who thinks that Microsoft should pay for the traffic caused by millions of people downloading security patches for Windows?
I am absilutely sure that they are in fact paying whomever provides their connectivity (akamai in most cases I believe) for their bandwidth use. What is more, due to the capacity they need, they actually are paying a more expensive provider that can handle such bandwidth.
THe other side is payed for by the subscription fees that end-users pay to their ISP. Anything between MS' provider and your residential ISP is payed for by peering contracts between different transit providers.
So, it is all payed for already and there is no need to introduce any new fees or extra payments.
btw, no it really doesn't matter if it is MS or someone else, and using them in order to turn a logical argument into an emotional one is first of all pretty obvious and second it makes you look like someone who is pushing an agenda instead of trying to find out what is best/true etc.
And the boiler plate argument on the side is now that it is just some "fear" that we all have about the big bad telecoms... of course that fear isn't based on statements by their CEOs that it is their intention to start charging for lower latency as well as more bandwidth. I mean it is just a fear until they actually start doing it... even though they said they are going to do it. I mean how do you know someone is going to pull the trigger, until they actually do. And just because google and other companies have already said that the telecoms have approached them with these threats, I'm sure the telecoms where just kidding around. Those kidders.
And not only are they suggesting to be big and bad, every telco on this planet that had a chance to be big and bad turned big and bad. Maybe they forgot why AT&T was split, why any telco market that is in fact competitive has required substantial government interference to make it such.
If the telcos want to take away this fear of them wanting to turn 'big and bad', they have a lot of precedents to overcome.
Or.. what a bunch of idiots to believe people would forget that easily.
for example, telcos can charge what they want but lose their monopoly on providing service. They would have to provide access to the home for any competitor on their wires at a rate no higher than they charge to their own internet business.
Extend this to alternative voice services providers, and you basicly end upsplitting off the local loop and turning it into a seperate business. A bit of regulation and oversight is required it seems, but for what I can tell, such a setup is doing wonders for competition in both telephony and internet access markets in Europe.
This however has little to do with network neutrality. Network neutrality in the context of the internet is about transport providers not creating barriers for content providers regardless of whom those content providers are. It has NOTHING to do with what a transport provider charges its end-user (please note that content providers are paying their own transport providers already and as a rule of thumb they are not customers of the ISP that you get your dsl/cable/dial-in connection from.
At best one can say that the kind of competition allowed by unbundling the local loop is likely to result in better alternatives, some of which may offer an 'open' internet.
Issue at hand is imho that transport services should by definition be content neutral. This is better for them and for the customer because it makes content purely a responsibility of the content provider, or in other words, doign away with network neutrality results in transport providers becomming (partially) responsible for the content they carry. I leave it to your imagination what the result of that will be.
For as far as the ISP argument goes.. yes, Google is making money thanks to your users, but realize you wouldn't have paying users without such content services, in other words, YOU ARE BEING PAYED FOR IT ALREADY by your own customers which you would not have without said content providers.
Thus, the point of my post was to alert those people to the concept that in the political spectrum of thinking one's political beliefs in the right-left axis are independent of one's political beliefs in the libertarian-conservative axis.
Of course one could as well argue that the opposite of conservative is progressive and if libertarian has an opposite it is totalitatian...
The point of my post was to say that such 'axis' as you call them are useless for any kind of discussion about content. They ONLY serve a us versus them kind of argument.
Ah, when reading back the discussion I see it wasn't you who was commenting on how this was unjustly forced upon the states, merely you explained what happened, sorry for the misunderstanding.
In fact, it is extremely likely that the Bill of Rights would never have been ratified had the states believed that its provisions applied to them: the point of the Bill of Rights was only to assure the states that their own protections (which were uneven but substantial in most cases) would not be abridged by the new and large federal government.
