You can't really say no system is static; that wouldn't be a fair judgement. But you could deal with "steady state". As such, the family unit is a steady state unit. It doesn't mean it can't be broken into -- but it is a stable point.
Likewise, there are various social, political, and religious systems which have lasted for thousands of years. Those are a different kind of steady state, but they too are steady state. Again, many of them can be destroyed. When you look at how they are destroyed, and how they persist, then you can start to deal with what you might call a "natural" system. That is, a stability point about which a steady state system can develop and maintain itself.
"Imposed" systems, on the other hand, cannot maintain themselves. They are, if you will, the eddies in the conflict of two or more other systems. One such imposed system would have been the Amazon tribe of women warriors, assuming that was historical [I'm not convinced it was, but not convinced it wasn't, either]. Without a male component, they had to be at continuous war in order to survive, but war is not a steady-state survival tactic.
Now, it seems that you are of the opinion that both the US and the EU are in a continous state of flux, and cannot remain the same. As such, you are saying that they are not in a maintainable position. In other words, using my admittedly inaccurate terminology, they are imposed; not natural. I would then argue that this is because they impose granted rights, not natural rights -- that is, that the rights supported by the countries are not self-maintainable, but have to be upheld with continuous effort, or they fall apart. In other words, they are simply a result of the eddies caused by conflicting systems. Naturally, if you want a longer lasting government, you want a more stable set of laws.
In terms of physics, it's like asking "which is a natural flow pattern -- airflow around a wing? Or the airflow of a vortex?" The airflow of a vortex is self-maintaining; and if you look in the ocean, you'll see that vorticies caused by the Amazon flowing into the South Atlantic can last halfway to Britain. On the other hand, as a wing flies through the air, the drag on it will stop the airflow in relatively short order. The airflow around a wing, therefore, must be imposed. But the vortex need not be: it can develop spontaneously [that happens, too, occasionally], and last for quite a long time.
Enjoy your coffee [though I don't doubt it'll be cold by now].
I'm not going to say a whole lot against your argument, not because I think it's right -- clearly, this is one of those cases where neither of us convinced the other.
As far as I can tell, you take a view of law that everything is imposed and artificial; I take a view that some law is natural, and some is not, and the lifetime of a government has to do with how natural its law is. I might as easily say "internally consistent with governing the people", but you definitely would not accept that jump between one and the other without proof that I don't think I can provide.
I think, looking at the moderation, that there are a ton of people who think your way; and there are a ton of people who think my way. I think, ultimately, that for me, the proof is in the pudding: I forecast that the European Union and America will fall; you forecast that the European Union will stand, based upon its taking more power to itself [as I understand, their motto is "ever closer", and they are beginning to take a federal army, which will help drive that point home.]
I guess we'll see.
But I also rather expect that even were I right in the near future (30 years), and you wrong, you would not be convinced. Likewise, were you right for the near future and I wrong, I probably would not be convinced, so this isn't even a valid test case. I'd really be interested in seeing what *would* be a valid test case, though. It would be neat to come up with a kind of predictive test method that operated on smaller structures such as companies, large gangs, or agencies within a government, such that we could predict and test without getting more involved than reading a newspaper. But even that, I suspect, would be impossible.
Boy, you should be happy to have gotten a mod point there. I've got my own shingle, am paid squat, and still have to deal with that, with a publisher no less. It's called "author-at-law". Yeah, that's right, the author isn't the guy with his name on the book, it's the publisher.
Regarding your "cat's out of the bag" bit, there is actually a successful business model, without IP, that is based upon exactly that method. First copy is $60k. Second copy is $50k. Third copy you sell is $41k, and so on.
Furthermore, consider this: in every business transaction, everyone involved should profit, or there is injustice. Yet if you aren't paying the upkeep of your labor, then that means that your labor is working (presumably doing a good job) and their wage is death. That's no good. So even if the business doesn't make a profit but doesn't make a loss, the worker's just wage should be a living wage, including enough to have children who can carry them through when they are worn out [replacement costs, if you will].
That being the case, if a profit is made, the guy who assigned it justly deserves his own IP. However, I would point out to you that in every case of having specific laws, the powerful can and often do subvert the laws to take what is not rightfully theirs. Therefore, when that is the case, and it is the case now, the tragedy of the commons is preferable to the tragedy of slavery.
I do not have what *should* be my own intellectual property, if we're going to have intellectual property laws. But that's really not important to me. What's important to me is right and wrong, and intellectual property goes against natural law. It's just plain wrong; don't eat it with Quaker Oats.
Oh, and by definition, I don't have money, I'm not powerful, and I can't afford a lawyer, even if I wanted one. I don't. I just testify to the truth.
Actually, according to the book Hope's Edge, as I understand it (my wife read it, I haven't had time)...... genetically modified corn was developed and patented. Then Gerber had problems, so they started to search for corn that was not genetically modified, and found that it has all been contaminated.
At that point, the owners of the IP successfully sued the farmers of non-modified corn whose corn *they* had contaminated, for royalties.
It's messed up... and yes, that was great irony. I applaud the moderators who gave it "insightful" as opposed to "funny".
So you are saying that because European governments tend to tax higher in order to support a richer welfare system that EU countries will also suffer more violent crime?
I'm not sure that your premise is true. Tax is just one form of granted rights. Monopoly, or government taxes that then pay for government contracts to companies, are also granted rights. As far as I can tell, the American system has a higher rate of granted rights than Europe, so I'd rather expect it to have more violent crime, as well.
You have to understand that America is far more socialist than Europe in a lot of ways; but it's a right-wing socialism. To say I'm pushing "right wing", trolling "left wing" would not be a correct statement at all. I'm really sorry if I gave that impression.
As far as I can tell, violent crime comes from a number of factors, one of which is extreme frustration caused by an inability to live in a stable situation. As such, it is an indicator that your government is falling -- but it is by no means the only indicator.
That said, I do fully expect Europe to have problems with violent crime, whether that be France (don't they have a problem with gangs outside Paris?), Germany (anti-Turkish crime), Spain (highway robbery, mafia, armed revolution in two or three quarters?), Italy, and so on.
