And I totally disagree with your opinion that MS will win, or that they ought to. The cure is an old one - antitrust legislation has been around for about a hundred years, and it has been pretty damn good too.
Antitrust has been around for 90-100 years, but has been spottily enforced. Just in the past few years Joel Klein (Assistant Attorney General in charge of the DOJ's antitrust division) has brought it back alive with a frenzy of lawsuits. He's leaving in a month for the private sector... it's estimated that he can now make a salary of $750K/yr. helping corporations defend themselves against the very antitrust enforcement empire he built.
Antitrust laws are harmful to consumers. They raise prices, reduce competition, stifle innovation, and foster corruption of government officials. The laws are used not to 'manage competition', but as strategic weapons by less-successful competitors seeking an advantage over market leaders. They are extremely counterproductive and damaging, and should be repealed.
But I find it difficult to believe that you don't think that MS has been acting illegally. It's a pretty cut and dry case.
It might be cut and dry to you... but its been rehashed here on/. for eons and there's still no consensus. So I'd say its far from clearcut.
Certainly MS never had any problems with antitrust legislation existing until recently. (given that IBM would be the only computer company, had a number of cases not been persued against it)
Do you truly believe that IBM would be the only computer company around today without government intervention?
That's what Nader's driving at, if you had bothered to read. "Every day hundreds of companies work in pursuit of one goal: manipulating children and teenagers to purchase video games and music and watch movies and television endlessly and mindlessly."
Nader wants the government to take over the role of parents. It's absolutely no different than the religious right, and now even the Democrats, what with Al, Tipper and Lieberman at the helm. Nader is a loud-mouthed control freak, and I frankly don't want him to have anything to do with raising my children.
Since you asked... Browne is around 1% nationally... which is a little over a million votes. He and Pat Buchanan are pretty close.
In some states, Browne has a healthy lead over Buchanan, and in others Browne is even ahead of or tied with Nader. In one or two states, Browne is on the ballot and Nader is not.
It's quite frustrating that Buchanan and Nader get heaps of attention from major media (because they're celebrities?) and Browne gets very little, despite having risen this far in the polls without it.
All they know how to do, more deeply ingrained than a knee-jerk reflex, is pass more and more laws. Some are hilarious, many are contradictory none can even claim to be representative.
And the -5 Bummer result is that we have tens (hundreds?) of thousands of laws and administrative regulations on the books... endless pages of mind-numbing BS that gets added to, but rarely deleted. It's like a massive software system designed by committee and written in Perl by an ever-changing team of thousands of programmers, to a specification that is constantly changing. It makes me hungry for spaghetti just thinking about it.
Certain laws are common sense... but this level of bureaucracy and micro-management is ridiculous. For Christ's sake, the FDA recently published a 15-page proposal to regulate the size of holes in Swiss cheese. How absurd is that?
For around 4 years I was a system administrator for a network of about 12 Mac servers and 45 Mac workstations, in a demanding, deadline-driven publishing environment. This was in the System 6.5 - 8.0 days... I was a Mac zealot, but after years of dealing with crashes and instability I gave up on them. The Power Mac 7100's were the worst machines I ever had to cope with. They froze up with System Error type 11's day in and day out.
If OS X rocks, I will buy another Mac. It's a wait-and-see game for me... I suspect that's the case for a lot of people.
Hey... I used to have a IIfx... with a $600 video card, and 8MB RAM...
I miss Macs. I'm *really* thinking about getting a G4 Cube if it turns out that Photoshop rocks on it. Anyone know anything about the status of Photoshop and other Adobe graphics apps?
All systems based on violence and force (whether communism, fascism, or capitalism) exist through the use of the Nation State.
You do make a good point. Under a minarchist capitalist system, the Nation State enforces private property rights, giving it a monopoly on the use of force in that area.
What it all boils down to is whether private property is theft (wasn't it Bakunin that said that?) or private property is absolute (a la capitalism).
