Absolutely. What is shocking here is the following two points :
Laws should be defined by the people or the elected bodies on behalf of the people. What happens instead is that corporations buy Congressmen to vote laws that can get as tough as they like on ordinary citizens, and as soft as they like on businesses when their interests are at stake. One year in jail for camcording a movie in a theater is ridiculous.
Order should be represented by state or federal police, not by corporate-funded vigilantes. When a country decides to delegate the upholding of the law to private police, one can be sure that injustice and corruption will soon be the rule. Especially when private jails have an interest in having as many people as possible stuffed in -- people who make a cheap labor force BTW.
IMHO is if PanIP was to be legally stomped to the ground by a countersuit, the way SCO will probably end up thanks to IBM, Novell and RedHat.
Anything less will still leave a door open for legal thugs to try and mug small businesses on the grounds of ridiculous claims on abusively granted patents (on obvious business methods and such).
The business world would be a safer place with those jailbirds slammed to where they belong.
Sorry, I lacked time for my first reply and I made it short -- too short maybe. I wanted to say that I generally agree with you on the point that comptetition can be really destructive on businesses since the little revenue you earn (due to tight pricing and low margins) is essentially spent on marketing, advertising, sometimes on legal advice and lawsuits too, but not in research and development, let alone in long-term theoretical research.
However, we all know that monopolies cause problems too. How are we to know whether a monopoly will be mainly used to pile huge profits for a crappy service, or whether it will use a big chunk of its revenues to do R&D, or to invest in new companies, and invigorate the economy ? Nobody, except the shareholders, has the power to check that monopolies are not abusing their powers and disrupting the economy. Christ, even the antitrust law cannot do it correctly !
So what are we to do ? Should we trust the companies that hold a monopoly over certain domains ? I think not. Should we enact better laws to prevent them from working around the antitrust legislation ? Possibly. I know it is a difficult question.
Going back to Microsoft, however, I fail to see how their business culture has brought benefits to the society as a whole. Sure, they've made computers "easy to use" to Joe User. Sure, they've created a need for qualified MCSEs. But the way they are trained, the policy of secrecy and confidentiality around the way their products work, have also had a negative effect: users are not curious about how their computer works, therefore they do not understand how its security can be compromised, and they do not feel the need to follow obvious security rules. This reminds e of that blog where I read about a user complaining that her computer was being "moody" -- people start being irrationnal in front of their computers. This leads to huge sums being spent on securing computers, paying for antivirus software and so on. Sure, this also contributes to the GNP, but that money would have been better spent elsewhere.
The Free Software movement has had it the other way round : it is based on making as much documentation as possible available to the public, and encouraging computer savviness. By making as many people as possible computer-literate, the Free Software movement has already brought a great benefit to the society. I can't count the number of friends I have helped installing Linux on their computers, giving them many more informations on how their computers work by the way. Even if this does not generate immediate revenue or profit, this is time and energy well spent, which implies spending less money on security -- computer-literate users make fewer dumb mistakes.
So, although I agree with you generally on the fact that a monopoly is economically more efficient than a destructive comptetition with price wars, there is a lot of points to take into account before considering that a monopoly is actually a better situation for economy or society as a whole, rather than a competitive market.
I think that at present, Microsoft makes obscene margins on its flagship product, the operating system (I heard it was about 85% -- can't confirm, though). Even if MS cut their prices by half they would still make both a comfortable revenue and enough money to reinvest in research and development.
I wholeheartedly agree with you. Besides, as far as games are concerned, I think that (just like Hollywood movies) they try to compensate the hollowness of the scenario by using the latest and greatest graphics effects, which of course require the latest video chips.
In fact, I'm having lots of fun these days playing vintage versions of Day of the Tentacle (man, that was scenario-writing ! Where are those guys gone ?) even though I finished the game a good many times already. And I still enjoy Falconeye's version of NetHack, which is everything but a hog as far as CPU, memory and GFX requirements are concerned.
I used to be fond of simple adventure games, where the quality of the scenario and the subtlety of the enigmas were the main strengths of the game. I can't seem to find any of these any longer...
This idea that a corporation should have rights - such as free speech - as if it were a person strikes me as being quite spectacularly daft.
As is the idea that corporations are "entitled" to make a profit -- no matter what they do. Jeez, I saw this in a silly comment on Kuro5hin the other day.
Dude... seriously, why don't your bosses sue J. K. Rowling for both trademark and patent infringement ?
