So you are assuming your friends don't have electricity? I mean, I actually thought this was a terrific project, but it seems you are stretching a bit:-P
If you can't tell, I usually think it's pretty swell when any government tells another they can't do something that infringes on my rights. In this case that is the right of every person to spend their money how the see fit, so long as they don't directly harm anyone else. In my case, I would support a wifi network, whether corporate in nature or community-run, so long as it was not funded by tax dollars. I also dislike having my taxes support building a sports stadium or the like, as that is not in my interest. For purposes of disclosure, I consider myself to be a Libertarian and voted for Michael Badnarik in the 2004 presidential election.
I live in a small university town of about 30,000. From my vantage point neither federal nor state nor city goverment are doing a bang-up job right now. In city elections, the turnout is low and this is for an area that is considered fairly politically active, with a strongly liberal movement coming form the university and a strong pro-military, pro-Jesus kind of conservative movement on the other. The governor of my state (Illinois), a Democrat, has devoted his entire administration to fixing the $5 Billion deficit left by his Republican predecessor. He is not doing so well. The city government is run by a moderate republican mayor. At one point a few years ago, I believe the city council passed a motion cesuring the president for lying about the war in Iraq or somesuch. The mayor is fairly well-liked, but there has been some opposition to his recent plan of buying up abandoned buildings in the downtown for far more than they are worth, leveling them, developing them and then selling them to businesses at firesale prices. We have yet to see how effective this plan will be, but I'm putting my money on "expensive and ineffective". The truth is, the buildings were empty because they were not economically viable and there weren't even that many things wrong with them. However, we shall see. As one more point of trivia, the mayor and city coucil recently enacted a popular measure that would stop arresting and trying people found possessing small quantities of marijuana and instead fine them $500 per offense. The administration of the university is facing many budget problems, much of which are caused by extensive reliance on the cash-strapped state and federal governments. They do have a wifi network around campus that is open to the public. Still and all, I personally would not hand my cash to these various politicians and task them with building a financially viable wireless network.
As for your second point, I have already addressed above in response to another poster, but the only facilitation that government can give to building a wireless network would be in the form of tax dollars. In the end, I don't want a network built off the work of the other people in my community. Several years ago I was a moderate socialist, until I realized that governments are almost never very good at deciding what to spend money on. I hope I have managed to make a good point or two, and sorry if my post is a bit rambling. It's 8am and I have yet to sleep.
There would be nothing wrong with that, but I think you are missing the bigger picture. If a city government decides to charge for wifi access, how are they going to set it up? They could take pre-orders for early adopters, but I don't see that as generating enough revenue. If they use public funds, even if they are just borrowing them, then we are strictly back into misappropriation of tax dollars--there is always the possibility that the plan could fall through and the invested money lost, so there must be a private entity who is responsible for the debt. Okay, so we have a government run program funded by private grants, donations and private debt (which could be considered a donation if the gov't must default). However, what does "run by the government" mean? If the business of running a wifi network was being done by city employees, it would have to be off-the-clock, or else we are still using government funds for our service. Personally, I think that maintenance, and not equipment charges, are going to be the biggest cost in any long-term solution, so any administration of our wifi network is going to have to be performed by individuals paid for from the private funds or by individuals donating funds.
At this point, it should be clear that what we have is a private organization and can no longer be said to be goverment run. The risk is private, the maintenance is taken care of privately, the system is paid for privately. If the city council and the mayor want to donate their time to this project, they can, but since they are doing it off-hours it is just the same as any other citizen operating a private network. Once you realize that, you see that the only thing government can do is to force people to pay for the network under the threat of violence, imprisonment, etc... That is why I find laws like this that protect me from government projects reassuring (assuming I'm not completely misreading the whole bill).
The great thing about a private network is that it is it can take almost any form, including for-profit models or the co-operative model I provided in my original post. Peronsally, this is something I would donate time, money and bandwidth to. I think the internet is important and would assist in bringing it to as many people as possible, as long as there are suitable controls to prevent file leeching, etc... If Verizon didn't want to build a network here (and I don't see them doing so) we would have a good chance of success, assuming the individuals involved could work together effectively. What's more, we could compete against most for-profit ventures since we would have low overheads, which I think is a great thing. Now, if someone comes out with a law that prevents individuals from donating their own time and money, then I would be pissed and would certainly see it as a form of corporate welfare.
I know of no law preventing someone from giving away what is theirs. The point of this bill is to prevent municipalities from taxing citizens to pay for a service most people will never use. The service isn't "free", it is forced on all of the citizens who have to pay for it. In addition, no private company can compete with a solution that is funded with stolen money and then graciously provided as "free" by the politicians. This bill is depriving no one of personal freedom, but is trying to do precisely the opposite and protect the personal freedom of citizens to choose how to spend their own money.
