Yeah because they took this amount of effort when I was assaulted. And when there is a burglary... oooh they just go mad investigating here, investigating there. And half the time they know who might be responsible, but do nothing because 'oooh citizens say so' is not good enough. Of course the MPAA or RIAA say so is more than good enough, because yeah they are credible sources of information. Police don't bother to investigate any real crime anymore. As far as they are concerned, if it isn't organised crime resulting from some ridiculous prohibition, or a 'crime' almost all ordinary citizens with the means commit, they couldn't care less. I know of tens of vagrants in my area who by rights should have a criminal record longer than the Trans Canada Highway, yet nothing is done about them. But middle class white boy who decides he is going to get Britney Spears latest song over peer to perr is priority number one. Last time I checked, he aint going to mug me. I gave up on the police a long time ago. There is no justice in the West any more.
No, I think what he is saying is if they print that, then they cant be held responsible for printing it, only for the consequences of printing it. If you reveal troop locations then people might die and you are frankly a bit of a barsted. If you reveal the illegal activities of the government, then far from being a barsted, you are a hero. The government has the right to keep some things secret for a limited time. It does not have the right to keep illegal activity concealed from the public.
Since they are being taught to program you shouldn't try to teach them to use a text editor (this coming from someone who uses vi and wouldn't write a text document in anything else). Your best bet is to start with a simple text editor (if you can find one with syntax highlighting but nothing fancy that would be ideal). You then want to move them onto an IDE when you get the chance to teach them to use the IDE. For all intents and purposes Emacs is (when used in this context) a super powerful IDE with the mother of all text editors bolted on the side. It might however be a bit hard core as a 'first IDE' to use. As much as I love vi, it's a text editor, not a development environment, at least as far as I use it. Using an IDE properly requires either lots of practice, or less practice and education. When you are first starting you need to make a few of the mistakes that the IDE will stop you making just so you know how to use an IDE properly. In the end it is a compramise. If you use an IDE, you will lose some of the power that text editors offer, but gain some of the power IDEs offer. Since you are teaching them to program, using an IDE seems a more suitable skill to teach them that using a text editor. Especially since it is very easy to misuse a IDE and much harder to misuse a text editor. Just my two pence worth. If you had infinite time available the ideal would be to have them programming in emacs with all the suitable extensions and whatnot by the end of the course, but that is like saying by the end of a course on classical mechanics the ideal would that students could do string theory. Heck I've been programming on and off for years now and I haven't got around to learning how to properly use emacs in this context yet. It would seem a bit much to expect your students to reach that level.
I've got a better idea for patent reform. Take any application that isn't a physical invention (i.e. something that cannot be implemented on a general purpose computer or expressed in terms of pure mathematics) and reject it out of hand. Business practices, software, physical theories, etc. Then fine the individual filing the patent for wasting the patent offices time.
No? Oh I forgot, this isn't about innovation or helping inventor, or preventing information getting locked up in trade secrets. It's about protectionism, the very worst kind of protectionism. Protectionism acting against anyone who isn't a multibillion dollar US company, even ordinary hard working US citizens.
Downloading copyrighted material without the copyright owners permission might, might, be copyright infringement. Copyright is a legal concoction which only exists because it is supposed to enhance the public domain. It is not a right that is comparable to the right to own property. Why? Because the right to own property has a moral basis. We agree collectively that people can own property, things, stuff. Objects you can touch with you hand.
You cant own general relativity. You cant own the designs to you new death ray. You cant own that song you wrote. You can keep them secret if you want. But if you go public with them, then you cant complain when people copy them. You might be granted a limited monopoly in some way to encourage you to produce and release this information, but that is not a moral right you are entitled to, it is just an economic device.
Downloading is not stealing, and copyright legislation needs to take into account again that fact.
Companies who hire employees are from the get go looking to skrew them over. As an employee your role is to do the minimum you have to to get the maximum return. It's exactly the same goal as the company. That's why there are all these policies that are so negative to deal with the employee who is lazy. Since they basically assume you are lazy, and treat you as such, you should behave as such. Unions offer a way to balance the equation. If the system was fair there would be no need for them, but employers band together in large difficult to deal with groups called companies, employee should band together into unions to counter that.
