For SCO's claims to even hold water, SCO would have to have IP or copyright claims to IBM's products, such as AIX, OS/2, etc. They do not. Remember, just because SCO has IP rights on Unix, doesn't mean they, in turn, have rights to everything IBM has done to add value to Unix.
Yeah... thank god AT&T didn't release the original Unix under a viral license, huh?
Patents in a situation like this still provide one big benefit to their owners -- they maintain oligopolies.
Of course, one issue that is often ignored is that our economy probably wouldn't work very well without them. Oligopolies preserve the delicate balance between price fixing and all-out price wars. And just throwing out the patent system has other problems. I'm not sure that, say, RSA encryption would *ever* have been developed without a patent system to provide encouragement.
This a bad example since RSA was originally invented by a British intelligence agency. It was also eventually rediscovered by university professors, who may have done it just for the fame. But there are plenty of discoveries that wouldn't have been made if not for patents -- prescription drugs, for example.
You shouldn't have to pay for any spam. Anti-spam programs are irrelevant in this case because they don't prevent spam from being sent to you in the first place. The fact that they'll filter spam out of your inbox doesn't matter since the bandwidth has already been used to download the spam.
Anti-spam programs don't just work on your inbox. Right now you probably have a free mail account, maybe from a university or from Hotmail or from your ISP. Would you pay extra to get a mail account from a 3rd party provider if they provided anti-spam services on the server? Maybe you would if you had to pay for your bandwidth.
There's plenty of good technology out there. The most effective one is to give out a different e-mail address every time you sign up for a website or post to a mailing list. For $5 a month you could get unlimited disposable addresses. At least this technology existed during the dot.com bubble, but it died out because no one was willing to pay for it.
The IETF has standardized the SACRED protocol for securely downloading your credentials to an untrusted, public terminal. This is a technology that I will never ever use.
It probably (almost certainly, but IANAL) wouldn't work.
[Meaningless discussion of technical details omitted.]
The law exists both on paper and in spirit. When someone does something that violates the spirit of the law but not the letter of the law, that's called a loophole. Two interesting points about loopholes:
a) The courts don't entirely ignore the spirit of the law in their interpretations, especially when there is clear intent to exploit a loophole.
b) Congress is always free to amend the law, thus closing the loophole.
Therefore, the literal interpretation of your ridiculous tehnical scheme is meaningless.
So you think we should have all been nice polite british subjects a few hundred years back and happily paid for our stamps and tea and all the other "good laws" of George the III?
Realistically, yes. The American revolution was started by a subversive mob who deliberately spread lies and propaganda in order to further their pet cause. The fact that these deliberate distortions still live on today, is proof of the American public's desire to believe them.
For example, historians now agree that the Boston massacre was not really a massacre. An armed mob confronted a small group of British soldiers who merely fired in self defense. The tax on tea was not unreasonable. What is often not mentioned is that the British had already removed 90% of the taxes on other dry goods. The revolutionaries could hardly complain about the quantity of tax they paid, so they started complaining about the principle of the thing. Hence, "no taxation without representation."
In many aspects, the American revolutionaries weren't all that different from/. readers, in the sense that they were extremists who believed in Libertarianism at any cost.
You have read about Enron, Tyco, Global Crossing, Adelphia?? Those VP and executive types really know how to run a business for the benefit of all the employees and stock holders.
The point is, they care about the bottom line, or at least what they tell people is the bottom line after they finish inflating their earnings.
These executives aren't necessarily stupid. Some of them are con artists. Others were merely forced into a catch-22 due to the out-of-control economy. I blame Greenspan for not having the guts to put his money where is mouth is by pre-emptively raising interest rates.
I agree with you about the workplace security thing, but not the outsourcing. I don't think VPs are necessarily dumb, but they are usually very busy. The security thing is a distraction. They initiate the program but they don't want to keep monitoring it.
But when it comes to the bottom line, it's something they can't ignore. They are not going to implement a cost saving program and then ignore it. If the foreign office ceases to become a cost savings, they will probably axe it.
If you're going to be a skeptic, you ought to try applying Occam's razor.
Your example involves a VP who is just a mindless sheep. He apparently got promoted to VP because they ran out of space in the mail room. He reads in a magazine that (imagine this) he can save money by paying people less. What a ridiculous idea... As everyone on/. knows, counter-intuitive business cases are *always* the best!
