libertarianism is nothing but selfishness with a philosophical bumper sticker stuck on its ass that somehow purports to elevate it to respectability.
Libertarianism, in essence, is classical liberalism. Are you calling John Locke, Adam Smith, Thomas Jefferson, Hayek, and Milton Friedman supporters of selfishness? Selfishness is the last quality that I would equate with these people. Where and why do people equate libertarianism with selfishness; somebody please tell me before I go off.
the only people who take this shit seriously are earnest but naive college students with too much philosophy classes under their belt and no real life experience, 40-something selfish assholes behind on their alimony payments, and nutjobs who horde guns in the woods and consider themselves to be part of the minutement militia, 2 centuries hence
And what does that make you?
Libetarianism is about civil liberties and free-market economics. The socialism that you are pandering doesn't work in the long run and restricts the freedoms of its citizens. One very fallacious error that leftists make is that they claim that government should be "compassionate" and forcibly take money from the most successful in society and give it to the poor because all rich people are selfish (or some other theme). However, governments cannot be compassionate, because governments are entities of force. You should read this article which further explains my viewpoint.
You need to get some books and read them before you spew all of this ignorant crap about a political philosophy that you do not fully understand.
I have a big problem with people like you who have that attitude. Have you heard of a cost of living increase? I have been working for three years without even one of those. In essence, although my value to my company has increased, they are lowering my salary.
The parent poster did address cost of living increases, but he said that cost of living increases are formed by inflation. Some businesses are unable to keep up with inflation and therefore are unable to raise their workers' salaries. Inflation results in higher cost of living, because the money is worth less than it used to be.
Businesses generally want to pay their employees as least as possible but at fair market value in order to keep the workers happy and productive. They try to keep up with inflation and other market situations (such as cost of living), in order to keep their labor. However, businesses sometimes are unable to keep up (inflation, loss of profits, etc.) and make up for that via no raises (or worse, wage cuts), layoffs, etc.
The January/2006 Wired had an article titled "How Click Fraud Could Swallow the Internet" that presented a case study of a charter-jet service victimized by this... turns out it was their competition doing it to use up their on-line marketing budget. Google Girl basically stonewalled 'em.
I want to post an insightful response, but Google Girl has stonewalled my thoughts.
must....post...insightful...can't...resist...
My anti-anti-Libertarian (counter^3)points
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Netroots Politics
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Of course, when advocating for an end to government regulation on utility monopolies, Liberatarians place all the blame for their existence on the government and offer no concrete ways in which total deregulation will get past the problem of entrenched infrastructure and economies of scale.
Nobel economist Milton Friedman, said that in the case of natural monopoly that "there is only a choice among three evils: private unregulated monopoly, private monopoly regulated by the state, and government operation." He said "the least of these evils is private unregulated monopoly where this is tolerable." He reasons that the other alternatives are "exceedingly difficult to reverse," and that the dynamics of the market should be allowed the opportunity to have an effect and are likely to do so (Capitalism and Freedom).
I'd rather deal with an unregulated monopoly than a regulated monopoly (as long as that unregulated monopoly doesn't try to monopolize another commodity). I am firmly against government intervention in the economy. Natural monopolies can still be defeated using market techniques if you really want to defeat the monopoly. Regulated monopolies are government sponsored and can never go away. We don't want nationalized or heavily regulated industries; they hurt the economy and the consumer more than an unfettered natural monopoly does.
[What] "libertarian" state will you point to to show your point? There has never been one...
Somalia -- the world's only free market economy. This is the "paradise" you dream of when you wish to eliminate the government monopoly on deadly force. It's not a happy place, because when there is no monopoly on force, rule of the strong becomes the rule of law.
WRONG. Somalia is not a libertarian state, it resembles an anarchocapitalist state. Learn your definitions. Sorry, kiddo, you lost major points with your argument.
Libertarians recognize that the government has a monopoly on force. Libertarians, however, recognize that there are legitimate usages for using government power (the military and law enforcement are big examples). That is what separates libertarian from anarchocapitalism. When you start bringing up Somalia in an anti-libertarian tirade, you lose major points in your argument. It clearly shows your ignorance of libertarianism.
Poverty is oppression; wealth is freedom and power to take wealth from others. A system with no checks and balances on the wealthy is a system that increases the number of people falling into poverty.
A government that steals money from those who are economically successful is an illiberal, Robin Hood-esque government (and I'm using liberal in the classical sense here). Why pick on the rich? Oh, yeah, silly me, I forgot. (Picks up a red book). This red book here says that rich people are greedy and selfish, so they need to be heavily taxed. Getting back to the topic, redistribution of wealth doesn't help the poor improve their economic situation; it only keeps the poor impoverished, and the poor remain dependent on the "safety net" forever. Poor people are also hurt by lack of capital, lack of property (real estate), and lack of education. Egalitarianism makes everybody equally poor, and egalitarian goals like redistribution of wealth are completely opposite to the goals of liberty. Read this article, and then read another quote by Milton Friedman:
A society that puts equality - in the sense of equality of outcome - ahead of freedom will end up with neither equality or freedom. The use of force to achieve equality will destroy freedom. On the other hand, a society that puts freedom first will, as a happy by-p
Re:Right and left are false dichotomies
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Netroots Politics
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The Libertarian economy: Runaway to Ruin
Please explain how laissez-faire economics lead to ruin. (And please don't use the classic Great Depression argument; the Great Depression was caused by the Fed's mishandling of failing band and worldwide inflation caused by central banks moving away from the gold standard and printing too much money. Google for Milton Friedman and Murray Rothbard; they present alternative views to the Great Depression).
Libertarianism is like communism: both look great on paper.
It depends on your definition of libertarianism. If you equate libertarianism to anarchocapitalism, then I will be obliged to agree with you. Anarchocapitalist theories are logical and I do read articles from The Mises Institute every day, but I don't think anarchism of any form works in the long run, and if it did, it isn't the optimal solution. Pure communism is anarchy, but no country has voluntarily adopted a voluntary communist system. Instead, deranged dictators who read all of Marx's books and didn't read any other philosophy and like what they hear gain power and make the state have ultimate, unlimited power, which is contrary to theoretical communism.
However, I believe that minarchism (small government) can and will work. In the United States framework of government, the federal government can take care of the military, interstate highways, money supply (although the Federal Reserve should be replaced with a gold standard), and upholding the Constitution and other liberty-minded laws. Issues such as education, health care, scientific research, housing, social safety nets, and others are best handled by society, states, counties, cities, communities, families, or individuals; the federal government should back out of those issues.
Libertarians never seem to understand that lifting all constraints from powerful organizations ultimately means the end of freedom and democracy. Why can't they see the end game of their simplistic thinking?
