What is "something better"?
Parliamentary elections have their own baggage (witness the power of the Communist (-Marxist) party in India as of today). There is no perfect
system of voting... just less flawed ones.
Arrow's
impossibility theorem
2-party blows, but would you like a Superpower that was REALLY gridlocked by a parliamentary system with no ruling coalition? The President
as Commander-in-Chief is sometimes dictatorial (never more so than today), but its really not all that bad since we can (and I hope will) get rid of him after 4 years.
I was in Japan in 2001 and stopped in at an off hour (mid-afternoon) to a nice fugu restaurant. Even though it was against their policy, they let us order just a platter of fugu and some beer (normally they required a full meal... I don't know what they liked about us (American tourists are not particularly rare)). Anyway, the point is that there is nothing special about the taste of fugu... pure taste-wise, tuna, salmon, mackerel... just about anything is more interesting. The value lies in saying you did it.
That said, I still enjoy saying I did it and have no regrets at all.
The GPL says (in a tiny over-simplified, sure to get me in trouble with RMS nutshell): Take this, use it, have fun. If you make it better, let us
know how. Or we'll take you to court.
The general slashdot take on this (and I'm in agreement) is that its a morally and legally responsible request to make.
Apple is saying: You can only use this music you bought in ways we approve of. You don't own it, you're just renting (licensing agreement). Yes,
people agree to the license before hand, but slashdotters feel that fair use... such as the ability to listen to iTMS music under Linux or on a non-iPod MP3 player... is such a fundamental right that it can't be abridged even by a mutually agreed upon contract. An analogy would be if you and I, without any duress, entered into a contract wherein you agreed to never vote again if I give you $1. Voting is such a fundamental right that the contract is invalid, even though we both agreed on it.
Now, people can argue that the GPL is not a valid (legally... maybe morally although I'm not sure how) contract or that the iTMS license trumps fair use, and thats fine. But, the argument that the average slashbot's view on contracts is "gimme free stuff" is just RIAA-level "you're a pirate" FUD. Its just that we think one type of contract is fine and the other interferes with more basic rights.
And thats not even touching on the DMCA and whether code in and of itself can be a crime.
Yeah, you're right, compared to the income for the at-the-pump tax, the SPR costs very little... How Stuff Works puts the cost at $21M for maintanance and $157M for buying oil (link) in what I think was 2000 or 2001. As for selling the oil high, it looks like they loan it to oil companies when things get tight and then ask for it back in the next couple of years... so I'm not sure how much of a profit that makes... but, its not unreasonable to think the SPR could be self-sufficient.
My point was more that the SPR isn't a very well targeted response to the problem, since it affects oil users and non-users equally.
The Pure Food and Drug Act, while seemingly innocuous in its time, paved the way for the current prohibition against certain drugs in the US (and most of the world) and led to all of the excesses and perversions of the government's "War on Drugs". How could this proposal (well-meaning and topical as it seems today) come back and bite us in the future?
Perhaps deeply immersive and psychologically convincing virtual reality of the future will be deemed to be software with the potential to cause harm and no redeeming properties. Then the government would be well within its "rights" to prohibit the software's use and impose draconian penalties for possession or distribution (especially if you have the source code).
People in 1906 let the government have say over what they put in their bodies because of fear of contamination (and outright fraud), are we going to let the government have say over what we put on our computers because of fear of ad- and spy-ware?
Reasons gas should have a 26% (or higher) tax on it:
The right reason: Internalize the "externalities" of gasoline use such as pollution, foreign aid, and military expenditures (unfortunately, in practice, this money doesn't actually go to offset these problems).
Another (largely European) reason: Shield the consumer from oil shocks such as OPEC-generated shortages. If the pre-tax price of a gallon of oil goes from $1 to $1.50 and you see that at the pump, the economy is going to take a major blow. With the taxes, the observed price goes from $4 to $4.50... still not fun, but the economy is build to integrate this kind of shock much more easily. Ideally, the government could even decrease the taxes until the shortage was over and keep the price at the original ($4) level (but that would never happen). This takes the power over western economies out of the hands of foreign, oil-producing nations. The US has tools such as the strategic petroleum reserve that fulfill a similar function (but with non-oil consuming tax-payers subsidizing the security of oil-users, since the funds to buy the SPR come from the general fund rather than oil taxes).
