I know some people _think_ rpm is standard, but if package management was the same for every distribution (read, they all agree on some packaging standards), then distros could flavour their Linux, and vendors could reliable create one package for their software which would correctly account for all dependencies on all distros.
I think this is the number 1 problem that needs to be fixed... and it is solvable with co-operation.
If a town has only one lawyer, then (s)he starves. If the town has two lawyers, then they're both rich. The moral of the story is that lawyers know how to create work for themselves, and they are carving our a new niche in the software industry.
Perhaps you should collect data on how all the lawyer expenses are just a ball and chain around the industry. Thus, the numbers of $$$ spent on patent attorneys, legal fees, court cases and such.
Then you can argue that other than killing innovation, creating artificial barriers to entry and a software oligarchy, the industry is also spending $$$ on this complete waste of time.
Our IPR overloads can sue each other to oblivion for all I care. Maybe we are hypocrites, but when someone uses unpopular law X to attack evil corporation Y, well... one can't help but be amused.
Sure I can prove you wrong, but you should search the net as well. The top 5 media corps in the US came to the defence of FOX when the whistle blowers had collected enough evidence to go to court. I guess a favourable decision would enable all of them to lie with impunity, so it was in their best interest.
The story has been covered by many small media outlets, but unfortunately they get branded as "liberal crap", so people don't listen. Not all small media outlets are liberal crap, but there are enough for the effect to work. I guess you could characterise it as a type of social engineering, but I think it's just a bunch of smart marketers and image makers manipulating widely held social opinions... that's how they have gotten away with it for so long!
Have a good look around www.foxbghsuit.com, and you will a lot of information on the conspiracy, including how supermarkets have sidelined the problem, regulators have sided with Monsanto, and the consumer/public interest is not even considered. For example, a university study found that 80% of people were concerned as to unknown long-term health problems of using growth hormones in milk. Monsanto's response was to make it illegal for farmers/super-markets to label milk products as containing rBGH.
Monsanto offered 2 million to Canada Health to rubber stamp the product (rBGH) without further testing. The people in the room characterized the act as a bribe, however, Monsanto went on the record that it was for research. Makes you wonder exactly why the FDA only tested 100 or so rats, and only in a limited way... perhaps a research grant was invovled.
So the FDA doesn't want this talked about because it would be very embarrassing to have an inquiry into why they aren't doing their job. Monsanto is making $$$ of this product, which is really a mass trial of genetic engineering on the US public. (rBGH is a genetically engineered Bovine Growth Hormone)
Health concern over IGF-1 aside (that's the particular compound (hormone I think) which is know to be carcinogenic), Monsanto has fought to make sure that consumers don't know if the milk they buy contains this genetically engineered compound. Consumer may want to know what they are... consuming... but instead of regulators forcing producers to label milk as containing a genetically engineered hormone the exact opposite happened. It is illegal for producers to say that their product doesn't contain rBGH. Two farms were served law suits because of this, and warning letters were sent to other farms. I guess the farmers (serfs) saw the writing on the wall and backed down. Why did regulators allow/do this? You have to ask them yourself, but that's what happened. If we are known by are actions (and I believe we are), then the regulators do not have the consumers interests ahead of Monsantos.
Now most US farmers are using rBGH, to stay competitive. Various retailers (remember that a few corps own all the retailers, and central office sets the policies) have rBGH policies, but they are carefully worded so as to be ambiguous. The reality is that milk from producers is usually mixed, so that pretty much all milk contains rBGH.
So the retailers don't want it talked about.
Now the press is responsible for informing the public right?? Well the scary part is that there are 6 (I think) major US media crops that pretty much control most of it... they all sided with FOX in suppressing this story. The reasons why they'd do this is sketchy, but the proof is there. None of them picked up the story, and they all came to the aid of FOX in the court case _and_ the appeal. Legally, by precedent, they can lie, and have limited the whistle blowers act, which is good for business. Maybe Monsanto paid them off, or maybe the major corps have a 'club'... who knows. We can only guess at that particular motive. But the facts are there for those who care to find them... and the implications are... that major co
Download the 3-part documentary "The Corporation", it has a lot of info about Monsanto, the FDA and FOX. You can here 1st hand from the people whose voice was squashed, and it will make perfect sense how such a big story was squashed.
The FDA did a small test on les than 100 rats and found "no-problems" and okayed the drug. That is, the FDA didn't do its job.
