In 2063 the Unification Council outlaws manually operated vehicles...
The steering wheels functioned only under emergency conditions. Manually operable vehicles were outlawed inside TransCon's ever-growing Automated Traffic Control Regions, and had been since the Speedfreak revolution in the summer of 2063.
"All we did, Trent, was we wanted to drive our own cars. And the fuckers went and outlawed them." Even after all the time, the amazement was still there in the man's voice. "So my reaction time isn't as fast as a chip's. My judgement's a hell of a lot better."
He was silent a moment, then shook his head.
"Water over the bridge. The argument's done, we lost it. But we attempted civil disobedience, Trent, almost two million of us set out from San Diego in a convoy, set out to do the Long Run. That's what we called them, the Long Runs, all the way around the world without stopping, without ever touching down on the goddamn dirt. We'd done thousands of Long Runs by '63, as individuals and in convoys. Speedfreak chapters used to pay to send members on the Long Run as presents, or rewards. In '63 two million Speedfreaks set out to do the biggest damn Long Run ever. Out of San Diego, to Hawaii, to Australia, over India, through Israel, through France, and then into the Atlantic for the trip to Capitol City."
Nathan's voice had grown harsh, strident. "The Unification Council called it treason, and we died, Trent. The Bureau of Weather Control hit us with a goddamn typhoon and eighty-five percent of us died and the ones who didn't were mostly picked up and tried for treason, they executed two hundred and thirty Speedfreaks and sent fifteen thousand into Public Labor for the rest of their lives."
The fierce glare did not leave Trent for an instant. "I was there. I was on the Long Run and I survived."
It took Trent a moment to find his voice.
"Faster, faster, faster," he said softly, "until the thrill of speed overcomes the fear of death."
If we go with your model, and centralize the combustion to electricity generation at the traditional pumping station, then we can attach much heavier fixed catalytic converters and smokestack filters than would be practical to haul around on individual vehicles. Right now we make a compromise between effective emissions filtration vs vehicle exhaust system weight.
Let me provide a real world anecdote here. For a few years, I worked on an island in the Caribbean where the local governement had decided to boost the local economy by making transportation cheaper. They did this by allowing heavy heating oil (normally used to heat furnaces in countries with cold winters) to be sold as diesel fuel. In the Northern countries I grew up in, home oil furnaces burned relatively clean because they burned at an optimal temperature with a predicatable work cycle http://www.oilheatamerica.com/index.mv?screen=furnaces/. In the diesel vehicles on this Caribbean island, the work cycle was much more varied, and the combustion was portable with minimal exhaust filtration on a fuel that is much dirtier than what used in diesel vehicles in the States and Europe. Each diesel vehicle was identifiable from a distance due to the back being black with oil soot and from the black particulate clouds coming out the tailpipe. After the 15 minute bike ride to work, I would cough up black phlegm. I soon took to riding with a respirator, and changing filters on a quarterly basis.
Anecdote aside, vehicle battery technology is getting lighter, no doubt about that. We're steadily improving battery energy density to the point where we will one day pass the liquid petroleum product energy density. My money is that this is further off than the low hanging fruit of being able to centralize emissions control at the neighbourhood generation/pumping station, but either way, both contribute greatly to the goal of making an electric vehicle lighter than a combustion one.
So I think the issues of rolling equipment weight and distributed vs centralized pollution are two factors that support his idea of neighbourhood filling stations fueled by modular energy sources.
If the end user has programmed their charging to begin at 2am every night, maybe the power company can offer a slight incentive to have people opt in to send their schedules in advance.
This way the utility will know in advance that a ramp up in demand will occur at 2am and in turn schedule their equipment to start up in time.
Not everyone may elect to send in their schedules, but enough may be motivated by the incentives to be able to indicate a general trend which can be extrapolated to the whole user base.
It seems like it would be a reasonable feature for the power meters to incorporate.
Think game client and server model. The OSS game The Mana World lets you play with older clients. Some of the newer functionality in the latest clients will be unavailable to those using older or forked clients, but the communication protocol still allows game play. I don't think it would be as big a deal unless there was a major change in the messaging format.
