"And how long will it be before these vast companies start blocking access to sites that don't enforce their morality policies or that belong to a competitor?"
Already happens. Within the work place I think it is acceptable for the employer to implement filters on what sites employees can visit.
The day a large backbone provider, or ISP's (likely in collusion with other large corporations) agree to filter certain sites from the internet in their interest - is the day I burn each and every CEO's house to the ground (at least after litigation fails).
"I'm sure some companies are going to start pulling some of these tricks in the near future and most of them will yank a web page today if someone even hints at a lawsuit. Food for thought."
There are good providers who will not do this. It is, of course, inevitable. What they can't do is control the content. If my ISP takes my site down, I can easily move it somewhere else.
I'm in complete agreement with this statement. It seems some people are easily fooled with talk of efficiency for better consumer services, goods and prices. Eliminating choice can only bring the opposite. Some fail to understand that the corporation exists to make profit. Efficiency is just a side effect of competition. With no choice and no competition, gains from economies of scale will just end up in the pocket of the share holders.
Yeah, the guy is an idiot. I'm beginning to think that he's a new kind of troll posting subtle stupidity to get a kick out of people flaming his posts.
This is false. You can't learn critical thinking and logic purely from hard science, engineering, and mathematics. History, philosophy, english, law, and even media studies all have some worth.
Your foolish assumption is that since there are no jobs directly based on some liberal arts educations, that they are useless. There is so much evidence to demonstrate this that I won't continue.
No, he is right. Economies of scale allow for efficiency in which you can sell incredibly large quantities of goods for low prices.
Dumb down the consumer, convince them they all want the same crap. Wallow in profits.
This is why we fear complete control of mass media. Combine it with inefficient government bureaucracy and corrupt unions and we become a victim of our own design.
Those with money have the power. Those with power will not allow for it to be taken away.
Present a perfectly valid utopian system and human nature will completely tear it apart.
Example:
Taxes based on consumption. A progressive inheritance tax jacked up.
These seem nice until you realize it takes away from your and your childrens ability to succeed. Human nature intends to dominate.
Education based on choice is a good thing. I sure as hell hope Gore or Bradley are not elected (for those of you interested in the impending US election). We need choice put back into the system otherwise this cycle will continue.
As for dumbing down consumers; You are absolutely right. Feed anyone mediocre crap and they will come to expect and even like mediocre crap.
And yet, it does happen. I have spent some time within an educational bureaucracy that has pressure for its students to do well, and middle administration puts pressure on the school administration to do well, and they in turn tell the teachers to distort marks by marking on a curve when students fail to meet expectations.
It's a sad circle really. Send your children to private school:).
That's funny. Corporations are in the business to make profit. Period. They care 0 about the people (even employees).
As for making it a lot harder for government to become corrupt. That's not happening any time soon. Here's what I see could be done:
- terms limited to 1 or 2 times.
Not going to happen. Government will do all it can to preserve itself.
- completely outlaw special interests. This includes taking money from anyone who could be a special interest.
Not going to happen. They've been promising to get rid of special interests for years. They are lying bastards.
- decrease government size
There are some programs that will be tweaked and/or fixed. However, the bureaucracy is too large with multiple levels and heads in control. Therefore efficiency is a joke.
Corruption. It's human. What can we do but live with it?
"Producing/selling at a lower rate, making it difficult for anyone who doesn't do the same to compete"
Complete joke. Prices aren't changing any time soon. We're talking about an industry that takes 3 - 5 dollar profit margins on every stage. The producer can sell the cd for 5 - 8 bucks to the distributor who sells for maybe 9 - 11 to the store, who marks up the price to like 14 - 17 dollars.
These companies have a lock on the industry. They aren't going to endanger their market share or profit margins for the sake of slowly gaining share. This is why they are more and more likely to feed you the same corporate mediocre crap over and over. If they don't differentiate product, they are in no danger of making stupid mistakes.
Was that a joke? In the past, Linux was very inferior. Today it is not. Both work particularly well in many niches.
Linux is making much more progress in terms of enterprise viability (such as database and complex application servers). As for one processor desktop, I would say that both are perfectly good and it just depends on your personal preference. Jump to multiprocessor systems and Linux has a pretty good advantage (though, you may want to jump to SCO, Solaris or win2k -- since if you're spending a lot for the machine, a 1500+ dollar license isn't much of a problem).
Both are very good systems. Use whichever is best for your application.
Don't take this post as completely pro linux. I use FreeBSD on web servers, firewalls, and mid range application servers (3-5 server clusters). Java limitations in FreeBSD are my primary cause for jumping to linux for some of my new work.
There is no denying that Linux has much more support. It also has a development accelerator that is moving faster than FreeBSD (especially in respect to high end enterprise application).
Also, since it's written in perl, it's pretty easy for even the novice perl programmer to create their own modules. From qmail to my own application servers, it works very well.
Of course, it's pretty easy to just make a cgi or php application to do similar administration.