Patent infringement: she imagines a device whose primary purpose is to filter one particular student out of a school (i.e. prenventing Harry Potter from going to Hogwarts)
Trademark infringement: the name of the particular device is Dobby
Why do people have to resort to things like this, before they complay with the terms of a license?
They just hope to get away with it while trying not to draw too much attention. If it were not for one or two whistleblowers, they would have gotten away with it and sold their modified version of the software without giving anything back to the community.
Fortunately, in the Free Software world, eyes are many and if bugs are not always shallow, at least people who are trying to infringe the GPL have very little chance to pass through the tight net of Free Software observers, who are always keen to try a new device powered by Linux.
(eg: France under Napoleon
Free trade ? Man, France was at war with pretty much all the countries they had not invaded back then! There was certainly no trade at all with the UK, for instance! If France did prosper during those years, it was by plundering the economy of invaded countries! Plus, a war economy, with huge government contracts, certainly stimulates growth.
the modern EU,
Er, with heavily subsidized farms ? You call this 'free trade'? Subsidizing agriculture was (and still is, at large) the the basics of the EU!!! And don't forget what the EU initially is: a collection of states that heavily interact with their own economies, through government contracts and public infrastructures. 'Free Trade' as defined by the WTO means 'no government-subsidized business'.
the US of fucking A!
Guess what boosted their economy in the 20s, and after the '29 krach ? Yes: a war economy! With government investments in heavy industries (steel & energy), and the Cold War competition with the Eastern block required the US to foster government funded research in aerospace and electronics... Was it 'free trade' that came up with that Internet idea and the 'new economy' that followed on ? No, it was a government-funded project: DARPA.
Sure, the government wouldn't have done everything on its own. Industries cannot be efficient with a civil-servant type of mentality. But as another poster added in one of the replies, what we need is more cooperation between the government and the industries. The corporate world must accept to pay taxes and therefore reduce their immediate profits, so that long-term government-funded research may yield results that industries will use in their products later on. A sort of planned economy would lead to an optimum balance between private profits, global economy and citizen's interests (jobs, environment and so on). 'Free trade' as defined by the WTO is the opposite of a planned economy: it will only reach a sub-optimal balance where everything benefits the corporate world, at the expense of jobs, the well-being of citizens and the environment.
In the end, it's also a matter of democracy and choosing who really decides of economic policies: we can leave this up to a handful of technocrats at the WTO and the Federal Reserve, or we can decide to handle this as citizens, with our own votes.
The article states that the Americans had a trojan horse planted into the robbed software. It was clearly designed to blow up the pipes.
Not that I approve of the KGB's stealing stuff, by the way... Hell, that's a lesson about not trusting binaries downloaded from random places. Open source rules !
I reckon that movie has had a very bad influence in Utah. Especially at SCO headquarters.
Kevin: Hey, D4rl, l00k @ those guyz using gr33k symbolz with their Macz. L33t, uh ? Darl: Kewl, brother, I woz trying to find an idea for obfuscating those stolen code lines before showing them to the press...
I don't know why this really shocked me -- maybe because English is not my native language. But, in the book, Frodo and his friends are said to be crossing corn fields. Since Tolkien maily referred to British folklore and legends, it is very likely that he actually meant wheat fields. However, if you look at the movie, the Hobbits are deep into maize fields.
That's a shame. I had plenty of other good ideas, you know, like:
JokeML, a joke-description metalanguage, with its infamous <laugh/>, <wink-wink/>, and <nudge-nudge/> tags. Obvious derivatives would be BlondeJokeML, or YoMamaJokeML
OrigamiML, to produce appropriate lines on printouts in order to fold them into various shapes afterwards
ErrandsML, to manage lists of items to buy at the mall, with such tags as <dontforget/>...
and I could go on and on.... Hey wait ! I'd better patent them too, that would be money well spent !
Chapter 6 of the report is the most tragically truth-telling about the various responsibilities (or lack thereof) and missed opportunities to detect the problem at an early stage, which would have enabled the crew or mission control to either fix the problem during orbital flight or send a rescue mission.
8 missed opportunities were found out by the investigating team, some of them due to the strict rigidity of the command chain (imagery request cancelled by officer Linda Ham, because it had not been processed through the usual command chain). Moreover, it also states that the engineers that suspected a problem were put into the difficult position of proving that the problem made the flight unsafe, rather than the other way round (usually, safety guidelines imply that if you can not prove that the whole procedure is safe, you need to take action).
The following error occurred: [code=SERVER_RESPONSE_RESET] The server response could not be read because of an error. Contact your system administrator.
