He's using Win2k. Not all versions of "Windows" are the same. NT and W2k are designed for use on servers, and if they can keep dell.com running, I don't see how you can say with a straight face that they are not reliable enough for mission-critical web browsing.
lternately, intellectual property is also about getting something for nothing.
This comes out of the marginal production cost of "intellectual property" tending towards zero.
This is a lie. You are confusing "production" with "copying". Copying a piece of work does not produce any "intellectual property". It merely facilitates distribution. So each piece of software costs a lot to write.
The fact that the marginal cost of distribution is irrelevant. What's important is the question as to how to compensate authors who do their work prior to distribution. The consumers do not want to buy vapourware. What is needed is an effect way for buyers to share the cost of the package, and copyrights provide a good model for this. I haven't seen anyone come up with a better model than copyright ( and a short sighted grab at the resources of software companies is *not* a solution )
The class action suit was not regarding the quality of the product, but the quality of IOMEGAs tech support. If you read the fine print that came with the early zip disks, you would see that you had to pay them to get warranty service, and this is why they were sued.
I can see where he's coming from. There has been an unfortunate tendency for some (including slashdot!) to talk about movements like the napster "movement" as if they were related to open source. Personally, I'm unhappy that people do this, because it's an insult to open source.
Unfortunately, the rise of the open source user community has led to a group of people who mistakenly believe that open source is about taking, or getting something for nothing, and some of these people have even grown to believe that they are entitled to get everything for nothing. To these people, anything that gives them more for nothing is considered "good for open source".
BTW, I hope the leeches from napster inc go down really hard.
Keeping a list of available warez sites is perfectly protected speech - if it wasn't how far would you carry it's
illeaglity?
If you're inciting people to commit illegal acts, or if you are an accomplice, then that's how far it goes. In the case of the search engines, one could argue that the primary use of the search engine is not to commit criminal acts. One would have a hard time arguing the same for napster.
Napster is just keeping a public database, nothing illegal about that, freedom of speech.
Actually, there are examples where you may not keep public databases, notably if you are inciting the public to commit criminal acts -- especially if you are profiteering from your "public database". ( There have been cases where people have gotten into trouble for putting "hit lists" with names and addresses of targets on the web, for example)
I'm not sure about other states, but in Vermont I'm one of the three people
who gets to cast one of Vermont's three elector college votes if the Libertarian
receives the majority of the votes.
You've got a chicken and egg problem. Everyone will polarise at the last minute because they want to be able to decide which of the leading parties wins. Because of this, the small parties are unable to get sufficient momentum.
My point is that with the current ( flawed ) electoral system, it's almost impossible for small parties to go anywhere. The US electoral system is two party by design.
I don't think he was saying that anything's wrong with it.
His point is there's nothing with being non-white, female, and educated at a public school, besides the fact that most probably you will never get to run for president representing a major party.
Tons of people think the same way as you, and that's why third
parties aren't viable right now.
Wrong, dead wrong. The reason why third parties aren't viable is because the electoral system makes it impossible to have a say re Bush vs Gore if you want to vote for a third party.
If you want a system where third parties are viable at all, you need preferential voting ( instant runoffs )
So what's your point, that artists shouldn't be paid ? Sorry, art is not free. In order to create music, the artist must be fed. This means they need to pay themselves ( through some other job ) or somebody else has to pay them. The art does not just materialise from thin air.
So now we've established that it does indeed cost something to create the art, it seems essential to come up with a viable compensation scheme for artists. And IMO, copyright is a pretty good one.
Our system is not a two-party system. The Constitution intentionally has no
mention of political parties at all.
A system that does not have preferential voting is a two party system.
BTW, I should clarify something -- I use "preferential voting" to describe what your link calls "instant runoffs". Proportional representation is OK, but it has the tendency to break if the major parties always vote along party lines ( they do in Australia, but don't so much in the US )
I suppose helping Nader over the appropriate threshold will help him get airtime and help him promote electoral reform.
Well, for one thing, the Second Amendment doesn't say anything about
criminals, it just says "the people". Are convicted felons stripped of their First
Amendment rights?
