Actually it is, just click on any of the chapters. The full text is available all the way through the epilogue. I'm guessing that message was put there some time ago while they were still gradually releasing chapters. Someone probably forgot to delete the comment.
Seems like/. has this outsourcing discussion every other day, if not more often. Try this instead, the Dallas FRB's Appreciating The Churn:
What is the Churn?
In the 1930s, Joseph A. Schumpeter advanced the idea that an economy doesn't grow but evolves as people discover new ways to improve their standards of living. The capaitalist economy continuously recreates itself as resources are redirected to new and more profitable uses. Schumpeter called this process "creative destruction." Today "the churn" is sometimes used to describe the same principle. Implicit in either term is the paradox that Schumpeter uncovered: innovation--the manifestation of the individual's quest for gain--is central to economic progress but, at the same time, is the cause of most economic difficulties.
Make sure to check out the related articles off to the margin there - "The Upside of Downsizing" and "The Churn--The Paradox of Progress".
This means that if Microsoft's source code was leaked, and products were made based on that source code, it would be fair in Objectivism; Microsoft failed to keep the information secret, now it has to eat its lunch.
I guess I just don't understand this comparison, I think you have it reversed. Bad example, but if Microsoft bombed Apple Computer to destroy their competing OS, that would be considered unfair competition. If someone forecefully steals and/or leaks protected source code (property) it is completely against objectivism to make use of it as an ill gotten gain.
That also means that any rival who cares to can freely reverse-engineer any part of the operating system without fear of reprisal; that's just another form of competition.
In fact, that above statement just argued against things like copyright, patents, and trade secrets; those are results of government intervention, and not true to the objectivist morality.
Contrary to some popular beliefs, objectivism does not equal anarchism. I'm not sure why you think objectivism would rule out IP law. The protection of private property, all property including in particular the productive products of the mind, is a basic tenet of the philosophy, not to mention an original part of the constitution. IP law is the very codification of this belief and possibly the single most important contributor to America's unequalled economic success. Now, whether IP law has gotten too powerful and long lasting to the point of no longer simply fostering innovation and creating perpetual government created monopoly is a distinct problem that seems to be getting worse, and this would definitely be considered unfair competition under objectivism.
Now getting at your point about reverse engineering, thats a tough call. Clearly all invention is to some extent inspired by prior work. And if someone creates something functionally similar but in a significantly different manner, that would be fine. The problem there is you create a seriously difficult judgement call for either individuals or the court to make about just how original such a technology is.
It's one of the oldest axioms on the net that when Hitler/Nazis/Fascism is mentioned, the discussion is officially over. I suppose it holds as well when Islamofascism is used as a serious comparison to something obviously in a different ballpark.
Capitalism entails free competition, which means the freedom to better your rivals--even to the point of putting them out of business. Barring physical force or fraud, there is no such thing as "unfair" competition; there is only competition that your rivals may not be good enough to match. There is no such thing as "predatory pricing"; there are only prices that your competitors may not be efficient enough to meet.
Good call. I reflexively thought this was a dupe since I submitted a nearly identical article last November.
Finally, a chance to rant about best buy!
on
Best Buy Sued By Ohio
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
This story really shouldn't surprise anyone. My personal policy is this: never, ever, under any circumstances, talk to any salesperson at Best Buy. Here are a few of my worst anectodes:
1. While laptop shopping I asked one of the computer people how much video memory a particular model had (it wasn't clearly stated on the tag). After looking it up on the computer he replies "Ah, here it is, um, it has eh 64, um M.....B, yeah that's it". Now it's hard to convey here in writing, but it was obvious from the tone of his voice and the way he said it that he had absolutely no idea what MB stood for. Long story short, I subsequently bought a laptop from CompUSA.
2. While waiting at a counter in the computer section, I overhear a 'salesperson' talking with a customer who had asked if he knew the difference between a serial port and a USB port. He did not.
3. Another conversation overheard, a 'salesperson' clearly did not know the difference between a hard drive or any other drive on the computer, nor their relative capacities.
