Oh, absolutely. I have a hard time believing this will perform better than currently existing *good* NICs, so the price may be excessive. But I have no problem believing it will outperform the POS NICs that are most common, even in fairly high-end gaming rigs.
I suspect it will produce a noticeable improvement in situations where your computer is running heavily loaded. If you're playing a game that keeps your cpu pegged or near most of the time, your latency will be noticeably higher because of that (using the typical network card, which is a bit 'winmodemish' in that it's relying on the cpu to do much of its work.) So having a card that does all the network processing itself, without relying on the CPU, would avoid that slowdown.
Re:class action lawsuit in the works?
on
Verizon Can't Do Math
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· Score: 3, Interesting
These guys work in an environment where *every word* they say on the phone is scripted and approved by management. So of course it's deliberate.
The thing is, he's tried, repeatedly, to get them to quote what they actually charge. They refuse, and this appears to be a trained response. They quote one rate, then charge 100 times that rate, and refuse to admit there's a difference.
If someone else tried to do that to them, they wouldn't stand for it for a moment, and you know it.
You don't have to be a specialist to see this kind of crap, either. I know this society seems to steer towards an ant-like specialisation, and people are supposed to be absolutely ignorant about everything outside their field, but hollywood writers routinely show abject igorance of things like basic physics to the point where it seems miraculous these people can get through a day without winning a darwin award. And they're lucky if their gaffes turn out to be funny - they're very often just stupid, and destroy the suspension of disbelief necessary to the enjoyment of fiction in anyone not similarly brain dead.
I agree. Sad thing for the US, when freaking Europe has a healthier market, but it's true. Cell phone service in Europe is so much better than here it's not even in the same class. The only competition in this market in the US seems to be for who can come up with the most insulting commercials.
If you're asking if I hold copyright on code in the linux kernel, the answer would be no, sorry.
If there's one thing the SCaldera saga should have taught you, it's that a civil suit is never cheap, quick, or simple.
Suing a distro for distributing the combined work might be about as close as they get, but it would also be a case of fighting inside the community while the real culprits watch and laugh.
Suing the real culprits would be very expensive and messy. Honestly, I think the money that would take could be better spent other places. The FSF, after all the years and all they've accomplished, is still running on a shoestring. Pro Bono lawyers are great, but their hours are limited.
Oh, and it's a good thing to remember, btw, that copyright is not like trademark. You don't have to enforce it or lose it. You *do* have to make an attempt to mitigate damages, but if kernel developers inform Nvidia they believe they are violating their copyright and are ignored, they have no obligation, best I can read the law, to actually sue in order to preserve their claims, and even if they completely ignore Nvidia that doesn't provide a defense to the next infringer.
Crossing the street is dangerous too.
The danger of the FSF being taken over by aliens is almost infinitely less likely than the danger of more exploits being found in any license one chooses.
Ok, I'm gunna have to stop you right there. They don't obey their obligations on the shim. Specifically the shim (which I call, the wrapper) is not under the GPL
I apologise if my information is incorrect. I thought it was.
Even without such, Ubuntu should not include this stuff, because it takes away your freedom. You might not care about that
I care very much about that, actually. And I don't think I've said anything from which you could reasonably infer otherwise.
Of course, in the case of NVIDIA, who have just shown outright contempt for the GPL, I'd be willing to bend that ideal and recommend that kernel developers sue for damages.
I almost agree with you. Show me a good shot at Nvidia and I'll take it. But suing them for what they're doing now would, I think, be extremely expensive first off. Because, unlike the cases that have been prosecuted so far, this is not a clear, undeniable violation. It's not going out on summary judgement, it would take a full trial, and if you skimp on the lawyers you know the enemy wouldn't and you'll lose. It would be very expensive. And that brings up the risk - the risk of an unfavourable precedent here is probably more than it's worth.
Better to talk with distros, keep it from shipping with them, and find ways to show the end users whose fault this mess is. For now. I'm still hoping Moglen can find a way to strengthen the GPL v3 to deal with this.
Unfortunately, it wouldn't be a simple case to prosecute.
You see, Nvidia distributes two works they present as separate. A binary blob, and a 'shim' under the GPL, whose only purpose is to load their blob and link it into the kernel.
Also, Nvidia doesn't distribute the kernel.
So, while it's clearly illegal to distribute a working system using this two-part driver as part of the linux kernel, it's not quite clearly illegal to distribute just those two parts without the kernel, which is what Nvidia does.
They're exploiting a loophole in the GPL, and unfortunately, while I believe a court would probably rule against them in the end, once the entire situation was clearly explained, this would be an incredibly expensive proposition.
