The example is particularly ironic, being that there has never been any evidence that shoes are good for peoples feet, and there is ample evidence that shoes are bad for people feet.
Recently, Nike went to visit the Olympic running teams with bags of shoes in tow, and were sent away because the runners did not want them, nor did the coaches. So, they invented the Nike Free, which is designed to be like not wearing a shoe at all. Makes your mind spin.
Turns out, the shoes they've been marketing all these years were hurting the people who bought them. Of course, Nike always knew that their product wasn't good for their customers... they spent years trying to find scientific evidence that shoes are good for you in some fashion, without success. So, they made them fashion accessories and kept things quiet.
You really consider what they're doing research? Seems like a bit of a stretch to me... creating an engineering prototype based on established scientific principles would never have qualified as research when I was in school...
Actually, the imbalance between those retiring and those working is going to result in the collapse of the structures that support modern civilization, just like the excessive work force the baby boom represented created a dramatic surplus that led to our decadent lifestyle in the first place. There is no problem with earths resources... they are abundant and far in excess of what we need. The problem is in the human resources which are lacking.
Indeed, ever notice how such a big deal is made over "civilian" casualties, but soldiers, they almost don't even count. Oh well, 10k soldiers died, but HOLY MOLY! You killed a CIVILIAN!!!
You don't see a difference between killing someone who is trying to kill you in return, and killing someone who is trying not to get involved?
The big problem with modern war is, the killers come home. If the soldiers who went off to war never came back, we'd be much better off, I think...
Yes, Iranians are Persian. They also are Muslim, and they revere a Semite as their prophet. You seriously don't think it requires cognitive dissonance to be racist against your own prophet?
Israel is not a people. It is a piece of land that is occasionally a nation and occasionally a province and occasionally a group of nations.
Jewish isn't a people either. It's a religion.
The people you're thinking of are called Semites or, more specifically, Hebrews.
Semites are supposedly descended from Shem, Noah's son.
Hebrews are supposedly descended from Heber, who was descended from Shem.
It is interesting to note that the Muslims are also descended from Heber through Ishmael, son of Abraham, and are therefore all Hebrews as well.
I get a big chuckle every time I see articles referring to the Iranians as Anti-Semitic.
When you get right down to it, being that members of the Jewish religion have been wandering the earth interbreeding with other tribes for such a long time, the Muslims have a much stronger claim to the title Hebrew than the Jewish sect do.
No, I don't have infrastructure to make computers, or network equipment. Yet.
Can I make a car from scratch? Well, I'm studying the works of David Gingery and teaching myself the theory and using a friends land to build my first forge, crucible and lathe, and I think I should be able to build my own engines within a couple of years. Though my priority is to build Sterling engines from scrap aluminum rather than cars, because I don't think the roads or the fuel are going to last.
Can I make a house from scratch? Yes, and as soon as I get land, I intend to do so.
I'm a member of my local Urban Garden Society, and I grow all my own vegetables. Soon, I will be adding tilapia fish and shrimp to my hydroponic system and removing the necessity for external fertilizer, at which point I'll be producing my own white meat in addition to the vegetables growing here in my apartment.
I make my own beer from scratch. I make my own wine from scratch. I make my own vinegar from scratch. I grow my own medicinal herbs. I grow my own tobacco.
I'm working on getting a RepRap set up, at which point I will begin doing my own manufacturing. I know how to grow corn and make PLA and be in control of my raw materials where that is concerned. I've been chatting with friends and family in the genetic engineering industry investigating the practicality of making similar plastics out of cellulose rather than starch, so I'm not building with food. Hopefully that will pan out.
I'm also researching hardware design with an eye towards building my own decentralized communications infrastructure, and working together with friends doing their Phd in Comp Sci and Math towards that end.
That is just a brief glimpse of my agenda... the sort of thing you throw off the cuff when some smart ass gets you riled up. Once I get these structures into place, I'll teach others, and I'll build more such tools out of nothing and give them away for free. Or, I'll die still struggling with the task half finished. Either is fine.
So, no, I don't live my life entirely according to my ideals. But I get closer each day, despite the fact that the mightiest men on earth would sooner shoot me dead than ever help such a way of life become commonplace, and the average middle class person would rather make smart ass remarks like your own and go play on his X-Box than actually get off his ass. Just like spoiled little children.