This is a staggering over-simplification of the international oil economy. I just spent a semmester studying the economies of the middle east and north africa, and that was just a broad overview. This is a complicated problem.
While the United States and other countries that don't produce enough oil to run their economies would obviously like the price to be as low as possilbe (and I agree that internalizing the enviornmental, military, and foriegn aid costs of oil would greatly drive up its price), the idea that the price of oil is where it is because the US forces it to be so is just plain bad economics.
The Sauids (and not just Bush's buddies the House of Saud, but whatever theoretical government might be in place there) have a lot more oil than anyone else and a much larger time frame for extraction. So, they fight with the rest of OPEC to keep the price in an acceptable range (lower than other members would want) and use their massive capacity to flood the market when others get out of line. This is precisely so that oil doesn't get so expensive that people start looking elsewhere. Furthermore, this type of behavior is inherant is the nature of oil (rentier) economies, not a result of anyone's policies.
Now, I am far from an expert in these matters, but those who express admiration for "natural market processes" shouldn't also demonstrate such complete ignorance of how those processes work.
I didn't see any reference to this in the first article (and as a good slashdotter, I haven't looked at the second, Microsoft one yet), but clearly to "zip through" 1000s of pictures, you need to store tons of meta-data for each one. GPS-like location for outdoors, trianglation based on 802.11 access points for indoors???, maybe you could enable yours to transfer a digital business card to other people's sense-cam at the push of a button, so another part of the meta-data would be who you were talking to.
Upload not only pictures but also meta-data to your PC at night and have software that generates a log of what you did that day. The privacy issues are a little scary, but (like video cameras today) you could just disallow them in buildings/situations you don't want to be photographed. Technology is just a tool... its how you use it... blah blah blah...
Slashdot Mirror
What is "something better"?
Parliamentary elections have their own baggage (witness the power of the Communist (-Marxist) party in India as of today). There is no perfect system of voting... just less flawed ones. Arrow's impossibility theorem
2-party blows, but would you like a Superpower that was REALLY gridlocked by a parliamentary system with no ruling coalition? The President as Commander-in-Chief is sometimes dictatorial (never more so than today), but its really not all that bad since we can (and I hope will) get rid of him after 4 years.
I was in Japan in 2001 and stopped in at an off hour (mid-afternoon) to a nice fugu restaurant. Even though it was against their policy, they let us order just a platter of fugu and some beer (normally they required a full meal... I don't know what they liked about us (American tourists are not particularly rare)). Anyway, the point is that there is nothing special about the taste of fugu... pure taste-wise, tuna, salmon, mackerel... just about anything is more interesting. The value lies in saying you did it.
That said, I still enjoy saying I did it and have no regrets at all.
The GPL says (in a tiny over-simplified, sure to get me in trouble with RMS nutshell): Take this, use it, have fun. If you make it better, let us know how. Or we'll take you to court.
The general slashdot take on this (and I'm in agreement) is that its a morally and legally responsible request to make.
Apple is saying: You can only use this music you bought in ways we approve of. You don't own it, you're just renting (licensing agreement). Yes, people agree to the license before hand, but slashdotters feel that fair use... such as the ability to listen to iTMS music under Linux or on a non-iPod MP3 player... is such a fundamental right that it can't be abridged even by a mutually agreed upon contract. An analogy would be if you and I, without any duress, entered into a contract wherein you agreed to never vote again if I give you $1. Voting is such a fundamental right that the contract is invalid, even though we both agreed on it.
Now, people can argue that the GPL is not a valid (legally... maybe morally although I'm not sure how) contract or that the iTMS license trumps fair use, and thats fine. But, the argument that the average slashbot's view on contracts is "gimme free stuff" is just RIAA-level "you're a pirate" FUD. Its just that we think one type of contract is fine and the other interferes with more basic rights.