Suing distro makers that bundle the kernel, shim, and blob together in a usable form would be much easier, but you know what? No one really wants to sue a distro maker for trying to make their customers lives easier. That's a last resort, only if and when it becomes clear that simply talking to them won't do the trick. And that's how it should be. We're a community, and we don't and shouldn't jump to sue each other unless and until everything else has been tried and failed.
And as long as they aren't actually distributing code, they can get away with it.
The only reason they're getting away with it is because the relevant kernel developers are not suing them.
You misinterpreted the word they in that sentence, and I confess I should have written that more clearly and I inadvertently encouraged your confusion. The they above is Nvidia and co, not Ubuntu.
Look, here's how I see it, and I suspect how the kernel devs may well see it. Nvidia has found a loophole to exploit. Nvidia doesn't distribute the kernel. They do distribute a shim, which is clearly a derived work of the kernel, but they obey their obligations on the shim. The binary blob, in and of itself, is NOT clearly a derived work of the kernel, it's Nvidia's own property.
Now this doesn't solve the problem, but it shifts the act of infringement. Nvidia is not directly infringing. Anyone that ships the three parts, the kernel, the shim, and the blob, together in a useful form, IS infringing - but Nvidia has enough wiggle room to argue in court.
A distro shipping their shim+blob driver, on the other hand, is technically infringing. But they aren't doing it with malice - they're just trying to do the right thing for their customers, who really don't want to deal with all this. It's Nvidias fault, not theirs. Hence it makes sense to deal with the distros gently - even though they are the ones that are technically in violation, they aren't the ones from whom the intent to violate is coming. And free software has always been fairly gentle with compliance issues, seeking compliance rather than to punish. How much more gentle then, when dealing with a distro maker, a member of the community, that genuinely believes (though in error) that they are doing the right thing?
The kernel coders already replace a large portion of the kernel every year. If Linus wanted to go to GPLv3, he could relicense his own code (a quite small amount, at this point in time, as he's been more of a manager for years) and more importantly encourage everyone else to do the same, and announce that new contributions must be under a compatible license as well of course. After, say, 6 months, he could then identify the code that remains under GPL v2 only (likely a small amount, by this time - remember that much of the code is GPL v2 or later already, and much of what is not is from authors still working and very likely to go along with Linus' wishes) and schedule those parts to be rewritten. At the outside, it might take 2 years to complete the transition.
It would be somewhat of a pain to change, but if he wanted to do it he could definitely do it.
They don't sue Ubuntu because those guys are clearly NOT trying to circumvent the spirit of the license. It's Nvidia and their ilk that are doing that. And as long as they aren't actually distributing code, they can get away with it. Suing Ubuntu wouldn't hurt them directly, and would hurt some good people that are trying to do the right thing, so don't expect to see that happen.
What I do expect will happen, at some point, is someone with standing to sue will initiate a dialogue with them, and they'll remove the drivers. I don't think anyone is in a huge hurry about that, however, for the reasons outlined above.
I removed mail.app long ago because I couldn't convince it to quit parsing html. I can remove webkit and my system still works fine. Contrast this to a windows machine and there's a world of difference. Even on Windows 98, where it was, despite the manufacturers testimony under oath to the contrary, possible to remove IE completely, this required patching several system binaries and breaks many applications. Later versions, to the best of my knowledge, will refuse to function at all without IE.
I agree that the predatory behaviour was what got them in "trouble" (I use the word advisedly, as it doesn't seem to have caused them any real repurcussions so far - the suits have been mostly settled by giving away coupons for more of their bugware which costs them nothing) - and a large part of that predatory behaviour was locking IE into systems and doing everything possible to prevent its removal, so as to force a non-standard 'standard' on the web - the imposition of innumerable bugs and security holes on their customers was simply a side effect. But there are definitely very significant technical differences in the implementation of IE on Windows versus Safari on Mac.
No difference. You can do the same in Windows. Deleting iexplore.exe is trivial and harmless.
That's because iexplore.exe is NOT Internet Explorer. It's just a shell. You cannot remove the actual code, and the many security breaches it contains, without causing serious problems.
Phenominally well, once you control for their starting position (poorer than Ethiopia) and all the murderous interventions that have had to be weathered.
So cool, we agree! A free market needs regulation.
Well, I'm not so sure we agree. "Regulation" is normally interpreted in a way that would make that statement definitely not something I would agree with. I would say that a free market requires some mechanism of rights enforcement as a prerequisite, or to put it more simply, without freedom there is no free market.
Incidentally, this would seem to contradict most anarcho-capitalist doctrine, since there is a conceptual difficulty there - how do you have a free market for rights protection when you must have rights protection before the market can be free?