Thanks for taking the time to make some good points (and some poor ones, such as installation). However you still are not listening. You demonstrate some ways in which Windows is easier to use for a nieve user. However you completely miss the point. And the point is as follows. That people lack of desire to learn how to use a computer is flaw. It is isomorphic to not learning how to drive a car then complaining when you don't know how to start it. A computer is a complex piece of equipment and 'usability' should not translate to dumbing the system down to the point you cant get anything useful done with it. You keep using Windows as an example, but I would argue that Windows is a sophisticate desktop operating system that you cannot nievely just pick up and use. I would argue this because I've seen people try to just start doing things with it. They cant, they require training. You might say 'less training than with command line UNIX'. Sure it's a fair cop. But for a properly installed and configured UNIX with KDE, I'd say that isn't the case. I'd say that because I've attempted to teach people on both systems and they peform about the same. You say that one should not require a computer science course to operate a computer. That is exactly my point. People do, one way or another, and they should! I understand what you are saying. I get it. My point is I disagree. I believe that everyone who uses a computer should, at a bare minimum understand the very basics of how it operates before they get anywhere near a K or Start Menu. You wouldn't drive a car without knowing the basics of how it works. People shouldn't use a computer without first understanding the basics of how it works. That doesn't mean compiling thier own kernel, but it does mean understanding what a CPU is or what a program is. How the internet works is important if you are going to use it. It doesn't mean learning to program in C++, but knowing what kernel module is or a device driver is essential. You know, the computer equivilant of being able to change the tire on a car. I get what you keep saying. You keep pointing out ways in which the simpler operation of Windows makes it 'easier' to use. Well for every simple application of Windows there is an equivilant one on UNIX. This is not true for more complex programs like Word I will grant you that. But using word properly requires considerable training. I know this because I know people who can use Word properly and it is extremely powerful. You compare VI and Notepad, a better comparison would be Notepad and Abiword. I think on the ease of use stakes Notepad wins there, but by a really small margin.
"If Vi didn't convince you to not stop using it you already spend time and effort to learn it syntax,likrly becoming such a "hacker" but this doesn't makes you any more productive then notepad users" Erm, this is simply wrong. VI is very powerful. There are things you can do in VI in seconds you would be pretty hard pushed to do in Notepad in a week. That is like saying that learning to use Word doesn't make you more productive than a Notepad user. It's clearly a flawed arguement. Words is a very powerful document editing program. Notepad, is, well basic text editor. VI is an advanced text editor. There are equivilant packages for Windows (like VI itself). VI doesn't make UNIX better. VI is just a more powerful tool.
Which again comes back to my point. If a user is going to use a powerful tool like Word or VI, they need to spend time learning to use it. You don't need to do that with tools like Notepad or Abiword. My point, which you have systematically missed, is that people have to spend a proportionate amount of time learning to use the tools they need. Computers are complex pieces of kit, and you cannot just pick them up and make them do stuff.
As for your point about Firefox vs Opera, that is perfectly true. Opera is a better browser. I use it because I prefer to use free software when I can.
Probably because the camp is so secretive. If they don't have anything to hide, why are they being so secretive about it? Bottom line is citizens may have a right to privacy, government have no such right and should only conceal things when there is a very good reason to.
It is not about consumer expectations. As a monopoly there are certain things you are not allowed to do. If Microsoft wants to enter the search market they are at liberty to make an unbundled browser free for download that has their search engine as default. If they bundle it with their OS, they leverage their monopoly. Is it fair on Microsoft? Not really. But life isn't fair, and the alternative isn't fair on any of their competitors or the public.
To obtain parity Google would need to have their own OS with a monopoly in the desktop PC market. Last time I checked that was not the case. So you see, if Google doesn't like Microsoft leveraging it's monopoly illegally, it has every right to complain.
As much as there is some truth to what you say, I feel the need to point out some things. Google is in the online advertising business. They primarily advertise via thier search pages. But Expanding in an existing and growing market which is the market you already have a monopoly in is not leveraging a monopoly. Nor is going into a new market area without utilising your monopoly in another area. Integrating a Paypal type scheme with Adsense could be an example of leveraging a monopoly. Making Google Earth isn't. Gmail might be an abuse, but you would have a hard time showing they are leveraging their search monopoly since I don't see any links to it on search pages. There is a difference between having a monopoly and leveraging it. We are now begining to see the start of Google using it's monopoly, but the examples you listed were on the whole pretty weak.
