Your Native American tribes would fail that test in so far as the woodlands and buffalo herds were not privately owned.
I don't think that would be true. You could easily defend the position that the leader of the tribe that has won the last war over the buffalo herd/woodland privately owns it.
Mmmm... A more conventional analysis would be to say that the tribe controls the territory as a result of the last war. If the tribe has a single totalitarian ruler (and I don't think that's a given) then you can argue that the resource is perhaps vested in him personally, but it's a stretch to cite that as evidence of capitalism. Otherwise you could argue that Josef Stalin becomes one of the 20th Century's most prominent capitalists, and that doesn't seem right.
In any case, the tribal chief didn't charge his own tribesmen for permission to use the territory. And "capitalist on an inter-tribal level" is just another way of saying "trade".
And it strikes me as true that on a small scale the differences between systems is not very large. Totalitarianism, communism, maybe even very limited forms of capitalism would look very similar if not the same within a tribe.
I think that some economic and/or political models don't work very well at the tribal scale. Probably the best fit for most tribal structures would be socialism, with some individual ownership but with many resources held in common by the tribe, an accepted duty of care by the tribe for its members. Obviously a sweeping generalisation, but I think it fits the general case better than most.
But yeah, it's possible to fit analyse any facet of the world purely in terms of one theory or philosophy if someone is inclined to make the effort. Really it's about how well the notion fits overall.
So at what point are you capitalist ? What does it require ? Native Americans did trade goods for "money", even if it was not paper money like we have.
That's a reasonable question. The I believe the standard definition is that a capitalist system is one where the means of production of goods and the resources needed to do so are vested entirely in the hands of private individuals rather than in the state
Your Native American tribes would fail that test in so far as the woodlands and buffalo herds were not privately owned.
Now if they'd had to buy a hunting permit from the owner of the woods, or pay a surcharge for each buffalo killed, that would have been a capitalist system.
Communism is what existed within a tribe : a central organ (the guy with the biggest axe) "decides what happens" (through what we'd call murder).
I believe the generally accepted term for that system is "totalitarianism". It's not entirely incompatible with communism, but neither is it the defining feature of the system.
Totalitarianism isn't entirely incompatible with capitalism either, for that matter.
I have. It works the other way around. Congressmen stalk and harass the lobbyists for dough.
So you're apparently saying that instead of the lobbyists offering bribes to the politicians to do something, the politicians are actively extorting money from the lobbyists or they won't do what the lobbyists want.
And apparently this means that the system is less corrupt because the lobbyists have their integrity intact?
Inter-tribe relations in native American tribes were capitalistic. They traded and even had various things that took the function of money, and this was partially used within a tribe as well
Mmmm... I think you're conflating "trade" and "capitalism" there. I'll grant trade as a fundamental of human behavior. However, if we define any social grouping that conducted trade or used a form of currency as "capitalist" then we have a definition that encompasses everything from Stalin's USSR to England under William the Conqueror.
That's admirably consistent, but not especially useful, you know?
Besides, if you want to see how a tribe functions for yourself, visit one in Central Africa. I think you'll agree that it's a much worse system than capitalism. And yes, inter-tribe relations in central africa are also mostly based on money exchange.
So hang on. By your earlier argument, they use money relations therefore they are capitalist. So your point would seem to be that capitalism is much better than capitalism.
Perhaps there's some inconsistency in your use of the term after all.
In any case, the GP's point wasn't that tribal society was better than capitalism (whether they were capitalists or not) but simply that it only seems natural to people because they've grown up with the system.
I'll pair these with the hated headphones from the previous story, and occupy my own, private digital HELL!
It does make me wonder as to the business plan. I can imagine these things being given away free, but with small discrete text ads in your top right peripheral vision.
On the other hand, imagine if Google subsidiary Doubleclick gets to handle the business. They'll be inserting hallucinations of monster movie serial killers into your left side periphery, and then using the right eye to advertise psycho-analysis.
Still, could be worse. If it was Microsoft Goggles, they scan for apple logos replace them with the windows symbol. And if they detected a screen from a working replace Linux box, they'd overlay it with a static blue-screen-of-death image.
Nyre may simply have desired to support the Feds on a particular issue.
Or maybe the feds trained someone from the MPAA to use twitter, and then thought "I know a cool way to turn to major anti-establishment groups against one another."
Of course, this is assuming that no-one from the MPAA is smart enough to learn how to use twitter for themselves. Which is doing them a massive disservice, I'm sure...
I didn't mean it as a knock on Linux. The device I was mentioning explicitly presented a watered down OS that could only check mail and internet. Anything else you had to but into a "real" OS whether windows or a *nix variant.
Ah, fair enough then. I didn't pick up on that context at all.
Regardless in my mind if the majority of people end up single or dual booting these boxes Linux hasn't one. It is shipping the box and people not feeling the need to install a different OS that will make it a win for Linux.