Seriously, if Wi-fi is important enough to enough people then it will get built. I would love to see wi-fi access in my community, but I don't want to have it paid for by a bunch of extra taxes--in response to another poster: how exactly is robbing others in your community to pay for your addiction to good wifi (hey, I'm addicted too) being "neighborly"? Do you people consider the thousands in these communites who don't even own a computer and who will derive absolutely no benefit from this government-mandated service? No one is going to turn down an opportunity for profits and if the telco won't build it, then maybe some enterprising individual will. Perhaps it will take the form of a co-operative where participants provide access by connecting a public AP to their broadband in exchange for access to the network. That's fine, so long as it isn't being treated as another "government" benefit.
This is from the crowd that (rightfully, IMHO) won't trust the FBI/CIA/NSA to read their e-mail but expects the government to provide magically free wireless that comes with no strings attached? One more thing that you seem to miss is that with higher-speed wireless with much wider range on the horizon, a wifi network with hundreds of nodes might be a million dollar waste in 3 years time. Corporations tend to be more careful with money that is their own than governments do with their budgets and maybe the telcos see no point in investing billions across the nation in networks that are being made obsolete as we speak.
How again is satellite not competitive with cable tv? Are you saying that cable tv is so cheap that satellite can't compete against it? If so, it seems that the cable tv monopoly isn't hurting anyone, especially if no one is able to compete effectively. However, around where I live satellite is quite competitive with cable tv and the effect of many subscribers switching to directv or dish network, as well as a series of poorly-implemented digital cable upgrades by mediacom have put the pressure on the cable guys. Seriously, how can you complain if the price is so good that $25 a month satellite (with free installation to boot) can't beat it? Also, I would love to see a wifi isp in my area, but I certainly wouldn't expect everyone else to pay for it and I would also want to avoid the unavoidable political quid pro quo that taking public funds always leads to.
Compromise in the name of convenience is what makes the world go round. If every person insisted on getting their way all the time and refused to give up because the were absolutely right, then we'd all be up to our necks in quarrelous, obnoxious loons who are more interested in stroking their own egos than in being productive and going about the business of their own happiness...
After listening to so much insanity here on/. concerning copyrights (and I'm not saying the RIAA are all right either, just that they have some grounding in reality) I am at the point where I wish you would all get your way. I wish copyright laws would be repealed, high-quality versions of all media would be available for your pleasure and that the media conglomerates would have no recourse. Then, the media companies can pull out of the market, taking their originals away and locking them up forever and pulling out all of their cash, leaving the artists and professionals without any source of revenue. If Britney Spears wants to eat, then the anorexic bitch can take Paypal!
Think of the freedom!
We would have no reason to invest in HDTV or high-end digital sound equipment because every movie would look like it was shot with Super 8 and every mp3 album would sound like it was recorded in some guy's parent's basement because--hey, guess what!!--it was. We can once and for all kill off those arrogant FLAC bastards because who wants lossless encoding of shit? Seriously, we can just spend all day trying new and exotic codecs, hoping we end up with something halfway listenable ("Yo! Yo! Realaudio in the hizzle! It kinda sounds like electronic feedback when you push the bitrates into the single digits!"). And you know what, we'll all be happy for the feedback because, by God, we will be free of EMI and Sony and Universal once and for all! Who needs unimaginative crap like the Beatles when you have Phish. They let people tape their concerts, because they are rebels and not because even they realize that their fans wouldn't buy their music even if they hadn't blown the last of the cash they stole from mom's purse on a dime back this morning. They are like Jesus but with even more salvation and far less Christian!
And verily, it will be a brighter world because farmer11 wasn't forced to make a purchasing decision and we won't really be depriving ourselves of good music because it will no longer be illegal and this mythical "future-music" that would have been created is just as much a fiction as the cash we are supposedly "stealing" from greedy record execs.
Your post touches on many complex topics, but I want to focus on the point you make about incentive. I don't know precisely what motivated Newton but I do know that calculus was not so outrageous that others would not have discovered it and that being first is only a small part of what it takes to make a difference. If Newton's ideas had never been spread to the public, if there hadn't been millions of engineers, scientists and businessmen to expand on his work it would have been quite useless. The vast amount of work that goes into taking an idea and making it real is often overlooked by people looking to fawn over the work of one man. Yes, Newton was brilliant, but if there wasn't a public to desire automobiles or airliners or what-have-you, if there weren't capitalists to risk the money, if there weren't marketing folks pounding the streets to find out what things tickle our fancies, if there weren't factory workers to produce them, then very little of his work probably would have mattered. Graduate students with ideas are a dime a dozen, but it takes a lot of work to take an abstract idea and turn it into something that can bring happiness, longer life and great benefit to billions of people everyday. It seems to me that you have unwittingly fallen into the trap that many socialists accuse capitalists of believing in: the theory that one person is so much more important than everyone else. The amusing part is that the communists said they were for the people and promptly destroyed the things people wanted and attempted to force people to be happy worshipping the genius of Marx, Lenin and Stalin. The simple truth is, most of the people are (rightfully) concerned about the happiness that their work brings to them and are not so happy to be working in awful conditions for the good of everyone else or for the pursuit of some intellectual ideal. Like it or not, but capitalism has had more success at creating the goods that people want than any of the miserable failures of so-called "socialist paradises".
