This is not correct, because I don't agree that there is any fundamental philosophical point at stake
And this is where I disagree. There is not only "a point" here, but one of most fundamental and profound issues for the future of humanity. Namely, if positions of DirectTV, "Music Industry", "Software Industry" etc are valid and morally correct, then one has to logically submit to "ownership" of simple numbers, mathematical formulaes and ultimately our very thoughts. In the past, due to our relatively primitive level of technology, it was feasible to deal with some forms of information as if it were physical property, books being the prime example. Unfortunalely as technology advanced, this simple and incorrect approach resulted in more and more contorted and convoluted morass of laws, all hell-bent on denying the simple fact that information cannot be "property". If this continues, it has most devastating implications for the future of sicence, technology and our society in general. In is very sad indeed that so few people put any mental effort into realizing the implications of the current course. And if you do not see the inklinks of things to come, just look at the concepts like ownership of DNA sequences and resulting lawsuits being launched against farmers whose fields contain genetically modified crops that spread there from the neighbouring fields. Ponder the idea of someone "owning" the DNA sequences in a human child. And this being Slashdot, I dont think I have to verse you on the joys of software patents. The DirectTV and RIAA are the glittery but trivial tip of a far more sinister iceberg.
... why a person would, for example, crack a digital TV signal and watch it, then try to justify it in terms of rights and freedoms.
For the record, I dont have Direct TV or cable for that matter. I simply do not care for being fed vast amounts of intellectual vomit intermingled with attempts at getting me to buy things I dont need and sprinkled with political propaganda. And I find the very idea of paying for that kind of "contents", insulting. This howerver has no bearing on what is being discussed here. You are obviously a victim of propaganda by people who stand to benefit from crippling our society for generations if not centuries to come. It is them who are "self-serving" and "intellectually bankrupt". They are easilly recognized when they use the word "theft" in reference to information.
So can you explain why it's better to crack the signal and view for free rather than abstaining?
From the moral and logical standpoint there is no difference. Cracking and watching simply means that you are processing/obtaining information available in the ether around you. Not doing so means you are ignoring this information. Both are totally irrelevant to the extortion attempt by an organisation called DirectTV for something that cannot be owned in the first place. The fact that DirectTV made its business "model" dependant on a lie is not any of my concern. If they come up with a way to sell actual physical goods and make profit at this, my hat is off to them. If they dont.. too bad.
You seem to be falling into a trap of thinking that if some dazzling and glittering shiney thing that is being "offered" to you depends on merely giving up on some fundamental phillosophical and moral concepts, so be it because dazzling and glittering thing is more important.
Maybe not an absolute right, but if you can't figure out a way to keep me from decoding EM energy that happens to land in my yard near a parabolic dish that I built from parts that I obtained without knowingly hurting or killing anyone then that is not my problem and I refuse to admit that I am doing anything wrong.
And you would not be doing anything wrong. What you are trying to express here and what is leading to all these cretinous "stealing of airwaves" charges by the conmen in charge of these "industries" is the simple fundamental truth: information is NOT property
Once this simple fact is understood you can easilly see how this all works. Infromation embedded in the satellite transmission cannot be "owned" so your decoding or otherwise processing it (converting it to sound waves or light patterns) does not constitute "stealing" of anything.
The fact is that DirecTV is not viable without paying subscribers
Exactly the point. This useless "service" is not viable. The only reason it exists is because a bunch of usurpers managed to pervert and twist laws into a mess that affords them protection in implementing any hair-brained, money making scheme as long as it has words "copyright" or "intellectual property" in its description.
I cant stand people so brainwashed that they actually think: "but they would not make any money on this so we must give up our rights and public resoources!... so that the poor downdrotten businessmen can reak undeserved profits at society's expense".
DirectTV, The "Music Industry" and a whole bunch of similiar idiotic endavours are a form of cancer of industrial societies and a result of lack of internally-consistent and logical rules of law.
Yes I do. It means that one is making a lof of money and paying its suppliers and staff many times more then the other, which is constrained by its tax-generated funding and accessibility to all citzens. It means that one crumbles rapidly as staff leaves and suppliers become too expensive for it untill there is nothing but an empty shell to which the politicians pay nothing but lip-service. That is what it means.
The middle class(yes me) will still pay our taxes we just want the option to pay for an MRI in our own province if I feel waiting almost 2 years is too long!
As I explained comprehensively in the other post, there is no such thing as a "parallel" for-pay system. With our limited supply of medical personell, out-of control pricing for equipment, unwillingness of medical staff to work for the less profitable enterprise and unlimted profit potential of the for-pay medical system, total destruction of the public system would be utterly inevietable. The feeble barriers now in place are the last things that prevents all out abandonement of it in favour of "lets-get-rich-quck" schemes akin to those in the USA.
I want the option to say "screw you" to the Health Region that postpones critical surgery due to political fighting.
It might surprise you that I agree that there should be a public mechanism for severely (I am talking felonies and confiscation of all assets) penalizing the politicians/managers of the public health system. Their duties are of such great gravity that there indeed should be a way for citizens to make short work of some asshole who thinks he can hold sick people hostage for his political gain. I just think that running away and giving money to the very people who in all likelyhood put the politician up to his tricks, is not the wisest course of action.
So as a socialist your argueing that when private enterprise and the government compete for a service that private enterprise will always win. Welcome to the capitalist side what took you so long?