I don't think that's as a big a problem as some do, however, simply because, although our language forces us to speak of these things in a somewhat absolute fashion, in fact the reality is one of a continuum of more and less free structures rather than a binary condition. Completely unfree systems are just as mythical as completely free ones - so any system begins with some small amount of freedom which can be leveraged.
But I digress...
The real definition of a natural monopoly has to do with the marginal cost of entry into a market
And that's exactly my point. Regulation tends to raise, not lower, the cost of entry into markets. Expecting regulation to mitigate a natural tendency toward monopolisation is therefore entirely illogical - as well as contrary to history. The freer a market is, the more closely the cost of entry approximates the natural cost of entry - and making a market unfree will predictably lead to higher, not lower, costs of entry. Remember, don't let the mythical perfect become the enemy of the attainable good.
In an ideal libertarian world, from what I have seen, cases such as mislabelling of products would be handled by legal means, if the victim had the resources to pay and otherwise not at all.
Which is obviously an imperfect solution. However, you're stating that as if it automatically suffices to dismiss it. It does not. As imperfect as the solution is, it may still be the best possible solution. Particularly when you consider that in a relatively more libertarian system, the cost of rights enforcement would be lower (and drastically so,) and the resources of the victim relatively more. You're also failing to anticipate the possibility that these claims themselves would be fungible, so a victim somehow without the resources to press her claim could sell the claim immediately to someone else for prosecution. This seems a rather odd oversight, considering that even in our current system something very similar happens, with litigators who work on a contingency basis.
The market can not fairly compensate any providers of education for their services, because much of the value of an educated populace accrues to the society as a whole.
While this is true, again, you fail to articulate how any possible system could do better, or how this goes beyond being a purely conceptual flaw and becomes a practical concern. As long as people have sufficient motivation to value and pursue education, it doesn't really matter so much that there are free riders who receive secondary benefits without paying.
So far as property, I don't have any problem in seeing some truth to 'property is theft' - for some definitions of property.
Proudhon wrote not only that property is theft but also that property is impossible and even property is the foundation of liberty. This makes sense only when you realise that each statement uses a different meaning for the word property. "Property" that accrues from coërcion is theft indeed. Property that properly arises from self-ownership is the foundation of liberty, however.
To the extent a market is free, it produces the latter sort of property, and to the extent a market is unfree, it concerns itself with the application of the
It's true that the word 'freedom' has multiple sometimes contradictory usage in loose speech, but I believe I was being reasonably clear as to exactly what I'm talking about - political freedom, freedom from aggression.
Like the GPL, any legal system that sets out to promote freedom from aggression must set rules that can be described as limiting some other form of freedom - as the GPL prohibits taking away other people's rights, so must a legal system that aims at political freedom prohibit aggression.
Your examples of natural monopolies are all incorrect. Roads are not a natural monopoly - it's quite possible, and indeed common, to have many alternate routes between any given endpoints. The pseudo-monopolistic character of the current road system in the US (and other places) is a state creation as well. The use of tax money and 'eminent domain' seizures, among other things, not only created what looks like a natural monopoly there, it's also closed off the development of alternative transportation possibilities that otherwise would be competing in the same market as well. Sewers? Again, not a natural monopoly at all. It's a monopoly created by a regulatory regime, by use of eminent domain, by the prohibition of competition by state power. Every example you mention is similar.
The Market for Lemons isn't a bad paper per se, but the conclusions you seem to be drawing from it are certainly flawed. Reducing the freedom in a market makes it less, not more, able to deal with uncertain information, and your assertion that the problem is unique to a free market makes no sense really. In reality, there is no 'free market' per se, there are many markets, with varying degrees of freedom. This misunderstanding seems likely to explain several of your statements that don't seem to make any sense to me. You seem to be setting up some kind of platonic ideal of a 'free market,' arguing that it isn't perfect, and then jumping to the unwarranted conclusion that some un-named alternative system must therefore be better. In reality, no system is perfect, but the freer a market is, the better it serves the general good, while the more unfree a market is, the more it unjustly enriches those who are politically connected at the expense of the general good.
How do free markets deal with externalities at all?
I don't believe I actually said that they do, exactly, and if I did then I spoke sloppily. It would probably be more accurate to say that a system for dealing with externalities is one of the things that makes a free market possible - or that to the extent that externalities are not dealt with, the markets affected are correspondingly deficient in freedom.
. How does the free market fairly compensate the provider of public education when said education benefits society as a whole more than the individual?
I wouldn't agree that public education benefits society at all - to the contrary, it has harmed society greatly by driving a far better system out of the market. Of course, the judgement of superiority depends on point of view. The public education system is, obviously, superior from the point of view of the 'elites' that it serves and at whose behest it was instituted, but like any other unfree market, it serves those who are politically connected at the expense of the general good. And I would certainly argue that the interest of 'society' is more accurately identified with that general good, than with the the particular good of the politically connected.
