The Virtue of Communal Instincts 235
The following was written by Slashdot Reader Brian Martin
The Virtue of Communal Instinct
With the recent hoopla surrounding Michael Chaney's courtesy to Microsoft, much breath has been given to the discussion of the incident as if there are 'sides' to be taken in some sort of 'battle'. Questions like "Would a Windows NT Admin Have Paid for LINUX.COM" are nothing if not antagonistic. While antagonism has its inherent value, such value is often over-appraised. Most Linux users will preach on the fact that their OS is more reliable, powerful, secure, inexpensive, etc. than the offerings from Microsoft. Microsoft will preach their FUD and usability. Macintosh users sit by and watch the battle with a belief that their OS is better than either of the others. The BSD users stand in the corner with their quiet exclusivity. But this is not an OS issue, it never was.What an unfortunate use of our time and energy to bicker about a commodity piece of software like an OS. Can you honestly say that in the simplest terms your OS matters when using the Internet? I don't believe you can. We as a community are approaching a point where the petty arguments over what OS, browser, e-mail program, etc. are fruitless and mean nothing. The key to the future has never been the messenger, just the message. Sure, it is important that the messenger be fast, reliable, secure, and usable. Sure, it is important that new ideas be constantly integrated, tested, and either kept or dumped. Sure, some avenue should be left for individuals to make a living off of assisting others with a lighter inclination towards computers and the net. But when the messenger in all its glory (or simplicity) becomes the focus of the attention, then the message is lost in the confusion.
We must ask ourselves, as vocal and involved users of the Internet, one simple question: Why do we use the Net? I believe the answer to that question is that somewhere deep inside the bowels of instinct there is a piece of all of us that wants to commune with others. This is not a unique idea, this is not a new idea. If this is the case, then why do we form divisions in the community based on software or hardware selections?
Another more important aspect of this communal instinct is the goal - what do we hope to gain by communing? For some, it is a sense of enlightenment - the perfect end to the infinite search for knowledge. For some, it is a sense of family - the power of belonging. For some, it is a sense of dominance - the power hungry seek for the inexperienced user to prey upon. All of these things lead back to one source - the Ego. All of these things are fodder for the conscious thought. However, when you talk about instinct, you normally think of the id - that part of the human psyche which is the source of instinctual impulses. It seems as if the internet has given us a tool to satiate the communal instinct of the id, but that our Ego hijacks the process.
And what about the superego? What internalized sense of morality is constructed by communing in this way? We see now the uprising of a 'free information' movement. Statements of thought such as "The Cathedral and The Bazaar" have opened many minds to this thread of generosity.
One could suggest that our entire lives, humanity has been growing closer and closer together. The id driving constantly for satiation with a communal sharing of ideas. A rapid spiral of communication where technology is driven by the need for either real or virtual proximity. From the feudal days where you were unlikely to know people who lived further away than a day or two walk, to the age and boom of the telegraph/phone. Add in the invention of the printing press - which provided consistent portability of ideas, not just permanence of those ideas - and the myriad of transportation technologies, and we find this web of connectivity between people. For example, I can be contacted via postal service, telephone, e-mail, pager, instant messaging, or by personal visit. Every one of these methods has seen significant improvement by technology. If we assume that the point of all of this technology is to make it easier to communicate with others, when are we going to adjust our focus from constantly improving the technology to actually using the technology?
This leads us to the natural division of our community rather than some capitalistic ego-driven segregation. The natural order of perception should be understanding what level of balance between computing and communing is right for you, and then reinforcing that with others who seek a similar balance point. Individuals who find peace closer to the computing side of things will be the 'innovators' and 'inventors' of technology. Individuals comfortable at the other end of the spectrum will be the 'enlighteners' and 'internalizers' of idea and thought. With this concept of perception in place, we see that the majority of Internet users are of the 'innovator/inventor' genre. For now, those people who may someday be the 'enlighteners/internalizers' flock to services like AOL - communities that require minimal computing knowledge and experience.
The fact that there will always be individuals at both ends of the spectrum insures the reliability of the medium. It is up to the 'innovators/inventors' to provide the messenger. It is up to the 'enlighteners/internalizers' to provide a concept/idea for the messenger.
What Michael Chaney did was quite simple, quite noble, and a perfect example of an 'innovator/inventor' providing for the masses. He saw a gap, closed it, and enabled probably millions of people to communicate with others over the holiday because of it.
More Arguments for Community (Score:2)
Briefly, this notion of community that the author argues is part of evolution is supported by Richard Dawkins analysis of the evolution of the DNA in "The Selfish Gene" (http://www.world-of-dawkins.com/selfish.h tm [world-of-dawkins.com]).
Most notably is the notion of the "Prisoner's Dilemma", which shows that the most effective path for success of a gene (or of an entire organism or society) is co-operation. Nice explanation and applet at http://www.midwinter.com/~piaw/p risoner/prisoner.htm [midwinter.com].
Most people commonly think that the only way is strong competition and the "survival of the fittest", when in fact there is so much evidence against this.
The computer community and the whole 'open-source thang' has always seemed to be in tune with this. Thankfully.
Why OS does matter. (Score:5)
- The os and assorted programs define what you are able to do with your computer out of the box. People keep saying that if internet users really wanted a X feature out of the box, the market presures would make it happen. Quite frankly, this is just not true. Due to the Microsoft hegemony, people have a skewed vision of what their OS can do. Many people want their own website but feel it is too hard to get server space without the anoying popups and banner adds. If they kewn and felt that a webserver should come with the OS, would a company like Microsoft give their webserver away? Web serving is a fundimental communication principle that the net uses, but is mostly unavailble on the largest user OS and definately not, in the box.
- Users have a skewed view of what services that they can use out of the box. Has anyone tried to use the default Windows telnet out of the box? Compare that to a Unix telnet. How about IRC? These are fundimental communication technolgies that the 'enlighteners/internalizers' cannot use out of the box because of their OS. If communication is the key to the net (which I feel it is) then how could their OS not matter?
- To return to the subject of services, can anyone imagine their Unix box without telnetd? How about ftpd? Sendmail (or related mail tech)? People cannot utilize their machine to its fullest sense because their OS does not allow that use. Ask yourself, if those services came default in Windows historically and the next release they were taken away, would people not care? They would be furious because their ability to communicate.
- If these people are flocking to AOL and MS because of its ease of use, does that mean they should be denied basic computational and communicative power because they chose a path with a low learning curve? Currently, these people's expressive ablity is limited because they have to go out and typically purchase hundreds of dollars of extra software to get these services. They are seen as extras when really they are almost fundimental rights. Their OS has limited them.
If the people who are flocking to the internet are really going to spend time creating ideas, they need to be able to communicate them. You mention several technologies that have tremendously enhanced people's expressive power. Now, because of the tool that they choose to use, that power is limited. So honestly, I do feel that the OS matters. And not just a little bit, but a LOT. Until people use an OS that provides programs that fully utilize internet services and give easy access to contenet serving, they will be intellectually hampered and unable to realize the full communacative potential that we both feel that they have.Crulx
Re:Freedom has limits (Score:1)
To begin with, absolute freedom is a fallacy. The Western notion of freedom ends when it interferes with someone else's rights. In this way, autonomy is checked by non-harm. In a Marxist society, you are free to be helped by your society to reach your goals, but you lose autonomy.
I agree with the premise. I don't agree that there is some sort of difference between fundamental reaosning that applies in the "Western" (as you call it - meaning capitalist) societies and the Marxist/Leninist/Stalinist ones. Bothe apply the principle that one's freedom stops where someone else's rights are being encroached upon. In both these cases autonomy is lost. The M/S/L societies just have a different interpretation of where that boundary lies. They claim that it is infringing someone's rights to allow their labour to be exploited for an employers profit. If the goods cannot be produced without all then the goods should be shared with all. It's like a machine with many parts. If it can't function without one of those small cogs (or a janitor in society) then that cog is essential to the machine and deserves an equal share.
That said I agree with the rest of your post. I suspect that the comment you're replying to is a troll though.
Re:Thankyou (Score:1)
Re:"lefties" (Score:1)
government is most definitely not over by any stretch of the imagination.) I believe that we will see socialized health care within the next 20 years, which will be a Good Thing (TM). In addition, the iron grip that the totalitarian
right wing has held on social issues has been steadily dissolving since the 60s. This is another Good Thing (TM).
Well since you know so much about America it is worthy to point out that in fact Bill Clinton's first attempt to push a new health care bill failed in his first term. Another thing that you do not understand is that ideas of what is right and wrong fade and ebb over time. All we have to have is another little thing like the great depression to get everyone interested in order and stability and all the freedoms that have supposedly been gained over the years will be slowly taken away in favor of getting things better. We are actually getting closer to a period of intollerance in our affairs.
And this is just America. I note that you conveniently ignore the rest of the world, most notably Europe, where benevolent socialism is in and heartless practices and ancient superstitions are out.
And you ignore that policies that make a country powerful: population, land, and power. We in the USA are concerned with China because concievably if it were an even fight they could do serious damage if they really wanted to. That's why all the little fuss over the stoler nuclear warhead designes for the recent warheads. European population growth is actually decreasing and I think will be headed for negative growth over the next few years. America and Asia are the hot spots for people and power in the next few years. Socialism may be in now however socialism was in reaction to what was percieved as a problem. The minute a new problem is found you will find a new solution no matter how extreme it is.
An interesting aside. You say "ancient practices and ancient superstitions" are out? Well let's look at that one now. Major hub for Christianity (that's what I assume you are refering to) major Cathedrials and monuments in France, Endland, and Germany. Oh and all that little pagan stuff that is so en vouge with a lot of people (which is largely superstitious and very ancient usually what people did before Christianity came along). This would mean that ancient superstitions are actually in within Europe not just in other places. Unless all your churches are along the line of God Almighty's Church of Healin' and Miracles founded by an ex-Steel worker in Kansas or some strange group of people who think that wearing their shoes on their heads is really neato.
Heh. Hardly.
Actually if you want to kill a bill in the Senate one method is to attach riders onto the bill. One of the methods I heard about was that people would put a clause onto the bill that says that the Communist part is the only political part in the united states. Guess what happens to the bill? Yup gone finished fineato. People want to live in a way that does not create misery and the best way is to have money with which to exchange for goods at a fair exchange rate. This is largely how the world works. People don't want inflation and they don't want marginal lives. How do leftist policies actually change what people basically want and satisify them?
That's nice, but completely meaningless. Count me out.
Not necessarily because having money is one of the best ways of creating a positive environment (at least in part) for a family. I know. Having money eliminates at least the basic problems of crime, disease, hunger, want, etc. And for most people who are in the USA those "ancient superstitions" are actually a good way to satisfy all the major higher level problems. People can also study in college and gain the technical abilities that they need without even encountering leftism as anything that is necessary to learn. People who are doing things in technical areas are usually not the type to read War and Peace and the works of Karl Marx.
Re:rival goods (Score:1)
Interesting how it DOESN'T. (Score:2)
Red Hat has never made a dime. In fact, it has been losing millions of dollars per employee.
What's more, it does not own its own products! Anyone can publish the same code as Red Hat. The company therefore has virtually no assets as well as no profits.
This does not seem like a good argument for using the GNU Public Virus. In fact, it's a great argument against it.
--Brett
Re:Marx's critique of Hegel (Score:1)
No I am not clueless. When discussing man one is usually directed to the most ancient examples whereby one can gain a better understanding of the current or cases where desperation is the norm.
