At least it wouldn't give people the feeling that the USA likes to stick their nose in all matters and have control of everything under the sun...
We seem to agree, here on Slashdot, that the relative "anarchy" inherent to the way the internet works is a good thing, and that government control over it should be kept to a minimum. Why, then, do some people insist that the American government keep control over something as important to the internet as the ICANN? It would be the same as giving them the power to regulate which protocols and data formats you are allowed to use over the internet (currently, apart from the fact that you must encapsulate your packets into IP, they can contain pretty much anything you'd like). That kind of control would go against the spirit of the internet. In my opinion, control of the ICANN by a government (be it the American one or any other) is no different.
Right, because we all know the American government has never favoured corporations in detriment of the will of the people...
I for one don't think it would be that bad. Any organisation is subject to the kind of political/economical pressures you refer to. The fact that the ICANN is autonomous, controlled by the US government, controlled by the UN or controlled by anyone else will not change that. It just determines who is the most capable of exerting that pressure.
In fact you could argue that an ICANN under American control will simply have a tendency to favour American companies. Aren't many, if not all of the top-level registrars (excluding national TLDs) American? That certainly says something about the way the ICANN is currently run.
You don't own the internet! Some of the core protocols of the internet were invented in America. Others weren't! E.g. the World Wide Web was invented by an english man. Can you picture the internet without the world wide web? Should Tim Berners-Lee and the British government have control over every website in existence? Does that look right to you, in the same way you think everything that runs on IP, TCP, DNS, etc. is "owned" by the USA?
Meanwhile, the fact that you invented some protocols doesn't grant you rights over a huge physical network built thanks to the effort (and investments!) of many people, companies and governments, only a fraction of which sit in the USA. Show me proof that you manufactured and installed every modem, network card, router, switch, underwater cable, ethernet cable, etc. in the whole wide world, and that the operators of every single network connected to the internet are American, and only then will I agree the internet is yours.
Otherwise, just shut up already, because what you're doing is just spreading false information. Repeat after me: the only part of the internet that is American is the one lying in American soil. Nothing else is technically, legally nor ethically yours.
Okay, I'm glad to know you were only joking. It is really difficult to tell when so many people around here have such an arrogant attitude when it comes to the deeds of their countrymen. You are right in that grants are essential for the development of science to function, and those who grant them should be praised. I won't question that. My point was that the way the article was worded was american-centric (considering that the issue is not strictly a domestic problem) and, as others have noted in this thread, that does not bode well with the foreign relations department. For example, I don't think this news would ever be presented with such nationalistic emphasis by the media in my own country, were the advancement to be made here. Maybe it's just a cultural problem...
It might be sarcasm (and you saying it doesn't automatically make it so), but that doesn't do away with the fact that the attitude I was referring to is common.
So if e.g. European researchers found a cure for AIDS and didn't share that knowledge with the USA because they had done it under a European grant, would you be happy to still be infected until you found the cure on your own?
I'm going to be modded down by this, but it really takes a bigot to react the way you did. Your attitude is exactly the kind of thing the original poster was condemning (or maybe you're just a troll trying to get some entertainment).
Well, I really can't see how that would have any advantage compared to having just a single copy of each library. What do you gain by having each installed program duplicate that information? The "compatibilities" you talk of should be dealt with library versioning (and I believe Unix gets this better than Windows does...), allowing for multiple versions if installed programs so require.
Back in the day when sharing a DLL was needed to save HD space it was a good idea...is it now. Should we require all the apps to include their libraries?
It's not simply a matter of HD space. One very important advantage of shared libraries is that you can upgrade them (for example, if a critical security bug is found) by overwriting a single file. Imagine having to reinstall 50 programs on your system just to get all the copies of the library updated. And that's assuming the developers were kind enough to release a patched version quickly...
Nah, there's just too much goodness in shared libraries to throw them away.
