Insightful? Shuttleworth is independently wealthy from a previous internet business, and his mission from day one has been a mass Linux desktop. Don't believe me? Look at Bug #1 in Ubuntu "Microsoft has a majority market share". Ubuntu isn't market-driven. Shuttleworth has said that he'll support the distribution himself out-of-pocket if need be.
I don't think those concerns are valid, nor do they reflect much knowledge of the situation.
Seconded. I think it's also important to consider just how much Shuttleworth and Canonical have given, not only for Ubuntu but for Debian as well.
To characterise what they've done as 'ripping off someone else's work' does no justice whatsoever to the immense number of hours they've invested in:
Integrating a compositing window manager that out-blings Aero by a country mile;
Creating an entirely new system start-up service to replace the aging init.d
Investing huge amounts of effort in improving the package management GUI to a point where anyone can use it;
Creating themes that - like them or not - are better organised, cleaner and simpler to use than anything that's come before;
Providing top-flight technical support services, both free and paid;
Creating one of the most dynamic and energetic user communities in FOSS today;
Spending millions preparing an educational version of the OS, and paying to roll it out into African schools;
And dozens of other things that I will leave as an exercise for the reader.
Rest assured, this is not the work of a rip-off artist. If it is, then I wish someone would 'rip-off' my work early and often! 8^)
The Internet Security Alliance has been talking openly about an overhaul of core protocols since 2004.
People have been talking about this since 1998. On Halloween of that year, Eric Raymond had several Microsoft internal emails forwarded anonymously to him. They outlined how Microsoft could respond to the Open Source Threat. The single most telling quote runs like this:
"OSS projects have been able to gain a foothold in many server applications because of the wide utility of highly commoditized, simple protocols. By extending these protocols and developing new protocols, we can deny OSS projects entry into the market."
At the World Wide Web conference in Amsterdam In 2000, Lawrence Lessig spoke clearly about the threat to the principle of the 'end to end' network (i.e. the Internet as designed). At that time he was speaking about the intent of the telcos to subvert it through WAP, but the prophetic nature of his comments are made visible by endeavours such as these.
Make no mistake, folks: the shiny new future that's being laid out for us here will have none of the freedoms that we enjoy today, where access to information is concerned. This is something that needs to be opposed early, loudly and without compromise.
He's posting to advertise his site. He posts short, inane, marginally on topic comments to many stories with the hope that a few people click through(he no doubt has noticed that posting early very much increases the chance of getting modded up). It must be working, he isn't stopping.
Here's a short, inane response: I've removed the website link. (Incidentally, it only features a bunch of outdated, inane essays.) The site, by the way, has no advertising on it, and makes me no money whatsoever. In response to the timing: if you'd care to check a map, Vanuatu (which is where I live, and what my last post is about) is located in GMT -11, which means I post in the day time.
I hope that's enough for you to realise that you're spouting silly conspiracy theories about someone who may well be inane, but does it because it's who I am, and not for any ulterior motives.
At least it can help weed out the most abusive moderators. I seldom call a mod unfair, but when I do I suspect I'm not alone.
It's still possible to game the system. I used to get mod points quite often because of excellent karma and daily metamoderation. But that's no longer the case. I made the mistake of flaming a troll a couple of months ago, and now it seems that someone is tracking me, and modding me down just often enough to ensure that I never get points.
In most cases, the moderation is borderline valid. I make a silly joke, for example, that gets modded 'off-topic'. That's fair enough, but normally people just accept that there's going to be a bit of glib humour in every discussion and let it ride. No more.
Another tactic that gets used is to throw an 'over-rated' mod onto a popular comment. Again, the meta-mods might find it ambiguous, and if they're like me, they tend to pass on borderline mods like this.
So let's do an experiment: everybody mod me insightful, and let's see if I get an 'over-rated' as well.... 8^)
It's not Pigeon - it's 'Pidgin', which refers to a number of English-derived dialects spoken in Vanuatu, Papua New Guinea and the Solomon Islands in the South Pacific. The language is simple in construction and has a very limited vocabulary, but it can be quite poetic.
