Slashdot Mirror

The "local" reporters are now, if you look at their profiles, all over the country and making errors in articles that just make them look like idiots to anyone actually living here. Reviews and articles about places that closed a year or two ago do not make for credibility. Much of the supposedly local news is just repackaged national stats. "How is unemployment in YourLocalTown compared to the rest of the country?" and the like. Other stuff is somewhat local looking blog stuff that turns out to be identical on all the sites.

This American Life had an interesting story on this. Transcript here - (skip down to "Act Two. Forgive us our Press Passes").

tldr: The local news is being outsourced to places that grab data from public record, and then write canned stories with whatever sparse facts they have.

I agree, labelling people based on half science is dangerous. There was a This American Life on the topic a couple of years ago, in which they interviewed the creator, users, and victims of the Psychopath Test used to evaluate if a person is a psychopath. Guess what, it was never intended to keep kids in jail, but it's routinely used in parole hearings to justify continued incarceration....it's not a big leap to use this stuff in that way.

Link to This American Life episode.

So, no, the crash of 2008 wasn't due to regulation, it was due to fraud. And no one went to jail.

In my experience, any explanation for a calamity that casts blame on only one "side" is usually incomplete or overly simplistic.

The best explanation I have ever heard of the crash came in NPR's "Planet Money" reporting series on the crash, specifically their Peabody-winning show "The Giant Pool of Money." To give you the short version:

• Global private investors and government-backed investment funds got greedy. They liked US treasury bills for being stable, but they hated the low interest rates. They yelled at Wall Street banks to give them some new investment option that was stable like T-bills but had a higher rate of return.
• Wall Street banks got "creative." Mortgages were historically very secure (in aggregate) and people paid more money on mortgage interest than T-bills paid. So they figured out a way to split up these mortgages into collective batches and sell them to investors. Investors loved these and had an insatiable appetite to buy them from Wall Street banks - but before too long, they ran out of batches of 100% stable, well-qualified mortgages to "securitize" and sell.
• Wall Street banks wanted mortgage lending rules relaxed so they had more mortgages to securitize. This coincided perfectly with the Bush Administration's desire to encourage home ownership, since homeowners tend to be more stable since they are more invested in the economy ... oh, and they also tend to vote Republican. So together - no arm twisting by Wall Street needed - regulations were relaxed on lending standards, basically peeing on the grave of Glass-Steagall after it was killed (under the Clinton administration FWIW).
• More people can now get mortgages, which means more people can now buy houses. More buyers for a relatively fixed commodity = everybody's house price goes up! Millions of home-owning Americans get rich on paper. Some get greedy, buying multiple houses as investments. Others get greedy by selling their current homes and buying houses they can't afford with the gains. Still other Americans consider entering the home ownership market for the first time, not because they can afford it but because they think they'll get rich by selling their house before they ever have to really pay for it. Other Americans get greedy doing big cash-out refinancings, ARMs or other dangerous mortgages because they think housing prices will never come back and bite them... long story short, there are few totally "innocent" home buyers who got badly caught in this... most who found themselves overleveraged were greedy or foolish in some way or another.
• Of course, the mortgage brokers who sold these loans (and the real estate agents selling the houses) were greedy too. They had their own incentives to bend the rules as much as possible to put all these people into houses who wanted to be in them.
• Then it all falls apart. The best minds on Wall Street had built statistical models - based on historical data - saying "well qualified home owners only default on X% of mortgages, even these more relaxed mortgage buyers should only default Y% of the time... so we package up mostly good mortgages with some of the iffy ones and the investment as a whole is still very secure." Oops. It turns out that as prices peaked, many of these iffy mortgages showed up as way more risky than expected, and they began to default at several times higher than the historical maximum ratios.
• Big banks held LOTS of these securitized mortgages which seemed safe according to their best data modelling but had failed to account for the highly relaxed standards PLUS the effects of a housing bubble where you had people getting into the market who never should have.
• The shit REALLY hits the fan. Big banks - like the ones who have all my money and your

People became more productive due to technology. Now you are able to produce enough for you and your family in 40 hours / week. Before this technology advancement, you needed to work 60-80 hours / week in order to produce enough.

WTF are you talking about back in the first half of the last century, unless you worked on the farm, you were able to produce enough for you and your family in a 40 hour week with just one adult working and that was with an average of 4 kids. Today, it takes both parents working with an average of 1.4 kids.

