The FCC has never been anything but a drag on freedom, economic prosperity and technical innovation.
Without the FCC, companies would have created new technologies earlier to deal with the technical problems of a free-for-all airspace. There would have been less interference in corporate affairs (providing greater economic prosperity), and far greater freedom (no decency laws limiting speech).
Look around at other government agencies (other than the core responsibilities in millitary, judicial and police functions), and you'll see much the same story.
This is why "Free" software can be free of charge: there usually is a prototype to work from, in the form of original ("proprietary") software.
There might be some exceptions, but they are few and far between, if they exist at all (I can't think of any right now).
People might have bad connotations associated with what I'm saying, but that doesn't change the fact that it's true.
Another point to walk away with is that the economics of software really isn't that different from the economics of manufactured goods - it's really one of degree, rather than kind, as many people have suggested over the years. (The next century will see the cost of manufacturing physical goods continue to drop to near zero, just like the software industry has done.)
There are other conclusions that naturally follow given these facts, but their expression has to be left to others (I don't have karma to burn).
The conch shell design is an innovative way to display extremely bad taste. There's nothing subjective about it being ugly - it's easy to see why the bad design hampers its functionality (and increases its price) while offering nothing but useless bulk in return.
The 8-series cases are wonderful, though.
I really like some of their stuff (I have a PC60 myself).
Ah yes, a new Windows is on the horizon. Vista! Longhorn! All of 18 months away and short on features
You should learn about.NET 2.0, Avalon and XAML. Windows Vista is a big deal: Avalon has much better compositing than Quartz. XAML is an incredibly beautiful thing that lets you completely separate UI design from implementation (and it completely blows away the interface builder derived stuff that was so innovative a decade and a half ago)..NET 2.0 and ClickOnce let you deploy.NET applications with the same ease as creating web apps.
That doesn't count loads of other features, like the explorer, IE 7, a ton of security features, better search, better web services through Indigo (try doing web services with PHP now - I've done it, and it's such a pain that it's not really worth it. Microsoft nailed web services in 2002, and the new stuff is even better!).
Apple is doing the slapdash hacks, and Microsoft leads the way in beautifully architected software.
emulate: 1. strive to equal or match, especially by imitating;
Linux and the BSDs emulate Unix. Sometimes even in a binary sense (iBCS).
Unix was designed for and by programmers. Which means that Linux and the BSDs won't be designed for users unless and until the design philosophy changes drastically.
Apple's OS X does this: * it does not use X-Windows (need I say more?) * it has what appears to the user as a single, unified set of user interface elements * its applications generally have fewer (if any) dependencies than real Unix/Linux/*BSD applications do * Apple hid directories like/usr and/bin, and then provided properly named replacements!
Even configuration files on Unix/Linux/*BSD are screwed, with separate, proprietary (to each individual program) formats (Apple fixed this to a certain extent in OS X).
Obviously, things won't get better in this respect. The philosophical change required is way too high; it's nearly one of those "boil the ocean" problems.
Linux users are switching to OS X (and sometimes to Windows), because they realize that rolling your own PC and OS (or being able to) is just a giant waste of time.
If you're like me, and you don't want any Unix crap, use Windows.
Most users with DSL or cable service have firewalls. People that still use dial-up connections can have problems, but this is becoming less important every day.
SP2 has a firewall that's on by default. Everyone that buys Windows XP today gets SP2 in the box. Every new PC that comes with Windows XP has SP2.
The BSDs (and to a slightly lesser extent, Linux) doesn't compare well against Windows, because the designs they emulate were never desktop operating systems.
The "war on terror" did not vanquish our enemy because we didn't fight it hard enough.
A nuclear detonation in Mecca, coupled with a full WWII-style invasion of the entire middle east would have worked. The momentum to do this was present after 9/11, but Bush squandered it.
You can't have a "limited" war, where you bomb and kill selectively, and parachute food to your enemy in the same day!
If we had fought WWII the same way, the Nazis might still be in power today.
Piracy is immoral, just as breach of contract and theft of phyiscal property constitute immoral acts.
Slashdot isn't nearly the only place. I'm advocating action on all sites.
What's moral is always smart in the long-term. For example, our country could have prevented Islamic terrorism by stopping the nationalization of American and British-owned oil fields in the 1950s.
War is sometimes necessary. Intellectual property is so important that it's worth fighting for. (But I don't think it'll come to that - other countries would much rather fix our laws that fight us. All we need to do is make them flinch.)
Sure, if someone wants to change formats on their own machine, that won't be really policed in many instances. But telling potentially everyone else how to do it (via a blog, for example) is easy to catch, and can only harm people.
