If we win one battle, we haven't won the war, and if we lose a battle like this in the EU it doesn't mean we've lost completely, it just means we have to work even harder to overcome it.
Once a battle like this is lost in any one location, then the war is lost in that location.
Don't believe me? Look at the state of copyright around the globe. It has been monotonically increasing over time. Not once that I've ever heard of have we seen a reduction in copyright strength or an increase in the rights of the general public.
And not once has a location gained software patents only to lose them again.
I agree, if we lose in the EU it doesn't mean we've lost completely, but it does mean we've lost completely in the EU.
If the EU adopts software patents (and I guarantee they will -- it's only a matter of time and money), there will be precious few places left in the world where one is truly free to write software.
Not that such a trend would be in any way out of character with the overall trend the entire world is following: a descent into an oppressive global police state in which the masses are only given the illusion of freedom.
I'd rather see the school day extended to match real-life work hours (0800-1700) with a minimum of homework outside of that.
I tend to agree with the concept, except that "real-life" work hours are more along the lines of 0800-2100, at least for the plebs in the U.S.
That's not something I'd ever want to impose on a kid, because they'd never be a kid if you did that.
Play is of incredible importance, and most people don't seem to realize it. The young of every species (especially predatory ones) with more brains than a mouse plays, and there are strong evolutionary reasons for it.
Play is one of the most important activities that prepares the young for the real world. It has to be balanced against schooling, not discarded.
I'd suggest that anyone who really cares about values such as Freedom and Liberty move to a country that counts those values are core values. The United States clearly doesn't.
Unfortunately, I can't think of a single country that qualifies. Can you? If so, please share it with the rest of us!
...although the companies in question certainly won't die if they have to pay royalties here.
If the companies in question want to reap the benefits of the patent system, they have to pay the price of the patent system. But since most three-year-old children show greater maturity than most of these corporations, it's no surprise that these corporations want to reap the benefits without paying the price.
They're just lucky that the organization in question (the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization, a research arm of the Australian government) isn't a competitor. Although I suppose in this case it could use this patent to give Australian companies an advantage over their American competition.
It's about damned time the U.S. corporations got a black eye from the bullshit patent situation over here. After all, they're the ones who have been abusing it. I just wish it happened far more often.
Anti-Aliasing made a hell of a lot more sense to me back at 320x200 to 800x600... but maybe that's just me. I'm sure we'll have 16x FSAA at 8192x6160 too, and everyone will say it's da bomb! "How can you play without anti-aliasing? Don't you stop and look at the jaggies? "
If we were still using CRTs then I might agree with you. But if you're running the game at the native resolution of your LCD display, then you'll still notice the jaggies. Not as much, mind you, but LCDs are so crisp that the jaggies tend to stand out more than on a CRT.
Remember the bad old days when the brand-new language "C" was owned by Bell Labs, and they claimed anything you wrote in C belonged to Bell?
Remember how long that was true? As measured in picoseconds?
There are no closed source languages. That's an urban legend. You can try to booby-trap a language, like MS tried to do to Java, but that won't work, either. You may recollect that MS failed in that effort, expensively(!).
What you say is true...until someone like Sun patents a language feature that the language spec itself requires.
What will you do then when you're trying to reimplement the language? Work around the patent? Please. Most patents these days are directly against the problem being solved, not against solutions to the problem, and when they are against solutions to the problem, it's usually when the solution presented is the only solution possible.
This isn't like the good old days of Bell Labs, when software patents simply didn't exist.
Stick your head in the sand all you want, but the problem of proprietary languages is only going to get worse as the patent situation itself gets worse, and the only approach to the problem that will survive is to implement everything using unencumbered languages, and the best way to guarantee that a language is unencumbered is for the reference implementation to be completely free (libre).
And now we have evidence that this was all a ruse, that a man that was never elected deliberately fabricated evidence to start a war. And what do we do?
Absolutely nothing.
Right. Why?
Because there isn't anything that the people can do that will have any real effect.
Why? A couple of reasons:
Because the real purpose of elections in the U.S. isn't to allow people to decide what kind of person gets into office, it's to maintain the illusion of that choice. The actual choices are made long before the election, by people who are completely unrelated to the popular vote.
Because the government has all the guns (all the real guns, not the pathetic peashooters the civilian population is "allowed" to have), and when combined with the previous item, it doesn't matter what the people actually think or do. Want proof? Simple: despite the likely situation that 50% (according to the source you cited) of the people in the U.S. think that they were misled about the war in Iraq, the military is still there. Which means that the military leadership doesn't care. They do what they're told.
And who tells these people what to do? Who controls the list of credible choices on the ballot? Who does the government really answer to? Those who run the largest corporations in the country, that's who. And by the way, that happens to include all the major media outlets, too. This is why the media hasn't said much about the lies and subversion behind the Iraq war.
And all this is why things will just get worse. Welcome to fascism, 21st century style.
I am pretty sure the president gets voted into office because of the votes of the People. I am pretty sure a corporation doesn't get a vote. Maybe they can buy them ad-time, but thats about it.
It's a lot worse than that.
The corporations literally get to decide who even has a chance of running and who doesn't. You only get to choose from among those that they have already chosen.
