Somewhere around BBEdit 4 or so I may have agreed with you, but not anymore. BBEdit has been suffering from feature bloat ever since people figured out it was a great HTML editor, and now with the Webcore preview feature, it's coming one step closer to being a WYSIWYG web page editor. Add in the FTP capabilities, remote editing, and the file group feature and you already have basic site management. All that's really needed is a bit of refinement and it's there.
On a side note, I have yet to find a web page editor with a site management feature I like. Unless there was something I missed in Dreamweaver MX or it's changed in MX 2004, the biggest thing I found lacking is that you can only synchronize between your local computer and one other system. The way I had my setup was a local copy for editing, a home web server for testing, and then I would upload to my actual server. Dreamweaver doesn't allow for a setup like this, so I would ultimately have to upload the files to my website manually either from my system or the test server. It also doesn't allow for the possibility that you could have one site spanning two remote servers without having to create a separate site for each system (although I am guessing this is a rare occurrence, I do know of one non-profit that I created a site for that had this type setup. What the reasoning behind it was I don't know, but since I didn't have control over it I just had to deal with it).
Your original statement was correct. It is generally right-wing non-libertarians who support conscription. Just look at where most of the suggestions for mandatory military service come from. You'll see they're generally either Republicans or "barely" Democrats.
So it would be okay to say, oh, Linux was "owned" by HP, IBM, Redhat? Most of the major players and contributors work for other for profit companies. It's not too far-fetched, is it?
Actually, it is. But this point doesn't really interest me so I'm not going to spend time substantiating it (at least I'm honest).
Reality check people--if it's not privately owned, it's not private. If you want to make a point saying it's unduly influenced, do that, but you'll still be laughed at--most of our banking system runs through private companies. There is nothing wrong with that. Unless you want to argue the top tier of our banking system should cater to a socialist view and make decisions utterly independent of the community it serves. In which case, I'll just laugh at you.
Feel free. I'll laugh right back at you.
Reality check yourself. I never stated that the Fed was a private institution (I believe the term I used is "quasi-governmental", which I will stand by). The industry it supposedly regulates and sets policy for constitutes the majority of its board of governors. The regional banks themselves are privately owned (the shareholders being the member banks of the each reserve bank). This doesn't constitute undue influence, it constitutes selling out.
The important question to ask is what community does the Fed serve. If you think that it exists to serve banks, then I guess you're fine with the way it exists now. The Fed was created though not to stabilize banks but to stabilize the money supply and by extension the economy (setting banking policy was just the easiest means to do so). Unfortunately because of the system's design from day one it has mainly catered to the interests of banks (which are not always the same as the interests of everybody else). I'm not necessarily arguing that the Fed should cater to socialists. I'm arguing that the Fed should care about more than what's good for banks.
It doesn't make sense because you don't even want to consider it. Hence why you respond with such a disdainful and obstinate tone yourself.
That , and yeah, I did not substantiate my statement. Unfortunately I can't recall the specific source nor do I have time to look it up right now (stoopid final exams and all that...), but it went something like this:
1. Fast growing but poor parenting GE salmon escape into the wild. 2. Female salmon find GE salmon irresistible and all try to hook up with them, disregarding their smaller but otherwise genetically superior wild counterparts and failing to mate with them. 3. Offspring of GE and wild salmon are less likely to survive. Note less likely, not completely unlikely, and that the survivors are likely to continue to carry on their genetic weakness (as recessive traits) and pass them to future generations. 4. Repeat starting at #1 (because it's likely that GE salmon are not going to escape only one year but year after year, as demonstrated by the current fish farming industry) until... 5. No more salmon.
NIMBYism at it's finest. "Test it out somewhere else, and if it doesn't screw anything up, then I'm OK with it." That's not exactly very principled: if you're not willing to accept the risks you shouldn't expect anybody else to.
One person's reactionary is another person's visionary.
The reality is that the rules being "pulled out of their asses" are all about the political realities and context.
