"I think The Histories give many great reasons as to why democracy sucks hard."
Me too. It's only that History doesn't seem to provide examples of other systems that suck less.
"Also, to say "National Scale" presupposes nationalism"
Ancient Aegyptians presupposed nationalism. Greek presupposed nationalism. And Roman, and everybody else. Do you know why? Because it works or at least seem to work. Take a bunch of nationalist dogs and see what happens to the people around them: they fastly become part of the Great Roman Empire too, so to say. But, hey, don't talk about nationalisms then: just offer an example of a bunch of people organized enough to build roads, acueducts and food enough to ensure not starving on cold winters based on the 'bonne savage' premises and succeding.
"Also, many capitalist and socialist nations have fallen."
Yes. After some time and usually to be suplanted with more of the same. That's more than can be said of any furierist experiment in History.
"I think a very limited government whose purpose is to effectively "preserve the anarchy" has historically shown to most greatly benefit the greatest number of people, propel human progress, reduce suffering, and improve quality of life for all people."
Like in...? I cannot think of any real example of such a government in History, not even at the state-city level much less over spaces in the ranges of the thousands or tens of thousands square kilometers but I'm far of being omniscient: can you provide them?
"Unfortunately, security is a process and affects all interacting systems. Placing them under one umbrella in a UTM device allows security issues to be dealt with in one place."
Unfortunately, putting all those interacting systems under one umbrella in a UTM device allows security to be tresspassed by jumping out just one choke point. Security by depth==0.
"Sorry, but a planned economy only works with a central planner to replace the invisible hand."
And that's anything more than your opinion, how?
"No village can know what they need to be producing to satisfy a need hundreds of miles away"
But a company can? Villagers on that remote town doesn't have access to a telephone?
"or one anticipated in the future"
But a company can? Is somebody smarter when working for The Company than working for The Major?
"And since price no longer serves to communicate oversupply or shortage anymore only a central planner can organize things."
Or, you know, they can organize themselves by means of a telephone call or carrying pidgeons.
"Except for that pesky fact that no central planner CAN possess enough information to make such plans."
Or it can't now, or it can, but never really tried.
"what is the motive to open these mines you speak of, plant and reap the farms, manufacture things, etc. when there is no reward for doing it."
Of course it is impossible to think of other rewarding systems but those managed by the invisible hand. Yeah, of course not.
"You get exactly what some people's committee decides you 'need' and nothing more."
Of course that's the exact output expected from having a central comitee. You are aware you are argumenting with somebody especulating about *not* having such a central comitee, aren't you?
"European Democratic Socialism has escaped the worst features of Socialism so far because there has been sufficient reactionary elements to prevent a total slide into Socialism."
Or else European Democratic Socialism has escaped the worst features atributable by your own discourse to Totalitarism by being, ahem, European Democratic Socialism instead of European Totalitarian Socialism.
"A good fourth example is the US military, of which I was a part of in the early 90s. It's all teamwork, everyone shares, no one owns the hummvee"
That's not the army but each and every corporation in the world. Do you think any corporation worker owns his chair, or PC, or bulldozer anymore GI Joe owns the hummvee?
"I would interpret that as the only stable communistic societies would be either medieval theocratic or modern militaristic"
Modern transnational corporations have as much power and control as much people as little-to-mid countries and *all* of them are regulated under clearly communist principles.
" All that hear is projection; the only way I can understand a persons position that people left to their own free will are destined to evil is a reflection of themselves"
You are too young then. I hear projection... and experience. Why do you think Socialism and Capitalism (somehow) works at least for a while on a national scale but anarchism do not? The first two are hobbesias (man is a wolf for a man) while anarchism is volterian (bonne savage). There has never been a working social system based on other grounds but that the human being is a greedy bastard and it's not because people didn't tried.
"If people are irrational, corrupt, and corrosive to society, how could we ever trust such people to pick quality leaders?"
Who told you we can? But precisely because we can't democracy is the only way to equally spray the shit to everybody.
"Capitalism is about the right for individuals to own property"
Not. Capital is not property; property is not capital. Capitalism is about giving almighty power to capital disregarding everything else.
"Communism claims that individuals are wasteful and inefficient"
Not. Communism claims that individuals should be liberated from the tiranny of capital as an almighty power.
"only an all powerful, all seeing state can best manage the resources and labor of a society for greatest good."
