In several cases, between all of the Wikipedia articles on semi-related topics, there's been more usefull information on Wikipedia itself than within all of the external sources for that topic.
Bombadillo said:
There is a correlation in modern urban society between Guns and Instability.
There's also a correlation in modern society between democracy and "instability".
However, I'll rather live in the "instability" of western nations than the absolute "stability" of someplace like North Korea.
Also... the "instability" in modern urban America is by design.
The war on drugs is designed to keep the prisons full, the anti-drug paramilitary forces fully employed, and the poor under virtual house-arrest in their neighborhoods.
Legalize drugs, so that the businessmen and entreprenuers involved in the street-level pharmacuetical business have access to the court system to resolve business disputes, and most gun violence in urban America would dissapear almost instantly.
You'd think that the current administration would be all for the idea of "reducing the contraints on business" and "letting the market decide" and "allowing entreprenuers to grow the economy".;)
But, unfortunately (from the point of view of the powers-that-be), legalizing drugs would put several tens of thousands of hired anti-drug thugs out of work, and would also leave the poor people in the inner cities free to live their lives without constant gun-battles and police raids. It would also be devastating to the stock of the many private corporations that run prisons in many states... seeing as how drug-offenders make up more than 50% of their "customer base".
So, obviously, we can't have that any of that;)
But hey, you just go on and blame the "guns" for causing "instability"... it's easier than having to actually examine cause-and-effect.
It'll make it that much easier for your public servants when they come to you offering "stability" and "security", in exchange for some of those pesky freedoms that you aren't using much anyways.
Um... they tried that in a book by Bruce Sterling called "Vacuum Flowers".
The producers of Star Trek rather blatently copied the resulting hive-mind concept from that book and tweaked it slightly to become "The Borg".
However, in the book, it was called "Earth".
Not a collective. A single organism, with several billion cells.
This was considered "a bad thing".
Wrong. People can learn new things at any age.
on
That's Using Your Head
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· Score: 2, Insightful
I grew up (mostly) before there were personal computers available.
I didn't learn how to program in C until I was over 30 years old... yet, I can program a hell of a lot better than most of the kids who "grew up with computers".
The people who enjoy learning new things and who like a mental challenge will always have an advantage over most people (who don't like to learn anything that's either difficult or different from what they're used to).
If, or rather when, they invent computer-brain interfaces, I have no doubt that I'll pick it up quicker than someone who's got many decades less experience at.. um.. anything.
All the stories about people who can't learn new technology, and stories about "old" people whose digital clocks on their VCRs still blink "12:00"... those stories are basically about stupid people who don't like to learn.
Do you really think that some 10-year-old who was born into a world with computer-brain interfaces is gonna be able to *out-think* a forty or fifty-year-old?
I can't bring up the merits of "my guy", because there is quite frankly no one running who represents me or my interests in this election.
I'll be voting for John Kerry, largely because Kerry had the good fortune to be born "Not Bush".
That's not a pro-Kerry stance, that's an Anti-Bush stance.
In fact, NOBODY should ever have to bring up even one word in defense of John Kerry or his record, because John Kerry and his record have ZERO relevance to the George Bush presidency.
Whether Kerry is too tall, too thin, too rich, not wounded enough, too flip-floppy, too windsurfy, or too much or too little of anything, has NO relevance to George Bush's record.
The US Army currently is almost completelly out of unutilized soldiers.
There are currently 500,000 Regular Army troops, and there are currently 500,000 total Army troops stationed overseas.
If it wasn't for the 200,000 Army reserve troops who are currently assigned "indefinately" to active service, we'd be OUT of foot soldiers.
As an example of how low manpower reserves are, they've reassigned the 11th ACR from the NTC at Ft. Irwin to duty in Iraq.
The unit that is tasked with TRAINING other units in desert warfare, has now been sent to the front.
When you start sending your training cadres to the front, it means you have NOTHING left to assign.