The point grandparent was getting at is that scientists never "decide something is right," but rather say "this theory matches data to within a tolerance of ± whatever%." And, in context, not only is grandparent correct to point this out, but what he's saying is very important to keep in mind. It's a pity he's not a better writer.
Okay. I agree with what you say and apologise if my post sounded otherwise. But the impression I got from the original poster was that he somehow expected science to give definitive, not-to-be-ever-changed answers -- something that is far too common nowadays when laymen point the finger at scientists.
If there was evidence that there was some kind of purpose to the Universe, then it would fall into the realm of science.
Yes, you're quite right. Obviously, my naïve use of the words "how" and "why" opens up a lot of interpretations -- I was hoping for an intuitive one in the spirit of the GP poster. I do agree intuition often fails in this situation, and only exposure to the inner workings of science can help one grasp the difference between the two "kinds of question".
I would further add that, in respect to the purpose of our Universe, I'm a big fan of the anthropic principle, at least for its wit value.;)
Things work as if Einstein was right, but there is no evidence that he was right.
To me this just seems like a play on words. Observation is the only way in which we can test the validity of a model. If the model fits experimental data consistently and throughout a large number of experiments, we can only conclude it is right -- at least until someone makes an experiment whose results disprove it, but that's part of the nature of a scientific theory.
Here's an example: If you pass a current through a wire it generates a magnetic field. If that field crosses another wire it generates a current in that wire. It's exactly as if the magnetic field moved from one wire across the other.
I don't understand the last sentence, perhaps you could put it in other words.
The flaw is that if you wrap both wires through an iron donut all the field is inside the iron - absolutely NO field is detected anywhere around either wire.
I believe you're wrong, unless I haven't understood what you're trying to do with the iron and the wires.
One could argue that the objective of science is to provide models that accurately describe our Universe and allow us to make predictions about its evolution. That's finding out "how". The question of "why" is of a different nature -- it can't be answered using the tools of science -- and falls into the problem domains of philosophy and theology. So don't really expect science to answer all possible questions, but keep in mind it does answer quite a few of them as it stands.:)
Isn't Einstein's relativity just a much smaller magnitude extra term on Newton's mechanics? Negligible at human scales.
That's a rather vague way to put it. Relativistic effects on a body moving at 1 m/s are negligible to the point that Newtonian mechanics can be considered 100% correct for all practical purposes. Take another body moving at a speed close to the speed of light (we deal with those every day in modern Physics) and it's a very different story -- I can assure you the effects are very much not negligible.
Actually, this is more like car manufacturers forcing you to buy their replacement parts (at the price they set) whenever something in your car breaks down, and locking out competitors from repairing or tuning your vehicle. And yes, this happens. See this for an example.
This is about MS allowing alternatives, not about MS being blocked from providing their own. Don't be fooled by the spin.
I think the main difference between our points of view is simply that you have more trust in the capitalist system than I do (essentially going back to my first post in this thread). Me, I might be a tad paranoid about it but I simply refuse to believe that someone whose only incentive is profit will ever contribute to an (ethically, socially) improved society any more than just marginally. The "private sector" alternatives you propose for healthcare, education, etc all make sense in the light of an optimistic view of capitalism, but that is one I do not have. I really think capitalism in its present form creates an effective barrier between those who produce/are rich and those who consume/are poor, with very little permeability between the two groups, and the former tends to control the latter in a very effective, albeit dissimulated manner.
(However, we are totally in agreement in that one of the requirements for a better society is to have less passive people who take their personal and social responsilities more seriously.)
Another reason why your "C" solutions fail (and you have to admit it, your arguments are quite slanted towards saying that G's are all bad and C's are all good... reality is different for both) is that sometimes it really is impossible for the consumers to create an alternative (that is a requirement when nobody in the "producers" group steps up to offer one). I'll give you an example: oil. I doubt most people have oil in their backyard, and even if they had, the startup costs are incredibly huge. Even if you secured a third-party investment, I still doubt you could make it both profitable and cheaper than the already existing choices, and admitting you succeeded in this respect, the oil companies would probably try to strike you down or buy you out because you would be hurting their (cartel-like) monopoly.