Not. Marx states that only a temporal all powerful all seeing state can crush away the minority of those few greedy individuals that control society by means of capital and use their power to perpetuate such 'statu quo'. Once the goal acomplished, such powerful state machinery would dismantle itself and vanish.
"Karl Marx would have called for government to come in and heavily regulate software. Designate a central authority to manage the development of software, public schools train a specific number of necessary software developers, outlaw the possession, development, or use of "rogue" compilers to help protect people from poor quality software that wasn't approved by the state, and possibly imprison people for unauthorized forking of projects arguing that such action "steals" the necessary resources of the state and impedes progress."
It's obvious you never read Karl Marx. Marxism is not Stalinism. Did you knew that under Marx's opinion your "central authority" was just an interim but unavoidable artifact? Did you knew that lacking unsurmountable opposition from the capital oligochracy there's no need of such "central authority" in Marx'x opinion? In the end, did you knew that if the basic premise from this article is true -that capital oligochracy is not able to dismantle those communal efforts born from individuals' free will, Marx supports the opinion that no "central authority" is needed?
"a non-statist (in the national sense) version of socialism is when your local neighborhood meeting also addresses economic issues as well as transportation and education ones - and markets become ways that neighborhoods and the people in them exchange goods and services."
It's only that has already been invented and has a name: archism, my friend.
"to me it seems to happen in humans. When I think of people I know, the ones with diverse ethnic backgrounds are invariably taller than either of their parents and very often good-looking. "
Regarding size, just two issues: 1) Regression to average 2) Most if not all of your friends will be taller than their parents, unless they already are beyond current averages.
And then, check background for those diverse ethnic friends: look after immigrants from poor countries or lower income and you'll have there your answer.
"Lets shoot all the dogs that aren't pure bred Mastiffs or pure bred Chihuahuas, and leave just the two groups, with exactly the genes they have now. Do they become two separate species because they can't naturally interbreed in the wild"
You would be *very* surprised about what a male Chihuaha would be able to do. There's quite above zero chances that they'll interbreed in the wild.
"Airport food may also be overpriced because one firm has a monopoly on dining in the airport."
It is not as much a problem of monopoly but of "local" monopoly. On an airport you can go nowhere so you will end paying almost everything they say. If there are three companies the three will end up rising prices. And then, you have Girona: it's not only Barcelona's "cheap" airport but it is in the middle of nowhere so that means that specially of left ons (more that on arrivals) you must get with plenty of time and with the ability to go nowhere. No wonder prices are high.
"They bake bread, for example, that nobody has ordered yet"
But they *never* expect money for bread that nobody asked them for; if by the end of the day the still have breads on the shop, they won't ask money to third parties for their "effort". I didn't ask RIAA for any song but still they expect me paying them in such and such circumnstances. Oh! but you used your "ACME Backed Bread Duplicator" so know you owe me *two* breads... I know you asked me just one, but now you owe me two... and by the way, the friend of yours that you duplicated another bread to, owes me one bread too, he never asked me nothing, but now he owes me one bread!
"it is Ok to steal such bread, because it was not requested by anyone..."
A very, very different issue -again, mixing real things and intangibles doesn't hold water, but if you ask my opinion, it's your point of view the one that have 1/3 of human population literally starving and another 1/3 on the verge of it, so go figure.
"Instead of starting the planned roll-out now, after two years of planning, let's start all over again with Windows 7 because it's newer?"
Not because it's newer but because even Microsoft (by means of its puppet Gartner) suggests jumping out Vista. On the other hand, while I told "start testing now to get ready in two years", being W7 not much more than Vista SP3 they'll probably will be able to take advantage of their current testbed so being ready for Windows 7 would be probably faster.
"of course, they can't plan on anything until W7 is RTM."
Of course they can. Using beta releases for early testing is nothing but "bussiness as usual".
"How are they pushing their works onto the public?"
It is not that I know of Britney Spears. It is that I've heard her songs from start to end. And I've done it without any previous agreement with her agent.
"Are you saying because they advertise their works they lose their right to revenue from these works."
No. They still retain all their right to profit form their works. But I already know of it. They were free to make me know their work (not know about their work, but know their very work), but now there's no way to backpedal.