Cancer wasn't found in 1 rat, I'm not sure of the scientific details myself... but this page has some info. Here's another arcticle
Here's a quote from an expert:
My concern is that increases in such minute levels could readily enter
the blood stream of individuals drinking milk from BST treated cows. As
an individual ages, indolent tumor cells do appear in various organs
(breast, ovary, prostate, etc..) which grow slowly with the result that
clinical cancer is not manifested until old age, or, in many cases, after
the individual would have died of other causes. Stimulation of these
cells by elevated levels of IGF-1 would result in clinical cancer in a
decade or two or even less. Furthermore, these levels of IGF-1 could
stimulate the progression and aggressiveness of childhood leukemias to a
point that chemotherapy could not be effective, much less curative.
The researcher went on to say that the FDA/Monsanto research was extremely slopping, or even fraudulent.
Monsanto has tried to push this drug on Canada, and I saw an interview with a guy from the Canadian equivalent of the FDA, and he said that he was pressured to okay the drug. Talk about integration with the government. Now, Canada, and most of the rest of the developed world refuse to touch rBGH, the main concern being IGF-1.
I've followed a bit of this already; I've even seen interviews with the people involved with the case.
In summary:
The milk in the US contains a chemical additive that is cancer causing. That chemical is produced by Monsanto. The FDA tested a few rats and rubber stamped to drug. It causes distress and health problems in many cows. There is hard evidence that Monsanto knew there was problems with the drug before they even sent it for testing at the FDA. FOX suppressed the story (presumably on behalf of Monsanto) using various different sleazy tactics. The investigative reporters in question refused to sign a NDA, and were later fired after about 80 rewrites of the story. The story was rewritten with lawyers present, not scientists. The pretence was that the story should be balanced. The Monsanto lawyers objected to terms like "carcinogenic", preferring more balanced terms such as "may cause health problems".
The reporters won their court case, to find it over turned at appeal. The reason was that lying isn't a crime, and the whistle blower act only protects employees from business asking them to commit a crime. FOX immediately said that they were 'vindicated', but left out the part about lying.
The milk is being drunk all over the US, and is being served to children at schools.
Many of the articles come from seriously left-leaning rags
And just about every major player in the media market will sell you any news so long as it doesn't hurt the corporate agenda.
It's likely that we'll never require samizdat
in this country, but we all require tin-foil
hats
I think there is an strong element as you describe, and that the slashdotters do themselves a diservice by over-stating their case.
With respect to the public good, however, there are problems with the RIAA, MPAA, M$ and the coporate model in general has flaws. It's fine to discuss that, but over-stating your case makes it very easy for your opponents to sideline you.
With more posts such as yours, ideally, slashdot could give more balanced coverage, including the good things M$ has achieved. It's fine to draw attention to anticompetitive M$ tactics and general anti-social behaviour. Let them spread their FUD, but if you FUD back, who do you think people are going to listen to?
We must always remember that M$ is a corporation, and thus is out to make a buck at all costs - that's the formula that corporations operate to. We can't expect M$ to change without a change in corporate culture, it just wouldn't make sense in the real world. So which problem are slashdotters bitching about? How evil company X makes $$$ by using shady practices {Y...}, with the effect of damaging Z? That happens everywhere! That doesn't make it okay, but you should at least realize that it's a cultural problem!
With regards to the RIAA/MPAA, it's hard to have any sympathy for them at all, particularly considering my wife and many friends are musicians and film-makers. I have already noticed the success of their media machine in making people believe their mantra.
In the quest to own everything conceivable, corporations have twisted IP laws so that they can own ideas. They own obscenely long copyrights on cultural bread and butter, such as the song "Happy Birthday" (bet that shareholder's happy). They have pushed patent laws so that they can patent living things, genes, discoveries, algorithms, ideas. This is wealth usurpation, pure and simple.
The prevailing group-think on slashdot, however, is that people feel that they should get something for free anyhow. After all, linux is free, and don't people make money off it anyway? There are, however, problems faced by IP owners. Those very same IP owners (powerful people) are using those problems to extend their wealth (by getting new rules passed, or getting customers to agree to restrictive conditions that they wouldn't have considered before).
The RIAA/MPAA is doing well in this game, and slashdotters don't even realize that they're being out manoeuvred; sitting at home trolling about how evil they are only makes it easier for the RIAA/MPAA to push their agenda. Once mum and dad agree that DRM and similar are culturally necessary to protect the "artists" (well, the record label), then we'll all have DRMed computers... because the market will accept it.
I went to get some music photo copied a few days ago and couldn't. The copy shop had received threatening letters warning not to copy any music. It didn't matter that it was for personal use, or that the music was written in the era of Mozart, or that it was published in 1939. The store owner said I had to buy a new copy from the publisher, because otherwise I'd be stealing profit from the publisher.
