I don't know about how much code rms has written recently, but other than that, it sure looks factual to me.
Oh yeah? Then you should learn some history - the rebuttals in the talkback section of the Forbes article make a good starting point.
I mean, the very first sentence of the article is already utterly wrong,
The free Linux operating system set off one of the biggest revolutions in the history of computing when it leapt from the fingertips of a Finnish college kid named Linus Torvalds 15 years ago.
What does the author try to say here? That a complete "Linux" distribution (GNU tools, Linux kernel, X, Gnome/KDE, etc.) "leapt" from Torvald's fingertips? That's absolute nonsense. Or does he mean that Linux proper (the kernel) leapt? Well, I guess Linux 0.01 did not exactly leap, and it certainly did not cause a revolution - it was a very basic kernel that was pretty worthless without a userland, which incidentally was GNU. And so on, however you turn it the author makes no sense. (Ironically the author's confusion emphasizes why RMS's stance on calling the OS "GNU/Linux" is important.)
And the article gets worse from there, spare me a line-by-line rebuttal (already done in the Forbes talkbacks.)
Let me start with saying that I didn't necessarily dispute that an individual has more control over his/her economic future in the US than in most other places. I just disputed that this can be deduced from the fact that most rich americans are first generation.
That being said:
I haven't read the article (login required) and "the book" (which book?), but I have a few objections to what you said.
First, frugality. I'm sure that has an effect, but why this would be bigger in the US than anywhere else I cannot see. Plus, while frugality will pay off under specific circumstances (possibly the majority), there are many business endeavors where it is bad for you. Dunno what this says about the control one has, but my gut feeling is again that this still does not mean that hard working equals rich any more in the US than in other places.
"We are welding contractors, auctioneers, rice farmers, owners of mobile-home parks, pest controllers, coin and stamp dealers, and paving contractors." indicates that it's not some special, rare stroke of luck. It's just the right to be in business for yourself.
There exist however many hard working rice farmers and pest controllers that are not rich. Again, I am not completely convinced.
Chance events happen to everyone, good and bad. The parents question was "You can exercise greater control over your socioeconomic standing? Honestly?". Yes, you can have greater control, probably better called influence. But, in a very real sense, you are right, chance happens, so you do not, by the strength of your will, get control as in absolute control.
Appreciated. An honest question: what about failure? Don't you have to take into account when juding about control over your life that in Europe there is a social safety net? If in the US your business goes wrong in spite of hard work and other good qualities you have (say, you had no health insurance and got sick), what about the influence over your life then?
The huge decrease in corporate taxes mainly over the last 20 years is a fact, like it or not. In any case it makes little sense to say "spending on immigrants is the ruin of the European social security systems" when at the same time huge parts of the income of these systems disappear. Saying so does not make one opposed to globalization.
Which only means that the US system creates more opportunities to become rich. However these opportunities can be distributed rather randomly, in which case the individual's power to will him/herself into a higher socioeconomic class (i.e., control) is not affected.
waiting for years on the NHS, or getting an infection whilst in hospital and dying because they're not cleaned properly?
What are you talking about? European clinics are in general just as good as in the US with the possible exception of some very expensive, very specialized treatments (which land you in the gutter if you need them in the US anyway, private insurance or not.)
What many US people posting here seem to miss is that private health insurance is an option in Europe too. If you are not happy with what the state system provides, you can add on top whatever you want, and many employers offer packages. At the same time if you can't afford that, you get decent care anyway. I see this as a good thing.
all of the social services that have made them so attractive for so long are now buckling under the strain of un-restrained immigration
Common disinformation. In fact however they are buckling because due to globalization the companies "opt out" of paying taxes at all, leaving the whole system on the shoulders of their employees.
doesn't this constitute a blatant violation via reverse-engineering of the Fairplay DRM?
I'm certainly not a lawyer, and I quite likely misunderstand something here, but page 5 of the DMCA contains this:
2. Reverse engineering (section 1201(f)). This exception permits
circumvention, and the development of technological means for such
circumvention, by a person who has lawfully obtained a right to use a
copy of a computer program for the sole purpose of identifying and
analyzing elements of the program necessary to achieve interoperability
with other programs, to the extent that such acts are permitted under
copyright law.
the state TV program is IMHO not a single bit better than the rest, of course..
