Why is it that when this same story came out for Yahoo, everyone declared that Yahoo was "pushing IE7 on Firefox users?" People were even claiming that Yahoo was trying to leverage monopolistic practices. Now that Google has done exactly the same thing, people are claiming that this somehow diminishes Microsoft's original intentions (though I don't understand how having a popular search engine endorse your web browser would be a bad thing). How is Google's decision to use this strategy any different from Yahoo's? I'm just curious to know what sort of BS/. will provide in order to prove how Google's plan is so different and ethically superior to Yahoo's.
So you would also be skeptical of the claim that I may be a billionaire by 2040?
There's a slight difference here in that policy is not meant to be determined by your claim concerning whether you may become a billionaire by 2040. Also, the goal of this report isn't to suggest that an event may or may not occur, it is to suggest that some dire outcome is likely to occur. Reports like this are specifically meant to influence current policy according to future forecasts (the may qualifier is only meant as a safeguard in case the event doesn't occur). Skepticism in such reports is targeted at the possible outcome claimed because the outcome may be so far removed from reality as not to warrant any policy changes.
Suppose it's not an obvious fact. Suppose there were only a 50% chance that human activity is really the cause of the global climate change we're observing.
I have heard this before... Suppose that there is a 50% chance that hell exists and only true Christians can escape it. Prudence would dictate that everyone choose Christianity (and do anything to prove their faith), right? Of course, the same argument can be made for whatever religion you'd prefer.
The problem with such a risk analysis is that you make assumptions which are inherently unclear. After all, how do you assign such probabilities and what courses of action should be chosen based off of those probabilities? Furthermore, how do you describe consequences of falling into one category or another? For example, human impact on the environment may be much lower (say 1*10^-38%) or higher (say 98%) than 50%. If, in the first case, the result is absolute annihilation of all life on earth, should humans seek to stop "hurting" their involvement (even if this is getting into the likelihood of random teleportation of large objects)? On the other hand, if in the second case humans brought about a 0.5m rise in sea level, would this justify a major shift in human tinkering? Suppose further that sustaining an environmentally friendly change according to some set of standards would incur costs exceeding the combined GDP of the top 10 most economically prosperous nations. Would the changes be worth it (in either scenario listed above)?
Before you look at any numbers or try to generate some risk/benefit model, realize that all of the figures I provided were utter BS... I just made them up. So what information can you glean from randomly cobbled together bits of data? Nothing. Arbitrarily assigning a probability or consequence for human impact on the environment does nothing for the sake of argument in the context of risk analysis. Those that would seek to repudiate "environmentalist" claims attempt to show that, in spite of complex modeling and data interpretation, such claims are still essentially arbitrary and serve an agenda. When reports such as these surface and scientists claim that the same risk should be attributed to a lower level of human impact, it becomes difficult not to swayed into a skeptical position.
Thanks for looking at this with a realistic perspective. There is a reason that the article said these chips would be used in deeply embedded or automotive situations. In these situations, low power consumption granted by an asynchronous design is great.
Not so great, however, is the overall performance. Part of the reason for clocking something (for example synchronous busses) is to avoid the excessive need for handshaking algorithms. Extending the handshaking methodology to multiple pipeline stages seems somewhat self-defeating. How might one effectively design an asynchronous pipeline with the same overall performance of a synchronous pipeline? How can you handle register bypassing or interlocks in a general case without some synchronization happening (as the different paths among different stages will inevitably introduce different time delays) yet also without adding a handshake to every stage?
I guess my point is that I wouldn't expect this to find wide acceptance in scenarios in which reasonably high performance (where pipelining is a key factor) is needed. Seems great for embedded applications, poor for games.
Most real scientists have accepted the fact of global warming.
Hmm, that's interesting, because I thought that global warming is the theory that C02 and other green house gas emissions are directly responsible for increasing the global temperature. While this theory has a lot of weight behind it, it is not an observable fact, yet.
Or did we decide that scientific consensus (or excuse me, real scientific consensus) determines what's fact now? Is it acceptable to rely only on theories and models that introduce several assumptions to govern what is observable (even if those models sometimes conflict with what is actually observable)?
My point isn't to diminish the possible threat of global warming, but that it should be observed it on a purely scientific bases (free from political tantrums). Let's not forget where heavily politicized scientific consensus got us before... Anyone ever hear of Eugenics?