Technology may make us more efficient, but it has nothing to do with the economics of providing for a family.

Jobs are not a scarce resource, labor is. There is always enough jobs for everyone that wants one and then some, even if it means being self employed. The only reason there is unemployment at all, is because of bad laws.

For a look at what really happened to America's jobless when manual labor jobs disappeared, check out a collaborative NPR Planet Money/This American Life expose on this invisible economy: "Unfit for Work: The startling rise of disability in America" The program's podcast "Trends with benefits" is well worth listening to.
In summary, what happens is that manual labor jobs disappear from small American towns and they're replaced with lawyer and bureaucratic desk jobs in large cities, state capitals and Washington D.C. A look at trends in unemployment during the great recession gives us a glimpse of this. But Americans on disability don't appear in any labor department unemployment or employment statistics. What's more, people on disability almost never get off the program. Unlike welfare, people on disability are discouraged from working, their kids are discouraged from doing well in school. Even in comparison the obvious economic mess made by programs to promote debt until death (aka mortgage), the non-productive trillions in the derivative economy, this 200+ billion dollar hole in the US economy is significant specifically because of its social fallout. Uncovering this is the first step in adjusting our economy to a new reality of labor and employment.

The second big reason is to protect loss of face and avoid embarrassment

This is the heart of it. The State Secrets Doctrine in its modern form has its roots in a coverup by the Air Force of its own negligence that led to a plane crash that killed three RCA engineers. When their widows sued and requested the crash report in discovery, the Air Force refused citing State Secrets. Eventually, the Supreme Court upheld the Air Force's right to not turn over the document without any judge having ever looking at what it contained, but rather, just trusting the Government to be honest.

Fast forward many decades, the report is declassified, and guess what, all it contained was a record of poor maintenance and a failure to install manufacturer recommended heat shields in the engine to prevent the exact type of engine fire that occurred and caused the crash.

Great interview with the granddaughter who finally got her hands on the document:
http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/383/origin-story?act=2#play

One of my childhood friends does internal auditing for a large bank. One time I asked him what his biggest fears were (having been able to look at all the books) and he told me at the time it was actually price anarchy. This was around the 2008 time frame and he was trying to describe a situation where nobody knows how much money to charge for something. I later heard a This American Life episode that details life in Brazil when something like this happens.

So my friend told me that his biggest fears are when you go into a market one day and eggs are 68 cents a dozen and you go in the next day and they're $5.92 a dozen ... and you can go to the store management and they're looking at some graphs at the beginning of each day to set their prices but they're doing guesswork because the money fluctuates so quickly. So my friend's real fear was that there's some point where that swings wildly out of control and -- similar to the bank runs that happened before regulation -- weird swings cause people to act erratically and irrationally. And those actions cause the swings to get even wilder and suddenly you have price anarchy where nobody knows what anything is worth at a given point in time. The funny part is that on some days he would watch the terminals and freak out and go withdraw as much money as he could from the ATM to hedge into some liquid assets since he kept everything in the bank. That amused me because by using inside information he was performing what were erratic behavioral patterns ... but I guess that's another discussion.

Anyway, yeah, back to Bitcoin ... if you want some entertainment, keep this tab open throughout the day. So many people are gaming Bitcoin right now that it makes for an excellent show! Behold, the completely unregulated market!

We are very sorry if this offended anyone,

Typical non-apology apology. "I'm sorry you were offended"

Someone needs to listen to the This American Life episode "Mistakes Were Made"

http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/354/mistakes-were-made

--
BMO

"This American Life" covered Intellectual Ventures extensively about two years ago (PDF transcript here audio here) in an episode called "When Patents Attack!" And Joe Chernesky referred them to Chris Crawford as an example of where Intellectual Ventures had helped an inventor license his/her patents to customers. Since the Chris Crawford lead largely turned up to be bogus, could you refer us to a few small time inventors that Intellectual Ventures has helped license their patents to licensees without having to get into extensive litigation?

I'm not sure that's even remotely reasonable. From your linked PDF:

We found Chris Crawford in Clearwater, Florida, but as predicted, he never responded to our many e-mails and phone calls. You will never hear from him in this story.

If someone refuses to talk to you, that doesn't give you license to say that their story was turned up to be bogus. You may assume that it is, and you may assume various negative things about them or their credibility, but you haven't actually shown anything.

