Socialism isn't Communism. One describes an economic system, the other describes a system of government intended to force an economic system. Guess which one is which?
That's why socialism as a pure economic system doesn't work: people are unable to cooperate or achieve consensus enough to allow it to work. Marx may not have invented cooperation, but socialism depends upon a form and degree of it that would be quite unique in the history of this planet.
The ideal extension of this is actual on-site power generation. No miles of copper wires, no attenuation. Had we focused on that as a goal in the first place, I suspect the total cost of on-site generation with solar and wind would have been no more or even less than the cost for creating an entire "grid" infrastructure. We've spent a LOT of money creating and maintaining that grid, and now in these heady days of terrorism it exposes a weakness that can be exploited.
The point I was attempting to make is that in situations where there is a conflict between interests of We versus interests of Me, Me all too often winds up being the interest that wins the conflict. Selfishness still trumps socialism far too often for me to perceive that cooperation as "instinctive". The degree of cooperation you describe as instinctive is horribly limited, often very short-term and done in a cold calculating fashion with the expectation that it is in fact temporary to serve a selfish desire.
That is not my definition of cooperation. That is how I define politics and manipulation.
But that behavior is not the GOAL of FOSS, now is it? Cooperation is still not an instinctive behavior for us, and there's certainly a wide swath of socio- and econo-ethics that aren't at all natural. Ethics winds up being largely about resisting and changing more instinctive behaviors, doesn't it?
I believe my old West's Business Law textbook covers it quite nicely, but I'd rather you do the legwork and not me. This is basic stuff. What the hell do you think contracts are, exactly? Whether written or oral, they define a VOLUNTARY agreement with an exchange of value, i.e. mutual benefit. When you are hired to work as an employee or contractor, there is ALWAYS a voluntary contract in evidence, whether it looks like a formal contract or not. Both parties are willingly explicitly entering into said contract, because if not then it's called something else - slavery or duress - and not employment or "work for hire".
The only voluntary contract students have with their universities is one for an education for they they are already paying; there is no mutual agreement involved in this, rather it's something being forced upon them under duress. No student is a willing participant to this assignation.
As I said, this is universities looking for an under-the-table revenue stream, and they don't care who they have to fuck to get it, even if it's their own students.
No, it doesn't. First of all, this is a UNIVERSITY, supposedly a place of learning. It's supposed to be non-partisan and free of the pull of outside interests, whether economic or political. That unfortunately is a slippery slope down which universities have already been sliding long enough that it has deluded people like you into now thinking that it's perfectly acceptable.
Second, the burden is clearly placed upon the student to prove that he didn't abuse university resources for personal profit, when in fact the burden of proof should be reversed. There is no "work for hire" here, since there is no actual explicit contract to that end, only these unilateral pejorative assignations of rights. Work for hire would require an explicit contract defining mutual benefit, a contract which doesn't exist here. Students are already paying dearly for their educations, so you can't argue that these assignations are reciprocity for their education.
Clearly the university is looking for "non-traditional revenue streams" and now seeks to unfairly use their students to that end.
Free and open source software - hell, ANYTHING open source and free - is not about "freedom" per se. It's about cooperation rather than competition. It's about that dirty economic word socialism versus Mother Nature's status quo capitalism.
So, here we have yet more patents doing a bang-up job of protecting the rights and interests of the actual inventors, which we were indoctrinated to believe is the purpose of the patent system, eh? Do you suppose we were told a lie?
This is nothing new. Walt Disney was able to patent Mickey Mouse many decades ago even though the character was a blatant ripoff of a physical toy (which had already been trademarked or patented, can't recall which).
The patent system does nothing to protect the rights of actual inventors, nor does it encourage invention. NOT having the safety net of a patent is a much stronger motivation to keep inventing than having one.
It's good to see at least one other person sees the real contractual dynamic, here. This scenario, free web hosting in exchange for free content to use for ad revenue, bears only superficial resemblance to a meatspace landlord-tenant contract. Nevertheless, BOTH are contracts wherein an exchange of value occurs, for BOTH parties.
You're a liar, dude. You WOULD in fact continue to offer such "free" services, because in fact you're GETTING SOMETHING FOR FREE IN RETURN: "free" content to use as a vehicle for the advertising which generates revenue for you, content for which you didn't have to pay a dime directly. You offer the free service to get the free content hosted on servers you control and from which you can generate advertising revenue.
In economics, that is called an exchange of value, and thus a transaction. In business law, it's called a contract or an agreement, for which the civil code and common law provides protections for both parties.
Your long-winded rationalization is about as disingenuous as they come.