But let's look at the process for one kind of violent crime, the criminal gangs: the criminal gangs, as you say, come in where the state is weakest. But where is the state weakest? Usually where they have driven an economy underground, so that there is financial incentive driving an entirely secondary government (the crime lords, if you will). There can be ways that an economy is driven underground, meanwhile. One is taxes. One is regulations prohibiting an activity ineffectively. Yet another, though, could be social norms that provide a secondary government that the first refuses to recognize. [As such, if you have a large Basque population and an underground Basque system of governance, the national government would do best to look at the Basque government, and recognize it officially.]
As you say, a strong state is almost always a good cure for violent crime; but in the end, for a state to be strong they have to have the support of the people they rule. And to do that, they have to in general uphold inherent rights; because people in general are not going to give their inherent rights up.
Your post is easier to answer than the one above; the one above takes a ton more new thought, so I'm going to wait on that one. But then again, I think that the one above also got moderated better for the same reason. But I'll happily answer your post immediately. Just, check back to the one above later, because I think that he/she was a bit clearer and more succinct than you.
If you even look at the behavior of animals, you will see that they claim property and defend it as their own. Therefore, the right of property is a natural right.
The right to smash someone's face, as you claim, is part of the right to self defense; but "self defense" inherently includes "taking the offensive" as well. Essentially, yeah, if people are going to fight each other, then fighting is going to happen. So it, too, is a natural right. Locking someone up to keep them from fighting is a right granted to other people to smooth the edges of a very rough life.
Regarding the US, I didn't mention it, because I thought it was obvious. The US has nothing to do with freedom: there are granted rights everywhere, and very seldom are inherent rights officially acknowledged, much less upheld. I am not holding up US as an example, therefore.
Okay... your most important statement.
"In order to": That involves a value judgement, perfectly fine as long as you don't put the force of government behind it "drive innovation"... very nice, but innovation is not worth much in and of itself, unless you think that next year all teachers should wear clown masks (that's innovative, but not effective). "an innovative idea deserves the right"... I'm sorry, did we get away from human rights? Now ideas have rights and humans do not? How about the right to labor with your skills to better your condition? "to be protected"... thus, you are dealing not with rights, but with protection "so that the work or the genius in finding it pays off"...if the idea has value, then it will probably pay off anyhow. If it doesn't have value, then it shouldn't. "...for the one investing it." That, in my opinion, is the entire point of patents: for the investor. In other words, for the person with money, with power, so that they can have more money, more power. Which is why it has the power to become law. So we're going to damage the economy (which patents do), in order to benefit those with power, and give them more power. There's nothing new in that: despots like Saddam Hussein's sons stole businesses left and right, and girls too, and fed their boyfriends to the lions... but it doesn't make it right.
So I'd say that even the idea of patents is wrong. That is, the application will always be wrong, because the basic reason behind them is wrong.
Oh, yes... umm, so we can distribute all the source code we want, but if we ever compile it to use it, we get hit for a lawsuit equal to the minimum patent licensing fee, plus lawyer fees? With MP3s, I guess that's $10000, though you get 5000 licenses for that. But first you have to come up with 5000 people who all want the same license, or the MP3 people will hit you with 5000 suits for $10k each...... so no, pointless intellectual exercises are what attract chess players and Mensa members, not computer programmers. It would not be good for OSS.
Aside from that, I base my arguments for or against laws, based on right and wrong. If I based my arguments on just what I want, you'd see some moral consistancy from me: I'd also be a highway robber, carjacking every time I thought I could get away with it. Which wouldn't be often, but just often enough that you'd be afraid to go out driving very far. I hear it's like that in Spain (highwaymen, and all).
It's what's wrong with patents in general. Quite simply: There are natural rights, and there are granted rights. Your natural rights include such things as freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of travel, right to property, and so on.
The natural rights are things that can be released to some extent by a person, but cannot be taken away. Therefore, as a government attempts to take these rights away, it drives anarchy, crime, and disorder, eventually resulting in the fall of the government.
Your granted rights include such things as welfare, right to a single national language (nationalism), right not to compete against foreign labor, right to a monopoly, (as in Spain) right to tax funds for your family title and property, and so on. Patents and copyrights fall into the latter class. They are granted rights.
The granted rights are those things that make it easier to live, especially when people are not good to each other on their own. You break your leg, and didn't have insurance, and can't work, and haven't been paid justly for your labor in the past, so you have no assets? Well, we will make others pay for you.
The problem is that every granted right that is given to one person requires the government to attempt to deprive another person of their natural rights. So the more granted rights you have, the more unstable your government is. A sign of this is that your economy will be bad, the unofficial (criminal) economy will be larger, and violent crime will be greater, as well.
Where your balance point between natural and granted rights is, is a balance that is forced by people not dealing with each other rightly. But there is another factor, as well: when those with power just want benefits, and have the ability to take them by controlling the law. When this happens, though, the government is not going to last long.
Unfortunately, I'm seeing this happen in the EU, so I don't expect the union to last. But if I am correct, it also means that no argument you use will work. So by all means, try your own. But if you want, present this to them as well. Maybe it'll wake someone up, but I doubt it.
When we're in a restaurant, and they're playing the music too loud, and the waitress is taking forever to get there, I don't get mad.
I just start hand dancing. That is, I choreograph my hands, maybe my head/eye motions, to the music, with only the most subtle motions. That drives my wife crazy, but amuses me. Actually, it amuses her too; she starts laughing, and then says "stop it." But it passes the time.
But it gave me an idea for a music video, in which they play the music, and the band is there, playing, and the people are there, frozen in time, just standing around, but then as you look more closely, you see that they actually are dancing in a rather complicated, interesting dance.
Then, at the end, you finish up with something like a bit of sheet music falling down, or a lady's ring dropping, or maybe with everybody stopping, and stretching, talking, and going out afterwards.
I'm sorry. Can you tell me what is so bad about the Chinese or Russians getting to xxx first? If they do it, then they earned it. Clearly, NASA is incapable. That said, I don't think China will succeed, though India has a chance, and Europe just might possibly.
But my point is that it probably would be better just to shut the thing down, until we get off our warhorse, and stop screwing each other financially, and our economy therefore recovers. Until that point, I don't foresee anything but disaster.
Oh, and... those engineers who put their souls on the line over a fatally flawed design? They were lousy engineers; either they realized it was flawed, and still chose to work a deadly project, or they didn't know it was flawed, but should have. That admittedly leaves plenty of others who were in unflawed fields, but the engineers too need to take their share of the blame. If you're an engineer, at some point, it isn't just a job. I'd compare it to doctors and the hippocratic oath, but these days, it seems that for them it's just a job, so I'll leave well enough alone.