How does it deal with the public bad of polution?
Again, you have this reversed, the market doesn't deal with externalities, the market depends on dealing with externalities. In this case, one way to do that would be the common law tort law system. Other systems are certainly possible as well - but that's the one I'm most familiar with as it's part of my cultural heritage. Strict liability tort would have pre
Oh, I don't disagree with that. I just get the impression that the folks making the decisions at Novell today are so totally clueless in regards to free software they didn't, and apparently still don't, grok that they have obligations here. Old-thinking suits, crazy as it is, often show that level of cluelessness in this particular regard in my experience. I theorise they have some major mental blocks that are responsible.
Either way, it's not an auspicious sign for the future of Novell. Gnu/linux is their only viable long-term hope, and they don't seem to have a clue how to run a business around that.
The problem with the soviet model in terms of productivity wasn't first generation raw industrial output, as you rightly point out. But in the long term it was incapable of efficiency, because of the calculation problem. Without a market, and barring an omniscient planner, there's simply no way to know how much of what should be produced. In the long run, this means that initial productivity winds up being used in overwhelmingly wasteful ways. You're right, early in it's history the soviet union was an economic powerhouse - but the economic system doomed it form the start to collapse.
The point is that there's a difference between moral concerns and religious or pseudo-religious taboos. It may well be possible to make a mistake of putting too much emphasis on minor differences, but it would also be a mistake to allow religious psychosis to be passed off as morality without objection as well.
No, by definition, the free market is free. But truly free markets are, indeed, rather rare. In practical terms they aren't black or white, but some shade of grey. Nonetheless, it's clear that the freer they are the better they perform in terms of serving the general good, and the more unfree they are the less well they do at that.
Natural monopoly, where the marginal cost of entry into a market is so great it precludes competition
True natural monopolies are exceptionally rare, and tend to be mooted by advancing technology rather quickly. Artificial monopolies, however, are common and can survive indefinitely.
imbalance of information, where one party knows more about the value of a transaction than the other, causing inefficient pricing
The problem with this argument is that, while there's some truth to it, all alternatives to the free market suffer from the same problem, in greater intensity. In fact, the key to the efficiency of free markets is this very issue - while they don't perfectly solve the problem, no known system can. Command economies do far worse at this - resulting eventually in starvation and economic collapse wherever implemented.
externalities where the true cost or benefit of a transaction is not covered in the market price.
Certainly a real problem, but in no way unique to free markets - and again, in fact, a problem they deal with far better than any known alternative.
Don't worry about the false "Tragedy of the Commons" either. Any managed resource is safe from that tragedy, whether it is privately or publicly managed.
I'm sorry, if you believe that you're obviously badly out of touch with reality. Nearly every 'managed' resource around has fallen victim to some variation of the tragedy of the commons, and until and unless people evolve into a totally different sort of creature, that isn't going to change. The exceptions that can be found involve small, tightly knit groups with strong social cohesion, generally including blood bonds, and that simply doesn't scale much past the size of a hunting band.
Finally, the end result of Libertarianism is Feudalism or slavery. When all the resources of the world are owned, any non-owners must be slaves to any owners just to survive.
Actually, you've got this entirely reversed. The corporate feudalism we are facing is the result of repudiating libertarian principles. Libertarianism does not allow for any 'non-owners' - it is fundamentally based on self ownership. The situation you are talking about is the result of the use of state power to unjustly enrich the politically connected - exactly the condition that negates a free market.
I think you've got that backwards - it's restrictivism that doesn't work.
Think about it. The least restricted areas are always the most productive, whether by area we're talking about a neighborhood, a country, or an industrial sector. The polities that most thouroughly purge libertarian principles - the soviet union being a prominent example - collapse under their own inability to work.
It's kind of like saying, let's all rely on people's good will and conscicentiousness that they will never infringe on the freedom of others, and that we can always talk someone into action....
Not at all. That's so frightfully far from libertarianism I must say it sounds like you've confused it with it's polar opposite.
Well, it doesn't work like that. Your inflated ego won't let you see my point of view,
You're absolutely correct. 'Don't murder' isn't a perfect axiom, but it's a good counterexample to the original argument. A better axiom would be more general, and allow 'don't murder' - along with a usable definition of murder as opposed to merely kill - to follow from implication.
'Do not initiate force' seems to fit that bill rather well. It's a basic principle understood across cultures, across social strata, by children, adults, and the aged. In simple terms, don't start shit.
From that axiom your questions may be answered with a fair degree of certainty. There's always room for different interpretations of corner cases, but it settles the majority very easily when applied in good faith.
