I've used both GeoWorks and OS/2. They were good systems. They failed, but not because of Microsoft, but because of bad marketing and the failure to position themselves as development platforms.
Please look up "natural rights". The enumerated three came from Locke, but was in some of the earlier drafts of the Constitution, before they replaced "property" with the more poetic "pursuit of happiness".
In a sense, all natural rights derive from the concept of self ownership. We own our bodies, not the public or the state. If our body is our property, then we have the right to defend it against death or damage (right to life), the right to use it to act, so long as that act does not interfer in the same rights of others (right to liberty), and the right to use its labor to create things and trade them (right to property). These rights are called "natural" because we get them merely by being alive, and not by the benevolent act of governments.
Other "rights" are in fact privileges, and require taking them from someone else. For example, the "right" to housing can only exist if the housing (or its use) can be taken from its owner. The "right" to a living wage can only exist if wages can be coerced from employers. Etc, etc. I'm not saying that these things are not important, only that they are not natural rights.
Apropos this topic, the "right" not to be offended can only exist by curtailing the rights of others to speak.
Except your scenario has never happened in real life. At least never happened without the collusion of government. The scenario exists in some bad economic texts, but it's a myth. Without the force of government to competitors at bay, big businesses will always have small businesses keeping them awake at night. The history of 19th century "robber barons" is the history of lobbying government to stop the competition. In fact, the term "robber baron" was coined by a monopolist (Collins) complaining to congress about a competitor (Vanderbilt) encroaching on his government granted privilege.
The more successful a business, the more people want to enter that industry to grab a piece of that pie. People used to enter the oil business just so they could get bought out by Rockefeller. And he only had 60% or so of the market. We may not have seen Windows clones come out in the late nineties during the heyday of the Microsoft monopoly, but we did see an explosion of software development all competing with various bits and pieces of Windows.
Businesses come and go. It's the nature of economic reality. The Fortune 500 of 1958 had a very different roster than the Fortune 500 of today. And I can think of only one major U.S. company in 1908 that still exists intact today (IBM).
The natural state of a market system is to increase production while decreasing prices. Within certain limits, this has been the case for every economic good so long as external restraints (ei, government) have not interfered. It's what innovation and entrepreneurship are all about: figuring out how to produce more or produce cheaper (or how to distribute more or distribute cheaper).
It's tough to compete in a market economy. Thus many industries and businesses choose to expend resources on lobbying efforts to get government to impose regulations, trade restrictions, price floors, subsidies, etc. How much longer until the software industry starts lobbying to regulate open source development? How much longer until the software industry lobbies for price supports and subsidies? Not too long in my opinion. This lobbying won't all be from the proprietary side either.
Progress is painful in the present, but that's no excuse to halt it. Businesses fail, people get displaced, and confusion abounds. But in its place we get new businesses, more jobs, and better lives. Yeah it sucked all those mathematicians got laid off when the computer was invented, but there are far more people writing software today than there ever were professional mathematicians. Progress frees up resources to be used in more productive ways. We still have mathematicians (God bless 'em), but they're no longer toiling away in damp basements producing logarithm tables.
Software prices are plummeting, and only the external restraint of copyright (a government grant of privilege) keeps it in check. But the good news is that the demand for software production still exists. Open Source hobbyists can't produce all the software in the world. There is still lots of room to pay for professional software development. Your particular software niche might not exist in ten years, but there will be other paying niches that will.
If you're really worried about your professional future, I would suggest finding a job where you aren't producing a software product, but producing software for a product, or producing software as a service.
There is a proven way to prevent "smart loss". (That is, proven except for actual deterioration like alzheimers). I've known people in their fifties who were showing signs of cranial petrification, and a few in their nineties who were as sharp as ever.
First thing: Don't stop learning. Change is good for the brain. If all you ever use your brain for is programming, it will deteriorate in other areas. Keep learning new skills and areas of knowledge.
Second thing: Exercise your brain. Work on puzzles, write new software, analyze things, etc. Not just the left brain, but the right brain too. Write poetry, paint scenery, create scuptures, etc.
Most people get dumber as they age for the same reason their waistlines expand: they get lazy and stuck in a rut.
Free speech is not being elevated over other rights. Natural rights include the right to life, liberty and property. Free speech falls under "liberty", the right to act freely without interference so long as you do not yourself interfer with the liberties of others. One should have the full and unhindered right of speech, so long as such speech does not interfer with the rights of another.