... Clearly, they won't be allowed to remain in the US. Therefore, they're going to have to fly to some South Seas island with good internet connectivity. Then, when they get there, they're of course going to find that there are only two real tech jobs available to invest in...... spam, and internet worms to DoS the blacklists.
Well, you gotta invest money, don't you? You can't just have it sitting there... you have a right to make money, don't you? Isn't that what America is all about?
I'd say the internet is about done for.
There -- I've managed to compress three recent stories (well, four or five, really) into one.
And all, without mentioning how they do it in Soviet Russia. Because in Soviet Russia, they have a different method of dealing with companies like SCO, and it ain't pretty, and it ain't good either.
Put it this way, if the blocklists were properly funded, I'd bet they could pay people to actually check each business out, and respond quickly. Therefore, it would seem to me that the following methods should be available:
(1) Pay $$$ to get reviewed immediately. That money shouldn't be small either. As an ISP, you pass this on to the customer, by making him post bond if he wants his own email server. That bond equals the money it costs to get you removed quickly.
(2) Don't pay $$$, and get reviewed at leisure.
If you suggested that, I'm pretty sure the blocklists would respond.
That said, I strongly suspect that this is the spammers, and they are going to win this round. They won't win long term; nor will those who sell them spam facilities.
I think that came out in 1988 or so, but there were all kinds of things like "We've got lots of them. So many in fact, that you would need two strong people to carry around the documentation if we had bothered to write it. So many that even we don't know what most of them do. Don't ask us for any of these options, because we probably can't find the PEC for it anyway. Even if we find the PEC, we probably can't order it either (just TRY asking for nroff on a 3B2). If you don't like it, call Technologies. They'll tell you to see Figure 1."
I graduated in 1992. I was the structural designer for the team that came up with the winning G/A 4-seat design in the AIAA design contest.
So I can say "I was good."
But it isn't exactly pain by now. It's just half "oh well, look what could've been", combined with "wow, if that hadn't happened, my life would have been normal. I would've been moderately wealthy, deskbound, and quietly desperate. Thank goodness it didn't."
... I, as an aerospace engineer by training (not by job, sadly... I graduated with terrible timing... or maybe happily) will champion the cause of zeroing their budget.
As any good engineer will tell you, if there isn't the budget to do it right, then don't do it. Following some rather terrible logic, I might conclude that Nasa, therefore, typically does not have good engineers.
I'd much rather slow down, let the economy sort itself out, and sort the space issue out, as well.
And if it doesn't sort itself out, then what? Well, then some other nation succeeds that *has* figured out how to maintain an economy with integrity. Call me an optimist, but I actually think that that's likely.
It seems to me that when I wanted to set up my sound system, I didn't actually have to start logging in as root. Rather, I set up a "sound" group, gave it specific privileges, and then added my user name to "sound".
Now, it seems to me that that is role-based privilege. That is distinctly opposed to the Windows system, where you assign a program "trusted status", and then everything it does is considered okay.
I suppose there is a possibility for a third model of security, perhaps something you'd call database security. Every program and subprogram has the subprograms/GUI routines that it calls, and when you set up the program, you specifically give it access to those routines and no others. Then users' shells are just another one of those programs, and each shell has its own database reference list. If you need mail priveleges, you have to ask the admin.
But that kind of a security setup is going to take a ton of time to check as a program runs, and even that is going to be "broken" for a lot of business models.
As a result, there's a different kind of security I favor: it's the broken network security method. You have your internal computer network, with whatever security it has. And you have your webserver/email server. And those two computers are not on the same network. Rather, it takes physical access to get data from one to the other. Either that access is through manually installing a network cable for a short period of time, or transferring a CD-R, or some other similar method. But 99.4% of the time, there is just no access whatseover. Such a system is mostly secure against net-based attacks, 99.4% of the time. I say mostly, because someone with insider knowledge could concievably root your net box, and then have it wait until someone connected in the other network, and immediately launch a predefined attack... but that's probably less likely than J03 51XPAcK owning your 100%-internet-available company network.
Teach your guys how to use Bash. Then have them write their own little Bash shortcuts, which take only 2 characters plus a target name, assign them executable status, and put them in their personal bin folders.
Have them tell you about them, and post useful shortcut names + Bash command, each week, near the coffee machine. That will help standardize their commands within the company.
Is Linux as secure as we'd like to think it is? No. I'd like to think that my Linux box is completely secure, thank you very much.
But that said, in my finest Lewis Carollian tradition and practice, I not only *think* it's inherently secure, but for five minutes per day I outright completely believe it's inherently secure. If you remember, Lewis Caroll was a famous British mathematician, and quotes of his are incredibly important within the computer security industry.
It's just that I already wasted my five minutes today, and don't have more time to spend on it, while I made this posting. Catch me again next week with Taco's Weekly Topic Rerun, and you'll see me post a proof of why Linux must be 100% secure, and an insecure Linux box does not exist.
You know, I was just this last week over in Nida, and we first went to Thomas Mann's house, and later went up the large dune, and saw the stage set being built for a a German movie, "Wellen" (waves).
However, while we were at Thomas Mann's house, I saw their reed roofs, and noticed how there was a good 1 foot (1/3 m) of reeds in the roof. The reeds all pointed downwards, but not nearly as steeply as the roof, so water tension and gravity would combine to make the water run out of the roof, towards the outside. Likewise, the siding involves boards that are carved to fit, interlocking, side by side. And there's a very specific style of house that is standard.
But then we were over at the stage set, and the first thing I notice is these island-style pagodas, with reed roofs 1-3 reeds thick, and reed-colored tar paper actually sealing against water. It was incredibly funny. Then I noticed that the house style was island-style pagoda. Then we walked a little farther, and I saw this Victorian-style mansion (not Nida at all, nor Island style, but American Victorian), with 1x2 (inch) furring nailed over particle board, along the outside to make it look sortof like the interlocking boards of the Thomas Mann house. Mmmhmm.
But the most amusing part was the reed roofs, because I had taken the time, on my own, to see how they actually worked, and this was glaringly obvious. For a small chicken shed, you can get away with 4"-6" thick roofs. For a larger house, you really need a greater thickness.