I don't think you addressed a single thing I said. I said I know how things work, and I know how to fix them when they go wrong. My point was not to say "Linux is superior" or to indicate I'm some uber hacker, because frankly, I'm crap. But I take the time to learn what is needed to get a system working. Why? Because anything more complicated than a spoon will require an individual to obtain some technical knowledge of how it works if they are to actually do anything with it. To take your examples... Monolithic Kernels really don't suffer from the problems you describe if you use one of the generic ones. All people need to be able to understand is modifying what modules are loaded and that is not hard. It is no harder or easier than on Windows, just different. I know, I use both and I wish they were both easier, they both have big stinking faults. As for installing programs, I use Debian so most of the time I just use apt-get. Last time I checked that was easier than walking to the store to buy a new copy of a program and then proceeding through the 'click through installation'. Heck most programs install themselves without any asistance. User friendliness can reduce the time it takes to do things. Especially if they are simple and only need to be done once. From what little I've used of Macs, Apple are very good at this. Both KDE/Gnome and Windows suck at it. Windows is consistent but actually doing something complicated is a pain and the consistency does not extend to efficiency. Sometimes, things should just be in a config file. KDE and Gnome on the other hand, confuse me like nobodies business, as does the fact that very few applications developers stick to the HIG. So you see it isn't all bad, and I think user interfaces could be improved. However, people just have to accept that using computers is like driving a car. You have to invest about 20 or so hours of practice before you will actually be able to use the darn thing.
"Or maybe it was a completely inapproprate speech that made everyone there uncomfortable and the media has chosen to ignore it and pretend it never happened, since they chose Colbert anyway."
I'm with everything you said, except the inappropriate bit. The media are doing as piss poor a job as the President, and I for one am greatful that Colbert had the guts to make himself very unpopular with the whole room by going up on stage and basically turning to that pitiful excuse for an audience and saying "You are all worthless".
"But you should ask yourself whether most of these people even care about knowing better."
Apathy resulting in ignorance is a crime in and of itself. Being stupid through willful omission of effort is wrong. I own a bike, I know the basics of how a bike works. I own a computer, I know the basics of it's operation. I have an oven, I know how that works. If I owned a car, I would learn the basics of it's operation. I vote, the exercise of political force. Such an extreme measure requires even more study.
I use a web browser I know the basics of it's operation. Being stupid through lack of effort is not okay. It is not acceptable. It is the root cause of most of this worlds problems.
Yeah, but you are relatively intelligent.
This is people taking matters into their own hands. People are too stupid to do what they consider the right thing, so they creat a false perception to induce them to do the right thing. The more times you say IE is broke, the more broke people will think it is. I don't agree with the tactic, but it might work on Joe Average.
The problem I see is this is means to an end type stuff. The enemies of a certain way of thinking are using every low down, dirty underhanded tactic to get their way. The response is to do exactly the same. The problem with a mud throwing contest is that everyone just ends up covered in mud. The solution is not throwing more mud, it's getting the barsteds who first cheated to play fair again.
Exactly the same problem plagues politics.
"I seriously think the big record labels are on borrowed time -- all they have left is American Idol type garbage that no one with a brain takes seriously."
I missed the point at which I should credit the majority of the human race with a fully functional human brain.
Don't know if you noticed but relection isn't decided by these issues. It is decided by who gets the largest campaign donations so they can do the most fear moungering.
It's not about enforcing it. It's about making everyone a criminal. When everyone is a criminal, it becomes considerably easier to get around pesky issues like getting enough evidence for a search warrent, or arresting and detaining people for something else you don't like using the new 'crime' as an excuse.
Your Ad Hominem attacks are getting tiresome. This is a debate about how things should be, not what they are. The "real world" as you put it is flawed, thats the whole point of the discussion. If we listened to people such as yourself then women still wouldn't have the right to own property because heck, women having rights independent of the man who takes care of her, that isn't living in the real world. Lets take a look at the constitution of the United States, which I consider to be high point of civilisation (note I'm not American), the 4th Amendment: "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures." That looks to me like establishing property rights to me. Your arguement amounts to an Appeal to Tradition fallacy. Because we didn't in the past correctly treat property rights correctly throught our treatment of women and minors, they cannot be inalieable rights. You sound more and more Stalinist to me by the minute, going back to my original post. You now are suggesting that property rights, rather than being drawn from the people are drawn from the state. Any other powers that you wish to draw from the state instead of being inherent to the people? It remains the case that while property rights are rights, things such as copyrights, patents and trademarks are restrictions. Restrictions are only tolerated when they do good. You seem to think restrictions should only be tolerated when they are the status quo. I can only hope I've misinterpreted that.