Republican or Democrat doesn't matter anymore. Both parties answer to the same masters.
And if you doubt the power of the corporate-controlled media to decide an election, just remember this: the "Dean Scream" is a media fabrication, and is primarily responsible for Howard Dean's fall from favor.
Media exposure is everything, and the reason the third parties don't have a chance in hell is that the corporations that own the media don't need the third parties -- they have plenty of control via the two parties that dominate right now, thank you very much.
One big thing that they always forget about patriotism is that you(we) are supposed to hold our leadership accountable, demand fair and equitable treatment and preserve our freedoms.
Agreed, but the question is how?
You can demand anything you want. That doesn't mean you'll get it. You'll get it only if you can somehow coerce your "representatives" (who are no such thing anymore) to see things your way.
The problem is that they no longer answer to you, or to any of their "constituents". The people they answer to are the people that made their election possible: the people who run large corporations, and especially the people who run the corporations that own the media. Because you can't even begin to get elected unless you get media exposure, and the corporations that own the media can suddenly decide to bury you, to make you look ridiculous. Like they did to Howard Dean (remember that the "Dean Scream" was a media fabrication, and [correct me if I'm wrong] support for Dean was quite strong until that media trick).
The problem today is that people don't recognize who the real leadership is: the people who own and run the large corporations in this country. And those people only answer to themselves. So how, then, are we to demand anything at all, much less fair and equitable treatment?
I definitely agree with you about the US->fascist dictatorship bit. It's coming; the question is, who will have the foresight and vision and power to stop it?
Nobody. It's too late by far. I expect to see a lot more laws passed that have provisions exempting them from judicial review, and I expect the government to ignore any ruling from the Supreme Court disputing those provisions. The Supreme Court has only as much power as the military is willing to give it.
Ya i agree you may lose a few hundred or even a thousand, but has it ever occcured to you that Vietnam was similar to this. Of course ! I forgot! We were better equipped, more powerful, more organized that the Vietnamese.... and yet we were thrown out !
Care to explain why?
Simple: because we didn't have the political will to stick it out.
Remember: we pulled out. We voluntarily withdrew. There was no gun to our head forcing us to do so. Yes, it was largely the result of political pressure here at home, but the point is that if we were losing at all it was because we weren't really trying. Fear of the USSR and/or China's entry into the arena restrained our military actions. Vietnam is widely known as a war run by the politicians instead of by the military. If the military had been left to its own devices then the outcome likely would have been very, very different (assuming that a larger power like China or the USSR stayed out of it).
No such restraints exist when the government's very existence and authority is being challenged by those it rules over. And if such restraints don't exist, what in the world makes you think that the government would even for a moment think of restraining its military action here?
You are referring to Libertarians. Republicans take my money and use it to build commerce (and get votes from those with money and power). Democrats take my money and use it to feed disadvantaged folks (and get votes from those who like handouts).
Almost.
Democrats take my money and use most of it for the benefit of big business. They take a small part of it and use it to help the poor and disadvantaged.
The Republicans take my money and use all of it for the benefit of big business.
But make no mistake: big business wins either way, because it is only by winning the favor of big business that one can get into and stay in office (that is to say, winning the favor of big business is necessary in order to get into or stay in office. It might not be sufficient, but it's always necessary).
No, eventually the people will stop feeding them and building their toys.
Yeah, I suppose this explains why so many brutal military dictatorships have fallen all by themselves without any help from the outside. Oh, wait, they haven't.
If your choice is to produce or be shot, you'll produce. Just like the slaves of the south in the 1800s.
Or, if you create issues divisive enough, that same military will simply divide into factions, complete with chains of command, civilian support, industrial and agricultural supply, and then you've got a civil war and/or revolution on your hands that will not fit with your vision of a nice asymmetrical battle between modern military forces and peasants with sticks and rocks.
Fortunately, that's not a problem. Because people are sheep who will do what they're told, and like what they're told. Every modern totalitarian government has been overthrown from the outside, or as a result of weakening of said government from the outside. People are remarkably adaptive, and that means that they'll adapt quite nicely to totalitarian rule.
After all, it's the kind of government that the vast majority of people who have ever lived on the planet have lived under.
I agree, though, that if you piss off the military, you're screwed. That's why every smart totalitarian government treats its military very nicely. It doesn't matter what the people want. But it matters very much what the military wants.
You might not have noticed, but we're still in Iraq, despite the wishes of the insurgents. And that's despite the fact that it isn't even our country, and despite the fact that leaving Iraq does nothing to threaten the existence of the U.S. government.
We may lose a few hundred, or perhaps even a few thousand, people a year over there. And that's the best the insurgents can do. And they're armed considerably better than the U.S. population. And you think that's a good example of how "useful" their weapons are??
As for the Palestinians, the only reason they're still there is that they, too, don't pose a credible threat to the existence of the Israeli government. I guarantee that if they did, the Israeli government wouldn't think twice about killing the entire lot of them.
So what makes you think that a government whose very existence is being threatened by some segment of the population it rules over is going to treat that same population with kid gloves, huh? Do you think said government will just give up quietly? You're crazy if you do. No, the government will do everything it has to in order to remain in power, and if that means killing off a large fraction of the population it rules over, then that's life.