The copy shop is the one who had profit stolen from them, and the owner didn't even get it! That's what we're up against people; misinformation turning into a cultural attitude that copying is inherently bad for the economy.
So long as people whine here, the RIAA/MPAA will have a free hand to continue their campaign, until they're a public institution. If only slashdotters saw RIAA/MPAA articles as a chance to discuss solutions to this problem. Perhaps someone clever will come up with some good ideas, and spread them to other slashdotters. If the ideas are good enough, someone will write to their heritage minister (or non-Canadian equivalent), or form a political action group, and _that_ is how you fight the copyright cartel.
They simply never grew out of lying
on
Ballmer on Linux
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· Score: 1
I was reading the transcript of SCO 3rd quarter teleconference, and was astounded once more by how deftly McBride spun the news, and how ably he misrepresented SCO position.
The M$ board aren't stupid, so either they have severe reality problems, or lying is an automatic impulse to them, kinda like when you ask a 10 year old kid if they stole $20.
They know about the problems with M$ products, and they delude themselves about how minor the problem is, and how great their effort is to fix things. They also proceed to delude as many people as possible, which involves retaining a large marketing machine, well versed in replacing fact with gloss and image.
How do I know this? Just a wild stab in the dark, but if I had $50 billion in the bank, I'd feel differently about certain minor niggly issues as well. God knows what I'd think of a bunch of commies on a religious crusade to give away their code.
Many other forms of advertising mean I get something for free (several TV channels here) or cheaper (magagzines/newspapers), and never cost me more, anyway (billboards, etc.)
Advertising always costs you something. The fact it's not always money is what economists call an "externality", but it's still a cost. The visual noise from logos, billboards, etc is a cost. If you find yourself wasting 1second noticing an unwanted ad, it's costs you 1 second of your life... something you appreciate more as you get older and the days get shorter.
There's also this common misconception that ads reduce the cost of TV. While it's true that revenue from ads _does_ pay for a lot of the cost of producing programming, society as a whole pays for the cost of the programming, and the ads, and the consumer has to foot the bill in the end.
I feel that heavy regulation on all forms of advertising is the only way to reduce those 'externalities' and would make TV, Magazines etc cheaper on average. It would severly damage one of the world largests and industries though, but progess always does that.
RPM is a package management staple. Apt-get is great, and in many ways superiour. Urpmi is an excellent wrapper on RPM. All of these things are staples, but not standards.
If they were standard, then I wouldn't need to distribute a.deb and half a dozen.rpm files as well as a.tar.gz file when I distribute my latest killer app.
That's just too much effort to make sure that it works on all those systems. It's simpler on windows, even with the clunky package management interface.
If there was a real standard... people could still make different front ends and distributors could still distribute different versions of the same packages, and end users could just double click and install any linux package, that they get form rpmfind, tucows or whatever.
Linux will never make it to the desktop unless the major distributors agree on a standard package format.
Once that hill has been climbed, then developers only need to create and test one type of package to distribute their software on any Linux distribution.
The old./configure prefix=, make && make install is too archaic and relies on a good understanding of directory structure. Getting the software off can be impossible, and if you have to type in your root password... how long before that social engineering is exploited by virus writers.
Also, I find it too lengthy a process to edit all those configuration files... most Mac/Windows programs just run. Sygate is a good example of a useable firewall... it requires no instructions to use.
I think this is more important than improving KDE/Gnome etc.
That charter obiously has teeth, because I haven't seen rampent and widespread abuse of the public good by corporations since last I looked at the news
Blame them for being human, won't change the fact that corps and politicians use a high-tech image making machine to "manufactor" the consent of the masses.
We're delibrately distracted from the issues that really matter. This isn't a conspiracy, it's just business.
You're fighting against a media machine, which is owned by corporations, which is really a conflict of interest. You can blame irresponsible citizens, but we (yes including me) are dumbed into believing things by some of the cleverist marketers and image makers in the world.
If 0.1% of the population reponsed to something as cludgy and obivious as spam, think how we respond en masse to sophisticated and well-researched image making machines.
So perhaps we should blame the marketing firms which irresponsibly sell lies to the public, and distract citizens from the real issues at hand...
Well, unfortuanetly marketing firms are also corporations... and the marketing firm that pleases it's clients best is the won with the $$$, and that's the point of a corporation... right?
So as soon as one marketing firm starts selling lies, they all have to, just to stay in business.
So we're back to the problem of corporations again.
