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Spockie-Tech
Site Admin
Joined: 31 May 2004
Posts: 3160
Location: Melbourne, Australia
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Possibly, I CBF'ed doing it right now, in the middle of some stuff, unless an enthusiastic mod wants to do it, Ill do it an a day or so when I have some more time..
The details would have to be worked out carefully of course, and methods to precent people from wasting everyones time with requests to vote on every little issue, you could probably divide it up into local, regional , state and national areas, along with things like "is this a permanent change or does it auto-expire unless renewed every x years", and "needs a minimum of X% to vote before enacted" etc etc.
The point being, that if open source collaboration can develop hugely complex projects like operating systems, indestructible torrent networks, strong crypto money systems and so on, a piddly little vote/poll taking app with strong ID shouldnt be at all hard to do.
The tricky bit will be forcing it to be adopted by the incumbent powers-that-be who arent going to like letting go of their chokehold on the levers of power and influence-broking at all.. But, hey, if Linux can defeat the biggest meanest dirtbag companies in the world (Apple, Microsoft etc ) in a mere 20 years then I dont think a bunch of luddite politicians will present too much of on obstacle given some time..
The revolutions of tomorrow arent going to be conducted by idiots throwing rocks or blasting away at the vastly superior armanent of the established powers. they will be kicked off by those who know how to direct the force of open technology and freedom. Bitcoin is just the beginning. _________________ Great minds discuss ideas. Average minds discuss events. Small minds discuss people
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Fri Mar 01, 2013 9:39 pm |
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Spockie-Tech
Site Admin
Joined: 31 May 2004
Posts: 3160
Location: Melbourne, Australia
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^^ Wot He said..
Google, Ebay, Amazon, Twitter, Facebook, Wikipedia, Youtube - The worlds biggest servers of data - any Microsoft/Apple servers in there ? Nope. Pretty much all Linux (some BSD Unix)
Webcameras, Routers, Printers, GPS, Switches, VOIP Systems, Nas Drives, - Any Microsoft/Apple in there ? Nope.. Linux rules the embedded market.
"Mobile Computing Devices" - Phones & Tablets - 75% to Android, which is Linux + Java under the Gui, other Linux devices on the way (ubuntu + more)
http://venturebeat.com/2012/11/01/as-android-grabs-75-market-share-can-anyone-tell-me-why-this-is-not-mac-vs-pc-all-over-again/
Apple 15%, MS - 3%
Super Computers, Video Rendering Farms, Single Board Embedded Devices, Rasperry Pi's (over 1 million hobbyist boards sold in its first year) - MS/Apple on any of them ? Nope. All Linux.
Oh, MS still "dominates" the shrinking Desktop PC Market huh ?
Predictions of overall MS Market share of "computing devices" falling to 4% pretty soon. http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2407410,00.asp
Android is chomping up Apple's Tablet and Phone market, both of which have been eating into its Desktop sales in a rapidly shrinking overall Desktop Market.
Got Linux Skills ? Welcome to the cream of the IT Jobs.
http://www.pcworld.com/article/249875/linux_where_the_jobs_and_bigger_salaries_are.html
Sounds like an ass-whupping to me. _________________ Great minds discuss ideas. Average minds discuss events. Small minds discuss people
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Sat Mar 02, 2013 2:40 pm |
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Spockie-Tech
Site Admin
Joined: 31 May 2004
Posts: 3160
Location: Melbourne, Australia
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By "defeat" I mean "has beaten them to their goal".
Their stated goal was to have microsoft operating systems and application software running on practically every computing device on the planet. what else would a convicted monopolist aim for ?
Instead, thanks to their repeated behaving like prime asshats, people who used to be quite happy with their "good enough" solutions are now more and more looking for ways to escape their blatant lock-ins, deliberate incompatibility, intentional feature crippling to sell premium versions, planned obsolesence and attempted forced upgrade cycles.
Their latest trick ? Changing the licence for Office so that you arent buying the software any more.. you are buying it to use *only* on *1* computer forever. Upgrade your computer, or the old one dies ? Sorry, you need to buy another copy of Office, you are not allowed to transfer yor software from a old or dead machine to a new one.
Way to go Microsoft, I know of at least 3 companies that are now making serious efforts to move to Open/Libre Office just because of that dick move.
http://semiaccurate.com/2012/11/14/microsoft-has-failed/
Yes, I would say that they have been *defeated* - I cant see any way forward for them from here that isnt in a downwards direction.
@valen: I wouldnt call "Ubuntu" the Linux Flagship.. yes its probably used by more people than most other distro's, but most of them are n00bs because its relatively simple and Mark Shuttleworth threw millions at kickstarting a good support community around it, but to me its just a johny-come-lately derivitave of debian..
I admit I dont like it much, but I dont like anything that runs Gnome as the ui much, I prefer KDE..
Plus after being finally forced to move off Mandrake/Mandriva after repeated failures of the managment team, Ive moved over to Mageia which is managed/run by a community team the way a good free OS should be.
But, to each their own, Ubuntu has done a lot of good in giving Windows refugees a relatively easy path away from the Microsoft camp and for that Im grateful to it. _________________ Great minds discuss ideas. Average minds discuss events. Small minds discuss people
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Sun Mar 03, 2013 3:30 pm |
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Spockie-Tech
Site Admin
Joined: 31 May 2004
Posts: 3160
Location: Melbourne, Australia
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Having had to deal with the less intellectually gifted on a regular basis, I would normally agree with what you are saying in principle.. except..
it assumes that the current selection process for our decision makers is based upon some form of merit, or judgement of their ability to do good things for the long term benefit of the community.
I would argue that our current selection process does little to encourage such traits, instead preferentially selecting for media-friendly looks, well spoken, an ability to avoid making easily-misquotable sound bites, expensive clothes, and political astuteness over any sort of financial acumen or social responsibility.
Having to convince a bunch of people who know jack about you except what they have seen on the Telly to vote for you again and again every few years ensures that they have little ability to think of any long-term benficial projects if they might cost them short term votes.
Bluntly put, most politicians are media friendly short sighted idiots, and probably average out at a lower median IQ than the much maligned "Average Aussie" would.
Not to mention the inherent inefficiencies in a system where its "workers" spend more time trying to secure and advance their position in the beauracracy than they do trying to ensure the system produces a useful amount of "work" as an output.
Indeed, given the current gov pay structures, that reward bosses based on the size of their department in terms of resources managed, rather than efficient results, it seems obvious to me that gov employees have an incentive to do things as *inefficiently* as possible to require more people to get a job done and thus pad their own paypackets.
So, with voter-friendly driven media whore leaders backed up by teams of the worst workers that can be found, I seriously doubt that even a mass-market democracy could possibly do worse than our present "leaders" manage to do.
I do agree that a simple majority rules democracy has problems, and as has often been said, the best form of gov is a benevolent dictator, problem is they dont stay that way..
But Im sure that we could hardly fail given a team of people who can perform the "herding cats" task of coordinating a bunch of fractious programmers into producing something as complex as an operating system reasonably well.
Whatever they come up with is extremely unlikely to be worse than what we presently have, which hasnt changed in operational methods in a thousand odd years. _________________ Great minds discuss ideas. Average minds discuss events. Small minds discuss people
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Tue Mar 05, 2013 11:02 pm |
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