Bingo: you've nailed the problem exactly. The stuff the researchers get to do is selected by the company.
This is a very interesting problem. I was sitting here thinking about it trying to figure out a way around this problem, but as I stated before, it ends up being really, really tricky.
My first solution had the corporations putting the money for research into one giant slush fund for the university and then research projects would pull money out of that, but it would be spread around for all to enjoy as well. The only problem with this is that corporations wouldn't do it, because there was no way to gauruntee that the projects they wanted funded would get funded.
The exact opposite of this would be to allow the direct corporate funding, but I think that is just begging for corruption.
So that led me to the hybrid system, take a bit of both worlds, and implement a shared profit system. If company A wants to fund research B, then they can give B as much money as they want, except that 50% of the money that they give the project will be put into the "slush fund" for other projects to pull some much needed funding out. All rights of the knowledge gained should be public knowledge (assumption: if company A wants the research for their own, then they should hire their own damn researchers to do it in their own damn labs).
There is alot of work that could be done on this, but the idea is a start.
Perhaps I should have taken a little bit of a different angle on this one. So, I'll take it here. Comedy is much like literature (in fact, its pretty much is literature). Now, literature, for the most part, never goes bad. Its not wine, its not going to turn into vinegar. However, this is not to say that it is always as relevant as it once was. Certain genres of literature age better than others, and in many cases the literature of comedy doesn't age well because it takes into account a much greater amount of social norms and social situations of the time in which it was written. This means that the comedy in it is subject to the knowledge of what was going on at the time... there is a pre-requisite to finding this stuff humorous.
Now, certain forms of comedy were able to get by this as they appealed to certain subjects (such as sexuality) that pretty much just stayed relevatn throughout the ages. If George Carlin tried to do his "Seven Words You Can't Say on Television" skit in a place that didn't have TV, they wouldn't find it funny at all since they had absolutely no background knowledge which was required for the joke.
So, the point of this long winded diatribe is simply that the jokes can still be funny, the do not go obsolete so long as the requisite knowledge is maintained. Python will remain funny so long as people know the background information which makes them funny.
As someone else pointed out here, sophisticated humor seems to last longer than others. That is mostly because the requisite knowledge for sophisication has not changed all that much through different time periods. I know that there are some differences, saying that would just be dumb. However, this gets back to the cannon... there are certain books that people are supposed to read, and rather than replacing books in the cannon, books are just added to it. So, if you make jokes that refer back to stuff like that, then people are going to be getting them for a much longer time period than commenting on something much more ephemeral.
So, to pull of this back together. Comedy does not become obsolete like technology in the sense that so long as people have some sort of knowledge of what made it funny in the first place, it will still be considered funny. Since most humorists work with a common base (else people wouldn't find them funny), and this common base is passed on throughout the ages, the comedy is passed as well.
OK, so this argument isn't perfect, but its not bad for having about 5 minutes to think about it before writing it down.
Well, I will say one thing for this post, it definitely has attracted quite a bit of attention and quite a bit of responses, so I figure its time for me to do my part and have part in this lovely little response fest as well. Afterall, what is life without mob mentality (She's a witch!!!).
There's been a whole lot of progress in the last thirty years. Monty Python may have been pioneers of a sort, and they sure made the BBC cringe like no one had before. But do they really hold a candle to Full House or Pee Wee's Great Adventure or any of the other brilliant programs that have followed? No.
Well, there has been a whole lot of progress in all sorts of things. But does it make those things which made the foundation upon which the other stuff stands obsolete? Not at all... comedy is not technology, it does not become obsolete . When one thinks about it, why would comedy become obsolete? We could really get into the theory of comedy (I know many a person who has taken the class), but that's just going to be wasting our time. A good deal of Python's comedy was done in such a way that it was rather universal, which is why they succeeded in many different cultures rather than just ours.
Saying that comedy becomes obsolete like technology is like saying that literature becomes obsolete like technology. Thus, we should not go back and read anything that was prodcued before 1995 as it has all been said more recently and more relevant to our times. This is hardly ever the case. Quite often, the newer material is stuff that was pretty much ripped off from the original and done in the manner of a cheap hack, which would then give me less pleasure than the pure original. Why then would I bother with something that is modern and not purely original when I could have the pure sources? Well, that is simple as well... they new people have something new to offer above and beyond what the original source did.
What conclusions have we come to in this posting. Basically that saying anything old is categorically better than something new is wrong, and vice versa. Python continues to exist and be popular because people enjoy it, and other stuff isn't as appealing to them. It will continue to be so as long as these conditions exist.
By the way, I'll try to ignore the fact that you even brought up Full House in comparison to Holy Grail and Pee Wee's Big Adventure.
.it appears that the interviewer seemed very clueless about the "open source movement" so to speak. It seemed to me that she didn't grasp some of the concepts, particularly that Torvalds did this for the love of programming and nothing more. She even asked Torvalds if he was some how regretful that he didn't try to "sell" his OS rather than giving it away.
I would say that the reason for this is that the average listener has no idea what the "open source movement" is. People here on Slashdot are not your average listener. The average person who listens to NPR is someone who is usually fairly well educated, and quite often they are not the most technical people in the world (a good amount of my friends fall directly into this category). Thus, that person has no idea what is going on in the software world, and therefore has no idea what the whole idea of open source vs. closed source is.
In this way, the interviewer has delved into the issue rather well and touched on the open source side of the argument, giving the people who are listening a much better idea of what is going on. The idea of programming purely in the open source matter (and not specifically for profit) is something that is foreign to most people out there. They have no idea that there is a culture that loves to program for the sake of coding, they are generally ignorant of that. They understand artists doing things for the sake of art, but they usually don't consider it to be art.
I think that in this way, this is the only thing that the interviewer missed (and Linus didn't specifically say). She concentrated on the differences between the open source movement and the closed source movement (basically, the difference between those who are out there specifically for profit, and those who are out there specifically for the elegant and superior design). This is pretty much the first step, as most peole don't understand it in this area. They understand the idea of the artist not selling out, but nobody has any idea of what people are talking about when they refer to a coder selling out.
One thing I will note as well, is that it was hard to get across the point of the GPL (which is actually not the easiest concept to explain), and she actually hit Linus hard on this topic quite a bit, trying to get this point across. It probably would have been better for her to get someone like RMS or ESR to talk about Open Source or GPL (in their respective roles).
