I'll note that you dodged and completely refused to compare it to other Carribean countries under the American sphere of influence without an embargo, such as Haiti, or to address it's average lifespan, or anything of the sort
Sigh. It's been a long evening, so I'm not hitting every point, but... how does "sphere of influence" relate to Haiti? If the US were to spend any more time peacekeeping, we'd never hear the end of the complaints about how our actual military troops were "occupying" the place. As it is, the US is the single largest source of financial, material, medical, and related aid to that place. It's being kept in Chaos because: 1) there are too many people and too few, too poorly managed resources 2) disease and both petty and no-so-petty corruption run rampant, 3) the local culture is in a tailspin of ignorance and poverty exactly as the French left it when they pulled out of their former slave colony. You want to read up on the complexity of the situation? This is a good start. But I sense that you're thinking that since we don't simply dump trainloads of cash into the country to somehow fix it, that thus we must be a cause of the problem - which is nonsense. Of course, when I mentioned Cuba, I did so because it is a classic example of socialism run amok, and it's a place that Chavez expressly praises (and of course, he and Castro have enjoyed their photo ops and mutual admiration club), so it was appropriate to focus there, as opposed to equally bleak situations in Africa. You didn't hear me mention Africa because that's not what we're talking about.
You then go on to quote lots of stuff about Chavez endorsing socialism (something that I already mentioned that he supports, and something a good portion of Europe supports as well), but quoted not a thing about him claiming that old concepts of socialism is broken and that he's going to do some sort of New Socialism. Again, another dodge.
Oh, please. Take five minutes and do a little reading. Try here, for example, where you can read comments from one of his often-quoted speeches where he says, "So, if capitalism (won't work), what will? I have no doubt: socialism. Now, which socialism of many? We should be thinking even about types that haven't existed. We have to invent 21st century socialism..." and so on. He speaks frequently in these terms: socialism as the solution, but only if he gets to make it finally work in his own way.
On your other subjects: don't put words in my mouth. I have not put pro/anti-Americanism into some formula with democracy/capitalism/communism or any other ism. I'm simply observing (please refer to the original post, sheesh!) that talking about the "state of Linux" in glowing terms, and refering to Venezuela as an example of a place with no need for legacy IT support suggests really missing the point about where that country's money comes from.
Sort of like when we condemned the French for doing business with Iraq when we were the world's largest purchaser of Iraqi oil.
Yeah, until Saddam, heavily in debt and running out of economic options (given his spending on Kurd-killing, Iran-attacking, and palace building) decided to invade Kuwait... and subsequently renegged on every agreement he uttered (including the terms of his oil sales through the UN... though I'm sure you can follow the trail on that one, including the huge objections from the French, now for very obvious reasons). But do we sell things to China? Sure! Not nearly as much as we buy from China with cash (a trade defecit in the billions of dollars annually - part of how China can afford to pump money into Venezuelan real estate and oil). I generally don't care who sells what where, but I find it truly telling that Chavez will preach socialism eve
Cuba - under a strict embargo and with a superpower in direct opposition, has been doing far better than many other Carribian states - look at Haiti, for example. Heck, Cuba's lifespan is almost as long as that of the US. What a horrible example. There are plenty of examples of socialist collapse out there, but Cuba's a rather poor example
The current regime would never have survived its initial forray into communism without Soviet patronage and brutal repression (which continues to this day.. that's "better"?). And they're "thriving" now because of other countries (in Europe and elsewhere) that enjoy having Cuba as a tropical destination, and are willing to overlook the attrocious human rights situation there. Hard to imagine a better example than a place that's willing to imprison and even execute people for trying to leave. "Strong-man" run socialism sure is wonderful! Just like Chavez says it is!
the long term strikers / the thuggish election tactics
I'm blaming all sides involved on this sort of thing. That general level of chaos, protest, violence, and industry-wrecking-to-make-a-point is exactly the sort of self-inflicted wounds I mentioned earlier.
[the pretension... brand new, properly tuned form of Socialism that will magically bring prosperity...]
Please quote Chavez talking about such a thing. He supports socialism - but, heck, even Spain is under a socialist government. What's the big deal?
Let's see... from a progressive blogger's coverage of a recent Chavez appearance in Brazil: "Everyday I become more convinced, there is no doubt in my mind, and as many intellectuals have said, that it is necessary to transcend capitalism. But capitalism can't be transcended from within capitalism itself, but through socialism, true socialism..."
Or, from no less of a socialist voice than the UK's Socialist Worker Online, "Chavez gets more radical every year... He was always sympathetic to the left, but in the last couple of years he's started to make references to Marx and Trotsky... One of the reasons that Chavez did so well in the referendum is that he gave citizenship to two million people in Venezuela. These people were economic migrants from across Latin America..."
Or, maybe another article quoting him on his contention that only socialism (vs. a market economy) can improve his country's circumstances.
Until then, it's not our responsibility - if we want to support democracy, we need to accept that Venezuela's poor are sticking up for this guy.
But we (and every open, democratic, non-corrupt culture) have a very, very strong interest in this. They're the #5 oil exporter in the world, they're striking deals with China, Iran, etc., and that truly matters if you care about the nature of totalitarian regimes and those that make money off of them.
