It's smart for us to destroy other peoples forests first but eventually they will run out and we will have to start in on our own lands.
Actually, Europe destroyed most of its forests centuries ago. The U.S. destroyed most of its forests over the last three centuries, but has become increasingly forested over the last hundred years.
Your view of natural resources and economics is nearly 100 percent wrong. Most natural resources are not scarce. In fact, they have become more plentiful and cheaper over time. Natural resources are not the limiting factors in a modern economy.
That's not what I remember. The feds and the states have filed suits against the record companies for trying to fix prices (See http://www.geek.com/news/geeknews/q22000/gee200081 0002089.htm. As that item mentions, the feds had their own antitrust action against the record companies.
The government sets the royalty on blank, recordable CDs. They don't have anything to do with the $17 cost of pre-recorded CDs. Those prices are set by record companies and retailers in order to maximize profit.
Every time Napster and CD burning come up on Slashdot, we find out who is a principled defender of intellectual freedom and who is a just a Greedy Arrogant Cheapskate.
I have lots of sympathy about patent issues. They have broad reaching effects and certainly there are too many trivial patents issued--not just in software, either.
But if you think CDs are three times too expensive, just by 1/3 the number of CDs! You'll survive, believe me. If everybody feels as you do, the prices will come down. All the arguments on Slashdot come down to: I can break the law and they can't stop me, nyah, nyah, so they're wrong to even try.
As usual, Katz is railing, but it's never exactly clear about what. There must be some problem, but he can never state clearly what it is or any possible solution to it except that we must stop "corporatism," whatever that is.
Examples:
Beyond that, fast food franchises obliterated a sense of geographical and cultural differences among different regions of the United StatesThe appeal of fast food -- that people would know just what to expect no matter where they bought their Whoppers or Taco Bell burritos -- was also one of its most devastating consequences.
This is a devastating consequence? The fact that you can get McDonald's everywhere? Shudder! The blood's running in the street. What exactly does this have to do with "corporatism," anyway? I can get Chinese food everywhere, despite the notable absence of any national Chinese food chains.
Seriously, Katz, are you saying we need laws to preserve regional cuisine? Is that what you want?
The industry was one of the first to use technology -- especially advances in genetics -- to set the ground rules for the corporate republic, whose media, culture and economy are increasingly dominated by McDonaldesque notions about uniformity, scale and work. The fast food biz re-conceived the high-tech, manual-labor factory; it has always relied on poorly-paid workers doing regimented, robot-like work.
Ummm...no. Katz seems to have skipped all those history classes. McDonald's was the first to try to do this in the service industry, but manufacturing and agriculture had been doing this for more than a century before McDonald's.
It has, naturally, attracted a disproportionate number of immigrant, poor and minority workers who have little real chance of advancement, and whose work is so rote and mechanized they have no need for high wages, further training or the opportunities to acquire meaningful new skills.
So people who work for McDonald's do so for life? Sorry, not in my experience. Again, Katz, what exactly is the problem you're trying to identify, and what solution do you propose? Do you want to ban the timers on the fry machines so workers will need more skill?
These changes have made meatpacking -- once a highly skilled, well-paid trade -- into the most dangerous job in the U.S., performed by legions of poor, transient immigrants whose rapidly rising rate of injuries attract little publicity or government attention. The same meat industry practices, reports Schlosser, have facilitated the introduction of deadly pathogens, such as E. col 0157:H7, into America's hamburgers, one of the foods most aggressively marketed to kids.
Gee, meat packing is dangerous. Let's see, we learned that back in 1906, when Upton Sinclair published "The Jungle." Has it become more dangerous lately? No. Are there more germs in meat now? No, it's safer than ever. Which is the safest place to eat: (1) a random home kitchen, (2) a small mom-and-pop restaurant, or (3) a restaraunt run by a large corporation? Which has the lowest incidence of food poisoning, Katz? Do you dare tell the truth?
At the moment it is not cheap to ship lots of diverse stuff in small packages to numerous different locations.
That's why hypermarts, stores etc rent/buy floorspace - to provide an area where customers can go get the goods themselves. Easy and cheap to move the goods in bulk from a few spots to a single spot
The flip side to the shipping cost is the cost (mostly in time) that consumers have to pay to go get things themselves. If the consumer buys a lot of things at one--as they do at supermarkets--then it's clearly cheaper than shipping to the consumer's house.
But if you're just getting one thing, it may be cheaper for you to pay for the shipping. Mostly it depends on how highly you value your own time.
You know I am trying to think of one instance when ANYBODY was jailed when a corporation
knowingly killed people, poisoned wells, caused disease, sold addictive drugs to teenagers, or spilled a billion tons of toxic sludge in somebodies back yard. Not firestone, not exxon, not Union Carbide, no airline, no car manufacturer no cigarette maker ever went to jail for crimes that would have landed you or I in jail. Perhaps you could provide a couple of examples.
Sure, two examples from my memory here in North Carolina. The owner of Imperial Food Products served four and half years out of a twenty year sentence for involuntary manslaughter for the fire at his plant in Hamlet, N.C.