Gmail is cool, it is my primary email (I am definitely a webmail kind of guy) but to me all of the little javascript tricks are either unnoticable (so why bother?) or annoying. I hate to say it, but maybe if they had spent more time on the backend they wouldn't have had the XML parsing vulnerability that exposed random emails. Things I like about Gmail: the light feel to the pages (unfortunately, they keep adding stuff), the wider range of basic functionality (like searching) and the usage of text ads which are far preferable to banner ads. These three things make Gmail feel like a real email service over the circus-like atmosphere of hotmail or yahoo. However, the nifty javascript never features in. Ditto for Google Suggest--it seems to have very limited usefulness. Honestly, I'm a huge Google fan because for years it gave the best results and had the cleanest interface, as well as non-intrusive ads that almost everyone (including advertisers) seemed to prefer. I'm not saying this is all a bad thing, but I've always been more of a fan of HTML+CSS interfaces. I remember back in 98 or so where every site suddenly decided it needed to add flash-based menus. Ugly, slow, stupid, and crashed the damn browser a lot. I just don't see anywhere this is being used that it is actually needed, especially not on the public web where most users have become accustomed to hypertext-based interfaces. I have never favored bloated desktop applications and I really hate to see web developers moving that way.
No offense, but do you really think the 250 year old efforts of our ancestors to flesh out a working government is the only practical way of doing things, or that it is even the best? They were clever about a good deal of things, but they also goofed up a lot. Hell, they spent a lot of time arguing if we should have a king or just two co-presidents. Then there was the whole slavery thing... The fact is, our constitution is a wonderful document, but I am annoyed by legalists who can't wrap their minds around the idea that there might be fantastic ways of doing things that our ancestors had never heard of, like, you know, computers and all. This mindset has led to the invasion of law into every nook and cranny of our lives so that no almost no interaction with the government apparatus can be performed without the services of a lawyer and so that many otherwise bright people instantly dismiss any good idea as wrong because it is illegal and and will accept the injustices of their government because somewhere it is written on paper that this is how it must be done. Sorry to rant at you, I'm sure you probably weren't meaning any harm, but I think that the mindset echoed in your post hints at a much bigger problem in society.
I think you miss the point. Patents provide the incentive for people to engage in economic activity by protecting their investment, whether you call it discovery or invention, it makes no difference practically. Other posters have stated that people would still invent without patents, and although true, it would most likely lead to a less productive society. I do think there needs to be a degree of uniqueness to a discovery or invention, but this was what was intended by the framers of the constitution. The patent system is indeed an artificial construct of government, but without companies will continue to try to protect their investments, leading us eventually to DRM-like schemes where you aren't allowed to know what the companies don't want you to know. I see intellectual property laws, when properly balanced, as an attempt to give inventors (or discovers, whichever you prefer) the protection of law but at the same time allowing individuals access to the internals of the discovery or invention. As many have pointed out, this is central to the FOSS community, as the GPL, BSD, Apache, et al. licenses are using the protection of law to allow individuals access to the disovery, without giving up all rights to the content. Of course, most of the people who create for free could not do so without either a day job whose gains are protected by IP laws or through government fiat, the mediocre results of the latter attesting to the viability of that social model.
Very good points, both of you. I do agree, waffle, that patents are overkill for fundamental things like "one-click checkout" or a particular algorithm. I imagine that copyright protects software sufficiently (the industry has done well for itself without them). To me, it seems that if an algorithm or process is sufficiently complicated enough to have a legitimate desire for the protection of a patent, then it is probably sufficiently protected by the high-level of knowledge required to implement it as well as the protection copyright would afford it due to its unique nature. Most of these software patents seem like novelists or publishers trying to patent a particular character type or plot line, which would completely decimate Hollywood's ability to make money. In that case, as with software, copyright prevents outright stealing, but allows enough wiggle room for authors to reuse the same old ideas in different ways. Software patents don't seem to be about protection of property and innovation as the protection of monopolies and litigous companies who cannot compete in a free market, much like compulsory DRM, which would almost certainly be rejected by consumers for its expensive nature and alien view of ownership of content. However, I still think it is neat that IBM is offering protection to open source developers by loosening some of its patent restrictions, even though I wish it was not granted that power in the first place. Now bring on the Polish jokes!