And thats not even touching on the DMCA and whether code in and of itself can be a crime.
Yeah, you're right, compared to the income for the at-the-pump tax, the SPR costs very little... How Stuff Works puts the cost at $21M for maintanance and $157M for buying oil (link) in what I think was 2000 or 2001. As for selling the oil high, it looks like they loan it to oil companies when things get tight and then ask for it back in the next couple of years... so I'm not sure how much of a profit that makes... but, its not unreasonable to think the SPR could be self-sufficient.
My point was more that the SPR isn't a very well targeted response to the problem, since it affects oil users and non-users equally.
The Pure Food and Drug Act, while seemingly innocuous in its time, paved the way for the current prohibition against certain drugs in the US (and most of the world) and led to all of the excesses and perversions of the government's "War on Drugs". How could this proposal (well-meaning and topical as it seems today) come back and bite us in the future?
Perhaps deeply immersive and psychologically convincing virtual reality of the future will be deemed to be software with the potential to cause harm and no redeeming properties. Then the government would be well within its "rights" to prohibit the software's use and impose draconian penalties for possession or distribution (especially if you have the source code).
People in 1906 let the government have say over what they put in their bodies because of fear of contamination (and outright fraud), are we going to let the government have say over what we put on our computers because of fear of ad- and spy-ware?
Reasons gas should have a 26% (or higher) tax on it:
The right reason: Internalize the "externalities" of gasoline use such as pollution, foreign aid, and military expenditures (unfortunately, in practice, this money doesn't actually go to offset these problems).
Another (largely European) reason: Shield the consumer from oil shocks such as OPEC-generated shortages. If the pre-tax price of a gallon of oil goes from $1 to $1.50 and you see that at the pump, the economy is going to take a major blow. With the taxes, the observed price goes from $4 to $4.50... still not fun, but the economy is build to integrate this kind of shock much more easily. Ideally, the government could even decrease the taxes until the shortage was over and keep the price at the original ($4) level (but that would never happen). This takes the power over western economies out of the hands of foreign, oil-producing nations. The US has tools such as the strategic petroleum reserve that fulfill a similar function (but with non-oil consuming tax-payers subsidizing the security of oil-users, since the funds to buy the SPR come from the general fund rather than oil taxes).
This is a staggering over-simplification of the international oil economy. I just spent a semmester studying the economies of the middle east and north africa, and that was just a broad overview. This is a complicated problem.
While the United States and other countries that don't produce enough oil to run their economies would obviously like the price to be as low as possilbe (and I agree that internalizing the enviornmental, military, and foriegn aid costs of oil would greatly drive up its price), the idea that the price of oil is where it is because the US forces it to be so is just plain bad economics.
The Sauids (and not just Bush's buddies the House of Saud, but whatever theoretical government might be in place there) have a lot more oil than anyone else and a much larger time frame for extraction. So, they fight with the rest of OPEC to keep the price in an acceptable range (lower than other members would want) and use their massive capacity to flood the market when others get out of line. This is precisely so that oil doesn't get so expensive that people start looking elsewhere. Furthermore, this type of behavior is inherant is the nature of oil (rentier) economies, not a result of anyone's policies.
Now, I am far from an expert in these matters, but those who express admiration for "natural market processes" shouldn't also demonstrate such complete ignorance of how those processes work.
I didn't see any reference to this in the first article (and as a good slashdotter, I haven't looked at the second, Microsoft one yet), but clearly to "zip through" 1000s of pictures, you need to store tons of meta-data for each one. GPS-like location for outdoors, trianglation based on 802.11 access points for indoors???, maybe you could enable yours to transfer a digital business card to other people's sense-cam at the push of a button, so another part of the meta-data would be who you were talking to.
Upload not only pictures but also meta-data to your PC at night and have software that generates a log of what you did that day. The privacy issues are a little scary, but (like video cameras today) you could just disallow them in buildings/situations you don't want to be photographed. Technology is just a tool... its how you use it... blah blah blah...