My company spent a lot of time making a Unicode version of one of our larger web applications, and it does well in the Japanese market. Japan (and I guess Korea and China) are largely excluded from the Western market (as consumers) because of the complexity of supporting their character sets (Katakana, Hirigi, and Kanji in Japan alone).
So Japan, Korea, China share the need for coherent Unicode support in their software at OS and application level. This is something missing from anything one can put together today in the West, either using Windows or Linux.
So this move makes sense, though given the history between these three countries, somewhat unlikely. Perhaps after the successful football world cup, someone has been thinking...
Anyhow, I've said several times that it seems an obvious thing for governments to do, especially ones outside the reach/grip of the US hegemony: invest in local open source, both to encourage the development of local IT and to save money by buying less American junk. China, India, Brazil: these are the countries where the likeliehood of a serious home-grown OSS "industry" is most likely.
Before the "destroying value and US jobs" mob get here, I'll just add my voice saying it's a good thing and all success to them.
KazaaLite is a hack of Kazaa, and thus blatant piracy. But Kazaa itself is dubious stuff, filled with spyware. Sigh. Perhaps we will see a version of KazaaLite distributed through Kazaa?
I've worked for many people and also for myself and my boss has never been an idiot. I would have been an idiot to work for an idiot, and the one time this almost happened (reorganization in the company I worked for), I quit and found another job. It does not say much for someone who knowingly works for an idiot! Yes, tell me about job insecurity and so on, but if your boss really is a fool, your job ain't safe either. Work for competent people. It's so much more fun, more secure, and generates more money.
The thing about the dot-com boom...
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We forgot about nostalgia for a little while...
Truly a once-in-a-lifetime experience, to live through a boom/bust cycle like that. Kindof a Millenium Burnout Party, I guess.
Yes indeed. I was thinking that a few thousand blockading farmers are enough to leverage France into forcing the EU to keep spending something like 50% of its budget on agricultural support.
What would happen in several thousand IT'ers went on strike...? Hehe. We don't need to drive tractors onto the motorways, simply refuse to answer our emails for a week.
Hang on... we'd all be sacked and replaced within 3 hours. OK, silly idea. But certainly IT staff within ministries are both relatively secure in their jobs, most probably unionised in most places, and able to hit government where it really hurts.
Just my 2 Euro/c. I hate strikes and am an ardent believer in the free market, but since you mentioned EU boondoggles,...
But needs lots and lots of work. I would guess that the only way a decent OSS ERP system will come into being is if it is (a) subsidised by the state and (b) actively used by many businesses. If I had the political power I'd definitely find this a good investment of money. Damn, it's a great idea: how much would a small country like Belgium or Sweden save per year if they could find a workable alternative to SAP, for instance? The mind boggles... Perhaps one day we will see governments simply buying software companies. It could make good economic sense.
Well, I'm not counting moderation points, simply taking your statements and applying them to the world I know.
Of course the EU and USA will "fall" one day, but this is a meaningless statement - history, like the weather is only predictable when seen behind you. The future is chaotic and empires can fall because of trivial things.
There are natural laws, yes. Physics lays the basis and chemistry, biology, and many other ologies build up from their. Human societies follow natural laws that can be entirely constructed from first principles.
I have to admit some difficulty grasping your argument, but I believe you have found some philosophy that tries to split things into "natural" and "imposed", and you are using this to try to understand the world.
It is a false split, one that will not help you understand, and one that will lead you into false conclusions. Everything is natural, even imposition. Is that clear? The state imposes law, human nature resists it in some cases, accepts it in others. The state is itself a creation of human nature, a natural solution to the problem of violent conflict.
There are many, many examples of how our innate human nature leads us to create complex so-called "artificial" systems. Laws are just one of these.
I hope this is clearer to you and helps you understand why you cannot really speak of competing or failing systems: the USA and EU each represent current snapshots of incredibly complex but natural systems. These will change over time, become unrecognizably different, because no natural system is static. But there is no way to measure this by dividing things into "granted", "natural", "imposed", and so on.
Sorry for the long post. I am waiting for the coffee machine to heat up and have nothing better to do this morning.:)
Yesterday as I was restocking my kitchen, I thought, "hey, I want the kind of software that supermarkets use" (possibly without the RDIF tags, though whenever my cousin visits, bottles of gin mysteriously vanish, so even those might be a good idea).
Then, why not a serious financial management package for my money (the $232 that I've managed to save since the dot-com boom, and which has not yet been converted into gin)?