The "right" not be offended is not a natural right. It is a political privilege that exists only through the use of political power gained through political gamesmanship.
I never blame a people for the inanities of their government. I was recently in Germany and I loved it. It's a wonderful place with wonderful people. But their government sucks. Being a very efficient government, it sucks very efficiently.
My question is: Why the heck did the government have to be involved? This isn't a copyright issue, it's a property issue. The property isn't the movie, it's the theater itself. All the theater had to do was evict the recorder. No need for police at all, unless he refused to leave the premises.
The studios should just tell their distributors that there must not be any recordings. The distributors then tell the theaters that there must not be any recordings. The theaters evict recorders and put their names on a non-welcome list. If theaters don't agree they don't get to show the movies. Problem solved, all without copyright.
Obama releases his speech on a proprietary format. If this really were the era of Change and Hope, we wouldn't have to still be sneaking around behind YouToob's Flash (and it's Adobe Minders) to snarf down the actual video content.
Qt apps work just fine over a network. For best performance, stay away from OpenGL and large pixmaps or gradients. You want to avoid shoving huge bitmaps down your skinny pipe. Some themes can be killers, but overall Qt is nearly as responsive as Athena over a network.
Net Neutrality: Geeks, gamers and techopundits demanding that they pay the same as everyone else for ten times the bandwidth and three times the quality. They are demanding to pay the same $19.95 as their grandma who only checks her email once a day.
The "One Price Fits All" model that we have necessitates a Lowest Common Denominator product. We should be sending market demands to networks that we want differentiation, but instead we're sending political demands to Congress to forbid differentiation.
It's not all due to nefarious Google-Corporate-Conspiracy. I know you guys like to think it's all one big giant conspiracy to keep nerds from ruling the Earth, but it's not true. Close up Google views are from airplane photos, not satellite photos. If airplanes can't fly over an area then you don't get good pictures of it. If the airplane photos belong to the government and they don't include them in the database, you don't get good pictures of it. It's as simple as that for most things. If something is deliberately obscured you can tell.
While PBI is interesting, I'm still want a decent package manager. A lot of package managers out there suck, but some are great. There is nothing wrong with the concept of package managers. (Fortunately PC-BSD lets me use ports, so I get the best of both worlds).
Thanks to a doofus in the White House, and hundreds of doofuses in Congress, the government is now giving almost a trillion dollars of *out* money to private business. Don't blame the Republicans, don't blame the Democrats, blame them both! Blame their presidential candidates too, who can't seem to fine the conjones to condemn this action.
I have obtained a legal copy of the software. It is no longer Mozilla's business what I do with it. Copyright prevents me from distributing it, but I what I do with it is solely up to me. They own the copyright, but the specific copy in my possession is now my property and I have the moral right to use it. Requiring that I assent to a EULA for software that I already have the legal right to use is bullshit.
If Mozilla doesn't like it, they can offer me the agreement before/b> I acquire the software! It's bad enough that proprietary companies try to foist this crap on us, but I expect better from Open Source companies.
"Initial refusal". Interesting choice of words. Are you saying the government ordered companies to install fiber cable and they refused? The reason there was no fiber cable is because the companies did not perceive there to be sufficient demand to make it profitable. It is a huge initial cost, and they didn't think there would be enough customers to make up for it.
I'm not promising rose gardens. The world is not perfect, but I do think it works a bit better when the government is not trying to make it perfect.
Yes, it's expensive to lay fiber optic cable. The reason Monticello didn't have any fiber providers was that the potential providers didn't think they would get enough customers to offset the huge initial cost. There just wasn't enough perceived demand. By passing off the cost by *force* to the entire populace, a few techies get what they want for only a tiny increase in personal cost.
It's no more religious than worshipping at the idol of government. Got a problem? Pray to government! Even government created problems have government solutions! If you see a problem with government, just tell yourself that it's only because the wrong guy is in charge, and that if we could only get the right guys in office we will have a paradise on Earth!
Don't have fiber access to the internet? Who ya gonna call? Government!
All Hail Godvernment from which all Goodness flows!
Unlike you many people live in places that don't have a choice as to whom provides access, cable tv or broadband.
That's because the cities have deliberately created a monopoly. This is what afidel suggests is moral. This isn't a "natural monopoly", it's yet another government ban on competition. The government may own the physical roads, but there's absolutely no reason they can't provide rights of way to lay parallel cables under them. Except for people like afidel who demand central economic planning.
