Based on sections of your post, its hard to be sure whether you are serious or joking, but I will bite regardless. I assume you are serious. My apologies if you are joking.
From your earlier post: Anything that reduces profits is, by definition bad. Anything that reduces profits reduces the GNP which is, by definition, a social evil.
Durrrrr. Wrong. You are mixing your micro and macro economies. I must assume you are speaking of Linux here, so I will use it as the base example. If Company X is selling OS, and Linux comes along, then Company X loses profits. This is bad for Company X, but it says very LITTLE for the overall GDP. Why? Becuase the resources going to Company X do not just disappear, they are re-allocated. Linux can be seen as a more-efficient technology, one that is driving profits lower in the software industry. Is that bad for the economy? No, its actually good. Resources will be freed up to more productive uses.
Lets also not forget that Linux is not truly free. It has labor, implementation, customization, and maintenance costs. In some cases, these are higher than other OSes that are not free. So, linux is not TRULY free, and as such, is not a public good, which is why the market continues to produce it.
But from the economic point of view that's a good thing. There is a schizophrenic rift in economic theory between man the consumer and man the producer.
This is a very interesting choice of words. Schizophrenia, by definition, from dictionary.com, is: "Any of a group of psychotic disorders usually characterized by withdrawal from reality, illogical patterns of thinking, delusions, and hallucinations, and accompanied in varying degrees by other emotional, behavioral, or intellectual disturbances.". However, in any and all actions that are described by modern economics, the first assumption is rationality of the consumer and the producer. And to refer to the "its a good thing", not its not. Consumables are good for the short term, but are bad in the long term, becuase they promote waste of resources, which causes real future economic problems when the needed resource is gone. We should start experiencing this soon with oil. There WILL be significant "pain" when switching from oil to something else, becuase we use oil so much now.
If you are a slave who you are enslaved to is of little mind. One master may treat you better than another, but you are still beholden to the master.
I was following you up until this point. While I understand what you were saying, I disagree wholeheartedly. I think you have forgotten the role or entrepreneurs. In most capitalist economies, the worker is only a "slave" (I prefer employee, but whatever), as long as he/she cannot do it better on their own. In capitalism, there is incentive to leave the corporate slavehood. In communism/feudalism, there is none. The few who find ways to do something better, faster, cheaper, locate more resources, locate a new resource, create new processes are rewarded heavily in a capitalist economy but are punished (or at best, not rewarded) in a communist/feudal one. This is IMPORTANT becuase it creates a stagnant economy. Anyone who thinks economic growth (and employment growth) is creates by large companies is dead wrong, its created by small entrepreneurial companies, and lots of them.
Overall, it seems like in your post, you dont belive that a capitalist economy will be able to adapt to the OSS model. While it is unfair for me to assume this of you, whether you believe it or not, this is incorrect. Capitalism written by Adam Smith has been proven to be incomplete and in need of much addition, extension, and revision. This is what modern economic theory is, revision upon the base. OSS will be another revision, but its not going to kill capitalism, not by a long shot.
I have assembled at least 10 PCs for myself and close family members. I have never had the trouble that you are describing, save for some bad components along the road.
On the other hand, family with dell computers always end up getting shafted on support (guess what, they are in india!!) and the components are about as cheap as dell can get them.
Not to sound insulting, but perhaps it isnt the hardware, its the assembler in your case that is making things unstable. Regardless, if you are going to buy a big-name PC, for god's sake, make it anything BUT a dell.
Re:I have some problems with at least ONE of his..
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His comment simple revolves around economic game theory. Which is more valuable -- First mover advantage or late-comer savings?
First mover advantage is what you describe, and the company with such an advantage gets the first customers, the first investors, and a chance to exploit the market to their benefit. What do they lose? Well, they PAY for their advantages, in the form of riskier investments (higher equity or interest rates), they develop the technology and the processes, and they create the market.
Late-comers to the market get to steal the technology and processes ofthe first company, and with an established or growing market, they can gain market share by being cheaper and more efficient.
So which is best? Dunno, its not a sure thing. It depends on market conditions, and the type of industry. Quite a few of the big companies today are late-comers: Walmart, BestBuy (circuit city invented that business model), CVS, GM, etc. However, in technology, its really a crap shoot, andcomes down to the management teams abilities.
One more thing...
The reason that something like A VPN is useful, which I forgot to point out (that you were perhaps hinting at), is that Universities jumped on board too quickly, and they now have boatloads of 802.11b equipment floating around. In such a case, VPN is really their only option, all bandwidth issues aside. They could potentially use the CISCO stuff, but that would mean that ALL users would need cisco cards, something which is NOT possible on large universities (they will see everything from high end proxim/cisco cards all the way down to dinky D-Link shit in the dorm rooms).