Re:Community (Score:1)
I think you're making an excellent point. However, I think your fears are unfounded. Only that which was essentially mechanical to begin with can be automated. But are we exclusively mechanical? I don't think so. Only thought is mechanical, so what happens if you manage to stop thinking? That's what all this automation is doing for us. It is giving us more free to time spend in contemplation of reality. There has been no other time in recorded history when so many people were able to concentrate on understanding themselves. Sometimes I catch glimpses of the future and I'm impatient! :-)
Re:Marx's critique of Hegel (Score:1)
In a society in which we must struggle for our food and happiness against one another it is absolutely essential that there should be a system of the type that you outline.
I think that you fall into error though when you allude to the failure of State Capitalism in the Eastern Bloc as proving that there is no alternative to a capitalist system that enforces property rights.
You say that you are responding to the idea that IP-rights are a plot to keep us enthralled by The Man and a perceived call for the communizing of intellectual property.
I agree with you that they serve a useful function in this society, that they foster and reward innovation. How is it that they do this? They give money to the innovators - for what? So that they can have a better life. This implies that the only and sole motivation of the inventor is to prevent himself from starving. If this is so, then you are correct, there is no other way to advance technology than handing out sweeties to innovators. I believe that you are wrong however, most people that innovate do it because they are smart and interested. They like it!.
You can't escape from the fact that either you characterize innovators as responding solely to stupid greed or else you are missing out an important part of the argument - motivation.
I disagree (Score:1)
Okay, now I can begin. There are problems with this post too numerous to mention so I'll just hit a few. The author posits the common belief that the life of every man on the planet should be dedicated to sacrificing himself to "them." The person being sacrificed is never one of "them", but "they" are more important than anything he can conceive of.
Why do people come to this conclusion? There are a few reasons. One is that they see it as an easy way to live - you don't have to achieve anything because you can ride on the back of someone smart who swallowed this philosophy (and this is philosophy we're talkin about, read some stuff by Kant and Kierkegaard and Plato and you'll recognize all of these ideas) - and they also see that they will never be sacrificed since they are worthless. What they don't realize is that this philosophy eliminates the best people in the world one by one until THEY are the best person in the world, at which time they must be sacrificed. Kill ever man who makes over $1M a year and the tax brackets will scale so that the person making $900k is paying for everyone else. Kill every man making over $10k a year and the same thing happens, the tax brackets scale.
Another reason people accept this odious philosophy is that they don't understand it. An astonishing number of people on this planet believe that they don't need to think about philosophy. But they pick one up. Everyone MUST have a philosophy or they would die. Now, no one accepts this philosophy completely, if they did they would be dead. To accept this philosophy completely means you would cease eating and spend your last days feeding your neighbor. But no one does that, they simply scream that you need to be pragmatic. Why they want to go along with only the slightest sliver of capitalism and justice as possible and stumble around in poverty, I really have no clue.
I think eventually people will come around to reject this philosophy. They will realize that anything worth doing actually has a reason behind it that is much better than "you HAVE to do it because the human race DEMANDS it of you and if you don't cut your own throat to save them, you're a bad person." Why use Open Source? There are a myriad of GOOD reasons. Any reason which involves benefitting others as your primary objective is a BAD reason. I won't give you those good reasons because I hope you'll be able to think of them yourself, there are quite a few. Its not a silver bullet though, and nothing ever is. I don't say that out of a hatred for absolutism as most people do nowadays (how many people do you know that will not accept a set of beliefs simply because they ARE a set of beliefs?), i say it because its true. Not everything in nature is the same color (but things do have a definite color), just as not every software package can fall under the same license.
Now, why do I think people uphold Linux so highly when their OS is basically irrelevant to the happiness and fulfillment they feel in their lives? Well, personally I think its the "new OS smell" mostly. You use one OS for a year and you get used to it. You use another one and even if it sucks donkey balls for playing 3D games, you'll want them ported. This exact same thing would happen if Linux was widespread... MS OS' would be considered 'cool' because they looked and felt a little different and were a breath of new air (note I didn't say fresh).
Another good reason people feel the need to violently uphold Linux is because they're not doing it based on Linux' merit. They COULD do it on Linux' merit, but it would be very difficult and the people who cling to Linux cannot see the technical advantages, let alone its shortcomings (there is an abundance of both). They uphold Linux violently because they're upholding this philosophy. They choose to do it violently and not reationally because it is an irrational philosophy that basically tells you that the individual is not important and that the collective is all-important. No collective has ever invented anything. Individuals inside of collectives have. No collective has ever helped anyone. Individuals inside collective have helped other individuals. "The collective" is another way of saying "the people who are going to take credit for whatever you do as an individual and who are going to convince you that it is them who deserve the credit."
Look at Open Source. Is Linux a product of a masterful individual? A product of the work of several masterful individuals? No, its the product of a collective, of the "community" as they call it. This is not true. One part of the kernel is by Linus Torvalds, other parts are by other individuals. They all have names. They are not a community.
Esperandi
I am not a community. I take credit for my rights and wrongs. Should you try to take credit for either, I will stop producing until you stop stealing.
And development tools. (Score:2)
Re:Marx's critique (OpenBSD) (Score:2)
Yet OpenBSD has produced the most secure OS in existence? What does the license really matter? When you have to solve a technical problem like security, the license is not on the agenda of issues. OBSD does not 'depend on' the license for its existence; nor does it depend on any other code for its existence. It's organization is integrated, as in an integrated society (i.e., Lucacz's view of the Hellenistic culture); where as the GNU group is not, they abide by principles in common but do not operate in common.
Practically speaking, who cares? You say 'tomaeto' I say 'tomawto.' These discussions that incorporate philosophy with tools are academic.
If learned anything in my miserable years in law school it's this. If the laws, contracts or licenses restrict some activity upon which one *must* proceed, then survey the legal landscape and come up with a new way to articulate your activity so that it conforms to the standard. In most cases of business activity you can do this with success. Laws are putty attempting to bind. The are not hard and fast such that they can be broken; that's just how we talk in common parlance. In practice, the law is almost completely grey shaded and one can almost always articulate an activity such that it remains in the grey without touching the edges of black and white.
This approach to legal activity that I described can be seen as opportunistic or manipulative. However, it is also factually based, and characterizes the real way real people operate in our society. The successful people take it to an artform.
People who are idealistic (and I once was very idealistic) try to formulate truisms that rarely fit into the elastic system. Formulating hard and fast rules 'just feels good' because it prevents our minds from reaching into the fog of the grey areas, and we can live out in the area of black and white where most people don't operate. The black and white rules are a way to relax mentally. I recommend you take up fly fishing or yoga instead.
The world is in a state of tension; society is in flux; it's all stirred up. I'm no fan of lawyers, the law or the system, but unless you've got your finger on the button you will not change the world. Live in it; use it; it's a fun game...; play.
Re:Marx's critique of Hegel (Score:2)
The drive to segregate (Score:2)
I put that in quotes because i'm skeptical of "human nature," if only because it smacks of us having some inability to control ourselves. Still, I feel a need (as do all of us, at some times) to be a part of a group. For example, while I'm not the great technophile a lot of /.'rs are, I feel like a part of the Linux/Free Software/etc. movement, and I get a good rush of self-satisfaction when I'm explaining the evils of MS, Intel, patents, closed source, etc.
The rush comes from the feeling that because I know these things, and they are The Truth (TM), I am better than the people I am explaining to them. In all truth, I'm masterbating my ego, as is anyone that feels "superior" to a person simply because they have different ideas about things.
To some extent, this kind of schism in society is a good thing, because educated people try really hard to justify their views, and in the process they get or generate a lot of new information, and sometimes actually prove themselves right. It's even more entertaining when they prove themselves wrong though. So get to work, MS!
On the other hand, this strife can be (and has been) taken to unhealthy extremes, which is where a lot of war, institutionalized discrimination, and other Bad Stuff (TM) comes from.
The trick, I suppose, is in finding the balance.
-Ristoril
Re:Marx's critique of Hegel (Score:1)
sociological point of view (Score:1)
We must ask ourselves, as vocal and involved users of the internet, one simple question: Why do we use the net? I believe the answer to that question is that somewhere deep inside the bowels of instinct there is a piece of all of us that wants to commune with others.
This is not a matter of instinct. Communication in all of its forms and ways is an elemental need for what is refered to as "community". This fact is widely analysed throughout sociological literature, such as N. Luhman (to give but one example).
This is not a unique idea, this is not a new idea.
You bet.
If this is the case, then why do we form divisions in the community based on software or hardware selections?
From my point of view this refers to the whish of individuals heading to be specific, to be distinguishable against other individuals, to be better, superior. All individuals (in modern societies) dare to be unique and to be recognized as being unique. But on the other hand, there simply can't be any society without at least one community. So all individuals need to flock together in communities, defining themselves via being identical or at least comparable in some way (refer to Habermas, Adorno, Horkheimer, Giddens, Weber, Marx, Engels, to name but a few.) This is a cause for several conflicts common to societies in general.
All sociologically recognized changes within any community are based on such conflicts, but oppinions wether this is a matter of the conflict between classes - as seen within marxism - or as "just another 'hint' of social evolution of society" - as eg. Weber might argue - varies within social sciences. One will find this kind of conflict as the one observed here (the "clash-of-the-systems", or simplyfied "my-computer-is-better-than-yours") all over human society: This-car-is-better-than-that, This-team-is-better-than-the-other, This-fashion-is-way-cool, This-is-hype, etc.
All of those conflicts can be reduced to "I-am-better-than-you", which on the other hand reflects to "Me and all of my kind are better than you and all of your kind", because each and every individual is measured (and sociologically positioned within the community) in front of his social background, which again depends on the community he belongs to. As Marx and Weber have shown, communities (in the meaning of a social class) divide in two kinds with one very special distingtion:
Members of the class "by itself" (heck, in german "fuer sich") share the same sociological position within scociety, but each member is "for herself" and acts individually, since she isn't aware about the fact her social neighbour being in the same "situation".
The class "on its own" (in german: "an sich") is the same as above but differing from above all members are aware about their neighbours situation and therefore act collectively and behave solidaristically.
All of us have one in common: we are using a computer in one way or the other. We are aware about the fact, our social neighbour being in the same situation. Due to this fact we behave as a class on its own against those not using computers or those not wanting to be refered to as "computer-users" (as a general term). Both classes try to distint themselves from the other as being "better" and both gaining internal stability and a feeling of "we" / "us" by doing so.
Inside this community (of computer-users) several rifts and cracks divde us in several sub-communities, having the same kind of mechanism (conflict) active to distinguish ourselves from the others due to the fact not all members of this community want to be compared to all the other members in a way of being identical (tendency of individualism.) But since distinction leads to social isolation (in last consequence) and isolation leading to loss of communication and this (phew, finally) leading to social death, we all again need to flok in groups, dividing internally further and further.
Because we are positioned in more than one community in any given time we develope a personality via the profile we build up (and get "dictated" in some way) by gaining social ranks in these communities whilest refusing this or even (trying to actively) lower those ranks in in other groups.
(If you read this far and are still on track, than you need a cheer: you are way ahead in terms of knowledge about the theoretical social structures and dependencies of society than most of the other people ;)
What I want to say? Well, these discussions (disputes, flamewars, holy wars, conflicts) about such "irrelevant" topics as hardware and software have a message and the message is loud and clear: We are a community within society, we know this, so watch it! We might come over you one day!
Until that time we will build up a hierachy within our community to etablish our powers and improve our social situation: collectively and individually in the same time.