This is the model I have http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=93RnYZaeyFk, it's a bit slimmer than the video in the thread above. I never dropped calls either, although the touchscreen was frustrating to get used to. The UI isn't as good as Apple's.
As far as I can tell, the people who mod their i9s use SpiderMan for flashing firmware and MTK Flash Tools for reading firmware, all over a com port using a special cable.
At first I hated it, but it really grew on me. Having an unlocked iPhone form-factor phone, that I can transfer anything I want to it, pictures, music, movies, all over usb, is really nice. I took it traveling and really liked having two batteries, especially after I started reading books on it. Say what you want about the new eBook readers, but I love having a backlit screen that can fit in my pocket, fit hundreds of books on microSD cards, and has a backup battery. I could read clearly at night in bed or waiting for the subway in poorly lit areas.
It's really funny to watch an iPhone user try to use my phone, because even though it looks nearly the same, the screen handles way differently, needing more of a tap than a slide.
I wouldn't buy one of these for running apps on, I would just use it for an eBook reader and phone. That's all I wanted out of it and it exceeded my initial expectations.
If all you want is a unlocked phone and eBook reader with awesome battery life, give it a try. But the article is right that it can't compare to an iPhone. The user interface sucks compared to Apple's product, especially when you move into the submenus.
You have a source of heat energy being radiated into the atmosphere as quickly as possible in order to reduce the possibility of damage to the engine components. Currently this energy is dumped as quickly as possible by the radiator. If it is captured by a steam engine, that is energy that has already escaped the capacity of the engine to use it, and is now useable to the vehicle.
If you can represent a number by an inner and outer bound, and then every time you perform a calculation using that number, you expand the bounds to represent the margin of error, you get a nice way of always knowing your precision.
So take the real value, 1/3, and represent it as say, [0.33333329, 0.33333334].
After a few operations, you could end up with [4.2134243, 4.2136963] as an answer. This tells you that your answer definitely lies in the range above, and that you have lost some certainty of the location of that "real value answer".
Two so that one always has a charged battery and I have an abundance of parts to cannibalize. When I have guests (this is a dangerous place to live and a cellphone is needed) I buy a cheap card and give them the phone for the duration of the visit.
A nice thing about the v180 is that it is still current enough to be found in some stores. There is also a USB port on the phone that doesn't require an over-priced proprietary cable. Any standard mini-USB will work, although at the phone shop they try and sell you a "special" motorola cable for $50.
The only complaint I have is the horrid PC software for uploading and backing up to your phone via USB. Proprietary motorola garbage. Check this out, installing it on a machine without an internet connect will hose your windows install. It only works on PCs connected to the internet so it can get updates from moto.
Anyone know of and OSS (linux?) software to connect to these v180s?
That sounds very interesting. Do you have any pictures of that car? My Dad had a GE electric tractor for our farm from that era and I remember him always rebuilding the electrics to improve performance. I've always had an interest in EVs since sharing Pop's enthusiasm for them.
how do feel about your experience on hidden camera?
An-gryyy..
Re:Apparently they never heard of the Cappuccino P
on
Mac mini to PC Hack
·
· Score: 1
I've owned a pIII-1000MHz Cappuccino since 2001 (I now have a second one) and most noticeable difference to the Mac Mini is the fan noise. There is a very small fan that cools a copper heatsink over the desktop processor mounted inside the Cappuccino. Due to the size constraints of the case, they move the required volume of air to cool the desktop CPU by having a fan with high rpms. High rpms of the fan make it sound like a hairdryer going off on your desk.
The sound really gets to you after a while, it's a very high-pitched whine that carries and is hard to drown out. I ended up hiding the unit behind a couch and making a sound baffle for it because it was so loud. Eventually I got a laptop that is way quieter. I'm still glad I got the Cappuccino because it was perfect for what I needed it for: using with my monitor at home, chucking in my courier bag for my bike ride to work, and then using with my monitor there. Also, at the time it was way faster than any laptop available and had the added bonus of being cheaper.
