I couldn't disagree more. I'm a relatively agile techie. I code a bit, have a comp sci minor, like to try new technology, and have no trouble with mac or windows. However I never did manage to get wireless networking up and running on my SUSE install. Nor could I ever get Firefox updated on my Mandriva install. I didn't spend huge amounts of time working on it - but the fact is that if I can't figure out how to get the install program to run in 30 minutes it's not as useable as windows.
On the other hand I love OpenOffice and think it's poised to start eating away market share from MS Office. I know I'm goign to get my company switched over to it relatively soon. The droves will really start to move over when the next iteration of MS Office comes out - in my opinion.
I'm not trying to insult your wife or anything, but having a PhD doesn't make you a scientist. My dad's got a PhD in comparitive literature. It doesn't make him a scientist. Furthermore having a PhD and publishing quantitative results doesn't make you a scientist either. Are sociologists scientists? Anthropologists? Archeologists? What about economists? I would argue that you can make cases of various strength for and against all of these. I don't care if you study ran 4 minutes of 400 years - what does length of study have to do with science? You think that just running some regression analysis and figuring out a few p-values makes you a scientist? Kids are doing that for the high school fair, man. Excel can do that for you. Is everyone with a spreadsheet and a theory (and a PhD) a scientist now? Furthermore the statistics that go into a lot of these quantitative studies are pretty poor. Speaking as a mathemetician and analyst - I feel comfortable saying that.
Look, the very fact that you had to say your wife has a PhD psychologist AND had published articles with quantifiable results is proof positive of what I'm saying: psychologists are not scientists by default. You had to add something else to that. What does that tell you? Would you still consider a pyschologist a scientist if he or she didn't deal with quantitive results? Do you have any evidence at all about how many psychologists in your secret survey fall into that subset? I mean, while you're making up #s you might as well add that to the mix. "The majority of psychologists think homosexuality is genetic. And, uh, they're the ones that do all the quantitative studies. And don't listen to geneticists - that's an immature science. No - you can't see this study - why would you ask? It's a FACT - and you're an idiot". Scintillating acumen at work there, pal. It's a wonder we're not all convinced yet.
Just to make something clear hear, scientist isn't some title like knighthood. You can be just as intelligent - and just as right - without being a scientist. It's this weird fetish Americans have with science. It's the new religion. We used to turn to priests to assuage our fears. Before that it was druids, maybe. Now we want to put scientists up on this holy pedastal - the human mind apparently just can't get by without granting authoritative power to some priestly craft or other.
Why are you even still responding anyway? I mean - you haven't addressed any of my points. We never got beyond the "fact" that most pyschologists think homosexuality is genetic. This was never backed up by you. Ever. It's just a "fact" and if I don't see it, I'm stupid. (And I'm the bully?)
You still haven't argued why we should care even if this is true. As I pointed out in my last post - this isn't a thread discussing the opinions of psychologists. At least - I don't know why it should be.
I guess the plan is that we'll just keep changing the subject and talking and eventually we'll forget all that pesky logic and reason stuff I was talking about that. Especially if you keep calling me a mean, arrogant bully.
Sigh - this really is my last post. I'll come back if you can actually respond to any of my arguments isntead of just piling baseless assertion on top of baseless assertion.
Now you certainly appear to be saying that "IT service companies" can sell the GoogleOS to their customers. I don't know about you, but as a home user, I don't rely on IT service companies to sell me my desktop OS, so I made the natural assumption you were talking about their customers being businesses.
That's actually not a very good conclusion. I run one such IT service company. I don't actually sell AVG Free anymore than I would sell a GoogleOS. But I do get paid rather well to come to people's houses and run virus scans and such and the fact that I can offer to install AV software for no additional cost helps a lot. If I can offer to install some cool new OS for no additional cost that would also help in the same way. I don't charge for the software, I charge for the expertise. That's what I mean when I talk about IT moving to a service-based as opposed to product-based industry.
Now as for the difference between Google and HP, Dell, etc. it again comes to service companies. Your average user knows squat about OSs, but your average small business owner is a little better informed and much more highly motivated. If I come up to a small business user (and this is speaking from experience) and say "hey - I can help you out by saving you money while giving you better IT service" they are interested, but they want to know why they should trust me. Now if I say "because HP backs it" that's about as good as "Google backs it". But what free software or hardware has HP given me that I can then offer to the small business (not for resell, but as value-added to service)? Nothing. Same goes for Dell and IBM.
But GoogleOS - assuming it's free like Gmail and everythign else Google has done - is fundamentally different. It gives those with expertise a free tool with which they can augment the value of their services to those that can't take advantage of the free tools themselves. If a small business has a competent techie they don't need me - they can do it their own. But most service small businesses have neither a good techie nor the money to hire one.
That's the fundamental shift. The tools become free, the services become the value. This is the opposite of the old model - where the tools were the product and the service was an afterthought. In my opinion the new model is more accessible to small and medium sized businesses and eventually even large-scale businesses. That's why IBM has switched to consulting. It's not like I'm alone in seeing this - it's part of an emerging trend.
Currently Windows is not set to compete with this new business model. In the process of converting I think they will lose a lot of market share.
Apple's OS is weighed down by it's hardware. This isn't a problem for Apple. They have a higher profit-margin on hardware than software, and so they prefer to grow their OS only as fast as they can grow their hardware penetartion into the market. It's not bad, but it's definitely slow.
Google has no hardware. That's the big difference between the two.
I tried to help you out. I really did. I didn't want to have to quote the definition to you, so I inserted a hyphen to point out the key word in the term "procreate". And that is "create". Adoption is by definition raising a child that is NOT your own. Therefore it means you did NOT create. So adoption is not procreation.
I really want to know what twisted logic was operating in your head that somehow morphed "adoption is not procreation" into "adoption is evil". How does that work, exactly? Could you enlighten the group and reveal those particular mental gymanstics? I mean, it's like i were to say "metal is not wood" and you were to respond "well, since you think metal is EVIL..." Seriously, this is the biggest case of "WTF, mate?" I've come across in quite some time.
For the record adoption is not evil. My wife and I would love to adopt some children. And when we do we will not be procreating. We will also not be doing a lot of other things. Adopting isn't planting a tree, it's not washing a car, it's not coding in C#. That's the tricky thing about dictionaries - they tell you what words mean and by definition what they don't.
I'm sorry if you feel I'm being a bully. You call me an idiot. I call you stupid. I'd say that makes us equally agressive.
But you insist that makes me a bully. Which implies that you feel intimidated in some way. That's what bullies do. They win arguments by threat of physical force. If you'll notice, however, this is the internet. I don't have any phsyical capacity to harm you (nor would I want to - if that's what you're worried about). I don't know you're real name, where you live, or anything about you. The only thing I have to bully you with is my posts.
So if you feel bullied then maybe I need to be nicer, but since the only source of threat for you to feel is the weight of the logic and evidence that I have brought to bear on this particular discussion - maybe you need to reconsider what calling me "a bully" really reveals about this discussion. If you're so threatened by what I have to say that your only response is to argue that - by being intimidating - I'm a bully how is this different from saying that I'm right and you're not happy about it? You see in the playground bullies are bad becauae they use physical force to win intellectual arguments. But since all I've got to play with here is intellect - then how is it meaningful to call me a bully?
Look, if your feelings are hurt I'm geuninely sorry. I'm rather thick-skinned myself, so I'm not really trying to make you upset. I've had are more heated debates than this with my best friend - and I tend to get dished to me just as much as I dish out. If you're not used to that level of open confrontation in a heated discusion, I'm sorry. But maybe next time you should watch your own condescending attitude before it gets you in so much trouble that you're only remaining argument is to complain about how unfair it is that you're losing.