Re:Freedom has limits (Score:1)
yes, it sounds insane, but lots of people believe this more deeply than they know.
Esperandi
Re:Evolutionary Prisoner's Dilemma -- Not Class Wa (Score:1)
Open source isn't a Marxist "class struggle" -- it is an evolutionary Prisoner's Dilemma.
There's no reason to suppose that the two things are exclusive of each other. Class struggle can be seen to incorporate elements of the Prisoner's Dilemma within it and the Prisoner's Dilemma can be set up for situations that include class as a factor.
As far as all the genetics stuff goes, well, there is considerable debate over it and speaking as an evolutionary biologist I can assure you that the simplistic "selfish gene" paradigm is considered by many to be misleading. For alternative view check out the work of S.J.Gould and especially Richard Lewontin.
I agree heartily with the idea that we've got to study altruism and communication and the PD.
Re:"lefties" And the 60's rethoric (Score:1)
I was born and lived for 20 years in a country with socialized medicine (one of those wonderful places your American centrism calls "rest of the world" like it's a glamorous thing - usually just to ignore questions about particular countries because you usually don't know the first thing about them), and one of my fingers was badly treated when it was smashed (not too badly, actually - until I got treated) and went to the emergency room of the public hospital (because it was closest and I didn't know any better). By the time a private thraumathologist got to look at it (the next day) it was deformed for life (threading the suture without pulling out the nail beforehand will do that to you - and it hurts like hell). The guy told me he's seen it over and over again, and that I was actually very lucky in comparison with other patients he has had after the public hospital is done with them.
Sure my right thumb still hits the spacebar just fine and it's fully functional (just looks rather ugly), but it did make me think of one thing - socialized medicine means, among other Bad Things (tm) there's nobody to sue if something goes wrong.
I mean, it might have been possible, but who can take on big government?
Be careful what you wish for, because you just might get it.
As for the 60's, personally I'm tired of the 60's rethoric. I'm sure your 60's parents must love to hear you talking like that and probably encourage it, but I'd bet that (notwithstanding how the media tries to portray us) our "Generation X" is composed of a very plural in ideas, but mostly conservative group of people, as a backlash from the 60's left-winging and picketing.. Of course the 60's children are in their prime now and holding very good positions of influence today, so you're, say, 80% more likely to hear from them and their ideas (especially since they all went on to Journalist school). But just like the ultra conservative, "everything-alien-is-bad" generation before them, they will also get old and fade away, leaving us to clean the mess. Please use your brain now, so you can know better than they did.
I am not saying everything the left wing proposes is bad, or everything the right wing proposes is good (or viceversa), but as a rule I distrust anyone who says "everything" the other side says been has and always will be wrong (and you should too).
Personally there's nothing I fear the most than a fundamentalist - even if he agrees with me. And that is why your post makes me sick.
Nothing personal,
Re:Marx's critique of Hegel (Score:1)
Work must be paid for. Workers must be paid according to their value. All workers are not equal. All work is not equal. Anyone who denies payment for work or demands overpayment for work will be eliminated. Selfishness is the only instinct and should be followed always. If you INSIST on looking at how this affects other people, do so. But do so with the real definition of selfishness which is to act in ones best interests at all times. Killing people is not in your best interests because you will be punished and you are attempting to profit by force and not by merit. Ignoring your family is not selfish because it deprives you of happiness. You can trace back all bad behavior that people now call selfish and find that it is actually the action of a selfless person... a person acting againt their own interests. There is no value in that, only death.
Esperandi
Re:False dichotomy (Score:1)
False. Bill Gates got Windows out there, as well as writing a book about his ideas in the computer realm. The idea that Open Source created this ability is laughable. Open Source came after.
Esperandi
Re:"lefties" (Score:1)
Re:Your architecture is out of date (Score:1)
Praise (Score:1)
BTW, Open Source can be defended by this viewpoint, but I don't want posers who can't figure it out for themselves defending Open Source under the guise of capitalism and man as a heroic ideal and then turning around and going back Marxist on everyone.
Esperandi
Marx's critique of Hegel (Score:4)
Except that the Prussian state was unstable. And it was unstable for the same reason that Brian's utopian ideal is unstable. It's the reason that Karl Marx (early, pre Communist Manifesto) identified in a statement which was shocking at the time, but so true that these days it's taken as obvious.
Between genuinely opposing interests, there can be no compromise
We can't all work together, because some of "us" depend for "our" existence on keeping code proprietary, and some of us depend on keeping it free. Microsoft can't compromise with free-software, because if it does, it effectively dies as Microsoft. Sure, it could exist as a distro company for FreeWindows2000, but it would no longer be Microsoft in anything but name.
Similarly, it's not possible to say that you want "most" code to be open source, any more than you can say you want "most" speech to be free. Freedom scales in some ways, but not in this way. The existence of the whole copyright/patent/trademark legal nexus is inimical to the free exchange of information. It's a part of "the system" (a term degraded by the dull hippies who coined it) -- the legal and political superstructure put up to serve the interests of those who control the economic base.
Microsoft and free software have fundamentally inconsistent economic interests, so any accomodation between them has to be unstable, and prone to collapse. There's no way around it. Compromises, whether it's a sickly Christmas fairy-story, or the OpenBSD license, are attempts to kid oneself. They are nice illusions, and people like Mike Chaney and the OpenBSD advocates are to be praised for trying to make things good, but the fact is that opposites are irreconcilable. We need to stop kidding ourselves.
Marx said it best himself:
We need to see the copyright/patent/trademark proprietary structure for what it is -- a restriction on our freedom. Articles like this are just attempts to put more flowers on the chain.
Re:It is not bad to pay for software (Score:1)
> in the minority and will be unfairly monderated
> down. Such is the nature of slashdot.
Why is it that statyments like this make your
points seem more thought out and "worthwhile".
I guess thats another statment on human nature.
(and wholly besides the point)
> it is thouroughly fair to charge money for a
> product
Why is it fair?
Is there an absolute scale by which fairness can
be judged, regardless of the beliefs of an
individual?
Is it fair to judge a Christian as a bad person
because of his failure to adhere to Hindu ideals?
It could be argued that charging money for
products is itself unfair, and that production
is suposed to be done so that people can use them,
and requiring money for a product defeats the
entire purpose of making products...which is so
that people can use them.
what is the "correct" viewpoint?
At least with software and other "intellectual
property" (I do despise that term) the author
doesn't actually lose anything by use. So
I see no real harm done here. He still has his
copy, and all his code.
You anonymous coward! (Score:1)
I would have just sent you an email to tell you how much I admired your smart and fast (first!) post, but you had to be an anonymous coward so now I have to waste space on /.'s server and post it here, ya schmuck.
> Microsoft and free software have fundamentally inconsistent
> economic interests, so any accomodation between them has to
> be unstable, and prone to collapse.
But I don't buy this, I don't think the interests of the corporations and the free-software people are so totally and irrevocably at odds as you claim. As Marx observed, these binary things are inherently unstable, like a chair with only two legs, but there are more players than just those two in this economic game.
It's absurd to deny that practically all laws in this country are written by and for corporations and the wealthy - and those few that weren't, such as the laws of FDR's New Deal, or the civil rights laws of the early sixties, were generally extorted from legislatures facing imminent violent revolution as the alternative. But even discounting ordinary citizens as beneath the consideration of the ruling class, there are the corporate customers, and the anti-trust division of the U.S. Department of Justice to be considered as well.
Of course it would benefit Microsoft to annihilate all their competitors, both open-source and proprietary. But the investing class has divisions of interest in itself as well; Microsoft isn't the only corporation there is. If one company has a chokehold on a valuable item of intellectual property, it faces opposition from all the other companies who would have to pay them to use that IP. Keep in mind that the Microsoft antitrust suit is not about a conflict between Microsoft and end users like me or you - if it were, it would never have made it to court - but about the conflict between Microsoft and Compaq, two multi-billion-dollar behemoths.
Yours WDK - WKiernan@concentric.net
Re:Evolutionary Prisoner's Dilemma -- Not Class Wa (Score:1)
Funny, and I always though Nationalism was just a manifestation of the social alienation people feel in their everyday lives. A way for people to divide themselves into groups based on abstract notions such as "national interests". How can the concept of Nationalism be hypocritcal or even be comapred to Marxism? Hypocrisy is holding that a viewpoint and then acting contrary to that viewpoint. Nationalism may be self-contradictory (ie. end result of nationalism on the world is further alienation --racism, etc.--, but the reason for engaging in Nationalism is to eliminate alienation by grouping around "national interests" and attempting to unite for a "common good"), but it certainly isn't hypocritical. And Marxism is a theory of historical processes and human relations manifesting itself in a critical analysis of Capitalism and attempting to provide a solution (Communism) to the problem of trying to eliminate the restrictions on human freedom that cause self-alienation (ie. wage-labour relations, religion (identification and governing of self through the intangible -- which can also be said about many things we do)). How can this be compared to the concept of Nationalism?
And btw, National Socialism was just a term coined by the Nazi party to try and identify themselves with the popular political movement of the day in that area of the world (Socialism). I'm sure if the Nazi party existed in present-day United States, they'd call it Democratic Libertarianism (or something along those lines). They're political agenda had nothing to do with Socialism (in fact, large corporations dictated the agenda of the Nazi government -- Volkswagen even built tanks for the German military).
Re:The reasons and the medium (Score:1)
Anyhow, about half-duplex... this reminds me of when a teacher told me he could take devils advocate to any position at all, so I took him up on that. I told him my position was that someone who was totally ignorant in a certain field should not be allowed to influence the field. He couldn't do it. He always assumed they could bring something to the table by drawing analogies and such... which would require them to not be totally ignorant of the subject, etc.
Anyhow, I "lurk" on all sorts of mailing lists that I do not have the knowledge to make a profitable conversation in that arena. In others, I reply to every post because I know the matter at hand. I think you can agree with me that on the lists on which I lurk, no one is being short-changed. I'm not withholding anything, I simply do not have anything to give. In reality, this is the way it works. You shouldn't converse with everyone because everyone doesn't have something to contribute.
The key to becoming a ful human being is knowing and acknowledging and not being ashamed of NOT contributing. Those lists which I lurk on and learn... I realize fully that I do not have the knowledge the people there do. I'd admit it to anyone who asks, and I don't feel the slightest bit embarrassed about it. There are a lot of people out there who would rather LIE about something than admit they are totally ignorant of the subject. I'd rather have those people realize their own limitations and capitalize on their abilities than try to fake and squirm and disseminate all kinds of false information just so he doesn't feel he's letting the community down by running in "half-duplex" mode.
By giving people the exact credit they deserve, no less and certainly no more, you help them grow. By giving them an abundance of credit, they stand still.
Esperandi
Maybe if we give him lots of free stuff for a long time he'll get sick of it and get motivated!
This is kind of silly (Score:2)
Re:Evolutionary Prisoner's Dilemma -- Not Class Wa (Score:2)
There were plenty of tyrants, its just that they varied greatly in the degree to which relied on hypocritical moral indoctrination of their subjects.
Tell me how is evolution politically correct.
On the contrary, the open and honest study of evolution is almost the definition of what is politically INcorrect. Reread what I said.
Most of what I have seen in the world in terms of political correctness has essentially been groups whom they think are under represented are suddently in a position to exploit a government or a faction for their own self interest.