I speak Bislama, the Vanuatu version of the language, which contains elements of French as well as English. The syntax is very much like English (subject - verb - object), but its idiom is derived from the hundreds of local languages.
I don't know whether the team were aware of this when they chose the name, but Bislama and the other South Pacific Pidgins are spelled phonetically, which makes it really easy to understand. Example:
Mi wantem toktok long yu Means "I (me) want to talk to you."
This phonetic spelling makes it absolutely ideal for texting, because there are few if any of the crazy English spellings that stretch on forever without adding anything to the word - 'thought', for example, is simplified to 'ting'. When SMS was recently introduced into Vanuatu, even expat folks like myself found ourselves texting in Bislama, because it's more concise.
So with all that in mind, I'll simply say, "Mi ting se 'pidgin' hemi wan gudfala nem blong givim long kaen software olsem. Smol tingting blong mi nomo.'
Well, suppose you want to be a physicist but have to take a class in art history or something to satisfy university requirements. You probably don't care about actually learning any art history, so you cheat and focus on your physics instead.
Well, no offense, but that's bloody stupid. The student who thinks that art history and physics don't have any relation to one another, and that there's nothing to be learned outside the immediate confines of one's field of study... well, suffice it to say that they need to adjust their logic.
I have a fairly good reason for saying this, as someone who did a double degree in Theatre and English Lit, but ended up working as an application developer and systems integrator. If it weren't for the fact that I'm omnivorous when it comes to learning, I'd have never made the leap. And don't for a second think that there's no application for what I learned in Theatre in the world of computers, or vice versa.
Incidentally, one of my Theatre term papers was a study of the interaction of Ernst Mach and his contemporary scientists with the Dadaist art movement. And for those of you who don't see the point of such a study, consider that Einstein, Lenin, James Joyce and Tristan Tzara (who founded the Dada movement) all lived within spitting distance of one another at one point in time.
Summary: The greatest cost of cheating is borne by the cheater.
"PayPerPost versus authentic blogging is like comparing prostitution with making love to someone you care for deeply. [...]," said Jason McCabe Calacanis...
Paid blogging is like sex with hookers?! Beauty! Where do I sign up?
If not, just stop. I don't care WHY not. I don't care about whining about the genetic licensing purity of an operating system. If it doesn't work, completely, out of the box, then this is of no use at all. OK, I'll even give it a pass on the "out of the box" thing and say this. It's gotta work with no more than 1 trip to NVidia.com to get the latest driver package. Which is all it takes to get working under Windows. I hold every operating system to that VERY LOW standard. It's a low bar to meet. Ubuntu has yet to meet it.
Why are you complaining about Ubuntu when your complaint is with the hardware manufacturer? If you want a usable computer out of the box, then install the VESA driver and be content. But if that's not good enough, and you want all the state of the art features that modern graphics adapters support, then go to the people who write the drivers and demand it.
You may not care WHY not, but you should at least take the time to understand that issues like this are not of Ubuntu's making. This is not about software purity; this is about the intransigence of the people who make the hardware. There are valid historical reasons for that intransigence, but until YOU start aiming your complaints at the people who can actually affect the situation, then you should stick to Windows.
It's not tech, it's not fantasy, it's plain old generic business being posted for plain old political reasons. So why is it here?
Hmm.... Good question. Let's see... What does the Wall Street Journal have to say?
"Mr. Cheney was Halliburton's chief executive from 1995-2000 and the Bush administration has been accused of favoring the giant firm with lucrative no-bid contracts in Iraq. Federal investigators said last month that Halliburton was responsible for $2.7 billion of the $10 billion in contractor waste and overcharging in Iraq.
Last month, Halliburton announced a 40% decline in fourth-quarter profit, despite heavy demand for its oil field equipment and personnel.
Vice President favours company... federal investigators identify billions in misappropriation and waste... company cuts and runs from US... Yep, nothing there of any interest to Americans, just boring old business. Surely not Stuff That Matters.
Ninety percent of their business is in the Middle East and Asia. The move just makes business sense.