My statement about the proportion of psychologists who believe homosexuality is something you're born with is a fact, and you're dumb enough to try to disprove a fact. Have fun
As I said - pyschologists are not genetecists. I'm not even sure if you could call them scientists. If most psychologists think that black holes are really fairy dust, should I care? Or should I ask an astrophysicist? And again - even if you're right about psychologists - who cares? Does that actually mean anything about homosexuality at all? No - you've only proven a point about psychologists. Did I miss something? Is this the "let's talk about the opinions of pyschologists" thread?
You can choose to get your feelings hurt by this and call me a bully, or you can choose to learn from it. You just got hosed in a debate. You screwed up and got nailed to the wall for it. It happens. It's sure as Hell happened to me before. I've been utterly flattened when I thought I knew what I was talking about and it turned out that there was some gaping hole in my logic I'd never noticed.
It's up to you. Continue to call me a bully, or learn from the experience. Hell - do both if you want. I don't mind being called a bully - I'd just like to see this exchange as beneficial in the end.
Well I wouldn't go so far as to say that there's going to be a "Google PC". At the most I could see them offering some custom linux OS back to the community to be sold on Dell (or HP, etc.) PCs like Mandriva and other are currently trying to do.
But do I think this is part of a general trend back towards the return to thin clients? Absolutely. The fact is that the mainframe never died - and that's essentially the same model as the thin-client model. The market got carried away with PCs as they got cheaper and cheaper and everyone bought them. But the fact of the matter is that PCs waste huge amounts of energy, cost a lot, break down a lot, and generate huge amounts of waste when they are eventually disposed of. Thin clients just make too much sense not to come back.
As I said - they're not going to totally replace desktops. Programmers especially need desktops. I wouldn't want to part with mine. Laptops - as portable self-contained units - are also not going away.
But the industry is moving towards a utility-model for business computing and I think it's smart. Thin clients are more durable, cheaper, and (in conjunction with app servers) allocate resources more efficiently. Giving every employee in a service industry a PC is like giving every postal worker an 18-wheeler. It just doesn't make sense because 18-wheelers fit a different niche than those little postal jeeps.
One of the most painful experiences in the internet is debating with people who are not only very stupid but think they are being very clever. It's like watching the protagonist embarass him or herself horribly in a movie - we feel an outpouring of empathic embarassment. Anyway - I got to get back to my work, so I'll wrap this up with a final post.
1. When I say that the prevailing scientific attitude is that homosexuality is something a person is born with, I don't need to back it up, because that's a fact.
In intelligent discussion even when something IS a fact you have to back it up to prove it. Citing common knowledge is not proof. Even if the fact is very simple - say the distance from LA to NYC - I can't just assert "it's a fact" and expect anyone to take that as proof. I should just MapQuest it or something. If the fact is something REALLY obvious like "the consensus is that Shakespeare wrote Hamlet" then the proper response to someone saying "prove it!" is to provide them ample pieces of evidence (look it up on Amazon.com). The proper response is not to say "I don't have to prove it, it's a FACT!" That just makes you look stupid. It especially makes you look stupid when it turns out that you can't find any such simple evidence for your "fact" at all.
Furthermore you're not being very clear. What exactly is a fact - that the consensus of scientists is that homosexuality is genetically determined, that the consensus of scientists is that this has been proven, or that it is a fact that homosexuality is indeed genetically determined because the consensus of scientists says that it is? As far as I can tell you're not making any distinctions between these three non-identical claims.
Depending on which you are trying to argue for (do you even know?) you need to provide different evidence. If your argument is that most scientists think it's genetic or think that it has been proven to be genetic you'd need a poll or some other evidence of what scientists think. You also need to define "scientist". I'm well aware that psychologists consider it to be genetic, but they're not genetecists, are they? Dear Abbey considers it genetic too - should I care?
If, on the other hand, you're tying to actually argue that not only is it the consensus among scientists that homosexuality is genetic but that furthermore the scientists are right you need to provide us with some articles, some evidence, SOMETHING. You sound like a kindergartner insisting that this is the way it is because your parents told you and that settles it.
I did a quick google search to help you out. I haven't even read these two articles in their entirety - but they'll do for examples:
Here's a more recent article arguing that although the perception is that homosexuality is genetic the science is inconclusive: http://www.cbmw.org/news/ram150404.php (sure, that ones from some council on biblical manhood and womanhood - which sounds creepy to me, but it was the first I found and it may have some relevant survey of the science surrounding the issue)
You see what I've done? I've substituted your irrational insistence that "fact" don't need to be proven with an actual opportunity to have intelligent discussion. This is how adults talk about issues.
2. Make your case that most scientists do NOT believe that homosexuality is something a person is born with.
I saw this one coming a mile away. I tried to spare you the embarassment of making this logical blunder by pointing that it's not an either/or proposition in my last post. Not only did you fall right into the typical logical trap, but you didn't even recognize the danger signs I posted all around it.
If you make a claim "Most scientists believe X" and I make the claim "You haven't proven
You think that you can just stand up and say "the scientific community thinks X" and the rest of us are going to go "Oh, OK, he says that's what they say so it must be what they say". There are two main problems here.
1. You can't just tell us what the scientific community says and act like you've proven anything. I can't believe you even wrote "my citatoin is all the pyschological literature..." Your citation is non-existent. You didn't cite ANYTHING.
2. Again - consensus is not proof. You're just walking evidence of the fact that science is the new dogma. Even if "all the psychological literature of the past 50 years" was really in your court that's still not proof. Literature is not proof. Consensus is not proof. Popular opinion - even of the best and brightest minds - is not proof. Proof is when you have a testable hypothesis, a repeatable experiment, and the analysis to back it up. Go get me that, post it for review, and we'll talk.
In the meantime you haven't proven anything other than your own utter misapprehension of what does and does not constitute a scientifically valid argument. The fact of the matter is that real science spits in the fact of consensus. That's why we have scientific revoluions: because the best and the brightest have a long track record of being proven wrong.
You should also take note that I haven't once even intimated that I know or can prove that homosexuality is a choice. This is not an either/or proposition. It's quite possible - and I believe this to be the case - that NEITHER side has amassed enough evidence to "prove" their viewpoint.
All I'm pointing out is that you can spout all you want about "citations" but the fact remains that you're just a political hack trying to bludgen your way to the top on the sheer authoritative weight of experts you can't quote or reference. How does that make you any different from some religious nutjob who says Jesus talks to him? I don't see that nutjob's Jesus any more - or any less - than I see your citations.
You can take your self-assured consensus and shove it. There was once a consensus that the sun rotated around the earth, consensus that man couldn't fly, consensus that the world population would be 10 billion in 2010, and consensus in the superiority of the white race. Congratulations, you've joined the long and illustrious ranks of those who are right "because everybody else says so".
1. Service industries. I work in an insurance brokerage. We all have Windows PCs. No one does anything but email, word process (a tiny bit) some excel work, look at pdf documents, surf the web, and there's one database program we use for contact management. What a waste of resources. The same goes for law firms, travel agencies, etc.
2. Retail industries. Some retailers have a simple cash register, but a lot of retailers (like my local mechanice) have full-blown PCs running Win2K with internet connection to run their software. Maybe they don't have MS Office, but they're still in a position to save a ton of money by shifting to thin clients (provided someone sets up an app server they can access) and avoid windows tax, virus vulnerability, etc. Futhermore a lot of retailers that have more kiosks (like restuarants) are not happy with their current set up (and I've been to many of those that have Dells set up for all the point-of-sale stuff). Hell, even hospital emergency rooms trundle around Dell PCs on carts to enter medical info in for all of the patients.