I'm sure oil isn't the only example.
You advocate a solution which is practically anarchy: everyone does what they want and hopefully no one will get hurt. We already know that doesn't work because people don't act ethically without rewards in place. The only true solution I can envision is to create a system (which might not necessarily be that different from present-day capitalism) in which the reward goes to those who act in an ethical way, not to those who manage to make the most profit. Admittedly, I don't have a friggin' clue about how we could do this; in fact, I'm not even sure it would be possible because of the lack of a definitive criterion of what is ethical (money at least can be counted, property can be evaluated, but there is no standard unit nor measuring instrument for ethics...). Hell, I'm an idealist and I feel comfortable with that. A more practical, down-to-earth solution is a more regulated version of capitalism. The purpose of regulations would be countering the tendency producers have to control the consumers. The arbiter would be the state (government) because there really is no other suitable choice.
So you propose a system where the enlightened tell the masses what are best for them, and of course, you are such an enlightened person.
No. I propose a system that fosters educated and conscious citizens capable of acting rationally. What I said is merely that brainwash by the media (which are ultimately controlled by the big corporations) seems to contradict that goal (have you ever realised how commercials always appeal to your emotional side, almost in an abusive way, and rarely ever, if ever, to your reason?).
When government steps in to do for us what we should be doing for ourselves, we actually demonstrably weaken society, regardless of how pure the motives for the original intervention were.
It's not about the government doing things for ourselves. It's about the government providing what we can't afford on our own...
This is easily demonstrated by the public education system which has slowly been made more and more responsible for bringing up our children as parents have elected to spend less and less time doing it themselves.
That's just the reflex of a bad education system that tries to absorb all the parents' duties, instead of encouraging their participation in their children's upbringing. But see it the other way round: would we ever have a society as educated as today's (despite my criticism) without a public education system? How would the uneducated masses of the 1800s who couldn't even read have access to education they couldn't afford on their own at all? Do you think the rich (who wanted them as dumb sheep working for them in factories) would have gladly contributed to that cause? Do you for one second doubt that, if the public education system were struck down today, we would in a matter of decades regress to that state?
In order for a free market system OR a democracy to function properly, the individual MUST be vigilant about protecting their own self interests AND ensuring society doesn't try to do it for them. As soon as we, as individuals, start to abdicate responsibility for our decisions to others, we necessarily start to sacrifice our individual rights and liberties. And I am sure you and I can both agree that is a bad thing.
I strongly agree. But see next paragraph.
I have not suggested that there be no police force - there has to be a method to enforce contracts and to protect the rights of citizens that may require the use of force, in some cases beyond what an individual is capable of doing for themselves.
It was an analogy. You seemed to be advocating that the government should have no business in regulating the competitive behavior of corporations. Surely, regulating that behavior is something the individual (you and me, common people) is not "capable of doing it for themselves"?
You are correct in that certain essential services might best be handled by the government. Services such as a legal system, fire system, and the like, may be most suitably handled by the government. I do not agree that healthcare and education are such systems, however.
Okay, we disagree in detail, but I'm glad to see you believe the public sector is needed sometimes.
I can quite reasonably choose where my money should be spent and I resent others telling me that they somehow know better where to spend it, especially when it is manifestly evident (at least to me) that they do not (for example, supporting the Space Shuttle, funding a war on drugs, propping up illegitimate governments, etc.)
Well... I do understand where you're trying to get, but the problem is really that modern democracies can't actually hold their governments accountable before their people... Assume for the sake of argument that your government is truly accountable: then you surely have to accept the government's budget, b
While it is POSSIBLE that a company could, for a time, hold a monopoly, without the force of government on its side, it can only do so as long as consumers are convinced to _voluntarily_ purchase its products over those of a competitor. Presumably consumers cannot be actively coerced into this purchase.