As long as the majority of the U.S. military, or at least the part of it that controls the heavy weapons, is willing to do the bidding of the government it answers to, then violent revolution in the U.S. will be impossible.
Finally, if you think that someone can't come in and turn a democracy like the U.S. into a fascist dictatorship, then think again. It's happened before, within the last 100 years even.
And if you think people in the U.S. won't tolerate a fascist dictatorship here, then I wanna know what you're smoking, because the vast majority of the people who have ever lived on this planet have done so under some sort of totalitarian rule. The people of the U.S. are no different from the rest -- they have the same desires, the same fears, the same needs. And the same weaknesses. The passage of the bill we're talking about today without even a whimper from the people should be proof enough of that for you. The fact that Bush got re-elected despite the quite large amount of opposition to the war in Iraq should be proof enough for you. If it's not, then you're blind, and nothing I can say will change that.
Then how is that sitting senators and congressional representatives (and governors, and presidents, etc) who are up for relection are sometimes kicked out and replaced by someone with a significantly different message and appeal to the voters?
Because the real people in charge (those who run large corporations) allow it to happen. Gotta maintain the illusion of democracy, after all.
Read what you're saying -- someone with a different "message" gets elected. Well, remember this: the message doesn't mean shit. All that matters is action. And I think you'll find, as with this bill, that everyone who gets elected acts in a very consistent manner: they do what their corporate masters tell them to do, and to hell with the "message" they used to get elected.
The "elected officials" aren't the people with real power. They're just tools. The people with real power aren't elected.
And if the plethora of bills that have been passed for the benefit of large corporations isn't enough to convince you of that, then I'm afraid you're beyond hope.
You've been watching too much Star Wars if you think that just because some bill is passed, an evil dictator can come and instantly turn America from a Democracy into tyranny. The people would never go for that.
So the fuck what? As long as the government has the support of the U.S. military, the people will have to bend over and take it up the ass like good little sheep. All those little peashooters that you people call "guns" can't do shit against real military hardware.
What the hell is the matter with you idiots who think that democracies (or democratic republics) are somehow magically immune from becoming a police state? Are you that stupid and naive? You probably believe in Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy, too, huh?
Just remember that I Told You So when the U.S. government finally, at long last, meets your current definition of totalitarianism (I say "current" because I know that some of you will change your definition over time to keep from "losing", to make it possible to keep believing that the U.S. isn't a totalitarian state).
I'm afraid the sheep-like americans won't wake up from their media-induced slumber until things get worse... much worse. When no one but the richest 5% of the country has health care. When no one can afford a good education. When a quarter of the country is considered a felon (with leg bracelets, no doubt!). When these terrible things come to pass, and much more... then we will see real change.
And then it'll be too late. What, do you really think those in power won't be willing to pull out all of the stops, including the use of nuclear, biological, and chemical devices against U.S. citizens, to remain in power, if the citizenry decides to try and revolt?
No violent revolution in the 20th century against a well-armed government has ever succeeded without a lot of outside military intervention except when the government's military abandoned it (as it did during the Russian Revolution).
But it won't come to that. It won't have to, except maybe once, to demonstrate that they aren't kidding. Otherwise, normal military "police action" will be sufficient. Just like it was and is in Iraq (the people there have no more control over their government than we have over ours, and we're still there despite all of their objections).
The passage of this bill and the war in Iraq illustrate very clearly that the people of this country no longer have any real influence over the government. Nobody in a position of power in government gives a flying fuck about the citizens of this country anymore, and it has never been this obvious. The only thing they care about is their own money and power. The rest of the world can burn for all they care.
I predict that the entire world will become a fascist police state that will last for thousands of years (since there won't be any "outside" that can topple it), and that it'll easily happen within the century. I actually expect it to take no more than 50 years. We're already pretty damned close. There are only a few countries, like Brazil, left to take care of first. The only thing I can think of that might prevent it is global nuclear war.
So these large, monopolistic corporations (cable companies and baby bells) want to keep municipalities from providing internet access, huh?
Well, then, those same corporations will also be happy to relinquish their municipality-granted monopoly on the basic infrastructure (data cables, etc., that are there because the municipality granted exclusive right-of-way, and in many cases actually paid for them) they use to transport data, then, right?
No? Then said corporations should shut the fuck up.
Granted that copyright infringement is against the law and should be pursued more by the government like other crimes that the government has established, I wish the government would rerecognise their belief in a free economy and that no company has any right to profit nor compensation for loss of profit.
The government believes no such thing. Quite the opposite, actually: the government believes that the largest businesses do have a right to profit. Worse, it believes that they have a right to do so in perpetuity (hence, the ever growing copyright term length). It believes that small business entities must compete, while large ones shouldn't have to.
One need only look at the kinds of legislation that has consistently been passed over the past two decades, and the treatment of very large corporations and those who run them, even when they get caught redhanded at something which brings great harm to a large number of people (e.g., Enron executives).
The government is completely bought and paid for. This shouldn't be a surprise, since one can't get elected without a lot of decent media exposure (see Howard Dean for an example of what happens to your election chances when the media decides it doesn't like you anymore), and the media is owned by a small number of very large corporations, whose owners care only for their own wealth and power. You should be able to work out the further implications of that for yourself.