So, when dealing with 802.11b, VPN is really your only decent option, even if it does drive your bandwidth to shit.
Sure, VPN will do it, but it will eat up your bandwidth too.
Anyone who has done any significant work with large-scale wifi infrastructure knows this, any form of VPN will eat 20-30% of your bandwidth away just for itself. This is very bad for networks with hundreds (thousands) of users, like large corporations and universities.
In cases like those, WPA/Radius is a better implementation, or you can use CISCO proprietary LEAP (i think..). They wont eat your bandwidth for breakfast, but they will provide security that is 100x better than WEP (what a joke).
Combining this with some simple form of network authentication (authenticated DHCP, nocat, or whatever) works pretty darn well.
I think it will run using WineX. Actually, I am sure of it, I did it 8 months ago. It didnt run very well.
I do not believe there is a linux native version.
As for demo/shareware, there are some very crippled, old demos, but they probably will NOT work with linux (at least not well), and are probably not capable of playing any mods.
So, the answer to your questions, in order are: "Yes, but not native" and "You dont want any demo version on linux".
While this would ne nice for movies, and for peace of mind, in the real world, this would mean nothing but bad things.
Look at the UN for example. This is the closest thing we have to a world government at this point, and what good does it do? Very little. The UN is the biggest, slowest moving, most incompetent form of government ever created. It IS the largest bureaucracy in the world. They get VERY little real work accomplished.
Working as individual countries is advantageous becuase you can take regional opinions into account, and tell the rest of the world to take a walk if you need to. You cant do this with a 1 government world.
Besides, where can you go when something in the government screws up (taking freedoms, privacy, etc)? Nowhere, its the ONLY COUNTRY. You cant move to Canada, you are just stuck in hell.
Sure, lets work together where it makes sense, but I will despise the day when there is only one government on this planet.
While I cannot say for what reasons the poster above uses professional shredding services, I do know why such services still exist.
The difference between a $30 Office-Depot Shredder and a good commercial shredder is significant. The Cheapo shredder usually shredes only vertically, and does so usually so that there are about 20 cuts down one page. People sending 3-4 documents in at once will find that they have those 3-4 documents nearly intact, just cut into 20 vertical peices which are easy to put back together if someone is careful in extraction.
On the other hand, good commercial shredders litterall demolish the paper, turning it into sawdust like material that would be impossible (virtually) to reconstruct. Along these same lines, good document security companies use combination of methods, not just shredding to ensure security (read: chemical treatment, randomization, etc).
"Bush is a miserable failure and September 11th is his administration's fault."
Come on man, turn off PBS. Bush isnt satan, he isnt ruining america, he isnt a "miserable failure", as you put it (but actually stole from gephardt), he just has a different style at getting things done than you prefer. However, to try and blaim Sept 11 on him is trivializes those who died on that day. Not to be trite, but you should be fucking ashamed to think that way.
Right, but you cant just block *@comcast.net or *@aol.com, just because some jackoff using his cable modem is sending spam. Then you are no better than AOL.
Not at all. Im just saying its not the ONLY software they use. I would imagine its about 1000x times easier to make Microsoft software work correctly when the jobs of the programmers who write the code are under direct review.
Dont be silly.
Just becuase they dont give a crap about YOUR security, doesnt mean they ignore their own. The same applies for accessibility, backups, etc. Microsoft facilities function pretty well.
I see what you are saying, but I think you have forgotten some of what you learned in your Econ 101 Class.
By creating false monopolies in certain markets we allow monopolistic practices and huge economic waste.
Just becuase a monopoly is in place doesnt automatically imply economic waste. Most of the waste in economies come from government taxation, not monopolistic practices.
Let's say you are Monsanto, you have a patent on drug Z for 14 years. You have no competition and so you get to set the price. Now, your instinct will not be to recoup the research plus 12% profit over 14 years, it will be to set the proce as high as possible, recoup the research as fast as possible and make super-normal profits for 13 years. That is the logical behaviour of a monopolist. OK, but how feasible is that really. I mean, unless this is a live-forever potion, there are going to be alternatives, for any disease, any condition. Alternatives (economists read substitutes) mean that they cant charge ridiculous prices, becuase there is indirect competition. Also, lets not forget price-elasticity. As the price goes up, less people purchase it (assuming its not addictive or something...). You simply cannot charge ridiculous prices to recoup all expenses within a short timeframe.