I believe this is where our difference in opinion is. Is the bill of rights a promise by the federal government to not deny those rights or is it a promise to uphold them. Of course when looking at it from the perspective of the early USA with states having a substantially bigger level of independence then they have today, arguing that the federal government was going to restrict states was not very popular. That said, ennumerating rights you believe the people within the federation should have only makes sense to me when you do intend to uphold them also, regardless of how this was presented in order to get it rattified. At any rate, I do see the merrit of your argument, too bad the real answer is probably burried with the people who wrote the bill of rights.
The problem you seem to try to address is actually one you seem to fall pray to yourself as well.
You correctly state that looking at politics as a 'left-right' polarisation is too simplistic and that there is more to it.
Where you fall prey to the same problem is that you then come up with just another way to polarize the political spectrum. While you correctly point at 2 opposites, the thing is that polarizing the political spectrum is too simplistic in all cases, regardless of what kind of polarisation you use. The only thing that is served by polarisation is finding the opposite of what you are looking at now.
Such simplifications are however very usefull to people who try to get as many people to support them without thought, which is the primary reason why you should try to avoid them or at least be very carefull with using them.
Ratification of the Civil Rights Amendments was extorted in most cases from the Southern state governments as the 'cost of readmittance' to the Union;
That is clever wording at best, lets rewrite it a bit to a more neutral form:
After the debacle of slavery, the breaking away of states, and the civil war, it was made clear that no state could discard the bill of rights if it wanted to be a member of the USA.
they didn't 'ratify' them in any more significant a sense than a cashier 'gives' a robber money. In other words, the act is technically true as described, but emptied of all willful meaning.
You know.. I really thought that southeners disgrunted about the civil war and its aftermatch had died out a few generations ago, but it seems they and their slight misrepresentation of the civil war and their defeat seem to still be around.
Just for the record, if it is not obvious to you that a bill of rights which applies to all people within the territories of the USA cannot be overriden by a local state govenrment, and why that must have been the intention from the start, then you really need to work on your basic reasoning and logic skills, because without that assumption the whole concept of a bill of rights makes no sense whatsoever.
I think its really difficult to come out with something new and groundbreaking if you automatically rule out any possiblity of sex, violence or profanity.
And this is a problem why?
Without rating, not excluding sex, violence or profanity would still result in something aimed at adults mostly and definitely not at 8 year olds, and will not make for what is generally considered a nice family movie.
As a result it will still be aimed at a smaller public and likely less proffitable.
Ratings don't change anything in this whatsoever. What they do change is that people have an easy way to spot content with things they may want to avoid..
First, the movie leaves the realm of the real world
Unless you are talking about documentaries, leaving the realm of the real world is quite the purpose of movies usually....
, since in the real world, there is sex, violance and profanity.
And it still doesn't make for what is generally considered a nice family movie, hence it is aimed at a smaller public etc, see above.
Second, most G rated movies amount to the 'funny' scenes amounting to 'look at the squirell get hit over the head! HAHA AHAHA AHAH HAHA'. Please. You think THAT makes a quality movie? The EXACT same drivel over and over and over again?
Your problem seems to be with the high level of repetition of commercially succesfull 'concepts'. This has absolutely zero to do with rating.
Yes, I'm sure that Over the Hedge is a truely groundbreaking movie, and Saving Private Ryan or the Green Mile or even T2 are just plain junk.
You may still be entertained by playing with Legos and Matchbox cars, but I just don't find them entertaining anymore.
I do not know you, but from the way you sound you are desperately trying to show how much of an adult you are and how any content that is not adult like enough sucks.. Don't worry, that is also a part of growing up, it will go again.
The Chinese kids whose families can afford to send them to Australia for three years are probably not the ones mutilating themselves to get into college.
Rather, they more likely then not are. Those who can get there without cheating don't need their parents to pay for staying overseas either because their study and stay abroad would be funded by their own government.
Tho not from China, but in the area where I live there are quite a few students from places like Vietnam and Cuba, who are on a grant from their own government, their job already waiting for the moment they finish.
and, since "warm" applied to an amp instead of a musician is just a code word for flattering distortion, I'm happy that way.