But really, that's ok. The spoiled and idle aren't the people that need to be convinced... it's the people whose hard work makes their spoiled life practical that need to be convinced, and that is not nearly as difficult a task. When that happens, wave your dollars around as much as you like. No one will come. No one will want them.
If anyone feels inspired by this, hit google and look for things like factor e farm, the RepRap project, the Farm Fountain project, the works of David Gingery, and maybe take a breeze over to opendemocracy.net and see an example of a democratic system that wasn't designed not to work.
The real solution is to stop destroying wealth just because it's convenient for the operation of an abstract system for managing resources.
What MUST be done and CAN be done by the individual for themselves, SHOULD be done by the individual for themselves, and they should be systematically provided the tools necessary so they remain self-reliant rather than becoming another persons pawn.
What MUST be done and CAN ONLY through the co-operation of many other people SHOULD be done in co-operation with your fellows WITH your own two hands. To do otherwise is to make entire societies into the pawns of a few administrators, and to be unable to replace those administrators because of your own ignorance, and to be unable to identify when they need to be replaced, again, because of your own ignorance.
Determining which is which should be controlled through direct democracy, and the infrastructure that provides for peoples needs should be publicly controlled, with no exceptions whatsoever.
And, of course, it's in the best interest of all men and women to use whatever technology can be devised to shift needs from the second category to the first.
This is the way a free society of well informed and responsible people is constructed. Examples of this sort of society would include the Athenians, the Anarchists of Spain, and so forth.
Contrast this with the society we have now, which is full of compartmentalization and the ignorance it brings, corporate and government secrets, bureaucrats who cannot be displaced, oligarchs who rule essential services with an iron fist, and so on, and so forth.
In such a society as I've described, you could render money obsolete. Look at the amount of injustice and hardship our current economic systems have created. For the sake of justice and liberty, isn't it time to stop?
What do you think about capping production of milk and legislating minimum pricing for it? If that practice were to stop, I doubt you would see children drinking sugar water purchased at a 10000% markup.
If he made his own soda, he wouldn't have to worry about it. But, he isn't self reliant. The factory isn't his, he has no involvement in it's operation, and he doesn't even know what goes in the things he likes to drink. So, anything and everything can be taken from him. Talking about prying things from peoples cold dead hands sounds very dramatic, but it's not necessary. He needs to stop being lazy and address his needs himself.
All this talk of that control freak Ayn Rand is similarly ridiculous. The people who espouse her vile philosophy have been actively working to keep us estranged and ignorant our whole life. It's because of the actions of people like her that so many people managed to develop a lifelong habit of consuming something when they have no idea how to make it. And it's because so many have allowed themselves to slide into such a pathetic state that these assholes are making $2 for less than a penny's worth of sugar and water and using that economic power to make the situation even worse.
Maybe he should look into OpenCola, and see if he can acquire a taste for that...
Where in my post did I say that you can't choose inferior codecs for other reasons?
You didn't. But superior and inferior are value judgments, not technical ones. I submit that the legal encumbered codecs are inferior because the required diversion of resources necessary to use them causes them to have less practical utility.
It's similar to the way that code that runs on Windows servers has less practical utility than code that runs on Linux servers. It might be functionally identical or even superior, but you can't scale it out to billions of users unless you can entice those billions of users to pay the Microsoft tax, and construct and maintain the infrastructure they will use to make those payments.
Solutions that are easy for a single man to create and still useful to billions, but not useful enough to divert resources that would put food on the table... those solutions cannot be delivered on Windows servers.
That makes them less fit for purpose. That makes them inferior. Just like the legally encumbered codecs are inferior because of their legal encumbrances.
I would rather that community based projects with low budgets distribute video using an absolutely free codec if the alternative is that they don't distribute at all because they can't afford the fees. If the quality is a little bit worse, but it's still fit for the purpose, and it's free, then it has more value than superior technology that is not affordable.
People shouldn't be using YouTube as their distribution mechanism in the first place. They should be using their own devices.
Commercial software is not going to go away even with OSS stuff around.
There are a whole host of different industries that require disclosure as a legal prerequisite of doing business. For the sake of safety, we do not allow those industries to keep things secret. Now, computers are involved in pretty much every industry. It doesn't require a big stretch of the imagination to envision a future in which disclosure of source is a prerequisite to distribution for the same reasons.
If you had a robot in your house that had enough power to destroy property and take lives, would you feel comfortable with the controlling software being secret? Would you feel comfortable with having such robots distributed to the homes of all your neighbors and to every workplace and government office?