Certain measures can me made to limit this particular problem, such as preventing corps from changing names and limiting the number of trademarks and other corporations they can have. Unfortunately, it only takes 1 corp, and one bad administration to make these rules float away, and once they do... we're back to square 1.
There _are_ good things about corporations and our free market economy. We should redefine corporations so that they keep the good and throw out the bad.
Making shareholders liable would defeat the original purpose of the corporation which was limited-liability. I don't think limited-liability is a bad thing, because is makes it easier to make investment decisions, and investment underpins economic growth.
For example, if you wanted to start a shop, you could borrow the money from you folks... should they be liable for you actions then!
I think the solution lies more in the direction of what a corporation can do. For example, corporations could be created with a set of specific goals, and the CEO is bound to those goals and not just the bottom line.
Now obvious it's not as simple as that, because there'd have to be lots of specific goals to make this work... not just the one current goal (7% return or whatever).
Someone else posted a link to "The Corporation" which is a Canadian documentary about the subject... it's well watching
Unfortunately you'd have to get rid of the old 'I have no recollection with that' excuse.
For example, a corp will hire someone to find something out, and say they have no knowledge of how that person does business. That person is actually a spy, and everyone knows that he's going to break the law to get that information. But the CEO's aren't responsible unless you can prove that they knew that the spy was going to break the law when they hired them. Convenient that this situation has arisen.
It goes deeper than holding CEOs accountable... if you held shareholders accountable, then things certainly _would_ change, but everyone would cry unfair, and it would defeat the point of a corporation.
Greed is no more basic in shareholders than everyone else, so the definition of a corporation has to change to limit what it _can_ do, because anything it _can_ do it will, including extending the extension of itself, and what it can do.
For example, corporations fought do be able to patent living organizism back in the 80s. People didn't believe that you could own real life. Well a single firm argued in court that they had invented nothing more mundane then a standard chemical when they modified a bacteria.... and the supreme court (curse them!) agreed with the copr!
Now companies are patenting the DNA sequences of all the living creatures on earth. The USPTO said you couldn't patent the human genome (thankfully!), however, corps are patenting discoverings on human DNA - such as what the genes do (?!?)
The limitations I'm thinking of are more along the lines of:
"corporations have a limited lifespan", and
"this corporation is created to refine steel"
This would give a corporation a specific charter that they can't deviate from once it's created.
Obviously I don't believe that these specific examples would be practicle in the current world!
Don't blame M$, Bill Clinton or anybody else... the real problem is deeply routed in the definition of a corporation.
You see, some coporate lawyers in the late 19thC realized that they could make a lot more money if a corporation had the rights of a person, and the supreme court agreed they were, with all the rights and privileges there-of.
Now a coporation is a 'legal' person whose sole purpose is to make money for the shareholders. The CEO and board are legally bound to do so. Unfortunately, since corporations aren't real people, they don't have real morals... other than what will make $$$ for shareholders. Because shareholders aren't liable for the actions of corportions, they don't CARE how the corporation makes money on their investment.
That's the root of the problem.
Every corporation is in a free-fall race to the bottom to out-compete it's rivals and make 7% growth in profits. While that level of competition has many obvious good points, it has also created some terrible problems.
Once one corporation 'buys' a law (such as software patents), then everyone in the industry has to start using them or die. You don't even have to buy a law... if breaking the law and paying the fine (and paying a nice PR firm to make you look shiny) is cost effective, then that's what you HAVE to do if you're going to raise your stock higher than your rivals.
CEOs and lawyers are not all trolls, they are just cogs in a machine. Corporations have bought off politions all over the world, PR firms, marketers... all so that they can bend and create rules to make more $$$. As soon as one nasty little troll does it... they all have to. If they don't, well, only the fittest survive.
The solution?
We have to unravel the legal framework that has come to define what corporations are. Exactly how to do this???? Well, you tell me =)
FischerRandom chess != inflated sense of ego
on
Bobby Fischer Found
·
· Score: 1
Other great playres have dabbled in creating chess variants. Alkehine and Capablanca played on a 10x10 board with two new types of powerful pieces - one moving like a bishop and knight, and the other moving like a rook and knight
While Fischer may be a little on the crazy side, his chess variant is an excellent idea.
Slashdot Mirror
but don't be confused that FUD is necessarily an evil thing
Just because marketers and advertisers don't operate by a 'limited' moral standard doesn't mean that it's okay.
Truth and openess are good things, FUD is bad. The world is what we make it.
Because the legal system occupies a different mind-space.
