It doesn't have to be a perfect analogy to illustrate the point at hand. If you prefer, you can cast your eyes down to see my take on the blue-ink business analogy;)
Well, I do and I don't agree with you, if that makes sense.;)
I think it's fairly similar to the handedness example, insofar as it has a disparate impact on the players in the market - it may be "fair" in the sense that it applies to everyone, but it really only has an impact on one participant. To borrow your later example, if everyone in your town already writes double-spaced with blue ink anyway, a law requiring it makes no difference to you - you just go on doing what you've been doing all along, and it's all good for you. If, however, I move into town, and I'm accustomed to typing all my paperwork, I'm the only one who will have to change my behavior, and I'm the only one who will be inconvenienced by such a law, despite the fact that it ostensibly applies to everyone equally.
Perhaps you are familiar with Anatole France and his observation that the law, in all its majestic equality, forbids the rich and the poor from stealing bread and sleeping under bridges. Who do you supposed is actually affected by laws like that - the rich, or the poor?
Anyway, the point is that a law can be neutral on its face, and yet have wildly disparate impacts upon the various people it might apply to. More specifically, the law can be composed of perfectly neutral language, and still only affect Wal Mart.
Re:That's not a software giant, THIS is a ...
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Linux vs. Windows
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Well, crap - that wasn't supposed to be an AC post, so here it is again:
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umm... as if that matters? you're setting up a straw man
Did you even read the post I was responding to originally? The poster said, and I quote, "WalMart didnt kill Lidl and Aldi when they tried to take on the German discounters on their home soil." I pointed out that this was due to the fact that German laws are structured in such a way as to prevent Wal Mart from doing there what they've done successfully elsewhere. I'm sorry if this observation bothers you, but there you go.
That there isn't is a reflection that Wal-Mart isn't something that Germans want.
Fine. I agree with you. Who cares? The laws are they way they are, and if it amuses you to explore why the laws are the way they are, be my guest. The proximate cause for Wal Mart's lack of success, however, is the law itself.
After all, look what Hitler did. You don't want another Hitler do you?
As long as everyone is under the same laws, it is a fair competative environment.
By that logic, a law that bans writing with your left hand is fair because it applies to everyone. We can simply advise left-handed people that they "need to create a new strategy" for writing....
Re:That's not a software giant, THIS is a ...
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Linux vs. Windows
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I personally don't know of any Wal Mart in The Netherlands too...
Dunno. For all I know, they haven't tried there yet - google is unrevealing about Wal Mart's activities in the Netherlands.
...iirc Wal Mart only has (a) store(s) in the UK?
I don't know how many Wal Mart branded stores they have there, but they do own this - notice the logo in the upper left;)
Re:That's not a software giant, THIS is a ...
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Linux vs. Windows
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· Score: 1
maybe germans don't want a wal-mart, huh? did you ever think of that, did you, huh?
Well, yes, I did, as has anyone who's devoted more than a moment's thought to the issue. I'm sure that's exactly why those laws are in place, but let's not kid ourselves about why Wal Mart has had problems in Germany - it's not because their Teutonic competition is somehow more capable than retailers elsewhere. They may very well be more competitive than Wal Mart, all else being equal, but all else isn't equal, in the sense that the laws are structured in such a way as to prevent Wal Mart from replicating some of the key components of its success elsewhere. Whether Germans want it that way or not is neither here nor there - that's how it is, and that's what's preventing them from being as successful there as they are elsewhere, not the abilities of their competitors.
Re:That's not a software giant, THIS is a ...
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Linux vs. Windows
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· Score: 2, Interesting
WalMart didnt kill Lidl and Aldi when they tried to take on the German discounters on their home soil.
A) German labor laws make it difficult for Wal Mart to build and employ their workforce in the same way they do outside of Germany;
B) German zoning laws make it difficult for Wal Mart to build the sort of big-box stores that they do outside of Germany;
C) German pricing laws make it difficult for Wal Mart to discount their goods as deeply as they do outside of Germany;
D) Don't kid yourself about why Wal Mart has had a tough time in Germany - it has nothing at all to do with how clever their competition is, and everything to do with how the deck is stacked against them from the get-go. Take off the shackles by changing the laws, and I guarantee you'll see just how formidable they can be, even in Germany.
...now that it's making the rounds again in English, more of us can read it without resorting to Babelfish.
What the hell fun is that?
