Please don't take this for pedantry, but it's microeconomics that applies, not market theory.
"from each according to his ability" is actually the same as "from each according to his own desires" if you treat labour as something respectable. In Soviet Union people actually believed that every capable person should work to benefit the society. Many people in the West, on the other hand, think that earning your money on the stock market is respectable. In Soviet Union that was considered "unearned income" and was frowned upon by both people and the state and sometimes outright illegal.
If you take a Linux C++ programmer, who likes coding and make the assumptions that: 1) The society provides the opportunity for him to code C++ for Linux and to retrain when technology changes 2) The society either compensates him well for coding or provides him with the necessities for free then that particular person would desire to work according to his abilities, because that would be self-realisation for him.
Ditto for every other job (except unpleasant/boring ones that should be automated).
Of course, from my point of view, the "market" part is just an inevitable side effect of the "free" part: Good point. In a modern Western society this is certainly true. However, you can probably imagine quite easily conditions where modern Western people would collectively agree that central planning and distribution is preferable. Imagine any situation (without existing market mechanisms, such as on an uninhabited island) with limited resources, but with clear common goals. People will tend to agree that pooling the resources and labour in order to achieve the result would be better. It's when you allow unlimited selfishness that freedom leads to competition and thus to markets. People don't usually compete inside an organisation if they all share the same goals, but they start competing when each department/division/person is hogging the blanket.
Whenever people can, they own and trade things. Would more time or better teaching really change that result? First of all, there are many societies (subgroups) where owning things is not considered important, interesting or valuable. Same for trading things. Consider, for example, a kindergarden.:) It is true that in a modern Western (capitalist, free market) society it is considered normal to own and trade things. But it is mostly because that's how people are brought up. Furthermore, there is a big difference between owning/trading personal belongings and means for production. You can have the former and it won't lead to free markets (economic system), only to "markets" (places where you trade stuff).
There are also some developments that can reduce the desire to own and trade things. For example, increased production capabilities is one important development. If you are sure you can always get what you need (even if not everything that you want), there are less incentives to hoard stuff. Another important possible development is elimination of advertising and a reduction in consumerist attitudes. There is no reason why everyone needs to own all the stuff that is needed for comfortable life. This is defined not by objective economic and engineering reasons, but by the cultural norms. Of course, the easiest way to get rid of advertising is to prohibit for-profit private enterprises and get rid of the market in favor of central planning (which, BTW, can be very flexible and democratic).
Now, to answer your question of why - free markets are a natural system when you have independent selfish economic agents. Each time, when you allow selfishness and grant independence, they will appear. And in an unrestricted competitive environment the most competitive agents win, leading to stronger and harsher competition.
If you decide that greater social good is important and restrict economic selfishness, you eliminate one prerequisite. Logically it then follows to restrict the economic indep
When the price is zero, there ceases to be a market. The core idea of a market is that supply and demand are equalised through floating prices. When the price is zero, it's not really a market anymore.
As for voluntary production you are confusing central planning in a pre-communism society with communism.
Actually, it's a myth that films appear smooth. I can assure you that when you have even a moderately fast panning of the camera, the things appear rather jerky. If you compare a film shown in a regular theatre with the same film (digitally remastered or rendered again, if it's 3D animation) shown in IMAX (60Hz framerate), there is a large difference.
Next time you go to see a movie, pay attention to the pans.
The Internet is not one procedure to distribute information. It is HTML, DNS, BitTorrent, even Real Audio. None of these standards are government regulated, they're free market regulated. The users, en masse, decide what format will succeed.
Why do you call it a free market? I agree about the free part, but this has nothing to do with markets. Here are some definitions.
Free market
The production and exchange of goods and services without interference from the government or from monopolies.
Market where there is little or no government control.
A free market is one in which buyers and sellers make mutually voluntary exchanges at a price agreed upon by both.
Business governed by the laws of supply and demand, not restrained by government interference, regulation or subsidy.
An economic system in which prices are determined by unrestricted competition between privately owned businesses.
An economic system in which businesses operate without government control in matters such as pricing and wage levels
Market
In economics, a market is a mechanism which allows people to trade, normally governed by the theory of supply and demand, and thereby allocates resources through a price mechanism. It typically involves a bid and ask process.