Besides webmin, I also have almost everything on my system automated. From splitting logfiles and creating reports, to easy additions to config files, to little crontabbed scripts that ensure a daemon is working, to *cough* automated logging of user commands upon executing commands or connecting to ports they shouldn't be, to adding new ip's to an interface as well as the rc, to simple changes to the adduser script to meet my requirements for new users...
These are things anyone can do with a bit of practice.
I'm in complete agreement here. If the posters of the story can understand that they must not be biased, then I would assume it would be a good thing to make the logo non partisan.
Of course, we also have a logo of Bill Gates as a borg... which brings to light the fact that it is a joke, even if a biased presentation of fact.
I'm sorry, but there are many things that we could do in making a more intuitive GUI, more legible documentation, and applications that fulfill certain needs that would be good for every user.
Of course, we also have to hide some functions from users in attempt to simplify, but that is what different distributions (or hidden more advanced menu modes) are for.
They are filling a particular need so that newbies can use Linux. OSS projects are just as free to do similar things that Corel is doing.
I don't know why you have to be completely against them. Can you provide me with a logical economic model where Corel would be able to actually profit from their work? I doubt paid support plans will have much success.
Hah yeah, the same goes for business taxes. People don't think it affects them until they realize that the producer is increasing prices of their end goods and services because of them.
You should have explained to her in simple economic terms such as efficient exchange of human resources. Of course, you also have to explain that competitive advantage in this context is not meant to make money. This fact is usually the hardest for people to understand.
As for the value added closed applications, the hybrid could end up working well. We don't have to be pure...
I think it's great that they are building applications to fill the gap so that newbies can use Linux. Many of these applications that they are building are specifically made to enable the newbie user. It can only accelerate the process of making linux viable for the masses. Perhaps they will give input and help to the projects that they draw from in Corel Linux in the future...
This article is full of false statements designed to prey on the ignorant. You can believe anything you want, but we all know it for what it is. Stop blaming the worlds problems on an identifiable and stereotyped group.
If you took your CD and put it on the web for your own personal reasons without allowing access to anyone else, that is acceptable.
This seems to be what mp3.com is doing -- except they are doing it for the customer, and they just verify that they own the work they wish to listen to. Whether it is legal to do so is the dispute.
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"And how long will it be before these vast companies start blocking access to sites that don't enforce their morality policies or that belong to a competitor?"
Already happens. Within the work place I think it is acceptable for the employer to implement filters on what sites employees can visit.
The day a large backbone provider, or ISP's (likely in collusion with other large corporations) agree to filter certain sites from the internet in their interest - is the day I burn each and every CEO's house to the ground (at least after litigation fails).
"I'm sure some companies are going to start pulling some of these tricks in the near future and most of them will yank a web page today if someone even hints at a lawsuit. Food for thought."
There are good providers who will not do this. It is, of course, inevitable. What they can't do is control the content. If my ISP takes my site down, I can easily move it somewhere else.
I'm in complete agreement with this statement. It seems some people are easily fooled with talk of efficiency for better consumer services, goods and prices. Eliminating choice can only bring the opposite. Some fail to understand that the corporation exists to make profit. Efficiency is just a side effect of competition. With no choice and no competition, gains from economies of scale will just end up in the pocket of the share holders.
What a great day for the consumer !
Ah, the joys of corporate propaganda :).
The poster you replied to may think winamp == mp3. The truth is that they are irrelevant. Destroy winamp, another player is created to take its place.
Yeah, the guy is an idiot. I'm beginning to think that he's a new kind of troll posting subtle stupidity to get a kick out of people flaming his posts.
"Liberal arts education is poison"
This is false. You can't learn critical thinking and logic purely from hard science, engineering, and mathematics. History, philosophy, english, law, and even media studies all have some worth.
Your foolish assumption is that since there are no jobs directly based on some liberal arts educations, that they are useless. There is so much evidence to demonstrate this that I won't continue.
He needs to go back and read about efficiency and specialization. No use arguing with him until he understands those two terms within capitalism.
No, he is right. Economies of scale allow for efficiency in which you can sell incredibly large quantities of goods for low prices.
Dumb down the consumer, convince them they all want the same crap. Wallow in profits.
This is why we fear complete control of mass media. Combine it with inefficient government bureaucracy and corrupt unions and we become a victim of our own design.
Those with money have the power. Those with power will not allow for it to be taken away.
Present a perfectly valid utopian system and human nature will completely tear it apart.
Example:
Taxes based on consumption. A progressive inheritance tax jacked up.
These seem nice until you realize it takes away from your and your childrens ability to succeed. Human nature intends to dominate.
Education based on choice is a good thing. I sure as hell hope Gore or Bradley are not elected (for those of you interested in the impending US election). We need choice put back into the system otherwise this cycle will continue.
As for dumbing down consumers; You are absolutely right. Feed anyone mediocre crap and they will come to expect and even like mediocre crap.
And yet, it does happen. I have spent some time within an educational bureaucracy that has pressure for its students to do well, and middle administration puts pressure on the school administration to do well, and they in turn tell the teachers to distort marks by marking on a curve when students fail to meet expectations.
