Why Open Source is not in Government more than it is

Business systems are built around ensuring that people pay for what they use - and if something fails to perform they can be taken to court and made to pay for that failure. With Open Source there IS NO WAY TO enforce payment for failure to live up to promises since NO ONE person or firm owns the code - no one to sue. Imagine a group of people all getting together and building a car then giving it away. If a tire falls off and the person driving it gets killed and none of the builders can EVER be held responsible would you buy use car knowing that if anything breaks its YOUR fault and no one can pay for the faulty assemblage of it?
Open source is like that car - if it causes you problems there is no one to blame and you just have to live with it. To continue the car example you can ask the person who bolted on the wheel how they did it, but they may or may not respond, even be findable, and may not help you if you discover the problem before it fell off - since they just helped its not their problem and they are NOT making any living off of perpetually helping people.
The government ALWAYS insists that the firm be held accountable and payable for bad products - which is the main reason Open Source has not been fielded in any meaningful way - if it fails to work as designed no way can any money be recovered for lost time in trying to use it or people be forced to pay in rebuilding destroyed data, or other problems caused by using it. There is no liability trail at all. The lawyers will hate it! <:)

 

Publish Or Perish! - Google Book Scanning - A solution

If the rights holders are so loath to let Google scan and then publish the books for searching - and displaying partial results or giving the people an opportunity to purchase and download it - then the universal copyright laws that ALL nations have signed (The Berne Commission) should have a new clause inserted that Google (or any other company that intends to do the same)  will notify the copyright holder that it intends to scan those books in copyright but out of print - and if the owner objects THE OWNER must then publish a new run of that book worldwide (10,000 minimum copies) within 6 months and advertise that it is now available again to all the nations (and people) who are part of the copyright treaty- and Google does not get to scan it. If they refuse to publish it - then Google gets to scan it.

If they are SO worried about losing money - then they need to publish it again and make that money. If they refuse to publish - then it shows that the book is really "economically worthless" and it should be in the public domain - or at least parts of it accessible via a public method.

Some of the works being published now will never make it into the public domain for 125 YEARS!  If an author writes a book at age 30, lives to be 80, the copyright still exists for another 75 years = 125 years under copyright. So much for the "limited time" that the original copyright convention had. 125 years out of 2000 is a short time - but since most people die before 80 . . .

Tom Philo

The Smart Grid- A better way to charge you more for the same service

Think of the smart grid like the highway system - there are peak times (traffic jams) and times when it seems the highways are deserted (2 AM till 5 AM). And the smart grid is going the way LOTS of cities want to regulate your travel: you go to work during peak traffic times we will charge you more to get there - the implied idea is that you will go to work when it is convenient for THEM to lessen the traffic and not for you .

So your job opens at 8, we want you to travel at 5:30 to avoid the extra rush hour toll fee for using the road that you paid for. Social engineering.

With the "smart grid" it allows them to charge you for peak usage during the day - because now they CAN. Umm peak demand for air conditioning is between 3 and 6 in the afternoon, lets charge more to people to turn down the demand to cool down their house when it is the hottest park of the day - because we can.

We're not going to build more power plants (never mind that 50 million more people will be in the USA in 10 years or so, we can conserve our way out of this problem) but charging extra money to try and get people to not use the air conditioning when they need it to most will work! Complain? Forget it, the regulators say this is proper and we can do it - and we can earn another 10% above what we would have - because its good for society! (And now add in the government overhead to help the low income people afford this extra costs so 80% of the others will end up paying even more to pay for this subsidy and the 100%+ government overhead costs to run the program).
And with no extra power on the grid - remember no new plants - then they WILL lower the voltage down to all to (likely around to 98 or so to keep the system from collapsing. Wind power? Sure, on the hottest days there is usually NO WIND so they sit idle. At least the birds won't hit them.) Equipment that is designed for a certain voltage will run less efficiently and will electrically internally fail faster.
It will mean a few hundred billion dollars spent to allow the government to tell the utilities that they can charge more during peak times to change social and natural behavior - and of course the Government will get more since they tax on income (sure, I want to pay 20% more for clean energy!) and if you charge more people during peak time for something they need to use then, which allows the Government to get more money.

Just don't eat dinner between 5 PM and 8 PM when electrical demand is high since that is when most people cook, start cooking all your meals after 8 PM to save electrical costs -  its not our problem you don't get enough sleep since you have to get up at 4 AM to avoid the tolls that kick in at 6 AM. Oh yes, don't turn on your lights during the winter. Demand is high because people want light in their houses then.

They are going to micromanage you life in your house now - and the roads have been the proving ground.