I'm a firm believer in the theory of Wired, namely that the world is getting better, not worse. In terms of corporations v. the individual, I think in 20 years they won't be distinguishable. Thanks to E*Trade and the like. To take examples from my personal life, I'm a restaurant worker, not even a waiter, because I'm not old enough. I'm a food runner and a dishwasher ( maybe soon to be prep cook, let's keep our fingers crossed. ) Yet I own stock in Big Blue, Motorola, and numerous other companies. There's a cook at my work who is a hard-core blue collar democrat and family man, who I talk to about the tech sector and the economic status of Japan. He's heavily invested in blue-chip mutual funds. It's my opinion that Marx was right, and the workers are destined to own the means of production, but here's the good part: Thanks to the rising popularity of the stock market, capitalist competition and innovation will be preserved. I think this WTO thing is no more than the final cries of the labor movement. No person or thing dies quietly, so don't assume that just because something's making a lot of noise, it's growing in power. So, I've still got half a glass of beer left. But when I'm finished, I can just go buy some more thanks to the money I'm making investing in Apple, and await the coming Utopia.
Regardless of what happens, Corel stock owners win. I just bought it at 21 ( I was going to put in the order Sunday night, before I heard of these rumors, and buy at around 14, but I got drunk and forgot. ) Anyhow, if Red Hat does buy Corel ( probably all stock, since Red Hat doesn't have any money ), it'll be at a good profit. Or, if on the other hand, Red Hat doesn't buy Corel, Corel's in a good position to be a dominant player in the exploding Linux Market. Once they get a little more R&D capital they'll probably put out a more original distribution and gain control of most of the Linux office market. So it's a great long term stock. I just wish I bought earlier this year when it was trading at 2 - 6.
Every other day on Slashdot there's a story where the legislature is trying to pass a law to interfere with the internet, and that irritates me to no end. Yet in in the cases of Amazon and Yahoo patenting technology used by thousands of others, they do nothing.
It's the government's fault that this is happening because of a loophole in patent law, yet instead of fixing that loophole, a serious problem, they're passing laws to protect my privacy when I don't want my privacy protected.
I'm not sure about this, but I think these patents might not hold up under common law. There's no real precidents, it would be like a pre-internet age company patenting the invention of a screwdriver. We'll see what happens when Amazon v. Barnes and Noble finishes up.
Truste definitely doesn't work to well, but I'm still vehemently opposed to someone bringing in federal regulation. It's very easy to preserve your privacy online, as long as you pay attention.
First of all, if you are asked for a required address, and you're not ordering a product to be mailed to you, your adress is "123 FakeAddress Dr."
If, on the other hand, you are ordering something online, read the freakin' privacy agreement. I've read them, and they aren't that hard to understand. Also, the parts about selling your personal information are almost always clearly labeled.
The simple fact of the matter is that asking the government to step in simply because you are lazy is hypocritical and unfair to others. Government regulation is designed for lazy people, so if you want freedom online, you have to work for it. You can't have your cake and eat it too. Personally, I'm willing to spend an extra five minutes of my time reading an agreement if it means keeping the government out of the one remaining bastion of free speech and capitalism in the world.
This is no more than a stock market scam. All a company needs right now is a name that sounds high tech, and they get big IPO bucks. When I first heard that a company with the "linux" in it was going IPO, even I was tempted to buy it.
It might not even be that bad of an idea to buy it. Whenever a tech comapany goes IPO, no matter how unstable it is, it gets bid up 200-1000% in it's first two days, and then corrects itself to a fair market value. I could make serious money just buying every tech IPO there is and selling after two days, without even finding out what the company does.
Regardless, I have a feeling this is probably illegal. I don't know much about investment law, but if "registering domain names with the intent to squat on them" is now illegal, I'm pretty sure going IPO with the intent to scam stupid daytraders is or will soon be illegal also.
I see a lot of people complaining that the ibook is high priced and low performance. That's not because "Macs suck" as these people are so fond of saying. It's because iBooks weren't designed for people trying to figure out how to set up their own beowulf cluster. It's designed for people who call tech support because they forgot to plug in their computer. That's why a lot of production money is taken away from hardwared and put into pretty colors.