Without the Nation State, capitalism would collapse.
Not sure about that. Check David D. Friedman's site... he's perhaps the most prominent contemporary individualist anarchist (aka anarcho-capitalist). There are some good writings on his site, in which he explores various voluntary private institutions as replacements for coercive government ones. (private neighboorhood associations instead of county housing boards, for example)
Everything I've ever read has said that India is mostly Socialist... they do allow some private enterprise, but potential entrepreneurs are subject to a lengthy application process where the government determines if the businesses are in the best interest of the community.
You are completely and totally misunderstanding the point of capitalism. At its core it has *nothing* to do with any of that shit you rattled off.
If you'd lose the blinding anger and do some reading you might at least better understand where proponents of Capitalism are coming from, and it might make for more fruitful discussions.
It's not about accumulation of wealth, it's about cooperation through trade, efficient and equitable division of labor, and promoting *voluntary* interactions between humans instead of coercive ones.
I know this is gonna piss you off, but the truth is that capitalism is 100% about individual sovereignity - the idea that each person on this planet is capable of making their own choices. Other systems - Socialism, Marxism, etc. - recognize the Nation-State (or the 'good of society', or the Proletariat) as the highest power - and trample completely over the individual.
The fact is, economies being what they are, the average Indian programmer would much rather move from the Indian culture and Indian economy, and all of its liabilities, to an American one.
On this it would seem that you're correct. India's (socialist) economy is completely fucked, the country is mired in severe poverty, and Internet access is exorbitantly priced and difficult to obtain (the govt has a monopoly on phone service, iirc). You would think we'd welcome them to our country, what with the words on the Statue of Liberty, and all our talk about being the melting pot of the world. Instead we have immigration quotas and deportations.
And this desire is *exploited* by American corporations. They take advantage of the fact that the Indian situation is worse than the American one (or so it would seem), and based on the Indian programmer desire to leave it, they offer them less wages, thinking that the conditions of American existence *make up for* the loss in wages - since the demand is there on the part of the Indian programmer, companies factor in this 'living standard' as part of the deal.
The American corporations are offering them a better standard of living than they've ever dreamed of. The Katzian references to 'exploitive corporations' are misplaced.
Haha. Awesome links, especially the Linux demo ones. Optimum has some killer FX (w/ source of course) including one of Bill Gates morphing into Evil Gates
Hell yeah - those were the days... at least on the Amiga they were...
Silents, Razor 1911, Complex, Cryptoburners, Melon Dezign, Fairlight, Crusaders, Skid Row, Kefrens, Andromeda... those cats flexed furious audiovisual skills on the Amiga's dedicated coprocessors. Most of them are working at game and 3D companies now, I imagine.
The reason for this may be so that mortal users are not expected to actually compile their own software to use it. Example: Windows doesn't come with compilers, so virtually all Windows software (even Apache, PHP, etc.) come in binary form.
Wide availabilty of free, quality development tools is one thing that's allowed Linux to skyrocket in popularity. If MacOS [7|8|9] had included a free copy of CodeWarrior (or equivalent) with each desktop, there would be a lot more software for the Mac today. Lots of people want to learn to program for their favorite platform but few are willing or able to shell out megabucks for the necessary tools.
Dev tools don't have to be included in the default install, or even on the install CD, but making them easily and freely available can help ensure a platform's future popularity.
I agree that end users should not have to muck with compiling software. Hopefully OS X has a decent binary package format.
If this rule is truly desired (yeah, right), then it should be passed as a law by legislators who are accountable to voters.
Someone please correct me if I'm wrong here... but my understanding is that most federal rules and regulations are administrative law - that is, they are independently created and enforced by the various three-letter acronymic agencies that Congress has created in the past 75 years. Congress delegates authority over certain sectors of the economy to these Agencies, Boards, Bureaus, and Commissions, and generally only steps in if there is a public outcry of some sort.
