"... sells Linux support... And more often than not the system is "working as designed", just it was either designed counter-intuitively or it's not working as expected by the user."
Yeah, sign me and my users up for that. Confused users are in fact the most productive, right?
"I can't see a single business out there that wouldn't like the costs of their software reduced..."
Businesses might like to have their "costs" reduced, but the costs of the software, administration, training, retraining, support, and so on also factor into the equation.
And Open Office may do, for example, 90% of what the majority of the users need, but what about that other 10%. Are we going to support two environments, one for most and one for them? Dual and/or cross-trained support staffs? Same goes for other proprietary software and solutions that may be in place. Are we going to redevelop them? Port them? How much is that going to cost?
OSS advocates, as in this article, attempt to promote OSS solutions based solely on the fact that the software itself is free. Though the price of the software itself is often the least important thing about it. And no solution is worth the price (including free) if it doesn't meet my needs.
"If you tell business there is a way they can share their costs with every other business around the world of course they are interested."
Perhaps. Then again, there's now no differentiation either. Some businesses develop their own solutions to things wholly as a competitive advantage against other companies.
"The impact on everyone else of my F-350 is made up..."
It gets around 12 MPG, yes? That means to carry you and your SO around it uses FOUR times as much fuel as a new Prius. Or translated, we could put three-to-four other vehicles on the road for every "Super Truck" some jerk is driving around.
So, 3-4x the fuel. 3-4x the demand for fuel. With a fixed supply and greater demand prices rise for everyone else.
How then, exactly, is the impact made up? It either gets crappy milage, or it doesn't? It needs 2-3x the materials to build one over a convential vehicle, or it doesn't? A friggin replacement tire needs 3x the material of a Prius tire, or it doesn't?
You have one too many phones in your rant. iPhone, iPhone 3G, and iPhone 3GS. The "half" discount was on the 3G.
And personally, I'd much rather have been using my iPhone over the last two years, "crippled or no," instead of Apple having waited two more years to develop and ship the "perfect" phone.
Did I miss copy and paste? Occasionally. Will I use MMS? Occasionally. Did I use SMS and email and weather and Google maps? The clock and movie times and Stanza and Kindle and OmniFocus and, OMG, how did I forget, the built-in video iPod?
Ever hear the phrase, "Your freedom ends the second your fist hits my nose."
Translated, to a certain extent whatever I do impacts you and whatever you do impacts me and the rest of society. As such, you are not "free" to do anything you choose. You can't stand in the middle of the street and shoot anyone you want with an AK-47. You can't walk into a store and steal whatever it is you want, just because you want it.
Freedom walks hand in hand with responsibility. Responsibility to yourself, your family, your friends, your community, society in general, and, ultimately, your country. Some people, unfortunately, are totally irresponsible, and unable to see past the end of their own nose, or past their own petty wants, needs, and desires. Or to see how what they want impacts everyone else. As such, we have laws, rules, and regulations, and enforce them for the greater good.
Which brings us back around to the F-350. You want one just because you want one? Fine. But that want has an impact on everyone else, and as such I'm saying that you need to pay for those externalities. Price too high? Too bad. I'd like a Porsche, but I can't justify the price nor the impact.
"I don't want to have to make a decision before starting to read an article about whether I think it's likely to be worth the money I'm paying for it, even if that money is only pennies..."
Please. Read ten "paid" articles a day for an entire year and at a penny a piece it's less than $40, or pretty much just one magazine subscription.
And actually, the original idea behind micropayments was to charge fractions of a cent ($0.0025) per article or page view. So on that site you're going to bitch about paying $4 a year? For reading ten articles a day? Every day?
Hell, your personal time should be worth more than that...
You want to help write the law to exempt commercial vehicles? Fine. Just make sure some real estate asshole can't loophole his way in by claiming his Hummer is for "business" use. (Which, incidentally, happened when the IRS allowed higher tax breaks on "heavy" vehicles used for business. Every Tom, Dick, and Dick suddenly saw a way to get a Hummer or F-350 for "free".)
Like it or not, what "everyone" does has an impact on everyone else. One person expressing their personal freedom and "individuallity" by driving an oversized truck or SUV is one thing. Multiply that by 100 million people, however, and we suddenly have a problem.