I am assuming that you are talking about deregulation of corporations. Now, I am not completely laissez-faire in deregulation; I support anti-trust laws and other regulations that support fair business practices, because they help keep the markets competitive; restrictions of the growth of monopolies is an integral part of having a free market, IMO. I also agree that the laws about corporations being treated as people should be scrapped. However, I believe that too much regulation hampers freedom. We don't need price controls, government inspection of products (a private corporation could do the same), tariffs, 100-year old copyrights, FCC, (insert other regulatory function here).
I believe in environmental regulation, however. However, I am a supporter of free market environmentalism. Free market environmentalism combines taxation of pollution, upkeeping of government- and privately-owned parks and wildlife reserves, and other ideas that combine protecting the environment with free-market ideas.
Libertarianism constitutes the ultimate in linear thought processes.
Well, libertarianism is the most consistent of all of the political ideologies that I studied. However, it isn't illogical.
The central problem (and irony) with big-L Libertarianism is that ultimately, in this linear system of thinking, all liberty is lost. Libertarianism always seems to leave out the concept of the big-power players, who obviously will always exist and will always work to build their power at the expense of the masses. Libertarianism leads to a feudalist society with no liberties. That's why I say Yes to small-l libertarianism for individuals, and No to big-L Libertarianism for corpora
I disagree. Once they open up Gaim or Kopete (or, even easier, open up Firefox/Konqueror/some other *nix browser and load AIM or Meebo), then they'll be chatting on their machines.
Nothing will get in the way of high schoolers/ college students and their IM/MySpace/Facebook/whatever hit of the day. Unless you give them a command line, but if they find naim....
I'm sorry to say this, but frankly as far as home desktops are concerned, the battle has been won by Windows
I would argue that there has never been a battle between Linux and Windows on the desktop. When Linus Torvalds started work on the Linux kernel, MS already had a major chunk of market share based on DOS and Windows 3.0. By the time OSS developers started work on KDE and GNOME, Windows 95 was already released for over a year and MS controlled 97% of the desktop. Linux's goal was never about being the #1 desktop (or even being a desktop to begin with; that came about later in the OSS community circa 1996).
I currently don't use Linux on my desktop and have never installed a desktop-oriented Linux distribution like Mandrake or Ubuntu; I use FreeBSD and Windows XP, so some of my points of view may be a bit out of date. I agree with some of your points; hence my XP partition. However, I also disagree; hence my BSD partition. With that being said, the only problem with using OSS OSes is that the entire world is centered around Windows (and OS X, to an extent). Hardware manufacturers only make drivers for those OSes, software developers only sell software to those OSes, companies only give support to those OSes, etc. There are also proprietary hardware and proprietary file formats to deal with. With issues such as DRM, it gets even worse. It will be impossible to provide Linux programs that sync with iPods and buy music from the iTunes Music Store (unless Apple ports iTunes to Linux) because it is against the law to write such a program.
I think it will be almost impossible for OSS to completely catch up with Windows based on all of these incompatiblities and other issues. Some people are asking for Linux to support every piece of hardware manufactured since 1981, run any application that they can throw at it, be "usable" (i.e., pointy-clicky-GUI; command lines aren't completely unusable, even though GUIs are easier for beginners), clean their rooms, and provide everything but the kitchen sink. That is currently impossible. I also think that it is very difficult to graft an architecture of "one program does everything" onto an architecture that is built for "Do one thing, and do it well." Integrated programs that do tons of things may work well for a user's standpoint, but they are needlessly complex to code. Now, Apple did this with OS X flawlessly, but they already started out with a 10-year codebase from NeXT.
However, I still think that desktop Linux has a chance, provided that some rough edges are smoothed out. I also have another suggestion; I wish that today's OSS software weren't as bloated. Is it possible to write a modern web browser optimized for computers with a 266MHz Pentium II with 64MB RAM? (I have an old laptop with those specs and FreeBSD; Firefox is too slow, and Opera, while faster, is still pretty slow.) Just a thought.
Re:yep, great benchmarks, but lacking in features.
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You seem unable to accept any other points of view about DRM./i>
I did my research of DRM many months ago and read various viewpoints about it. After thoroughly researching it, my conclusion is that I don't like DRM at all. My problem with DRM isn't the DRM technologies itself; it's its tie-in with the DMCA and other laws (buying out Congress, extending copyright, etc.), trusted computing, and the content providers' and software developers' push to eliminate fair use.
I'm not a zealot; I am just rationally opposed to DRM. I just get very pissed off when the majority of Apple supporters go from anti-DRM to pro-DRM just because Apple is doing it, as if Apple can never do anything wrong. Or worse, when those same Apple DRM supporters bash Microsoft and the MPAA/RIAA because of DRM. Still, I don't trust DRM and TPM chips at all, and I don't trust anything that cannot be legally cracked and figured out.
Re:yep, great benchmarks, but lacking in features.
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What makes you think that Apple (or some Mac software development companies) won't extend the use of that TPM chip to do some other things, such as restrict what type of media you can listen to and watch, lock down your documents so that way they can only be opened with a proprietary document reader that costs $$$, prevent you from doing anything that is "unsupported," etc.? The chip is already inside. Why not extend it to its fullest potential? Plus, the RIAA and MPAA comes up with new tricks every minute; Microsoft, Intel, and even AMD have bought into Trusted Computing; and this year has started the development of computers with those chips.
The AC's point is a valid point. Why would anybody who wants the maximum functionality of their computers want to support DRM of any shape or form? I used to love Apple up until the day that Jobs announced the switch to the x86 platform. The switch just shows that Apple isn't the benevolent, "never-do-any-wrong" company that many people thought that it is. Apple is the silent introducer and proponent of DRM. They don't (and won't) immediately start out with draconian restrictions, they'll just implement it slowly, and people won't notice it until everything is DRM'd.
I hate DRM and I hate trusted computing even more. I refuse to purchase any products that support DRM and trusted computing (and, no, I will not pirate them, either). I'll stick with my open hardware and FOSS software, thank you.
Re:yep, great benchmarks, but lacking in features.
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You were probably modded 'troll' because you started on about DRM as if it actually mattered [emphasis mine]
You're only proving plasmacutter's point about Apple zealots and DRM. DRM does matter. It matters because DRM tells us what we can and cannot do with the software/media that we bought. It matters because we, as in the user, have to give up control of our computers and files when we accept DRM. It matters because if nothing changes within the next few years, we're all going to be using locked down computers. I have lusted for Macs since OS X was released years ago, but since the Intel switch and Apple's stance with DRM, I have lost much of my enthusiasm with Macs and Apple in general. I don't want to buy a machine with TPM chips that may be used for much more evil purposes (such as locking down my media). I want to buy a machine that does what I, the customer wants, not what Apple or Microsoft or the **AA wants. Thankfully I can still buy and build some computers that aren't DRM-encumbered.
DRM matters. That's the bottom line. And I, for one, am not going to give up my freedoms, even for "ease of use" and other minor benefits. Nobody should tell me what I can do with my media, or with a certain OS (points at Apple and OS X), but that's why I don't use that stuff anyway; I prefer to befree instead.