Modernizing? Ha! Weather, country size and shear numbers were the primary factor. Many of Zhukov's troops were armed with shovels, because they didn't have guns
The Russian ability to produce tanks overwhelmed the Nazis. Their tanks (at first, until the Germans copied them) had innovations like sloped shell deflecting armour and heavier guns. The Germans focussed on finely engineered vehicles while the Russians built huge assembly line factories to mass produce thousands of tough, heavy, winterized, wide-stanced tanks. They were ugly, with the welds showing, but they kicked ass. And there were many many more Soviet tanks than German.
You think a bunch of guys with shovels alone could hold off the Nazi war machine? Sure there were millions of poorly armed peasants in the front lines but without Soviet armour they would have faced the same fate as the Incans against Pizarro's superiour technology. That was a case where one side was not able to catch up technologically. Each mounted and armoured cavalier accounted for hundreds of Incan footsoldiers killed.
No, the reason the Russians fought off the Nazis is that the Germans were unprepared for winter, which bought the Russians time to ramp up an incredible feat of technological mass production, done in less time than ever before. Keep in mind that at the same time the Soviets also relocated their factories to central Russia during to avoid the Luftwaffe.
The cost they paid in human lives was horrible, but to claim that they didn't modernize is false.
But during those forty years the people lived in poverty, waiting in lines to get bread, while their own government spied on them
Let's be objective. Didn't both sides do this?
And the same country sent many of those artists to the gulag. How soon you forget the MacCarthy years.
Yes. The Soviet Union folded. Yes, Russia was a shitty place to live freely. But to just dismiss huge chunks of history like that isn't right. I'm glad to live here and I value my freedom just as much as you do, but I doesn't mean I have to turn off my brain. There are good logical reasons for supporting capitalism but blind faith in our system isn't one of them.
A lot of that money isn't his. It should have been paid in fines or been earned by his competitors had he not cheated.
The Microsoft monopoly has everything to do with this because without it, Bill Gates would have a lot less money.
You ask Why do you or anyone else have claim to what someone else rightfully earned?
Because I feel he didn't rightfully earn it, that's why.
Maybe you think I'm jealous of his money but that's not it. All I am saying is that for our government to allow people that have cheated capitalism to still rise to the top is not only wrong but also dangerous.
In my view, capitalism is supposed to allow us a fair chance to work our asses off and combined with a bit of luck and talent, reap the rewards of this hard work. What makes me mad is that there were companies with better products that would have been outperformed Microsoft had Mr. Gates not made these illegal deals.
Microsoft is making inferior products, stifling innovation and competition, the very things that capitalism is supposed to promote. As a programmer seeking to get ahead by working hard and smart, this worries me. Reading about Palladium and it's ability to shut out all non-microsoft approved programs sends chills down my back. This isn't the kind of marketplace I want to enter, one where I have to buy a license to program approved software to run on a monoculture of Windows approved hardware. Does this sound like free-enterprise to you?
I don't think we're arguing very different points here you know. I agree with you that people do own the money they earn. If Bill had legitimately earned his money and payed maybe a bit more tax into the system, I would be very happy to admire him for it. But like I said before, I don't think he has done these things.
Look at how ravaged by exploits it is and how the majority of people are at a loss with how to deal with it. One vulnerability brings down the whole herd.
The lack of quality in the windows software is another indication of something wrong in the free market. I mean, under true capitalism, the consumers would have had access to other better choices of Operating Systems, browsers, media players and office software. Instead due to strong-arm monopolistic tactices by Microsoft, computer makers weren't allowed to bundle competing software to Microsoft. I don't think the choice was left to the consumer that way. They were forced to choose what Microsoft dictated, not what was necessarily the best or most popular choice at the time.
While I'm no communist, I'm also not one to back down from a badly stated comment like that. So bear with my while I play devil's advocate here.
Communism, which you're preaching, does away with incentives. Look at all of the wonderful innovations of this century. How much of it came from communist countries?
The Russian space program
Modernizing and arming their country in time to crush the Nazis
Being able to sustain a nuclear stand off for forty years with the USA
Some of the best film, art, poetry and literature came of the Soviet Union.
To say that the communists lack invention and will simply shows your ignorance. I wouldn't have wanted to live there or be a communist, but what you said was plain wrong.
People are born selfish. Nothing, I mean NOTHING can ever change that, short of a gun to the head.
