Capitalism is about allowing market forces to optimize the allocation of resources. In a healthy competition, corporate profit is decreased to the minimum level of being a decent return on investment, because as long as it the profit is higher, a new player can enter the marketplace, price between the minimum level and the actual level, and make profit while capturing the market. This mechanism is hindered by branding, which reduces the comparability between otherwise equivalent products, barriers to entrance (such as high investments or lock-in)
A monopoly can only exist in fields with such barriers to entrance, in MS case the enormous investments required to create a modern (desktop) OS (essentially limiting the competition to Apple and linux), and the high price users pay if they shift or use an OS that is non-standard. This is where MS is different from Google: Google has a monopoly position but could be easily replaced by a competitor as soon as their quality drops or prices increase. If google would ban all non-mozilla browsers, (a lot of) people would simply shift search engine. If MS bans winamp and itunes, (a lot of) people will rather switch to WMP than switch to another OS.
Sustained monopolies are almost always bad for consumers, as prices will increase (top of my head MS has profit margins >50%, which is unheard of in normal industries). Leveraging one monopoly to get another is even worse, as that will mean higher prices and less choice in more areas.
There are two ways of dealing with monopolies: nationalizing and regulating.
Consider railroads: laying tracks is very expensive and it is generally a waste of resources (land and money) to lay more than one pair of tracks between two points. Thus, a railroad can easily become a (local) monopolist. In most countries in Europe, railroads were nationalized in the late nineteenth century. In the US, they were regulated, with railroad boards setting maximum prices and other mechanisms (but see books like Octopus). The electricity market is the same: power grid is very expensive to maintain and not very useful to duplicate (although some redundancy can be useful), and building power plants is enormously expensive. In most of Europe, power companies used to be nationalized (not sure about the US)
[Interestingly, in the EU there is now a shift towards splitting the monopoly part of such services (building and maintaining tracks, the actual power grid) and the competition part (running trains, generating and selling electricity). ]
With Microsoft, we either have to regulate or nationalize. Regulating would mean
- stopping the leverage of one monopoly to create new monopolies (desktop -> browser, media player, server)
- lowering barriers of entry by forcing interoperability
I think they should have split off Office and IE the first time around, as there is no sane business reason for office to be windows only, and this would greatly improve the prospects of interoperability between platforms. Also, MS should be forced to only use public API between modules (ie kernel -> windowing -> applications)
What part of "has been" did you miss there?
A number of years back the GPL had not been tested in court, and detractors stated that since such licenses were never used before, they might not be valid, making firms copying and distributing GPL'd software copyright infringers (thieves! pirates!)
I am not a lawyer, but I don't really understand why microsoft cannot put those things in the patent equivalent of public domain or grant everyone a free license. I mean, they want people to use their standard, right? OTOH, I agree with GP that "it might not hold up in court" is not a very strong argument by itself..
Anyway, good to see MS getting the FUD:-)
You mean that in python you hit ENTER BACKSPACE BACKSPACE while in C you hit ENTER CLOSE-CURLY ENTER?
The reason why editors can't guess where to end your block is because that is a decision you have to make and signal to the editor. Whether the [CLOSE BLOCK] symbol is a curly brace or a backspace is not really that important now, is it?
The scary part here is not the privacy of the scientist. But many social or behavioral scientists (social networks, psychology,...) have datasets about real people, either from surveys or from observations. Often, the same group of people (eg college students) that participate in these surveys also have a lot of info online. Consider the marketing opportunities / privacy implications there, if google or some other source were able to match them...
Does the C code fail gracefully? If not, you are comparing apples to oranges.
If it does, it does so because it checks the function result. catching an error is a clearer way to do exception handling than checking non-zero return value, and is not necessary slower (depending on implementation and exception frequency). If the java code has to both check the exception and check the result, than either the result is meaningful (so the semantics get completely messed up in the C case) or the java library call sucks. Neither case is java's fault.
So are they 'over 50's' or are they 'between 35 and 54'?
I know that from the perspective of a teenager it all classifies as "really old", but some of us make more subtle distinctions...
few other language groups will praise someone for their broken sentences as they make their first attempts Rubbish. Exceptions excepted, most people will appreciate it if someone tries to speak a couple words in their language. I've travelled quite a lot, mostly in europe, and wherever I come I try to learn at least the rudimentary 'tourist speak' of hello, very beautiful, thanks, and good bye, and in France and Germany I can actually hold small conversations in broken French and German. And my experience is quite simple: people love it if foreigners try to appreciate their land and language, and even the silliest little greeting in their language makes them forgive the fact that you do the rest in English or using hands and feet.