No I merely argue that private enterptise is able to generate more profit and therefore attract all the personell away from the government one. If both had ability to generate equal revenues, this would not be the case. However the governemt is restricted to the tax revenues which cannot be generated without grave impact on the rest of the economy, and by keeping the service accessible to all Canadians and that means no additional fees. The private side has no such concerns. Given limited supply of doctors and wide spread collusion and price fixing currenly prevalent in medical equipment and pharmaceutical fields there is only one outcome possible. The government side would not be able to afford providing the service. Note that milking the consumer is only an option for the private side of this equasion. And if you think competition is to take care of the supply of medical services you should look again at the USA and note that for example an average drug brand is expected to produce 0.5-3 billion dollars in profit in the first year of its introduction
...I'm living in the communist paradise of Saskatchewan..
I am not sure what is going on there in that province (seems all the worst trouble with the system). I would guess that it has to do with the fact that Saskatchewan has no industry to speak of (other then cut-throat WTO controlled agriculture) and subsequently no tax revenue to fund the medical (and any other services). Coupled perheaps with especially bad mismanagment of the resources. But then, is your solution is to have your private clinic and screw the rest of the citizens of that province since they cant afford it anyhow? Or shouldn't it be to get the government to start managing the thing properly?
I want the option to pay my hard earned money, that my government has dained to let me keep, for a service that they aren't performing.... let me pay to have my MRI on "off hours" when it's supposedly too costly for them to run with the tax dollars they're already stealing from me!.. etc
Well there is the fundamental difference between me and you. You believe that govenment by definition cannot perform good service because it is not a capitalist greed-motivated entity. I argue that they can if appropriately hot fire is lit under the politician's asses. All those things you describe are results of mismanagment (not uncommon in private enterprises but much more easilly hidden). The solution is to make the government manage the resources given to them and control costs by not contracting to wildly profiteering operators or to people whose primary interest is sabotaging the system. I will not accept the premise that the services are deteriorating even if the funding is increasing accross the board. The only reasons for this are mismanagment and profit-taking of various suppliers in the private sector. Curbing their greed is one of the first steps in maintaining quality. Giving in and paying them more and more via government AND private fees is only submitting to vicious robbery.
Oh, and if you CAN'T pay the $20,000 than no private clinic regardless of where it is is an option for you, and in reality that's what really burns you isn't it?
Believe it or not I can spend much more then that. However I also recognize that by doing so I am doing a great disservice to countless Canadians who cannot afford it. In fact, a majority of people of this country do not have $20k spare cash laying around. Or more like $450k for serious surgery. I am a Canadian and my duty as a citizen of this country is to attempt to help make it better for everyone instead of being self-important asshole who believes that by being gifted with social standing, education or sought-after skills he is entitled to live like a prince sur
Where in anything that I said did you get the belief that I wanted to abolish medicare?
I dont know what it is with these right wing maniacs. Why cant they understand that private MRI's and private parallel system will result in the public one to be degenerated to the level reminiscent of public housing in the US, Graffitti covered slums next to shiney new "for-pay" clinics. What you argue is abolishment of medicare for all practical purposes. You might not comprehend how economic and political forces work and that probably precludes any sane discussion, but that is what will happen. Unlike the "under-the-table" for pay system involving travel to the USA, a Canadian based one removes any restrictions on flow of personell and investment from the public system to the far, far more profitable private one. There is only one outcome possible.
So instead of whining about how you should be able to be better off then everyone else since you got cash to grease the wheels with, perheaps you should try to work on seeing why the MRIs are so overbooked or underfunded. Perheaps the cost of the units at $20 million a pop (90% profit margin) has something to do with it. Or maybe a practice of running the MRI systems 3 hours-a day to create artificial shortage so that the same people who are doing it can go on the talk shows and blabber about how much better it would be if they were allowed to run a private MRI center. Get a clue because your understaning of what is going on here is on par with that of a cow being led to slaughter.
Medical services are different from every other kind of "business" because they involve desperate and suffering people who can be abused for profit in basically unlimited ways. Just look at what is happening in the USA. Our"communist" system is unsustainable?! They will end up paying 80% of their GDP for partial coverage of 15% of their population if the trend continues! That is what you propose, even if you dont understand it.
Calgary was rated as having the best healthcare of any city in the world
Perheaps that has something to do with all that oil they are digging (due to Kleins great foresight of placing Alberta on top of main Canadian oil reserves) and provincial income which Klein is keeping and spending in Alberta and then claiming thats all due to privatization.
Look pal, Alberta's main claim to fame is that they are more like Saudi Arabia then the rest of the country. If some Natives laid the claim to some diamond mines up north and then set up world-class top-dollar medical center, whould you compare it to Saskatchewan, arguably the least industrialized and poorest province? Or perheaps should you complain about Kleins "its my cash I am keeping it and screw the rest of the country" attitude?
So! Nice argument. And why can't we have 40% of the population with no medical care and another 40% percent paying 50% of their incomes for partial coverage and "public" system that is only capable of delivering band-aid (if you wait 7 years in the queue)? Face it, we are going there already thanks to doctor's greed and uncontrollable rampant profiteering down in the USA which is responsible for our medical costs skyrocketing! The only thing now is to join the feeding frenzy and just make sure we end up with some Canadian born hyenas getting rich too. The socialists can't/won't accept this as the final outcome and this shows that even in the face of impossible odds they still retain some hope for the future of this country as one of the few places on the planet where rational thinking and not naked greed and lust for power are in charge.