The II line was Woz's baby, and he kept it going even as Jobs was pushing his Mac. For a time, the two lines co-existed. This proved problematic for Apple, though, because the II (by then, the IIgs) was more powerful and expandable than the existing Mac, not to mention cheaper, and it remained more popular. Jobs saw the Mac as the future, though, and this contributed to the friction between Woz and Jobs that eventually led to Woz's departure. The rest, as they say, is history.
What's worse, Jobs left Apple the same year. Imagine had Jobs stayed at Apple instead of founding NeXT? We could have new machines that are better than the Macintosh. Scully, Spindler, and Ameilo decided to milk the Mac for everything that it was worth, but, unfortunately, left the Mac to stagnate technologically until the "beleaguered" era of 1997 when Apple was still stuck with its old OS and Microsoft surpassed them technologically. Had Jobs and the Woz stayed at Apple, Apple could have been producing new machines every so many years that could have been better than the Mac. Fortunately for Apple, the Mac was replaced with Jobs's NeXTSTEP, which became the basis for OS X. But just imagine had Apple held on to Jobs and Woz much longer, and not let Sculley/Spindler/Amelio run the company.
I disagree. The OSS components of OS X are pretty insignificant compared to the proprietary components of OS X (Aqua, Carbon, Cocoa, graphics toolkits, etc.). The core of the OS is just BSD and Mach. People like OS X because of what is running on top of BSD+Mach; the interface and ease of use. If Linux and BSD were just as easy to set up out of the box, and supported all of the applications and hardware that they needed, then BSD and Linux would be much more common. *nix has improved tremendously in the past few years, however, so we will see more *nix desktops in the future.
Re:How is he questioning the move to Intel?
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I guess it's good he's no longer with the company. We might still be using Performas....
Performas weren't Woz's idea. If Woz still stuck with Apple for all of those years, we'd be seeing very expandable, open, and well-engineered Apple machines (well-engineered from an electrical engineering perspective). All of the modern PC enthusiasts would have stuck with Apple to this day had Apple kept the Apple II and went beyond that (more powerful processors, improved OS, etc.).
If Woz still remained at Apple, Apple would have probably became an electrical engineering company that specialized in computers, not a consumer electronics company like Jobs has allowed it to become since the iPod. Apple would have been more like the old HP instead.
I don't agree with your views with the DMCA and Apple's draconian restrictions, but I agree with your point that it will be much better if the people trying to get OS X running on vanilla x86 boxen spent their time coding and building a better opposition to OS X.
Frankly, I find OS X and Macs in general to be overrated, especially since the Intel switch. Anything that I can do with an OS X box I can also do under Windows or under Linux/BSD, except OS X has a prettier interface. I've used OS X machines and I think that they are very good, but OS X isn't the greatest thing since sliced bread; it isn't that compelling. However, the only major advantage that OS X has compared to Windows and *nix is the coherency, the ease of use, and the overall design of the interface in general, not to mention that Apple is the only manufacturer of laptops (besides Sun) that come with a Unix-derivative preinstalled (I'm looking around for laptops currently). However, KDE and GNOME has improved remarkably with its interfaces, and certain Linux distributions are almost as easy to install and to use as a typical Windows or OS X installation.
However, there is still a lot of work that needs to be done in order to get *nix on Joe Average's desktop. Applications need some more polishing, and needless bloat needs to be removed. Interfaces can be a bit better. However, *nix has all of that applications that 90% of the people need to do their work, and the interfaces has gotten to the point that most people can use it without too much trouble. Heck, I know a few people who were using Linux boxes without being aware that they were using Linux, and they were surfing the Internet, chatting with their friends, and typing their homework without any problems. That's progress. Give the OSS community a few years, and by then, nobody will be hyping about OS X on vanilla PCs because we have already upped our standards, as one signature on Slashdot says.
So, yes, there are a few people like myself who aren't interested in pirating OS X and aren't interested in getting it working on their PCs. We already have an equivalent to OS X: free *nix and KDE/GNOME. We just have some more work to do; then we'll see you in about two or three years.
The difference is that NeXTSTEP was released for vanilla x86 PCs, and was first released in 1993. NeXT stopped selling their 68k hardware at the same time. You can still buy copies of NeXTSTEP and OPENSTEP for x86 on eBay these days, and there is a community of *STEP and Rhapsody users. Rhapsody is the closest thing we have to legal OS X for x86, except that the disks are hard to find (I would love to try Rhapsody). In the Apple scenario, however, Apple doesn't want to sell OS X for vanilla x86 PCs, and is using DRM to stop it. NeXT didn't try to lock down their OS to just their machines (they quit selling machines at that point), whereas Apple is fighting tooth and nail to keep OS X tied to the Mac. Jobs has been down this road, but he is taking a different approach this time around.
Simple; Steve Wozniak left. The Woz came from an electrical engineering background and was very interested in building expandable, hackable machines that you can do almost anything that you wanted with. Therefore, from 1976 to 1993 Apple built these types of machines. Unfortunately, after Woz left and after Jobs left for the first time, the executives made the Mac (closed system, from hardware down to software) a very high priority and milked the Mac continuing to this day, while the Apple II was left to rot until its discontinuation in 1993.
Jobs, on the other hand, is more of a business, money-making guy who would find a way to make money off of his products. He is the one who thought of very closed boxes that aren't very expandable. The original Macintosh is an example of that; functional but not very expandable. Macs didn't start becoming more expandable until the Mac II came out in the late 80s, and didn't become fully expandable until the Centris/Quadra series came out (neither of which are Jobs's designs; that is during the Sculley/Spindler/Ameilio era, before Jobs returned). They also closed the source of their OS. Even when they adopted BSD + Mach for OS X, although they have a very good record with giving back to the FOSS community (they didn't have to, after all), they also placed DRM into their kernel.
Don't let Apple fool you into thinking that they are a bunch of innocent fruit from a tree who will never do anything bad. They are one of the biggest supporters of DRM, even bigger than Microsoft is at this point (there is no DRM in Vista forbidding me to run on any computer). They're not in the Trusted Computing Group (but Intel is), but that doesn't mean anything. They have successfully launched the iTunes Music Store, and they have locked down OS X to run solely on their Intel Macs, even though the core of it is FreeBSD + Mach (both FOSS).
It's going to be a long road ahead, when your only choices are DRM-encumbered Windows boxen and DRM-encumbered OS X boxen.
I can buy a copy of IntelliJ IDEA for academic use for $99, or a license for personal use for $199. They charge (I think) $599 for the commercial license. All have equal functionality. So, you think it's moral for me to buy the personal license for $199, and then use it to create commercial software? After all, that right do they have to tell me what to do with the software I've purchased? I should be able to do whatever I want with it, regardless of what the terms of the sale were.
