Hiring a contractor is a lot more hassle and a lot more expensive than buying software that offers support. The contractor has to spend a lot of time just familiarizing himself with the OSS in question before he can even begin to tackle your question. There's no guarantee there's someone already familiar with your problem that you can just call him up and pay him for an answer. If there was, then the OSS software would be supported, and the problem would be solved.
By approving of any govt. measure that forces MS to change any policy of theirs, you are telling MS how to run their business. Antitrust regulations violate the basic rights of Americans to trade freely. MS never pointed a gun at anyone and made them accept their terms. The govt. now, however, is pointing a gun at MS and telling them what they can and cannot do in negotiating contracts with OEMs
MS has the right to negotiate contracts without govt. interference. This includes the right to sell or not sell a product to an OEM for whatever reason. To take away this right is an infringement of a basic liberty guaranteed to all Americans. There's nothing in the constitution that guarantees you a choice of products or services, however. You only have the right to negotiate with available sellers. Antitrust laws are a violation of the basic freedoms guaranteed in the constitution, and should be repealed.
Antitrust legislation is immoral since it sacrifices an individual's freedom for "the good of society". I have no problem with anyone breaking these laws since they're absurd. True MS must abide by the rulings (or leave the country to avoid some of the consequences), but I think it's a good form of civil disobedience. A consumer has no apriori right to a product or service provided by someone else. Otherwise the provider would be a slave to the customer. If no one's willing to provide a machine with BeOS preinstalled because they can't negotiate a contract with MS while providing this service, no one's rights have been violated. Every producer made his choice freely. To say that there is no free market in your example is absurd. Consumers only have the right to negotiate with sellers for products. They have no apriori right to a product or service provided by someone else.
Antitrust legislation is immoral and therefore bad legislation. It sacrifices the individual rights of business owners, "for the good of the people". This is a socialistic mentality that goes against everything the US stands for. MS should break these antitrust rules as a form of civil disobedience. Now we see how absurd they are when a govt. appointed judge is writing contracts for MS. Hopefully this case will lead to repealing of these unamerican laws. Probably not though given the attitude of the typical American that big business is somehow evil, and deserves whatever the govt. feels like doing to them.
"In classical music, for instance, there are plenty of dirt cheap disks produced by relatively unknown orchestras. They spend very little on advertizing, have very simple labels, and sell because some people want to get copies of the classics without having to pay a top dollar price."
Your model fails in mainstream music because the orchestras are playing music that is already popular, and has been for hundreds of years. There's no guarantee that a new band can sell a single cd, however, without a lot of promotion, etc.
"The record industry could lose a fortune if people stop buying CDs and make their own copies. Halderman reckons he has a solution for them. "Reduce the cost of new CDs; if discs cost only a few dollars each, buying them might be preferable to spending the time and effort to make copies or find them online.""
So Halderman believes that record companies must price their music at a low enough cost to remove the incentive to pirate? Aside from the obvious moral issues this statement presents (you should appease the people who would steal your property, rather than preventing them from doing so), I think this plan is doomed anyway, since as technology improves, It will become easier to download all the tracks of a cd and burn them than to go to the store and buy them, given no preventitive measures are taken. So the bottom line is, piracy is paving the way for cd encryption. If you don't like it, blame the pirates, not the recording industry.
A full time programmer is a huge expense. That's the whole point of the discussion. You're better off with a closed source solution that offers support than an open source solution with no support + hiring a person to do the support yourself.
So, if everyone on slashdot's dream comes true, and Linux becomes the dominant OS, are we willing to accept regulation from the US and EU? Are we willing to let the US govt. tell Linus what features he can and cannot put in the kernel, without becoming "anticompetitve". Poor OSDoe can't compete anymore because of feature Z in Linux now, so we the govt. will need to ban that from the Linux distros. Be careful what you wish for from the govt. You may set a precedent that will come back to haunt you in the future.
You must think you're really important, that you should have the power to tell MS how to do business. I don't go into your home and tell you what you can and cannot do. I hope there are so many loopholes that MS can keep doing business as usual. They're not pointing a gun at anyone and infringing on their rights. But you're more than happy to let the govt. point guns at MS and tell them what they can and cannot do with their own product. I hope they start regulating Linux and Apple some day so people on slashdot will understand the consequences of their belief systems.
Yeah. It would be terrible if we actually let people decide what software they want to run on their servers. It would be much better if govt. types point guns at us and tell us what software we must run on our machines.