The problem I think is that most researchers (and their corporate overlords) who are pursuing genetic research are not being guided by any ethical principles other than "can we do this?" (researchers) or "can we make money off of this?" (the corporate overlords). I would argue that most of those pushing for no human cloning or no stem cell research have far more of an ethical principle for why they are opposing these practices (although I don't agree with their principles, most of it being biblically or otherwise religiously based).
The primary ethical consideration should be "what are the consequences of doing this?", and economic considerations should either be disregarded or at least de-emphasized to allow other impacts (environmental, sociological, etc.) to be fully considered. As an aside, this is what I think the main point of "Jurassic Park" was, something that seems to be lost on most people (especially those who just saw the movie) or disregarded by most of the geek demographic.
Part of using one's "senses, reason, and intellect" might imply that one should also use them to think out the consequences of one's actions and therefore choose not to explore or pursue particular ends. In shorthand, think before you act.
Morality is legislated everyday. The simplest example::Thou shalt not kill" and statutes that implement it. One can argue whether or not it's effective to legislate morality though.
Furthermore, although it might not apply to GE fish as pets, I (and others) fully have the right and I would argue duty to force my beliefs upon another when it can be legitimately argued that your actions are infringing upon my own rights. The problem of course is how do you define "legitimately" and how to deal with the fact that every decision one makes impacts others in some way, and part of living in a society with others is the inevitability that everybody is going to have to compromise and give up something.
While on it's face your argument may appear to make some sense, the reality unfortunately is quite different.
1. The randomness of "natural" evolution in the end produces a balance that mimics an intelligently designed system. Or if you happen to be a creationist, then you would argue that there is an intelligence behind it. Maybe the first statement is what leads people to believe the second. 2. Despite the supposed superiority of human intellect, in all of our brief history we have failed to create an equally balanced system through our intervention. In the end, in order to maintain the system we have to continuously intervene to keep it from collapsing. As an example, the number one cause of civilization collapse throughout history has been exhausting local resources, i.e., "ecological disaster". Creating situations where once vibrant ecosystems can no longer support and perpetuate themselves (or even human life for those who don't care about the cute and fuzzy bunnies) I would think would qualify as such a disaster.
Calling what we do as a natural result of that mutation is not on its face a true statement. It is a potential (and in fact the actual) result of that mutation, but to call it natural is to discard the fact that it was the result of certain decisions made. In fact there are still societies that "live lightly" on the land in ways that are not environmentally degrading, who are not living marginal existences (and in those cases where they are, it is most often due to external influence of other societies). These societies represent that road not taken.
Maybe if I believed that what's good for banks is good for everybody I wouldn't be alarmed either, but that statement simply isn't true. As it stands they are ONE interest group but their interests are allowed to almost completely dominate the agenda of the Fed. It's billed to the public as an apolitical agency, but in reality it is a highly political body that happens to only have one real constituency that they cater to (again, banks, the bigger the better). Given the impact that the Fed has on the economy (and by extension everybody in the country as well as a big influence on the world economy), yeah, I would say that I'm more than a bit alarmed.
A good reference on the subject is "Secrets of the Temple: How the Federal Reserve Runs the Country" by William Greider. It's a bit thick (around 800 pages) but a quick read considering. And quite enlightening.
No it's not owned by the banks, but the member banks elect most of the board members of the district banks who are then elected to the national fed board...so it's not too far-fetched to say that they "own" the fed. I don't think it's necessarily unhealthy to fear a quasi-governmental institution that has such a far ranging impact on the economy as a whole but really only cares about the interests of one particular group (being big banks). The fed far from being any sort of responsive democratic institution, although from your tone I doubt you would care.
Of course the question then is what kind of subsidies are they getting from the French government. There aren't a whole lot of drugs being developed by the U.S. government either, but the primary way it encourages development is by giving tax breaks out the wazoo and letting the pharmas then go back and rape consumers with any outrageous price they want to set.
I think the "tragedy of the commons" scenario, both as it was originally conceived back in the day and as applied to this example, is utter BS. It assumes first that people will not realize that it is in their best interest to cooperate and that some sort of systemic solution couldn't be devised to deal with free-loaders, i.e. some sort of pay into the system what you can (ohmygod, that sounds like socialism!) or get nothing out of it type deal.
