How can you say there's no philosophical or ethical foundation for regulation of monopolies?
I didn't say that! Does no one read the posts they're responding to anymore? I was talking about the "rules changing" when you become a monopoly.
A capitalist society cannot allow this to happen. Understand this point. One way or another, any capitalist society *must* solve this problem, or collapse.
There are two kinds of monopolies. The most common is the monopoly backed by government power. The US Post Office is the prime example, but virtually every other monopoly you can name is one. The Bell System, Standard Oil, the railroad monopolies, OPEC, your local phone company, etc., etc. They get their power through grant of government resources, special privileges, or outright proscription of competition.
The other kind of monopoly is the natural monopoly. This is the kind most economic texts talk about, despite their rarity. They occur because a business has been so successful in the marketplace that it drives out other competitors. They also tend to occur alongside new technologies. The only examples I know of in US history (outside of local regional monopolies) are IBM and Microsoft, though the government did help them somewhat indirectly though copyright and patent laws.
How do deal with monopolies in a capitalistic society? First, get the government out of the monopoly business. It shouldn't be granting special favors to any business, including the special immunities that public corporations enjoy. Ever heard of a monopoly that wasn't a corporation? That takes care of the chartered monopolies.
The marketplace can take care of the natural monopolies on its own. Monopolies cannot indiscriminately raise prices. They do and the market immediately looks to their remaining competitors or to alternatives. Only government laws favoring monopolies can prevent this. The railroads lost their monopolies not because of anything the government did, but because long distance truckers could provide the same service cheaper. As another example, everytime OPEC raises their prices, research money is spent on petroleum alternatives.
Even before the government had rendered a decision on the IBM monopoly, it was already gone. The market had replaced mainframes with minis and then micros. Sit back and think about what would have happened if IBM had not been reigned in. Would we all be forced to use mainframes provided by IBM today? Hardly!
Then there's Microsoft. Funny thing. Despite all the formal Slashdot pronouncements that Microsoft has us all by the short and curlies, we're still using Linux, BSD, OpenOffice, Mozilla and Apache. As hackers and geeks we know very well the alternatives to Microsoft. Linux went from nothing to a position where its kicking Micosoft out of the server market, during the precise same time that Microsoft was a monopoly and the government did nothing about it. It's going to kick Microsoft off the desktop in a few years too, even if the government gives Bill Gates carte blanche. The marketplace is taking care of this monopoly.
What we need is a GNU GPL for markets - a way of automatically, inescapably, and defensibly defending their freedom from the inevitable attacks. If you have any ideas along these lines, please post them.
No ideas, but one comment apropos the Free Software Foundation and its crusade against copyrights. Engage your brain and ponder how "powerful" Microsoft (and the RIAA and MPAA) would be today without the government grant of the monopoly privilege known as "copyright"?
The citizens of the U.S. have decided that the public has an interest in seeing healthy competition, and has enacted laws that govern how companies compete.
Then why do these laws only affect monopolies? Why don't they also affect smaller businesses performing the IDENTICAL anti-competitive practices?
Back when I was in sales I routinely gave out discounts for exclusive contracts. Specifically for the purpose of keeping the competition away from my customers. At what precise point does an attempt to take away market share from a competitor transform from an acceptable and recommended business practice, to an evil act that must be stopped?
If you can't see that unbridled capitalism is not only not good for the public, but ultimately self-destructive
Be that as it may, the facts are the Microsoft has been largely "unbridled" even after losing their case, yet during this exact same period of monopolyship we have seen the rise of Linux from nothing to actually being in a position to displace Windows on the server with a keen eye on the desktop as well.
On the vague chance that your're referring to me as a Microsoft apologist, let me resoundly deny that accusation. Just because I don't want to see Microsoft Inc. dissolved and Bill Gates head placed on a pole in Redmond's town square, does not that I am apologizing for them in any way.
hen you are a convicted monopolist. the rules suddenly change
Which, when you step back about ten feet and view it with an objective perspective, is absolutely insane.
One day you're perfectly legal trying to gain market share by bundling two of your products together. Next day you gain one customer too many, and what you did yesterday is now illegal. There is no philosophical or ethical foundation for this, only a vague sense of "big==evil" political kneejerkery.
Lady Justice is always depicted with a blindfold. Seems to me that this attitude wants to rip that blindfold off.
Do you guys even bother to read the posts you're replying to? Why do I suspect that you all have canned responses you automatically send out regardless of what you're replying to?
Please tell me what the fsck the GPL has to do with any original independently implemented code? "Oh, that's clause 13! 'In the event your wholly original and independent code is interoperable with this work, then you must release your wholly original and independent code under this license, or face the puerile whinings of Slashdot trolls!'"