Especially when a big part of that 90% comes from clients like Iran, and when US law forbids Halliburton US from trading with them. Conveniently, Halliburton's Dubai-based counterpart continues to deal with Iran and North Korea. This shift in the center of gravity just consolidates their position as, uh, free agents.
I guess following US trade restrictions just doesn't make business sense....
Having read TFA and the PDF of the ECMA responses to the complaints, i can see why they decided to fast-track it, many of the complaints by countries are thoroughly debunked as misunderstandings of the specification.
That's fine, but it only takes one complaint ('contradiction' in ECMA parlance) to stop the process, and there was one such provided by three separate national bodies. It stated the objection, raised elsewhere in this thread, that elements in the standard such as autoSpaceLikeWord95, which basically state, 'do things like we did in this version of this application', are contradictory to the the very essence of a document standard.
ECMA's response is not at all satisfactory. First, they provide the self-serving argument that they're reproducing the state of the art, then they say that they can throw in any missing details later in the process, then they conclude with a statement that is patently absurd:
As already discussed, the OpenXML committee chose to take a different route in defining document settings. If,
however, it is decided that more documentation should be provided on the elements in question, or if the
elements should be removed from the standard, that is a more appropriate matter for the 5-month ballot, and is
not, in fact, a contradiction.
We can sum this up as 'We accept that nobody has ever done this before, but we don't think that contradicts other standards. Anyway, even if it does, let's just agree to talk about this later.' Ultimately, ECMA is saying, 'Whatever faults may exist, even if they're unprecedented, let's just get on with it. We'll figure things out as we go.' That is hardly what one would expect of any self-respecting standards body.
The French want to outlaw the filming of violence by non-journalists but allows for sexual content...and the Murricans want to up the violence but censor anything vaguely sexual.
... And in Soviet Russia, Youtube would censor Turkeys!
But that would kind of ruin their business model, wouldn't it?
You're attacking a strawman - you won't find anyone opposed to researching and using alternate energy sources.
I understand what you're saying, but I'm afraid I don't at all agree with your conclusion. Everything I see convinces me that there it is indeed opposition to widespread use of technologies that threaten to disenfranchise the powers that be (i.e. Big Oil). And the argument that change would necessarily be costly (a given) is being extended to a counterintuitive assertion that costly == ruinously expensive and devastating to America's position vis à vis the rest of the world.
In short, you're right that I'm attacking the straw man, but it's not of my making. I replied to someone who argued precisely that change would be wrong because of the expense: It would adversely affect 'countless millions', according to GP. That's simply bollocks. History teaches us exactly the opposite lesson.
What the GPP was referring to is things like idiotic Kyoto style wealth-distribution schemes, and unreasonable controls on carbon emissions for private industry.
That's not how I read it. I read the GP as opposing any controls on CO2 emissions, which were in their very nature unreasonable. Regardless, no matter how one reads it, the statement was hyperbolic and, again, has no foundation in fact. Experience teaches us that it's simply not true. Members of the human race suffer with every significant change it undergoes; that's indisputable. But writ large, the population always benefits.
I know your strawman attack was unintentional, but please, try not to do that in the future. It's intellectually dishonest, and it tends to derail discussions which might otherwise be productive.
(Ignore the other responses about your tone. They're confusing politeness with condescension. I appreciate your willingness to engage and my confidence, at least, is not threatened by someone who writes courteously and well when making an opposing point.)
That said, I'll recommend you re-read the comments on this thread. It's seems quite clear to me that the new attack against fighting climate change is precisely that 'we can't afford the expense'. I don't buy it. It flies in the face of reason. It also adds nothing to the debate.
Few people will argue that Kyoto was anything but flawed, but let's be clear about the cause: National governments (of whom the US was one of the most strident) deliberately sought to block consensus on most of the critical areas, and in the end the political calculation in places like Canada and Japan (who invested quite a bit in the process) was that any agreement that recognised the impact of climate change was ultimately a good thing, but it was only a first step.
Now the very people who did the most to sabotage the agreement are standing up and complaining about it. This is disingenuous and counter-productive. There has been huge opposition, first to recognising the threat of climate change, and more recently to exploring any meaningful alternatives whatsoever. It's my assessment, therefore that the arguments about expense and the need to learn more are being hijacked by those who simply want to slow the entire process because it affects their revenue stream.
