Are you really this dense? The guy said that they weren't ready to start asking because they were working on that list, and someone jumped the gun. How many fucking times does someone have to tell you before you get it? Does it have to fall out of the sky, land on your head, and start scratching your fucking eyes out? Quit acting stupid and read what people are saying. If you can't do that, then just fuck off.
Well it would be handy to have an edit ability that extends for at least a short period of time. Yes I know you are ment to use 'preview', but really - who does?...
Hm, I was trying to make a blanket statement. As with all blanket statements, it failed.:)
Insert "Assuming we have access to the same facts" as needed. As you point out in your last paragraph:
That being said, even if we did "stick to the facts" for our decision making, I would assert that we wouldn't be "viewing the same world". What this presumes is a level of near-perfect knowledge and access to information and the ability to quickly determine what facts are germane at any given moment. Lack of facts or selective disuse of facts lead to a fracturing of that "one world".
There is also a large amount of disagreement on what constitutes, so there's a lot of room to argue about what facts are.
So I'll approach this from the other end and maybe you'll see what I was trying to say.:)
It is dangerous to say that all opinions are valid because they aren't. It has become common these days for people to say "Well, I know it's stupid, but it's my opinion, and you can't change it." That's intellectually lazy and usually indicates that the person isn't willing to think through it. It's usually accompanied by the "I can say what I want and you can stop me because that's freedom of speech" mindset. In any case, when too many people in a society resort to opinions because all opinions are valid, then we have a severe absence of thought. Besides the fact that absence of thought is one of my pet peeves, it's also the most dangerous condition to society at large and invites totalitarian rule. Or at the very least, malevolent dictatorship.
So we need a way to say "That opinion is not valid" without oppressing the holder of the opinion. Rather, a way to arrive at opinions that provides a reasonable level of failsafes to prevent the instance of error, as well as a certain amount of critical thinking. Ultimately, we always need to be able to back down from our opinions if it should prove they are founded weakly, or on lies (or other mis-truths).
But I find many Christians to be of the opinion that I am wrong (and that I am going to burn in hell for being so, but in my estimation if I'm going to hell it'll probably be for much worse things than a simple lack of faith...) and how am I able to say that is not a valid opinion? I can't prove them wrong, and they can't prove themselves to be correct. It's perfectly valid from their point of view, even if it is not from my own.
Heh, don't bring Christianity into it, dude. I've started flame wars on that subject, and participated in many a.:) Faith is a complete absence of fact, and is usually accompanied by a complete absence of thought. I suspect I don't have to say any more on this subject....
mirroring wikipedia would make basic editing and retrieval slow and difficult, and result in inconsistent data across the mirrors
Hmm, not exactly. Or rather, there's got to be a solution. How does sourceforge handle it's cvs servers? Yes, yes, sourceforge just had a bunch of problems with them, so they're a *really* bad example to bring up right now.
Or you could follow the RAID model. Write in one place and propogate those changes at regular intervals for reading. So all the forms that post would post to wikipedia.org (or whatever), but might be read from my.stupid.server.com.
Synchronizing will always be a problem when you have to mirror, but mirroring is still a viable solution. Yes, it's beatiful that all these people can see changes to their articles within minutes of writing them, but that's a luxury. Furthermore, distributing it is a problem already solved in version control software, so maybe you should look there for your solution?
"Give a man a fish, and he eats a meal. Teach a man to fish, and he eats for life."
So, why should I give money to wikipedia when they're just gonna come back and ask for more later? What can they do in terms of sponsorships and advertising and value-add services to raise money for themselves?
I'm not taking a stand on that, but there are plenty of ways to generate revenue without selling out, contrary to the example slashdot has made for us...
Encarta is a decent solution for the price. 'Free' is not always better. Some things are worth paying for.
Hmm, let's see. First I'd have to buy Windows. Let's see, better make it Windows XP so I can have the latest security patches and the longest product life available right now. Hrm, that means I need more memory. Crap. The thing takes up more space than I have available on a spare partition. Well, that means I"ll have to trash my Linux installation. There goes all my valuable data (of course I backed it up, but Windows doesn't have any programs that will read it).
THEN, oh THEN I can finally buy Encarta, since Wikipedia is such a worthless endeavor.
Fuck off. There are reasons to run Linux, and losing Encarta isn't worth it, not when there's Wikipedia and plenty of other sources of information out there.