Yes, they can't, provided they take their decisions rationally and only after pondering all the options carefully. In practice, this doesn't happen because they are too susceptible to brainwash by the media, advertisements and, of course, "what everyone else does". This is another premise in which the free market theory fails spectacularly (in my opinion).
I suspect that much of the trouble you feel exists within the current market (excepting those cases where direct government regulation causes issues) is that the majorty of consumers, for whatever reason, continue to send their money towards corporations which do not, in your opinion, work in your best interests.
True. But I also feel, without wanting to be too self-centered, that the interests I'm talking about are those of humanity as a whole.:)
All your measures to avoid "cartel-like" behavior involve you using the enforcement powers of government to reshape society to your whims. And if the 'public whims' do not match yours, then you will be back here decrying how unjust/unfair/unresponsive/inefficient/monopolisti c the government is [...]
I do understand that a market governed at the government's whim is no better than one governed at the corporations' whim. But some regulation is needed. To say the contrary is akin to saying we shouldn't have police forces at all, because any action the police take to protect the citizens is completely unacceptable and puts the society at the whim of the policemen. It's a matter of checks and balances, of ensuring the government provides the necessary regulation -- but not too little nor too much.
I didn't mention this in my previous post, but to further clear up my point: I certainly do not believe that the private sector should be wiped off entirely in all fields of industry. What I mean is that certain components of a functional and progressive society (such as healthcare and education, for instance) are better served by the public sector because of their extreme importance to the well-being of the people. As for space exploration, what I feel is that the risks involved and the need to ensure effort is being put on the right things (i.e. actually exploring space and not, for instance, putting expensive billboards in space or creating lunar resorts for millionaires) are an indicator that the interests in question are best served by the public sector (parallel private sector investments notwithstanding).
The problem is that nowadays it's hard to have the government have a grip on the whims of the private sector (see the current situation with the American administration being effectively in the hands of the big corporations). While the public sector has no "competition" to drive improvements, it is supposed (at least in theory) to act in the best interests of the public. The private sector provides no such guarantee.
That really is (IMO) what's wrong with capitalism as we know it. In a free market, competition is supposed to work out everything the best way possible for the consumer in the long run. In practice the market isn't free because corporations do not just compete with each other; they usually also have objectives in common which are prejudicial to the consumers, as the RIAA/MPAA cartels have demonstrated. You can't get past this limitation unless you take measures to avoid such cartel-like behavior. And the only entity that can deliver such regulation is a government acting in the interest of the general public.
Of course one could argue that with OSS you can alwais "fix or change it yourself", but then again, most companies and users do not want to do that, they want to use functionality. By chosing OSS you lock yourself into that path, which is effectively no different from the vendor path.
Not really. With OSS you may be "locked in" to a certain piece of software (and even that is debatable since interoperability is one of the goals of the OSS movement), but you're not locked in to a vendor. Since the source is open, anyone other than your vendor can step up and offer maintenance/support at a lower cost (or you can hire a team yourself), which I think is quite handy especially when/if the vendor goes under.
Do you feel that an artist shouldn't be allowed to sell the ownership rights to their work?
My point of view is this: while I do accept that an artist should have the choice to do so, I can't conceive it as an intelligent thing to do. Record companies are focused on financial returns only and provide little benefit to society in return. While it is true that they have more adequate resources to successfully market an artist's work, at any rate the artist should (as in "ethically should") always keep full rights to what he/she created.
In other words, record companies should stick to their logical function, which is bridging the gap between artist and listener (and that's a shortening gap nowadays with the emergence of the internet). Their role is not to be parasites who profit on someone else's work, while actually creating nothing of their own. And this is precisely what they are, judging by the insanely large amount of money they make (despite the threat of piracy!) that never ends up in the hands of the artists.
How freaking self-centered does a person have to be to believe that their rights to pirate music are more relevant than the rights of the people who actually own the music?
DRM only protects the rights of artists as a collateral effect (*). The main purpose of DRM is to ensure continued and enlarged revenue to the publishing companies (as well as some control over consumer choices). It does not exist to, as said companies want us to believe, to prevent piracy from killing the production of art.