The list goes on. Even "huge" packages like SAP are basically just dumb data-entry applications with lots, lots, and lots of options. It used to be that the entry point for building something like this was huge. You needed:
- serious hardware
- licenses for the OS, for tools,...
- Oracle or something similar
- dozens of developers
- huge management structures
I know, I've worked in many companies that produced this kind of software.
Now, today, almost all of these costs have been eliminated, even the huge management structures, as developers have learned how to use tools like CVS, wiki, and even simple email.
It's now feasible (and has been for several years) to foresee a possible next step for OSS, namely to provide domestic/personal/small-business versions of software applications that until today have been considered only "big business".
I'm thinking of stuff like accounting systems, stock-control systems, ERP systems, financial planning systems, currency management, and so on. I'm sure you can add your own favourites: content management.
I'm not quite sure whether I want my fridge to be equipped with a "supply chain management system", but that might be the best tool for the job.
OK, I _know_ that one day, maybe ten years from now, Siebel Systems, or SAP, or PeopleSoft will decide to donate their source code to OSS, much as Sun donated StarOffice. Maybe it's simplest to wait.
But this seems to me to be one of the greatest gaps in today's OSS offering, and one that it should be relatively easy to fill, given modest state support.
Re:Captured not so well.
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Linux is much more than Linus's kernel, and most of the core of Linux is built to Unix specifications in one way or another. Calling Unix the ancestor of Linux is entirely accurate in the same way as the horse cart is the ancestor of the car. I'm sure they don't share code, but we agree that there is a joining history. Linux is most certainly a descendant of Unix, and calling it a "workalike" is unnecessarily pedantic. Are your modern sportshoes "workalikes" for sandals, or descendants of sandals? The Economist is simply using language the way most people use it, unaware perhaps of the color with which we, who see the generations much more closely, paint words like "ancestor". The good news is that - as I said - this is the kind of article you can show to non-technical business people and they will understand. And yes, Mr Perens is an evangelist, and I think he would agree with that label. It simply means someone who "spreads the word".
No, not really a "dark side". This is far too simplistic and the kind of thinking that leads to trouble (as in: "that man is smoking crack, he's breaking the law, so send him to jail and create a real criminal"). It's really just a process of negotiation between the law makers and the citizenship. Europe tends to do this somewhat differently from the USA - in the States laws are designed and debated with near-religious fervour. In Europe, when governments make laws we don't like, we simply ignore them. In general it works very well because there is nonetheless a strong sense of right and wrong which keeps people in check. "Walk on the grass, OK. Kick the flowers, not OK." This is different in each European country, and the UK for instance follows the US model more closely than Italy. Example: in Belgium the law sets the maximum speed limit at 120 Kmph on the motorways. You will see at least 50% of drivers doing 130 or more. This is socially acceptable when the roads are empty. Doing the same when the roads are packed is seen as irresponsible. Second example: in Belgium (again), you are expected to cheat on your tax returns if you're a professional or small business, and the state handles this by negotiation for most people, and punishment only for those who cheat in a stupid or insulting manner (like inventing invoices). Compare this to the UK where a meeting with the tax inspector is something like the Inquisition. Third example (now in the other direction): Belgian law treats immigration very seriously, and illegal immigrants can expect to be picked-up, detained, and deported. This is largely because there is a strong passion for social "order" in many quarters. But behind the scenes, the governments regularly grant block amnesties, allow students to get permanent residence, make it easy for families to reunit, etc. Why? Because here the government takes a more realistic stance ("we need immigrants") than the general population ("funny people, smell strange"). Last related example: in US states like Texas, illegal migrant workers keep the economy working. Despite legislation, everyone turns a blind eye to the large "illegal" workforce. In those states where enforcement is most relaxed, you will find illegal migrants to be most integrated and least involved in general crime or criminal networks. I hope these examples show that a healthy civil state needs lots of negotiation between citizens and government as to what constitutes "the Law". One of the citizens' basic tools in this process is to disobey stupid or irrelevant laws (especially those pertaining to individual freedoms), and this tool works very well so long as the state remains an arbitrer and sanctuary in case of conflict between parties.
Just for interest, how does CWRU handle this problem (preceding/. story. I presume that 1,200 staff, students, and random strangers constitutes quite a serious home-grown network...?
I suspect a large part of the answer is to treat mobile users as "foreign" and put them all on an external segment of the network where they simply can't do much damage except possibly to each other.
Does anyone have more information?