There may not have been any providers at the time the city decided to monopolize fiber, but by monopolizing it they proactively prevent any competitition from ever happening. I suspect the reason there was no fiber provider was that there was no significant market demand for it at the price it would have taken to provide it. The marginal cost was just too great.
Governments should not be competing with private businesses. It's not their role. Monopolies aren't fun, but government run monopolies are downright depressing. Even if the government allows competition, how do you compete with an entity that has the power to tax or borrow against taxes?
Much of the current "problem" is due to previous government created monopolies in local telephone and cable. The solution is not more of the same intervention.
At the same time, I think the lawsuit is misguided. If I were a shareholder I would be telling the company to cut its losses, pull up stakes, and get out of Monticello. It's clear they've gone over to the dark side, and it's pointless trying to compete with techie-welfare.
Investment dollars aren't thrown away, they are used. It's called "capital" and is the basis for our economy. The investments expand production so we all get more in the long run. Not just existing production, but new production as well.
It's not all rosy, of course. Government does a heck of a lot to encourage bad investments. But over all investment is good for the economy. IT IS NOT ZERO SUM! I cannot believe you are sticking to that. It's like believing in a flat earth. We are so much better off than our parents and grandparents it's stunning when you think about it. I'm not talking about mere dollars, I'm talking about the extend of actual day-to-day products the average individual can afford. If it really were a zero sum game we would still be living in caves and scraping hides with flint to make a living.
What I meant was "Linux OS as a boot loader for a Chrome OS which then runs apps". Yes of course operating systems are meant to run apps. But I already have an operating system (four in fact) so I don't see why I need a superflous layer on top of them.
Take a calendar for example. Sharing a calendar online is an awesome idea. But to get it I need to run a webapp in a browser within my desktop on top of my operating system. But what if it was *just* the calendar data that was stored online? And what if there was a standard calendar format meant for online access? Then I could have a local desktop calendar that followed the desktop look and feel, usability wouldn't have to suck, didn't consume an inordinate amount of resources, etc. I could also use a different calendar app if I wanted to. *I* would be in control of my own environment, instead of some nameless developer at Google.
Slashdot Mirror
I've used both GeoWorks and OS/2. They were good systems. They failed, but not because of Microsoft, but because of bad marketing and the failure to position themselves as development platforms.
Please look up "natural rights". The enumerated three came from Locke, but was in some of the earlier drafts of the Constitution, before they replaced "property" with the more poetic "pursuit of happiness".
In a sense, all natural rights derive from the concept of self ownership. We own our bodies, not the public or the state. If our body is our property, then we have the right to defend it against death or damage (right to life), the right to use it to act, so long as that act does not interfer in the same rights of others (right to liberty), and the right to use its labor to create things and trade them (right to property). These rights are called "natural" because we get them merely by being alive, and not by the benevolent act of governments.
Other "rights" are in fact privileges, and require taking them from someone else. For example, the "right" to housing can only exist if the housing (or its use) can be taken from its owner. The "right" to a living wage can only exist if wages can be coerced from employers. Etc, etc. I'm not saying that these things are not important, only that they are not natural rights.
Apropos this topic, the "right" not to be offended can only exist by curtailing the rights of others to speak.
Except your scenario has never happened in real life. At least never happened without the collusion of government. The scenario exists in some bad economic texts, but it's a myth. Without the force of government to competitors at bay, big businesses will always have small businesses keeping them awake at night. The history of 19th century "robber barons" is the history of lobbying government to stop the competition. In fact, the term "robber baron" was coined by a monopolist (Collins) complaining to congress about a competitor (Vanderbilt) encroaching on his government granted privilege.
The more successful a business, the more people want to enter that industry to grab a piece of that pie. People used to enter the oil business just so they could get bought out by Rockefeller. And he only had 60% or so of the market. We may not have seen Windows clones come out in the late nineties during the heyday of the Microsoft monopoly, but we did see an explosion of software development all competing with various bits and pieces of Windows.
Businesses come and go. It's the nature of economic reality. The Fortune 500 of 1958 had a very different roster than the Fortune 500 of today. And I can think of only one major U.S. company in 1908 that still exists intact today (IBM).
Welcome to the wonderful world of progress!
The natural state of a market system is to increase production while decreasing prices. Within certain limits, this has been the case for every economic good so long as external restraints (ei, government) have not interfered. It's what innovation and entrepreneurship are all about: figuring out how to produce more or produce cheaper (or how to distribute more or distribute cheaper).
