hxa7241

8 ms·

1.
by hxa7241 4y ago
Anarchism can never even exist, let alone work, because it defines itself in a fundamentally nonsensical way. It distinguishes itself on the principle of 'non-coerciveness'. But coercion is written into the fact of physical scarci
2.
by hxa7241 4y ago
Always good to see a zero-CSS website. The true zen-master style of web production ‒ many tacitly aspire to its purity, yet few are able to shake off worldly temptations to attain it.
3.
by hxa7241 4y ago
https://www.hxa.name/ ‒ lightweight, handmade, maybe a little bit of unusualness of design, quite a few writings, some software, other oddities, and almost 20 years old.
4.
by hxa7241 12y ago
Software is not all made up out of thin air -- you do not 'choose your own gravity'. The equivalent of phyical laws in software are computational/algorithmical, logical laws. For example, sorting cannot be done faster than O(
5.
by hxa7241 12y ago
This is, well, shallow propagandising guff. It promotes an agenda but diverts criticism with mythologising illusion. Markets fail in various ways. Should we just let that happen? -- and just have 'faith' in the wonder of ' fr
6.
by hxa7241 12y ago
What is this 'theory' Naur talks of? It is not a nebulous feeling or sensation, it is something complex, articulate -- something 'built'. But how can something with logical structure be at the same time inexpressible? Th
7.
by hxa7241 12y ago
Naur's article is based on a contradiction: On one hand, a 'theory' is described as something completely internal and irreducible: "the theory, is not, and cannot be, expressed" (quote from PATB) But on the other
8.
by hxa7241 13y ago
That argument, commonly associated with Hayek, quite trivially does not make sense. If the information is unknowable, then it cannot play any role economically. If it is unknowable, the market itself cannot act upon it either. The idea lurk
9.
by hxa7241 13y ago
As Landes and Posner say in 'The economic structure of intellectual property law' (Conclusion, p422, s3) (2003): "Economic analysis has come up short of providing either theoretical or empirical grounds for assessing the over
10.
by hxa7241 13y ago
If plenty of music is being made, so what? If certain businesses cannot make so much money, tough luck on them -- they should get out of business. That is the market. The purpose of copyright law is to ensure good amounts of production for
11.
by hxa7241 13y ago
The copyright industry has been 'crying wolf' for ages. No-one should listen. We do not even know that very large amounts of piracy would be bad -- the market would probably reconfigure and adapt. We should increase people's
12.
by hxa7241 13y ago
That question has been answered: we have had plenty of piracy for years now -- and do we still have plenty of film/TV/music/book production? Yes! So piracy (at least, as we have known it) is not harmful, in fact it seems almo
13.
by hxa7241 13y ago
And if you like that (spheres only), you might also like this (general triangles-based), in 444 lines of Scala (and OCaml, Python, Ruby, Lua, Scheme, C++, and C): http://www.hxa.name/minilight/
14.
by hxa7241 13y ago
This is quite pointless because it essentially cancels out. To get a cooperative structure you have to give away surplus -- that is, people with more have to give it to people with less. Yes, redistribution ! That seems a dirty idea in a
15.
by hxa7241 13y ago
If they made lots of money, good: they offered a service the public wanted. As far as that basic model goes they added value into the economy. Anyone who wants to claim there is something actually materially bad there needs to provide evide
16.
by hxa7241 13y ago
> That's what's so stupid about the entire article. You could just as easily make a case that everything we have today is the result of gentlemen scientists from the renaissance Or that Alexander the Great is the inventor of al
17.
by hxa7241 13y ago
Let's not confuse product with implementation. Someone still needs to choose and arrange data-structures and algorithms to fit available resources. That is engineering. Just because the product is ill-defined and subjectively-judged does no
18.
by hxa7241 13y ago
What precisely is wrong with people copying things for free? Since these are non-rival, non-finite goods -- that is, as many people can use or reproduce them as want to without obstructing anyone else -- there is no basic physical reason fo
19.
by hxa7241 13y ago
Why? If you want to measure energy, measure energy. The point of currency is something else. Currency/money is a data-structure for a kind of cooperation algorithm . That is the way to understand it in an informational world. Note that mon
20.
by hxa7241 14y ago
What makes using an honesty-box moral? It is not that one side has dictated the terms. Imagine finding an empty car-park, parking your car, approaching the honesty-box and finding a note declaring the owner does not expect money but instead
21.
by hxa7241 14y ago
> people have decided that they have an intrinsic right to content They do -- people do indeed have pretty much exactly that: an intrinsic right -- to copy and share intellectual/informational goods. Why? How? Because these are non-fini
22.
by hxa7241 14y ago
Your 'publication of ideas' argument applies only to things that can be hidden. But the patent system applies to a super-set: things that are plain, too. Therefore, by your own argument, the patent system is operating beyond its justificati
23.
by hxa7241 14y ago
The program get shorter because the author learned more and improved it each time, not mainly because of the languages. Mainstream programming languages do not seem to vary much in lines of code of programs: the range is maybe about 2 or 3.
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by hxa7241 14y ago
While that is certainly a nice and well regarded model, it does not say much about what actually happens. It really only amounts to a proposition, and cannot be read as indicating a necessity. As Landes and Posner themselves later say: "Eco
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by hxa7241 14y ago
Copyright is not justified by it being a way to maximise producers' revenue. Such principle would set no limit to laws that restrict people in general to make money for some few. That should immediately seem awry. Informational goods are
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by hxa7241 14y ago
Land is rival: the owner needs to restrict others in order to not be restricted from accessing the land themself. Informational goods are nonrival: any number of people can use them without obstructing anyone else's use. So normal property
27.
by hxa7241 14y ago
There is a dilemma there. If you are only skimming a few comments, you are not reading most. But if the comments are not being read, how can they be scored properly? The extent to which points allow reduced/selective reading is the extent t
28.
by hxa7241 14y ago
The basic problem is a power imbalance, and its result is that they tell you how they pay. So any proposed solution built on the idea of you telling them how to pay seems very much in danger of failing for exactly the same reason th
29.
by hxa7241 14y ago
The whole of the author's argument, and its weakness, in four words: > It’s fine. It’s business. Why is this inadequate? Because whether something is 'business' is not the beginning and the end of whether it is a good thing to do. It is
30.
by hxa7241 14y ago
Requiring originality is far too restrictive. For example: would only Martin Luther King be allowed to express his opinion, and absolutely no-one else? No, that hardly sounds like freedom. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article

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