Also, did anyone else notice that the new iMac release is giving a lot of hardware for the money. Normally with Macs you get half the RAM and disk space of a comparable PC. But the 1300 dollar iMac DVs give you about the same hardware. That takes away one more compaint from raving anti-Mac reactionaries.
I think it's pretty obvious. 1st world nations are just realizing that women might just be good for more things than popping out babies. When countries become more "advanced" they put aside thousands of years of deeply rooted sexism because women can make money and add to the economy. When that happens, couples have one or two kids to satisfy our instinct for propagation, and then get back to work.
I've been arguing this theory with every anti-overpopulation environmentalist I've seen for the past five years. Then, if I'm drunk enough, I'll start in on how it ties into my theory of the nature of the universe, which eventually leads me to why the government really shouldn't make it illegal for me to drink. Then I usually grab another beer and start explaining my philosophy of why AC/DC rules and some band you like stinks.
When I'm sober I usually just talk about computers.
The mere thought of the FTC and FCC makes me want to punch someone. This country has the nerve to call itself a democracy? Did anyone here happen to vote for the head of the FTC? The last time I checked the Constitution, the Executive branch of the government was supposed to execute rules passed by congress, not make their own. Congress may have given them some power 50 years ago, but 1.) That was a long time ago and a different congress, 2.) I don't want Congress giving away the power of my vote to appointed bureaucrats anyhow.
Don't even get me started on the FCC, unless you have a day or two to spare listening to my ranting.
After checking out this story a little bit, I bought stock in AMD. A few reasons:
1.) Right no AMD is ahead in the race. Pretty impressive for company with something like 1 billionth (give or take) Intel's market cap.
2.) Even if Intel takes the lead with their "Athalon killer" AMD's production of the athalon has shown that they can now compete with Intel as equals, sort of.
3.) If Intel DOES rush up the production of their 1100 mhz chip, it will result in a production and distribution nightmare. I would bet on one or two recalls too. Conversely, AMD has almost flawlessly executed production for all of it's recent releases. If THEY say they can rush their 1Ghz, I tend to believe them.
4.) Buying Mote or IBM won't make me money off the G4, which I'd still rather have than any of these. Despite the fact that I'm using a second rate Pentium Laptop, I'm a Mac Man at heart.
I've got two principals that don't agree with this:
1.) I don't want the U.S. to regulate ANYTHING on the internet. Whether it's something I whole heartedly support, such as Porn sites or strong encryption, or something that annoys me, such as spamming or domain squatting. The U.S. government represents the majority of Americans, who are not online, and does not represent the population of the rest of the world, many of whom are online. Even if.com and.net are technically US domain suffixes, MANY international companies use them because.au or.de are too obscure.
2. Free market capitalism. I don't need the government to protect me from spam. Because there was a market for it, spam filters were created. Plus, it's not difficult to tell when someone is trying to get you to sign up for a mailing list, so on my own common sense tells me to enter a@b.c as my email address.
The domain name problem cropped up in my own life. My father owns a restaurant called Montserrat (6th block of South Street, Philadelphia. Try the spinach burger. It's great, and I'll be able to get a bigger hard drive for my birthday.) Since Montserrat.com was taken by an insurance company in Vancouver, and my father had no intention of paying for it, he registered monserratbistro.com. If that was taken, there's also MonserratRestaurant, MontserratAmericanBistro, MonteserratOnSouth, or any other number of possibilities. If a company is big enough that it absolutely HAS to have a certain domain name, then they're already online anyhow.
The internet economy has historically regulated itself before congress had time to reguate it for us. And everything else, such as this issue, doesn't need regulation. Overall, I'd rather just keep the government from getting anymore footholds in internet regulation than are absolutely necessary (Of which I have yet to see any).
Isn't anyone else afraid that we always do this stuff to mice? We clone them, we make them smarter, and we put human ears on their backs. What happens when the make smart mice with super hearing who know how to clone themselves? If we keep giving them all of these advantages, we'll never win when the the war of Mice and Men for control of the world breaks out. Humanity's end may be near...
