Comment Re:Another Corporate rape of the commons (Score 1) 142
You own that space right now.
No, no you don't. And you sure as hell have nothing to do with what's going on at 200, let alone 400 feet.
You own that space right now.
No, no you don't. And you sure as hell have nothing to do with what's going on at 200, let alone 400 feet.
for their benefit
And for YOUR benefit, if you have enough discipline to run your own business that happens to use the same type of technology. I suppose you consider the wireless connectivity you use every day to be a "rape of the commons" every time you connect to a web site that runs advertising in order to pay for their operations? Rape! Rape rape rape! Eeeeevil businesses doing things like
Ooh good business writing regulations. (Score:1)
You're so right. Only people who HATE businesses should be recommending regulations. Only people who've never had the energy to organize a croquet game, let alone the biggest retailer in the world, should propose changes to a huge body of regulations. A fine idea.
the editors will welcome they're new
Hopefully the new platform will still support irony.
I wanted to run my own social networking site just for me and my friends using a FOSS project, so I was excited about Diaspora, then I saw that it requires Node.js. I have no interest in setting my server up for that. I imagine this selection was made because developers think Ruby is cool and PHP is boring and lame. Unfortunately, whatever the justification was, to make Diaspora work you need to have, you know, Diasporas, but if the only people using the project are those that manage their own Node.js server, then the already puny market size of available Diasporas has just shrunk by several orders of magnitude. It really needed to be a project that could be installed on any generic LAMP server, but the developers are so rarely interested in this boring aspect (this is actually the case across many engineering fields, it's why companies hire marketers) that left to manage their own projects they fail to achieve their stated goals.
So I took a look at GNU Social, which is written in PHP. Unfortunately, they also fail the marketing test. The project seemed to revolve around making a 'federated' social networking system. However, the actual features of the social networking seemed to be trumped by trying to make the federated system work. From a marketing perspective, they put the cart before the horse. How many users want a circa 2009 facebook clone? I bet a fairly high number, but GNU Social doesn't even offer that level of functionality. The 'federation' of the system should be viewed more as a distribution element, so, you know, before going to distribution, you should have a product that people want to distribute, and GNU Social is not that.
And where would the colder place be to vent that heat?
Just pop up a little lead umbrella so there's a shady spot.
The BBC is independent from the government.
Other than the part where it's the government that runs the court system that enforces your having been forced to give the BBC money whether you want to patronize them or not.
It's freer from government influence than other funding mechanisms
What? It can't even work without the direct involvement in the government running the courts that are necessary for the BBC to collect their unavoidable TV tax.
Here's a way that the government could be even less involved: don't DO that. Let people who want to show programs to a large audience find their own way to fund the production and dissemination of that material. Say, by selling ads or attracting sponsors, etc. Remove the court system and penalties under law for not wanting to fund everything that's broadcast from the equation entirely. Why should someone who doesn't want to fund a given program be forced to, under penalty of being dragged through court? I have zero interest in watching our many all-sports programming options (ESPN, etc). You think the "best system we have" is for the government to be the enforcer in an arrangement where I'm forced to give them money anyway?
The BBC is funded by a tax on the UK citizens, enforced by the criminal code. Your assertion is completely wrong.
Ah, so in Britain the government isn't involved in tax collection and enforcement. They don't do the collecting, they don't penalize people who don't pay, and they don't get involved in picking and choosing who receives those funds, or have any say, whatsoever, over how that money is allocated. That is an interesting system indeed! Who handles all of that, if not the government?
This file will self-destruct in five minutes.