4. A nightmare situation evolved after I foolishly tried to sign up for SBC Yahoo DSL service at a Best Buy. (hint, just go straight to SBC or Yahoo if you want this) The deal called for a free starter kit which included a modem to be provided by the store. Unfotunately they gave me a cable modem and I didn't realize it (I'll take some tiny amount of blame for that one) until I got home. It turns out they didn't even have the DSL modems in stock (and never did) and that SBC will send it out later. This guy claimed to have the service himself at home - which leads me to wonder if he even knows the difference between DSL and cable? Doubtful.
in upscale Troy, Michigan (my home state). I've been there dozens of times and never really even noticed that one fairly normal sized shopping mall needed 3 of these things, amazing. Reminds me of this Simpsons quote:
"You better hurry up tho, kid, in a few moments this place is becoming a StarBucks."
I too am a Car and Driver subscriber, and you can now check out their newest offshoot magazine Boost - dedicated exclusively to compact sports car tuning. Interestingly I saw no mention of it in C&D, and ran across it randomly at the magazine rack. Worthwhile for all the real gear heads out there.
Excellent advice, another crucial piece of software I never run windows without is Mike Lin's Startup Monitor. Which will pop up a dialogue box and notify you if a program attempts to install itself to run on startup. You can then allow or disallow. This is good for stopping all kind of annoying things from happening to your PC.
Re:screw it, use driverloader
on
Linux Unwired
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· Score: 1
I have a Belkin card and wanted to get Linux working with wireless on my IBM Thinkpad which currently runs Windows 2000 quite well. I loaded up Mepis Linux and then set about getting the WiFi card working. My Belkin F5D6020 uses the Atmel AT76C5 chipset which as luck would have it has a set of open source drivers over on sourceforge. I thought I was golden until I started reading the directions...step 1 of about a dozen steps was: recompile kernel. Being a noob, I quickly decided this just wasn't going to happen. So I have pretty much given up on it till now. I'll give driverload a try. Otherwise it's just wait for a distro with full support or maybe by a new card that is known to work.
This pretty much says it all. I think people underestimate how carefully the CD audio standard was chosen all those many years ago. Its a great example of a technology so well engineered from the beginning that there just won't be a good reason to replace it anytime soon. Its like the oil driven internal combusion engine - its lasted over 100 years and its just not going to be replaced anytime soon until we really need to.
As a recovering audiophile (I'm in a 12 step program) I sampled SACD back when it was new, on some of the priciest audio gear around (B&W Nautilus speakers, monoblock amps, Sony's flagship $3000 SACD player) and was sadly unimpressed. I heard no difference, and thus correctly predicted its non-adoption by anyone but the audio zealots.
DVD-A and other multichannel audio formats are just not something the general public is interested in. They're gimmicky, simple as that. Aside from the gee-whiz demo in the store, they offer nothing to the average music listener. And it goes back to the main point, stereo audio when properly done, does an outstanding job presenting an audio programe. The only honest rationale for DVD-A is so they can sell more speakers and surround receivers.
In my personal expience if you want a drastic increase in audio fidelity, you have to find well mastered recordings or remastered reissues. The mastering process does more for the final product than the format. For my money the remastered Muddy Waters Folk Singer album is without a doubt the finest audio recording I've ever listened to.
The next big improvement is to go out and buy a pair of good speakers (no Bose do not count), my personal favs are B&W, but that's just me. I guarantee you'll get 10x the improvement than from any other part of the chain.
I am not telling you anything, I was referring to the conclusion of the paper, which despite its length, is a very good read. No, the loss of jobs is not in your heads, the point is that jobs constantly turn over, jobs lost in one industry are replaced in another. This is understandably stressful on those displaced, but accepting this and adapting is a far quicker and less painful solution than trying to legislate and prolong the inevitable.
I have been called a selfish prick before, but I've never wished death on someone in order to take their job. That's just cold! I'm not sure what makes you think I am a baby boomer, since I'm in my twenties, and an unemployed recent graduate of a masters program with no job for you to take. Sorry!