The fact of the matter is that you and I and everyone else pay more for gasoline and in city and highway maintenance fees for every one of those vehicles that's on the road. (Not to mention minor things like imbalanced trade deficits and polution and climate and losing our children in wars in the Middle East.)
Yes, we need blue-collar. But the rest also need to learn not to buy a super-truck just because they've got a small dick and a terrible self-image and need to overcompensate. "Yes, I'm a manly man, driving a manly truck... right down to the corner supermarket to pick up a loaf of bread."
Better a gas tax AND a hefty graduated annual excise tax on oversize trucks and SUVs with poor mileage. Make it simple, say, $200/year for every MPG under the mandated 35MPG average. Want to drive that 12MPG Excursion or F-350? Fine. That's $4,600 a year, please.
Hope the overcompensaion was worth it.
The average European family does just fine with compact cars like Fiats and VWs. If they can do it, then so can the average US family. (Of course, the average US family may need to go on a diet first. But then again, that will improve mileage too!)
Seriously, According to the U.S. Department of Energy, we burn roughly 400 million gallons of gasoline day-in and day-out. And roughly 60% of all of the petroleum consumed was imported, with 13% coming from the middle east (shipping is easier from SA). Finally, from 2000 to 2007, the US new fleet fuel economy has averaged 23.1 mpg, with light trucks and SUVs making up about 40% of the vehicles on the road.
So, LTs and SUVs make up 40%, but since their mileage sucks they burn 55-60% of the fuel. Replace SUVs, and we immediately save 120 million gallons each and every day, cut imports by 30%, and IMMEDIATELY and totally cut our need for Middle Eastern oil.
Well, if tethering isn't an "official" option for Pre users w/o upgrading to a data plan, then I suspect your point is "stupid and moot" as well.
BTW, I loved this excerpt from the article, "Even worse for hackers, Palm's taking an unusually aggressive approach to webOS system updates -- they're mandatory. According to the support docs, webOS updates are automatically downloaded in the background within two days of being available..."
Automatic? Mandatory? So much for the "freedom" of open source.
"On Linux, there's a simple way out: you can grab any window and move it around with Alt-Mouse-1. It's documented and it's a useful shortcut anyway."
Of course, with the screen down to 640x480 and with a modal dialog up it may be just a little bit hard to back out and search the internet for the mythical command key shortcut you need.
Assuming, of course, that you even know that there might be a command key shortcut....
You realize, of course, that CA and AK production would produce at best 5% of the oil we consume on an annual basis?
And even if we drill here and now, MULTINATIONAL oil companies could just as easily ship the oil drilled here and now off to Japan and China, who are more than willing to pay for oil.
Worse, drilling more oil means burning more oil, which spews even more CO2 and pollutants into the atmosphere. Sorry, but doing more of the same simply isn't an option.
Here's a better idea. Research and build alternative energy sources, and do it here. We cut down on pollution, contribute less to global CO2 emissions, reduce our dependence on foreign oil, reduce our need to constantly intervene in the Middle East, dramatically slash our import trade deficit, and, oh yeah, create tens of thousands of new jobs here in the US. And probably create a major new export industry to boot.
Now, those are tech jobs that you may not be qualified for, but if we keep the US economy afloat Walmart will always need greeters and stockboys.:)
BTW. If I'd been president a few years ago, I would have hit the automakers with MUCH higher MPG standards, and mandated a significant excise tax on oversized trucks and SUVs. We can easily cut foreign oil consumption by at least a third just by being smarter about what we drive, and by not playing He-Man with our off-road SUVS that never go off-road.
"Authors and Inventors shouldn't be allowed to rest on their laurals for the rest of their lives, but actually contribute to society...."
Yeah, because Asimov and Heinlein and Clancy and King and Rowling and Crichton and Brown and Irving and Koontz and Grisham and Puzo all just wrote one single book, then rested on their laurals for the rest of their lives.
While I'm all for shortening the term, the meme that authors rest on their laurals for the rest of their lives is completely, totally, 100% false-to-fact. Writers write.
Hell, even musicians who score one-hit-wonders rarely have produced just one song, and most try to follow up on their success with new music and material. It may not take (which is why they're one-hit-wonders) but most at least try.