Exactly, and this is within a society that has, as a cultural norm, placed examination and open dialogue of the genetic drivers of such groups in about the same class of moral bankruptcy as child molestation. Hence, hypocrisy and self-deception is the goal of the current eugenics progrom conducted by the Politically Correct Empire as it is with all heterogenous empires built primarily on moral control of their subjects.
What exactly is a "genetic self-interest".
The behavior of organisms that appears to place propagation of their genes above their individual well-being -- such as a male frequently engaging in sex without a condom with lots of partners of the opposite sex, as one minor but graphic example. Cynics might try to give such a character a "Darwin Award" but the laugh would be on those cynics -- evolution doesn't always select for intelligence.
See Dawkins The Extended Phenotype [barnesandnoble.com].
Tell me why nationalism is hypocritical
Nationalism is certainly is less hypocritical than JudeoChristianity, Marxism and Political Correctness, but a very good example is the difference between pre-unification Prussia (attacked by Marx) and post-unification Germany (that spawned National Socialism):
Prussia represented a smaller set of tribal groups (root word of demography) that had a lot more in common than did Hitler's unified Germany, so it was less hypocritical to be a Prussian Nationalist than a Nazi just as it is less hypocritical to be a Nazi than a Marxist. These days, we have this "european identity" hypocrisy in the form of the European Community, the Euro, etc. which is bound to get worse as it takes hold.
The last part of that sentence translates (again correct me if I'm wrong) says:
"The people who don't agree with the program and feel united are then enslaved by the people who don't get with it."
That is a bad translation.
The Prisoner's Dilemma is about people having a choice to cooperate and share big winnings, vs one exploiting the other, in which case the exploiter wins bigger than he would if he had cooperated and the exploited loses big, or, in the ultimate degeneration, they both try to exploit the other, and everyone loses big.
Real life is a lot like that, which is why that particular scenario is studied so heavily in game theory.
By the same token, since real life is a lot like that, there many who would rather not study the genetic evolutionary implications of the Prisoner's Dilemma. One exception to that rule is Michael Oliphant [ed.ac.uk], and I strongly suggest reading his stuff.
Now I am a little confused about what you mean by "morality" in this case.
I mean the capacity to take on a system of morals and abide by it with fidelity, even when it runs counter to one's self interest or the self interest of one's genes.
So are you saying that anarchy is the best form of government
No. I'm saying tribal/clan/kindred identities are rooted in evolutionary history more than are national identities and national identities are more rooted in evolutionary history than are universalist ideologies. If you want to see how I would handle governance, please read what I have to say about the nature of money and government [geocities.com].
Freudian concepts... (Score:1)
"There are no shortcuts to any place worth going."
Re:Marx's critique of Hegel (Score:1)
Re:Do we really want this? (Score:1)
"When a person driving a motor vehicle reaches a horse and the horse acts frightened, the driver of the vehicle must get out of the car and take it apart, laying its pieces in front of the horse so the horse will calm down"
That is the problem with enacting laws about technology that might change everything
Re:Community (Score:2)
Somebody will say that communications is equalizing us. I think this is very true. Another pet belief of mine, and I'm sure many who frequent this site, is that knowledge never
At the same time though, my previous argument says that communications are making our relationships less meaningful. So it seems the same technology which is equalizing us, is having the effect of equalizing us by making all of us more distant, debilitated. I can quickly physically equalize pretty much everybody by removing their limbs. Would we would all then rejoice that we are equal? I guess it's the cliched double-edged sword. We are equal by means of being a commodity. If you are presented with aisles upon aisles of bags of sugar (some commodity produc), they will all seem pretty equal.
Returning to Marx, I think we should be careful that
Jazilla.org - the Java Mozilla [sourceforge.net]
Re:"lefties" (Score:2)
Thank you for that, I'm sick of this attitude that money is a means in itself, and anything that won't make money is a waste of time.
The point behind the GPL is to let people freely share software with others, not a new business plan (although there is no conflict of interest with companies which genuinely further free software making money from support.)
But anyone expressing these views on /. is put down as a "communist" as if there are only two political ways - pure capitalism, and communism.
Perhaps if more people had the same ideals of community and sharing (join with us and share the software, so to speak;) there'd be a lot less problems in the world.
p.s. remember that advertisers are the maggots feeding on the corpse of capitalism (Karl Marx - never as funny as his brother, Groucho)
--
I think there are some things to be said. (Score:2)
synthesis in the highest form of human organisation -- the Prussian state.
I really cannot see how the pre united germany (germany before 1870's) was very powerful or the epitome of the state. Generally we have not seen anything close except attempts made by Hitler and Stalin wherein the state was everyhting. If I were a peseant I would rather see the aristocracy die in a rather bloody and cruel way sooner than actually help them. For one simple reason: they are the haves and I am one of the have nots. They can spend all day doing whatever they want and I have to do my dull little tasks. They never have want and have many excesses and I have many wants and no excesses. Do you see a pattern. There is no way short of brainwashing to actually get a people to go along with this in any way.
Except that the Prussian state was unstable. And it was unstable for the same reason that Brian's utopian ideal is unstable. It's the reason that Karl Marx (early, pre Communist Manifesto) identified in a statement which was shocking
at the time, but so true that these days it's taken as obvious.
Between genuinely opposing interests, there can be no compromise
Yes. However you need those to define both. I was thinking about this. Consider if we use the idea of Satan and God (many may hate this but it gets the message across). Satan is the embodiment of all the evil in the world. Now suppose that God does in fact destroy Satan. Since there is no opposite to actually become evil we have what ammounts to no evil. Without that evil element there is no good and then anything that you do becomes good because evil has been distroyed. If say proprietary software were distroyed in some way (say secret police make everyone give up their code to the government) then anything that the government does is in fact just a movemnt of the open-source group. This may not be totally correct but it comes close. I can be good or bad but when bad is distroyed then I am just a different shade of good.
We can't all work together, because some of "us" depend for "our" existence on keeping code proprietary, and some of us depend on keeping it free. Microsoft can't compromise with free-software, because if it does, it effectively dies as
Microsoft. Sure, it could exist as a distro company for FreeWindows2000, but it would no longer be Microsoft in anything but name.
You would have to associate all the behaviour of Microsoft with what they are (a software company). If we look at what would happen with them if they decided to actually give away their code they are in fact not distroyed as an entity they are merely just changing tactics. Suppose we look at policy of the US military in the 19th and 20th centuries. Now the military was still in the same country and potentially all of the same people were involved with it however what changed were the tactics and more global conflicts that didn't happen in the 19th century.
Similarly, it's not possible to say that you want "most" code to be open source, any more than you can say you want "most" speech to be free. Freedom scales in some ways, but not in this way. The existence of the whole
copyright/patent/trademark legal nexus is inimical to the free exchange of information. It's a part of "the system" (a term degraded by the dull hippies who coined it) -- the legal and political superstructure put up to serve the interests of
those who control the economic base.
Maybe but what is actually very interesting is that those same hippies (most of them) decided when they really needed something that they would have to take something from the system. To totally rebel and oppose the system would mean that the system and those who operate it would have to be totally distroyed. Maybe something similar to the French revolution in socpe and blood. You can have an effective system where some code is free and some code makes you pay for it. What this creates is a good ecconomy and allows for more people to have that better job so that they can code software for free. I can't tell you how irritating that computers cost so damn much. However this has resolved me that when I do get a sum of money (about $3,000) I will get the best computer that could be sold to the average person or that is just before an exponentially more expensive system (mainframe/high end server). This means that some very lucky company some time in the future will get my business because of my jealousy and burning desire for what others have. Now I could always just get a group of terrorists and just rob a computer store with force but that's not as simple or as perhaps safe as I would like. I think that people trust the system because they don't like the altenative.
People sound interesting and all ivory tower for awhile but when they really get dowm to brass tacks then begin to realize: hey that bum on the corner could be me. Or that old man who is bitter and has no friends down the street could be me in 40 years or something like that. People don't really think and take a minute to internalize that ecconomic solvency is what drives us. It used to be an option to just leave town and set up shack in the woods. However Fredric Jackson Turner in his essay in 1891 officially said that there was no more frontier. That was 109 years ago roughly. If a man who has grown up knowing the difference between wide open spaces and urban sprawl said that there was no more space left dosn't that mean that obviously there is none left as well now? This means that we have to operate in the capitalistic system because we don't have any other choice. Well except suicide or perhaps just infinite suffering. Usually these two options do not appeal to most people because in out popular media they are rather frowned upon for what they create.
Microsoft and free software have fundamentally inconsistent economic interests, so any accomodation between them has to be unstable, and prone to collapse. There's no way around it. Compromises, whether it's a sickly Christmas
fairy-story, or the OpenBSD license, are attempts to kid oneself. They are nice illusions, and people like Mike Chaney and the OpenBSD advocates are to be praised for trying to make things good, but the fact is that opposites are
irreconcilable. We need to stop kidding ourselves.
Well there is a word and a concept that was taken from the cold war. MAD. Basically the world had created the most powerful weapons that could possibly be created. Essentially this could very possibly just decimate billions. Now when this was realized people resorted to just claiming what people already expected who were in the know. Mutual Assured Destruction. That boils down to the following statement "Well if you try to kill me. I will kill you too!!" type thing. Another concept is that we are racing to an apocalypse of our own creation. Essentially that attitide creates a climate of nihilism and allows for either a slow disipation of thought or just a massive climax that destorys usually both parties. I would rather prolong that eventual climax as long as possible and just concentrate in changing every possible faction that I can insead of just going out ranting and raving with an automatic weapon in my hand.
Marx said it best himself:
they are
We need to see the copyright/patent/trademark proprietary structure for what it is -- a restriction on our freedom. Articles like this are just attempts to put more flowers on the chain.
Again this is quite bad. Just look at it this way. I don't suppose you ever had a hard time getting some form of employment in you life right? Well that kind of proposition just damn well scares me. In general you have to get something to make sure that you don't die of starvation (really nasty thing: hallucinations, massive fatigue, intense intestinal pain, bloated stomach, (see Africa south of the Sahara for prime examples)). We have used methods of "progress" to raise the bar so to speak. What that translates into is that it becomes harder and harder to do something that makes an "average" wage. Back in the good old days (say 1700-1850 or so) people usually did the same thing: farm. Farmers usually did the same work and that was how it was. Because of this you didn't feel cheated and you didn't need to have a great deal of your disadvantages broadcast to the world through your station in life. It was a goods ecconomy. Because of this people had a rather easy time to get things done. You just simply were a farmer along with everyone else; you hated the wealthy and praised the poor people like you. What the so called "information" age has created is that people are by no means guaranteed anything. This is the epitome of nihilistic thought. Essentially it is so very easy to fail and never realize anything that it becomes almost frightening. When I have to have an almost flawless interpretation of logic just to get by that makes for rather interesting living.
Evolutionary Prisoner's Dilemma -- Not Class War (Score:3)
Karl Marx ... Between genuinely opposing interests, there can be no compromise.
And Marx was essentially a means by which the ancient enemy of all honorable peoples could continue the essential "we are the world" hypocrisy of JudeoChristianity despite the disruptions of post-Enlightenment forces like Darwin.
There is a reason why Drawin's theories and study of genetics were suppressed in the empires spawned by Marx/Engels, and it is essentially the same reason they are taboo in in much of JudeoChristiandom as well as the newest religion of Empires, Political Correctness:
The real and enduring opposing interests, until we take responsibility for them as a technological civilization, are genetic self interests. Within JudeoChristianity, Marxism and Political Correctness (not to mention lesser forms of hypocrisy such as Nationalism) we are all supposed to identify as one people so that those instinctively less prone to having their kin-altruism abused can exploit us at their leisure -- until there are no people left who are capable of morality.