Come on. Patents do good things. Copyrights do good things. Its the LENGTH that is debatable here, not whether we should have them at all.
Its called competition. I am sure there are some very nice Insurance companies in the UK that dont do this. Switch to one of them if you are affected.
Basically, this article says something that I have known from birth: Insurance companies are out to rape you. Either bend over, or find a small insurance company.
In other news, big business is out to make money and doesnt care about their customers....
While I am not sure if you are serious or not, your logic is flawed. The simple fact that the government has ACCESS to those files should not be legal. This is about challenging your government. Its what happens in fascist and dictator states.
"Oh Look, he checked out an article by Locke, or Marx, or Lenin, Or an Islamic Text.....he MUST be doing something illegal. Kill him". While this is extreme, the government knowing what people are doing, seeing, reading, and learning allows them to find and target those with different political beliefs than they. The whole point of a free democracy is to prevent such things.
The MIT cause hopes to prevent the government from having all the info and all the power, and returns some power to the people. The simple fact is, that behind every bad decision in government, there is a person responsible. The MIT site helps us to pinpoint who, so we (the PEOPLE, the CITIZENS) to not elect next time, or to ask our reps to fire.
I'm curious where they get their teachers. In order to make this program worthwhile (IE - the kids learn something about security), you would need someone with some significant experience and knowledge.
I know that I was in high school a few years ago, the head netadmin/sysadmin was worse than pitiful, a MS Certification only type of person. The only systems he ever hacked into were those in a computer game. Granted, I did go to private HS, and IT was not at the top of their budget priorities.
Regardless, it brings up a good point of having competent people teaching these types of classes, and how difficult it is for schools feeling the budget crunch to find competency.
Remember, the best managers/executives are those that surround themselves with (read hire) people smarter than themselves, and encourage disagreement and diversity.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm curious where you "booted up". Most people with decent cable/dsl connections have (at very least) a dinky Linksys router blocking most dirtyness.
You need not preach to the converted... I own three businesses currently, and more in the past that I have sold.
It is good to see that entrepreneurship is alive and well on slashdot, as I typically see "our jobs are going overseas, whine".
Best of luck to you.
Based on sections of your post, its hard to be sure whether you are serious or joking, but I will bite regardless. I assume you are serious. My apologies if you are joking. From your earlier post:
Anything that reduces profits is, by definition bad. Anything that reduces profits reduces the GNP which is, by definition, a social evil.
Durrrrr. Wrong. You are mixing your micro and macro economies. I must assume you are speaking of Linux here, so I will use it as the base example. If Company X is selling OS, and Linux comes along, then Company X loses profits. This is bad for Company X, but it says very LITTLE for the overall GDP. Why? Becuase the resources going to Company X do not just disappear, they are re-allocated. Linux can be seen as a more-efficient technology, one that is driving profits lower in the software industry. Is that bad for the economy? No, its actually good. Resources will be freed up to more productive uses.
Lets also not forget that Linux is not truly free. It has labor, implementation, customization, and maintenance costs. In some cases, these are higher than other OSes that are not free. So, linux is not TRULY free, and as such, is not a public good, which is why the market continues to produce it.
But from the economic point of view that's a good thing. There is a schizophrenic rift in economic theory between man the consumer and man the producer.
This is a very interesting choice of words. Schizophrenia, by definition, from dictionary.com, is: "Any of a group of psychotic disorders usually characterized by withdrawal from reality, illogical patterns of thinking, delusions, and hallucinations, and accompanied in varying degrees by other emotional, behavioral, or intellectual disturbances.". However, in any and all actions that are described by modern economics, the first assumption is rationality of the consumer and the producer. And to refer to the "its a good thing", not its not. Consumables are good for the short term, but are bad in the long term, becuase they promote waste of resources, which causes real future economic problems when the needed resource is gone. We should start experiencing this soon with oil. There WILL be significant "pain" when switching from oil to something else, becuase we use oil so much now.
If you are a slave who you are enslaved to is of little mind. One master may treat you better than another, but you are still beholden to the master.
I was following you up until this point. While I understand what you were saying, I disagree wholeheartedly. I think you have forgotten the role or entrepreneurs. In most capitalist economies, the worker is only a "slave" (I prefer employee, but whatever), as long as he/she cannot do it better on their own. In capitalism, there is incentive to leave the corporate slavehood. In communism/feudalism, there is none. The few who find ways to do something better, faster, cheaper, locate more resources, locate a new resource, create new processes are rewarded heavily in a capitalist economy but are punished (or at best, not rewarded) in a communist/feudal one. This is IMPORTANT becuase it creates a stagnant economy. Anyone who thinks economic growth (and employment growth) is creates by large companies is dead wrong, its created by small entrepreneurial companies, and lots of them.
