Linus's custody battle quote really sums up the dispute well. SCO thinks they have rights to Linux becuase they see Linux as an unauthorized form of unix. They believe this even if all the Linux code was written without seeing any unix source code. Although the immediate litigation is focused on IBM, since there are contracts that may or may not have been violated by IBM (as Linus pointed out in an earlier quote), the overall war is an attempt to claim rights to Linux, and thus get paid for its use. In a free society one would think if Linux did not copy any code from unix (which is likely the case), SCO has no hold on Linux. However, the US is NOT a free society for business. There are any number of laws that limit practices of businesses, and Linux may get caught up in these laws, since busnesses are using Linux, as well as donating towards its development.
"This could be seen as the fatal flaw of humanity: we don't care if we fail. "
No, that's the fatal flaw of govt. Businesses care if they succeed or not. In this case there was no real penalty for failure, so for Diebold failure was a success anyway.
"Who, then, is really running the country? And how did they really get in office?
"
Ideally, redistricting should adjust things so the will of the voter is represented. For instance, if 75% of a state votes for party A, and because of the way districts are organized, only 50% of representatives sent to congress are from party A, then there is a real problem with districting. Beyond that, it's a power struggle between the parties.
This letter gave me some insight into SCO's think behind saying the GPL was invalid, which didn't make any sense at all before. They seem to be saying that the FSF is violating the spirit of copyright laws by not using copyright for personal gain, and therefore what they are doing is wrong. Of course this is bogus. If you have copyright, you should be able to dictate terms other than monetary to allow someone to copy the work.
"Funny thing happens when you develop an antagonistic relationship with your customers instead of following the age-old law of supply and demand."
Since you understand supply and demand so well, you should realize that allowing uploading of music for free decreases the demand for legitimate outlets of the music. This causes the value of the music to decrease. Anyone who thinks piracy is a victimless crime doesn't understand economics.
I doubt the N. Korean govt. wants an encryption system without a back door for them. I wouldn't be surprised if the modified gpg to provide their idea of secure e-mail
I predict dvrs will start playing their own ads when you hit pause, much like the software promos that sometimes show up on ReplayTV now, when it's paused.
is to allow people who are directly affected financially by spammers to sue them. These people are generally ISPs who need more storage and bandwidth to deal with receiving and storing spam. It reminds me of the fax laws since there was concern there that advertisers were making their targets pay for ink and paper to distribute their ads via fax.
"Last spring, the pressure from record companies hit critical mass at the University of Florida. The school was getting about 40 notices a month asking it to disconnect students for illegal downloading. About 1,000 cases involving violations of copyright rules were clogging the school's judicial system. An estimated 40 percent of dorm residents were downloading illegally."
Some important facts from the article completely ignored by poster, who was too busy with his own anti recording industry agenda to bother mentioning.
"But if there are sixty million of them, and there are some thousands losing money over it, then I'd say that the aggregate benefit damn well outweights the aggregate loss."
So we should legalize shoplifting sice there are a lot more shoppers than store owners?
The availability of tv series on dvd has a nice side effect in that by buying the dvd, you're casting a vote with your money that you like the show, which probably translates a lot better into profit than if you simply watched the show on tv (and the ads). Therefore, a smaller segment of the population can now keep a show going if they're willing to buy it on dvd. This works particularly well for cartoons, since you don't need to worry about aging actors as much (only voices). As more people purchase DVR's and stop watching ads, this may make the television market more like the radio market in the sense that show producers will use broadcast tv to sample a show to the public in an effort to sell dvds, much like music producers use radio airplay to get people to buy cds.
People do things for their own reasons, not to better humanity. Linus started Linux because he wanted an OS for HIS pc. Stallman started GNU becuase he was sick of using code that he couldn't debug and wanted the source code available for all code. There are many reasons to pursue a particular project. Usually self-interest is the main motivation.