It's only bad because in Canada it's treated as a national religion.
That is because Canadians understand that if it is not, greed hyenas and jackals will tear it appart in no time flat. Public health care system is a constant struggle against greed filled opportunists who eye massive profits to be made on suffering of desperate people. That is why there is so much noise about "delays" and "problems" and "unsustainable costs". Keep in mind that the very same people who do all the shouting are usually responsible for the cost increases. That is drug manufacturers with 20-year patents, medical equipment manufacturers with their $20 million MRI machines and of coure doctors who are green with envy about their counterparts incomes down South.
That is why in order to retain any universal health care, one has to treat it as a religion and fight these opportunists at every turn, they are determined to nibble away at the system any way they can. Various "This will all fall appart... unless you pay MEEEEE!" reports, and massive propaganda in private media is just par for the course. Politicians like Romanow are easilly manipulated to draw the "correct" concusions from the statistical data.
The obvious way to control costs of medicare is simply for the government to not support various foreign industries that are contributing to the spiraling costs. Yet this is the last thing on the list, given that the politicians are for the most part in the pockets of those interests and can also be bullied by Washington should the monetary incentives fail. What all the proponents of privatisation seem to always miss that any alternative system has to be by definition more costly (profit) and have more overhead (insurance). And it is therefore guaranteed to deliver less services to a lesser portion to the population. Having "user-fees" is just as good as capitulating to the greed run amok.
And while this is true that the very-rich can just hop on their private jets and go to New York... that is not our problem, but theirs. All the country of Canada owes them, is that when their business empires turn out like Enron, a bankrupt ex-CEO still can have his tripple bypass done, even if he is peniless...
I find there are two classes of Canadians I run into. A small minority of typically well-off residents of Western provinces and the rest of us. The minority rants and raves about how they have to wait in some major queues for services, and the rest of us goes to the hospital when we are sick (as I did on many occasions) and get our care with little or no fuss. While there are surely some cases of delays and problems, if you would listen to those malcontents, it sounds like we are dying of burst appendixes and the doctors got rusty saws for equipment.
What are they really saying is that they detest being treated like everyone else, why them being rich and aristocratic! Where are the private nurses lined up waiting to satisfy the smallest whim of the oh, sooo important patient? What? They have to be in the same hospital as those low-life blue collar people?! Insolent peasants?! How dare they! And they wont even take the money to push the princes and princesses to the front of the queue! This is downright un-Christian and un-Capitalist! Abolish the national medical care! That will show those pinko communists! Let them spend 40% of their income on medical insurance.
In case you didnt notice I am starting to find the attitude of the proponents of "two-tier" and "private" medicine not only annoying but being hostile to the very top social achievements this country has. That's right, Medicare is one of them. I will tell you this, so that there is no mis-understandings: if there is one cause that will make me (and vast majority of Canadians) take up arms, this is it. Want to start a civil war? Abolish medicare, I will be a combatant.
Perheaps you are not aware that our system has around 3% administrative overhead, while the US for-profit medicine + massive insurance middleman industry accounts for something like 25% of the cost. Wasn't there a bunch of American doctors lobbying the Congress for cutting out the whole insurance-driven mess and making their system Canadianised just a while ago? Check your facts man, before ranting and raving.
1) in breach of the GPL code that *they* have used
2) trying to enforce a license they do not have.
Its more fuzzy than that. One could try to point out companies like Nvidia or ATI which produce closed-source (and patented to boot) software that is then linked to a GPL covered Linux kernel. If they are not harassed about the "derrivative works" aspect of the GPL, I see no reason why a QT application developer (QT is just a toolkit library) should be.
On the other hand TT seems to think they can extract payments on strictly GPL code.
All of this is open to legal "interpretations" and hair splitting in the courtrooms and my main point is that one can easily avoid the whole legal mess by simply using a toolkit that is specifically licensed (LGPL) to avoid such issues.
The Trolltech/QT sitiuation is clear as mud and prone to abuses and major upheavals should the company change hands and the new management have more money to sue with then brain cells.
They can't decide that the GPL only applies to certain people.
Tell them that. TT dual license terms state that any "commercial" application needs a license regardless if it is GPLed or not. One can easilly write and distribute GPLed code and charge for service/customizations etc.
Trolltech cannot prevent people who write GPL-compatible (and thus Open Source) applications with the code it already released under those licensing conditions. However, people writing closed-source, proprietary applications cannot link to GPL code under the terms of the GPL.
Not unless you license it under LGPL or some such. Look at what companies like NVIDIA are doing with their binary-only kernel driver modules. The kernel is GPL (not even LGPL) and yet they merilly produce non-GPL closed source add ons. This is a nice and plausible excuse to have a dual license but its just that.
Once again, since the GPL has no termination clause for the original copywrite holder, they can't take it back.
You dont seem to understand how fuzzy and sneaky dual-license can be. Dual license is a pretext to go to court to claim that a GPLed fork for example constitutes "commercial" development and thus GPL is null and void in that case and the "other" license applies. Effectively by having a second license on the same code and deciding where and to whom this applies, one can control the scope of the GPL to ones liking. All is needed is a court decision that says "in this case GPL is superceeded by the TT commercial license" and presto, GPL is nullified. If the code is LGPL or GPL only with no "bait and switch" back-door license this would not be possible.