It's true that copy protection can always be circumvented, given enough time, equipment, and skilled people willing to crack a given system.
These criteria are not met frequently - there aren't a lot of crackers out there. Crackers can't cause a lot of damage if they aren't allowed to spread their cracks.
So we have laws like the DMCA that help curtail this kind of abuse. Because of the DMCA, they won't try to regulate or outlaw debuggers, compilers, ICEs and soldering irons (it would also be immoral to try to regulate these things).
The only loophole is foreign governments that don't support intellectual property rights and don't have a DMCA-like law enacted. The solution for this is economic sanctions and physical disconnection from the rest of the internet (cut their cable lines, jam/destroy their satellites).
Posts that promote piracy are both immoral and illegal. The government won't ignore Slashdot forever, and you'll eventually have to play by the same rules as everyone else.
Imagine you bought a Honda last week. Now road conditions have changed to where the its completely unsafe to travel the roads without a special Add-on.... (snip)... This is exactly what anyone who just bought a system with Windows XP today has to go through. Is that ethical
If a car crashes, you can die.
If your computer crashes, you will be annoyed for minute or two while it reboots.
Like any other stolen good, pirated software ultimately has negative value to the theif. Subsequent actions related to theft detract from the overall wealth and health of the perpetrator.
People who were duped by a dishonest reseller aren't theives. Microsoft is right in treating them nicely.
... Oh wait, thats right the more money you make, the less you get taxed : )
This is absolutely false. Well-to-do people almost always pay higher dollar amounts in taxes than other people do. (They also pay a higher percentage of their income in taxes, which is highly unfair, but this is partially offset through accountants/money managers.)
If what you say is true, I'm sure Bill Gates would love to have you pay his tax bill.
I object to the notion that a dollar (to a rich man) is somehow not as valuable as another dollar is to a poor man.
This might seem appealing at first, but can only lead to problems down the road (5-15 years from now) if it becomes popular.
It might seem like the government will give you a good deal on broadband right now, but that won't always be true. They have a weak or non-existent financial (and thus organizational) incentive to upgrade their network or invest in it the way a corporation would. But they have advantages (they don't have to pay taxes, and have free channels by which to market) that can be used to sour the market for companies which fuel innovation in the long-term.
This kind of interference also fuels urban sprawl, because it helps to mask the true cost of living in rural or low-density areas.
Absolutely not. Child abuse is a serious criminal matter that should be handled by the police (which is a proper government function).
The government of the people and by the people should have the people's interests at heart.
The problem with this is that your interests are not necessarily mine. The only moral way to deal with this is to speak in terms of negative rights (which tell us exactly how we will not interfere with each other).
If you haven't already, read John McCarthy's (best known as the creator of Lisp) Sustainability of Human Progress pages. He writes about a large number of environmental topics, and comes to what I consider very solid conclusions.
The proper role of government is to preserve the constitutionally-limited negative (which do not require the enslavement of others) rights of citizens.
The government has no business encouraging or discouraging any legal activity. Such "encouragment" necessarily violates the rights of someone.
If we were to switch to nuclear power, and had a Chernobyl-size accident EVERY YEAR, fewer people would die in the production of energy than the number of people that currently die producing the same quantity of energy (in coal mining accidents).
But, judging from the history of nuclear power over the last 50 years, another Chernobyl is not going to happen, at least not in first-world countries.
First, Americans are not wasteful (to see what true waste is, read some stories about the Saudi royal family, or the Soviet Union).
Using less energy would require a lower standard of living, causing the kind of misery that exists in the non-Western world. Since the American lifestyle can be sustained for millions of years with current nuclear technology, why put people through all of the misery and shortened lifespans that environmentalism demands?
Automobiles and packaging save millions of lives yearly. For example: without automobiles (ambulances), some people wouldn't be able to get to hospitals in a timely manner, and would die needlessly. Or: without packaging, many medical products would cause death through contamination, or non-availability.
If people were less wealthy, the economy would be able to support a proportionally lower number of researchers, doctors, and nurses, which would cause more people to die than would otherwise.
More wealth even translates into people living healthier lifestyles. As an example, witness the growth of the fast-casual resturant segment. Resturants like Noodles and Company, Panera Bread, and Qdoba sell healthier, and slightly more expensive food than McDonald's does (which just recently had its first-ever quarterly loss). If you made Americans just a few hundred dollars poorer across the board on an annual basis, more people would eat less healthy food, get fatter, and die earlier.
Environmentalism necessarily degrades the values listed above. (I have to go back to work now, or I'd keep ranting.)
