Quoting: KandarihuI don't think that this is the right approach. As much as I want Linux to grow as a platform, this gives us an unfair advantage. The better choice will be to scrap/abolish such legislation entirely.

As a general rule, I am fine with open source having unfair advantages. For one thing, closed source things do their best to create obstacles and disadvantages for open source. If you can't stop your opponent from cheating, better cheat back. For another, I can see very sound public policy objectives that can be served by preferences for open source. Government does not have a responsibility to make the playing field level, it has a responsibility to make the results of the game good for its citizens. If open source is better for the country and its citizens, then favour it.

In this specific case, I agree that the best choice would be to scrap this kind of legislation entirely. However, if that is not on the table, an unfair advantage for open source would be better than nothing.

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So the consensus is, this is obviously stupid. The question is, is the relevant law in Britain just as stupid? If this were some jurisdictions I'd try for a jury trial, because juries are less practiced at accepting insane things for the sake of the law. Not sure that's an available option in Britain.

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This is about the only tower defence game I've actually played. It was fairly good . . . maybe I'll get the DLC.

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Quoting: suchYou say "SODIMM" to most people and they'll look at you funny.

Hey! Who are you calling "so dim"?!

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"He pulled the wrong tooth! (hahahaha!!!)"
"Only one man would pull the wrong tooth! (Heehehe!!)"
"It's Clouseau! (bwahahaha!!!)"
"KILL HIM!!! (Woohahahee!!!)"

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Oooh! Shiny!

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Quoting: CatKillerMore than anything, it's an admission of a fundamental lack of self-confidence on Sony's part.

To be fair, based on the rest of your post it would seem to be a very justified lack of self-confidence.

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Quoting: eggroleI actually agree that there has never been any "pure" capitalism (or socialism) ever enacted. When you talk about Enclosure (and the other countless examples of gov intervention on behalf of the fat cats), I don't see that as an outgrowth of capitalism. I see it as corruption.

See, I think that is a misinterpretation. For instance, the Enclosures in specific wasn't either corruption or an "outgrowth" of capitalism--it was a foundation of capitalism. But more generally, capitalism is the whole system. It cannot exist without government support; before you even get to corruption, there is contract law, laws against fraud, the creation of money, and so on and on. The "marketplace" exists because government created the conditions for it to exist, and the people using the "marketplace" are going to be involved in shaping just what conditions the government is making. So if you have a system of government part of whose job is to enable the existence and activities of a class of private property owners who seek profit, individual profit-seekers enlisting the government to enable their individual profit is just an outgrowth of that, not an anomaly. Even back in the day, Karl Marx's analysis of capitalism included government--he said "The executive of the modern state is but a committee for managing the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie."

Note that none of this speaks directly to whether capitalism or socialism or whatever are good. I'm very much into that kind of value judgement, but I feel you can't really make such judgements until you have a pretty good idea what you're judging.

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Quoting: eggroleThere will always be some people that want a free lunch and they will exploit whatever (economic) system they are in. I'm sure there was tons of corruption in the USSR or even a little corruption in some uncontacted tribe in the middle of nowhere.

This is true as far as it goes. Even hunter-gatherer tribes seem to need to work to keep things egalitarian; there's this interesting custom in some of them where, if some hunter brings in say a deer, everyone almost ritually rubbishes the deer, saying it's in bad shape, probably not much good meat on that, maybe it was sick . . . just to make sure nobody gets any ideas about being the mightiest hunter in the tribe.

But at the same time, there are differences. Capitalism as an economic system is founded on the idea that what you want is more money. That isn't universal. Feudalism is founded on the idea that what you want is more land . . . and, to a fair extent, more glory. So you're going to have more corruption, in the sense of doing dirty deeds to get money, under capitalism than under feudalism. It's hard to cheat your way to more land, you have to commit some violence; the endemic sin of feudalism was not corruption, but nobles and kings starting tons of territorial wars. The Soviet system . . . I don't think in the end they really managed to make a new system "take", partly because it was an authoritarian top-down thing, partly because it was always under so much pressure from outside. The commissars still kind of thought like capitalists in terms of what they wanted and how they cheated.

If you could establish a full democratic socialism that wasn't really thinking in capitalist cultural terms, it would probably have some kind of characteristic sin, but I don't think it would be corruption in the sense we think of it. Now personally, I think that in the end, all the individual goals we've seen in unequal societies, whether it's land, money, perceived closeness to God or whatever, are all in the end placeholders for the desire for respect. People want to be respected, looked up to; that's the charge that our evolution in social bands built into us. My ideal would be societies where the goal was mainly back to respect, rather than placeholders for it, and which tried to spread respect broadly. I suppose there, the sin would be faking and calumny . . . attempts to get or deny respect on false pretences.

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Quoting: Cyba.CowboyIt's funny that you say this, because I watched a thing a couple of weeks ago comparing politicians and businessmen... Then general gist was that most politicians ask "What needs to be done", followed-up by "And how will this affect me in the polls". Businessmen on the other hand, usually ask "What needs to be done", followed-up by a command to "Get it done" (regardless of how it makes them look). The argument was that Trump falls into the latter camp, which I think is pretty accurate when you consider how he approaches some of America's problems.

Far as I can tell, Trump never asks "What needs to be done?"
He asks "What will stroke my ego?"

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