"Good thing they've patented this technology. Now nobody else can use it."...unless they pay Microsoft. Hmm, I don't see the big advantage for me, I will still get screwed and Microsoft will get more money.
First of all I don't deal with generalities "bad" and "good" are relative to me and to most (I assume) of the people, I just assume I'm not unique person and that most of the people appreciate freedom and don't like their needs be decided upon by somebody else. I can't prove that Communism is BAD in general, but I can't prove that Necrophilia is bad either -- it's just that's bad for me and people who share my principles/likes/dislikes -- and not because it's bad "in practice", but because of its basic principles. To me it seems that people who say that Communism was a good idea that cannot be applied, didn't think things through. (not to mention that "a good idea that cannot be applied" is an oximoron)
I'm also not sure what's "Communist" about some ideas, the idea of giving voluntarily to the poor people is not specific to Communism, most of the religions ask their adherents to give to poor people, to live thriftily, to work hard. I doubt that can be called Communism... If Communism advocates giving voluntarily to poor people then is nothing wrong with it, somehow I doubt that's the objective and the way, Communist theorists advocated revolutions and forceful changes -- to me it seems artificial to separate things into "Communism ideals" and "Communist politics", what is Communism if not the reflection of what the Communist theorists wrote and said?
So the main issue is "what exactly is Communism?", and more importantly "what does Communism propose?" -- here, the "How?" is very important, and not to show that Communism is Utopical, but to define Communism itself. If you define it only as voluntarily giving and sharing, then I have no problem with the concept, only that's no innovation and I wouldn't call it "communism", again, I doubt this is the best description and the basic understanding of Communism.
What is the "Communist concept itself"? I'm not specialist in Communism but I think Communism is talking about changing the society in some specific ways -- those ways are (I think) evil. Now, if make some very strange assumption "society so reach that people don't care if they earn or not money" or "society so advanced that everybody can replicate any product so there's no problem in satisfying any need" what relevance do the ideas of Communism or Free Market have? Oh, you don't talk about that, you talk about people freely willing to work and receiving "what they need", first of all not all people are willing to work "all they can" if you don't believe let me give you a concrete example -- myself, I don't want to do that, so Communism would be against _my_ personal freedom, I don't even care about other people, I already proved that Communism is BAD (at least to me), also please define "what people need" there's nothing that can say that, it _might_ be applicable in some strict fields, medicine for example, people might get the medicines that doctors recommend, but otherwise, who decides who "needs" a Mercedes? Oh, no Mercedes for us? Who decides how many rooms I am allowed, how many pairs of socks do I "need"? Do we need to vote for that? If we need to vote for that than yes, QED, Communism is liberty depriving, somebody else defines what _I_ need.
I don't have any problems with voluntary communism. the problem is that people who want it "voluntarily" dream about imposing on other people. If we lived in a post-industrial world when almost every need is satisfied and work is voluntary and everyone does whatever they please and contribute however they like and robots do all the menial tasks then I guess you could call that "communism", but you could call it anything else too, even "capitalist heaven", since the name would be kind of irrelevant since it is not anything like our society now. There's also the philosophical issue if "every need" can be satisfied... I kind of doubt it.
In the world we live _now_ communism means taking freedoms away from at least a group of people (actually I don't think you can take away fundamental rights from a group of people without affecting all the people), and Marx and Engels (and other communist theoreticians) knew it because they talked about revolution and forcefully taking "back" rights that belong to the "working people". Now the issue is, do you belive that those rights belong to working people or do you think that people should be allowed to be rich and dispose of their wealth and be free to enter into contracts which involve material gain, etc.
"The simple fact is that I LIKED the idea of communism, but it will NEVER work. "
I never liked the idea of communism, that idea goes against the feedom of the people, if you allow free decision to people and free enterprise you have capitalism (or a form of it) not communism, to have communism it means to take those freedoms away from the people. I don't know how some people can be fooled by communism and don't see what it really means, it's not the "putting into practice" that killed the communism, it's the idea itself that's BAD.