Have you priced Office 2003 lately? Absolutely REDICULOUS pricing model MS has.
You sound ridiculous to me. Office has a very good pricing model (extremely low cost with a new machine, cheap for education/developers). Prices are higher where they can be charged (boxed version on the shelf), which is exactly the way it should be.
Slashdot Mirror
The FCC has never been anything but a drag on freedom, economic prosperity and technical innovation.
Without the FCC, companies would have created new technologies earlier to deal with the technical problems of a free-for-all airspace. There would have been less interference in corporate affairs (providing greater economic prosperity), and far greater freedom (no decency laws limiting speech).
Look around at other government agencies (other than the core responsibilities in millitary, judicial and police functions), and you'll see much the same story.
There might be some exceptions, but they are few and far between, if they exist at all (I can't think of any right now).
People might have bad connotations associated with what I'm saying, but that doesn't change the fact that it's true.
Another point to walk away with is that the economics of software really isn't that different from the economics of manufactured goods - it's really one of degree, rather than kind, as many people have suggested over the years. (The next century will see the cost of manufacturing physical goods continue to drop to near zero, just like the software industry has done.)
There are other conclusions that naturally follow given these facts, but their expression has to be left to others (I don't have karma to burn).
More attention should be paid toward colonizing Venus instead.
The conch shell design is an innovative way to display extremely bad taste. There's nothing subjective about it being ugly - it's easy to see why the bad design hampers its functionality (and increases its price) while offering nothing but useless bulk in return.
The 8-series cases are wonderful, though.
I really like some of their stuff (I have a PC60 myself).
Anything that uses X-Windows will not get widespread user adoption.
DesktopBSD looks good for a BSD, but it's still at least seven years behind the market.
You should learn about .NET 2.0, Avalon and XAML. Windows Vista is a big deal: Avalon has much better compositing than Quartz. XAML is an incredibly beautiful thing that lets you completely separate UI design from implementation (and it completely blows away the interface builder derived stuff that was so innovative a decade and a half ago). .NET 2.0 and ClickOnce let you deploy .NET applications with the same ease as creating web apps.
That doesn't count loads of other features, like the explorer, IE 7, a ton of security features, better search, better web services through Indigo (try doing web services with PHP now - I've done it, and it's such a pain that it's not really worth it. Microsoft nailed web services in 2002, and the new stuff is even better!).
Apple is doing the slapdash hacks, and Microsoft leads the way in beautifully architected software.
emulate: 1. strive to equal or match, especially by imitating;
/usr and /bin, and then provided properly named replacements!
Linux and the BSDs emulate Unix. Sometimes even in a binary sense (iBCS).
Unix was designed for and by programmers. Which means that Linux and the BSDs won't be designed for users unless and until the design philosophy changes drastically.
Apple's OS X does this:
* it does not use X-Windows (need I say more?)
* it has what appears to the user as a single, unified set of user interface elements
* its applications generally have fewer (if any) dependencies than real Unix/Linux/*BSD applications do
* Apple hid directories like
Even configuration files on Unix/Linux/*BSD are screwed, with separate, proprietary (to each individual program) formats (Apple fixed this to a certain extent in OS X).
Obviously, things won't get better in this respect. The philosophical change required is way too high; it's nearly one of those "boil the ocean" problems.
Linux users are switching to OS X (and sometimes to Windows), because they realize that rolling your own PC and OS (or being able to) is just a giant waste of time.
If you're like me, and you don't want any Unix crap, use Windows.
No.
Most users with DSL or cable service have firewalls. People that still use dial-up connections can have problems, but this is becoming less important every day.
SP2 has a firewall that's on by default. Everyone that buys Windows XP today gets SP2 in the box. Every new PC that comes with Windows XP has SP2.
The BSDs (and to a slightly lesser extent, Linux) doesn't compare well against Windows, because the designs they emulate were never desktop operating systems.
A nuclear detonation in Mecca, coupled with a full WWII-style invasion of the entire middle east would have worked. The momentum to do this was present after 9/11, but Bush squandered it.
You can't have a "limited" war, where you bomb and kill selectively, and parachute food to your enemy in the same day!
If we had fought WWII the same way, the Nazis might still be in power today.
Slashdot isn't nearly the only place. I'm advocating action on all sites.
What's moral is always smart in the long-term. For example, our country could have prevented Islamic terrorism by stopping the nationalization of American and British-owned oil fields in the 1950s.
War is sometimes necessary. Intellectual property is so important that it's worth fighting for. (But I don't think it'll come to that - other countries would much rather fix our laws that fight us. All we need to do is make them flinch.)