Ah! Mod it a Troll without bothering to even read the news! Love it.
Just take about 30 seconds on Google, looking for keywords like "loan", "Venezuela", "China", "Oil", etc., and you'll get a real sense of how things are shaping up there. Venezuela will become an oil-producing client state of China's, plain and simple. I'm not trolling, I'm just reading the damn news!
You have no idea what's going on in Venezuela, do you?
Um, actually, yes, I do pay attention to actual facts and everything! I'm more impressed by your completely vague (and cowardly anonymous) implication that my take on things is wrong without actually saying in what way it's wrong.
When I refer to self inflicted wounds in that country, I'm talking about the long term strikers, the thuggish election tactics, the pretension that they (unlike the foolish rest of the world that just can't quite get it right) have discovered a brand new, properly-tuned form of Socialism that will magically bring prosperity to the people there. Please. Running a nationalized semi-economy that tries to sell things to the rest of the world for hard currency while simultaneously condemning the very economic mechanisms that allow international trade to happen in the first place... its all so... Cuban. Of course, we know what a paradise that is. Imagine Cuba with huge oil reserves, and you'll know where Chavez (out of expediency, not love of freedom) is headed. He's trapped in a 40-year old view of the world, and has enough control over what happens in that country to make a lot of his people think that's simply the way it has to be.
In the meantime, he's borrowing money from China to build housing and win local popularity contests. China, of course, will take the money back in the form of cheap oil.
Well, I was thinking about MicroAsia, too, but that's a lot like Micronesia... all the good stuff is taken! And Macromedia's probably already working on MacroChina.
Of course, there's always RedSoft, a distribution for the masses. Get it? Heh.
It's interesting that the writer would describe Munich's adoption of more OSS-ish stuff as due to an urge not to be dependent on big bad Redmond (a political decision) where as he credits Venezuela (described as an "emerging economy") with embracing a clean start without being weighed down by the "pitfalls and inefficiencies" of traditional systems (implying policy making by technologists, something that doesn't really resonate with current events in that country).
Venezuela, of course, is suffering more from self-inflicted wounds than anything else, and certainly the companies doing business there (or trying to, without getting nationalized) are likely to be making their own IT decisions based on low-friction extensions of how they already do things. It seems more likely that to the extent Chavez' government is making any thoughtful IT policy decisions, it's going to be driven by simple cash, or the lack of it.
The writer's comments on China are also somewhat puzzling. He indicates that China clearly doesn't want to be dependent on outside entities - but that doesn't lead directly to open participation in the OSS-sphere. They (as a matter of government policy, anyway) seem more inclined to establish their own proprietary standards, aimed at making more people dependent on their own industry players' wares and standards. Whether China leverages OSS and plays along, or simply uses that low-cost foothold to build their own stuff and then become MicroChina - we shall see! I think the writer is looking back (and forwards) through a rose-colored monitor on some of this stuff.
Every single/. article about alternative energy gets posts from people dissing it because it can't do it all. Where did this requirement come from? Is single-sourcing all of our energy even desirable? Is it possible? Where does this stupid meme keep coming from?
It comes from the same place that the Linux-Is-The-Only-Necessary-OS meme comes from.
because it sure looks like it, and people wonder why the Americans get such a bad reputation, perhaps spamassasin should use the dollar sign as a "+5 US currency mentioned"
The reason most spam targets people with US dollars to spend is that the US is where you'll find more people actual money to spend. It's because even after an economic recession coming out of the 1990's, and the 9/11 impact on our economy, we produce more monetary horsepower per person than anywhere else in the world - and as a rule, we spend it on stuff.
You are either working on a project or you are working on operations. A project has a defined scope, time frame, is temporary and has a unique deliverable. Operations is on-going and repetitive.
OK, I see why you're saying this, but: in a suitably large/busy/dynamic environment, daily change is a routine aspect of the operations. Here's where we split hairs over whether an operational task (upgrading someone's machine) is or is not a project. I prefer to only use "project" when the task (or collection of tasks) in question requires the involvement of a person dedicated to project management. Whether that's a technical person who happens to have been charged with planning and reporting on the execution of the chore, or a permanent project manager that happens to take this effort under his/her wing... that's a project. Patching a database (per se) is more likely to be an operational task, at least in a larger network.
In this case, what we're talking about are distributions of films that are not yet even meant to be out on DVD yet. They're distributed to potential reviewers/voters with the academy under very strict terms. When these get pirated, it's by people who want to bypass the agreed-upon distribution contracts, and arrange for other people to see these highly regarded, recently released movies, not have to go to the (not-free) theatre. Theatrical releases are one of the ways that these film producers recoup the tens of millions of dollars it takes to produce the films.
Pirating these movies absolutely is preventing at least some sales. And so what if it's not? Are you saying that all of the people who happily elect to make the filmakers (and actors, and crews, and writers, and so on) work for them as free slave entertainers, wouldn't like the movie if they had to pay for it? Which is it? Do they respect the artists enough to want to the movie, but think the artists should work for them for free? Or, do they not have any respect for the artists, but are too intellectually dishonest to admit that, and somehow pretend that the movie is disconnected from the people that spent money to make it?