Those who believe that large businesses have a right to profit are precisely the same people who own the government.
In the long run, friends of mine using Internet Explorer affects me in the sense that I'll have to be the one to clean the spyware off their computer and repair whatever damage it caused. Apathy is a problem with software just as it is with politics. People accept what they are given
Then it's time that people who use inferior products like Internet Explorer suffer the consequences of doing so.
It means you're going to have to show some backbone with your friends and refuse to clean the spyware off their computers if they continue to use Internet Explorer.
People will continue to use whatever is most convenient for them as long as they don't have to deal with the consequences. When you clean spyware off your friends' computers, they are not dealing with the consequences -- you are. That must change before they'll use something else.
... on the purpose and role of the software in question, IMO.
If Bitkeeper had been a game, very few here would have complained about the fact that it's not truly free, and one wouldn't expect Linus to be terribly annoyed in the face of Tridge's actions.
But Bitkeeper was used in the role of a mission-critical piece of software. This is not really any different in importance than the kernel you run, or the database engine that stores your critical information, or the office suite you use, or perhaps even the web browser you use.
What makes those pieces of software so important are the consequences to you if they should fail to function properly, or if their use should suddenly be taken from you. They're mission-critical, or (perhaps) infrastructural in nature -- their importance is much higher to their users than that of much of the software that's out there.
And so, the importance of them being truly free is also much higher.
I sometimes wonder what the consequences to the Linux kernel today would be if Linus had taken a few weeks off to write the revision control system he wants and needs, rather than to deploy Bitkeeper. He'd have to stop accepting patches to the Linux kernel for that period of time, of course, but the submitters of the patches in question could certainly sit on them until he was ready, no?
In any case, I agree with RMS that there's a lesson here: if you use proprietary software for mission-critical work, you're essentially giving control over that mission to someone else. Think about that carefully before you choose.
As for the meaning of efficiency, the concept isn't defined until you decide what is of value.
I didn't think that needed to be defined, because in any society, supply and demand exist and will not be denied. What is of value, therefore, is whatever people happen to demand. Nothing in my definition of efficiency ignores that.
Efficiency isn't cheapness; it is the best use of resources.
Er, well, no, not quite. Close, but you don't define what "best" means here. Efficiency is the ratio of productive output divided by the amount of input needed to create that output (if you really want to be pedantic, it's really that value divided by the theoretical maximum value).
And thus, the most efficient laborer is usually one who is producing while being given a minimum of resources in compensation.
Similarly, slavery is inefficient, for it prevent slaves from moving into more productive work.
Well, no, this isn't necessarily so. All it does is change the person responsible for the decision (from the person performing the labor to the person supervising the laborer). If what you said were strictly true, then most companies would not employ a top-down authoritarian power structure. Unless you want to argue that companies in general are horribly inefficient compared to ones which don't employ such a power structure...
If someone on a minimum wage can afford better food because of that minimum, for example, they will require less hospital care, and also be more productive. This needs a law, because the employer doesn't typically gain from their long-term health; more likely, another will.
Well, no. The "employer" that gains from someone else's long-term health is just as likely to be the employer in question, because that employer will constantly be employing people who also benefit from the law in question. So you can't argue that a sane employer will be opposed to minimum wage laws on these grounds.
No, the employer is opposed to minimum wage laws because he doesn't care about the employee's health. He only cares about efficiency: how much he gets out of his employee divided by how much he has to pay.
One thing I forgot to mention about automation and technology: the more automation there is and the more advanced it is, the less in the way of total labor is necessary to accomplish the same task, and thus the fewer the number of people needed for that task.
Now, while the amount of work that can be done is infinite, the amount of work that even the richest people in the country want done is not.
Think about the long term consequences of that combination.
The long term consequences are that the supply of labor available to accomplish the tasks that those in power do want done will increase as technology and automation improve. That means that the price that can be commanded by that labor must inevitably drop due to the increased competition for jobs.
This is why economies that have large middle classes, like that of the U.S., are generally much stronger than those that don't. Only those who have a standard of living significantly above subsistence level can afford to demand more than just the basics. The more such people there are, the more economic activity (exchange of labor) there will be. It's not sufficient to simply want something for the market to be able to supply it, one must have the means to afford it.
Offshoring significantly increases the amount of competition for the same finite number of jobs that the middle class is currently vying for, without benefitting in any real way that same middle class. You know what must happen to the middle class as a result.
And as a result of the shrinking of the middle class, the total demand for work must fall as well.
They seem to think that it is somehow 'unfair' that people in other contries can make product X cheaper. I don't know how many times I've heard the 'rush to the bottom' argument from people who obviously have no grasp of basic economics.
Oh, some of us have some grasp of basic economics. More than that, we have some grasp of history.
We know that the market rewards "efficiency". "Efficiency" in the case of labor means getting as much out of your employees for as little compensation as possible.
This comes in a number of ways. One is through automation, which acts as a labor multiplier. Another is through competition between potential employees, which lowers the price they're willing to accept to do the job.