I am really looking forward to the day when we have a U.S. Department of Software!
I hear Somalia has minimal government. Enjoy yourself.
Actually, Somalia does have minimal government, and it would seem that things are going pretty well now considering what they've been through in the past.
another method is available: take away the errant corp's charter. not too easily done, but the *attempt* is what's important: it'll chill the blood of every ceo around. and ONE success...
What it'll do is force every CEO around to send hired guns to DC to wine and dine lawmakers and get on their good side.
above all, don't buy! then the corp has lost, and you retain your money power, ready and able to support businesses that deserve your patronage.
This I agree with, as well as your statement about boycotts.
I believe that Ralph Nader truly has good intentions, and is generally a guy of decent character...
That being said, I firmly believe that the policies he proposes would greatly *increase* political corruption in the U.S. Nader proposes to vastly increase the size of the federal government and its control over businesses... thereby increasing the incentive for business people to lobby/bribe politicians for favors, access to markets, and thwarting of competitors ( this is how it works in China and Russia which, as I am sure you are aware, have very large governments)
If you want to reduce corruption, get rid of the power that politicians have to dole out special treatment to different corporations and industries.
Favoritism, lobbying and political manipulation doesn't just happen at the Federal level.... it goes all the way down to your local 'Economic Development Commission' - the one that grants 10-year tax breaks and free infrastructure buildout to certain companies that it wants to attract, but not to others.
I'd like to wind up my rant by saying that I agree with the other posters... If you want your freedom, are tired of seeing your tax dollars wasted, want to end the completely absurd War on Drugs, and not leastly want to reduce corruption, Vote Libertarian, from the presidential ticket all the way down to the state and local level.
I wasn't really even talking generally about RIAA, MPAA, copyrights or patents in my original post. When I wrote that I was thinking about the various taxes on recording media and devices that were mentioned in the story. Tell me that's not a bunch of outrageous crap... taxing someone for a crime they might potentially commit later, and giving the money to their potential future victim. I should have been clearer in my original post.
In fact, I still don't understand enough about the foundations of IP/copyright law to even have a particularly strong opinion on that yet... Of course I support enforcement of contracts and protection of property rights... but in some cases it seems as if there is more happening than just that, as is obviously the case with the tax on recordable media.
The Grateful Dead allowed and encouraged people to tape their shows and trade the 'bootleg' tapes freely. They refused to play in any venue that wouldn't provide a special section for tapers to set up their gear. Some of my friends had hundreds of Dead show tapes, and participated in elaborate tape-trading networks. Many people taped with DAT decks. Commercial use of their music (charging more than the cost of a blank tape) was strictly prohibited, however, and would be met with prosecution, although I'm not aware of any cases where that happened.
Perhaps this could explain how the Dead came to be so popular that they sold out every show within minutes, and that their official albums sold millions and remain big sellers to this day... (BTW, Workingman's Dead kicks ASS!)
The bootleg jams are still around - people are now making MP3s of them and trading them in a Dead MP3 binaries newsgroup... Every now and then I fire up nget and pull down a couple dozen of them.
My point... is that maybe the Grateful Dead had a Really Gargantuan Clue, about 25 years before it occurred to anyone else... that you could share your music with the world and still make a living.
Anyone serious about understanding the changing world of digital music and new business models should read up not on Napster or MP3.com, but on the Grateful Dead bootleg scene that has being going on for the past 25 years or so.
Slashdot Mirror
And I totally disagree with your opinion that MS will win, or that they ought to. The cure is an old one - antitrust legislation has been around for about a hundred years, and it has been pretty damn good too.
Antitrust has been around for 90-100 years, but has been spottily enforced. Just in the past few years Joel Klein (Assistant Attorney General in charge of the DOJ's antitrust division) has brought it back alive with a frenzy of lawsuits. He's leaving in a month for the private sector... it's estimated that he can now make a salary of $750K/yr. helping corporations defend themselves against the very antitrust enforcement empire he built.