Re:Yes, I posted this story yesterday
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They why did you bring it up?:) You got me there. OK, it was a grouse, but only a small one serving as an excuse to repeat what I'd said in my story submission, namely that The Economist's analysis of the whole affair was very reasonable and satisfactory, and that this was an excellent sign for Linux's future.
I believe your basic premises are inaccurate in several ways. Firstly, your definitions of "granted" and "natural" rights. This is a highly subjective viewpoint: looking at cultures across time and space it's more realistic to say that the very notion of a "right" is a granted thing. "Natural rights" sound nice but simply don't exist, unless you count the right to suffer and die, which is a bit brutal.
Secondly, more fundamentally, your assertion that the balance between "natural" and "granted" rights somehow implies a conflict between groups and governments. The conflicts are there, yes, and they are important, but they come from other much simpler reasons. What you eat, I can't. What you burn, I can't. What you take, I can't. Thus conflict is the simplest way of increasing one's well-being. But it's not the only one, and all human cultures survive by implementing sophisticated conflict avoidance mechanisms, between people and between groups. Trade is one of these. Social welfare another. Armies of poor people make fodder for wars, as Europe has discovered many times. The rest of your argument is based on what are, to me, fallacies, and you if you take your ideas to a logical conclusion I think you will see they don't make sense. High taxes leading to crime is one good example. I live in a high-tax country (Belgium) and I am aware of the extent of the black economy. However, this is not a criminal economy except in the eyes of the tax authorities. When the government makes unenforceable laws, people ignore them and life carries on, pretty much as normal. The criminal networks seem to arise in one very specific situation, which can have many causes. This situation is when the state retreats from enforcing its law in some area or segment of society. I gave some examples already. Why is the state so important as a law enforcement agency? This question lies at the heart of the matter when it comes to violence and criminal violence. It has been shown often that violence is self-perpetuating, and for good reason. If your neighbour is likely to come and rob or injure you, you have every interest in going across to his place and doing it to him first. Self-protection means being more aggressive than strictly necessary, since under-aggression leaves one vulnerable. The logic of this is implacable, and leads to vendettas and other extraordinary symptoms of violence. The state cuts through this cycle by defining itself as the only legal hand of violence. Crimes and punishments are defined a priori, and though this does not necessarily deter crime, it deters the cycle of violence that follows crime. In every historical instance where a police force is instituted, crime rates fall sharply. A corrupt and violent police force is much, much better than none at all. Now, how does this fairly successful system sometimes break down? One case is when the victim of a crime cannot go to the authorities. Criminals tend to resort to extreme violence not because it's in their nature, but because they revert to the non-state logic of crime and punishment. And when illogical laws - such as prohibition of alcohol or drugs - creates large "criminal" communities, extreme violence is a natural and inevitable consequence. The best answer to all this appears to be twofold. Firstly, human nature is basically and generally good, because that is more successful in the long term. Secondly, for this to work we need a strong civil society backed-up by a strong but even-handed state.
Your granted rights include such things as welfare...
So you are saying that because European governments tend to tax higher in order to support a richer welfare system that EU countries will also suffer more violent crime?
This is the strangest anti-state argument I've heard in a long time, and I'm really unsure what it has to do with patents.
If anything, the European-style welfare systems achieve something quite extraordinary: a society in which the poor and the weak always find support, and a society in which spare time is valued over simple wealth, demonstrated by the long holidays most Europeans enjoy.
Violent crime has its origins in things very different from high taxes (again, this linkage boggles my mind, the high-tax countries in Europe are generally the most calm, think Scandinavia and Belgium). Violent crime comes from organised criminal gangs who operate where the state is weakest. This happens when the state fails (in places like Albania) or when the state loses control over large segments of the population (in drug-ridden inner cities). A strong state is almost always a good cure for violent crime, but so is the avoidance of criminalising anti-drug legislation.
You want violent crime? Look at the USA in ten years' time, when almost 1 in 11 men will have been imprisoned at one time or another, and 1 in 3 black Americans will have a criminal record. Somehow, taxes and patents are not behind this. Bizarrely punitive lawmakers and courts, yes.
The EU is a nice place to live and work, and the union will last for much longer than people like you expect.
Since software is rapidly becoming a material that can implement devices previously possible only in hardware. Consider a GSM for instance.
The problem with treating software as a creative work inherently different from material works is that this argument is quickly defeated, and indeed this is the basis for allowing software patents, for "devices implemented as software", as the EPTO put it once to me when I asked about it.