Yours and other people's replies here indicate the depth of blind trust in the system by naive developers who fail to understand that such muddled conditons will atteact SCO-like behaviour very much like a rotting corpse atracts flies.
If you want to use it in some other way (like, writing closed proprietary software), then you have to pay TT to get a different license.
Not acccording to Trolltech. They indicate that any commercial developers, regardless if they use GPL for their code (some poeple sell service/support for a GPL product) must pay TT. That is the source of the whole mess. Seems that TT either does not think the way you do and they dont understand what they are doing or they do plan on some later-date hockery-pockery with this licensing mess.
One could imagine some creative interpretations of the dual licensing and which license takes precedence where etc. Clearly a fork would be contested in court as a competing "commercial" code with TT claiming that GPL was null and void and its "other" license took precedence over it.
If what you say were what TT was indeed thinking and saying, then there would no problem since noone in their right mind would use the non-GPL toolkit. All it would take is to create a wrapper code and license the whole thing under LGPL. That way you would end-up with GPL toolkit and proprietary apps on top via the LGPL layer. This is (or very close to it) what NVIDIA does with their kernel drivers for example.
The LGPL exists to address the whole GPL/proprietary boundary problem but it is still an unholy mess unless the whole toolkit was intended to be LGPL from the get-go, like Gnome was.
So in short what TT is doing is confusing, unworkable and not to mention suspicious, riddled with potential traps and a far cry from your "100% safe, 100% in compliance ".
This wont work for the simple reason that in order to charge varying license fees, Troltech would have to retain exclusive control of the licenses. Thus at any point of time (presumably when QT is an indispensable part of 90% of desktop Linux applications) the licensing could change. I (and probably most other opponents of QT) are not arguing that Troltech has no right to do as they wish with their code. We merely argue that blind depnedance on good will of Trolltech is foolish to say the least.
Since QT is licensed under a childlish scheme of "dual-licenses" whereby Trolltech seems to think they can apply GPL willy-nilly only to certain applications of their choosing, there is nothing stopping them from changing the rules and proclaiming that GPL "only" applies to applications developed free of charge, on Friday the 13th between 4 and 4:15pm, during hailstorm and while a stampede of wild elephants in in progress...
There's a BIG difference between windows and Proprietary QT here, and the difference is that Windows costs money per-user...
Not in the area that is being discussed. We are discussing control. Money usually follows control but it does not need to be "per-user" charge. Merely ridiculous "per-deployment" surcharge on the toolkit. It amounts to the same thing since you will then collect per-user form of a tax on all revenues of software vendors. Better, since you yourself do not need to deal with those pesky users directly.
So in your example: to install Opera you pay Opera who in turn pays portion of thier per-user revenue to Trolltech. Etc. Right now the per-developer fee is flat but thats only because QT is not an indispensable part of Linux desktop... yet. Wait utill it becomes so and you will find out there is no limit to corporate greed once a company has a lock-in control of something.
I bet that's what you would have said, if there was someone on Slashdot in 2000 posting: "I just know this SCO bunch will try to extort money out of all Linux users"...
You would mod him -10 Troll and have a 100-post long discussion with all your "non-paranoid" friends ridiculing the poor sucker.
If Trolltech turns into a monster, the GPL Qt libraries can be forked and Trolltech can be told to go hang themselves.
I am afraid its not that simple. All it takes for Trolltech to decide that their "non-commercial" use license (the GPL) does not apply to not only "commercial" software but also to "commercially minded" or "commercially useful" software or some other similiar crock. Then you and thousands of other GPL developers will be in the crosshairs of some Legal Beagles dragged to court to prove that your software has no "commercial applications". This dual licensing bullshit is just asking for it. You dont seem to realize that if this type of licensing is allowed, the extent of GPL coverage is in effect controlled by Trolltech and can be "adjusted" at any time. Say the GPL only applies to "educational free of charge" uses of QT. And I assume that you and hundreds of outher GPL ppl will fork over tens of thousands to defend your "interpretation" of dual licensinfg in court? And even if you do, you are still out for years of press headlines in vain of "Trolltech, the company who owns Linux desktop is suing pirates...".
Use your nuggin man! If there is a way for some member of the Harvard-educated career CEO club to run a company like Trolltech, this is what will happen.
Nah, I am using Linux and Mozilla and believe me no malware or proxies here.
Those are the results of some smart-ass dudes "googlebombing" the engine with every word related to some items they think people will buy (mostly computer parts and consumer electronics) and they try to redirect your search to their "portal". Supposedly for price comparisons, reviews and such but they all have their own vendor they peddle. Think SPAM crafted to abuse Google. The sign of the times.
This is one of most insightful AC post I have ever seen. This is precisely my main beef with QT. Its easy and sexy for the evelopers and has a following of enthusiasts. It has a good commercial presence amd marketing aimed at commercial developers.
And its DEADLY for future of Linux as a free and open platform. Mark my words, a few years from now Slashdot will be full of suprised QT appologists going "What happened?! We thought Trolltech was on our side!" when TT turns into a Microsoft or SCO-like monstrosity and unlike SCO we will be all fucked since there seem to be a lot of developers who learn by sticking their asses into the fire because it looked "cute". No matter how many times were they warned about it.