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City Munich continues Linux migration
Despite legal ambiguity and continuous fears of a patent war approximately around open SOURCE of Munich wants to start mayor Christian Ude the bidding procedure for the re-equipment of the Desktops in the city administration on free software. This announced the SPD politician on today's Wednesday on a press conference in the city hall. The Prozedere is brought to the active migration phase of the LiMux project after a "pause for thought by few days" in course, gave to Ude with well one week delay green light for the introduction . An appraisal and the participant competition should be final up to the autumn. If a conversion to Linux appears then harmless, can be begun immediately with the Bieterverfahren. In any case one however wants to remain the city with its confession to Linux: "it remains with the fact that the city Munich decided for open SOURCE."
Ude announced that the city will give a legal opinion for clarifying to the question in order, which effects the disputed European Union guideline to the patenting barness of "computer-implemented inventions" in its present version of the Council of Ministers have could. Of the Federal Government Ude information required, why she had votiert in Brussels at all for a change before good of the version of the directive which was called by the European parliament. If one wants to promote to Berlin of far open SOURCE projects, how from the Federal Department of Justice week passed stresses again , one must create right security for the public and private expenditures also. Furthermore Ude requested other cities, municipalities and authorities, which work on Linux migrations, to the shoulder conclusion with Munich -- the argumentation residents of Munich of the city head and the demands on the Federal Government submitted the city equivalent again in writing therefore .
With the temporary stop of the LiMux advertisement the residents of Munich city administration at the beginning of of August had fed the continuous debate over software patents and the lining up Brussels legislation on an expanded summer high floated -- in addition, doubts about the feasibility of the Linux re-equipment. Also the camp of the proponents of free software was in disagreement itself in the estimate of the concrete danger for the residents of Munich of migration plans. In a pointed reaction to the interruption of the project the Free warned software Foundation Europe ( FSFE ) and the LinuxTag e.V. Beginning of the week again together before the abuse of software patents "for psychological war guidance" in the economy.
"at present mechanisms from the cold war are adapted for the keeping by interests of enterprise", echauffierte themselves olive Zendel, chairman of the LinuxTags. The principle of the atomic deterrence is replaced by armament by Patentportfolios, while other companies nonaggression treaties would lock by a Kreuzlizenzierung of the own patents. Wrong-basic are thereby "programmers, small and medium-size enterprises and thus the economic situation Europe." Disturbingly to it above all, supplemented FSFE president is George Greve that do not even need to be prozessiert: "a confused rumor is completely sufficient, in order to bring a complex and complex project for days from the trace. It would be interesting to compute the economical damage."
The residents of Munich city administration does not see so far under any circumstances eliminated the fears of the open SOURCE scene despite the appeasement attempts from the Ministry of Justice. It has a number of open questions listed, approximately after long-term investment security for LiMux estimated approximately 30 million euro, after appearing a patent flood in the software range, itself the complaint waves and its consequences for the innovation strength of the economy,
Sorry for the delay in responding, but I composed an eloquent, thoughtful reply to your post, capturing all of the points I wanted to make, with both impeccable logic and a certain amount of rhetorical flair. So of course the/. posting system ate it, and it's all gone...
You raise a number of interesting points - unfortunately, I doubt I'll have a chance to address them until another time in the (semi-)near future. Oh well - such is life;)
You're right, guns don't kill people. People with guns kill people. It is highly likely that those 750,000 lives would not have been lost if the person that ended each of them didn't have the gun they used to kill them.
In the immortal words of Archie Bunker, would you feel better if they had been pushed out of windows?
The fact that someone died is not prima facie evidence of an immoral act - not to put too fine of a point on it, but we all die sooner or later. Instead, the circumstances illuminate the morality or immorality of the situation. Is a person who uses a gun to kill in self-defense, is that person someone who perpetrates evil?
I do not think you are in a position to testify to the "intent" of people who are not you. All guns are manufactured such that they can kill, but I do not believe that all guns are manufactured such that it is intended that they will kill. You ignore the proximate cause of killing - murderers - in favor of shifting the blame to some rather more remote actor that offends you more than the actual killers, apparently. You might as well label Boeing as evil based on the fact that fanatical madmen chose to fly planes into buildings - the logic is essentially the same, whereby we blame someone perceived to have facilitated evil rather than the actual perpetrators themselves.
Gun manufacturers profit from death. Profiting from death has a certain tinge of evil, don't you think?
Morticians profit from death, so they must also be evil. Emergency room doctors profit from pain and suffering - they must be evil too, albeit less so than morticians, I guess...
