And yet, one of my toy projects in grad school generated over a billion data points that needed analysis. The only database server I had access to choked on the first analysis pass (of about a dozen). It took about three months of processing to get to a point that could even be considered acceptable. Since then, on a whim, I've redone the program using Hadoop and HBase. A MapReduce job completed the analysis, on worse hardware, in less than a day. A major contributing factor was the lack of a rigid structure in HBase, which greatly improved the organization of data.
NoSQL solutions are certainly not the best tool for every job, but neither are normal relational databases. In my opinion, it's worthwhile to be familiar with both, and to be able to choose the right one for every task.
That's okay... Facebook, StumbleUpon, and Twitter will be thrilled to have you pre-screening their applicants to weed out those who refuse to break tradition in the search for improvement.
So 2011 will be the year of the Linux desktop, right?
Linux has gained recognition. It's something that IT managers won't usually dismiss immediately. Sure, that's important, but the average user out there still doesn't know that Linux exists, let alone what it is. There's a long road ahead of us, even longer than the path we've just traveled. Wear good shoes.
How I see it depends entirely on what hat I'm wearing at the time.
As a submitter myself, I see it as a boon. As a manager of a project, I see it as a headache. As an advocate of open-source software, I see it as yet more FUD I have to waste my time explaining to some company who's concerned about wasting resources without profit.
Patents do not cover "an idea". They cover a specific solution, which for software is a specific algorithm. Find a different algorithm to produce the same (or similar enough) results, and the patent isn't an issue. Yes, that's a problem when you want to exactly duplicate some function (like with a compression codec), but for the vast majority of applications, the algorithms used are well-known and not patented. Once in a great while, some brilliant algorithm will be discovered for doing something that isn't specialized, but in the vast majority of such cases, those algorithms come after years of research work and refinement. Why shouldn't the thinker have some control over their thoughts?
Copyright is indeed what protects open-source software, but the other details are where trouble lies. Contributors to open-source projects must declare that the copyright on their work belongs to the project. That means it can't be itself copied from somewhere else without license (including tutorials, sample code, etc.). If that assignment isn't made, then any change in the project's licensing requires the approval of all the submitters!
"To enter the maintenance control panel, follow these 57 easy steps:"
"Simply hold down the 'firmware unlock' button, located on the back of the display circuit board, throughout the entire upgrade process. You may need to remove your phone's case and some internal parts to do this, which may make your device inoperable. Proceed at your own risk."
Per the terms of the agreement, the vanilla-update option would be there, and the user can access it. That they need to jump through ridiculous hoops first is a separate issue.
That's because people like you hate reason, are driven by emotion...
Rage is an emotion. It's that feeling you have when someone has offended you beyond your ability to understand. It often manifests as an intense desire to cause physical harm to the offending person(s), with little to no concern for any mitigating circumstances.
Perhaps the woman in question has a vision or coordination problem. Perhaps she's distracted thinking about other things. Perhaps you should have been a proper gentleman and made sure you were well out of her path, that she may go any way she likes. Perhaps, for a few fleeting moments, you could let a trivial inconvenience pass by you, and not demonize someone you know remarkably little about.
What moral principle says that someone should be so privileged that they can risk injuring others without even trying to be responsible and should never ever suffer any consequence of that?
That's a very good question. Why should anyone be given the ability to risk injuring anyone else, especially around the face, which is of high social importance?
Given that you've shown you know nothing about the other side of the story, and appear unable to empathize, why should you be the sole judge of who should be injured and who shouldn't?
When a factory makes a mistake, the defective part is rejected, at a cost of a few dollars. If the mistake is serious and isn't caught, the company faces a maximum cost of about a few hundred thousand dollars for a recall. When a hospital screws up, the malpractice settlements average around half a million dollars, and if a jury gets involved, the cost jumps up to almost 5 million. That's a significant difference, and it significantly affects the risk analysis.