The most efficient employee, in terms of work per unit of compensation, is a slave laborer who is being given barely enough to survive. Don't believe me? One need only look at the plantations of the 1800s to see the truth of this. If non-slave labor were truly more efficient than slave labor, then plantations that made use of slave labor would have gone out of business in their attempt to compete with plantations that didn't. Of course, we know that didn't happen -- rather the opposite, in fact.
The "race to the bottom" here isn't just in terms of compensation, though that's part of it. It's also in terms of working conditions and employees' rights. The less an employer has to do to keep his employees working, the greater his profit. And so, employers have incentive to do as little as possible to provide decent working conditions. If an employer can get away with providing squalid working conditions, he will do so. If he can get away with requiring his employees to work 20 hour days, he will do so. Employers will get as close as they can to employing slave labor. History has shown this repeatedly, and you're a fool to believe otherwise.
Finally, if you really understand economics, you'll understand that at its core, it's about the exchange of labor. One person's labor for another. Because of this, after technological improvements and increased efficiencies due to specialization and organizational improvements, economics is a zero-sum game, when one is considering a closed economy (as the world economy obviously is). An employer cannot simply drop the salaries of his employees to nothing without eventually incurring a corresponding drop in sales, because his employees use the money they make to purchase goods and services, and eventually that money makes its way back to the employer. When it doesn't, the employer goes out of business.
In an economy that is reasonably regulated, i.e. one to which reasonable labor laws apply, it's entirely reasonable to expect the standard of living of most participants to improve over time as a result of technological improvement (which, as I said, is a labor multiplier). But in a completely unregulated economy, that's not what will happen.
In a completely unregulated economy, employers are free to collude with each other in order to maintain a much higher standard of living at the expense of their employees. Since the amount of labor is fixed (there are only so many people available to work at any one time, after all, and there are only 24 hours in a day), when one person has a very high standard of living, someone else must have a correspondingly low standard of living, relatively speaking. And while automation and other market efficiencies may reduce the cost of survival, it doesn't change the necessities of life. As long as someone is receiving the necessities of life, he can produce. And as automation reduces the cost of those necessities, it improves that person's efficiency (same work for less cost == greater efficiency). Thus, in a completely unregulated economy, the standard of living of employers will improve over time through automation, while the standard of living of the employees will not.
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I'd wager that they think it's a good idea because they're being paid (if only under the table) to think that.
In fact, they're so vehemently in favor of software patents that any other possible reason is so implausible as to be laughable.
Politicians are generally this reliably stupid only when they're being paid to be.
Once a battle like this is lost in any one location, then the war is lost in that location.
Don't believe me? Look at the state of copyright around the globe. It has been monotonically increasing over time. Not once that I've ever heard of have we seen a reduction in copyright strength or an increase in the rights of the general public.
And not once has a location gained software patents only to lose them again.
I agree, if we lose in the EU it doesn't mean we've lost completely, but it does mean we've lost completely in the EU.
If the EU adopts software patents (and I guarantee they will -- it's only a matter of time and money), there will be precious few places left in the world where one is truly free to write software.
Not that such a trend would be in any way out of character with the overall trend the entire world is following: a descent into an oppressive global police state in which the masses are only given the illusion of freedom.
I tend to agree with the concept, except that "real-life" work hours are more along the lines of 0800-2100, at least for the plebs in the U.S.
That's not something I'd ever want to impose on a kid, because they'd never be a kid if you did that.
Play is of incredible importance, and most people don't seem to realize it. The young of every species (especially predatory ones) with more brains than a mouse plays, and there are strong evolutionary reasons for it.
Play is one of the most important activities that prepares the young for the real world. It has to be balanced against schooling, not discarded.
Unfortunately, I can't think of a single country that qualifies. Can you? If so, please share it with the rest of us!
If the companies in question want to reap the benefits of the patent system, they have to pay the price of the patent system. But since most three-year-old children show greater maturity than most of these corporations, it's no surprise that these corporations want to reap the benefits without paying the price.
They're just lucky that the organization in question (the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization, a research arm of the Australian government) isn't a competitor. Although I suppose in this case it could use this patent to give Australian companies an advantage over their American competition.
It's about damned time the U.S. corporations got a black eye from the bullshit patent situation over here. After all, they're the ones who have been abusing it. I just wish it happened far more often.
The Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization, in Australia.
If we were still using CRTs then I might agree with you. But if you're running the game at the native resolution of your LCD display, then you'll still notice the jaggies. Not as much, mind you, but LCDs are so crisp that the jaggies tend to stand out more than on a CRT.
But yeah, FSAA is not as important anymore.
What you say is true...until someone like Sun patents a language feature that the language spec itself requires.
What will you do then when you're trying to reimplement the language? Work around the patent? Please. Most patents these days are directly against the problem being solved, not against solutions to the problem, and when they are against solutions to the problem, it's usually when the solution presented is the only solution possible.
This isn't like the good old days of Bell Labs, when software patents simply didn't exist.
Stick your head in the sand all you want, but the problem of proprietary languages is only going to get worse as the patent situation itself gets worse, and the only approach to the problem that will survive is to implement everything using unencumbered languages, and the best way to guarantee that a language is unencumbered is for the reference implementation to be completely free (libre).
Right. Why?
