"Wow. So let me get this straight - the purpose of computers in schools isn't to teach kids the greatest and broadest amount of skills (which would translate to having a wide and broad assortment of OS's and applications),"
See my comment elsewhere on this thread. I am simply saying that if you are going to teach a monoculture it's better to teach linux and whore your children out to a corporation. Remember schools today are only teaching one thing, either MS or Mac. It's not like they have a diverse curriculum and are going to narrow it down.
if you are teaching only one thing anyway then teach linux.
" Since when were Hanity and Savage Leaders of the Republican Party?"
Of course they are. Them and Ann Coulter, David Horowitz, the editorial board of the wall streer journal, fox news etc.
"Why are you worried about the Conservatives?"
Because conservatives kill. Have you ever heard of an abortion doctor advocating murdering priests? Have you ever heard to priests advocating the murder of abortion doctors?
"The liberals are the ones to worry about. They are forcing socialism on us which is the real threat."
I don't see one republican talking about abolishing social security, medicare, medicaid, welfare, farm subsidies, etc. Why do you think it's only liberals that want those things?
" Hold on there, sport. Not everyone who lives in Jesusland agrees with these wackos."
Once the split is achieved the people in jesusland who don't like it there can move north, same with the fundamentalists in the north who want to move to jesusland so their children will only learn what's in the bible.
What is the point of metro anyway? Doesn't MS give away DOC readers? Just seems like a silly thing, remember when worperfect suite also had a PDF like thing?
" If price is the only selling point for this software, I don't think much of its future. At some point, it's going to have something substantially better than what MS has."
Ms has dominated many a market by selling sub standard software for less or by giving it away. Exactly how short of an attention span do people have anyway?
"My opinion is that the OOo guys should drop whatever they're doing for a while, choose one version of the.DOC format, and keep working on the import filter until it's near-perfect. Then OOo will really take over Word, and they can resume their normal development cicle..."
That will never be possible. First of all MS will change their format as soon as it gets close. Secondly they have patents and will sue to stop it from happening.
It would be total and complete waste of time spending your energy on better doc compatibility. OO can already export PDF, HTML and other open formats.
I think people will ditch office for oo to save three hundred bucks. Not everybody of course but lots. In the end people who are locked into any one vendor will suffer and companies which opt for open formats will beat them in the marketplace.
Locking people to Macs? Bad. Locking people to MS? Bad
Locking people to Linux? Good!.
Students should learn on linux. They can really get to the guts to learn how computers work. They can even make contributions if they want. Finally you are not whoring your students to some company.
What's interesting to me is how your friend merely wanted republicans to be banned from voting. This is much better then what the republicans want to do with liberals. For example the title of Sean Hannity's book is "Defeating Terrorism, Despotism, and Liberalism". According to this very popular republican leader there is no discernable difference between a liberal and a terrorist. One presumes if Sean ran the world the liberals would end up next to the terrorists in gitmo.
Another prominent republican leader has written a book called "The Enemy Within: Saving America from the Liberal Assault on Our Schools, Faith, and Military". Here liberals are the enemies of the united states. Since Mr. Savage has been in favor of killing and bombarding enemies of the united states one presumes that he would have no real problems with execution of liberals along with other enemies of the united states.
These are just two of the dozens of leaders of the republican party who have declared war on liberals. Since these books have all been best sellers it's obvious that the rank and file republicans are in agreement with those messages.
If all the liberals can come up with is "we are going to stop you from voting" they are all going end up in 5X5 chain link cages or buried in a mass grave someplace. It seems like liberals don't even comprehend the hatred the republicans have towards them and they certainly have underestimated their enemy. Sure formula for anhilliation, they should wise up.
"There's plenty of companies who aren't taking a stand on this discrimination bill without anyone noticing; there's plenty of reasons to dislike Microsoft and their business practices without having to drag in minutiae of the actions of their lobbyists. Let it go."
There is a difference between not getting involved in the first place and supporting something and then pulling out when the big black preacher declares war on your ass.
Did anybody see that preacher on TV talking about how he kicked Microsoft's ass? That was hilarious. I swear Fox News is the funniest thing on TV. They gave this guy all kinds of time to crow about how he and god combined were stronger then the richest man on the planet.