Antitrust laws are harmful to consumers. They raise prices, reduce competition, stifle innovation, and foster corruption of government officials. The laws are used not to 'manage competition', but as strategic weapons by less-successful competitors seeking an advantage over market leaders. They are extremely counterproductive and damaging, and should be repealed.
But I find it difficult to believe that you don't think that MS has been acting illegally. It's a pretty cut and dry case.
It might be cut and dry to you... but its been rehashed here on /. for eons and there's still no consensus. So I'd say its far from clearcut.
Certainly MS never had any problems with antitrust legislation existing until recently. (given that IBM would be the only computer company, had a number of cases not been persued against it)
Do you truly believe that IBM would be the only computer company around today without government intervention?
--
That's what Nader's driving at, if you had bothered to read. "Every day hundreds of companies work in pursuit of one goal: manipulating children and teenagers to purchase video games and music and watch movies and television endlessly and mindlessly."
Nader wants the government to take over the role of parents. It's absolutely no different than the religious right, and now even the Democrats, what with Al, Tipper and Lieberman at the helm. Nader is a loud-mouthed control freak, and I frankly don't want him to have anything to do with raising my children.
--
Since you asked... Browne is around 1% nationally... which is a little over a million votes. He and Pat Buchanan are pretty close.
In some states, Browne has a healthy lead over Buchanan, and in others Browne is even ahead of or tied with Nader. In one or two states, Browne is on the ballot and Nader is not.
It's quite frustrating that Buchanan and Nader get heaps of attention from major media (because they're celebrities?) and Browne gets very little, despite having risen this far in the polls without it.
--
All they know how to do, more deeply ingrained than a knee-jerk reflex, is pass more and more laws. Some are hilarious, many are contradictory none can even claim to be representative.
And the -5 Bummer result is that we have tens (hundreds?) of thousands of laws and administrative regulations on the books... endless pages of mind-numbing BS that gets added to, but rarely deleted. It's like a massive software system designed by committee and written in Perl by an ever-changing team of thousands of programmers, to a specification that is constantly changing. It makes me hungry for spaghetti just thinking about it.
Certain laws are common sense... but this level of bureaucracy and micro-management is ridiculous. For Christ's sake, the FDA recently published a 15-page proposal to regulate the size of holes in Swiss cheese. How absurd is that?
--
It's Fucking Ugly.
--
For around 4 years I was a system administrator for a network of about 12 Mac servers and 45 Mac workstations, in a demanding, deadline-driven publishing environment. This was in the System 6.5 - 8.0 days... I was a Mac zealot, but after years of dealing with crashes and instability I gave up on them. The Power Mac 7100's were the worst machines I ever had to cope with. They froze up with System Error type 11's day in and day out.
If OS X rocks, I will buy another Mac. It's a wait-and-see game for me... I suspect that's the case for a lot of people.
--
Hey... I used to have a IIfx... with a $600 video card, and 8MB RAM...
I miss Macs. I'm *really* thinking about getting a G4 Cube if it turns out that Photoshop rocks on it. Anyone know anything about the status of Photoshop and other Adobe graphics apps?
--
All systems based on violence and force (whether communism, fascism, or capitalism) exist through the use of the Nation State.
You do make a good point. Under a minarchist capitalist system, the Nation State enforces private property rights, giving it a monopoly on the use of force in that area.
What it all boils down to is whether private property is theft (wasn't it Bakunin that said that?) or private property is absolute (a la capitalism).
Without the Nation State, capitalism would collapse.
Not sure about that. Check David D. Friedman's site... he's perhaps the most prominent contemporary individualist anarchist (aka anarcho-capitalist). There are some good writings on his site, in which he explores various voluntary private institutions as replacements for coercive government ones. (private neighboorhood associations instead of county housing boards, for example)
--
Try doing a Google search on "India Socialist"
Everything I've ever read has said that India is mostly Socialist... they do allow some private enterprise, but potential entrepreneurs are subject to a lengthy application process where the government determines if the businesses are in the best interest of the community.