At times it does, but often this also refers to things like behavior under overload. This is pretty much irrelevant when talking about a purely digital setup however since the condition should not occur ever. That said, its practically impossible to make a digital recording without the use of a limiter/compressor, while thanks to the 'overload behavior' of esp. valve based analog equipment, you can do without.
Which gives a better overall sound depends a lot on what you are recording and the quality of your sound and recording engineers, but generally spoken a good analog recording played back through (consumer grade) analog means usually has more distorition as 'consumer grade' digital equipment while providing more natural dynamics. Which of the 2 is more important depends on what you are playing back.
Of course 'consumer grade' is quite vague, what I mean with this is not high-end audiophile or studio grade equipment, rather the things you can buy in the typical consumer orriented electronics shop. Price range? as long as the price range you look at for digital and analog equipment is similar, it doesn't really matter much.
Perhaps you could of been clearer in your statement. You said "a market free of anti-competative influences" then you said "for a shorter version, competition-free market?".
I don't see me saying that anywhere, rather, I used 'free market'.
If a market is free of anti-competitive influences then it's not competition free. They are the opposite. Instead of competition free maybe you meant free competition, I don't know.
Rather, I suggest you just read a bit more carefully.
What people like you forget is that it is al about usability fo the net. As soon as your anti-spam measures become a bigger issue for usability of the net then spam you definitely went too far.
But hey, why am I bothering to point that out, you sound like one of those who believe that the goal justifies the means regardless of the consequences later on.
Honestly, I'm all for the use of online marketing that allows you to, and respects your right to, opt-out.
I have no problem with online marketing, but I have a problem whenever it is not opt-in (with a decent check on if you indeed tried to opt-in)
There is no reason why people should fill my mailbox and use the bandwidth I pay for to tell me something I don't want to hear to begin with. Now, if they were paying for it themselves exclusively this might change, but for now I pay for the bandwidth usage of my mail server.
And iven the number and frequency of security holes found in sendmail, maybe some people have just made an executive decision to not accept mail coming from sendmail sites. Guess what? I'm one of them
Anybody who's silly enough to run sendmail in this day and age, given the alternatives, is either on crack, or so self-centered that they don't give a shit about anybody else. In my opinion, that in and of itself is enough of an indication of incompetence that I just won't bother with them.
1996 called, they want their sendmail complaints back.
Actually Adam Smith, the "father of capitalism", hated copyrights and patents.
It is probably no surprise that I rather agree with him.
At first Thomas Jefferson did as well but evenually his friend James Madison convinced him that granting copyrights and patents could do more for progress than not granting them. If someone hacked, invented, or created something but couldn't improve their life by patenting and marketing said product then why should s/he release it?
I believe that the reasoning is flawed.
You can make a valid argument that copyrights and patents promote the release of such works, but as you said also, those should be limited in time to actually work as an encouragement. However, from this to 'why should they release it without patents/copyrights' is ignoring that people did quite release such works and inventions during the thousands of years before someone came up with patents and copyrights, so it is clear that there must be other motivations.
Anyway, in a limited form I can see how patents and copyrights may just work. I still don't like them, and I think they should be used with great care and avoided whenever possible.
And, my interpretation of your original post assumed that you meant what most other people mean by "free of anti-competitive influences," meaning free of trusts, monopolies, etc.
It indeed means free of trusts and monopolies that try to abuse their position by barring others from entering the market, yes. That does not mean there cannot exist a temporary monopoly at times, and doesn't mean natural monopolies should be avoided at all cost.
I think that kind of market is competition-free(and, actually, not free at all).
A market that contains monopolies is by the mere definition of monopoly 'free of competition'. This does not mean that a market without monopolies is by definition competative.
The argument you are trying to make is indeed the argument I am trying to despell, an unregulated market full with monopolies and trusts is as unfree as a market dictated completely by the government, in either case it is not market forces and ultimately, customers who determine what happens, it is a small few (being them government or a company in a monopoly position) being able to force their rule on everyone. This is definitely 'non free'. Being able to exclude competitors is definitely reducing competition in the market as well.