The BSD license is compatible with the GPL. This means that I can take BSD licensed code and insert it into GPL code, and distribute the whole under the GPL.
But the GPL is not compatible with the BSD license. This means that I CANNOT take GPL code and insert it into BSD licensed code, and distribute the whole under the BSD license.
Remember how Microsoft "adopting" Kerboros for SMB authentication, but perverted one of unused fields so it wouldn't work with anybody else's servers?
The licensing in this situation was irrelevant, since Microsoft made their own implementation. The fscked with the spec, not the code. In other words, if Kerberos had been under the Holy GPL, NOTHING WOULD HAVE BEEN DIFFERENT!
The interpretation of the GPL license is not just the opinions of individuals in the FSF... people should look at the ASF2.0 and GPL licenses to see if they really are compatible.
Heresy! The GPL means exactly what RMS says it means. No more and no less. Suggesting that people should read the GPL for themselves, indeed! Next thing you know you'll be suggesting people read the Bible for themselves instead of trusting in the Pope!
If gconf is so easy to use, then why not dump all the configuration dialogs completely and just use it? The answer is obvious: gconf is not easy to use, and no amount and advocacy will change that fact.
You get what you pay for. Oh wait, that's a cliche. Let me start over...
Yes, Qt is expensive. So was the prime rib I had last night. It was $50, including Cabernet. For that price I could have bought every value meal on the menu at McDonalds! Heck, I could have gone to the local Hofbrau and had it for only fifteen dollars if I wanted to put up with their surly attitude. But that prime rib I had last night was wonderful. I don't regret that $50 at all. It's too expensive to eat there every night, but for special occasions its perfect.
Qt is like that. It cost more than the McDonald's brand MSDN, but the quality is worth it. The classes work together and make sense. It's OO/C++ done right. Creating callbacks with signals/slots makes more sense than creating callbacks with unreadable MFC macros. The documentation is meaningful. Designer and Linguist far surpass anything McDonalds/Microsoft has to offer. And when my application is done, it's instantly portable to Linux, Macintosh, FreeBSD and Solaris.
Like a good prime rib, it's too expensive for the cheapass weekend shareware authors. But for professional software developers, that 2500USD is quite affordable.
Advanced users are still quite capable of changing a plethora of options, using advanced methods.
I would hardly call using GConf to edit undocumented keys and values an advanced method. "Arcane and hidden black art" would be closer to the truth. It also ignores the multitude of people between "newbie" and "expert" who want to have full control of their desktop, but don't have the fortitude to handle the raw guts that GConf exposes. A much better way is to use expandable dialogs (eg. an "advanced" button).
But this counters the received wisdom of Havoc, so of course is blasphemy...
How would you like me sneaking into your house and swapping out your QWERTY keyboard for a Dvorak one?
Good analogy. It's good because the Dvorak keyboard is not inherently better than the QWERTY keyboard for English. All the evidence in favor of Dvorak is anecdotal. Any actual data is inconclusive. Just like the Gnome UI...
One of the most annoying things about ClearCase is that it requires a kernel-mode driver to run
It may be annoying, but I know of no way around it. To be (or pretend to be) a filesystem for most UNIX systems, you need to be part of the kernel. You can fake it with a front end (eg. a KDE kio module), but it's not the same thing.
"Out of the box" means you install the system with the default settings, and it's secure *before* you start administering it. Few Linux systems meet this requirement, and certainly none of the "newbie" distros do.
Are ALL services and ports off by default? If not, then it's not secure out the box. Period. (I'll make an exception for ssh). Are any of the "only enable this if you know what you are doing" options in the shipping kernel? If so, it's not secure out the box.
Some distros are indeed secure out of the box. But there are so many exceptions that one cannot possibly make the blanket assertion that "Linux" meets this criteria. In fact, one major mainstream distribution actually had finger an telnet enabled "out of the box" last time I used it. Doh!
I'll put it terms less likely to offend our Linux friends. BSD's have better overall system integration than Linux distros. Often, Linux system integration takes a back seat to product differentiation.
The less integrated a system, the less secure. A developer who fixes a problem in project "A", isn't going to be able to fix the same problem (or even file all of the necessary bug reports) for projects "B" through "Z".
If you want a secure Linux system, DO NOT use one of the "newbie" distros or one that is obsessed with "bleeding edge" software. Stick with Debian or Slackware. They still won't be as integrated as a BSD system, but they'll be much closer.
p.s. To be fair, once you start installing a hundred different third party packages, the security differences between Linux and BSD vanish. I'm only talking about the "base" systems.