When I bought Quake 3 for linux several years back (had already owned the windows version for sometime), I installed it but apparently didn't get my drivers straight as it would default to the software OpenGL driver instead of my shiny new Geforce3. Of course my frame rates were atrocious (2-3 fps, vs. 100+ on windows). Of course it was unplayable and I eventually got it the nvidia driver to work and enjoyed a bit of fragging on linux before giving up gaming for awhile. The thing I find odd, though, is how nice it looked in software mode. Everything was much more crisp and clear than it was in hardware accelerated windows or linux. This might've been the result of some nvidia driver hack to sqeeze more fps out, but I have to admit I was surprised. On windows you couldn't even run the game without a 3d accelerator, and it had never occurred to me that other operating systems might be capable of such "magic". I still wish I could have had the great looks of the software driver with the performance of the windows configuration.
Anyway, about the live cd--it looks decent, but I really don't see any hardcore windows gamers being that impressed. However, this might server as a further bit of enticement for the friend or family member who just wants some simple, generic games and isn't loyal to a particular developer or game franchise. Of course, there is always cedega. But as far as gaming on linux goes, I figure it will pick up when it needs to. Mainstream linux is far from critical mass. However, the increasing prevalence of online gaming might bode well for the linux user who misses mass market games, as these systems 1) generally have to be more standards-minded to function on the internet, 2) many times have backends running on non-microsoft code and 3) can handle automatic updates which would help with "tuning" the game for linux. I definitely hope we see a shift towards broader gaming markets. Of course, any game that relied on TC would exclude linux users.
Personally, I have to admit I'm a bit surprised that PC gaming is as strong as it is, because when I started gaming (10 years ago or so) most PC gaming magazines were predicting their own obsolesence and death at the hands of the almight PLAYSTATION. As someone who enjoys PC gaming much more than console gaming (jesus, please, no flames--its just my preference) I was worried at the time, but the pc gaming industry seems very vibrant (thank you valve!). Also, let me just say that I would marry Sid Meier if he would but have me, even though I'm not gay and would even be willing to undergo the necessary "kernel recompile" to give him the heterosexual relationship he most likely desires. Okay, christ, now I know why I quit gaming for so long, serious issues....
As others have pointed out, a terrorist attack is a deliberate attempt to end human life and is not quite the same thing as an accident, even one resulting from gross negligence. As operators of the plant, UC had the responsibility to protect its workers and its surroundings. If I wreck my car into someone's house, I am held responsible. It might have been an accident, but I am still responsible. Just say "oops" and walking away does not absolve my debt to those I've hurt. I think the biggest "they hate us" behind this isn't because of the accident (which was horrible) but the conspiracy of ignorance perpetrated by our government and citizenry. I admit I don't know the extent of the negligence involved, but even assuming everything was above board, they killed thousands of people and did millions in damages, so they sure as hell better pay up big time. In addition, if it were found that gross negligence was part of company policy, I would expect criminal proceedings against those complicit in such reckless actions.
As a libertarian at heart, I have to note that more laws and more government regulation are not the answer. The fact is, damage was done and that can be dealt with by the court system. As soon as the politcians get involved, everything goes to hell. In every country around the world, every time a new law is passed that regulates business, it has been been compromised and subverted by those same politicians before the ink is even dry. The fact is, every new law seems to open more loopholes for the dishonest corporation or individual while at the same time locking out those who truly aim to just do the right thing. If a company commits to following the insane rats' nest of legalese that they are required to by law, they will be out of business shortly and only the companies willing to bribe, lie and cheat will be left. As a former big government liberal, I'd have to say that what most pushed me to a "less is more" view of government was the administration of George W. Bush. At first angered by the subversion of what seemed to me sound environmental and regulatory policy, I soon came to the realization that this is how it had always been: the dishonest simply bypass the law. In fact, it seems the criminals seem to favour the law as it keeps legitimate competition at bay. I think that if the government was committed to keeping people safe in their persons and their property, nothing else would be necessary. I still think we need clever solutions to problems like air pollution (it is a common resource and to allow any one group the right to sully it at the expense of the rest of us is the surrender of very basic property rights).
All in all, I think that civil and criminal action should be taken against UC as soon as possible. I really don't understand how anyone could argue that it's alright to kill people so long as it is an accident and that I should only have to make minimal recompense to the victims of my flagrant irresponibilities.
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I agree that it's pretty nifty, but seems like a lot of work that is more failure prone than just using a firewall to exclude invalid IPs.
So you are assuming your friends don't have electricity? I mean, I actually thought this was a terrific project, but it seems you are stretching a bit :-P
Good points, but I still remain unswayed ;)
If you can't tell, I usually think it's pretty swell when any government tells another they can't do something that infringes on my rights. In this case that is the right of every person to spend their money how the see fit, so long as they don't directly harm anyone else. In my case, I would support a wifi network, whether corporate in nature or community-run, so long as it was not funded by tax dollars. I also dislike having my taxes support building a sports stadium or the like, as that is not in my interest. For purposes of disclosure, I consider myself to be a Libertarian and voted for Michael Badnarik in the 2004 presidential election.