A burglar has initiated force, and so this axiom does not prohibit killing him. That doesn't necessarily mean that there may not be other reasons not to do so, and it doesn't mean you can't construct a corner case where you can define someone as a burglar without them initiating force.
Scenarios involving war and soldiers are subject to a number of complications, and the soldiers on both sides can often claim that force was initiated against them. Wars are evil things, and certainly anyone that values humanity should make every effort to avoid them - but the non coërcion principle does not prohibit a soldier from killing an armed enemy on the battlefield - rather it urges him to avoid being put in that situation, and condemns the political leaders who so love to put them there.
Suicide is not an initiation of force, assisted or not. Therefore nonaggression does not prohibit it, though again there may be other reasons to refrain from it. I would personally classify kevorkian and the samurai together, but separate entirely from Schiavo, who according to all medical testimony was already dead and simply being artificially animated and preserved, but if you disbelieve that medical data as some do then you would doubtless have a different view as a result...
Slashdot Mirror
Oh, absolutely. I have a hard time believing this will perform better than currently existing *good* NICs, so the price may be excessive. But I have no problem believing it will outperform the POS NICs that are most common, even in fairly high-end gaming rigs.
I suspect it will produce a noticeable improvement in situations where your computer is running heavily loaded. If you're playing a game that keeps your cpu pegged or near most of the time, your latency will be noticeably higher because of that (using the typical network card, which is a bit 'winmodemish' in that it's relying on the cpu to do much of its work.) So having a card that does all the network processing itself, without relying on the CPU, would avoid that slowdown.
These guys work in an environment where *every word* they say on the phone is scripted and approved by management. So of course it's deliberate.
The thing is, he's tried, repeatedly, to get them to quote what they actually charge. They refuse, and this appears to be a trained response. They quote one rate, then charge 100 times that rate, and refuse to admit there's a difference.
If someone else tried to do that to them, they wouldn't stand for it for a moment, and you know it.
You don't have to be a specialist to see this kind of crap, either. I know this society seems to steer towards an ant-like specialisation, and people are supposed to be absolutely ignorant about everything outside their field, but hollywood writers routinely show abject igorance of things like basic physics to the point where it seems miraculous these people can get through a day without winning a darwin award. And they're lucky if their gaffes turn out to be funny - they're very often just stupid, and destroy the suspension of disbelief necessary to the enjoyment of fiction in anyone not similarly brain dead.
I agree. Sad thing for the US, when freaking Europe has a healthier market, but it's true. Cell phone service in Europe is so much better than here it's not even in the same class. The only competition in this market in the US seems to be for who can come up with the most insulting commercials.
If you're asking if I hold copyright on code in the linux kernel, the answer would be no, sorry.
If there's one thing the SCaldera saga should have taught you, it's that a civil suit is never cheap, quick, or simple.
Suing a distro for distributing the combined work might be about as close as they get, but it would also be a case of fighting inside the community while the real culprits watch and laugh.
Suing the real culprits would be very expensive and messy. Honestly, I think the money that would take could be better spent other places. The FSF, after all the years and all they've accomplished, is still running on a shoestring. Pro Bono lawyers are great, but their hours are limited.
Oh, and it's a good thing to remember, btw, that copyright is not like trademark. You don't have to enforce it or lose it. You *do* have to make an attempt to mitigate damages, but if kernel developers inform Nvidia they believe they are violating their copyright and are ignored, they have no obligation, best I can read the law, to actually sue in order to preserve their claims, and even if they completely ignore Nvidia that doesn't provide a defense to the next infringer.
Crossing the street is dangerous too. The danger of the FSF being taken over by aliens is almost infinitely less likely than the danger of more exploits being found in any license one chooses.
I apologise if my information is incorrect. I thought it was.
I care very much about that, actually. And I don't think I've said anything from which you could reasonably infer otherwise.
I almost agree with you. Show me a good shot at Nvidia and I'll take it. But suing them for what they're doing now would, I think, be extremely expensive first off. Because, unlike the cases that have been prosecuted so far, this is not a clear, undeniable violation. It's not going out on summary judgement, it would take a full trial, and if you skimp on the lawyers you know the enemy wouldn't and you'll lose. It would be very expensive. And that brings up the risk - the risk of an unfavourable precedent here is probably more than it's worth.
Better to talk with distros, keep it from shipping with them, and find ways to show the end users whose fault this mess is. For now. I'm still hoping Moglen can find a way to strengthen the GPL v3 to deal with this.
Unfortunately, it wouldn't be a simple case to prosecute.
You see, Nvidia distributes two works they present as separate. A binary blob, and a 'shim' under the GPL, whose only purpose is to load their blob and link it into the kernel.
Also, Nvidia doesn't distribute the kernel.