One thing that English are very good at is communicating with foreigners who speak English poorly. English speakers are often good at dumbing down and slowing their language (especially compared to the French!). I think this is mainly because they have a lot of experience with people speaking their language as a second language, while for the smaller language groups it is uncommon for foreigners (esp non-migrants) to speak their language, so they have less practice with communicating.
O well...:-)
The problem is the requirement of secrecy: Banking systems etc. are transparent because all involved parties can check the whole process and do the accounting. In elections, a fully transparent process is impossible because every vote has to be secret. This makes it very difficult to do things electronically, as the checks need to be at the micro level and at the time point of voting, rather than at the macro level afterwards
The 8% only tells part of the story. The cost of car use to society increase with traffic intensity, as traffic jams cause material losses and relatively much pollution. Even in the Netherlands, which has high overall population density, public transport use is concentrated in the busy places and times. Some numbers from the statistics bureau: In total, public transport use for commuting is 10%, comparable to the number in the parent. In rural areas, cars are used for 74% of commuting against 3% public transport and 20% bicycle use. This goes almost linearly to urban areas, where cars are only used for 40%, public transport is almost 25%, and bicycle use is 30%.
Conclusion 1: overall train use might be low, but if you differentiate for urban:rural, even where rural Holland is more like American suburban (no 1000-acre corn fields here!), you will see that train use is a lot higher in urban areas, where cars are causing most trouble in terms of congestion and pollution
Conclusion 2: train use for commuting is a viable alternative if the infrastructure is there and if the conditions are good, meaning (local) high population density (good for trains) and serious congestion and 8$ per hour street side parking (bad for cars). In the American urban areas, the conditions might not be that good due to suburban sprawl, but ridiculing trains because nationwide use is low does not make sense.
TFS states that the deadliness is bacause the germs were adapter better to the conditions inside the body, so kill lab mice faster. Outside the lab, these germs will have to pass from host to host, and presumable in between the hosts conditions will be less like microgravity. SO, they might be deadlier, but with less rate of infection. A deadlier disease with lower infection rate might actually be less of a risk: hosts die more quickly and not enough new hosts get infected.
Also: if the new germs are really more well-adapted (ic better at multiplying and spreading), wouldn't they have evolved like that on earth? Especially since the evolutionary step is apparently small enough to be attained by a limited colony in a very limited time?
[quote]Slashdot seems to have a decent handle on ads[/qoute]
Slashdot has ads? Who would have thought that! *starting IE*
Hmm 1 flash animation for blackberry, using javascript to document.write link to a javascript file hosted by doubleclick with context info and the fact that I am not logged in. This means that
- doubleclick gets to send random code to my machine which IE will execute, presumably sandboxed but who knows what vulnerabilities are in there. - doubleclick gets my IP, my logged in status, and what article I am viewing - I get an animated flash in the middle of my screen
I wouldn't mind inserting text based ads into the static html, but I will not consent to any ad that 1) sends information to a third party 2) asks my computer to execute javascript from somewhere else (or execute anything at all, really) or 3) moves
1) isn't this up to the author - to decide how he wants to make a living from his profession?
2) this might be true for a top 5% of authors (who aren't doing to bad anyways), but if your book would only sell a couple (ten) thousand copies [as I think a lot of academic books do] , do you really think selling coffee mugs is going to make a killing???
IANAC, but I think the biblical justification is that Jesus sorta names Peter as his 'successor' by giving him the 'keys', and Peter (with Paul) proceeded to found the diocese of Rome, so the pope claims to be the direct descendant of John, and hence of Jesus.
Interestingly, in the early middle ages the pope was actually called the bishop of rome, and often invoked this lineage from Peter (& Paul) to claim authority. Since early mediaeval faith was strongly relics-based (the bones of martyrs and saints were often placed in thrones, swords etc as a blessing) the fact that their skeletons were kept in Rome added to his authority. Somewhere in the high/late middle ages the emphasis shifted from being bishop of rome and successor of Peter & Paul to being the representative of God on earth. I don't believe this has any basis in the bible and was a way to place the position of the pope within a faith less based on relics.
Another interesting point is that Rome was no longer the centre of the known world during most of the early days of christianity, and the bishops of Byzantium, Antioch, Alexandria and Jerusalem never really agreed with the special position of the pope. This (with some doctrinal issues) ultimately lead to the schism between Rome and the Eastern ('orthodox') church, which was reduced to Byzantium by the Islamic capture of the 3 other patriarchates..02 etc
There's a legal side to this and a 'ethical or friendly' side.