To reduce the risk of casual error, every procedure is treated individually. Every detail gets somebody's attention, and every possibility is examined. If you go to a clinic complaining of a persistent cough, and the desk clerk hands you a bottle of cough syrup, that's efficient. If you really had pneumonia and die the next day, that's malpractice. Of course, testing for pneumonia means sterile equipment, more time, and more skilled personnel paying attention to the details of any symptoms you present.
Medicine is not a straightforward symptom-to-treatment-to-cure process. It's a tricky system of guessing what makes the body behave the way it does. In one case I heard about, a man went to a hospital with pain in is abdomen. Initial examination showed nothing wrong. There was no swelling and no visible indication of any problems. It wasn't until a doctor heard that the man was an alcoholic several decades earlier that he figured out what had happened. The alcohol caused reduced testosterone, which caused a higher risk of osteoporosis, which led to a broken vertebra, which pinched a nerve, which caused the feeling of pain. The efficient treatment would be to give the man some aspirin and send him home to paralyze himself.
A hospital having the same kind of efficiency as a factory would lead to even worse care than currently exists, and the malpractice insurance would cost more than the efficiency would save.
That list will include nurse visits, paperwork management, sterilization of a whole room, malpractice insurance, a significant number of tests run by very skilled and highly-educated people, more malpractice insurance, a mandatory contribution to the dying-guy-with-no-insurance fund, testing and maintenance on the oh-god-I-sneezed-and-now-i-can't-feel-my-legs button, even more malpractice insurance, disposal of the disposables...
All those little things that the hospital does for every patient add up. $5,000 per day isn't too surprising. Now, if we could cut back the load on hospitals, they might be able to have only one room cleaner, instead of four. There would be fewer procedures done unnecessarily, so fewer screwed up procedures, so lower malpractice costs.
Of course, that means there has to be some way to reduce the load. Perhaps if we had some way to identify sick patients before they desperately need a hospital, they could get care at smaller clinics...
Such a horribly rational view ignores the blatant invasion of privacy involved! Lying to doctors, denying preventative care, and having delusions of perfection are all natural rights, guaranteed in the Constitution, the Magna Carta, and the Emancipation Proclamation! Please, think of the children! What will the effect be on their self-esteem if a doctor tells them they have a risk of diabetes, and have to go get a scary test?
It's like the insurance companies raising premiums for habitually driving recklessly. I know I'm the best driver on the roads, so I can drive however I want. All my accidents have been caused by those other drivers getting in the way! These companies should be forced to serve me how I want, when I want, without concern for any of those ridiculous "expenses" they keep talking about. They're corporations! They shouldn't have any rights, and that means they don't have the right to not be my slaves!
You're kidding, right? Instead of simply allocating the spectrum based on frequency, we have to allocate by frequency and time, synchronize all relevant devices, and build every device with proper radio hardware to switch frequencies rapidly. Maybe it's a small price to pay for the increased security of such a transmission... until the CIA/NSA/Illuminati/tinfoil-hat-enemy-of-the-week gets their hands on a single receiver, and they know the psuedorandom sequences involved anyway.
Most spread spectrum algorithms improve resistance to accidental interference, because they simply provide a "moving target". If two spread-spectrum devices are transmitting simultaneously, they will seldom interfere with each other during normal operation. If the interference is intentional, no amount of hopping or alteration will stop it for long, because the interfering transmitter can be designed to follow the same pattern, or simply broadcast on all frequencies the device will use.
Going to a private, non-franchised mechanic with no record of doing
credible work means the insurance company's taking a bigger risk by
insuring you. After all, that's the historical purpose of insurance
companies: to mitigate financial risk by taking small payments from
many people to cover the large cost incurred by a few. If you're
contributing more to the total risk, you should contribute more to the
pool as well. Right now, it's an imperfect system. There's no way for
the insurance companies to know if you're taking good care of your
car, or if you're the kind of driver who only changes his tires after
they're completely bald. Without that information, everyone's premiums
go up to cover the risk of a bad tire causing a crash. You speak of
history, and I simply want to make a more complete personal history
available to everyone.