So the employees at his company fudge the numbers to make it look like you can save money by paying people less. Can you believe the gulliblity of this guy? Fortunately, after he implements the policy, he kicks back and never looks at the balance sheet again. The pioneering programmers rapidly drive up consulting prices without facing cut-throat competition from the other 1 billion citizens of India. (After all, it worked so well for Mexico.) Hooray! Hoorah! The economy is saved and the naysayers triumph.
Why do all/. business cases require either the customer or the competition to be as dumb as a post?
I guess you are a conservative eh? You can tell where someone is on the econopolitcal spectrum by their opinion of media. Conservatives bash CNN; liberals bash FOX; and people left of left (ie. left to far left; like me) bash all media cuz they are elitist and controlled by a few groups.
I already said I was centrist. I don't bash CNN for "being too liberal". I don't have the opportunity to bash Fox News since I don't get that station. My bashing of CNN is based on the fact that in order to get "balanced" opinions on an issue, they get guests from both extremes and let them yell at each other. The CBC is not immune from this either. At one point I remember they were doing a piece on viagra and they felt obligated to give equal time to a woman who was anti-viagra. She had nothing particularly insightful to say, but I imagine she was the only anti-viagra person they could find. Except for the fact that... the opportunity for an individual to succeed can result in greater harm to others.
You're really evading the question here. "Capitalism causes harm to society" is not a refutation of "Capitalism offers anyone the opportunity to become filthy rich." Socialists do NOT believe in economic collapse (I think you have socialists and anarchists mixed up, although we are allied quite often:) ).
You may disagree, but most people now agree socialism tends to cause economic collapse. That's why I said there was a difference between believing in X and believing in something that tends to cause X. I'm going to start up a left-wing technology website and hopefully I'll get a chance to interview RMS one of these days. I'll ask him about your concerns.
I have heard quotes from RMS to the effect of "If kids in third world countries don't have access to cheap software, how will they ever get jobs in the future?" It didn't occur to him to explain where the jobs of the future are going to come from. The only reason USA is even sustaining itself is because: (i) foreigners invest a lot in USA (without this, USA will have problems since it has negative trade with nearly all countries),
I don't think this can be true. (ii) USA, like all capitalism-worshippers, is mortgaging its future for the present via debt
Does that really have a lot to do with it? They basically had the budget balanced in 1994. It's Bush that took them back into debt. "My claim is that the benefit to the owner is short-term only. Reduced costs are only profitable when you have a small number of competitors."
Why? Why are reduced costs only profitable with small # of competitors?
Because with a small # of competitors you can form an industry cartel to keep margins high. BTW, what's your definition of short-term? 1-3 years? 10 years?
1-3 years should be typical. Because if what you are saying is true, companies that out-source will run into problems after the short-term? It's a good test to see if your theory is correct.
It's not the individual companies that cut costs that will suffer. It's when whole industries cut costs that the member companies will suffer. The 1-3 year lag is the time it takes for the industry to adjust. I think you are wrong. Well, if anything, your examples are poor. Netscape and Corel were big-time losers at that time. They were getting killed and simply went into Linux.
Corel is a bandwagon jumper. They didn't just go into Linux. They also got into Java, network toasters, office suites, etc. They didn't open source their office suite, but they soon learned that Linux users weren't good customers. Netscape went open source when there was still hope. At that time, lots of people still believed that you could make money going open source. The CEO of Netscape even wrote an article listing all the possible open source business models (that was posted on/.). I remember o
What we need is to buy out vmware like we did with blender.
Yeah, lets... but first we need to drive VMware into bankruptcy so they'll accept our terms. "Hey, guys... thanks for developing this great app, but we don't need you any more. Take a hike!"
I agree that WW1 makes no sense at all, however your statement that WW2 only makes sense in context with WW1 is a bit of a tautology. Doesn't all of history only make sense in the context of what came before? Isn't all history predicated on prehistoric man coming out of the caves.
In WW1, I think most of Europe did want war. There was this ridiculous attitude of "The men will look good in uniform. The war will be jolly good fun for a few months and it'll all be over by Christmas." (At least this is based on the recruitment posters I have seen and my memory of grade 11 history.) Your claim was that most Europeans wanted WW2. Sounds to me like only Germany and Italy (the aggressors) did.
England didn't want to fight WW2. They didn't participate in the Spanish Civil War and they were prepared to let Hitler keep Czechoslovakia. However, when he invaded Poland they recognized that Hitler could not be left unchecked and they were forced to act. Australia and Canada (excluding Quebec) agreed. The US government wanted to join the war, but they couldn't get the support of the American people. That's why they allowed Japan to attack them and used this as a pretense for fighting Germany.