Legally, it is quite obvious that you are *allowed* to relicense the code. AFAIK, the purpose of the BSD is to *allow* people to use and distribute the code in (almost) any way they want.
The issue here, as stated specifically by TdR, is an one of ethics. He sees "the GPL people" as friends and fellow free software fighters, and would like them to give code back if they improve on it. GPL licensed code is not useful for "BSD people" since the licenses are not compatible. The very nature of the BSD license is that they cannot demand the contribution to be given back, but they can ask nicely and hope that friends are friends indeed.
It's a bit like a good street artist contributing something to society to listen to and enjoy, with a friendly request to donate something if they like it. And in software terms, this donation should consist of improved code (although I'm sure nobody would mind a monetary contribution:-))
In related news [in Dutch], earplugs are becoming common among the *audiences* of pop concerts.
I think that is really shocking: they are turning up the volume so much that people who haven't destroyed their hearing yet (and are not planning to do so) need earplug to listen to a concert! I am pretty sure that turning up the volume at the speaker and then applying a very low-tech filter to turn the volume down at the ear can't be good for the quality...
It states 'in their mutual relations'. Ie, if three powers are at war and one power is not a signatory, the other two are still bound in their treating of each others prisoners. The quote does not say that they are bound with respect to the third power.
Another interesting system is the Dutch system: health care is universal but done by the insurers: the government has created a package of treatments (covering practically everything except 'non-necessary treatments' like adult dental care, physical therapy and alternative treatments) that every insurer has to offer and people have to take - but they can choose their insurance company and the companies really compete on price and bargain hard with the care providers. The 'basic package' is affordable (I pay $100 per month) but those who cannot afford it get subsidized so even people on welfare can afford insurance (and are obliged to have it). Everything not covered in the basic package is left to the free market.
Although it has been criticized in the Netherlands for being too 'privatized', I think this is really a 'best of both worlds' system: health care is universal, yet you can choose insurance company based on service, price, etc., and there is competition pressure on both health care providers and insurance companies to keep costs low and service high.
Did it ever occur to you that car travel is subsidized heavily by road construction payed by taxpayers (and at least over here road and fuel taxes cover only a small percentage of that cost)
The question is: How many % of your research budget comes from DARPA / DoD /... ? In some universities and some fields I think this can be quite high. There is a tension between the openness and curiosity normal in academia and the closedness required by national security.
Slashdot Mirror
Never applied for EU research funding, did you? :-)
Capitalism is about allowing market forces to optimize the allocation of resources. In a healthy competition, corporate profit is decreased to the minimum level of being a decent return on investment, because as long as it the profit is higher, a new player can enter the marketplace, price between the minimum level and the actual level, and make profit while capturing the market. This mechanism is hindered by branding, which reduces the comparability between otherwise equivalent products, barriers to entrance (such as high investments or lock-in) A monopoly can only exist in fields with such barriers to entrance, in MS case the enormous investments required to create a modern (desktop) OS (essentially limiting the competition to Apple and linux), and the high price users pay if they shift or use an OS that is non-standard. This is where MS is different from Google: Google has a monopoly position but could be easily replaced by a competitor as soon as their quality drops or prices increase. If google would ban all non-mozilla browsers, (a lot of) people would simply shift search engine. If MS bans winamp and itunes, (a lot of) people will rather switch to WMP than switch to another OS. Sustained monopolies are almost always bad for consumers, as prices will increase (top of my head MS has profit margins >50%, which is unheard of in normal industries). Leveraging one monopoly to get another is even worse, as that will mean higher prices and less choice in more areas. There are two ways of dealing with monopolies: nationalizing and regulating. Consider railroads: laying tracks is very expensive and it is generally a waste of resources (land and money) to lay more than one pair of tracks between two points. Thus, a railroad can easily become a (local) monopolist. In most countries in Europe, railroads were nationalized in the late nineteenth century. In the US, they were regulated, with railroad boards setting maximum prices and other mechanisms (but see books like Octopus). The electricity market is the same: power grid is very expensive to maintain and not very useful to duplicate (although some redundancy can be useful), and building power plants is enormously expensive. In most of Europe, power companies used to be nationalized (not sure about the US) [Interestingly, in the EU there is now a shift towards splitting the monopoly part of such services (building and maintaining tracks, the actual power grid) and the competition part (running trains, generating and selling electricity). ] With Microsoft, we either have to regulate or nationalize. Regulating would mean - stopping the leverage of one monopoly to create new monopolies (desktop -> browser, media player, server) - lowering barriers of entry by forcing interoperability I think they should have split off Office and IE the first time around, as there is no sane business reason for office to be windows only, and this would greatly improve the prospects of interoperability between platforms. Also, MS should be forced to only use public API between modules (ie kernel -> windowing -> applications)
Eclipse?