Yeah, damn those Republicans and their obvious endorsement of all things corporate. Oh wait, which side of the court voted to allow corporations to swipe land from citizens in the interests of the so called public good? Hmmm, couldn't have been our liberal saviors could it? Let's think about Kelo v. City of New London for a while... Oh wait, yeah, the 5-4 decision expanding eminent domain to include corporate interests was completely the work of the John Paul Stevens, Anthony Kennedy, David Souter, Stephen Breyer and Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Not exactly your model Republicans.
Open your eyes for just a moment and realize something. Democrats are not your friends. Republicans are not your friends. Each party will seek to expand the government to suit their own interests (which is why it's so great that massive expansion in either direction isn't too easy).
The RNC is no more centralized than the DNC. Besides, it's not like things can't change in, say, an upcoming election (like maybe 1 year from now). Also, it's not like Republicans have a stranglehold on anything (aside from the presidency of course). For example, the senate is basically 51-R, 49-D (as Jeffords is allied with the Democratic caucus). But if they don't change, who are we to challenge the vote (as in try to overturn it)?
If there is a consensus that demands more Republican representation, then that's what there shall and should be. If your aim is to demolish the democratic process because you're unhappy for a little while, then you're truly delving into dark territory. I don't really want to see a single party have control of all branches of our government, but I really doubt that such control could be sustained for a long period. After all, how often has that happened (excepting historically huge scenarios like post Civil War America)?
More likely, after at most a couple more terms, Republicans will be viewed as having had their chance at running things being deemed failures. Then the nation will go into a democratic swing for a while until they too are deemed failures (unless of course your primary source is/.).
I'd agree that cracking should carry an appropriate penalty, but while the death penalty may be excessive, cracking is far worse than graffiti. It doesn't matter that people may make stupid mistakes that invite people to exploit their systems; after all, a store owner may leave a door unlocked. Do you mean to say that a person robbing the store shouldn't be prosecuted (if caught) because of the stupidity of the store owner? Nor does it matter that the crime is just for fun. People kill just for fun or commit any number of crimes for no particular financial purpose.
It is true that much of the exploitation performed by individuals doesn't account for an enormous economic loss, but for that which does manage to wreak tremendous havoc, I'm not convinced that anything much less than life in prison should be an acceptable punishment.
Consider this, if an individual causes damages exceeding millions of dollars, who really feels that loss? I'll guarantee you that it isn't a corporate board; rather it is the consumer and more or less expendable employees. Should a cracker or virus writer receive no punishment for inducing potential job loss and the resulting social impact that unemployment causes?
People shrug of cracking as though it doesn't really burden anyone; all it does is embarrass "evil" corporations. Just take a moment to think of the costs of cracking that exceed economics.
I don't know if you're wanting much more than a simple TV tuner card, but I have a Hauppauge WinTV card that works well enough. I've had it for a few years and when I bought it, it cost me ~$30 (it is just a basic card). Also, driver support has been decent for both Windows and Linux.
The bundled TV viewer program could be better (WinTV 2000) as it sometimes crashes on full screen transitions, but overall it's pretty good. For Linux, TVtime is great.
As for ATI cards, I've had issues with driver support all around... The hardware itself may be good, but the support is painfully lacking (especially with Linux). Anyway, I feel your pain when dealing with ATI.
Since the shareholders are safely insulated from the day to day actions of the corporation they feel no guilt when the corporation does something immoral.
Actually, they aren't safely insulated from the actions of the corporation, they are just less susceptible to excessive losses on the corporation's part (read limited liability). As I stated, the price of this limited liability is that the rewards are also smaller (you get taxed on income and so does the corporation). Since excessive immorality would (hopefully) hurt a corporation's earnings (due to a loss of public support), shareholders would notice the corporation's debts in their corporate holdings, just not in their private holdings; this can be a substantial loss. Though shareholders may not feel any guilt they are all but insulated from the day to day actions of the corporation.
Corporations have one purpose and one purpose only. Profit. They exist only to enrich the shareholders.
Actually, this is a hotly debated topic. You may find this hard to believe, but ideally, a corporation exists to enrich the shareholders. In reality, boards of directors may do little to promote the shareholder's best interests. Instead, they may function more as a rubber stamp for management which frequently pursues goals that it sets for a corporation (particularly for itself) usually with little accountability to the board of directors. Though the board is supposed to ensure that this doesn't happen, it can find itself unable or unwilling to demand accountability. This is to say that typical stock holders actually have little corporate power (unless, of course, a stockholder has a huge amount of stock).
In short, greed is the core of any corporation. It is the reason they exist. It is expected of the corporate officers. It is also one of the seven deadly sins - which certainly implies that corporations are evil by nature.
As I've argued in other posts, observing corporate actions on human terms is basically invalid. Basically, it boils down to the notion that a corporation is a financial identity only, governed by society. However, I'm not going to restate myself on this point anymore. If you want to see my argument, feel free to read some of my other posts on this topic.