"Freedom" has limits in a society and that's probably a good thing. Freedom doesn't have much meaning if you live alone in a island, in a society freedom doesn't have a specific meaning, in some society at least nominal there's a right to free speech (U.S.) in others (Germany) there isn't, e.g., you can't say how great Nazism is or to give a newer example you can't make movies if you promote Scientology. "Freedom" in itself doesn't mean anything, it's the rules that defines a specific concept of Freedom that are important and what the society wants to achieve, BSD and GPL communities want to achieve different ideas of freedom that's why they use different licenses, if people from BSD want their code shared alike then they shouldn't allow re-licensing of the code, as I said in a different post it seems to me that they want some parts of BSD license (everybody can use it, even closing it) and they want some parts of GPL license (but we still want the changes back) -- so they eat the cake and still want to have it.
I agree completely, this comes to show the BSD weakness not the GPL weakness, it seem that BSD people who bitch about it would want their BSD code to behave like GPL in some respects while still behaving like BSD in others (we still want to let people to use it who don't want to give back improvements to the code) -- I still don't see how you can eat the cake and still have it.
"For instance, how do you see a trail as it winds over grassland and leads into the woods? How does one see a year old trail that is partially overgrown, or a new trail not completely tramped down. How do you track down an animal from smattering of scat, nibbles and tracks over rocks, dirt, grassland, and the tree line? How does a human being see a camouflaged predator slinking behind the tree line? How do you read the sky and know what the weather will be later that day? How do you look at a river and know if it's crossable or not? Back at home, how do you play your relatives, friends, and enemies in the tribe so that you are elected leader when the Big Man passes away? Or how do you manage to convince your husband that your new pregnancy is his, and not your secret lovers'?"
Thanks for proving that I'm not intelligent, I am not able to do any of these...
I know that's a joke but monkey are very close to extinction and humans are more than 6 billion, so yes, it's the survival of the fittest and humans are clearly the fittest.
Do you actually bring the Bible as a proof into a discussion, I'm amazed! Let me rush and bring Lord of the Rings as better proof that people lived a good life in the past, except for wars with evil spirits.
1. how many people were living in Old Stone Age, how many are living now. 2. how many of people who go hungry to bed every night are in modern capitalist societies and how many are in countries like Zimbabwe 3. what does it mean to "go hungry to bed" if one ate a Big Mac at launch he can still go hungry to bad, in "Old Stone Age" if one didn't catch anything the day and day before and ate only peanuts would probably go to bad much hungrier. 4. what was the life expectance of hunters and gatherers?
"You can't tell a professional graphics artist that GIMP should be "good enough" and they "don't need what Photoshop"
I don't know for others, but myself I'm getting tired to hear about Photoshop everytime switching from Windows to Linux is mentioned. Does anybody know what is the market penetration of Photoshop? 50%? 20%? 3%? of Windows users? Thanks!
I asked him and he said: "my wife is beautiful but she doesn't want to fuck me more than once a month, her sister (while butt-ugly) wants to do it all the time"
That's almost like saying that "I just don't allow you to eat, it's not like I deprive you of your life" -- to me it's the same shit, I don't care if you can't sell my assets, I care that I don't have access to them anymore (I've been deprived of them)
Frankly I'm having the same problem every time I go into a restaurant, too many damn things on the menu, there should be one or at most two things, most of the time I leave hungry because I can't decide what to order.
Slashdot Mirror
"Good thing they've patented this technology. Now nobody else can use it." ...unless they pay Microsoft. Hmm, I don't see the big advantage for me, I will still get screwed and Microsoft will get more money.