Like I said before, I said ideal, not practical. You need some state powers to maintain law and order. But state powers for and of themselves or which exist onlybecause they have been around for a some period of time are not needed. Does this apply to laws applying to corporations? Sometimes, much of the law is antiquated in this respect.
You list examples but you don't offer any benefits. You said:
"Consider the situation of a movie producer who pays a scriptwriter $1,000,000 to write a script for a movie, why should the scriptwriter maintain copyright?"
You completely miss the point. The question isn't does the company have a right to own the copyright. The question is, is it beneficial for the company to own the copyright. Companies are an extension of state powers and should only be vested with rights for the purposes of benefiting society. Not because of some inherent 'right' they may posses. Companies have no inalieable rights because they are not people. If this makes me out of touch, then I would much prefer to be out of touch and live in a liberal democracy than in a corporate republic.
You also use a totally flawed property vs copyright analogy which I wont even bother to address because copyright is a government mandated monopoly, an extension of state powers for the intent of promoting the useful science and the arts. The right to own property is a inalieable right endowed to all humans at birth.
"The ideal level of state powers is not "zero", unless you enjoy chaos."
I said ideal, not practical.
Who said employees could not hold copyrights? No one, they have the same rights as anyone else un the proposed system. Just that a company cannot own a copyright. A company is not a person, they have different rights and responsibilities. I disagree with the proposed system because of the previous reasons I have listed. You still haven't given a reason for your disagreement. At least not a coherent one.
"Do you channel Joseph Stalin twenty-four hours a day, or just when you're posting to Slashdot?"
Hate to point it out but you are the one proposing an increase of state powers above the ideal level (zero). By giving government the power to grant temporary monopolies you are in fact expanding the state. What sounds more Stalinist to you?
Can you think of a good reason for companies to hold copyrights?
I can, for example to allow a group of individuals to produce a work that a single individual could not, or to add value to copyrighted work to increase the incentive to produce it, by giving companies the ability to buy and sell government mandated monopolies. I question the latter reason, the former is one in the primary reason we allow companies to exist in the first place.
Perhaps you could contribute your reasons, instead of invoking the booogie man.
The problem isn't obtaining funding. The problem is that these people are trying to waste public money answering questions we already know the answer to. Since Global Climate Change is an established fact, the kinds of questions doubters ask would waste public money for the most part. So when the scientific budget is portioned out, less goes into that pot. Heck my research isn't considered very practical (string theory in 2D, not exactly very useful in the immediate term), so I have less funding opertunities. Your grant proposal is assesed on merit. These scientists obviously submitted grant proposals that were not good enough if they got refused. If they are not getting published then the research was not good enough. You can guess that apriori because many of their grant proposals were not good enough. Funding councils have to give funding based on specific criteria. Those scientists who doubt Global Climate Change are not meeting those criteria. The scientific community is hardly likely to be enthralled by a less note worthy study (which it probably was if it was refused funding by the funding councils) it isn't going to be enthralled whoever funds it. The bottom line is that the evidence is in, and the science has been done. Global Climate Change is happening and man is play a part in that Change. We now need to find out why and what we can do about it. Science is about doubt until we have the facts. Not doubt after we have them. We wouldn't run a study to find out a basic question about if evolution is happening or not now. The same goes for Global Climate Change.
I call bullshit. If a person is working in business based on IT, then they sure as hell should know a little about the computer based technical terms in thier business. If you ask a question which can legitimately get a response containing the anacronym TCP/IP, either you understand the term, or you lack the technical knowledge to do your job. The theoretical physicists at my lab wouldn't dream of asking the IT guys to speak 'plainly' if they worked on a project with them. But corporate speak is not a technical language. It isn't like the technical language of Physics, or IT, or Medicine. It's more like the bullshit language of the art critic who wants to pretend competance at a discipline. It's devised to make people feel smarter than they are. It's ignorant MBAs compensating for thier lack of real qualifications with an obtuse language. CP Snow got alot of things wrong, but one thing he didn't get wrong was the fact that those disciplines unable to quantify thier sucesses became desperate to pretend they were as technically hard as the true technical disciplines, and so made up a bullshit language to compensate for thier own percieved inadequacies.