If they invested even a fraction of the effort that's gone into this FUD campaign into actual innovation and consumption reduction, I might be more kindly disposed and trusting. But I'm afraid I've seen no appreciable sign.
Even better: If we don't cripple our economy trying to fix a problem we didn't cause and have no control over, we will be glad not only that we didn't bring suffering to millions of people for no good reason, but we may also have the technolgical advancements necessary to adapt to the problem and prevent further suffering to millions of people.
Indeed. Because the history of human advancement is one in which every innovation in resource consumption proved ruinously expensive and set humanity back a step, caused endless suffering and waste.
Take for example the move from wood burning to coal energy, which resulted in the reforestation of vast swathes of Europe. Oh, hang on, that was a good thing. Well, how about the rise in urban poverty? What, you're suggesting that conditions, especially with regard to food security and illness, were actually worse in the cities before that? Oh well, forget it then.
But the move to petroleum from coal has been an unmitigated disaster, hasn't it? Oh, okay, right.
Yeah, but the energy conservation measures and emission controls of the 1970s and 80s in California are the shape of things to come. Their disastrous impact on the state left it gutted and rudderless... except they didn't. Wait - what do you mean? Are you saying that every innovation in terms of motive power, energy sources and efficiency has had a net positive effect both economically and by just about every other metric? But we should avoid it at all costs this time, because we're not Cross My Heart and Hope to Die Capital ESS Sure about things?
Because if you are, then I can see why you'd want to avoid that like the plague. It sounds like work.
Just the same, humans must find out why the world is warming for sure before we try anything radical to reverse it... if in the end it turns out a large part isn't caused by humans then removing more CO2 then we put in, in a given year, from the atmosphere or otherwise altering its chemical makeup could be a really bad idea, for example.
Why? We're not having any effect on the climate, following your logic. 8^)
Okay, kidding aside, you're absolutely right that understanding causes are critical to success, but just as generals don't wait until they understand the full disposition of the enemy before they engage them, we can't allow a lack of certainty to stop us from taking action before it's too late.
Sometimes you have to work with the best available information. That information seems to suggest that there is a significant correlation between human activity and climate change. And this study doesn't contradict that, either. It suggests that the sun may be playing a role, but does not, to my understanding, do anything to disprove or even dispute the effect of human activity. Anybody who understands anything about complex systems (and that includes just about every self-respecting climatologist) assumes that every effect has multiple causes.
We have a choice right now: We can sit around, saying, 'It's all so confusing!' and do nothing, or we can take action. We already know that there are huge benefits to be had from energy conservation and a reduction in the consumption of petrochemicals. So even if we dead wrong about climate change, we still win. So, honestly, why are we waiting?
Let's not allow the trees to obscure the forest. The only way to achieve net neutrality is to divest the government of their power to direct the flow of a significant portion of the GDP. As long as the federal government directly collects a significant portion of the GDP in tax money, and indirectly regulates the remainder, "net-neutrality" is nothing but lip service.
Right, because leaving things entirely in the hands of the multi-national corporations is guaranteed to ensure that they'll have a sudden change of heart and never implement the predatory practices they've always inclined towards whenever they thought they could get away with it.
Okay, seriously: I'm not disputing the fundamental validity of what you're suggesting. In theory, it makes perfect sense. But there's just no practical means of implementing that idea. Take away the influence that spending provides, and you take away most of the government's ability to exert its influence.
So yes, Net Neutrality can be said to comprise some hypocrisy, with the government saying, 'Do as I say, not as I do.' That may be galling to all of us at least some of the time, but ultimately, we have to accept that at least some neutrality is being enforced, and most of the worst transgressors are being kept in check.
As Churchill famously said, Western democracy is not a good form of government, but it's the best we have at the moment.
I know socialism is a bad word on Slashdot, because it means red commie soviets who are going to take away all our civil rights and make us live like in 1984...