Either we start to bring troops back from Iraq within the next 12 months, or we HAVE to have a draft.
Or... hahahaahaha.. raise the pay of infantry troops to market rates to increase the number of volunteers.
Let's see.. will the staunch supporters of free-markets and capitalism follow the rules of the free market and raise pay for soldiers because of rising demand, OR will they simply institute involuntary servitude to force people to die for a cause they're not willing to volunteer for?
Bush has said repeatedly that there will not be a draft.
It is true he said this, and it is also true that this is a lie on his part.
It will not be the first lie that he has told, and it wouldn't even be the biggest lie that he has told.
A vote for Bush will be a vote for 1) A military draft, 2) Massive social disruption and unrest as a result of the draft, and 3) Draconian supression of free-speech and free assembly in an attempt to enforce the draft.
If Bush is elected, expect a draft to begin no later than December 2005, and probably earlier.
If you think that/. posting links to incredibly poorly written articles by half-illiterate SCO shills is *helping* SCO, then you're not seeing the whole picture.
When crayon-drawn spewings (such as the linked article) of "journalists" who are obviously less skilled in writing than the average message board troll are ALL the possitive press that SCO can get, it's a sort of cruel fun to post verbatim what the pro-SCO trolls write.
I mean come on, put up an article by Maureen O'Gara or Laura Didio, or Rob Enderle... and then put a Groklaw article next to it. Who comes off looking like a retard (um, I mean "specially abled journalist"), and who comes off looking like an intelligent human being?
Giving the writings of shills like O'Gara wide exposure simply makes everyone aware of thier illiteracy, and therefore contemptuous.
Heh, might as well give the pro-SCO folks plenty of opportunities to explain their position... it's fun to watch not-too-bright people try to explain the inexplicable.
When the people who are taking your rights away daily to "fight terrorists" have tons of DOCUMENTED business and personal ties to the very same people who they are supposedly "fighting", then it's time to realize that you're being scammed.
Remember the protection rackets, where mobsters would charge small shop owners for "protection" against fire. Isn't it an amazing coincidence how the shops that burned down always seemed to be those that hadn't paid the "protection" money?
The current war on terror is simply a replacement for the war on drugs and for the war on communism. The military-industrial complex had to find a new boogy man when the communists dropped out of the game.
How else would they keep making the same profits and enjoy the exercise of power, if not in the name of "protecting" you?
Are the 500,000 American troops currently stationed overseas PROTECTING America? How exactly are they doing that from so far away? Wouldn't they be better placed to protect America if they were IN America guarding the coastlines and borders?
Nope. They'd only be well-placed in that case to *actually* protect you, as opposed to "protecting" you.
That's your problem, and your responsibility to deal with.
It's NOT anybody else's problem, and it's NOT anyone else's responsibility to assist in your children's upbringing.
If I worked in a game store, I'd sell anything we had in stock to anyone who had cash to spend, regardless of the customer's age.
If your kids were to then buy something from me that you don't want them to have, then you bring it up to them, because I couldn't give a flying fuck about whatever rules you enforce in your household.
Capitalism existed long before huge megacorporations ever existed, and it will exist long after huge megacorporations have died off.
The guy who runs a corner grocery store, or who owns his own 1-man roofing bussiness is just as much a "capitalist" as the guy who wears a suit and tie to his fortune 500 job.
No... scratch that.. the guy who owns a corner grocery store is MORE of a capitalist than some MBA drone who just pushes pieces of paper around to manipulate other people's money.
Capitalism is about using wealth and hard work to create more wealth.
Small bussiness owners actually MAKE new things and create stuff... while nowadays the megacorporations seem to just be into draining the wealth from pension and investment funds into the offshore bank accounts of a select few.
Seriously, the legions of dedicated programmers who cooperated to create Linux are a lot more "capitalist" than the folks at Redmond who think that innovation is something that you can buy or steal.