A very interesting opinion and one to which you are, of course, entitled.
Personally, I think we'd get a more useful metric if the criteria for "winning" wasn't skewed quite so asymmetrically towards what you think of as the "real" OS. But I suppose the question then becomes "useful toward what end?"
Not that it really matters; the absence of data makes the question moot. All we can do is compare opinions, and since we've already done that with adequate clarity, all that's really left is to agree to disagree.
Really how many? Going from the 90%+ OS is always going to be more.
Of course it is. That's exactly my point.
It does happen but I know of very few people other than *nix admins at an office that completely blast away their Win OS. They dual boot and often Win is the primary OS whenever it is time to "get something done"
Or they're like me and use Linux for the serious work and windows for the odd game that's too much trouble to keep working under wine. I doubt either of us has enough data to draw conclusions about how that percentage breaks down,
It doesn't alter my point though: You can't discount linux machines supposedly turned into windows boxes without looking at the converse case of windows boxes that have come to run Linux. And by your own admission, the percentages work in Linux' favour in that calculation.
Incidentally, conceding for the moment at a number of those linux boxes are destined to run windows, why assume that none of them will be dual boot? Anyone techie enough to do the reinstall is surely just as likely to want both OSes as your anecdotal friends
Speaking of "no Microsoft tax" I'm curious how many of those 5% of computers will be running windows in less than a year? People will go with the cheap option then get a pirated copy of windows.
Of course, if you're going to make that calculation, you should also consider the number of windows PCs that get wiped and replaced with legitimate copies of Linux.
I was in university (and poor) when Napster became popular and I stopped paying for music. I have money now but the habit kind of stuck and I haven't paid for music since; I know many people who are the same way. I'm pretty sure that P2P has cost the music industry hundreds of dollars from me personally over the last 14 years.
I know how you feel. I remember when I decided that records were basically overpriced crap and that I didn't feel like spending any more money on them. And I haven't. Except for the odd requested present, anyway.
Interesting point here is that this happened in the late 80s for me. Long before the advent of filesharing. I didn't need P2P to persuade me to stop buying, and the habit of not buying stuck so much that I don't d/l music either.
So in my case, it's the music industry that cost the music industry hundreds of dollars from me personally. Maybe P2P wasn't the pivotal factor in your own disenchantment either?
Well, I suppose that depends on how you go about increasing the prices.
I mean, if all Shilling wanted was to raise the price he could have simply, you know, charged more money for the product and then we'd not be having this silly conversation.
It'd be a real shame if someone were to report you to Homeland Security for supporting what they now consider to be a terrorist group.
Yeah, it'd be a great shame if that whole right to free speech thing was so undervalued that you were unable to put forth the viewpoint of a protest group without being reported as a possible terrorist.
And yes, I know you were trolling. But I thought the point was worth making anyway.
I do support FOSS and I do support copyright. I'm not sure I agree that you *have* to be both though.
I know exactly what you mean. To my way of thinking, arguing to keep copyright becuase it drives the GPL is like refusing to eradicate malaria because it saves so many lives.
I'm pro-vaccine and anti-malaria, and I'm pro-GPL and anti-copyright. I don't think there's any contradiction in either.
"As any online discussion grows longer, the probability of someone mentioning Microsoft in a derogatory manner approaches 1."
I think we can generalise it a bit better than that.
"As any online discussion grows longer, the probability of someone mentioning anyone or anything in a derogatory manner approaches 1."
It might also make sense to add a "Slashdot Corollary" under which Microsoft and Apple are interchangeable.
And just those two and no others, because no-one ever says mean things about (let's say) Google or the FSF on this forum. Or maybe a better corollary might be "The better known the person or organization, the faster the probability approaches unity".
I find the same hilarity in people bitching and moaning about Unity. Again, nearly ALL of my time is spent in an application. I only interface with Unity to start the damn thing...
Personally, I derive vast amusement from those all too common cases where people whinge and whine about other people expressing their opinions in a public forum.
Sometimes they even try and disguise their bitching and moaning as amusement. I find that even more hillarious!
The question is: How is publishing code as open source of advantage to you?
The question is: What are you selling? Hardware or software?
If the software is the product, then close it obviously. There's money to be had from support contracts, but that's more of a pathway for monetising an existing free software project than for setting up a new business.
If the hardware is the product, then open the software. In doing so you effectively recruit every university doing research in the field, since they will all have tweaks and improvements. They publish their research, along with the software used (copyleft is good for that) and you either modify your own default software, or add the code to a repository for special purpose software. Your code is continuously improved and supports an increasingly wide range of applications.
Your competitor can adapt the results to their product as well, of course, but first of all they've got to port it. Meanwhile the number of applications for your sensor with custom software from third parties is going to grow and grow...