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah because they took this amount of effort when I was assaulted. And when there is a burglary... oooh they just go mad investigating here, investigating there. And half the time they know who might be responsible, but do nothing because 'oooh citizens say so' is not good enough. Of course the MPAA or RIAA say so is more than good enough, because yeah they are credible sources of information.
Police don't bother to investigate any real crime anymore. As far as they are concerned, if it isn't organised crime resulting from some ridiculous prohibition, or a 'crime' almost all ordinary citizens with the means commit, they couldn't care less. I know of tens of vagrants in my area who by rights should have a criminal record longer than the Trans Canada Highway, yet nothing is done about them. But middle class white boy who decides he is going to get Britney Spears latest song over peer to perr is priority number one. Last time I checked, he aint going to mug me.
I gave up on the police a long time ago. There is no justice in the West any more.
No, I think what he is saying is if they print that, then they cant be held responsible for printing it, only for the consequences of printing it. If you reveal troop locations then people might die and you are frankly a bit of a barsted. If you reveal the illegal activities of the government, then far from being a barsted, you are a hero.
The government has the right to keep some things secret for a limited time. It does not have the right to keep illegal activity concealed from the public.
Since they are being taught to program you shouldn't try to teach them to use a text editor (this coming from someone who uses vi and wouldn't write a text document in anything else). Your best bet is to start with a simple text editor (if you can find one with syntax highlighting but nothing fancy that would be ideal). You then want to move them onto an IDE when you get the chance to teach them to use the IDE. For all intents and purposes Emacs is (when used in this context) a super powerful IDE with the mother of all text editors bolted on the side. It might however be a bit hard core as a 'first IDE' to use. As much as I love vi, it's a text editor, not a development environment, at least as far as I use it.
Using an IDE properly requires either lots of practice, or less practice and education. When you are first starting you need to make a few of the mistakes that the IDE will stop you making just so you know how to use an IDE properly.
In the end it is a compramise. If you use an IDE, you will lose some of the power that text editors offer, but gain some of the power IDEs offer. Since you are teaching them to program, using an IDE seems a more suitable skill to teach them that using a text editor. Especially since it is very easy to misuse a IDE and much harder to misuse a text editor.
Just my two pence worth.
If you had infinite time available the ideal would be to have them programming in emacs with all the suitable extensions and whatnot by the end of the course, but that is like saying by the end of a course on classical mechanics the ideal would that students could do string theory. Heck I've been programming on and off for years now and I haven't got around to learning how to properly use emacs in this context yet. It would seem a bit much to expect your students to reach that level.
I've got a better idea for patent reform. Take any application that isn't a physical invention (i.e. something that cannot be implemented on a general purpose computer or expressed in terms of pure mathematics) and reject it out of hand. Business practices, software, physical theories, etc. Then fine the individual filing the patent for wasting the patent offices time.
No? Oh I forgot, this isn't about innovation or helping inventor, or preventing information getting locked up in trade secrets. It's about protectionism, the very worst kind of protectionism. Protectionism acting against anyone who isn't a multibillion dollar US company, even ordinary hard working US citizens.
How many times...
Downloading copyrighted material without the copyright owners permission might, might, be copyright infringement. Copyright is a legal concoction which only exists because it is supposed to enhance the public domain. It is not a right that is comparable to the right to own property. Why? Because the right to own property has a moral basis. We agree collectively that people can own property, things, stuff. Objects you can touch with you hand.
You cant own general relativity. You cant own the designs to you new death ray. You cant own that song you wrote. You can keep them secret if you want. But if you go public with them, then you cant complain when people copy them. You might be granted a limited monopoly in some way to encourage you to produce and release this information, but that is not a moral right you are entitled to, it is just an economic device.
Downloading is not stealing, and copyright legislation needs to take into account again that fact.
Companies who hire employees are from the get go looking to skrew them over. As an employee your role is to do the minimum you have to to get the maximum return. It's exactly the same goal as the company. That's why there are all these policies that are so negative to deal with the employee who is lazy. Since they basically assume you are lazy, and treat you as such, you should behave as such.
Unions offer a way to balance the equation. If the system was fair there would be no need for them, but employers band together in large difficult to deal with groups called companies, employee should band together into unions to counter that.
Thanks for taking the time to make some good points (and some poor ones, such as installation). However you still are not listening. You demonstrate some ways in which Windows is easier to use for a nieve user. However you completely miss the point.