I'd actually be interested in something like that, and I know others would be too.
Sometimes people forget that not everyone is endowed at birth with immense knowledge (like the parent poster apparently was:P ), and that many people would appreciate something that walks them through the simple first steps of new concepts.
What really tees me off about a lot of tutorials and manuals, is how they'll go into great detail on the basic principles (great), and they go into great detail on solutions to intermediate and advanced level concepts (again, great), but they spend a tiny ammount of time quickly glossing over the first few steps to actually get something done (arrrghh!).
It's sort of like getting some piece of furniture home from Ikea, and discovering that the pictographic instruction sheet had been replaced by a journeyman carpenter's course book.
Yeah yeah, it's great to be able to see how to shingle a roof and build drywall... but I just want to know how to put friggin Tab A into Tab B so my Ikea bookcase doesn't collapse when I set it up.
So, please don't disparage anyone who's going to actually step up to the plate and provide good solid basic knowledge to people who may not have been exposed to it in a way that they could actually USE it before.
Basic knowledge is a good thing... except for those of you who were born knowing everything:|
Actually, the people who agree with Noam Chomsky probably had to READ his views......which automatically pegs thier abilities far beyond the capabilities of most of Bill O'Reilly's illiterate fans.
Linux is a MAJOR threat to MS, and all of the major Linux vendors acting together would be *death* for MS.
Which is how the whole SCO thing is panning out. The big boys are realizing that there is no co-existance with Microsoft other than in the fashion that a slave "co-exists" with its master.
Because of Microsoft's predatory behavior, it'll either be hunted down like a man-eating tiger and killed by the members of the village, or it will simply eat the villagers one-by-one.
The MS "Linux Strategist" is hoping/dreaming that he can start some in-fighting among the villagers to prevent them from finishing the organization of the tiger hunt.
The boon/reward for cooperative behavior in this case, is that once the tiger is dead everyone will be able to freely compete for thier chunk of the 90% market share that MS currently controls on the desktop.
That's a powerfull incentive to cooperate against MS, and the examples of what has happened to every single one of the "Microsoft Partners" is a powerfull DISincentive for any of the big players to play nice with MS.
MS will be have to be incredibly lucky to get more than 10% to 20% market penetration on the desktop with Longhorn... and that will be the begining of thier end.
If "subscription-based software delivery via high-speed data pipes is the future", as you say, then how could anyone possibly impede it using only what you call "dogmatic political theory"?
If it's possible to impede it, then it AINT "the future".
Someone might be stupid enough to buy what is essentially a nuetered and locked-down PC with outdated graphics capability, and then pay for content.
But that's hardly "the future". That's just a marketing scam that relies on stupid and/or gullible people.
So they claim.
Are there any court cases which support the conditions spelled out in these draconian EULAs, or are these just ideas that the software manufactures would "like" to be true?
Grandparent: The trick is to mandate a shorter work week like France and some other European countries, who mandate a 35 hour work week, maximum. No more velvet sweat shops....
Anonymous Parent: whee increased unemployment!
Dear Mr. Anonymous, think about what you just wrote.
If all of the people working 70 hour, and 50 hour, workweeks were to suddenly be limited to 35 hour workweeks, then how exactly would that INCREASE unemployment?
If anything, it would require that many many people be hired to pick up the work left undone.
Also, since we're on the subject... why do you think unemployement and underemployement are so high right now, but the newspapers keep trumpeting "gains in American productivity" every fiscal quarter?
It's because companies are having each worker do the work that would have been handled by 2 or 3 or 4 people a decade ago.
Great news if you're an executive or if you own enough corporate stock to support yourself from the dividends alone... but pretty crappy news if you have to work for a living.
To be property, it has to have the ability to be owned, possessed, controlled.
Well then, since ideas can no longer be "controlled" because of the web, then I guess by your own definition that there is no such thing as "intellectual Property".
