If you are being held on suspicion of the preparation, instigation or commission of a terrorist act [note: no terrorist act need have taken place] under section 40 of the Terrorism Act 2000 the police can waive your right to a phone call to prevent you from alerting your fellow terrorists who may then be able to take evasive action of some kind. At least that was my understanding from what the police said.
Under present laws, eg. Terrorism Act 2000, people can be held incognito for up to 30 days. In other words, you just disappear. People think you are dead. They would most likely call the police. This only happens to terrorists, of course. Right?
Well, actually it happened to me. 36 hours inside. For two nights my girlfriend thought I was dead. She was indescribably upset about it. This is how it goes. What did I do? I took some photographs in the centre (yes, this is the correct way of spelling "center") of town with my mobile phone and some dork behind one of those ridiculous cameras thought I was taking a picture of a manhole cover which could be used for terrorist activities.
Thanks OneIfByLan,
That's a fine speech and I enjoyed it.
Now then, I once made a similar speech myself, less eloquently, on a board where my speech was being restrained, tendentiously, I thought. The reply from a contributor was along the lines of, "it's their board they can do what they want. If you don't like it you are free to start your own board. That's as much freedom as you need. It's governments that are bound by freedom of speech rules, not private entities.
I like your position better. What should I have said?
Yes. It appears to me to limit the choice of the customer.
I cannot see how this can be construed as an example of a free market in operation.
Surely what is going on here is that the dominant OS producer and the main retailers are in collusion to prevent the customer from having the choice which is the very essence of a free market.
When we stop and ask what is the basis of the legitimation of Microsoft's vast wealth and market power we are invariably told by free market enthusiasts that it comes down to their success on the free market. What is the free market? Well, each member of society is free to choose what he wants. What he chooses, given freedom, just is what he prefers. So long as the market remains free, the business which most efficiently satisfies consumer preference will succeed. In this way, the free market assures the most efficient distribution of resources and rewards those who satisfy consumer demand.
But in this case it seems very clear that resources are not being most efficiently distributed; the market is not free, but rather huge political and monopoly power is being used to distort the competitiveness of the market, misinform the consumer and deny him the choice upon which the very existence of his preference is predicated.
A defense of the free market theory might suggest that in the long run this MS strategy will fail. Perhaps, as some have suggested, this will open the way for a new entrant to compete with MS and the incumbent retailers for the demand for ULCPCs with growning specs and OSS. That may yet be, but not if history is any judge. From the outset MS has used information assymmetry and brand marketing to persuade people to buy what, left to their own devices, they would not. The result has been a great diminution in the legitimate public interest for the benefit of private profit. The market, so far, does not seem to have done what it says on the tin.
An alternative defense might be that this collusion and brand marketing and perhaps even the use of monopoly power are themselves features of a free market. After all, why should the government regulate these deals. Traders should be free to enter into them. And in the long run if the incumbent does not satisfy demand he will be beaten by a new entrant who does.
The problem with this very attractive idea, however, is that it shows little sign of happening in practice. Contrariwise, what I see are new entrants undercutting the competition on price initially in while still trying to establish their brand reputation, but subsequently recognizing their common interest with the competition once that reputation is established. After all, in a classic prisoner's dilemma, why hurt yourself when you can all be so well-off together. Hence, once established, oligopoly prevails, even with multiple "competitors". How else can you explain retailers and OEMs agreeing to this contract?
I conclude that the problem here is not Microsoft per se, but the system of state-corporate capitalism in which we choose to live and which gives corporations this huge power over our lives. If the market were genuinely free Microsoft would soon collapse, and most of the rest of the economy with it. Instead, banks must be bailed out, public investment handed over for private profit, and the likes of Microsoft allowed to use contingent political and economic influence evade court rulings, externalize their costs, ruthlessly undermine the competition from free software and rob the public of its freedom.
It seems to me this could be used for vehicle pooling to save money for people who want to share rides, if the feedback mechanism is extended.
People who are making a long journey on their own in a car, or who make a regular journey, can key in it's start and end co-ordinates and say when they are going and whether it is a one-off or a regular journey. Someone who is looking for a ride can do the same, or just say where he wants to go to right now. Then the system can match the two and alert the willing driver to the presence of someone nearby who would like a ride to somewhere along the route they are taking. This way they could meet up and share costs, giving people without cars more freedom to travel at reduced cost, giving drivers who are spending increasing amounts on gasoline and road or bridge tolls some means of recouping their costs, and giving people who make regular journeys to work some way of connecting and sharing rides with fellow commuters.
There are existing ride sharing websites, but they lack the possibility for spontaneity that something like this might acquire once a critical mass of participants become involved.