That means the end of the moral animal: Man.
I don't think Open Source is therefore working against the existence of Man, but I do think we had have to start paying a lot of attention to studies of altruism and communication in the presence of the Prisoner's Dilemma predict for Empires built on over-extended kin identification -- as well as the history of moral systems that condemn open dialogue about genetic tendencies to defect within our global Prisoner's Dilemma.
Re:The Doc Sayz (Score:1)
Esperandi
Psst, I agree 100%, keep up the subversity
Re:Community in flux in itself (Score:1)
Now, the real kicker is when you look at these communities. The "capitalist community" if you wish to call it that, with patents and copyrights and such, are basically just keeping to themselves. The Open Source community is trying to start a war. They're disappointed with their own progress and are attempting to bully themselves in on someone elses turf. At the same time, they're protecting their turf vigorously. Most anti-Open Source posts on slashdot get moderated into oblivion, check the viral GPL license, other such things.
Esperandi
Re:Evolutionary Prisoner's Dilemma -- Not Class Wa (Score:2)
Nationalist hypocrisy generally preaches a natural social order exists in which kin groups of less diversity and scale than the nation are of no consequence -- one big happy national family and all that. Of course what really happens is that those who generally promote this view are serving their own genetically related clans/tribes/kindreds at the expense of those who are most prone to childhood imprinting and honorable duty in adulthood.
Nationalism can be compared to Marxism because the "one big happy family" promised by Marxism is even bigger and more diverse, therefore the occurance of exploiters is far greater.
As bad as it was, Nazi Germany wasn't as destructive as Soviet empire.
Re:And development tools. (Score:1)
And I think this is why computers were not very popular at the time. Only computer geeks (by definition) are excited by and interested in programming their computers. Most people just want to get info off the web, play games, send email, or print something.
After using BeOS for a while, I can understand the excitement of a computer that is designed for a programmer, one where you pretty much *have* to code something cause there aren't many apps. But I finally went back a mainstream OS because I don't use a computer as just a hobby (though I have hobbies that are *on* the computer). I have things I want to get done (not just work, but games, chatting, mp3s), and I don't want to spend all that time messing around with configurations or coding. I'm absolutely willing to sacrifice some control over the way the computer works in exchange for all that time I don't have to spend making it work my own way.
- Isaac =)
Re:Why OS does matter. - NOT (Score:1)
Well, it really really depends on what you're doing on the net. There are apparently people happy with WebTV.
If they kewn (sic) and felt that a webserver should come with the OS, would a company like Microsoft give their webserver away?
Um well yes they do actually, if you buy NT Server. It's used by many commercial sites and is quite full-featured. I'm a Netscape man myself, but you have to give them their due. And if you're using FrontPage (the package most used by neophytes to publish web content) it includes a "Personal Web server" which does, in fact, work just fine. Or you can get one for free, as others have pointed out.
Has anyone tried to use the default Windows telnet out of the box?
Uh yes, actually it works just fine for my needs, thank you.
People cannot utilize their machine to its fullest sense because their OS does not allow that use
I think generally speaking they can't utilize it to its fullest because they don't have the knowledge or the need. It takes work. Most people want to plug something into the wall and have it work. There is a huge disconnect here between what programmers/hobbyists do and the other 98% of the population.
If these people are flocking to AOL and MS because of its ease of use, does that mean they should be denied basic computational and communicative power because they chose a path with a low learning curve?
Who's denying anyone? Again, this stuff is all available. Free, most of it. What's the difference between a Linux distrib and a ZDNet collection of Windows utilities other than the moralistic attitude? (Yeah, I know you get the source. My mom is NOT going to modify and compile her browser, thanks anyway.)
When you start out driving most people buy a car that's easy to start and run. If you turn out to be a gear-head, THEN you get something that may be harder to start-up and maintain, but gives you other benefits. (i.e. has 600 HP) That's a completely natural progression.
Easy access to content serving for the public will be a set-top box with a built-in firewall and webserver. Not a problem. For others, they'll soon realize that they can run a little webserver on their PC over the cable modem or DSL. But most people won't want to deal with the hazards. They don't want to leave the PC on all the time, and don't want to deal with the script kiddies who want to take you down for fun.
By the way, everybody who's tried to hack my systems so far has been running Linux, and most are running a webserver on the machine with no content at all - they probably don't even know they're running the service. Looks great for the "community".
Re:Marx's critique of Hegel (Score:1)
No, but you imply it again and again in your posts, for instance this
The core of the issue is that many inventions take a staggering amount of effort to commercialize, and no individual or company could afford to spend years working on something unless they receive a limited monopoly
only makes sense if one assumes that one is operating in a capitalist society where funds for development have to be raised on the promise of a future return on a time-limited monopoly. Imagine an alternative where the community decides that certain things are useful and desirable. Communal resources are then available for development of those things and the resources go to those that are able to pass peer review. Not really very different from trying to convince angels to invest in a project. The difference is that the profits from it don't all go to the angels, they go back to the community. More efficient.
Re:"lefties" (Score:1)
Animal Farm and 1984 were written against Totalitarianism. There's a famous quote of his: "Everything I have written has been in support of Democratic Socialism, and against Totalitarianism.
Re:Marx's critique of Hegel (Score:1)
Envy is a large feature of rightist ideology, as I see it, at least in the "rational" libertarian element of it. People are motivated by self interest, and wealth is generally in everyone's self interest, therefore everyone wants to aquire more wealth.
Problem is, it is usually a fixed resource, so more wealth for your neighbor means less wealth for you. It becomes a game motivated by envy and jealousy, because to achieve your goals, you need what your neighbor has.
Re:[OT] Your classification? (Score:1)
I completely disagreed with the original poster's view -- I think it's a fairly deluded view of things. But it's still interesting. People read Descartes over and over again, it's taught to students, and yet due to the numerous flaws in his arguments there are probably no real Cartesians left in this world. But again, especially in the context of his times, it's still interesting. And, just as much as Hitler and Lenin, Descartes sought to tell people exactly what they wanted to hear (that they have an immortal soul, that God exists, that the Skeptics were all wrong). So yes, I agree with you that targeted rhetoric like that can be extremely manipulative. But, if you are the type of person who is inclined (provoked) to think about it, you don't allow yourself to be manipulated so easily. Hiding your head in the sand like an ostrich doesn't really help. You're not really saying that people shouldn't challenge convention, right? If so, we'd still believe the world was flat, that the universe revolves around the earth, etc...
And incidentally, I enjoy Tolkien just as much as the next person -- if you are good at spouting jibberish about magic and little gnomes, go ahead and write to your heart's content (but probably not in this thread, for obvious reasons).
-NooM
Re:The reasons and the medium (Score:1)
Lurking is fine, as I originally said but to make the most of the interchange, it needs to be interactive. That doesn't mean you need to provide data, just that you'll get more out of it by asking questions of the knowledgable participants. Chances are you'll learn more by asking specific questions that you lack answers to rather than just absorbing the meme-stream (after a short initial reading period).
As for your devil's advocate position, clueless people serve a purpose in an interactive exchange because you need to restate and revisit your position in multiple ways to try to reach their level of understanding and bring them forward. I find describing methods and algorithms with our non-technical QE people at work, very useful because I have to cover all aspects since I need to provide them with a full context. I'm not expecting them to design objects within the application but I may think of an alternate method while describing it.
rival goods (Score:2)
This is a nice statment. "You may own the sky if others can still see the blue." Is a nice statement too. Can you back your statement up?Lets see.
Your Support: Since ideas are not "rival" goods (my consumption of them does not preclude your consumption), this clearly suggests that ideas cannot be made property in this way.
I cringe to actually call this support. You are merely restating what Locke said, and poorly. You state, "an idea can be consumed by multiple people and still exist". You also state, "An idea cannot be property." I leave it to you to please explain how the first suggests the second? Again, nice statements, but thats all I see, nice statements with no connection.
It is them who are trying to make me their slave, by demanding that I not say or write certain things so that they can create an artificial scarcity of an abundant good.
I have to start in the middle here. First of all, if the creator of an idea does not share that idea (or sell it) then can you claim you would have had the idea anyway? A demonstration. Please write down the entire score to Mozart's Requiem. Oh, and do it without looking at a copy of the score. Can you? I didn't think so. You claim that if Mozart tells you that you can't copy his score (his intellectual property) that he is making you his slave. What if he never releases it to start with. If Mozart never writes the score to his Requiem, are you still his slave because he has the idea for the score in his mind? Does that not also make him slave to all the ideas and thoughts you have that you do not share with the world? Perhaps he is slave to your thoughts about dying your underwear blue. As I have demonstrated, claiming that someone is making you their slave by NOT sharing their information with you is absurd. If ideas are truly free, then we would need to spend our time walking around proclaiming every thought we have to the world in order to make the ideas of the world TRULY free. Either that, or we are ALL slaves to everyone else, all the time. Oh, unless of course you only mean popular ideas that you want to use. Unpopular ideas are not free, only popular ones? Under your own idea, are you contributing your ideas to the world?
I am not trying to make anyone my slave -- I am not trying to stop them from doing anything
I have to use another example here. Orson Scott Card writes a book. Before that book goes to print, you get a copy. Since "intellectual property" doesn't exist, you print your own 1 million copies and sell them for $1.00 less each than Mr Card's publishing company. You can do this because you are not paying Mr Card royalties for his work. You don't have to because "ideas are free" and the book is an idea. Since your books are cheaper, everyone buys your books and not his. Mr. Card spent a year writing this book. During that time, he did not have another job because he needed to focus his energies to writing this book. The revenue from this book would pay his bills from the past year. Now, all his work for the past year earns him nothing and he starves. That doesn't sound like a slave to you? Your right.. slaves are usually given bread and water to keep them producing, you are beyond that. You want to give the people who reap your cotten NOTHING in return for their hard labor. Are the people who want to protect their intellectual property the greedy ones, or are you? Take a look in the mirror.
I look forward to your reply.
Me... "bullshit"... (Score:1)
Nathaniel P. Wilkerson
NPS Internet Solutions, LLC
www.npsis.com [npsis.com]
Re:Freud was a fraud - but be thankful anyway (Score:1)
Re:The Doc Sayz (Score:1)
Re:Marx's critique of Hegel (Score:1)
This is a forum for conversation, not a magazine or journal. The post is highly rated not because it's necessarily true or even historically accurate but because it's thought provoking -- much more so than the average Slashdot post. If you find that you are provoked to disagree with the content of the article, why not point out where it goes wrong?
-NooM
Re:Marx's critique of Hegel (Score:2)
about comparing our yields, since mine is ENOUGH to keep me and my mistress in plush comfort.
How very odd. I don't think that things back in times where farmers actually did farming in the majority of any society did they usually have such complex relationships. Concepts of sex appeal and such are usually not the domain of farmers in the mdeieval times. If I have to work to live I really wouldn't care what I look like as long as pain is absent from my life. That is what people should really look at and see. Pain is quite bad. Anyone who actually likes pain is usually not a person in pain or a person who cannot see out of pain. Human life is infinite and so therefore avoiding pain is the halmark of basic human desires. The desire to be sexy or to admire anyone is a step above the basic desires and is therefore not terribly revelent when analyzing how the average human conducts themselves.