First, I do not accept the negative connotation attached to the word 'selfish', so I will settle for just 'prick'. And while it may or may not be true that I am in fact a prick, I'm not sure what in my comment would lead you to this belief, since I was merely pointing out the text that was the origin for the parent posters reference. Does facing the hard truth make me a prick? Not that it matters. And since you're obviously a big Rand fan, here's another key quote "check your premises", there is no such thing as rational group interest, there is only a collection of individually determined self interests.
For those wishing to enlighten themselves further with the truth, see the the Dallas FRB's site for a summary of the Churn, here is a direct link to the PDF of the original 1992 annual report which describes it in depth. The outsourcing boogeyman is BS, plain and simple, accept it.
Mr. Burns: "Oh, so Mother Nature needs a favor? Well, maybe she should have thought of that when she was besetting us with droughts and floods and poison monkeys. Nature started the fight for survival and she wants to quit because she's losing? Well, I say Hard cheese!"
I just wanted to point out that while the Insight is a very compact car, the Prius is actually quite large compared to it, plus some of the other comparisons going on here such as the Civic and Escorts. The Prius has the interior volume of a midsize car, close to a Camry in fact, despite smaller exterior dimensions. Just something important to remember when doing comparisons.
As far as not getting the mileage the EPA says, this is old news if you follow the auto industry. This was evident from the first when the auto mags started testing these things. Is this a bad thing, I don't think so. The technology still has room to grow, and who knows in a few years they could be posting really big numbers. That's the price of being an early adopter. I know the feeling well, having spent $600 on a first generation DVD player when the format was new only a few years ago, only to watch prices drop to below $100. If you think the technology is worthy, even if it doesn't make sense now, then think of hybrids as an ivestment. I think the market has shown that people like the idea of these vehicles and are willing to pay a premium for them.
It is extremely unlikley you will 'save money on gas' so to speak. When you factor in higher maintenance costs, higher insurance, and the price premium, trust me, with gas as cheap as it is, you're not likely to make it up. Now that the tax credits are in danger, it may be even worse moneywise.
Other posters are right, if you really want to save on gas, buy a compact car with a manual transmission, and drive in a fuel saving way. And would it kill you to check you tire pressure?! Oh and the environmental thing, is a pretty minor point to me. My Corolla was a ULEV which is pretty darn good, not that pollution is a big problem anyway.
We encourage our employees, in addition to their regular projects, to spend 20% of their time working on what they think will most benefit Google. This empowers them to be more creative and innovative. Many of our significant advances have happened in this manner. For example, AdSense for content and Google News were both prototyped in "20% time." Most risky projects fizzle, often teaching us something. Others succeed and become attractive businesses.
This has to be the most interesting thing I read in the entire report (300% reveneue growth was a close 2nd). Anyone experienced in large corporations and how they operate can instantly see the incredible value in this policy. If this isn't a formula for consistent innovation, I don't know what is. Most firms are dead set on keeping their employees busyworked to death 100% of the time if not more. But innovation doesn't come from people doing things prescribed by their managers, it comes from people just spending time thinking about problems. I've read dozens of management articles that talk about how hard it is to foster a creative culture - well I think the answer is right here. It might have been too simple and direct for their consultant minds to comprehend though.
Although we may discuss long term trends in our business, we do not plan to give earnings guidance in the traditional sense. We are not able to predict our business within a narrow range for each quarter. We recognize that our duty is to advance our shareholders' interests, and we believe that artificially creating short term target numbers serves our shareholders poorly. We would prefer not to be asked to make such predictions, and if asked we will respectfully decline. A management team distracted by a series of short term targets is as pointless as a dieter stepping on a scale every half hour.
The public benefit is clearly the 'desired outcome', and the ownership is the 'carrot'. But I'm not so sure I'd say it places a strong second, the two are co-dependant. You don't get public benefits without a cost, and you can't go around handing out perpetual monopolies at the expense of progress. I think you're right though, the public good should take a slight lead, more like a close second.