Software patents, like other patents, provide the creator with limited-time exclusivity on the invention in exchange for **making the information public**
Ah, so we all should be eternally gratefull that people have made the concepts of "one click shopping" and "clicking multiple times" public, rather than keeping this valuable IP a seeeekriiit forever.
Yeah, right. And the money needed for really serious R&D would come from anonymous "contributors" like you?
Ah... you're right, because nobody other than a large meganational corporation could possibly afford the huge research effort that went into the "one click shopping" patent, or the salaries of the phenomenally large numbers of scientists and technicians who devoted decades of thier lives to researching the "multiple clicks" patent.
Nobody is stopped - you can do it while paying patent royalty.
True. In much the same way that nobody is stopped from running a business in mafia territory... they just have to pay the protection money.
Re:If people would just stop stealing...
on
European DRM News
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· Score: 1
Hold on a second.....a minute ago you were talking about supply-and-demand, and as soon as someone called you on that, then suddenly you argument morphs into a "but won't someone please think of the forklift operators!" argument.
So, which is it? Are you gonna talk about supply-and-demand, and take your lumps when the obvious fact that supply of electronic data is infinite and inexhaustible is mentioned?
(Let's see... demand is fixed, and supply is infinite. What happens to price in this situation? This is Econ 101 stuff.)
Or are you gonna use a "Oh please thiiiink about the pooooor workers" argument... and take your lumps when we look into the treatment of non-MBAs and non-management workers by large corporations.
The bottom line is that only a very tiny percentage of what people pay for a CD is actually reflected in costs.
The artists who created the music get next-to-nothing, and the workers who manufacture and distribute the CDs get next to nothing... the bulk of the $17.99 cost of a CD is simply profit for people who contributed nothing.
Protecting the obscene ammounts of UNEARNED profits by middlemen who never created anything in thier lives, but who simply leech off of both artists and the public is not really something the public cares much about.
You can throw words like "theft" and "piracy" around all you like, but those words actually have specific dictionary meanings that in no way apply to the current situation.
No company ever LOST money because of song downloads... they simply didn't earn as much profit as they thought they would. If you view thier projections of future income as somehow something that company executives have a RIGHT to expect to recieve... then how about extenting that same courtesy to the lowly workers in that same company?
Ah.. no, but then, your argument will probably quickly morph back into the "free market" argument from before.
Gee, funny how the basic principles of economics only apply to arguments when they'd support the actions of our corporate overlords.... but as soon as free-market arguments would go against them, then suddenly logic and economic theory get thrown aside and we're back to the shrill shrieks of "THEFT!!" and "Pirate!!" and "Wont someone please think of the poor forklift operators!!":)
Essentially, the expansion of the internet into almost every country, and the continued growth of open source software methods has created a sort of "mini-singularity".
Through cooperation and collaberation on the internet, people have the ability to create and expand software much much rapidly than could have been concieved of.. even as late as the 1990s.
As internet service is expanded to more and more sections of the world, and as computer literacy keeps rising, expect this trend to develop exponentially.
Don't think in terms of simply computing power, but think in terms of creative power.
From a certain viewpoint, isn't the internet just a way to link human brains and creativity to create a "beowulf cluster" of people?
And aren't the rapid development of things like the wikipedia, GNU tools, the linux kernal, and so on, a result of this new cluster of people?
Who needs to manufacture a super-human machine intelligence, when you already have 6 billion Human beings that you can link into a cluster?
Slashdot Mirror
I like Wikipedia :)
In several cases, between all of the Wikipedia articles on semi-related topics, there's been more usefull information on Wikipedia itself than within all of the external sources for that topic.
Bombadillo said: There is a correlation in modern urban society between Guns and Instability.
There's also a correlation in modern society between democracy and "instability".
However, I'll rather live in the "instability" of western nations than the absolute "stability" of someplace like North Korea.
Also... the "instability" in modern urban America is by design.