I'm not talking about convergence. There's always a temptation - whenever there's a market instability - for people to go crazy and overcompensate. In my opinion that's all convergence is - hype and overcompensation.
But the fundamental market driver here is inefficiency. Any service based office with 25-50 pcs could afford an app server and thin clients instead of PCs. They've got 25 PCs sitting on desktops running at what - 4% CPU usage? I'm a power user and I hardly ever get my RAM usage above 35%. That's just inefficient and it's that inneficiency that reveals the potential niche for thin-client solutions. Just as the fact that I can get Mandriva for free and do practically everything my windows box does that's work related (but for Windows I have to buy the OS and office software). That's inefficient - and so the potential for improvement is obvious. That's not hype - that's just a realistic assessment of the current market.
Raising an adopted child is by defintion NOT pro-creating. You're confusing issues here. The fact remains that from a teleological standpoint homosexuality IS a disfunction.
You're ignoring the deep psychological implications of human biological sexuality.
-stormin
(I realize I didn't prove that homosexuality is wrong, I'm just pointing out that you're not proving it's right either. I'm happy with the issue left undecided.)
It's well established and well known that homosexuals are born that way.
Consensus doesn't prove anything. And even if I did agree with your conclusion I will debate down anybody that makes an objective truth claim involving the caveat "I don't have to prove this."
Maybe you didn't really read my other posts. Google is a radically different company from IBM, HP and Dell. First of all there's the obvious difference: Google doesn't sell hardware (I'm aware IBM has moved away from that too, but they still sell a lot of servers).
What's more important, however, is the customer base. Sure, you're average consumer may go pick up a dell or an HP at the store (or online). But by and large those are tech companies. Everyone's heard of IBM, but who uses IBM services consiously everyday?
This might be the clearest way to get you to understand the huge cultural difference between Google and the others: is there a new word in the common English vocabulary from Dell? From HP? From IBM? Google is far newer than any of those companies and it has already infiltrated our very language (eg "My professor seems weird. I'm going to go Google him and see if I can find anything.")
Once you realize this you start to realize that Google reaches ordinary people while IBM, HP and Dell don't even really reach the whole techie-crowd. What linux or mac afficionado gives a rats ass about Dell's new XPS line? Does IBM matter to someone doing video editing? But EVERYONE uses Google.
So if Google opens up a linux distro you've got a straigh shot to not just some sub-set of techies, but pretty much every human being that uses the internet. You've got an established relationship with EVERYONE. That's quite possibly the most valuable asset any company could imagine for a new product or service of any kind. The difference between what Google has to offer linux and what any other tech company has to offer linux can not be relegated to "not much" by any rational human who really thinks about the issue realistically for more than 5 minutes.
What you write is true, but I wouldn't write MS off yet. For one thing you have to remember that nature abhors a vacum. If MS topples SOMETHING will have to take it's place. As MS shrinks marketspace will be split between the new kid on the block (Google) and a variety of additional smaller interests. But as Google swells to take on the burned of MS-business they will begin to suffer the same interia problems that MS currently does.
MS, on the other hand, benefits greatly from its size in terms of both intellectual and physical capital. Their server products are getting better, and the.NET framework offers some truly powerful programming solutions for the programming masses. We've seen that they can adapt to open source when absolutely necessary (creating their own open document standard) and I think we'll see them continue to kind of morph into a more open-tolerant company.
In many ways the open-source movement spells the end of software-as-product. What Google really shows us, if we look closely, is not just a new comapny within the old paradigm but an entirely new paradigm: software-as-service. That's what searches are all about. That's what Gmail is all about. That's what the OpenOffice on the internet project would be all about. No longer do you sell licenses (units of product) but access (service).
I think MS sees this, and I think that with their capital (financial/physical) and experience (intellectual capital) they will turn out to have quite a lot to offer the market in terms of services. This is what is going to keep them alive - although it will not be the same MS that we see before us today.
I agree with the "keep swimming" mentality. Business is a lot like an ecosystem with ever changing resources and climate: adapt or die.
As part of that adaptation I really think that the whole PC-centered computing model is not going to last as the dominant player. Sure, you can't just take away everyone's PC and give them all thin clients. Power users need their own sandboxes, and many people need the mobility that you can only get with a self-sufficient laptop. But the current usage of computers in, for example, the service and retail industries is incredibly inefficient. I see linux/open source as being part of a tandem push with a shift to thin-client computing for these types of environments. If all you do is word processing, excel, etc. there's no reason why you should be paying the hardware overhead associated with a full-blown PC, the licensing overhead associated with stand-alone OS and office software, not to mention the maintenance associated with distributed PCs when you could save in all of these arena's by switching to linux/open source/thin client.
That's the way of the future. Not in a zero-sum PCs are going to die (PCs will never die) but in a growing-pie the thin-client niche is going to explode paradigm.
I see it a little differently. First of all large companies haven't been entirely dragged down by Linux. I don't think IBM is going to jetison it any time soon, for example, and I think that Sun still has high hopes for Star/Open Office.
But the problem is that large companies have tried to laterally transplant linux into the marketplace. This won't work. What Google could do here that is radically different is start to build a groundswell of support. Think of it as politics. Large companies are like well-funded small-interest groups, Google is starting a grassroots campaign. If you want to get a specific earmark, go with the small-interest groups. But if you want to make fundamental changes in politics - or in in IT - you need a grassroots movement.
By convincing individual users - in business, academic, or private capacity - that linux is safe to use Google could start just this kind of grassroots momentum. This spreads to small and medium businesses and retail (why use Windows to run cash registers with a few bells and whistles?). That kind of broad market penetration means that the employees of large companies will be able to transition more easily to linux - so eventually IBM, Sun etc. start to get what they've been gunning for as well: mainstream adoption of linux.
Of course a lot of companies are going to find out that Windows is better for them than Linux. That's really what we want to have happen, however. Instead of politics we may actually get a more open market where people have genuine choice and therefore there's genuine competition.
Google can contribute to this process in ways that IBM, Sun, Novell, etc. never could because Google is visible to ordinary non-techies in their day-to-day lives in ways those tech giants aren't.
Mod the parent up. It's simplistic, but it's incredibly true. There are two barriers to linux pretty much wiping away MSs stranglehold on the OS market. The first is the actual usability of the linux distros. Google can help with that, but it will probably be incremental over the existing efforts.
The second major barrier is something that linux can't really overcome on its own, however, and that is credibility. The impact of having a Google-branded linux distro could be huge. Google is one of the most well-known brands in the world. Techies may be happy to choose between Ubuntu, SUSE, Mandriva, and the huundreds of other varieties of linux but to the average man or woman on the street the choices of distros make the move to linux doubtful. Having a Google-branded distro would be like a huge signpost reading "this is safe" that would encourage droves of people to try linux out. Of coruse - most people aren't going to reinstall the OS on their desktop, but it opens the opportunity for IT service companies to come in and say "you know that Google OS you've been hearing about? We can install it for you."
For private users this is not such a big deal. But for small to medium sized (non IT) businesses - many of which outsource their IT - this could be huge. These companies want to save money on IT and they don't care very much about the nuts and bolts. If Linux is cheaper AND they feel it is safe and credible - they will switch. A lot of them already know that Linux is cheaper, but they don't have the expertise to verify how stable and/or easy to use it may be so they go with the safe option: Windows.
Goobuntu (what a ridiculous name) totally changes this equation. Suddenly Linux is cheaper AND trusted. The reprecussions could be huge. Not just for Google-linux, but really for all the desktop distros.
Note that I'm not saying this will end Windows at all, but that it will end the Windows monopoly. Windows is good at what it does. The market doesn't need a new monolith - it needs real competition. That's the great part about linux and open source. If you've got open standards than transitioning the software won't kill access to the data. So the companies and individuals aren't as locked into their software. And with hundreds of distros to choose from - and several close competitors at the top - we are looking at the dawn of REAL competition in the market. And that competition is what we want.