In fact, most of that This American Life episode was pretty poor, research-wise. Consider this quote:

Alex: And on David Martin’s computer screen, we see lots of patents with slightly different language, but covering essentially the same idea. For example patent number 6003044 for “efficiently backing up files using multiple computer systems.” Patent 5933653 for “mirroring data in a remote data storage system.” And then there were three different patents with three different patent numbers but that all had the same title, “System and Method for Backing Up Computer Files Over a Wide Area Computer Network.”

First, titles are not patent claims. There are literally tens of thousands of patents titled "wheel" and hundreds of thousands titled "engine". That doesn't mean they're all claiming the same invention. In fact, the title has no legal weight whatsoever.
Second, those "three different patent numbers that all had the same title" are really one application and two continuations. By definition, they have to have the same title, so it's really just spreading so much FUD to complain about it.

"This American Life" covered Intellectual Ventures extensively about two years ago (PDF transcript here audio here) in an episode called "When Patents Attack!" And Joe Chernesky referred them to Chris Crawford as an example of where Intellectual Ventures had helped an inventor license his/her patents to customers. Since the Chris Crawford lead largely turned up to be bogus, could you refer us to a few small time inventors that Intellectual Ventures has helped license their patents to licensees without having to get into extensive litigation?

I'm not sure that's even remotely reasonable. From your linked PDF:

We found Chris Crawford in Clearwater, Florida, but as predicted, he never responded to our many e-mails and phone calls. You will never hear from him in this story.

If someone refuses to talk to you, that doesn't give you license to say that their story was turned up to be bogus. You may assume that it is, and you may assume various negative things about them or their credibility, but you haven't actually shown anything.

In fact, most of that This American Life episode was pretty poor, research-wise. Consider this quote:

Alex: And on David Martin’s computer screen, we see lots of patents with slightly different language, but covering essentially the same idea. For example patent number 6003044 for “efficiently backing up files using multiple computer systems.” Patent 5933653 for “mirroring data in a remote data storage system.” And then there were three different patents with three different patent numbers but that all had the same title, “System and Method for Backing Up Computer Files Over a Wide Area Computer Network.”

First, titles are not patent claims. There are literally tens of thousands of patents titled "wheel" and hundreds of thousands titled "engine". That doesn't mean they're all claiming the same invention. In fact, the title has no legal weight whatsoever.
Second, those "three different patent numbers that all had the same title" are really one application and two continuations. By definition, they have to have the same title, so it's really just spreading so much FUD to complain about it.

One of my favorite radio shows called "This American Life" covered Intellectual Ventures extensively about two years ago (PDF transcript here audio here) in an episode called "When Patents Attack!" They tried to visit Oasis Research offices at 104 East Houston Street, Suite 190 in Marshall, Texas but found them largely vacant. What is IV's relationship with Oasis Research and Lodsys and why are these empty offices in Marshall, Texas? What sort of partners are Lodsys and Oasis Research? Customers? Licensees?

If IV isn't related to Lodsys and Oasis Research, then I don't see how Myhrvold could possibly answer this question. Is this a witch hunt or a real question?

It's the followup to investigative journalism that IV at first went along with and then suddenly clammed up about.

One of my favorite radio shows called "This American Life" covered Intellectual Ventures extensively about two years ago (PDF transcript here audio here) in an episode called "When Patents Attack!" They tried to visit Oasis Research offices at 104 East Houston Street, Suite 190 in Marshall, Texas but found them largely vacant. What is IV's relationship with Oasis Research and Lodsys and why are these empty offices in Marshall, Texas? What sort of partners are Lodsys and Oasis Research? Customers? Licensees?

If IV isn't related to Lodsys and Oasis Research, then I don't see how Myhrvold could possibly answer this question. Is this a witch hunt or a real question?

It's the followup to investigative journalism that IV at first went along with and then suddenly clammed up about.

One of my favorite radio shows called "This American Life" covered Intellectual Ventures extensively about two years ago (PDF transcript here audio here) in an episode called "When Patents Attack!" They tried to visit Oasis Research offices at 104 East Houston Street, Suite 190 in Marshall, Texas but found them largely vacant. What is IV's relationship with Oasis Research and Lodsys and why are these empty offices in Marshall, Texas? What sort of partners are Lodsys and Oasis Research? Customers? Licensees?

If IV isn't related to Lodsys and Oasis Research, then I don't see how Myhrvold could possibly answer this question. Is this a witch hunt or a real question?