So does this mean we should then trust one person who doesn't have any checks and balances but has the resources of a small country and a proven track records of shady business practices? You first.
I'm all for capitalism as long as the rules of the game are followed.
Bill Gates accrued his immense fortune by using illegal monopoly tactics to unfairly destroy the companies that shared his target market. If he hadn't done that, the capital would have been distributed more among the companies that had proven their worth on the fair market, and the decision to donate would have been shared among many more individuals.
The government should have at least had a large portion of his money as settlements for the illegal business practices performed by his company.
I also think that he should have been taxed a lot more. I'd rather see an emphasis on smaller businesses rather than big monoculture software giants.
Like I said before, I'm all for the way he chose to spend his money. My point is that I don't think he should have that much money to begin with. A lot of it should have been paid in taxes and fines for the illegal damage he did to his competition.
By taxation the capital's disposal at least has some checks and balances in place, rather than the whim of one individual. Same with it being at the disposal of many smaller businesses and corporations rather than in one huge illegally aquired pile of funds.
The problem I have with wealthy philanthropists is that regardless of the reasons for their generosity, be it a tax-write off or a genuine out-of-the-blue heartfelt donation, the donation is subject purely to the mercy of one very rich individual.
I would rather see the same level of funding coming from a democratically represented government in which a greater number of people have a say.
Why should a charity make or break it on the say of one man? I would prefer to have a vote in the distribution of that wealth through the representation I enjoy in the democratic system, instead of seeing such an obscene amount of money in the hands of one man.
Good for him for his choices of charities so far but the potential for abuse is frightening.
Slashdot Mirror
In 2063 the Unification Council outlaws manually operated vehicles...
The steering wheels functioned only under emergency conditions. Manually operable vehicles were outlawed inside TransCon's ever-growing Automated Traffic Control Regions, and had been since the Speedfreak revolution in the summer of 2063.
"All we did, Trent, was we wanted to drive our own cars. And the fuckers went and outlawed them." Even after all the time, the amazement was still there in the man's voice. "So my reaction time isn't as fast as a chip's. My judgement's a hell of a lot better."
He was silent a moment, then shook his head.
"Water over the bridge. The argument's done, we lost it. But we attempted civil disobedience, Trent, almost two million of us set out from San Diego in a convoy, set out to do the Long Run. That's what we called them, the Long Runs, all the way around the world without stopping, without ever touching down on the goddamn dirt. We'd done thousands of Long Runs by '63, as individuals and in convoys. Speedfreak chapters used to pay to send members on the Long Run as presents, or rewards. In '63 two million Speedfreaks set out to do the biggest damn Long Run ever. Out of San Diego, to Hawaii, to Australia, over India, through Israel, through France, and then into the Atlantic for the trip to Capitol City."
Nathan's voice had grown harsh, strident. "The Unification Council called it treason, and we died, Trent. The Bureau of Weather Control hit us with a goddamn typhoon and eighty-five percent of us died and the ones who didn't were mostly picked up and tried for treason, they executed two hundred and thirty Speedfreaks and sent fifteen thousand into Public Labor for the rest of their lives."
The fierce glare did not leave Trent for an instant. "I was there. I was on the Long Run and I survived."
It took Trent a moment to find his voice.
"Faster, faster, faster," he said softly, "until the thrill of speed overcomes the fear of death."
Agreed.
One of the major issues here is weight.
If we go with your model, and centralize the combustion to electricity generation at the traditional pumping station, then we can attach much heavier fixed catalytic converters and smokestack filters than would be practical to haul around on individual vehicles. Right now we make a compromise between effective emissions filtration vs vehicle exhaust system weight.
Let me provide a real world anecdote here. For a few years, I worked on an island in the Caribbean where the local governement had decided to boost the local economy by making transportation cheaper. They did this by allowing heavy heating oil (normally used to heat furnaces in countries with cold winters) to be sold as diesel fuel. In the Northern countries I grew up in, home oil furnaces burned relatively clean because they burned at an optimal temperature with a predicatable work cycle http://www.oilheatamerica.com/index.mv?screen=furnaces/. In the diesel vehicles on this Caribbean island, the work cycle was much more varied, and the combustion was portable with minimal exhaust filtration on a fuel that is much dirtier than what used in diesel vehicles in the States and Europe. Each diesel vehicle was identifiable from a distance due to the back being black with oil soot and from the black particulate clouds coming out the tailpipe. After the 15 minute bike ride to work, I would cough up black phlegm. I soon took to riding with a respirator, and changing filters on a quarterly basis.