Although the poster took great pains to point out "It would not require that any copyright infringement actually take place.", he completely left out the actual description of the bill, which is "A forthcoming copyright bill backed by key U.S. senators would place file swappers in prison for up to three years if they have a copy of even one prerelease movie in their shared folders.". If you want to bash a bill on the front page of/., you should at least give the readers who don't RTFA a chance to understand what you're disagreeing with.
The poster is quoting out of context to spin a nothing story. Here's the whole quote:"Despite the rivalry, Microsoft is keen to talk up its love for the competition, One Microsoft employee even went so far as to say Linux having a 50 percent market share would be good for Microsoft. "At least if Linux takes off, their viruses will propagate and we won't be seen as the bad guys any more," he said. Tipp equally sees advantages to Linux taking off. "We think Linux is great," he said, adding that competition from the penguin and associates keeps the Microsoft on its toes."
Why did the poster pick and choose quote that made it look like MS is attacking Linux, when in context, the quote are obviously not meant to be serious.
Re:Moving weel on into stage 3...
on
Security FUD On Linux
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
" First they ignore you
Then they laugh at you
Then they fight you
Then you win
Mohandas Gandhi"
This quote is meaningless, except in hindsight. For instance, if Ghandi had used the same tactics in Hussein controlled Iraq, insetad of British controlled India, the quote would go First they ignore you
Then they laugh at you
Then they fight you
Then you die.
He would have ended up in a mass grave with the other 300k people.
What has the consumer done to earn trust? Original cd's had no copy protection. Napster came along and proved that consumers can't be trusted. Don't blame the recording industry because consumers have shown they can't be trusted.
"Capitalism is all about the free market. Copyright is a regulation of the market. Those who would have the government grant monopolies are anti-capitalist. The fact is, copyright doesn't fall under any of the three big economic ideologies (Capitalism, Socialism, and Communism). You could just as easily say:
Abolishing copyright is capitalism, a concept where people are free to compete by manufacturing any product they want."
Wrong. Abolishing copyright is like allowing shoplifting. Would you say breaking into a store and stealing a book is capitalist? No it's theft of property. Copyright violations are also theft of property. The govt. is simply protecting a basic property right. You'd think digital copying would highlight the real work is in the creation, not the distribution. But instead, it's done the opposite. People think that because it's easy to copy, the creator won't care if you make a copy without compensating him.
What do your comments have to do with the proposal? If you think Britney Spears is just scraping by, you've been misled (watch South Park?). The internet may help musicians bypass the normal route to fame, but the RIAA hasn't purposely sued any uploader who was distributing his own music. You're just spinning the facts. The Courtney Love number assume all musicians are successful. They don't account for all the failed musicians that declare bankruptcy and stick the industry with the loss. If it was so easy to be successful in music, any musician could walk into a bank, get a loan, and start his own label.
The RIAA is a lobby group. Recording labels sign musicians they think people will like. People either buy their album or they don't. That's capitalism, not feudalism. No one points a gun at a musician and forces him to sign a recording contract. No one prevents a musician from starting his own label if he can't find a contract he likes. Under the proposed system, my tax dollars pay for musicians that other citizens who may pay no taxes vote for. No one has the right to steal my money and give it to a musician I don't like. The govt. is pointing a gun at me and forcing me to pay taxes, so they have ultimate control. If the proletariat wants free music, they can start their own foundation with their own money, and sign up their own musicians, but don't force me to pay for it.
"In capitalism, man exploits man
In communism, its the other way around"
If their is exploitation in capitialism, at least the exploited person chose that poison. In communism, there is no choice. You are always exploited for the good of the collective, and have no choice.
No true libertarian would talk about abolishing copyright. They believe that the purpose of govt. is to protect individual freedom. One of these freedom is the ability to own property, including intellectual property. It is no cooincidence socialists don't believe in property. They don't believe in individual rights, only collective rights. This proposed system wants my tax dollars to pay authors and musician I don't necessarily care about or may even want boycotted. That's a socialist system.
"n a purely socialist society, the proletariat becomes the ruling class, hence the phrase "dictatorship of the proletariat."