I'll just use vim and javac, like I always do with my Java programs;). And once the GNU or Apache people complete their Java compilers, I'll move to gcj or Harmony.
Alright, I'll answer the question. I don't think it is right to use the personal edition to create commercial software; however, I also think it is a BS restriction, and I don't think that the creators of IntelliJ IDEA should send out their ninja lawyers to imprison people who used the personal edition to create commercial software. But that is why, for the most part, I use either use FOSS development tools or use development tools that don't have these restrictions.
Now, you think you have me trapped. However, I still maintain that there is a strong difference between certain types of EULA restrictions. The restriction you listed above is a fair restriction for development tools, even though I will personally never develop software in which the development tool told me how to license the software. However, I still maintain that Apple shouldn't force that OS X should only be installed on Macs, just like the record company can't force me to listen to a CD with only a CD player, and the soccer ball manufacturer to force me to play with a soccer ball solely for soccer. Corporations shouldn't be telling people that they must use a product a certain way, or they'll call out the cops. Unfortunately, that seems to be the status quo these days.
But once again, you are right. I don't have to buy the crap. Hopefully this whole Treacherous^WTrusted Computing crap won't happen so that way DRM and all of these restrictions aren't my only option.
Exactly. You are right about the EULA portion. Unfortunately, in my country (the USA), we have a law called the DMCA that prevents you from circumventing DRM. Since Apple used DRM in OS X for x86 that prevents you from installing OS X on a vanilla x86 PC, cracking it is against the law, and is punishable under a heavy fine and/or even prison time.
Apple's restriction in the EULA is irrelevant, unenforcable, and most likely illegal. It is the DMCA that is the main issue.
However, I think that if a manufacturer sells you an object with the condition that you don't use it in a certain way, it's immoral to ignore their wishes.
Why?
As for CDs: if the CD's publisher sells a CD to you with the restriction that you only play it in a CD player, not in your iPod, then ripping it to your iPod is immoral (even if it's legal, which I think it is, and should be). Simple as that - they make the CD, they can sell it with whatever terms they want. No one is forcing you to buy the CD. If you don't like the terms, find some other CD to buy. And if your favorite artist is only available from a publisher that doesn't want you ripping their CDs, tough shit. Life isn't fair.[emphasis mine] The fact that you don't like the terms the CD is being sold under doesn't give you the moral right to violate them.
One way to lose points in an argument is to use phrases such as "tough shit," "life isn't fair," or "that's life" to prove a point. That is called an argumentum ad antiquitatem fallacy. It sounds like you are dancing around the question instead of answering it. Tell me why it is immoral, instead of just saying "life isn't fair."
Anyways, getting back to the quote, I feel that in these cases, nobody has the right to tell people what to do with an object once they have purchased it. My CD is my CD; as long as I'm not redistributing it to other people, why should the manufacturer care if I'm listening to it with a CD player or listening to it with an iPod? With software and other "intellectual property" (I hate that phrase, but I'll use it), I still feel that nobody has the right to tell you what you can do with it as long as you don't redistribute copies of it, disassemble it and use your disassembled code for OSS and proprietary projects, etc. There is a difference between following general copyright rules and laws and having manufacturers be complete fascists when dealing with how you can use the product. It gets even worse when the manufacturers and the government get in bed and pass laws that are completely in favor of the manufacturers instead of the freedoms of the people. That is called corporatism, also known as fascism.
Well, Apple only sells a handful of computer variations and specifications, and they are mostly in the high end. In the PC world, however, you can build a custom-made PC with any specification you desire. You can build yourself anything from an el-cheapo $200 machine with a decent Celeron or Sempron processor, all the way to dual dual-core Opteron and Xeon boxen that costs thousands of dollars. Imagine if Apple had to compete with Dell; Apple will hold its own against Dell's higher-end offerings, but Apple can't compete against Dell's $299 specials for desktops and $499 specials for laptops (after rebates, of course).
Yes, there is the question of driver support. However, that will be taken care of once hardware manufacturers start feeling the demand for devices that work with OS X. Driver support won't be perfect since Apple won't control the hardware manufacturers, but that problem (for the most part) will fix itself. Besides, Apple's architecture of OS X should better handle itself against faulty drivers due to the microkernel (please correct me if I'm wrong, however).
Pretty much, if Apple started selling OS X for vanilla PCs, their hardware sales will come down, because the only thing that Apple can compete on now is quality of the hardware. Then there is also the issue of piracy (even though pirates already have access to developer releases to OS X for x86, so that issue is already out there).
Finally, Microsoft's possible reaction to OS X being availale to vanilla PCs is the elephant in the room, IMO. Microsoft will intervene and find creative ways to kill OS X (stop publishing Office for OS X, collaborate with PC vendors and give them hefty subsidies to prevent them from preinstalling OS X, etc.)
So, yeah, there are many potential issues with why Apple is fighting vigorously to keep OS X tied to their hardware. Pretty much, Apple is a computer company that sells computers complete with the whole she-bang. Most people want the bang, but Apple's wants you to buy both the she and the bang bundled together. I disagree with the tactics used for Apple to do this (especially DRM and the DMCA), but Apple isn't a stranger to DRM.
But I don't understand the people who truly don't see what's immoral about, for example, running Mac OS X in a way that Apple expressly asks you not to.
I'm not a pirate. I never pirated anything in my life, and never will, either. I only use proprietary software that I licensed and FOSS software. I respect and obey all copyright laws, even some of the most restrictive ones (such as the DMCA).
However, I believe your error in your argument is that you think that all objects must be used in the way that the manufacturer intended. Alright, I'll use some more analogies. Is ripping (not sharing) a CD that you bought from the music store and converting those files to MP3s immoral because you aren't listening to the CD with a CD player? Is using a soccer ball for basketball immoral because soccer balls aren't intended to be used in basketball? Is putting an object wrapped in aluminum foil in a microwave immoral because it will blow up the microwave?
Whatever happened to fair use, i.e., the principle of you using an object in any way, shape, or form, as long as you aren't copying it or "stealing" it? Why should Apple tell me that I can must only use their OS on their computers, or they'll send out their army of ninja lawyers? Why should the MPAA tell the that I must listen to my CDs with my CD player, or they'll send me to jail? Oh wait, the MPAA bought out Congress and passed the DMCA in 1998, forbidding me to do either of those things if they involve some sort of DRM.
Give me a break! Laws such as the DMCA restrict the individual freedoms of the purchasers of the content to the point of foolishness. Nobody should tell me what I can or should do with something that I buy from them, as long as I am not copying and redistributing or selling it to people all over the globe. All of those Congresspeople who passed the DMCA need to be voted out of office this year and be replaced with people who respect liberty, for a change.