Not at all! All we need is an operating system that is too difficult for any MCSE to use, but still easy enough for the average chimpanzee or kindergarten dropout.
Precisely. Under individualistic "don't tread on me" cultures like the US, such activities are met with scorn. Cops are NOT of a higher class than the citizens. But similar activities in some cultures are accepted grudgingly, or even considered normal.
Though he opposed the PATRIOT act, his website says nothing at all about eliminating the Department of Homeland Security. He is completely silent on the issue of the illegal searches and seizures of toenail clippers in national airports. But he does advocate a "Department of Peace." This is just as scary to me as a Bush's new department.
The grandparent post to which I replied talked about the US being closer to an authortarian state than we realize. Running through Kucinich's position papers, I realize that he WANTS an authortarian state, but one that is kinder and gentler than Bush's. The vast majority of his positions requires larger and more intrusive government. That's not solving the problem, it's only exacerbating it.
I think we are closer than most of us would admit.
I know we're damned close. The Bush administration starts curtailing our rights after 9/11 and what does the other side do? Bitch that he didn't do it fast or forcefully enough! Is there any Democrat candidate who advocates eliminating the Department of Homeland Security? Eliminating the illegal search and seizures of toenail clippers at national airports?
It's because the United States has a three hundred year history of libertarianism (yes, older than the founding). I'm not talking about the political party of the same name, but on the attitude. US residents have an innate distrust of authority. We feel that we can govern our own individual lives much better than the policeman, soldier or bureaucrat can.
The general attitude among those raised in the US is that the government should keep out of people's affairs. Asking for someone "papers please" for no reason is simply too intrusive for the average US citizen to stomache, regardless of their political affiliation.
The policeman in question should not have asked for the ID because he had no probably cause that a crime had been was being committed. Absent that, the papers of the gentlemen were no one's business, least of all the government's.
Slashdot Mirror
Actually my UID is quite low (under 100,000). But I discontinued that earlier account and made this one for a variety of reasons.
How can you say there's no philosophical or ethical foundation for regulation of monopolies?
I didn't say that! Does no one read the posts they're responding to anymore? I was talking about the "rules changing" when you become a monopoly.
A capitalist society cannot allow this to happen. Understand this point. One way or another, any capitalist society *must* solve this problem, or collapse.
There are two kinds of monopolies. The most common is the monopoly backed by government power. The US Post Office is the prime example, but virtually every other monopoly you can name is one. The Bell System, Standard Oil, the railroad monopolies, OPEC, your local phone company, etc., etc. They get their power through grant of government resources, special privileges, or outright proscription of competition.
The other kind of monopoly is the natural monopoly. This is the kind most economic texts talk about, despite their rarity. They occur because a business has been so successful in the marketplace that it drives out other competitors. They also tend to occur alongside new technologies. The only examples I know of in US history (outside of local regional monopolies) are IBM and Microsoft, though the government did help them somewhat indirectly though copyright and patent laws.
How do deal with monopolies in a capitalistic society? First, get the government out of the monopoly business. It shouldn't be granting special favors to any business, including the special immunities that public corporations enjoy. Ever heard of a monopoly that wasn't a corporation? That takes care of the chartered monopolies.
The marketplace can take care of the natural monopolies on its own. Monopolies cannot indiscriminately raise prices. They do and the market immediately looks to their remaining competitors or to alternatives. Only government laws favoring monopolies can prevent this. The railroads lost their monopolies not because of anything the government did, but because long distance truckers could provide the same service cheaper. As another example, everytime OPEC raises their prices, research money is spent on petroleum alternatives.
Even before the government had rendered a decision on the IBM monopoly, it was already gone. The market had replaced mainframes with minis and then micros. Sit back and think about what would have happened if IBM had not been reigned in. Would we all be forced to use mainframes provided by IBM today? Hardly!
Then there's Microsoft. Funny thing. Despite all the formal Slashdot pronouncements that Microsoft has us all by the short and curlies, we're still using Linux, BSD, OpenOffice, Mozilla and Apache. As hackers and geeks we know very well the alternatives to Microsoft. Linux went from nothing to a position where its kicking Micosoft out of the server market, during the precise same time that Microsoft was a monopoly and the government did nothing about it. It's going to kick Microsoft off the desktop in a few years too, even if the government gives Bill Gates carte blanche. The marketplace is taking care of this monopoly.
What we need is a GNU GPL for markets - a way of automatically, inescapably, and defensibly defending their freedom from the inevitable attacks. If you have any ideas along these lines, please post them.