The war on drugs is designed to keep the prisons full, the anti-drug paramilitary forces fully employed, and the poor under virtual house-arrest in their neighborhoods.
Legalize drugs, so that the businessmen and entreprenuers involved in the street-level pharmacuetical business have access to the court system to resolve business disputes, and most gun violence in urban America would dissapear almost instantly.
You'd think that the current administration would be all for the idea of "reducing the contraints on business" and "letting the market decide" and "allowing entreprenuers to grow the economy". ;)
But, unfortunately (from the point of view of the powers-that-be), legalizing drugs would put several tens of thousands of hired anti-drug thugs out of work, and would also leave the poor people in the inner cities free to live their lives without constant gun-battles and police raids. It would also be devastating to the stock of the many private corporations that run prisons in many states... seeing as how drug-offenders make up more than 50% of their "customer base".
So, obviously, we can't have that any of that ;)
But hey, you just go on and blame the "guns" for causing "instability"... it's easier than having to actually examine cause-and-effect.
It'll make it that much easier for your public servants when they come to you offering "stability" and "security", in exchange for some of those pesky freedoms that you aren't using much anyways.
Where would we be without the GPL?
Where would we be without the FSF?
Heck, where would we be without GCC?
The fact that FOSS even *exists* is because of RMS.
Um... they tried that in a book by Bruce Sterling called "Vacuum Flowers".
The producers of Star Trek rather blatently copied the resulting hive-mind concept from that book and tweaked it slightly to become "The Borg".
However, in the book, it was called "Earth".
Not a collective. A single organism, with several billion cells.
This was considered "a bad thing".
I grew up (mostly) before there were personal computers available.
I didn't learn how to program in C until I was over 30 years old... yet, I can program a hell of a lot better than most of the kids who "grew up with computers".
The people who enjoy learning new things and who like a mental challenge will always have an advantage over most people (who don't like to learn anything that's either difficult or different from what they're used to).
If, or rather when, they invent computer-brain interfaces, I have no doubt that I'll pick it up quicker than someone who's got many decades less experience at.. um.. anything.
All the stories about people who can't learn new technology, and stories about "old" people whose digital clocks on their VCRs still blink "12:00"... those stories are basically about stupid people who don't like to learn.
Do you really think that some 10-year-old who was born into a world with computer-brain interfaces is gonna be able to *out-think* a forty or fifty-year-old?
Only if the forty-year-old is an idiot.
I can't bring up the merits of "my guy", because there is quite frankly no one running who represents me or my interests in this election.
I'll be voting for John Kerry, largely because Kerry had the good fortune to be born "Not Bush".
That's not a pro-Kerry stance, that's an Anti-Bush stance.
In fact, NOBODY should ever have to bring up even one word in defense of John Kerry or his record, because John Kerry and his record have ZERO relevance to the George Bush presidency.
Whether Kerry is too tall, too thin, too rich, not wounded enough, too flip-floppy, too windsurfy, or too much or too little of anything, has NO relevance to George Bush's record.
George Bush's record should speak for itself.
Except... I'm quite serious.
The US Army currently is almost completelly out of unutilized soldiers.
There are currently 500,000 Regular Army troops, and there are currently 500,000 total Army troops stationed overseas.
If it wasn't for the 200,000 Army reserve troops who are currently assigned "indefinately" to active service, we'd be OUT of foot soldiers.
As an example of how low manpower reserves are, they've reassigned the 11th ACR from the NTC at Ft. Irwin to duty in Iraq.
The unit that is tasked with TRAINING other units in desert warfare, has now been sent to the front.
When you start sending your training cadres to the front, it means you have NOTHING left to assign.
Either we start to bring troops back from Iraq within the next 12 months, or we HAVE to have a draft.
Or... hahahaahaha.. raise the pay of infantry troops to market rates to increase the number of volunteers.