Linus is a trademark, maybe Microsoft doesn't allow trademarked words (I wonder if there is such a list)
First of all I don't deal with generalities "bad" and "good" are relative to me and to most (I assume) of the people, I just assume I'm not unique person and that most of the people appreciate freedom and don't like their needs be decided upon by somebody else. I can't prove that Communism is BAD in general, but I can't prove that Necrophilia is bad either -- it's just that's bad for me and people who share my principles/likes/dislikes -- and not because it's bad "in practice", but because of its basic principles. To me it seems that people who say that Communism was a good idea that cannot be applied, didn't think things through. (not to mention that "a good idea that cannot be applied" is an oximoron)
I'm also not sure what's "Communist" about some ideas, the idea of giving voluntarily to the poor people is not specific to Communism, most of the religions ask their adherents to give to poor people, to live thriftily, to work hard. I doubt that can be called Communism... If Communism advocates giving voluntarily to poor people then is nothing wrong with it, somehow I doubt that's the objective and the way, Communist theorists advocated revolutions and forceful changes -- to me it seems artificial to separate things into "Communism ideals" and "Communist politics", what is Communism if not the reflection of what the Communist theorists wrote and said?
So the main issue is "what exactly is Communism?", and more importantly "what does Communism propose?" -- here, the "How?" is very important, and not to show that Communism is Utopical, but to define Communism itself. If you define it only as voluntarily giving and sharing, then I have no problem with the concept, only that's no innovation and I wouldn't call it "communism", again, I doubt this is the best description and the basic understanding of Communism.
What is the "Communist concept itself"? I'm not specialist in Communism but I think Communism is talking about changing the society in some specific ways -- those ways are (I think) evil. Now, if make some very strange assumption "society so reach that people don't care if they earn or not money" or "society so advanced that everybody can replicate any product so there's no problem in satisfying any need" what relevance do the ideas of Communism or Free Market have? Oh, you don't talk about that, you talk about people freely willing to work and receiving "what they need", first of all not all people are willing to work "all they can" if you don't believe let me give you a concrete example -- myself, I don't want to do that, so Communism would be against _my_ personal freedom, I don't even care about other people, I already proved that Communism is BAD (at least to me), also please define "what people need" there's nothing that can say that, it _might_ be applicable in some strict fields, medicine for example, people might get the medicines that doctors recommend, but otherwise, who decides who "needs" a Mercedes? Oh, no Mercedes for us? Who decides how many rooms I am allowed, how many pairs of socks do I "need"? Do we need to vote for that? If we need to vote for that than yes, QED, Communism is liberty depriving, somebody else defines what _I_ need.
I don't have any problems with voluntary communism. the problem is that people who want it "voluntarily" dream about imposing on other people. If we lived in a post-industrial world when almost every need is satisfied and work is voluntary and everyone does whatever they please and contribute however they like and robots do all the menial tasks then I guess you could call that "communism", but you could call it anything else too, even "capitalist heaven", since the name would be kind of irrelevant since it is not anything like our society now. There's also the philosophical issue if "every need" can be satisfied... I kind of doubt it.
In the world we live _now_ communism means taking freedoms away from at least a group of people (actually I don't think you can take away fundamental rights from a group of people without affecting all the people), and Marx and Engels (and other communist theoreticians) knew it because they talked about revolution and forcefully taking "back" rights that belong to the "working people". Now the issue is, do you belive that those rights belong to working people or do you think that people should be allowed to be rich and dispose of their wealth and be free to enter into contracts which involve material gain, etc.
"The simple fact is that I LIKED the idea of communism, but it will NEVER work. "
I never liked the idea of communism, that idea goes against the feedom of the people, if you allow free decision to people and free enterprise you have capitalism (or a form of it) not communism, to have communism it means to take those freedoms away from the people. I don't know how some people can be fooled by communism and don't see what it really means, it's not the "putting into practice" that killed the communism, it's the idea itself that's BAD.