That would be against the Right Wing Conspiracy- which aims to keep kids illiterate and stupid so that they will vote pro-life and against their own financial interests.
Well, if you look at the record of political contributions by the NEA and the AFT, it seems pretty clear that putting the Left in charge of the public schools for a few decades is the best way to get illiterate and stupid kids like you have now.
There's your fair and balanced moment for the day - if the mods are so inclined, we both ought to wind up modded offtopic;)
Well, yeah. And while we're at it, who's funding the rebel forces in Star Wars? We're not seriously supposed to believe that X-Wings come free, are we?
And that site will be up how many milliseconds before the first take-down notices arrive?
Based on what? If I notice that both Wal Mart and K-Mart trucks are driving out of the same lightbulb factory, what exactly are they going to point to in the law that would prevent me from sharing that information with others?
You end up having to get really close to the TV to use the PDA (or cellphone) based remote, and at that point you can just stick your arm out and use the buttons.
Indeed. It is "control", but it's not especially "remote" - I played around with a Palm III way back when, trying to get it to control the TV/cable box/etc. I finally gave up when I realized that the thing would never ever work at distances greater than six inches from the television.
...but this is research and the point is to do something new.
No, the point is to solve some problem that humans want/need solved, in which case elegant non-solutions are decidedly inferior to inelegant, brute-force solutions. Sorry if it offends your sense of aesthetics, but if the idea is to put these things out into the public so that they can do things for us, which is what the lead researcher claims to be interested in, then it hardly seems unreasonable to insure that they do, in fact, perform the tasks set out for them. What's good is a robot librarian that can't find a given book 20% of the time?
Right, exactly, but either way, it's very likely to be more efficient if you slightly modify the enviroment to better fit the robot than if you try to fit the robot into an environment built exclusively for humans - it's not human, and you're better off playing to its strengths and weaknesses than you are in trying to get it to be a human.
It shines when a book hasn't been taken out in years/decades and it's hidden far away where people seldom visit and is not open to the public.
Well, yeah, but those books have barcodes too - however they got the first barcodes on them, that's how you put barcodes/RFID tags on the spine as well. Obviously, it takes an investment of some time, but I'm suggesting that the investment is worth the payoff, especially if we get a chance to sit down and see just how reliably this OCR robot can actually find a given book.
Somewhat OT, but it seems to me that RFID has a potential ancillary benefit as well - simple inventory control. You can use the same RFID tags that the robot uses for a loss-prevention system, and anyone who's worked in or with libraries knows very well that theft is a major problem in libraries. Adding RFID might very well help cut down on theft significantly
Slashdot Mirror
It doesn't have to be a perfect analogy to illustrate the point at hand. If you prefer, you can cast your eyes down to see my take on the blue-ink business analogy ;)
I think it's fairly similar to the handedness example, insofar as it has a disparate impact on the players in the market - it may be "fair" in the sense that it applies to everyone, but it really only has an impact on one participant. To borrow your later example, if everyone in your town already writes double-spaced with blue ink anyway, a law requiring it makes no difference to you - you just go on doing what you've been doing all along, and it's all good for you. If, however, I move into town, and I'm accustomed to typing all my paperwork, I'm the only one who will have to change my behavior, and I'm the only one who will be inconvenienced by such a law, despite the fact that it ostensibly applies to everyone equally.
Perhaps you are familiar with Anatole France and his observation that the law, in all its majestic equality, forbids the rich and the poor from stealing bread and sleeping under bridges. Who do you supposed is actually affected by laws like that - the rich, or the poor?
Anyway, the point is that a law can be neutral on its face, and yet have wildly disparate impacts upon the various people it might apply to. More specifically, the law can be composed of perfectly neutral language, and still only affect Wal Mart.
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By that logic, a law that bans writing with your left hand is fair because it applies to everyone. We can simply advise left-handed people that they "need to create a new strategy" for writing....
Dunno. For all I know, they haven't tried there yet - google is unrevealing about Wal Mart's activities in the Netherlands.
I don't know how many Wal Mart branded stores they have there, but they do own this - notice the logo in the upper left ;)
Well, yes, I did, as has anyone who's devoted more than a moment's thought to the issue. I'm sure that's exactly why those laws are in place, but let's not kid ourselves about why Wal Mart has had problems in Germany - it's not because their Teutonic competition is somehow more capable than retailers elsewhere. They may very well be more competitive than Wal Mart, all else being equal, but all else isn't equal, in the sense that the laws are structured in such a way as to prevent Wal Mart from replicating some of the key components of its success elsewhere. Whether Germans want it that way or not is neither here nor there - that's how it is, and that's what's preventing them from being as successful there as they are elsewhere, not the abilities of their competitors.