Anecdote aside, vehicle battery technology is getting lighter, no doubt about that. We're steadily improving battery energy density to the point where we will one day pass the liquid petroleum product energy density. My money is that this is further off than the low hanging fruit of being able to centralize emissions control at the neighbourhood generation/pumping station, but either way, both contribute greatly to the goal of making an electric vehicle lighter than a combustion one.
So I think the issues of rolling equipment weight and distributed vs centralized pollution are two factors that support his idea of neighbourhood filling stations fueled by modular energy sources.
If the end user has programmed their charging to begin at 2am every night, maybe the power company can offer a slight incentive to have people opt in to send their schedules in advance.
This way the utility will know in advance that a ramp up in demand will occur at 2am and in turn schedule their equipment to start up in time.
Not everyone may elect to send in their schedules, but enough may be motivated by the incentives to be able to indicate a general trend which can be extrapolated to the whole user base.
It seems like it would be a reasonable feature for the power meters to incorporate.
Think game client and server model. The OSS game The Mana World lets you play with older clients. Some of the newer functionality in the latest clients will be unavailable to those using older or forked clients, but the communication protocol still allows game play. I don't think it would be as big a deal unless there was a major change in the messaging format.
This is the model I have http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=93RnYZaeyFk, it's a bit slimmer than the video in the thread above. I never dropped calls either, although the touchscreen was frustrating to get used to. The UI isn't as good as Apple's.
The CPU is a MT6226 CPU http://www.infinity-box.com/wiki/index.php/Chinese_Miracle
As far as I can tell, the people who mod their i9s use SpiderMan for flashing firmware and MTK Flash Tools for reading firmware, all over a com port using a special cable.
Here's more info on what it runs and who makes it:
OS http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nucleus_PLUS
Phone http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CECT_(mobile_phone_brand)
I initially bought one of these as a joke.
At first I hated it, but it really grew on me. Having an unlocked iPhone form-factor phone, that I can transfer anything I want to it, pictures, music, movies, all over usb, is really nice. I took it traveling and really liked having two batteries, especially after I started reading books on it. Say what you want about the new eBook readers, but I love having a backlit screen that can fit in my pocket, fit hundreds of books on microSD cards, and has a backup battery. I could read clearly at night in bed or waiting for the subway in poorly lit areas.
It's really funny to watch an iPhone user try to use my phone, because even though it looks nearly the same, the screen handles way differently, needing more of a tap than a slide.
I wouldn't buy one of these for running apps on, I would just use it for an eBook reader and phone. That's all I wanted out of it and it exceeded my initial expectations.
This is the one I have: http://product.madeinchina.com/CECT-i9-Quadband-Unlocked-Dual-Sim-PDA-Smart-phone/10618567.shtml
If all you want is a unlocked phone and eBook reader with awesome battery life, give it a try. But the article is right that it can't compare to an iPhone. The user interface sucks compared to Apple's product, especially when you move into the submenus.
What about the sportos, motorheads, sluts, bloods, waistoids and dickheads?
Why not?
You have a source of heat energy being radiated into the atmosphere as quickly as possible in order to reduce the possibility of damage to the engine components. Currently this energy is dumped as quickly as possible by the radiator. If it is captured by a steam engine, that is energy that has already escaped the capacity of the engine to use it, and is now useable to the vehicle.
Case in point, BMW turbo-steamer.
I think the reasons for fighting are nicely summed up here in Bin Laden's declaration of war against the Americans.
If you can represent a number by an inner and outer bound, and then every time you perform a calculation using that number, you expand the bounds to represent the margin of error, you get a nice way of always knowing your precision.
So take the real value, 1/3, and represent it as say, [0.33333329, 0.33333334].