--
You are completely and totally misunderstanding the point of capitalism. At its core it has *nothing* to do with any of that shit you rattled off.
If you'd lose the blinding anger and do some reading you might at least better understand where proponents of Capitalism are coming from, and it might make for more fruitful discussions.
It's not about accumulation of wealth, it's about cooperation through trade, efficient and equitable division of labor, and promoting *voluntary* interactions between humans instead of coercive ones.
I know this is gonna piss you off, but the truth is that capitalism is 100% about individual sovereignity - the idea that each person on this planet is capable of making their own choices. Other systems - Socialism, Marxism, etc. - recognize the Nation-State (or the 'good of society', or the Proletariat) as the highest power - and trample completely over the individual.
As an atheist also, I'm done railing now.
--
The fact is, economies being what they are, the average Indian programmer would much rather move from the Indian culture and Indian economy, and all of its liabilities, to an American one.
On this it would seem that you're correct. India's (socialist) economy is completely fucked, the country is mired in severe poverty, and Internet access is exorbitantly priced and difficult to obtain (the govt has a monopoly on phone service, iirc). You would think we'd welcome them to our country, what with the words on the Statue of Liberty, and all our talk about being the melting pot of the world. Instead we have immigration quotas and deportations.
And this desire is *exploited* by American corporations. They take advantage of the fact that the Indian situation is worse than the American one (or so it would seem), and based on the Indian programmer desire to leave it, they offer them less wages, thinking that the conditions of American existence *make up for* the loss in wages - since the demand is there on the part of the Indian programmer, companies factor in this 'living standard' as part of the deal.
The American corporations are offering them a better standard of living than they've ever dreamed of. The Katzian references to 'exploitive corporations' are misplaced.
--
Haha. Awesome links, especially the Linux demo ones. Optimum has some killer FX (w/ source of course) including one of Bill Gates morphing into Evil Gates
--
Hell yeah - those were the days... at least on the Amiga they were...
Silents, Razor 1911, Complex, Cryptoburners, Melon Dezign, Fairlight, Crusaders, Skid Row, Kefrens, Andromeda... those cats flexed furious audiovisual skills on the Amiga's dedicated coprocessors. Most of them are working at game and 3D companies now, I imagine.
If anyone's interested, there's a very cool research paper called "The Hacker Demo Scene and it's Cultural Artifacts" at http://www.curti n.edu.au/conference/cybermind/papers/borzysko.html ...
--
TLA == Three Letter Acronym (ie, CIA, FBI, NSA, DEA, etc.) alternatively, They Liberate America. ;-)
Ah. Now I understand, although I can't think of what they liberate us from, except our hard-earned money...
--
What exactly does TLA stand for?
--
The reason for this may be so that mortal users are not expected to actually compile their own software to use it. Example: Windows doesn't come with compilers, so virtually all Windows software (even Apache, PHP, etc.) come in binary form.
Wide availabilty of free, quality development tools is one thing that's allowed Linux to skyrocket in popularity. If MacOS [7|8|9] had included a free copy of CodeWarrior (or equivalent) with each desktop, there would be a lot more software for the Mac today. Lots of people want to learn to program for their favorite platform but few are willing or able to shell out megabucks for the necessary tools.
Dev tools don't have to be included in the default install, or even on the install CD, but making them easily and freely available can help ensure a platform's future popularity.
I agree that end users should not have to muck with compiling software. Hopefully OS X has a decent binary package format.
--
If this rule is truly desired (yeah, right), then it should be passed as a law by legislators who are accountable to voters.
Someone please correct me if I'm wrong here... but my understanding is that most federal rules and regulations are administrative law - that is, they are independently created and enforced by the various three-letter acronymic agencies that Congress has created in the past 75 years. Congress delegates authority over certain sectors of the economy to these Agencies, Boards, Bureaus, and Commissions, and generally only steps in if there is a public outcry of some sort.