Of course, companies are looking to make a profit. Few employees or
executives (as a general rule) are willing to sacrifice the company to
make a quick profit, so the key aspect is giving companies enough
information that they can screw over only the people who deserve it.
If you have an increased risk of cancer, and you're being considered
to be an astronaut destined for Mars, it makes perfect sense for you
to be rejected, because you might not be able to do the job. If you've
been an outspoken activist against animal testing, and you're applying
to be a night janitor at an animal testing lab, there's an obvious
security risk that the company should know about. Imagine any
situation where someone's hidden actions are detrimental to the
population, and there's a good chance that analysis of Big Data can
fix the problem.
The reverse is also true. Insurance companies already lower
premiums for drivers with decent records and displays of responsible
behavior, and that's fueled primarily by heavy competition. More
available information means more ways to compete with each other, and
I expect the current discounting trend to continue. History shows that
consumers benefit from competition, and competition benefits from
having more options available to the competitors.
Yes, there's potential for abuse. That should be expected and
anticipated, and regulated as soon as possible. The companies are
generally happy, because they would get to raise prices for (or simply
drop) customers that cut heavily into their profits, where before
there was no way to predict which customers those were. Most consumers
can be happy with regulated costs, with more mistakes necessary to be
put into the "bad customer" class. The only ones who get screwed are
those who have been deceitfully screwing over others for decades.
Call me selfish if you like, but I'm particularly opposed to the
idea that someone is naturally entitled to a having a job, or lying to get a better deal.
The way I see it, the temptation of 'big data' is leading businesses to draw us closer to a transparent society. I, personally, would prefer to live in a world where every public official's voting record is on display, dating back to their first local government position, correlated with their publicly-voiced positions on the issues. I'd like to see insurance companies charge more to drivers who take their cars to neighbor Bubba's barn for repairs, and (by regulation, if necessary) charge less to people who usually take their cars to well-qualified reputable mechanics. I'd like to see mechanics' reputations be based on how many of their repairs fail. I'd like to have a society where every company and individual can have access to the information that's relevant to them.
If there's less chance of a company being screwed over by any random person, then there's less chance of a company screwing over any random customer, including myself. I'm perfectly fine enforcing that by industry regulation, but the information has to come first. If the price of such idealism is that I can't lie to my doctor anymore, so be it.
The Constitution has nothing to do with this. A few senators were standing around one day and somebody mentioned this app, and thew others said it's a bad idea. The headline may as well read "3rd-grade teacher, zookeeper, astrophysicist, and bus driver to Apple".
Now, if there's public support for this idea, then there might be a proposal for legislation, which would likely be a large complicated mess falling under the "interstate commerce" clause, but I doubt that will happen. There's far too many assholes out there who think they have a God-given right to ignore any law they don't like.
software patents by big greedy corporations that get in the way of me doing whatever I want are simply and plainly wrong.
or perhaps
expecting me to have the same limits as a big company is simply and plainly wrong.
Simply and plainly, that's not how software patents work at all.
They cover all implementations that fit a particular description. Come up with an implementation using a different design (such as a genetic algorithm rather than a greedy algorithm), and the patent's probably not an issue. No, you won't get perfect results all the time, but you aren't the one who made the investment to research the algorithm in the first place. Why should you get anything for free, when others had to work hard to produce it?
Are they more harmful than allowing any established company to copy the product of any smaller (therefore slower-moving) company or individual, after that smaller entity has put in the research investment?
I have a friend who has patented an algorithm to solve a particular problem using a novel method. Existing software solutions sell for over hundred thousand dollars each, and saves their customers millions. This individual inventor spent seven years working on his algorithm, at his own expense. He has no customer contacts, and no means to develop a salable product on his own. The ability to license his invention to established companies is the only thing he gets for seven years of investment, and his patent is the only thing preventing any of those established companies from simply copying his work. How is it harmful that an investment like that gets a return?
Then we'd have the problem where bug fixes would invalidate the patent. Changing the order of unrelated statements would allow another company to duplicate the technology, making the patent protection utterly useless.
