work. Or you may be just at the point where you are about to buy a new car. Or you might have a diesel engine that can be converted to run on straight vegetable oil. Or there actually may be good public transport where you travel. Or you may be rich enough to simply buy a new vehicle when you feel like it. But I reckon that, for most people who drive cars, none of these are true.