Go to a bookshop, and pick-up a book on running a small business, and read the chapter on going to court...
There is a reason why public faith in the legal system is at an all time low.
I know some people _think_ rpm is standard, but if package management was the same for every distribution (read, they all agree on some packaging standards), then distros could flavour their Linux, and vendors could reliable create one package for their software which would correctly account for all dependencies on all distros.
I think this is the number 1 problem that needs to be fixed... and it is solvable with co-operation.
If a town has only one lawyer, then (s)he starves. If the town has two lawyers, then they're both rich. The moral of the story is that lawyers know how to create work for themselves, and they are carving our a new niche in the software industry.
Perhaps you should collect data on how all the lawyer expenses are just a ball and chain around the industry. Thus, the numbers of $$$ spent on patent attorneys, legal fees, court cases and such.
Then you can argue that other than killing innovation, creating artificial barriers to entry and a software oligarchy, the industry is also spending $$$ on this complete waste of time.
Our IPR overloads can sue each other to oblivion for all I care. Maybe we are hypocrites, but when someone uses unpopular law X to attack evil corporation Y, well... one can't help but be amused.
Can you prove me wrong
Sure I can prove you wrong, but you should search the net as well. The top 5 media corps in the US came to the defence of FOX when the whistle blowers had collected enough evidence to go to court. I guess a favourable decision would enable all of them to lie with impunity, so it was in their best interest.
The story has been covered by many small media outlets, but unfortunately they get branded as "liberal crap", so people don't listen. Not all small media outlets are liberal crap, but there are enough for the effect to work. I guess you could characterise it as a type of social engineering, but I think it's just a bunch of smart marketers and image makers manipulating widely held social opinions... that's how they have gotten away with it for so long!
Have a good look around www.foxbghsuit.com, and you will a lot of information on the conspiracy, including how supermarkets have sidelined the problem, regulators have sided with Monsanto, and the consumer/public interest is not even considered. For example, a university study found that 80% of people were concerned as to unknown long-term health problems of using growth hormones in milk. Monsanto's response was to make it illegal for farmers/super-markets to label milk products as containing rBGH.
Monsanto offered 2 million to Canada Health to rubber stamp the product (rBGH) without further testing. The people in the room characterized the act as a bribe, however, Monsanto went on the record that it was for research. Makes you wonder exactly why the FDA only tested 100 or so rats, and only in a limited way... perhaps a research grant was invovled.
So the FDA doesn't want this talked about because it would be very embarrassing to have an inquiry into why they aren't doing their job. Monsanto is making $$$ of this product, which is really a mass trial of genetic engineering on the US public. (rBGH is a genetically engineered Bovine Growth Hormone)
Health concern over IGF-1 aside (that's the particular compound (hormone I think) which is know to be carcinogenic), Monsanto has fought to make sure that consumers don't know if the milk they buy contains this genetically engineered compound. Consumer may want to know what they are... consuming... but instead of regulators forcing producers to label milk as containing a genetically engineered hormone the exact opposite happened. It is illegal for producers to say that their product doesn't contain rBGH. Two farms were served law suits because of this, and warning letters were sent to other farms. I guess the farmers (serfs) saw the writing on the wall and backed down. Why did regulators allow/do this? You have to ask them yourself, but that's what happened. If we are known by are actions (and I believe we are), then the regulators do not have the consumers interests ahead of Monsantos.
Now most US farmers are using rBGH, to stay competitive. Various retailers (remember that a few corps own all the retailers, and central office sets the policies) have rBGH policies, but they are carefully worded so as to be ambiguous. The reality is that milk from producers is usually mixed, so that pretty much all milk contains rBGH.
So the retailers don't want it talked about.
Now the press is responsible for informing the public right?? Well the scary part is that there are 6 (I think) major US media crops that pretty much control most of it... they all sided with FOX in suppressing this story. The reasons why they'd do this is sketchy, but the proof is there. None of them picked up the story, and they all came to the aid of FOX in the court case _and_ the appeal. Legally, by precedent, they can lie, and have limited the whistle blowers act, which is good for business. Maybe Monsanto paid them off, or maybe the major corps have a 'club'... who knows. We can only guess at that particular motive. But the facts are there for those who care to find them... and the implications are... that major co
Download the 3-part documentary "The Corporation", it has a lot of info about Monsanto, the FDA and FOX. You can here 1st hand from the people whose voice was squashed, and it will make perfect sense how such a big story was squashed.
Also, check out this webpage.
The FDA did a small test on les than 100 rats and found "no-problems" and okayed the drug. That is, the FDA didn't do its job.