Not necessarily. As long as they are saying "no" to both GBLT (gay-BLT -> gay-"bacon-lettuce and tomato" -> gay-wich) and straight organizations than what they say about religion is a separate matter. They are simply saying that sexuality is not a permissable basis for a guild. So the only bias here is sexuality (in general) vs. religion (in general) and I just don't think that's really a discrimination problem.
Given that you tend to get in a LOT more trouble if you mess with homosexuality than if you mess with Christianity this makes sense. When was the last time someone was successfully sued for being anti-Christian? When was the last time someone was successfully sued for discriminating against gays? 'Nuff said - if Blizzard allows gay groups they are going to have to protect them or get sued. If people cuss out the Christians there's not nearly as much risk to Blizzard because it's pretty much assumed that Christians fend for themselves.
1. I'm not an economist, but I'd think that being a younger economy would actually make it easier to have a greater %-wise increase in GDP. And that's really what I was referring to when I talked about economic strength. Of course with nearly 300 million to just 20 million the USA's gross GDP is always going to be bigger.
2. I certainly agree that you also need to consider the citizen health and welfare and not just raw GDP. But that can be easier said than done. For example - is it really a great benchmark to have very low % below the poverty line if practically the entire population is hovering just above it? And who defines the poverty line? Along this vein I found an article by Walter Williams (conservative columnist and economist) to be very revealing. There's been a lot of hype in America about the growing gap between the rich and the poor.
He refers to a study started in 1968 that tracked 50,000 families. The study found among other things that only 5% of those families in the bottom quintile for income in 1975 stayed there until 1991. Without quoting the rest of the statistics what the study revealed is that American society is extremely class-mobile.
The overall trend was that poor families tended to get much wealthier with time - which makes sense. The other trends were also fairly conservative-reinforcing: work full time, get married, etc. Walter didn't take into account how many of those not working full time may have been injured or disabled but the study does indicate one powerful fact - if you want to make money in America and you're willing to work then for the most part you can.
I don't know that much about socialist countries, but I have heard that their job creation levels are far, far lower. I also doubt that they maintain the same kind of class mobility that America's economy can. It's not a perfect meritocracy - but it's the closest thing you can get.
I'm too young to have had any Cold War propaganda shoved down my throat. It's more a consequence of the fact that in college everyone is liberal - and those are the only socialists I've been exposed to. Some of what you wrote was new to me, and I'm never going to dismiss something I don't understand.
To the extent that socialism provides welfare geared towards re-employment, I don't have as much a problem with it. You made a lot of valid points that will get me started on taking socialism more seriously. I'm not kidding around - I've never had it defended to me in ways that made sense before, and some of what you said is compelling.
But I think you are mistaken on some other fronts. You far too casually dismiss the effect of higher taxes by saying that the money would go to the same thing anyway. Eg either pay for health care in taxes or pay for health care through the free market. The problem with that analysis is that you are likely to get much more value for your dollar if you have the ability to spend it as you see fit and not merely hand it over to a gov't organization. Education is a perfect example of this. We all pay taxes to support schools and then are forced to go to schools by geographic region. Combined with the power of the teachers union the result is utter stangation. School credits and other systems that move in the direction of the free market would induce competition - driving down cost and improving quality.
You also failed to address my salient point that the US economy is far more powerful (measured by growth) than the economy of Western Europe - and that furthermore the successful socialist experiments of Europe are largely bought and paid for by the Americans. This isn't just knee-jerk jingoism, Russia had (and probably still has) dreams of world domination and if it weren't for American resistance most of Europe would be learning Russian right now. It was the might of the American military-industry complex (certainly no knight in shining armor I know) that allowed European nations to devote artificially high levels of there economy towards supporting less-efficient economic models.
Anyway, thanks for the post. Could you point me in the direction of some good socialist pieces that I could read to get more research on the type of socialism you describe? I really will follow up on any titles you suggest.
OK, as a hard-core capitalist I'm definitely going to be out of place in this discussion, but I want to make a few points.
1 - Europe's socialist system has been successful largely because it has been - and continnues to be - subsidized by the American system. The subsidy takes the form of defense. For the duration of the Cold War it was American might parked all across Western Europe that allowed those European nations to divert their defense funds to social projects. I'm not saying they had no military, just that they had less military than it would have taken to fend off the Soviets. The world is a dangerous place, America has taken the burden of standing against most of that danger for the past 50 years, and European and other nations (eg Japan) have benefitted from that fact.
2 - Some would say that the gov't sponsored welfare system (socialism) is immoral because it acts as an enabler. Is it morally better to just put someone who's been through hardship on the dole or work to make them capable of once again contributing to society? As an analogy do you just put a quadrapalegic on bed rest for the rest of their life - or put them through physical therapy to maximize their remaining potential while augmenting it with additional technological help (motorized wheelchair, etc.)
3 - Other post was right - American are personally very generous. It's not necessarily that Americans believe that other shouldn't be helped, it's that Americans believe the gov't shouldn't be the one helping them. Belief in small gov't entails fighting against socialism - but the motivating factor may have nothing to do with greed or selfishness.
When it comes down to it I believe that competitive markets outperform over-regulated ones. A meritocracy where I sink or swim largely by my own efforts is preferrable to me than a society where I have to give 50% (or more) of my income to support people who have no ambition. I believe in equality of opportunity - not in equality of outcomes.
And finally I need to lay down some caveats. I'm not saying the American system is perfect by any stretch of the imagination. I'm a conservative capitalist - that doesn't mean that I'm a Republican, that I support Bush or the war on terror, or any other such stupidity. So don't flame me about that stuff. I can respect socialists - I just think they are wrong. If they want to run their nations according to their principles that's fine with me. Power to them. But like communism I believe that socialism will eventually be revealed as a nice-sounding idea that fails in practice. Old Europe is dying - and I hope for the sake of people everywhere that socialism dies with it.
Why do we say data is lost or has gone missing? Data is lost when your USB drive gets stolen, or when your hard drive dies. Data is missing when someone copies over data, deletes the source file, and wanders off with it.
Data isn't "missing" or "lost" if someone makes a copy of it.
You don't necessarily need separate trials do you? I mean, you already have data on how effective drug A is. You already have data on how effective drug B is. All you need to do is force that data to be made public.
Otherwise your example doesn't make sense. You can't say "drug A is less effective than B, but has fewer side effects" without presuming to know the relative efficacy.
I'm not really asking for more tests - just more disclosure.
How on earth do you get from a single example of how a less-effective drug with lower side-effects can be useful to your wild generalizaton that "it does not matter if the drug is more or less effective then other drugs on the market"? That's logically incoherent.
The truth is that you have to know both the effectiveness AND the side-effects in order to make an informed decision about which drug to use. It's assinine to say that because sometimes less potency and greater safety is a good tradeoff that potency doesn't matter. If you don't measure relative potency you can't even figure out if the tradeoff is worthwhile or not can you?
Right now FDA testing lets you know (w/ varying degrees of certainty) 1. That the drug doesn't hurt people 2. That the drug helps people more than a placebo
Say all you want about improving the certainty of either of those, but I think we ought to include testing the drug against existing treatments not as an afterthought, but as a fundamental evaluative criteria.
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I couldn't disagree more. I'm a relatively agile techie. I code a bit, have a comp sci minor, like to try new technology, and have no trouble with mac or windows. However I never did manage to get wireless networking up and running on my SUSE install. Nor could I ever get Firefox updated on my Mandriva install. I didn't spend huge amounts of time working on it - but the fact is that if I can't figure out how to get the install program to run in 30 minutes it's not as useable as windows.