The real issue is not about differences between software and other materials such as metal and plastic. The real issue is about the basic concept of granting patents on inventions. There are domains where "invention" is a laborious and costly process and where a patent is the only protection that makes it worthwhile to proceed. Medicines is one such domain. But there are other domains where invention is a trivial and fundamental aspect of the work, and where protection is not just unnecessary, but counter-productive, and software sits at this extreme.
Most other domains, such as engineering, sit somewhere in the middle, and patents can be useful or harmful depending on the context.
Making software is not inherently different from any other form of invention, it is the scale and purpose which is different. Comparing software and music is interesting, but it looks to me as if music is simply the same process of invention, take one step further along the artistic line.
In other words: not only is this argument not going to work with legislators, but it may well set the grounds for future extension of patents into domains previously considered pure "art".
The only viable arguments against software patents must be based on solid economic calculations: all patents act against small innovators, concentrate power in the hands of monopolists, and software patents in particular are a serious and possible fatal impediment to the natural and beneficial development of a software industry.
Patents are instruments created by governments to allow their business buddies to monopolise interesting areas of business. Today, any argument against patents, software or not, has to be stated in terms of "benefit to the government", not philosophical arguments about pianos and music. Legislators don't give a rats ass about music.
All as it takes...
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Damn it, I swear I read this as:
All as it takes is one sanguine penguin to turn the tide...
And this bizarre mental image of a sanguine penguin explaining to Mr Gerstner what the future looked like and why it involved lots of ice and fish.
Yes, I posted this story yesterday
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and it was rejected.
I'm not grousing.
The Economist has captured the issue very well, and in a way that any businessman (your boss, your clients, for instance) will understand.
It has also defined the core of this issue, namely the realignment of the IT industry from old to new, with SCO/MS on the old side, and IBM/OSS/Linux on the new.
I never thought I would see IBM on the right side of IT, but there we have it.
The basic problem is that people compete for resources, so one person's benefit is almost always another person's loss. Here we're seeing the story from a single viewpoint, the group at the losing end.
But, if you look at the whole picture - that is, not just the USA but the global picture - you can be much more optimistic.
Only an insane business would stay in a high-cost place like NYC when it can move to a cheaper place like Ohio. The end result of such a move is cheaper goods for the consumer, and a realignment of the jobs into an economy that can justify the lower wages.
For every IT worker paid less, there are 100 consumers who benefit. It's not immediately visible, but it's real. The high standard of living in the USA today (which made those luxury IT jobs possible) is in large part due to the cheap goods made by factories around the world. If you had to pay the "old" prices for your car, TV, food, and clothes, you would not have much left over for your PC and internet.
Globally, it is better for all when jobs are done by those who do them best. Indeed, if you can do something cheaper than me, it's better for both of us if you do it, and I do something else, or even nothing. That's a basic principle of trade, and it applies here as well as anywhere else.
It just hurts because it involves people, families, loss, debt. But life is full of suffering and frankly job loss is minor compared to what most people on the planet have to live through.
The whole "save my job" argument is basically an egotistical reaction by people who find themselves in the wrong place at the wrong time.
There are two options: complain (and watch your jobs being wiped out anyhow) or adapt (and have a good chance of benefiting from the new changes).
Cheaper IT is actually a very, very good thing, and long overdue. IT is the lifeblood of modern business, and cheap IT means more businesses doing more interesting and profitable things. The loss of IT jobs is a small price to pay for this. (And I speak as an IT'er myself).
Yes, up to a point. I have a SonicBlue web pad, and it's very, very nice, but too little disk space, no extensibility, poor battery life.
A laptop is too large to carry in your pocket. The Archos is just right. A laptop can't work as a digital camera or videocorder, the Archos can, easily. A laptop is a nasty music player (how do you skip tracks without opening the thing?). A laptop can't be used for playing games on the subway. A laptop can't work from one hand.
Why Linux? Because then I can install the software of my choice, which makes the price tag much more acceptable.
Slashdot Mirror
I know it, my brain skipped a beat. Does that sometimes, it's a software problem.
Thank you for pointing it out.
This may explain it.
It may also explain why the latest release of KazaaLite is labelled "K++".
As Jonathan Swift said:
"So, naturalists observe, a flea
Has smaller fleas that on him prey;
And these have smaller still to bite 'em;
And so proceed ad infinitum."