Because there isn't anything that the people can do that will have any real effect.
Why? A couple of reasons:
And who tells these people what to do? Who controls the list of credible choices on the ballot? Who does the government really answer to? Those who run the largest corporations in the country, that's who. And by the way, that happens to include all the major media outlets, too. This is why the media hasn't said much about the lies and subversion behind the Iraq war.
And all this is why things will just get worse. Welcome to fascism, 21st century style.
It's a lot worse than that.
The corporations literally get to decide who even has a chance of running and who doesn't. You only get to choose from among those that they have already chosen.
Republican or Democrat doesn't matter anymore. Both parties answer to the same masters.
And if you doubt the power of the corporate-controlled media to decide an election, just remember this: the "Dean Scream" is a media fabrication, and is primarily responsible for Howard Dean's fall from favor.
Media exposure is everything, and the reason the third parties don't have a chance in hell is that the corporations that own the media don't need the third parties -- they have plenty of control via the two parties that dominate right now, thank you very much.
Agreed, but the question is how?
You can demand anything you want. That doesn't mean you'll get it. You'll get it only if you can somehow coerce your "representatives" (who are no such thing anymore) to see things your way.
The problem is that they no longer answer to you, or to any of their "constituents". The people they answer to are the people that made their election possible: the people who run large corporations, and especially the people who run the corporations that own the media. Because you can't even begin to get elected unless you get media exposure, and the corporations that own the media can suddenly decide to bury you, to make you look ridiculous. Like they did to Howard Dean (remember that the "Dean Scream" was a media fabrication, and [correct me if I'm wrong] support for Dean was quite strong until that media trick).
The problem today is that people don't recognize who the real leadership is: the people who own and run the large corporations in this country. And those people only answer to themselves. So how, then, are we to demand anything at all, much less fair and equitable treatment?
Nobody. It's too late by far. I expect to see a lot more laws passed that have provisions exempting them from judicial review, and I expect the government to ignore any ruling from the Supreme Court disputing those provisions. The Supreme Court has only as much power as the military is willing to give it.
We're close now, so very close.
Simple: because we didn't have the political will to stick it out.
Remember: we pulled out. We voluntarily withdrew. There was no gun to our head forcing us to do so. Yes, it was largely the result of political pressure here at home, but the point is that if we were losing at all it was because we weren't really trying. Fear of the USSR and/or China's entry into the arena restrained our military actions. Vietnam is widely known as a war run by the politicians instead of by the military. If the military had been left to its own devices then the outcome likely would have been very, very different (assuming that a larger power like China or the USSR stayed out of it).
No such restraints exist when the government's very existence and authority is being challenged by those it rules over. And if such restraints don't exist, what in the world makes you think that the government would even for a moment think of restraining its military action here?
Almost.
Democrats take my money and use most of it for the benefit of big business. They take a small part of it and use it to help the poor and disadvantaged.
The Republicans take my money and use all of it for the benefit of big business.
But make no mistake: big business wins either way, because it is only by winning the favor of big business that one can get into and stay in office (that is to say, winning the favor of big business is necessary in order to get into or stay in office. It might not be sufficient, but it's always necessary).
Yeah, I suppose this explains why so many brutal military dictatorships have fallen all by themselves without any help from the outside. Oh, wait, they haven't.
If your choice is to produce or be shot, you'll produce. Just like the slaves of the south in the 1800s.
Fortunately, that's not a problem. Because people are sheep who will do what they're told, and like what they're told. Every modern totalitarian government has been overthrown from the outside, or as a result of weakening of said government from the outside. People are remarkably adaptive, and that means that they'll adapt quite nicely to totalitarian rule.
After all, it's the kind of government that the vast majority of people who have ever lived on the planet have lived under.
I agree, though, that if you piss off the military, you're screwed. That's why every smart totalitarian government treats its military very nicely. It doesn't matter what the people want. But it matters very much what the military wants.
You might not have noticed, but we're still in Iraq, despite the wishes of the insurgents. And that's despite the fact that it isn't even our country, and despite the fact that leaving Iraq does nothing to threaten the existence of the U.S. government.
We may lose a few hundred, or perhaps even a few thousand, people a year over there. And that's the best the insurgents can do. And they're armed considerably better than the U.S. population. And you think that's a good example of how "useful" their weapons are??
As for the Palestinians, the only reason they're still there is that they, too, don't pose a credible threat to the existence of the Israeli government. I guarantee that if they did, the Israeli government wouldn't think twice about killing the entire lot of them.
So what makes you think that a government whose very existence is being threatened by some segment of the population it rules over is going to treat that same population with kid gloves, huh? Do you think said government will just give up quietly? You're crazy if you do. No, the government will do everything it has to in order to remain in power, and if that means killing off a large fraction of the population it rules over, then that's life.
As long as the majority of the U.S. military, or at least the part of it that controls the heavy weapons, is willing to do the bidding of the government it answers to, then violent revolution in the U.S. will be impossible.
Finally, if you think that someone can't come in and turn a democracy like the U.S. into a fascist dictatorship, then think again. It's happened before, within the last 100 years even.