It's tough to compete in a market economy. Thus many industries and businesses choose to expend resources on lobbying efforts to get government to impose regulations, trade restrictions, price floors, subsidies, etc. How much longer until the software industry starts lobbying to regulate open source development? How much longer until the software industry lobbies for price supports and subsidies? Not too long in my opinion. This lobbying won't all be from the proprietary side either.
Progress is painful in the present, but that's no excuse to halt it. Businesses fail, people get displaced, and confusion abounds. But in its place we get new businesses, more jobs, and better lives. Yeah it sucked all those mathematicians got laid off when the computer was invented, but there are far more people writing software today than there ever were professional mathematicians. Progress frees up resources to be used in more productive ways. We still have mathematicians (God bless 'em), but they're no longer toiling away in damp basements producing logarithm tables.
Software prices are plummeting, and only the external restraint of copyright (a government grant of privilege) keeps it in check. But the good news is that the demand for software production still exists. Open Source hobbyists can't produce all the software in the world. There is still lots of room to pay for professional software development. Your particular software niche might not exist in ten years, but there will be other paying niches that will.
If you're really worried about your professional future, I would suggest finding a job where you aren't producing a software product, but producing software for a product, or producing software as a service.
There is a proven way to prevent "smart loss". (That is, proven except for actual deterioration like alzheimers). I've known people in their fifties who were showing signs of cranial petrification, and a few in their nineties who were as sharp as ever.
First thing: Don't stop learning. Change is good for the brain. If all you ever use your brain for is programming, it will deteriorate in other areas. Keep learning new skills and areas of knowledge.
Second thing: Exercise your brain. Work on puzzles, write new software, analyze things, etc. Not just the left brain, but the right brain too. Write poetry, paint scenery, create scuptures, etc.
Most people get dumber as they age for the same reason their waistlines expand: they get lazy and stuck in a rut.
Free speech is not being elevated over other rights. Natural rights include the right to life, liberty and property. Free speech falls under "liberty", the right to act freely without interference so long as you do not yourself interfer with the liberties of others. One should have the full and unhindered right of speech, so long as such speech does not interfer with the rights of another.
The "right" not be offended is not a natural right. It is a political privilege that exists only through the use of political power gained through political gamesmanship.
I never blame a people for the inanities of their government. I was recently in Germany and I loved it. It's a wonderful place with wonderful people. But their government sucks. Being a very efficient government, it sucks very efficiently.
My question is: Why the heck did the government have to be involved? This isn't a copyright issue, it's a property issue. The property isn't the movie, it's the theater itself. All the theater had to do was evict the recorder. No need for police at all, unless he refused to leave the premises.
The studios should just tell their distributors that there must not be any recordings. The distributors then tell the theaters that there must not be any recordings. The theaters evict recorders and put their names on a non-welcome list. If theaters don't agree they don't get to show the movies. Problem solved, all without copyright.
Obama releases his speech on a proprietary format. If this really were the era of Change and Hope, we wouldn't have to still be sneaking around behind YouToob's Flash (and it's Adobe Minders) to snarf down the actual video content.
Qt apps work just fine over a network. For best performance, stay away from OpenGL and large pixmaps or gradients. You want to avoid shoving huge bitmaps down your skinny pipe. Some themes can be killers, but overall Qt is nearly as responsive as Athena over a network.
Sounds like you want Windows. Or if you prefer a Unixy flavor, Mac OSX. They'll give you all the standardization you could want, and then more.
I heard there will be extra penalties if the downloads weren't in French...
Net Neutrality: Geeks, gamers and techopundits demanding that they pay the same as everyone else for ten times the bandwidth and three times the quality. They are demanding to pay the same $19.95 as their grandma who only checks her email once a day.
The "One Price Fits All" model that we have necessitates a Lowest Common Denominator product. We should be sending market demands to networks that we want differentiation, but instead we're sending political demands to Congress to forbid differentiation.
It's not all due to nefarious Google-Corporate-Conspiracy. I know you guys like to think it's all one big giant conspiracy to keep nerds from ruling the Earth, but it's not true. Close up Google views are from airplane photos, not satellite photos. If airplanes can't fly over an area then you don't get good pictures of it. If the airplane photos belong to the government and they don't include them in the database, you don't get good pictures of it. It's as simple as that for most things. If something is deliberately obscured you can tell.