In regards to HTML, DNS, BitTorrent and Real Audio there is no exchange of goods or services - the standards are available to anyone for free (used to be some limitations in case of producing RA, IIRC). People do not trade HTML, they simply use the file standard that they like. There is no supply and demand, because supply is infinite and you can't measure the "product", because there is no "product". People do not trade, there are no prices, there are no resources to be allocated (except with domain names, or with bandwidth, but that isn't related to acceptance of DNS or BT protocols). There is no bid and ask process, you just use the standard that you want. There are no exchanges, because W3, Cohen or Real do not get anything in return. Generally there are also no privately owned businesses - W3 is not one, Bram wasn't a business either. To use DNS you may interact with a business - your ISP, but you typically don't pay for DNS use separately.
Overall, Internet standards and protocols have nothing to do with the free market. Interenet is neither free market, nor capitalist. Internet is a different economic order, based essentially on voluntary production and unlimited free distribution. If I had to put a label on it, I'd say it's very much like communism. But free market? No.
The biggest secret that noone is comfortable to talk about yet is that pirates do not harm anyone (or the harm is very limited). There are different segments of the market, with people willing to pay different rates for the product. The top segments (who can pay the retail price or more) are controlled by the producer of the content. The lower segments (those willing to pay a low price or nothing at all) are controlled by pirates. Yes, there are some people, who would be willing to pay the full price, but aren't willing to do it voluntarily, when a cheaper (but illegitimate) alternative is available. But the data seems to suggest that their number is relatively low. The sales of CDs haven't immediately plummeted, because most people are willing to pay for what they get.
Having said that, WB doesn't need to prevent piracy, it just needs to make the downloading/watching experience comfortable and a lot of people will happily watch the content and the ads. Ditto for selling content - most of those who are willing to pay will pay anyway.
P.S. Personally I am a bit more advanced and already live according to 2015 standards - I download all books/films/documentaries/music/software that I use for free. I do contribute software/videos/images and texts back to the comminuty, though (without any restrictions on use).
The more interesting question is what government crimes are they covering in the USA in order to serve the owners and maintain good relations with their buddies in the administration.
Speaking of Iraq, the UN secretary general said that the blame for hundreds of thousands dead from sanctions lies not with Saddam, but with the UN (first of all the US). UN inspectors told (see "In Shifting Sands") very clearly that as early as in 1995 they knew that there were no WMDs left, but the USA pushed for confrontations and conflicts, refusing to let the Security Council to lift sanctions until they finally got their way. The USA is a real criminal. The USA is an evil empire. Compared with it, Cuba, Syria and China are saints.
Re:So why is Tamiflu withdrawn from customers?
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A Flu Pandemic?
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No, it doesn't prove squat. There have been thousands of natural disasters all over the world and many governments are competent in handling them. Speaking of the Mexican Gulf hurricanes, Cuba has exemplary systems in place that combine central planning with local awareness to ensure that as few lives and property are lost as possible and normal life resumes as quickly as possible.
I am not saying that all governments have good systems in place to handle flu pandemics. I am not saying that the distribution of Tamiflu by the US government would necessarily be efficient. I am just saying that generally if the government has a system in place, then letting it handle such problem is more likely to lead to success than allowing free market to reign.
Re:So why is Tamiflu withdrawn from customers?
on
A Flu Pandemic?
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· Score: 1
If there is not enough X for everyone, some people will not get it. Do you think people in free market countries like the US get everything they need? No, many are "left out of the circle", because they don't have the money.
When it comes to supplying everyone with PlayStations, I am willing to let free market do the job. But when we are talking about a rare vital medicine, I'd rather have the government do it.
Now the only thing to do would be to start a chain-letter campaign with letters starting with "This time it's for real" and the explanations of the problem. Give the historical success of chain-letters, this can build up some huge negative publicity for Sony. If someone actually does it, of course.
May be the dominant values suck? Or aren't promoted well enough among the new groups (i.e. they aren't given access to education, are denied jobs, etc.)?
The history of the Soviet Union demonstrates that you can have several hundreds of nationalities with 130+ languages, 5+ different alphabets and god knows how many religions live peacefully in close cooperation.