Finally, I want you to compare yourself to the list of authors given above and then ask yourself what YOU have contributed to society?
Applesoft BASIC on the Apple II mapped keyword tokens directly to a jump table of ROM entry points.
Other than the fact that it was not object-based, didn't reference system or external libraries, and all of the token offsets were fixed and predetermined...
Uh, you mean like firewalls? Sandboxing? Library Randomization? Protected memory and Execute Disable? Encrypted virtual memory? System heap library checksums? The ability to actually run user accounts as non-admins? FileVault? Disabling root by default? Download screening? Antiphishing technology? Browser page isolation? Minimal outward facing ports and services? Parental Controls?
Those anti-exploitation technologies?
"...he works for a security consulting firm and uses a Mac himself."
And not Windows and not Linux. Guess that says it all.
DSL and cable ISPs already have different bit rates for uploads and downloads, perhaps 1.5mps down and 400kpbs up. Since there's less bandwidth available upstream, they can (and should) charge more and use different caps on the upstream side.
As to your footprint, it sounds as if you're dependent on the goodwill of others, as you're downloading a lot more content than you're uploading. (A leech in addition to being a pirate and a parasite.) In other words, under my proposal someone somewhere would be paying more for their upstream traffic just so that you can download the stuff to which you think you're entitled.
So if it starts costing them money, do you think they'll continue to let you download for free?
"To illustrate my point: why buy a laptop now that will cost 3000$ and keep it for 3 years, instead of buying a 1000$ laptop every year for 3 years? I'll get a better deal with the cheaper laptops!"
At 3x times the cost in materials, 3x times the energy needed to produce each one and ship it and sell it, and generating 3x times the waste when you toss each one away and it ends up in a landfill.
You may be getting a better "deal", but from an environmental standpoint, the rest of use are getting screwed by your disposable mindset.
"Companies can buy all the laws they like, from a practical point of view DRM is unworkable, and laws against file sharing are unenforceable."
Unfortunately, there's a pretty easy solution to torrents: charge bandwidth on a per megabit basis.
In particular, charge much, much more for upstream traffic than for downstream traffic. Do that, and you'll kill off the vast majority of P2P file servers. You may be willing to pay out-of-pocket to get "free" content, but are you willing to spend your dollars so that other people can download content off your connection? Turn more people into leaches and the pond slowly but surely dries up.
And college students in particular would be much less likely to be able to afford high internet connection fees.
Paul Revere's famous "Midnight Ride" occurred on the night of April 18/April 19, 1774, when he and William Davies were instructed by Dr. Joseph Warren to ride from Boston to Arlington to warn John Hancock and Samuel Adams of the movements of the British Army...
Fine. Except it was 1775, not 1774, he rode to Lexington, not Arlington, and it's William Dawes, not Davies.
But if any of the above were represented on Wikipedia as fact, how would you--not knowing any better--separate out the "bullshit"?
I once calculated that a Prius would save me $3,000 a year in fuel costs over my 16MPG Jeep. Plates and registration fees for a 10-year old truck? $150. Adding a parked, rarely-driven vechicle to your insurance policy? About $200/year. Maintence on a vehicle driven 5% of the time? Please. If something major happens spend another grand and buy a new truck.
So $3,000-$150-$200=$2,650 extra in your pocket. Okay, fine. Spring for the truck's once-a-year $50 oil change. $2,600.
And funny how one used to be able to go out with the kids in your basic four-door sedan. Hell, in Europe and Asia families make do with pint-sized Fiats, Volkswagons, and other subcompacts.
So yes, there are "more" costs to go that route, and since the money saved covers them easily, that solution is LESS expensive. Stop making up excuses just to be making up excuses.
Slashdot Mirror
"... sells Linux support ... And more often than not the system is "working as designed", just it was either designed counter-intuitively or it's not working as expected by the user."
Yeah, sign me and my users up for that. Confused users are in fact the most productive, right?
"I can't see a single business out there that wouldn't like the costs of their software reduced..."
Businesses might like to have their "costs" reduced, but the costs of the software, administration, training, retraining, support, and so on also factor into the equation.