Let's see.. will the staunch supporters of free-markets and capitalism follow the rules of the free market and raise pay for soldiers because of rising demand, OR will they simply institute involuntary servitude to force people to die for a cause they're not willing to volunteer for?
Right. A Draft. In 2005. If Bush wins.
Bush has said repeatedly that there will not be a draft.
It is true he said this, and it is also true that this is a lie on his part.
It will not be the first lie that he has told, and it wouldn't even be the biggest lie that he has told.
A vote for Bush will be a vote for 1) A military draft, 2) Massive social disruption and unrest as a result of the draft, and 3) Draconian supression of free-speech and free assembly in an attempt to enforce the draft.
If Bush is elected, expect a draft to begin no later than December 2005, and probably earlier.
Ilserve said: "There are all kinds of examples in which one person's values must be pushed on to others for the good of society."
:)
Great. We'll start by pushing mine onto you
Now go parent your own kids, and stop trying to make everyone else in the country your unpaid babysitter.
If you think that /. posting links to incredibly poorly written articles by half-illiterate SCO shills is *helping* SCO, then you're not seeing the whole picture.
When crayon-drawn spewings (such as the linked article) of "journalists" who are obviously less skilled in writing than the average message board troll are ALL the possitive press that SCO can get, it's a sort of cruel fun to post verbatim what the pro-SCO trolls write.
I mean come on, put up an article by Maureen O'Gara or Laura Didio, or Rob Enderle... and then put a Groklaw article next to it. Who comes off looking like a retard (um, I mean "specially abled journalist"), and who comes off looking like an intelligent human being?
Giving the writings of shills like O'Gara wide exposure simply makes everyone aware of thier illiteracy, and therefore contemptuous.
Heh, might as well give the pro-SCO folks plenty of opportunities to explain their position... it's fun to watch not-too-bright people try to explain the inexplicable.
When the people who are taking your rights away daily to "fight terrorists" have tons of DOCUMENTED business and personal ties to the very same people who they are supposedly "fighting", then it's time to realize that you're being scammed.
Remember the protection rackets, where mobsters would charge small shop owners for "protection" against fire. Isn't it an amazing coincidence how the shops that burned down always seemed to be those that hadn't paid the "protection" money?
The current war on terror is simply a replacement for the war on drugs and for the war on communism. The military-industrial complex had to find a new boogy man when the communists dropped out of the game.
How else would they keep making the same profits and enjoy the exercise of power, if not in the name of "protecting" you?
Are the 500,000 American troops currently stationed overseas PROTECTING America? How exactly are they doing that from so far away? Wouldn't they be better placed to protect America if they were IN America guarding the coastlines and borders?
Nope. They'd only be well-placed in that case to *actually* protect you, as opposed to "protecting" you.
That's your problem, and your responsibility to deal with.
It's NOT anybody else's problem, and it's NOT anyone else's responsibility to assist in your children's upbringing.
If I worked in a game store, I'd sell anything we had in stock to anyone who had cash to spend, regardless of the customer's age.
If your kids were to then buy something from me that you don't want them to have, then you bring it up to them, because I couldn't give a flying fuck about whatever rules you enforce in your household.
I'm not your children's parent, YOU are.
Capitalism existed long before huge megacorporations ever existed, and it will exist long after huge megacorporations have died off.
The guy who runs a corner grocery store, or who owns his own 1-man roofing bussiness is just as much a "capitalist" as the guy who wears a suit and tie to his fortune 500 job.
No... scratch that.. the guy who owns a corner grocery store is MORE of a capitalist than some MBA drone who just pushes pieces of paper around to manipulate other people's money.
Capitalism is about using wealth and hard work to create more wealth.
Small bussiness owners actually MAKE new things and create stuff... while nowadays the megacorporations seem to just be into draining the wealth from pension and investment funds into the offshore bank accounts of a select few.
Seriously, the legions of dedicated programmers who cooperated to create Linux are a lot more "capitalist" than the folks at Redmond who think that innovation is something that you can buy or steal.