This disdain seems especially ironic these days, now that the capitalist West is proving that it can produce gulags and a 1984 surveillance society much more efficiently than the those nasty old Soviets. 8^)
...but personally, I see the open source movement as an example of voluntary socialism, or anarcho-socialism - programmers have decided that the existing market forces are abusing their property rights to producing crap software for ridiculous prices. So, they have voluntarily formed a network which allows them to share their resources in a non-market environment.
There is one thing missing from the picture. Before you can call it a socialist system, you'd need to demonstrate that a command economy is possible. It is in certain projects, but not in any consistent way. I think the term we might be searching for is 'communalism' - that is, a form of self-organising collectivism that is found in most small villages.
Anarchy doesn't really come into it as much as some might think. Once involved in a community, people often develop very strong obligations and commitment, which makes it hard to float about in the FOSS world and participate arbitrarily. Likewise, there are often barriers to entry in many development communities. You can't just toss a patch into the main trunk without having first established your credibility and, often enough, having demonstrated your commitment to the ongoing development of the project. This kind of moral suasion isn't contradictory to anarchism, but it encourages something different.
This, interestingly, is why I think that FOSS in the developing world doesn't need to be 'explained' (i.e. defended) the way it usually does in North America and Western Europe. FOSS' organising principles are self-evident in many parts of the world.
MS really doesn't know what to do with good ideas.
On the contrary. They know exactly what to do with good ideas: Keep them out of the hands of the competition. Whatever did you think MS Research was for?
Or when you say, 'Microsoft will probably support this,' do you actually mean 'Microsoft will take this opportunity to ass-rape Novell exactly the same way they did to IBM, Stacker, Lotus, WordPerfect and Novell[*]: Put them in a position where they rely on Microsoft's good graces, then cut their throats.'
Because if that's what you meant, I couldn't agree more. 8^)
[*] Novell? Yeah, Novell. This is the second time the corporation has made a formal alliance with Microsoft. The last time this happened, Microsoft positively buried Novell by ensuring that they understood enough about NDS to bootstrap their own AD product, and to make sure that NDS would never peacefully co-exist with Windows NT. Don't believe me? Read the court documents. Novell won a very large settlement from them, but it was too late to save their business.
Slashdot Mirror
I don't think those concerns are valid, nor do they reflect much knowledge of the situation.
Seconded. I think it's also important to consider just how much Shuttleworth and Canonical have given, not only for Ubuntu but for Debian as well.
To characterise what they've done as 'ripping off someone else's work' does no justice whatsoever to the immense number of hours they've invested in:
Rest assured, this is not the work of a rip-off artist. If it is, then I wish someone would 'rip-off' my work early and often! 8^)
People have been talking about this since 1998. On Halloween of that year, Eric Raymond had several Microsoft internal emails forwarded anonymously to him. They outlined how Microsoft could respond to the Open Source Threat. The single most telling quote runs like this:
At the World Wide Web conference in Amsterdam In 2000, Lawrence Lessig spoke clearly about the threat to the principle of the 'end to end' network (i.e. the Internet as designed). At that time he was speaking about the intent of the telcos to subvert it through WAP, but the prophetic nature of his comments are made visible by endeavours such as these.
Make no mistake, folks: the shiny new future that's being laid out for us here will have none of the freedoms that we enjoy today, where access to information is concerned. This is something that needs to be opposed early, loudly and without compromise.
Here's a short, inane response: I've removed the website link. (Incidentally, it only features a bunch of outdated, inane essays.) The site, by the way, has no advertising on it, and makes me no money whatsoever. In response to the timing: if you'd care to check a map, Vanuatu (which is where I live, and what my last post is about) is located in GMT -11, which means I post in the day time.
I hope that's enough for you to realise that you're spouting silly conspiracy theories about someone who may well be inane, but does it because it's who I am, and not for any ulterior motives.
HTH HAND
It's still possible to game the system. I used to get mod points quite often because of excellent karma and daily metamoderation. But that's no longer the case. I made the mistake of flaming a troll a couple of months ago, and now it seems that someone is tracking me, and modding me down just often enough to ensure that I never get points.
In most cases, the moderation is borderline valid. I make a silly joke, for example, that gets modded 'off-topic'. That's fair enough, but normally people just accept that there's going to be a bit of glib humour in every discussion and let it ride. No more.