I live in a small university town of about 30,000. From my vantage point neither federal nor state nor city goverment are doing a bang-up job right now. In city elections, the turnout is low and this is for an area that is considered fairly politically active, with a strongly liberal movement coming form the university and a strong pro-military, pro-Jesus kind of conservative movement on the other. The governor of my state (Illinois), a Democrat, has devoted his entire administration to fixing the $5 Billion deficit left by his Republican predecessor. He is not doing so well. The city government is run by a moderate republican mayor. At one point a few years ago, I believe the city council passed a motion cesuring the president for lying about the war in Iraq or somesuch. The mayor is fairly well-liked, but there has been some opposition to his recent plan of buying up abandoned buildings in the downtown for far more than they are worth, leveling them, developing them and then selling them to businesses at firesale prices. We have yet to see how effective this plan will be, but I'm putting my money on "expensive and ineffective". The truth is, the buildings were empty because they were not economically viable and there weren't even that many things wrong with them. However, we shall see. As one more point of trivia, the mayor and city coucil recently enacted a popular measure that would stop arresting and trying people found possessing small quantities of marijuana and instead fine them $500 per offense. The administration of the university is facing many budget problems, much of which are caused by extensive reliance on the cash-strapped state and federal governments. They do have a wifi network around campus that is open to the public. Still and all, I personally would not hand my cash to these various politicians and task them with building a financially viable wireless network.
As for your second point, I have already addressed above in response to another poster, but the only facilitation that government can give to building a wireless network would be in the form of tax dollars. In the end, I don't want a network built off the work of the other people in my community. Several years ago I was a moderate socialist, until I realized that governments are almost never very good at deciding what to spend money on. I hope I have managed to make a good point or two, and sorry if my post is a bit rambling. It's 8am and I have yet to sleep.
There would be nothing wrong with that, but I think you are missing the bigger picture. If a city government decides to charge for wifi access, how are they going to set it up? They could take pre-orders for early adopters, but I don't see that as generating enough revenue. If they use public funds, even if they are just borrowing them, then we are strictly back into misappropriation of tax dollars--there is always the possibility that the plan could fall through and the invested money lost, so there must be a private entity who is responsible for the debt. Okay, so we have a government run program funded by private grants, donations and private debt (which could be considered a donation if the gov't must default). However, what does "run by the government" mean? If the business of running a wifi network was being done by city employees, it would have to be off-the-clock, or else we are still using government funds for our service. Personally, I think that maintenance, and not equipment charges, are going to be the biggest cost in any long-term solution, so any administration of our wifi network is going to have to be performed by individuals paid for from the private funds or by individuals donating funds.
At this point, it should be clear that what we have is a private organization and can no longer be said to be goverment run. The risk is private, the maintenance is taken care of privately, the system is paid for privately. If the city council and the mayor want to donate their time to this project, they can, but since they are doing it off-hours it is just the same as any other citizen operating a private network. Once you realize that, you see that the only thing government can do is to force people to pay for the network under the threat of violence, imprisonment, etc... That is why I find laws like this that protect me from government projects reassuring (assuming I'm not completely misreading the whole bill).
The great thing about a private network is that it is it can take almost any form, including for-profit models or the co-operative model I provided in my original post. Peronsally, this is something I would donate time, money and bandwidth to. I think the internet is important and would assist in bringing it to as many people as possible, as long as there are suitable controls to prevent file leeching, etc... If Verizon didn't want to build a network here (and I don't see them doing so) we would have a good chance of success, assuming the individuals involved could work together effectively. What's more, we could compete against most for-profit ventures since we would have low overheads, which I think is a great thing. Now, if someone comes out with a law that prevents individuals from donating their own time and money, then I would be pissed and would certainly see it as a form of corporate welfare.
I know of no law preventing someone from giving away what is theirs. The point of this bill is to prevent municipalities from taxing citizens to pay for a service most people will never use. The service isn't "free", it is forced on all of the citizens who have to pay for it. In addition, no private company can compete with a solution that is funded with stolen money and then graciously provided as "free" by the politicians. This bill is depriving no one of personal freedom, but is trying to do precisely the opposite and protect the personal freedom of citizens to choose how to spend their own money.