Heh heh...
:)
How about "Indentured Wage-Slaves" vs. "People Who Do It For The Joy of Doing it."?
THAT makes the whole issue much clearer than "Proffesional vs. Amatuer"
I'd actually be interested in something like that, and I know others would be too.
:P ), and that many people would appreciate something that walks them through the simple first steps of new concepts.
:|
Sometimes people forget that not everyone is endowed at birth with immense knowledge (like the parent poster apparently was
What really tees me off about a lot of tutorials and manuals, is how they'll go into great detail on the basic principles (great), and they go into great detail on solutions to intermediate and advanced level concepts (again, great), but they spend a tiny ammount of time quickly glossing over the first few steps to actually get something done (arrrghh!).
It's sort of like getting some piece of furniture home from Ikea, and discovering that the pictographic instruction sheet had been replaced by a journeyman carpenter's course book.
Yeah yeah, it's great to be able to see how to shingle a roof and build drywall... but I just want to know how to put friggin Tab A into Tab B so my Ikea bookcase doesn't collapse when I set it up.
So, please don't disparage anyone who's going to actually step up to the plate and provide good solid basic knowledge to people who may not have been exposed to it in a way that they could actually USE it before.
Basic knowledge is a good thing... except for those of you who were born knowing everything
Actually, the people who agree with Noam Chomsky probably had to READ his views... ...which automatically pegs thier abilities far beyond the capabilities of most of Bill O'Reilly's illiterate fans.
No.
Linux is a MAJOR threat to MS, and all of the major Linux vendors acting together would be *death* for MS.
Which is how the whole SCO thing is panning out. The big boys are realizing that there is no co-existance with Microsoft other than in the fashion that a slave "co-exists" with its master.
Because of Microsoft's predatory behavior, it'll either be hunted down like a man-eating tiger and killed by the members of the village, or it will simply eat the villagers one-by-one.
The MS "Linux Strategist" is hoping/dreaming that he can start some in-fighting among the villagers to prevent them from finishing the organization of the tiger hunt.
The boon/reward for cooperative behavior in this case, is that once the tiger is dead everyone will be able to freely compete for thier chunk of the 90% market share that MS currently controls on the desktop.
That's a powerfull incentive to cooperate against MS, and the examples of what has happened to every single one of the "Microsoft Partners" is a powerfull DISincentive for any of the big players to play nice with MS.
MS will be have to be incredibly lucky to get more than 10% to 20% market penetration on the desktop with Longhorn... and that will be the begining of thier end.
If "subscription-based software delivery via high-speed data pipes is the future", as you say, then how could anyone possibly impede it using only what you call "dogmatic political theory"?
If it's possible to impede it, then it AINT "the future".
Someone might be stupid enough to buy what is essentially a nuetered and locked-down PC with outdated graphics capability, and then pay for content.
But that's hardly "the future". That's just a marketing scam that relies on stupid and/or gullible people.
Chomp said:
Someone breaks into your house. He is armed, you are not. You lose some valuables.
Someone breaks into your house. You are armed, he is armed. You lose nothing, he loses his life.
Hey Chomp: Where do you live?
Sounds like I can pretty much take whatever I want from your house.
I hope we're neighbors, because I can really use some new stuff.
:)
So they claim. Are there any court cases which support the conditions spelled out in these draconian EULAs, or are these just ideas that the software manufactures would "like" to be true?
Grandparent: The trick is to mandate a shorter work week like France and some other European countries, who mandate a 35 hour work week, maximum. No more velvet sweat shops....
Anonymous Parent: whee increased unemployment!
Dear Mr. Anonymous, think about what you just wrote.If all of the people working 70 hour, and 50 hour, workweeks were to suddenly be limited to 35 hour workweeks, then how exactly would that INCREASE unemployment?
If anything, it would require that many many people be hired to pick up the work left undone.