OK. Just as long as your moral compass doesn't make you feel comfortable making me do things against my will, we'll get along fine.
I do not feel obligated to abide by laws set down by Gods or men --- especially laws I had no part in creating. Wherein lies their authority?
So we should re-invent the Constitution or our legal framework every time someone is born? No: we use the Constitution's built-in flexibility to allow us to adapt it if need be, but we honor the basic concepts of liberty regardless. That concept doesn't require continual re-invention, and is pretty damn universal. There's no need to ask "by what authority" here... the whole point is derive laws from the fundamental foundation of liberty and reason. Not all legal constructs are as well grounded that way as they should be, obviously, but just because the larger picture came into being before you were born and didn't get your initial blessing doesn't mean that the rest of us should have to worry that you're a loose canon without any thought towards civilized behavior. It isn't just the we-all-agree-we-can't-just-kill-anyone shared principle, here... it's the practical use of the knowledge that most people around you are thinking the same thing.
The "Rule of Law" as a social contract to keep us from killing one another is one I'm willing to agree to. However, when it is used as a tool by a privileged few to concentrate financial and military power, I am no longer bound by it.
Meaning, you reserve the right to kill rich people just because they're rich? Or, you think that rich people have somehow gained the legal right to kill you? If what you mean is that OJ Simpson got away with murder because he had more expensive lawyers than you or I could afford, well, that's not much of a reason to say that therefore laws don't apply to you, and what the heck, I might as well pirate DVDs.
Actually, while he's accurating quoting Aleister, he's sorta missing the point. Aleister wasn't saying 'You should do whatever you want', he's more saying 'Doing whatever you want is all that exists'.
It's not some sort of incitment to anarchy, it's the claim that everyone is completely free, and there is nothing else. Everyone who thinks they aren't free to do whatever they want is simply mistaken.
So, yeah, the quote is accurate, but the sentiment isn't really.
OK, that makes more sense - and raises the issue of consequence. You can do what you want, but you'll also wind up wearing it. Rule of law (etc) is just a common framework that spells out collectively defined consequences. But you're right, that doesn't imply lack of freedom to act, just lack of freedom from consequence. Which is a good thing.
I would not invest in a company that use proprietary software to lock their customers. This is called ethics.
"Ethics" means, essentially, "value system" or "code of conduct." We all have them - the question is whether your ethics are in line with someone else's ethics. What is wrong with a company making something proprietary if that allows them succeed, reward the people who put up money to form the company, pay the people who work for the company, and (most importantly) take care of a need that paying customers are willing to spend money on? If no one wanted to buy a company's proprietary solution, they would be out of business. So, where are the good/bad ethics, here?
When there's no force and no fraud, everyone involved in such an arrangement (software publisher, and software buyer) is in it mutually, and it is mutually beneficial. Many companies make specialized software so good that it doesn't need any "service" (as you put it), or at least certainly not enough to sustain the publisher (which is why Mandrake almost died). If they don't make enough money on service, and (if we were to use your "ethics") should not make any on the software they produce... who feeds the programmers writing the software? Where does the staff's health care come from? How does the company grow? I'm guessing that your answer will be: The State Takes Care Of All Of That. But of course, that requires taxes, and if no one is selling anything, where do the taxes come from?
Socialism may be an ethic, but it usually does a crappy job of motivating truly innovative groups of people to take risks and make shiny new things. It's an ethic, but it's a lousy one (um, unless you're lazy, of course, or unable/unwilling to innovate and compete).
Aleister Crowley said it best, "Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law."
Well, you may be accurately quoting him... but it's a little hard (from context) to know if you're endorsing that view, or simply being ironic.
If "do what thou wilt" is a legitmate philosophical approach, then "I can do what I want to prevent you from doing what you wilt" is also valid. That's the Wild West, and not particularly helpful. Thriving, knowledge-powered cultures don't rise up from that sort of chaos. Rational, liberty-centric rule of law (both criminal and contractual) and the expectation of its enforcement, is the lubricant of civilization and the foundation of prosperity, risk-taking innovation, and everything else that spools off things like antibiotics, video games, longer lives, healthier children, art, refridgeration, and slashdot. "Do what thou wilt" leaves lots of room for the Taliban, political correctness, and mob rule.
It may come as a complete shock to you, but companies don't have a God-given right for profit.
But they do have the right to not be your slaves. If they produce something, and set the terms by which they're willing to let you use it, they do have the right to expect you to honor those terms. If you think the content is important enough, you'll respect them. If you won't respect them, then hopefully you have enough personal integrity to not steal the content.
No one has a right to profit. They have the right to earn (or pursue the earning of) that profit. If what they have to sell (subscriptions, ad-space on their web sites, whatever) isn't interesting enough to generate a profit, then so be it: they've failed.