But there's an interesting point on your argument. Exactly: packaged music born as a means for an artist to advertise himself, it was not meant to be a means of revenue (you still see videoclips being used mainly that way). Distributors, on a very clever step, made what is basically an advertisement into a very profitable market. Good for them. But those days already finished; they should enjoy the good ol'days when they did mountains of money out of almost nothing and move on.
"Leaving my car running in the driveway, with the keys in the ignition is not a clever thing to do. But it also isn't an invitation to steal it."
Certainly. But if I then take your car, how are you going to return home? On the other hand, if I owned a magic device able to copycat cars parked in the driveway and I used it to copy yours for my benefit, would you still consider I stole your car? Please stop making analogies between physical properties and knowledge: they don't hold water.
"People do not consume a distribution model. They want the convenience so that they get the works they want as easily and as cost effectively as possible."
And that's *exactly* what they are doing: taking the most easy, convenient and effective model.
"But not having it is not justification for taking without permission"
Again: nobody is *taking* nothing, since it's already "there" since the moment they decide to make it public. It's indeed needed laws to forbid the naturally obvious, but don't take the laws that avoid doing the naturally doable as a "natural right" of those protected from such laws because it isn't.
"Perhaps, instead of using the internet to break the law"
What you forget is that it is not breaking the law in vast parts of the world, and it is not because as I already stated in my previous paragraph, is unnatural to put doors to the country, so to say, so is needed some afterthougth prior to such natural behaviour to become illegal. Of course, those doing the afterthought are the very same collective lucky enough to become already absurdly rich with the distribution model. Basically, reality is not that you are using the internet to break the law but that entertaiment industries are making illegal your usage of the internet. Quite a different thing.
"What has happened is that the legitimate debate has been taken over by a rather loud radical minority which doesn't believe in most rights that most people believe in, including the rights of artists to make money of their works."
What has happened is that a rather powerful minority which only belief on sustain their own flux of benefits are making other people believe in the absurd, like that somebody has an inherent right to benefit from their work, which is not only false but absurd (or else, I could be digging holes the whole day and somebody would have to pay for my unasked for effort). Of course, nobody would expect otherwise from the very powerful entertaiment lobby in their efforts to maintain current 'statu quo' since, as Heinlein stated
"There has grown in the minds of certain groups in this country the idea that just because a man or corporation has made a profit out of the public for a number of years, the government and the courts are charged with guaranteeing such a profit in the future, even in the face of changing circumstances and contrary to public interest. This strange doctrine is supported by neither statute or common law. Neither corporations or individuals have the right to come into court and ask that the clock of history be stopped, or turned back."
"If I take your argument to the logical extreme, BMW should not expect payment for the cars it makes because no one promised to pay for them once they are made."
And that's exactly the case. BMW offers its cars on the expectancy of selling them, but if nobody effectly goes into the shop and buys them, it will eat them without asking government to pay for its stock or sueing anyone that happens to buy a different car or decide to ride a bycicle.
"So stealing their cars is OK."
It's not OK. Each car you steal from BMW is a car less on its expositories and it's a car less it *can* sell. And even if somebody steals a BMW car from an owner, BMW doesn't go overthere telling people that means a car less to be sold: they know that a stolen car doesn't mean they would have sold a car to the thief.
"Artists do not expect money from people who do not want to own copies of their works. Only from those who do."
All they have to do for that to happen is not pushing their work into the public. BMW retains its cars in the dealer shop till they are sold; they don't leave them open with keys for anyone to take and then go after the users saying that they do that in the expectancy that once you take one of them for using you first should go to the dealer to pay for it afterwards. Oh, and they don't sue everybody that happens to have a better distribution model than theirs.
"They can do without your money, if you will do without their works."
I can do perfectly without their works, thanks. It is *them* the ones forcibly pushing them to the public environment without my consent or agreement.
"Absolutely right, I'm not sure why anyone would think adopting bleeding edge on a huge rollout would be a good idea."
Exactly for the same reasons they are about to deploy Vista now. They surely started planning when Vista was the new kid in the block. They can certainly decide now to deploy W7 now, so their deployment will be ready in two years... by the time you will consider W7 properly stablished.
"Not even OpenBSD is suitable for my desktop nowadays, I forgot to mention."
OK: I'll get this as an atenuant.