After a few operations, you could end up with [4.2134243, 4.2136963] as an answer. This tells you that your answer definitely lies in the range above, and that you have lost some certainty of the location of that "real value answer".
There's some more info here on a project website http://shrinc.ca/?n=237&h=1&r=286&wc=1
Nice, I bought two v180s for the same reasons.
Two so that one always has a charged battery and I have an abundance of parts to cannibalize. When I have guests (this is a dangerous place to live and a cellphone is needed) I buy a cheap card and give them the phone for the duration of the visit.
A nice thing about the v180 is that it is still current enough to be found in some stores. There is also a USB port on the phone that doesn't require an over-priced proprietary cable. Any standard mini-USB will work, although at the phone shop they try and sell you a "special" motorola cable for $50.
The only complaint I have is the horrid PC software for uploading and backing up to your phone via USB. Proprietary motorola garbage. Check this out, installing it on a machine without an internet connect will hose your windows install. It only works on PCs connected to the internet so it can get updates from moto.
Anyone know of and OSS (linux?) software to connect to these v180s?
That sounds very interesting. Do you have any pictures of that car? My Dad had a GE electric tractor for our farm from that era and I remember him always rebuilding the electrics to improve performance. I've always had an interest in EVs since sharing Pop's enthusiasm for them.
The man himself at a speech (no demo unfortunately)9 095310372&q=Hatsumi&pl=true
3 3808703395&q=Hatsumi&pl=true
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=366686315
And while there isn't any chain link fence running for you, there's some wall climbing and poison dart action in this old video near the end.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-60028739
SWF File
how do feel about your experience on hidden camera?
An-gryyy..
I've owned a pIII-1000MHz Cappuccino since 2001 (I now have a second one) and most noticeable difference to the Mac Mini is the fan noise. There is a very small fan that cools a copper heatsink over the desktop processor mounted inside the Cappuccino. Due to the size constraints of the case, they move the required volume of air to cool the desktop CPU by having a fan with high rpms. High rpms of the fan make it sound like a hairdryer going off on your desk.
The sound really gets to you after a while, it's a very high-pitched whine that carries and is hard to drown out. I ended up hiding the unit behind a couch and making a sound baffle for it because it was so loud. Eventually I got a laptop that is way quieter. I'm still glad I got the Cappuccino because it was perfect for what I needed it for: using with my monitor at home, chucking in my courier bag for my bike ride to work, and then using with my monitor there. Also, at the time it was way faster than any laptop available and had the added bonus of being cheaper.
I just wish they'd included the earplugs.
Modernizing? Ha! Weather, country size and shear numbers were the primary factor. Many of Zhukov's troops were armed with shovels, because they didn't have guns
The Russian ability to produce tanks overwhelmed the Nazis. Their tanks (at first, until the Germans copied them) had innovations like sloped shell deflecting armour and heavier guns. The Germans focussed on finely engineered vehicles while the Russians built huge assembly line factories to mass produce thousands of tough, heavy, winterized, wide-stanced tanks. They were ugly, with the welds showing, but they kicked ass. And there were many many more Soviet tanks than German.
You think a bunch of guys with shovels alone could hold off the Nazi war machine? Sure there were millions of poorly armed peasants in the front lines but without Soviet armour they would have faced the same fate as the Incans against Pizarro's superiour technology. That was a case where one side was not able to catch up technologically. Each mounted and armoured cavalier accounted for hundreds of Incan footsoldiers killed.
No, the reason the Russians fought off the Nazis is that the Germans were unprepared for winter, which bought the Russians time to ramp up an incredible feat of technological mass production, done in less time than ever before. Keep in mind that at the same time the Soviets also relocated their factories to central Russia during to avoid the Luftwaffe.
The cost they paid in human lives was horrible, but to claim that they didn't modernize is false.
But during those forty years the people lived in poverty, waiting in lines to get bread, while their own government spied on them Let's be objective. Didn't both sides do this?
And the same country sent many of those artists to the gulag. How soon you forget the MacCarthy years.
Yes. The Soviet Union folded. Yes, Russia was a shitty place to live freely. But to just dismiss huge chunks of history like that isn't right. I'm glad to live here and I value my freedom just as much as you do, but I doesn't mean I have to turn off my brain. There are good logical reasons for supporting capitalism but blind faith in our system isn't one of them.