...
* free
* open source
* mature
* interactive ide (code completion, debugging, refactoring)
* supports multiple languages
* Eclipse Rich Client Platform
* easily customizable, modifiable, pluggable,
What part of "has been" did you miss there? A number of years back the GPL had not been tested in court, and detractors stated that since such licenses were never used before, they might not be valid, making firms copying and distributing GPL'd software copyright infringers (thieves! pirates!) I am not a lawyer, but I don't really understand why microsoft cannot put those things in the patent equivalent of public domain or grant everyone a free license. I mean, they want people to use their standard, right? OTOH, I agree with GP that "it might not hold up in court" is not a very strong argument by itself.. Anyway, good to see MS getting the FUD :-)
You mean that in python you hit ENTER BACKSPACE BACKSPACE while in C you hit ENTER CLOSE-CURLY ENTER? The reason why editors can't guess where to end your block is because that is a decision you have to make and signal to the editor. Whether the [CLOSE BLOCK] symbol is a curly brace or a backspace is not really that important now, is it?
The scary part here is not the privacy of the scientist. But many social or behavioral scientists (social networks, psychology, ...) have datasets about real people, either from surveys or from observations. Often, the same group of people (eg college students) that participate in these surveys also have a lot of info online. Consider the marketing opportunities / privacy implications there, if google or some other source were able to match them...
Does the C code fail gracefully? If not, you are comparing apples to oranges.
If it does, it does so because it checks the function result. catching an error is a clearer way to do exception handling than checking non-zero return value, and is not necessary slower (depending on implementation and exception frequency). If the java code has to both check the exception and check the result, than either the result is meaningful (so the semantics get completely messed up in the C case) or the java library call sucks. Neither case is java's fault.
So are they 'over 50's' or are they 'between 35 and 54'? I know that from the perspective of a teenager it all classifies as "really old", but some of us make more subtle distinctions...
The problem is the requirement of secrecy: Banking systems etc. are transparent because all involved parties can check the whole process and do the accounting. In elections, a fully transparent process is impossible because every vote has to be secret. This makes it very difficult to do things electronically, as the checks need to be at the micro level and at the time point of voting, rather than at the macro level afterwards
The 8% only tells part of the story. The cost of car use to society increase with traffic intensity, as traffic jams cause material losses and relatively much pollution. Even in the Netherlands, which has high overall population density, public transport use is concentrated in the busy places and times. Some numbers from the statistics bureau: In total, public transport use for commuting is 10%, comparable to the number in the parent. In rural areas, cars are used for 74% of commuting against 3% public transport and 20% bicycle use. This goes almost linearly to urban areas, where cars are only used for 40%, public transport is almost 25%, and bicycle use is 30%.
Conclusion 1: overall train use might be low, but if you differentiate for urban:rural, even where rural Holland is more like American suburban (no 1000-acre corn fields here!), you will see that train use is a lot higher in urban areas, where cars are causing most trouble in terms of congestion and pollution
Conclusion 2: train use for commuting is a viable alternative if the infrastructure is there and if the conditions are good, meaning (local) high population density (good for trains) and serious congestion and 8$ per hour street side parking (bad for cars). In the American urban areas, the conditions might not be that good due to suburban sprawl, but ridiculing trains because nationwide use is low does not make sense.
TFS states that the deadliness is bacause the germs were adapter better to the conditions inside the body, so kill lab mice faster. Outside the lab, these germs will have to pass from host to host, and presumable in between the hosts conditions will be less like microgravity. SO, they might be deadlier, but with less rate of infection. A deadlier disease with lower infection rate might actually be less of a risk: hosts die more quickly and not enough new hosts get infected.
Also: if the new germs are really more well-adapted (ic better at multiplying and spreading), wouldn't they have evolved like that on earth? Especially since the evolutionary step is apparently small enough to be attained by a limited colony in a very limited time?
[quote]Slashdot seems to have a decent handle on ads[/qoute]
Slashdot has ads? Who would have thought that! *starting IE*
Hmm 1 flash animation for blackberry, using javascript to document.write link to a javascript file hosted by doubleclick with context info and the fact that I am not logged in. This means that
- doubleclick gets to send random code to my machine which IE will execute, presumably sandboxed but who knows what vulnerabilities are in there.