Seriously, if Wi-fi is important enough to enough people then it will get built. I would love to see wi-fi access in my community, but I don't want to have it paid for by a bunch of extra taxes--in response to another poster: how exactly is robbing others in your community to pay for your addiction to good wifi (hey, I'm addicted too) being "neighborly"? Do you people consider the thousands in these communites who don't even own a computer and who will derive absolutely no benefit from this government-mandated service? No one is going to turn down an opportunity for profits and if the telco won't build it, then maybe some enterprising individual will. Perhaps it will take the form of a co-operative where participants provide access by connecting a public AP to their broadband in exchange for access to the network. That's fine, so long as it isn't being treated as another "government" benefit.
This is from the crowd that (rightfully, IMHO) won't trust the FBI/CIA/NSA to read their e-mail but expects the government to provide magically free wireless that comes with no strings attached? One more thing that you seem to miss is that with higher-speed wireless with much wider range on the horizon, a wifi network with hundreds of nodes might be a million dollar waste in 3 years time. Corporations tend to be more careful with money that is their own than governments do with their budgets and maybe the telcos see no point in investing billions across the nation in networks that are being made obsolete as we speak.
How again is satellite not competitive with cable tv? Are you saying that cable tv is so cheap that satellite can't compete against it? If so, it seems that the cable tv monopoly isn't hurting anyone, especially if no one is able to compete effectively. However, around where I live satellite is quite competitive with cable tv and the effect of many subscribers switching to directv or dish network, as well as a series of poorly-implemented digital cable upgrades by mediacom have put the pressure on the cable guys. Seriously, how can you complain if the price is so good that $25 a month satellite (with free installation to boot) can't beat it? Also, I would love to see a wifi isp in my area, but I certainly wouldn't expect everyone else to pay for it and I would also want to avoid the unavoidable political quid pro quo that taking public funds always leads to.
I think you hit the nail on the head. Sorry I have no mod points...
I am thankful that Wal-Mart is powerful enough to force MS to compete on price.
Compromise in the name of convenience is what makes the world go round. If every person insisted on getting their way all the time and refused to give up because the were absolutely right, then we'd all be up to our necks in quarrelous, obnoxious loons who are more interested in stroking their own egos than in being productive and going about the business of their own happiness...
Oh sod it all...
After listening to so much insanity here on /. concerning copyrights (and I'm not saying the RIAA are all right either, just that they have some grounding in reality) I am at the point where I wish you would all get your way. I wish copyright laws would be repealed, high-quality versions of all media would be available for your pleasure and that the media conglomerates would have no recourse. Then, the media companies can pull out of the market, taking their originals away and locking them up forever and pulling out all of their cash, leaving the artists and professionals without any source of revenue. If Britney Spears wants to eat, then the anorexic bitch can take Paypal!
Think of the freedom!
We would have no reason to invest in HDTV or high-end digital sound equipment because every movie would look like it was shot with Super 8 and every mp3 album would sound like it was recorded in some guy's parent's basement because--hey, guess what!!--it was. We can once and for all kill off those arrogant FLAC bastards because who wants lossless encoding of shit? Seriously, we can just spend all day trying new and exotic codecs, hoping we end up with something halfway listenable ("Yo! Yo! Realaudio in the hizzle! It kinda sounds like electronic feedback when you push the bitrates into the single digits!"). And you know what, we'll all be happy for the feedback because, by God, we will be free of EMI and Sony and Universal once and for all! Who needs unimaginative crap like the Beatles when you have Phish. They let people tape their concerts, because they are rebels and not because even they realize that their fans wouldn't buy their music even if they hadn't blown the last of the cash they stole from mom's purse on a dime back this morning. They are like Jesus but with even more salvation and far less Christian!
And verily, it will be a brighter world because farmer11 wasn't forced to make a purchasing decision and we won't really be depriving ourselves of good music because it will no longer be illegal and this mythical "future-music" that would have been created is just as much a fiction as the cash we are supposedly "stealing" from greedy record execs.
Your post touches on many complex topics, but I want to focus on the point you make about incentive. I don't know precisely what motivated Newton but I do know that calculus was not so outrageous that others would not have discovered it and that being first is only a small part of what it takes to make a difference. If Newton's ideas had never been spread to the public, if there hadn't been millions of engineers, scientists and businessmen to expand on his work it would have been quite useless. The vast amount of work that goes into taking an idea and making it real is often overlooked by people looking to fawn over the work of one man. Yes, Newton was brilliant, but if there wasn't a public to desire automobiles or airliners or what-have-you, if there weren't capitalists to risk the money, if there weren't marketing folks pounding the streets to find out what things tickle our fancies, if there weren't factory workers to produce them, then very little of his work probably would have mattered. Graduate students with ideas are a dime a dozen, but it takes a lot of work to take an abstract idea and turn it into something that can bring happiness, longer life and great benefit to billions of people everyday. It seems to me that you have unwittingly fallen into the trap that many socialists accuse capitalists of believing in: the theory that one person is so much more important than everyone else. The amusing part is that the communists said they were for the people and promptly destroyed the things people wanted and attempted to force people to be happy worshipping the genius of Marx, Lenin and Stalin. The simple truth is, most of the people are (rightfully) concerned about the happiness that their work brings to them and are not so happy to be working in awful conditions for the good of everyone else or for the pursuit of some intellectual ideal. Like it or not, but capitalism has had more success at creating the goods that people want than any of the miserable failures of so-called "socialist paradises".