Dismissing critics as GNU Zealots and blabbering about dual-licensing does not hide the fact that TT is positioning itself as the nexus for ALL of the commercial application development on Linux. To be followed shortly by TT dictating Linux standards. Remember, commercial applications are where the mainstream acceptance of Linux will come from (at least in the near future) and it its the commercial applications which will be the most visible to the corporate desktop user. In fact those applications will be Linux as far as millions of corporate users are concerned. Their failure or success will directly impact the impressions of those poeple and subsequent adoption of Linux into their homes and small businesses.
I really don't think anyone is seriously considering such a system; maybe in ten years..
Yes they are. The timeframe might be long, but as someone else noticed insightfully on this thread, the DRM technologies are a slippery slope of small increments leading to the demise of Personal Computer to be replaced by Personal Computing/Enterntainment Appliance. The people who wish it to be so are wealthy, powerful and prepared for a long-haul battle since profits and control that could be gained by forcing everyone to use DRM are truly immense.
As the other posters mentioned from the "basic consumer rights" standpoint you will no longer be in charge of your own computer but the signatories to the "trusted computing" will.
One additional note: It is very likely that anyone wishing to make software that would install on your PC will need to obtain a license from whomever is the encryption key issuing "authority" in the "trusted" computing world. This will put an end to making your own sofware and also it probably will financially impact small software companies. Not to mention that it will give total control of what software will be granted a "license" to the few signatories of the "trusted" computing. In essence Microsoft will get to decide who will be allowed to make software for the PC platform.
Slashdot Mirror
And this is where I disagree. There is not only "a point" here, but one of most fundamental and profound issues for the future of humanity. Namely, if positions of DirectTV, "Music Industry", "Software Industry" etc are valid and morally correct, then one has to logically submit to "ownership" of simple numbers, mathematical formulaes and ultimately our very thoughts. In the past, due to our relatively primitive level of technology, it was feasible to deal with some forms of information as if it were physical property, books being the prime example. Unfortunalely as technology advanced, this simple and incorrect approach resulted in more and more contorted and convoluted morass of laws, all hell-bent on denying the simple fact that information cannot be "property". If this continues, it has most devastating implications for the future of sicence, technology and our society in general. In is very sad indeed that so few people put any mental effort into realizing the implications of the current course. And if you do not see the inklinks of things to come, just look at the concepts like ownership of DNA sequences and resulting lawsuits being launched against farmers whose fields contain genetically modified crops that spread there from the neighbouring fields. Ponder the idea of someone "owning" the DNA sequences in a human child. And this being Slashdot, I dont think I have to verse you on the joys of software patents. The DirectTV and RIAA are the glittery but trivial tip of a far more sinister iceberg.
For the record, I dont have Direct TV or cable for that matter. I simply do not care for being fed vast amounts of intellectual vomit intermingled with attempts at getting me to buy things I dont need and sprinkled with political propaganda. And I find the very idea of paying for that kind of "contents", insulting. This howerver has no bearing on what is being discussed here. You are obviously a victim of propaganda by people who stand to benefit from crippling our society for generations if not centuries to come. It is them who are "self-serving" and "intellectually bankrupt". They are easilly recognized when they use the word "theft" in reference to information.
From the moral and logical standpoint there is no difference. Cracking and watching simply means that you are processing/obtaining information available in the ether around you. Not doing so means you are ignoring this information. Both are totally irrelevant to the extortion attempt by an organisation called DirectTV for something that cannot be owned in the first place. The fact that DirectTV made its business "model" dependant on a lie is not any of my concern. If they come up with a way to sell actual physical goods and make profit at this, my hat is off to them. If they dont.. too bad.
You seem to be falling into a trap of thinking that if some dazzling and glittering shiney thing that is being "offered" to you depends on merely giving up on some fundamental phillosophical and moral concepts, so be it because dazzling and glittering thing is more important.
And you would not be doing anything wrong. What you are trying to express here and what is leading to all these cretinous "stealing of airwaves" charges by the conmen in charge of these "industries" is the simple fundamental truth: information is NOT property
Once this simple fact is understood you can easilly see how this all works. Infromation embedded in the satellite transmission cannot be "owned" so your decoding or otherwise processing it (converting it to sound waves or light patterns) does not constitute "stealing" of anything.
Exactly the point. This useless "service" is not viable. The only reason it exists is because a bunch of usurpers managed to pervert and twist laws into a mess that affords them protection in implementing any hair-brained, money making scheme as long as it has words "copyright" or "intellectual property" in its description.
I cant stand people so brainwashed that they actually think: "but they would not make any money on this so we must give up our rights and public resoources! ... so that the poor downdrotten businessmen can reak undeserved profits at society's expense".
DirectTV, The "Music Industry" and a whole bunch of similiar idiotic endavours are a form of cancer of industrial societies and a result of lack of internally-consistent and logical rules of law.
Yes I do. It means that one is making a lof of money and paying its suppliers and staff many times more then the other, which is constrained by its tax-generated funding and accessibility to all citzens. It means that one crumbles rapidly as staff leaves and suppliers become too expensive for it untill there is nothing but an empty shell to which the politicians pay nothing but lip-service. That is what it means.
As I explained comprehensively in the other post, there is no such thing as a "parallel" for-pay system. With our limited supply of medical personell, out-of control pricing for equipment, unwillingness of medical staff to work for the less profitable enterprise and unlimted profit potential of the for-pay medical system, total destruction of the public system would be utterly inevietable. The feeble barriers now in place are the last things that prevents all out abandonement of it in favour of "lets-get-rich-quck" schemes akin to those in the USA.