Connecting facts to those statements requires logical leaps that would impress Evil Knievel.
First, the "genocide" links don't actually talk about genocide. Two discuss alleged rape by UN peacekeepers, which has already been acknowledged as a problem by the UN, which primarily is the result of countries themselves picking which soldiers serve the UN missions. The Democratic Republic of Congo wants to torment its own people, so it sends its worst soldiers to the UN-controlled areas. That's hardly the result of any incompetence within the UN.
The other link goes to a page discussing the Congo Crisis, which conveniently makes the logical leaps for you. Long story short, the UN had worked out a treaty to set the Congo free from Belgian control, and made the first steps toward that goal. Then a political leader, Moise Tshombe, used the instability to split off his own country under false pretenses. When it became clear that Tshombe would not follow the arranged agreements, instead opting to promote civil war, the UN intervened. Tshombe waged war against the UN, instead.
Interestingly, this escalation couldn't have happened under the League of Nations, which you also don't like. The LoN could only issue sanctions, and those had to be passed in unanimous agreement by the members. One of the League's primary goals was the near-complete disarmament of the world, with little regard for things like "safety". Poland was worried about German invasion before Hitler even came to power, so followed the disarmament procedures as little as possible. Poland didn't want to disarm, so Germany opposed as well, fearing an attack from Poland in retribution for WWI. The League of Nations was also biased from the start, being mainly comprised of the victors of WWI. Germans perceived this as a global threat against them, which is how Hitler was able to rise to power on a promise to restore Germany's reputation. It's wasn't the League' fault, and the United Nations is a different beast, generally unbiased and actually capable of being effective.
These organizations have continually demonstrated interest in opening a forum for international discussion, backed by force as needed, and generally funded by member governments and private donations. The highest salary in the UN is roughly $200,000. Lloyd Blankfein had a base salary of three times that much, plus other bonuses.
IAEA - Because pakistan doesn't yet have hydrogen bombs. Oh and pakistan won't help Iran (the one smart decision in a forest of lunatic, delusional decisions that border on warcrimes), so someone else will have to give them the bomb.
...Because nuclear power reactors are related to nuclear weapons only in that they both use fission, so a nuclear power plant built with IAEA help can be sure to actually be a nuclear power plant, and not a uranium-consuming munitions factory.
IMF - Because the UN does not yet control the money of every state
...Because now and then, developing countries needs a loan, and the IMF is there to provide that loan in exchange for a promise of adherence to financial best practices. Those practices haven't always worked out, but that's why the idea of "best practices" is always changing.
UNRWA - Because, let's face it, palestinians might finish what hitler started, wouldn't that be great
...Because people affected by war need help, and since Palestine isn't universally recognized as a state, these people
The Department of Defense doesn't care if you have a job right now, unless you aren't otherwise occupied and are willing to do whatever task it is that they do care about, but generally speaking they will not take notice of your employment status unless they are interested in you for other reasons.
you still aren't fixing the shit conditions that allow one to take power in the first place.
Absolutely! Before the UN or anybody else intervenes, there should be some clear sign that the people are ready for change! Maybe a mass uprising or something...
we got too many of our own problems to go around playing world police.
That's why we have several people, in several places, each doing their own jobs. The Department of Labor doesn't give a damn about Libya. Likewise, the Department of Defense doesn't care if you have a job right now. Government is a part of society, which is a group of people who have realized that people can work together, each doing their own jobs, to accomplish many things at once.
Do you also expect the President to not sleep tonight, because some kid in Oregon broke his leg?
Gee, I wonder how government spies could have fake government records... It's not like the world's current method of checking a foreigner's information is to just ask their government... oh wait...
Moore committed no wrongdoing in his research job, and as far as the law's concerned, hasn't done anything illegal in the past, either. Innocent until proven guilty, remember?
It's closer to walking into a restaurant, recognizing a waiter as that guy who rudely bumped into you a year ago, and trying to get him fired.
Being nice changes the intent from "force the guy out of his job" to "spreading information to the public". It's not what you say, but how you say it that counts.