This is the fundamental nature of the problem. As computers grow more powerful, more connected and are embedded in and controlling more and more of our formerly mechanical systems, they become more and more like the hypothetical robot in my example. When you're running closed source software, you don't know who is really pulling the strings.
The strength of this argument is only going to grow. Eventually, it may lead to the criminalization of closed source software. I hope so.
Military vehicles are painted in camouflage because they are not secure, and cannot ever be made secure. Things that are secure do not need protection, that is what secure means. If something is protected, it is insecure.
Personally, I'd like to set the interviewee on fire and watch him burn after that 1984esque example of doublethink. It's inappropriate to allow someone to walk the earth after such a demonstration.
You've spent time mastering skills that you will only ever put to use in the unlikeliest of events, while others master skills relevant to their chosen professions and thereby take better part in the gains from trade. What a pity for you.
You're a co-dependent who can't meet your own needs, and can't use the skills they've mastered to serve yourself, but only to serve others. You're a slave riding the tiger, and one day it will eat you.
Protip - we're talking about business computers. Business Computers == WindowsXP (to a first approximation).
Pro tip - Business Computers = Tools that solve problems to make money
I've been solving problems and making money using open source tools for years. If your tools don't work, then maybe people should be giving their money to me instead of you.
That's the problem with money. Money is the vote you don't get to revoke, ever. It's all well and good to talk about how stupid people don't deserve to keep their vote, but when a few malicious assholes can be elevated on the backs of billions of people who never get to say "oops, we made a mistake", the fact that you voted wisely with your money doesn't change the fact that that malicious asshole is more powerful than you.
Money gives the intelligent man a choice between being the malicious asshole he knows it would be easy to become, or being steamrollered by someone who was willing to make the vicious choice that you weren't. Not much of a choice.
Slashdot Mirror
The example is particularly ironic, being that there has never been any evidence that shoes are good for peoples feet, and there is ample evidence that shoes are bad for people feet.
Recently, Nike went to visit the Olympic running teams with bags of shoes in tow, and were sent away because the runners did not want them, nor did the coaches. So, they invented the Nike Free, which is designed to be like not wearing a shoe at all. Makes your mind spin.
Turns out, the shoes they've been marketing all these years were hurting the people who bought them. Of course, Nike always knew that their product wasn't good for their customers... they spent years trying to find scientific evidence that shoes are good for you in some fashion, without success. So, they made them fashion accessories and kept things quiet.
http://nymag.com/health/features/46213/
Keep pimping those shoes, Miguel!
You really consider what they're doing research? Seems like a bit of a stretch to me... creating an engineering prototype based on established scientific principles would never have qualified as research when I was in school...
I believe its against their policy.
That's an optimistic view. I wonder if the Romans felt the same way...
Actually, the imbalance between those retiring and those working is going to result in the collapse of the structures that support modern civilization, just like the excessive work force the baby boom represented created a dramatic surplus that led to our decadent lifestyle in the first place. There is no problem with earths resources... they are abundant and far in excess of what we need. The problem is in the human resources which are lacking.
Gee, a way to keep retiring invalids alive longer. That's exactly what we need.
Indeed, ever notice how such a big deal is made over "civilian" casualties, but soldiers, they almost don't even count. Oh well, 10k soldiers died, but HOLY MOLY! You killed a CIVILIAN!!!
You don't see a difference between killing someone who is trying to kill you in return, and killing someone who is trying not to get involved?
The big problem with modern war is, the killers come home. If the soldiers who went off to war never came back, we'd be much better off, I think...
So, they're kind of like Gwar, The Monkees, Spinal Tap, Milli Vanilli, etc...
There doesn't seem to be much demand for what shipping already exists these days...
Yes, Iranians are Persian. They also are Muslim, and they revere a Semite as their prophet. You seriously don't think it requires cognitive dissonance to be racist against your own prophet?
Say what you will, but Israel is not a country I'd mess with.
Consider their history....there have been countless efforts to wipe them off the face of the planet
Clearly, you are in the minority, yes?
Israel is not a people. It is a piece of land that is occasionally a nation and occasionally a province and occasionally a group of nations.
Jewish isn't a people either. It's a religion.
The people you're thinking of are called Semites or, more specifically, Hebrews.
Semites are supposedly descended from Shem, Noah's son.
Hebrews are supposedly descended from Heber, who was descended from Shem.
It is interesting to note that the Muslims are also descended from Heber through Ishmael, son of Abraham, and are therefore all Hebrews as well.