But, hey, you are right. We don't have to buy Apple's OS X. We don't need no stinkin' OS X. Anything that you can do with OS X can be handled by us with free *nix, KDE/GNOME, and Wine. That covers all of our bases. Plus, KDE and GNOME has improved to the point that they are almost matching OS X in capabilities and usability. OS X is a very good operating system, but we don't need it. We'll stick on the free side of the fence and use free (as in speech) operating systems and applications. At least RMS, Linus, and Theo doesn't tell us to use their software on only their personally branded boxes, or else.
Just one problem, though. To use a playground analogy, Apple is the kid on the playground who owns his ball and refuses to let you use his ball outside of a few games that Apple likes to play on the playground. Apple will let you loan (or license) his ball to play four square, but won't let you use the ball to attach to a tether to play tetherball. Sure, you can tie the ball to the tetherball, but Apple will get mad and call up the yard supervisors and have you sitting in detention, thanks to a law called the PTMPA (Playground Toys' Millenium Protection Act), created by the TMAA (Toy Manufacturers' Association of America). The PTMPA disallows balls made specifically for four square to be used for tetherball, basketballs to be used for bowling, and other combinations, and is punishable by a hefty fine.
In other words, Apple owns OS X, and has created rules about how you can use it. Because it uses DRM, you cannot legally install it under your brand-spanking new vanilla x86 machine, even if you ran out and purchased bought two MacBook Pros and owned tons of Apple stock, thanks to the DMCA. Yeah, I would love to purchase OS X for x86 and install it natively on my PC, but that isn't going to legally happen anytime soon. I don't feel like breaking laws to simply use an operating system; I would much rather use GNU-licensed or BSD-licensed software and not have to worry about the legality of running it on whatever hardware I feel fit to install it on. I also believe that installing OS X on a vanilla PC should constitute as fair use, but the DMCA overrides fair use. The best way to get legal OS X for x86 on a vanilla PC is to either write up your Congresscritter and ask him/her to pass a bill repealing the DMCA (or, better yet, since elections for Congresscritters are this November, vote for candidates who will repeal it), or talk to Apple and show them the $$$ in selling copies of OS X for x86 to an open market.
It's sad what we have to deal with today thanks to our growing loss of fair use rights, but we have to deal with it for now until the political landscape changes in the realm of copyrights and fair use. In the meanwhile, we'll be either saving up for a Mac or working on making *nix easier to use and almost comparable to OS X. I wonder what Apple is more afraid of; selling copies of OS X and them losing money because people aren't buying their machines, or having to compete with a Linux or BSD distribution that just as good or better than OS X?
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Libertarianism, in essence, is classical liberalism. Are you calling John Locke, Adam Smith, Thomas Jefferson, Hayek, and Milton Friedman supporters of selfishness? Selfishness is the last quality that I would equate with these people. Where and why do people equate libertarianism with selfishness; somebody please tell me before I go off.
And what does that make you?
Libetarianism is about civil liberties and free-market economics. The socialism that you are pandering doesn't work in the long run and restricts the freedoms of its citizens. One very fallacious error that leftists make is that they claim that government should be "compassionate" and forcibly take money from the most successful in society and give it to the poor because all rich people are selfish (or some other theme). However, governments cannot be compassionate, because governments are entities of force. You should read this article which further explains my viewpoint.
You need to get some books and read them before you spew all of this ignorant crap about a political philosophy that you do not fully understand.
The parent poster did address cost of living increases, but he said that cost of living increases are formed by inflation. Some businesses are unable to keep up with inflation and therefore are unable to raise their workers' salaries. Inflation results in higher cost of living, because the money is worth less than it used to be.
Businesses generally want to pay their employees as least as possible but at fair market value in order to keep the workers happy and productive. They try to keep up with inflation and other market situations (such as cost of living), in order to keep their labor. However, businesses sometimes are unable to keep up (inflation, loss of profits, etc.) and make up for that via no raises (or worse, wage cuts), layoffs, etc.
I want to post an insightful response, but Google Girl has stonewalled my thoughts.
must....post...insightful...can't...resist...
I'll counter with a quote from Milton Friedman inside of this Wikipedia article:
I'd rather deal with an unregulated monopoly than a regulated monopoly (as long as that unregulated monopoly doesn't try to monopolize another commodity). I am firmly against government intervention in the economy. Natural monopolies can still be defeated using market techniques if you really want to defeat the monopoly. Regulated monopolies are government sponsored and can never go away. We don't want nationalized or heavily regulated industries; they hurt the economy and the consumer more than an unfettered natural monopoly does.
WRONG. Somalia is not a libertarian state, it resembles an anarchocapitalist state. Learn your definitions. Sorry, kiddo, you lost major points with your argument.
Libertarians recognize that the government has a monopoly on force. Libertarians, however, recognize that there are legitimate usages for using government power (the military and law enforcement are big examples). That is what separates libertarian from anarchocapitalism. When you start bringing up Somalia in an anti-libertarian tirade, you lose major points in your argument. It clearly shows your ignorance of libertarianism.
A government that steals money from those who are economically successful is an illiberal, Robin Hood-esque government (and I'm using liberal in the classical sense here). Why pick on the rich? Oh, yeah, silly me, I forgot. (Picks up a red book). This red book here says that rich people are greedy and selfish, so they need to be heavily taxed. Getting back to the topic, redistribution of wealth doesn't help the poor improve their economic situation; it only keeps the poor impoverished, and the poor remain dependent on the "safety net" forever. Poor people are also hurt by lack of capital, lack of property (real estate), and lack of education. Egalitarianism makes everybody equally poor, and egalitarian goals like redistribution of wealth are completely opposite to the goals of liberty. Read this article, and then read another quote by Milton Friedman:
Please explain how laissez-faire economics lead to ruin. (And please don't use the classic Great Depression argument; the Great Depression was caused by the Fed's mishandling of failing band and worldwide inflation caused by central banks moving away from the gold standard and printing too much money. Google for Milton Friedman and Murray Rothbard; they present alternative views to the Great Depression).
It depends on your definition of libertarianism. If you equate libertarianism to anarchocapitalism, then I will be obliged to agree with you. Anarchocapitalist theories are logical and I do read articles from The Mises Institute every day, but I don't think anarchism of any form works in the long run, and if it did, it isn't the optimal solution. Pure communism is anarchy, but no country has voluntarily adopted a voluntary communist system. Instead, deranged dictators who read all of Marx's books and didn't read any other philosophy and like what they hear gain power and make the state have ultimate, unlimited power, which is contrary to theoretical communism.
However, I believe that minarchism (small government) can and will work. In the United States framework of government, the federal government can take care of the military, interstate highways, money supply (although the Federal Reserve should be replaced with a gold standard), and upholding the Constitution and other liberty-minded laws. Issues such as education, health care, scientific research, housing, social safety nets, and others are best handled by society, states, counties, cities, communities, families, or individuals; the federal government should back out of those issues.