So a 'free market' is not a market left to its own device at all times, it is a market in which there is a level of ensurance that you can compete freely on merrits of your product/service with others, without either of you being able to bar the other from competing beforehand.
Hence, my statement that you should term it a competition-free market. If you don't get it, it's probably safe to disregard it all as BS coming from layers upon layers of retarded interpretations.
The rest of your post clarifies things, but, here, you obfuscate everything. If you mean "a market free of anti-competative influences" why don't you say that or, for a shorter version, competition-free market? That way you don't have to explain yourself. Though, I'm glad you had enough foresight to provide that explanation to keep people from basing arguments on a misinterpretation of your post.
Because 'free market' is the right term for it but is often misunderstood.
I am not confusing the goal and the means at all. What I'm saying, and what I truly believe, is that in large part the patent system does its job: that is, it encourages innovation and promotes development.
Ok, if that is clear then we have a good basis for a discussion about the system.
The abuses of the patent system are more rare than you would think, since the very large majority of patents never make the papers. It's the one bad one that sneaks through among a hundred or a thousand or ten-thousand fair patents that's the problem.
I agree that abuse is not as common as some people on slashdot want to believe. However, there are many more situations where progress is hindered while not qualifying as 'abuse'. One of the examples I mentioned was the invention and general availability of TV. While there is some dubious behavior on the side of RCA, claiming inventions that they probably just 'stole', the basic issue here was RCA owning patents that basicly geave them the possibility to decide who could use radio broadcasting techniques, and thereby being able to forstall any public deployment of TV broadcasts. As a small inventor, Farsworth was in no position to negotiate a deal with them that would leave him in control over his own invention and could not deploy it without a license. This kind of situation is far more common then you seem to believe also.
Many problems in the current patent system are caused by the legal definition of 'obvious', which basicly comes down to 'combination of prior art together with a documented reason for wanting to combine them), which basicly means that whenever a new field of science and invention appears, anything in it can be patented regardless of actual 'obviousness' (dictionary definition as was clearly intended by the constitutional provision for patents). This effectively means that for new and rapidly developing fields patents cause:
1. big companies to get a grip on speed of development and quickly create barriers to entry for others 2. a 'patent minefield' for anyone involved in such a new field who doesn't have a signigicant budget for patenting anything in sight.
Electronics in the early 1900s provide a clear example of this with TV as its 'hilight'. Computer software has been free of this exactly because of it not being patentable for quite some time, but looking at the development of 'internet technology' we see the same type of problems occur that you see when looking at electronics development in the early 1900s on a larger scale. This is because there is virtually no barrier to entry for software development, so many more people can participate in it outside large corporate structures.
The profitability of companies doing the inventing and promoting invention itself are rather related. If developing new products and inventing things isn't profitable, then it won't happen (at least as quickly).
Definitely. I can also see how patents may help this, but they are definitely not the only way to make a profit on inventions, and I believe the burden they put on both the rest of the marketplace, and society as a whole to be too high for the positive effect they may achieve.
So although the purpose of the patent system should not be the profitability of companies or persons using it, it's fair to assume that it will occur as a side-effect.
It is the primary means by which the patent system tries to achieve promotion of usefull inventions, so much more then a 'side effect'.
In general, I think you have to put the damage caused by overly-broad patents into perspective. I think you're greatly overstating the damage they're doing, versus the benefit we gain as a society from patents (as compared to a society in which patents didn't exist, and everything was protected as trade secrets, etc.)
First of all, assuming that lack of patents would cause almost everything to be protected as trade secrets is wrong I believe, if only because there is no way in most cases to
Slashdot Mirror
who thinks that Microsoft should pay for the traffic caused by millions of people downloading security patches for Windows?
I am absilutely sure that they are in fact paying whomever provides their connectivity (akamai in most cases I believe) for their bandwidth use. What is more, due to the capacity they need, they actually are paying a more expensive provider that can handle such bandwidth.