The recipe was rather simple too: 1) Everyone is declared and considered equal. 2) You make every effort to help those at the bottom get up and develop as quickly as possible (i.e. develop their own culture). 3) You ensure that noone is denied an opportunity. 4) You do not discriminate. 5) You strongly prohibit any nationalist/schauvinist propaganda.
Voila. +250 million people living in harmony with one of the highest percentage of international marriages in the world (17.5% of all Soviet families were ethnically mixed in 1989 - data by M. Rutkevich, 1992). 21.5% of people in 1989 lived outside "their" national territory.
I don't see why other countries can't live in similar peaceful manner.
Not really. Not if you are self-sufficient. I am in a different situation - I have great social skills and would have no problem dating/getting laid, but why bother? Social life is indeed overrated. An online forum like Slashdot is sufficient social life for me.;)
Also, it would be impossible to have closed architecture for terminals with the advent of general-purpose computers. Programmers would want freedom of expression no matter what. If we hadn't GNU and Open Software movement, we would have something else, but similar. And with freedom to program comes the freedom to use the programs, the freedom to connect, etc.
Fidonet was created from the ground-up and has a lot of freedom. We also had the BBSes with a lot of freedom as well. Yes, it's not as advanced as the Internet, but if the Internet was closed enough, we would have an alternative. And to thing of it, it's inconceivable that we would have all the powerful computers and noone would connect them. All the growth has been organic. Yes, with some things we were just lucky, but the general notion of open web would be realised one way or another.
The speculation is nice, and may be useful as a reminder of the evils of strong copyright, but it doesn't qualify as realistic alternative history.
The only reason why the Web-as-designed-today would be infested by lawyers and controlled by Disney and RIAA is that the original Web gave so much freedom to the people. If that didn't happen, RIAA would be clueless that "pirates" may trade and share songs online.
That's one thing I've always loved about Macs - the booting. No matter how much they try to disguise it with logos, I still see it's booting to the same resolution as DOS.
Personally I was always fond of DOS-style booting, preferably with a memory check first.:) If I could make my P4 make the sounds of the 286 (tick-tick-tick...) at startup that would be even better.:) And the memorable sounds of 5.25" and 3.5" disk drive detection. Ah, the memories.:) When possible I always disable the logos, it's really nice to see when the HDDs are detected and stuff. And I am not even that geeky.
Look, I don't have anything against vegans, they can have whatever moral outlook on life they want. I also don't really mind vegans trying to persuade others that vegetarianism is a better moral (and nutritious) choice.
But I strongly oppose vegans lying about facts or twisting and misrepresenting them in order to mislead meat-eaters.
Let PETA promote the vegetarian lifestyle, let them preach to other vegans about not drinking milk. But when it lies and engages in other unethical behaviour (all in the name of "greater good", I understand) it stops being a respected debate participant. Rational people now see PETA as extremist green nuts. Personally I would no longer listen to PETA and my initial reaction to anything they say is going to be dismissal. All because they don't play by the rules of a rational and honest discourse.
P.S. Most people don't share your morals, just like you don't share hindu religious beliefs. And there is nothing unethical about killing cows.
It's not dropping from 8 tons to 5 tons. It's dropping from 8 tons to zero tons, because the cow dies.
What a lot of farmers don't realize is that running a cow at 8 tons a year (number pulled out of my ass)
Since when is ignorance a valid point of view? You don't have a clue about diary farming. People have been working for centuries breeding better cows and finding out how different factors affect milk production. Hundreds of people probably get their PhDs in the field of diary farming. You look like an idiot, when you assert that everyone doesn't know what they are doing.
PETA is lying through their teeth, they are a bunch of manipulative bastards, who are part crazy and part financed by crazies. No industry is perfect and many companies are outright unethical, but painting the whole diary industry as bad is nonsense.
I don't really know what else to say to a person who decides that comparing cows with overclocked CPUs is a valid analogy that can provide some valuable insights to the problem we are discussing... You are not making any sense is all that I can say.
The problem is that PETA (like most people and organisations today) is unable to see the shades of grey in the world. According to their vision, everything that is done by the industry is eeeevil. I don't see anything wrong with feeding dead chickens to cows. Heck, I eat dead chickens myself!