And Open Office may do, for example, 90% of what the majority of the users need, but what about that other 10%. Are we going to support two environments, one for most and one for them? Dual and/or cross-trained support staffs? Same goes for other proprietary software and solutions that may be in place. Are we going to redevelop them? Port them? How much is that going to cost?
OSS advocates, as in this article, attempt to promote OSS solutions based solely on the fact that the software itself is free. Though the price of the software itself is often the least important thing about it. And no solution is worth the price (including free) if it doesn't meet my needs.
"If you tell business there is a way they can share their costs with every other business around the world of course they are interested."
Perhaps. Then again, there's now no differentiation either. Some businesses develop their own solutions to things wholly as a competitive advantage against other companies.
"The impact on everyone else of my F-350 is made up..."
It gets around 12 MPG, yes? That means to carry you and your SO around it uses FOUR times as much fuel as a new Prius. Or translated, we could put three-to-four other vehicles on the road for every "Super Truck" some jerk is driving around.
So, 3-4x the fuel. 3-4x the demand for fuel. With a fixed supply and greater demand prices rise for everyone else.
How then, exactly, is the impact made up? It either gets crappy milage, or it doesn't? It needs 2-3x the materials to build one over a convential vehicle, or it doesn't? A friggin replacement tire needs 3x the material of a Prius tire, or it doesn't?
Come on, grow up, and put away your toys....
You have one too many phones in your rant. iPhone, iPhone 3G, and iPhone 3GS. The "half" discount was on the 3G.
And personally, I'd much rather have been using my iPhone over the last two years, "crippled or no," instead of Apple having waited two more years to develop and ship the "perfect" phone.
Did I miss copy and paste? Occasionally. Will I use MMS? Occasionally. Did I use SMS and email and weather and Google maps? The clock and movie times and Stanza and Kindle and OmniFocus and, OMG, how did I forget, the built-in video iPod?
Constantly.
Ever hear the phrase, "Your freedom ends the second your fist hits my nose."
Translated, to a certain extent whatever I do impacts you and whatever you do impacts me and the rest of society. As such, you are not "free" to do anything you choose. You can't stand in the middle of the street and shoot anyone you want with an AK-47. You can't walk into a store and steal whatever it is you want, just because you want it.
Freedom walks hand in hand with responsibility. Responsibility to yourself, your family, your friends, your community, society in general, and, ultimately, your country. Some people, unfortunately, are totally irresponsible, and unable to see past the end of their own nose, or past their own petty wants, needs, and desires. Or to see how what they want impacts everyone else. As such, we have laws, rules, and regulations, and enforce them for the greater good.
Which brings us back around to the F-350. You want one just because you want one? Fine. But that want has an impact on everyone else, and as such I'm saying that you need to pay for those externalities. Price too high? Too bad. I'd like a Porsche, but I can't justify the price nor the impact.
"I don't want to have to make a decision before starting to read an article about whether I think it's likely to be worth the money I'm paying for it, even if that money is only pennies..."
Please. Read ten "paid" articles a day for an entire year and at a penny a piece it's less than $40, or pretty much just one magazine subscription.
And actually, the original idea behind micropayments was to charge fractions of a cent ($0.0025) per article or page view. So on that site you're going to bitch about paying $4 a year? For reading ten articles a day? Every day?
Hell, your personal time should be worth more than that...
You want to help write the law to exempt commercial vehicles? Fine. Just make sure some real estate asshole can't loophole his way in by claiming his Hummer is for "business" use. (Which, incidentally, happened when the IRS allowed higher tax breaks on "heavy" vehicles used for business. Every Tom, Dick, and Dick suddenly saw a way to get a Hummer or F-350 for "free".)
Like it or not, what "everyone" does has an impact on everyone else. One person expressing their personal freedom and "individuallity" by driving an oversized truck or SUV is one thing. Multiply that by 100 million people, however, and we suddenly have a problem.
The fact of the matter is that you and I and everyone else pay more for gasoline and in city and highway maintenance fees for every one of those vehicles that's on the road. (Not to mention minor things like imbalanced trade deficits and polution and climate and losing our children in wars in the Middle East.)