I am really looking forward to the day when we have a U.S. Department of Software!
--
I hear Somalia has minimal government. Enjoy yourself.
Actually, Somalia does have minimal government, and it would seem that things are going pretty well now considering what they've been through in the past.
--
another method is available: take away the errant corp's charter. not too easily done, but the *attempt* is what's important: it'll chill the blood of every ceo around. and ONE success...
What it'll do is force every CEO around to send hired guns to DC to wine and dine lawmakers and get on their good side.
above all, don't buy! then the corp has lost, and you retain your money power, ready and able to support businesses that deserve your patronage.
This I agree with, as well as your statement about boycotts.
--
I believe that Ralph Nader truly has good intentions, and is generally a guy of decent character...
That being said, I firmly believe that the policies he proposes would greatly *increase* political corruption in the U.S. Nader proposes to vastly increase the size of the federal government and its control over businesses... thereby increasing the incentive for business people to lobby/bribe politicians for favors, access to markets, and thwarting of competitors ( this is how it works in China and Russia which, as I am sure you are aware, have very large governments)
If you want to reduce corruption, get rid of the power that politicians have to dole out special treatment to different corporations and industries.
Favoritism, lobbying and political manipulation doesn't just happen at the Federal level.... it goes all the way down to your local 'Economic Development Commission' - the one that grants 10-year tax breaks and free infrastructure buildout to certain companies that it wants to attract, but not to others.
I'd like to wind up my rant by saying that I agree with the other posters... If you want your freedom, are tired of seeing your tax dollars wasted, want to end the completely absurd War on Drugs, and not leastly want to reduce corruption, Vote Libertarian, from the presidential ticket all the way down to the state and local level.
--
Hacking is not a consentual crime! The drug war comparison is specious.
True, true. Good point, AC.
There is a similarity, however, in that mandatory minimum sentencing is being applied to both.
--
We're not locked into their IM client or server. In fact, you're even free to start your own IM service!
--
Relax, Poncho.
I wasn't really even talking generally about RIAA, MPAA, copyrights or patents in my original post. When I wrote that I was thinking about the various taxes on recording media and devices that were mentioned in the story. Tell me that's not a bunch of outrageous crap... taxing someone for a crime they might potentially commit later, and giving the money to their potential future victim. I should have been clearer in my original post.
In fact, I still don't understand enough about the foundations of IP/copyright law to even have a particularly strong opinion on that yet... Of course I support enforcement of contracts and protection of property rights... but in some cases it seems as if there is more happening than just that, as is obviously the case with the tax on recordable media.
--
Thank ya. Thank ya very much. It's a pleasure to be here tonight.
--
The Grateful Dead allowed and encouraged people to tape their shows and trade the 'bootleg' tapes freely. They refused to play in any venue that wouldn't provide a special section for tapers to set up their gear. Some of my friends had hundreds of Dead show tapes, and participated in elaborate tape-trading networks. Many people taped with DAT decks. Commercial use of their music (charging more than the cost of a blank tape) was strictly prohibited, however, and would be met with prosecution, although I'm not aware of any cases where that happened.
... is that maybe the Grateful Dead had a Really Gargantuan Clue, about 25 years before it occurred to anyone else ... that you could share your music with the world and still make a living.
Perhaps this could explain how the Dead came to be so popular that they sold out every show within minutes, and that their official albums sold millions and remain big sellers to this day... (BTW, Workingman's Dead kicks ASS!)
The bootleg jams are still around - people are now making MP3s of them and trading them in a Dead MP3 binaries newsgroup... Every now and then I fire up nget and pull down a couple dozen of them.
My point
Anyone serious about understanding the changing world of digital music and new business models should read up not on Napster or MP3.com, but on the Grateful Dead bootleg scene that has being going on for the past 25 years or so.
--