(For the record, I have a copy of Encarta that I got years ago with an OEM box. I remember it being mostly worthless)
Already read that, and translated it says "We're still putting the list together and someone went and posted this before we were done."
It's like when you're cooking dinner and your kid comes in and says "I'm not eating that until it's ready you fucking jerk-off, asshole. Don't expect me to eat it until it's done cooking, you piece of shit."
Not everybody's opinion is equal, but everybody's opinion is valid, even if demonstrably untrue.
I'm going to disagree with this. An opinion based on false facts or reached through faulty or excessive logic is not valid. An opinion is essentially how you view the facts of the world and how you interpret them, and if you build opinions on false facts or with faulty or excessive logic, then you will quickly find yourself living in a fantasy world. It's possible for us all to have our opinions focused on the same world, but we can only do that by sticking to facts and using strong, but not excessive logic to reach our opinions. Doubtless we'll still reach different opinions, but at least we'll be viewing the same world.
People don't mean to be biased, but often are. It has been shown that when giving a poll the results may change just by framing the questions in different ways. (Don't ask for a source since I heard it from my psycology prof years ago).
You said "Don't ask for a source" and then provided one. Slashdotters frequently require sources, and usually expect it to be verifiable. Your source is not verifiable, but it is not actually a requirement, just normally expected.
And that's the whole problem. 1000000 monkeys do not end up writing Shakespeare. Freedom of speech is great, and I think everyone should exercise it. But I'll get my information from a more reliable source, thanks all the same.
Heh, I'm torn on the wikipedia. I think it's a great project, and that the best way to store the sum of human knowledge is to allow all humans to contribute.
Still, whenever I stumble across it (through Google, I never go there willingly), I always find myself looking further to confirm what I read. It's a source I just don't trust, for the fact that it allows all humans to contribute, and most humans don't know much about anything.
So it's biggest strength is also the reason I don't use it.:)
I'll check it out. You've exposed a 1500-year gap in my knowledge of history in the area, and I'm not happy about that. I'll have to correct it.:) The questions that immediately come to mind are "If they were so prosperous, why have they lagged behind in industrializing? If Islam is [all this stuff], why are the Middle East countries seeped in monarchy and theocracy?" The answers will invariably be in the history. They always are...
Re:Constant Reorganization Gives The Illusion....
on
Wikipedia Needs $20K
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I'll respond and try to give some wisdom, but you strike me a lot like I was when I was 16, in which case what I'm about to say won't be helpful at all.:)
How do I become an authority on "skepticism", or "pseudoscience", and who determines whether I am that authority? And even then, who determines the people that determine who is an authority?
It's not possible to "qualify" as an authority on these things, but it is possible to justify why your skepticism might be considered valid when another's wouldn't. You first have to show an advanced sense of logic and critical thinking. Skeptics frequently lack these two tools but try to use them anyway. Second, you need to have a certain critical mass of worldly experience on which to base your skepticism. No matter how much reading you can do (believe me, when I was 16 I'd read a lot), none of it matters next to someone who's done it. To show "authority" you must be able to show that your own worldly experience will validate competing claims next to someone else with worldly experience. That's where the original poster's argument about age comes into play.
If I were to write about the Harry Potter books, what kind of authority would I need? Would J.K. Rowling need to certify me? If I wanted to write about the history of the Star Wars saga, would I need a certification from Lucasfilms?
Aha, depends on what you're writing. If you're writing pure history, as in your second example, then the only authority you need is generally referred to as a bibliography. If, instead, you're trying to provide interpretation, you'll need literary experience (which you probably have) as well as worldly experience to back up any interpretations you might reach.
Without going too much into it, my wife, at age 15 had a great deal of worldly experience. Enough that I, at age 21, had a great deal of trust in her judgement. Moreso than I myself deserved at age 15, because I stayed couped up in the house reading heroic fantasy novels. At age 21, when I married my wife, who was age 15, she and I were approximately equal in mentality and worldly experience. So to answer the unspoken question, I wouldn't single you out for your age on the matter, because I of all people know that age is only an indicator, not an absolute measurement, of worldly experience.:)
Let me disagree with you here. What they had at that time was not feudalistic.