I'm always puzzled, though, by the people who claim to respect the source of information enough to want to consume it, but don't have the same respect for the source's wishes about how they're offering it. It's like saying you love a particular chef's cooking, and sit down to eat his meal, and they say (when you're done) that there's just this one little thing you don't like about the chef: that he only prepared you that meal because of an expectation that he'd be paid for his time, efforts, and overhead. He has no "right" to a profit in his career as a chef, only the right to expect you to hold up your end of the transaction when you choose to do business with him. Same goes for authors, musicians, and film makers. Don't like the deal? Then don't participate. Love someone's work but not their terms? Then admit that you don't really love that peron's work (because part of their work is the mechanism by which they make a living - that's a choice they've made, and it's part of their effort).
Eventually it will be exceptionally clear that there is not middle ground. You're either breaking the law or you aren't. If you are, you'll not be able to pretend not to have made a significant effort to do so.
You're right, of course. I'd suggest that we're pretty much there already, aren't we? I mean, dicking around with the OS is so plainly off limits (or should be) that anyone planting code like that should be just hauled out back and shot.
Is TiVo free? Last I heard no.
In which case expect me to take no part in it.
Sorry TiVo, but I like my money in my pocket.
That's funny!
Indeed, everything should always be free. We should all get paid for doing our work, but should be able to get all of the stuff and services we want for free. That would be perfect! And then, cool new free companies would have all sorts of incentives to hire lots of people to invent even cooler new things that they'd give away for free! Excellent! Everyone would just have all sorts of money, and all sorts of cool things, too! Fantastic!
Why isn't there some sort of community political watchdog site that informs us when things are "quietly passed"? Tell us about everything that's in the works, let us decide what we do and don't like
The sheer scope of everything that's proposed, pending, passed, etc., makes this almost impossible except for vested parties with DC-based busy-bodies. They're called Lobbyists, PACs, Associations, etc. Or, as we love to call them, Special Interests.
For actions that end up impacting large business sectors, there are also for-profit companies that wade through all of this and digest it for paying audiences. Typical examples would be people that specialize in, say, communications law/regulation. With the FCC being so busy, and its work (or lack of work, whatever) impacting everything from WiFi to mobile phones and various broadband issues, many lawyers or other interested parties gladly pay people like Pike and Fischer to present them with abstracts of everything that's cooking in those legal/legislative regulatory arenas. It's not just the overall information is hard for the average Joe to come by, it's that you need expert interpretation of the information to know if or how it's meaningful to you. Hell, I can't even keep up with what our town council is up to, never mind the entire federal government. Less (government) is more, but we're certainly dealing with a rapidly changing technical landscape, and the laws/regs have to at least try to keep up - and keeping up with that is literally a full time job (for someone else!).
This is like saying we've discovered a second Mac mouse button just because you can make more use of the single one you've got if you're smarter and more experienced, or because you're so used to using the control key that you're no longer conscious that you're doing it.
Identifying a neurological component in our intuition by way of a reasonable study doesn't scream "pseudoscience" to me.
No, but drawing the wrong conclusions should. The "psuedo" part comes in when people start assigning non-physiological (i.e., mystical) mechanisms to the processing of information. Actually, in the silly paranormal world, you'd have to call it more like "delivery" of information, since the implication is that some magical part of the universe informs you of something, rather than you processing stimuli from your senses to derive that information.
What's there to be "open minded" about? This study suggests that we have some firmware with which we pre- or background-process subtle information against the landscape of our experiences. Um... gee, is it possible it's just that simple, and there's no need to keep my mind open for magic?
I wonder whether you think it is possible to report news critical of the Bush administration's policies without becoming "partisan." Or do you suppose that "the facts have an agenda"?
Facts don't have an agenda, but you can sure forward an agenda by choosing to dedicate network news time only to some information (or doing so in only a certain way), or by fabricating material that you represent as if it were fact. That's editorial spin, and what you do with it generally exposes your politics. Every editor is going to include their biases in their decisions about what to do with 23 minutes of airtime every night - but the worst offenders are the ones that clearly push a political agenda while shrilly proclaiming that they would never do such a thing. I'm actually happier with people like the cursed NY Times, who actually TELL you how they're slanting the news, or Fox News, who also make no apologies for producing shows that are for their known audience.
But guys like Rather, who portray themselves as wearing some noble mantle of journalistic neutrality even as they actively, transparently spin for a particular party - that's pretty embarassing, actually. It's even funny (for its transparency), and that's why John Stewart is easier to take - because he knows it's funny, and he plays with it. Rather's a parody of neutrality, and his bosses have always known it, and the whole fake-document flap just shown a brighter light on it.
Dan Rather was actually good at hiding his political beliefs
Have you ever actually watched Dan Rather? Especially in the last 5 or so years, he couldn't have been more overtly partisan in both his delivery of the news, and in his editorial/production decisions. I'll leave the pre-election phony document shenanigans out of it - there's plenty of his older material to make my point.
The difference between him and Stewart is that Stewart is much more direct about his preferences, whereas Rather plays coy about it, while, through his actions shows his (blue) colors.