But ultimately, this is a stage set. It isn't reality. And when it comes down to it, the goal of these movies is to tell a story, pretty much as cheaply as possible, and the story isn't true. Which means that if you look, you're going to see that it isn't true. Maybe, we should get back to some simpler stories, and forget the glamour. When you tell a story with the hula, or in the style of the African dance stories, or a campfire horror story, nobody says "oh, that isn't real", largely because there isn't any glamour. But the story is just as entertaining.
... like the driver named Conley, who bought a BMW.
This article's old news, I know, but it's worth rereading. This guy didn't know how to operate his brake lights, or his phone, and such. Clearly, even cars are too technical for people, so it shouldn't surprise you if people have trouble with their Microsoft Windows products.
Sometimes you really do need a techie to open your car windows for you.
Nope. Don't do it that way. You're liable to promote Linux to their system, and yourself into homelessness.
---
Use a proper business model:
"Okay, my first charge for help is going to be $100 -- $50 for one hour of help, and another $50 for a second HDD, installing a dual-boot Debian Linux on your computer. At that point, you have a choice about which system you want to boot into, and it will make it easier for me to disk-image your Windows system directories, and fix your problems. One thing, though: keep all your program CDs in one place for quick reinstall; your programs installed in c:\my programs; your downloaded programs in c:\my downloads\programs; and all your documents stored somewhere under c:\mydocuments. That will keep things simple for me, and cheap for you.
"After that, I'll charge $50/hr for service, but it will be a ton cheaper, because I'll often simply restore the image of your OS directory. Indeed, I'll show you how to do it.
---
Quite honestly, as they get used to using Linux, they'll start to forget Windows. I know I did. It's still on my system. Eventually, though, I had to completely reformat my Win98 HDD and reinstall. This time, the reinstall for some reason never gave me Word, which was in the original software set, and I can't figure out how to get it [and it is one of my main reasons for keeping Windows around.] But interestingly, with the reinstall, I ended up doing it a second time and installing almost nothing, but lo and behold, my HP DJ1120c print driver, which used to crash on the loaded system, still crashes on the empty system, and now it's clear that it is an OS bug, since it crashes other things, too. So my other major reason for keeping Windows around, a better print driver, is also bogus.
Well, as people start to realize this stuff, they're going to drop Windows on their own. And you're not going to make yourself poor, servicing them for free.
And indeed, I don't think it's a bad thing. Let me give a comparison.
Here in Lithuania, we have a ton of factories that didn't have the cash to stay open, and closed their doors. So there's all this factory equipment, all these factory buildings, sitting there idle. Or it was that way for the last 10 years, anyhow.
Anyhow, you have smart international companies coming in and buying up this property cheap, and putting it back into production. Chevron; Yukos Oil; Food Line (I think you know it as Food Lion), and so on. Now, I'm of mixed feelings about this. You see, on the one hand, Lithuanian property, which *should* have been divided up among the people, *should* have been available for privatization to individuals, instead is going to profit these international corporations.
On the other hand, if they can get this stuff working, then they have every reason to try to keep it producing. So if they keep it producing by (for example) paying the workers a real living wage, then this is good. On the other hand, if they keep it producing in the US Energy Company style -- bring in soldiers, point guns at the workers and say "your choice is die fast with a bullet or die slowly by starvation", then that's a bad thing.
Either way, Lithuania ends up having this great big sign "Exploit me". With any luck, a responsible company will do so, and it will be good for everyone involved.
Well, it's the same for OSS. We say "It's free! Really free!". That's like saying "Exploit me!". Now, if a responsible company (Apache) does this, then that's good. If, on the other hand, like SCO, they try to bring out the big guns and say "die now or die later", that's a bad thing.
But that "Exploit me" sign? Well, that's also called advertising. Or a sale. And OSS is, well, one darn good sale. I've come, I've bought (who can resist the price?), I've called my friends and family to come too.
I use Debian. I like Debian because I don't have money, and I find the mailing list support good and useful.
That said, all the time people ask questions from a RH point of view, or mention "well, I also have SUSE". Nobody gets in a dither--at least, not any more than usual (the Debian mailing lists are not "professional" by a long shot, and the burners are kept on with a constant low-level flame.)
But to be honest, I've seen, indeed installed SUSE before, and SUSE's YAST is every bit as good as Debian's installer. For newbies, it's probably better. Indeed, their partitioning program is better as well, in my opinion.
And when I installed it, it was a sample install, but I got everything. After that, I'm pretty sure I could figure out how to install any source code I needed.
My point is that if a company was interested in installing Linux, or if a person who had the $80, and understood German better than English wanted it, I would not hesitate to recommend SUSE.
I really don't see any vs.
That said, the Debian distribution is every bit as valuable as the SUSE distribution. As I mentioned above, I use Debian. I really do hope that the CEO was saying essentially "if you want to go with a Linux company, that means us or RH", and not turning SCOish (starting to think with an "us vs. free as in beer" mentality).
#1. My point was about it being Baltic. My familiarity is with the Samogitian culture, not the northern baltic culture, but there were significant cross-invasions with the Swedes. So it's more than possible.
#2. I thank you for the information about Finland/Sweden. More information is better. That said, I made my guess. And the basic information about the endings isn't wrong. Nor is the basic history wrong.
Here are some links that will help back up my statements:
(3) And for evidence that Finnish got words directly from Baltic, you need read no farther than the 2nd paragraph here, though I think it's interesting to read straight to the end.
(4) Looking at Torvaldz, I'd note that valia in Swedish is "elect/appointed"; Valdz*ia in Lithuanian, on the other hand is "power", while valda is property, and valdymas is government. In Latvian, if you look up "vald" (type it in, then hit tulkot), you will see a whole bunch of words, like valdos*s, that deal with authority, power, and governance.
Those words are all quite close in both meaning and sound. Now, that doesn't mean that Torvalds' name came from anything having to do with "appointments" or "power"; I don't know enough about Swedish culture and Swedish names to say any such thing for sure. But I would say that Finnish is not so far from Samogitian (which is in turn one of the closest languages to IndoEuropean that you'll find), as you might believe. And since Latvia is in close proximity to Sweden, and there were wars between the two, I don't find it hard to believe that language structure would transmit between them.
More language than that transmitted between the Vikings and the Angles, and between the Normans and the English, to create the English language, and in less time.