Another example: I don't see how the data (I call it data, but it sounds more like empty claims) above shows that the breeding life is cut to half of the natural. They say that cows are rendered worthless to the dairy industry. Perhaps it means that instead of making 8 tons of milk each year they only make 5 tons. At that point it would become more profitable for the farm to slaughter the cow. As long as we are not against cowslaighter per se, I don't see what's wrong with that.
If PETA actually targeted their attacks somewhat instead of proclaiming that anyone who as much as looks at a cow the wrong way is a monster, they would get much more respect. I concede that the profit-driven (or subsudies-driven?) industry will happily spit on the well-being of cows, but why not attack their actual transgressions and not the whole concept of industrial farming? For example, why doesn't PETA attack specific farms (companies) that hold their cows in bad conditions, while co-operating with some other farms that do respect their bovine partners?
It makes sense for the game developers to make graphics complex enough that you can play on highest settings only with the fastest card on the market. It doesn't mean than the 6600GT experience is bad, only that the X1000 experience is better.
Not to "shoot anyone", but to shoot the panic-mongers and restore the discipline. And usually there were no machine guns, just armed normally soldiers and officers.
Panic doesn't win wars and there really was nowhere to run.
Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi has trumpeted the project as a vital driver of development in the south, which will finally make Italy one nation by linking Sicily to the mainland.
I wonder if Mr. Berlusconi has heard of a place called Sardinia.
First human rights - I really doubt that the Czechs Poles and Hungarians (among others) would agree that what the Soviet Union achieved was accomplished "without resorting to exploitation of other countries." Well, I would really appreciate if those Czechs, Poles and Hungarians who disagree provide some actual specific facts. What resources or products were extracted from those countries and send to the Soviet Union for free or at artificially low prices? As far as I am aware, there are no such examples and so all the talks about them being exploited is just bullshit.
Mass murder and repression were also rampant insde the former Soviet union. It was no paradise. Not true. There never was mass murder. And repressions are a very complex phenomenon that had its objective reasons. The country was preparing for the War with Hitler and it needed all the resources and all the dedication it could master. Without the repressions we would have seen a Holocaust of Slavs, a horror tens times as that of the Jewish tragedy. Whatever price we had to pay for being better prepared was justified. Whatever price was paid for the heavy industry, for power plants, for railroads, for oil fields was justified. Even several hundreds of thousands of people executed for sabotage and other crimes with some of them being innocent.
Second, economics - the problem with a planned economy is that there is no competition, so if the central political directorate gets something wrong, there is no competing firm to offer an alternative. You simply don't know anything about the Soviet Union and don't understand how its economy worked. What you say is nonsense and is completely unlike how it really worked.
First, there was no "political directorate". Planning decisions were carefully calculated by large teams of expert economists. The essence of decision-making was the same as anywhere on Earth, because how you decide where to build a railroad is the same in free market and a planned economy. When you calculate how large a factory needs to be and in which city to build it to minimise total costs of the products, you work the same way, whether you work in a capitalist or a socialist economy.
I don't know who told you this ridiculous version of how Soviet economy worked, but I suspect that it was the Western media and the government propaganda writers... But the truth is much more logical and makes much more sense.
Planning decisions were carefully prepared and there wasn't much difference, for example, between how Soviet oil companies and Shell planned their operations. The only difference is that the planned system eliminated the inefficiencies of the market, so no wonder that it worked better than the market.
Yes corporations are each mini planned economies, but if one giant corporation makes a bad call, there are others with different plans offering alternatives.
And why do you think it wasn't the case in the Soviet Union? There have often been several research institutes developing alternative plans for large capital-intensive projects. Competing design bureaus developed alternative designs for equipment, airplanes, rockets. When competition was beneficial, it was allowed and encouraged. But that competition wasn't driven by profit, but by a grand plan for the better good.
In a centrally planned state economy when the planners make a bad call, you're screwed with no recourse. Why? Can't we just fix the problem? Can't we notice it as it develops and fix it? I don't know any examples where we were screwed with no recourse. I doubt you can you provide any examples...
The constant shortages and failures to keep up with advancing technologies in the West were the result of this lack of competition. What cosntant shortages? That's another myth. The average per capita consumption of many products was higher than in the Western countries. Occassional temporary shortages of some goods are a small price to pay for the greater abundance overall.