Art will always exist as long as there are people willing to produce it. For millenia art was produced with little financial incentive in return. Money can be a motivation to produce art, but it certainly isn't the most important one; anyone who call themselves an "artist" ought to agree with this.
(*) Of course, I take that you -- as any sane person -- believe that artists, and not the record companies that publish their music, should be the ones who own and have rights over their work.
Because when the hardware blows up on your face (due to careless design/manufacturing), you have to reverse-engineer the firmware (tough) to find out what's going wrong. With open firmware you can actually see where the problem is and fix it.
Also, really faulty firmware could induce the operating system in error and become a source of system instability/insecurity.
I find it incredibly nonsensical that so many people have trouble accepting the validity of the scientific method, and yet they make an everyday use of a vast amount of items whose existence would never have been possible without the advancement of Science.
I hereby propose we outlaw the use of TVs, computers, portable music players and cars, as well as access to healthcare professionals and services, to people who refuse to give credit to Science. I guess we'd end up living in a much more evolved (ha, pun) society than the present state of affairs. What d'ya all think?
Wouldn't IP Multicast be a more appropriate solution to this problem (and, for that matter, also for the whole lot of streaming content that flows on the 'net nowadays)? AFAIK it has been standardised for some time now, both for IPv4 for IPv6. Why, then, is it that multicast is virtually unused outside private networks?
Slashdot Mirror
At least it wouldn't give people the feeling that the USA likes to stick their nose in all matters and have control of everything under the sun...
We seem to agree, here on Slashdot, that the relative "anarchy" inherent to the way the internet works is a good thing, and that government control over it should be kept to a minimum. Why, then, do some people insist that the American government keep control over something as important to the internet as the ICANN? It would be the same as giving them the power to regulate which protocols and data formats you are allowed to use over the internet (currently, apart from the fact that you must encapsulate your packets into IP, they can contain pretty much anything you'd like). That kind of control would go against the spirit of the internet. In my opinion, control of the ICANN by a government (be it the American one or any other) is no different.
Right, because we all know the American government has never favoured corporations in detriment of the will of the people...
I for one don't think it would be that bad. Any organisation is subject to the kind of political/economical pressures you refer to. The fact that the ICANN is autonomous, controlled by the US government, controlled by the UN or controlled by anyone else will not change that. It just determines who is the most capable of exerting that pressure.
In fact you could argue that an ICANN under American control will simply have a tendency to favour American companies. Aren't many, if not all of the top-level registrars (excluding national TLDs) American? That certainly says something about the way the ICANN is currently run.
*sigh* There we go again.
You don't own the internet! Some of the core protocols of the internet were invented in America. Others weren't! E.g. the World Wide Web was invented by an english man. Can you picture the internet without the world wide web? Should Tim Berners-Lee and the British government have control over every website in existence? Does that look right to you, in the same way you think everything that runs on IP, TCP, DNS, etc. is "owned" by the USA?
Meanwhile, the fact that you invented some protocols doesn't grant you rights over a huge physical network built thanks to the effort (and investments!) of many people, companies and governments, only a fraction of which sit in the USA. Show me proof that you manufactured and installed every modem, network card, router, switch, underwater cable, ethernet cable, etc. in the whole wide world, and that the operators of every single network connected to the internet are American, and only then will I agree the internet is yours.
Otherwise, just shut up already, because what you're doing is just spreading false information. Repeat after me: the only part of the internet that is American is the one lying in American soil. Nothing else is technically, legally nor ethically yours.
Okay, I'm glad to know you were only joking. It is really difficult to tell when so many people around here have such an arrogant attitude when it comes to the deeds of their countrymen. You are right in that grants are essential for the development of science to function, and those who grant them should be praised. I won't question that. My point was that the way the article was worded was american-centric (considering that the issue is not strictly a domestic problem) and, as others have noted in this thread, that does not bode well with the foreign relations department. For example, I don't think this news would ever be presented with such nationalistic emphasis by the media in my own country, were the advancement to be made here. Maybe it's just a cultural problem...