Cancer wasn't found in 1 rat, I'm not sure of the scientific details myself... but this page has some info. Here's another arcticle
Here's a quote from an expert:
My concern is that increases in such minute levels could readily enter the blood stream of individuals drinking milk from BST treated cows. As an individual ages, indolent tumor cells do appear in various organs (breast, ovary, prostate, etc..) which grow slowly with the result that clinical cancer is not manifested until old age, or, in many cases, after the individual would have died of other causes. Stimulation of these cells by elevated levels of IGF-1 would result in clinical cancer in a decade or two or even less. Furthermore, these levels of IGF-1 could stimulate the progression and aggressiveness of childhood leukemias to a point that chemotherapy could not be effective, much less curative.
The researcher went on to say that the FDA/Monsanto research was extremely slopping, or even fraudulent.
Monsanto has tried to push this drug on Canada, and I saw an interview with a guy from the Canadian equivalent of the FDA, and he said that he was pressured to okay the drug. Talk about integration with the government. Now, Canada, and most of the rest of the developed world refuse to touch rBGH, the main concern being IGF-1.
I'd draw your attention to The Media can Leagally Lie
I've followed a bit of this already; I've even seen interviews with the people involved with the case.
In summary:
The milk in the US contains a chemical additive that is cancer causing. That chemical is produced by Monsanto. The FDA tested a few rats and rubber stamped to drug. It causes distress and health problems in many cows. There is hard evidence that Monsanto knew there was problems with the drug before they even sent it for testing at the FDA. FOX suppressed the story (presumably on behalf of Monsanto) using various different sleazy tactics. The investigative reporters in question refused to sign a NDA, and were later fired after about 80 rewrites of the story. The story was rewritten with lawyers present, not scientists. The pretence was that the story should be balanced. The Monsanto lawyers objected to terms like "carcinogenic", preferring more balanced terms such as "may cause health problems".
The reporters won their court case, to find it over turned at appeal. The reason was that lying isn't a crime, and the whistle blower act only protects employees from business asking them to commit a crime. FOX immediately said that they were 'vindicated', but left out the part about lying.
The milk is being drunk all over the US, and is being served to children at schools.
Many of the articles come from seriously left-leaning rags
And just about every major player in the media market will sell you any news so long as it doesn't hurt the corporate agenda.
It's likely that we'll never require samizdat in this country, but we all require tin-foil hats
I think there is an strong element as you describe, and that the slashdotters do themselves a diservice by over-stating their case.
With respect to the public good, however, there are problems with the RIAA, MPAA, M$ and the coporate model in general has flaws. It's fine to discuss that, but over-stating your case makes it very easy for your opponents to sideline you.
With more posts such as yours, ideally, slashdot could give more balanced coverage, including the good things M$ has achieved. It's fine to draw attention to anticompetitive M$ tactics and general anti-social behaviour. Let them spread their FUD, but if you FUD back, who do you think people are going to listen to?
We must always remember that M$ is a corporation, and thus is out to make a buck at all costs - that's the formula that corporations operate to. We can't expect M$ to change without a change in corporate culture, it just wouldn't make sense in the real world. So which problem are slashdotters bitching about? How evil company X makes $$$ by using shady practices {Y...}, with the effect of damaging Z? That happens everywhere! That doesn't make it okay, but you should at least realize that it's a cultural problem!
With regards to the RIAA/MPAA, it's hard to have any sympathy for them at all, particularly considering my wife and many friends are musicians and film-makers. I have already noticed the success of their media machine in making people believe their mantra.
In the quest to own everything conceivable, corporations have twisted IP laws so that they can own ideas. They own obscenely long copyrights on cultural bread and butter, such as the song "Happy Birthday" (bet that shareholder's happy). They have pushed patent laws so that they can patent living things, genes, discoveries, algorithms, ideas. This is wealth usurpation, pure and simple.
The prevailing group-think on slashdot, however, is that people feel that they should get something for free anyhow. After all, linux is free, and don't people make money off it anyway? There are, however, problems faced by IP owners. Those very same IP owners (powerful people) are using those problems to extend their wealth (by getting new rules passed, or getting customers to agree to restrictive conditions that they wouldn't have considered before).
The RIAA/MPAA is doing well in this game, and slashdotters don't even realize that they're being out manoeuvred; sitting at home trolling about how evil they are only makes it easier for the RIAA/MPAA to push their agenda. Once mum and dad agree that DRM and similar are culturally necessary to protect the "artists" (well, the record label), then we'll all have DRMed computers... because the market will accept it.