My company spent a lot of time making a Unicode version of one of our larger web applications, and it does well in the Japanese market. Japan (and I guess Korea and China) are largely excluded from the Western market (as consumers) because of the complexity of supporting their character sets (Katakana, Hirigi, and Kanji in Japan alone).
So Japan, Korea, China share the need for coherent Unicode support in their software at OS and application level. This is something missing from anything one can put together today in the West, either using Windows or Linux.
So this move makes sense, though given the history between these three countries, somewhat unlikely. Perhaps after the successful football world cup, someone has been thinking...
Anyhow, I've said several times that it seems an obvious thing for governments to do, especially ones outside the reach/grip of the US hegemony: invest in local open source, both to encourage the development of local IT and to save money by buying less American junk. China, India, Brazil: these are the countries where the likeliehood of a serious home-grown OSS "industry" is most likely.
Before the "destroying value and US jobs" mob get here, I'll just add my voice saying it's a good thing and all success to them.
KazaaLite is a hack of Kazaa, and thus blatant piracy. But Kazaa itself is dubious stuff, filled with spyware. Sigh. Perhaps we will see a version of KazaaLite distributed through Kazaa?
I've worked for many people and also for myself and my boss has never been an idiot. I would have been an idiot to work for an idiot, and the one time this almost happened (reorganization in the company I worked for), I quit and found another job.
It does not say much for someone who knowingly works for an idiot! Yes, tell me about job insecurity and so on, but if your boss really is a fool, your job ain't safe either.
Work for competent people. It's so much more fun, more secure, and generates more money.
We forgot about nostalgia for a little while...
Truly a once-in-a-lifetime experience, to live through a boom/bust cycle like that. Kindof a Millenium Burnout Party, I guess.
And that's one fad they forgot: the Millenium.
a great idea for yet another EU boondoggle
Yes indeed. I was thinking that a few thousand blockading farmers are enough to leverage France into forcing the EU to keep spending something like 50% of its budget on agricultural support.
What would happen in several thousand IT'ers went on strike...? Hehe. We don't need to drive tractors onto the motorways, simply refuse to answer our emails for a week.
Hang on... we'd all be sacked and replaced within 3 hours. OK, silly idea. But certainly IT staff within ministries are both relatively secure in their jobs, most probably unionised in most places, and able to hit government where it really hurts.
Just my 2 Euro/c. I hate strikes and am an ardent believer in the free market, but since you mentioned EU boondoggles,...
Yes, stuff like this.
But needs lots and lots of work. I would guess that the only way a decent OSS ERP system will come into being is if it is (a) subsidised by the state and (b) actively used by many businesses. If I had the political power I'd definitely find this a good investment of money. Damn, it's a great idea: how much would a small country like Belgium or Sweden save per year if they could find a workable alternative to SAP, for instance? The mind boggles... Perhaps one day we will see governments simply buying software companies. It could make good economic sense.
Well, I'm not counting moderation points, simply taking your statements and applying them to the world I know.
:)
Of course the EU and USA will "fall" one day, but this is a meaningless statement - history, like the weather is only predictable when seen behind you. The future is chaotic and empires can fall because of trivial things.
There are natural laws, yes. Physics lays the basis and chemistry, biology, and many other ologies build up from their. Human societies follow natural laws that can be entirely constructed from first principles.
I have to admit some difficulty grasping your argument, but I believe you have found some philosophy that tries to split things into "natural" and "imposed", and you are using this to try to understand the world.
It is a false split, one that will not help you understand, and one that will lead you into false conclusions. Everything is natural, even imposition. Is that clear? The state imposes law, human nature resists it in some cases, accepts it in others. The state is itself a creation of human nature, a natural solution to the problem of violent conflict.
There are many, many examples of how our innate human nature leads us to create complex so-called "artificial" systems. Laws are just one of these.
I hope this is clearer to you and helps you understand why you cannot really speak of competing or failing systems: the USA and EU each represent current snapshots of incredibly complex but natural systems. These will change over time, become unrecognizably different, because no natural system is static. But there is no way to measure this by dividing things into "granted", "natural", "imposed", and so on.
Sorry for the long post. I am waiting for the coffee machine to heat up and have nothing better to do this morning.
This means the playing field for alternative IM networks is levelled.
There is only one possible icon for SCO and it's so disgusting that I can only mention its name, not link to it: goatse.cs.
Yesterday as I was restocking my kitchen, I thought, "hey, I want the kind of software that supermarkets use" (possibly without the RDIF tags, though whenever my cousin visits, bottles of gin mysteriously vanish, so even those might be a good idea).