And the point is as follows. That people lack of desire to learn how to use a computer is flaw. It is isomorphic to not learning how to drive a car then complaining when you don't know how to start it. A computer is a complex piece of equipment and 'usability' should not translate to dumbing the system down to the point you cant get anything useful done with it.
You keep using Windows as an example, but I would argue that Windows is a sophisticate desktop operating system that you cannot nievely just pick up and use. I would argue this because I've seen people try to just start doing things with it. They cant, they require training. You might say 'less training than with command line UNIX'. Sure it's a fair cop. But for a properly installed and configured UNIX with KDE, I'd say that isn't the case. I'd say that because I've attempted to teach people on both systems and they peform about the same.
You say that one should not require a computer science course to operate a computer. That is exactly my point. People do, one way or another, and they should! I understand what you are saying. I get it. My point is I disagree. I believe that everyone who uses a computer should, at a bare minimum understand the very basics of how it operates before they get anywhere near a K or Start Menu. You wouldn't drive a car without knowing the basics of how it works. People shouldn't use a computer without first understanding the basics of how it works. That doesn't mean compiling thier own kernel, but it does mean understanding what a CPU is or what a program is. How the internet works is important if you are going to use it. It doesn't mean learning to program in C++, but knowing what kernel module is or a device driver is essential. You know, the computer equivilant of being able to change the tire on a car.
I get what you keep saying. You keep pointing out ways in which the simpler operation of Windows makes it 'easier' to use. Well for every simple application of Windows there is an equivilant one on UNIX. This is not true for more complex programs like Word I will grant you that. But using word properly requires considerable training. I know this because I know people who can use Word properly and it is extremely powerful. You compare VI and Notepad, a better comparison would be Notepad and Abiword. I think on the ease of use stakes Notepad wins there, but by a really small margin.
"If Vi didn't convince you to not stop using it you already spend time and effort to learn it syntax,likrly becoming such a "hacker" but this doesn't makes you any more productive then notepad users"
Erm, this is simply wrong. VI is very powerful. There are things you can do in VI in seconds you would be pretty hard pushed to do in Notepad in a week. That is like saying that learning to use Word doesn't make you more productive than a Notepad user. It's clearly a flawed arguement. Words is a very powerful document editing program. Notepad, is, well basic text editor. VI is an advanced text editor. There are equivilant packages for Windows (like VI itself). VI doesn't make UNIX better. VI is just a more powerful tool.
Which again comes back to my point. If a user is going to use a powerful tool like Word or VI, they need to spend time learning to use it. You don't need to do that with tools like Notepad or Abiword. My point, which you have systematically missed, is that people have to spend a proportionate amount of time learning to use the tools they need. Computers are complex pieces of kit, and you cannot just pick them up and make them do stuff.
As for your point about Firefox vs Opera, that is perfectly true. Opera is a better browser. I use it because I prefer to use free software when I can.
Probably because the camp is so secretive. If they don't have anything to hide, why are they being so secretive about it? Bottom line is citizens may have a right to privacy, government have no such right and should only conceal things when there is a very good reason to.
No doubt, and very true. Also, many of Google current actions would be objectionable if they used their OS to support them.
It is not about consumer expectations. As a monopoly there are certain things you are not allowed to do. If Microsoft wants to enter the search market they are at liberty to make an unbundled browser free for download that has their search engine as default. If they bundle it with their OS, they leverage their monopoly. Is it fair on Microsoft? Not really. But life isn't fair, and the alternative isn't fair on any of their competitors or the public.
To obtain parity Google would need to have their own OS with a monopoly in the desktop PC market. Last time I checked that was not the case.
So you see, if Google doesn't like Microsoft leveraging it's monopoly illegally, it has every right to complain.
As much as there is some truth to what you say, I feel the need to point out some things.
Google is in the online advertising business. They primarily advertise via thier search pages. But Expanding in an existing and growing market which is the market you already have a monopoly in is not leveraging a monopoly. Nor is going into a new market area without utilising your monopoly in another area.
Integrating a Paypal type scheme with Adsense could be an example of leveraging a monopoly. Making Google Earth isn't. Gmail might be an abuse, but you would have a hard time showing they are leveraging their search monopoly since I don't see any links to it on search pages.
There is a difference between having a monopoly and leveraging it. We are now begining to see the start of Google using it's monopoly, but the examples you listed were on the whole pretty weak.
I don't think you addressed a single thing I said. I said I know how things work, and I know how to fix them when they go wrong.