As an aside, less money spent on pharma research really doesn't seem like such a bad idea to me. Far too much of it is going into research for
a) stupid shit (viagra) b) developing new drugs because the old ones don't work anymore (mass feeding antibiotics to farm animals and over-prescribing) c) drugs for dealing with diseases that it would be far better if we put more effort into preventing them d) trying to make people live forever.
I say at the least we pull government subsidies and tax breaks from the pharmas and put that money into better preventative research and education, combined with some sort of litmus test to approve subsidies to research truly worthy drug research, focus more efforts on treatments for diseases that primarily affect younger people as opposed to older people (this probably sounds the most callous, but so be it. I think it's tragic when a 12 year old dies before even getting a chance to live. When and 80 year old dies, I'm less sympathetic and much more apt to say let nature take it's course) as well as some sort of system so that more funding is spent researching cures that impact larger portions of the population. Finally, how antibiotics and other drugs are used should be far more heavily regulated.
Mostly, I'm highly skeptical of letting the "free market" run the show. I think health care is far too important to be left to the decisions of greedy CEOs and the demands of worthless shareholders. Not that I'm all that trusting of greedy politicians, but given the choice, I'll take them over the CEOs, so long as their corporate sponsors can be kept under control. Yeah, right...
The counter argument would be that had there been no patents, the rate of innovation could have been much faster. With patent laws, something that was invented could only be directly improved on by the inventor until the patent expired. Without patent laws, somebody could reverse engineer a product, figure out how to make it better and release their own improved product.
No, if you're being paid with anything you've agreed to, you're not being "ripped off".
Well, my cowardly ill-informed friend, this assumes that there is true "agreement". In most cases, stock options are offered as a "take it or leave it" proposition: we will pay you in stock options or you can seek employment elsewhere. Very rarely is the offer "would you like to make another $X per year or would you rather get $X year in stock options."
You apparently made out well. Some people do. Most people do not. And it's not because they're too stupid to exercise them. It's because they're worthless, or worth little. Look beyond just YOUR own experience, which is one of the exceptions, and look at the general experience of MOST people.
And so they don't have to pay them with real money.
Stock options are largely a gimmick - employees generally make very little on them (the dot com boom being an aberration), and the savings in wages for the company are often much greater.
In conclusion, if you're being paid with stock options, you're being ripped off.
And riot they did, if you recall the backlash to the very early demos of OS X (then Rhapsody). That was where all the NEXT people came in and said "desktops are not for files" (which generally I would agree with, but that's just me) and "column view is the only way to view". It wasn't long before the Finder returned to much of its previous form with a bunch of NEXT features thrown into it. This I think is probably the biggest problem with the Finder as it is now is that it doesn't know what it is anymore - it lacks vision, and it really isn't making anybody happy, at least amongst those who talk about these sorts of things. Very little of Panther's changes are revolutionary and much of it strikes one as "change for the sake of change" (two words - brushed metal). This time next year, "fixing" the Finder should be Apple's priority number 1 for 10.4.
Nice try, but too bad it was the Post, not the Times. Now go back to watching Fox News, where you can be assured that they are always wrong. Not that you would notice...
Unless it's determined that the only remedy that would correct the situation is specific performance - i.e., a court order telling CocoaTech that they have to open the source code.
While I think that this is an unlikely remedy, and that a fine would be much more likely, I think one could make a good argument in favor of SP.
And if they get sued, they will likely be forced to stop distributing the product until they remove the code.
But I think the point is, the license clearly does require that if they ship binaries that are derivative works of the GPLed code, then they have to ship source code with them. In order to be in compliance, they do have to release the code.
Then instead of simply insulting the author, why not point out how he's incorrect. I DID READ the GPL, and basically come to the same conclusion. They don't have to release the code to everybody - just to those they distribute binaries to.
Slashdot Mirror
Somewhere around BBEdit 4 or so I may have agreed with you, but not anymore. BBEdit has been suffering from feature bloat ever since people figured out it was a great HTML editor, and now with the Webcore preview feature, it's coming one step closer to being a WYSIWYG web page editor. Add in the FTP capabilities, remote editing, and the file group feature and you already have basic site management. All that's really needed is a bit of refinement and it's there.