Slashdot Mirror
I'll note that you dodged and completely refused to compare it to other Carribean countries under the American sphere of influence without an embargo, such as Haiti, or to address it's average lifespan, or anything of the sort
Sigh. It's been a long evening, so I'm not hitting every point, but... how does "sphere of influence" relate to Haiti? If the US were to spend any more time peacekeeping, we'd never hear the end of the complaints about how our actual military troops were "occupying" the place. As it is, the US is the single largest source of financial, material, medical, and related aid to that place. It's being kept in Chaos because: 1) there are too many people and too few, too poorly managed resources 2) disease and both petty and no-so-petty corruption run rampant, 3) the local culture is in a tailspin of ignorance and poverty exactly as the French left it when they pulled out of their former slave colony. You want to read up on the complexity of the situation? This is a good start. But I sense that you're thinking that since we don't simply dump trainloads of cash into the country to somehow fix it, that thus we must be a cause of the problem - which is nonsense. Of course, when I mentioned Cuba, I did so because it is a classic example of socialism run amok, and it's a place that Chavez expressly praises (and of course, he and Castro have enjoyed their photo ops and mutual admiration club), so it was appropriate to focus there, as opposed to equally bleak situations in Africa. You didn't hear me mention Africa because that's not what we're talking about.
You then go on to quote lots of stuff about Chavez endorsing socialism (something that I already mentioned that he supports, and something a good portion of Europe supports as well), but quoted not a thing about him claiming that old concepts of socialism is broken and that he's going to do some sort of New Socialism. Again, another dodge.
Oh, please. Take five minutes and do a little reading. Try here, for example, where you can read comments from one of his often-quoted speeches where he says, "So, if capitalism (won't work), what will? I have no doubt: socialism. Now, which socialism of many? We should be thinking even about types that haven't existed. We have to invent 21st century socialism..." and so on. He speaks frequently in these terms: socialism as the solution, but only if he gets to make it finally work in his own way.
On your other subjects: don't put words in my mouth. I have not put pro/anti-Americanism into some formula with democracy/capitalism/communism or any other ism. I'm simply observing (please refer to the original post, sheesh!) that talking about the "state of Linux" in glowing terms, and refering to Venezuela as an example of a place with no need for legacy IT support suggests really missing the point about where that country's money comes from.
Sort of like when we condemned the French for doing business with Iraq when we were the world's largest purchaser of Iraqi oil.
Yeah, until Saddam, heavily in debt and running out of economic options (given his spending on Kurd-killing, Iran-attacking, and palace building) decided to invade Kuwait... and subsequently renegged on every agreement he uttered (including the terms of his oil sales through the UN... though I'm sure you can follow the trail on that one, including the huge objections from the French, now for very obvious reasons). But do we sell things to China? Sure! Not nearly as much as we buy from China with cash (a trade defecit in the billions of dollars annually - part of how China can afford to pump money into Venezuelan real estate and oil). I generally don't care who sells what where, but I find it truly telling that Chavez will preach socialism eve
Cuba - under a strict embargo and with a superpower in direct opposition, has been doing far better than many other Carribian states - look at Haiti, for example. Heck, Cuba's lifespan is almost as long as that of the US. What a horrible example. There are plenty of examples of socialist collapse out there, but Cuba's a rather poor example
... brand new, properly tuned form of Socialism that will magically bring prosperity ...]
... He was always sympathetic to the left, but in the last couple of years he's started to make references to Marx and Trotsky ... One of the reasons that Chavez did so well in the referendum is that he gave citizenship to two million people in Venezuela. These people were economic migrants from across Latin America..."
The current regime would never have survived its initial forray into communism without Soviet patronage and brutal repression (which continues to this day.. that's "better"?). And they're "thriving" now because of other countries (in Europe and elsewhere) that enjoy having Cuba as a tropical destination, and are willing to overlook the attrocious human rights situation there. Hard to imagine a better example than a place that's willing to imprison and even execute people for trying to leave. "Strong-man" run socialism sure is wonderful! Just like Chavez says it is!
the long term strikers / the thuggish election tactics
I'm blaming all sides involved on this sort of thing. That general level of chaos, protest, violence, and industry-wrecking-to-make-a-point is exactly the sort of self-inflicted wounds I mentioned earlier.
[the pretension
Please quote Chavez talking about such a thing. He supports socialism - but, heck, even Spain is under a socialist government. What's the big deal?
Let's see... from a progressive blogger's coverage of a recent Chavez appearance in Brazil: "Everyday I become more convinced, there is no doubt in my mind, and as many intellectuals have said, that it is necessary to transcend capitalism. But capitalism can't be transcended from within capitalism itself, but through socialism, true socialism..."
Or, from no less of a socialist voice than the UK's Socialist Worker Online, "Chavez gets more radical every year
Or, take a second to read a well-known German liberal's complaints about Chavez essentially giving socialism a bad name.
Or, maybe another article quoting him on his contention that only socialism (vs. a market economy) can improve his country's circumstances.
Until then, it's not our responsibility - if we want to support democracy, we need to accept that Venezuela's poor are sticking up for this guy.
But we (and every open, democratic, non-corrupt culture) have a very, very strong interest in this. They're the #5 oil exporter in the world, they're striking deals with China, Iran, etc., and that truly matters if you care about the nature of totalitarian regimes and those that make money off of them.
Ah! Mod it a Troll without bothering to even read the news! Love it.