"You know, I'm as atheistic and completely non-religious as the next slashdotter, but it's attitudes like this that help destroy any hope of rational discourse between the two sides of this argument."
I submit that it's not possible to have a rational discussion with religious fundemantalists.
"Comparing religious Americans to the Afghan Taliban just doesn't fly. Get back to me when mainstream American christians applaud murder in their god's name."
They do this all the time. For example whenever an abortion doctor gets killed.
"Seriously, if you're going to compare religious people to the Taliban"
The taliban wanted a nation run under the rules of the koran. The christian right wants the exact same thing. The taliban turned schools into madrasas that based their teachings on a radical political agenda based purely on the koran the christian right wants the same thing.
I know states can attempt to secede but can they be kicked out?
I honestly think it's time to dessolve the US. The states of Jesusland (red states) should form their own country and the blue states can form theirs too or merge with canada. It's clear by now that the concept of an American is just fiction. I have nothing culturally in common with somebody from kansas or oklahoma, they are more foreign to me then the canadians.
"Really: what's wrong with seeing the Universe and the wonderful complexity of everything from the scale of galaxies to the scale of atoms - or smaller - and our very lives as something more than the sum of its parts?"
You ask this question innocently but only because you are not a religious fundamentalists. To the taliban (afghan or american) it's heresy to even ask the question. You must accept the words in the bible/koran literally.
"I'm pretty sure the tsunami caused the destruction of natural resources (beaches) without deriving any economic benefit from it."
It depends on your definition of the word destroy. Beaches erode and created all the time. It's a natural event. A beach is destroyed ony insofar as you can't lay out on it. It doesn't matter all that much to the cretures living in the sea or in the immediate area.
"Most people would agree that sunlight is a reasonably constant and infinite resource"
I agree that for most practical purposes there is an infinate amount of sunlight. That sunlight is enough to sustain life on this planet. It is not enough however to fuel our economy. In order to do that we have to take the end result of millions of years of sunlight and gravity (oil and coal) and start depleting those. So we are spending all that energy that was saved by the earth throughout the last few million years.
As for eating you'd be right if the overall balance was being kept. The problem is that there is no balance. The problem is that food production is causing all kinds of chaos on the planet.
Do I think tommorow everything is going to fall apart? Of course not. Do I think that in a hundred years everything will fall apart? Yes I do. Oddly enough our children will live to see it. What's worse is the wars that will rage over the dwindling supplies of water and oil will make life miserable for them.
I'll have to think about whether it's possible to destroy natural resources without deriving economic benefit. I really don't think that's true but I am willing to give it some thought.
On the other hand it's impossible to gain economic benefit without destroying natural resources
The word efficiency is a canard. There is no such thing as efficiency without humans and machines. Both humans and machines consume natural resources faster then they can be regenarated.
Re:In other news IBM offloads all those workers
on
IBM Gives SCO the Works
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
"Capitalism works. Capitalism with greed and dishonesty will not."
Capitalims can not exist without greed. In fact capitalism IS greed.
Capitalism also rewards dishonesty.
Capitalism is basically a social/political system based solely on the seven deadly sins (and usury which is also a sin).
What's really sad is that SCO has been able to make IBM spend all that time and money without ever once presenting any evidence whatsoever of "stolen code". The judge has allowed them to change the case three times so far again without ever once asking "which code are you talking about".
MS sure is getting their money's worth on this case.
It's zero sum. Just like matter and energy are the same thing natural resources and tghe economy are the same thing. In fact economy is nothing more then turning natural resources into money.
I don't know why you refuse to acknowledge something obvious and simple as this.
The growth of china will come at the expense of the US and other world economies because we are all fighting over the same limited set of natural resources.
It will never happen. I watched one episode of this stupid numbers show. The math guy was going on about how you can apply quantum theory to the movement of bank robbers so he said that the criminals were going to rob this bank at this time. Of course he gets it right to the second but oh no he was not able to predict that there would be more of them!.
I turned it at that time. I wonder how much of america looks at that and says "wow I didn't know you could predict crimes using quantum theory".
"Now, an economist steps in and says to the two families "right, why doesn't family A cook family B food, in return for family B building a house for family A". So they do this, and end up both being slightly better off. The natural resources are left almost the same because the wheat grows every year (due to solar energy), as do the trees."