I am assuming that you are talking about deregulation of corporations. Now, I am not completely laissez-faire in deregulation; I support anti-trust laws and other regulations that support fair business practices, because they help keep the markets competitive; restrictions of the growth of monopolies is an integral part of having a free market, IMO. I also agree that the laws about corporations being treated as people should be scrapped. However, I believe that too much regulation hampers freedom. We don't need price controls, government inspection of products (a private corporation could do the same), tariffs, 100-year old copyrights, FCC, (insert other regulatory function here).
I believe in environmental regulation, however. However, I am a supporter of free market environmentalism. Free market environmentalism combines taxation of pollution, upkeeping of government- and privately-owned parks and wildlife reserves, and other ideas that combine protecting the environment with free-market ideas.
Well, libertarianism is the most consistent of all of the political ideologies that I studied. However, it isn't illogical.
The FOSS community is working on that..
But what if my only commitment is my computer? I'm a CS major Slashdotter, after all
Ajax is great! It cleans my hands, is tough on grime, and makes my dishes sparkling clean.
I disagree. Once they open up Gaim or Kopete (or, even easier, open up Firefox/Konqueror/some other *nix browser and load AIM or Meebo), then they'll be chatting on their machines.
Nothing will get in the way of high schoolers/ college students and their IM/MySpace/Facebook/whatever hit of the day. Unless you give them a command line, but if they find naim....
I would argue that there has never been a battle between Linux and Windows on the desktop. When Linus Torvalds started work on the Linux kernel, MS already had a major chunk of market share based on DOS and Windows 3.0. By the time OSS developers started work on KDE and GNOME, Windows 95 was already released for over a year and MS controlled 97% of the desktop. Linux's goal was never about being the #1 desktop (or even being a desktop to begin with; that came about later in the OSS community circa 1996).
I currently don't use Linux on my desktop and have never installed a desktop-oriented Linux distribution like Mandrake or Ubuntu; I use FreeBSD and Windows XP, so some of my points of view may be a bit out of date. I agree with some of your points; hence my XP partition. However, I also disagree; hence my BSD partition. With that being said, the only problem with using OSS OSes is that the entire world is centered around Windows (and OS X, to an extent). Hardware manufacturers only make drivers for those OSes, software developers only sell software to those OSes, companies only give support to those OSes, etc. There are also proprietary hardware and proprietary file formats to deal with. With issues such as DRM, it gets even worse. It will be impossible to provide Linux programs that sync with iPods and buy music from the iTunes Music Store (unless Apple ports iTunes to Linux) because it is against the law to write such a program.
I think it will be almost impossible for OSS to completely catch up with Windows based on all of these incompatiblities and other issues. Some people are asking for Linux to support every piece of hardware manufactured since 1981, run any application that they can throw at it, be "usable" (i.e., pointy-clicky-GUI; command lines aren't completely unusable, even though GUIs are easier for beginners), clean their rooms, and provide everything but the kitchen sink. That is currently impossible. I also think that it is very difficult to graft an architecture of "one program does everything" onto an architecture that is built for "Do one thing, and do it well." Integrated programs that do tons of things may work well for a user's standpoint, but they are needlessly complex to code. Now, Apple did this with OS X flawlessly, but they already started out with a 10-year codebase from NeXT.
However, I still think that desktop Linux has a chance, provided that some rough edges are smoothed out. I also have another suggestion; I wish that today's OSS software weren't as bloated. Is it possible to write a modern web browser optimized for computers with a 266MHz Pentium II with 64MB RAM? (I have an old laptop with those specs and FreeBSD; Firefox is too slow, and Opera, while faster, is still pretty slow.) Just a thought.
I did my research of DRM many months ago and read various viewpoints about it. After thoroughly researching it, my conclusion is that I don't like DRM at all. My problem with DRM isn't the DRM technologies itself; it's its tie-in with the DMCA and other laws (buying out Congress, extending copyright, etc.), trusted computing, and the content providers' and software developers' push to eliminate fair use.
I'm not a zealot; I am just rationally opposed to DRM. I just get very pissed off when the majority of Apple supporters go from anti-DRM to pro-DRM just because Apple is doing it, as if Apple can never do anything wrong. Or worse, when those same Apple DRM supporters bash Microsoft and the MPAA/RIAA because of DRM. Still, I don't trust DRM and TPM chips at all, and I don't trust anything that cannot be legally cracked and figured out.
What makes you think that Apple (or some Mac software development companies) won't extend the use of that TPM chip to do some other things, such as restrict what type of media you can listen to and watch, lock down your documents so that way they can only be opened with a proprietary document reader that costs $$$, prevent you from doing anything that is "unsupported," etc.? The chip is already inside. Why not extend it to its fullest potential? Plus, the RIAA and MPAA comes up with new tricks every minute; Microsoft, Intel, and even AMD have bought into Trusted Computing; and this year has started the development of computers with those chips.
The AC's point is a valid point. Why would anybody who wants the maximum functionality of their computers want to support DRM of any shape or form? I used to love Apple up until the day that Jobs announced the switch to the x86 platform. The switch just shows that Apple isn't the benevolent, "never-do-any-wrong" company that many people thought that it is. Apple is the silent introducer and proponent of DRM. They don't (and won't) immediately start out with draconian restrictions, they'll just implement it slowly, and people won't notice it until everything is DRM'd.
I hate DRM and I hate trusted computing even more. I refuse to purchase any products that support DRM and trusted computing (and, no, I will not pirate them, either). I'll stick with my open hardware and FOSS software, thank you.
You're only proving plasmacutter's point about Apple zealots and DRM. DRM does matter. It matters because DRM tells us what we can and cannot do with the software/media that we bought. It matters because we, as in the user, have to give up control of our computers and files when we accept DRM. It matters because if nothing changes within the next few years, we're all going to be using locked down computers. I have lusted for Macs since OS X was released years ago, but since the Intel switch and Apple's stance with DRM, I have lost much of my enthusiasm with Macs and Apple in general. I don't want to buy a machine with TPM chips that may be used for much more evil purposes (such as locking down my media). I want to buy a machine that does what I, the customer wants, not what Apple or Microsoft or the **AA wants. Thankfully I can still buy and build some computers that aren't DRM-encumbered.
DRM matters. That's the bottom line. And I, for one, am not going to give up my freedoms, even for "ease of use" and other minor benefits. Nobody should tell me what I can do with my media, or with a certain OS (points at Apple and OS X), but that's why I don't use that stuff anyway; I prefer to be free instead.
What's worse, Jobs left Apple the same year. Imagine had Jobs stayed at Apple instead of founding NeXT? We could have new machines that are better than the Macintosh. Scully, Spindler, and Ameilo decided to milk the Mac for everything that it was worth, but, unfortunately, left the Mac to stagnate technologically until the "beleaguered" era of 1997 when Apple was still stuck with its old OS and Microsoft surpassed them technologically. Had Jobs and the Woz stayed at Apple, Apple could have been producing new machines every so many years that could have been better than the Mac. Fortunately for Apple, the Mac was replaced with Jobs's NeXTSTEP, which became the basis for OS X. But just imagine had Apple held on to Jobs and Woz much longer, and not let Sculley/Spindler/Amelio run the company.