It might be sarcasm (and you saying it doesn't automatically make it so), but that doesn't do away with the fact that the attitude I was referring to is common.
So if e.g. European researchers found a cure for AIDS and didn't share that knowledge with the USA because they had done it under a European grant, would you be happy to still be infected until you found the cure on your own?
I'm going to be modded down by this, but it really takes a bigot to react the way you did. Your attitude is exactly the kind of thing the original poster was condemning (or maybe you're just a troll trying to get some entertainment).
Well, I really can't see how that would have any advantage compared to having just a single copy of each library. What do you gain by having each installed program duplicate that information? The "compatibilities" you talk of should be dealt with library versioning (and I believe Unix gets this better than Windows does...), allowing for multiple versions if installed programs so require.
It's not simply a matter of HD space. One very important advantage of shared libraries is that you can upgrade them (for example, if a critical security bug is found) by overwriting a single file. Imagine having to reinstall 50 programs on your system just to get all the copies of the library updated. And that's assuming the developers were kind enough to release a patched version quickly...
Nah, there's just too much goodness in shared libraries to throw them away.
Okay. I agree with what you say and apologise if my post sounded otherwise. But the impression I got from the original poster was that he somehow expected science to give definitive, not-to-be-ever-changed answers -- something that is far too common nowadays when laymen point the finger at scientists.
Yes, you're quite right. Obviously, my naïve use of the words "how" and "why" opens up a lot of interpretations -- I was hoping for an intuitive one in the spirit of the GP poster. I do agree intuition often fails in this situation, and only exposure to the inner workings of science can help one grasp the difference between the two "kinds of question".
I would further add that, in respect to the purpose of our Universe, I'm a big fan of the anthropic principle, at least for its wit value. ;)
To me this just seems like a play on words. Observation is the only way in which we can test the validity of a model. If the model fits experimental data consistently and throughout a large number of experiments, we can only conclude it is right -- at least until someone makes an experiment whose results disprove it, but that's part of the nature of a scientific theory.
I don't understand the last sentence, perhaps you could put it in other words.
I believe you're wrong, unless I haven't understood what you're trying to do with the iron and the wires.
One could argue that the objective of science is to provide models that accurately describe our Universe and allow us to make predictions about its evolution. That's finding out "how". The question of "why" is of a different nature -- it can't be answered using the tools of science -- and falls into the problem domains of philosophy and theology. So don't really expect science to answer all possible questions, but keep in mind it does answer quite a few of them as it stands. :)
That's a rather vague way to put it. Relativistic effects on a body moving at 1 m/s are negligible to the point that Newtonian mechanics can be considered 100% correct for all practical purposes. Take another body moving at a speed close to the speed of light (we deal with those every day in modern Physics) and it's a very different story -- I can assure you the effects are very much not negligible.
Actually, this is more like car manufacturers forcing you to buy their replacement parts (at the price they set) whenever something in your car breaks down, and locking out competitors from repairing or tuning your vehicle. And yes, this happens. See this for an example.
This is about MS allowing alternatives, not about MS being blocked from providing their own. Don't be fooled by the spin.
I think the main difference between our points of view is simply that you have more trust in the capitalist system than I do (essentially going back to my first post in this thread). Me, I might be a tad paranoid about it but I simply refuse to believe that someone whose only incentive is profit will ever contribute to an (ethically, socially) improved society any more than just marginally. The "private sector" alternatives you propose for healthcare, education, etc all make sense in the light of an optimistic view of capitalism, but that is one I do not have. I really think capitalism in its present form creates an effective barrier between those who produce/are rich and those who consume/are poor, with very little permeability between the two groups, and the former tends to control the latter in a very effective, albeit dissimulated manner.
(However, we are totally in agreement in that one of the requirements for a better society is to have less passive people who take their personal and social responsilities more seriously.)