Hmm, probably not the best thing in the world, but I am basing my knowledge of Persians against Belisarius on a series of alternative fiction, aptly named "The Belisarius Series", by Baen books. Check it out on the Baen Free Library. There's a thorough exploration of Persian society, discussing the "Cold war" and the hot war that existed between Persia and Rome in that time period, and the specific period I'm referring to is before Mohammed and Islam. In fact, it's the century immediately prior to the establishment of Islam.:)
All I know about what happens after that is some basic stuff about Mohammed and his journey to Mecca (or was it Medina?). Nothing about political, social, or technological shifts, and certainly nothing economic. Much later the middle east is considered a barrier in reaching the spice countries rather than an economic partner or player.
And that, my friend, is the sum total of what I know that we've been talking about.:)
Ironic, you're correct, that the one country in the world bent on murdering as many Moslems as possible is also adhering more to Islam concepts than the Moslems they're slaughtering. (For the record, I'm an american)
Hm, you make a good point, and it's that point on which is founded the idea that you can rearrange all the letters in a word and as long as the first and last letters are left the same, you can still read it.
I think I was talking about the construction of the word, but I'll have to think on it some more. I wrote about reading the word, but I'm starting to think that right-to-left or left-to-right is in construction and not reading, which would make numbers right-to-left in spite of my post.:) (Although we still write the numbers left-to-write, they are constructed the other way. Or maybe not, like I said, I'll have to think on it some more)
No, not at all IMO. These "islamic countries" are lagging behind in technology and education NOW. Its true. But that was not the case earlier. They had a glorious past when they were well advanced in these things.
Hmm, I admit I don't know much history of the Middle east from about 600AD 'till the renaissance, but I seem to recall that Persia (never called Persia!) spent a lot of time fighting Rome as a nation in decline, and then Rome started to decline. Rome took over 1000 years to die off, though. Anyway, last I heard about Persia being a relevant technological power was in the 500's AD when they were fighting the Roman general Belisarius. At that time, they were feudalistic.
Your point about Western society and the dark ages was a damn good one, though.:) About the only thing the renaissance actually did was make information more freely available. Otherwise, it wasn't a significant improvement in quality of living or standard of living.
Islam is very much against putting obstacles in reading or learing. Actually Quran start with the word "READ"("Iqra'h in Arabic) and free information is an essential thing according to Islam.
Considering then that Islam is the dominant religion *only* in countries that are behind the rest technologically, in spite of the fact that they are also the "cradle of civilization", and have therefore been populated longer than any western country, does that indicate that keeping knowledge hidden is actually condusive to building civilization?
Probably not a completely fair comparison, I'm sure. The Romans were fighting the Persians long before there was any monothestic cult grown to empire proportions, and the Persians were feudalistic while the Romans were "free market". Interesting, too, that Rome declined into feudalism..... I digress.
Numbers aren't read right to left any more than they're read left to right.:)
Consider the number 10. In order to read that as "ten", you have to read the 0 first. That's on the right. The 0 is in the ones place. Then you have to read the 1, which is in the tens place. Then you have to put this information together and get "ten", but you have to read it left-to-right to be able to read "ten". So, numbers are read in both directions.
Now, the same argument can be made about language. And it is true in some cases. Take the word "cases" like I just used. First you read "c" and think "Could sound like k or s". Then you read "a" and think "Could sound like a or a". Then you read "s" which only ever sounds like s. Then you read "e", which modifies "a" in this context. Then you read "s" again, which sounds like s but also modifies "e" in this context. THEN you put it together and read it left-to-right as "cases".
Among many, here's a definition I found applicable:
To play a principal or guiding role in:
Leading doesn't mean "the best", "the biggest", or whatever. KDE and Gnome are both leading desktops. Other, smaller ones, are also leading.
It can be said that KDE and Gnome are actually "following desktops", in that they're both following Windows. I tend to think that they both passed the point of following Windows awhile back and are both leading desktops, now.
But I doubt you'll ever see chips, drives, and robotics being built by companies if other companies can just steal their copy rights.
Sorry dude, but you're wrong.:) Chips, drives, and robotics are covered by patent law, which is related but separate from copyright law. So, remove copyrights, but you still have patents.
Patents are supposed to provide the inventor of a new object a monopoly on them.
Copyright is supposed to provide the author of a creative work a monopoly on the work.
Trade secrets are supposed to provide a way for companies to recoup damages when someone appropriates their "competitive edge".
Software is the bastard product that can be covered by all three of these particular sections of law that were never intended to apply concurrently to a single object.