Slashdot Mirror
I'm a firm believer in the theory of Wired, namely that the world is getting better, not worse. In terms of corporations v. the individual, I think in 20 years they won't be distinguishable. Thanks to E*Trade and the like. To take examples from my personal life, I'm a restaurant worker, not even a waiter, because I'm not old enough. I'm a food runner and a dishwasher ( maybe soon to be prep cook, let's keep our fingers crossed. ) Yet I own stock in Big Blue, Motorola, and numerous other companies. There's a cook at my work who is a hard-core blue collar democrat and family man, who I talk to about the tech sector and the economic status of Japan. He's heavily invested in blue-chip mutual funds. It's my opinion that Marx was right, and the workers are destined to own the means of production, but here's the good part: Thanks to the rising popularity of the stock market, capitalist competition and innovation will be preserved. I think this WTO thing is no more than the final cries of the labor movement. No person or thing dies quietly, so don't assume that just because something's making a lot of noise, it's growing in power. So, I've still got half a glass of beer left. But when I'm finished, I can just go buy some more thanks to the money I'm making investing in Apple, and await the coming Utopia.
Regardless of what happens, Corel stock owners win. I just bought it at 21 ( I was going to put in the order Sunday night, before I heard of these rumors, and buy at around 14, but I got drunk and forgot. ) Anyhow, if Red Hat does buy Corel ( probably all stock, since Red Hat doesn't have any money ), it'll be at a good profit. Or, if on the other hand, Red Hat doesn't buy Corel, Corel's in a good position to be a dominant player in the exploding Linux Market. Once they get a little more R&D capital they'll probably put out a more original distribution and gain control of most of the Linux office market. So it's a great long term stock. I just wish I bought earlier this year when it was trading at 2 - 6.
Every other day on Slashdot there's a story where the legislature is trying to pass a law to interfere with the internet, and that irritates me to no end. Yet in in the cases of Amazon and Yahoo patenting technology used by thousands of others, they do nothing.
It's the government's fault that this is happening because of a loophole in patent law, yet instead of fixing that loophole, a serious problem, they're passing laws to protect my privacy when I don't want my privacy protected.
I'm not sure about this, but I think these patents might not hold up under common law. There's no real precidents, it would be like a pre-internet age company patenting the invention of a screwdriver. We'll see what happens when Amazon v. Barnes and Noble finishes up.
Truste definitely doesn't work to well, but I'm still vehemently opposed to someone bringing in federal regulation. It's very easy to preserve your privacy online, as long as you pay attention.
First of all, if you are asked for a required address, and you're not ordering a product to be mailed to you, your adress is "123 FakeAddress Dr."
If, on the other hand, you are ordering something online, read the freakin' privacy agreement. I've read them, and they aren't that hard to understand. Also, the parts about selling your personal information are almost always clearly labeled.
The simple fact of the matter is that asking the government to step in simply because you are lazy is hypocritical and unfair to others. Government regulation is designed for lazy people, so if you want freedom online, you have to work for it. You can't have your cake and eat it too. Personally, I'm willing to spend an extra five minutes of my time reading an agreement if it means keeping the government out of the one remaining bastion of free speech and capitalism in the world.
This is no more than a stock market scam. All a company needs right now is a name that sounds high tech, and they get big IPO bucks. When I first heard that a company with the "linux" in it was going IPO, even I was tempted to buy it.
It might not even be that bad of an idea to buy it. Whenever a tech comapany goes IPO, no matter how unstable it is, it gets bid up 200-1000% in it's first two days, and then corrects itself to a fair market value. I could make serious money just buying every tech IPO there is and selling after two days, without even finding out what the company does.
Regardless, I have a feeling this is probably illegal. I don't know much about investment law, but if "registering domain names with the intent to squat on them" is now illegal, I'm pretty sure going IPO with the intent to scam stupid daytraders is or will soon be illegal also.
I see a lot of people complaining that the ibook is high priced and low performance. That's not because "Macs suck" as these people are so fond of saying. It's because iBooks weren't designed for people trying to figure out how to set up their own beowulf cluster. It's designed for people who call tech support because they forgot to plug in their computer. That's why a lot of production money is taken away from hardwared and put into pretty colors.