Yes, we need blue-collar. But the rest also need to learn not to buy a super-truck just because they've got a small dick and a terrible self-image and need to overcompensate. "Yes, I'm a manly man, driving a manly truck... right down to the corner supermarket to pick up a loaf of bread."
Better a gas tax AND a hefty graduated annual excise tax on oversize trucks and SUVs with poor mileage. Make it simple, say, $200/year for every MPG under the mandated 35MPG average. Want to drive that 12MPG Excursion or F-350? Fine. That's $4,600 a year, please.
Hope the overcompensaion was worth it.
The average European family does just fine with compact cars like Fiats and VWs. If they can do it, then so can the average US family. (Of course, the average US family may need to go on a diet first. But then again, that will improve mileage too!)
Seriously, According to the U.S. Department of Energy, we burn roughly 400 million gallons of gasoline day-in and day-out. And roughly 60% of all of the petroleum consumed was imported, with 13% coming from the middle east (shipping is easier from SA). Finally, from 2000 to 2007, the US new fleet fuel economy has averaged 23.1 mpg, with light trucks and SUVs making up about 40% of the vehicles on the road.
So, LTs and SUVs make up 40%, but since their mileage sucks they burn 55-60% of the fuel. Replace SUVs, and we immediately save 120 million gallons each and every day, cut imports by 30%, and IMMEDIATELY and totally cut our need for Middle Eastern oil.
Well, if tethering isn't an "official" option for Pre users w/o upgrading to a data plan, then I suspect your point is "stupid and moot" as well.
BTW, I loved this excerpt from the article, "Even worse for hackers, Palm's taking an unusually aggressive approach to webOS system updates -- they're mandatory. According to the support docs, webOS updates are automatically downloaded in the background within two days of being available..."
Automatic? Mandatory? So much for the "freedom" of open source.
So dive into the source and fix it yourself.
What? You can't? Huh. Well, document it and I'm sure that someone will get around to fixing it... someday.
If they're interested, of course.
"On Linux, there's a simple way out: you can grab any window and move it around with Alt-Mouse-1. It's documented and it's a useful shortcut anyway."
Of course, with the screen down to 640x480 and with a modal dialog up it may be just a little bit hard to back out and search the internet for the mythical command key shortcut you need.
Assuming, of course, that you even know that there might be a command key shortcut....
I dare you to come out of your parents basement and say that to my face. ;)
You realize, of course, that CA and AK production would produce at best 5% of the oil we consume on an annual basis?
And even if we drill here and now, MULTINATIONAL oil companies could just as easily ship the oil drilled here and now off to Japan and China, who are more than willing to pay for oil.
Worse, drilling more oil means burning more oil, which spews even more CO2 and pollutants into the atmosphere. Sorry, but doing more of the same simply isn't an option.
Here's a better idea. Research and build alternative energy sources, and do it here. We cut down on pollution, contribute less to global CO2 emissions, reduce our dependence on foreign oil, reduce our need to constantly intervene in the Middle East, dramatically slash our import trade deficit, and, oh yeah, create tens of thousands of new jobs here in the US. And probably create a major new export industry to boot.
Now, those are tech jobs that you may not be qualified for, but if we keep the US economy afloat Walmart will always need greeters and stockboys. :)
BTW. If I'd been president a few years ago, I would have hit the automakers with MUCH higher MPG standards, and mandated a significant excise tax on oversized trucks and SUVs. We can easily cut foreign oil consumption by at least a third just by being smarter about what we drive, and by not playing He-Man with our off-road SUVS that never go off-road.
"Authors and Inventors shouldn't be allowed to rest on their laurals for the rest of their lives, but actually contribute to society...."
Yeah, because Asimov and Heinlein and Clancy and King and Rowling and Crichton and Brown and Irving and Koontz and Grisham and Puzo all just wrote one single book, then rested on their laurals for the rest of their lives.
While I'm all for shortening the term, the meme that authors rest on their laurals for the rest of their lives is completely, totally, 100% false-to-fact. Writers write.
Hell, even musicians who score one-hit-wonders rarely have produced just one song, and most try to follow up on their success with new music and material. It may not take (which is why they're one-hit-wonders) but most at least try.