My point was not to say "Linux is superior" or to indicate I'm some uber hacker, because frankly, I'm crap. But I take the time to learn what is needed to get a system working. Why? Because anything more complicated than a spoon will require an individual to obtain some technical knowledge of how it works if they are to actually do anything with it. To take your examples...
Monolithic Kernels really don't suffer from the problems you describe if you use one of the generic ones. All people need to be able to understand is modifying what modules are loaded and that is not hard. It is no harder or easier than on Windows, just different. I know, I use both and I wish they were both easier, they both have big stinking faults.
As for installing programs, I use Debian so most of the time I just use apt-get. Last time I checked that was easier than walking to the store to buy a new copy of a program and then proceeding through the 'click through installation'. Heck most programs install themselves without any asistance.
User friendliness can reduce the time it takes to do things. Especially if they are simple and only need to be done once. From what little I've used of Macs, Apple are very good at this. Both KDE/Gnome and Windows suck at it. Windows is consistent but actually doing something complicated is a pain and the consistency does not extend to efficiency. Sometimes, things should just be in a config file. KDE and Gnome on the other hand, confuse me like nobodies business, as does the fact that very few applications developers stick to the HIG.
So you see it isn't all bad, and I think user interfaces could be improved. However, people just have to accept that using computers is like driving a car. You have to invest about 20 or so hours of practice before you will actually be able to use the darn thing.
"Or maybe it was a completely inapproprate speech that made everyone there uncomfortable and the media has chosen to ignore it and pretend it never happened, since they chose Colbert anyway."
I'm with everything you said, except the inappropriate bit. The media are doing as piss poor a job as the President, and I for one am greatful that Colbert had the guts to make himself very unpopular with the whole room by going up on stage and basically turning to that pitiful excuse for an audience and saying "You are all worthless".
"But you should ask yourself whether most of these people even care about knowing better."
Apathy resulting in ignorance is a crime in and of itself. Being stupid through willful omission of effort is wrong. I own a bike, I know the basics of how a bike works. I own a computer, I know the basics of it's operation. I have an oven, I know how that works. If I owned a car, I would learn the basics of it's operation. I vote, the exercise of political force. Such an extreme measure requires even more study.
I use a web browser I know the basics of it's operation. Being stupid through lack of effort is not okay. It is not acceptable. It is the root cause of most of this worlds problems.
Yeah, but you are relatively intelligent. This is people taking matters into their own hands. People are too stupid to do what they consider the right thing, so they creat a false perception to induce them to do the right thing. The more times you say IE is broke, the more broke people will think it is. I don't agree with the tactic, but it might work on Joe Average. The problem I see is this is means to an end type stuff. The enemies of a certain way of thinking are using every low down, dirty underhanded tactic to get their way. The response is to do exactly the same. The problem with a mud throwing contest is that everyone just ends up covered in mud. The solution is not throwing more mud, it's getting the barsteds who first cheated to play fair again. Exactly the same problem plagues politics.
"I seriously think the big record labels are on borrowed time -- all they have left is American Idol type garbage that no one with a brain takes seriously."
I missed the point at which I should credit the majority of the human race with a fully functional human brain.
Don't know if you noticed but relection isn't decided by these issues. It is decided by who gets the largest campaign donations so they can do the most fear moungering.
"This is nonenforcable"
It's not about enforcing it. It's about making everyone a criminal. When everyone is a criminal, it becomes considerably easier to get around pesky issues like getting enough evidence for a search warrent, or arresting and detaining people for something else you don't like using the new 'crime' as an excuse.
Your Ad Hominem attacks are getting tiresome. This is a debate about how things should be, not what they are. The "real world" as you put it is flawed, thats the whole point of the discussion. If we listened to people such as yourself then women still wouldn't have the right to own property because heck, women having rights independent of the man who takes care of her, that isn't living in the real world.
Lets take a look at the constitution of the United States, which I consider to be high point of civilisation (note I'm not American), the 4th Amendment:
"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures."
That looks to me like establishing property rights to me. Your arguement amounts to an Appeal to Tradition fallacy. Because we didn't in the past correctly treat property rights correctly throught our treatment of women and minors, they cannot be inalieable rights.
You sound more and more Stalinist to me by the minute, going back to my original post. You now are suggesting that property rights, rather than being drawn from the people are drawn from the state. Any other powers that you wish to draw from the state instead of being inherent to the people?