Another tactic that gets used is to throw an 'over-rated' mod onto a popular comment. Again, the meta-mods might find it ambiguous, and if they're like me, they tend to pass on borderline mods like this.
So let's do an experiment: everybody mod me insightful, and let's see if I get an 'over-rated' as well.... 8^)
It's not Pigeon - it's 'Pidgin', which refers to a number of English-derived dialects spoken in Vanuatu, Papua New Guinea and the Solomon Islands in the South Pacific. The language is simple in construction and has a very limited vocabulary, but it can be quite poetic.
I speak Bislama, the Vanuatu version of the language, which contains elements of French as well as English. The syntax is very much like English (subject - verb - object), but its idiom is derived from the hundreds of local languages.
I don't know whether the team were aware of this when they chose the name, but Bislama and the other South Pacific Pidgins are spelled phonetically, which makes it really easy to understand. Example:
Mi wantem toktok long yu Means "I (me) want to talk to you."
This phonetic spelling makes it absolutely ideal for texting, because there are few if any of the crazy English spellings that stretch on forever without adding anything to the word - 'thought', for example, is simplified to 'ting'. When SMS was recently introduced into Vanuatu, even expat folks like myself found ourselves texting in Bislama, because it's more concise.
So with all that in mind, I'll simply say, "Mi ting se 'pidgin' hemi wan gudfala nem blong givim long kaen software olsem. Smol tingting blong mi nomo.'
Well, no offense, but that's bloody stupid. The student who thinks that art history and physics don't have any relation to one another, and that there's nothing to be learned outside the immediate confines of one's field of study... well, suffice it to say that they need to adjust their logic.
I have a fairly good reason for saying this, as someone who did a double degree in Theatre and English Lit, but ended up working as an application developer and systems integrator. If it weren't for the fact that I'm omnivorous when it comes to learning, I'd have never made the leap. And don't for a second think that there's no application for what I learned in Theatre in the world of computers, or vice versa.
Incidentally, one of my Theatre term papers was a study of the interaction of Ernst Mach and his contemporary scientists with the Dadaist art movement. And for those of you who don't see the point of such a study, consider that Einstein, Lenin, James Joyce and Tristan Tzara (who founded the Dada movement) all lived within spitting distance of one another at one point in time.
Summary: The greatest cost of cheating is borne by the cheater.
I think we'd all enjoy it more if they killed DoubleClick and slowly dismantled the bastards responsible....
Somehow I don't think it would work in Japan or China.... Besides, you're missing the obvious one:
TERA-fi, dude!
Paid blogging is like sex with hookers?! Beauty! Where do I sign up?
Any chance of scoring some blow, too?
Why are you complaining about Ubuntu when your complaint is with the hardware manufacturer? If you want a usable computer out of the box, then install the VESA driver and be content. But if that's not good enough, and you want all the state of the art features that modern graphics adapters support, then go to the people who write the drivers and demand it.
You may not care WHY not, but you should at least take the time to understand that issues like this are not of Ubuntu's making. This is not about software purity; this is about the intransigence of the people who make the hardware. There are valid historical reasons for that intransigence, but until YOU start aiming your complaints at the people who can actually affect the situation, then you should stick to Windows.
No, it's not a showstopper, but it's a damned good reason not to put a spec on the fast track, which was the issue at hand.
I dunno, did Nabisco's management use its high-ranking government cronies to rake in billions of dollars in criminally-constructed no-bid contracts?
Hmm.... Good question. Let's see... What does the Wall Street Journal have to say?
Vice President favours company... federal investigators identify billions in misappropriation and waste... company cuts and runs from US... Yep, nothing there of any interest to Americans, just boring old business. Surely not Stuff That Matters.
Especially when a big part of that 90% comes from clients like Iran, and when US law forbids Halliburton US from trading with them. Conveniently, Halliburton's Dubai-based counterpart continues to deal with Iran and North Korea. This shift in the center of gravity just consolidates their position as, uh, free agents.
I guess following US trade restrictions just doesn't make business sense....