Hmm quite a failed logic. Bin Laden and Co. don't shave because they believe it's against their religion. If they don't shave, why would they buy Gillete Mach 3s?
That's why they need the cameras. If an unshaven guy who looks like a terrorist buys a razor then it must be for some nefarious purpose, such as sticking it in Halloween candy.
WWII and WWI are exactly the same thing, just there was a 10 (more or less) year cease fire. Once you start looking at WWII is a correction for all the things done wrong after WWI things start making more sense. Considering the destruction after WWI, who would have thought that Europe's major powers would be ready and willing for war so soon after. That is I'm intentionaly confusing them because I find it a lot more convient to think of them as one thing and not seperate wars - which they were not.
I'm aware of the fact that support for Hitler in Germany was partly derived from the crushing war reparations after WW1, however to call them the same war is silly. In regards to WW1, I agree with your earlier statement about most Europeans wanting war. But to say that about WW2 doesn't make sense!!
France clearly was unprepared for war, as they surrendered in about 5 minutes. Russia had a non-aggression pact with Germany, so I assume they didn't want war. England initially followed a policy of appeasement, so clearly they didn't want war. The only ones who really wanted war were the Germans (and Churchill). England only declared war on Germany once it became clear that there was no possible alternative.
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For SCO's claims to even hold water, SCO would have to have IP or copyright claims to IBM's products, such as AIX, OS/2, etc. They do not. Remember, just because SCO has IP rights on Unix, doesn't mean they, in turn, have rights to everything IBM has done to add value to Unix.
Yeah... thank god AT&T didn't release the original Unix under a viral license, huh?
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Oh, so you're saying that software patents are bad. That wasn't exactly clear from your previous message.
BTW, I don't think the example of drug patents is a matter of little importance.
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You know, I read your comment 3 times and I still have no idea what you're trying to say.
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Yes, oligarchies cause price fixing, but the fixed price is generally lower than if there was a monopoly. Hence, they provide a balance.
/. readers who believe that music is not drastically overpriced.
As for the RIAA, I may be one of the few
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Do you have any idea how difficult it is to write a security exploit that would work on a computer with a readonly file system?
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Patents in a situation like this still provide one big benefit to their owners -- they maintain oligopolies.
Of course, one issue that is often ignored is that our economy probably wouldn't work very well without them. Oligopolies preserve the delicate balance between price fixing and all-out price wars.
And just throwing out the patent system has other problems. I'm not sure that, say, RSA encryption would *ever* have been developed without a patent system to provide encouragement.
This a bad example since RSA was originally invented by a British intelligence agency. It was also eventually rediscovered by university professors, who may have done it just for the fame. But there are plenty of discoveries that wouldn't have been made if not for patents -- prescription drugs, for example.
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AFAIK (from watching Law&Order and such), jury nullification is something juries sometimes do, not something juries have a legal right to do.
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You shouldn't have to pay for any spam. Anti-spam programs are irrelevant in this case because they don't prevent spam from being sent to you in the first place. The fact that they'll filter spam out of your inbox doesn't matter since the bandwidth has already been used to download the spam.
Anti-spam programs don't just work on your inbox. Right now you probably have a free mail account, maybe from a university or from Hotmail or from your ISP. Would you pay extra to get a mail account from a 3rd party provider if they provided anti-spam services on the server? Maybe you would if you had to pay for your bandwidth.
There's plenty of good technology out there. The most effective one is to give out a different e-mail address every time you sign up for a website or post to a mailing list. For $5 a month you could get unlimited disposable addresses. At least this technology existed during the dot.com bubble, but it died out because no one was willing to pay for it.
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Before this is possible we need some kind of payment-negotiation protocol. I am certainly not going to pay for megabytes of spam that I get per week.
Maybe if you had to pay for spam you received, you would choose to pay for anti-spam technologies instead.
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The IETF has standardized the SACRED protocol for securely downloading your credentials to an untrusted, public terminal. This is a technology that I will never ever use.
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Remember, it is possible to make money with open-source software (or even free-as-in-beer software).
It's possible to make money begging for spare change in the street, but that doesn't mean I'd want to.
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It probably (almost certainly, but IANAL) wouldn't work.
[Meaningless discussion of technical details omitted.]