Slashdot Mirror
Actually it is, just click on any of the chapters. The full text is available all the way through the epilogue. I'm guessing that message was put there some time ago while they were still gradually releasing chapters. Someone probably forgot to delete the comment.
Everyone knows that quote originated with Star Trek VI.
Now getting at your point about reverse engineering, thats a tough call. Clearly all invention is to some extent inspired by prior work. And if someone creates something functionally similar but in a significantly different manner, that would be fine. The problem there is you create a seriously difficult judgement call for either individuals or the court to make about just how original such a technology is.
It's one of the oldest axioms on the net that when Hitler/Nazis/Fascism is mentioned, the discussion is officially over. I suppose it holds as well when Islamofascism is used as a serious comparison to something obviously in a different ballpark.
Good call. I reflexively thought this was a dupe since I submitted a nearly identical article last November.
This story really shouldn't surprise anyone. My personal policy is this: never, ever, under any circumstances, talk to any salesperson at Best Buy. Here are a few of my worst anectodes:
1. While laptop shopping I asked one of the computer people how much video memory a particular model had (it wasn't clearly stated on the tag). After looking it up on the computer he replies "Ah, here it is, um, it has eh 64, um M.....B, yeah that's it". Now it's hard to convey here in writing, but it was obvious from the tone of his voice and the way he said it that he had absolutely no idea what MB stood for. Long story short, I subsequently bought a laptop from CompUSA.
2. While waiting at a counter in the computer section, I overhear a 'salesperson' talking with a customer who had asked if he knew the difference between a serial port and a USB port. He did not.
3. Another conversation overheard, a 'salesperson' clearly did not know the difference between a hard drive or any other drive on the computer, nor their relative capacities.
4. A nightmare situation evolved after I foolishly tried to sign up for SBC Yahoo DSL service at a Best Buy. (hint, just go straight to SBC or Yahoo if you want this) The deal called for a free starter kit which included a modem to be provided by the store. Unfotunately they gave me a cable modem and I didn't realize it (I'll take some tiny amount of blame for that one) until I got home. It turns out they didn't even have the DSL modems in stock (and never did) and that SBC will send it out later. This guy claimed to have the service himself at home - which leads me to wonder if he even knows the difference between DSL and cable? Doubtful.
3 Applications should be all anyone ever really needs anyway!
Actually, not to be picky, but that's a contradiction.
in upscale Troy, Michigan (my home state). I've been there dozens of times and never really even noticed that one fairly normal sized shopping mall needed 3 of these things, amazing. Reminds me of this Simpsons quote:
"You better hurry up tho, kid, in a few moments this place is becoming a StarBucks."
I too am a Car and Driver subscriber, and you can now check out their newest offshoot magazine Boost - dedicated exclusively to compact sports car tuning. Interestingly I saw no mention of it in C&D, and ran across it randomly at the magazine rack. Worthwhile for all the real gear heads out there.
Excellent advice, another crucial piece of software I never run windows without is Mike Lin's Startup Monitor. Which will pop up a dialogue box and notify you if a program attempts to install itself to run on startup. You can then allow or disallow. This is good for stopping all kind of annoying things from happening to your PC.
I have a Belkin card and wanted to get Linux working with wireless on my IBM Thinkpad which currently runs Windows 2000 quite well. I loaded up Mepis Linux and then set about getting the WiFi card working. My Belkin F5D6020 uses the Atmel AT76C5 chipset which as luck would have it has a set of open source drivers over on sourceforge. I thought I was golden until I started reading the directions...step 1 of about a dozen steps was: recompile kernel. Being a noob, I quickly decided this just wasn't going to happen. So I have pretty much given up on it till now. I'll give driverload a try. Otherwise it's just wait for a distro with full support or maybe by a new card that is known to work.
and unbridled competition are once again evident as Yahoo has used its monopoly power to force an additional 96MB of space on us all!