My point wasn't that society created corporations, it was that society actively supports corporations. This is due to the simple fact that by contributing economically to a corporation despite any actions performed by the corporation, society is in effect endorsing the actions (regardless of how questionable) of the corporation. This is inherently different from a psychopath which (as you can argue) may be the result of society, but is not actively supported by society. So my answer to the question of whether society wants DVD region coding, a monopolistic Microsoft, and sweatshop labor would be a resounding yes. If social consensus was against such actions, then there would be no way that a corporation embracing such acts could survive.
Its much like Wal-Mart. People can complain all they want about Wal-Mart killing off local competition but until they put their money where their mouth is (and I mean collectively, not just a few anti-Wal-Mart groups) then Wal-Mart is (in effect) operating under society's demands, doing precisely what society says it should do.
My point is that it is basically invalid to view a corporation's legal identity beyond anything financial. It acts on an entirely different set of rules than people (even though it is run by people). Oh and one aside, when I mentioned lawsuits in the proprietorship or partnership case, I wasn't referring to stock holder lawsuits, I was referring to the potential lawsuits of the victim (miner). Sorry for not making that clear.
As I said in response to another poster, corporations, being a purely financial identity, have no moral obligations or feelings because they have no identity beyond a financial basis. Now, their actions are tied to the public because their existence is dependent on receiving financial support from the public. This means that the actions of a corporation fall under the responsibility of the public (society). If the public ceases to support the corporation, it will fail, if it continues support of the corporation, it will grow. This means that, if you care to anthropomorphically view them, corporations act according to the most basic instinct, survival. The fate of the corporation is in the hands of the public, however. Thus, corporations should act according to public consensus and therefore according to society as a whole. This means, that you can't classify the corporation as the psychopath, but instead need to examine the system (society) that supports questionable activities of the corporation.
Now, as to whether their behavior would be acceptable to an actual person... If society supported those person's actions like they do a corporation's, absolutely. After all, it is social consensus that defines things such as morality. However, society chooses to view corporations differently. Why? Hey, you'd have to ask society.
Thanks for the article though... It does indeed make some interesting points.
Indeed, I would qualify what you wrote as a more compelling argument, but I would still have issues with some of your arguments:
There is a certain sentiment that says that a corporation has a responsibility to produce maximum return for its shareholders. If they don't, the shareholders can sue the company and collect. That means if an employee falls down a mineshaft and the rescue effort would cost more than the settlement to the next of kin, the company is NOT ALLOWED to do the "right thing". The shareholders are assumed to have no morals (some probably don't), so the company has to think only in terms of dollar values. That is where it becomes a psychopath, it doesn't care about society, only itself (= shareholders).
1)If the worker was working under a proprietorship or partnership (ie under a structure without a legal identity) would the business be more or less obligated to help their worker? Or would they instead consider the economic ramifications of helping/not helping that worker (including lawsuits, public opinion, etc).
2)If you only consider economic ramifications and the cost of leaving the worker in the mineshaft to die doesn't meet or exceed the cost of rescuing the worker (taking such things into account as how this will affect future business transactions or lawsuits against the corporation) then who is really at fault? As a financial identity, corporations only have a responsibility to support what makes the most sense economically which begs the question... Since corporate profitability is inherently tied to public support (a corporation without support incurs debts and eventually dies) is it not the public at fault for allowing the miner to die?
Basically my arguments is that corporations, being a purely financial identity, have no moral obligations or feelings because they have no identity beyond a financial basis. This means that all of those awful things that faceless corporations do, if they still exist after completing their evil deeds, is the responsibility of the public (society).
Now, if you think that corporations should be punished for allowing bad things to happen (like the miner problem) then gain the support of the public and make a change. This is possible (as seen in the passage of things such as the Meat Inspection Act) and has benefited people greatly. But don't confuse a corporation with a psychopath because it is performing precisely what society dictates.
One other note, thanks for making a coherent argument.
Really? I thought that corporations were just around in order to have limited liability. That is the basic extent of how they're considered a person.
Basically, unlike proprietorships or partnerships in which liability of the firm is distributed to its owners, a corporation has its own legal identity separate from the people who own shares of its stock; if a corporation suffers losses, it has to pay debts, not its owners. By doing this, stockholder liability is only limited to what they've invested in the firm (not their entire fortune) whereas proprietorships and partnerships can potentially have unlimited liabilities (someone makes a big mistake) meaning that entire fortunes can be collected to pay debts.