On the other hand I love OpenOffice and think it's poised to start eating away market share from MS Office. I know I'm goign to get my company switched over to it relatively soon. The droves will really start to move over when the next iteration of MS Office comes out - in my opinion.
-stormin
I'm not trying to insult your wife or anything, but having a PhD doesn't make you a scientist. My dad's got a PhD in comparitive literature. It doesn't make him a scientist. Furthermore having a PhD and publishing quantitative results doesn't make you a scientist either. Are sociologists scientists? Anthropologists? Archeologists? What about economists? I would argue that you can make cases of various strength for and against all of these. I don't care if you study ran 4 minutes of 400 years - what does length of study have to do with science? You think that just running some regression analysis and figuring out a few p-values makes you a scientist? Kids are doing that for the high school fair, man. Excel can do that for you. Is everyone with a spreadsheet and a theory (and a PhD) a scientist now? Furthermore the statistics that go into a lot of these quantitative studies are pretty poor. Speaking as a mathemetician and analyst - I feel comfortable saying that.
Look, the very fact that you had to say your wife has a PhD psychologist AND had published articles with quantifiable results is proof positive of what I'm saying: psychologists are not scientists by default. You had to add something else to that. What does that tell you? Would you still consider a pyschologist a scientist if he or she didn't deal with quantitive results? Do you have any evidence at all about how many psychologists in your secret survey fall into that subset? I mean, while you're making up #s you might as well add that to the mix. "The majority of psychologists think homosexuality is genetic. And, uh, they're the ones that do all the quantitative studies. And don't listen to geneticists - that's an immature science. No - you can't see this study - why would you ask? It's a FACT - and you're an idiot". Scintillating acumen at work there, pal. It's a wonder we're not all convinced yet.
Just to make something clear hear, scientist isn't some title like knighthood. You can be just as intelligent - and just as right - without being a scientist. It's this weird fetish Americans have with science. It's the new religion. We used to turn to priests to assuage our fears. Before that it was druids, maybe. Now we want to put scientists up on this holy pedastal - the human mind apparently just can't get by without granting authoritative power to some priestly craft or other.
Why are you even still responding anyway? I mean - you haven't addressed any of my points. We never got beyond the "fact" that most pyschologists think homosexuality is genetic. This was never backed up by you. Ever. It's just a "fact" and if I don't see it, I'm stupid. (And I'm the bully?)
You still haven't argued why we should care even if this is true. As I pointed out in my last post - this isn't a thread discussing the opinions of psychologists. At least - I don't know why it should be.
I guess the plan is that we'll just keep changing the subject and talking and eventually we'll forget all that pesky logic and reason stuff I was talking about that. Especially if you keep calling me a mean, arrogant bully.
Sigh - this really is my last post. I'll come back if you can actually respond to any of my arguments isntead of just piling baseless assertion on top of baseless assertion.
-stormin
Now you certainly appear to be saying that "IT service companies" can sell the GoogleOS to their customers. I don't know about you, but as a home user, I don't rely on IT service companies to sell me my desktop OS, so I made the natural assumption you were talking about their customers being businesses.
That's actually not a very good conclusion. I run one such IT service company. I don't actually sell AVG Free anymore than I would sell a GoogleOS. But I do get paid rather well to come to people's houses and run virus scans and such and the fact that I can offer to install AV software for no additional cost helps a lot. If I can offer to install some cool new OS for no additional cost that would also help in the same way. I don't charge for the software, I charge for the expertise. That's what I mean when I talk about IT moving to a service-based as opposed to product-based industry.
Now as for the difference between Google and HP, Dell, etc. it again comes to service companies. Your average user knows squat about OSs, but your average small business owner is a little better informed and much more highly motivated. If I come up to a small business user (and this is speaking from experience) and say "hey - I can help you out by saving you money while giving you better IT service" they are interested, but they want to know why they should trust me. Now if I say "because HP backs it" that's about as good as "Google backs it". But what free software or hardware has HP given me that I can then offer to the small business (not for resell, but as value-added to service)? Nothing. Same goes for Dell and IBM.
But GoogleOS - assuming it's free like Gmail and everythign else Google has done - is fundamentally different. It gives those with expertise a free tool with which they can augment the value of their services to those that can't take advantage of the free tools themselves. If a small business has a competent techie they don't need me - they can do it their own. But most service small businesses have neither a good techie nor the money to hire one.
That's the fundamental shift. The tools become free, the services become the value. This is the opposite of the old model - where the tools were the product and the service was an afterthought. In my opinion the new model is more accessible to small and medium sized businesses and eventually even large-scale businesses. That's why IBM has switched to consulting. It's not like I'm alone in seeing this - it's part of an emerging trend.
Currently Windows is not set to compete with this new business model. In the process of converting I think they will lose a lot of market share.
Make sense?
-stormin
Apple's OS is weighed down by it's hardware. This isn't a problem for Apple. They have a higher profit-margin on hardware than software, and so they prefer to grow their OS only as fast as they can grow their hardware penetartion into the market. It's not bad, but it's definitely slow.
Google has no hardware. That's the big difference between the two.
-stormin
I tried to help you out. I really did. I didn't want to have to quote the definition to you, so I inserted a hyphen to point out the key word in the term "procreate". And that is "create". Adoption is by definition raising a child that is NOT your own. Therefore it means you did NOT create. So adoption is not procreation.
I really want to know what twisted logic was operating in your head that somehow morphed "adoption is not procreation" into "adoption is evil". How does that work, exactly? Could you enlighten the group and reveal those particular mental gymanstics? I mean, it's like i were to say "metal is not wood" and you were to respond "well, since you think metal is EVIL..." Seriously, this is the biggest case of "WTF, mate?" I've come across in quite some time.
For the record adoption is not evil. My wife and I would love to adopt some children. And when we do we will not be procreating. We will also not be doing a lot of other things. Adopting isn't planting a tree, it's not washing a car, it's not coding in C#. That's the tricky thing about dictionaries - they tell you what words mean and by definition what they don't.
-stormin
Sigh. I'm addicted to responding.
I'm sorry if you feel I'm being a bully. You call me an idiot. I call you stupid. I'd say that makes us equally agressive.
But you insist that makes me a bully. Which implies that you feel intimidated in some way. That's what bullies do. They win arguments by threat of physical force. If you'll notice, however, this is the internet. I don't have any phsyical capacity to harm you (nor would I want to - if that's what you're worried about). I don't know you're real name, where you live, or anything about you. The only thing I have to bully you with is my posts.
So if you feel bullied then maybe I need to be nicer, but since the only source of threat for you to feel is the weight of the logic and evidence that I have brought to bear on this particular discussion - maybe you need to reconsider what calling me "a bully" really reveals about this discussion. If you're so threatened by what I have to say that your only response is to argue that - by being intimidating - I'm a bully how is this different from saying that I'm right and you're not happy about it? You see in the playground bullies are bad becauae they use physical force to win intellectual arguments. But since all I've got to play with here is intellect - then how is it meaningful to call me a bully?
Look, if your feelings are hurt I'm geuninely sorry. I'm rather thick-skinned myself, so I'm not really trying to make you upset. I've had are more heated debates than this with my best friend - and I tend to get dished to me just as much as I dish out. If you're not used to that level of open confrontation in a heated discusion, I'm sorry. But maybe next time you should watch your own condescending attitude before it gets you in so much trouble that you're only remaining argument is to complain about how unfair it is that you're losing.