I think that one of the other things that she did very well was that she really delved into the idea of programming for the joy of programming. She may not have gotten the whole point of it all, but she really got close. She realized quickly that Linus was most responsive to questions that dealt with his joy of programming, and so she kept going in that direction. For this I have to salute her ability as an interviewer.
And people like to pretend, probably because they enjoy porn and violence, that it doesn't harm people, but anyone who can seriously believe this is quite frankly mad.
I couldn't agree with you more. People like to distance themselves from what they do that is wrong, they rather choose to rationalize what they are doing as right. Though its tough to argue with that porn man.... its soooooo good:-)
If you consistently expose people to sex and violence they grow to accept it. It's as obvious as anything. It's conditioning. For instance, in Muslim countries women aren't leered at and treated as sex objects, because society conditions them not to. In Western societies, women are objectified through their portrayal as breasts on a stick on TV.
You have a point here which is very valid in any situation. If a person is exposed to something more and more (be it violence or spicy food), that person will become more accustomed to it, and not be as alarmed by its presence, as they have become acclimated to it.
That's how conditioning works, and that's what's happened here.
This is where you go all wack job on me. You are saying that because these kids played violent video games that they went postal in their high school? I think you are missing a bit of supporting evidence, and I think you would be hard pressed to find anybody but the dullest of idiots who would buy the argument the way that you laid it out here.
those exposed to violence are more violent
Again, you've taken your foundation which ws rather good, and just gone all wierd on me. I'm just not able to follow you here. Just because someone is exposed to something, does not mean that they will fall in and follow that model. Now I get to pull out my favorite little quote from my statistics class. Correlation does not proove causation.
I'm not saying that the exposure and conditioning didn't have anything to do with the fact. I'm just saying that citing it as the only factor in the problem is just wrong. Most likely there were problems that went on for years that built up to this, and finally there was something that broke the camel's back and they decided it was now time. Nobody saw any of the signs, nobody did anything about it.
The whole thing is very sad, but being reactionary is not the answer to this problem.
What about if there is this huge message before you went into the forum that basically reads... "We are using this forum for the sole purpose of gathering material for an article that we will be publishing in ; if you do not wish your opinion to be published in this magazine, then do not post here... there will be no compensation for your writing other than that warm feeling of having some of your words published in the magazine"?
Personally, i would think that would suffice enough that you would get no compensation for something that you wrote in that forum. I guess, i would look at that and go, its not worth the fight, but I suppose someone might go in and do that just for the principal of the matter.
Though, looking at that... I guess it would come down to the spirit of the law rather than the letter of the law. If you didn't want your opinions published, you should simply not post there (this is again assuming that they put up that disclaimer).
It seems that the New York Times has an interesting position here - while they have regularly posted rants in the editorial column against napster and what they refer to as the "looting" of other people's intellectual property, they're firmly in favor of being able to use freelance material without paying for it again. The New York Times has a high percentage of freelance stuff in its pages, and it would be quite a financial blow if they were to have to pay writers for the second go around.
IANAL...
This is an interesting position, but if you look at it, they are two rather different positions. On one hand you have the average Napster user who buys a CD and converts it into mp3 format. That person has paid for the music in one form, and by rights of the fair use doctrine, is able to convert it to other forms for his/her own personal use. This means that the mp3's on his computer are completely in the realm of "fair use". However, when he/she posts those songs that were taken from the CD onto Napster, that person is sharing them with other people (though not for profit), these songs are no longer really covered under fair use since fair use is not extended to other people besides the person who bought the piece of music. The only thing thats sort of saving them (or at least was) is that no profit was being made by sharing this music.
Now let us move on to the NYT. They buy a piece of work from a free lance writer for use in their publication. They publish it according to the contract and pay the writer for the right to do so, the have in fact purchased certain distribution rights from the original writer. Now, the NYT wants to take this article that they have purchased and move it to another format for distribution that they will again make a profit on. Since they purchased these rights, I would assume that it would again come down to which distribution rights were purchased. If the NYT purchased the right to distribute the works in this digital format, then they are OK. However, if they didn't, then they owe the writers some money... as they made money off of selling their work again in a differnt format than originally agreed upon.
Looking at it this way, it seems like a fairly cut and dry case (at least to me), as the NYT is all about buying rights to distribution and Napster is about the fair use doctrine (meaning they come out very different). However, there are still some really bumpy areas in this debate.
I think what this case is coming down to is how this is being distributed by the NYT. Does the NYT change the article itself into the digital format and sell it to Nexis/Lexis, or does the NYT change the paper into digital format and sell it to Lexis/Nexis? If they change the article and sell it, then in my opinion they have to pay the writers because they're distributing it in a way that they didn't pay for (at least methinks... depending on their contract). However, if they give the entire paper to lexis/nexis then they are in effect selling their own product (which they have created by buying that piece of writing from the author), and thus really don't owe the writers anything.
Now, looking at this, I would say that if I were a freelance writer, from now on I would want a little piece of the pie every time that the NYT gets money off my article in anyway and thus would try to have it in my contract. Since I'm not, and I have no idea what the market is like for writers of this type, I'll just keep my mouth shut and let someone else who has a better idea of what is going on take a stab at it.
I see my online article as a contribution to the community. If they turned around and printed it, they are making a tangible profit off my work and I'd want a piece of that action. Would I be legally entitled to anything? Probably not. But I think they would be morally responsible to repay me for my contribution.
First off, IANAL...
This all depends on how they put this forum up for use. Do they say somewhere when you are using it, that any and all comments may be used in the publication that sponsors the site? If they did, then they can use your comments with or without the coffee mug (however, you might get a coffee mug out of it, since they valued your opinion and might actually want more). If they didn't put that up there, then I really have no idea what the legal ramifications would be. You could view it as a donation to the community, but I'm not sure that would do much to protect you. As I have no idea where to go with this I'll just leave it.
It really all depends on the purpose of the web page... if the company is using it to get more stuff to print in their dead-tree form, then they could use their stuff. However, without that, I'm pretty sure you are perfectly legal in asking for your coffee mug (and maybe even some coffee to fill it with).
'portable personal terminal for use in a system for handling transactions'
I think that the entire case will come down to this statement (of course... I am a master of the obvious). But I think it will be shot down very simply because it is way too vague. If you look at this, they have patented not only PDA's, but also laptop computers (they are portable as well) and pretty much any device that is capable of handling a transaction and isn't tied down physically for some reason or another. (for that matter, a normal old PC could be considered that as you can technically port it around)
On a further note, if NCR wins this little legal battle, they will be in a good strategic position to start collecting on any use of wireless technology. Well, not all wireless technology, but pretty much everything that deals with small, portable devices that connect to a central system.