One of my favorite radio shows called "This American Life" covered Intellectual Ventures extensively about two years ago (PDF transcript here audio here) in an episode called "When Patents Attack!" They tried to visit Oasis Research offices at 104 East Houston Street, Suite 190 in Marshall, Texas but found them largely vacant. What is IV's relationship with Oasis Research and Lodsys and why are these empty offices in Marshall, Texas? What sort of partners are Lodsys and Oasis Research? Customers? Licensees?

If IV isn't related to Lodsys and Oasis Research, then I don't see how Myhrvold could possibly answer this question. Is this a witch hunt or a real question?

"This American Life" covered Intellectual Ventures extensively about two years ago (PDF transcript here audio here) in an episode called "When Patents Attack!" And Joe Chernesky referred them to Chris Crawford as an example of where Intellectual Ventures had helped an inventor license his/her patents to customers. Since the Chris Crawford lead largely turned up to be bogus, could you refer us to a few small time inventors that Intellectual Ventures has helped license their patents to licensees without having to get into extensive litigation?

"This American Life" covered Intellectual Ventures extensively about two years ago (PDF transcript here audio here) in an episode called "When Patents Attack!" And Joe Chernesky referred them to Chris Crawford as an example of where Intellectual Ventures had helped an inventor license his/her patents to customers. Since the Chris Crawford lead largely turned up to be bogus, could you refer us to a few small time inventors that Intellectual Ventures has helped license their patents to licensees without having to get into extensive litigation?

One of my favorite radio shows called "This American Life" covered Intellectual Ventures extensively about two years ago (PDF transcript here audio here) in an episode called "When Patents Attack!" They tried to visit Oasis Research offices at 104 East Houston Street, Suite 190 in Marshall, Texas but found them largely vacant. What is IV's relationship with Oasis Research and Lodsys and why are these empty offices in Marshall, Texas? What sort of partners are Lodsys and Oasis Research? Customers? Licensees?

One of my favorite radio shows called "This American Life" covered Intellectual Ventures extensively about two years ago (PDF transcript here audio here) in an episode called "When Patents Attack!" They tried to visit Oasis Research offices at 104 East Houston Street, Suite 190 in Marshall, Texas but found them largely vacant. What is IV's relationship with Oasis Research and Lodsys and why are these empty offices in Marshall, Texas? What sort of partners are Lodsys and Oasis Research? Customers? Licensees?

Of course it's gambling; it's just not a game of chance. (When you're as bad a liar as I am, it's worse!) If you haven't already, you really ought to check out the third segment of this episode of This American Life. Great story.

They hide anything and everything that might threaten their place in power.

And this is distinctive from America how? In America, the State Secrets Doctrine has its roots in a wrongful death suit by the widows of some RCA engineers who were working for the US Air Force when they died in a plane crash in 1948. During discovery, the widows sought the accident report. The Air Force said that it contained information vital to national security and would not turn it over. Eventually, the case got to the Supreme Court, and without actually looking at the document, ruled that it could be kept secret. 40 some years later, it was declassified. It contained nothing in it beyond what was publicly known about the project, but it also revealed that the Air Force had negligently failed to install manufacturer recommended heat shields in the engines, among other issues with the plane, and that the engines caught fire leading to the crash.

http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/383/origin-story?act=2#play

So you tell me, is our State Secrets doctrine, the one that Obama has used to prevent people from suing for unlawful detention, unlawful torture, unlawful wiretapping, and unlawful execution, based in anything but an attempt to avoid embarrassment and liability? How is it that we are morally superior to the Chinese government on this issue?

Examples:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/10/us/10torture.html?_r=0
http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2009/10/obama-administration-invokes-state-secrets-privilegeagain/
http://www.politico.com/blogs/joshgerstein/0811/Obama_admin_asserts_state_secrets_privilege_to_dismiss_Muslims_suit.html
http://www.salon.com/2010/09/25/secrecy_7/

The only reason patent holders use that district is that it hears a very low number of criminal cases, so civil cases have a chance of getting on the docket.

Here's a good overview:
http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/441/when-patents-attack

One more point, not directed at you -- everything you said was right -- but at the jury nullification [fantasy] crowd.

This case never got to the trial phase. The case the SC decided was on a pre-trial procedural issue, i.e., do the parties who brought the suit have standing such that they are harmed parties who have the right to sue the government. The SC decided they do not have standing because they don't conclusively know they were spied upon, and that as a result: there will NOT be a trial. If there is no trial, there is no jury, and thus no chance for jury nullification.