So, while it's clearly illegal to distribute a working system using this two-part driver as part of the linux kernel, it's not quite clearly illegal to distribute just those two parts without the kernel, which is what Nvidia does.
They're exploiting a loophole in the GPL, and unfortunately, while I believe a court would probably rule against them in the end, once the entire situation was clearly explained, this would be an incredibly expensive proposition.
Suing distro makers that bundle the kernel, shim, and blob together in a usable form would be much easier, but you know what? No one really wants to sue a distro maker for trying to make their customers lives easier. That's a last resort, only if and when it becomes clear that simply talking to them won't do the trick. And that's how it should be. We're a community, and we don't and shouldn't jump to sue each other unless and until everything else has been tried and failed.
And as long as they aren't actually distributing code, they can get away with it.
You misinterpreted the word they in that sentence, and I confess I should have written that more clearly and I inadvertently encouraged your confusion. The they above is Nvidia and co, not Ubuntu.
Look, here's how I see it, and I suspect how the kernel devs may well see it. Nvidia has found a loophole to exploit. Nvidia doesn't distribute the kernel. They do distribute a shim, which is clearly a derived work of the kernel, but they obey their obligations on the shim. The binary blob, in and of itself, is NOT clearly a derived work of the kernel, it's Nvidia's own property.
Now this doesn't solve the problem, but it shifts the act of infringement. Nvidia is not directly infringing. Anyone that ships the three parts, the kernel, the shim, and the blob, together in a useful form, IS infringing - but Nvidia has enough wiggle room to argue in court.
A distro shipping their shim+blob driver, on the other hand, is technically infringing. But they aren't doing it with malice - they're just trying to do the right thing for their customers, who really don't want to deal with all this. It's Nvidias fault, not theirs. Hence it makes sense to deal with the distros gently - even though they are the ones that are technically in violation, they aren't the ones from whom the intent to violate is coming. And free software has always been fairly gentle with compliance issues, seeking compliance rather than to punish. How much more gentle then, when dealing with a distro maker, a member of the community, that genuinely believes (though in error) that they are doing the right thing?
Is that more clear?
The kernel coders already replace a large portion of the kernel every year. If Linus wanted to go to GPLv3, he could relicense his own code (a quite small amount, at this point in time, as he's been more of a manager for years) and more importantly encourage everyone else to do the same, and announce that new contributions must be under a compatible license as well of course. After, say, 6 months, he could then identify the code that remains under GPL v2 only (likely a small amount, by this time - remember that much of the code is GPL v2 or later already, and much of what is not is from authors still working and very likely to go along with Linus' wishes) and schedule those parts to be rewritten. At the outside, it might take 2 years to complete the transition.
It would be somewhat of a pain to change, but if he wanted to do it he could definitely do it.
They don't sue Ubuntu because those guys are clearly NOT trying to circumvent the spirit of the license. It's Nvidia and their ilk that are doing that. And as long as they aren't actually distributing code, they can get away with it. Suing Ubuntu wouldn't hurt them directly, and would hurt some good people that are trying to do the right thing, so don't expect to see that happen.
What I do expect will happen, at some point, is someone with standing to sue will initiate a dialogue with them, and they'll remove the drivers. I don't think anyone is in a huge hurry about that, however, for the reasons outlined above.
I removed mail.app long ago because I couldn't convince it to quit parsing html. I can remove webkit and my system still works fine. Contrast this to a windows machine and there's a world of difference. Even on Windows 98, where it was, despite the manufacturers testimony under oath to the contrary, possible to remove IE completely, this required patching several system binaries and breaks many applications. Later versions, to the best of my knowledge, will refuse to function at all without IE.
I agree that the predatory behaviour was what got them in "trouble" (I use the word advisedly, as it doesn't seem to have caused them any real repurcussions so far - the suits have been mostly settled by giving away coupons for more of their bugware which costs them nothing) - and a large part of that predatory behaviour was locking IE into systems and doing everything possible to prevent its removal, so as to force a non-standard 'standard' on the web - the imposition of innumerable bugs and security holes on their customers was simply a side effect. But there are definitely very significant technical differences in the implementation of IE on Windows versus Safari on Mac.
That's because iexplore.exe is NOT Internet Explorer. It's just a shell. You cannot remove the actual code, and the many security breaches it contains, without causing serious problems.
Phenominally well, once you control for their starting position (poorer than Ethiopia) and all the murderous interventions that have had to be weathered.
Driver review wouldn't need to be expensive, if the source was open.
Well, I'm not so sure we agree. "Regulation" is normally interpreted in a way that would make that statement definitely not something I would agree with. I would say that a free market requires some mechanism of rights enforcement as a prerequisite, or to put it more simply, without freedom there is no free market.