Another reason why your "C" solutions fail (and you have to admit it, your arguments are quite slanted towards saying that G's are all bad and C's are all good... reality is different for both) is that sometimes it really is impossible for the consumers to create an alternative (that is a requirement when nobody in the "producers" group steps up to offer one). I'll give you an example: oil. I doubt most people have oil in their backyard, and even if they had, the startup costs are incredibly huge. Even if you secured a third-party investment, I still doubt you could make it both profitable and cheaper than the already existing choices, and admitting you succeeded in this respect, the oil companies would probably try to strike you down or buy you out because you would be hurting their (cartel-like) monopoly.
I'm sure oil isn't the only example.
You advocate a solution which is practically anarchy: everyone does what they want and hopefully no one will get hurt. We already know that doesn't work because people don't act ethically without rewards in place. The only true solution I can envision is to create a system (which might not necessarily be that different from present-day capitalism) in which the reward goes to those who act in an ethical way, not to those who manage to make the most profit. Admittedly, I don't have a friggin' clue about how we could do this; in fact, I'm not even sure it would be possible because of the lack of a definitive criterion of what is ethical (money at least can be counted, property can be evaluated, but there is no standard unit nor measuring instrument for ethics...). Hell, I'm an idealist and I feel comfortable with that. A more practical, down-to-earth solution is a more regulated version of capitalism. The purpose of regulations would be countering the tendency producers have to control the consumers. The arbiter would be the state (government) because there really is no other suitable choice.
No. I propose a system that fosters educated and conscious citizens capable of acting rationally. What I said is merely that brainwash by the media (which are ultimately controlled by the big corporations) seems to contradict that goal (have you ever realised how commercials always appeal to your emotional side, almost in an abusive way, and rarely ever, if ever, to your reason?).
It's not about the government doing things for ourselves. It's about the government providing what we can't afford on our own...
That's just the reflex of a bad education system that tries to absorb all the parents' duties, instead of encouraging their participation in their children's upbringing. But see it the other way round: would we ever have a society as educated as today's (despite my criticism) without a public education system? How would the uneducated masses of the 1800s who couldn't even read have access to education they couldn't afford on their own at all? Do you think the rich (who wanted them as dumb sheep working for them in factories) would have gladly contributed to that cause? Do you for one second doubt that, if the public education system were struck down today, we would in a matter of decades regress to that state?
I strongly agree. But see next paragraph.
It was an analogy. You seemed to be advocating that the government should have no business in regulating the competitive behavior of corporations. Surely, regulating that behavior is something the individual (you and me, common people) is not "capable of doing it for themselves"?
Okay, we disagree in detail, but I'm glad to see you believe the public sector is needed sometimes.
Well... I do understand where you're trying to get, but the problem is really that modern democracies can't actually hold their governments accountable before their people... Assume for the sake of argument that your government is truly accountable: then you surely have to accept the government's budget, b
Yes, they can't, provided they take their decisions rationally and only after pondering all the options carefully. In practice, this doesn't happen because they are too susceptible to brainwash by the media, advertisements and, of course, "what everyone else does". This is another premise in which the free market theory fails spectacularly (in my opinion).
True. But I also feel, without wanting to be too self-centered, that the interests I'm talking about are those of humanity as a whole. :)
I do understand that a market governed at the government's whim is no better than one governed at the corporations' whim. But some regulation is needed. To say the contrary is akin to saying we shouldn't have police forces at all, because any action the police take to protect the citizens is completely unacceptable and puts the society at the whim of the policemen. It's a matter of checks and balances, of ensuring the government provides the necessary regulation -- but not too little nor too much.
I didn't mention this in my previous post, but to further clear up my point: I certainly do not believe that the private sector should be wiped off entirely in all fields of industry. What I mean is that certain components of a functional and progressive society (such as healthcare and education, for instance) are better served by the public sector because of their extreme importance to the well-being of the people. As for space exploration, what I feel is that the risks involved and the need to ensure effort is being put on the right things (i.e. actually exploring space and not, for instance, putting expensive billboards in space or creating lunar resorts for millionaires) are an indicator that the interests in question are best served by the public sector (parallel private sector investments notwithstanding).