The catch is that corporations, existing as a legal identity are taxed whereas proprietorships and partnerships are not... This means that owners are taxed on corporate income in addition to the corporation being taxed on the same income (or double taxation).
So this is the extent to which a corporation is considered a person... it's purely financial. So how exactly does a purely financial construct resemble a psychopath? I mean, if you're embracing an abstraction of that degree, why not extend the argument to basically anything centered around a theoretical basis? I'm curious, what would be the psychological evaluation of the/. copyright opposition crowd (considering that it seems to oppose the RIAA/MPAA, but supports copyright enforcement concerning GNU efforts)?
Go ahead and call me a capitalist, republican, conservative, bible-thumping pig as that seems to be the common response here (to opposing opinions of open minds of course).
Note: I did not make any statements in the hopes of diminishing open source efforts (as I would be quite the hypocrite considering I made this post using Linux and Mozilla). I just get tired of the whole faceless corporations are evil and that's that argument. Corporations have problems (such as the issue of corporate governance) but absurd comparisons to psychopaths have got to go.
I'd have to agree that, at the moment, this is a gigantic waste. It is a waste because of the nanotubes themselves. Sure they have a great potential for strength (depending on how they're rolled) but the problem is in forming the correct types of nanotubes in bulk. The current manufacturing process more or less generates a whole bunch of different types that are not easily sorted. For the type of strength needed in this application, there's not a lot of room for impurities in the nanotube mix (by impurities, I mean the wrong types). Until a manufacturing process is developed that can produce specific nanotubes in bulk, why even bother with the other aspects of the space elevator?
I don't know if anybody else has used this site before, but it seems to implement fairly well the same service that google is trying to create. Granted, I don't think Answers.com tries to accept actual queries in a complete form (like "Who was JFK?") but searching for JFK gives answers immediately.
Americans have relatively advanced technology, but unfortunately for themselves and everybody else, they are the least advanced society around.
Wow, I wish I could engage in as much hyperbole as you. Is there anything else you'd like to add? Perhaps Americans are the most evil society around, most short-sighted society around, etc. Why don't you, oh I don't know, actually examine other societies before making such moronic statements? Unless of course you consider Stalinist dictatorships as far advanced beyond American society.
Oh yeah... Unless of course someone like Bill Gates makes a dubious remark. Can anybody remember the whole "640K ought to be enough for anybody" quote? Of course you can, you bring it up all the time. And when was this stated?
You know, this argument has persisted for quite some time and I wonder where people think that Linux truly is in comparison to Windows or Mac usability. There are just some aspects of Linux that I have noticed that convince me that this comparison is premature and, unless developmental attitudes change (for applications running on Linux), destined to remain a faulty comparison. I know that some of you out there think I'm absolutely insane or some Linux noob that is utterly stupid or something (even though I use Linux and have for some years now) but let me post a question to you...
I remember using Redhat 9 and running into a problem editing the main menu in Gnome; 1 hour later I found that menu editing was turned off by default and needed to be turned on. Now, all issues about whether editing the menu should be off by default or not aside, wouldn't it have been a good idea to at least mention this in some readily available documentation instead of having to dig through tons of posts about this problem before finding a solution?
This, to me, represents a lot of the Linux experience as a whole to users that want to utilize the OS for something other than scripting or coding or whatever. Regardless of how pretty the desktops become or how many more codecs mplayer gets, various defaults (that matter in terms of usability) only accessible through various text files that are next to impossible to find any documentation on will keep Linux in this unfriendly place.
Also, before you make the plugs for Debian, Gentoo, Mandrake, Suse, etc, I have tried all of these distros and found them to be roughly the same or worse in terms of overall usability as Redhat so don't make the claim to me that one is better overall than the other. You can, however, make that claim to other readers.
So I basically think that this whole idea of usability being inversely related to security doesn't yet apply to Linux. If you're talking about nice desktop environments or other nifty guis then blather on.
Just my own critical opinion though I know that most of you other open-minded people will correct my views... Let the name calling/personal attacks begin.
Why was this moded down? IBM was once at the walking in line with the filth of humanity prior to WWII. In fact, there are some ties between (old) IBM and the Holocaust, none of which present the company or Watson in a good light. For example, look at this article . Though I don't think that the IBM of today would repeat such mistakes, there is precedence for inexcusable business tactics.
I'm confused. Isn't part of the point of Godel's theorem to do exactly what you said not to do? Pardon me for putting more conviction behind a logician with an actual proof instead of some random/.er with a code segment.