That's fine, but it only takes one complaint ('contradiction' in ECMA parlance) to stop the process, and there was one such provided by three separate national bodies. It stated the objection, raised elsewhere in this thread, that elements in the standard such as autoSpaceLikeWord95, which basically state, 'do things like we did in this version of this application', are contradictory to the the very essence of a document standard.
ECMA's response is not at all satisfactory. First, they provide the self-serving argument that they're reproducing the state of the art, then they say that they can throw in any missing details later in the process, then they conclude with a statement that is patently absurd:
We can sum this up as 'We accept that nobody has ever done this before, but we don't think that contradicts other standards. Anyway, even if it does, let's just agree to talk about this later.' Ultimately, ECMA is saying, 'Whatever faults may exist, even if they're unprecedented, let's just get on with it. We'll figure things out as we go.' That is hardly what one would expect of any self-respecting standards body.
Yep, it's just you and 5,999,999 of your closest friends.
Sorry, couldn't resist. 8^)
... And in Soviet Russia, Youtube would censor Turkeys!
But that would kind of ruin their business model, wouldn't it?
I should think that would be easy. 8^)
You've obviously never met a restaurant owner before.
Bring 'em on, I'm on a roll, here! 8^)
I understand what you're saying, but I'm afraid I don't at all agree with your conclusion. Everything I see convinces me that there it is indeed opposition to widespread use of technologies that threaten to disenfranchise the powers that be (i.e. Big Oil). And the argument that change would necessarily be costly (a given) is being extended to a counterintuitive assertion that costly == ruinously expensive and devastating to America's position vis à vis the rest of the world.
In short, you're right that I'm attacking the straw man, but it's not of my making. I replied to someone who argued precisely that change would be wrong because of the expense: It would adversely affect 'countless millions', according to GP. That's simply bollocks. History teaches us exactly the opposite lesson.
That's not how I read it. I read the GP as opposing any controls on CO2 emissions, which were in their very nature unreasonable. Regardless, no matter how one reads it, the statement was hyperbolic and, again, has no foundation in fact. Experience teaches us that it's simply not true. Members of the human race suffer with every significant change it undergoes; that's indisputable. But writ large, the population always benefits.
(Ignore the other responses about your tone. They're confusing politeness with condescension. I appreciate your willingness to engage and my confidence, at least, is not threatened by someone who writes courteously and well when making an opposing point.)
That said, I'll recommend you re-read the comments on this thread. It's seems quite clear to me that the new attack against fighting climate change is precisely that 'we can't afford the expense'. I don't buy it. It flies in the face of reason. It also adds nothing to the debate.
Few people will argue that Kyoto was anything but flawed, but let's be clear about the cause: National governments (of whom the US was one of the most strident) deliberately sought to block consensus on most of the critical areas, and in the end the political calculation in places like Canada and Japan (who invested quite a bit in the process) was that any agreement that recognised the impact of climate change was ultimately a good thing, but it was only a first step.
Now the very people who did the most to sabotage the agreement are standing up and complaining about it. This is disingenuous and counter-productive. There has been huge opposition, first to recognising the threat of climate change, and more recently to exploring any meaningful alternatives whatsoever. It's my assessment, therefore that the arguments about expense and the need to learn more are being hijacked by those who simply want to slow the entire process because it affects their revenue stream.
If they invested even a fraction of the effort that's gone into this FUD campaign into actual innovation and consumption reduction, I might be more kindly disposed and trusting. But I'm afraid I've seen no appreciable sign.
Indeed. Because the history of human advancement is one in which every innovation in resource consumption proved ruinously expensive and set humanity back a step, caused endless suffering and waste.
Take for example the move from wood burning to coal energy, which resulted in the reforestation of vast swathes of Europe. Oh, hang on, that was a good thing. Well, how about the rise in urban poverty? What, you're suggesting that conditions, especially with regard to food security and illness, were actually worse in the cities before that? Oh well, forget it then.
But the move to petroleum from coal has been an unmitigated disaster, hasn't it? Oh, okay, right.