You know, look at is this way. NCR can gain nothing from this patent anymore, and they may have some spare cash sitting around. What do they have to lose by starting this lawsuit? Nothing really besides lawyers fees and bad PR.... and what do they have to gain? Well, they have the possibility of gaining a prior patent on one of the fastest growing sectors in technology. This could be viewed almost completely as a strategic move on their part... really crappy and pathetic, but strategic...
If you recall (which you probably don't, since this started much before any of us were really around to remember), this was a fear that was had by normal old mail-order houses. One of the big ones was Eastbay who had that shoe catalog (and quite possibly still does), and local merchants would complain that people would come into their stores, try on the shoes and then state to the salesman's face that they were now going to go buy that from Eastbay because it was cheaper there.
The only difference here, as far as I can see, is the whole "instantaneous gratification" factor. Now you can just do all of this faster than you used to be able to. What I actually see happening, and what I think makes the most sense is to apply a taxation system that works like the mail order catalogs of days past. Which, if I recall, basically amounts to you paying taxes if the company is located in the same state as the purcahser, but I can't remember for sure.
Yet, this new "Edge" is simply not that much better.... here is a link to a handspring hosted comparison table . It shows that the Vx is smaller and lighter. Where the Edge is better is only because it has the latest software (which can be upgraded on the Vx anyway), has a microphone, the "springboard" (which I have never seen used...) and has a blinking light...;-)
Well, you can look at it that way, or you can look at it as Handspring finally coming out with an answer to the Palm V and Palm Vx, which are quite possibly Palm's sexiest models out there (though, when the Palm VIIx comes out in the Palm V case, the wireless will push it over the top). Handspring now has an alternative to their (in my opinion) rather ugly cases that they used in the past, allowing more buisiness type people to pick them up and use them (though I guess they weren't really stopped before).
Handspring is continuing their past trend and taking the old Palm model and giving it a kick in the ass. In this case, they bumped up the processor (which actually makes a good deal of difference) and added a few amenities to make it prettier to the end user.
The one thing that I've never been sure of is why Handspring chose the route that it did for expandability. Why didn't they choose the compact flash format rather than their format? I'm sure there is a good explanation, but right now it seems sort of silly that they would have their own proprietary format when they could vastly expand their compatibility if they would just have compact flash ability.
Yes, of course they do. There's also no threading, let alone multitasking.
Well, to be truthful, I beleive that the operating system is fully multithreaded, however, they just don't give the developers the ability to do muliple threads. Perhaps if they would just give us a peak at that source code, life would be a bit happier in this realm... though most likely not
This isn't a new tactic at all. I would try to avoid sounding anti-establishmentarian here for a second, but its really tough to. Look at it from this persepctive.... you're playing a game of chess (if you want too look at it that way, bad analogy, but oh well, I only have so much time here), and you get yourself into a winning position. Are you going to risk moving into a new position, or are you going to try whatever you can to maintain that winning position?
Now I admit that this isn't the perfect analogy because there are many more things at play here, but it makes sense. The publishing companies have a winning formula which makes them money. Why would they go out and pay someone to do something new and exciting (while it may have more artistic merit) when they can beat the dead horse a bit more to get the rest of the money out of it?
Now the game of Lawyers, etc has been to keep changing the rules of the game, so that they are in a winning position. They keep moving the goal posts.
There is another interesting way to look at this, look at it from the same sort of perspective. Once you realize that you can't maintain that winning position any longer, you change the game so that someone can't beat you at it. Hence bring in the clown^H^H^H^H^H lawyers. This is a classical "older brother tactic", when your little brother/sister has started to master the game that you are playing, if you change the game or the rules, there is no way that they can actually win.:-)
Too bad that the duration of copyright and patent wasn't specified in the constitution. It would have solved a lot of these issues.
Well, this is easy to say here and now that they should have speicified it differently back then, but we have the advantage of about 225 years of history to look back at how the copyrights have failed and succeeded through the years, they didn't get that luxury, they just went along with what they knew and provided for the existance of it. Can't really blame them, they didn't have the resources that we have. Besides, how could they have even imagined that we would have the ability to reproduce IP like we do now?
As much as I hate to agree with you, I have to. Most people care about Napster in this order:
free music
artist's rights
free music
free music
did I mention free music?
While napster did not stand up to a court attack (and lets be honest here, who actually thought that they would? Fair use can go along way, but when there is so much of it going on and there is money being lost... who is going to win? The fair use clause, or the people losing the money?), it did do a few things. It did liven up the whole topic of artist's rights and electronically distributed music, which is in itself a good thing.
I personally have a feeling that while Napster forced open the door to the distribution of music electronically (adopting a fee based system) there is something else on the horizon. With all of the grassroots movement going on, someone is going to figure out a way to distribute music electronically and give more of that money to the artist rather than to the record company. Its really a pipedream at this point, but there is hope that it can happen (something like mp3.com, except that would actually work right).
Nixon only resigned because they were going to impeach him like the next day. And unlike in the case of Clinton, there was alot worse going on than getting a blowjob in the whitehouse. Its not like Nixon heard that he had done wrong (being ever the innocent one), realized that the deeds he had done were corrupt, immediatly went on TV, apologized to the nation, restored the national confidence to where it should be and resigned. Rather, Nixon covered everything up from day one and at each step of the way he tried something else, further digging himself a hole until the point where Congress got fed up with it and was ready to impeach his ass (and unlike Clinton, there was NO doubt that he was being kicked out on his fat corrupt ass), then he resigned the day before when there was NO way that he could hold on.
However, this did not stop there, oh no, that would be too easy. They continued to investigate the Watergate happens, as rightly the should have. It took then President Gerald Ford to end all of this by giving Nixon a pardon on a crime that he most definitly committed.
Now, Clinton wasn't the most honest president that we've ever had. In fact, he was kind of slimy, but even mentioning his name in the same breath as Nixon is just wrong... its up there with John Lennon comparing the Beatles with Jesus.
If you want a much more candid opinion on this matter, check out Hunter S. Thompson's obituary for Nixon. Its much more candid and venom dripping than any of us could possibly be. While you're at it, you should read the accompanying article that goes into a bit more of Thompson's feelings on the guy. And unlike most people here on slashdot, Thompson actually lived through Nixon and covered him as a coorispondant back in the day.