Good point. I was talking more about "high art", or the "artsy" kind of art. I think that's what the author of the article was talking about - the games that explore the medium, that try challenging new things. And most games don't need to be that way.
I completely agree with you that good games are art in a sense that they evoke a right emotional response, I am just saying that they don't need to be textured in charcoal or watercolor as long as they are simply fun and enjoyable.
Slashdot Mirror
Please don't take this for pedantry, but it's microeconomics that applies, not market theory.
:) It is true that in a modern Western (capitalist, free market) society it is considered normal to own and trade things. But it is mostly because that's how people are brought up. Furthermore, there is a big difference between owning/trading personal belongings and means for production. You can have the former and it won't lead to free markets (economic system), only to "markets" (places where you trade stuff).
"from each according to his ability" is actually the same as "from each according to his own desires" if you treat labour as something respectable. In Soviet Union people actually believed that every capable person should work to benefit the society. Many people in the West, on the other hand, think that earning your money on the stock market is respectable. In Soviet Union that was considered "unearned income" and was frowned upon by both people and the state and sometimes outright illegal.
If you take a Linux C++ programmer, who likes coding and make the assumptions that:
1) The society provides the opportunity for him to code C++ for Linux and to retrain when technology changes
2) The society either compensates him well for coding or provides him with the necessities for free
then that particular person would desire to work according to his abilities, because that would be self-realisation for him.
Ditto for every other job (except unpleasant/boring ones that should be automated).
Of course, from my point of view, the "market" part is just an inevitable side effect of the "free" part:
Good point. In a modern Western society this is certainly true. However, you can probably imagine quite easily conditions where modern Western people would collectively agree that central planning and distribution is preferable. Imagine any situation (without existing market mechanisms, such as on an uninhabited island) with limited resources, but with clear common goals. People will tend to agree that pooling the resources and labour in order to achieve the result would be better. It's when you allow unlimited selfishness that freedom leads to competition and thus to markets. People don't usually compete inside an organisation if they all share the same goals, but they start competing when each department/division/person is hogging the blanket.
Whenever people can, they own and trade things. Would more time or better teaching really change that result?
First of all, there are many societies (subgroups) where owning things is not considered important, interesting or valuable. Same for trading things. Consider, for example, a kindergarden.
There are also some developments that can reduce the desire to own and trade things. For example, increased production capabilities is one important development. If you are sure you can always get what you need (even if not everything that you want), there are less incentives to hoard stuff. Another important possible development is elimination of advertising and a reduction in consumerist attitudes. There is no reason why everyone needs to own all the stuff that is needed for comfortable life. This is defined not by objective economic and engineering reasons, but by the cultural norms. Of course, the easiest way to get rid of advertising is to prohibit for-profit private enterprises and get rid of the market in favor of central planning (which, BTW, can be very flexible and democratic).
Now, to answer your question of why - free markets are a natural system when you have independent selfish economic agents. Each time, when you allow selfishness and grant independence, they will appear. And in an unrestricted competitive environment the most competitive agents win, leading to stronger and harsher competition.
If you decide that greater social good is important and restrict economic selfishness, you eliminate one prerequisite. Logically it then follows to restrict the economic indep
When the price is zero, there ceases to be a market. The core idea of a market is that supply and demand are equalised through floating prices. When the price is zero, it's not really a market anymore.
As for voluntary production you are confusing central planning in a pre-communism society with communism.
Actually, it's a myth that films appear smooth. I can assure you that when you have even a moderately fast panning of the camera, the things appear rather jerky. If you compare a film shown in a regular theatre with the same film (digitally remastered or rendered again, if it's 3D animation) shown in IMAX (60Hz framerate), there is a large difference.
Next time you go to see a movie, pay attention to the pans.
Why do you call it a free market? I agree about the free part, but this has nothing to do with markets. Here are some definitions.
Free market
Market
In regards to HTML, DNS, BitTorrent and Real Audio there is no exchange of goods or services - the standards are available to anyone for free (used to be some limitations in case of producing RA, IIRC). People do not trade HTML, they simply use the file standard that they like. There is no supply and demand, because supply is infinite and you can't measure the "product", because there is no "product". People do not trade, there are no prices, there are no resources to be allocated (except with domain names, or with bandwidth, but that isn't related to acceptance of DNS or BT protocols). There is no bid and ask process, you just use the standard that you want. There are no exchanges, because W3, Cohen or Real do not get anything in return. Generally there are also no privately owned businesses - W3 is not one, Bram wasn't a business either. To use DNS you may interact with a business - your ISP, but you typically don't pay for DNS use separately.