Finally, I want you to compare yourself to the list of authors given above and then ask yourself what YOU have contributed to society?
Thought so.
Have you ever heard of paragraphs? (plural)
Applesoft BASIC on the Apple II mapped keyword tokens directly to a jump table of ROM entry points.
Other than the fact that it was not object-based, didn't reference system or external libraries, and all of the token offsets were fixed and predetermined...
It's exactly the same. :)
Except OS X has library and address-space randomization, which makes changing an arbitrary bit of RAM just that: arbitrary.
Which pretty much makes this, at worst, a DoS/crash issue, and not an exploit.
"... lack of anti-exploitation technologies..."
Uh, you mean like firewalls? Sandboxing? Library Randomization? Protected memory and Execute Disable? Encrypted virtual memory? System heap library checksums? The ability to actually run user accounts as non-admins? FileVault? Disabling root by default? Download screening? Antiphishing technology? Browser page isolation? Minimal outward facing ports and services? Parental Controls?
Those anti-exploitation technologies?
"...he works for a security consulting firm and uses a Mac himself."
And not Windows and not Linux. Guess that says it all.
DSL and cable ISPs already have different bit rates for uploads and downloads, perhaps 1.5mps down and 400kpbs up. Since there's less bandwidth available upstream, they can (and should) charge more and use different caps on the upstream side.
As to your footprint, it sounds as if you're dependent on the goodwill of others, as you're downloading a lot more content than you're uploading. (A leech in addition to being a pirate and a parasite.) In other words, under my proposal someone somewhere would be paying more for their upstream traffic just so that you can download the stuff to which you think you're entitled.
So if it starts costing them money, do you think they'll continue to let you download for free?
"To illustrate my point: why buy a laptop now that will cost 3000$ and keep it for 3 years, instead of buying a 1000$ laptop every year for 3 years? I'll get a better deal with the cheaper laptops!"
At 3x times the cost in materials, 3x times the energy needed to produce each one and ship it and sell it, and generating 3x times the waste when you toss each one away and it ends up in a landfill.
You may be getting a better "deal", but from an environmental standpoint, the rest of use are getting screwed by your disposable mindset.
"Companies can buy all the laws they like, from a practical point of view DRM is unworkable, and laws against file sharing are unenforceable."
Unfortunately, there's a pretty easy solution to torrents: charge bandwidth on a per megabit basis.
In particular, charge much, much more for upstream traffic than for downstream traffic. Do that, and you'll kill off the vast majority of P2P file servers. You may be willing to pay out-of-pocket to get "free" content, but are you willing to spend your dollars so that other people can download content off your connection? Turn more people into leaches and the pond slowly but surely dries up.
And college students in particular would be much less likely to be able to afford high internet connection fees.
Paul Revere's famous "Midnight Ride" occurred on the night of April 18/April 19, 1774, when he and William Davies were instructed by Dr. Joseph Warren to ride from Boston to Arlington to warn John Hancock and Samuel Adams of the movements of the British Army...
Fine. Except it was 1775, not 1774, he rode to Lexington, not Arlington, and it's William Dawes, not Davies.
But if any of the above were represented on Wikipedia as fact, how would you--not knowing any better--separate out the "bullshit"?
".... and no longer reaches the ocean through most of the year is environmentally benign?"
Well, yes. As opposed, say, to letting all of the water simply flood out all at once in the spring.
I once calculated that a Prius would save me $3,000 a year in fuel costs over my 16MPG Jeep. Plates and registration fees for a 10-year old truck? $150. Adding a parked, rarely-driven vechicle to your insurance policy? About $200/year. Maintence on a vehicle driven 5% of the time? Please. If something major happens spend another grand and buy a new truck.
So $3,000-$150-$200=$2,650 extra in your pocket. Okay, fine. Spring for the truck's once-a-year $50 oil change. $2,600.
And funny how one used to be able to go out with the kids in your basic four-door sedan. Hell, in Europe and Asia families make do with pint-sized Fiats, Volkswagons, and other subcompacts.
So yes, there are "more" costs to go that route, and since the money saved covers them easily, that solution is LESS expensive. Stop making up excuses just to be making up excuses.
Yeah, I see Nintendo posts on Slashdot daily.