THe other side is payed for by the subscription fees that end-users pay to their ISP. Anything between MS' provider and your residential ISP is payed for by peering contracts between different transit providers.
So, it is all payed for already and there is no need to introduce any new fees or extra payments.
btw, no it really doesn't matter if it is MS or someone else, and using them in order to turn a logical argument into an emotional one is first of all pretty obvious and second it makes you look like someone who is pushing an agenda instead of trying to find out what is best/true etc.
And the boiler plate argument on the side is now that it is just some "fear" that we all have about the big bad telecoms... of course that fear isn't based on statements by their CEOs that it is their intention to start charging for lower latency as well as more bandwidth. I mean it is just a fear until they actually start doing it... even though they said they are going to do it. I mean how do you know someone is going to pull the trigger, until they actually do. And just because google and other companies have already said that the telecoms have approached them with these threats, I'm sure the telecoms where just kidding around. Those kidders.
And not only are they suggesting to be big and bad, every telco on this planet that had a chance to be big and bad turned big and bad. Maybe they forgot why AT&T was split, why any telco market that is in fact competitive has required substantial government interference to make it such.
If the telcos want to take away this fear of them wanting to turn 'big and bad', they have a lot of precedents to overcome.
Or.. what a bunch of idiots to believe people would forget that easily.
for example, telcos can charge what they want but lose their monopoly on providing service. They would have to provide access to the home for any competitor on their wires at a rate no higher than they charge to their own internet business.
Extend this to alternative voice services providers, and you basicly end upsplitting off the local loop and turning it into a seperate business. A bit of regulation and oversight is required it seems, but for what I can tell, such a setup is doing wonders for competition in both telephony and internet access markets in Europe.
This however has little to do with network neutrality. Network neutrality in the context of the internet is about transport providers not creating barriers for content providers regardless of whom those content providers are. It has NOTHING to do with what a transport provider charges its end-user (please note that content providers are paying their own transport providers already and as a rule of thumb they are not customers of the ISP that you get your dsl/cable/dial-in connection from.
At best one can say that the kind of competition allowed by unbundling the local loop is likely to result in better alternatives, some of which may offer an 'open' internet.
Issue at hand is imho that transport services should by definition be content neutral. This is better for them and for the customer because it makes content purely a responsibility of the content provider, or in other words, doign away with network neutrality results in transport providers becomming (partially) responsible for the content they carry. I leave it to your imagination what the result of that will be.
For as far as the ISP argument goes.. yes, Google is making money thanks to your users, but realize you wouldn't have paying users without such content services, in other words, YOU ARE BEING PAYED FOR IT ALREADY by your own customers which you would not have without said content providers.
Thus, the point of my post was to alert those people to the concept that in the political spectrum of thinking one's political beliefs in the right-left axis are independent of one's political beliefs in the libertarian-conservative axis.
Of course one could as well argue that the opposite of conservative is progressive and if libertarian has an opposite it is totalitatian...
The point of my post was to say that such 'axis' as you call them are useless for any kind of discussion about content. They ONLY serve a us versus them kind of argument.
Ah, when reading back the discussion I see it wasn't you who was commenting on how this was unjustly forced upon the states, merely you explained what happened, sorry for the misunderstanding.
In fact, it is extremely likely that the Bill of Rights would never have been ratified had the states believed that its provisions applied to them: the point of the Bill of Rights was only to assure the states that their own protections (which were uneven but substantial in most cases) would not be abridged by the new and large federal government.
I believe this is where our difference in opinion is. Is the bill of rights a promise by the federal government to not deny those rights or is it a promise to uphold them. Of course when looking at it from the perspective of the early USA with states having a substantially bigger level of independence then they have today, arguing that the federal government was going to restrict states was not very popular. That said, ennumerating rights you believe the people within the federation should have only makes sense to me when you do intend to uphold them also, regardless of how this was presented in order to get it rattified. At any rate, I do see the merrit of your argument, too bad the real answer is probably burried with the people who wrote the bill of rights.
I find your post somewhat interesting.