Overall, Internet standards and protocols have nothing to do with the free market. Interenet is neither free market, nor capitalist. Internet is a different economic order, based essentially on voluntary production and unlimited free distribution. If I had to put a label on it, I'd say it's very much like communism. But free market? No.
The biggest secret that noone is comfortable to talk about yet is that pirates do not harm anyone (or the harm is very limited). There are different segments of the market, with people willing to pay different rates for the product. The top segments (who can pay the retail price or more) are controlled by the producer of the content. The lower segments (those willing to pay a low price or nothing at all) are controlled by pirates. Yes, there are some people, who would be willing to pay the full price, but aren't willing to do it voluntarily, when a cheaper (but illegitimate) alternative is available. But the data seems to suggest that their number is relatively low. The sales of CDs haven't immediately plummeted, because most people are willing to pay for what they get.
Having said that, WB doesn't need to prevent piracy, it just needs to make the downloading/watching experience comfortable and a lot of people will happily watch the content and the ads. Ditto for selling content - most of those who are willing to pay will pay anyway.
P.S. Personally I am a bit more advanced and already live according to 2015 standards - I download all books/films/documentaries/music/software that I use for free. I do contribute software/videos/images and texts back to the comminuty, though (without any restrictions on use).
The more interesting question is what government crimes are they covering in the USA in order to serve the owners and maintain good relations with their buddies in the administration.
Speaking of Iraq, the UN secretary general said that the blame for hundreds of thousands dead from sanctions lies not with Saddam, but with the UN (first of all the US). UN inspectors told (see "In Shifting Sands") very clearly that as early as in 1995 they knew that there were no WMDs left, but the USA pushed for confrontations and conflicts, refusing to let the Security Council to lift sanctions until they finally got their way. The USA is a real criminal. The USA is an evil empire. Compared with it, Cuba, Syria and China are saints.
No, it doesn't prove squat. There have been thousands of natural disasters all over the world and many governments are competent in handling them. Speaking of the Mexican Gulf hurricanes, Cuba has exemplary systems in place that combine central planning with local awareness to ensure that as few lives and property are lost as possible and normal life resumes as quickly as possible.
I am not saying that all governments have good systems in place to handle flu pandemics. I am not saying that the distribution of Tamiflu by the US government would necessarily be efficient. I am just saying that generally if the government has a system in place, then letting it handle such problem is more likely to lead to success than allowing free market to reign.
If there is not enough X for everyone, some people will not get it. Do you think people in free market countries like the US get everything they need? No, many are "left out of the circle", because they don't have the money.
When it comes to supplying everyone with PlayStations, I am willing to let free market do the job. But when we are talking about a rare vital medicine, I'd rather have the government do it.
What if she is a porn actress? Now that's a legitimate job. What if she is a paid surrogate mother? What if she is an exotic stage performer?
:)
Also, in your example the job of the secretary didn't include her sexual organs, apparatus, or cells. It only involved those of the executive.
Now the only thing to do would be to start a chain-letter campaign with letters starting with "This time it's for real" and the explanations of the problem. Give the historical success of chain-letters, this can build up some huge negative publicity for Sony. If someone actually does it, of course.
If that reasoning doesn't apply to the music you buy, why should it apply to computers that you buy?
May be the dominant values suck? Or aren't promoted well enough among the new groups (i.e. they aren't given access to education, are denied jobs, etc.)?
The history of the Soviet Union demonstrates that you can have several hundreds of nationalities with 130+ languages, 5+ different alphabets and god knows how many religions live peacefully in close cooperation.
The recipe was rather simple too:
1) Everyone is declared and considered equal.
2) You make every effort to help those at the bottom get up and develop as quickly as possible (i.e. develop their own culture).
3) You ensure that noone is denied an opportunity.
4) You do not discriminate.
5) You strongly prohibit any nationalist/schauvinist propaganda.