Hey, I love using Corneramp set as a semi-translucent skin for winamp 3.x or 5. I've been using it with the 5 beta release for about 1 month now; it is my favorite skin and is, without a doubt, not a square and opaque skin. Granted, the 2.x player was much nicer than 3.x, though 5 really is 2.x with the skin support of 3.x and some other features. However, some people do like skins that aren't simply rectangular and opaque, or at least I do. Last time I checked, I was still a person... wait, yup, still a person.
Many physicians use Medical Manager for their billing and scheduling purposes; my father was once included as one of them. Regardless of the legalities involved that are supposedly damning to SCO, it has a strong presence, or at least had one, in the medical world of which most people are accustomed. Also, it would seem that, while there is always an alternative, the only real choice for most physicians, especially in smaller towns like mine, is Medical Manager thus SCO. Those boxes running it aren't cheap either; in fact, they were running about 10k I think for an office of just 3 employees during the Y2K frenzy.
Though it was expensive, it did what it was supposed to do, despite the large costs for mainly scheduling and billing. However, I can't see many physicians changing the software that they use any time soon. Frankly, I think that as long as SCO is around, it will always have a place in medical businesses, much like celebrities that are celebrities because they're famous. However, I can't really comment on current dealings with Medical Manager as my father now works for an institution instead. I would assume that it will take much longer than a decade to stop existing in your doctor's office despite the worst scenarios for SCO. Regardless of how great Linux, BSD, Solaris, etc is, migration, especially migration within a small business where someone with any computer knowledge outside of the vendor is unheard of, just is not an easy task. This is where and how SCO will continue to hold onto the market.
Sorry for being verrrry off topic here, but where did your sig come from? I vaguely remember that being said in some show, though I can't remember which one.
Slashdot Mirror
Why is it that when this same story came out for Yahoo, everyone declared that Yahoo was "pushing IE7 on Firefox users?" People were even claiming that Yahoo was trying to leverage monopolistic practices. Now that Google has done exactly the same thing, people are claiming that this somehow diminishes Microsoft's original intentions (though I don't understand how having a popular search engine endorse your web browser would be a bad thing). How is Google's decision to use this strategy any different from Yahoo's? I'm just curious to know what sort of BS /. will provide in order to prove how Google's plan is so different and ethically superior to Yahoo's.
There's a slight difference here in that policy is not meant to be determined by your claim concerning whether you may become a billionaire by 2040. Also, the goal of this report isn't to suggest that an event may or may not occur, it is to suggest that some dire outcome is likely to occur. Reports like this are specifically meant to influence current policy according to future forecasts (the may qualifier is only meant as a safeguard in case the event doesn't occur). Skepticism in such reports is targeted at the possible outcome claimed because the outcome may be so far removed from reality as not to warrant any policy changes.
I have heard this before... Suppose that there is a 50% chance that hell exists and only true Christians can escape it. Prudence would dictate that everyone choose Christianity (and do anything to prove their faith), right? Of course, the same argument can be made for whatever religion you'd prefer.
The problem with such a risk analysis is that you make assumptions which are inherently unclear. After all, how do you assign such probabilities and what courses of action should be chosen based off of those probabilities? Furthermore, how do you describe consequences of falling into one category or another? For example, human impact on the environment may be much lower (say 1*10^-38%) or higher (say 98%) than 50%. If, in the first case, the result is absolute annihilation of all life on earth, should humans seek to stop "hurting" their involvement (even if this is getting into the likelihood of random teleportation of large objects)? On the other hand, if in the second case humans brought about a 0.5m rise in sea level, would this justify a major shift in human tinkering? Suppose further that sustaining an environmentally friendly change according to some set of standards would incur costs exceeding the combined GDP of the top 10 most economically prosperous nations. Would the changes be worth it (in either scenario listed above)?
Before you look at any numbers or try to generate some risk/benefit model, realize that all of the figures I provided were utter BS... I just made them up. So what information can you glean from randomly cobbled together bits of data? Nothing. Arbitrarily assigning a probability or consequence for human impact on the environment does nothing for the sake of argument in the context of risk analysis. Those that would seek to repudiate "environmentalist" claims attempt to show that, in spite of complex modeling and data interpretation, such claims are still essentially arbitrary and serve an agenda. When reports such as these surface and scientists claim that the same risk should be attributed to a lower level of human impact, it becomes difficult not to swayed into a skeptical position.