There are many sitauations in which a company must file legal briefs of some sort (or just legal paperwork) which would be expediated greatly by the use of this "cybercourt" (which, as has bee pointed out before, is nothing but a buzzword for a way to update the manner in which legal documents are handled -- basically now being able to use computer and electronic submission of more things than you used to be able to do).
I beleive that you are right in the fact that just the "cybercourt" itself will not really attract that many buisinesses (or start-ups for that matter, as that is what they are really trying to attract). What will attract them are the things that you lined out. The low taxes always attract buisinesses, and buisinesses tend to move towards the better educated workforce (or at least the workforce that is capable of learning).
However, if Michigan was able to offer the low taxes and this cybercourt, then they would be able to attract more distributed style buisinesses and startups. Where you would basically have a few programmers and people scattered about the country with their legal base in Michigan (and the key being that nobody would have to be there, including the lawyers as they would be able to do all of their work over the internet, trasmitting all the things that they need to rather than bringing it in by hand).
This is a great concept of bringing courts up to date with the modern world, which I hope actually happens in more places than just michigan (though I'm not sure about evidence being presented in streaming video).
Another thing that big companies do, that open source developers often don't (flame gates are now opened, commencing in 5...4...3...2) is contributing resources completely and totally to bug fixing. Think about it this way, if a big company wants to use a program and they've commited themselves to it, they will lose a lot of productive time if their developers/users are held up by bugs. It is in their economic interest to hire people to squash these bugs so that their resources will be able to work w/o having to implement work arounds and things of that nature.
To your average user, the program crashing every once in awhile isn't the biggest itch in the world (its a bit annoying, but we can live with it usually because what we are working on is more of a liesure quality than a life and death quality). A big company, on the other hand, is in more of a life and death situation, thus this is not just an "itch" perse, its more of an inflamed rash that would be rather nice to get rid of.
Now, as far as contributing to mozilla, I guess that's a personal thing for each person... I could see it being a major world of suck if you had to download the entire source tree over a 56k connection (its not all that wonderful over DSL as it is), but that's the unfortunate fact about a product that is that big.
The problem that you speak of is not new at all, and is definitly not confined to the realms of computer programming. When it comes right down to it, nobody wants to do the dirty work that is required to get a project done (i.e. bug squashing, documentation, general project managements) , they would rather go out and do the new and fun stuff (which in this case is adding new features).
This is just a fundamental flaw in human nature. People want to get all the glory and credit and nobody wants to do the background work that is required to make something actually work. Look at politics... everybody wants to be president, nobody wants to be his aides that actually run around and get the shit done (well, some people do, but most don't).
This was also a problem in ancient Rome, when you actually look at it. Everything used to be paid for by donations from the rich folk. However, everyone wanted their money to pay for something big and wonderful that everybody loved (such as theathers and circuses, etc), but nobody wanted to pay for the smaller bits of infrastructure that held everything together, as they wouldn't be remembered eternally if they gave money for the roads to be resurfaced or for general maintenance of the aquaducts.
Its the same thing with programming. Nobody thinks they'll get any credit for the bug fixes that they work out that makes the product actually work, they want to be known for the feature which they implemented (even if nobody actually needs it or wants it in any way).
Well, I think one thing that you are forgetting here is that when you are typing code, you are for the most part not typing at your highest speed, unless you have a much faster mind than I do. Chances are you are typing out a few lines, then thinking.... so on and so forth.... for writers, this is different, as they can go a bit more stream of conscience than a coder can.
If you wanted to use it for dictation, you could also do that. My father uses speech recognition for dictation and finds it alot easier to do than writing things out by hand. Admittedly, he can type much faster than he speaks, however it tends to drain him less than typing it out does, and he is able to do more (though it takes a little extra time) than he would if he was just typing it out (less brain drain).
Where I see the big advantages coming through in this is in the overall OS control. I don't see this controlling everything (unless you so wanted it that way, in which case be my guest), but I can see this helping in my "multitasking" of many different things at once. You could for instance be typing away at a letter and realize that you need to bring one up to reference it, but you don't want to click through and find it because you're on a roll. You simply tell the computer "bring up letter X in the background" (
One of the big problems that happens with new technologies is that everyone says that this is going to replace some device that is used every day (remember people have declared that the PC was dead for about 10 years now if I recall the first time I heard that). In reality, what will happen is that people will discover a way to use it to work a bit faster than they did before, using their every day means + the new technology rather than just the new technology itself.
but it is the most determined, the most suicidal of the two that will win, just as in real life.
This is sometimes the case, but definitly not always the case. Look for instance at the United States versus Japan, while it could be argued (and I know it will be) that we were more suicidal than Japan was, I would have to bring up the fact of the Kamakzi fighters and the manned torpedos and then hope that would count them as a bit more suicidal than we were. We defeated them, though it took a whole lot of effort to do so.
No matter how fanatical an untrained and unarmed person is, he is not going to be able to defeat a fully armed and trained army, that's just preposterous.
The Matrix, OTOH, was an intelligent film (I remember/. posts on how philosophy professors were impressed enough with it to mention it on their courses). It bears repeated watchings, and leaves the audience thinking.
The matrix brought nothing to the table in the way of original thought, or even plot line for that matter. It was yet another of the dark-future saved by messianic figured who starts out the film thinking that "something is not quite right" and then goes through a process of realization only to come to the conclusion that he can beat the "master race" at their own game (for another of the same plot... see Dark City).
The one thing that the Matrix did which I have seen no other film do yet, was make the movie truely beatiful and captivating. Their use of special effects to tell the story (remember that old quote from "The Making of Star Wars" a special effect without a story is very boring??!? Well that applies here big time). They used their special effects in such a wonderful and artistic manner that i (and many others) was completely captivated by it. There were many shots in that movie (such as the shot of the group off of a rear view window on a car) which were just unbeleivable (at least to my eye) and made it very easy to endure the same old plot yet again.
The Matrix is an example of a movie doing what it meant to do. I don't beleive that the makers of this movie were trying to make some philosophical point that would enlighten the viewer. On the other hand, I think the Matrix was meant to entertain you sensually while giving you enough of a plot to keep you interested. Its more intelligent than your average action flick, but not much.
Your argument would mean I could copy my favorite photographer's photo book, change a pixel or two, and then give them away as my own.