I disagree. The OSS components of OS X are pretty insignificant compared to the proprietary components of OS X (Aqua, Carbon, Cocoa, graphics toolkits, etc.). The core of the OS is just BSD and Mach. People like OS X because of what is running on top of BSD+Mach; the interface and ease of use. If Linux and BSD were just as easy to set up out of the box, and supported all of the applications and hardware that they needed, then BSD and Linux would be much more common. *nix has improved tremendously in the past few years, however, so we will see more *nix desktops in the future.
Performas weren't Woz's idea. If Woz still stuck with Apple for all of those years, we'd be seeing very expandable, open, and well-engineered Apple machines (well-engineered from an electrical engineering perspective). All of the modern PC enthusiasts would have stuck with Apple to this day had Apple kept the Apple II and went beyond that (more powerful processors, improved OS, etc.).
If Woz still remained at Apple, Apple would have probably became an electrical engineering company that specialized in computers, not a consumer electronics company like Jobs has allowed it to become since the iPod. Apple would have been more like the old HP instead.
I don't agree with your views with the DMCA and Apple's draconian restrictions, but I agree with your point that it will be much better if the people trying to get OS X running on vanilla x86 boxen spent their time coding and building a better opposition to OS X.
Frankly, I find OS X and Macs in general to be overrated, especially since the Intel switch. Anything that I can do with an OS X box I can also do under Windows or under Linux/BSD, except OS X has a prettier interface. I've used OS X machines and I think that they are very good, but OS X isn't the greatest thing since sliced bread; it isn't that compelling. However, the only major advantage that OS X has compared to Windows and *nix is the coherency, the ease of use, and the overall design of the interface in general, not to mention that Apple is the only manufacturer of laptops (besides Sun) that come with a Unix-derivative preinstalled (I'm looking around for laptops currently). However, KDE and GNOME has improved remarkably with its interfaces, and certain Linux distributions are almost as easy to install and to use as a typical Windows or OS X installation.
However, there is still a lot of work that needs to be done in order to get *nix on Joe Average's desktop. Applications need some more polishing, and needless bloat needs to be removed. Interfaces can be a bit better. However, *nix has all of that applications that 90% of the people need to do their work, and the interfaces has gotten to the point that most people can use it without too much trouble. Heck, I know a few people who were using Linux boxes without being aware that they were using Linux, and they were surfing the Internet, chatting with their friends, and typing their homework without any problems. That's progress. Give the OSS community a few years, and by then, nobody will be hyping about OS X on vanilla PCs because we have already upped our standards, as one signature on Slashdot says.
So, yes, there are a few people like myself who aren't interested in pirating OS X and aren't interested in getting it working on their PCs. We already have an equivalent to OS X: free *nix and KDE/GNOME. We just have some more work to do; then we'll see you in about two or three years.
The difference is that NeXTSTEP was released for vanilla x86 PCs, and was first released in 1993. NeXT stopped selling their 68k hardware at the same time. You can still buy copies of NeXTSTEP and OPENSTEP for x86 on eBay these days, and there is a community of *STEP and Rhapsody users. Rhapsody is the closest thing we have to legal OS X for x86, except that the disks are hard to find (I would love to try Rhapsody). In the Apple scenario, however, Apple doesn't want to sell OS X for vanilla x86 PCs, and is using DRM to stop it. NeXT didn't try to lock down their OS to just their machines (they quit selling machines at that point), whereas Apple is fighting tooth and nail to keep OS X tied to the Mac. Jobs has been down this road, but he is taking a different approach this time around.
Simple; Steve Wozniak left. The Woz came from an electrical engineering background and was very interested in building expandable, hackable machines that you can do almost anything that you wanted with. Therefore, from 1976 to 1993 Apple built these types of machines. Unfortunately, after Woz left and after Jobs left for the first time, the executives made the Mac (closed system, from hardware down to software) a very high priority and milked the Mac continuing to this day, while the Apple II was left to rot until its discontinuation in 1993.
Jobs, on the other hand, is more of a business, money-making guy who would find a way to make money off of his products. He is the one who thought of very closed boxes that aren't very expandable. The original Macintosh is an example of that; functional but not very expandable. Macs didn't start becoming more expandable until the Mac II came out in the late 80s, and didn't become fully expandable until the Centris/Quadra series came out (neither of which are Jobs's designs; that is during the Sculley/Spindler/Ameilio era, before Jobs returned). They also closed the source of their OS. Even when they adopted BSD + Mach for OS X, although they have a very good record with giving back to the FOSS community (they didn't have to, after all), they also placed DRM into their kernel.
Don't let Apple fool you into thinking that they are a bunch of innocent fruit from a tree who will never do anything bad. They are one of the biggest supporters of DRM, even bigger than Microsoft is at this point (there is no DRM in Vista forbidding me to run on any computer). They're not in the Trusted Computing Group (but Intel is), but that doesn't mean anything. They have successfully launched the iTunes Music Store, and they have locked down OS X to run solely on their Intel Macs, even though the core of it is FreeBSD + Mach (both FOSS).
It's going to be a long road ahead, when your only choices are DRM-encumbered Windows boxen and DRM-encumbered OS X boxen.
I'll just use vim and javac, like I always do with my Java programs ;). And once the GNU or Apache people complete their Java compilers, I'll move to gcj or Harmony.
Alright, I'll answer the question. I don't think it is right to use the personal edition to create commercial software; however, I also think it is a BS restriction, and I don't think that the creators of IntelliJ IDEA should send out their ninja lawyers to imprison people who used the personal edition to create commercial software. But that is why, for the most part, I use either use FOSS development tools or use development tools that don't have these restrictions.
Now, you think you have me trapped. However, I still maintain that there is a strong difference between certain types of EULA restrictions. The restriction you listed above is a fair restriction for development tools, even though I will personally never develop software in which the development tool told me how to license the software. However, I still maintain that Apple shouldn't force that OS X should only be installed on Macs, just like the record company can't force me to listen to a CD with only a CD player, and the soccer ball manufacturer to force me to play with a soccer ball solely for soccer. Corporations shouldn't be telling people that they must use a product a certain way, or they'll call out the cops. Unfortunately, that seems to be the status quo these days.
But once again, you are right. I don't have to buy the crap. Hopefully this whole Treacherous^WTrusted Computing crap won't happen so that way DRM and all of these restrictions aren't my only option.
Exactly. You are right about the EULA portion. Unfortunately, in my country (the USA), we have a law called the DMCA that prevents you from circumventing DRM. Since Apple used DRM in OS X for x86 that prevents you from installing OS X on a vanilla x86 PC, cracking it is against the law, and is punishable under a heavy fine and/or even prison time.
Apple's restriction in the EULA is irrelevant, unenforcable, and most likely illegal. It is the DMCA that is the main issue.