Sure, if someone wants to change formats on their own machine, that won't be really policed in many instances. But telling potentially everyone else how to do it (via a blog, for example) is easy to catch, and can only harm people.
It's just a matter of time before the enforcement comes along to fix the situation.
These criteria are not met frequently - there aren't a lot of crackers out there. Crackers can't cause a lot of damage if they aren't allowed to spread their cracks.
So we have laws like the DMCA that help curtail this kind of abuse. Because of the DMCA, they won't try to regulate or outlaw debuggers, compilers, ICEs and soldering irons (it would also be immoral to try to regulate these things).
The only loophole is foreign governments that don't support intellectual property rights and don't have a DMCA-like law enacted. The solution for this is economic sanctions and physical disconnection from the rest of the internet (cut their cable lines, jam/destroy their satellites).
Posts that promote piracy are both immoral and illegal. The government won't ignore Slashdot forever, and you'll eventually have to play by the same rules as everyone else.
Get your facts straight before you post.
Not true at all. FairTax proposes a monthly rebate to low-income people. Read the FAQ:
http://www.fairtaxvolunteer.org/smart/faq-main.htm l#3
It will benefit everyone (except slimy DC lobbyists)...
http://www.fairtax.org/
http://www.fairtaxvolunteer.org/smart/faq.html
If a car crashes, you can die.
If your computer crashes, you will be annoyed for minute or two while it reboots.
Grow up.
People who were duped by a dishonest reseller aren't theives. Microsoft is right in treating them nicely.
It's obstacles! ... idiot.
This is absolutely false. Well-to-do people almost always pay higher dollar amounts in taxes than other people do. (They also pay a higher percentage of their income in taxes, which is highly unfair, but this is partially offset through accountants/money managers.)
If what you say is true, I'm sure Bill Gates would love to have you pay his tax bill.
I object to the notion that a dollar (to a rich man) is somehow not as valuable as another dollar is to a poor man.
It might seem like the government will give you a good deal on broadband right now, but that won't always be true. They have a weak or non-existent financial (and thus organizational) incentive to upgrade their network or invest in it the way a corporation would. But they have advantages (they don't have to pay taxes, and have free channels by which to market) that can be used to sour the market for companies which fuel innovation in the long-term.
This kind of interference also fuels urban sprawl, because it helps to mask the true cost of living in rural or low-density areas.
Of course, you'd be free to beat your kid
Absolutely not. Child abuse is a serious criminal matter that should be handled by the police (which is a proper government function).
The government of the people and by the people should have the people's interests at heart.
The problem with this is that your interests are not necessarily mine. The only moral way to deal with this is to speak in terms of negative rights (which tell us exactly how we will not interfere with each other).
If you haven't already, read John McCarthy's (best known as the creator of Lisp) Sustainability of Human Progress pages. He writes about a large number of environmental topics, and comes to what I consider very solid conclusions.
The proper role of government is to preserve the constitutionally-limited negative (which do not require the enslavement of others) rights of citizens.
The government has no business encouraging or discouraging any legal activity. Such "encouragment" necessarily violates the rights of someone.
But, judging from the history of nuclear power over the last 50 years, another Chernobyl is not going to happen, at least not in first-world countries.
Period.
Using less energy would require a lower standard of living, causing the kind of misery that exists in the non-Western world. Since the American lifestyle can be sustained for millions of years with current nuclear technology, why put people through all of the misery and shortened lifespans that environmentalism demands?
Automobiles and packaging save millions of lives yearly. For example: without automobiles (ambulances), some people wouldn't be able to get to hospitals in a timely manner, and would die needlessly. Or: without packaging, many medical products would cause death through contamination, or non-availability.
If people were less wealthy, the economy would be able to support a proportionally lower number of researchers, doctors, and nurses, which would cause more people to die than would otherwise.
More wealth even translates into people living healthier lifestyles. As an example, witness the growth of the fast-casual resturant segment. Resturants like Noodles and Company, Panera Bread, and Qdoba sell healthier, and slightly more expensive food than McDonald's does (which just recently had its first-ever quarterly loss). If you made Americans just a few hundred dollars poorer across the board on an annual basis, more people would eat less healthy food, get fatter, and die earlier.
Environmentalism necessarily degrades the values listed above. (I have to go back to work now, or I'd keep ranting.)
You sound ridiculous to me. Office has a very good pricing model (extremely low cost with a new machine, cheap for education/developers). Prices are higher where they can be charged (boxed version on the shelf), which is exactly the way it should be.