You can get 3+ MegaBytes per second from microsoft's servers so long as your connection can handle it. Makes those service packs less bothersome...
heh, you shouldn't have pointed that out--i thought you were just being cute
Gmail is cool, it is my primary email (I am definitely a webmail kind of guy) but to me all of the little javascript tricks are either unnoticable (so why bother?) or annoying. I hate to say it, but maybe if they had spent more time on the backend they wouldn't have had the XML parsing vulnerability that exposed random emails. Things I like about Gmail: the light feel to the pages (unfortunately, they keep adding stuff), the wider range of basic functionality (like searching) and the usage of text ads which are far preferable to banner ads. These three things make Gmail feel like a real email service over the circus-like atmosphere of hotmail or yahoo. However, the nifty javascript never features in. Ditto for Google Suggest--it seems to have very limited usefulness. Honestly, I'm a huge Google fan because for years it gave the best results and had the cleanest interface, as well as non-intrusive ads that almost everyone (including advertisers) seemed to prefer. I'm not saying this is all a bad thing, but I've always been more of a fan of HTML+CSS interfaces. I remember back in 98 or so where every site suddenly decided it needed to add flash-based menus. Ugly, slow, stupid, and crashed the damn browser a lot. I just don't see anywhere this is being used that it is actually needed, especially not on the public web where most users have become accustomed to hypertext-based interfaces. I have never favored bloated desktop applications and I really hate to see web developers moving that way.
No offense, but do you really think the 250 year old efforts of our ancestors to flesh out a working government is the only practical way of doing things, or that it is even the best? They were clever about a good deal of things, but they also goofed up a lot. Hell, they spent a lot of time arguing if we should have a king or just two co-presidents. Then there was the whole slavery thing... The fact is, our constitution is a wonderful document, but I am annoyed by legalists who can't wrap their minds around the idea that there might be fantastic ways of doing things that our ancestors had never heard of, like, you know, computers and all. This mindset has led to the invasion of law into every nook and cranny of our lives so that no almost no interaction with the government apparatus can be performed without the services of a lawyer and so that many otherwise bright people instantly dismiss any good idea as wrong because it is illegal and and will accept the injustices of their government because somewhere it is written on paper that this is how it must be done. Sorry to rant at you, I'm sure you probably weren't meaning any harm, but I think that the mindset echoed in your post hints at a much bigger problem in society.
I think you miss the point. Patents provide the incentive for people to engage in economic activity by protecting their investment, whether you call it discovery or invention, it makes no difference practically. Other posters have stated that people would still invent without patents, and although true, it would most likely lead to a less productive society. I do think there needs to be a degree of uniqueness to a discovery or invention, but this was what was intended by the framers of the constitution. The patent system is indeed an artificial construct of government, but without companies will continue to try to protect their investments, leading us eventually to DRM-like schemes where you aren't allowed to know what the companies don't want you to know. I see intellectual property laws, when properly balanced, as an attempt to give inventors (or discovers, whichever you prefer) the protection of law but at the same time allowing individuals access to the internals of the discovery or invention. As many have pointed out, this is central to the FOSS community, as the GPL, BSD, Apache, et al. licenses are using the protection of law to allow individuals access to the disovery, without giving up all rights to the content. Of course, most of the people who create for free could not do so without either a day job whose gains are protected by IP laws or through government fiat, the mediocre results of the latter attesting to the viability of that social model.
Very good points, both of you. I do agree, waffle, that patents are overkill for fundamental things like "one-click checkout" or a particular algorithm. I imagine that copyright protects software sufficiently (the industry has done well for itself without them). To me, it seems that if an algorithm or process is sufficiently complicated enough to have a legitimate desire for the protection of a patent, then it is probably sufficiently protected by the high-level of knowledge required to implement it as well as the protection copyright would afford it due to its unique nature. Most of these software patents seem like novelists or publishers trying to patent a particular character type or plot line, which would completely decimate Hollywood's ability to make money. In that case, as with software, copyright prevents outright stealing, but allows enough wiggle room for authors to reuse the same old ideas in different ways. Software patents don't seem to be about protection of property and innovation as the protection of monopolies and litigous companies who cannot compete in a free market, much like compulsory DRM, which would almost certainly be rejected by consumers for its expensive nature and alien view of ownership of content. However, I still think it is neat that IBM is offering protection to open source developers by loosening some of its patent restrictions, even though I wish it was not granted that power in the first place. Now bring on the Polish jokes!