I'm not a constitutional lawyer, but it seems to me that convicted criminals do not have the same rights as law abiding citizens. For example, prisoners and parolees have considerable limitations on their "rights". ( prison time is an obvious violation of the prisoner's "liberty" ).
Second, I don't see why a law about how to purchase a gun is going to keep a
criminal from purchasing one.
In some cases, it might. The world is not as black and white as you think. The world is not neatly divided into "criminals" who have zero regard for the law, and "law abiding citizens" who diligently obey every law. It probably would not prevent hardened criminals from purchasing weapons. It might make it less likely that other offenders buy weapons.
How about we limit library checkouts to 3
items for 2 days so that criminals have less opportunity to research how to
make bombs?
That's a stupid analogy. An analogous situation with the guns would be that you allow criminals to borrow them for 2-3 days. I won't bother explaining why I don't think that would be effective.
If you
want to get rid of guns legally you are going to have to remove the Second
Amendment.
I don't believe either candidate is trying to "get rid of guns". BTW, I don't see how preventing people with criminal records from purchasing guns is "unconstitutional".
In a system that is two-party by design, a vote for a third party is IMO a complete waste. If you really want choice, you should lobby your butts off to get preferential voting in place. In the current system, supporters of the smaller parties will almost certainly polarize and move to the two main parties when they're in the voting booth, even if they support other candidates.
The problem with handing out H1Bs is that you're going to have to kick these people out sooner or later. But a lot of them simply will not want to leave, they will stay here illegaly if possible ( because they've typically already settled down and don't want to move after 6 years ). Is a H1B a temporary visa or not ? End the scam. 1-2 years is "temporary". "Foreign specialty worker" ? Pffft. A lot of them are straight out of school. That's why it's 6 years and not 2 -- the company want to be able to hold on to them so that they'll still be there when they have thrree years or so experience. When they have 6 years experience, well they hire a new boatload.
6 years is semi-permanent. It's just silly to hand out enormous numbers of 6 year visas to people who you have no intention of allowing to stay. A 6 year green card is a convenient way of chewing up foreign workers and spitting them out when you're done with them.
Before they start handing out more H1Bs, maybe they should do something about the enormous backlog of Chinese and Indians who've had their applications approved but cannot get green cards -- they are stuck in limbo waiting for the backlog to clear out.
More H1Bs isn't good for anyone besides big money lobbyists. It doesn't help citizens because it provides the corporations with either a disposable workforce and possibly provides the country with illegal immigrants.
It doesn't help the would-be immigrants because it lowers their chances of ever acquiring green cards.
Don't you understand my example or do you doubt its applicability?
I doubt its applicability.
In the first case: If you build a house, you typically select a building company a priory, contract the job to them, and (often) pay them as they go.
Building a house is taking on a substantial risk. A lot of home buyers prefer to buy a house that is already there. Much like software, the benefits only outweigh the risk in the case where custom solutions are necessary ( and when they are, this model is preferred ).
Now I agree that there are fundamental differences between physical and intellectual property, however, much software has been written following this model. It just has not yet been tried for mass-market software.
It has not been tried because the copyright model simply works better. If someone could make more money and give consumers better prices using an alternative model, they obviously would do so.
And think that e.g. the popularity of Linus or Alan Cox or even RMS show that you can get a reputation for excellence and reliability without a traditional development model.
These guys are the exception, not the norm. What about all the great programmers out there that no one has heard of ? Are you saying that only famous programmers should get paid ?
Good programmers do not necessarily make a good software company, or reliable software products. The way the company is managed has a lot to do with it. ( Take MS as an example of a company who can hire top programmers and still get mediocre results. Or Looking Glass Studios who went down due to poor project management despite the talents of some of their developers )
Nevertheless, it works for houses, so it can work for software.
Sorry, I don't follow this. Statements that are true about houses may or may not be true about software.
More into the realm of intellectual property, I think Steven King is at the moment marketing a novel
this way - he will only write the next chapter after having received enough money for the last one.
Works for him because he's already become rich and famous -- and he did so using a more traditional model. The problem is that this model wouldn't work very well with a relatively unknown software author.
You are right. But a reasonable business process would charge most of the money for developing
software, not for licensing copies of it.