At this point, the only way these abuses will ever be addressed, is if we get a whistleblower. Then harmed individuals would have standing at least, but before those conclusively harmed parties get to a jury, there's the State Secrets Doctrine (rooted in Air Force coverup of negligence) to get through, and the Federal Courts fall all over themselves trying to suck the DOJ's dick on that issue. Assuming the extraordinarily unlikely event that one is a conclusively harmed party, finds out about it, AND the State Secrets Doctrine isn't abused to trump your right to trial -- after that, maybe you'd get to present a case to a jury. More probable however, is that the Feds would just retroactively immunize whoever, like they did with AT&T.

Really? How many software developers (not companies, individual developers) have been sued for patent infringement?

Why make this distinction? Independent software devs, like "Notch" of Mojang, have their companies sued as soon as they achieve any success; And this is for a bullshit game. In business software it's even worse. Here: When Patents Attack - This American Life. The fucking apocalypse is NOW you fool.

. It may even be true (although essentially impossible to prove) that software patents are a net drain on the industry. But it is clearly not the case that software patents are crippling developers or causing everyone to get sued.

So, wait, what you're saying is that it's "essentially impossible to prove that software patents" are beneficial to the software industry. So, PROVE to me why we should have these damn laws if we can't prove they're beneficial!? You're suggesting we continue operating under an unproven and untested hypothesis?! FUCK YOU, you're a moron!

That the banks were forced to lend to low income people and that caused the problem is more of a tale than anything else. Certainly it wasn't helpful, but it was at worst a tiny percentage of the problem.

Nobody was twisting Countrywide's arm from making loans and crappy CDOs (*), but the real problem was Credit Default Swaps on the CDOs. These are a type of insurance a lender can take out on a loan (didn't even have to be a loan the lender made) wherin the insurance company would pay the loan off if the creditor defaulted. Back in the Clinton administration, it was decided that this type of insurance did not need to be regulated, i.e., there were no standards for how much the insurance company had to have on hand to cover obligations.

No regs. So what happened? The insurance companies sold policies willy nilly and when the subprime mortgages started going bad, they had no money to cover those costs. This started a domino effect.

And what was the problem? No regulations requiring adequate funds to backup to the swaps. So the whole idea that businesses will act rationally in the absence of regulation is crazy. Or maybe not really -- they made obscene profits by selling bogus insurace and then got bailed out. Win/Win I guess, if you are a greedy asshole.

The guys who do Planet Money had a very informative show about Credit Default Swaps. You should listen to it (particularly acts 2 and 3):

http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/365/another-frightening-show-about-the-economy

(*) http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/taibblog/angelo-mozilo-former-countrywide-ceo-claims-he-doesnt-know-what-verified-income-is-20121228

Currently, the FBI really only sticks its nose into people that have done something 'big.'

You're serious? You haven't seen the dozens of cases where the FBI manufactured a bomb plot from some moron who chimed in on a 'shady' website that he wanted to bomb the US?

Here's a story for you, from This American Life, distributed by Public Radio International.

Episode 370: Ruining It for the Rest of Us, Act 1: Shots in the Dark

Summary:

Measles cases are higher in the U.S. than they've been in a decade, mostly because more and more nervous parents are refusing to vaccinate their kids. Contributing Editor Susan Burton tells the story of what happened recently in San Diego, when an unvaccinated 7-year-old boy returned home from a trip to Switzerland, bringing with him the measles. By the end of the ordeal, 11 other children caught the disease, and more than 60 kids had to be quarantined.

It doesn't always lead to jail-time. You can be kicked out of the country.

That doesn't change what I said, though.

Remember, the land you live on is ruled by the public. You still have to pay the public to live there - no freeloaders in this country.

Sure there are. Thousands of them. In fact, it's something that libertarians tend to criticize as well.

But in any case, nothing in the libertarian philosophy opposed paying for stuff. Hell, some people prefer to pay more, as long as it's voluntary and not as a tax:

Jan Martin: And a gentleman came up to me and actually thanked me for the adopt a street light program. He had just written a check to the city for $300 to turn all the street lights back on in his neighborhood. And I did remind him that for $200 if he had supported the tax initiative, we could have had not only streetlights, but parks and firemen and swimming pools and community centers. That by combining our resources, we as a community can actually accomplish more than we as individuals.