Slashdot Mirror
They're wandering doppelgängers... that's obvious, right?
And yet, one of my toy projects in grad school generated over a billion data points that needed analysis. The only database server I had access to choked on the first analysis pass (of about a dozen). It took about three months of processing to get to a point that could even be considered acceptable. Since then, on a whim, I've redone the program using Hadoop and HBase. A MapReduce job completed the analysis, on worse hardware, in less than a day. A major contributing factor was the lack of a rigid structure in HBase, which greatly improved the organization of data.
NoSQL solutions are certainly not the best tool for every job, but neither are normal relational databases. In my opinion, it's worthwhile to be familiar with both, and to be able to choose the right one for every task.
That's okay... Facebook, StumbleUpon, and Twitter will be thrilled to have you pre-screening their applicants to weed out those who refuse to break tradition in the search for improvement.
So 2011 will be the year of the Linux desktop, right?
Linux has gained recognition. It's something that IT managers won't usually dismiss immediately. Sure, that's important, but the average user out there still doesn't know that Linux exists, let alone what it is. There's a long road ahead of us, even longer than the path we've just traveled. Wear good shoes.
How I see it depends entirely on what hat I'm wearing at the time.
As a submitter myself, I see it as a boon. As a manager of a project, I see it as a headache. As an advocate of open-source software, I see it as yet more FUD I have to waste my time explaining to some company who's concerned about wasting resources without profit.
Patents do not cover "an idea". They cover a specific solution, which for software is a specific algorithm. Find a different algorithm to produce the same (or similar enough) results, and the patent isn't an issue. Yes, that's a problem when you want to exactly duplicate some function (like with a compression codec), but for the vast majority of applications, the algorithms used are well-known and not patented. Once in a great while, some brilliant algorithm will be discovered for doing something that isn't specialized, but in the vast majority of such cases, those algorithms come after years of research work and refinement. Why shouldn't the thinker have some control over their thoughts?
Copyright is indeed what protects open-source software, but the other details are where trouble lies. Contributors to open-source projects must declare that the copyright on their work belongs to the project. That means it can't be itself copied from somewhere else without license (including tutorials, sample code, etc.). If that assignment isn't made, then any change in the project's licensing requires the approval of all the submitters!
How long until that's subverted, though?
"Enter authorization code to upgrade:"
"To enter the maintenance control panel, follow these 57 easy steps:"
"Simply hold down the 'firmware unlock' button, located on the back of the display circuit board, throughout the entire upgrade process. You may need to remove your phone's case and some internal parts to do this, which may make your device inoperable. Proceed at your own risk."
Per the terms of the agreement, the vanilla-update option would be there, and the user can access it. That they need to jump through ridiculous hoops first is a separate issue.
That's because people like you hate reason, are driven by emotion...
Rage is an emotion. It's that feeling you have when someone has offended you beyond your ability to understand. It often manifests as an intense desire to cause physical harm to the offending person(s), with little to no concern for any mitigating circumstances.
Perhaps the woman in question has a vision or coordination problem. Perhaps she's distracted thinking about other things. Perhaps you should have been a proper gentleman and made sure you were well out of her path, that she may go any way she likes. Perhaps, for a few fleeting moments, you could let a trivial inconvenience pass by you, and not demonize someone you know remarkably little about.
What moral principle says that someone should be so privileged that they can risk injuring others without even trying to be responsible and should never ever suffer any consequence of that?
That's a very good question. Why should anyone be given the ability to risk injuring anyone else, especially around the face, which is of high social importance?
Given that you've shown you know nothing about the other side of the story, and appear unable to empathize, why should you be the sole judge of who should be injured and who shouldn't?
When a factory makes a mistake, the defective part is rejected, at a cost of a few dollars. If the mistake is serious and isn't caught, the company faces a maximum cost of about a few hundred thousand dollars for a recall. When a hospital screws up, the malpractice settlements average around half a million dollars, and if a jury gets involved, the cost jumps up to almost 5 million. That's a significant difference, and it significantly affects the risk analysis.