Just take about 30 seconds on Google, looking for keywords like "loan", "Venezuela", "China", "Oil", etc., and you'll get a real sense of how things are shaping up there. Venezuela will become an oil-producing client state of China's, plain and simple. I'm not trolling, I'm just reading the damn news!
You have no idea what's going on in Venezuela, do you?
Um, actually, yes, I do pay attention to actual facts and everything! I'm more impressed by your completely vague (and cowardly anonymous) implication that my take on things is wrong without actually saying in what way it's wrong.
When I refer to self inflicted wounds in that country, I'm talking about the long term strikers, the thuggish election tactics, the pretension that they (unlike the foolish rest of the world that just can't quite get it right) have discovered a brand new, properly-tuned form of Socialism that will magically bring prosperity to the people there. Please. Running a nationalized semi-economy that tries to sell things to the rest of the world for hard currency while simultaneously condemning the very economic mechanisms that allow international trade to happen in the first place... its all so... Cuban. Of course, we know what a paradise that is. Imagine Cuba with huge oil reserves, and you'll know where Chavez (out of expediency, not love of freedom) is headed. He's trapped in a 40-year old view of the world, and has enough control over what happens in that country to make a lot of his people think that's simply the way it has to be.
In the meantime, he's borrowing money from China to build housing and win local popularity contests. China, of course, will take the money back in the form of cheap oil.
Well, I was thinking about MicroAsia, too, but that's a lot like Micronesia... all the good stuff is taken! And Macromedia's probably already working on MacroChina.
Of course, there's always RedSoft, a distribution for the masses. Get it? Heh.
It's interesting that the writer would describe Munich's adoption of more OSS-ish stuff as due to an urge not to be dependent on big bad Redmond (a political decision) where as he credits Venezuela (described as an "emerging economy") with embracing a clean start without being weighed down by the "pitfalls and inefficiencies" of traditional systems (implying policy making by technologists, something that doesn't really resonate with current events in that country).
Venezuela, of course, is suffering more from self-inflicted wounds than anything else, and certainly the companies doing business there (or trying to, without getting nationalized) are likely to be making their own IT decisions based on low-friction extensions of how they already do things. It seems more likely that to the extent Chavez' government is making any thoughtful IT policy decisions, it's going to be driven by simple cash, or the lack of it.
The writer's comments on China are also somewhat puzzling. He indicates that China clearly doesn't want to be dependent on outside entities - but that doesn't lead directly to open participation in the OSS-sphere. They (as a matter of government policy, anyway) seem more inclined to establish their own proprietary standards, aimed at making more people dependent on their own industry players' wares and standards. Whether China leverages OSS and plays along, or simply uses that low-cost foothold to build their own stuff and then become MicroChina - we shall see! I think the writer is looking back (and forwards) through a rose-colored monitor on some of this stuff.
Every single /. article about alternative energy gets posts from people dissing it because it can't do it all. Where did this requirement come from? Is single-sourcing all of our energy even desirable? Is it possible? Where does this stupid meme keep coming from?
It comes from the same place that the Linux-Is-The-Only-Necessary-OS meme comes from.
because it sure looks like it, and people wonder why the Americans get such a bad reputation, perhaps spamassasin should use the dollar sign as a "+5 US currency mentioned"
The reason most spam targets people with US dollars to spend is that the US is where you'll find more people actual money to spend. It's because even after an economic recession coming out of the 1990's, and the 9/11 impact on our economy, we produce more monetary horsepower per person than anywhere else in the world - and as a rule, we spend it on stuff.
You are either working on a project or you are working on operations. A project has a defined scope, time frame, is temporary and has a unique deliverable. Operations is on-going and repetitive.
OK, I see why you're saying this, but: in a suitably large/busy/dynamic environment, daily change is a routine aspect of the operations. Here's where we split hairs over whether an operational task (upgrading someone's machine) is or is not a project. I prefer to only use "project" when the task (or collection of tasks) in question requires the involvement of a person dedicated to project management. Whether that's a technical person who happens to have been charged with planning and reporting on the execution of the chore, or a permanent project manager that happens to take this effort under his/her wing... that's a project. Patching a database (per se) is more likely to be an operational task, at least in a larger network.
In this case, what we're talking about are distributions of films that are not yet even meant to be out on DVD yet. They're distributed to potential reviewers/voters with the academy under very strict terms. When these get pirated, it's by people who want to bypass the agreed-upon distribution contracts, and arrange for other people to see these highly regarded, recently released movies, not have to go to the (not-free) theatre. Theatrical releases are one of the ways that these film producers recoup the tens of millions of dollars it takes to produce the films.
Pirating these movies absolutely is preventing at least some sales. And so what if it's not? Are you saying that all of the people who happily elect to make the filmakers (and actors, and crews, and writers, and so on) work for them as free slave entertainers, wouldn't like the movie if they had to pay for it? Which is it? Do they respect the artists enough to want to the movie, but think the artists should work for them for free? Or, do they not have any respect for the artists, but are too intellectually dishonest to admit that, and somehow pretend that the movie is disconnected from the people that spent money to make it?
I have my own moral compass.