A) German labor laws make it difficult for Wal Mart to build and employ their workforce in the same way they do outside of Germany;
B) German zoning laws make it difficult for Wal Mart to build the sort of big-box stores that they do outside of Germany;
C) German pricing laws make it difficult for Wal Mart to discount their goods as deeply as they do outside of Germany;
D) Don't kid yourself about why Wal Mart has had a tough time in Germany - it has nothing at all to do with how clever their competition is, and everything to do with how the deck is stacked against them from the get-go. Take off the shackles by changing the laws, and I guarantee you'll see just how formidable they can be, even in Germany.
Actually, I think we got a sneak preview of that new look about an hour ago - half the articles on the front page were titled "Index:"...
What the hell fun is that?
--------------
You raise a number of interesting points - unfortunately, I doubt I'll have a chance to address them until another time in the (semi-)near future. Oh well - such is life ;)
Try this...
In the immortal words of Archie Bunker, would you feel better if they had been pushed out of windows?
The fact that someone died is not prima facie evidence of an immoral act - not to put too fine of a point on it, but we all die sooner or later. Instead, the circumstances illuminate the morality or immorality of the situation. Is a person who uses a gun to kill in self-defense, is that person someone who perpetrates evil?
I do not think you are in a position to testify to the "intent" of people who are not you. All guns are manufactured such that they can kill, but I do not believe that all guns are manufactured such that it is intended that they will kill. You ignore the proximate cause of killing - murderers - in favor of shifting the blame to some rather more remote actor that offends you more than the actual killers, apparently. You might as well label Boeing as evil based on the fact that fanatical madmen chose to fly planes into buildings - the logic is essentially the same, whereby we blame someone perceived to have facilitated evil rather than the actual perpetrators themselves.
Morticians profit from death, so they must also be evil. Emergency room doctors profit from pain and suffering - they must be evil too, albeit less so than morticians, I guess...
Well, if you look at the record of political contributions by the NEA and the AFT, it seems pretty clear that putting the Left in charge of the public schools for a few decades is the best way to get illiterate and stupid kids like you have now.
There's your fair and balanced moment for the day - if the mods are so inclined, we both ought to wind up modded offtopic ;)
There you go - stop paying and let them come repo the thing. Problem solved ;)
Its really about dubya trying to hide anything that shows what a dumbass he is.
Everybody licensed stuff from Xerox, including Microsoft.
Based on what? If I notice that both Wal Mart and K-Mart trucks are driving out of the same lightbulb factory, what exactly are they going to point to in the law that would prevent me from sharing that information with others?
Indeed. It is "control", but it's not especially "remote" - I played around with a Palm III way back when, trying to get it to control the TV/cable box/etc. I finally gave up when I realized that the thing would never ever work at distances greater than six inches from the television.
Considering the silliness of campaign season, I'm having trouble seeing this as a bad thing. I may have to buy one myself now...
No, the point is to solve some problem that humans want/need solved, in which case elegant non-solutions are decidedly inferior to inelegant, brute-force solutions. Sorry if it offends your sense of aesthetics, but if the idea is to put these things out into the public so that they can do things for us, which is what the lead researcher claims to be interested in, then it hardly seems unreasonable to insure that they do, in fact, perform the tasks set out for them. What's good is a robot librarian that can't find a given book 20% of the time?
Right, exactly, but either way, it's very likely to be more efficient if you slightly modify the enviroment to better fit the robot than if you try to fit the robot into an environment built exclusively for humans - it's not human, and you're better off playing to its strengths and weaknesses than you are in trying to get it to be a human.
Well, yeah, but those books have barcodes too - however they got the first barcodes on them, that's how you put barcodes/RFID tags on the spine as well. Obviously, it takes an investment of some time, but I'm suggesting that the investment is worth the payoff, especially if we get a chance to sit down and see just how reliably this OCR robot can actually find a given book.
Somewhat OT, but it seems to me that RFID has a potential ancillary benefit as well - simple inventory control. You can use the same RFID tags that the robot uses for a loss-prevention system, and anyone who's worked in or with libraries knows very well that theft is a major problem in libraries. Adding RFID might very well help cut down on theft significantly