Also, since we're on the subject... why do you think unemployement and underemployement are so high right now, but the newspapers keep trumpeting "gains in American productivity" every fiscal quarter?
It's because companies are having each worker do the work that would have been handled by 2 or 3 or 4 people a decade ago.
Great news if you're an executive or if you own enough corporate stock to support yourself from the dividends alone... but pretty crappy news if you have to work for a living.
To be property, it has to have the ability to be owned, possessed, controlled.
Well then, since ideas can no longer be "controlled" because of the web, then I guess by your own definition that there is no such thing as "intellectual Property".
:)
Software patents, like other patents, provide the creator with limited-time exclusivity on the invention in exchange for **making the information public**
Ah, so we all should be eternally gratefull that people have made the concepts of "one click shopping" and "clicking multiple times" public, rather than keeping this valuable IP a seeeekriiit forever.
Yeah, right. And the money needed for really serious R&D would come from anonymous "contributors" like you?
Ah... you're right, because nobody other than a large meganational corporation could possibly afford the huge research effort that went into the "one click shopping" patent, or the salaries of the phenomenally large numbers of scientists and technicians who devoted decades of thier lives to researching the "multiple clicks" patent.
Nobody is stopped - you can do it while paying patent royalty.
True. In much the same way that nobody is stopped from running a business in mafia territory... they just have to pay the protection money.
Hold on a second... ..a minute ago you were talking about supply-and-demand, and as soon as someone called you on that, then suddenly you argument morphs into a "but won't someone please think of the forklift operators!" argument.
:)
So, which is it? Are you gonna talk about supply-and-demand, and take your lumps when the obvious fact that supply of electronic data is infinite and inexhaustible is mentioned?
(Let's see... demand is fixed, and supply is infinite. What happens to price in this situation? This is Econ 101 stuff.)
Or are you gonna use a "Oh please thiiiink about the pooooor workers" argument... and take your lumps when we look into the treatment of non-MBAs and non-management workers by large corporations.
The bottom line is that only a very tiny percentage of what people pay for a CD is actually reflected in costs.
The artists who created the music get next-to-nothing, and the workers who manufacture and distribute the CDs get next to nothing... the bulk of the $17.99 cost of a CD is simply profit for people who contributed nothing.
Protecting the obscene ammounts of UNEARNED profits by middlemen who never created anything in thier lives, but who simply leech off of both artists and the public is not really something the public cares much about.
You can throw words like "theft" and "piracy" around all you like, but those words actually have specific dictionary meanings that in no way apply to the current situation.
No company ever LOST money because of song downloads... they simply didn't earn as much profit as they thought they would. If you view thier projections of future income as somehow something that company executives have a RIGHT to expect to recieve... then how about extenting that same courtesy to the lowly workers in that same company?
Ah.. no, but then, your argument will probably quickly morph back into the "free market" argument from before.
Gee, funny how the basic principles of economics only apply to arguments when they'd support the actions of our corporate overlords.... but as soon as free-market arguments would go against them, then suddenly logic and economic theory get thrown aside and we're back to the shrill shrieks of "THEFT!!" and "Pirate!!" and "Wont someone please think of the poor forklift operators!!"
Essentially, the expansion of the internet into almost every country, and the continued growth of open source software methods has created a sort of "mini-singularity".
Through cooperation and collaberation on the internet, people have the ability to create and expand software much much rapidly than could have been concieved of.. even as late as the 1990s.
As internet service is expanded to more and more sections of the world, and as computer literacy keeps rising, expect this trend to develop exponentially.
Don't think in terms of simply computing power, but think in terms of creative power.
From a certain viewpoint, isn't the internet just a way to link human brains and creativity to create a "beowulf cluster" of people?
And aren't the rapid development of things like the wikipedia, GNU tools, the linux kernal, and so on, a result of this new cluster of people?
Who needs to manufacture a super-human machine intelligence, when you already have 6 billion Human beings that you can link into a cluster?