And if you think people in the U.S. won't tolerate a fascist dictatorship here, then I wanna know what you're smoking, because the vast majority of the people who have ever lived on this planet have done so under some sort of totalitarian rule. The people of the U.S. are no different from the rest -- they have the same desires, the same fears, the same needs. And the same weaknesses. The passage of the bill we're talking about today without even a whimper from the people should be proof enough of that for you. The fact that Bush got re-elected despite the quite large amount of opposition to the war in Iraq should be proof enough for you. If it's not, then you're blind, and nothing I can say will change that.
Because the real people in charge (those who run large corporations) allow it to happen. Gotta maintain the illusion of democracy, after all.
Read what you're saying -- someone with a different "message" gets elected. Well, remember this: the message doesn't mean shit. All that matters is action. And I think you'll find, as with this bill, that everyone who gets elected acts in a very consistent manner: they do what their corporate masters tell them to do, and to hell with the "message" they used to get elected.
The "elected officials" aren't the people with real power. They're just tools. The people with real power aren't elected.
And if the plethora of bills that have been passed for the benefit of large corporations isn't enough to convince you of that, then I'm afraid you're beyond hope.
So the fuck what? As long as the government has the support of the U.S. military, the people will have to bend over and take it up the ass like good little sheep. All those little peashooters that you people call "guns" can't do shit against real military hardware.
What the hell is the matter with you idiots who think that democracies (or democratic republics) are somehow magically immune from becoming a police state? Are you that stupid and naive? You probably believe in Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy, too, huh?
Just remember that I Told You So when the U.S. government finally, at long last, meets your current definition of totalitarianism (I say "current" because I know that some of you will change your definition over time to keep from "losing", to make it possible to keep believing that the U.S. isn't a totalitarian state).
And then it'll be too late. What, do you really think those in power won't be willing to pull out all of the stops, including the use of nuclear, biological, and chemical devices against U.S. citizens, to remain in power, if the citizenry decides to try and revolt?
No violent revolution in the 20th century against a well-armed government has ever succeeded without a lot of outside military intervention except when the government's military abandoned it (as it did during the Russian Revolution).
But it won't come to that. It won't have to, except maybe once, to demonstrate that they aren't kidding. Otherwise, normal military "police action" will be sufficient. Just like it was and is in Iraq (the people there have no more control over their government than we have over ours, and we're still there despite all of their objections).
The passage of this bill and the war in Iraq illustrate very clearly that the people of this country no longer have any real influence over the government. Nobody in a position of power in government gives a flying fuck about the citizens of this country anymore, and it has never been this obvious. The only thing they care about is their own money and power. The rest of the world can burn for all they care.
I predict that the entire world will become a fascist police state that will last for thousands of years (since there won't be any "outside" that can topple it), and that it'll easily happen within the century. I actually expect it to take no more than 50 years. We're already pretty damned close. There are only a few countries, like Brazil, left to take care of first. The only thing I can think of that might prevent it is global nuclear war.
Well, then, those same corporations will also be happy to relinquish their municipality-granted monopoly on the basic infrastructure (data cables, etc., that are there because the municipality granted exclusive right-of-way, and in many cases actually paid for them) they use to transport data, then, right?
No? Then said corporations should shut the fuck up.
The government believes no such thing. Quite the opposite, actually: the government believes that the largest businesses do have a right to profit. Worse, it believes that they have a right to do so in perpetuity (hence, the ever growing copyright term length). It believes that small business entities must compete, while large ones shouldn't have to.
One need only look at the kinds of legislation that has consistently been passed over the past two decades, and the treatment of very large corporations and those who run them, even when they get caught redhanded at something which brings great harm to a large number of people (e.g., Enron executives).
The government is completely bought and paid for. This shouldn't be a surprise, since one can't get elected without a lot of decent media exposure (see Howard Dean for an example of what happens to your election chances when the media decides it doesn't like you anymore), and the media is owned by a small number of very large corporations, whose owners care only for their own wealth and power. You should be able to work out the further implications of that for yourself. Those who believe that large businesses have a right to profit are precisely the same people who own the government.
Then it's time that people who use inferior products like Internet Explorer suffer the consequences of doing so.
It means you're going to have to show some backbone with your friends and refuse to clean the spyware off their computers if they continue to use Internet Explorer.
People will continue to use whatever is most convenient for them as long as they don't have to deal with the consequences. When you clean spyware off your friends' computers, they are not dealing with the consequences -- you are. That must change before they'll use something else.
If Bitkeeper had been a game, very few here would have complained about the fact that it's not truly free, and one wouldn't expect Linus to be terribly annoyed in the face of Tridge's actions.
But Bitkeeper was used in the role of a mission-critical piece of software. This is not really any different in importance than the kernel you run, or the database engine that stores your critical information, or the office suite you use, or perhaps even the web browser you use.
What makes those pieces of software so important are the consequences to you if they should fail to function properly, or if their use should suddenly be taken from you. They're mission-critical, or (perhaps) infrastructural in nature -- their importance is much higher to their users than that of much of the software that's out there.
And so, the importance of them being truly free is also much higher.
I sometimes wonder what the consequences to the Linux kernel today would be if Linus had taken a few weeks off to write the revision control system he wants and needs, rather than to deploy Bitkeeper. He'd have to stop accepting patches to the Linux kernel for that period of time, of course, but the submitters of the patches in question could certainly sit on them until he was ready, no?