Why?
One way to lose points in an argument is to use phrases such as "tough shit," "life isn't fair," or "that's life" to prove a point. That is called an argumentum ad antiquitatem fallacy. It sounds like you are dancing around the question instead of answering it. Tell me why it is immoral, instead of just saying "life isn't fair."
Anyways, getting back to the quote, I feel that in these cases, nobody has the right to tell people what to do with an object once they have purchased it. My CD is my CD; as long as I'm not redistributing it to other people, why should the manufacturer care if I'm listening to it with a CD player or listening to it with an iPod? With software and other "intellectual property" (I hate that phrase, but I'll use it), I still feel that nobody has the right to tell you what you can do with it as long as you don't redistribute copies of it, disassemble it and use your disassembled code for OSS and proprietary projects, etc. There is a difference between following general copyright rules and laws and having manufacturers be complete fascists when dealing with how you can use the product. It gets even worse when the manufacturers and the government get in bed and pass laws that are completely in favor of the manufacturers instead of the freedoms of the people. That is called corporatism, also known as fascism.
Well, Apple only sells a handful of computer variations and specifications, and they are mostly in the high end. In the PC world, however, you can build a custom-made PC with any specification you desire. You can build yourself anything from an el-cheapo $200 machine with a decent Celeron or Sempron processor, all the way to dual dual-core Opteron and Xeon boxen that costs thousands of dollars. Imagine if Apple had to compete with Dell; Apple will hold its own against Dell's higher-end offerings, but Apple can't compete against Dell's $299 specials for desktops and $499 specials for laptops (after rebates, of course).
Yes, there is the question of driver support. However, that will be taken care of once hardware manufacturers start feeling the demand for devices that work with OS X. Driver support won't be perfect since Apple won't control the hardware manufacturers, but that problem (for the most part) will fix itself. Besides, Apple's architecture of OS X should better handle itself against faulty drivers due to the microkernel (please correct me if I'm wrong, however).
Pretty much, if Apple started selling OS X for vanilla PCs, their hardware sales will come down, because the only thing that Apple can compete on now is quality of the hardware. Then there is also the issue of piracy (even though pirates already have access to developer releases to OS X for x86, so that issue is already out there).
Finally, Microsoft's possible reaction to OS X being availale to vanilla PCs is the elephant in the room, IMO. Microsoft will intervene and find creative ways to kill OS X (stop publishing Office for OS X, collaborate with PC vendors and give them hefty subsidies to prevent them from preinstalling OS X, etc.)
So, yeah, there are many potential issues with why Apple is fighting vigorously to keep OS X tied to their hardware. Pretty much, Apple is a computer company that sells computers complete with the whole she-bang. Most people want the bang, but Apple's wants you to buy both the she and the bang bundled together. I disagree with the tactics used for Apple to do this (especially DRM and the DMCA), but Apple isn't a stranger to DRM.
I'm not a pirate. I never pirated anything in my life, and never will, either. I only use proprietary software that I licensed and FOSS software. I respect and obey all copyright laws, even some of the most restrictive ones (such as the DMCA).
However, I believe your error in your argument is that you think that all objects must be used in the way that the manufacturer intended. Alright, I'll use some more analogies. Is ripping (not sharing) a CD that you bought from the music store and converting those files to MP3s immoral because you aren't listening to the CD with a CD player? Is using a soccer ball for basketball immoral because soccer balls aren't intended to be used in basketball? Is putting an object wrapped in aluminum foil in a microwave immoral because it will blow up the microwave?
Whatever happened to fair use, i.e., the principle of you using an object in any way, shape, or form, as long as you aren't copying it or "stealing" it? Why should Apple tell me that I can must only use their OS on their computers, or they'll send out their army of ninja lawyers? Why should the MPAA tell the that I must listen to my CDs with my CD player, or they'll send me to jail? Oh wait, the MPAA bought out Congress and passed the DMCA in 1998, forbidding me to do either of those things if they involve some sort of DRM.
Give me a break! Laws such as the DMCA restrict the individual freedoms of the purchasers of the content to the point of foolishness. Nobody should tell me what I can or should do with something that I buy from them, as long as I am not copying and redistributing or selling it to people all over the globe. All of those Congresspeople who passed the DMCA need to be voted out of office this year and be replaced with people who respect liberty, for a change.
But, hey, you are right. We don't have to buy Apple's OS X. We don't need no stinkin' OS X. Anything that you can do with OS X can be handled by us with free *nix, KDE/GNOME, and Wine. That covers all of our bases. Plus, KDE and GNOME has improved to the point that they are almost matching OS X in capabilities and usability. OS X is a very good operating system, but we don't need it. We'll stick on the free side of the fence and use free (as in speech) operating systems and applications. At least RMS, Linus, and Theo doesn't tell us to use their software on only their personally branded boxes, or else.
Just one problem, though. To use a playground analogy, Apple is the kid on the playground who owns his ball and refuses to let you use his ball outside of a few games that Apple likes to play on the playground. Apple will let you loan (or license) his ball to play four square, but won't let you use the ball to attach to a tether to play tetherball. Sure, you can tie the ball to the tetherball, but Apple will get mad and call up the yard supervisors and have you sitting in detention, thanks to a law called the PTMPA (Playground Toys' Millenium Protection Act), created by the TMAA (Toy Manufacturers' Association of America). The PTMPA disallows balls made specifically for four square to be used for tetherball, basketballs to be used for bowling, and other combinations, and is punishable by a hefty fine.
In other words, Apple owns OS X, and has created rules about how you can use it. Because it uses DRM, you cannot legally install it under your brand-spanking new vanilla x86 machine, even if you ran out and purchased bought two MacBook Pros and owned tons of Apple stock, thanks to the DMCA. Yeah, I would love to purchase OS X for x86 and install it natively on my PC, but that isn't going to legally happen anytime soon. I don't feel like breaking laws to simply use an operating system; I would much rather use GNU-licensed or BSD-licensed software and not have to worry about the legality of running it on whatever hardware I feel fit to install it on. I also believe that installing OS X on a vanilla PC should constitute as fair use, but the DMCA overrides fair use. The best way to get legal OS X for x86 on a vanilla PC is to either write up your Congresscritter and ask him/her to pass a bill repealing the DMCA (or, better yet, since elections for Congresscritters are this November, vote for candidates who will repeal it), or talk to Apple and show them the $$$ in selling copies of OS X for x86 to an open market.
It's sad what we have to deal with today thanks to our growing loss of fair use rights, but we have to deal with it for now until the political landscape changes in the realm of copyrights and fair use. In the meanwhile, we'll be either saving up for a Mac or working on making *nix easier to use and almost comparable to OS X. I wonder what Apple is more afraid of; selling copies of OS X and them losing money because people aren't buying their machines, or having to compete with a Linux or BSD distribution that just as good or better than OS X?