I went to get some music photo copied a few days ago and couldn't. The copy shop had received threatening letters warning not to copy any music. It didn't matter that it was for personal use, or that the music was written in the era of Mozart, or that it was published in 1939. The store owner said I had to buy a new copy from the publisher, because otherwise I'd be stealing profit from the publisher.
The copy shop is the one who had profit stolen from them, and the owner didn't even get it! That's what we're up against people; misinformation turning into a cultural attitude that copying is inherently bad for the economy.
So long as people whine here, the RIAA/MPAA will have a free hand to continue their campaign, until they're a public institution. If only slashdotters saw RIAA/MPAA articles as a chance to discuss solutions to this problem. Perhaps someone clever will come up with some good ideas, and spread them to other slashdotters. If the ideas are good enough, someone will write to their heritage minister (or non-Canadian equivalent), or form a political action group, and _that_ is how you fight the copyright cartel.
I was reading the transcript of SCO 3rd quarter teleconference, and was astounded once more by how deftly McBride spun the news, and how ably he misrepresented SCO position.
The M$ board aren't stupid, so either they have severe reality problems, or lying is an automatic impulse to them, kinda like when you ask a 10 year old kid if they stole $20.
They know about the problems with M$ products, and they delude themselves about how minor the problem is, and how great their effort is to fix things. They also proceed to delude as many people as possible, which involves retaining a large marketing machine, well versed in replacing fact with gloss and image.
How do I know this? Just a wild stab in the dark, but if I had $50 billion in the bank, I'd feel differently about certain minor niggly issues as well. God knows what I'd think of a bunch of commies on a religious crusade to give away their code.
Advertising always costs you something. The fact it's not always money is what economists call an "externality", but it's still a cost. The visual noise from logos, billboards, etc is a cost. If you find yourself wasting 1second noticing an unwanted ad, it's costs you 1 second of your life... something you appreciate more as you get older and the days get shorter.
There's also this common misconception that ads reduce the cost of TV. While it's true that revenue from ads _does_ pay for a lot of the cost of producing programming, society as a whole pays for the cost of the programming, and the ads, and the consumer has to foot the bill in the end.
I feel that heavy regulation on all forms of advertising is the only way to reduce those 'externalities' and would make TV, Magazines etc cheaper on average. It would severly damage one of the world largests and industries though, but progess always does that.
A bit of wit and a sprinkle of convensional wisdom can brand even a cult as progressive compared to the dusty scriptures of the "older" religions
RPM is a package management staple. Apt-get is great, and in many ways superiour. Urpmi is an excellent wrapper on RPM. All of these things are staples, but not standards.
.deb and half a dozen .rpm files as well as a .tar.gz file when I distribute my latest killer app.
If they were standard, then I wouldn't need to distribute a
That's just too much effort to make sure that it works on all those systems. It's simpler on windows, even with the clunky package management interface.
If there was a real standard... people could still make different front ends and distributors could still distribute different versions of the same packages, and end users could just double click and install any linux package, that they get form rpmfind, tucows or whatever.
That would be ideal.
Competition is good sometimes, however, sometimes it's better for people to collaborate and find a best way of doing things.
Imagine a world where every province/country/state uses different train guages...
RPM is the tool, but you can't use Mandrake RPMs with a SuSE install etc...
Doing soo just leads to problems
Linux will never make it to the desktop unless the major distributors agree on a standard package format.
./configure prefix=, make && make install is too archaic and relies on a good understanding of directory structure. Getting the software off can be impossible, and if you have to type in your root password... how long before that social engineering is exploited by virus writers.
Once that hill has been climbed, then developers only need to create and test one type of package to distribute their software on any Linux distribution.
The old
Also, I find it too lengthy a process to edit all those configuration files... most Mac/Windows programs just run. Sygate is a good example of a useable firewall... it requires no instructions to use.
I think this is more important than improving KDE/Gnome etc.
That charter obiously has teeth, because I haven't seen rampent and widespread abuse of the public good by corporations since last I looked at the news
Blame them for being human, won't change the fact that corps and politicians use a high-tech image making machine to "manufactor" the consent of the masses.
We're delibrately distracted from the issues that really matter. This isn't a conspiracy, it's just business.
about patenting human gene sequences Patenting DNA
You're fighting against a media machine, which is owned by corporations, which is really a conflict of interest. You can blame irresponsible citizens, but we (yes including me) are dumbed into believing things by some of the cleverist marketers and image makers in the world.
If 0.1% of the population reponsed to something as cludgy and obivious as spam, think how we respond en masse to sophisticated and well-researched image making machines.