I want the option to say "screw you" to the Health Region that postpones critical surgery due to political fighting.
It might surprise you that I agree that there should be a public mechanism for severely (I am talking felonies and confiscation of all assets) penalizing the politicians/managers of the public health system. Their duties are of such great gravity that there indeed should be a way for citizens to make short work of some asshole who thinks he can hold sick people hostage for his political gain. I just think that running away and giving money to the very people who in all likelyhood put the politician up to his tricks, is not the wisest course of action.
No I merely argue that private enterptise is able to generate more profit and therefore attract all the personell away from the government one. If both had ability to generate equal revenues, this would not be the case. However the governemt is restricted to the tax revenues which cannot be generated without grave impact on the rest of the economy, and by keeping the service accessible to all Canadians and that means no additional fees. The private side has no such concerns. Given limited supply of doctors and wide spread collusion and price fixing currenly prevalent in medical equipment and pharmaceutical fields there is only one outcome possible. The government side would not be able to afford providing the service. Note that milking the consumer is only an option for the private side of this equasion. And if you think competition is to take care of the supply of medical services you should look again at the USA and note that for example an average drug brand is expected to produce 0.5-3 billion dollars in profit in the first year of its introduction
I am not sure what is going on there in that province (seems all the worst trouble with the system). I would guess that it has to do with the fact that Saskatchewan has no industry to speak of (other then cut-throat WTO controlled agriculture) and subsequently no tax revenue to fund the medical (and any other services). Coupled perheaps with especially bad mismanagment of the resources. But then, is your solution is to have your private clinic and screw the rest of the citizens of that province since they cant afford it anyhow? Or shouldn't it be to get the government to start managing the thing properly?
I want the option to pay my hard earned money, that my government has dained to let me keep, for a service that they aren't performing.... let me pay to have my MRI on "off hours" when it's supposedly too costly for them to run with the tax dollars they're already stealing from me!.. etc
Well there is the fundamental difference between me and you. You believe that govenment by definition cannot perform good service because it is not a capitalist greed-motivated entity. I argue that they can if appropriately hot fire is lit under the politician's asses. All those things you describe are results of mismanagment (not uncommon in private enterprises but much more easilly hidden). The solution is to make the government manage the resources given to them and control costs by not contracting to wildly profiteering operators or to people whose primary interest is sabotaging the system. I will not accept the premise that the services are deteriorating even if the funding is increasing accross the board. The only reasons for this are mismanagment and profit-taking of various suppliers in the private sector. Curbing their greed is one of the first steps in maintaining quality. Giving in and paying them more and more via government AND private fees is only submitting to vicious robbery.
Oh, and if you CAN'T pay the $20,000 than no private clinic regardless of where it is is an option for you, and in reality that's what really burns you isn't it?
Believe it or not I can spend much more then that. However I also recognize that by doing so I am doing a great disservice to countless Canadians who cannot afford it. In fact, a majority of people of this country do not have $20k spare cash laying around. Or more like $450k for serious surgery. I am a Canadian and my duty as a citizen of this country is to attempt to help make it better for everyone instead of being self-important asshole who believes that by being gifted with social standing, education or sought-after skills he is entitled to live like a prince sur
I dont know what it is with these right wing maniacs. Why cant they understand that private MRI's and private parallel system will result in the public one to be degenerated to the level reminiscent of public housing in the US, Graffitti covered slums next to shiney new "for-pay" clinics. What you argue is abolishment of medicare for all practical purposes. You might not comprehend how economic and political forces work and that probably precludes any sane discussion, but that is what will happen. Unlike the "under-the-table" for pay system involving travel to the USA, a Canadian based one removes any restrictions on flow of personell and investment from the public system to the far, far more profitable private one. There is only one outcome possible.
So instead of whining about how you should be able to be better off then everyone else since you got cash to grease the wheels with, perheaps you should try to work on seeing why the MRIs are so overbooked or underfunded. Perheaps the cost of the units at $20 million a pop (90% profit margin) has something to do with it. Or maybe a practice of running the MRI systems 3 hours-a day to create artificial shortage so that the same people who are doing it can go on the talk shows and blabber about how much better it would be if they were allowed to run a private MRI center. Get a clue because your understaning of what is going on here is on par with that of a cow being led to slaughter.
Medical services are different from every other kind of "business" because they involve desperate and suffering people who can be abused for profit in basically unlimited ways. Just look at what is happening in the USA. Our "communist" system is unsustainable?! They will end up paying 80% of their GDP for partial coverage of 15% of their population if the trend continues! That is what you propose, even if you dont understand it.
Perheaps that has something to do with all that oil they are digging (due to Kleins great foresight of placing Alberta on top of main Canadian oil reserves) and provincial income which Klein is keeping and spending in Alberta and then claiming thats all due to privatization.
Look pal, Alberta's main claim to fame is that they are more like Saudi Arabia then the rest of the country. If some Natives laid the claim to some diamond mines up north and then set up world-class top-dollar medical center, whould you compare it to Saskatchewan, arguably the least industrialized and poorest province? Or perheaps should you complain about Kleins "its my cash I am keeping it and screw the rest of the country" attitude?