My statement about the proportion of psychologists who believe homosexuality is something you're born with is a fact, and you're dumb enough to try to disprove a fact. Have fun
As I said - pyschologists are not genetecists. I'm not even sure if you could call them scientists. If most psychologists think that black holes are really fairy dust, should I care? Or should I ask an astrophysicist? And again - even if you're right about psychologists - who cares? Does that actually mean anything about homosexuality at all? No - you've only proven a point about psychologists. Did I miss something? Is this the "let's talk about the opinions of pyschologists" thread?
You can choose to get your feelings hurt by this and call me a bully, or you can choose to learn from it. You just got hosed in a debate. You screwed up and got nailed to the wall for it. It happens. It's sure as Hell happened to me before. I've been utterly flattened when I thought I knew what I was talking about and it turned out that there was some gaping hole in my logic I'd never noticed.
It's up to you. Continue to call me a bully, or learn from the experience. Hell - do both if you want. I don't mind being called a bully - I'd just like to see this exchange as beneficial in the end.
-stormin
Well I wouldn't go so far as to say that there's going to be a "Google PC". At the most I could see them offering some custom linux OS back to the community to be sold on Dell (or HP, etc.) PCs like Mandriva and other are currently trying to do.
But do I think this is part of a general trend back towards the return to thin clients? Absolutely. The fact is that the mainframe never died - and that's essentially the same model as the thin-client model. The market got carried away with PCs as they got cheaper and cheaper and everyone bought them. But the fact of the matter is that PCs waste huge amounts of energy, cost a lot, break down a lot, and generate huge amounts of waste when they are eventually disposed of. Thin clients just make too much sense not to come back.
As I said - they're not going to totally replace desktops. Programmers especially need desktops. I wouldn't want to part with mine. Laptops - as portable self-contained units - are also not going away.
But the industry is moving towards a utility-model for business computing and I think it's smart. Thin clients are more durable, cheaper, and (in conjunction with app servers) allocate resources more efficiently. Giving every employee in a service industry a PC is like giving every postal worker an 18-wheeler. It just doesn't make sense because 18-wheelers fit a different niche than those little postal jeeps.
-stormin
One of the most painful experiences in the internet is debating with people who are not only very stupid but think they are being very clever. It's like watching the protagonist embarass him or herself horribly in a movie - we feel an outpouring of empathic embarassment. Anyway - I got to get back to my work, so I'll wrap this up with a final post.
1. When I say that the prevailing scientific attitude is that homosexuality is something a person is born with, I don't need to back it up, because that's a fact.
In intelligent discussion even when something IS a fact you have to back it up to prove it. Citing common knowledge is not proof. Even if the fact is very simple - say the distance from LA to NYC - I can't just assert "it's a fact" and expect anyone to take that as proof. I should just MapQuest it or something. If the fact is something REALLY obvious like "the consensus is that Shakespeare wrote Hamlet" then the proper response to someone saying "prove it!" is to provide them ample pieces of evidence (look it up on Amazon.com). The proper response is not to say "I don't have to prove it, it's a FACT!" That just makes you look stupid. It especially makes you look stupid when it turns out that you can't find any such simple evidence for your "fact" at all.
Furthermore you're not being very clear. What exactly is a fact - that the consensus of scientists is that homosexuality is genetically determined, that the consensus of scientists is that this has been proven, or that it is a fact that homosexuality is indeed genetically determined because the consensus of scientists says that it is? As far as I can tell you're not making any distinctions between these three non-identical claims.
Depending on which you are trying to argue for (do you even know?) you need to provide different evidence. If your argument is that most scientists think it's genetic or think that it has been proven to be genetic you'd need a poll or some other evidence of what scientists think. You also need to define "scientist". I'm well aware that psychologists consider it to be genetic, but they're not genetecists, are they? Dear Abbey considers it genetic too - should I care?
If, on the other hand, you're tying to actually argue that not only is it the consensus among scientists that homosexuality is genetic but that furthermore the scientists are right you need to provide us with some articles, some evidence, SOMETHING. You sound like a kindergartner insisting that this is the way it is because your parents told you and that settles it.
I did a quick google search to help you out. I haven't even read these two articles in their entirety - but they'll do for examples:
Here's a 10-year old article arguing that homosexuality is genetic:
http://www.skeptictank.org/gaygene.htm
Here's a more recent article arguing that although the perception is that homosexuality is genetic the science is inconclusive:
http://www.cbmw.org/news/ram150404.php (sure, that ones from some council on biblical manhood and womanhood - which sounds creepy to me, but it was the first I found and it may have some relevant survey of the science surrounding the issue)
You see what I've done? I've substituted your irrational insistence that "fact" don't need to be proven with an actual opportunity to have intelligent discussion. This is how adults talk about issues.
2. Make your case that most scientists do NOT believe that homosexuality is something a person is born with.
I saw this one coming a mile away. I tried to spare you the embarassment of making this logical blunder by pointing that it's not an either/or proposition in my last post. Not only did you fall right into the typical logical trap, but you didn't even recognize the danger signs I posted all around it.
If you make a claim "Most scientists believe X" and I make the claim "You haven't proven
You think that you can just stand up and say "the scientific community thinks X" and the rest of us are going to go "Oh, OK, he says that's what they say so it must be what they say". There are two main problems here.
1. You can't just tell us what the scientific community says and act like you've proven anything. I can't believe you even wrote "my citatoin is all the pyschological literature..." Your citation is non-existent. You didn't cite ANYTHING.
2. Again - consensus is not proof. You're just walking evidence of the fact that science is the new dogma. Even if "all the psychological literature of the past 50 years" was really in your court that's still not proof. Literature is not proof. Consensus is not proof. Popular opinion - even of the best and brightest minds - is not proof. Proof is when you have a testable hypothesis, a repeatable experiment, and the analysis to back it up. Go get me that, post it for review, and we'll talk.
In the meantime you haven't proven anything other than your own utter misapprehension of what does and does not constitute a scientifically valid argument. The fact of the matter is that real science spits in the fact of consensus. That's why we have scientific revoluions: because the best and the brightest have a long track record of being proven wrong.
You should also take note that I haven't once even intimated that I know or can prove that homosexuality is a choice. This is not an either/or proposition. It's quite possible - and I believe this to be the case - that NEITHER side has amassed enough evidence to "prove" their viewpoint.
All I'm pointing out is that you can spout all you want about "citations" but the fact remains that you're just a political hack trying to bludgen your way to the top on the sheer authoritative weight of experts you can't quote or reference. How does that make you any different from some religious nutjob who says Jesus talks to him? I don't see that nutjob's Jesus any more - or any less - than I see your citations.
You can take your self-assured consensus and shove it. There was once a consensus that the sun rotated around the earth, consensus that man couldn't fly, consensus that the world population would be 10 billion in 2010, and consensus in the superiority of the white race. Congratulations, you've joined the long and illustrious ranks of those who are right "because everybody else says so".
-stormin
1. Service industries. I work in an insurance brokerage. We all have Windows PCs. No one does anything but email, word process (a tiny bit) some excel work, look at pdf documents, surf the web, and there's one database program we use for contact management. What a waste of resources. The same goes for law firms, travel agencies, etc.
2. Retail industries. Some retailers have a simple cash register, but a lot of retailers (like my local mechanice) have full-blown PCs running Win2K with internet connection to run their software. Maybe they don't have MS Office, but they're still in a position to save a ton of money by shifting to thin clients (provided someone sets up an app server they can access) and avoid windows tax, virus vulnerability, etc. Futhermore a lot of retailers that have more kiosks (like restuarants) are not happy with their current set up (and I've been to many of those that have Dells set up for all the point-of-sale stuff). Hell, even hospital emergency rooms trundle around Dell PCs on carts to enter medical info in for all of the patients.