William Shakespeare when he was in his time did various plays. The average person was nowhere near the oppulent and ecconomic level where concerns of complex associations between honor, duty, revenge, jealousy, and kindness were not revelent. Peseants do not have that level of luxry that allows them that freedom. Do you think that bum dowm the street really cares about his honor or duty?, how about his sex appeal? How about intricate policital schemes? I don't think that he really cares more than the avoidance of pain. That man is most likely measuring out his life in coffee spoons and is not concerned with the need to do anything else. Until we eliminate the main barriers to a successful life we will always have problems and always the solutions will still present themselves. A look at ancient peoples will yield precisely the themes I have given out and not many of the little sophisticated ones. Oh and the people who usually had time to write or had the knowledge to write books in the ancient days were not the ones we are concerned with. Dirt farmers are the subejct and not the king of Mesopotamia or the Emperor or Rome.
Well thnks moderators for the Troll I guess I didn't need those karma points anyway.
Re:"Kin identification" (Score:2)
Similar murders are part of all such "unifications" -- this is something that gets about a factor of 100 under-acknowledged in these issues.
The wars in the Balkans are a feature of that part of the world as a boundary between Empires.
Re:The reasons and the medium (Score:1)
I have a feeling that answer is why my high school teacher was a teacher and you're not
Esperandi
Re:False dichotomy (Score:1)
False. Bill Gates got Windows out there, as well as writing a book about his ideas in the computer realm. The idea that Open Source created this ability is laughable. Open Source came after.
Perhaps I was a bit unclear. I didn't mean that open source made this possible for the first time. It made it possible for some people where it might not have been possible for them otherwise.
Re:Evolutionary Prisoner's Dilemma -- Not Class Wa (Score:1)
How does diversity increase the chance of exploitation? In order to argue that, you must assume that the ratio of "exploiters" to "non-exploiters" in each culturally distinct group is different (and larger in the ones that aren't part of the predominant national group). Thus, by including people from other culturally distinct groups in the "big happy family" (rather than including more people from the same group), you are increasing the ratio of "exploiters" to "non-exploiters" in that group.
Then again, the assumption that there is a gene that makes people "exploiters" is ludicrous IMHO (asbestos suit on). That fits in the same category as assuming there is a pre-defined human nature (beyond a survival instinct). Genetic theory meets Thomas Hobbes... or in your terms "evolutionary prisoner's dilemma".
I don't believe in free will, but I don't believe that our will is completely determined by our genetic makeup. I believe that our will is determined by a large number of factors (possibly some genetics, but more likely our external environment -- not just "childhood imprint", but more like "lifelong imprint").
As bad as it was, Nazi Germany wasn't as destructive as Soviet empire.
Guess it all depends on whose point of view you look at it from, doesn't it? And also what you define as "destructive"...
buffering (Score:1)
--thi
Re:Evolutionary Prisoner's Dilemma -- Not Class Wa (Score:2)
Nationalism can be compared to Marxism because the "one big happy family" promised by Marxism is even bigger and more diverse, therefore the occurance of exploiters is far greater.
to which Axiom replied:
How does diversity increase the chance of exploitation? In order to argue that, you must assume that the ratio of "exploiters" to "non-exploiters" in each culturally distinct group is different (and larger in the ones that aren't part of the predominant national group).
No I don't. I could, for example, assume merely that the chance of any two "groups" trying to exploit the other is dependent entirely on random factors that emerge only when the two groups encounter each other.
So if you have N groups, you have N*(N-1)/2 distinct ways in which exploitation might be selected for. Note I didn't have to hypothesize a "gene for" exploitation in general.
Further, I had written:
As bad as it was, Nazi Germany wasn't as destructive as Soviet empire.
To which Axiom replied:
Guess it all depends on whose point of view you look at it from, doesn't it? And also what you define as "destructive"...
Well, I guess if I looked at it from the Gypsy point of view, more of my people got taken out per capita by far than even the Jews in Nazi occupied countries, so you're certainly right on the first point.
However, if you look at it from the "one big happy family of humans" point of view:
Since more people, per capita were taken out by the Trotsky/Lennin/Stalin purges than were taken out of the nations participating in WW II, it is certainly reasonable to declare the Soviet Empire more destructive than Nazi Germany.
Re:More Arguments for Community (Score:2)
It has occured to me that the whole patent situation can be regarded as a prisoner's dilemma. Companies may either release technology into the public domain or patent. Open release benefits everybody via the sharing of information, but patenting makes a greater profit for the firm concerned.
So it's a pure prisoner's dilemma. In accordance with theory, real world evidence suggests that the non-cooperative outcome that everbody patents is the result. This is of course not the optimal outcome - everybody would be better off if there were no patents.
Maybe I'll formalise the argument properly some time..... but basically any system that encourages co-operation and sharing of information resources is a Good Thing. Kind of nice to know that Open Source insticts are fully backed up with the latest and greatest game theory.
Re:Community (Score:1)
A clan is small enough that everybody knows each other and can agree on mores, but not big enough that a separation needs to be made between the "people" and "government".
Well, in a group of any size that has generational divides, there will be leaders and followers, though a follower could reasonably expect to be a leader some day if he/she lived long enough. An important point however, is that the change in group size has been technologically driven from the very earliest increases. "Clans" are groups that have enough people to take care of each other and few enough to move around as hunter-gatherers without destroying the area they move through. "camps" have a fairly reliable water source and rudimentary argiculture. "Villages" have a well and established crops allong with some form of storage. "cities" have plumbing of a sort (or at least a protocol) and a way to transport crops from outlying farms. Modern cities have water filtration and delivery systems, massive transports of food every day and a plumbing system we'd all be dead without.
In a clan, the person to person connection is tight because there are a small number of people. Technology is enabling, and /forcing/ us to increase our number of connections. I think this is having the effect of making each connection less meaningful.
In addition to the people we connect to, we are also inundated with information about people. Oh, my neighbor's dog got hit by a car. I feel sad. A storekeeper on the other end of town was shot to death. I'm shocked and think thats too bad. A fire in a nearby state killed eleven people. Its a tradgedy and yet I feel... less. 20,000 people have been killed in an earthquake and thats just the starting numbers. I can't think about them as people. If I tried to take even the empathy I would feel for my neighbor's dog and apply it to that large a human tradgedy, I would have a nervous breakdown. But does the buffer we have to put up to protect ourselves desensitise us to the closer matters that we can make a difference in? Cases of bystander apathy are too common to make big news in boston. A schoolgirl was sexually assaulted on a subway car in front of numerous witnesses, and they all looked away even when she asked for help. Has the world gotten too big for us?
You walk accross a street downtown and may see hundreds of people...but you know not one...they are just a few faces out of billions. ...
There is so much that you are unable to make use of it. I also think it may be having an effect physically. Animals need space. We are imbued with a sense of our range and a sense of how much space, either physical or emotional, that we need.
I consider population density very important. I have observed the changes in my own behaviors and feelings since I came to Boston, and frankly, some of them frighten me. I pass amoung probably a thousand people by the time I make it to my office in the morning, and I deal with them as obstacles. Things in my way that I have to say "excuse me" if I touch. Someone says something to me and my first reaction is warriness. Last time I tried to help someone who got my attention on the street it turned into a bizzarre scene of him hasseling me for money. I don't respond as much anymore if someone asks "can you help me". But I don't want to be like that.
I don't think the increases in communication are entirely a good thing. They can help, but they can desensitize. General worries, no good way to end this off.
-Kahuna Burger
Telenet/ftpd can be disabled. (Score:1)
Re:Evolutionary Prisoner's Dilemma -- Not Class Wa (Score:1)
Ah, but your initial argument was the chance that an "exploiter" would exploit the "big, happy, family", not that two groups would attempt to exploit each other. That is a different case altogether. And besides, even within a group that wouldn't be considered diverse, people will still find ways to divide themselves into subgroups based on, for example, religious beliefs, political viewpoints, etc. Even Nazi Germany's concept of "Volk" only excluded people based on their heritage (yet they still purged German Communists).
Besides, I don't believe in dividing exploitation along "group" boundaries. Exploitation is exploitation regardless of the color of skin, religious beliefs, etc. of the person responsible for it.
Since more people, per capita were taken out by the Trotsky/Lennin/Stalin purges than were taken out of the nations participating in WW II, it is certainly reasonable to declare the Soviet Empire more destructive than Nazi Germany.
If the Nazi party were in power as long as the Soviets, I can guarantee you they would have purged more people per capita (ie. if they had stuck to ethnic cleansing instead of invading their neighbors, thus drawing the attention of the world).
You seem fairly preoccupied with how destructive the Soviet government was, but have you ever investigated the destruction the U.S government/multinational corporations are responsible for? To use examples from South America (an area of the world that doesn't seem to fall under the radar scope of the American media):
The involvement of the American government in the overthrow of democratically elected Brazilian president Salvador Allende, whose government was in turn replaced by the brutal dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet [ucsb.edu]. A list of Pinochet's crimes can be found here [trentu.ca]. Documentation of the connection between the CIA and DINA (the Chilean secret police -- responsible for carrying out Pinochet's brutality) can be found here [tripod.com]. There are literally hundreds of references on this...
The United States involvement (CIA, AID, MILGP) in the creation of military, police, and paramilitary agencies, which in turn were responsible for the torture and death of hundreds of thousands of people in El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala, Brazil, Chile (as mentioned above), and Bolivia. You can find large lists of MILGP (U.S. Military Group) officers still to this day in these and other countries. [state.gov]
I don't condone destruction of human life caused by anyone, but it is wrong to only selectively look at the sources of it.
Re:Community (Score:1)
Ignorance of what? Does the murderer kill because he's ignorant of the fact that it's wrong? Does the rapist rape because he doesn't know any better? And if they are ignorant of these facts, then why is that so? What's the root of this ignorance?
I'm personally convinced that ignorance stems from a reckless disregard for a basis of absolute right and wrong. If this basis is lost, everything is relative, and anything is admissible. "Knowledge-dispersal" and "awareness-raising" can only do so much when they're based on shifting, ever-changing notions of what's acceptable and what isn't.
[C]ommunications is raising the knowledge level and awareness of people.
Just a minor point, but I think communications is only increasing the information available to people. Knowledge...I don't know. It sure doesn't seem like people are getting any smarter. Look at "Who Wants to be a Millionaire?" for an example of that. I had harder questions than that in the third grade!
But then what about the community factor? I have to agree that all our gadgets and gizmos have made people more distant and disengaged. Sure, there are virtual communities, but are they anything like a real community? Can everybody get together when the electricity goes out for three days to stay warm, light a fire, and cook on the grill (despite the freezing rain)? It's possible and expected to communicate with vast numbers of people on the internet, but where's the depth, the personal in interpersonal communications?
Don't get me wrong, I think communications are a good thing. I like being able to call and e-mail friends and family who live half a country (or world) away. But looking to communications to solve all the world's inequities and woes...I personally don't think that's such a good thing.
Cheers!
Jim
JimD
Re:rival goods (Score:1)
My example is fine considering the point of the example. Could the musicians you know write the score for Mozarts Requiem without having ever heard it or seen it before? The point is, nobody can write Mozart's Requiem but Mozart himself. Anyone can COPY it, just like anyone can make copies of a book or a Porche, but only Mozart can orginally create the idea. Back to my original statement then. If Mozart NEVER WRITES DOWN his requiem, but keeps it in his head, is he still holding you slave by not releasing his intellectual property? Are you staying your musician friends could write down the score to a piece they have never heard?