This could be a whole new way for people to share rides, or even the return of hitch-hiking for the satellite age.
And is reading the link in the article really so much harder than reading an entire manual and all the attendant manuals upon which understanding it depends?
Some commentators say that this arrogance can be found everywhere and that it's the same across the board. But so far as I know the open source community is the originator of the use of "snob" as an term of merit. Perhaps it's starting to go out of fashion now, but freequently on newsgroups I used to encounter people happy to describe themselves as linux snobs. In doing so they acknowledged that perhaps snobbery is not a good thing, but in the case of linux it was OK because Linux really was a superior OS and the snobbery entailed promoting linux as intrinsically better in some normative sense.
No one argues that windows is better for some deep religious reason. If it's better, they say it's better for some down-to-earth practical reason to do with meeting their direct needs. Linux, it can be argued, is better for just those same kinds of reason. And if that is the case, then there is every reason to be happy with it and to use it, but none to look down on those who don't. The looking down derives from some sense of moral superiority in both the use and the user of the software. Does such moral superiority really exist in a piece of software, in what is, after all, a machine, a tool designed for some perfectly mundane purpose?
I doubt it. And I doubt that _this_ kind of superiority, deriving as it does from the sense of moral superiority intrinsic to the software itself, can really be said to belong to the much more populous world of windows. "This may be", I hear you say, "but that's because Windows is a commercial product lacking any higher ideals of freedom or communal effort or popular control. There really is nothing idealistic about Windows or any other commercial product. It is just there to be bought or not as people see fit." But if this is the case, are we to conclude that the linux snob and the normative sense in which linux is seen as "better" than other OS's are inextricably linked? And does it mean that the snobbery the article criticizes will always be a part of the linux experience as long as it is seen to be this quasi-religion seated a little closer to the gods.
At the very least, opponents of this view have to answer how "I am a linux snob", said apparently without much sense of irony or shame, can have become such a familiar refrain in linux or open source discussion groups in particular, but without much evidence of its correlate appearing in the parallel commercial universe, if snobbery and its attendant arrogance are equally distributed between products and all avenues of life.
Slashdot Mirror
Insightful?
If you are being held on suspicion of the preparation, instigation or commission of a terrorist act [note: no terrorist act need have taken place] under section 40 of the Terrorism Act 2000 the police can waive your right to a phone call to prevent you from alerting your fellow terrorists who may then be able to take evasive action of some kind. At least that was my understanding from what the police said.
No news yet. The government still haven't used up their three months response time. Thanks for asking. We'll see.
Under present laws, eg. Terrorism Act 2000, people can be held incognito for up to 30 days. In other words, you just disappear. People think you are dead. They would most likely call the police. This only happens to terrorists, of course. Right?
Well, actually it happened to me. 36 hours inside. For two nights my girlfriend thought I was dead. She was indescribably upset about it. This is how it goes. What did I do? I took some photographs in the centre (yes, this is the correct way of spelling "center") of town with my mobile phone and some dork behind one of those ridiculous cameras thought I was taking a picture of a manhole cover which could be used for terrorist activities.
I'm not making this up: http://link.brightcove.com/services/link/bcpid1213934526/bctid5172505001
Thanks OneIfByLan, That's a fine speech and I enjoyed it. Now then, I once made a similar speech myself, less eloquently, on a board where my speech was being restrained, tendentiously, I thought. The reply from a contributor was along the lines of, "it's their board they can do what they want. If you don't like it you are free to start your own board. That's as much freedom as you need. It's governments that are bound by freedom of speech rules, not private entities. I like your position better. What should I have said?
I think you're on to something. It's called McCommunism: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/naomi-klein/the-olympics-unveiling-po_b_117403.html
Honesty is not a marketable commodity.
Yes. It appears to me to limit the choice of the customer.
I cannot see how this can be construed as an example of a free market in operation.
Surely what is going on here is that the dominant OS producer and the main retailers are in collusion to prevent the customer from having the choice which is the very essence of a free market.
When we stop and ask what is the basis of the legitimation of Microsoft's vast wealth and market power we are invariably told by free market enthusiasts that it comes down to their success on the free market. What is the free market? Well, each member of society is free to choose what he wants. What he chooses, given freedom, just is what he prefers. So long as the market remains free, the business which most efficiently satisfies consumer preference will succeed. In this way, the free market assures the most efficient distribution of resources and rewards those who satisfy consumer demand.
But in this case it seems very clear that resources are not being most efficiently distributed; the market is not free, but rather huge political and monopoly power is being used to distort the competitiveness of the market, misinform the consumer and deny him the choice upon which the very existence of his preference is predicated.