Then, why not a serious financial management package for my money (the $232 that I've managed to save since the dot-com boom, and which has not yet been converted into gin)?
The list goes on. Even "huge" packages like SAP are basically just dumb data-entry applications with lots, lots, and lots of options. It used to be that the entry point for building something like this was huge. You needed:
- serious hardware
- licenses for the OS, for tools,...
- Oracle or something similar
- dozens of developers
- huge management structures
I know, I've worked in many companies that produced this kind of software.
Now, today, almost all of these costs have been eliminated, even the huge management structures, as developers have learned how to use tools like CVS, wiki, and even simple email.
It's now feasible (and has been for several years) to foresee a possible next step for OSS, namely to provide domestic/personal/small-business versions of software applications that until today have been considered only "big business".
I'm thinking of stuff like accounting systems, stock-control systems, ERP systems, financial planning systems, currency management, and so on. I'm sure you can add your own favourites: content management.
I'm not quite sure whether I want my fridge to be equipped with a "supply chain management system", but that might be the best tool for the job.
OK, I _know_ that one day, maybe ten years from now, Siebel Systems, or SAP, or PeopleSoft will decide to donate their source code to OSS, much as Sun donated StarOffice. Maybe it's simplest to wait.
But this seems to me to be one of the greatest gaps in today's OSS offering, and one that it should be relatively easy to fill, given modest state support.
Linux is much more than Linus's kernel, and most of the core of Linux is built to Unix specifications in one way or another. Calling Unix the ancestor of Linux is entirely accurate in the same way as the horse cart is the ancestor of the car. I'm sure they don't share code, but we agree that there is a joining history.
Linux is most certainly a descendant of Unix, and calling it a "workalike" is unnecessarily pedantic. Are your modern sportshoes "workalikes" for sandals, or descendants of sandals?
The Economist is simply using language the way most people use it, unaware perhaps of the color with which we, who see the generations much more closely, paint words like "ancestor". The good news is that - as I said - this is the kind of article you can show to non-technical business people and they will understand.
And yes, Mr Perens is an evangelist, and I think he would agree with that label. It simply means someone who "spreads the word".
No, not really a "dark side". This is far too simplistic and the kind of thinking that leads to trouble (as in: "that man is smoking crack, he's breaking the law, so send him to jail and create a real criminal").
It's really just a process of negotiation between the law makers and the citizenship. Europe tends to do this somewhat differently from the USA - in the States laws are designed and debated with near-religious fervour. In Europe, when governments make laws we don't like, we simply ignore them. In general it works very well because there is nonetheless a strong sense of right and wrong which keeps people in check. "Walk on the grass, OK. Kick the flowers, not OK." This is different in each European country, and the UK for instance follows the US model more closely than Italy.
Example: in Belgium the law sets the maximum speed limit at 120 Kmph on the motorways. You will see at least 50% of drivers doing 130 or more. This is socially acceptable when the roads are empty. Doing the same when the roads are packed is seen as irresponsible.
Second example: in Belgium (again), you are expected to cheat on your tax returns if you're a professional or small business, and the state handles this by negotiation for most people, and punishment only for those who cheat in a stupid or insulting manner (like inventing invoices). Compare this to the UK where a meeting with the tax inspector is something like the Inquisition.
Third example (now in the other direction): Belgian law treats immigration very seriously, and illegal immigrants can expect to be picked-up, detained, and deported. This is largely because there is a strong passion for social "order" in many quarters. But behind the scenes, the governments regularly grant block amnesties, allow students to get permanent residence, make it easy for families to reunit, etc. Why? Because here the government takes a more realistic stance ("we need immigrants") than the general population ("funny people, smell strange").
Last related example: in US states like Texas, illegal migrant workers keep the economy working. Despite legislation, everyone turns a blind eye to the large "illegal" workforce. In those states where enforcement is most relaxed, you will find illegal migrants to be most integrated and least involved in general crime or criminal networks.
I hope these examples show that a healthy civil state needs lots of negotiation between citizens and government as to what constitutes "the Law". One of the citizens' basic tools in this process is to disobey stupid or irrelevant laws (especially those pertaining to individual freedoms), and this tool works very well so long as the state remains an arbitrer and sanctuary in case of conflict between parties.
Just for interest, how does CWRU handle this problem (preceding /. story. I presume that 1,200 staff, students, and random strangers constitutes quite a serious home-grown network...?