Please contact the administrator.
Woo-hoo ! I DoSed the SCO server with only one finger !
and I'm gonna feed it. I think upgrading from Linux to BSD must be like upgrading from CSS2/XHTML to the HTML formatting used by this guy. Has the guy heard about HTML 3.2 ?:P
Aaaah, but that's a good question indeed. However, since the DVD standard has been agreed upon by the main media producers and that they retain their rights to the contents no matter what happens, only the final user, Joe Watcher, is actually bothered by those barriers, which hamper with his rights to fair use.
By the way, is there any rule in the WTO agreements which allows for a user/consumer/citizen to complain against this kind of artificial barrier when put in place by a corporate cartel like RIAA ?
Answer : no, there isn't. Hell, there's not even a rule which would allow *states* to complain against companies abusing their power: if a state took action to regulate their abuses, the WTO rules would allow those companies to sue said state.
The WTO is a wonderful tool to make us surrender of our rights as consumers to corporate bullies.
Well after all, France Telecom has long been one of the main pr0n providers in France thanks to the once wonderful Minitel... and they made heaps of money on it, charging every minute online !
Slashdot Mirror
Anything less will still leave a door open for legal thugs to try and mug small businesses on the grounds of ridiculous claims on abusively granted patents (on obvious business methods and such).
The business world would be a safer place with those jailbirds slammed to where they belong.
However, we all know that monopolies cause problems too. How are we to know whether a monopoly will be mainly used to pile huge profits for a crappy service, or whether it will use a big chunk of its revenues to do R&D, or to invest in new companies, and invigorate the economy ? Nobody, except the shareholders, has the power to check that monopolies are not abusing their powers and disrupting the economy. Christ, even the antitrust law cannot do it correctly !
So what are we to do ? Should we trust the companies that hold a monopoly over certain domains ? I think not. Should we enact better laws to prevent them from working around the antitrust legislation ? Possibly. I know it is a difficult question.
Going back to Microsoft, however, I fail to see how their business culture has brought benefits to the society as a whole. Sure, they've made computers "easy to use" to Joe User. Sure, they've created a need for qualified MCSEs. But the way they are trained, the policy of secrecy and confidentiality around the way their products work, have also had a negative effect: users are not curious about how their computer works, therefore they do not understand how its security can be compromised, and they do not feel the need to follow obvious security rules. This reminds e of that blog where I read about a user complaining that her computer was being "moody" -- people start being irrationnal in front of their computers. This leads to huge sums being spent on securing computers, paying for antivirus software and so on. Sure, this also contributes to the GNP, but that money would have been better spent elsewhere.
The Free Software movement has had it the other way round : it is based on making as much documentation as possible available to the public, and encouraging computer savviness. By making as many people as possible computer-literate, the Free Software movement has already brought a great benefit to the society. I can't count the number of friends I have helped installing Linux on their computers, giving them many more informations on how their computers work by the way. Even if this does not generate immediate revenue or profit, this is time and energy well spent, which implies spending less money on security -- computer-literate users make fewer dumb mistakes.
So, although I agree with you generally on the fact that a monopoly is economically more efficient than a destructive comptetition with price wars, there is a lot of points to take into account before considering that a monopoly is actually a better situation for economy or society as a whole, rather than a competitive market.
I think that at present, Microsoft makes obscene margins on its flagship product, the operating system (I heard it was about 85% -- can't confirm, though). Even if MS cut their prices by half they would still make both a comfortable revenue and enough money to reinvest in research and development.
In fact, I'm having lots of fun these days playing vintage versions of Day of the Tentacle (man, that was scenario-writing ! Where are those guys gone ?) even though I finished the game a good many times already. And I still enjoy Falconeye's version of NetHack, which is everything but a hog as far as CPU, memory and GFX requirements are concerned.
I used to be fond of simple adventure games, where the quality of the scenario and the subtlety of the enigmas were the main strengths of the game. I can't seem to find any of these any longer...
As is the idea that corporations are "entitled" to make a profit -- no matter what they do. Jeez, I saw this in a silly comment on Kuro5hin the other day.
They just hope to get away with it while trying not to draw too much attention. If it were not for one or two whistleblowers, they would have gotten away with it and sold their modified version of the software without giving anything back to the community.
Fortunately, in the Free Software world, eyes are many and if bugs are not always shallow, at least people who are trying to infringe the GPL have very little chance to pass through the tight net of Free Software observers, who are always keen to try a new device powered by Linux.