Incidentally, this would seem to contradict most anarcho-capitalist doctrine, since there is a conceptual difficulty there - how do you have a free market for rights protection when you must have rights protection before the market can be free?
I don't think that's as a big a problem as some do, however, simply because, although our language forces us to speak of these things in a somewhat absolute fashion, in fact the reality is one of a continuum of more and less free structures rather than a binary condition. Completely unfree systems are just as mythical as completely free ones - so any system begins with some small amount of freedom which can be leveraged.
But I digress...
And that's exactly my point. Regulation tends to raise, not lower, the cost of entry into markets. Expecting regulation to mitigate a natural tendency toward monopolisation is therefore entirely illogical - as well as contrary to history. The freer a market is, the more closely the cost of entry approximates the natural cost of entry - and making a market unfree will predictably lead to higher, not lower, costs of entry. Remember, don't let the mythical perfect become the enemy of the attainable good.
Which is obviously an imperfect solution. However, you're stating that as if it automatically suffices to dismiss it. It does not. As imperfect as the solution is, it may still be the best possible solution. Particularly when you consider that in a relatively more libertarian system, the cost of rights enforcement would be lower (and drastically so,) and the resources of the victim relatively more. You're also failing to anticipate the possibility that these claims themselves would be fungible, so a victim somehow without the resources to press her claim could sell the claim immediately to someone else for prosecution. This seems a rather odd oversight, considering that even in our current system something very similar happens, with litigators who work on a contingency basis.
While this is true, again, you fail to articulate how any possible system could do better, or how this goes beyond being a purely conceptual flaw and becomes a practical concern. As long as people have sufficient motivation to value and pursue education, it doesn't really matter so much that there are free riders who receive secondary benefits without paying.
So far as property, I don't have any problem in seeing some truth to 'property is theft' - for some definitions of property.
Proudhon wrote not only that property is theft but also that property is impossible and even property is the foundation of liberty. This makes sense only when you realise that each statement uses a different meaning for the word property. "Property" that accrues from coërcion is theft indeed. Property that properly arises from self-ownership is the foundation of liberty, however.
To the extent a market is free, it produces the latter sort of property, and to the extent a market is unfree, it concerns itself with the application of the
It's true that the word 'freedom' has multiple sometimes contradictory usage in loose speech, but I believe I was being reasonably clear as to exactly what I'm talking about - political freedom, freedom from aggression.
Like the GPL, any legal system that sets out to promote freedom from aggression must set rules that can be described as limiting some other form of freedom - as the GPL prohibits taking away other people's rights, so must a legal system that aims at political freedom prohibit aggression.
Your examples of natural monopolies are all incorrect. Roads are not a natural monopoly - it's quite possible, and indeed common, to have many alternate routes between any given endpoints. The pseudo-monopolistic character of the current road system in the US (and other places) is a state creation as well. The use of tax money and 'eminent domain' seizures, among other things, not only created what looks like a natural monopoly there, it's also closed off the development of alternative transportation possibilities that otherwise would be competing in the same market as well. Sewers? Again, not a natural monopoly at all. It's a monopoly created by a regulatory regime, by use of eminent domain, by the prohibition of competition by state power. Every example you mention is similar.
The Market for Lemons isn't a bad paper per se, but the conclusions you seem to be drawing from it are certainly flawed. Reducing the freedom in a market makes it less, not more, able to deal with uncertain information, and your assertion that the problem is unique to a free market makes no sense really. In reality, there is no 'free market' per se, there are many markets, with varying degrees of freedom. This misunderstanding seems likely to explain several of your statements that don't seem to make any sense to me. You seem to be setting up some kind of platonic ideal of a 'free market,' arguing that it isn't perfect, and then jumping to the unwarranted conclusion that some un-named alternative system must therefore be better. In reality, no system is perfect, but the freer a market is, the better it serves the general good, while the more unfree a market is, the more it unjustly enriches those who are politically connected at the expense of the general good.
I don't believe I actually said that they do, exactly, and if I did then I spoke sloppily. It would probably be more accurate to say that a system for dealing with externalities is one of the things that makes a free market possible - or that to the extent that externalities are not dealt with, the markets affected are correspondingly deficient in freedom.
I wouldn't agree that public education benefits society at all - to the contrary, it has harmed society greatly by driving a far better system out of the market. Of course, the judgement of superiority depends on point of view. The public education system is, obviously, superior from the point of view of the 'elites' that it serves and at whose behest it was instituted, but like any other unfree market, it serves those who are politically connected at the expense of the general good. And I would certainly argue that the interest of 'society' is more accurately identified with that general good, than with the the particular good of the politically connected.
