> I misstated (I'm trying to do too much this morning..sorry) --
> Corporations aren't protected, they protect people -- specifically the
> people who make and implement the 'corporate' decisions -- i.e. if I,
> Vinnie, choose to break a law, I, Vinnie, get punished. If a corporation
> breaks a law (meaning the people behind the corporation) the corporation
> gets smacked (and it's rather limited what you can do...often times fines
> don't even make a dent in the increased profitability of rule breaking.
> You can't put a corporation in jail. *very rarely* do corporations get
> broken up) and the folks behind the decisions almost never are punished.
If a corporation breaks a law.. what would you like to see happen... going
for an extreme here... if microsoft hires an assasan to kill Linus.. what
should happen?
>
> > The problem I see with putting restrictions on companies.. is it tends to
> > hurt progress and forces them to take dirtyer actions...
>
> I'll wait and see before fearing hurt progress. To my knoweldge, nothign
> that the U.S. *can* do to MS will hurt anyone else directly (and MS
> already plays as dirty as it can get away with)
Well obviously nothing has happened yet.. but lets say something along the
lines of code verification happens (ie. before microsoft releases
something it has to go before a government approved board that makes sure
what they are releasing isn't "anti-compeditive") it could slow down
releases of patches that might be nessary immedatly.. which are released
slow enough as it is...
>
> > The technology area is probably the area where government intervention
> > scares me the most... since they have NO CLUE!
>
> Agreed. But their interventions will most likely be business based, not
> technology based.
If your going to apply a business ruling to a technology company your
going to end up ruling against the technology as well.. even if it's
something like splitting up the company.. since at this point application,
internet, and OS APIs in Microsoft are so ingrained into the OS.. I don't
see how the split is going to help anything.. if they are split they will
still be working as one.. only this time microsoft will have more heads...
> A fair chunk of the pro-MS clan (and libertarians/objectivists/et al in
well I don't feel completly alone in my anti-MS yet libertarian views..
since Eric Raymond seems to share alot of them :)
> general, which is not to say the whole of the pro-MS clan is l/o/etc al or
> vice versa, just that there is some overlap and this one attituide in
> common) believe that government should stay out of business and let
> corporations go their own way, but seem to forget that the whole
> coporation idea is a legal one. Coporations are not a 'natural' concept,
> but are created by government.
when you say corpoations aren't natural.. do you mean in terms of an
organization that distributes it's profits to others? or perhaps where
many individuals make the whole of the company? or where people have
varying levels of say in a company? sounds to me to be alot like a
family... or perhaps families aren't 'natural'.. hmmms now there is an
intresting concept :).. paperwise, yes a corporation is a government
"concept" though they are founded in many ways on natural ideas...
>
> blah. I'm keeping this out because that's about the extent of my thoughts
keeping what out?
> on it. I've been lurking around some social darwinistic dicussions this
wheee kill all the white people (kidding :) )
> week and the whole set of attitudes is so illogical it bugs.
ahh bugs.. probably the most advanced creature in terms of darwanism..
they survive anything.. yet are so low on the chain...
and with the advent of computers.. a whole new species of bugs have come
to take over the world :)
>
> bleh.
>
> Vinnie
moo,
jl
>
>
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> [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.linuxchix.org
>
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