A purely socialist society is unrealizable. People act in their own interest. Someone must decide how to distribute wealth. That class of people will inevitably favor themselves. This leads to a system where it is more important to get in those peoples good favor, to be able to pursue a profession, rather than to actually have talent in that field, as free market favors. Just look at the USSR as a classic example of what really happens when socialism is put into practice.
"Look up the "iron law of wages". In the 19th century, it was considered a *good* thing that capitalists only paid their workers starvation wages -- the silly workers would just waste any excess anyway. No wonder socialist ideas were attractive to workers."
Labor unions solved that problem. Socialism in the USSR did not, as history shows.
"While it was clear that the socialist nations during the Cold War didn't have as good quality of life as the first world nations, people there lived much better than in most capitalist third-world nations."
Name a 3rd world country that has a free market system. There aren't any. The governments are corrupt and don't allow free market to flourish. Mexico is practically socialist for instance, and Iraq was no better under Hussein. You need to understand fundamentals. People only work productively when they profit directly from their labor in some way or another. Socialism and govt. corruption destroys this by stealing the product of labor and distributing to people underserving of the product.
In the world I live, socialism is slowly creeping over the US and Eurpoe. They haven't learned a thing from the USSR collapse. The only services regulated in the US currently, involve some scarce resource, such as wiring infrastructure for power and phone, roads, airwaves, etc. It's not difficult to show that govt. involvement has caused as many problems as solutions in these areas. Nationalizing health care and regulating drug prices are a big mistake. Regulating drug prices will kill incentive to invest in drug companies. Regulating health care will kill incentive to become a doctor. who the hell wants to spend all that time in school to end up a govt. employee. There's no reason my tax dollar should pay to support authors, particularly those I dislike. Let free market decide, not the govt. That's the principle that the US was founded on. People claim the love the US, but they constantly try to change it from what was intended, think they know better than the founding fathers. If authors want to give up their copyright to some foundation that hands them a bone, fine. But that foundation better not use my tax dollars.
Slashdot Mirror
Linus's custody battle quote really sums up the dispute well. SCO thinks they have rights to Linux becuase they see Linux as an unauthorized form of unix. They believe this even if all the Linux code was written without seeing any unix source code. Although the immediate litigation is focused on IBM, since there are contracts that may or may not have been violated by IBM (as Linus pointed out in an earlier quote), the overall war is an attempt to claim rights to Linux, and thus get paid for its use. In a free society one would think if Linux did not copy any code from unix (which is likely the case), SCO has no hold on Linux. However, the US is NOT a free society for business. There are any number of laws that limit practices of businesses, and Linux may get caught up in these laws, since busnesses are using Linux, as well as donating towards its development.
"This could be seen as the fatal flaw of humanity: we don't care if we fail. "
No, that's the fatal flaw of govt. Businesses care if they succeed or not. In this case there was no real penalty for failure, so for Diebold failure was a success anyway.
"Who, then, is really running the country? And how did they really get in office? "
Ideally, redistricting should adjust things so the will of the voter is represented. For instance, if 75% of a state votes for party A, and because of the way districts are organized, only 50% of representatives sent to congress are from party A, then there is a real problem with districting. Beyond that, it's a power struggle between the parties.
This letter gave me some insight into SCO's think behind saying the GPL was invalid, which didn't make any sense at all before. They seem to be saying that the FSF is violating the spirit of copyright laws by not using copyright for personal gain, and therefore what they are doing is wrong. Of course this is bogus. If you have copyright, you should be able to dictate terms other than monetary to allow someone to copy the work.
"Funny thing happens when you develop an antagonistic relationship with your customers instead of following the age-old law of supply and demand."
Since you understand supply and demand so well, you should realize that allowing uploading of music for free decreases the demand for legitimate outlets of the music. This causes the value of the music to decrease. Anyone who thinks piracy is a victimless crime doesn't understand economics.