I'm sure they'll do all of the above, given the socialist nature of Europe. The govt. loves to infringe on the rights of businessmen "for the good of the people".
So you're blaming MS because OEMs voluntarily chose to dump BeOS at MS's request. MS can't force anyone to do anything. They can only negotiate contracts. They can't force anyone to do anything. Don't blame MS because no one was willing to take a chance on BeOS.
"Using fraud, deceit, extortion, theft, etc, microsoft has become a dominant player in desktop pc's and is roughly 1/4 to 1/3 the servers out there"
MS never promises anything about their software in their contracts (read the EULA). Also, they never put a gun to anyone's head and told them they must buy MS products. I'm sick of this nonsense. I see it all the time here. If you don't like their stuff, don't buy it. Quit trying to use the govt. to infringe on their civil liberties. MS has no obligation to the internet, citizens around the world, or any other corporate entity beyond whay they promise in their contracts. Your analogy is painfully flawed, BTW. MS doesn't have any exclusive contract to run the internet. If you don't like their stuff, go get your software somewhere else. If some particular server you contact runs MS, complain to the people running the server. They made a free choise to use MS. Get them to change. Quit whining to the govt., however. It's none of their business.
BeOS died because nobody wants their product. That's free market at work. MS is being threatened by force of govt. because people want their product too much. That's an infringment on a civil liberty by the govt. There's a big difference. You shouldn't call someone a fool and put forth such a poor argument.
That's a terrible analogy. A better one is that the govt., because of companies like Sun and Netscape, wants to push MS over the cliff in the interest of competition. If you don't like MS products, you don't need to buy them. There are plenty of cheaper alternatives.
The term viral is used because, if you use GPL code in your code, you must make your code open source, If someone uses your code, they must also make it open source. Therefore, it spreads like a virus. This is not necessarily bad. In fact it's exactly what Stallman wants, because the virus makes all code it touches free. If you don't like the connotation, come up with another analogy, but don't call the analogy inaccurate. As far as copyright law, it is not viral for the opposite reasons. You can't use someone elses material in your material, so copyright law can be thought of more like an antivirus. It does not let material spread without permission from the copyright holder (theoretically at least).
No. Why do you think you have the right to something you didn't create without compensating the creator. You can't have an individual right that infringes on the rights of another. That would be anarchy. By your reasoning, murder, theft, etc. would also be individual freedoms. A govt's purpose is to protect individual freedoms and prevent/punish crimes against individual freedoms
People wonder why I complain about the US govt. regulating business, e.g. Microsoft. This new legislation in Panama is the sort of thing you face when you start allowing govt. to regulate business. Once a business realizes that the govt. is willing to write laws to protect one business at the expense of another (In this case teleophony vs. internet, which is surprising since you'd think the same company would run both in Panama) they will naturally use govt. for their own ends to get an unfair advantage. Similarly, you can argue netscape did the same thing to MS. Tried to use the govt. to give them an unfair advantage because they couldn't compete against MS. You can argue MS is a monopoly, but at least they aren't using force supplied by the govt. for gain an advantage. All MS can do is negotiate contracts. Let Panama be a lesson as to the dangers of allowing govt. to interfere with business.
""How is having the best product and trying to sell it at a competitive rate coercive strong-arming?" Note how I use a well-established logical fallacy to make a point that is entirely irrelevent to the issue at hand."
I don't think you have any idea what a logical fallacy is, Zordak, or what logic is, for that matter.
Laws need to be based on moral principles. The moral principle at stake here is basic freedom for an individual. Govts. should protect individual freedoms. Antitrust laws attack indivdual freedoms of people running a company. Copyright laws protect the freedom of an individual to create something of value and not have it stolen.,That is why the former law is unjust and the latter law is just. My argument that one law is good and another bad is not arbitrary. Govt. has the right to use force to protect the individual rights of people. MS doesn't use force, the ask the govt. to do so for just reasons.
This case isn't about whether or not MS lied or breeched contracts? If someone wants to take them to court over these things, they have the freedom to do so. This idea of stalled lawsuits is an accusation against a judge, since a judge runs a trial. Your saying MS is paying of judges? This case is about anticompetitve practices, which is an oxymoron in a free market society, except through use of physical force, which no one has ever accused MS of.