And it seems that under your argument that Andy Warhol would not have been able to exist. Though you could argue that he changed the "look and feel" of the original subject.
Also, alot of music these days is sampled, could we say that the sample has changed the look and feel of the subject at hand (or the sound and feel). Those artists spent many hours recording and mixing their songs so that the particular sound they were looking for was found. Then Puff Daddy comes along, samples their work and I don't think the original artists get anything from it (though I could be wrong).
There is a definite problem to this system, and that comes in with the write-in vote. How do you rank it? Do you limit the amount of people that you can vote for in order of preference? Do you come up with some scale for the amount of people that you ranked -- and can you assure that in that situation that the person who ranked more candidates votes are counted the same as the person who only voted for one person?
With these situations in mind, I think that the only way to do this, is through the "vote for all whom you would like" method (I can't remember the technical name"... in this situation you can write in as many names as you want and give them each one vote!!! I think if this were the case, Ralph Nader would have gotten a great deal more votes than he did, as I can personally think of a good number of my friends who were holding out to the bitter end, in hopes that they wouldn't have to vote the hate vote (that they hated George Bush more than they liked Ralph Nader), myself being one of them.
I think with a system like that, you would open up the system to 3rd parties and get a much bigger variety of people in the government. Something which I personally think needs to happen!!
Slashdot Mirror
They will, but in this case it happens to be for charity...
Or better yet... the butter and Claudia Schiffer together!!!
marc
This is a very interesting problem. I was sitting here thinking about it trying to figure out a way around this problem, but as I stated before, it ends up being really, really tricky.
My first solution had the corporations putting the money for research into one giant slush fund for the university and then research projects would pull money out of that, but it would be spread around for all to enjoy as well. The only problem with this is that corporations wouldn't do it, because there was no way to gauruntee that the projects they wanted funded would get funded.
The exact opposite of this would be to allow the direct corporate funding, but I think that is just begging for corruption.
So that led me to the hybrid system, take a bit of both worlds, and implement a shared profit system. If company A wants to fund research B, then they can give B as much money as they want, except that 50% of the money that they give the project will be put into the "slush fund" for other projects to pull some much needed funding out. All rights of the knowledge gained should be public knowledge (assumption: if company A wants the research for their own, then they should hire their own damn researchers to do it in their own damn labs).
There is alot of work that could be done on this, but the idea is a start.
Perhaps I should have taken a little bit of a different angle on this one. So, I'll take it here. Comedy is much like literature (in fact, its pretty much is literature). Now, literature, for the most part, never goes bad. Its not wine, its not going to turn into vinegar. However, this is not to say that it is always as relevant as it once was. Certain genres of literature age better than others, and in many cases the literature of comedy doesn't age well because it takes into account a much greater amount of social norms and social situations of the time in which it was written. This means that the comedy in it is subject to the knowledge of what was going on at the time... there is a pre-requisite to finding this stuff humorous.
Now, certain forms of comedy were able to get by this as they appealed to certain subjects (such as sexuality) that pretty much just stayed relevatn throughout the ages. If George Carlin tried to do his "Seven Words You Can't Say on Television" skit in a place that didn't have TV, they wouldn't find it funny at all since they had absolutely no background knowledge which was required for the joke.
So, the point of this long winded diatribe is simply that the jokes can still be funny, the do not go obsolete so long as the requisite knowledge is maintained. Python will remain funny so long as people know the background information which makes them funny.
As someone else pointed out here, sophisticated humor seems to last longer than others. That is mostly because the requisite knowledge for sophisication has not changed all that much through different time periods. I know that there are some differences, saying that would just be dumb. However, this gets back to the cannon... there are certain books that people are supposed to read, and rather than replacing books in the cannon, books are just added to it. So, if you make jokes that refer back to stuff like that, then people are going to be getting them for a much longer time period than commenting on something much more ephemeral.
So, to pull of this back together. Comedy does not become obsolete like technology in the sense that so long as people have some sort of knowledge of what made it funny in the first place, it will still be considered funny. Since most humorists work with a common base (else people wouldn't find them funny), and this common base is passed on throughout the ages, the comedy is passed as well.
OK, so this argument isn't perfect, but its not bad for having about 5 minutes to think about it before writing it down.
Well, I will say one thing for this post, it definitely has attracted quite a bit of attention and quite a bit of responses, so I figure its time for me to do my part and have part in this lovely little response fest as well. Afterall, what is life without mob mentality (She's a witch!!!).
Well, there has been a whole lot of progress in all sorts of things. But does it make those things which made the foundation upon which the other stuff stands obsolete? Not at all... comedy is not technology, it does not become obsolete . When one thinks about it, why would comedy become obsolete? We could really get into the theory of comedy (I know many a person who has taken the class), but that's just going to be wasting our time. A good deal of Python's comedy was done in such a way that it was rather universal, which is why they succeeded in many different cultures rather than just ours.
Saying that comedy becomes obsolete like technology is like saying that literature becomes obsolete like technology. Thus, we should not go back and read anything that was prodcued before 1995 as it has all been said more recently and more relevant to our times. This is hardly ever the case. Quite often, the newer material is stuff that was pretty much ripped off from the original and done in the manner of a cheap hack, which would then give me less pleasure than the pure original. Why then would I bother with something that is modern and not purely original when I could have the pure sources? Well, that is simple as well... they new people have something new to offer above and beyond what the original source did.
What conclusions have we come to in this posting. Basically that saying anything old is categorically better than something new is wrong, and vice versa. Python continues to exist and be popular because people enjoy it, and other stuff isn't as appealing to them. It will continue to be so as long as these conditions exist.
By the way, I'll try to ignore the fact that you even brought up Full House in comparison to Holy Grail and Pee Wee's Big Adventure.
I would say that the reason for this is that the average listener has no idea what the "open source movement" is. People here on Slashdot are not your average listener. The average person who listens to NPR is someone who is usually fairly well educated, and quite often they are not the most technical people in the world (a good amount of my friends fall directly into this category). Thus, that person has no idea what is going on in the software world, and therefore has no idea what the whole idea of open source vs. closed source is.
In this way, the interviewer has delved into the issue rather well and touched on the open source side of the argument, giving the people who are listening a much better idea of what is going on. The idea of programming purely in the open source matter (and not specifically for profit) is something that is foreign to most people out there. They have no idea that there is a culture that loves to program for the sake of coding, they are generally ignorant of that. They understand artists doing things for the sake of art, but they usually don't consider it to be art.