... probably. I don't want to sound too dogmatic when I only have a sketchy outline of the situation. But that's the way I'd look at it.
Exactly. The first tablet with a decent hardware spec and a substantially lower price is going to be a game changer.
I don't know if the B&N or Amazon offerings are going to be the ones to do that (don't know much about them, really) but the fact that the vendor doesn't need to licence the O/S means that there almost certainly is going to be one.
Gee whiz, I wonder why people choose an iPad where for exactly the same money they could have had an Android wanna-be from a company not completely behind their own product.
Of course, a couple of years or so ago and some people were using that exact same line of argument to show how the iPhone was always going to dominate the market, and how Android would never be more than a curiosity.
The key point here is that while the set of all mammals is not equivalent to the set of all animals, it is a subset thereof. So any true statement of the form "there exists a mammal such that X" remains true if you substitute "animal" for "mammal"
Also, you'd have to consider that Animal != Arachnid.
Which means that even if we accept your logic, the summary still isn't valid, since the researcher's spider would be no more valid than the GP's skunk.
Slashdot Mirror
Indeed. The only surprise is that he's doing down Linux in favour of Apple rather than Winows.
One can only assume that the promised cushy job at Microsoft failed to materialise, so now he's sucking up to Apple in the hopes of a job there.
Mmmm... A more conventional analysis would be to say that the tribe controls the territory as a result of the last war. If the tribe has a single totalitarian ruler (and I don't think that's a given) then you can argue that the resource is perhaps vested in him personally, but it's a stretch to cite that as evidence of capitalism. Otherwise you could argue that Josef Stalin becomes one of the 20th Century's most prominent capitalists, and that doesn't seem right.
In any case, the tribal chief didn't charge his own tribesmen for permission to use the territory. And "capitalist on an inter-tribal level" is just another way of saying "trade".
I think that some economic and/or political models don't work very well at the tribal scale. Probably the best fit for most tribal structures would be socialism, with some individual ownership but with many resources held in common by the tribe, an accepted duty of care by the tribe for its members. Obviously a sweeping generalisation, but I think it fits the general case better than most.
But yeah, it's possible to fit analyse any facet of the world purely in terms of one theory or philosophy if someone is inclined to make the effort. Really it's about how well the notion fits overall.
That's a reasonable question. The I believe the standard definition is that a capitalist system is one where the means of production of goods and the resources needed to do so are vested entirely in the hands of private individuals rather than in the state
Your Native American tribes would fail that test in so far as the woodlands and buffalo herds were not privately owned.
Now if they'd had to buy a hunting permit from the owner of the woods, or pay a surcharge for each buffalo killed, that would have been a capitalist system.
I believe the generally accepted term for that system is "totalitarianism". It's not entirely incompatible with communism, but neither is it the defining feature of the system.
Totalitarianism isn't entirely incompatible with capitalism either, for that matter.
So you're apparently saying that instead of the lobbyists offering bribes to the politicians to do something, the politicians are actively extorting money from the lobbyists or they won't do what the lobbyists want.
And apparently this means that the system is less corrupt because the lobbyists have their integrity intact?
And to think I was worried for a minute.
Mmmm... I think you're conflating "trade" and "capitalism" there. I'll grant trade as a fundamental of human behavior. However, if we define any social grouping that conducted trade or used a form of currency as "capitalist" then we have a definition that encompasses everything from Stalin's USSR to England under William the Conqueror.
That's admirably consistent, but not especially useful, you know?
So hang on. By your earlier argument, they use money relations therefore they are capitalist. So your point would seem to be that capitalism is much better than capitalism.
Perhaps there's some inconsistency in your use of the term after all.
In any case, the GP's point wasn't that tribal society was better than capitalism (whether they were capitalists or not) but simply that it only seems natural to people because they've grown up with the system.
I got that with "cloud".
How open can the system be when it runs on someone else's hardware under someone else's control?
OK, maybe potentially big news for cloud service vendors, but I can't the average Linux hobby coder giving this a lot of time or effort
Hey, now there's a fun thought. How long before the first X-Ray Specs app is released, I wonder.
It does make me wonder as to the business plan. I can imagine these things being given away free, but with small discrete text ads in your top right peripheral vision.
On the other hand, imagine if Google subsidiary Doubleclick gets to handle the business. They'll be inserting hallucinations of monster movie serial killers into your left side periphery, and then using the right eye to advertise psycho-analysis.
Still, could be worse. If it was Microsoft Goggles, they scan for apple logos replace them with the windows symbol. And if they detected a screen from a working replace Linux box, they'd overlay it with a static blue-screen-of-death image.
Oh the possibilities! :)
Or maybe the feds trained someone from the MPAA to use twitter, and then thought "I know a cool way to turn to major anti-establishment groups against one another."