On a side note, I have yet to find a web page editor with a site management feature I like. Unless there was something I missed in Dreamweaver MX or it's changed in MX 2004, the biggest thing I found lacking is that you can only synchronize between your local computer and one other system. The way I had my setup was a local copy for editing, a home web server for testing, and then I would upload to my actual server. Dreamweaver doesn't allow for a setup like this, so I would ultimately have to upload the files to my website manually either from my system or the test server. It also doesn't allow for the possibility that you could have one site spanning two remote servers without having to create a separate site for each system (although I am guessing this is a rare occurrence, I do know of one non-profit that I created a site for that had this type setup. What the reasoning behind it was I don't know, but since I didn't have control over it I just had to deal with it).
Correction to your correction:
Your original statement was correct. It is generally right-wing non-libertarians who support conscription. Just look at where most of the suggestions for mandatory military service come from. You'll see they're generally either Republicans or "barely" Democrats.
So it would be okay to say, oh, Linux was "owned" by HP, IBM, Redhat? Most of the major players and contributors work for other for profit companies. It's not too far-fetched, is it?
Actually, it is. But this point doesn't really interest me so I'm not going to spend time substantiating it (at least I'm honest).
Reality check people--if it's not privately owned, it's not private. If you want to make a point saying it's unduly influenced, do that, but you'll still be laughed at--most of our banking system runs through private companies. There is nothing wrong with that. Unless you want to argue the top tier of our banking system should cater to a socialist view and make decisions utterly independent of the community it serves. In which case, I'll just laugh at you.
Feel free. I'll laugh right back at you.
Reality check yourself. I never stated that the Fed was a private institution (I believe the term I used is "quasi-governmental", which I will stand by). The industry it supposedly regulates and sets policy for constitutes the majority of its board of governors. The regional banks themselves are privately owned (the shareholders being the member banks of the each reserve bank). This doesn't constitute undue influence, it constitutes selling out.
The important question to ask is what community does the Fed serve. If you think that it exists to serve banks, then I guess you're fine with the way it exists now. The Fed was created though not to stabilize banks but to stabilize the money supply and by extension the economy (setting banking policy was just the easiest means to do so). Unfortunately because of the system's design from day one it has mainly catered to the interests of banks (which are not always the same as the interests of everybody else). I'm not necessarily arguing that the Fed should cater to socialists. I'm arguing that the Fed should care about more than what's good for banks.
It doesn't make sense because you don't even want to consider it. Hence why you respond with such a disdainful and obstinate tone yourself.
That , and yeah, I did not substantiate my statement. Unfortunately I can't recall the specific source nor do I have time to look it up right now (stoopid final exams and all that...), but it went something like this:
1. Fast growing but poor parenting GE salmon escape into the wild.
2. Female salmon find GE salmon irresistible and all try to hook up with them, disregarding their smaller but otherwise genetically superior wild counterparts and failing to mate with them.
3. Offspring of GE and wild salmon are less likely to survive. Note less likely, not completely unlikely, and that the survivors are likely to continue to carry on their genetic weakness (as recessive traits) and pass them to future generations.
4. Repeat starting at #1 (because it's likely that GE salmon are not going to escape only one year but year after year, as demonstrated by the current fish farming industry) until...
5. No more salmon.
and taking the rest of the population with them...
Like Creationists, the anti-GE crowd simply ignores science when it doesn't serve their purposes.
Wow, they sound just like the pro-GE crowd.
The offspring of the GE salmon are not as hardy as their wild counterparts. So within a few generations you would have no fish.
NIMBYism at it's finest. "Test it out somewhere else, and if it doesn't screw anything up, then I'm OK with it." That's not exactly very principled: if you're not willing to accept the risks you shouldn't expect anybody else to.
One person's reactionary is another person's visionary.
The reality is that the rules being "pulled out of their asses" are all about the political realities and context.