I doubt the N. Korean govt. wants an encryption system without a back door for them. I wouldn't be surprised if the modified gpg to provide their idea of secure e-mail
I predict dvrs will start playing their own ads when you hit pause, much like the software promos that sometimes show up on ReplayTV now, when it's paused.
is to allow people who are directly affected financially by spammers to sue them. These people are generally ISPs who need more storage and bandwidth to deal with receiving and storing spam. It reminds me of the fax laws since there was concern there that advertisers were making their targets pay for ink and paper to distribute their ads via fax.
"Last spring, the pressure from record companies hit critical mass at the University of Florida. The school was getting about 40 notices a month asking it to disconnect students for illegal downloading. About 1,000 cases involving violations of copyright rules were clogging the school's judicial system. An estimated 40 percent of dorm residents were downloading illegally."
Some important facts from the article completely ignored by poster, who was too busy with his own anti recording industry agenda to bother mentioning.
"But if there are sixty million of them, and there are some thousands losing money over it, then I'd say that the aggregate benefit damn well outweights the aggregate loss."
So we should legalize shoplifting sice there are a lot more shoppers than store owners?
The availability of tv series on dvd has a nice side effect in that by buying the dvd, you're casting a vote with your money that you like the show, which probably translates a lot better into profit than if you simply watched the show on tv (and the ads). Therefore, a smaller segment of the population can now keep a show going if they're willing to buy it on dvd. This works particularly well for cartoons, since you don't need to worry about aging actors as much (only voices). As more people purchase DVR's and stop watching ads, this may make the television market more like the radio market in the sense that show producers will use broadcast tv to sample a show to the public in an effort to sell dvds, much like music producers use radio airplay to get people to buy cds.
" Bill Gates has to pay people to work for him. Linus does not. Advantage: Linus."
More like: Bill Gates pays people to work for him. Companies like IBM, Dell, and HP pay Linus to work for them through OSDL donations, etc..
People do things for their own reasons, not to better humanity. Linus started Linux because he wanted an OS for HIS pc. Stallman started GNU becuase he was sick of using code that he couldn't debug and wanted the source code available for all code. There are many reasons to pursue a particular project. Usually self-interest is the main motivation.
Although the poster took great pains to point out "It would not require that any copyright infringement actually take place.", he completely left out the actual description of the bill, which is "A forthcoming copyright bill backed by key U.S. senators would place file swappers in prison for up to three years if they have a copy of even one prerelease movie in their shared folders.". If you want to bash a bill on the front page of /., you should at least give the readers who don't RTFA a chance to understand what you're disagreeing with.
The poster is quoting out of context to spin a nothing story. Here's the whole quote:"Despite the rivalry, Microsoft is keen to talk up its love for the competition, One Microsoft employee even went so far as to say Linux having a 50 percent market share would be good for Microsoft. "At least if Linux takes off, their viruses will propagate and we won't be seen as the bad guys any more," he said. Tipp equally sees advantages to Linux taking off. "We think Linux is great," he said, adding that competition from the penguin and associates keeps the Microsoft on its toes."
Why did the poster pick and choose quote that made it look like MS is attacking Linux, when in context, the quote are obviously not meant to be serious.
" First they ignore you Then they laugh at you Then they fight you Then you win Mohandas Gandhi"
This quote is meaningless, except in hindsight. For instance, if Ghandi had used the same tactics in Hussein controlled Iraq, insetad of British controlled India, the quote would go
First they ignore you Then they laugh at you
Then they fight you
Then you die.
He would have ended up in a mass grave with the other 300k people.
What has the consumer done to earn trust? Original cd's had no copy protection. Napster came along and proved that consumers can't be trusted. Don't blame the recording industry because consumers have shown they can't be trusted.
"Capitalism is all about the free market. Copyright is a regulation of the market. Those who would have the government grant monopolies are anti-capitalist. The fact is, copyright doesn't fall under any of the three big economic ideologies (Capitalism, Socialism, and Communism). You could just as easily say: Abolishing copyright is capitalism, a concept where people are free to compete by manufacturing any product they want."