Of course, this is assuming that no-one from the MPAA is smart enough to learn how to use twitter for themselves. Which is doing them a massive disservice, I'm sure...
Ah, fair enough then. I didn't pick up on that context at all.
A very interesting opinion and one to which you are, of course, entitled.
Personally, I think we'd get a more useful metric if the criteria for "winning" wasn't skewed quite so asymmetrically towards what you think of as the "real" OS. But I suppose the question then becomes "useful toward what end?"
Not that it really matters; the absence of data makes the question moot. All we can do is compare opinions, and since we've already done that with adequate clarity, all that's really left is to agree to disagree.
Of course it is. That's exactly my point.
Or they're like me and use Linux for the serious work and windows for the odd game that's too much trouble to keep working under wine. I doubt either of us has enough data to draw conclusions about how that percentage breaks down,
It doesn't alter my point though: You can't discount linux machines supposedly turned into windows boxes without looking at the converse case of windows boxes that have come to run Linux. And by your own admission, the percentages work in Linux' favour in that calculation.
Incidentally, conceding for the moment at a number of those linux boxes are destined to run windows, why assume that none of them will be dual boot? Anyone techie enough to do the reinstall is surely just as likely to want both OSes as your anecdotal friends
Of course, if you're going to make that calculation, you should also consider the number of windows PCs that get wiped and replaced with legitimate copies of Linux.
I bet I know which number is bigger :)
I know how you feel. I remember when I decided that records were basically overpriced crap and that I didn't feel like spending any more money on them. And I haven't. Except for the odd requested present, anyway.
Interesting point here is that this happened in the late 80s for me. Long before the advent of filesharing. I didn't need P2P to persuade me to stop buying, and the habit of not buying stuck so much that I don't d/l music either.
So in my case, it's the music industry that cost the music industry hundreds of dollars from me personally. Maybe P2P wasn't the pivotal factor in your own disenchantment either?
That would explain why TFA reads so much like it's preparing the ground for a massive damage limitations exercise.
Well, I suppose that depends on how you go about increasing the prices.
I mean, if all Shilling wanted was to raise the price he could have simply, you know, charged more money for the product and then we'd not be having this silly conversation.
Yeah, it'd be a great shame if that whole right to free speech thing was so undervalued that you were unable to put forth the viewpoint of a protest group without being reported as a possible terrorist.
And yes, I know you were trolling. But I thought the point was worth making anyway.
I know exactly what you mean. To my way of thinking, arguing to keep copyright becuase it drives the GPL is like refusing to eradicate malaria because it saves so many lives.
I'm pro-vaccine and anti-malaria, and I'm pro-GPL and anti-copyright. I don't think there's any contradiction in either.
I think we can generalise it a bit better than that.
"As any online discussion grows longer, the probability of someone mentioning anyone or anything in a derogatory manner approaches 1."
And just those two and no others, because no-one ever says mean things about (let's say) Google or the FSF on this forum. Or maybe a better corollary might be "The better known the person or organization, the faster the probability approaches unity".
Personally, I derive vast amusement from those all too common cases where people whinge and whine about other people expressing their opinions in a public forum.
Sometimes they even try and disguise their bitching and moaning as amusement. I find that even more hillarious!
Tom The Dancing Bug
The question is: What are you selling? Hardware or software?
If the software is the product, then close it obviously. There's money to be had from support contracts, but that's more of a pathway for monetising an existing free software project than for setting up a new business.
If the hardware is the product, then open the software. In doing so you effectively recruit every university doing research in the field, since they will all have tweaks and improvements. They publish their research, along with the software used (copyleft is good for that) and you either modify your own default software, or add the code to a repository for special purpose software. Your code is continuously improved and supports an increasingly wide range of applications.
Your competitor can adapt the results to their product as well, of course, but first of all they've got to port it. Meanwhile the number of applications for your sensor with custom software from third parties is going to grow and grow...
Exactly. The first tablet with a decent hardware spec and a substantially lower price is going to be a game changer.
I don't know if the B&N or Amazon offerings are going to be the ones to do that (don't know much about them, really) but the fact that the vendor doesn't need to licence the O/S means that there almost certainly is going to be one.
It's just not going to have "Dell" written on it.
Of course, a couple of years or so ago and some people were using that exact same line of argument to show how the iPhone was always going to dominate the market, and how Android would never be more than a curiosity.
And we all know how that turned out :)
The key point here is that while the set of all mammals is not equivalent to the set of all animals, it is a subset thereof. So any true statement of the form "there exists a mammal such that X" remains true if you substitute "animal" for "mammal"
Also, you'd have to consider that Animal != Arachnid. Which means that even if we accept your logic, the summary still isn't valid, since the researcher's spider would be no more valid than the GP's skunk.
Fun stuff, logic :)