I think that in this way, this is the only thing that the interviewer missed (and Linus didn't specifically say). She concentrated on the differences between the open source movement and the closed source movement (basically, the difference between those who are out there specifically for profit, and those who are out there specifically for the elegant and superior design). This is pretty much the first step, as most peole don't understand it in this area. They understand the idea of the artist not selling out, but nobody has any idea of what people are talking about when they refer to a coder selling out.
One thing I will note as well, is that it was hard to get across the point of the GPL (which is actually not the easiest concept to explain), and she actually hit Linus hard on this topic quite a bit, trying to get this point across. It probably would have been better for her to get someone like RMS or ESR to talk about Open Source or GPL (in their respective roles).
I think that one of the other things that she did very well was that she really delved into the idea of programming for the joy of programming. She may not have gotten the whole point of it all, but she really got close. She realized quickly that Linus was most responsive to questions that dealt with his joy of programming, and so she kept going in that direction. For this I have to salute her ability as an interviewer.
I couldn't agree with you more. People like to distance themselves from what they do that is wrong, they rather choose to rationalize what they are doing as right. Though its tough to argue with that porn man.... its soooooo good :-)
You have a point here which is very valid in any situation. If a person is exposed to something more and more (be it violence or spicy food), that person will become more accustomed to it, and not be as alarmed by its presence, as they have become acclimated to it.
This is where you go all wack job on me. You are saying that because these kids played violent video games that they went postal in their high school? I think you are missing a bit of supporting evidence, and I think you would be hard pressed to find anybody but the dullest of idiots who would buy the argument the way that you laid it out here.
Again, you've taken your foundation which ws rather good, and just gone all wierd on me. I'm just not able to follow you here. Just because someone is exposed to something, does not mean that they will fall in and follow that model. Now I get to pull out my favorite little quote from my statistics class. Correlation does not proove causation.
I'm not saying that the exposure and conditioning didn't have anything to do with the fact. I'm just saying that citing it as the only factor in the problem is just wrong. Most likely there were problems that went on for years that built up to this, and finally there was something that broke the camel's back and they decided it was now time. Nobody saw any of the signs, nobody did anything about it.
The whole thing is very sad, but being reactionary is not the answer to this problem.
What about if there is this huge message before you went into the forum that basically reads... "We are using this forum for the sole purpose of gathering material for an article that we will be publishing in ; if you do not wish your opinion to be published in this magazine, then do not post here... there will be no compensation for your writing other than that warm feeling of having some of your words published in the magazine"?
Personally, i would think that would suffice enough that you would get no compensation for something that you wrote in that forum. I guess, i would look at that and go, its not worth the fight, but I suppose someone might go in and do that just for the principal of the matter.
Though, looking at that... I guess it would come down to the spirit of the law rather than the letter of the law. If you didn't want your opinions published, you should simply not post there (this is again assuming that they put up that disclaimer).
IANAL...
This is an interesting position, but if you look at it, they are two rather different positions. On one hand you have the average Napster user who buys a CD and converts it into mp3 format. That person has paid for the music in one form, and by rights of the fair use doctrine, is able to convert it to other forms for his/her own personal use. This means that the mp3's on his computer are completely in the realm of "fair use". However, when he/she posts those songs that were taken from the CD onto Napster, that person is sharing them with other people (though not for profit), these songs are no longer really covered under fair use since fair use is not extended to other people besides the person who bought the piece of music. The only thing thats sort of saving them (or at least was) is that no profit was being made by sharing this music.
Now let us move on to the NYT. They buy a piece of work from a free lance writer for use in their publication. They publish it according to the contract and pay the writer for the right to do so, the have in fact purchased certain distribution rights from the original writer. Now, the NYT wants to take this article that they have purchased and move it to another format for distribution that they will again make a profit on. Since they purchased these rights, I would assume that it would again come down to which distribution rights were purchased. If the NYT purchased the right to distribute the works in this digital format, then they are OK. However, if they didn't, then they owe the writers some money... as they made money off of selling their work again in a differnt format than originally agreed upon.
Looking at it this way, it seems like a fairly cut and dry case (at least to me), as the NYT is all about buying rights to distribution and Napster is about the fair use doctrine (meaning they come out very different). However, there are still some really bumpy areas in this debate.
I think what this case is coming down to is how this is being distributed by the NYT. Does the NYT change the article itself into the digital format and sell it to Nexis/Lexis, or does the NYT change the paper into digital format and sell it to Lexis/Nexis? If they change the article and sell it, then in my opinion they have to pay the writers because they're distributing it in a way that they didn't pay for (at least methinks... depending on their contract). However, if they give the entire paper to lexis/nexis then they are in effect selling their own product (which they have created by buying that piece of writing from the author), and thus really don't owe the writers anything.
Now, looking at this, I would say that if I were a freelance writer, from now on I would want a little piece of the pie every time that the NYT gets money off my article in anyway and thus would try to have it in my contract. Since I'm not, and I have no idea what the market is like for writers of this type, I'll just keep my mouth shut and let someone else who has a better idea of what is going on take a stab at it.
First off, IANAL...
This all depends on how they put this forum up for use. Do they say somewhere when you are using it, that any and all comments may be used in the publication that sponsors the site? If they did, then they can use your comments with or without the coffee mug (however, you might get a coffee mug out of it, since they valued your opinion and might actually want more). If they didn't put that up there, then I really have no idea what the legal ramifications would be. You could view it as a donation to the community, but I'm not sure that would do much to protect you. As I have no idea where to go with this I'll just leave it.
It really all depends on the purpose of the web page... if the company is using it to get more stuff to print in their dead-tree form, then they could use their stuff. However, without that, I'm pretty sure you are perfectly legal in asking for your coffee mug (and maybe even some coffee to fill it with).
I think that the entire case will come down to this statement (of course... I am a master of the obvious). But I think it will be shot down very simply because it is way too vague. If you look at this, they have patented not only PDA's, but also laptop computers (they are portable as well) and pretty much any device that is capable of handling a transaction and isn't tied down physically for some reason or another. (for that matter, a normal old PC could be considered that as you can technically port it around)
On a further note, if NCR wins this little legal battle, they will be in a good strategic position to start collecting on any use of wireless technology. Well, not all wireless technology, but pretty much everything that deals with small, portable devices that connect to a central system.