About twenty years ago there were jail sentences dished out for executives in a case of PCB dumping, although I don't recall how long they served.
The idea that corporations or their employees or officers are exempt is just plain wrong. Go ask a lawyer.
Since you ask about airlines, two employees of SabreTech were indicted in relation to the ValuJet crash. They were acquitted, although the corporation was convicted on some counts. What exactly did you have in mind? Air travel is extremely safe. Do you want to convict somebody just because it's not perfect?
There were corporate executives indicted in the Bhopal incident. From what I have found on the web, the legal proceedings were still going on last year! So, no immunity for corporate execs in India, either.
"The main reason is that because corporations have "personhood" under the law, but no one has to pay the price of any wrong they do. Also, these "persons" can afford the best lawyers and the best politicians to get their way."
Corperations serve to shield the shareholders from the wrongs that are done on their behalf. If we got a group of people together and gassed a town in India, we would be extradited and jailed. When Union Carbide does it, the get a nice big tax write-off, err fine.
First of all, the idea of corporate "personhood" is separate from the idea of limited liability. If you want to be like a third-world country, get rid of limited liability and see how fast investment dries up.
Second, limited liability only shields shareholders, not officers or employees who can and sometimes do go to jail for their actions.
Third, tens of thousands of people are killed in traffic accidents each year in the U.S., yet hardly any one is ever charged with murder because of it. Yes, we make the distinction between murder and accidents for individuals as well as corporations. Imagine that!
It allowed aboriginal Americans to claim the 9,000 year old bones of the Kennewick Man as their direct ancestor. Nova also covered this issue with Mystery of the First Americans. His genes show that he's most closely related to the Ainu.
There hasn't been a successful DNA analysis. I'm pretty sure that scientists weren't allowed to drill into the teeth, which would be the most likely source of uncontaminated DNA.
Well this shouldn't really be turned into a debate on global warming policy, but the claim that the regulations would only hurt business, not ordinary citizens is just wrong.
For example, the current fuel economy standards for automobiles (CAFE) are estimated to cost between 2,000 to 4,000 lives per year in America alone because smaller cars are more dangerous. Any measures which costs businesses will also cost employees and consumers.
From what I recall, and from what I can find on the web, it was the physicist James Clerk Maxwell who created the first color photograph in 1861. See, e.g. http://landow.stg.brown.edu/victorian/photos/chron.html. Fox Talbot is responsible for many other innovations, however.
And if you were to investigate the options, you'd stop using a QWERTY keyboard immediately, because the RSI is caused by non-home-row stretching.
I'm actually surprised that a lawyer hasn't won a large class-action using OSHA laws - since the DVORAK keyboard has been proven to be a safer keyboard to use over the long term.
Is there any good evidence for either of these statements?
Surprisingly, dams are not clean energy sources. Many of them produce a large amount of carbon dioxide http://www.newscientist.com/nl/0603/stink.html, so they wouldn't help with global warming.
I don't think the issue is one of individuals versus corporations at all. Individuals can be patent parasites and corporations can develop inventions which deserve a lot more than five years protection.
All inventions are easier to copy than to develop in the first place and corporations will spend less on R&D if they can't expect to get a good return on their investment.
I think some software patents are legitimate. Ullman cited the best example--the RSA encryption method. There's nothing obvious about it and it was novel at the time. The people at RSA still had to put a lot of work into it in order to develop it into something useful, too. Look at the PKCS series of papers as well as the software written.
School voucher programs are bad because it imposes a blanket solution (vouchers vouchers everywhere) to a problem that only exists in certain areas (poorly funded inner city schools).
Actually, inner city schools tend to be well-funded. The terrible Washington, D.C. system has one of the highest per-student spending in the country. Throwing billions of dollars at the Kansas City schools didn't improve them at all.
In fact, extensive studies have shown that there's very little association between school funding and student performance.
Actually, studies have shown that the differences in school funding in America have essentially no impact on student achievement. See Does Money Matter? or the work of Eric Hanushek.
Individual and family factors are the dominant forces. Asian immigrants often attend poor schools yet manage to achieve. Conversely, there are many bad students in rich schools.
We already have a food surplus. The USA and EU feed their grain to animals instead of people, because "economics" says that your hamburger is more important than the life of someone you will never meet. Don't get me started on overfed "right to life" hypocrates.
If we didn't feed grain to animals, yes, the price would be slightly lower. What's your point?
Of course scientists have already made huge contributions to fighting world hunger, and there's less starvation and malnutrition in the world than ever before.
Let's see, has the idea about putting caring above economics been tried before? Yes, come to think of it, in the USSR and China, among other places. The result? 100 MILLION people died.
Also, what's this bullshit about "right to life" got to do with it? The "right to life" Catholic Church is one of the biggest charity providers in the third world.
To elucidate on this point a bit further, Canada's system *works.* We might not like the results (and who does? Inevitably, a politician is elected. Seems a rather unfair consequence, really.), but it works.