Slashdot Mirror
Are you really this dense? The guy said that they weren't ready to start asking because they were working on that list, and someone jumped the gun. How many fucking times does someone have to tell you before you get it? Does it have to fall out of the sky, land on your head, and start scratching your fucking eyes out? Quit acting stupid and read what people are saying. If you can't do that, then just fuck off.
Well it would be handy to have an edit ability that extends for at least a short period of time. Yes I know you are ment to use 'preview', but really - who does?...
Um, people that want to edit their posts?
Ironic that I read this in Konqueror...
This is not rocket science. Try a basic math course.
Your basic math course would show you that geeks aren't enough of a group to show on a dataset as large as Google's. Having trouble with this concept?
Hm, I was trying to make a blanket statement. As with all blanket statements, it failed. :)
Insert "Assuming we have access to the same facts" as needed. As you point out in your last paragraph:
There is also a large amount of disagreement on what constitutes, so there's a lot of room to argue about what facts are.
So I'll approach this from the other end and maybe you'll see what I was trying to say. :)
It is dangerous to say that all opinions are valid because they aren't. It has become common these days for people to say "Well, I know it's stupid, but it's my opinion, and you can't change it." That's intellectually lazy and usually indicates that the person isn't willing to think through it. It's usually accompanied by the "I can say what I want and you can stop me because that's freedom of speech" mindset. In any case, when too many people in a society resort to opinions because all opinions are valid, then we have a severe absence of thought. Besides the fact that absence of thought is one of my pet peeves, it's also the most dangerous condition to society at large and invites totalitarian rule. Or at the very least, malevolent dictatorship.
So we need a way to say "That opinion is not valid" without oppressing the holder of the opinion. Rather, a way to arrive at opinions that provides a reasonable level of failsafes to prevent the instance of error, as well as a certain amount of critical thinking. Ultimately, we always need to be able to back down from our opinions if it should prove they are founded weakly, or on lies (or other mis-truths).
Heh, don't bring Christianity into it, dude. I've started flame wars on that subject, and participated in many a. :) Faith is a complete absence of fact, and is usually accompanied by a complete absence of thought. I suspect I don't have to say any more on this subject....
mirroring wikipedia would make basic editing and retrieval slow and difficult, and result in inconsistent data across the mirrors
Hmm, not exactly. Or rather, there's got to be a solution. How does sourceforge handle it's cvs servers? Yes, yes, sourceforge just had a bunch of problems with them, so they're a *really* bad example to bring up right now.
Or you could follow the RAID model. Write in one place and propogate those changes at regular intervals for reading. So all the forms that post would post to wikipedia.org (or whatever), but might be read from my.stupid.server.com.
Synchronizing will always be a problem when you have to mirror, but mirroring is still a viable solution. Yes, it's beatiful that all these people can see changes to their articles within minutes of writing them, but that's a luxury. Furthermore, distributing it is a problem already solved in version control software, so maybe you should look there for your solution?
Hey, I'll complete the quote for a you.
"Give a man a fish, and he eats a meal. Teach a man to fish, and he eats for life."
So, why should I give money to wikipedia when they're just gonna come back and ask for more later? What can they do in terms of sponsorships and advertising and value-add services to raise money for themselves?
I'm not taking a stand on that, but there are plenty of ways to generate revenue without selling out, contrary to the example slashdot has made for us...
I can go with that. My main point was that calling KDE "leading" didn't automatically snub Gnome, as all the Gnome-o-philes were kneejerking about.
Encarta is a decent solution for the price. 'Free' is not always better. Some things are worth paying for.
Hmm, let's see. First I'd have to buy Windows. Let's see, better make it Windows XP so I can have the latest security patches and the longest product life available right now. Hrm, that means I need more memory. Crap. The thing takes up more space than I have available on a spare partition. Well, that means I"ll have to trash my Linux installation. There goes all my valuable data (of course I backed it up, but Windows doesn't have any programs that will read it).
THEN, oh THEN I can finally buy Encarta, since Wikipedia is such a worthless endeavor.
Fuck off. There are reasons to run Linux, and losing Encarta isn't worth it, not when there's Wikipedia and plenty of other sources of information out there.
(For the record, I have a copy of Encarta that I got years ago with an OEM box. I remember it being mostly worthless)
Already read that, and translated it says "We're still putting the list together and someone went and posted this before we were done."