I suspect a large part of the answer is to treat mobile users as "foreign" and put them all on an external segment of the network where they simply can't do much damage except possibly to each other.
Does anyone have more information?
They why did you bring it up? :) You got me there. OK, it was a grouse, but only a small one serving as an excuse to repeat what I'd said in my story submission, namely that The Economist's analysis of the whole affair was very reasonable and satisfactory, and that this was an excellent sign for Linux's future.
I believe your basic premises are inaccurate in several ways. Firstly, your definitions of "granted" and "natural" rights. This is a highly subjective viewpoint: looking at cultures across time and space it's more realistic to say that the very notion of a "right" is a granted thing. "Natural rights" sound nice but simply don't exist, unless you count the right to suffer and die, which is a bit brutal.
Secondly, more fundamentally, your assertion that the balance between "natural" and "granted" rights somehow implies a conflict between groups and governments. The conflicts are there, yes, and they are important, but they come from other much simpler reasons. What you eat, I can't. What you burn, I can't. What you take, I can't. Thus conflict is the simplest way of increasing one's well-being. But it's not the only one, and all human cultures survive by implementing sophisticated conflict avoidance mechanisms, between people and between groups. Trade is one of these. Social welfare another. Armies of poor people make fodder for wars, as Europe has discovered many times.
The rest of your argument is based on what are, to me, fallacies, and you if you take your ideas to a logical conclusion I think you will see they don't make sense. High taxes leading to crime is one good example.
I live in a high-tax country (Belgium) and I am aware of the extent of the black economy. However, this is not a criminal economy except in the eyes of the tax authorities. When the government makes unenforceable laws, people ignore them and life carries on, pretty much as normal.
The criminal networks seem to arise in one very specific situation, which can have many causes. This situation is when the state retreats from enforcing its law in some area or segment of society. I gave some examples already.
Why is the state so important as a law enforcement agency? This question lies at the heart of the matter when it comes to violence and criminal violence.
It has been shown often that violence is self-perpetuating, and for good reason. If your neighbour is likely to come and rob or injure you, you have every interest in going across to his place and doing it to him first. Self-protection means being more aggressive than strictly necessary, since under-aggression leaves one vulnerable. The logic of this is implacable, and leads to vendettas and other extraordinary symptoms of violence.
The state cuts through this cycle by defining itself as the only legal hand of violence. Crimes and punishments are defined a priori, and though this does not necessarily deter crime, it deters the cycle of violence that follows crime.
In every historical instance where a police force is instituted, crime rates fall sharply. A corrupt and violent police force is much, much better than none at all.
Now, how does this fairly successful system sometimes break down? One case is when the victim of a crime cannot go to the authorities. Criminals tend to resort to extreme violence not because it's in their nature, but because they revert to the non-state logic of crime and punishment. And when illogical laws - such as prohibition of alcohol or drugs - creates large "criminal" communities, extreme violence is a natural and inevitable consequence.
The best answer to all this appears to be twofold. Firstly, human nature is basically and generally good, because that is more successful in the long term. Secondly, for this to work we need a strong civil society backed-up by a strong but even-handed state.
Nuff said.
Your granted rights include such things as welfare...
So you are saying that because European governments tend to tax higher in order to support a richer welfare system that EU countries will also suffer more violent crime?
This is the strangest anti-state argument I've heard in a long time, and I'm really unsure what it has to do with patents.
If anything, the European-style welfare systems achieve something quite extraordinary: a society in which the poor and the weak always find support, and a society in which spare time is valued over simple wealth, demonstrated by the long holidays most Europeans enjoy.
Violent crime has its origins in things very different from high taxes (again, this linkage boggles my mind, the high-tax countries in Europe are generally the most calm, think Scandinavia and Belgium). Violent crime comes from organised criminal gangs who operate where the state is weakest. This happens when the state fails (in places like Albania) or when the state loses control over large segments of the population (in drug-ridden inner cities). A strong state is almost always a good cure for violent crime, but so is the avoidance of criminalising anti-drug legislation.
You want violent crime? Look at the USA in ten years' time, when almost 1 in 11 men will have been imprisoned at one time or another, and 1 in 3 black Americans will have a criminal record. Somehow, taxes and patents are not behind this. Bizarrely punitive lawmakers and courts, yes.
The EU is a nice place to live and work, and the union will last for much longer than people like you expect.
Since software is rapidly becoming a material that can implement devices previously possible only in hardware. Consider a GSM for instance.