The problem with this is that it would require up-front payment, or at least up-front commitment to pay. I think most users would like to make the decision regarding whether or not they wish to pay for development after the software has been made available, not before. Having any kind of upfront payment pushes the buying risk from the software company to the consumer.
I'd say the child should be a citizen, but I don't think that means that the parents are entitled to stay. The parents are entitled to either give their child up for adoption or take them home.
Sounds harsh, but anything short of this would be a major loophole, and it would most certainly be exploited en masse.
My girlfriends consulting company pays most of the consultants over 80k, some over 100k. They're mostly H1Bs. I'd hardly call them "exploited" by any stretch of the imagination. It's not like you're getting indian born rocket scientists getting paid 10k or something. These guys have salaries that are astronomical by American standards.
Now, with INS' bureaucratic bungling, that delay has grown to four years plus, and many people are
finding that they are out of luck.
I know someone who's waiting for a green card. The problem is not that the INS don't process applications quickly. The problem is that the applications are coming faster than the government wants to let people into the country. You basically have a backlog, or queue of people who have their greencard applications approved, but can't be let in yet.
The advantage of the company disopsing of it is that the user pays for disposal up front. This removes any incentive to illegally dump. It also means that in the case where the hardware is donated / sold, the person at the end of the chain
doesn't have to foot the bill for disposal.
If you currently own something harmfull to the environment,
YOU are responsible for it's safe disposal when you are finnished with it!!!!!
It's a nice theory. The problem with this is that a lot of people will just dump illegally. It's better IMO that the cost of disposal is built into the cost products -- that is, everyone is forced to pay for disposal up front, removing any financial incentive to dump.
Slashdot Mirror
He's using Win2k. Not all versions of "Windows" are the same. NT and W2k are designed for use on servers, and if they can keep dell.com running, I don't see how you can say with a straight face that they are not reliable enough for mission-critical web browsing.
This is a lie. You are confusing "production" with "copying". Copying a piece of work does not produce any "intellectual property". It merely facilitates distribution. So each piece of software costs a lot to write.
The fact that the marginal cost of distribution is irrelevant. What's important is the question as to how to compensate authors who do their work prior to distribution. The consumers do not want to buy vapourware. What is needed is an effect way for buyers to share the cost of the package, and copyrights provide a good model for this. I haven't seen anyone come up with a better model than copyright ( and a short sighted grab at the resources of software companies is *not* a solution )
Unfortunately, the rise of the open source user community has led to a group of people who mistakenly believe that open source is about taking, or getting something for nothing, and some of these people have even grown to believe that they are entitled to get everything for nothing. To these people, anything that gives them more for nothing is considered "good for open source".
BTW, I hope the leeches from napster inc go down really hard.
If you're inciting people to commit illegal acts, or if you are an accomplice, then that's how far it goes. In the case of the search engines, one could argue that the primary use of the search engine is not to commit criminal acts. One would have a hard time arguing the same for napster.
Actually, there are examples where you may not keep public databases, notably if you are inciting the public to commit criminal acts -- especially if you are profiteering from your "public database". ( There have been cases where people have gotten into trouble for putting "hit lists" with names and addresses of targets on the web, for example)
You've got a chicken and egg problem. Everyone will polarise at the last minute because they want to be able to decide which of the leading parties wins. Because of this, the small parties are unable to get sufficient momentum.
My point is that with the current ( flawed ) electoral system, it's almost impossible for small parties to go anywhere. The US electoral system is two party by design.
His point is there's nothing with being non-white, female, and educated at a public school, besides the fact that most probably you will never get to run for president representing a major party.
Wrong, dead wrong. The reason why third parties aren't viable is because the electoral system makes it impossible to have a say re Bush vs Gore if you want to vote for a third party.
If you want a system where third parties are viable at all, you need preferential voting ( instant runoffs )
So what's your point, that artists shouldn't be paid ? Sorry, art is not free. In order to create music, the artist must be fed. This means they need to pay themselves ( through some other job ) or somebody else has to pay them. The art does not just materialise from thin air.
So now we've established that it does indeed cost something to create the art, it seems essential to come up with a viable compensation scheme for artists. And IMO, copyright is a pretty good one.
A system that does not have preferential voting is a two party system.