So! Nice argument. And why can't we have 40% of the population with no medical care and another 40% percent paying 50% of their incomes for partial coverage and "public" system that is only capable of delivering band-aid (if you wait 7 years in the queue)? Face it, we are going there already thanks to doctor's greed and uncontrollable rampant profiteering down in the USA which is responsible for our medical costs skyrocketing! The only thing now is to join the feeding frenzy and just make sure we end up with some Canadian born hyenas getting rich too. The socialists can't/won't accept this as the final outcome and this shows that even in the face of impossible odds they still retain some hope for the future of this country as one of the few places on the planet where rational thinking and not naked greed and lust for power are in charge.
That is because Canadians understand that if it is not, greed hyenas and jackals will tear it appart in no time flat. Public health care system is a constant struggle against greed filled opportunists who eye massive profits to be made on suffering of desperate people. That is why there is so much noise about "delays" and "problems" and "unsustainable costs". Keep in mind that the very same people who do all the shouting are usually responsible for the cost increases. That is drug manufacturers with 20-year patents, medical equipment manufacturers with their $20 million MRI machines and of coure doctors who are green with envy about their counterparts incomes down South.
That is why in order to retain any universal health care, one has to treat it as a religion and fight these opportunists at every turn, they are determined to nibble away at the system any way they can. Various "This will all fall appart ... unless you pay MEEEEE!" reports, and massive propaganda in private media is just par for the course. Politicians like Romanow are easilly manipulated to draw the "correct" concusions from the statistical data.
The obvious way to control costs of medicare is simply for the government to not support various foreign industries that are contributing to the spiraling costs. Yet this is the last thing on the list, given that the politicians are for the most part in the pockets of those interests and can also be bullied by Washington should the monetary incentives fail. What all the proponents of privatisation seem to always miss that any alternative system has to be by definition more costly (profit) and have more overhead (insurance). And it is therefore guaranteed to deliver less services to a lesser portion to the population. Having "user-fees" is just as good as capitulating to the greed run amok.
And while this is true that the very-rich can just hop on their private jets and go to New York... that is not our problem, but theirs. All the country of Canada owes them, is that when their business empires turn out like Enron, a bankrupt ex-CEO still can have his tripple bypass done, even if he is peniless...
What are they really saying is that they detest being treated like everyone else, why them being rich and aristocratic! Where are the private nurses lined up waiting to satisfy the smallest whim of the oh, sooo important patient? What? They have to be in the same hospital as those low-life blue collar people?! Insolent peasants?! How dare they! And they wont even take the money to push the princes and princesses to the front of the queue! This is downright un-Christian and un-Capitalist! Abolish the national medical care! That will show those pinko communists! Let them spend 40% of their income on medical insurance.
In case you didnt notice I am starting to find the attitude of the proponents of "two-tier" and "private" medicine not only annoying but being hostile to the very top social achievements this country has. That's right, Medicare is one of them. I will tell you this, so that there is no mis-understandings: if there is one cause that will make me (and vast majority of Canadians) take up arms, this is it. Want to start a civil war? Abolish medicare, I will be a combatant.
Perheaps you are not aware that our system has around 3% administrative overhead, while the US for-profit medicine + massive insurance middleman industry accounts for something like 25% of the cost. Wasn't there a bunch of American doctors lobbying the Congress for cutting out the whole insurance-driven mess and making their system Canadianised just a while ago? Check your facts man, before ranting and raving.
2) trying to enforce a license they do not have.
Its more fuzzy than that. One could try to point out companies like Nvidia or ATI which produce closed-source (and patented to boot) software that is then linked to a GPL covered Linux kernel. If they are not harassed about the "derrivative works" aspect of the GPL, I see no reason why a QT application developer (QT is just a toolkit library) should be.
On the other hand TT seems to think they can extract payments on strictly GPL code.
All of this is open to legal "interpretations" and hair splitting in the courtrooms and my main point is that one can easily avoid the whole legal mess by simply using a toolkit that is specifically licensed (LGPL) to avoid such issues.
The Trolltech/QT sitiuation is clear as mud and prone to abuses and major upheavals should the company change hands and the new management have more money to sue with then brain cells.
Tell them that. TT dual license terms state that any "commercial" application needs a license regardless if it is GPLed or not. One can easilly write and distribute GPLed code and charge for service/customizations etc.
Trolltech cannot prevent people who write GPL-compatible (and thus Open Source) applications with the code it already released under those licensing conditions. However, people writing closed-source, proprietary applications cannot link to GPL code under the terms of the GPL.
Not unless you license it under LGPL or some such. Look at what companies like NVIDIA are doing with their binary-only kernel driver modules. The kernel is GPL (not even LGPL) and yet they merilly produce non-GPL closed source add ons. This is a nice and plausible excuse to have a dual license but its just that.
Once again, since the GPL has no termination clause for the original copywrite holder, they can't take it back.
You dont seem to understand how fuzzy and sneaky dual-license can be. Dual license is a pretext to go to court to claim that a GPLed fork for example constitutes "commercial" development and thus GPL is null and void in that case and the "other" license applies. Effectively by having a second license on the same code and deciding where and to whom this applies, one can control the scope of the GPL to ones liking. All is needed is a court decision that says "in this case GPL is superceeded by the TT commercial license" and presto, GPL is nullified. If the code is LGPL or GPL only with no "bait and switch" back-door license this would not be possible.
Yours and other people's replies here indicate the depth of blind trust in the system by naive developers who fail to understand that such muddled conditons will atteact SCO-like behaviour very much like a rotting corpse atracts flies.