The problem I think is that most researchers (and their corporate overlords) who are pursuing genetic research are not being guided by any ethical principles other than "can we do this?" (researchers) or "can we make money off of this?" (the corporate overlords). I would argue that most of those pushing for no human cloning or no stem cell research have far more of an ethical principle for why they are opposing these practices (although I don't agree with their principles, most of it being biblically or otherwise religiously based).
The primary ethical consideration should be "what are the consequences of doing this?", and economic considerations should either be disregarded or at least de-emphasized to allow other impacts (environmental, sociological, etc.) to be fully considered. As an aside, this is what I think the main point of "Jurassic Park" was, something that seems to be lost on most people (especially those who just saw the movie) or disregarded by most of the geek demographic.
Part of using one's "senses, reason, and intellect" might imply that one should also use them to think out the consequences of one's actions and therefore choose not to explore or pursue particular ends. In shorthand, think before you act.
:Thou shalt not kill" and statutes that implement it. One can argue whether or not it's effective to legislate morality though.
Morality is legislated everyday. The simplest example:
Furthermore, although it might not apply to GE fish as pets, I (and others) fully have the right and I would argue duty to force my beliefs upon another when it can be legitimately argued that your actions are infringing upon my own rights. The problem of course is how do you define "legitimately" and how to deal with the fact that every decision one makes impacts others in some way, and part of living in a society with others is the inevitability that everybody is going to have to compromise and give up something.
While on it's face your argument may appear to make some sense, the reality unfortunately is quite different.
1. The randomness of "natural" evolution in the end produces a balance that mimics an intelligently designed system. Or if you happen to be a creationist, then you would argue that there is an intelligence behind it. Maybe the first statement is what leads people to believe the second.
2. Despite the supposed superiority of human intellect, in all of our brief history we have failed to create an equally balanced system through our intervention. In the end, in order to maintain the system we have to continuously intervene to keep it from collapsing. As an example, the number one cause of civilization collapse throughout history has been exhausting local resources, i.e., "ecological disaster". Creating situations where once vibrant ecosystems can no longer support and perpetuate themselves (or even human life for those who don't care about the cute and fuzzy bunnies) I would think would qualify as such a disaster.
Calling what we do as a natural result of that mutation is not on its face a true statement. It is a potential (and in fact the actual) result of that mutation, but to call it natural is to discard the fact that it was the result of certain decisions made. In fact there are still societies that "live lightly" on the land in ways that are not environmentally degrading, who are not living marginal existences (and in those cases where they are, it is most often due to external influence of other societies). These societies represent that road not taken.
Maybe if I believed that what's good for banks is good for everybody I wouldn't be alarmed either, but that statement simply isn't true. As it stands they are ONE interest group but their interests are allowed to almost completely dominate the agenda of the Fed. It's billed to the public as an apolitical agency, but in reality it is a highly political body that happens to only have one real constituency that they cater to (again, banks, the bigger the better). Given the impact that the Fed has on the economy (and by extension everybody in the country as well as a big influence on the world economy), yeah, I would say that I'm more than a bit alarmed.
A good reference on the subject is "Secrets of the Temple: How the Federal Reserve Runs the Country" by William Greider. It's a bit thick (around 800 pages) but a quick read considering. And quite enlightening.
No it's not owned by the banks, but the member banks elect most of the board members of the district banks who are then elected to the national fed board...so it's not too far-fetched to say that they "own" the fed. I don't think it's necessarily unhealthy to fear a quasi-governmental institution that has such a far ranging impact on the economy as a whole but really only cares about the interests of one particular group (being big banks). The fed far from being any sort of responsive democratic institution, although from your tone I doubt you would care.
Of course the question then is what kind of subsidies are they getting from the French government. There aren't a whole lot of drugs being developed by the U.S. government either, but the primary way it encourages development is by giving tax breaks out the wazoo and letting the pharmas then go back and rape consumers with any outrageous price they want to set.
I think the "tragedy of the commons" scenario, both as it was originally conceived back in the day and as applied to this example, is utter BS. It assumes first that people will not realize that it is in their best interest to cooperate and that some sort of systemic solution couldn't be devised to deal with free-loaders, i.e. some sort of pay into the system what you can (ohmygod, that sounds like socialism!) or get nothing out of it type deal.