Thanks for looking at this with a realistic perspective. There is a reason that the article said these chips would be used in deeply embedded or automotive situations. In these situations, low power consumption granted by an asynchronous design is great. Not so great, however, is the overall performance. Part of the reason for clocking something (for example synchronous busses) is to avoid the excessive need for handshaking algorithms. Extending the handshaking methodology to multiple pipeline stages seems somewhat self-defeating. How might one effectively design an asynchronous pipeline with the same overall performance of a synchronous pipeline? How can you handle register bypassing or interlocks in a general case without some synchronization happening (as the different paths among different stages will inevitably introduce different time delays) yet also without adding a handshake to every stage? I guess my point is that I wouldn't expect this to find wide acceptance in scenarios in which reasonably high performance (where pipelining is a key factor) is needed. Seems great for embedded applications, poor for games.
Hmm, taking a look at their balance sheet, it seems sorta like they might be telling the truth about a loss this year. Who'd a thunk it huh?
Hmm, that's interesting, because I thought that global warming is the theory that C02 and other green house gas emissions are directly responsible for increasing the global temperature. While this theory has a lot of weight behind it, it is not an observable fact, yet.
Or did we decide that scientific consensus (or excuse me, real scientific consensus) determines what's fact now? Is it acceptable to rely only on theories and models that introduce several assumptions to govern what is observable (even if those models sometimes conflict with what is actually observable)?
My point isn't to diminish the possible threat of global warming, but that it should be observed it on a purely scientific bases (free from political tantrums). Let's not forget where heavily politicized scientific consensus got us before... Anyone ever hear of Eugenics?
Open your eyes for just a moment and realize something. Democrats are not your friends. Republicans are not your friends. Each party will seek to expand the government to suit their own interests (which is why it's so great that massive expansion in either direction isn't too easy).
If there is a consensus that demands more Republican representation, then that's what there shall and should be. If your aim is to demolish the democratic process because you're unhappy for a little while, then you're truly delving into dark territory. I don't really want to see a single party have control of all branches of our government, but I really doubt that such control could be sustained for a long period. After all, how often has that happened (excepting historically huge scenarios like post Civil War America)?
More likely, after at most a couple more terms, Republicans will be viewed as having had their chance at running things being deemed failures. Then the nation will go into a democratic swing for a while until they too are deemed failures (unless of course your primary source is /.).
I'd agree that cracking should carry an appropriate penalty, but while the death penalty may be excessive, cracking is far worse than graffiti. It doesn't matter that people may make stupid mistakes that invite people to exploit their systems; after all, a store owner may leave a door unlocked. Do you mean to say that a person robbing the store shouldn't be prosecuted (if caught) because of the stupidity of the store owner? Nor does it matter that the crime is just for fun. People kill just for fun or commit any number of crimes for no particular financial purpose.
It is true that much of the exploitation performed by individuals doesn't account for an enormous economic loss, but for that which does manage to wreak tremendous havoc, I'm not convinced that anything much less than life in prison should be an acceptable punishment.
Consider this, if an individual causes damages exceeding millions of dollars, who really feels that loss? I'll guarantee you that it isn't a corporate board; rather it is the consumer and more or less expendable employees. Should a cracker or virus writer receive no punishment for inducing potential job loss and the resulting social impact that unemployment causes?
People shrug of cracking as though it doesn't really burden anyone; all it does is embarrass "evil" corporations. Just take a moment to think of the costs of cracking that exceed economics.
The bundled TV viewer program could be better (WinTV 2000) as it sometimes crashes on full screen transitions, but overall it's pretty good. For Linux, TVtime is great.
As for ATI cards, I've had issues with driver support all around... The hardware itself may be good, but the support is painfully lacking (especially with Linux). Anyway, I feel your pain when dealing with ATI.
Good luck with your TV viewing.
Actually, they aren't safely insulated from the actions of the corporation, they are just less susceptible to excessive losses on the corporation's part (read limited liability). As I stated, the price of this limited liability is that the rewards are also smaller (you get taxed on income and so does the corporation). Since excessive immorality would (hopefully) hurt a corporation's earnings (due to a loss of public support), shareholders would notice the corporation's debts in their corporate holdings, just not in their private holdings; this can be a substantial loss. Though shareholders may not feel any guilt they are all but insulated from the day to day actions of the corporation.
Corporations have one purpose and one purpose only. Profit. They exist only to enrich the shareholders.
Actually, this is a hotly debated topic. You may find this hard to believe, but ideally, a corporation exists to enrich the shareholders. In reality, boards of directors may do little to promote the shareholder's best interests. Instead, they may function more as a rubber stamp for management which frequently pursues goals that it sets for a corporation (particularly for itself) usually with little accountability to the board of directors. Though the board is supposed to ensure that this doesn't happen, it can find itself unable or unwilling to demand accountability. This is to say that typical stock holders actually have little corporate power (unless, of course, a stockholder has a huge amount of stock).