Robert Smith: And he said?

Jan Martin: He said he would never support a tax increase.

http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/459/what-kind-of-country

This reminds me of this episode of This American Life which mentioned that kids that undergo a lot of stress at home are basically constantly in a "fight or flight" mode and therefore have a lot of trouble actually sitting down and absorbing information.

Great piece on psychopaths that includes an interview / profile of Jack Welch that NPR carried here:

http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/436/the-psychopath-test

After this week's outburst, it's come out that Jack's mind mind jump on the idea that critical numbers were being goosed because he did it all the time while at GE...

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mark-gongloff/jack-welch-book-cooking_b_1954396.html

This American Life

http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/167/memo-to-the-people-of-the-future?act=3

What happened to Einstein's brain after he died.

--
BMO

Kristy Kruger: It was about a group of five to seven people, kind of standing around the keg, just talking. And somehow a discussion of endangered species came up, in which I posed the question, is the unicorn endangered or extinct? And basically, there was a big gap of silence [...]and then everybody laughed. And then that laughter was followed by more silence when they realized I wasn't laughing. And I was like, yeah, oh God, unicorns aren't real? Oh no.

Understandable. If you are interested, there was a great story on the radio regarding patent trolls (and connections to East Texas).

This American Life: When Patents Attack

It is a patentable subject, but overcoming prior art is usually quite difficult.

Maybe in a country with a sane patent system, but in the US, an estimated 30% of granted patents are duplicates.

Source: http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/441/when-patents-attack

While I thought the program was extremely interesting and a good listen, if that sort of thing isn't for you, you can read the transcript. http://www.thisamericanlife.org/sites/default/files/TAL441_transcript.pdf -- the statistic is near the top of page 10.

It is a patentable subject, but overcoming prior art is usually quite difficult.

Maybe in a country with a sane patent system, but in the US, an estimated 30% of granted patents are duplicates.

Source: http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/441/when-patents-attack

While I thought the program was extremely interesting and a good listen, if that sort of thing isn't for you, you can read the transcript. http://www.thisamericanlife.org/sites/default/files/TAL441_transcript.pdf -- the statistic is near the top of page 10.

And then there is the judicial branch, which rolls over and asks the Feds to scratch its tummy at any mention of the State Secrets Doctrine.

There's a whole sordid history to the State Secrets Doctrine involving the deaths of three geeks in a military plane in the 50s and the Air Force covering up its negligence by claiming it would harm national security if an accident report was released. Decades later that accident report was declassified and showed nothing of any national security import -- just some lousy maintenance on the plane and failure to make manufacturer recommended upgrades. Had the widows been allowed to have it, they would have likely done well at trial. Anyway, keeping it secret enabled the Air Force to short change the widows by settling the case cheap.

http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/383/origin-story?act=2#play

Oh yeah, and Obama is the worst offender in applying the state secrets doctrine. Just search for obama state secrets doctrine --- the examples are ridiculously numerous for one who promised openness in government.

This American Life reported this over a year ago. The podcast is well worth hearing:
http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/441/when-patents-attack/

Listen to This American Life's episode on Myhrvold, seriously. It really makes the hypocrisy obvious:

http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/441/when-patents-attack/

>> is Zynga doing God's work? Is Facebook doing God's work?

Yes, Nathan, you're doing a lot of wonderful work. But that doesn't excuse *how* you're getting your money these days. Your business practices are hurting the entire industry, and putting a big crimp on innovation. The end does not justify the means.

Anyone who has not yet listened to This American Life's episode on Mr. Myhrvold really ought to:

http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/441/when-patents-attack/

Wrong.

http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/355/the-giant-pool-of-money

A special program about the housing crisis produced in a special collaboration with NPR News. We explain it all to you. What does the housing crisis have to do with the turmoil on Wall Street? Why did banks make half-million dollar loans to people without jobs or income? And why is everyone talking so much about the 1930s?

We think of the show as journalism. One of the people who helped start the program, Paul Tough, says that what we're doing is applying the tools of journalism to everyday lives, personal lives...
The American Journalism Review declared that the show is at "the vanguard of a journalistic revolution."
-thisamericanlife.org

The show is clearly intended to be truthful. Whenever I have heard fiction on TAL it has been clearly identified as such.