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You can't really say no system is static; that wouldn't be a fair judgement. But you could deal with "steady state". As such, the family unit is a steady state unit. It doesn't mean it can't be broken into -- but it is a stable point.
Likewise, there are various social, political, and religious systems which have lasted for thousands of years. Those are a different kind of steady state, but they too are steady state. Again, many of them can be destroyed. When you look at how they are destroyed, and how they persist, then you can start to deal with what you might call a "natural" system. That is, a stability point about which a steady state system can develop and maintain itself.
"Imposed" systems, on the other hand, cannot maintain themselves. They are, if you will, the eddies in the conflict of two or more other systems. One such imposed system would have been the Amazon tribe of women warriors, assuming that was historical [I'm not convinced it was, but not convinced it wasn't, either]. Without a male component, they had to be at continuous war in order to survive, but war is not a steady-state survival tactic.
Now, it seems that you are of the opinion that both the US and the EU are in a continous state of flux, and cannot remain the same. As such, you are saying that they are not in a maintainable position. In other words, using my admittedly inaccurate terminology, they are imposed; not natural. I would then argue that this is because they impose granted rights, not natural rights -- that is, that the rights supported by the countries are not self-maintainable, but have to be upheld with continuous effort, or they fall apart. In other words, they are simply a result of the eddies caused by conflicting systems. Naturally, if you want a longer lasting government, you want a more stable set of laws.
In terms of physics, it's like asking "which is a natural flow pattern -- airflow around a wing? Or the airflow of a vortex?" The airflow of a vortex is self-maintaining; and if you look in the ocean, you'll see that vorticies caused by the Amazon flowing into the South Atlantic can last halfway to Britain. On the other hand, as a wing flies through the air, the drag on it will stop the airflow in relatively short order. The airflow around a wing, therefore, must be imposed. But the vortex need not be: it can develop spontaneously [that happens, too, occasionally], and last for quite a long time.
Enjoy your coffee [though I don't doubt it'll be cold by now].
I'm not going to say a whole lot against your argument, not because I think it's right -- clearly, this is one of those cases where neither of us convinced the other.
As far as I can tell, you take a view of law that everything is imposed and artificial; I take a view that some law is natural, and some is not, and the lifetime of a government has to do with how natural its law is. I might as easily say "internally consistent with governing the people", but you definitely would not accept that jump between one and the other without proof that I don't think I can provide.
I think, looking at the moderation, that there are a ton of people who think your way; and there are a ton of people who think my way. I think, ultimately, that for me, the proof is in the pudding: I forecast that the European Union and America will fall; you forecast that the European Union will stand, based upon its taking more power to itself [as I understand, their motto is "ever closer", and they are beginning to take a federal army, which will help drive that point home.]
I guess we'll see.
But I also rather expect that even were I right in the near future (30 years), and you wrong, you would not be convinced. Likewise, were you right for the near future and I wrong, I probably would not be convinced, so this isn't even a valid test case. I'd really be interested in seeing what *would* be a valid test case, though. It would be neat to come up with a kind of predictive test method that operated on smaller structures such as companies, large gangs, or agencies within a government, such that we could predict and test without getting more involved than reading a newspaper. But even that, I suspect, would be impossible.
Boy, you should be happy to have gotten a mod point there. I've got my own shingle, am paid squat, and still have to deal with that, with a publisher no less. It's called "author-at-law". Yeah, that's right, the author isn't the guy with his name on the book, it's the publisher.
Regarding your "cat's out of the bag" bit, there is actually a successful business model, without IP, that is based upon exactly that method. First copy is $60k. Second copy is $50k. Third copy you sell is $41k, and so on.
Furthermore, consider this: in every business transaction, everyone involved should profit, or there is injustice. Yet if you aren't paying the upkeep of your labor, then that means that your labor is working (presumably doing a good job) and their wage is death. That's no good. So even if the business doesn't make a profit but doesn't make a loss, the worker's just wage should be a living wage, including enough to have children who can carry them through when they are worn out [replacement costs, if you will].
That being the case, if a profit is made, the guy who assigned it justly deserves his own IP. However, I would point out to you that in every case of having specific laws, the powerful can and often do subvert the laws to take what is not rightfully theirs. Therefore, when that is the case, and it is the case now, the tragedy of the commons is preferable to the tragedy of slavery.
I do not have what *should* be my own intellectual property, if we're going to have intellectual property laws. But that's really not important to me. What's important to me is right and wrong, and intellectual property goes against natural law. It's just plain wrong; don't eat it with Quaker Oats.
Oh, and by definition, I don't have money, I'm not powerful, and I can't afford a lawyer, even if I wanted one. I don't. I just testify to the truth.
Actually, according to the book Hope's Edge, as I understand it (my wife read it, I haven't had time)... ... genetically modified corn was developed and patented. Then Gerber had problems, so they started to search for corn that was not genetically modified, and found that it has all been contaminated.
At that point, the owners of the IP successfully sued the farmers of non-modified corn whose corn *they* had contaminated, for royalties.
It's messed up... and yes, that was great irony. I applaud the moderators who gave it "insightful" as opposed to "funny".
So you are saying that because European governments tend to tax higher in order to support a richer welfare system that EU countries will also suffer more violent crime?
I'm not sure that your premise is true. Tax is just one form of granted rights. Monopoly, or government taxes that then pay for government contracts to companies, are also granted rights. As far as I can tell, the American system has a higher rate of granted rights than Europe, so I'd rather expect it to have more violent crime, as well.
You have to understand that America is far more socialist than Europe in a lot of ways; but it's a right-wing socialism. To say I'm pushing "right wing", trolling "left wing" would not be a correct statement at all. I'm really sorry if I gave that impression.
As far as I can tell, violent crime comes from a number of factors, one of which is extreme frustration caused by an inability to live in a stable situation. As such, it is an indicator that your government is falling -- but it is by no means the only indicator.
That said, I do fully expect Europe to have problems with violent crime, whether that be France (don't they have a problem with gangs outside Paris?), Germany (anti-Turkish crime), Spain (highway robbery, mafia, armed revolution in two or three quarters?), Italy, and so on.