The problem you seem to try to address is actually one you seem to fall pray to yourself as well.
You correctly state that looking at politics as a 'left-right' polarisation is too simplistic and that there is more to it.
Where you fall prey to the same problem is that you then come up with just another way to polarize the political spectrum. While you correctly point at 2 opposites, the thing is that polarizing the political spectrum is too simplistic in all cases, regardless of what kind of polarisation you use. The only thing that is served by polarisation is finding the opposite of what you are looking at now.
Such simplifications are however very usefull to people who try to get as many people to support them without thought, which is the primary reason why you should try to avoid them or at least be very carefull with using them.
Ratification of the Civil Rights Amendments was extorted in most cases from the Southern state governments as the 'cost of readmittance' to the Union;
That is clever wording at best, lets rewrite it a bit to a more neutral form:
After the debacle of slavery, the breaking away of states, and the civil war, it was made clear that no state could discard the bill of rights if it wanted to be a member of the USA.
they didn't 'ratify' them in any more significant a sense than a cashier 'gives' a robber money. In other words, the act is technically true as described, but emptied of all willful meaning.
You know.. I really thought that southeners disgrunted about the civil war and its aftermatch had died out a few generations ago, but it seems they and their slight misrepresentation of the civil war and their defeat seem to still be around.
Just for the record, if it is not obvious to you that a bill of rights which applies to all people within the territories of the USA cannot be overriden by a local state govenrment, and why that must have been the intention from the start, then you really need to work on your basic reasoning and logic skills, because without that assumption the whole concept of a bill of rights makes no sense whatsoever.
I think its really difficult to come out with something new and groundbreaking if you automatically rule out any possiblity of sex, violence or profanity.
And this is a problem why?
Without rating, not excluding sex, violence or profanity would still result in something aimed at adults mostly and definitely not at 8 year olds, and will not make for what is generally considered a nice family movie.
As a result it will still be aimed at a smaller public and likely less proffitable.
Ratings don't change anything in this whatsoever. What they do change is that people have an easy way to spot content with things they may want to avoid..
First, the movie leaves the realm of the real world
Unless you are talking about documentaries, leaving the realm of the real world is quite the purpose of movies usually....
, since in the real world, there is sex, violance and profanity.
And it still doesn't make for what is generally considered a nice family movie, hence it is aimed at a smaller public etc, see above.
Second, most G rated movies amount to the 'funny' scenes amounting to 'look at the squirell get hit over the head! HAHA AHAHA AHAH HAHA'. Please. You think THAT makes a quality movie? The EXACT same drivel over and over and over again?
Your problem seems to be with the high level of repetition of commercially succesfull 'concepts'. This has absolutely zero to do with rating.
Yes, I'm sure that Over the Hedge is a truely groundbreaking movie, and Saving Private Ryan or the Green Mile or even T2 are just plain junk.
You may still be entertained by playing with Legos and Matchbox cars, but I just don't find them entertaining anymore.
I do not know you, but from the way you sound you are desperately trying to show how much of an adult you are and how any content that is not adult like enough sucks.. Don't worry, that is also a part of growing up, it will go again.
In other words, you are arguing there should be a loophole so states can just ignore the bill of rights and reduce it to a meaningless bit of paper?
The Chinese kids whose families can afford to send them to Australia for three years are probably not the ones mutilating themselves to get into college.
Rather, they more likely then not are. Those who can get there without cheating don't need their parents to pay for staying overseas either because their study and stay abroad would be funded by their own government.
Tho not from China, but in the area where I live there are quite a few students from places like Vietnam and Cuba, who are on a grant from their own government, their job already waiting for the moment they finish.
Moderation -1
40% Offtopic
30% Troll
30% Underrated
I think those with mod points are taking this post way too serious...
Ah, I see now. and my quoting there wasn't clear either, sorry about that.
and, since "warm" applied to an amp instead of a musician is just a code word for flattering distortion, I'm happy that way.