"My point is that even though I felt comfortable once with OpenBSD and GNU/Linux as a desktop system, I recognize that it's not ready yet for the masses"
Forget about the masses. History shows once and again how dangerous are those that worry about the masses. Worry about you: if *BSD or Linux is not ready for *you* that's fine. If *BSD or Linux is ready for you, I'm glad, that's even better but, please, don't try to think for other people: they are adults with their own brains.
"Establishing Copyright and an international treaty made it possible for artists to make a buck. Like any law, it needs retooling, but to dismiss the concept of copyright as amoral is puerile."
So you really think that giving credit to the idea of expecting money for a work nobody asked you nor promised compensation for is not puerile?
"Sure, just please explain to us how a small, unknown artist is to get a name for him or herself without any legal recourse to a bunch of assholes nicking his/her work early on, claiming it as their own, and running off with an ill-gotten reputation."
Do you really think Homer was a big known Sony-backed up artist prior to his Illiad? But somehow he did manage to become famous and respected without neither a Sony contract nor 90-year-after-death copyright laws.
"Oh, wait, sorry, did someone forget to inform you that copyright law is more than just making money?"
Do you really think so? Nowadays?
"It also entails plagiarism and similar concepts."
Sorry to splash your bubble, but not: plagiarism and copyright are not in the same boat. They are not even on the same ocean.
"so who survives when such a hypothetical flu DOES EVENTUALLY arrive? well, i know that answer: certainly not you. those who survive will be those who healhty adrenal glands, who panic, hide and flee. it MAKES SENSE"
It never made sense. What you are talking about is as old (at least) as the Decameron. And surprise!, those the flew not only died exactly equal than everybody else but by flying they extended the pest.
I will tell you a *slight* difference between Spanish flu and an current one: ICUs and a vastly better knowledge about human metabolism. Anyway, I'll tell you who will survive the new hypothetical flu: Rich people. Well, same as almost always. And they'll do so by staying on their comfortable homes, not by flying; that's what MAKES SENSE to the trained eye.
But heck! I've seen you post history, so I know not to expect from you anything beyond the "unpolite and slightly moronic" level.
"My reasoning is that there is a clear and significant gap between MySQL and Oracle DB. MySQL is never going to draw many customers away from using Oracle DB, and mostly the other way around as well. But I see the gap between PostgreSQL and Oracle as being much smaller"
And that's exactly why Oracle could support PostgreSQL better than MySQL: it's all about bussiness opportunities. Postgres is much more a "typical" RDBM while MySQL tends to do thinks their own way*1, so look at the outcomes: 1) You are using PostgreSQL very publicly backed up by Oracle and you (or your boss) think you need "more". The natural choice would be 10 out of 10 time going for Oracle's big product which is like PostgreSQL, only more. 2) You are using MySQL very publicly backed up by Oracle and you (or your boss) think you need "more" but then find going for "more" means changing quite a lot of things (new or heavily retrained DBAs, revise tons of code, etc.) then, while probably your first choice still would be stick to Oracle, there's a non zero chance that you go out to study the market and go with anyone else.
*1 I don't think you can find a professional DBA with experience on Oracle, DB2, Sybase, etc. and then PostgreSQL and MySQL that would choose MySQL over PostgreSQL not even offering him money.
"G.R. Dalziel, at the Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, has written a report chronicling every confirmed case of malicious food contamination in the world since 1950: 365 cases in all, plus 126 additional unconfirmed cases. [...] There are very few incidents of people contaminating the actual food supply. People deliberately contaminated a water supply seven times, resulting in three deaths. Just because we have the budget and the products to buy doesn't mean that's how we should be spending our necessarily finite resources defending the public."
In other news, Prof. Obvious has written a report chronicling every confirmed case of malicius airplane crashing against skycrappers in the world from 1950 to 10/10/2001: 0 cases in all, plus 0 additional unconfirmed cases. His conclusion was, well, obvious: just because we have the budget and the products to buy doesn't mean we should spend them to fight such a highly improbable threat.
Slashdot Mirror
"I think The Histories give many great reasons as to why democracy sucks hard."
Me too. It's only that History doesn't seem to provide examples of other systems that suck less.