No ideas, but one comment apropos the Free Software Foundation and its crusade against copyrights. Engage your brain and ponder how "powerful" Microsoft (and the RIAA and MPAA) would be today without the government grant of the monopoly privilege known as "copyright"?
The citizens of the U.S. have decided that the public has an interest in seeing healthy competition, and has enacted laws that govern how companies compete.
Then why do these laws only affect monopolies? Why don't they also affect smaller businesses performing the IDENTICAL anti-competitive practices?
Back when I was in sales I routinely gave out discounts for exclusive contracts. Specifically for the purpose of keeping the competition away from my customers. At what precise point does an attempt to take away market share from a competitor transform from an acceptable and recommended business practice, to an evil act that must be stopped?
If you can't see that unbridled capitalism is not only not good for the public, but ultimately self-destructive
Be that as it may, the facts are the Microsoft has been largely "unbridled" even after losing their case, yet during this exact same period of monopolyship we have seen the rise of Linux from nothing to actually being in a position to displace Windows on the server with a keen eye on the desktop as well.
On the vague chance that your're referring to me as a Microsoft apologist, let me resoundly deny that accusation. Just because I don't want to see Microsoft Inc. dissolved and Bill Gates head placed on a pole in Redmond's town square, does not that I am apologizing for them in any way.
hen you are a convicted monopolist. the rules suddenly change
Which, when you step back about ten feet and view it with an objective perspective, is absolutely insane.
One day you're perfectly legal trying to gain market share by bundling two of your products together. Next day you gain one customer too many, and what you did yesterday is now illegal. There is no philosophical or ethical foundation for this, only a vague sense of "big==evil" political kneejerkery.
Lady Justice is always depicted with a blindfold. Seems to me that this attitude wants to rip that blindfold off.
no excuse for not giving credit to AMD for what they did
Yeah dammit! It's not "IA-32", it's "GNU/AMD/IA-32"!
--RMS
Do you guys even bother to read the posts you're replying to? Why do I suspect that you all have canned responses you automatically send out regardless of what you're replying to?
Please tell me what the fsck the GPL has to do with any original independently implemented code? "Oh, that's clause 13! 'In the event your wholly original and independent code is interoperable with this work, then you must release your wholly original and independent code under this license, or face the puerile whinings of Slashdot trolls!'"
Horsehockey!
The BSD license is compatible with the GPL. This means that I can take BSD licensed code and insert it into GPL code, and distribute the whole under the GPL.
But the GPL is not compatible with the BSD license. This means that I CANNOT take GPL code and insert it into BSD licensed code, and distribute the whole under the BSD license.
GPL compatibility is a one way street.
Remember how Microsoft "adopting" Kerboros for SMB authentication, but perverted one of unused fields so it wouldn't work with anybody else's servers?
The licensing in this situation was irrelevant, since Microsoft made their own implementation. The fscked with the spec, not the code. In other words, if Kerberos had been under the Holy GPL, NOTHING WOULD HAVE BEEN DIFFERENT!
The interpretation of the GPL license is not just the opinions of individuals in the FSF... people should look at the ASF2.0 and GPL licenses to see if they really are compatible.
Heresy! The GPL means exactly what RMS says it means. No more and no less. Suggesting that people should read the GPL for themselves, indeed! Next thing you know you'll be suggesting people read the Bible for themselves instead of trusting in the Pope!
If gconf is so easy to use, then why not dump all the configuration dialogs completely and just use it? The answer is obvious: gconf is not easy to use, and no amount and advocacy will change that fact.
You get what you pay for. Oh wait, that's a cliche. Let me start over...
Yes, Qt is expensive. So was the prime rib I had last night. It was $50, including Cabernet. For that price I could have bought every value meal on the menu at McDonalds! Heck, I could have gone to the local Hofbrau and had it for only fifteen dollars if I wanted to put up with their surly attitude. But that prime rib I had last night was wonderful. I don't regret that $50 at all. It's too expensive to eat there every night, but for special occasions its perfect.
Qt is like that. It cost more than the McDonald's brand MSDN, but the quality is worth it. The classes work together and make sense. It's OO/C++ done right. Creating callbacks with signals/slots makes more sense than creating callbacks with unreadable MFC macros. The documentation is meaningful. Designer and Linguist far surpass anything McDonalds/Microsoft has to offer. And when my application is done, it's instantly portable to Linux, Macintosh, FreeBSD and Solaris.
Like a good prime rib, it's too expensive for the cheapass weekend shareware authors. But for professional software developers, that 2500USD is quite affordable.
Advanced users are still quite capable of changing a plethora of options, using advanced methods.