"Freedom" has limits in a society and that's probably a good thing. Freedom doesn't have much meaning if you live alone in a island, in a society freedom doesn't have a specific meaning, in some society at least nominal there's a right to free speech (U.S.) in others (Germany) there isn't, e.g., you can't say how great Nazism is or to give a newer example you can't make movies if you promote Scientology. "Freedom" in itself doesn't mean anything, it's the rules that defines a specific concept of Freedom that are important and what the society wants to achieve, BSD and GPL communities want to achieve different ideas of freedom that's why they use different licenses, if people from BSD want their code shared alike then they shouldn't allow re-licensing of the code, as I said in a different post it seems to me that they want some parts of BSD license (everybody can use it, even closing it) and they want some parts of GPL license (but we still want the changes back) -- so they eat the cake and still want to have it.
I agree completely, this comes to show the BSD weakness not the GPL weakness, it seem that BSD people who bitch about it would want their BSD code to behave like GPL in some respects while still behaving like BSD in others (we still want to let people to use it who don't want to give back improvements to the code) -- I still don't see how you can eat the cake and still have it.
This post reeks of false analogies and logical fallacies.
I bet smarter too, here only the idiots take such kind of jobs.
That would a government for, of and by the horses. "hippo" means horse in Greek.
"For instance, how do you see a trail as it winds over grassland and leads into the woods? How does one see a year old trail that is partially overgrown, or a new trail not completely tramped down. How do you track down an animal from smattering of scat, nibbles and tracks over rocks, dirt, grassland, and the tree line? How does a human being see a camouflaged predator slinking behind the tree line? How do you read the sky and know what the weather will be later that day? How do you look at a river and know if it's crossable or not? Back at home, how do you play your relatives, friends, and enemies in the tribe so that you are elected leader when the Big Man passes away? Or how do you manage to convince your husband that your new pregnancy is his, and not your secret lovers'?"
Thanks for proving that I'm not intelligent, I am not able to do any of these...
I know that's a joke but monkey are very close to extinction and humans are more than 6 billion, so yes, it's the survival of the fittest and humans are clearly the fittest.
Do you actually bring the Bible as a proof into a discussion, I'm amazed! Let me rush and bring Lord of the Rings as better proof that people lived a good life in the past, except for wars with evil spirits.
1. how many people were living in Old Stone Age, how many are living now.
2. how many of people who go hungry to bed every night are in modern capitalist societies and how many are in countries like Zimbabwe
3. what does it mean to "go hungry to bed" if one ate a Big Mac at launch he can still go hungry to bad, in "Old Stone Age" if one didn't catch anything the day and day before and ate only peanuts would probably go to bad much hungrier.
4. what was the life expectance of hunters and gatherers?
What a concept! Do you really think that somebody from California is just as important as somebody from Florida or Ohio?
"I have no good grasp on where humans will be 2 billion years from now, but I am sure we will be pretty advanced." ...or dead.
"You can't tell a professional graphics artist that GIMP should be "good enough" and they "don't need what Photoshop"
I don't know for others, but myself I'm getting tired to hear about Photoshop everytime switching from Windows to Linux is mentioned. Does anybody know what is the market penetration of Photoshop? 50%? 20%? 3%? of Windows users? Thanks!
Well, take a look at Stalin's picture: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photo_editing
"First rule of unix, never tell anyone you use pico. Second rule of unix, NEVER TELL ANYONE YOU USE PICO! ..."
I use nano.
I asked him and he said: "my wife is beautiful but she doesn't want to fuck me more than once a month, her sister (while butt-ugly) wants to do it all the time"
Duh!
Browsing at 4+ helps too.
If the students care enough they won't go to that University.
That's almost like saying that "I just don't allow you to eat, it's not like I deprive you of your life" -- to me it's the same shit, I don't care if you can't sell my assets, I care that I don't have access to them anymore (I've been deprived of them)
Frankly I'm having the same problem every time I go into a restaurant, too many damn things on the menu, there should be one or at most two things, most of the time I leave hungry because I can't decide what to order.