A defense of the free market theory might suggest that in the long run this MS strategy will fail. Perhaps, as some have suggested, this will open the way for a new entrant to compete with MS and the incumbent retailers for the demand for ULCPCs with growning specs and OSS. That may yet be, but not if history is any judge. From the outset MS has used information assymmetry and brand marketing to persuade people to buy what, left to their own devices, they would not. The result has been a great diminution in the legitimate public interest for the benefit of private profit. The market, so far, does not seem to have done what it says on the tin.
An alternative defense might be that this collusion and brand marketing and perhaps even the use of monopoly power are themselves features of a free market. After all, why should the government regulate these deals. Traders should be free to enter into them. And in the long run if the incumbent does not satisfy demand he will be beaten by a new entrant who does.
The problem with this very attractive idea, however, is that it shows little sign of happening in practice. Contrariwise, what I see are new entrants undercutting the competition on price initially in while still trying to establish their brand reputation, but subsequently recognizing their common interest with the competition once that reputation is established. After all, in a classic prisoner's dilemma, why hurt yourself when you can all be so well-off together. Hence, once established, oligopoly prevails, even with multiple "competitors". How else can you explain retailers and OEMs agreeing to this contract?
I conclude that the problem here is not Microsoft per se, but the system of state-corporate capitalism in which we choose to live and which gives corporations this huge power over our lives. If the market were genuinely free Microsoft would soon collapse, and most of the rest of the economy with it. Instead, banks must be bailed out, public investment handed over for private profit, and the likes of Microsoft allowed to use contingent political and economic influence evade court rulings, externalize their costs, ruthlessly undermine the competition from free software and rob the public of its freedom.
Rant over. Thanks for reading.
It seems to me this could be used for vehicle pooling to save money for people who want to share rides, if the feedback mechanism is extended.
People who are making a long journey on their own in a car, or who make a regular journey, can key in it's start and end co-ordinates and say when they are going and whether it is a one-off or a regular journey. Someone who is looking for a ride can do the same, or just say where he wants to go to right now. Then the system can match the two and alert the willing driver to the presence of someone nearby who would like a ride to somewhere along the route they are taking. This way they could meet up and share costs, giving people without cars more freedom to travel at reduced cost, giving drivers who are spending increasing amounts on gasoline and road or bridge tolls some means of recouping their costs, and giving people who make regular journeys to work some way of connecting and sharing rides with fellow commuters.
There are existing ride sharing websites, but they lack the possibility for spontaneity that something like this might acquire once a critical mass of participants become involved.
This could be a whole new way for people to share rides, or even the return of hitch-hiking for the satellite age.
And is reading the link in the article really so much harder than reading an entire manual and all the attendant manuals upon which understanding it depends?
Doofus! Read the fine article.
Some commentators say that this arrogance can be found everywhere and that it's the same across the board. But so far as I know the open source community is the originator of the use of "snob" as an term of merit. Perhaps it's starting to go out of fashion now, but freequently on newsgroups I used to encounter people happy to describe themselves as linux snobs. In doing so they acknowledged that perhaps snobbery is not a good thing, but in the case of linux it was OK because Linux really was a superior OS and the snobbery entailed promoting linux as intrinsically better in some normative sense.
No one argues that windows is better for some deep religious reason. If it's better, they say it's better for some down-to-earth practical reason to do with meeting their direct needs. Linux, it can be argued, is better for just those same kinds of reason. And if that is the case, then there is every reason to be happy with it and to use it, but none to look down on those who don't. The looking down derives from some sense of moral superiority in both the use and the user of the software. Does such moral superiority really exist in a piece of software, in what is, after all, a machine, a tool designed for some perfectly mundane purpose?
I doubt it. And I doubt that _this_ kind of superiority, deriving as it does from the sense of moral superiority intrinsic to the software itself, can really be said to belong to the much more populous world of windows. "This may be", I hear you say, "but that's because Windows is a commercial product lacking any higher ideals of freedom or communal effort or popular control. There really is nothing idealistic about Windows or any other commercial product. It is just there to be bought or not as people see fit." But if this is the case, are we to conclude that the linux snob and the normative sense in which linux is seen as "better" than other OS's are inextricably linked? And does it mean that the snobbery the article criticizes will always be a part of the linux experience as long as it is seen to be this quasi-religion seated a little closer to the gods.
At the very least, opponents of this view have to answer how "I am a linux snob", said apparently without much sense of irony or shame, can have become such a familiar refrain in linux or open source discussion groups in particular, but without much evidence of its correlate appearing in the parallel commercial universe, if snobbery and its attendant arrogance are equally distributed between products and all avenues of life.