As an aside, less money spent on pharma research really doesn't seem like such a bad idea to me. Far too much of it is going into research for
a) stupid shit (viagra)
b) developing new drugs because the old ones don't work anymore (mass feeding antibiotics to farm animals and over-prescribing)
c) drugs for dealing with diseases that it would be far better if we put more effort into preventing them
d) trying to make people live forever.
I say at the least we pull government subsidies and tax breaks from the pharmas and put that money into better preventative research and education, combined with some sort of litmus test to approve subsidies to research truly worthy drug research, focus more efforts on treatments for diseases that primarily affect younger people as opposed to older people (this probably sounds the most callous, but so be it. I think it's tragic when a 12 year old dies before even getting a chance to live. When and 80 year old dies, I'm less sympathetic and much more apt to say let nature take it's course) as well as some sort of system so that more funding is spent researching cures that impact larger portions of the population. Finally, how antibiotics and other drugs are used should be far more heavily regulated.
Mostly, I'm highly skeptical of letting the "free market" run the show. I think health care is far too important to be left to the decisions of greedy CEOs and the demands of worthless shareholders. Not that I'm all that trusting of greedy politicians, but given the choice, I'll take them over the CEOs, so long as their corporate sponsors can be kept under control. Yeah, right...
RU-486?
The counter argument would be that had there been no patents, the rate of innovation could have been much faster. With patent laws, something that was invented could only be directly improved on by the inventor until the patent expired. Without patent laws, somebody could reverse engineer a product, figure out how to make it better and release their own improved product.
No, if you're being paid with anything you've agreed to, you're not being "ripped off".
Well, my cowardly ill-informed friend, this assumes that there is true "agreement". In most cases, stock options are offered as a "take it or leave it" proposition: we will pay you in stock options or you can seek employment elsewhere. Very rarely is the offer "would you like to make another $X per year or would you rather get $X year in stock options."
You apparently made out well. Some people do. Most people do not. And it's not because they're too stupid to exercise them. It's because they're worthless, or worth little. Look beyond just YOUR own experience, which is one of the exceptions, and look at the general experience of MOST people.
Is Polish (with a bit of Irish and French-Canadian thrown in) descent good enough?
And so they don't have to pay them with real money.
Stock options are largely a gimmick - employees generally make very little on them (the dot com boom being an aberration), and the savings in wages for the company are often much greater.
In conclusion, if you're being paid with stock options, you're being ripped off.
And riot they did, if you recall the backlash to the very early demos of OS X (then Rhapsody). That was where all the NEXT people came in and said "desktops are not for files" (which generally I would agree with, but that's just me) and "column view is the only way to view". It wasn't long before the Finder returned to much of its previous form with a bunch of NEXT features thrown into it. This I think is probably the biggest problem with the Finder as it is now is that it doesn't know what it is anymore - it lacks vision, and it really isn't making anybody happy, at least amongst those who talk about these sorts of things. Very little of Panther's changes are revolutionary and much of it strikes one as "change for the sake of change" (two words - brushed metal). This time next year, "fixing" the Finder should be Apple's priority number 1 for 10.4.
But that's just my opinion.
Nice try, but too bad it was the Post, not the Times. Now go back to watching Fox News, where you can be assured that they are always wrong. Not that you would notice...
Unless it's determined that the only remedy that would correct the situation is specific performance - i.e., a court order telling CocoaTech that they have to open the source code.
While I think that this is an unlikely remedy, and that a fine would be much more likely, I think one could make a good argument in favor of SP.
And if they get sued, they will likely be forced to stop distributing the product until they remove the code.
But I think the point is, the license clearly does require that if they ship binaries that are derivative works of the GPLed code, then they have to ship source code with them. In order to be in compliance, they do have to release the code.
Except continuing to distribute the binary that depends on the GPL'd code.
Then instead of simply insulting the author, why not point out how he's incorrect. I DID READ the GPL, and basically come to the same conclusion. They don't have to release the code to everybody - just to those they distribute binaries to.
So how is this incorrect?