So perhaps we should blame the marketing firms which irresponsibly sell lies to the public, and distract citizens from the real issues at hand...
Well, unfortuanetly marketing firms are also corporations... and the marketing firm that pleases it's clients best is the won with the $$$, and that's the point of a corporation... right?
So as soon as one marketing firm starts selling lies, they all have to, just to stay in business.
So we're back to the problem of corporations again.
Certain measures can me made to limit this particular problem, such as preventing corps from changing names and limiting the number of trademarks and other corporations they can have. Unfortunately, it only takes 1 corp, and one bad administration to make these rules float away, and once they do... we're back to square 1.
There _are_ good things about corporations and our free market economy. We should redefine corporations so that they keep the good and throw out the bad.
Making shareholders liable would defeat the original purpose of the corporation which was limited-liability. I don't think limited-liability is a bad thing, because is makes it easier to make investment decisions, and investment underpins economic growth.
For example, if you wanted to start a shop, you could borrow the money from you folks... should they be liable for you actions then!
I think the solution lies more in the direction of what a corporation can do. For example, corporations could be created with a set of specific goals, and the CEO is bound to those goals and not just the bottom line.
Now obvious it's not as simple as that, because there'd have to be lots of specific goals to make this work... not just the one current goal (7% return or whatever).
Someone else posted a link to "The Corporation" which is a Canadian documentary about the subject... it's well watching
Unfortunately you'd have to get rid of the old 'I have no recollection with that' excuse.
For example, a corp will hire someone to find something out, and say they have no knowledge of how that person does business. That person is actually a spy, and everyone knows that he's going to break the law to get that information. But the CEO's aren't responsible unless you can prove that they knew that the spy was going to break the law when they hired them. Convenient that this situation has arisen.
It goes deeper than holding CEOs accountable... if you held shareholders accountable, then things certainly _would_ change, but everyone would cry unfair, and it would defeat the point of a corporation.
Greed is no more basic in shareholders than everyone else, so the definition of a corporation has to change to limit what it _can_ do, because anything it _can_ do it will, including extending the extension of itself, and what it can do.
For example, corporations fought do be able to patent living organizism back in the 80s. People didn't believe that you could own real life. Well a single firm argued in court that they had invented nothing more mundane then a standard chemical when they modified a bacteria.... and the supreme court (curse them!) agreed with the copr!
Now companies are patenting the DNA sequences of all the living creatures on earth. The USPTO said you couldn't patent the human genome (thankfully!), however, corps are patenting discoverings on human DNA - such as what the genes do (?!?)
The limitations I'm thinking of are more along the lines of:
"corporations have a limited lifespan", and
"this corporation is created to refine steel"
This would give a corporation a specific charter that they can't deviate from once it's created.
Obviously I don't believe that these specific examples would be practicle in the current world!
Don't blame M$, Bill Clinton or anybody else... the real problem is deeply routed in the definition of a corporation.
You see, some coporate lawyers in the late 19thC realized that they could make a lot more money if a corporation had the rights of a person, and the supreme court agreed they were, with all the rights and privileges there-of.
Now a coporation is a 'legal' person whose sole purpose is to make money for the shareholders. The CEO and board are legally bound to do so. Unfortunately, since corporations aren't real people, they don't have real morals... other than what will make $$$ for shareholders. Because shareholders aren't liable for the actions of corportions, they don't CARE how the corporation makes money on their investment.
That's the root of the problem.
Every corporation is in a free-fall race to the bottom to out-compete it's rivals and make 7% growth in profits. While that level of competition has many obvious good points, it has also created some terrible problems.
Once one corporation 'buys' a law (such as software patents), then everyone in the industry has to start using them or die. You don't even have to buy a law... if breaking the law and paying the fine (and paying a nice PR firm to make you look shiny) is cost effective, then that's what you HAVE to do if you're going to raise your stock higher than your rivals.
CEOs and lawyers are not all trolls, they are just cogs in a machine. Corporations have bought off politions all over the world, PR firms, marketers... all so that they can bend and create rules to make more $$$. As soon as one nasty little troll does it... they all have to. If they don't, well, only the fittest survive.
The solution?
We have to unravel the legal framework that has come to define what corporations are. Exactly how to do this???? Well, you tell me =)
Other great playres have dabbled in creating chess variants. Alkehine and Capablanca played on a 10x10 board with two new types of powerful pieces - one moving like a bishop and knight, and the other moving like a rook and knight
While Fischer may be a little on the crazy side, his chess variant is an excellent idea.