Voila. +250 million people living in harmony with one of the highest percentage of international marriages in the world (17.5% of all Soviet families were ethnically mixed in 1989 - data by M. Rutkevich, 1992). 21.5% of people in 1989 lived outside "their" national territory.
I don't see why other countries can't live in similar peaceful manner.
Not really. Not if you are self-sufficient. I am in a different situation - I have great social skills and would have no problem dating/getting laid, but why bother? Social life is indeed overrated. An online forum like Slashdot is sufficient social life for me. ;)
Also, it would be impossible to have closed architecture for terminals with the advent of general-purpose computers. Programmers would want freedom of expression no matter what. If we hadn't GNU and Open Software movement, we would have something else, but similar. And with freedom to program comes the freedom to use the programs, the freedom to connect, etc.
Fidonet was created from the ground-up and has a lot of freedom. We also had the BBSes with a lot of freedom as well. Yes, it's not as advanced as the Internet, but if the Internet was closed enough, we would have an alternative. And to thing of it, it's inconceivable that we would have all the powerful computers and noone would connect them. All the growth has been organic. Yes, with some things we were just lucky, but the general notion of open web would be realised one way or another.
The speculation is nice, and may be useful as a reminder of the evils of strong copyright, but it doesn't qualify as realistic alternative history.
The only reason why the Web-as-designed-today would be infested by lawyers and controlled by Disney and RIAA is that the original Web gave so much freedom to the people. If that didn't happen, RIAA would be clueless that "pirates" may trade and share songs online.
That's one thing I've always loved about Macs - the booting. No matter how much they try to disguise it with logos, I still see it's booting to the same resolution as DOS.
:) If I could make my P4 make the sounds of the 286 (tick-tick-tick...) at startup that would be even better. :) And the memorable sounds of 5.25" and 3.5" disk drive detection. Ah, the memories. :) When possible I always disable the logos, it's really nice to see when the HDDs are detected and stuff. And I am not even that geeky.
Personally I was always fond of DOS-style booting, preferably with a memory check first.
I don't think we can anticipate what that will be
Why not? I think it's rather obvious that in 10-20 years almost all information will be freely accessible, even full texts of most books.
Look, I don't have anything against vegans, they can have whatever moral outlook on life they want. I also don't really mind vegans trying to persuade others that vegetarianism is a better moral (and nutritious) choice.
But I strongly oppose vegans lying about facts or twisting and misrepresenting them in order to mislead meat-eaters.
Let PETA promote the vegetarian lifestyle, let them preach to other vegans about not drinking milk. But when it lies and engages in other unethical behaviour (all in the name of "greater good", I understand) it stops being a respected debate participant. Rational people now see PETA as extremist green nuts. Personally I would no longer listen to PETA and my initial reaction to anything they say is going to be dismissal. All because they don't play by the rules of a rational and honest discourse.
P.S. Most people don't share your morals, just like you don't share hindu religious beliefs. And there is nothing unethical about killing cows.
It's not dropping from 8 tons to 5 tons. It's dropping from 8 tons to zero tons, because the cow dies.
What a lot of farmers don't realize is that running a cow at 8 tons a year (number pulled out of my ass)
Since when is ignorance a valid point of view? You don't have a clue about diary farming. People have been working for centuries breeding better cows and finding out how different factors affect milk production. Hundreds of people probably get their PhDs in the field of diary farming. You look like an idiot, when you assert that everyone doesn't know what they are doing.
PETA is lying through their teeth, they are a bunch of manipulative bastards, who are part crazy and part financed by crazies. No industry is perfect and many companies are outright unethical, but painting the whole diary industry as bad is nonsense.
I don't really know what else to say to a person who decides that comparing cows with overclocked CPUs is a valid analogy that can provide some valuable insights to the problem we are discussing... You are not making any sense is all that I can say.
The problem is that PETA (like most people and organisations today) is unable to see the shades of grey in the world. According to their vision, everything that is done by the industry is eeeevil. I don't see anything wrong with feeding dead chickens to cows. Heck, I eat dead chickens myself!
Another example: I don't see how the data (I call it data, but it sounds more like empty claims) above shows that the breeding life is cut to half of the natural. They say that cows are rendered worthless to the dairy industry. Perhaps it means that instead of making 8 tons of milk each year they only make 5 tons. At that point it would become more profitable for the farm to slaughter the cow. As long as we are not against cowslaighter per se, I don't see what's wrong with that.