OK but your premise is messed up. The reality is that the use of trees, soils, water, oil, coal etc are not being used at the rate in which they are being replenished. Trees are only a renewable resource if they are being used at a rate less then or equal to the rate at which they renew.
"Whilst this is somewhat arbitrary and dependent on someone's value judgements, since the enivronmental effect is negligible it would be sensible for the negative effect to be only slightly so. So overall, there is a net positive. Caused by an improved economic system."
Here you have a small point. Humans as a general rule do not value trees, fish, animals etc as much as they value their new car. They are gladly willing to decimate rainforests to eat hamburgers.
Your claim that environmental effects are negligable OTOH is way off. One day when you get a chance take a look at forest coverage 200 years ago vs today. In fact go read the lewis and clark diaries to see how much the US has changed in the last 200 years.
Needless to say the rate of depletion is not going to slow down anytime soon. Just as americans are paying 2.30 for gas because china is buying way more oil then they used to there will be further economic effects of the emergence of the chinese (and indian) consumer class.
There is only so much oil, coal, air, water, and trees to go around. Pretending that it's all being used in a sustainable manner and that the effects of the economy are negligable is foolish at best. As economies of other countries grow there will be increased competition for those precious resources. Right now we are fighting wars for oil soon it will be water.
"Yes, that was the original posters argument. Your argument on the other hand was about economic activity + natural resources being zero sum...which it isn't."
If you don't think it is then perhaps you should make an argument as why or how.
The earth is a closed system and so is the universe. In order for the economy NOT to be a zero sum game there would have to be an infinate source of money someplace where it would come into this universe and make everybody billionaires.
"But that is merely a necessary condition for it being zero-sum, not a sufficient one."
Slashdot Mirror
Mainstream christians do not want to redefine science and teach creation. People who do that are american taliban.
"Wow. So let me get this straight - the purpose of computers in schools isn't to teach kids the greatest and broadest amount of skills (which would translate to having a wide and broad assortment of OS's and applications),"
See my comment elsewhere on this thread. I am simply saying that if you are going to teach a monoculture it's better to teach linux and whore your children out to a corporation. Remember schools today are only teaching one thing, either MS or Mac. It's not like they have a diverse curriculum and are going to narrow it down.
if you are teaching only one thing anyway then teach linux.
Sure but that will never happen as long as schools are only teaching MS products.
I say if you are only going to teach one thing then teach linux.
Your choices are not "teach a wide variety of technologies or teach only one" they are "choose one technology to teach out of these three options".
" Since when were Hanity and Savage Leaders of the Republican Party?"
Of course they are. Them and Ann Coulter, David Horowitz, the editorial board of the wall streer journal, fox news etc.
"Why are you worried about the Conservatives?"
Because conservatives kill. Have you ever heard of an abortion doctor advocating murdering priests? Have you ever heard to priests advocating the murder of abortion doctors?
"The liberals are the ones to worry about. They are forcing socialism on us which is the real threat."
I don't see one republican talking about abolishing social security, medicare, medicaid, welfare, farm subsidies, etc. Why do you think it's only liberals that want those things?
"What do you think NAZI means? Just look it up."
Ooops, godwin, you lose.
" Hold on there, sport. Not everyone who lives in Jesusland agrees with these wackos."
Once the split is achieved the people in jesusland who don't like it there can move north, same with the fundamentalists in the north who want to move to jesusland so their children will only learn what's in the bible.
What is the point of metro anyway? Doesn't MS give away DOC readers? Just seems like a silly thing, remember when worperfect suite also had a PDF like thing?
" If price is the only selling point for this software, I don't think much of its future. At some point, it's going to have something substantially better than what MS has."
Ms has dominated many a market by selling sub standard software for less or by giving it away. Exactly how short of an attention span do people have anyway?
"My opinion is that the OOo guys should drop whatever they're doing for a while, choose one version of the .DOC format, and keep working on the import filter until it's near-perfect. Then OOo will really take over Word, and they can resume their normal development cicle..."
That will never be possible. First of all MS will change their format as soon as it gets close. Secondly they have patents and will sue to stop it from happening.