I get a big chuckle every time I see articles referring to the Iranians as Anti-Semitic.
When you get right down to it, being that members of the Jewish religion have been wandering the earth interbreeding with other tribes for such a long time, the Muslims have a much stronger claim to the title Hebrew than the Jewish sect do.
No, I don't have infrastructure to make computers, or network equipment. Yet.
Can I make a car from scratch? Well, I'm studying the works of David Gingery and teaching myself the theory and using a friends land to build my first forge, crucible and lathe, and I think I should be able to build my own engines within a couple of years. Though my priority is to build Sterling engines from scrap aluminum rather than cars, because I don't think the roads or the fuel are going to last.
Can I make a house from scratch? Yes, and as soon as I get land, I intend to do so.
I'm a member of my local Urban Garden Society, and I grow all my own vegetables. Soon, I will be adding tilapia fish and shrimp to my hydroponic system and removing the necessity for external fertilizer, at which point I'll be producing my own white meat in addition to the vegetables growing here in my apartment.
I make my own beer from scratch. I make my own wine from scratch. I make my own vinegar from scratch. I grow my own medicinal herbs. I grow my own tobacco.
I'm working on getting a RepRap set up, at which point I will begin doing my own manufacturing. I know how to grow corn and make PLA and be in control of my raw materials where that is concerned. I've been chatting with friends and family in the genetic engineering industry investigating the practicality of making similar plastics out of cellulose rather than starch, so I'm not building with food. Hopefully that will pan out.
I'm also researching hardware design with an eye towards building my own decentralized communications infrastructure, and working together with friends doing their Phd in Comp Sci and Math towards that end.
That is just a brief glimpse of my agenda... the sort of thing you throw off the cuff when some smart ass gets you riled up. Once I get these structures into place, I'll teach others, and I'll build more such tools out of nothing and give them away for free. Or, I'll die still struggling with the task half finished. Either is fine.
So, no, I don't live my life entirely according to my ideals. But I get closer each day, despite the fact that the mightiest men on earth would sooner shoot me dead than ever help such a way of life become commonplace, and the average middle class person would rather make smart ass remarks like your own and go play on his X-Box than actually get off his ass. Just like spoiled little children.
But really, that's ok. The spoiled and idle aren't the people that need to be convinced... it's the people whose hard work makes their spoiled life practical that need to be convinced, and that is not nearly as difficult a task. When that happens, wave your dollars around as much as you like. No one will come. No one will want them.
If anyone feels inspired by this, hit google and look for things like factor e farm, the RepRap project, the Farm Fountain project, the works of David Gingery, and maybe take a breeze over to opendemocracy.net and see an example of a democratic system that wasn't designed not to work.
The real solution is to stop destroying wealth just because it's convenient for the operation of an abstract system for managing resources.
What MUST be done and CAN be done by the individual for themselves, SHOULD be done by the individual for themselves, and they should be systematically provided the tools necessary so they remain self-reliant rather than becoming another persons pawn.
What MUST be done and CAN ONLY through the co-operation of many other people SHOULD be done in co-operation with your fellows WITH your own two hands. To do otherwise is to make entire societies into the pawns of a few administrators, and to be unable to replace those administrators because of your own ignorance, and to be unable to identify when they need to be replaced, again, because of your own ignorance.
Determining which is which should be controlled through direct democracy, and the infrastructure that provides for peoples needs should be publicly controlled, with no exceptions whatsoever.
And, of course, it's in the best interest of all men and women to use whatever technology can be devised to shift needs from the second category to the first.
This is the way a free society of well informed and responsible people is constructed. Examples of this sort of society would include the Athenians, the Anarchists of Spain, and so forth.
Contrast this with the society we have now, which is full of compartmentalization and the ignorance it brings, corporate and government secrets, bureaucrats who cannot be displaced, oligarchs who rule essential services with an iron fist, and so on, and so forth.
In such a society as I've described, you could render money obsolete. Look at the amount of injustice and hardship our current economic systems have created. For the sake of justice and liberty, isn't it time to stop?
What do you think about capping production of milk and legislating minimum pricing for it? If that practice were to stop, I doubt you would see children drinking sugar water purchased at a 10000% markup.
If he made his own soda, he wouldn't have to worry about it. But, he isn't self reliant. The factory isn't his, he has no involvement in it's operation, and he doesn't even know what goes in the things he likes to drink. So, anything and everything can be taken from him. Talking about prying things from peoples cold dead hands sounds very dramatic, but it's not necessary. He needs to stop being lazy and address his needs himself.