Wrong. Abolishing copyright is like allowing shoplifting. Would you say breaking into a store and stealing a book is capitalist? No it's theft of property. Copyright violations are also theft of property. The govt. is simply protecting a basic property right. You'd think digital copying would highlight the real work is in the creation, not the distribution. But instead, it's done the opposite. People think that because it's easy to copy, the creator won't care if you make a copy without compensating him.
What do your comments have to do with the proposal? If you think Britney Spears is just scraping by, you've been misled (watch South Park?). The internet may help musicians bypass the normal route to fame, but the RIAA hasn't purposely sued any uploader who was distributing his own music. You're just spinning the facts. The Courtney Love number assume all musicians are successful. They don't account for all the failed musicians that declare bankruptcy and stick the industry with the loss. If it was so easy to be successful in music, any musician could walk into a bank, get a loan, and start his own label.
The RIAA is a lobby group. Recording labels sign musicians they think people will like. People either buy their album or they don't. That's capitalism, not feudalism. No one points a gun at a musician and forces him to sign a recording contract. No one prevents a musician from starting his own label if he can't find a contract he likes. Under the proposed system, my tax dollars pay for musicians that other citizens who may pay no taxes vote for. No one has the right to steal my money and give it to a musician I don't like. The govt. is pointing a gun at me and forcing me to pay taxes, so they have ultimate control. If the proletariat wants free music, they can start their own foundation with their own money, and sign up their own musicians, but don't force me to pay for it.
"In capitalism, man exploits man In communism, its the other way around"
If their is exploitation in capitialism, at least the exploited person chose that poison. In communism, there is no choice. You are always exploited for the good of the collective, and have no choice.
No true libertarian would talk about abolishing copyright. They believe that the purpose of govt. is to protect individual freedom. One of these freedom is the ability to own property, including intellectual property. It is no cooincidence socialists don't believe in property. They don't believe in individual rights, only collective rights. This proposed system wants my tax dollars to pay authors and musician I don't necessarily care about or may even want boycotted. That's a socialist system.
"n a purely socialist society, the proletariat becomes the ruling class, hence the phrase "dictatorship of the proletariat."
A purely socialist society is unrealizable. People act in their own interest. Someone must decide how to distribute wealth. That class of people will inevitably favor themselves. This leads to a system where it is more important to get in those peoples good favor, to be able to pursue a profession, rather than to actually have talent in that field, as free market favors. Just look at the USSR as a classic example of what really happens when socialism is put into practice.
"Look up the "iron law of wages". In the 19th century, it was considered a *good* thing that capitalists only paid their workers starvation wages -- the silly workers would just waste any excess anyway. No wonder socialist ideas were attractive to workers."
Labor unions solved that problem. Socialism in the USSR did not, as history shows.
"While it was clear that the socialist nations during the Cold War didn't have as good quality of life as the first world nations, people there lived much better than in most capitalist third-world nations."
Name a 3rd world country that has a free market system. There aren't any. The governments are corrupt and don't allow free market to flourish. Mexico is practically socialist for instance, and Iraq was no better under Hussein. You need to understand fundamentals. People only work productively when they profit directly from their labor in some way or another. Socialism and govt. corruption destroys this by stealing the product of labor and distributing to people underserving of the product.
In the world I live, socialism is slowly creeping over the US and Eurpoe. They haven't learned a thing from the USSR collapse. The only services regulated in the US currently, involve some scarce resource, such as wiring infrastructure for power and phone, roads, airwaves, etc. It's not difficult to show that govt. involvement has caused as many problems as solutions in these areas. Nationalizing health care and regulating drug prices are a big mistake. Regulating drug prices will kill incentive to invest in drug companies. Regulating health care will kill incentive to become a doctor. who the hell wants to spend all that time in school to end up a govt. employee. There's no reason my tax dollar should pay to support authors, particularly those I dislike. Let free market decide, not the govt. That's the principle that the US was founded on. People claim the love the US, but they constantly try to change it from what was intended, think they know better than the founding fathers. If authors want to give up their copyright to some foundation that hands them a bone, fine. But that foundation better not use my tax dollars.