But let's look at the process for one kind of violent crime, the criminal gangs: the criminal gangs, as you say, come in where the state is weakest. But where is the state weakest? Usually where they have driven an economy underground, so that there is financial incentive driving an entirely secondary government (the crime lords, if you will). There can be ways that an economy is driven underground, meanwhile. One is taxes. One is regulations prohibiting an activity ineffectively. Yet another, though, could be social norms that provide a secondary government that the first refuses to recognize. [As such, if you have a large Basque population and an underground Basque system of governance, the national government would do best to look at the Basque government, and recognize it officially.]
As you say, a strong state is almost always a good cure for violent crime; but in the end, for a state to be strong they have to have the support of the people they rule. And to do that, they have to in general uphold inherent rights; because people in general are not going to give their inherent rights up.
If you even look at the behavior of animals, you will see that they claim property and defend it as their own. Therefore, the right of property is a natural right.
The right to smash someone's face, as you claim, is part of the right to self defense; but "self defense" inherently includes "taking the offensive" as well. Essentially, yeah, if people are going to fight each other, then fighting is going to happen. So it, too, is a natural right. Locking someone up to keep them from fighting is a right granted to other people to smooth the edges of a very rough life.
Regarding the US, I didn't mention it, because I thought it was obvious. The US has nothing to do with freedom: there are granted rights everywhere, and very seldom are inherent rights officially acknowledged, much less upheld. I am not holding up US as an example, therefore.
Okay... your most important statement.
"In order to": That involves a value judgement, perfectly fine as long as you don't put the force of government behind it
"drive innovation"... very nice, but innovation is not worth much in and of itself, unless you think that next year all teachers should wear clown masks (that's innovative, but not effective).
"an innovative idea deserves the right"... I'm sorry, did we get away from human rights? Now ideas have rights and humans do not? How about the right to labor with your skills to better your condition?
"to be protected"... thus, you are dealing not with rights, but with protection
"so that the work or the genius in finding it pays off"...if the idea has value, then it will probably pay off anyhow. If it doesn't have value, then it shouldn't.
"...for the one investing it." That, in my opinion, is the entire point of patents: for the investor. In other words, for the person with money, with power, so that they can have more money, more power. Which is why it has the power to become law. So we're going to damage the economy (which patents do), in order to benefit those with power, and give them more power. There's nothing new in that: despots like Saddam Hussein's sons stole businesses left and right, and girls too, and fed their boyfriends to the lions... but it doesn't make it right.
So I'd say that even the idea of patents is wrong. That is, the application will always be wrong, because the basic reason behind them is wrong.
Oh, yes... umm, so we can distribute all the source code we want, but if we ever compile it to use it, we get hit for a lawsuit equal to the minimum patent licensing fee, plus lawyer fees? With MP3s, I guess that's $10000, though you get 5000 licenses for that. But first you have to come up with 5000 people who all want the same license, or the MP3 people will hit you with 5000 suits for $10k each... ... so no, pointless intellectual exercises are what attract chess players and Mensa members, not computer programmers. It would not be good for OSS.
Aside from that, I base my arguments for or against laws, based on right and wrong. If I based my arguments on just what I want, you'd see some moral consistancy from me: I'd also be a highway robber, carjacking every time I thought I could get away with it. Which wouldn't be often, but just often enough that you'd be afraid to go out driving very far. I hear it's like that in Spain (highwaymen, and all).
It's what's wrong with patents in general. Quite simply: There are natural rights, and there are granted rights. Your natural rights include such things as freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of travel, right to property, and so on.
The natural rights are things that can be released to some extent by a person, but cannot be taken away. Therefore, as a government attempts to take these rights away, it drives anarchy, crime, and disorder, eventually resulting in the fall of the government.
Your granted rights include such things as welfare, right to a single national language (nationalism), right not to compete against foreign labor, right to a monopoly, (as in Spain) right to tax funds for your family title and property, and so on. Patents and copyrights fall into the latter class. They are granted rights.
The granted rights are those things that make it easier to live, especially when people are not good to each other on their own. You break your leg, and didn't have insurance, and can't work, and haven't been paid justly for your labor in the past, so you have no assets? Well, we will make others pay for you.
The problem is that every granted right that is given to one person requires the government to attempt to deprive another person of their natural rights. So the more granted rights you have, the more unstable your government is. A sign of this is that your economy will be bad, the unofficial (criminal) economy will be larger, and violent crime will be greater, as well.
Where your balance point between natural and granted rights is, is a balance that is forced by people not dealing with each other rightly. But there is another factor, as well: when those with power just want benefits, and have the ability to take them by controlling the law. When this happens, though, the government is not going to last long.
Unfortunately, I'm seeing this happen in the EU, so I don't expect the union to last. But if I am correct, it also means that no argument you use will work. So by all means, try your own. But if you want, present this to them as well. Maybe it'll wake someone up, but I doubt it.
When we're in a restaurant, and they're playing the music too loud, and the waitress is taking forever to get there, I don't get mad.
I just start hand dancing. That is, I choreograph my hands, maybe my head/eye motions, to the music, with only the most subtle motions. That drives my wife crazy, but amuses me. Actually, it amuses her too; she starts laughing, and then says "stop it." But it passes the time.
But it gave me an idea for a music video, in which they play the music, and the band is there, playing, and the people are there, frozen in time, just standing around, but then as you look more closely, you see that they actually are dancing in a rather complicated, interesting dance.
Then, at the end, you finish up with something like a bit of sheet music falling down, or a lady's ring dropping, or maybe with everybody stopping, and stretching, talking, and going out afterwards.
I'm sorry. Can you tell me what is so bad about the Chinese or Russians getting to xxx first? If they do it, then they earned it. Clearly, NASA is incapable. That said, I don't think China will succeed, though India has a chance, and Europe just might possibly.
But my point is that it probably would be better just to shut the thing down, until we get off our warhorse, and stop screwing each other financially, and our economy therefore recovers. Until that point, I don't foresee anything but disaster.
Oh, and... those engineers who put their souls on the line over a fatally flawed design? They were lousy engineers; either they realized it was flawed, and still chose to work a deadly project, or they didn't know it was flawed, but should have. That admittedly leaves plenty of others who were in unflawed fields, but the engineers too need to take their share of the blame. If you're an engineer, at some point, it isn't just a job. I'd compare it to doctors and the hippocratic oath, but these days, it seems that for them it's just a job, so I'll leave well enough alone.
... Clearly, they won't be allowed to remain in the US. Therefore, they're going to have to fly to some South Seas island with good internet connectivity. Then, when they get there, they're of course going to find that there are only two real tech jobs available to invest in... ... spam, and internet worms to DoS the blacklists.