BTW, I should clarify something -- I use "preferential voting" to describe what your link calls "instant runoffs". Proportional representation is OK, but it has the tendency to break if the major parties always vote along party lines ( they do in Australia, but don't so much in the US )
I suppose helping Nader over the appropriate threshold will help him get airtime and help him promote electoral reform.
I'm not a constitutional lawyer, but it seems to me that convicted criminals do not have the same rights as law abiding citizens. For example, prisoners and parolees have considerable limitations on their "rights". ( prison time is an obvious violation of the prisoner's "liberty" ).
Second, I don't see why a law about how to purchase a gun is going to keep a criminal from purchasing one.
In some cases, it might. The world is not as black and white as you think. The world is not neatly divided into "criminals" who have zero regard for the law, and "law abiding citizens" who diligently obey every law. It probably would not prevent hardened criminals from purchasing weapons. It might make it less likely that other offenders buy weapons.
How about we limit library checkouts to 3 items for 2 days so that criminals have less opportunity to research how to make bombs?
That's a stupid analogy. An analogous situation with the guns would be that you allow criminals to borrow them for 2-3 days. I won't bother explaining why I don't think that would be effective.
I don't believe either candidate is trying to "get rid of guns". BTW, I don't see how preventing people with criminal records from purchasing guns is "unconstitutional".
In a system that is two-party by design, a vote for a third party is IMO a complete waste. If you really want choice, you should lobby your butts off to get preferential voting in place. In the current system, supporters of the smaller parties will almost certainly polarize and move to the two main parties when they're in the voting booth, even if they support other candidates.
The current system is completely unfair to the smaller parties, and while it's in place, it will be very hard for smaller parties to get votes.
Before they start handing out more H1Bs, maybe they should do something about the enormous backlog of Chinese and Indians who've had their applications approved but cannot get green cards -- they are stuck in limbo waiting for the backlog to clear out.
More H1Bs isn't good for anyone besides big money lobbyists. It doesn't help citizens because it provides the corporations with either a disposable workforce and possibly provides the country with illegal immigrants.
It doesn't help the would-be immigrants because it lowers their chances of ever acquiring green cards.
I doubt its applicability.
In the first case: If you build a house, you typically select a building company a priory, contract the job to them, and (often) pay them as they go.
Building a house is taking on a substantial risk. A lot of home buyers prefer to buy a house that is already there. Much like software, the benefits only outweigh the risk in the case where custom solutions are necessary ( and when they are, this model is preferred ).
Now I agree that there are fundamental differences between physical and intellectual property, however, much software has been written following this model. It just has not yet been tried for mass-market software.
It has not been tried because the copyright model simply works better. If someone could make more money and give consumers better prices using an alternative model, they obviously would do so.
And think that e.g. the popularity of Linus or Alan Cox or even RMS show that you can get a reputation for excellence and reliability without a traditional development model.
Sorry, I don't follow this. Statements that are true about houses may or may not be true about software.
More into the realm of intellectual property, I think Steven King is at the moment marketing a novel this way - he will only write the next chapter after having received enough money for the last one.
Works for him because he's already become rich and famous -- and he did so using a more traditional model. The problem is that this model wouldn't work very well with a relatively unknown software author.
The problem with this is that it would require up-front payment, or at least up-front commitment to pay. I think most users would like to make the decision regarding whether or not they wish to pay for development after the software has been made available, not before. Having any kind of upfront payment pushes the buying risk from the software company to the consumer.
Sounds harsh, but anything short of this would be a major loophole, and it would most certainly be exploited en masse.
My girlfriends consulting company pays most of the consultants over 80k, some over 100k. They're mostly H1Bs. I'd hardly call them "exploited" by any stretch of the imagination. It's not like you're getting indian born rocket scientists getting paid 10k or something. These guys have salaries that are astronomical by American standards.
I know someone who's waiting for a green card. The problem is not that the INS don't process applications quickly. The problem is that the applications are coming faster than the government wants to let people into the country. You basically have a backlog, or queue of people who have their greencard applications approved, but can't be let in yet.
It's a nice theory. The problem with this is that a lot of people will just dump illegally. It's better IMO that the cost of disposal is built into the cost products -- that is, everyone is forced to pay for disposal up front, removing any financial incentive to dump.