The creators of sites in "free" Web spaces should indeed have legal protections, because in fact there IS AN EXCHANGE OF VALUE even though no money changes hands directly. The host uses those sites as vehicles for advertising, from which it does make money; in offering the free hosting, it is banking on the ability of the sites thus created to draw in traffic and thus generate them revenue. Could the host have hired people and created sites themselves? Sure, BUT THAT WOULD COST MONEY. They're getting CONTENT WHICH DRAWS IN TRAFFIC for free, in exchange for free hosting for those sites.
That, my dear boy, is a contractual agreement, one which should engender legal protections for BOTH parties. This corporate practice of getting consumers to agree to terms which "may be revised or retracted at any time without notice" is, in my opinion, flatly illegal by traditional civil and business law. Credit card companies are another horrid example of the practice.
This is just one more example of what I recently described as the perversion of law by the "victors", who not only get to rewrite history but also remake the laws to benefit themselves just a bit more than everyone else. The victors, in this case, are corporations and the extremely wealthy.
This is exactly the sort of conditions and behavior that in other times and places has led to revolutions. Americans are so pussy-whipped by consumerism that they don't even seem to notice, much less revolt.
Have you ever been removed from an online group or forum by some megalomaniacal or otherwise disturbed individual in a position of authority? I was summarily removed from a Meetup.com group by the organizer: a woman I had once rejected had a friendship (or more) with the man, and declared to him that she wouldn't be involved with the group if I was. She also invented a few false justifications having nothing to do with my spurning her. He was too delusional to even question her, and his reaction was to remove me from the group and advise me to "get therapy".
It's disturbing to live in an alleged macro-democratic society where on a micro scale such totalitarian things still happen.
I did not, BTW, mean to imply that everything that transpired was directly the fault of the pilot, but indirectly it was, since it was the exercise of his discretion that started the whole process. The TSA and FBI would never have been involved had he not made the decision that he did. He could have just as easily chosen to actually question the complaining (bigoted) passengers and their intended victims directly himself; he could have chosen to eject the complaining passengers from the plane instead, for in essence yelling "fire!" in a crowded theater.
Instead, the pilot made the wrong choice and played along with the passengers' hysteria and bigotry. Everyone else that was involved, everything else that happened, was required by virtue of the pilot's one bad decision. The pilot was the executive in charge, and he made the wrong executive decision.
Trust me they have and they can... but you'll have to pay LESS than $100 to get it. That "high-priced computer gear" is planned to obsolete much sooner so you'll "need what you need" much sooner rather than later.;-)
I didn't spend $100 on any mouse I've ever bought... not even half of that. I've never experienced debilitating pain or consequences, and I've been "mousing" long enough now that if it were going to happen, it would have happened already. Chances are pretty good statistically that I've been mousing much longer than you. I've been using the same mouse for quite a few years now. It's a cheap Microsoft optical mouse that I got on sale. I did buy a GyroPoint mouse once, though, and I still have it, but I thought it was an unwieldy piece of junk. Fortunately I didn't pay $100 for that one, either.
Either (a) I'm just physiologically lucky, (b) I'm privy to tricks that let me avoid the pain and problems, (c) I'm intrepid enough to have always bought mice that are the perfect RSI-lessening choice, or (d) you have no clue what is really causal. Clearly you think the mice are causal and that throwing money at the problem is the way to avoid it, but my experience seems to be proof that what you believe is mistaken. YMMV.
Don't quit yer day job yet, there, fella... with a subjective perception of value like you described, you're not at all ready for socialism. You'd wreck it for yourself and the rest of us, too.
I don't stay upbeat. I have a few brief orgasmic moments of optimism every so often, but it never lasts: inevitably I'll encounter some idiot(s) who remind me just how bad reality really is, in the absence of blissful ignorance.
Frankly, though, I'd rather remain this way than take some pill that bestows bliss. I have a sneaking suspicion the shit will seriously hit the fan while I yet live, and all that pessimism may come in handy when it does.
If the driver doesn't act, the car will brake automatically.
And, ummm, it's also able to monitor the reaction of the following vehicles and keep them from smashing into the backside of the vehicle? The driver and passengers had better pray that everyone behind them is also driving a Volvo, I guess....
Google can hardly file a patent for this strategy: certain game and other software developers have been doing this for some time. They release unfinished skeletal software and then rely on the eager-but-clueless users of the product to identify problems and shortcomings and suggest future evolution. The users become unpaid Q&A or R&D staff without ever being the wiser. They don't even get business cards to flash at parties.
Slashdot Mirror
... a diode?
Socialism isn't Communism. One describes an economic system, the other describes a system of government intended to force an economic system. Guess which one is which?