Thus depriving Chinese workers of jobs. Preferring your own nationality to foreigners is called...what exactly? Purely because you're part of that nationality? Go ahead and put whatever label you like on it. It's still bullshit.

Not sure I parse your argument here... you're saying that it's wrong for American companies to pull their manufacturing back from China to America (where, consequently, the vast majority of said American companies customers reside)... because why? Nationalism bad? Like I said, not sure I follow your point here...

Why should Chinese suffer while Americans prosper?

They don't now?

This story has buried the lead. All anyone's going to talk about is Woz this and Cloud that, when the real news should be that somehow people are continuing to pay money to go see Mike Daisey put on his one-man show that, despite coming across as if he's telling a true story about what he did, has in fact been proven to be largely false. It became quite the embarrassment for the radio show This American Life when they aired portions of it as being true after he lied to them about specifics of the story.

http://levine.sscnet.ucla.edu/general/intellectual/againstfinal.htm

Intellectual property: Patents against prosperity | The Economist

Why abolish software patents - software patents wiki (en.swpat.org)

When Patents Attack! | This American Life

Johanna Blakley: Lessons from fashion's free culture | Video on TED.com

Do music artists fare better in a world with illegal file-sharing? Times Labs Blog

The Coming War on General Purpose Computation - Boing Boing

US patent trolling costs $29b: study - Strategy - Business - News - iTnews.com.au

Patents | Electronic Frontier Foundation

http://christianengstrom.wordpress.com/

Zynga might be too close, but the vast majority of games actually copy each other so much that they create a GENDRE for god's sake. And that has been alwways a good thing for gaming in particular. The truth is that yes, there are indeed assholes, there will always be, but they seem to be on both sides and the question remains to where do they cause the less damage.

As far as being non-creative, I'm not sure who you mean. Personally, I develop new software for a living and I was curiously enough working on my novel when I got your reply.

Keep in mind that IP Ventures is said to use between 1600 and 1800 proxy companies for suing. Those companies are formally independent of IP Ventures, but the filings indicate that IP Ventures has a financial interest in the outcome (they get their share). If the legislation is not carefully crafted, the proxy companies can just go bankrupt and sell the patent(s) back to IP Ventures.

Source: http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/441/when-patents-attack/

Kind of like you making shit up about what he did? His failing is that he didn't independently verify some of what was reported to him by workers in the factories.

Well, he said he personally met people that he did not meet, and that they told him their stories, when these people did not exist and the stories were things that he made up based on rumors he'd heard.

He also lied about the name of the translator who was with him during these purported interviews, and when "This American Life" asked to contact her to check the facts of the story, he told them she'd moved, changed her phone number, and could not be contacted, when when she had not changed her phone number nor moved nor would have been hard to contact if they knew her name. If his failng had been merely "he failed to independently verify," it seems a bit peculiar that he would lie to the producers and tell them it was impossible to contact his translator.

Some links:
http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2012/03/16/148761812/this-american-life-retracts-mike-daiseys-apple-factory-story
http://www.thisamericanlife.org/blog/2012/03/retracting-mr-daisey-and-the-apple-factory/
http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/460/retraction
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/19/theater/defending-this-american-life-and-its-mike-daisey-retraction.html
http://www.salon.com/2012/03/19/mike_daisey_and_the_inconvenient_truth/

The take-home lesson is that even if you think you're on the side of the angels, you shouldn't lie, because it makes people disbelieve anything you say. In fact, especially if you think you're on the side of the angels.

Kind of like you making shit up about what he did? His failing is that he didn't independently verify some of what was reported to him by workers in the factories.

Well, he said he personally met people that he did not meet, and that they told him their stories, when these people did not exist and the stories were things that he made up based on rumors he'd heard.

He also lied about the name of the translator who was with him during these purported interviews, and when "This American Life" asked to contact her to check the facts of the story, he told them she'd moved, changed her phone number, and could not be contacted, when when she had not changed her phone number nor moved nor would have been hard to contact if they knew her name. If his failng had been merely "he failed to independently verify," it seems a bit peculiar that he would lie to the producers and tell them it was impossible to contact his translator.

Some links:
http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2012/03/16/148761812/this-american-life-retracts-mike-daiseys-apple-factory-story
http://www.thisamericanlife.org/blog/2012/03/retracting-mr-daisey-and-the-apple-factory/
http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/460/retraction
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/19/theater/defending-this-american-life-and-its-mike-daisey-retraction.html
http://www.salon.com/2012/03/19/mike_daisey_and_the_inconvenient_truth/

The take-home lesson is that even if you think you're on the side of the angels, you shouldn't lie, because it makes people disbelieve anything you say. In fact, especially if you think you're on the side of the angels.