Not acccording to Trolltech. They indicate that any commercial developers, regardless if they use GPL for their code (some poeple sell service/support for a GPL product) must pay TT. That is the source of the whole mess. Seems that TT either does not think the way you do and they dont understand what they are doing or they do plan on some later-date hockery-pockery with this licensing mess.
One could imagine some creative interpretations of the dual licensing and which license takes precedence where etc. Clearly a fork would be contested in court as a competing "commercial" code with TT claiming that GPL was null and void and its "other" license took precedence over it.
If what you say were what TT was indeed thinking and saying, then there would no problem since noone in their right mind would use the non-GPL toolkit. All it would take is to create a wrapper code and license the whole thing under LGPL. That way you would end-up with GPL toolkit and proprietary apps on top via the LGPL layer. This is (or very close to it) what NVIDIA does with their kernel drivers for example.
The LGPL exists to address the whole GPL/proprietary boundary problem but it is still an unholy mess unless the whole toolkit was intended to be LGPL from the get-go, like Gnome was.
So in short what TT is doing is confusing, unworkable and not to mention suspicious, riddled with potential traps and a far cry from your "100% safe, 100% in compliance ".
Since QT is licensed under a childlish scheme of "dual-licenses" whereby Trolltech seems to think they can apply GPL willy-nilly only to certain applications of their choosing, there is nothing stopping them from changing the rules and proclaiming that GPL "only" applies to applications developed free of charge, on Friday the 13th between 4 and 4:15pm, during hailstorm and while a stampede of wild elephants in in progress...
Not in the area that is being discussed. We are discussing control. Money usually follows control but it does not need to be "per-user" charge. Merely ridiculous "per-deployment" surcharge on the toolkit. It amounts to the same thing since you will then collect per-user form of a tax on all revenues of software vendors. Better, since you yourself do not need to deal with those pesky users directly.
So in your example: to install Opera you pay Opera who in turn pays portion of thier per-user revenue to Trolltech. Etc. Right now the per-developer fee is flat but thats only because QT is not an indispensable part of Linux desktop... yet. Wait utill it becomes so and you will find out there is no limit to corporate greed once a company has a lock-in control of something.
I bet that's what you would have said, if there was someone on Slashdot in 2000 posting: "I just know this SCO bunch will try to extort money out of all Linux users"...
You would mod him -10 Troll and have a 100-post long discussion with all your "non-paranoid" friends ridiculing the poor sucker.
I am afraid its not that simple. All it takes for Trolltech to decide that their "non-commercial" use license (the GPL) does not apply to not only "commercial" software but also to "commercially minded" or "commercially useful" software or some other similiar crock. Then you and thousands of other GPL developers will be in the crosshairs of some Legal Beagles dragged to court to prove that your software has no "commercial applications". This dual licensing bullshit is just asking for it. You dont seem to realize that if this type of licensing is allowed, the extent of GPL coverage is in effect controlled by Trolltech and can be "adjusted" at any time. Say the GPL only applies to "educational free of charge" uses of QT. And I assume that you and hundreds of outher GPL ppl will fork over tens of thousands to defend your "interpretation" of dual licensinfg in court? And even if you do, you are still out for years of press headlines in vain of "Trolltech, the company who owns Linux desktop is suing pirates...".
Use your nuggin man! If there is a way for some member of the Harvard-educated career CEO club to run a company like Trolltech, this is what will happen.
Those are the results of some smart-ass dudes "googlebombing" the engine with every word related to some items they think people will buy (mostly computer parts and consumer electronics) and they try to redirect your search to their "portal". Supposedly for price comparisons, reviews and such but they all have their own vendor they peddle. Think SPAM crafted to abuse Google. The sign of the times.
And its DEADLY for future of Linux as a free and open platform. Mark my words, a few years from now Slashdot will be full of suprised QT appologists going "What happened?! We thought Trolltech was on our side!" when TT turns into a Microsoft or SCO-like monstrosity and unlike SCO we will be all fucked since there seem to be a lot of developers who learn by sticking their asses into the fire because it looked "cute". No matter how many times were they warned about it.
Dismissing critics as GNU Zealots and blabbering about dual-licensing does not hide the fact that TT is positioning itself as the nexus for ALL of the commercial application development on Linux. To be followed shortly by TT dictating Linux standards. Remember, commercial applications are where the mainstream acceptance of Linux will come from (at least in the near future) and it its the commercial applications which will be the most visible to the corporate desktop user. In fact those applications will be Linux as far as millions of corporate users are concerned. Their failure or success will directly impact the impressions of those poeple and subsequent adoption of Linux into their homes and small businesses.
Yes they are. The timeframe might be long, but as someone else noticed insightfully on this thread, the DRM technologies are a slippery slope of small increments leading to the demise of Personal Computer to be replaced by Personal Computing/Enterntainment Appliance. The people who wish it to be so are wealthy, powerful and prepared for a long-haul battle since profits and control that could be gained by forcing everyone to use DRM are truly immense.
Yea, but does your kernel include the Esspresso and Julian Fries modules?
One additional note: It is very likely that anyone wishing to make software that would install on your PC will need to obtain a license from whomever is the encryption key issuing "authority" in the "trusted" computing world. This will put an end to making your own sofware and also it probably will financially impact small software companies. Not to mention that it will give total control of what software will be granted a "license" to the few signatories of the "trusted" computing. In essence Microsoft will get to decide who will be allowed to make software for the PC platform.