"Also, to say "National Scale" presupposes nationalism"
Ancient Aegyptians presupposed nationalism. Greek presupposed nationalism. And Roman, and everybody else. Do you know why? Because it works or at least seem to work. Take a bunch of nationalist dogs and see what happens to the people around them: they fastly become part of the Great Roman Empire too, so to say. But, hey, don't talk about nationalisms then: just offer an example of a bunch of people organized enough to build roads, acueducts and food enough to ensure not starving on cold winters based on the 'bonne savage' premises and succeding.
"Also, many capitalist and socialist nations have fallen."
Yes. After some time and usually to be suplanted with more of the same. That's more than can be said of any furierist experiment in History.
"I think a very limited government whose purpose is to effectively "preserve the anarchy" has historically shown to most greatly benefit the greatest number of people, propel human progress, reduce suffering, and improve quality of life for all people."
Like in...? I cannot think of any real example of such a government in History, not even at the state-city level much less over spaces in the ranges of the thousands or tens of thousands square kilometers but I'm far of being omniscient: can you provide them?
"Yeah, that worked out great for Russia now didn't it."
So what? How does that change what Marx stated? Is he going to return from the death to rewrite Das Kapital, or what?
"Unfortunately, security is a process and affects all interacting systems. Placing them under one umbrella in a UTM device allows security issues to be dealt with in one place."
Unfortunately, putting all those interacting systems under one umbrella in a UTM device allows security to be tresspassed by jumping out just one choke point. Security by depth==0.
"Sorry, but a planned economy only works with a central planner to replace the invisible hand."
And that's anything more than your opinion, how?
"No village can know what they need to be producing to satisfy a need hundreds of miles away"
But a company can? Villagers on that remote town doesn't have access to a telephone?
"or one anticipated in the future"
But a company can? Is somebody smarter when working for The Company than working for The Major?
"And since price no longer serves to communicate oversupply or shortage anymore only a central planner can organize things."
Or, you know, they can organize themselves by means of a telephone call or carrying pidgeons.
"Except for that pesky fact that no central planner CAN possess enough information to make such plans."
Or it can't now, or it can, but never really tried.
"what is the motive to open these mines you speak of, plant and reap the farms, manufacture things, etc. when there is no reward for doing it."
Of course it is impossible to think of other rewarding systems but those managed by the invisible hand. Yeah, of course not.
"You get exactly what some people's committee decides you 'need' and nothing more."
Of course that's the exact output expected from having a central comitee. You are aware you are argumenting with somebody especulating about *not* having such a central comitee, aren't you?
"European Democratic Socialism has escaped the worst features of Socialism so far because there has been sufficient reactionary elements to prevent a total slide into Socialism."
Or else European Democratic Socialism has escaped the worst features atributable by your own discourse to Totalitarism by being, ahem, European Democratic Socialism instead of European Totalitarian Socialism.
"A good fourth example is the US military, of which I was a part of in the early 90s. It's all teamwork, everyone shares, no one owns the hummvee"
That's not the army but each and every corporation in the world. Do you think any corporation worker owns his chair, or PC, or bulldozer anymore GI Joe owns the hummvee?
"I would interpret that as the only stable communistic societies would be either medieval theocratic or modern militaristic"
Modern transnational corporations have as much power and control as much people as little-to-mid countries and *all* of them are regulated under clearly communist principles.
" All that hear is projection; the only way I can understand a persons position that people left to their own free will are destined to evil is a reflection of themselves"
You are too young then. I hear projection... and experience. Why do you think Socialism and Capitalism (somehow) works at least for a while on a national scale but anarchism do not? The first two are hobbesias (man is a wolf for a man) while anarchism is volterian (bonne savage). There has never been a working social system based on other grounds but that the human being is a greedy bastard and it's not because people didn't tried.
"If people are irrational, corrupt, and corrosive to society, how could we ever trust such people to pick quality leaders?"
Who told you we can? But precisely because we can't democracy is the only way to equally spray the shit to everybody.
"Capitalism is about the right for individuals to own property"
Not. Capital is not property; property is not capital. Capitalism is about giving almighty power to capital disregarding everything else.
"Communism claims that individuals are wasteful and inefficient"
Not. Communism claims that individuals should be liberated from the tiranny of capital as an almighty power.
"only an all powerful, all seeing state can best manage the resources and labor of a society for greatest good."
Not. Marx states that only a temporal all powerful all seeing state can crush away the minority of those few greedy individuals that control society by means of capital and use their power to perpetuate such 'statu quo'. Once the goal acomplished, such powerful state machinery would dismantle itself and vanish.