That's why socialism as a pure economic system doesn't work: people are unable to cooperate or achieve consensus enough to allow it to work. Marx may not have invented cooperation, but socialism depends upon a form and degree of it that would be quite unique in the history of this planet.
You could be Max Butler himself. for all we know, trying to employ a little PR here.
I'm just sayin'. Your key piece isn't very useful until we actually know that it's true.
... duh!
The ideal extension of this is actual on-site power generation. No miles of copper wires, no attenuation. Had we focused on that as a goal in the first place, I suspect the total cost of on-site generation with solar and wind would have been no more or even less than the cost for creating an entire "grid" infrastructure. We've spent a LOT of money creating and maintaining that grid, and now in these heady days of terrorism it exposes a weakness that can be exploited.
The point I was attempting to make is that in situations where there is a conflict between interests of We versus interests of Me, Me all too often winds up being the interest that wins the conflict. Selfishness still trumps socialism far too often for me to perceive that cooperation as "instinctive". The degree of cooperation you describe as instinctive is horribly limited, often very short-term and done in a cold calculating fashion with the expectation that it is in fact temporary to serve a selfish desire.
That is not my definition of cooperation. That is how I define politics and manipulation.
But that behavior is not the GOAL of FOSS, now is it? Cooperation is still not an instinctive behavior for us, and there's certainly a wide swath of socio- and econo-ethics that aren't at all natural. Ethics winds up being largely about resisting and changing more instinctive behaviors, doesn't it?
Since your argument isn't any more evidentiary than mine and no more compelling, welcome to the same losing class.
I believe my old West's Business Law textbook covers it quite nicely, but I'd rather you do the legwork and not me. This is basic stuff. What the hell do you think contracts are, exactly? Whether written or oral, they define a VOLUNTARY agreement with an exchange of value, i.e. mutual benefit. When you are hired to work as an employee or contractor, there is ALWAYS a voluntary contract in evidence, whether it looks like a formal contract or not. Both parties are willingly explicitly entering into said contract, because if not then it's called something else - slavery or duress - and not employment or "work for hire".
The only voluntary contract students have with their universities is one for an education for they they are already paying; there is no mutual agreement involved in this, rather it's something being forced upon them under duress. No student is a willing participant to this assignation.
As I said, this is universities looking for an under-the-table revenue stream, and they don't care who they have to fuck to get it, even if it's their own students.
No, it doesn't. First of all, this is a UNIVERSITY, supposedly a place of learning. It's supposed to be non-partisan and free of the pull of outside interests, whether economic or political. That unfortunately is a slippery slope down which universities have already been sliding long enough that it has deluded people like you into now thinking that it's perfectly acceptable.
Second, the burden is clearly placed upon the student to prove that he didn't abuse university resources for personal profit, when in fact the burden of proof should be reversed. There is no "work for hire" here, since there is no actual explicit contract to that end, only these unilateral pejorative assignations of rights. Work for hire would require an explicit contract defining mutual benefit, a contract which doesn't exist here. Students are already paying dearly for their educations, so you can't argue that these assignations are reciprocity for their education.
Clearly the university is looking for "non-traditional revenue streams" and now seeks to unfairly use their students to that end.
Free and open source software - hell, ANYTHING open source and free - is not about "freedom" per se. It's about cooperation rather than competition. It's about that dirty economic word socialism versus Mother Nature's status quo capitalism.
Eh, trademarks, patents... all the same, right? *sheepish*
http://www.boingboing.net/2007/10/17/micky-mouse-vs-micke.html
Never heard of parents disowning their children, huh?
So, here we have yet more patents doing a bang-up job of protecting the rights and interests of the actual inventors, which we were indoctrinated to believe is the purpose of the patent system, eh? Do you suppose we were told a lie?
This is nothing new. Walt Disney was able to patent Mickey Mouse many decades ago even though the character was a blatant ripoff of a physical toy (which had already been trademarked or patented, can't recall which).
The patent system does nothing to protect the rights of actual inventors, nor does it encourage invention. NOT having the safety net of a patent is a much stronger motivation to keep inventing than having one.
It's good to see at least one other person sees the real contractual dynamic, here. This scenario, free web hosting in exchange for free content to use for ad revenue, bears only superficial resemblance to a meatspace landlord-tenant contract. Nevertheless, BOTH are contracts wherein an exchange of value occurs, for BOTH parties.
You're a liar, dude. You WOULD in fact continue to offer such "free" services, because in fact you're GETTING SOMETHING FOR FREE IN RETURN: "free" content to use as a vehicle for the advertising which generates revenue for you, content for which you didn't have to pay a dime directly. You offer the free service to get the free content hosted on servers you control and from which you can generate advertising revenue.
In economics, that is called an exchange of value, and thus a transaction. In business law, it's called a contract or an agreement, for which the civil code and common law provides protections for both parties.