Slashdot Mirror
Hiring a contractor is a lot more hassle and a lot more expensive than buying software that offers support. The contractor has to spend a lot of time just familiarizing himself with the OSS in question before he can even begin to tackle your question. There's no guarantee there's someone already familiar with your problem that you can just call him up and pay him for an answer. If there was, then the OSS software would be supported, and the problem would be solved.
By approving of any govt. measure that forces MS to change any policy of theirs, you are telling MS how to run their business. Antitrust regulations violate the basic rights of Americans to trade freely. MS never pointed a gun at anyone and made them accept their terms. The govt. now, however, is pointing a gun at MS and telling them what they can and cannot do in negotiating contracts with OEMs
MS has the right to negotiate contracts without govt. interference. This includes the right to sell or not sell a product to an OEM for whatever reason. To take away this right is an infringement of a basic liberty guaranteed to all Americans. There's nothing in the constitution that guarantees you a choice of products or services, however. You only have the right to negotiate with available sellers. Antitrust laws are a violation of the basic freedoms guaranteed in the constitution, and should be repealed.
Antitrust legislation is immoral since it sacrifices an individual's freedom for "the good of society". I have no problem with anyone breaking these laws since they're absurd. True MS must abide by the rulings (or leave the country to avoid some of the consequences), but I think it's a good form of civil disobedience. A consumer has no apriori right to a product or service provided by someone else. Otherwise the provider would be a slave to the customer. If no one's willing to provide a machine with BeOS preinstalled because they can't negotiate a contract with MS while providing this service, no one's rights have been violated. Every producer made his choice freely. To say that there is no free market in your example is absurd. Consumers only have the right to negotiate with sellers for products. They have no apriori right to a product or service provided by someone else.
Antitrust legislation is immoral and therefore bad legislation. It sacrifices the individual rights of business owners, "for the good of the people". This is a socialistic mentality that goes against everything the US stands for. MS should break these antitrust rules as a form of civil disobedience. Now we see how absurd they are when a govt. appointed judge is writing contracts for MS. Hopefully this case will lead to repealing of these unamerican laws. Probably not though given the attitude of the typical American that big business is somehow evil, and deserves whatever the govt. feels like doing to them.
Thank you for contributing to the problem, rather than the solution.
Your subjective opinion of music must obviously explain the real cause for the drop in cd sales.
"In classical music, for instance, there are plenty of dirt cheap disks produced by relatively unknown orchestras. They spend very little on advertizing, have very simple labels, and sell because some people want to get copies of the classics without having to pay a top dollar price."
Your model fails in mainstream music because the orchestras are playing music that is already popular, and has been for hundreds of years. There's no guarantee that a new band can sell a single cd, however, without a lot of promotion, etc.
"The record industry could lose a fortune if people stop buying CDs and make their own copies. Halderman reckons he has a solution for them. "Reduce the cost of new CDs; if discs cost only a few dollars each, buying them might be preferable to spending the time and effort to make copies or find them online.""
So Halderman believes that record companies must price their music at a low enough cost to remove the incentive to pirate? Aside from the obvious moral issues this statement presents (you should appease the people who would steal your property, rather than preventing them from doing so), I think this plan is doomed anyway, since as technology improves, It will become easier to download all the tracks of a cd and burn them than to go to the store and buy them, given no preventitive measures are taken. So the bottom line is, piracy is paving the way for cd encryption. If you don't like it, blame the pirates, not the recording industry.
A full time programmer is a huge expense. That's the whole point of the discussion. You're better off with a closed source solution that offers support than an open source solution with no support + hiring a person to do the support yourself.
So, if everyone on slashdot's dream comes true, and Linux becomes the dominant OS, are we willing to accept regulation from the US and EU? Are we willing to let the US govt. tell Linus what features he can and cannot put in the kernel, without becoming "anticompetitve". Poor OSDoe can't compete anymore because of feature Z in Linux now, so we the govt. will need to ban that from the Linux distros. Be careful what you wish for from the govt. You may set a precedent that will come back to haunt you in the future.
You must think you're really important, that you should have the power to tell MS how to do business. I don't go into your home and tell you what you can and cannot do. I hope there are so many loopholes that MS can keep doing business as usual. They're not pointing a gun at anyone and infringing on their rights. But you're more than happy to let the govt. point guns at MS and tell them what they can and cannot do with their own product. I hope they start regulating Linux and Apple some day so people on slashdot will understand the consequences of their belief systems.
Yeah. It would be terrible if we actually let people decide what software they want to run on their servers. It would be much better if govt. types point guns at us and tell us what software we must run on our machines.