"Karl Marx would have called for government to come in and heavily regulate software. Designate a central authority to manage the development of software, public schools train a specific number of necessary software developers, outlaw the possession, development, or use of "rogue" compilers to help protect people from poor quality software that wasn't approved by the state, and possibly imprison people for unauthorized forking of projects arguing that such action "steals" the necessary resources of the state and impedes progress."
It's obvious you never read Karl Marx. Marxism is not Stalinism. Did you knew that under Marx's opinion your "central authority" was just an interim but unavoidable artifact? Did you knew that lacking unsurmountable opposition from the capital oligochracy there's no need of such "central authority" in Marx'x opinion? In the end, did you knew that if the basic premise from this article is true -that capital oligochracy is not able to dismantle those communal efforts born from individuals' free will, Marx supports the opinion that no "central authority" is needed?
"a non-statist (in the national sense) version of socialism is when your local neighborhood meeting also addresses economic issues as well as transportation and education ones - and markets become ways that neighborhoods and the people in them exchange goods and services."
It's only that has already been invented and has a name: archism, my friend.
"to me it seems to happen in humans. When I think of people I know, the ones with diverse ethnic backgrounds are invariably taller than either of their parents and very often good-looking. "
Regarding size, just two issues:
1) Regression to average
2) Most if not all of your friends will be taller than their parents, unless they already are beyond current averages.
And then, check background for those diverse ethnic friends: look after immigrants from poor countries or lower income and you'll have there your answer.
"Lets shoot all the dogs that aren't pure bred Mastiffs or pure bred Chihuahuas, and leave just the two groups, with exactly the genes they have now. Do they become two separate species because they can't naturally interbreed in the wild"
You would be *very* surprised about what a male Chihuaha would be able to do. There's quite above zero chances that they'll interbreed in the wild.
"Airport food may also be overpriced because one firm has a monopoly on dining in the airport."
It is not as much a problem of monopoly but of "local" monopoly. On an airport you can go nowhere so you will end paying almost everything they say. If there are three companies the three will end up rising prices. And then, you have Girona: it's not only Barcelona's "cheap" airport but it is in the middle of nowhere so that means that specially of left ons (more that on arrivals) you must get with plenty of time and with the ability to go nowhere. No wonder prices are high.
"That's how most businesses operate."
No, they don't.
"They bake bread, for example, that nobody has ordered yet"
But they *never* expect money for bread that nobody asked them for; if by the end of the day the still have breads on the shop, they won't ask money to third parties for their "effort". I didn't ask RIAA for any song but still they expect me paying them in such and such circumnstances. Oh! but you used your "ACME Backed Bread Duplicator" so know you owe me *two* breads... I know you asked me just one, but now you owe me two... and by the way, the friend of yours that you duplicated another bread to, owes me one bread too, he never asked me nothing, but now he owes me one bread!
"it is Ok to steal such bread, because it was not requested by anyone..."
A very, very different issue -again, mixing real things and intangibles doesn't hold water, but if you ask my opinion, it's your point of view the one that have 1/3 of human population literally starving and another 1/3 on the verge of it, so go figure.
"Instead of starting the planned roll-out now, after two years of planning, let's start all over again with Windows 7 because it's newer?"
Not because it's newer but because even Microsoft (by means of its puppet Gartner) suggests jumping out Vista. On the other hand, while I told "start testing now to get ready in two years", being W7 not much more than Vista SP3 they'll probably will be able to take advantage of their current testbed so being ready for Windows 7 would be probably faster.
"of course, they can't plan on anything until W7 is RTM."
Of course they can. Using beta releases for early testing is nothing but "bussiness as usual".
"How are they pushing their works onto the public?"
It is not that I know of Britney Spears. It is that I've heard her songs from start to end. And I've done it without any previous agreement with her agent.
"Are you saying because they advertise their works they lose their right to revenue from these works."
No. They still retain all their right to profit form their works. But I already know of it. They were free to make me know their work (not know about their work, but know their very work), but now there's no way to backpedal.
But there's an interesting point on your argument. Exactly: packaged music born as a means for an artist to advertise himself, it was not meant to be a means of revenue (you still see videoclips being used mainly that way). Distributors, on a very clever step, made what is basically an advertisement into a very profitable market. Good for them. But those days already finished; they should enjoy the good ol'days when they did mountains of money out of almost nothing and move on.