You know, look at is this way. NCR can gain nothing from this patent anymore, and they may have some spare cash sitting around. What do they have to lose by starting this lawsuit? Nothing really besides lawyers fees and bad PR.... and what do they have to gain? Well, they have the possibility of gaining a prior patent on one of the fastest growing sectors in technology. This could be viewed almost completely as a strategic move on their part... really crappy and pathetic, but strategic...
If you recall (which you probably don't, since this started much before any of us were really around to remember), this was a fear that was had by normal old mail-order houses. One of the big ones was Eastbay who had that shoe catalog (and quite possibly still does), and local merchants would complain that people would come into their stores, try on the shoes and then state to the salesman's face that they were now going to go buy that from Eastbay because it was cheaper there.
The only difference here, as far as I can see, is the whole "instantaneous gratification" factor. Now you can just do all of this faster than you used to be able to. What I actually see happening, and what I think makes the most sense is to apply a taxation system that works like the mail order catalogs of days past. Which, if I recall, basically amounts to you paying taxes if the company is located in the same state as the purcahser, but I can't remember for sure.
Well, you can look at it that way, or you can look at it as Handspring finally coming out with an answer to the Palm V and Palm Vx, which are quite possibly Palm's sexiest models out there (though, when the Palm VIIx comes out in the Palm V case, the wireless will push it over the top). Handspring now has an alternative to their (in my opinion) rather ugly cases that they used in the past, allowing more buisiness type people to pick them up and use them (though I guess they weren't really stopped before).
Handspring is continuing their past trend and taking the old Palm model and giving it a kick in the ass. In this case, they bumped up the processor (which actually makes a good deal of difference) and added a few amenities to make it prettier to the end user.
The one thing that I've never been sure of is why Handspring chose the route that it did for expandability. Why didn't they choose the compact flash format rather than their format? I'm sure there is a good explanation, but right now it seems sort of silly that they would have their own proprietary format when they could vastly expand their compatibility if they would just have compact flash ability.
Well, to be truthful, I beleive that the operating system is fully multithreaded, however, they just don't give the developers the ability to do muliple threads. Perhaps if they would just give us a peak at that source code, life would be a bit happier in this realm... though most likely not
This isn't a new tactic at all. I would try to avoid sounding anti-establishmentarian here for a second, but its really tough to. Look at it from this persepctive.... you're playing a game of chess (if you want too look at it that way, bad analogy, but oh well, I only have so much time here), and you get yourself into a winning position. Are you going to risk moving into a new position, or are you going to try whatever you can to maintain that winning position?
Now I admit that this isn't the perfect analogy because there are many more things at play here, but it makes sense. The publishing companies have a winning formula which makes them money. Why would they go out and pay someone to do something new and exciting (while it may have more artistic merit) when they can beat the dead horse a bit more to get the rest of the money out of it?
There is another interesting way to look at this, look at it from the same sort of perspective. Once you realize that you can't maintain that winning position any longer, you change the game so that someone can't beat you at it. Hence bring in the clown^H^H^H^H^H lawyers. This is a classical "older brother tactic", when your little brother/sister has started to master the game that you are playing, if you change the game or the rules, there is no way that they can actually win. :-)
Well, this is easy to say here and now that they should have speicified it differently back then, but we have the advantage of about 225 years of history to look back at how the copyrights have failed and succeeded through the years, they didn't get that luxury, they just went along with what they knew and provided for the existance of it. Can't really blame them, they didn't have the resources that we have. Besides, how could they have even imagined that we would have the ability to reproduce IP like we do now?
As much as I hate to agree with you, I have to. Most people care about Napster in this order:
While napster did not stand up to a court attack (and lets be honest here, who actually thought that they would? Fair use can go along way, but when there is so much of it going on and there is money being lost... who is going to win? The fair use clause, or the people losing the money?), it did do a few things. It did liven up the whole topic of artist's rights and electronically distributed music, which is in itself a good thing.
I personally have a feeling that while Napster forced open the door to the distribution of music electronically (adopting a fee based system) there is something else on the horizon. With all of the grassroots movement going on, someone is going to figure out a way to distribute music electronically and give more of that money to the artist rather than to the record company. Its really a pipedream at this point, but there is hope that it can happen (something like mp3.com, except that would actually work right).
Nixon only resigned because they were going to impeach him like the next day. And unlike in the case of Clinton, there was alot worse going on than getting a blowjob in the whitehouse. Its not like Nixon heard that he had done wrong (being ever the innocent one), realized that the deeds he had done were corrupt, immediatly went on TV, apologized to the nation, restored the national confidence to where it should be and resigned. Rather, Nixon covered everything up from day one and at each step of the way he tried something else, further digging himself a hole until the point where Congress got fed up with it and was ready to impeach his ass (and unlike Clinton, there was NO doubt that he was being kicked out on his fat corrupt ass), then he resigned the day before when there was NO way that he could hold on.
However, this did not stop there, oh no, that would be too easy. They continued to investigate the Watergate happens, as rightly the should have. It took then President Gerald Ford to end all of this by giving Nixon a pardon on a crime that he most definitly committed.
Now, Clinton wasn't the most honest president that we've ever had. In fact, he was kind of slimy, but even mentioning his name in the same breath as Nixon is just wrong... its up there with John Lennon comparing the Beatles with Jesus.
If you want a much more candid opinion on this matter, check out Hunter S. Thompson's obituary for Nixon. Its much more candid and venom dripping than any of us could possibly be. While you're at it, you should read the accompanying article that goes into a bit more of Thompson's feelings on the guy. And unlike most people here on slashdot, Thompson actually lived through Nixon and covered him as a coorispondant back in the day.
There are many sitauations in which a company must file legal briefs of some sort (or just legal paperwork) which would be expediated greatly by the use of this "cybercourt" (which, as has bee pointed out before, is nothing but a buzzword for a way to update the manner in which legal documents are handled -- basically now being able to use computer and electronic submission of more things than you used to be able to do).
I beleive that you are right in the fact that just the "cybercourt" itself will not really attract that many buisinesses (or start-ups for that matter, as that is what they are really trying to attract). What will attract them are the things that you lined out. The low taxes always attract buisinesses, and buisinesses tend to move towards the better educated workforce (or at least the workforce that is capable of learning).
However, if Michigan was able to offer the low taxes and this cybercourt, then they would be able to attract more distributed style buisinesses and startups. Where you would basically have a few programmers and people scattered about the country with their legal base in Michigan (and the key being that nobody would have to be there, including the lawyers as they would be able to do all of their work over the internet, trasmitting all the things that they need to rather than bringing it in by hand).