OK. Just as long as your moral compass doesn't make you feel comfortable making me do things against my will, we'll get along fine.
I do not feel obligated to abide by laws set down by Gods or men --- especially laws I had no part in creating. Wherein lies their authority?
So we should re-invent the Constitution or our legal framework every time someone is born? No: we use the Constitution's built-in flexibility to allow us to adapt it if need be, but we honor the basic concepts of liberty regardless. That concept doesn't require continual re-invention, and is pretty damn universal. There's no need to ask "by what authority" here... the whole point is derive laws from the fundamental foundation of liberty and reason. Not all legal constructs are as well grounded that way as they should be, obviously, but just because the larger picture came into being before you were born and didn't get your initial blessing doesn't mean that the rest of us should have to worry that you're a loose canon without any thought towards civilized behavior. It isn't just the we-all-agree-we-can't-just-kill-anyone shared principle, here... it's the practical use of the knowledge that most people around you are thinking the same thing.
The "Rule of Law" as a social contract to keep us from killing one another is one I'm willing to agree to. However, when it is used as a tool by a privileged few to concentrate financial and military power, I am no longer bound by it.
Meaning, you reserve the right to kill rich people just because they're rich? Or, you think that rich people have somehow gained the legal right to kill you? If what you mean is that OJ Simpson got away with murder because he had more expensive lawyers than you or I could afford, well, that's not much of a reason to say that therefore laws don't apply to you, and what the heck, I might as well pirate DVDs.
Actually, while he's accurating quoting Aleister, he's sorta missing the point. Aleister wasn't saying 'You should do whatever you want', he's more saying 'Doing whatever you want is all that exists'.
It's not some sort of incitment to anarchy, it's the claim that everyone is completely free, and there is nothing else. Everyone who thinks they aren't free to do whatever they want is simply mistaken.
So, yeah, the quote is accurate, but the sentiment isn't really.
OK, that makes more sense - and raises the issue of consequence. You can do what you want, but you'll also wind up wearing it. Rule of law (etc) is just a common framework that spells out collectively defined consequences. But you're right, that doesn't imply lack of freedom to act, just lack of freedom from consequence. Which is a good thing.
I would not invest in a company that use proprietary software to lock their customers. This is called ethics.
"Ethics" means, essentially, "value system" or "code of conduct." We all have them - the question is whether your ethics are in line with someone else's ethics. What is wrong with a company making something proprietary if that allows them succeed, reward the people who put up money to form the company, pay the people who work for the company, and (most importantly) take care of a need that paying customers are willing to spend money on? If no one wanted to buy a company's proprietary solution, they would be out of business. So, where are the good/bad ethics, here?
When there's no force and no fraud, everyone involved in such an arrangement (software publisher, and software buyer) is in it mutually, and it is mutually beneficial. Many companies make specialized software so good that it doesn't need any "service" (as you put it), or at least certainly not enough to sustain the publisher (which is why Mandrake almost died). If they don't make enough money on service, and (if we were to use your "ethics") should not make any on the software they produce... who feeds the programmers writing the software? Where does the staff's health care come from? How does the company grow? I'm guessing that your answer will be: The State Takes Care Of All Of That. But of course, that requires taxes, and if no one is selling anything, where do the taxes come from?
Socialism may be an ethic, but it usually does a crappy job of motivating truly innovative groups of people to take risks and make shiny new things. It's an ethic, but it's a lousy one (um, unless you're lazy, of course, or unable/unwilling to innovate and compete).
Aleister Crowley said it best, "Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law."
Well, you may be accurately quoting him... but it's a little hard (from context) to know if you're endorsing that view, or simply being ironic.
If "do what thou wilt" is a legitmate philosophical approach, then "I can do what I want to prevent you from doing what you wilt" is also valid. That's the Wild West, and not particularly helpful. Thriving, knowledge-powered cultures don't rise up from that sort of chaos. Rational, liberty-centric rule of law (both criminal and contractual) and the expectation of its enforcement, is the lubricant of civilization and the foundation of prosperity, risk-taking innovation, and everything else that spools off things like antibiotics, video games, longer lives, healthier children, art, refridgeration, and slashdot. "Do what thou wilt" leaves lots of room for the Taliban, political correctness, and mob rule.
It may come as a complete shock to you, but companies don't have a God-given right for profit.
But they do have the right to not be your slaves. If they produce something, and set the terms by which they're willing to let you use it, they do have the right to expect you to honor those terms. If you think the content is important enough, you'll respect them. If you won't respect them, then hopefully you have enough personal integrity to not steal the content.
No one has a right to profit. They have the right to earn (or pursue the earning of) that profit. If what they have to sell (subscriptions, ad-space on their web sites, whatever) isn't interesting enough to generate a profit, then so be it: they've failed.
I'm always puzzled, though, by the people who claim to respect the source of information enough to want to consume it, but don't have the same respect for the source's wishes about how they're offering it. It's like saying you love a particular chef's cooking, and sit down to eat his meal, and they say (when you're done) that there's just this one little thing you don't like about the chef: that he only prepared you that meal because of an expectation that he'd be paid for his time, efforts, and overhead. He has no "right" to a profit in his career as a chef, only the right to expect you to hold up your end of the transaction when you choose to do business with him. Same goes for authors, musicians, and film makers. Don't like the deal? Then don't participate. Love someone's work but not their terms? Then admit that you don't really love that peron's work (because part of their work is the mechanism by which they make a living - that's a choice they've made, and it's part of their effort).