IIRC, A9 uses Google's results for web and image search. Too tired to check, but just a heads up..
Damn, that is a beautiful site. The advertising does not seem intrusive at all.
I agree with you, sir, and if I had any mod points you would receive one.
LOL
Wow, what a sig... I mean, no Oscar Wilde, but wow...
When I bought Quake 3 for linux several years back (had already owned the windows version for sometime), I installed it but apparently didn't get my drivers straight as it would default to the software OpenGL driver instead of my shiny new Geforce3. Of course my frame rates were atrocious (2-3 fps, vs. 100+ on windows). Of course it was unplayable and I eventually got it the nvidia driver to work and enjoyed a bit of fragging on linux before giving up gaming for awhile. The thing I find odd, though, is how nice it looked in software mode. Everything was much more crisp and clear than it was in hardware accelerated windows or linux. This might've been the result of some nvidia driver hack to sqeeze more fps out, but I have to admit I was surprised. On windows you couldn't even run the game without a 3d accelerator, and it had never occurred to me that other operating systems might be capable of such "magic". I still wish I could have had the great looks of the software driver with the performance of the windows configuration.
Anyway, about the live cd--it looks decent, but I really don't see any hardcore windows gamers being that impressed. However, this might server as a further bit of enticement for the friend or family member who just wants some simple, generic games and isn't loyal to a particular developer or game franchise. Of course, there is always cedega. But as far as gaming on linux goes, I figure it will pick up when it needs to. Mainstream linux is far from critical mass. However, the increasing prevalence of online gaming might bode well for the linux user who misses mass market games, as these systems 1) generally have to be more standards-minded to function on the internet, 2) many times have backends running on non-microsoft code and 3) can handle automatic updates which would help with "tuning" the game for linux. I definitely hope we see a shift towards broader gaming markets. Of course, any game that relied on TC would exclude linux users.
Personally, I have to admit I'm a bit surprised that PC gaming is as strong as it is, because when I started gaming (10 years ago or so) most PC gaming magazines were predicting their own obsolesence and death at the hands of the almight PLAYSTATION. As someone who enjoys PC gaming much more than console gaming (jesus, please, no flames--its just my preference) I was worried at the time, but the pc gaming industry seems very vibrant (thank you valve!). Also, let me just say that I would marry Sid Meier if he would but have me, even though I'm not gay and would even be willing to undergo the necessary "kernel recompile" to give him the heterosexual relationship he most likely desires. Okay, christ, now I know why I quit gaming for so long, serious issues....
As others have pointed out, a terrorist attack is a deliberate attempt to end human life and is not quite the same thing as an accident, even one resulting from gross negligence. As operators of the plant, UC had the responsibility to protect its workers and its surroundings. If I wreck my car into someone's house, I am held responsible. It might have been an accident, but I am still responsible. Just say "oops" and walking away does not absolve my debt to those I've hurt. I think the biggest "they hate us" behind this isn't because of the accident (which was horrible) but the conspiracy of ignorance perpetrated by our government and citizenry. I admit I don't know the extent of the negligence involved, but even assuming everything was above board, they killed thousands of people and did millions in damages, so they sure as hell better pay up big time. In addition, if it were found that gross negligence was part of company policy, I would expect criminal proceedings against those complicit in such reckless actions.
As a libertarian at heart, I have to note that more laws and more government regulation are not the answer. The fact is, damage was done and that can be dealt with by the court system. As soon as the politcians get involved, everything goes to hell. In every country around the world, every time a new law is passed that regulates business, it has been been compromised and subverted by those same politicians before the ink is even dry. The fact is, every new law seems to open more loopholes for the dishonest corporation or individual while at the same time locking out those who truly aim to just do the right thing. If a company commits to following the insane rats' nest of legalese that they are required to by law, they will be out of business shortly and only the companies willing to bribe, lie and cheat will be left. As a former big government liberal, I'd have to say that what most pushed me to a "less is more" view of government was the administration of George W. Bush. At first angered by the subversion of what seemed to me sound environmental and regulatory policy, I soon came to the realization that this is how it had always been: the dishonest simply bypass the law. In fact, it seems the criminals seem to favour the law as it keeps legitimate competition at bay. I think that if the government was committed to keeping people safe in their persons and their property, nothing else would be necessary. I still think we need clever solutions to problems like air pollution (it is a common resource and to allow any one group the right to sully it at the expense of the rest of us is the surrender of very basic property rights).
All in all, I think that civil and criminal action should be taken against UC as soon as possible. I really don't understand how anyone could argue that it's alright to kill people so long as it is an accident and that I should only have to make minimal recompense to the victims of my flagrant irresponibilities.
That, and I fear I will grow dumber by being on the same coast as Florida...
Dammit, somebody mod this up as funny...