Overall, it seems like in your post, you dont belive that a capitalist economy will be able to adapt to the OSS model. While it is unfair for me to assume this of you, whether you believe it or not, this is incorrect. Capitalism written by Adam Smith has been proven to be incomplete and in need of much addition, extension, and revision. This is what modern economic theory is, revision upon the base. OSS will be another revision, but its not going to kill capitalism, not by a long shot.
Cheers, and have a great New Years!
I have assembled at least 10 PCs for myself and close family members. I have never had the trouble that you are describing, save for some bad components along the road.
On the other hand, family with dell computers always end up getting shafted on support (guess what, they are in india!!) and the components are about as cheap as dell can get them.
Not to sound insulting, but perhaps it isnt the hardware, its the assembler in your case that is making things unstable. Regardless, if you are going to buy a big-name PC, for god's sake, make it anything BUT a dell.
His comment simple revolves around economic game theory. Which is more valuable -- First mover advantage or late-comer savings?
First mover advantage is what you describe, and the company with such an advantage gets the first customers, the first investors, and a chance to exploit the market to their benefit. What do they lose? Well, they PAY for their advantages, in the form of riskier investments (higher equity or interest rates), they develop the technology and the processes, and they create the market.
Late-comers to the market get to steal the technology and processes ofthe first company, and with an established or growing market, they can gain market share by being cheaper and more efficient.
So which is best? Dunno, its not a sure thing. It depends on market conditions, and the type of industry. Quite a few of the big companies today are late-comers: Walmart, BestBuy (circuit city invented that business model), CVS, GM, etc. However, in technology, its really a crap shoot, andcomes down to the management teams abilities.
One more thing... The reason that something like A VPN is useful, which I forgot to point out (that you were perhaps hinting at), is that Universities jumped on board too quickly, and they now have boatloads of 802.11b equipment floating around. In such a case, VPN is really their only option, all bandwidth issues aside. They could potentially use the CISCO stuff, but that would mean that ALL users would need cisco cards, something which is NOT possible on large universities (they will see everything from high end proxim/cisco cards all the way down to dinky D-Link shit in the dorm rooms).
So, when dealing with 802.11b, VPN is really your only decent option, even if it does drive your bandwidth to shit.
Sure, VPN will do it, but it will eat up your bandwidth too.
Anyone who has done any significant work with large-scale wifi infrastructure knows this, any form of VPN will eat 20-30% of your bandwidth away just for itself. This is very bad for networks with hundreds (thousands) of users, like large corporations and universities.
In cases like those, WPA/Radius is a better implementation, or you can use CISCO proprietary LEAP (i think..). They wont eat your bandwidth for breakfast, but they will provide security that is 100x better than WEP (what a joke).
Combining this with some simple form of network authentication (authenticated DHCP, nocat, or whatever) works pretty darn well.
I think it will run using WineX. Actually, I am sure of it, I did it 8 months ago. It didnt run very well.
I do not believe there is a linux native version.
As for demo/shareware, there are some very crippled, old demos, but they probably will NOT work with linux (at least not well), and are probably not capable of playing any mods.
So, the answer to your questions, in order are: "Yes, but not native" and "You dont want any demo version on linux".
Hope this helps, Brushfireb
While this would ne nice for movies, and for peace of mind, in the real world, this would mean nothing but bad things.
Look at the UN for example. This is the closest thing we have to a world government at this point, and what good does it do? Very little. The UN is the biggest, slowest moving, most incompetent form of government ever created. It IS the largest bureaucracy in the world. They get VERY little real work accomplished.
Working as individual countries is advantageous becuase you can take regional opinions into account, and tell the rest of the world to take a walk if you need to. You cant do this with a 1 government world.
Besides, where can you go when something in the government screws up (taking freedoms, privacy, etc)? Nowhere, its the ONLY COUNTRY. You cant move to Canada, you are just stuck in hell.
Sure, lets work together where it makes sense, but I will despise the day when there is only one government on this planet.
While I cannot say for what reasons the poster above uses professional shredding services, I do know why such services still exist.
The difference between a $30 Office-Depot Shredder and a good commercial shredder is significant. The Cheapo shredder usually shredes only vertically, and does so usually so that there are about 20 cuts down one page. People sending 3-4 documents in at once will find that they have those 3-4 documents nearly intact, just cut into 20 vertical peices which are easy to put back together if someone is careful in extraction.