In any case, I agree with RMS that there's a lesson here: if you use proprietary software for mission-critical work, you're essentially giving control over that mission to someone else. Think about that carefully before you choose.
I didn't think that needed to be defined, because in any society, supply and demand exist and will not be denied. What is of value, therefore, is whatever people happen to demand. Nothing in my definition of efficiency ignores that.
Er, well, no, not quite. Close, but you don't define what "best" means here. Efficiency is the ratio of productive output divided by the amount of input needed to create that output (if you really want to be pedantic, it's really that value divided by the theoretical maximum value).
And thus, the most efficient laborer is usually one who is producing while being given a minimum of resources in compensation.
Well, no, this isn't necessarily so. All it does is change the person responsible for the decision (from the person performing the labor to the person supervising the laborer). If what you said were strictly true, then most companies would not employ a top-down authoritarian power structure. Unless you want to argue that companies in general are horribly inefficient compared to ones which don't employ such a power structure...
Well, no. The "employer" that gains from someone else's long-term health is just as likely to be the employer in question, because that employer will constantly be employing people who also benefit from the law in question. So you can't argue that a sane employer will be opposed to minimum wage laws on these grounds.
No, the employer is opposed to minimum wage laws because he doesn't care about the employee's health. He only cares about efficiency: how much he gets out of his employee divided by how much he has to pay.
One thing I forgot to mention about automation and technology: the more automation there is and the more advanced it is, the less in the way of total labor is necessary to accomplish the same task, and thus the fewer the number of people needed for that task.
Now, while the amount of work that can be done is infinite, the amount of work that even the richest people in the country want done is not.
Think about the long term consequences of that combination.
The long term consequences are that the supply of labor available to accomplish the tasks that those in power do want done will increase as technology and automation improve. That means that the price that can be commanded by that labor must inevitably drop due to the increased competition for jobs.
This is why economies that have large middle classes, like that of the U.S., are generally much stronger than those that don't. Only those who have a standard of living significantly above subsistence level can afford to demand more than just the basics. The more such people there are, the more economic activity (exchange of labor) there will be. It's not sufficient to simply want something for the market to be able to supply it, one must have the means to afford it.
Offshoring significantly increases the amount of competition for the same finite number of jobs that the middle class is currently vying for, without benefitting in any real way that same middle class. You know what must happen to the middle class as a result.
And as a result of the shrinking of the middle class, the total demand for work must fall as well.
If this were simply a mat
Oh, some of us have some grasp of basic economics. More than that, we have some grasp of history.
We know that the market rewards "efficiency". "Efficiency" in the case of labor means getting as much out of your employees for as little compensation as possible.
This comes in a number of ways. One is through automation, which acts as a labor multiplier. Another is through competition between potential employees, which lowers the price they're willing to accept to do the job.
The most efficient employee, in terms of work per unit of compensation, is a slave laborer who is being given barely enough to survive. Don't believe me? One need only look at the plantations of the 1800s to see the truth of this. If non-slave labor were truly more efficient than slave labor, then plantations that made use of slave labor would have gone out of business in their attempt to compete with plantations that didn't. Of course, we know that didn't happen -- rather the opposite, in fact.
The "race to the bottom" here isn't just in terms of compensation, though that's part of it. It's also in terms of working conditions and employees' rights. The less an employer has to do to keep his employees working, the greater his profit. And so, employers have incentive to do as little as possible to provide decent working conditions. If an employer can get away with providing squalid working conditions, he will do so. If he can get away with requiring his employees to work 20 hour days, he will do so. Employers will get as close as they can to employing slave labor. History has shown this repeatedly, and you're a fool to believe otherwise.
Finally, if you really understand economics, you'll understand that at its core, it's about the exchange of labor. One person's labor for another. Because of this, after technological improvements and increased efficiencies due to specialization and organizational improvements, economics is a zero-sum game, when one is considering a closed economy (as the world economy obviously is). An employer cannot simply drop the salaries of his employees to nothing without eventually incurring a corresponding drop in sales, because his employees use the money they make to purchase goods and services, and eventually that money makes its way back to the employer. When it doesn't, the employer goes out of business.
In an economy that is reasonably regulated, i.e. one to which reasonable labor laws apply, it's entirely reasonable to expect the standard of living of most participants to improve over time as a result of technological improvement (which, as I said, is a labor multiplier). But in a completely unregulated economy, that's not what will happen.
In a completely unregulated economy, employers are free to collude with each other in order to maintain a much higher standard of living at the expense of their employees. Since the amount of labor is fixed (there are only so many people available to work at any one time, after all, and there are only 24 hours in a day), when one person has a very high standard of living, someone else must have a correspondingly low standard of living, relatively speaking. And while automation and other market efficiencies may reduce the cost of survival, it doesn't change the necessities of life. As long as someone is receiving the necessities of life, he can produce. And as automation reduces the cost of those necessities, it improves that person's efficiency (same work for less cost == greater efficiency). Thus, in a completely unregulated economy, the standard of living of employers will improve over time through automation, while the standard of living of the employees will not.
That is precisel