At times it does, but often this also refers to things like behavior under overload. This is pretty much irrelevant when talking about a purely digital setup however since the condition should not occur ever. That said, its practically impossible to make a digital recording without the use of a limiter/compressor, while thanks to the 'overload behavior' of esp. valve based analog equipment, you can do without.
Which gives a better overall sound depends a lot on what you are recording and the quality of your sound and recording engineers, but generally spoken a good analog recording played back through (consumer grade) analog means usually has more distorition as 'consumer grade' digital equipment while providing more natural dynamics. Which of the 2 is more important depends on what you are playing back.
Of course 'consumer grade' is quite vague, what I mean with this is not high-end audiophile or studio grade equipment, rather the things you can buy in the typical consumer orriented electronics shop. Price range? as long as the price range you look at for digital and analog equipment is similar, it doesn't really matter much.
Perhaps you could of been clearer in your statement. You said "a market free of anti-competative influences" then you said "for a shorter version, competition-free market?".
I don't see me saying that anywhere, rather, I used 'free market'.
If a market is free of anti-competitive influences then it's not competition free. They are the opposite. Instead of competition free maybe you meant free competition, I don't know.
Rather, I suggest you just read a bit more carefully.
What people like you forget is that it is al about usability fo the net. As soon as your anti-spam measures become a bigger issue for usability of the net then spam you definitely went too far.
But hey, why am I bothering to point that out, you sound like one of those who believe that the goal justifies the means regardless of the consequences later on.
Honestly, I'm all for the use of online marketing that allows you to, and respects your right to, opt-out.
I have no problem with online marketing, but I have a problem whenever it is not opt-in (with a decent check on if you indeed tried to opt-in)
There is no reason why people should fill my mailbox and use the bandwidth I pay for to tell me something I don't want to hear to begin with. Now, if they were paying for it themselves exclusively this might change, but for now I pay for the bandwidth usage of my mail server.
I find potential scenario amusing.
Heh, hadn't looked at it from that angle, pretty funny indeed.
GO away with your clearly Anti American (tm) and anti Anarcho-libertarian fud.
And iven the number and frequency of security holes found in sendmail, maybe some people have just made an executive decision to not accept mail coming from sendmail sites. Guess what? I'm one of them
Anybody who's silly enough to run sendmail in this day and age, given the alternatives, is either on crack, or so self-centered that they don't give a shit about anybody else. In my opinion, that in and of itself is enough of an indication of incompetence that I just won't bother with them.
1996 called, they want their sendmail complaints back.
Actually Adam Smith, the "father of capitalism", hated copyrights and patents.
It is probably no surprise that I rather agree with him.
At first Thomas Jefferson did as well but evenually his friend James Madison convinced him that granting copyrights and patents could do more for progress than not granting them. If someone hacked, invented, or created something but couldn't improve their life by patenting and marketing said product then why should s/he release it?
I believe that the reasoning is flawed.
You can make a valid argument that copyrights and patents promote the release of such works, but as you said also, those should be limited in time to actually work as an encouragement. However, from this to 'why should they release it without patents/copyrights' is ignoring that people did quite release such works and inventions during the thousands of years before someone came up with patents and copyrights, so it is clear that there must be other motivations.
Anyway, in a limited form I can see how patents and copyrights may just work. I still don't like them, and I think they should be used with great care and avoided whenever possible.
And, my interpretation of your original post assumed that you meant what most other people mean by "free of anti-competitive influences," meaning free of trusts, monopolies, etc.
It indeed means free of trusts and monopolies that try to abuse their position by barring others from entering the market, yes. That does not mean there cannot exist a temporary monopoly at times, and doesn't mean natural monopolies should be avoided at all cost.
I think that kind of market is competition-free(and, actually, not free at all).
A market that contains monopolies is by the mere definition of monopoly 'free of competition'.
This does not mean that a market without monopolies is by definition competative.
The argument you are trying to make is indeed the argument I am trying to despell, an unregulated market full with monopolies and trusts is as unfree as a market dictated completely by the government, in either case it is not market forces and ultimately, customers who determine what happens, it is a small few (being them government or a company in a monopoly position) being able to force their rule on everyone. This is definitely 'non free'. Being able to exclude competitors is definitely reducing competition in the market as well.