If PETA actually targeted their attacks somewhat instead of proclaiming that anyone who as much as looks at a cow the wrong way is a monster, they would get much more respect. I concede that the profit-driven (or subsudies-driven?) industry will happily spit on the well-being of cows, but why not attack their actual transgressions and not the whole concept of industrial farming? For example, why doesn't PETA attack specific farms (companies) that hold their cows in bad conditions, while co-operating with some other farms that do respect their bovine partners?
It makes sense for the game developers to make graphics complex enough that you can play on highest settings only with the fastest card on the market. It doesn't mean than the 6600GT experience is bad, only that the X1000 experience is better.
Not to "shoot anyone", but to shoot the panic-mongers and restore the discipline. And usually there were no machine guns, just armed normally soldiers and officers.
Panic doesn't win wars and there really was nowhere to run.
I wonder if Mr. Berlusconi has heard of a place called Sardinia.
First human rights - I really doubt that the Czechs Poles and Hungarians (among others) would agree that what the Soviet Union achieved was accomplished "without resorting to exploitation of other countries."
Well, I would really appreciate if those Czechs, Poles and Hungarians who disagree provide some actual specific facts. What resources or products were extracted from those countries and send to the Soviet Union for free or at artificially low prices? As far as I am aware, there are no such examples and so all the talks about them being exploited is just bullshit.
Mass murder and repression were also rampant insde the former Soviet union. It was no paradise.
Not true. There never was mass murder. And repressions are a very complex phenomenon that had its objective reasons. The country was preparing for the War with Hitler and it needed all the resources and all the dedication it could master. Without the repressions we would have seen a Holocaust of Slavs, a horror tens times as that of the Jewish tragedy. Whatever price we had to pay for being better prepared was justified. Whatever price was paid for the heavy industry, for power plants, for railroads, for oil fields was justified. Even several hundreds of thousands of people executed for sabotage and other crimes with some of them being innocent.
Second, economics - the problem with a planned economy is that there is no competition, so if the central political directorate gets something wrong, there is no competing firm to offer an alternative.
You simply don't know anything about the Soviet Union and don't understand how its economy worked. What you say is nonsense and is completely unlike how it really worked.
First, there was no "political directorate". Planning decisions were carefully calculated by large teams of expert economists. The essence of decision-making was the same as anywhere on Earth, because how you decide where to build a railroad is the same in free market and a planned economy. When you calculate how large a factory needs to be and in which city to build it to minimise total costs of the products, you work the same way, whether you work in a capitalist or a socialist economy.
I don't know who told you this ridiculous version of how Soviet economy worked, but I suspect that it was the Western media and the government propaganda writers... But the truth is much more logical and makes much more sense.
Planning decisions were carefully prepared and there wasn't much difference, for example, between how Soviet oil companies and Shell planned their operations. The only difference is that the planned system eliminated the inefficiencies of the market, so no wonder that it worked better than the market.
Yes corporations are each mini planned economies, but if one giant corporation makes a bad call, there are others with different plans offering alternatives.
And why do you think it wasn't the case in the Soviet Union? There have often been several research institutes developing alternative plans for large capital-intensive projects. Competing design bureaus developed alternative designs for equipment, airplanes, rockets. When competition was beneficial, it was allowed and encouraged. But that competition wasn't driven by profit, but by a grand plan for the better good.
In a centrally planned state economy when the planners make a bad call, you're screwed with no recourse.
Why? Can't we just fix the problem? Can't we notice it as it develops and fix it? I don't know any examples where we were screwed with no recourse. I doubt you can you provide any examples...
The constant shortages and failures to keep up with advancing technologies in the West were the result of this lack of competition.
What cosntant shortages? That's another myth. The average per capita consumption of many products was higher than in the Western countries. Occassional temporary shortages of some goods are a small price to pay for the greater abundance overall.
Good point. I was talking more about "high art", or the "artsy" kind of art. I think that's what the author of the article was talking about - the games that explore the medium, that try challenging new things. And most games don't need to be that way.
I completely agree with you that good games are art in a sense that they evoke a right emotional response, I am just saying that they don't need to be textured in charcoal or watercolor as long as they are simply fun and enjoyable.