I would hardly call using GConf to edit undocumented keys and values an advanced method. "Arcane and hidden black art" would be closer to the truth. It also ignores the multitude of people between "newbie" and "expert" who want to have full control of their desktop, but don't have the fortitude to handle the raw guts that GConf exposes. A much better way is to use expandable dialogs (eg. an "advanced" button).
But this counters the received wisdom of Havoc, so of course is blasphemy...
How would you like me sneaking into your house and swapping out your QWERTY keyboard for a Dvorak one?
Good analogy. It's good because the Dvorak keyboard is not inherently better than the QWERTY keyboard for English. All the evidence in favor of Dvorak is anecdotal. Any actual data is inconclusive. Just like the Gnome UI...
One of the most annoying things about ClearCase is that it requires a kernel-mode driver to run
It may be annoying, but I know of no way around it. To be (or pretend to be) a filesystem for most UNIX systems, you need to be part of the kernel. You can fake it with a front end (eg. a KDE kio module), but it's not the same thing.
Linux is secure... out of the box.
"Out of the box" means you install the system with the default settings, and it's secure *before* you start administering it. Few Linux systems meet this requirement, and certainly none of the "newbie" distros do.
Are ALL services and ports off by default? If not, then it's not secure out the box. Period. (I'll make an exception for ssh). Are any of the "only enable this if you know what you are doing" options in the shipping kernel? If so, it's not secure out the box.
Some distros are indeed secure out of the box. But there are so many exceptions that one cannot possibly make the blanket assertion that "Linux" meets this criteria. In fact, one major mainstream distribution actually had finger an telnet enabled "out of the box" last time I used it. Doh!
Kernel updates require a reboot.
Precisely! If Linux people didn't insist on updating their kernel twice a week, we might actually see one approach that 497 day limit!
I'll put it terms less likely to offend our Linux friends. BSD's have better overall system integration than Linux distros. Often, Linux system integration takes a back seat to product differentiation.
The less integrated a system, the less secure. A developer who fixes a problem in project "A", isn't going to be able to fix the same problem (or even file all of the necessary bug reports) for projects "B" through "Z".
If you want a secure Linux system, DO NOT use one of the "newbie" distros or one that is obsessed with "bleeding edge" software. Stick with Debian or Slackware. They still won't be as integrated as a BSD system, but they'll be much closer.
p.s. To be fair, once you start installing a hundred different third party packages, the security differences between Linux and BSD vanish. I'm only talking about the "base" systems.
Not at all! All we need is an operating system that is too difficult for any MCSE to use, but still easy enough for the average chimpanzee or kindergarten dropout.
1999: We're going to replace your position with someone who dropped out of tech school...
2004: We're going to replace your position with someone in Bangalore who dropped out of tech school...
Precisely. Under individualistic "don't tread on me" cultures like the US, such activities are met with scorn. Cops are NOT of a higher class than the citizens. But similar activities in some cultures are accepted grudgingly, or even considered normal.
Though he opposed the PATRIOT act, his website says nothing at all about eliminating the Department of Homeland Security. He is completely silent on the issue of the illegal searches and seizures of toenail clippers in national airports. But he does advocate a "Department of Peace." This is just as scary to me as a Bush's new department.
The grandparent post to which I replied talked about the US being closer to an authortarian state than we realize. Running through Kucinich's position papers, I realize that he WANTS an authortarian state, but one that is kinder and gentler than Bush's. The vast majority of his positions requires larger and more intrusive government. That's not solving the problem, it's only exacerbating it.
I think we are closer than most of us would admit.
I know we're damned close. The Bush administration starts curtailing our rights after 9/11 and what does the other side do? Bitch that he didn't do it fast or forcefully enough! Is there any Democrat candidate who advocates eliminating the Department of Homeland Security? Eliminating the illegal search and seizures of toenail clippers at national airports?
It's because the United States has a three hundred year history of libertarianism (yes, older than the founding). I'm not talking about the political party of the same name, but on the attitude. US residents have an innate distrust of authority. We feel that we can govern our own individual lives much better than the policeman, soldier or bureaucrat can.
The general attitude among those raised in the US is that the government should keep out of people's affairs. Asking for someone "papers please" for no reason is simply too intrusive for the average US citizen to stomache, regardless of their political affiliation.
The policeman in question should not have asked for the ID because he had no probably cause that a crime had been was being committed. Absent that, the papers of the gentlemen were no one's business, least of all the government's.
Can you imagine a D20 paranoia?
My bowels just tied themselves in knots thinking of it...
On the other hand, FUDGE Paranoia would be awesome! It's hard to think of a better match between a rules system and a milieu.