The problem is that nowadays it's hard to have the government have a grip on the whims of the private sector (see the current situation with the American administration being effectively in the hands of the big corporations). While the public sector has no "competition" to drive improvements, it is supposed (at least in theory) to act in the best interests of the public. The private sector provides no such guarantee.
That really is (IMO) what's wrong with capitalism as we know it. In a free market, competition is supposed to work out everything the best way possible for the consumer in the long run. In practice the market isn't free because corporations do not just compete with each other; they usually also have objectives in common which are prejudicial to the consumers, as the RIAA/MPAA cartels have demonstrated. You can't get past this limitation unless you take measures to avoid such cartel-like behavior. And the only entity that can deliver such regulation is a government acting in the interest of the general public.
Not really. With OSS you may be "locked in" to a certain piece of software (and even that is debatable since interoperability is one of the goals of the OSS movement), but you're not locked in to a vendor. Since the source is open, anyone other than your vendor can step up and offer maintenance/support at a lower cost (or you can hire a team yourself), which I think is quite handy especially when/if the vendor goes under.
My point of view is this: while I do accept that an artist should have the choice to do so, I can't conceive it as an intelligent thing to do. Record companies are focused on financial returns only and provide little benefit to society in return. While it is true that they have more adequate resources to successfully market an artist's work, at any rate the artist should (as in "ethically should") always keep full rights to what he/she created.
In other words, record companies should stick to their logical function, which is bridging the gap between artist and listener (and that's a shortening gap nowadays with the emergence of the internet). Their role is not to be parasites who profit on someone else's work, while actually creating nothing of their own. And this is precisely what they are, judging by the insanely large amount of money they make (despite the threat of piracy!) that never ends up in the hands of the artists.
DRM only protects the rights of artists as a collateral effect (*). The main purpose of DRM is to ensure continued and enlarged revenue to the publishing companies (as well as some control over consumer choices). It does not exist to, as said companies want us to believe, to prevent piracy from killing the production of art.
Art will always exist as long as there are people willing to produce it. For millenia art was produced with little financial incentive in return. Money can be a motivation to produce art, but it certainly isn't the most important one; anyone who call themselves an "artist" ought to agree with this.
(*) Of course, I take that you -- as any sane person -- believe that artists, and not the record companies that publish their music, should be the ones who own and have rights over their work.
Because when the hardware blows up on your face (due to careless design/manufacturing), you have to reverse-engineer the firmware (tough) to find out what's going wrong. With open firmware you can actually see where the problem is and fix it.
Also, really faulty firmware could induce the operating system in error and become a source of system instability/insecurity.
I'm not really sure how to express it in LoC, but knowing that Burning Library of Congress (BLoC) is roughly 4 petajoules and also that E = mc^2,
E = 0.83 * solar mass * c^2 = 1.48e47 J = 1.48e32 PJ = 3.7e31 BLoC
which allows us to truly appreciate the order of magnitude in question.
I find it incredibly nonsensical that so many people have trouble accepting the validity of the scientific method, and yet they make an everyday use of a vast amount of items whose existence would never have been possible without the advancement of Science.
I hereby propose we outlaw the use of TVs, computers, portable music players and cars, as well as access to healthcare professionals and services, to people who refuse to give credit to Science. I guess we'd end up living in a much more evolved (ha, pun) society than the present state of affairs. What d'ya all think?
(And by the way, yes, I'm just being ironic...)
Wouldn't IP Multicast be a more appropriate solution to this problem (and, for that matter, also for the whole lot of streaming content that flows on the 'net nowadays)? AFAIK it has been standardised for some time now, both for IPv4 for IPv6. Why, then, is it that multicast is virtually unused outside private networks?