While PBI is interesting, I'm still want a decent package manager. A lot of package managers out there suck, but some are great. There is nothing wrong with the concept of package managers. (Fortunately PC-BSD lets me use ports, so I get the best of both worlds).
How about "Slinky" or "Rutabaga"?
Thanks to a doofus in the White House, and hundreds of doofuses in Congress, the government is now giving almost a trillion dollars of *out* money to private business. Don't blame the Republicans, don't blame the Democrats, blame them both! Blame their presidential candidates too, who can't seem to fine the conjones to condemn this action.
I have obtained a legal copy of the software. It is no longer Mozilla's business what I do with it. Copyright prevents me from distributing it, but I what I do with it is solely up to me. They own the copyright, but the specific copy in my possession is now my property and I have the moral right to use it. Requiring that I assent to a EULA for software that I already have the legal right to use is bullshit.
If Mozilla doesn't like it, they can offer me the agreement before/b> I acquire the software! It's bad enough that proprietary companies try to foist this crap on us, but I expect better from Open Source companies.
"Initial refusal". Interesting choice of words. Are you saying the government ordered companies to install fiber cable and they refused? The reason there was no fiber cable is because the companies did not perceive there to be sufficient demand to make it profitable. It is a huge initial cost, and they didn't think there would be enough customers to make up for it.
I'm not promising rose gardens. The world is not perfect, but I do think it works a bit better when the government is not trying to make it perfect.
Yes, it's expensive to lay fiber optic cable. The reason Monticello didn't have any fiber providers was that the potential providers didn't think they would get enough customers to offset the huge initial cost. There just wasn't enough perceived demand. By passing off the cost by *force* to the entire populace, a few techies get what they want for only a tiny increase in personal cost.
It's no more religious than worshipping at the idol of government. Got a problem? Pray to government! Even government created problems have government solutions! If you see a problem with government, just tell yourself that it's only because the wrong guy is in charge, and that if we could only get the right guys in office we will have a paradise on Earth!
Don't have fiber access to the internet? Who ya gonna call? Government!
All Hail Godvernment from which all Goodness flows!
That's because the cities have deliberately created a monopoly. This is what afidel suggests is moral. This isn't a "natural monopoly", it's yet another government ban on competition. The government may own the physical roads, but there's absolutely no reason they can't provide rights of way to lay parallel cables under them. Except for people like afidel who demand central economic planning.
There may not have been any providers at the time the city decided to monopolize fiber, but by monopolizing it they proactively prevent any competitition from ever happening. I suspect the reason there was no fiber provider was that there was no significant market demand for it at the price it would have taken to provide it. The marginal cost was just too great.
Governments should not be competing with private businesses. It's not their role. Monopolies aren't fun, but government run monopolies are downright depressing. Even if the government allows competition, how do you compete with an entity that has the power to tax or borrow against taxes?
Much of the current "problem" is due to previous government created monopolies in local telephone and cable. The solution is not more of the same intervention.
At the same time, I think the lawsuit is misguided. If I were a shareholder I would be telling the company to cut its losses, pull up stakes, and get out of Monticello. It's clear they've gone over to the dark side, and it's pointless trying to compete with techie-welfare.
Investment dollars aren't thrown away, they are used. It's called "capital" and is the basis for our economy. The investments expand production so we all get more in the long run. Not just existing production, but new production as well.
It's not all rosy, of course. Government does a heck of a lot to encourage bad investments. But over all investment is good for the economy. IT IS NOT ZERO SUM! I cannot believe you are sticking to that. It's like believing in a flat earth. We are so much better off than our parents and grandparents it's stunning when you think about it. I'm not talking about mere dollars, I'm talking about the extend of actual day-to-day products the average individual can afford. If it really were a zero sum game we would still be living in caves and scraping hides with flint to make a living.
What I meant was "Linux OS as a boot loader for a Chrome OS which then runs apps". Yes of course operating systems are meant to run apps. But I already have an operating system (four in fact) so I don't see why I need a superflous layer on top of them.
Take a calendar for example. Sharing a calendar online is an awesome idea. But to get it I need to run a webapp in a browser within my desktop on top of my operating system. But what if it was *just* the calendar data that was stored online? And what if there was a standard calendar format meant for online access? Then I could have a local desktop calendar that followed the desktop look and feel, usability wouldn't have to suck, didn't consume an inordinate amount of resources, etc. I could also use a different calendar app if I wanted to. *I* would be in control of my own environment, instead of some nameless developer at Google.