Yeah, but the energy conservation measures and emission controls of the 1970s and 80s in California are the shape of things to come. Their disastrous impact on the state left it gutted and rudderless... except they didn't. Wait - what do you mean? Are you saying that every innovation in terms of motive power, energy sources and efficiency has had a net positive effect both economically and by just about every other metric? But we should avoid it at all costs this time, because we're not Cross My Heart and Hope to Die Capital ESS Sure about things?
Because if you are, then I can see why you'd want to avoid that like the plague. It sounds like work.
Why? We're not having any effect on the climate, following your logic. 8^)
Okay, kidding aside, you're absolutely right that understanding causes are critical to success, but just as generals don't wait until they understand the full disposition of the enemy before they engage them, we can't allow a lack of certainty to stop us from taking action before it's too late.
Sometimes you have to work with the best available information. That information seems to suggest that there is a significant correlation between human activity and climate change. And this study doesn't contradict that, either. It suggests that the sun may be playing a role, but does not, to my understanding, do anything to disprove or even dispute the effect of human activity. Anybody who understands anything about complex systems (and that includes just about every self-respecting climatologist) assumes that every effect has multiple causes.
We have a choice right now: We can sit around, saying, 'It's all so confusing!' and do nothing, or we can take action. We already know that there are huge benefits to be had from energy conservation and a reduction in the consumption of petrochemicals. So even if we dead wrong about climate change, we still win. So, honestly, why are we waiting?
Right, because leaving things entirely in the hands of the multi-national corporations is guaranteed to ensure that they'll have a sudden change of heart and never implement the predatory practices they've always inclined towards whenever they thought they could get away with it.
Okay, seriously: I'm not disputing the fundamental validity of what you're suggesting. In theory, it makes perfect sense. But there's just no practical means of implementing that idea. Take away the influence that spending provides, and you take away most of the government's ability to exert its influence.
So yes, Net Neutrality can be said to comprise some hypocrisy, with the government saying, 'Do as I say, not as I do.' That may be galling to all of us at least some of the time, but ultimately, we have to accept that at least some neutrality is being enforced, and most of the worst transgressors are being kept in check.
As Churchill famously said, Western democracy is not a good form of government, but it's the best we have at the moment.
This disdain seems especially ironic these days, now that the capitalist West is proving that it can produce gulags and a 1984 surveillance society much more efficiently than the those nasty old Soviets. 8^)
There is one thing missing from the picture. Before you can call it a socialist system, you'd need to demonstrate that a command economy is possible. It is in certain projects, but not in any consistent way. I think the term we might be searching for is 'communalism' - that is, a form of self-organising collectivism that is found in most small villages.
Anarchy doesn't really come into it as much as some might think. Once involved in a community, people often develop very strong obligations and commitment, which makes it hard to float about in the FOSS world and participate arbitrarily. Likewise, there are often barriers to entry in many development communities. You can't just toss a patch into the main trunk without having first established your credibility and, often enough, having demonstrated your commitment to the ongoing development of the project. This kind of moral suasion isn't contradictory to anarchism, but it encourages something different.
This, interestingly, is why I think that FOSS in the developing world doesn't need to be 'explained' (i.e. defended) the way it usually does in North America and Western Europe. FOSS' organising principles are self-evident in many parts of the world.
On the contrary. They know exactly what to do with good ideas: Keep them out of the hands of the competition. Whatever did you think MS Research was for?
Novell and MicroSoft, ring a bell?
Microsoft will probably support this.
Have your forgotten your history?
Or when you say, 'Microsoft will probably support this,' do you actually mean 'Microsoft will take this opportunity to ass-rape Novell exactly the same way they did to IBM, Stacker, Lotus, WordPerfect and Novell[*]: Put them in a position where they rely on Microsoft's good graces, then cut their throats.'
Because if that's what you meant, I couldn't agree more. 8^)
[*] Novell? Yeah, Novell. This is the second time the corporation has made a formal alliance with Microsoft. The last time this happened, Microsoft positively buried Novell by ensuring that they understood enough about NDS to bootstrap their own AD product, and to make sure that NDS would never peacefully co-exist with Windows NT. Don't believe me? Read the court documents. Novell won a very large settlement from them, but it was too late to save their business.