I'm sure they'll do all of the above, given the socialist nature of Europe. The govt. loves to infringe on the rights of businessmen "for the good of the people".
So you're blaming MS because OEMs voluntarily chose to dump BeOS at MS's request. MS can't force anyone to do anything. They can only negotiate contracts. They can't force anyone to do anything. Don't blame MS because no one was willing to take a chance on BeOS.
"Using fraud, deceit, extortion, theft, etc, microsoft has become a dominant player in desktop pc's and is roughly 1/4 to 1/3 the servers out there"
MS never promises anything about their software in their contracts (read the EULA). Also, they never put a gun to anyone's head and told them they must buy MS products. I'm sick of this nonsense. I see it all the time here. If you don't like their stuff, don't buy it. Quit trying to use the govt. to infringe on their civil liberties. MS has no obligation to the internet, citizens around the world, or any other corporate entity beyond whay they promise in their contracts. Your analogy is painfully flawed, BTW. MS doesn't have any exclusive contract to run the internet. If you don't like their stuff, go get your software somewhere else. If some particular server you contact runs MS, complain to the people running the server. They made a free choise to use MS. Get them to change. Quit whining to the govt., however. It's none of their business.
BeOS died because nobody wants their product. That's free market at work. MS is being threatened by force of govt. because people want their product too much. That's an infringment on a civil liberty by the govt. There's a big difference. You shouldn't call someone a fool and put forth such a poor argument.
That's a terrible analogy. A better one is that the govt., because of companies like Sun and Netscape, wants to push MS over the cliff in the interest of competition. If you don't like MS products, you don't need to buy them. There are plenty of cheaper alternatives.
The term viral is used because, if you use GPL code in your code, you must make your code open source, If someone uses your code, they must also make it open source. Therefore, it spreads like a virus. This is not necessarily bad. In fact it's exactly what Stallman wants, because the virus makes all code it touches free. If you don't like the connotation, come up with another analogy, but don't call the analogy inaccurate. As far as copyright law, it is not viral for the opposite reasons. You can't use someone elses material in your material, so copyright law can be thought of more like an antivirus. It does not let material spread without permission from the copyright holder (theoretically at least).
No. Why do you think you have the right to something you didn't create without compensating the creator. You can't have an individual right that infringes on the rights of another. That would be anarchy. By your reasoning, murder, theft, etc. would also be individual freedoms. A govt's purpose is to protect individual freedoms and prevent/punish crimes against individual freedoms
People wonder why I complain about the US govt. regulating business, e.g. Microsoft. This new legislation in Panama is the sort of thing you face when you start allowing govt. to regulate business. Once a business realizes that the govt. is willing to write laws to protect one business at the expense of another (In this case teleophony vs. internet, which is surprising since you'd think the same company would run both in Panama) they will naturally use govt. for their own ends to get an unfair advantage. Similarly, you can argue netscape did the same thing to MS. Tried to use the govt. to give them an unfair advantage because they couldn't compete against MS. You can argue MS is a monopoly, but at least they aren't using force supplied by the govt. for gain an advantage. All MS can do is negotiate contracts. Let Panama be a lesson as to the dangers of allowing govt. to interfere with business.
""How is having the best product and trying to sell it at a competitive rate coercive strong-arming?" Note how I use a well-established logical fallacy to make a point that is entirely irrelevent to the issue at hand."
I don't think you have any idea what a logical fallacy is, Zordak, or what logic is, for that matter.
Laws need to be based on moral principles. The moral principle at stake here is basic freedom for an individual. Govts. should protect individual freedoms. Antitrust laws attack indivdual freedoms of people running a company. Copyright laws protect the freedom of an individual to create something of value and not have it stolen. ,That is why the former law is unjust and the latter law is just. My argument that one law is good and another bad is not arbitrary. Govt. has the right to use force to protect the individual rights of people. MS doesn't use force, the ask the govt. to do so for just reasons.
This case isn't about whether or not MS lied or breeched contracts? If someone wants to take them to court over these things, they have the freedom to do so. This idea of stalled lawsuits is an accusation against a judge, since a judge runs a trial. Your saying MS is paying of judges? This case is about anticompetitve practices, which is an oxymoron in a free market society, except through use of physical force, which no one has ever accused MS of.
Fine. By copying someone's work without his permission, you are infringing on his property rights, making you a thief. Better?