The law exists both on paper and in spirit. When someone does something that violates the spirit of the law but not the letter of the law, that's called a loophole. Two interesting points about loopholes:
a) The courts don't entirely ignore the spirit of the law in their interpretations, especially when there is clear intent to exploit a loophole.
b) Congress is always free to amend the law, thus closing the loophole.
Therefore, the literal interpretation of your ridiculous tehnical scheme is meaningless.
-a
So you think we should have all been nice polite british subjects a few hundred years back and happily paid for our stamps and tea and all the other "good laws" of George the III?
Realistically, yes. The American revolution was started by a subversive mob who deliberately spread lies and propaganda in order to further their pet cause. The fact that these deliberate distortions still live on today, is proof of the American public's desire to believe them.
For example, historians now agree that the Boston massacre was not really a massacre. An armed mob confronted a small group of British soldiers who merely fired in self defense. The tax on tea was not unreasonable. What is often not mentioned is that the British had already removed 90% of the taxes on other dry goods. The revolutionaries could hardly complain about the quantity of tax they paid, so they started complaining about the principle of the thing. Hence, "no taxation without representation."
In many aspects, the American revolutionaries weren't all that different from
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Amazing how a set of lucid answers like these can make your average /. thread look like a bunch of squabbling 2 year olds.
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If anyone thinks that piracy does not affect everyday people trying to succeed in business, they need look no further.
The question is whether piracy affects everyday people who are trying to drive companies *out* of business. (Companies such as Microsoft.)
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Now I have a reason to take my comp to church!
Or a reason not to go to church... no thanks, mom. I'm just going to sit here in front of my computer and read my, uh... "bible".
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You have read about Enron, Tyco, Global Crossing, Adelphia?? Those VP and executive types really know how to run a business for the benefit of all the employees and stock holders.
The point is, they care about the bottom line, or at least what they tell people is the bottom line after they finish inflating their earnings.
These executives aren't necessarily stupid. Some of them are con artists. Others were merely forced into a catch-22 due to the out-of-control economy. I blame Greenspan for not having the guts to put his money where is mouth is by pre-emptively raising interest rates.
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I agree with you about the workplace security thing, but not the outsourcing. I don't think VPs are necessarily dumb, but they are usually very busy. The security thing is a distraction. They initiate the program but they don't want to keep monitoring it.
But when it comes to the bottom line, it's something they can't ignore. They are not going to implement a cost saving program and then ignore it. If the foreign office ceases to become a cost savings, they will probably axe it.
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Please?!?
/. knows, counter-intuitive business cases are *always* the best!
/. business cases require either the customer or the competition to be as dumb as a post?
If you're going to be a skeptic, you ought to try applying Occam's razor.
Your example involves a VP who is just a mindless sheep. He apparently got promoted to VP because they ran out of space in the mail room. He reads in a magazine that (imagine this) he can save money by paying people less. What a ridiculous idea... As everyone on
So the employees at his company fudge the numbers to make it look like you can save money by paying people less. Can you believe the gulliblity of this guy? Fortunately, after he implements the policy, he kicks back and never looks at the balance sheet again. The pioneering programmers rapidly drive up consulting prices without facing cut-throat competition from the other 1 billion citizens of India. (After all, it worked so well for Mexico.) Hooray! Hoorah! The economy is saved and the naysayers triumph.
Why do all
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how about "thirty six trillion" ?
Damn... I was betting that this remark would come within the first 3 posts. Looks like it took about 5.
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I guess you are a conservative eh? You can tell where someone is on the econopolitcal spectrum by their opinion of media. Conservatives bash CNN; liberals bash FOX; and people left of left (ie. left to far left; like me) bash all media cuz they are elitist and controlled by a few groups.
I already said I was centrist. I don't bash CNN for "being too liberal". I don't have the opportunity to bash Fox News since I don't get that station. My bashing of CNN is based on the fact that in order to get "balanced" opinions on an issue, they get guests from both extremes and let them yell at each other. The CBC is not immune from this either. At one point I remember they were doing a piece on viagra and they felt obligated to give equal time to a woman who was anti-viagra. She had nothing particularly insightful to say, but I imagine she was the only anti-viagra person they could find.
Except for the fact that... the opportunity for an individual to succeed can result in greater harm to others.
You're really evading the question here. "Capitalism causes harm to society" is not a refutation of "Capitalism offers anyone the opportunity to become filthy rich."