I'm not talking about convergence. There's always a temptation - whenever there's a market instability - for people to go crazy and overcompensate. In my opinion that's all convergence is - hype and overcompensation.
But the fundamental market driver here is inefficiency. Any service based office with 25-50 pcs could afford an app server and thin clients instead of PCs. They've got 25 PCs sitting on desktops running at what - 4% CPU usage? I'm a power user and I hardly ever get my RAM usage above 35%. That's just inefficient and it's that inneficiency that reveals the potential niche for thin-client solutions. Just as the fact that I can get Mandriva for free and do practically everything my windows box does that's work related (but for Windows I have to buy the OS and office software). That's inefficient - and so the potential for improvement is obvious. That's not hype - that's just a realistic assessment of the current market.
-stormin
Raising an adopted child is by defintion NOT pro-creating. You're confusing issues here. The fact remains that from a teleological standpoint homosexuality IS a disfunction.
You're ignoring the deep psychological implications of human biological sexuality.
-stormin
(I realize I didn't prove that homosexuality is wrong, I'm just pointing out that you're not proving it's right either. I'm happy with the issue left undecided.)
It's well established and well known that homosexuals are born that way.
Consensus doesn't prove anything. And even if I did agree with your conclusion I will debate down anybody that makes an objective truth claim involving the caveat "I don't have to prove this."
-stormin
Maybe you didn't really read my other posts. Google is a radically different company from IBM, HP and Dell. First of all there's the obvious difference: Google doesn't sell hardware (I'm aware IBM has moved away from that too, but they still sell a lot of servers).
What's more important, however, is the customer base. Sure, you're average consumer may go pick up a dell or an HP at the store (or online). But by and large those are tech companies. Everyone's heard of IBM, but who uses IBM services consiously everyday?
This might be the clearest way to get you to understand the huge cultural difference between Google and the others: is there a new word in the common English vocabulary from Dell? From HP? From IBM? Google is far newer than any of those companies and it has already infiltrated our very language (eg "My professor seems weird. I'm going to go Google him and see if I can find anything.")
Once you realize this you start to realize that Google reaches ordinary people while IBM, HP and Dell don't even really reach the whole techie-crowd. What linux or mac afficionado gives a rats ass about Dell's new XPS line? Does IBM matter to someone doing video editing? But EVERYONE uses Google.
So if Google opens up a linux distro you've got a straigh shot to not just some sub-set of techies, but pretty much every human being that uses the internet. You've got an established relationship with EVERYONE. That's quite possibly the most valuable asset any company could imagine for a new product or service of any kind. The difference between what Google has to offer linux and what any other tech company has to offer linux can not be relegated to "not much" by any rational human who really thinks about the issue realistically for more than 5 minutes.
-stormin
What you write is true, but I wouldn't write MS off yet. For one thing you have to remember that nature abhors a vacum. If MS topples SOMETHING will have to take it's place. As MS shrinks marketspace will be split between the new kid on the block (Google) and a variety of additional smaller interests. But as Google swells to take on the burned of MS-business they will begin to suffer the same interia problems that MS currently does.
.NET framework offers some truly powerful programming solutions for the programming masses. We've seen that they can adapt to open source when absolutely necessary (creating their own open document standard) and I think we'll see them continue to kind of morph into a more open-tolerant company.
MS, on the other hand, benefits greatly from its size in terms of both intellectual and physical capital. Their server products are getting better, and the
In many ways the open-source movement spells the end of software-as-product. What Google really shows us, if we look closely, is not just a new comapny within the old paradigm but an entirely new paradigm: software-as-service. That's what searches are all about. That's what Gmail is all about. That's what the OpenOffice on the internet project would be all about. No longer do you sell licenses (units of product) but access (service).
I think MS sees this, and I think that with their capital (financial/physical) and experience (intellectual capital) they will turn out to have quite a lot to offer the market in terms of services. This is what is going to keep them alive - although it will not be the same MS that we see before us today.
-stormin
I agree with the "keep swimming" mentality. Business is a lot like an ecosystem with ever changing resources and climate: adapt or die.
As part of that adaptation I really think that the whole PC-centered computing model is not going to last as the dominant player. Sure, you can't just take away everyone's PC and give them all thin clients. Power users need their own sandboxes, and many people need the mobility that you can only get with a self-sufficient laptop. But the current usage of computers in, for example, the service and retail industries is incredibly inefficient. I see linux/open source as being part of a tandem push with a shift to thin-client computing for these types of environments. If all you do is word processing, excel, etc. there's no reason why you should be paying the hardware overhead associated with a full-blown PC, the licensing overhead associated with stand-alone OS and office software, not to mention the maintenance associated with distributed PCs when you could save in all of these arena's by switching to linux/open source/thin client.
That's the way of the future. Not in a zero-sum PCs are going to die (PCs will never die) but in a growing-pie the thin-client niche is going to explode paradigm.
-stormin
I see it a little differently. First of all large companies haven't been entirely dragged down by Linux. I don't think IBM is going to jetison it any time soon, for example, and I think that Sun still has high hopes for Star/Open Office.
But the problem is that large companies have tried to laterally transplant linux into the marketplace. This won't work. What Google could do here that is radically different is start to build a groundswell of support. Think of it as politics. Large companies are like well-funded small-interest groups, Google is starting a grassroots campaign. If you want to get a specific earmark, go with the small-interest groups. But if you want to make fundamental changes in politics - or in in IT - you need a grassroots movement.
By convincing individual users - in business, academic, or private capacity - that linux is safe to use Google could start just this kind of grassroots momentum. This spreads to small and medium businesses and retail (why use Windows to run cash registers with a few bells and whistles?). That kind of broad market penetration means that the employees of large companies will be able to transition more easily to linux - so eventually IBM, Sun etc. start to get what they've been gunning for as well: mainstream adoption of linux.
Of course a lot of companies are going to find out that Windows is better for them than Linux. That's really what we want to have happen, however. Instead of politics we may actually get a more open market where people have genuine choice and therefore there's genuine competition.
Google can contribute to this process in ways that IBM, Sun, Novell, etc. never could because Google is visible to ordinary non-techies in their day-to-day lives in ways those tech giants aren't.
-stormin
Mod the parent up. It's simplistic, but it's incredibly true. There are two barriers to linux pretty much wiping away MSs stranglehold on the OS market. The first is the actual usability of the linux distros. Google can help with that, but it will probably be incremental over the existing efforts.
The second major barrier is something that linux can't really overcome on its own, however, and that is credibility. The impact of having a Google-branded linux distro could be huge. Google is one of the most well-known brands in the world. Techies may be happy to choose between Ubuntu, SUSE, Mandriva, and the huundreds of other varieties of linux but to the average man or woman on the street the choices of distros make the move to linux doubtful. Having a Google-branded distro would be like a huge signpost reading "this is safe" that would encourage droves of people to try linux out. Of coruse - most people aren't going to reinstall the OS on their desktop, but it opens the opportunity for IT service companies to come in and say "you know that Google OS you've been hearing about? We can install it for you."
For private users this is not such a big deal. But for small to medium sized (non IT) businesses - many of which outsource their IT - this could be huge. These companies want to save money on IT and they don't care very much about the nuts and bolts. If Linux is cheaper AND they feel it is safe and credible - they will switch. A lot of them already know that Linux is cheaper, but they don't have the expertise to verify how stable and/or easy to use it may be so they go with the safe option: Windows.
Goobuntu (what a ridiculous name) totally changes this equation. Suddenly Linux is cheaper AND trusted. The reprecussions could be huge. Not just for Google-linux, but really for all the desktop distros.