"Leaving my car running in the driveway, with the keys in the ignition is not a clever thing to do. But it also isn't an invitation to steal it."
Certainly. But if I then take your car, how are you going to return home? On the other hand, if I owned a magic device able to copycat cars parked in the driveway and I used it to copy yours for my benefit, would you still consider I stole your car?
Please stop making analogies between physical properties and knowledge: they don't hold water.
"People do not consume a distribution model. They want the convenience so that they get the works they want as easily and as cost effectively as possible."
And that's *exactly* what they are doing: taking the most easy, convenient and effective model.
"But not having it is not justification for taking without permission"
Again: nobody is *taking* nothing, since it's already "there" since the moment they decide to make it public. It's indeed needed laws to forbid the naturally obvious, but don't take the laws that avoid doing the naturally doable as a "natural right" of those protected from such laws because it isn't.
"Perhaps, instead of using the internet to break the law"
What you forget is that it is not breaking the law in vast parts of the world, and it is not because as I already stated in my previous paragraph, is unnatural to put doors to the country, so to say, so is needed some afterthougth prior to such natural behaviour to become illegal. Of course, those doing the afterthought are the very same collective lucky enough to become already absurdly rich with the distribution model. Basically, reality is not that you are using the internet to break the law but that entertaiment industries are making illegal your usage of the internet. Quite a different thing.
"What has happened is that the legitimate debate has been taken over by a rather loud radical minority which doesn't believe in most rights that most people believe in, including the rights of artists to make money of their works."
What has happened is that a rather powerful minority which only belief on sustain their own flux of benefits are making other people believe in the absurd, like that somebody has an inherent right to benefit from their work, which is not only false but absurd (or else, I could be digging holes the whole day and somebody would have to pay for my unasked for effort). Of course, nobody would expect otherwise from the very powerful entertaiment lobby in their efforts to maintain current 'statu quo' since, as Heinlein stated
"There has grown in the minds of certain groups in this country the idea that just because a man or corporation has made a profit out of the public for a number of years, the government and the courts are charged with guaranteeing such a profit in the future, even in the face of changing circumstances and contrary to public interest. This strange doctrine is supported by neither statute or common law. Neither corporations or individuals have the right to come into court and ask that the clock of history be stopped, or turned back."
"If I take your argument to the logical extreme, BMW should not expect payment for the cars it makes because no one promised to pay for them once they are made."
And that's exactly the case. BMW offers its cars on the expectancy of selling them, but if nobody effectly goes into the shop and buys them, it will eat them without asking government to pay for its stock or sueing anyone that happens to buy a different car or decide to ride a bycicle.
"So stealing their cars is OK."
It's not OK. Each car you steal from BMW is a car less on its expositories and it's a car less it *can* sell. And even if somebody steals a BMW car from an owner, BMW doesn't go overthere telling people that means a car less to be sold: they know that a stolen car doesn't mean they would have sold a car to the thief.
"Artists do not expect money from people who do not want to own copies of their works. Only from those who do."
All they have to do for that to happen is not pushing their work into the public. BMW retains its cars in the dealer shop till they are sold; they don't leave them open with keys for anyone to take and then go after the users saying that they do that in the expectancy that once you take one of them for using you first should go to the dealer to pay for it afterwards. Oh, and they don't sue everybody that happens to have a better distribution model than theirs.
"They can do without your money, if you will do without their works."
I can do perfectly without their works, thanks. It is *them* the ones forcibly pushing them to the public environment without my consent or agreement.
"Absolutely right, I'm not sure why anyone would think adopting bleeding edge on a huge rollout would be a good idea."
Exactly for the same reasons they are about to deploy Vista now. They surely started planning when Vista was the new kid in the block. They can certainly decide now to deploy W7 now, so their deployment will be ready in two years... by the time you will consider W7 properly stablished.
"Not even OpenBSD is suitable for my desktop nowadays, I forgot to mention."
OK: I'll get this as an atenuant.
"My point is that even though I felt comfortable once with OpenBSD and GNU/Linux as a desktop system, I recognize that it's not ready yet for the masses"
Forget about the masses. History shows once and again how dangerous are those that worry about the masses. Worry about you: if *BSD or Linux is not ready for *you* that's fine. If *BSD or Linux is ready for you, I'm glad, that's even better but, please, don't try to think for other people: they are adults with their own brains.