It's like when you're cooking dinner and your kid comes in and says "I'm not eating that until it's ready you fucking jerk-off, asshole. Don't expect me to eat it until it's done cooking, you piece of shit."
These days, porting Mozilla to Amiga is identical to a church building another wing.
Not everybody's opinion is equal, but everybody's opinion is valid, even if demonstrably untrue.
I'm going to disagree with this. An opinion based on false facts or reached through faulty or excessive logic is not valid. An opinion is essentially how you view the facts of the world and how you interpret them, and if you build opinions on false facts or with faulty or excessive logic, then you will quickly find yourself living in a fantasy world. It's possible for us all to have our opinions focused on the same world, but we can only do that by sticking to facts and using strong, but not excessive logic to reach our opinions. Doubtless we'll still reach different opinions, but at least we'll be viewing the same world.
People don't mean to be biased, but often are. It has been shown that when giving a poll the results may change just by framing the questions in different ways. (Don't ask for a source since I heard it from my psycology prof years ago).
You said "Don't ask for a source" and then provided one. Slashdotters frequently require sources, and usually expect it to be verifiable. Your source is not verifiable, but it is not actually a requirement, just normally expected.
Do I win a prize for being unbiased?
And that's the whole problem. 1000000 monkeys do not end up writing Shakespeare. Freedom of speech is great, and I think everyone should exercise it. But I'll get my information from a more reliable source, thanks all the same.
Heh, I'm torn on the wikipedia. I think it's a great project, and that the best way to store the sum of human knowledge is to allow all humans to contribute.
Still, whenever I stumble across it (through Google, I never go there willingly), I always find myself looking further to confirm what I read. It's a source I just don't trust, for the fact that it allows all humans to contribute, and most humans don't know much about anything.
So it's biggest strength is also the reason I don't use it. :)
I'll check it out. You've exposed a 1500-year gap in my knowledge of history in the area, and I'm not happy about that. I'll have to correct it. :) The questions that immediately come to mind are "If they were so prosperous, why have they lagged behind in industrializing? If Islam is [all this stuff], why are the Middle East countries seeped in monarchy and theocracy?" The answers will invariably be in the history. They always are...
I'll respond and try to give some wisdom, but you strike me a lot like I was when I was 16, in which case what I'm about to say won't be helpful at all. :)
How do I become an authority on "skepticism", or "pseudoscience", and who determines whether I am that authority? And even then, who determines the people that determine who is an authority?
It's not possible to "qualify" as an authority on these things, but it is possible to justify why your skepticism might be considered valid when another's wouldn't. You first have to show an advanced sense of logic and critical thinking. Skeptics frequently lack these two tools but try to use them anyway. Second, you need to have a certain critical mass of worldly experience on which to base your skepticism. No matter how much reading you can do (believe me, when I was 16 I'd read a lot), none of it matters next to someone who's done it. To show "authority" you must be able to show that your own worldly experience will validate competing claims next to someone else with worldly experience. That's where the original poster's argument about age comes into play.
If I were to write about the Harry Potter books, what kind of authority would I need? Would J.K. Rowling need to certify me? If I wanted to write about the history of the Star Wars saga, would I need a certification from Lucasfilms?
Aha, depends on what you're writing. If you're writing pure history, as in your second example, then the only authority you need is generally referred to as a bibliography. If, instead, you're trying to provide interpretation, you'll need literary experience (which you probably have) as well as worldly experience to back up any interpretations you might reach.
Without going too much into it, my wife, at age 15 had a great deal of worldly experience. Enough that I, at age 21, had a great deal of trust in her judgement. Moreso than I myself deserved at age 15, because I stayed couped up in the house reading heroic fantasy novels. At age 21, when I married my wife, who was age 15, she and I were approximately equal in mentality and worldly experience. So to answer the unspoken question, I wouldn't single you out for your age on the matter, because I of all people know that age is only an indicator, not an absolute measurement, of worldly experience. :)
Let me disagree with you here. What they had at that time was not feudalistic.
Hmm, probably not the best thing in the world, but I am basing my knowledge of Persians against Belisarius on a series of alternative fiction, aptly named "The Belisarius Series", by Baen books. Check it out on the Baen Free Library. There's a thorough exploration of Persian society, discussing the "Cold war" and the hot war that existed between Persia and Rome in that time period, and the specific period I'm referring to is before Mohammed and Islam. In fact, it's the century immediately prior to the establishment of Islam. :)
All I know about what happens after that is some basic stuff about Mohammed and his journey to Mecca (or was it Medina?). Nothing about political, social, or technological shifts, and certainly nothing economic. Much later the middle east is considered a barrier in reaching the spice countries rather than an economic partner or player.