It would be total and complete waste of time spending your energy on better doc compatibility. OO can already export PDF, HTML and other open formats.
I think people will ditch office for oo to save three hundred bucks. Not everybody of course but lots. In the end people who are locked into any one vendor will suffer and companies which opt for open formats will beat them in the marketplace.
Locking people to Macs? Bad.
Locking people to MS? Bad
Locking people to Linux? Good!.
Students should learn on linux. They can really get to the guts to learn how computers work. They can even make contributions if they want. Finally you are not whoring your students to some company.
What's interesting to me is how your friend merely wanted republicans to be banned from voting. This is much better then what the republicans want to do with liberals. For example the title of Sean Hannity's book is "Defeating Terrorism, Despotism, and Liberalism". According to this very popular republican leader there is no discernable difference between a liberal and a terrorist. One presumes if Sean ran the world the liberals would end up next to the terrorists in gitmo.
Another prominent republican leader has written a book called "The Enemy Within: Saving America from the Liberal Assault on Our Schools, Faith, and Military". Here liberals are the enemies of the united states. Since Mr. Savage has been in favor of killing and bombarding enemies of the united states one presumes that he would have no real problems with execution of liberals along with other enemies of the united states.
These are just two of the dozens of leaders of the republican party who have declared war on liberals. Since these books have all been best sellers it's obvious that the rank and file republicans are in agreement with those messages.
If all the liberals can come up with is "we are going to stop you from voting" they are all going end up in 5X5 chain link cages or buried in a mass grave someplace. It seems like liberals don't even comprehend the hatred the republicans have towards them and they certainly have underestimated their enemy. Sure formula for anhilliation, they should wise up.
"There's plenty of companies who aren't taking a stand on this discrimination bill without anyone noticing; there's plenty of reasons to dislike Microsoft and their business practices without having to drag in minutiae of the actions of their lobbyists. Let it go."
There is a difference between not getting involved in the first place and supporting something and then pulling out when the big black preacher declares war on your ass.
Did anybody see that preacher on TV talking about how he kicked Microsoft's ass? That was hilarious. I swear Fox News is the funniest thing on TV. They gave this guy all kinds of time to crow about how he and god combined were stronger then the richest man on the planet.
"You know, I'm as atheistic and completely non-religious as the next slashdotter, but it's attitudes like this that help destroy any hope of rational discourse between the two sides of this argument."
I submit that it's not possible to have a rational discussion with religious fundemantalists.
"Comparing religious Americans to the Afghan Taliban just doesn't fly. Get back to me when mainstream American christians applaud murder in their god's name."
They do this all the time. For example whenever an abortion doctor gets killed.
"Seriously, if you're going to compare religious people to the Taliban"
The taliban wanted a nation run under the rules of the koran. The christian right wants the exact same thing. The taliban turned schools into madrasas that based their teachings on a radical political agenda based purely on the koran the christian right wants the same thing.
If the foo shits you gotta wear it.
I know states can attempt to secede but can they be kicked out?
I honestly think it's time to dessolve the US. The states of Jesusland (red states) should form their own country and the blue states can form theirs too or merge with canada. It's clear by now that the concept of an American is just fiction. I have nothing culturally in common with somebody from kansas or oklahoma, they are more foreign to me then the canadians.
"Really: what's wrong with seeing the Universe and the wonderful complexity of everything from the scale of galaxies to the scale of atoms - or smaller - and our very lives as something more than the sum of its parts?"
You ask this question innocently but only because you are not a religious fundamentalists. To the taliban (afghan or american) it's heresy to even ask the question. You must accept the words in the bible/koran literally.
"I'm pretty sure the tsunami caused the destruction of natural resources (beaches) without deriving any economic benefit from it."
It depends on your definition of the word destroy. Beaches erode and created all the time. It's a natural event. A beach is destroyed ony insofar as you can't lay out on it. It doesn't matter all that much to the cretures living in the sea or in the immediate area.
"Most people would agree that sunlight is a reasonably constant and infinite resource"
I agree that for most practical purposes there is an infinate amount of sunlight. That sunlight is enough to sustain life on this planet. It is not enough however to fuel our economy. In order to do that we have to take the end result of millions of years of sunlight and gravity (oil and coal) and start depleting those. So we are spending all that energy that was saved by the earth throughout the last few million years.