Also, did anyone else notice that the new iMac release is giving a lot of hardware for the money. Normally with Macs you get half the RAM and disk space of a comparable PC. But the 1300 dollar iMac DVs give you about the same hardware. That takes away one more compaint from raving anti-Mac reactionaries.
I can carry it around, it runs linux, and it's pretty. That satisfies my computing needs.
I think it's pretty obvious. 1st world nations are just realizing that women might just be good for more things than popping out babies. When countries become more "advanced" they put aside thousands of years of deeply rooted sexism because women can make money and add to the economy. When that happens, couples have one or two kids to satisfy our instinct for propagation, and then get back to work.
I've been arguing this theory with every anti-overpopulation environmentalist I've seen for the past five years. Then, if I'm drunk enough, I'll start in on how it ties into my theory of the nature of the universe, which eventually leads me to why the government really shouldn't make it illegal for me to drink. Then I usually grab another beer and start explaining my philosophy of why AC/DC rules and some band you like stinks.
When I'm sober I usually just talk about computers.
The mere thought of the FTC and FCC makes me want to punch someone. This country has the nerve to call itself a democracy? Did anyone here happen to vote for the head of the FTC? The last time I checked the Constitution, the Executive branch of the government was supposed to execute rules passed by congress, not make their own. Congress may have given them some power 50 years ago, but 1.) That was a long time ago and a different congress, 2.) I don't want Congress giving away the power of my vote to appointed bureaucrats anyhow.
Don't even get me started on the FCC, unless you have a day or two to spare listening to my ranting.
After checking out this story a little bit, I bought stock in AMD. A few reasons:
1.) Right no AMD is ahead in the race. Pretty impressive for company with something like 1 billionth (give or take) Intel's market cap.
2.) Even if Intel takes the lead with their "Athalon killer" AMD's production of the athalon has shown that they can now compete with Intel as equals, sort of.
3.) If Intel DOES rush up the production of their 1100 mhz chip, it will result in a production and distribution nightmare. I would bet on one or two recalls too. Conversely, AMD has almost flawlessly executed production for all of it's recent releases. If THEY say they can rush their 1Ghz, I tend to believe them.
4.) Buying Mote or IBM won't make me money off the G4, which I'd still rather have than any of these. Despite the fact that I'm using a second rate Pentium Laptop, I'm a Mac Man at heart.
I've got two principals that don't agree with this:
.com and .net are technically US domain suffixes, MANY international companies use them because .au or .de are too obscure.
1.) I don't want the U.S. to regulate ANYTHING on the internet. Whether it's something I whole heartedly support, such as Porn sites or strong encryption, or something that annoys me, such as spamming or domain squatting. The U.S. government represents the majority of Americans, who are not online, and does not represent the population of the rest of the world, many of whom are online. Even if
2. Free market capitalism. I don't need the government to protect me from spam. Because there was a market for it, spam filters were created. Plus, it's not difficult to tell when someone is trying to get you to sign up for a mailing list, so on my own common sense tells me to enter a@b.c as my email address.
The domain name problem cropped up in my own life. My father owns a restaurant called Montserrat (6th block of South Street, Philadelphia. Try the spinach burger. It's great, and I'll be able to get a bigger hard drive for my birthday.) Since Montserrat.com was taken by an insurance company in Vancouver, and my father had no intention of paying for it, he registered monserratbistro.com. If that was taken, there's also MonserratRestaurant, MontserratAmericanBistro, MonteserratOnSouth, or any other number of possibilities. If a company is big enough that it absolutely HAS to have a certain domain name, then they're already online anyhow.
The internet economy has historically regulated itself before congress had time to reguate it for us. And everything else, such as this issue, doesn't need regulation. Overall, I'd rather just keep the government from getting anymore footholds in internet regulation than are absolutely necessary (Of which I have yet to see any).
Isn't anyone else afraid that we always do this stuff to mice? We clone them, we make them smarter, and we put human ears on their backs. What happens when the make smart mice with super hearing who know how to clone themselves? If we keep giving them all of these advantages, we'll never win when the the war of Mice and Men for control of the world breaks out. Humanity's end may be near...