As a recovering audiophile (I'm in a 12 step program) I sampled SACD back when it was new, on some of the priciest audio gear around (B&W Nautilus speakers, monoblock amps, Sony's flagship $3000 SACD player) and was sadly unimpressed. I heard no difference, and thus correctly predicted its non-adoption by anyone but the audio zealots.
DVD-A and other multichannel audio formats are just not something the general public is interested in. They're gimmicky, simple as that. Aside from the gee-whiz demo in the store, they offer nothing to the average music listener. And it goes back to the main point, stereo audio when properly done, does an outstanding job presenting an audio programe. The only honest rationale for DVD-A is so they can sell more speakers and surround receivers.
In my personal expience if you want a drastic increase in audio fidelity, you have to find well mastered recordings or remastered reissues. The mastering process does more for the final product than the format. For my money the remastered Muddy Waters Folk Singer album is without a doubt the finest audio recording I've ever listened to.
The next big improvement is to go out and buy a pair of good speakers (no Bose do not count), my personal favs are B&W, but that's just me. I guarantee you'll get 10x the improvement than from any other part of the chain.
I have been called a selfish prick before, but I've never wished death on someone in order to take their job. That's just cold! I'm not sure what makes you think I am a baby boomer, since I'm in my twenties, and an unemployed recent graduate of a masters program with no job for you to take. Sorry!
First, I do not accept the negative connotation attached to the word 'selfish', so I will settle for just 'prick'. And while it may or may not be true that I am in fact a prick, I'm not sure what in my comment would lead you to this belief, since I was merely pointing out the text that was the origin for the parent posters reference. Does facing the hard truth make me a prick? Not that it matters. And since you're obviously a big Rand fan, here's another key quote "check your premises", there is no such thing as rational group interest, there is only a collection of individually determined self interests.
For those wishing to enlighten themselves further with the truth, see the the Dallas FRB's site for a summary of the Churn, here is a direct link to the PDF of the original 1992 annual report which describes it in depth. The outsourcing boogeyman is BS, plain and simple, accept it.
"don't be evil" for anyone who didn't understand it at the time.
Reminded me of this obligatory Simpsons Quote:
Mr. Burns: "Oh, so Mother Nature needs a favor? Well, maybe she should have thought of that when she was besetting us with droughts and floods and poison monkeys. Nature started the fight for survival and she wants to quit because she's losing? Well, I say Hard cheese!"
~Episode 4F17 "The Old Man and the Lisa"
I just wanted to point out that while the Insight is a very compact car, the Prius is actually quite large compared to it, plus some of the other comparisons going on here such as the Civic and Escorts. The Prius has the interior volume of a midsize car, close to a Camry in fact, despite smaller exterior dimensions. Just something important to remember when doing comparisons.
As far as not getting the mileage the EPA says, this is old news if you follow the auto industry. This was evident from the first when the auto mags started testing these things. Is this a bad thing, I don't think so. The technology still has room to grow, and who knows in a few years they could be posting really big numbers. That's the price of being an early adopter. I know the feeling well, having spent $600 on a first generation DVD player when the format was new only a few years ago, only to watch prices drop to below $100. If you think the technology is worthy, even if it doesn't make sense now, then think of hybrids as an ivestment. I think the market has shown that people like the idea of these vehicles and are willing to pay a premium for them.
It is extremely unlikley you will 'save money on gas' so to speak. When you factor in higher maintenance costs, higher insurance, and the price premium, trust me, with gas as cheap as it is, you're not likely to make it up. Now that the tax credits are in danger, it may be even worse moneywise.
Other posters are right, if you really want to save on gas, buy a compact car with a manual transmission, and drive in a fuel saving way. And would it kill you to check you tire pressure?! Oh and the environmental thing, is a pretty minor point to me. My Corolla was a ULEV which is pretty darn good, not that pollution is a big problem anyway.
The public benefit is clearly the 'desired outcome', and the ownership is the 'carrot'. But I'm not so sure I'd say it places a strong second, the two are co-dependant. You don't get public benefits without a cost, and you can't go around handing out perpetual monopolies at the expense of progress. I think you're right though, the public good should take a slight lead, more like a close second.