Come on now! I will easily agree that the quality has deteriorated over the years, largely under pressure by the private stations to compete for the lowest common denominator ("Unterschichtsfernsehen"). But if you don't think RTL/SAT1/etc. are much worse you haven't watched them in a while.
that they have insulated themselves from public or governmental control
Note that after the Third Reich they were designed this way to prevent governmental control. That's also why there are two independent ones. This is a Good Thing.
Simply not true. The Gamecube was not far behind the Xbox in terms of delivered graphic quality (forget artificial poly counts), and both were significantly better than the PS2. The Wii specs are as of yet still unknown (most people consider the "leaked" specs not very credible) and Wii is generally believed to be 2 - 3 times as fast as the GC. Therefore, the Wii is not at all "comparable to a first-gen Xbox".
Ok, I misunderstood your argument at least partly I think. Still, based on my intuition I don't believe there is a correlation. Of course intuition is a bad guide in this, but I'd need more data to be convinced. Of course, correlation is not causation anyway.
Incidentally, how do you figure that this never happens in Europe? You certainly must be omitting the UK, which in some ways is ahead of the US in its march towards totalitarianism (ubiquitous monitoring of peaceful citizens, near-prohibition on self-defense).
I was talking about stupid school policies and general overprotection of kids, since I think that was what the whole thing was about. If this happens in the UK while the UK at the same time becomes more like the US, I would think this is a strong argument that there are other forces at work than the size of government.
If you actually correlate government size/responsibilities with overprotection of kids, I think you will come to very different conclusions. (Hint: this stuff happens in the US and never in Europe)
time opening up notepad in XP as opposed to your favorite note editor in Linux (gedit in gnome, kate in kde)
That's just stupid. Since when can Notepad do syntax highlighting and all the other stuff kate/gedit can do? Comparing applications with completely different feature sets is not valid.
Do the same thing for FireFox. Do the same thing for Open Office.
Everybody knew or should have known that the SCO that claimed ownership over part of linux was a different company form the old SCO you are talking about.
Slashdot Mirror
Oh yeah? Then you should learn some history - the rebuttals in the talkback section of the Forbes article make a good starting point.
I mean, the very first sentence of the article is already utterly wrong, What does the author try to say here? That a complete "Linux" distribution (GNU tools, Linux kernel, X, Gnome/KDE, etc.) "leapt" from Torvald's fingertips? That's absolute nonsense. Or does he mean that Linux proper (the kernel) leapt? Well, I guess Linux 0.01 did not exactly leap, and it certainly did not cause a revolution - it was a very basic kernel that was pretty worthless without a userland, which incidentally was GNU. And so on, however you turn it the author makes no sense. (Ironically the author's confusion emphasizes why RMS's stance on calling the OS "GNU/Linux" is important.)
And the article gets worse from there, spare me a line-by-line rebuttal (already done in the Forbes talkbacks.)
You have good points, I appreciate you took the time. And sorry for having said "control" instead of "influence" again, it was not on purpose :)
That being said:
I haven't read the article (login required) and "the book" (which book?), but I have a few objections to what you said.
First, frugality. I'm sure that has an effect, but why this would be bigger in the US than anywhere else I cannot see. Plus, while frugality will pay off under specific circumstances (possibly the majority), there are many business endeavors where it is bad for you. Dunno what this says about the control one has, but my gut feeling is again that this still does not mean that hard working equals rich any more in the US than in other places.
There exist however many hard working rice farmers and pest controllers that are not rich. Again, I am not completely convinced.
Appreciated. An honest question: what about failure? Don't you have to take into account when juding about control over your life that in Europe there is a social safety net? If in the US your business goes wrong in spite of hard work and other good qualities you have (say, you had no health insurance and got sick), what about the influence over your life then?
The parent poster saidYou need to adress this argument. "After the employees flee", Oracle certainly is not getting "experienced redhat linux *people*".
If a hundred guys work their asses off and one gets rich, it is used as a proof that hard work pays off. The other 99 are conveniently forgotten.