As for eating you'd be right if the overall balance was being kept. The problem is that there is no balance. The problem is that food production is causing all kinds of chaos on the planet.
Do I think tommorow everything is going to fall apart? Of course not. Do I think that in a hundred years everything will fall apart? Yes I do. Oddly enough our children will live to see it. What's worse is the wars that will rage over the dwindling supplies of water and oil will make life miserable for them.
I'll have to think about whether it's possible to destroy natural resources without deriving economic benefit. I really don't think that's true but I am willing to give it some thought.
On the other hand it's impossible to gain economic benefit without destroying natural resources
The word efficiency is a canard. There is no such thing as efficiency without humans and machines. Both humans and machines consume natural resources faster then they can be regenarated.
"Capitalism works. Capitalism with greed and dishonesty will not."
Capitalims can not exist without greed. In fact capitalism IS greed.
Capitalism also rewards dishonesty.
Capitalism is basically a social/political system based solely on the seven deadly sins (and usury which is also a sin).
They did that because they know IBM plans to go after them. It looks like they tossed yarro to the wolves and ran. I bet they get away with it too.
American capitalism, you gotta love it.
What's really sad is that SCO has been able to make IBM spend all that time and money without ever once presenting any evidence whatsoever of "stolen code". The judge has allowed them to change the case three times so far again without ever once asking "which code are you talking about".
MS sure is getting their money's worth on this case.
It's zero sum. Just like matter and energy are the same thing natural resources and tghe economy are the same thing. In fact economy is nothing more then turning natural resources into money.
I don't know why you refuse to acknowledge something obvious and simple as this.
The growth of china will come at the expense of the US and other world economies because we are all fighting over the same limited set of natural resources.
It will never happen. I watched one episode of this stupid numbers show. The math guy was going on about how you can apply quantum theory to the movement of bank robbers so he said that the criminals were going to rob this bank at this time. Of course he gets it right to the second but oh no he was not able to predict that there would be more of them!.
I turned it at that time. I wonder how much of america looks at that and says "wow I didn't know you could predict crimes using quantum theory".
"Now, an economist steps in and says to the two families "right, why doesn't family A cook family B food, in return for family B building a house for family A". So they do this, and end up both being slightly better off. The natural resources are left almost the same because the wheat grows every year (due to solar energy), as do the trees."
OK but your premise is messed up. The reality is that the use of trees, soils, water, oil, coal etc are not being used at the rate in which they are being replenished. Trees are only a renewable resource if they are being used at a rate less then or equal to the rate at which they renew.
"Whilst this is somewhat arbitrary and dependent on someone's value judgements, since the enivronmental effect is negligible it would be sensible for the negative effect to be only slightly so. So overall, there is a net positive. Caused by an improved economic system."
Here you have a small point. Humans as a general rule do not value trees, fish, animals etc as much as they value their new car. They are gladly willing to decimate rainforests to eat hamburgers.
Your claim that environmental effects are negligable OTOH is way off. One day when you get a chance take a look at forest coverage 200 years ago vs today. In fact go read the lewis and clark diaries to see how much the US has changed in the last 200 years.
Needless to say the rate of depletion is not going to slow down anytime soon. Just as americans are paying 2.30 for gas because china is buying way more oil then they used to there will be further economic effects of the emergence of the chinese (and indian) consumer class.
There is only so much oil, coal, air, water, and trees to go around. Pretending that it's all being used in a sustainable manner and that the effects of the economy are negligable is foolish at best. As economies of other countries grow there will be increased competition for those precious resources. Right now we are fighting wars for oil soon it will be water.
Those who don't know unix are doomed to re-implement it... badly.
"Yes, that was the original posters argument. Your argument on the other hand was about economic activity + natural resources being zero sum...which it isn't."
If you don't think it is then perhaps you should make an argument as why or how.
The earth is a closed system and so is the universe. In order for the economy NOT to be a zero sum game there would have to be an infinate source of money someplace where it would come into this universe and make everybody billionaires.
"But that is merely a necessary condition for it being zero-sum, not a sufficient one."
Again how and why?