To reduce the risk of casual error, every procedure is treated individually. Every detail gets somebody's attention, and every possibility is examined. If you go to a clinic complaining of a persistent cough, and the desk clerk hands you a bottle of cough syrup, that's efficient. If you really had pneumonia and die the next day, that's malpractice. Of course, testing for pneumonia means sterile equipment, more time, and more skilled personnel paying attention to the details of any symptoms you present.
Medicine is not a straightforward symptom-to-treatment-to-cure process. It's a tricky system of guessing what makes the body behave the way it does. In one case I heard about, a man went to a hospital with pain in is abdomen. Initial examination showed nothing wrong. There was no swelling and no visible indication of any problems. It wasn't until a doctor heard that the man was an alcoholic several decades earlier that he figured out what had happened. The alcohol caused reduced testosterone, which caused a higher risk of osteoporosis, which led to a broken vertebra, which pinched a nerve, which caused the feeling of pain. The efficient treatment would be to give the man some aspirin and send him home to paralyze himself.
A hospital having the same kind of efficiency as a factory would lead to even worse care than currently exists, and the malpractice insurance would cost more than the efficiency would save.
That list will include nurse visits, paperwork management, sterilization of a whole room, malpractice insurance, a significant number of tests run by very skilled and highly-educated people, more malpractice insurance, a mandatory contribution to the dying-guy-with-no-insurance fund, testing and maintenance on the oh-god-I-sneezed-and-now-i-can't-feel-my-legs button, even more malpractice insurance, disposal of the disposables...
All those little things that the hospital does for every patient add up. $5,000 per day isn't too surprising. Now, if we could cut back the load on hospitals, they might be able to have only one room cleaner, instead of four. There would be fewer procedures done unnecessarily, so fewer screwed up procedures, so lower malpractice costs.
Of course, that means there has to be some way to reduce the load. Perhaps if we had some way to identify sick patients before they desperately need a hospital, they could get care at smaller clinics...
But this is Slashdot!
Such a horribly rational view ignores the blatant invasion of privacy involved! Lying to doctors, denying preventative care, and having delusions of perfection are all natural rights, guaranteed in the Constitution, the Magna Carta, and the Emancipation Proclamation! Please, think of the children! What will the effect be on their self-esteem if a doctor tells them they have a risk of diabetes, and have to go get a scary test?
It's like the insurance companies raising premiums for habitually driving recklessly. I know I'm the best driver on the roads, so I can drive however I want. All my accidents have been caused by those other drivers getting in the way! These companies should be forced to serve me how I want, when I want, without concern for any of those ridiculous "expenses" they keep talking about. They're corporations! They shouldn't have any rights, and that means they don't have the right to not be my slaves!
</sarcasm>
You're kidding, right? Instead of simply allocating the spectrum based on frequency, we have to allocate by frequency and time, synchronize all relevant devices, and build every device with proper radio hardware to switch frequencies rapidly. Maybe it's a small price to pay for the increased security of such a transmission... until the CIA/NSA/Illuminati/tinfoil-hat-enemy-of-the-week gets their hands on a single receiver, and they know the psuedorandom sequences involved anyway.
Most spread spectrum algorithms improve resistance to accidental interference, because they simply provide a "moving target". If two spread-spectrum devices are transmitting simultaneously, they will seldom interfere with each other during normal operation. If the interference is intentional, no amount of hopping or alteration will stop it for long, because the interfering transmitter can be designed to follow the same pattern, or simply broadcast on all frequencies the device will use.
Going to a private, non-franchised mechanic with no record of doing credible work means the insurance company's taking a bigger risk by insuring you. After all, that's the historical purpose of insurance companies: to mitigate financial risk by taking small payments from many people to cover the large cost incurred by a few. If you're contributing more to the total risk, you should contribute more to the pool as well. Right now, it's an imperfect system. There's no way for the insurance companies to know if you're taking good care of your car, or if you're the kind of driver who only changes his tires after they're completely bald. Without that information, everyone's premiums go up to cover the risk of a bad tire causing a crash. You speak of history, and I simply want to make a more complete personal history available to everyone.