It remains the case that while property rights are rights, things such as copyrights, patents and trademarks are restrictions. Restrictions are only tolerated when they do good. You seem to think restrictions should only be tolerated when they are the status quo. I can only hope I've misinterpreted that.
You really don't listen do you.
Like I said before, I said ideal, not practical. You need some state powers to maintain law and order. But state powers for and of themselves or which exist onlybecause they have been around for a some period of time are not needed. Does this apply to laws applying to corporations? Sometimes, much of the law is antiquated in this respect.
You list examples but you don't offer any benefits. You said:
"Consider the situation of a movie producer who pays a scriptwriter $1,000,000 to write a script for a movie, why should the scriptwriter maintain copyright?"
You completely miss the point. The question isn't does the company have a right to own the copyright. The question is, is it beneficial for the company to own the copyright. Companies are an extension of state powers and should only be vested with rights for the purposes of benefiting society. Not because of some inherent 'right' they may posses. Companies have no inalieable rights because they are not people. If this makes me out of touch, then I would much prefer to be out of touch and live in a liberal democracy than in a corporate republic.
You also use a totally flawed property vs copyright analogy which I wont even bother to address because copyright is a government mandated monopoly, an extension of state powers for the intent of promoting the useful science and the arts. The right to own property is a inalieable right endowed to all humans at birth.
"The ideal level of state powers is not "zero", unless you enjoy chaos."
I said ideal, not practical.
Who said employees could not hold copyrights? No one, they have the same rights as anyone else un the proposed system. Just that a company cannot own a copyright. A company is not a person, they have different rights and responsibilities. I disagree with the proposed system because of the previous reasons I have listed. You still haven't given a reason for your disagreement. At least not a coherent one.
"Do you channel Joseph Stalin twenty-four hours a day, or just when you're posting to Slashdot?"
Hate to point it out but you are the one proposing an increase of state powers above the ideal level (zero). By giving government the power to grant temporary monopolies you are in fact expanding the state. What sounds more Stalinist to you?
Can you think of a good reason for companies to hold copyrights?
I can, for example to allow a group of individuals to produce a work that a single individual could not, or to add value to copyrighted work to increase the incentive to produce it, by giving companies the ability to buy and sell government mandated monopolies. I question the latter reason, the former is one in the primary reason we allow companies to exist in the first place.
Perhaps you could contribute your reasons, instead of invoking the booogie man.
The problem isn't obtaining funding. The problem is that these people are trying to waste public money answering questions we already know the answer to. Since Global Climate Change is an established fact, the kinds of questions doubters ask would waste public money for the most part. So when the scientific budget is portioned out, less goes into that pot. Heck my research isn't considered very practical (string theory in 2D, not exactly very useful in the immediate term), so I have less funding opertunities.
Your grant proposal is assesed on merit. These scientists obviously submitted grant proposals that were not good enough if they got refused. If they are not getting published then the research was not good enough. You can guess that apriori because many of their grant proposals were not good enough.
Funding councils have to give funding based on specific criteria. Those scientists who doubt Global Climate Change are not meeting those criteria. The scientific community is hardly likely to be enthralled by a less note worthy study (which it probably was if it was refused funding by the funding councils) it isn't going to be enthralled whoever funds it.
The bottom line is that the evidence is in, and the science has been done. Global Climate Change is happening and man is play a part in that Change. We now need to find out why and what we can do about it.
Science is about doubt until we have the facts. Not doubt after we have them. We wouldn't run a study to find out a basic question about if evolution is happening or not now. The same goes for Global Climate Change.
I call bullshit. If a person is working in business based on IT, then they sure as hell should know a little about the computer based technical terms in thier business. If you ask a question which can legitimately get a response containing the anacronym TCP/IP, either you understand the term, or you lack the technical knowledge to do your job. The theoretical physicists at my lab wouldn't dream of asking the IT guys to speak 'plainly' if they worked on a project with them.
But corporate speak is not a technical language. It isn't like the technical language of Physics, or IT, or Medicine. It's more like the bullshit language of the art critic who wants to pretend competance at a discipline.
It's devised to make people feel smarter than they are. It's ignorant MBAs compensating for thier lack of real qualifications with an obtuse language. CP Snow got alot of things wrong, but one thing he didn't get wrong was the fact that those disciplines unable to quantify thier sucesses became desperate to pretend they were as technically hard as the true technical disciplines, and so made up a bullshit language to compensate for thier own percieved inadequacies.