This is a great concept of bringing courts up to date with the modern world, which I hope actually happens in more places than just michigan (though I'm not sure about evidence being presented in streaming video).
Another thing that big companies do, that open source developers often don't (flame gates are now opened, commencing in 5...4...3...2) is contributing resources completely and totally to bug fixing. Think about it this way, if a big company wants to use a program and they've commited themselves to it, they will lose a lot of productive time if their developers/users are held up by bugs. It is in their economic interest to hire people to squash these bugs so that their resources will be able to work w/o having to implement work arounds and things of that nature.
To your average user, the program crashing every once in awhile isn't the biggest itch in the world (its a bit annoying, but we can live with it usually because what we are working on is more of a liesure quality than a life and death quality). A big company, on the other hand, is in more of a life and death situation, thus this is not just an "itch" perse, its more of an inflamed rash that would be rather nice to get rid of.
Now, as far as contributing to mozilla, I guess that's a personal thing for each person... I could see it being a major world of suck if you had to download the entire source tree over a 56k connection (its not all that wonderful over DSL as it is), but that's the unfortunate fact about a product that is that big.
The problem that you speak of is not new at all, and is definitly not confined to the realms of computer programming. When it comes right down to it, nobody wants to do the dirty work that is required to get a project done (i.e. bug squashing, documentation, general project managements) , they would rather go out and do the new and fun stuff (which in this case is adding new features).
This is just a fundamental flaw in human nature. People want to get all the glory and credit and nobody wants to do the background work that is required to make something actually work. Look at politics... everybody wants to be president, nobody wants to be his aides that actually run around and get the shit done (well, some people do, but most don't).
This was also a problem in ancient Rome, when you actually look at it. Everything used to be paid for by donations from the rich folk. However, everyone wanted their money to pay for something big and wonderful that everybody loved (such as theathers and circuses, etc), but nobody wanted to pay for the smaller bits of infrastructure that held everything together, as they wouldn't be remembered eternally if they gave money for the roads to be resurfaced or for general maintenance of the aquaducts.
Its the same thing with programming. Nobody thinks they'll get any credit for the bug fixes that they work out that makes the product actually work, they want to be known for the feature which they implemented (even if nobody actually needs it or wants it in any way).
Well, I think one thing that you are forgetting here is that when you are typing code, you are for the most part not typing at your highest speed, unless you have a much faster mind than I do. Chances are you are typing out a few lines, then thinking.... so on and so forth.... for writers, this is different, as they can go a bit more stream of conscience than a coder can.
If you wanted to use it for dictation, you could also do that. My father uses speech recognition for dictation and finds it alot easier to do than writing things out by hand. Admittedly, he can type much faster than he speaks, however it tends to drain him less than typing it out does, and he is able to do more (though it takes a little extra time) than he would if he was just typing it out (less brain drain).
Where I see the big advantages coming through in this is in the overall OS control. I don't see this controlling everything (unless you so wanted it that way, in which case be my guest), but I can see this helping in my "multitasking" of many different things at once. You could for instance be typing away at a letter and realize that you need to bring one up to reference it, but you don't want to click through and find it because you're on a roll. You simply tell the computer "bring up letter X in the background" (
One of the big problems that happens with new technologies is that everyone says that this is going to replace some device that is used every day (remember people have declared that the PC was dead for about 10 years now if I recall the first time I heard that). In reality, what will happen is that people will discover a way to use it to work a bit faster than they did before, using their every day means + the new technology rather than just the new technology itself.
This is sometimes the case, but definitly not always the case. Look for instance at the United States versus Japan, while it could be argued (and I know it will be) that we were more suicidal than Japan was, I would have to bring up the fact of the Kamakzi fighters and the manned torpedos and then hope that would count them as a bit more suicidal than we were. We defeated them, though it took a whole lot of effort to do so.
No matter how fanatical an untrained and unarmed person is, he is not going to be able to defeat a fully armed and trained army, that's just preposterous.
The matrix brought nothing to the table in the way of original thought, or even plot line for that matter. It was yet another of the dark-future saved by messianic figured who starts out the film thinking that "something is not quite right" and then goes through a process of realization only to come to the conclusion that he can beat the "master race" at their own game (for another of the same plot... see Dark City).
The one thing that the Matrix did which I have seen no other film do yet, was make the movie truely beatiful and captivating. Their use of special effects to tell the story (remember that old quote from "The Making of Star Wars" a special effect without a story is very boring??!? Well that applies here big time). They used their special effects in such a wonderful and artistic manner that i (and many others) was completely captivated by it. There were many shots in that movie (such as the shot of the group off of a rear view window on a car) which were just unbeleivable (at least to my eye) and made it very easy to endure the same old plot yet again.
The Matrix is an example of a movie doing what it meant to do. I don't beleive that the makers of this movie were trying to make some philosophical point that would enlighten the viewer. On the other hand, I think the Matrix was meant to entertain you sensually while giving you enough of a plot to keep you interested. Its more intelligent than your average action flick, but not much.
And it seems that under your argument that Andy Warhol would not have been able to exist. Though you could argue that he changed the "look and feel" of the original subject.
Also, alot of music these days is sampled, could we say that the sample has changed the look and feel of the subject at hand (or the sound and feel). Those artists spent many hours recording and mixing their songs so that the particular sound they were looking for was found. Then Puff Daddy comes along, samples their work and I don't think the original artists get anything from it (though I could be wrong).
There is a definite problem to this system, and that comes in with the write-in vote. How do you rank it? Do you limit the amount of people that you can vote for in order of preference? Do you come up with some scale for the amount of people that you ranked -- and can you assure that in that situation that the person who ranked more candidates votes are counted the same as the person who only voted for one person?
With these situations in mind, I think that the only way to do this, is through the "vote for all whom you would like" method (I can't remember the technical name"... in this situation you can write in as many names as you want and give them each one vote!!! I think if this were the case, Ralph Nader would have gotten a great deal more votes than he did, as I can personally think of a good number of my friends who were holding out to the bitter end, in hopes that they wouldn't have to vote the hate vote (that they hated George Bush more than they liked Ralph Nader), myself being one of them.
I think with a system like that, you would open up the system to 3rd parties and get a much bigger variety of people in the government. Something which I personally think needs to happen!!