On the other hand, good commercial shredders litterall demolish the paper, turning it into sawdust like material that would be impossible (virtually) to reconstruct. Along these same lines, good document security companies use combination of methods, not just shredding to ensure security (read: chemical treatment, randomization, etc).
Brushfireb
Agreed. Or -1, Completely F*cking Paranoid
Jesus christ thats funny.
Yeah, and then think of what a waste of immortality that would be.
"Bush is a miserable failure and September 11th is his administration's fault."
Come on man, turn off PBS. Bush isnt satan, he isnt ruining america, he isnt a "miserable failure", as you put it (but actually stole from gephardt), he just has a different style at getting things done than you prefer. However, to try and blaim Sept 11 on him is trivializes those who died on that day. Not to be trite, but you should be fucking ashamed to think that way.
Right, but you cant just block *@comcast.net or *@aol.com, just because some jackoff using his cable modem is sending spam. Then you are no better than AOL.
Not at all. Im just saying its not the ONLY software they use. I would imagine its about 1000x times easier to make Microsoft software work correctly when the jobs of the programmers who write the code are under direct review.
Dont be silly.
Just becuase they dont give a crap about YOUR security, doesnt mean they ignore their own. The same applies for accessibility, backups, etc. Microsoft facilities function pretty well.
I see what you are saying, but I think you have forgotten some of what you learned in your Econ 101 Class.
By creating false monopolies in certain markets we allow monopolistic practices and huge economic waste.
Just becuase a monopoly is in place doesnt automatically imply economic waste. Most of the waste in economies come from government taxation, not monopolistic practices.
Let's say you are Monsanto, you have a patent on drug Z for 14 years. You have no competition and so you get to set the price. Now, your instinct will not be to recoup the research plus 12% profit over 14 years, it will be to set the proce as high as possible, recoup the research as fast as possible and make super-normal profits for 13 years. That is the logical behaviour of a monopolist.
OK, but how feasible is that really. I mean, unless this is a live-forever potion, there are going to be alternatives, for any disease, any condition. Alternatives (economists read substitutes) mean that they cant charge ridiculous prices, becuase there is indirect competition. Also, lets not forget price-elasticity. As the price goes up, less people purchase it (assuming its not addictive or something...). You simply cannot charge ridiculous prices to recoup all expenses within a short timeframe.
Come on. Patents do good things. Copyrights do good things. Its the LENGTH that is debatable here, not whether we should have them at all.
Its called competition. I am sure there are some very nice Insurance companies in the UK that dont do this. Switch to one of them if you are affected.
Basically, this article says something that I have known from birth: Insurance companies are out to rape you. Either bend over, or find a small insurance company.
In other news, big business is out to make money and doesnt care about their customers....
This is so exciting.... That I am giving up porn. Forever.
I have had the same thing happen to me on numerous occasions. Pretty silly. I have really come to thing its like rolling dice or the lottery.
While I am not sure if you are serious or not, your logic is flawed. The simple fact that the government has ACCESS to those files should not be legal. This is about challenging your government. Its what happens in fascist and dictator states.
"Oh Look, he checked out an article by Locke, or Marx, or Lenin, Or an Islamic Text.....he MUST be doing something illegal. Kill him". While this is extreme, the government knowing what people are doing, seeing, reading, and learning allows them to find and target those with different political beliefs than they. The whole point of a free democracy is to prevent such things.
The MIT cause hopes to prevent the government from having all the info and all the power, and returns some power to the people. The simple fact is, that behind every bad decision in government, there is a person responsible. The MIT site helps us to pinpoint who, so we (the PEOPLE, the CITIZENS) to not elect next time, or to ask our reps to fire.
Gee. God forbid someone work hard and achieve something they want. Not giving it away to someone else is wrong! /sarcasm.
Its called capitalism, and freedom. Welcome.
I'm curious where they get their teachers. In order to make this program worthwhile (IE - the kids learn something about security), you would need someone with some significant experience and knowledge.
I know that I was in high school a few years ago, the head netadmin/sysadmin was worse than pitiful, a MS Certification only type of person. The only systems he ever hacked into were those in a computer game. Granted, I did go to private HS, and IT was not at the top of their budget priorities.
Regardless, it brings up a good point of having competent people teaching these types of classes, and how difficult it is for schools feeling the budget crunch to find competency.
Agreed, Mod Parent up.
Remember, the best managers/executives are those that surround themselves with (read hire) people smarter than themselves, and encourage disagreement and diversity.