The problem with treating software as a creative work inherently different from material works is that this argument is quickly defeated, and indeed this is the basis for allowing software patents, for "devices implemented as software", as the EPTO put it once to me when I asked about it.
The real issue is not about differences between software and other materials such as metal and plastic. The real issue is about the basic concept of granting patents on inventions. There are domains where "invention" is a laborious and costly process and where a patent is the only protection that makes it worthwhile to proceed. Medicines is one such domain. But there are other domains where invention is a trivial and fundamental aspect of the work, and where protection is not just unnecessary, but counter-productive, and software sits at this extreme.
Most other domains, such as engineering, sit somewhere in the middle, and patents can be useful or harmful depending on the context.
Making software is not inherently different from any other form of invention, it is the scale and purpose which is different. Comparing software and music is interesting, but it looks to me as if music is simply the same process of invention, take one step further along the artistic line.
In other words: not only is this argument not going to work with legislators, but it may well set the grounds for future extension of patents into domains previously considered pure "art".
The only viable arguments against software patents must be based on solid economic calculations: all patents act against small innovators, concentrate power in the hands of monopolists, and software patents in particular are a serious and possible fatal impediment to the natural and beneficial development of a software industry.
Patents are instruments created by governments to allow their business buddies to monopolise interesting areas of business. Today, any argument against patents, software or not, has to be stated in terms of "benefit to the government", not philosophical arguments about pianos and music. Legislators don't give a rats ass about music.
Damn it, I swear I read this as:
All as it takes is one sanguine penguin to turn the tide...
And this bizarre mental image of a sanguine penguin explaining to Mr Gerstner what the future looked like and why it involved lots of ice and fish.
and it was rejected.
I'm not grousing.
The Economist has captured the issue very well, and in a way that any businessman (your boss, your clients, for instance) will understand.
It has also defined the core of this issue, namely the realignment of the IT industry from old to new, with SCO/MS on the old side, and IBM/OSS/Linux on the new.
I never thought I would see IBM on the right side of IT, but there we have it.
The basic problem is that people compete for resources, so one person's benefit is almost always another person's loss. Here we're seeing the story from a single viewpoint, the group at the losing end.
But, if you look at the whole picture - that is, not just the USA but the global picture - you can be much more optimistic.
Only an insane business would stay in a high-cost place like NYC when it can move to a cheaper place like Ohio. The end result of such a move is cheaper goods for the consumer, and a realignment of the jobs into an economy that can justify the lower wages.
For every IT worker paid less, there are 100 consumers who benefit. It's not immediately visible, but it's real. The high standard of living in the USA today (which made those luxury IT jobs possible) is in large part due to the cheap goods made by factories around the world. If you had to pay the "old" prices for your car, TV, food, and clothes, you would not have much left over for your PC and internet.
Globally, it is better for all when jobs are done by those who do them best. Indeed, if you can do something cheaper than me, it's better for both of us if you do it, and I do something else, or even nothing. That's a basic principle of trade, and it applies here as well as anywhere else.
It just hurts because it involves people, families, loss, debt. But life is full of suffering and frankly job loss is minor compared to what most people on the planet have to live through.
The whole "save my job" argument is basically an egotistical reaction by people who find themselves in the wrong place at the wrong time.
There are two options: complain (and watch your jobs being wiped out anyhow) or adapt (and have a good chance of benefiting from the new changes).
Cheaper IT is actually a very, very good thing, and long overdue. IT is the lifeblood of modern business, and cheap IT means more businesses doing more interesting and profitable things. The loss of IT jobs is a small price to pay for this. (And I speak as an IT'er myself).
Telephone numbers are a quick way to lookup name and address.
This means the government has 41m email addresses that it can reverse-lookup into physical identities.
Any email address supplied to this database can be instantly turned into a name, address, and telephone number when used in another context.
Hope this is fine with everyone involved. Personally, I don't like the idea of my Internet aliases turning into midnight knocks on the door.
Do, if you have a second, rent the movie "Punishment Park". Quite the little shocker. And entirely relevant.
Yes, up to a point. I have a SonicBlue web pad, and it's very, very nice, but too little disk space, no extensibility, poor battery life.
A laptop is too large to carry in your pocket. The Archos is just right. A laptop can't work as a digital camera or videocorder, the Archos can, easily. A laptop is a nasty music player (how do you skip tracks without opening the thing?). A laptop can't be used for playing games on the subway. A laptop can't work from one hand.
Why Linux? Because then I can install the software of my choice, which makes the price tag much more acceptable.