All this talk of that control freak Ayn Rand is similarly ridiculous. The people who espouse her vile philosophy have been actively working to keep us estranged and ignorant our whole life. It's because of the actions of people like her that so many people managed to develop a lifelong habit of consuming something when they have no idea how to make it. And it's because so many have allowed themselves to slide into such a pathetic state that these assholes are making $2 for less than a penny's worth of sugar and water and using that economic power to make the situation even worse.
Maybe he should look into OpenCola, and see if he can acquire a taste for that...
Where in my post did I say that you can't choose inferior codecs for other reasons?
You didn't. But superior and inferior are value judgments, not technical ones. I submit that the legal encumbered codecs are inferior because the required diversion of resources necessary to use them causes them to have less practical utility.
It's similar to the way that code that runs on Windows servers has less practical utility than code that runs on Linux servers. It might be functionally identical or even superior, but you can't scale it out to billions of users unless you can entice those billions of users to pay the Microsoft tax, and construct and maintain the infrastructure they will use to make those payments.
Solutions that are easy for a single man to create and still useful to billions, but not useful enough to divert resources that would put food on the table... those solutions cannot be delivered on Windows servers.
That makes them less fit for purpose. That makes them inferior. Just like the legally encumbered codecs are inferior because of their legal encumbrances.
I would rather that community based projects with low budgets distribute video using an absolutely free codec if the alternative is that they don't distribute at all because they can't afford the fees. If the quality is a little bit worse, but it's still fit for the purpose, and it's free, then it has more value than superior technology that is not affordable.
People shouldn't be using YouTube as their distribution mechanism in the first place. They should be using their own devices.
Commercial software is not going to go away even with OSS stuff around.
There are a whole host of different industries that require disclosure as a legal prerequisite of doing business. For the sake of safety, we do not allow those industries to keep things secret. Now, computers are involved in pretty much every industry. It doesn't require a big stretch of the imagination to envision a future in which disclosure of source is a prerequisite to distribution for the same reasons.
If you had a robot in your house that had enough power to destroy property and take lives, would you feel comfortable with the controlling software being secret? Would you feel comfortable with having such robots distributed to the homes of all your neighbors and to every workplace and government office?
This is the fundamental nature of the problem. As computers grow more powerful, more connected and are embedded in and controlling more and more of our formerly mechanical systems, they become more and more like the hypothetical robot in my example. When you're running closed source software, you don't know who is really pulling the strings.
The strength of this argument is only going to grow. Eventually, it may lead to the criminalization of closed source software. I hope so.
Maybe we should do a manned mission to the moon someday!
Military vehicles are painted in camouflage because they are not secure, and cannot ever be made secure. Things that are secure do not need protection, that is what secure means. If something is protected, it is insecure.
Secrets imply trust. Trust implies vulnerability. Secrets, therefore, represent vulnerability and weakness.
Personally, I'd like to set the interviewee on fire and watch him burn after that 1984esque example of doublethink. It's inappropriate to allow someone to walk the earth after such a demonstration.
I don't fund them, but I still have to see the advertisements everywhere. You funded them. Doesn't that make you responsible?
You've spent time mastering skills that you will only ever put to use in the unlikeliest of events, while others master skills relevant to their chosen professions and thereby take better part in the gains from trade. What a pity for you.
You're a co-dependent who can't meet your own needs, and can't use the skills they've mastered to serve yourself, but only to serve others. You're a slave riding the tiger, and one day it will eat you.
Windows has apt? Cool. I never knew.
Protip - we're talking about business computers. Business Computers == WindowsXP (to a first approximation).
Pro tip - Business Computers = Tools that solve problems to make money
I've been solving problems and making money using open source tools for years. If your tools don't work, then maybe people should be giving their money to me instead of you.
That's the problem with money. Money is the vote you don't get to revoke, ever. It's all well and good to talk about how stupid people don't deserve to keep their vote, but when a few malicious assholes can be elevated on the backs of billions of people who never get to say "oops, we made a mistake", the fact that you voted wisely with your money doesn't change the fact that that malicious asshole is more powerful than you.
Money gives the intelligent man a choice between being the malicious asshole he knows it would be easy to become, or being steamrollered by someone who was willing to make the vicious choice that you weren't. Not much of a choice.