And that, my friend, is the sum total of what I know that we've been talking about. :)
Ironic, you're correct, that the one country in the world bent on murdering as many Moslems as possible is also adhering more to Islam concepts than the Moslems they're slaughtering. (For the record, I'm an american)
Hm, you make a good point, and it's that point on which is founded the idea that you can rearrange all the letters in a word and as long as the first and last letters are left the same, you can still read it.
I think I was talking about the construction of the word, but I'll have to think on it some more. I wrote about reading the word, but I'm starting to think that right-to-left or left-to-right is in construction and not reading, which would make numbers right-to-left in spite of my post. :) (Although we still write the numbers left-to-write, they are constructed the other way. Or maybe not, like I said, I'll have to think on it some more)
In either case, you come out as somebody who's somewhat full of yourself.
He did say he was 16 pretty early in his post, how can you be surprised he's full of himself? Were you ever 16?
No, not at all IMO. These "islamic countries" are lagging behind in technology and education NOW. Its true. But that was not the case earlier. They had a glorious past when they were well advanced in these things.
Hmm, I admit I don't know much history of the Middle east from about 600AD 'till the renaissance, but I seem to recall that Persia (never called Persia!) spent a lot of time fighting Rome as a nation in decline, and then Rome started to decline. Rome took over 1000 years to die off, though. Anyway, last I heard about Persia being a relevant technological power was in the 500's AD when they were fighting the Roman general Belisarius. At that time, they were feudalistic.
Your point about Western society and the dark ages was a damn good one, though. :) About the only thing the renaissance actually did was make information more freely available. Otherwise, it wasn't a significant improvement in quality of living or standard of living.
Islam is very much against putting obstacles in reading or learing. Actually Quran start with the word "READ"("Iqra'h in Arabic) and free information is an essential thing according to Islam.
Considering then that Islam is the dominant religion *only* in countries that are behind the rest technologically, in spite of the fact that they are also the "cradle of civilization", and have therefore been populated longer than any western country, does that indicate that keeping knowledge hidden is actually condusive to building civilization?
Probably not a completely fair comparison, I'm sure. The Romans were fighting the Persians long before there was any monothestic cult grown to empire proportions, and the Persians were feudalistic while the Romans were "free market". Interesting, too, that Rome declined into feudalism..... I digress.
Numbers aren't read right to left any more than they're read left to right. :)
Consider the number 10. In order to read that as "ten", you have to read the 0 first. That's on the right. The 0 is in the ones place. Then you have to read the 1, which is in the tens place. Then you have to put this information together and get "ten", but you have to read it left-to-right to be able to read "ten". So, numbers are read in both directions.
Now, the same argument can be made about language. And it is true in some cases. Take the word "cases" like I just used. First you read "c" and think "Could sound like k or s". Then you read "a" and think "Could sound like a or a". Then you read "s" which only ever sounds like s. Then you read "e", which modifies "a" in this context. Then you read "s" again, which sounds like s but also modifies "e" in this context. THEN you put it together and read it left-to-right as "cases".
Numbers are read right-to-left-to-right. :)
Among many, here's a definition I found applicable:
Leading doesn't mean "the best", "the biggest", or whatever. KDE and Gnome are both leading desktops. Other, smaller ones, are also leading.
It can be said that KDE and Gnome are actually "following desktops", in that they're both following Windows. I tend to think that they both passed the point of following Windows awhile back and are both leading desktops, now.
But I doubt you'll ever see chips, drives, and robotics being built by companies if other companies can just steal their copy rights.
Sorry dude, but you're wrong. :) Chips, drives, and robotics are covered by patent law, which is related but separate from copyright law. So, remove copyrights, but you still have patents.
Patents are supposed to provide the inventor of a new object a monopoly on them.
Copyright is supposed to provide the author of a creative work a monopoly on the work.
Trade secrets are supposed to provide a way for companies to recoup damages when someone appropriates their "competitive edge".
Software is the bastard product that can be covered by all three of these particular sections of law that were never intended to apply concurrently to a single object.
So, APple Tax = "good", but Microsoft Tax = "bad"?
Three simple words: "Taxation without representation"