Jeeezus, I hadn't had such a good bely laugh for a long time. Thanx dude, you made my day :-)
(eg: France under Napoleon
Free trade ? Man, France was at war with pretty much all the countries they had not invaded back then! There was certainly no trade at all with the UK, for instance! If France did prosper during those years, it was by plundering the economy of invaded countries! Plus, a war economy, with huge government contracts, certainly stimulates growth.
the modern EU,
Er, with heavily subsidized farms ? You call this 'free trade'? Subsidizing agriculture was (and still is, at large) the the basics of the EU!!! And don't forget what the EU initially is: a collection of states that heavily interact with their own economies, through government contracts and public infrastructures. 'Free Trade' as defined by the WTO means 'no government-subsidized business'.
the US of fucking A!
Guess what boosted their economy in the 20s, and after the '29 krach ? Yes: a war economy! With government investments in heavy industries (steel & energy), and the Cold War competition with the Eastern block required the US to foster government funded research in aerospace and electronics... Was it 'free trade' that came up with that Internet idea and the 'new economy' that followed on ? No, it was a government-funded project: DARPA.
Sure, the government wouldn't have done everything on its own. Industries cannot be efficient with a civil-servant type of mentality. But as another poster added in one of the replies, what we need is more cooperation between the government and the industries. The corporate world must accept to pay taxes and therefore reduce their immediate profits, so that long-term government-funded research may yield results that industries will use in their products later on. A sort of planned economy would lead to an optimum balance between private profits, global economy and citizen's interests (jobs, environment and so on). 'Free trade' as defined by the WTO is the opposite of a planned economy: it will only reach a sub-optimal balance where everything benefits the corporate world, at the expense of jobs, the well-being of citizens and the environment.
In the end, it's also a matter of democracy and choosing who really decides of economic policies: we can leave this up to a handful of technocrats at the WTO and the Federal Reserve, or we can decide to handle this as citizens, with our own votes.
Good one, but your URL has 2 spaces in it (damn the /. text editor). It's much better like this.
Actually, no -- just "fair and balanced" clusters.
Well, did you ?
The article states that the Americans had a trojan horse planted into the robbed software. It was clearly designed to blow up the pipes.
Not that I approve of the KGB's stealing stuff, by the way... Hell, that's a lesson about not trusting binaries downloaded from random places. Open source rules !
Kevin : Hey, D4rl, l00k @ those guyz using gr33k symbolz with their Macz. L33t, uh ? : Kewl, brother, I woz trying to find an idea for obfuscating those stolen code lines before showing them to the press...
Darl
Has anyone else noticed this ?
and I could go on and on.... Hey wait ! I'd better patent them too, that would be money well spent !
8 missed opportunities were found out by the investigating team, some of them due to the strict rigidity of the command chain (imagery request cancelled by officer Linda Ham, because it had not been processed through the usual command chain). Moreover, it also states that the engineers that suspected a problem were put into the difficult position of proving that the problem made the flight unsafe, rather than the other way round (usually, safety guidelines imply that if you can not prove that the whole procedure is safe, you need to take action).
Server Error
The following error occurred:
[code=SERVER_RESPONSE_RESET] The server response could not be read because of an error. Contact your system administrator.
Please contact the administrator.
Woo-hoo ! I DoSed the SCO server with only one finger !
Particularly, if you could smell a rat everytime a bogus patent is applied at the PTO.
Actually, these have already been applied to cutting cheese and butter in France. But instead of water, they use milk to do so.
Confirmed. Last time I took a trip around the Sun, it took me about a year to do it. And for free ! Food and accomodation at your expense, though.
Space tourism is much more affordable than some say.
and I'm gonna feed it. I think upgrading from Linux to BSD must be like upgrading from CSS2/XHTML to the HTML formatting used by this guy. Has the guy heard about HTML 3.2 ? :P
You mean Michael Moore's law, like in "Downsize this" ?
By the way, is there any rule in the WTO agreements which allows for a user/consumer/citizen to complain against this kind of artificial barrier when put in place by a corporate cartel like RIAA ?
Answer : no, there isn't. Hell, there's not even a rule which would allow *states* to complain against companies abusing their power: if a state took action to regulate their abuses, the WTO rules would allow those companies to sue said state.
The WTO is a wonderful tool to make us surrender of our rights as consumers to corporate bullies.
Well after all, France Telecom has long been one of the main pr0n providers in France thanks to the once wonderful Minitel... and they made heaps of money on it, charging every minute online !