I highly recommend review of the This American Life Episode referenced in TFA.

Although broadcast only a few weeks ago, I'm not sure when TAL recorded the interview. That said, the enthusiasm of the company's CEO was striking given the strong line of questioning posed by the This American Life Interviewer. I would imagine the interview was fairly recent.

Although conceding that the stories sometimes lacked full detail on the things going on on the community being covered, with base material consisting often of only a quick phone interview to get a quote and a press release to provide the story -- Journastic CEO Brian Timpone did clalim a degree of passion for enabling some form of coverage for stories that may simply go unreported on.

This kind of enthusiasm for idealistic coverage of Norman Rockwell's Small Town America really files in the face of the general approach of the company to the job at hand -- which included a policy to use falsified (read: made-up) by-lines. That is to say, the off-shore reporters writing the stories for Journastic and then syndicated to newspapers like the Chicago Tribune had a field in the story submission setting for a name to associated with the story. Amazing.

For some reason there was no link to the original source that kinda got the scoop. So here's the link to 'Switcheroo' which is This American Life's episode that covered this. It's free to stream, you can click the third link to Act II just to hear the coverage of this thing. I listened to it on the radio when it aired and sent it around as I found it really interesting (also a follow up here). There's a funny part where Ryan Smith is revealing everything about Journatic and he makes a comment about how it's not what journalism is supposed to be and Sarah Koenig says, "You are so fired. You realize that, right?" And then there's this odd pause and he says "Yeah, I am I guess. I'm okay with that." Another great part of that clip is when the owner of Journatic (CEO Brian Timpone) comes on and openly talks about it and defends his company (quite unsuccessfully, in my opinion). But hats off to him, he is a huge fan of TAL and so instead of giving one of those canned "could not be reached for comment" they got a real person arguing for his business venture. He actually argues that this saves newspapers money and therefore allows them report on the important stuff while outsourcing the inane stuff to Filipino freelancers who get absolutely no credit (and ridiculously low wages) for their (often correspondingly subpar) work.

For some reason there was no link to the original source that kinda got the scoop. So here's the link to 'Switcheroo' which is This American Life's episode that covered this. It's free to stream, you can click the third link to Act II just to hear the coverage of this thing. I listened to it on the radio when it aired and sent it around as I found it really interesting (also a follow up here). There's a funny part where Ryan Smith is revealing everything about Journatic and he makes a comment about how it's not what journalism is supposed to be and Sarah Koenig says, "You are so fired. You realize that, right?" And then there's this odd pause and he says "Yeah, I am I guess. I'm okay with that." Another great part of that clip is when the owner of Journatic (CEO Brian Timpone) comes on and openly talks about it and defends his company (quite unsuccessfully, in my opinion). But hats off to him, he is a huge fan of TAL and so instead of giving one of those canned "could not be reached for comment" they got a real person arguing for his business venture. He actually argues that this saves newspapers money and therefore allows them report on the important stuff while outsourcing the inane stuff to Filipino freelancers who get absolutely no credit (and ridiculously low wages) for their (often correspondingly subpar) work.

Traditional newspapers are heading in the Huffpost direction as well.

This is an industry where we are watching a race to the top, as well as a race to the bottom - with the middle squeezed from both sides.

Part2 of this week's This American Life profiles one company trying to bring the Huffpost model to traditional newspapers.

1 - Judges don't need to be educated to make these decisions. That's what the attorneys are for. Judges and juries shouldn't be swayed by anything but what the two sides present. Under your system, it's more like Judge Judy or The People's Court. Which isn't exactly legally fair if the Judge is biased one way or another.

2 - Agreed, but we CAN change it. It does matter who gets elected to congress.

First off, you have no idea how the buying and selling of senators even happens, do you? Give this a listen. The economics behind campaign contributions are ridiculous. The situation in Congress is the opposite of what you think. Congress critters stalk and seek the money of moneyed interests. Not the other way around.

Elections are tight, redistricting only can get you so far these days. Same with campaign contributions. By forming informed voter blocks you can actually sway elections by forming political action committees and doing the hard work of trying to be a participant in the representative democratic process.