I believe my example holds firm. *sighs* I'm so sick of people claiming an idea is 'obvious and easy' AFTER its been created. If its so obvious and easy, then create the idea and release it, but quit bitching about other people not releasing their 'obvious and easy' ideas to the "i don't wanna pay for it" community.
Some people on AOL know what they are doing (Score:1)
Re:Evolutionary Prisoner's Dilemma -- Not Class Wa (Score:2)
Yes. The fact that "one big happy family" empires exploit those outside "the family" as well as those inside "the family" comes as no surprise to anyone. The topic of dicsussion was "the virtue of communal instincts" and people are typically unaware of how profoundly destructive it is to exploit people with community spirit as opposed to simple brute, and relatively unhypocritical, despotism.
Re:Community (Score:1)
new cohousing community in late April.
Cohousing provides a small-village
environment in the midst of the larger
city and/or society. Privacy and public
life are balanced carefully, instead of
randomly smashed together or, in the case
of suburban homes, pulled back too far in
a reactionary response.
Disclaimer: if you haven't gone to
http://www.cohousing.org and read about what
cohousing actually is, as opposed to your
tired old notions about idealistic communes
from 30 years ago, DON'T follow up. Thanks.
Re:Marx's critique of Hegel (Score:1)
How very odd. I don't think that things back in times where farmers actually did farming in the majority of any society did they usually have such complex relationships
There are literatures that represent the first-person account of what it is like to be a "farmer" struggling to make a living from the soil. Good example would be the Irish poet Patrick Kavanagh who wrote (3!) autobiographical works: The Green Fool, Tarry Flynn and I forget the other. He cursed the work that he had to do and felt that his neighbours were different (read his poem Stoney Gray Soil for a expression of the hatred of the land). What I take from this is that most people are non-reflective, non-idealistic but that regardless of the conditions there are people that imagine. Providing the material comforts is good, but people that are dull under oppression will still probably be dull under comfort - look at the proliferation of stupidity and mediocrity here: McDonalds, automobiles, TV.
Also, Kavanaghs poems demonstrate great jealousy and kindness. The only difference between me, you and people struggling on the soil is that we're fat and they're thin.
Ancient peoples? well take the Norse sagas - the Edda or the Saga of Burnt Njal or whatever - plenty of hatred, jealousy, one-up-manship, love and admiration in the small, extremely poor 11thC. communities of Greenland there.
I don't think your point stands up.
Re:Marx's critique of Hegel (Score:2)
I don't have a problem using Open Source software and proprietary software. I make the choice based on my needs at the time and the solutions available. Some people put philosophical prinicples above practical considerations, but I don't.
In this way, the two sides compete but can co-exist as any competitors can. If Pepsi began giving away their formula but still selling the product, I would still drink Coke.
If you remove that pesky "copyright/patent/trademark proprietary structure" then you essentially hijack one element of a dynamic and successful market.
If Open Source is the solution you think it is, then this step won't be necessary.
If Open Source requires a change in the law to make it effective and competitive, then it's not the solution you think it is.
Re:Do we really want this? (Score:1)
Amen brother! I've always prefaced my criticisms of the Open Source community with the fact that I don't really have a problem with them. I simply don't want Open Source philosophy being enacted into law. It's unnecessary anyway because the movement is thriving as it is.
And in fact, I even think there are some noble aspirations in the free software movement. But the day they start ramming it down my throat is the day it loses that nobility.
[OT] Your classification? (Score:1)
This is a forum for conversation, not a magazine or journal. The post is highly rated not because it's necessarily true or even historically accurate but because it's thought provoking -- much more so than the average Slashdot post. If
you find that you are provoked to disagree with the content of the article, why not point out where it goes wrong?
-NooM
So what your saying is that the spirit of the speech not the speech itself is interesting and makes it worth while? Really? Well in that case I guess I can passionately just spout jibberish to people talking about magic and little gnomes and such and you will buy it right? After all it's tought provoking. Honestly that basic conventions that have stood the test of time are suddently coming under fire from people who would turn humans into something else than what they are really. I post information that I think is both acurate and thought provoking because I am comming from a different perspective than most people and does that usually get a good reaction? Usually something like "oh your just a whiner" and "oh well I guess that's they way life is" blah, blah, blah.
By the way what you are describing is what made men like Hitler and Lenin so popular. Tell the people what they want to hear (because it sounds good) and lie, lie, lie. Am I the only person who thinks so?
Re:Marx's critique of Hegel (Score:1)
And that from an Anonymous Coward, too!
If it hadn't already been moderated to 5, I would have used my last moderation point on it, rather than posting this waste of bandwidth.
Re:Marx's critique of Hegel (Score:1)
Even so, it is not the OSS movement that I am specifically speaking to in this. More generally, I'm speaking to further flesh out the answer to the question "Where and why has communication in society evolved to this point" or, with respect to this audience, "where and why has the internet evolved in the paths it has".
Thank you AC for some intelligent commentary.
Brian Martin
Agree wholeheartedly. (Score:1)
1. Open source Windows http/cgi server: www.mobydisk.com (lots of great OSS Windows stuff there, my friends' site)
2. Open source decent telnet/ssh client: TeraTerm (with SSH plugin)
3. The rest (lazy me
However, there is a difference between "I can go out and find it on the web, and install it" and "apt-get install xchat". If MS included all of these things (the day they release any OSS anything, let alone a web server with a consumer OS, is the day Beezlebub visits the Burlington Coat Factory), then stability would be the only issue
But they don't, and I doubt they ever will. As others have said, it's just not their style, really.
Re:Marx's critique of Hegel (Score:1)
If we look at the average person we see however that an "average" salary is only obtained through collegiate study and that this makes people have to work very, very, very, very hard to actually get a shot at anything approaching a normal condition. Sure you can be an animal but it is being beaten out of people. Raising the bar is something that I feel is just plain wrong for it causes the weak to fall and the strong to kill.
Re:Evolutionary Prisoner's Dilemma -- Not Class Wa (Score:2)
Well if you don't think that tyrants of the world were there before Jews and eventually Christianity you are wrong. Ever hear of people like Ghengis Khan, How about Mao? Maybe hitler? I seriously doubt Hitler was a church going man at all.
There is a reason why Drawin's theories and study of genetics were suppressed in the empires spawned by Marx/Engels, and it is essentially the same reason they are taboo in in much of JudeoChristiandom as well as the newest
religion of Empires, Political Correctness:
Tell me how is evolution politically correct. Most of what I have seen in the world in terms of political correctness has essentially been groups whom they think are under represented are suddently in a position to exploit a government or a faction for their own self interest.
The real and enduring opposing interests, until we take responsibility for them as a technological civilization, are genetic self interests. Within JudeoChristianity, Marxism and Political Correctness (not to mention lesser forms of
hypocrisy such as Nationalism) we are all supposed to identify as one people so that those instinctively less prone to having their kin-altruism abused can exploit us at their leisure -- until there are no people left who are capable of
morality.
Hmm. This really dosn't 'jive' with what most people think. What exactly is a "genetic self-interest". Why do people now that we posess technology have to make so form of choice in terms of genetics? You know computers and people's genes don't have to mix you know. We could have computers and still ride around on cammels use swords and ride in chariots. Nothing says that technology has to do anything it's just an add on feature.
Now honestly what I really have a shaky grasp of is the last sentence of this little thing.
Within JudeoChristianity, Marxism and Political Correctness (not to mention lesser forms of
hypocrisy such as Nationalism) we are all supposed to identify as one people so that those instinctively less prone to having their kin-altruism abused can exploit us at their leisure -- until there are no people left who are capable of
morality.
Tell me why nationalism is hypocritical in it's motives and aims. The aim is simple to create a nation state. How the people choose to relate to that state is a function of their choice and governmental impact. Nationalism does everything it says it does it just dosn't do it well all the time like every form of government. Oh by the way usuaully the more "fairy tale" forms of government you read about in fantasy books usually hint at one of two things:
1. Control by a government that is eventually embraced through a carefully constructed form of information.
2. Biological intervention in the form of having a way to easily transcend the unpopularity or the problems associated with that regime. Usually this means that they are into the inner self or a strong myth base or even the fact that they can leave.
The last part of that sentence translates (again correct me if I'm wrong) says:
"The peole who don't agree with the program and feel united are then enslaved by the people who don't get with it."
I'm sorry but this just is wrong. That would mean that hippies would rule the world and eventually kill "morality".
Now I am a little confused about what you mean by "morality" in this case. Usually that word is associated with clear cut ideas of what is right and wrong. This is usually associated with nation states and strong governments and not anarchy. So are you saying that anarchy is the best form of government (oops no Christians or Jews or any organized large religion that has a code of conduct) and that all others are repressive?
This just sounds like so many ideas lumped together. You should seperate all the ideas out and process them one by one. It might make it longer but for the majority of people in the world it's a little easier to understand.
Re:Evolutionary Prisoner's Dilemma -- Not Class Wa (Score:1)
Anyone who says competition is better is correct: as long as you have a fall-guy to pay the price for you, competition is better. I don't think this is the sort of world-model to advance. (Hah! I didn't say paradigm.. ah, fuck)
SA
Re:Of course we all know BeOS is better than MacOS (Score:1)
Re:rival goods (Score:1)
nice way to back out when you don't have an argument.
I look forward to reading your ideas in the future.
your highschool sucked (Score:2)
[ c h a d o k e r e ] [iastate.edu]
Re:Why OS does matter. - NOT (Score:2)
Well, it really really depends on what you're doing on the net. There are apparently people happy with WebTV.
But no one would argue that they are using the internet to its fullest communication ability. From what I have seen, when people go to buy a computer, they want it to be fully utilized. People with WebTv are skimming the surface, and unless they believe Microsoft's hype about WebTv, they know it. (The argument that most believe the hype is for another time)
Um well yes they do actually, if you buy NT Server...And if you're using FrontPage ...
My point was that a webserver (hell, and browser for that matter, despite the DOJ trial) is part of the essential ocmputer componants that you should receive when you get an OS. Yes, there are tons of pay and free webservers for Windows. None of them come with the generic OS. And most people don't understand that they can get and install them. If it came default and already preinstalled, like RedHat, they have a much larger chance of using it. And this use would increase the user's connectivity and ability to disseminate information. If the feature's author states this as the highest goal, then the OS matters.
me> Has anyone tried to use the default Windows telnet out of the box?
Uh yes, actually it works just fine for my needs, thank you.
Dude, the program sucks. It emulates vt100. No color. Its configuration is simple, but incomplete. It has serious problems if it cannot resolve a domain name (It can hang). (Haven't checked the win98 version, but that was true in the older ones) But I understand this can be a personal preference, so I'll drop the point.
Who's denying anyone?
Denying was a bad choice of words. I should have said, not making easily accessible. It amounts to the same thing when you are looking for a low learning curve. If all this technology is supposed to make everyone communicate easier, then it should be defaulted to do just that. Not require someone to download a webserver and set everything up themselves.
As for wanting to turn their computer off, with the advent of DSL and other "always on" internet technologies, the startup and shutdown process is going to become less and less frequent with home users. I think we are seeing trends in this direction. I'd like more numbers on this though.
As far as box crackers goes, you are right in some respects. People will not want to deal with the hazards. Distro's should come with a completely empty cgi-bin directory. Most webservers that server only static content are pretty "hardened". And if more and more people leave their computers always on, extremely unsecure OS's like Windows are going to be taking more hits from trojan's than crackers anyway.