- doubleclick gets my IP, my logged in status, and what article I am viewing
- I get an animated flash in the middle of my screen
I wouldn't mind inserting text based ads into the static html, but I will not consent to any ad that 1) sends information to a third party 2) asks my computer to execute javascript from somewhere else (or execute anything at all, really) or 3) moves
1) isn't this up to the author - to decide how he wants to make a living from his profession?
2) this might be true for a top 5% of authors (who aren't doing to bad anyways), but if your book would only sell a couple (ten) thousand copies [as I think a lot of academic books do] , do you really think selling coffee mugs is going to make a killing???
IANAC, but I think the biblical justification is that Jesus sorta names Peter as his 'successor' by giving him the 'keys', and Peter (with Paul) proceeded to found the diocese of Rome, so the pope claims to be the direct descendant of John, and hence of Jesus.
.02 etc
Interestingly, in the early middle ages the pope was actually called the bishop of rome, and often invoked this lineage from Peter (& Paul) to claim authority. Since early mediaeval faith was strongly relics-based (the bones of martyrs and saints were often placed in thrones, swords etc as a blessing) the fact that their skeletons were kept in Rome added to his authority. Somewhere in the high/late middle ages the emphasis shifted from being bishop of rome and successor of Peter & Paul to being the representative of God on earth. I don't believe this has any basis in the bible and was a way to place the position of the pope within a faith less based on relics.
Another interesting point is that Rome was no longer the centre of the known world during most of the early days of christianity, and the bishops of Byzantium, Antioch, Alexandria and Jerusalem never really agreed with the special position of the pope. This (with some doctrinal issues) ultimately lead to the schism between Rome and the Eastern ('orthodox') church, which was reduced to Byzantium by the Islamic capture of the 3 other patriarchates.
There's a legal side to this and a 'ethical or friendly' side.
:-))
Legally, it is quite obvious that you are *allowed* to relicense the code. AFAIK, the purpose of the BSD is to *allow* people to use and distribute the code in (almost) any way they want.
The issue here, as stated specifically by TdR, is an one of ethics. He sees "the GPL people" as friends and fellow free software fighters, and would like them to give code back if they improve on it. GPL licensed code is not useful for "BSD people" since the licenses are not compatible. The very nature of the BSD license is that they cannot demand the contribution to be given back, but they can ask nicely and hope that friends are friends indeed.
It's a bit like a good street artist contributing something to society to listen to and enjoy, with a friendly request to donate something if they like it. And in software terms, this donation should consist of improved code (although I'm sure nobody would mind a monetary contribution
In related news [in Dutch], earplugs are becoming common among the *audiences* of pop concerts.
I think that is really shocking: they are turning up the volume so much that people who haven't destroyed their hearing yet (and are not planning to do so) need earplug to listen to a concert! I am pretty sure that turning up the volume at the speaker and then applying a very low-tech filter to turn the volume down at the ear can't be good for the quality...
Has the DMCA actually been challenged in supreme court on first amendment / free speech grounds?
If computer programs fall under copyright, how can they not be considered speech?
Hey, and at least they can now look up on the internet how to repair a two stroke engine!
It states 'in their mutual relations'. Ie, if three powers are at war and one power is not a signatory, the other two are still bound in their treating of each others prisoners. The quote does not say that they are bound with respect to the third power.
Ah, a King! I think we already have a couple of those.
Oh, wait..
I'm sure they have solid experience with HRM
Another interesting system is the Dutch system: health care is universal but done by the insurers: the government has created a package of treatments (covering practically everything except 'non-necessary treatments' like adult dental care, physical therapy and alternative treatments) that every insurer has to offer and people have to take - but they can choose their insurance company and the companies really compete on price and bargain hard with the care providers. The 'basic package' is affordable (I pay $100 per month) but those who cannot afford it get subsidized so even people on welfare can afford insurance (and are obliged to have it). Everything not covered in the basic package is left to the free market.
Although it has been criticized in the Netherlands for being too 'privatized', I think this is really a 'best of both worlds' system: health care is universal, yet you can choose insurance company based on service, price, etc., and there is competition pressure on both health care providers and insurance companies to keep costs low and service high.
Did it ever occur to you that car travel is subsidized heavily by road construction payed by taxpayers (and at least over here road and fuel taxes cover only a small percentage of that cost)
The question is: How many % of your research budget comes from DARPA / DoD / ... ? In some universities and some fields I think this can be quite high. There is a tension between the openness and curiosity normal in academia and the closedness required by national security.