Socialists do NOT believe in economic collapse (I think you have socialists and anarchists mixed up, although we are allied quite often
You may disagree, but most people now agree socialism tends to cause economic collapse. That's why I said there was a difference between believing in X and believing in something that tends to cause X.
I'm going to start up a left-wing technology website and hopefully I'll get a chance to interview RMS one of these days. I'll ask him about your concerns.
I have heard quotes from RMS to the effect of "If kids in third world countries don't have access to cheap software, how will they ever get jobs in the future?" It didn't occur to him to explain where the jobs of the future are going to come from.
The only reason USA is even sustaining itself is because: (i) foreigners invest a lot in USA (without this, USA will have problems since it has negative trade with nearly all countries),
I don't think this can be true.
(ii) USA, like all capitalism-worshippers, is mortgaging its future for the present via debt
Does that really have a lot to do with it? They basically had the budget balanced in 1994. It's Bush that took them back into debt.
"My claim is that the benefit to the owner is short-term only. Reduced costs are only profitable when you have a small number of competitors."
Why? Why are reduced costs only profitable with small # of competitors?
Because with a small # of competitors you can form an industry cartel to keep margins high.
BTW, what's your definition of short-term? 1-3 years? 10 years?
1-3 years should be typical.
Because if what you are saying is true, companies that out-source will run into problems after the short-term? It's a good test to see if your theory is correct.
It's not the individual companies that cut costs that will suffer. It's when whole industries cut costs that the member companies will suffer. The 1-3 year lag is the time it takes for the industry to adjust.
I think you are wrong. Well, if anything, your examples are poor. Netscape and Corel were big-time losers at that time. They were getting killed and simply went into Linux.
Corel is a bandwagon jumper. They didn't just go into Linux. They also got into Java, network toasters, office suites, etc. They didn't open source their office suite, but they soon learned that Linux users weren't good customers. Netscape went open source when there was still hope. At that time, lots of people still believed that you could make money going open source. The CEO of Netscape even wrote an article listing all the possible open source business models (that was posted on
What we need is to buy out vmware like we did with blender.
Yeah, lets... but first we need to drive VMware into bankruptcy so they'll accept our terms. "Hey, guys... thanks for developing this great app, but we don't need you any more. Take a hike!"
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I agree that WW1 makes no sense at all, however your statement that WW2 only makes sense in context with WW1 is a bit of a tautology. Doesn't all of history only make sense in the context of what came before? Isn't all history predicated on prehistoric man coming out of the caves.
In WW1, I think most of Europe did want war. There was this ridiculous attitude of "The men will look good in uniform. The war will be jolly good fun for a few months and it'll all be over by Christmas." (At least this is based on the recruitment posters I have seen and my memory of grade 11 history.) Your claim was that most Europeans wanted WW2. Sounds to me like only Germany and Italy (the aggressors) did.
England didn't want to fight WW2. They didn't participate in the Spanish Civil War and they were prepared to let Hitler keep Czechoslovakia. However, when he invaded Poland they recognized that Hitler could not be left unchecked and they were forced to act. Australia and Canada (excluding Quebec) agreed. The US government wanted to join the war, but they couldn't get the support of the American people. That's why they allowed Japan to attack them and used this as a pretense for fighting Germany.
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Hmm quite a failed logic. Bin Laden and Co. don't shave because they believe it's against their religion. If they don't shave, why would they buy Gillete Mach 3s?
That's why they need the cameras. If an unshaven guy who looks like a terrorist buys a razor then it must be for some nefarious purpose, such as sticking it in Halloween candy.
-a
WWII and WWI are exactly the same thing, just there was a 10 (more or less) year cease fire. Once you start looking at WWII is a correction for all the things done wrong after WWI things start making more sense. Considering the destruction after WWI, who would have thought that Europe's major powers would be ready and willing for war so soon after. That is I'm intentionaly confusing them because I find it a lot more convient to think of them as one thing and not seperate wars - which they were not.
I'm aware of the fact that support for Hitler in Germany was partly derived from the crushing war reparations after WW1, however to call them the same war is silly. In regards to WW1, I agree with your earlier statement about most Europeans wanting war. But to say that about WW2 doesn't make sense!!
France clearly was unprepared for war, as they surrendered in about 5 minutes. Russia had a non-aggression pact with Germany, so I assume they didn't want war. England initially followed a policy of appeasement, so clearly they didn't want war. The only ones who really wanted war were the Germans (and Churchill). England only declared war on Germany once it became clear that there was no possible alternative.
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