Business, Linux, Ethics and Standards - [Was]RE: [Sussex] Yet Ano ther Windows Bug

[Geoff Teale]

Nik wrote:
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> Well speaking as a historian you want to move an establishment and move
> it aside you have to educate the masses.

Indeed.  Why are the national characteristics of the English people deep 
seated NIMBYism, racism, nationalism and a feeling that "this country needs 
to be sorted out, but I'm not paying for it!"?   Simple, because the popular 
press is dominated by wealthy people with a personal interest in instilling 
fear of social change in people.  

Has it ever struck you that the computing press have a vested interest is 
saying that new things are great?  People buy computer magazines to learn 
about new things and then learn to use them.  If computer magazines said that 
there was very little functional advantage in buying a new PC with Windows XP 
as a replacement for your old Windows 2000 system then they'd loose out on 
all those people buying more and more magazines so they can work out how to 
use XP to do stuff they used to do happily.  Moreover sponsorship (in terms 
of advertising) can be tied to being "nice" to the advertiser.  Where does 
Open Source stand here - well, actually we do OK.  The publishers realise 
that there is exactly the same market for people who want to learn about 
Linux.  Because most Linux publications are now seperate from their Windows 
orientated counterparts they can even sell magazines (and thus advertising 
space) by slagging off products championed in over magazine by the same 
publisher.  In this way the computing press acts as a big feedback loop, 
everone hears that the status-quo is great so long as you keep buying 
product.

The news-media is the same.  If your main source of information about the 
world is the Daily Mail or the Sun or even the Times or Torygraph then right 
now you will be of the belief that this country is being invaded by hordes 
dirty foreigners with no right to be here who want to steel our money, beat 
up our children and rape our women folk.   That's the view I hear repeated 
over and over by the majority of people I meet.  That's the view they've read 
in those newspapers and they've not bothered to analyse that information, 
they take it as gospel.  So the average man in the street feels that the 
solution to the phenomenum of mass economic migration is simply "send 'em 
back where they came from".   This is great because at heart most people are 
fearful of what they don't know, and thus this kind of behaviour is quite 
natural and predictable. The men at the top of these publications feed us 
back our fears (And so we believe them) and then they bolt on all kinds of 
over agendas.   There is strong supporting evidence to suggest that the 
biggest factor in Magret Thatchers election inn 1979 and Tony Blairs election 
in 1997 (?) was more heavily dependent on the support of the Sun newspaper 
than any other single factor.

Now some of the less facist newspapers may concede that a lot of these 
immegrants come from very poor countries.  What those publications never tell 
you is that these people live in those conditions _because_ we live in a land 
of great wealth.  I'll repeat that.  The majority of people on this planet 
live in poverty BECAUSE we in the minority live in comfort and wealth.  For 
the average joe on this list we're talking about 20-30 people living in 
poverty, but if you're Bill Gates or Larry Ellison we're talking about 
millions of people living in poverty directly because they have gained great 
wealth.  The value of money is linked to the value of the raw produce of a 
country.   The net value of any sum of currency is in proportion to the total 
amount of that currency in circulation and the GDP and balance of trading of 
the country in question - thus there is finite value in the world.  Britain 
produces next to nothing these days, most third world countries produce 
massive amounts of food and raw materials, so how come we are wealthy and 
they are not?  Again, it's easy, we built our wealth through force, we stole 
the resources of countries and then when it become politically unexceptable 
to be an "Empire", we pulled out, but with left the great corporations, and 
they continue to rape the world and rob it of it's resources - and we 
Europeans and Americans lean on these countries with all the weight of our 
stolen Economic strength so we can squeeze a little more out of the world.  
In the context of this, who are we to complain that immigrants are putting a 
strain on our economy and causing us discomfort.  So next time you're reading 
about the immigration problem just sit back and imagine how many people lived 
their entire life in poverty just so you could get that Widescreen TV of 
yours at an "affordable" price.  We all have more wealth than the resources 
around us should allow us, thus we are hoarding resource from elsewhere.


-- 
GJT
Free Software Foundation
tealeg at member.fsf.org