Of course, companies are looking to make a profit. Few employees or executives (as a general rule) are willing to sacrifice the company to make a quick profit, so the key aspect is giving companies enough information that they can screw over only the people who deserve it. If you have an increased risk of cancer, and you're being considered to be an astronaut destined for Mars, it makes perfect sense for you to be rejected, because you might not be able to do the job. If you've been an outspoken activist against animal testing, and you're applying to be a night janitor at an animal testing lab, there's an obvious security risk that the company should know about. Imagine any situation where someone's hidden actions are detrimental to the population, and there's a good chance that analysis of Big Data can fix the problem.
The reverse is also true. Insurance companies already lower premiums for drivers with decent records and displays of responsible behavior, and that's fueled primarily by heavy competition. More available information means more ways to compete with each other, and I expect the current discounting trend to continue. History shows that consumers benefit from competition, and competition benefits from having more options available to the competitors.
Yes, there's potential for abuse. That should be expected and anticipated, and regulated as soon as possible. The companies are generally happy, because they would get to raise prices for (or simply drop) customers that cut heavily into their profits, where before there was no way to predict which customers those were. Most consumers can be happy with regulated costs, with more mistakes necessary to be put into the "bad customer" class. The only ones who get screwed are those who have been deceitfully screwing over others for decades.
Call me selfish if you like, but I'm particularly opposed to the idea that someone is naturally entitled to a having a job, or lying to get a better deal.
That's not a haiku.
This message brought to you by the Foundation for Troll Education.
The way I see it, the temptation of 'big data' is leading businesses to draw us closer to a transparent society. I, personally, would prefer to live in a world where every public official's voting record is on display, dating back to their first local government position, correlated with their publicly-voiced positions on the issues. I'd like to see insurance companies charge more to drivers who take their cars to neighbor Bubba's barn for repairs, and (by regulation, if necessary) charge less to people who usually take their cars to well-qualified reputable mechanics. I'd like to see mechanics' reputations be based on how many of their repairs fail. I'd like to have a society where every company and individual can have access to the information that's relevant to them.
If there's less chance of a company being screwed over by any random person, then there's less chance of a company screwing over any random customer, including myself. I'm perfectly fine enforcing that by industry regulation, but the information has to come first. If the price of such idealism is that I can't lie to my doctor anymore, so be it.
The Constitution has nothing to do with this. A few senators were standing around one day and somebody mentioned this app, and thew others said it's a bad idea. The headline may as well read "3rd-grade teacher, zookeeper, astrophysicist, and bus driver to Apple".
Now, if there's public support for this idea, then there might be a proposal for legislation, which would likely be a large complicated mess falling under the "interstate commerce" clause, but I doubt that will happen. There's far too many assholes out there who think they have a God-given right to ignore any law they don't like.
I think what you meant to say was
software patents by big greedy corporations that get in the way of me doing whatever I want are simply and plainly wrong.
or perhaps
expecting me to have the same limits as a big company is simply and plainly wrong.
Simply and plainly, that's not how software patents work at all.
They cover all implementations that fit a particular description. Come up with an implementation using a different design (such as a genetic algorithm rather than a greedy algorithm), and the patent's probably not an issue. No, you won't get perfect results all the time, but you aren't the one who made the investment to research the algorithm in the first place. Why should you get anything for free, when others had to work hard to produce it?
Are they more harmful than allowing any established company to copy the product of any smaller (therefore slower-moving) company or individual, after that smaller entity has put in the research investment?
I have a friend who has patented an algorithm to solve a particular problem using a novel method. Existing software solutions sell for over hundred thousand dollars each, and saves their customers millions. This individual inventor spent seven years working on his algorithm, at his own expense. He has no customer contacts, and no means to develop a salable product on his own. The ability to license his invention to established companies is the only thing he gets for seven years of investment, and his patent is the only thing preventing any of those established companies from simply copying his work. How is it harmful that an investment like that gets a return?