Your long-winded rationalization is about as disingenuous as they come.
The creators of sites in "free" Web spaces should indeed have legal protections, because in fact there IS AN EXCHANGE OF VALUE even though no money changes hands directly. The host uses those sites as vehicles for advertising, from which it does make money; in offering the free hosting, it is banking on the ability of the sites thus created to draw in traffic and thus generate them revenue. Could the host have hired people and created sites themselves? Sure, BUT THAT WOULD COST MONEY. They're getting CONTENT WHICH DRAWS IN TRAFFIC for free, in exchange for free hosting for those sites.
That, my dear boy, is a contractual agreement, one which should engender legal protections for BOTH parties. This corporate practice of getting consumers to agree to terms which "may be revised or retracted at any time without notice" is, in my opinion, flatly illegal by traditional civil and business law. Credit card companies are another horrid example of the practice.
This is just one more example of what I recently described as the perversion of law by the "victors", who not only get to rewrite history but also remake the laws to benefit themselves just a bit more than everyone else. The victors, in this case, are corporations and the extremely wealthy.
This is exactly the sort of conditions and behavior that in other times and places has led to revolutions. Americans are so pussy-whipped by consumerism that they don't even seem to notice, much less revolt.
Have you ever been removed from an online group or forum by some megalomaniacal or otherwise disturbed individual in a position of authority? I was summarily removed from a Meetup.com group by the organizer: a woman I had once rejected had a friendship (or more) with the man, and declared to him that she wouldn't be involved with the group if I was. She also invented a few false justifications having nothing to do with my spurning her. He was too delusional to even question her, and his reaction was to remove me from the group and advise me to "get therapy".
It's disturbing to live in an alleged macro-democratic society where on a micro scale such totalitarian things still happen.
I did not, BTW, mean to imply that everything that transpired was directly the fault of the pilot, but indirectly it was, since it was the exercise of his discretion that started the whole process. The TSA and FBI would never have been involved had he not made the decision that he did. He could have just as easily chosen to actually question the complaining (bigoted) passengers and their intended victims directly himself; he could have chosen to eject the complaining passengers from the plane instead, for in essence yelling "fire!" in a crowded theater.
Instead, the pilot made the wrong choice and played along with the passengers' hysteria and bigotry. Everyone else that was involved, everything else that happened, was required by virtue of the pilot's one bad decision. The pilot was the executive in charge, and he made the wrong executive decision.
Trust me they have and they can... but you'll have to pay LESS than $100 to get it. That "high-priced computer gear" is planned to obsolete much sooner so you'll "need what you need" much sooner rather than later. ;-)
I didn't spend $100 on any mouse I've ever bought... not even half of that. I've never experienced debilitating pain or consequences, and I've been "mousing" long enough now that if it were going to happen, it would have happened already. Chances are pretty good statistically that I've been mousing much longer than you. I've been using the same mouse for quite a few years now. It's a cheap Microsoft optical mouse that I got on sale. I did buy a GyroPoint mouse once, though, and I still have it, but I thought it was an unwieldy piece of junk. Fortunately I didn't pay $100 for that one, either.
Either (a) I'm just physiologically lucky, (b) I'm privy to tricks that let me avoid the pain and problems, (c) I'm intrepid enough to have always bought mice that are the perfect RSI-lessening choice, or (d) you have no clue what is really causal. Clearly you think the mice are causal and that throwing money at the problem is the way to avoid it, but my experience seems to be proof that what you believe is mistaken. YMMV.
Don't quit yer day job yet, there, fella... with a subjective perception of value like you described, you're not at all ready for socialism. You'd wreck it for yourself and the rest of us, too.
I don't stay upbeat. I have a few brief orgasmic moments of optimism every so often, but it never lasts: inevitably I'll encounter some idiot(s) who remind me just how bad reality really is, in the absence of blissful ignorance.
Frankly, though, I'd rather remain this way than take some pill that bestows bliss. I have a sneaking suspicion the shit will seriously hit the fan while I yet live, and all that pessimism may come in handy when it does.
Whether allowing pilots that degree of individual unrestricted discretion is a wise idea or not should probably be debated.
And, ummm, it's also able to monitor the reaction of the following vehicles and keep them from smashing into the backside of the vehicle? The driver and passengers had better pray that everyone behind them is also driving a Volvo, I guess....
Google can hardly file a patent for this strategy: certain game and other software developers have been doing this for some time. They release unfinished skeletal software and then rely on the eager-but-clueless users of the product to identify problems and shortcomings and suggest future evolution. The users become unpaid Q&A or R&D staff without ever being the wiser. They don't even get business cards to flash at parties.