Well, you gotta invest money, don't you? You can't just have it sitting there... you have a right to make money, don't you? Isn't that what America is all about?
I'd say the internet is about done for.
There -- I've managed to compress three recent stories (well, four or five, really) into one.
And all, without mentioning how they do it in Soviet Russia. Because in Soviet Russia, they have a different method of dealing with companies like SCO, and it ain't pretty, and it ain't good either.
Put it this way, if the blocklists were properly funded, I'd bet they could pay people to actually check each business out, and respond quickly. Therefore, it would seem to me that the following methods should be available:
(1) Pay $$$ to get reviewed immediately. That money shouldn't be small either. As an ISP, you pass this on to the customer, by making him post bond if he wants his own email server. That bond equals the money it costs to get you removed quickly.
(2) Don't pay $$$, and get reviewed at leisure.
If you suggested that, I'm pretty sure the blocklists would respond.
That said, I strongly suspect that this is the spammers, and they are going to win this round. They won't win long term; nor will those who sell them spam facilities.
"We've got lots of them. So many in fact, that you would need two strong people to carry around the documentation if we had bothered to write it. So many that even we don't know what most of them do. Don't ask us for any of these options, because we probably can't find the PEC for it anyway. Even if we find the PEC, we probably can't order it either (just TRY asking for nroff on a 3B2). If you don't like it, call Technologies. They'll tell you to see Figure 1."
And, of course, Figure 1 was a ascii-art image, in the finest technical wierdness tradition.
I graduated in 1992. I was the structural designer for the team that came up with the winning G/A 4-seat design in the AIAA design contest.
So I can say "I was good."
But it isn't exactly pain by now. It's just half "oh well, look what could've been", combined with "wow, if that hadn't happened, my life would have been normal. I would've been moderately wealthy, deskbound, and quietly desperate. Thank goodness it didn't."
... I, as an aerospace engineer by training (not by job, sadly... I graduated with terrible timing... or maybe happily) will champion the cause of zeroing their budget.
As any good engineer will tell you, if there isn't the budget to do it right, then don't do it. Following some rather terrible logic, I might conclude that Nasa, therefore, typically does not have good engineers.
I'd much rather slow down, let the economy sort itself out, and sort the space issue out, as well.
And if it doesn't sort itself out, then what? Well, then some other nation succeeds that *has* figured out how to maintain an economy with integrity. Call me an optimist, but I actually think that that's likely.
It seems to me that when I wanted to set up my sound system, I didn't actually have to start logging in as root. Rather, I set up a "sound" group, gave it specific privileges, and then added my user name to "sound".
Now, it seems to me that that is role-based privilege. That is distinctly opposed to the Windows system, where you assign a program "trusted status", and then everything it does is considered okay.
I suppose there is a possibility for a third model of security, perhaps something you'd call database security. Every program and subprogram has the subprograms/GUI routines that it calls, and when you set up the program, you specifically give it access to those routines and no others. Then users' shells are just another one of those programs, and each shell has its own database reference list. If you need mail priveleges, you have to ask the admin.
But that kind of a security setup is going to take a ton of time to check as a program runs, and even that is going to be "broken" for a lot of business models.
As a result, there's a different kind of security I favor: it's the broken network security method. You have your internal computer network, with whatever security it has. And you have your webserver/email server. And those two computers are not on the same network. Rather, it takes physical access to get data from one to the other. Either that access is through manually installing a network cable for a short period of time, or transferring a CD-R, or some other similar method. But 99.4% of the time, there is just no access whatseover. Such a system is mostly secure against net-based attacks, 99.4% of the time. I say mostly, because someone with insider knowledge could concievably root your net box, and then have it wait until someone connected in the other network, and immediately launch a predefined attack... but that's probably less likely than J03 51XPAcK owning your 100%-internet-available company network.
Teach your guys how to use Bash. Then have them write their own little Bash shortcuts, which take only 2 characters plus a target name, assign them executable status, and put them in their personal bin folders.
Have them tell you about them, and post useful shortcut names + Bash command, each week, near the coffee machine. That will help standardize their commands within the company.
Problem solved.
Is Linux as secure as we'd like to think it is? No. I'd like to think that my Linux box is completely secure, thank you very much.
But that said, in my finest Lewis Carollian tradition and practice, I not only *think* it's inherently secure, but for five minutes per day I outright completely believe it's inherently secure. If you remember, Lewis Caroll was a famous British mathematician, and quotes of his are incredibly important within the computer security industry.
It's just that I already wasted my five minutes today, and don't have more time to spend on it, while I made this posting. Catch me again next week with Taco's Weekly Topic Rerun, and you'll see me post a proof of why Linux must be 100% secure, and an insecure Linux box does not exist.
You know, I was just this last week over in Nida, and we first went to Thomas Mann's house, and later went up the large dune, and saw the stage set being built for a a German movie, "Wellen" (waves).
However, while we were at Thomas Mann's house, I saw their reed roofs, and noticed how there was a good 1 foot (1/3 m) of reeds in the roof. The reeds all pointed downwards, but not nearly as steeply as the roof, so water tension and gravity would combine to make the water run out of the roof, towards the outside. Likewise, the siding involves boards that are carved to fit, interlocking, side by side. And there's a very specific style of house that is standard.
But then we were over at the stage set, and the first thing I notice is these island-style pagodas, with reed roofs 1-3 reeds thick, and reed-colored tar paper actually sealing against water. It was incredibly funny. Then I noticed that the house style was island-style pagoda. Then we walked a little farther, and I saw this Victorian-style mansion (not Nida at all, nor Island style, but American Victorian), with 1x2 (inch) furring nailed over particle board, along the outside to make it look sortof like the interlocking boards of the Thomas Mann house. Mmmhmm.
But the most amusing part was the reed roofs, because I had taken the time, on my own, to see how they actually worked, and this was glaringly obvious. For a small chicken shed, you can get away with 4"-6" thick roofs. For a larger house, you really need a greater thickness.
But ultimately, this is a stage set. It isn't reality. And when it comes down to it, the goal of these movies is to tell a story, pretty much as cheaply as possible, and the story isn't true. Which means that if you look, you're going to see that it isn't true. Maybe, we should get back to some simpler stories, and forget the glamour. When you tell a story with the hula, or in the style of the African dance stories, or a campfire horror story, nobody says "oh, that isn't real", largely because there isn't any glamour. But the story is just as entertaining.