In short, greed is the core of any corporation. It is the reason they exist. It is expected of the corporate officers. It is also one of the seven deadly sins - which certainly implies that corporations are evil by nature.
As I've argued in other posts, observing corporate actions on human terms is basically invalid. Basically, it boils down to the notion that a corporation is a financial identity only, governed by society. However, I'm not going to restate myself on this point anymore. If you want to see my argument, feel free to read some of my other posts on this topic.
Its much like Wal-Mart. People can complain all they want about Wal-Mart killing off local competition but until they put their money where their mouth is (and I mean collectively, not just a few anti-Wal-Mart groups) then Wal-Mart is (in effect) operating under society's demands, doing precisely what society says it should do.
My point is that it is basically invalid to view a corporation's legal identity beyond anything financial. It acts on an entirely different set of rules than people (even though it is run by people). Oh and one aside, when I mentioned lawsuits in the proprietorship or partnership case, I wasn't referring to stock holder lawsuits, I was referring to the potential lawsuits of the victim (miner). Sorry for not making that clear.
Thanks for the reply
Now, as to whether their behavior would be acceptable to an actual person... If society supported those person's actions like they do a corporation's, absolutely. After all, it is social consensus that defines things such as morality. However, society chooses to view corporations differently. Why? Hey, you'd have to ask society.
Thanks for the article though... It does indeed make some interesting points.
There is a certain sentiment that says that a corporation has a responsibility to produce maximum return for its shareholders. If they don't, the shareholders can sue the company and collect. That means if an employee falls down a mineshaft and the rescue effort would cost more than the settlement to the next of kin, the company is NOT ALLOWED to do the "right thing". The shareholders are assumed to have no morals (some probably don't), so the company has to think only in terms of dollar values. That is where it becomes a psychopath, it doesn't care about society, only itself (= shareholders).
1)If the worker was working under a proprietorship or partnership (ie under a structure without a legal identity) would the business be more or less obligated to help their worker? Or would they instead consider the economic ramifications of helping/not helping that worker (including lawsuits, public opinion, etc).
2)If you only consider economic ramifications and the cost of leaving the worker in the mineshaft to die doesn't meet or exceed the cost of rescuing the worker (taking such things into account as how this will affect future business transactions or lawsuits against the corporation) then who is really at fault? As a financial identity, corporations only have a responsibility to support what makes the most sense economically which begs the question... Since corporate profitability is inherently tied to public support (a corporation without support incurs debts and eventually dies) is it not the public at fault for allowing the miner to die?
Basically my arguments is that corporations, being a purely financial identity, have no moral obligations or feelings because they have no identity beyond a financial basis. This means that all of those awful things that faceless corporations do, if they still exist after completing their evil deeds, is the responsibility of the public (society).
Now, if you think that corporations should be punished for allowing bad things to happen (like the miner problem) then gain the support of the public and make a change. This is possible (as seen in the passage of things such as the Meat Inspection Act) and has benefited people greatly. But don't confuse a corporation with a psychopath because it is performing precisely what society dictates.
One other note, thanks for making a coherent argument.
Basically, unlike proprietorships or partnerships in which liability of the firm is distributed to its owners, a corporation has its own legal identity separate from the people who own shares of its stock; if a corporation suffers losses, it has to pay debts, not its owners. By doing this, stockholder liability is only limited to what they've invested in the firm (not their entire fortune) whereas proprietorships and partnerships can potentially have unlimited liabilities (someone makes a big mistake) meaning that entire fortunes can be collected to pay debts.
The catch is that corporations, existing as a legal identity are taxed whereas proprietorships and partnerships are not... This means that owners are taxed on corporate income in addition to the corporation being taxed on the same income (or double taxation).
So this is the extent to which a corporation is considered a person... it's purely financial. So how exactly does a purely financial construct resemble a psychopath? I mean, if you're embracing an abstraction of that degree, why not extend the argument to basically anything centered around a theoretical basis? I'm curious, what would be the psychological evaluation of the /. copyright opposition crowd (considering that it seems to oppose the RIAA/MPAA, but supports copyright enforcement concerning GNU efforts)?
Go ahead and call me a capitalist, republican, conservative, bible-thumping pig as that seems to be the common response here (to opposing opinions of open minds of course).
Note: I did not make any statements in the hopes of diminishing open source efforts (as I would be quite the hypocrite considering I made this post using Linux and Mozilla). I just get tired of the whole faceless corporations are evil and that's that argument. Corporations have problems (such as the issue of corporate governance) but absurd comparisons to psychopaths have got to go.