Eventually it will be exceptionally clear that there is not middle ground. You're either breaking the law or you aren't. If you are, you'll not be able to pretend not to have made a significant effort to do so.
You're right, of course. I'd suggest that we're pretty much there already, aren't we? I mean, dicking around with the OS is so plainly off limits (or should be) that anyone planting code like that should be just hauled out back and shot.
If you detect my rootkit, I will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine.
This really does feel like raising the stakes (or poking a bear with one, regardless).
Unavoidable, I suppose. <sigh>
Is TiVo free? Last I heard no. In which case expect me to take no part in it. Sorry TiVo, but I like my money in my pocket.
That's funny!
Indeed, everything should always be free. We should all get paid for doing our work, but should be able to get all of the stuff and services we want for free. That would be perfect! And then, cool new free companies would have all sorts of incentives to hire lots of people to invent even cooler new things that they'd give away for free! Excellent! Everyone would just have all sorts of money, and all sorts of cool things, too! Fantastic!
Why isn't there some sort of community political watchdog site that informs us when things are "quietly passed"? Tell us about everything that's in the works, let us decide what we do and don't like
The sheer scope of everything that's proposed, pending, passed, etc., makes this almost impossible except for vested parties with DC-based busy-bodies. They're called Lobbyists, PACs, Associations, etc. Or, as we love to call them, Special Interests.
For actions that end up impacting large business sectors, there are also for-profit companies that wade through all of this and digest it for paying audiences. Typical examples would be people that specialize in, say, communications law/regulation. With the FCC being so busy, and its work (or lack of work, whatever) impacting everything from WiFi to mobile phones and various broadband issues, many lawyers or other interested parties gladly pay people like Pike and Fischer to present them with abstracts of everything that's cooking in those legal/legislative regulatory arenas. It's not just the overall information is hard for the average Joe to come by, it's that you need expert interpretation of the information to know if or how it's meaningful to you. Hell, I can't even keep up with what our town council is up to, never mind the entire federal government. Less (government) is more, but we're certainly dealing with a rapidly changing technical landscape, and the laws/regs have to at least try to keep up - and keeping up with that is literally a full time job (for someone else!).
This is like saying we've discovered a second Mac mouse button just because you can make more use of the single one you've got if you're smarter and more experienced, or because you're so used to using the control key that you're no longer conscious that you're doing it.
Identifying a neurological component in our intuition by way of a reasonable study doesn't scream "pseudoscience" to me.
No, but drawing the wrong conclusions should. The "psuedo" part comes in when people start assigning non-physiological (i.e., mystical) mechanisms to the processing of information. Actually, in the silly paranormal world, you'd have to call it more like "delivery" of information, since the implication is that some magical part of the universe informs you of something, rather than you processing stimuli from your senses to derive that information.
What's there to be "open minded" about? This study suggests that we have some firmware with which we pre- or background-process subtle information against the landscape of our experiences. Um... gee, is it possible it's just that simple, and there's no need to keep my mind open for magic?
I wonder whether you think it is possible to report news critical of the Bush administration's policies without becoming "partisan." Or do you suppose that "the facts have an agenda"?
Facts don't have an agenda, but you can sure forward an agenda by choosing to dedicate network news time only to some information (or doing so in only a certain way), or by fabricating material that you represent as if it were fact. That's editorial spin, and what you do with it generally exposes your politics. Every editor is going to include their biases in their decisions about what to do with 23 minutes of airtime every night - but the worst offenders are the ones that clearly push a political agenda while shrilly proclaiming that they would never do such a thing. I'm actually happier with people like the cursed NY Times, who actually TELL you how they're slanting the news, or Fox News, who also make no apologies for producing shows that are for their known audience.
But guys like Rather, who portray themselves as wearing some noble mantle of journalistic neutrality even as they actively, transparently spin for a particular party - that's pretty embarassing, actually. It's even funny (for its transparency), and that's why John Stewart is easier to take - because he knows it's funny, and he plays with it. Rather's a parody of neutrality, and his bosses have always known it, and the whole fake-document flap just shown a brighter light on it.
Dan Rather was actually good at hiding his political beliefs
Have you ever actually watched Dan Rather? Especially in the last 5 or so years, he couldn't have been more overtly partisan in both his delivery of the news, and in his editorial/production decisions. I'll leave the pre-election phony document shenanigans out of it - there's plenty of his older material to make my point.
The difference between him and Stewart is that Stewart is much more direct about his preferences, whereas Rather plays coy about it, while, through his actions shows his (blue) colors.
Leave it to Lucas to find the only way to associate just that last little bit of (French, of course!) stink with this run of movies.
Honestly. How about direct to DVD? It would be fan boy heaven, and think of all of the popcorn that wouldn't have to die.
You mean climatic
Er... oops. Who knows, perhaps it WILL be climactic!