... like the driver named Conley, who bought a BMW.
This article's old news, I know, but it's worth rereading. This guy didn't know how to operate his brake lights, or his phone, and such. Clearly, even cars are too technical for people, so it shouldn't surprise you if people have trouble with their Microsoft Windows products.
Sometimes you really do need a techie to open your car windows for you.
Nope. Don't do it that way. You're liable to promote Linux to their system, and yourself into homelessness.
---
Use a proper business model:
"Okay, my first charge for help is going to be $100 -- $50 for one hour of help, and another $50 for a second HDD, installing a dual-boot Debian Linux on your computer. At that point, you have a choice about which system you want to boot into, and it will make it easier for me to disk-image your Windows system directories, and fix your problems. One thing, though: keep all your program CDs in one place for quick reinstall; your programs installed in c:\my programs; your downloaded programs in c:\my downloads\programs; and all your documents stored somewhere under c:\mydocuments. That will keep things simple for me, and cheap for you.
"After that, I'll charge $50/hr for service, but it will be a ton cheaper, because I'll often simply restore the image of your OS directory. Indeed, I'll show you how to do it.
---
Quite honestly, as they get used to using Linux, they'll start to forget Windows. I know I did. It's still on my system. Eventually, though, I had to completely reformat my Win98 HDD and reinstall. This time, the reinstall for some reason never gave me Word, which was in the original software set, and I can't figure out how to get it [and it is one of my main reasons for keeping Windows around.] But interestingly, with the reinstall, I ended up doing it a second time and installing almost nothing, but lo and behold, my HP DJ1120c print driver, which used to crash on the loaded system, still crashes on the empty system, and now it's clear that it is an OS bug, since it crashes other things, too. So my other major reason for keeping Windows around, a better print driver, is also bogus.
Well, as people start to realize this stuff, they're going to drop Windows on their own. And you're not going to make yourself poor, servicing them for free.
Meet the other robot, much more advanced, and made (like Marvin) to open doors:
O-B1-Kn0b
In fact, he was so good that he became a jedi knight!
And indeed, I don't think it's a bad thing. Let me give a comparison.
Here in Lithuania, we have a ton of factories that didn't have the cash to stay open, and closed their doors. So there's all this factory equipment, all these factory buildings, sitting there idle. Or it was that way for the last 10 years, anyhow.
Anyhow, you have smart international companies coming in and buying up this property cheap, and putting it back into production. Chevron; Yukos Oil; Food Line (I think you know it as Food Lion), and so on. Now, I'm of mixed feelings about this. You see, on the one hand, Lithuanian property, which *should* have been divided up among the people, *should* have been available for privatization to individuals, instead is going to profit these international corporations.
On the other hand, if they can get this stuff working, then they have every reason to try to keep it producing. So if they keep it producing by (for example) paying the workers a real living wage, then this is good. On the other hand, if they keep it producing in the US Energy Company style -- bring in soldiers, point guns at the workers and say "your choice is die fast with a bullet or die slowly by starvation", then that's a bad thing.
Either way, Lithuania ends up having this great big sign "Exploit me". With any luck, a responsible company will do so, and it will be good for everyone involved.
Well, it's the same for OSS. We say "It's free! Really free!". That's like saying "Exploit me!". Now, if a responsible company (Apache) does this, then that's good. If, on the other hand, like SCO, they try to bring out the big guns and say "die now or die later", that's a bad thing.
But that "Exploit me" sign? Well, that's also called advertising. Or a sale. And OSS is, well, one darn good sale. I've come, I've bought (who can resist the price?), I've called my friends and family to come too.
I use Debian. I like Debian because I don't have money, and I find the mailing list support good and useful.
That said, all the time people ask questions from a RH point of view, or mention "well, I also have SUSE". Nobody gets in a dither--at least, not any more than usual (the Debian mailing lists are not "professional" by a long shot, and the burners are kept on with a constant low-level flame.)
But to be honest, I've seen, indeed installed SUSE before, and SUSE's YAST is every bit as good as Debian's installer. For newbies, it's probably better. Indeed, their partitioning program is better as well, in my opinion.
And when I installed it, it was a sample install, but I got everything. After that, I'm pretty sure I could figure out how to install any source code I needed.
My point is that if a company was interested in installing Linux, or if a person who had the $80, and understood German better than English wanted it, I would not hesitate to recommend SUSE.
I really don't see any vs.
That said, the Debian distribution is every bit as valuable as the SUSE distribution. As I mentioned above, I use Debian. I really do hope that the CEO was saying essentially "if you want to go with a Linux company, that means us or RH", and not turning SCOish (starting to think with an "us vs. free as in beer" mentality).
Okay,
#1. My point was about it being Baltic. My familiarity is with the Samogitian culture, not the northern baltic culture, but there were significant cross-invasions with the Swedes. So it's more than possible.
#2. I thank you for the information about Finland/Sweden. More information is better. That said, I made my guess. And the basic information about the endings isn't wrong. Nor is the basic history wrong.
Here are some links that will help back up my statements:
(1) search for APUOLE here
(2) Note that Swedish mixed with Baltic.
(3) And for evidence that Finnish got words directly from Baltic, you need read no farther than the 2nd paragraph here, though I think it's interesting to read straight to the end.
(4) Looking at Torvaldz, I'd note that valia in Swedish is "elect/appointed"; Valdz*ia in Lithuanian, on the other hand is "power", while valda is property, and valdymas is government. In Latvian, if you look up "vald" (type it in, then hit tulkot), you will see a whole bunch of words, like valdos*s, that deal with authority, power, and governance.
Those words are all quite close in both meaning and sound. Now, that doesn't mean that Torvalds' name came from anything having to do with "appointments" or "power"; I don't know enough about Swedish culture and Swedish names to say any such thing for sure. But I would say that Finnish is not so far from Samogitian (which is in turn one of the closest languages to IndoEuropean that you'll find), as you might believe. And since Latvia is in close proximity to Sweden, and there were wars between the two, I don't find it hard to believe that language structure would transmit between them.
More language than that transmitted between the Vikings and the Angles, and between the Normans and the English, to create the English language, and in less time.
That said, believe what you want.