I'd have to agree that, at the moment, this is a gigantic waste. It is a waste because of the nanotubes themselves. Sure they have a great potential for strength (depending on how they're rolled) but the problem is in forming the correct types of nanotubes in bulk. The current manufacturing process more or less generates a whole bunch of different types that are not easily sorted. For the type of strength needed in this application, there's not a lot of room for impurities in the nanotube mix (by impurities, I mean the wrong types). Until a manufacturing process is developed that can produce specific nanotubes in bulk, why even bother with the other aspects of the space elevator?
I don't know if anybody else has used this site before, but it seems to implement fairly well the same service that google is trying to create. Granted, I don't think Answers.com tries to accept actual queries in a complete form (like "Who was JFK?") but searching for JFK gives answers immediately.
Wow, I wish I could engage in as much hyperbole as you. Is there anything else you'd like to add? Perhaps Americans are the most evil society around, most short-sighted society around, etc. Why don't you, oh I don't know, actually examine other societies before making such moronic statements? Unless of course you consider Stalinist dictatorships as far advanced beyond American society.
Don't you just love hypocrisy?
I remember using Redhat 9 and running into a problem editing the main menu in Gnome; 1 hour later I found that menu editing was turned off by default and needed to be turned on. Now, all issues about whether editing the menu should be off by default or not aside, wouldn't it have been a good idea to at least mention this in some readily available documentation instead of having to dig through tons of posts about this problem before finding a solution?
This, to me, represents a lot of the Linux experience as a whole to users that want to utilize the OS for something other than scripting or coding or whatever. Regardless of how pretty the desktops become or how many more codecs mplayer gets, various defaults (that matter in terms of usability) only accessible through various text files that are next to impossible to find any documentation on will keep Linux in this unfriendly place.
Also, before you make the plugs for Debian, Gentoo, Mandrake, Suse, etc, I have tried all of these distros and found them to be roughly the same or worse in terms of overall usability as Redhat so don't make the claim to me that one is better overall than the other. You can, however, make that claim to other readers.
So I basically think that this whole idea of usability being inversely related to security doesn't yet apply to Linux. If you're talking about nice desktop environments or other nifty guis then blather on.
Just my own critical opinion though I know that most of you other open-minded people will correct my views... Let the name calling/personal attacks begin.
Why was this moded down? IBM was once at the walking in line with the filth of humanity prior to WWII. In fact, there are some ties between (old) IBM and the Holocaust, none of which present the company or Watson in a good light. For example, look at this article . Though I don't think that the IBM of today would repeat such mistakes, there is precedence for inexcusable business tactics.
I'm confused. Isn't part of the point of Godel's theorem to do exactly what you said not to do? Pardon me for putting more conviction behind a logician with an actual proof instead of some random /.er with a code segment.
Hey, I love using Corneramp set as a semi-translucent skin for winamp 3.x or 5. I've been using it with the 5 beta release for about 1 month now; it is my favorite skin and is, without a doubt, not a square and opaque skin. Granted, the 2.x player was much nicer than 3.x, though 5 really is 2.x with the skin support of 3.x and some other features. However, some people do like skins that aren't simply rectangular and opaque, or at least I do. Last time I checked, I was still a person... wait, yup, still a person.
You are absolutely correct!
Many physicians use Medical Manager for their billing and scheduling purposes; my father was once included as one of them. Regardless of the legalities involved that are supposedly damning to SCO, it has a strong presence, or at least had one, in the medical world of which most people are accustomed. Also, it would seem that, while there is always an alternative, the only real choice for most physicians, especially in smaller towns like mine, is Medical Manager thus SCO. Those boxes running it aren't cheap either; in fact, they were running about 10k I think for an office of just 3 employees during the Y2K frenzy.
Though it was expensive, it did what it was supposed to do, despite the large costs for mainly scheduling and billing. However, I can't see many physicians changing the software that they use any time soon. Frankly, I think that as long as SCO is around, it will always have a place in medical businesses, much like celebrities that are celebrities because they're famous. However, I can't really comment on current dealings with Medical Manager as my father now works for an institution instead. I would assume that it will take much longer than a decade to stop existing in your doctor's office despite the worst scenarios for SCO. Regardless of how great Linux, BSD, Solaris, etc is, migration, especially migration within a small business where someone with any computer knowledge outside of the vendor is unheard of, just is not an easy task. This is where and how SCO will continue to hold onto the market.
Mod this guy up.
Sorry for being verrrry off topic here, but where did your sig come from? I vaguely remember that being said in some show, though I can't remember which one.
Sorry again for this nothing post.