My point is that if expressive power is what is going to fuel internet growth and use, and is its main benefit to society, then the OS you choose does make a difference in that it defines what you think your computer can easily do as opposed to going out and doing work and learning about things that may not interest you for youself.
And who knows, people are pretty interested in what is lying around on their computer. If your Mom may become interested in the source of her webserver if it was just sitting there. Stranger things have happend. *grin*
Crulx
Re:It is not bad to pay for software (Score:2)
Then you don't disagree with "Mr RMS and all like him" since "they" have no problem with charging money for (software) products.
(Perhaps if you did a better job researching, and thinking through, what people like RMS actually say, you wouldn't have to post anonymously? Heck, I'm amazed someone wasted a moderation point of "Insightful" on your post, but at least that helped it catch my eye.)
Of course, RMS and others (like myself) have written and then given away software, but we've also gotten paid $$ to write Open Source Software as well. (RMS gets paid much better than I do, though.) No moral/ethical/legal problem with that. I don't know what percentage of the source code in GCC was paid for (to get written), but it's probably well over 50%.
Does that throw your assumptions about what "Mr RMS" says completely out of the water, or what?
Re:Community (Score:2)
Ok, let me clarify. Perhaps I should have said discrimination, or prejudice stems from ignorance. The murderer and rapist probably have a lot more wrong with them than just discrimination, or prejudice, but surely those crimes do happen in many cases due to discriminition or prejudice. My point is that I believe that humans are born murderers or rapists. For most voilent criminals, chances are either something psychologically traumatic happened sometime in theire lifetime, or some sort of chemical imbalance causes them to behave psychologically unstable. Surely murderers and rapists aren't doing these things because they are misunderstanding "right" and "wrong". Do you really think a sane person would think to themselves "Hmm...I think murdering that guy would be a truly
"I'm personally convinced that ignorance stems from a reckless disregard for a basis of absolute
right and wrong."
I don't buy this moral absolutism at all. Do you
"If this basis is lost, everything is relative, and anything is admissible."
Everything is relative. Not everything is admissible though. The UN has outlined a universal bill or human rights that pretty much describes what is
""Knowledge-dispersal" and "awareness-raising" can only do so much when they're based on shifting, ever-changing notions of what's acceptable and what isn't."
Well, that's the point. Knowledge, information, has no bias, has no moral stance. Facts are agnostic of any one belief system. So, by spreading information, making the same
"Just a minor point, but I think communications is only increasing the information available to people."
Ok, sure. Information and knowledge are two slightly different things. I didn't make the distinction. Knowledge is internalized information. If people should to
"Knowledge...I don't know. It sure doesn't seem like people are getting any smarter.
Look at "Who Wants to be a Millionaire?" for an example of that. I had harder questions than that in the third grade!
Well, if not smarter, than at least more
It seems to me "Who Wants to be a Millionaire?" is more based on trivia than useful information. I'd say Jeopardy is a better guage. We've had Jeopardy for a long time, and still do.
"But then what about the community factor? I have to agree that all our gadgets and gizmos
have made people more distant and disengaged. Sure, there are virtual communities, but are
they anything like a real community? Can everybody get together when the electricity goes out
for three days to stay warm, light a fire, and cook on the grill (despite the freezing rain)? It's possible and expected to communicate with vast numbers of people on the internet, but where's the depth, the personal in interpersonal communications?
Don't get me wrong, I think communications are a good thing. I like being able to call and e-mail
friends and family who live half a country (or world) away. But looking to communications to
solve all the world's inequities and woes...I personally don't think that's such a good thing."
Entirely agreed.
Aaron
(please excuse the quoting if it comes out horrible)
Jazilla.org - the Java Mozilla [sourceforge.net]
Re:Do we really want this? (Score:1)
"When a person driving a motor vehicle reaches a horse and the horse acts frightened, the driver of the vehicle must get out of the car and take it apart, laying its pieces in front of the horse so the horse will calm down"
Um, like hell there is.
I have a set of Florida lawbooks on my office shelf. I've read every word of chapters 316-321, which cover motor vehicles, driving, licensure and titles. Nothing like this exists anywhere in that section.
You have a citation?
(Yeah, I know, he was just trying to make a point... with cobbled-up facts. Furrfu!)
Cheers,
-- jra
-----
Re:Freudian concepts...Confused (Score:4)
Personally, I prefer the Triune Brain [bizcharts.com] and variations thereof. The "power" which the original author ascribed to high-level conscious thought would be low-level reptilian preservation and domination instinct. The "community" is from the mammalian brain, whose emotions often are wired for herd or wolf-pack behavior, depending upon the species.
This article has some interesting observations, but I think they are pigeonholed in some obsolete psychological technology.
Re:Marx's critique of Hegel (Score:2)
I realize full well that the post was at best barely tenable, (even with my obvious lack of knowledge about German philosophy!) and said so. intellectual 'smarmyness' is what I termed it; He selectively played with snippets of fact and overgeneralization to get a grandiose conclusion. You call it pseudointellectualism; That would be a better description.
But look at how much useful discussion it inspired! That conversation makes the post far more valuable than just the sum of the contents.
No capitalistic separation?! (Score:4)
I gotta disagree on this one. For those who have access to a computer, the internet, yes, is quite an equalizer. But not everyone has access to a computer. Sure, libraries and schools have computers that are "Open to the public", but this simply does not pan out in reality. The guy sleeping on the street cannot walk into a library and log onto a computer unfettered (of course, the more important fact is, he will not, he's too busy fighting off hypothermia).
Point is, while the internet provides an interesting case study of human communalization, it does not remove the economic barriers. The people who were outcasts yesterday are still outcasts today. If we form communities on the net, it is largely because we are already in communities in real life - most of us are employable, mildly educated, and well fed.
Is this a troll? (Score:2)
We need to stop kidding ourselves.
You left out some framing and context about where these quotes are from:
The quote about the chain comes in a discussion about religion and how criticism of it is necessary in Germany from Contribution To The Critique Of Hegel's Philosophy Of Law
Criticism has torn up the imaginary flowers from the chain not so that man shall wear the unadorned, bleak chain but so that he will shake off the chain and pluck the living flower. The criticism of religion disillusions man to make him think and act and shape his reality like a man who has been disillusioned and has come to reason, so that he will revolve round himself and therefore round his true sun. Religion is only the illusory sun which revolves round man as long as he does not revolve round himself.
Even if your post is a troll, I agree that that is what most of us do with our shallow political philosophies that avoid the reality that any revolution will be a class revolution.
Could you provide context for your "opposing interest quote"? Here's a nice one where he talks about how one only sees parliamentary activity of 2 kinds, the compromise kind that
is the parliamentary activity of free traders with protectionists, gold standard with silver standard men, pro and anti-Trust people -- in short, elements who stand upon the common ground of the capitalist system.
and the other kind which is by socialist representatives who admit no compromise with the capitalist regime.
What fun!
The reasons and the medium (Score:2)
There, I feel better... I wonder if it'll get read?
8^)
False dichotomy (Score:3)
Open source has made it possible for people with ideas and a message to build tools that either embody it or enable it if they have the talent.
Re:This is kind of silly (Score:2)
I found the article above interesting and thought provoking and well written, but in the big picture I thought the port from Micheal to Marxism to "Why can t we all just get along" and back to Michael very odd. I think it was an exercise in creative writing.
Never knock on Death's door:
Re:No capitalistic separation?! (Score:2)
I believe someone once described intelligence as the ability to hold two opposing ideas and make sense of them. Although true for the mind, it seems as though for community it is not, and we get natural divisions based on these genuine differences.
Re:"lefties" (Score:2)
door where it belongs. Face it, not everyone buys into your notions of the benefits of capitalism with which people like you are brainwashed at a young age. Get over it: human society and brotherhood are the important aspects of
human civilization. Capital is merely one way of forming a living, but it is hardly the best.
Give me a good example of a strong world power that impliments anything that has anything to do with capitalism and I will believe you. Russia has fallen, Chian is essentially using capitalistic ideas, Cuba is a speed bump now that their big brother Russia is out of the running, North Korea can barely feed it's own people. Now I guess that leaves Vietnam and maybe some other isolated places. Please to some acurate political and intelligence forcasting and tell us again precisely how capitalism is inferior to foo and how and where foo is implimented.
Things are changing, here, and elsewhere. Be prepared.
Sounds like the hippies of a 20-30 years ago. Generally this will not happen. The average person does not agree with this statement. And what you are forgetting is that for any sort of massive change usually top officials and the military have to be behind it. Last I checked I think that military people like getting paid on a regular basis and the top officials were quite amiable towards capitalism because it pays them to like it.
p.s.: although it is probably pointless to argue with a brainwashed capitalist like yourself, advertising on Slashdot is tacky as hell.
No you know what's really getting tacks? It's thinking that the 60's are still alive and that other nations even using military force could easily topple the USA in the next 10 years at least. I suggest you look at the political analysis at stratfor [stratfor.com] under their predictions of the decade for the major political areas of the world or maybe take a look at Jane's Intelligence Review at your local library or get a subscription (yeah it's expensive but it will put all those little fears to rest that the US is going anywhere). These sources are quite unbiased and quite good reading.
What I am wondering is which country you are actually from and exactly what kind of things that they do there that make it a good place to live for the "average person" not just the governmetn or the rich how exploit the region.
Do we really want this? (Score:2)
Technology (Score:2)
Ease of communication is only part of the point. The real reason we continue to develope and extend our technology is because we can. Man is motivated by accomplishment and the continued thirst for knowledge. Innovation is personally satisfying. When you code that program, or route that network, or whatever you did today, didn't it feel good when you were done, like you accomplished something? If you have a idea, realize it. The further we go, the more we will learn, and the more questions we will have.
Re:Why OS does matter. (Score:2)
But, I think there is something that does matter - the philosophical differences between OS and proprietary. It's not that they can't co-exist, it's that we desperately need both to exist. We need the freedom of Open Source in some areas, particularly in our home software. We need an OS that we know won't betray our privacy. We need a world-wide network that intrinsically can't be controlled by any one person/group. We also need proprietary to help stimulate innovation (through the forces of greed). I don't believe all innovation can come from open-source. We need both.
Community (Score:3)
I've always thought that the ideal human grouping is the "clan". For hundreds of thousands if not millions of years, man (and woman) developed and gravitated towards this grouping. A clan is small enough that everybody knows each other and can agree on mores, but not big enough that a separation needs to be made between the "people" and "government". I think the "clan" is the basic unit we still gravitate towards. Numbering hundreds and hundreds of thousands, there are still Geek clans, Musician clans, etc.
Technology has forever been enabling us to communicate more easily, and expand the horizons of the world we live in. Our realm of acquantaince is not a few square miles anymore...it is the whole globe. In a clan, the person to person connection is tight because there are a small number of people. Technology is enabling, and
We are all "guys behind the counter".
I think this is actually having the reverse effect of what we expect an increased ability for communications via technology would provide. We now have many many many more connections with people, but they are less and less meaningful. Pervasive communications I think is having the effect of being
I hope I am wrong...because it is sort of sad. One of the things I think illustrates this "pseudo-theory/feeling" of mine, is, for example, the music and cover art of Radiohead...coldly nihilistic, and nostalgiac. ("let down", "uptight", "lucky", "tourist", etc. on OK Computer, but also The Bends and Pablo Honey...)
I guess to sum it up...pervasive communications is commoditizing us...Marx predicted technology would commoditize us physically...I feel communications technology might be commoditizing us emotionally/spiritually/mentally.
Jazilla.org - the Java Mozilla [sourceforge.net]