Nope,
A lot of that money isn't his. It should have been paid in fines or been earned by his competitors had he not cheated.
The Microsoft monopoly has everything to do with this because without it, Bill Gates would have a lot less money.
You ask Why do you or anyone else have claim to what someone else rightfully earned?
Because I feel he didn't rightfully earn it, that's why.
Maybe you think I'm jealous of his money but that's not it. All I am saying is that for our government to allow people that have cheated capitalism to still rise to the top is not only wrong but also dangerous.
In my view, capitalism is supposed to allow us a fair chance to work our asses off and combined with a bit of luck and talent, reap the rewards of this hard work. What makes me mad is that there were companies with better products that would have been outperformed Microsoft had Mr. Gates not made these illegal deals.
Microsoft is making inferior products, stifling innovation and competition, the very things that capitalism is supposed to promote. As a programmer seeking to get ahead by working hard and smart, this worries me. Reading about Palladium and it's ability to shut out all non-microsoft approved programs sends chills down my back. This isn't the kind of marketplace I want to enter, one where I have to buy a license to program approved software to run on a monoculture of Windows approved hardware. Does this sound like free-enterprise to you?
I don't think we're arguing very different points here you know. I agree with you that people do own the money they earn. If Bill had legitimately earned his money and payed maybe a bit more tax into the system, I would be very happy to admire him for it. But like I said before, I don't think he has done these things.
Respectfully, I disagree.
Look at how ravaged by exploits it is and how the majority of people are at a loss with how to deal with it. One vulnerability brings down the whole herd.
The lack of quality in the windows software is another indication of something wrong in the free market. I mean, under true capitalism, the consumers would have had access to other better choices of Operating Systems, browsers, media players and office software. Instead due to strong-arm monopolistic tactices by Microsoft, computer makers weren't allowed to bundle competing software to Microsoft. I don't think the choice was left to the consumer that way. They were forced to choose what Microsoft dictated, not what was necessarily the best or most popular choice at the time.
While I'm no communist, I'm also not one to back down from a badly stated comment like that. So bear with my while I play devil's advocate here.
Communism, which you're preaching, does away with incentives. Look at all of the wonderful innovations of this century. How much of it came from communist countries?
To say that the communists lack invention and will simply shows your ignorance. I wouldn't have wanted to live there or be a communist, but what you said was plain wrong.
People are born selfish. Nothing, I mean NOTHING can ever change that, short of a gun to the head.
So does this mean we should then trust one person who doesn't have any checks and balances but has the resources of a small country and a proven track records of shady business practices? You first.
I'm all for capitalism as long as the rules of the game are followed.
Bill Gates accrued his immense fortune by using illegal monopoly tactics to unfairly destroy the companies that shared his target market. If he hadn't done that, the capital would have been distributed more among the companies that had proven their worth on the fair market, and the decision to donate would have been shared among many more individuals.
The government should have at least had a large portion of his money as settlements for the illegal business practices performed by his company.
I also think that he should have been taxed a lot more. I'd rather see an emphasis on smaller businesses rather than big monoculture software giants.
Like I said before, I'm all for the way he chose to spend his money. My point is that I don't think he should have that much money to begin with. A lot of it should have been paid in taxes and fines for the illegal damage he did to his competition.
By taxation the capital's disposal at least has some checks and balances in place, rather than the whim of one individual. Same with it being at the disposal of many smaller businesses and corporations rather than in one huge illegally aquired pile of funds.
The problem I have with wealthy philanthropists is that regardless of the reasons for their generosity, be it a tax-write off or a genuine out-of-the-blue heartfelt donation, the donation is subject purely to the mercy of one very rich individual.
I would rather see the same level of funding coming from a democratically represented government in which a greater number of people have a say.
Why should a charity make or break it on the say of one man? I would prefer to have a vote in the distribution of that wealth through the representation I enjoy in the democratic system, instead of seeing such an obscene amount of money in the hands of one man.
Good for him for his choices of charities so far but the potential for abuse is frightening.
I so agree. That's been one of my favorite sites for a while now. It's awesome.