The huge decrease in corporate taxes mainly over the last 20 years is a fact, like it or not. In any case it makes little sense to say "spending on immigrants is the ruin of the European social security systems" when at the same time huge parts of the income of these systems disappear. Saying so does not make one opposed to globalization.
Which only means that the US system creates more opportunities to become rich. However these opportunities can be distributed rather randomly, in which case the individual's power to will him/herself into a higher socioeconomic class (i.e., control) is not affected.
waiting for years on the NHS, or getting an infection whilst in hospital and dying because they're not cleaned properly?
What are you talking about? European clinics are in general just as good as in the US with the possible exception of some very expensive, very specialized treatments (which land you in the gutter if you need them in the US anyway, private insurance or not.)
What many US people posting here seem to miss is that private health insurance is an option in Europe too. If you are not happy with what the state system provides, you can add on top whatever you want, and many employers offer packages. At the same time if you can't afford that, you get decent care anyway. I see this as a good thing.
Why should the dutch have 50% africans / arabs in their country? It wasnt like that in the past, why now?
Sucks not to have stayed home in the first place, huh?
all of the social services that have made them so attractive for so long are now buckling under the strain of un-restrained immigration
Common disinformation. In fact however they are buckling because due to globalization the companies "opt out" of paying taxes at all, leaving the whole system on the shoulders of their employees.
I'm certainly not a lawyer, and I quite likely misunderstand something here, but page 5 of the DMCA contains this:
I assume you meant this as a reply to someone else, because AFAICT we are on the same side here.
standard CD is the most reliable audio format
;)
Nope, vinyl. You only need a needle stuck through a sheet of paper
the state TV program is IMHO not a single bit better than the rest, of course..
Come on now! I will easily agree that the quality has deteriorated over the years, largely under pressure by the private stations to compete for the lowest common denominator ("Unterschichtsfernsehen"). But if you don't think RTL/SAT1/etc. are much worse you haven't watched them in a while.
that they have insulated themselves from public or governmental control
Note that after the Third Reich they were designed this way to prevent governmental control. That's also why there are two independent ones. This is a Good Thing.
Good luck with your absolute belief in the state.
fingerprints are something you leave behind on everything you touch anyways ... so are they not public?
Do you leave a name tag with them?
If you touch anything that is used in a crime, they will be right at your doorstep. This is why "I have nothing to hide" does not work.
The hardware is comparable to a first-gen Xbox
Simply not true. The Gamecube was not far behind the Xbox in terms of delivered graphic quality (forget artificial poly counts), and both were significantly better than the PS2. The Wii specs are as of yet still unknown (most people consider the "leaked" specs not very credible) and Wii is generally believed to be 2 - 3 times as fast as the GC. Therefore, the Wii is not at all "comparable to a first-gen Xbox".
Ok, I misunderstood your argument at least partly I think. Still, based on my intuition I don't believe there is a correlation. Of course intuition is a bad guide in this, but I'd need more data to be convinced. Of course, correlation is not causation anyway.
Incidentally, how do you figure that this never happens in Europe? You certainly must be omitting the UK, which in some ways is ahead of the US in its march towards totalitarianism (ubiquitous monitoring of peaceful citizens, near-prohibition on self-defense).
I was talking about stupid school policies and general overprotection of kids, since I think that was what the whole thing was about. If this happens in the UK while the UK at the same time becomes more like the US, I would think this is a strong argument that there are other forces at work than the size of government.
This is the inevitable result of big government
If you actually correlate government size/responsibilities with overprotection of kids, I think you will come to very different conclusions. (Hint: this stuff happens in the US and never in Europe)
time opening up notepad in XP as opposed to your favorite note editor in Linux (gedit in gnome, kate in kde)
That's just stupid. Since when can Notepad do syntax highlighting and all the other stuff kate/gedit can do? Comparing applications with completely different feature sets is not valid.
Do the same thing for FireFox. Do the same thing for Open Office.
Approx the same for me on Win and Ubuntu.
Just out of interest, what qualifies as a "crapload of vacation time" in the US? Thanks in advance.
AC: Is the world suffering from over-population already?
No it isn't. It is suffering from unfair distribution.
Everybody knew or should have known that the SCO that claimed ownership over part of linux was a different company form the old SCO you are talking about.