Note that I'm not saying this will end Windows at all, but that it will end the Windows monopoly. Windows is good at what it does. The market doesn't need a new monolith - it needs real competition. That's the great part about linux and open source. If you've got open standards than transitioning the software won't kill access to the data. So the companies and individuals aren't as locked into their software. And with hundreds of distros to choose from - and several close competitors at the top - we are looking at the dawn of REAL competition in the market. And that competition is what we want.
-stormin
Not necessarily. As long as they are saying "no" to both GBLT (gay-BLT -> gay-"bacon-lettuce and tomato" -> gay-wich) and straight organizations than what they say about religion is a separate matter. They are simply saying that sexuality is not a permissable basis for a guild. So the only bias here is sexuality (in general) vs. religion (in general) and I just don't think that's really a discrimination problem.
Given that you tend to get in a LOT more trouble if you mess with homosexuality than if you mess with Christianity this makes sense. When was the last time someone was successfully sued for being anti-Christian? When was the last time someone was successfully sued for discriminating against gays? 'Nuff said - if Blizzard allows gay groups they are going to have to protect them or get sued. If people cuss out the Christians there's not nearly as much risk to Blizzard because it's pretty much assumed that Christians fend for themselves.
-stormin
1. I'm not an economist, but I'd think that being a younger economy would actually make it easier to have a greater %-wise increase in GDP. And that's really what I was referring to when I talked about economic strength. Of course with nearly 300 million to just 20 million the USA's gross GDP is always going to be bigger.
s /2006/01/04/180969.html
2. I certainly agree that you also need to consider the citizen health and welfare and not just raw GDP. But that can be easier said than done. For example - is it really a great benchmark to have very low % below the poverty line if practically the entire population is hovering just above it? And who defines the poverty line? Along this vein I found an article by Walter Williams (conservative columnist and economist) to be very revealing. There's been a lot of hype in America about the growing gap between the rich and the poor.
He refers to a study started in 1968 that tracked 50,000 families. The study found among other things that only 5% of those families in the bottom quintile for income in 1975 stayed there until 1991. Without quoting the rest of the statistics what the study revealed is that American society is extremely class-mobile.
The overall trend was that poor families tended to get much wealthier with time - which makes sense. The other trends were also fairly conservative-reinforcing: work full time, get married, etc. Walter didn't take into account how many of those not working full time may have been injured or disabled but the study does indicate one powerful fact - if you want to make money in America and you're willing to work then for the most part you can.
You can read the article here: http://townhall.com/opinion/columns/walterwilliam
I don't know that much about socialist countries, but I have heard that their job creation levels are far, far lower. I also doubt that they maintain the same kind of class mobility that America's economy can. It's not a perfect meritocracy - but it's the closest thing you can get.
-stormin
I'm too young to have had any Cold War propaganda shoved down my throat. It's more a consequence of the fact that in college everyone is liberal - and those are the only socialists I've been exposed to. Some of what you wrote was new to me, and I'm never going to dismiss something I don't understand.
To the extent that socialism provides welfare geared towards re-employment, I don't have as much a problem with it. You made a lot of valid points that will get me started on taking socialism more seriously. I'm not kidding around - I've never had it defended to me in ways that made sense before, and some of what you said is compelling.
But I think you are mistaken on some other fronts. You far too casually dismiss the effect of higher taxes by saying that the money would go to the same thing anyway. Eg either pay for health care in taxes or pay for health care through the free market. The problem with that analysis is that you are likely to get much more value for your dollar if you have the ability to spend it as you see fit and not merely hand it over to a gov't organization. Education is a perfect example of this. We all pay taxes to support schools and then are forced to go to schools by geographic region. Combined with the power of the teachers union the result is utter stangation. School credits and other systems that move in the direction of the free market would induce competition - driving down cost and improving quality.
You also failed to address my salient point that the US economy is far more powerful (measured by growth) than the economy of Western Europe - and that furthermore the successful socialist experiments of Europe are largely bought and paid for by the Americans. This isn't just knee-jerk jingoism, Russia had (and probably still has) dreams of world domination and if it weren't for American resistance most of Europe would be learning Russian right now. It was the might of the American military-industry complex (certainly no knight in shining armor I know) that allowed European nations to devote artificially high levels of there economy towards supporting less-efficient economic models.
Anyway, thanks for the post. Could you point me in the direction of some good socialist pieces that I could read to get more research on the type of socialism you describe? I really will follow up on any titles you suggest.
Thanks,
-stormin
OK, as a hard-core capitalist I'm definitely going to be out of place in this discussion, but I want to make a few points.
1 - Europe's socialist system has been successful largely because it has been - and continnues to be - subsidized by the American system. The subsidy takes the form of defense. For the duration of the Cold War it was American might parked all across Western Europe that allowed those European nations to divert their defense funds to social projects. I'm not saying they had no military, just that they had less military than it would have taken to fend off the Soviets. The world is a dangerous place, America has taken the burden of standing against most of that danger for the past 50 years, and European and other nations (eg Japan) have benefitted from that fact.
2 - Some would say that the gov't sponsored welfare system (socialism) is immoral because it acts as an enabler. Is it morally better to just put someone who's been through hardship on the dole or work to make them capable of once again contributing to society? As an analogy do you just put a quadrapalegic on bed rest for the rest of their life - or put them through physical therapy to maximize their remaining potential while augmenting it with additional technological help (motorized wheelchair, etc.)
3 - Other post was right - American are personally very generous. It's not necessarily that Americans believe that other shouldn't be helped, it's that Americans believe the gov't shouldn't be the one helping them. Belief in small gov't entails fighting against socialism - but the motivating factor may have nothing to do with greed or selfishness.
When it comes down to it I believe that competitive markets outperform over-regulated ones. A meritocracy where I sink or swim largely by my own efforts is preferrable to me than a society where I have to give 50% (or more) of my income to support people who have no ambition. I believe in equality of opportunity - not in equality of outcomes.
And finally I need to lay down some caveats. I'm not saying the American system is perfect by any stretch of the imagination. I'm a conservative capitalist - that doesn't mean that I'm a Republican, that I support Bush or the war on terror, or any other such stupidity. So don't flame me about that stuff. I can respect socialists - I just think they are wrong. If they want to run their nations according to their principles that's fine with me. Power to them. But like communism I believe that socialism will eventually be revealed as a nice-sounding idea that fails in practice. Old Europe is dying - and I hope for the sake of people everywhere that socialism dies with it.
-stormin
Why do we say data is lost or has gone missing? Data is lost when your USB drive gets stolen, or when your hard drive dies. Data is missing when someone copies over data, deletes the source file, and wanders off with it.
Data isn't "missing" or "lost" if someone makes a copy of it.
-stormin
You don't necessarily need separate trials do you? I mean, you already have data on how effective drug A is. You already have data on how effective drug B is. All you need to do is force that data to be made public.
Otherwise your example doesn't make sense. You can't say "drug A is less effective than B, but has fewer side effects" without presuming to know the relative efficacy.
I'm not really asking for more tests - just more disclosure.
-stormin
How on earth do you get from a single example of how a less-effective drug with lower side-effects can be useful to your wild generalizaton that "it does not matter if the drug is more or less effective then other drugs on the market"? That's logically incoherent.
The truth is that you have to know both the effectiveness AND the side-effects in order to make an informed decision about which drug to use. It's assinine to say that because sometimes less potency and greater safety is a good tradeoff that potency doesn't matter. If you don't measure relative potency you can't even figure out if the tradeoff is worthwhile or not can you?
-stormmin
Testing should start there.
Right now FDA testing lets you know (w/ varying degrees of certainty)
1. That the drug doesn't hurt people
2. That the drug helps people more than a placebo
Say all you want about improving the certainty of either of those, but I think we ought to include testing the drug against existing treatments not as an afterthought, but as a fundamental evaluative criteria.
-stormin