"Establishing Copyright and an international treaty made it possible for artists to make a buck. Like any law, it needs retooling, but to dismiss the concept of copyright as amoral is puerile."
So you really think that giving credit to the idea of expecting money for a work nobody asked you nor promised compensation for is not puerile?
"Sure, just please explain to us how a small, unknown artist is to get a name for him or herself without any legal recourse to a bunch of assholes nicking his/her work early on, claiming it as their own, and running off with an ill-gotten reputation."
Do you really think Homer was a big known Sony-backed up artist prior to his Illiad? But somehow he did manage to become famous and respected without neither a Sony contract nor 90-year-after-death copyright laws.
"Oh, wait, sorry, did someone forget to inform you that copyright law is more than just making money?"
Do you really think so? Nowadays?
"It also entails plagiarism and similar concepts."
Sorry to splash your bubble, but not: plagiarism and copyright are not in the same boat. They are not even on the same ocean.
"so who survives when such a hypothetical flu DOES EVENTUALLY arrive? well, i know that answer: certainly not you. those who survive will be those who healhty adrenal glands, who panic, hide and flee. it MAKES SENSE"
It never made sense. What you are talking about is as old (at least) as the Decameron. And surprise!, those the flew not only died exactly equal than everybody else but by flying they extended the pest.
I will tell you a *slight* difference between Spanish flu and an current one: ICUs and a vastly better knowledge about human metabolism. Anyway, I'll tell you who will survive the new hypothetical flu: Rich people. Well, same as almost always. And they'll do so by staying on their comfortable homes, not by flying; that's what MAKES SENSE to the trained eye.
But heck! I've seen you post history, so I know not to expect from you anything beyond the "unpolite and slightly moronic" level.
"My reasoning is that there is a clear and significant gap between MySQL and Oracle DB. MySQL is never going to draw many customers away from using Oracle DB, and mostly the other way around as well. But I see the gap between PostgreSQL and Oracle as being much smaller"
And that's exactly why Oracle could support PostgreSQL better than MySQL: it's all about bussiness opportunities. Postgres is much more a "typical" RDBM while MySQL tends to do thinks their own way*1, so look at the outcomes:
1) You are using PostgreSQL very publicly backed up by Oracle and you (or your boss) think you need "more". The natural choice would be 10 out of 10 time going for Oracle's big product which is like PostgreSQL, only more.
2) You are using MySQL very publicly backed up by Oracle and you (or your boss) think you need "more" but then find going for "more" means changing quite a lot of things (new or heavily retrained DBAs, revise tons of code, etc.) then, while probably your first choice still would be stick to Oracle, there's a non zero chance that you go out to study the market and go with anyone else.
*1 I don't think you can find a professional DBA with experience on Oracle, DB2, Sybase, etc. and then PostgreSQL and MySQL that would choose MySQL over PostgreSQL not even offering him money.
"He's right ... but the only reason that's true is because we, as a culture, panic very easily."
The problem is not panicking very easily but how irrationale our panic is (well, not that someone would expect otherwise, it's panic after all):
People killed in the Twin Towers attack: 2,752
People killed in highway crashes in 2001: 42,116
I didn't look at the numbers lately, but I'd bet that USA hasn't expended roughly 20x trying to avoid car accidents than in "the war against terror".
"G.R. Dalziel, at the Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, has written a report chronicling every confirmed case of malicious food contamination in the world since 1950: 365 cases in all, plus 126 additional unconfirmed cases.
[...]
There are very few incidents of people contaminating the actual food supply. People deliberately contaminated a water supply seven times, resulting in three deaths.
Just because we have the budget and the products to buy doesn't mean that's how we should be spending our necessarily finite resources defending the public."
In other news, Prof. Obvious has written a report chronicling every confirmed case of malicius airplane crashing against skycrappers in the world from 1950 to 10/10/2001: 0 cases in all, plus 0 additional unconfirmed cases. His conclusion was, well, obvious: just because we have the budget and the products to buy doesn't mean we should spend them to fight such a highly improbable threat.
"It needs to be living flesh, which is why Cameron's body wasn't successfully transported in the last episode."
Then microfilm the blueprint and put it into Swarredcchdhdwhatever's skin.