Again, you have this reversed, the market doesn't deal with externalities, the market depends on dealing with externalities. In this case, one way to do that would be the common law tort law system. Other systems are certainly possible as well - but that's the one I'm most familiar with as it's part of my cultural heritage. Strict liability tort would have pre
Oh, I don't disagree with that. I just get the impression that the folks making the decisions at Novell today are so totally clueless in regards to free software they didn't, and apparently still don't, grok that they have obligations here. Old-thinking suits, crazy as it is, often show that level of cluelessness in this particular regard in my experience. I theorise they have some major mental blocks that are responsible. Either way, it's not an auspicious sign for the future of Novell. Gnu/linux is their only viable long-term hope, and they don't seem to have a clue how to run a business around that.
The problem with the soviet model in terms of productivity wasn't first generation raw industrial output, as you rightly point out. But in the long term it was incapable of efficiency, because of the calculation problem. Without a market, and barring an omniscient planner, there's simply no way to know how much of what should be produced. In the long run, this means that initial productivity winds up being used in overwhelmingly wasteful ways. You're right, early in it's history the soviet union was an economic powerhouse - but the economic system doomed it form the start to collapse.
The point is that there's a difference between moral concerns and religious or pseudo-religious taboos. It may well be possible to make a mistake of putting too much emphasis on minor differences, but it would also be a mistake to allow religious psychosis to be passed off as morality without objection as well.
No, by definition, the free market is free. But truly free markets are, indeed, rather rare. In practical terms they aren't black or white, but some shade of grey. Nonetheless, it's clear that the freer they are the better they perform in terms of serving the general good, and the more unfree they are the less well they do at that.
True natural monopolies are exceptionally rare, and tend to be mooted by advancing technology rather quickly. Artificial monopolies, however, are common and can survive indefinitely.
The problem with this argument is that, while there's some truth to it, all alternatives to the free market suffer from the same problem, in greater intensity. In fact, the key to the efficiency of free markets is this very issue - while they don't perfectly solve the problem, no known system can. Command economies do far worse at this - resulting eventually in starvation and economic collapse wherever implemented.
Certainly a real problem, but in no way unique to free markets - and again, in fact, a problem they deal with far better than any known alternative.
I'm sorry, if you believe that you're obviously badly out of touch with reality. Nearly every 'managed' resource around has fallen victim to some variation of the tragedy of the commons, and until and unless people evolve into a totally different sort of creature, that isn't going to change. The exceptions that can be found involve small, tightly knit groups with strong social cohesion, generally including blood bonds, and that simply doesn't scale much past the size of a hunting band.
Actually, you've got this entirely reversed. The corporate feudalism we are facing is the result of repudiating libertarian principles. Libertarianism does not allow for any 'non-owners' - it is fundamentally based on self ownership. The situation you are talking about is the result of the use of state power to unjustly enrich the politically connected - exactly the condition that negates a free market.
Glad to hear it.
I think you've got that backwards - it's restrictivism that doesn't work.
Think about it. The least restricted areas are always the most productive, whether by area we're talking about a neighborhood, a country, or an industrial sector. The polities that most thouroughly purge libertarian principles - the soviet union being a prominent example - collapse under their own inability to work.
Not at all. That's so frightfully far from libertarianism I must say it sounds like you've confused it with it's polar opposite.
Oh, it all makes sense now. Shoo troll.
You're absolutely correct. 'Don't murder' isn't a perfect axiom, but it's a good counterexample to the original argument. A better axiom would be more general, and allow 'don't murder' - along with a usable definition of murder as opposed to merely kill - to follow from implication.
'Do not initiate force' seems to fit that bill rather well. It's a basic principle understood across cultures, across social strata, by children, adults, and the aged. In simple terms, don't start shit.
From that axiom your questions may be answered with a fair degree of certainty. There's always room for different interpretations of corner cases, but it settles the majority very easily when applied in good faith.
A burglar has initiated force, and so this axiom does not prohibit killing him. That doesn't necessarily mean that there may not be other reasons not to do so, and it doesn't mean you can't construct a corner case where you can define someone as a burglar without them initiating force.
Scenarios involving war and soldiers are subject to a number of complications, and the soldiers on both sides can often claim that force was initiated against them. Wars are evil things, and certainly anyone that values humanity should make every effort to avoid them - but the non coërcion principle does not prohibit a soldier from killing an armed enemy on the battlefield - rather it urges him to avoid being put in that situation, and condemns the political leaders who so love to put them there.
Suicide is not an initiation of force, assisted or not. Therefore nonaggression does not prohibit it, though again there may be other reasons to refrain from it. I would personally classify kevorkian and the samurai together, but separate entirely from Schiavo, who according to all medical testimony was already dead and simply being artificially animated and preserved, but if you disbelieve that medical data as some do then you would doubtless have a different view as a result...