Then we'd have the problem where bug fixes would invalidate the patent. Changing the order of unrelated statements would allow another company to duplicate the technology, making the patent protection utterly useless.
Connecting facts to those statements requires logical leaps that would impress Evil Knievel.
First, the "genocide" links don't actually talk about genocide. Two discuss alleged rape by UN peacekeepers, which has already been acknowledged as a problem by the UN, which primarily is the result of countries themselves picking which soldiers serve the UN missions. The Democratic Republic of Congo wants to torment its own people, so it sends its worst soldiers to the UN-controlled areas. That's hardly the result of any incompetence within the UN.
The other link goes to a page discussing the Congo Crisis, which conveniently makes the logical leaps for you. Long story short, the UN had worked out a treaty to set the Congo free from Belgian control, and made the first steps toward that goal. Then a political leader, Moise Tshombe, used the instability to split off his own country under false pretenses. When it became clear that Tshombe would not follow the arranged agreements, instead opting to promote civil war, the UN intervened. Tshombe waged war against the UN, instead.
Interestingly, this escalation couldn't have happened under the League of Nations, which you also don't like. The LoN could only issue sanctions, and those had to be passed in unanimous agreement by the members. One of the League's primary goals was the near-complete disarmament of the world, with little regard for things like "safety". Poland was worried about German invasion before Hitler even came to power, so followed the disarmament procedures as little as possible. Poland didn't want to disarm, so Germany opposed as well, fearing an attack from Poland in retribution for WWI. The League of Nations was also biased from the start, being mainly comprised of the victors of WWI. Germans perceived this as a global threat against them, which is how Hitler was able to rise to power on a promise to restore Germany's reputation. It's wasn't the League' fault, and the United Nations is a different beast, generally unbiased and actually capable of being effective.
These organizations have continually demonstrated interest in opening a forum for international discussion, backed by force as needed, and generally funded by member governments and private donations. The highest salary in the UN is roughly $200,000. Lloyd Blankfein had a base salary of three times that much, plus other bonuses.
If the Libyans knew what they were getting into, they'd hope that somebody would stop their own military from attacking them.
Let's just review:
IAEA - Because pakistan doesn't yet have hydrogen bombs. Oh and pakistan won't help Iran (the one smart decision in a forest of lunatic, delusional decisions that border on warcrimes), so someone else will have to give them the bomb.
IMF - Because the UN does not yet control the money of every state
UNRWA - Because, let's face it, palestinians might finish what hitler started, wouldn't that be great
Fair point. Please allow me to rephrase:
The Department of Defense doesn't care if you have a job right now, unless you aren't otherwise occupied and are willing to do whatever task it is that they do care about, but generally speaking they will not take notice of your employment status unless they are interested in you for other reasons.
Doesn't have quite the same ring to it...
you still aren't fixing the shit conditions that allow one to take power in the first place.
Absolutely! Before the UN or anybody else intervenes, there should be some clear sign that the people are ready for change! Maybe a mass uprising or something...
we got too many of our own problems to go around playing world police.
That's why we have several people, in several places, each doing their own jobs. The Department of Labor doesn't give a damn about Libya. Likewise, the Department of Defense doesn't care if you have a job right now. Government is a part of society, which is a group of people who have realized that people can work together, each doing their own jobs, to accomplish many things at once.
Do you also expect the President to not sleep tonight, because some kid in Oregon broke his leg?
"This contract may be terminated at any time, for any or no reason."
If the contract allowed the university to fire him, he probably can't.
Gee, I wonder how government spies could have fake government records... It's not like the world's current method of checking a foreigner's information is to just ask their government... oh wait...
Moore committed no wrongdoing in his research job, and as far as the law's concerned, hasn't done anything illegal in the past, either. Innocent until proven guilty, remember?
It's closer to walking into a restaurant, recognizing a waiter as that guy who rudely bumped into you a year ago, and trying to get him fired.
Being nice changes the intent from "force the guy out of his job" to "spreading information to the public". It's not what you say, but how you say it that counts.