:).
It's a sad circle really. Send your children to private school
That's funny. Corporations are in the business to make profit. Period. They care 0 about the people (even employees).
As for making it a lot harder for government to become corrupt. That's not happening any time soon. Here's what I see could be done:
- terms limited to 1 or 2 times.
Not going to happen. Government will do all it can to preserve itself.
- completely outlaw special interests. This includes taking money from anyone who could be a special interest.
Not going to happen. They've been promising to get rid of special interests for years. They are lying bastards.
- decrease government size
There are some programs that will be tweaked and/or fixed. However, the bureaucracy is too large with multiple levels and heads in control. Therefore efficiency is a joke.
Corruption. It's human. What can we do but live with it?
"Producing/selling at a lower rate, making it difficult for anyone who doesn't do the same to compete"
Complete joke. Prices aren't changing any time soon. We're talking about an industry that takes 3 - 5 dollar profit margins on every stage. The producer can sell the cd for 5 - 8 bucks to the distributor who sells for maybe 9 - 11 to the store, who marks up the price to like 14 - 17 dollars.
These companies have a lock on the industry. They aren't going to endanger their market share or profit margins for the sake of slowly gaining share. This is why they are more and more likely to feed you the same corporate mediocre crap over and over. If they don't differentiate product, they are in no danger of making stupid mistakes.
FreeBSD also allows you to upgrade daily from current.freebsd.org builds without doing make buildworld and make installword after cvsup.
What dynamic content would that be? Vbscript ASP vs. mod_perl or jserv?
"MORE stable than our Linux boxes ont he same hardware"
Care to provide some examples? It may in fact be true, but no one is going to believe baseless claims unless you at least back them up.
Was that a joke? In the past, Linux was very inferior. Today it is not. Both work particularly well in many niches.
Linux is making much more progress in terms of enterprise viability (such as database and complex application servers). As for one processor desktop, I would say that both are perfectly good and it just depends on your personal preference. Jump to multiprocessor systems and Linux has a pretty good advantage (though, you may want to jump to SCO, Solaris or win2k -- since if you're spending a lot for the machine, a 1500+ dollar license isn't much of a problem).
Both are very good systems. Use whichever is best for your application.
Don't take this post as completely pro linux. I use FreeBSD on web servers, firewalls, and mid range application servers (3-5 server clusters). Java limitations in FreeBSD are my primary cause for jumping to linux for some of my new work.
There is no denying that Linux has much more support. It also has a development accelerator that is moving faster than FreeBSD (especially in respect to high end enterprise application).
Also, since it's written in perl, it's pretty easy for even the novice perl programmer to create their own modules. From qmail to my own application servers, it works very well.
Of course, it's pretty easy to just make a cgi or php application to do similar administration.
Besides webmin, I also have almost everything on my system automated. From splitting logfiles and creating reports, to easy additions to config files, to little crontabbed scripts that ensure a daemon is working, to *cough* automated logging of user commands upon executing commands or connecting to ports they shouldn't be, to adding new ip's to an interface as well as the rc, to simple changes to the adduser script to meet my requirements for new users...
These are things anyone can do with a bit of practice.
I'm in complete agreement here. If the posters of the story can understand that they must not be biased, then I would assume it would be a good thing to make the logo non partisan.
... which brings to light the fact that it is a joke, even if a biased presentation of fact.
Of course, we also have a logo of Bill Gates as a borg
I'm sorry, but there are many things that we could do in making a more intuitive GUI, more legible documentation, and applications that fulfill certain needs that would be good for every user.
Of course, we also have to hide some functions from users in attempt to simplify, but that is what different distributions (or hidden more advanced menu modes) are for.
They are filling a particular need so that newbies can use Linux. OSS projects are just as free to do similar things that Corel is doing.
I don't know why you have to be completely against them. Can you provide me with a logical economic model where Corel would be able to actually profit from their work? I doubt paid support plans will have much success.
Hah yeah, the same goes for business taxes. People don't think it affects them until they realize that the producer is increasing prices of their end goods and services because of them.
You should have explained to her in simple economic terms such as efficient exchange of human resources. Of course, you also have to explain that competitive advantage in this context is not meant to make money. This fact is usually the hardest for people to understand.
...
As for the value added closed applications, the hybrid could end up working well. We don't have to be pure
I think it's great that they are building applications to fill the gap so that newbies can use Linux. Many of these applications that they are building are specifically made to enable the newbie user. It can only accelerate the process of making linux viable for the masses. Perhaps they will give input and help to the projects that they draw from in Corel Linux in the future...
This article is full of false statements designed to prey on the ignorant. You can believe anything you want, but we all know it for what it is. Stop blaming the worlds problems on an identifiable and stereotyped group.
If you took your CD and put it on the web for your own personal reasons without allowing access to anyone else, that is acceptable.
This seems to be what mp3.com is doing -- except they are doing it for the customer, and they just verify that they own the work they wish to listen to. Whether it is legal to do so is the dispute.