So a 'free market' is not a market left to its own device at all times, it is a market in which there is a level of ensurance that you can compete freely on merrits of your product/service with others, without either of you being able to bar the other from competing beforehand.
Hence, my statement that you should term it a competition-free market. If you don't get it, it's probably safe to disregard it all as BS coming from layers upon layers of retarded interpretations.
If you mean "a market free of anti-competative influences"
Because 'free market' is the right term for it but is often misunderstood.
If it is anti competitive then it's not a free market. By their very nature free markets are competitive.
So, which part of 'market free of anti-competative influences' did you fail to read or understand?
The rest of your post clarifies things, but, here, you obfuscate everything. If you mean "a market free of anti-competative influences" why don't you say that or, for a shorter version, competition-free market? That way you don't have to explain yourself. Though, I'm glad you had enough foresight to provide that explanation to keep people from basing arguments on a misinterpretation of your post.
Because 'free market' is the right term for it but is often misunderstood.
I am not confusing the goal and the means at all. What I'm saying, and what I truly believe, is that in large part the patent system does its job: that is, it encourages innovation and promotes development.
Ok, if that is clear then we have a good basis for a discussion about the system.
The abuses of the patent system are more rare than you would think, since the very large majority of patents never make the papers. It's the one bad one that sneaks through among a hundred or a thousand or ten-thousand fair patents that's the problem.
I agree that abuse is not as common as some people on slashdot want to believe. However, there are many more situations where progress is hindered while not qualifying as 'abuse'. One of the examples I mentioned was the invention and general availability of TV. While there is some dubious behavior on the side of RCA, claiming inventions that they probably just 'stole', the basic issue here was RCA owning patents that basicly geave them the possibility to decide who could use radio broadcasting techniques, and thereby being able to forstall any public deployment of TV broadcasts. As a small inventor, Farsworth was in no position to negotiate a deal with them that would leave him in control over his own invention and could not deploy it without a license. This kind of situation is far more common then you seem to believe also.
Many problems in the current patent system are caused by the legal definition of 'obvious', which basicly comes down to 'combination of prior art together with a documented reason for wanting to combine them), which basicly means that whenever a new field of science and invention appears, anything in it can be patented regardless of actual 'obviousness' (dictionary definition as was clearly intended by the constitutional provision for patents). This effectively means that for new and rapidly developing fields patents cause:
1. big companies to get a grip on speed of development and quickly create barriers to entry for others
2. a 'patent minefield' for anyone involved in such a new field who doesn't have a signigicant budget for patenting anything in sight.
Electronics in the early 1900s provide a clear example of this with TV as its 'hilight'. Computer software has been free of this exactly because of it not being patentable for quite some time, but looking at the development of 'internet technology' we see the same type of problems occur that you see when looking at electronics development in the early 1900s on a larger scale. This is because there is virtually no barrier to entry for software development, so many more people can participate in it outside large corporate structures.
The profitability of companies doing the inventing and promoting invention itself are rather related. If developing new products and inventing things isn't profitable, then it won't happen (at least as quickly).
Definitely. I can also see how patents may help this, but they are definitely not the only way to make a profit on inventions, and I believe the burden they put on both the rest of the marketplace, and society as a whole to be too high for the positive effect they may achieve.
So although the purpose of the patent system should not be the profitability of companies or persons using it, it's fair to assume that it will occur as a side-effect.
It is the primary means by which the patent system tries to achieve promotion of usefull inventions, so much more then a 'side effect'.
In general, I think you have to put the damage caused by overly-broad patents into perspective. I think you're greatly overstating the damage they're doing, versus the benefit we gain as a society from patents (as compared to a society in which patents didn't exist, and everything was protected as trade secrets, etc.)
First of all, assuming that lack of patents would cause almost everything to be protected as trade secrets is wrong I believe, if only because there is no way in most cases to