So there are never any mistakes in counting? Ha! You just haven't had an election as close as the Bush/Gore race in a long time--neither have we.
The punch card system used in some counties is obsolete and hasn't been manufactured for years. The U.S. federal and state governments created standards for voting machines in the 1980s and the punch card systems don't meet them. Counties have not been forced to upgrade old systems.
There have been a few proposals along this line, but I don't remember hearing about any actually being built. The proposals I've heard included pumping water uphill during the night so that you can run turbines during the day; or, pumping pressurized air into underground storage tanks/caverns/salt domes--they have to be airtight, obviously.
PEOPLE are really responsible for these inventions. In the entire history of man it was not until the last 150 years that this privately owned corporate monster was born
We have had more inventions in the past 150 years than in all the rest of human history.
And, yes, I do believe that we would have fewer inventions if people didn't have the hope of getting rich.
Are you serious? The Communist party is the only legal party. Castro is president for life. So they held local elections...big deal. There were local elections in the Soviet Union, too.
Check out the
Amnesty International annual report on Cuba
Slashdot Mirror
Your view of natural resources and economics is nearly 100 percent wrong. Most natural resources are not scarce. In fact, they have become more plentiful and cheaper over time. Natural resources are not the limiting factors in a modern economy.
That's not what I remember. The feds and the states have filed suits against the record companies for trying to fix prices (See http://www.geek.com/news/geeknews/q22000/gee200081 0002089.htm. As that item mentions, the feds had their own antitrust action against the record companies.
The government sets the royalty on blank, recordable CDs. They don't have anything to do with the $17 cost of pre-recorded CDs. Those prices are set by record companies and retailers in order to maximize profit.
I have lots of sympathy about patent issues. They have broad reaching effects and certainly there are too many trivial patents issued--not just in software, either.
But if you think CDs are three times too expensive, just by 1/3 the number of CDs! You'll survive, believe me. If everybody feels as you do, the prices will come down. All the arguments on Slashdot come down to: I can break the law and they can't stop me, nyah, nyah, so they're wrong to even try.
Examples:
This is a devastating consequence? The fact that you can get McDonald's everywhere? Shudder! The blood's running in the street. What exactly does this have to do with "corporatism," anyway? I can get Chinese food everywhere, despite the notable absence of any national Chinese food chains.Seriously, Katz, are you saying we need laws to preserve regional cuisine? Is that what you want?
Ummm...no. Katz seems to have skipped all those history classes. McDonald's was the first to try to do this in the service industry, but manufacturing and agriculture had been doing this for more than a century before McDonald's. So people who work for McDonald's do so for life? Sorry, not in my experience. Again, Katz, what exactly is the problem you're trying to identify, and what solution do you propose? Do you want to ban the timers on the fry machines so workers will need more skill? Gee, meat packing is dangerous. Let's see, we learned that back in 1906, when Upton Sinclair published "The Jungle." Has it become more dangerous lately? No. Are there more germs in meat now? No, it's safer than ever. Which is the safest place to eat: (1) a random home kitchen, (2) a small mom-and-pop restaurant, or (3) a restaraunt run by a large corporation? Which has the lowest incidence of food poisoning, Katz? Do you dare tell the truth?But if you're just getting one thing, it may be cheaper for you to pay for the shipping. Mostly it depends on how highly you value your own time.
About twenty years ago there were jail sentences dished out for executives in a case of PCB dumping, although I don't recall how long they served.
The idea that corporations or their employees or officers are exempt is just plain wrong. Go ask a lawyer.
Since you ask about airlines, two employees of SabreTech were indicted in relation to the ValuJet crash. They were acquitted, although the corporation was convicted on some counts. What exactly did you have in mind? Air travel is extremely safe. Do you want to convict somebody just because it's not perfect?
There were corporate executives indicted in the Bhopal incident. From what I have found on the web, the legal proceedings were still going on last year! So, no immunity for corporate execs in India, either.
Sorry, you're just wrong.
Second, limited liability only shields shareholders, not officers or employees who can and sometimes do go to jail for their actions.
Third, tens of thousands of people are killed in traffic accidents each year in the U.S., yet hardly any one is ever charged with murder because of it. Yes, we make the distinction between murder and accidents for individuals as well as corporations. Imagine that!
There hasn't been a successful DNA analysis. I'm pretty sure that scientists weren't allowed to drill into the teeth, which would be the most likely source of uncontaminated DNA.
For example, the current fuel economy standards for automobiles (CAFE) are estimated to cost between 2,000 to 4,000 lives per year in America alone because smaller cars are more dangerous. Any measures which costs businesses will also cost employees and consumers.
From what I recall, and from what I can find on the web, it was the physicist James Clerk Maxwell who created the first color photograph in 1861. See, e.g. http://landow.stg.brown.edu/victorian/photos/chron .html. Fox Talbot is responsible for many other innovations, however.
Yes, but normally any vegetation that dies is replaced by new vegetation. If there is a dam, however, there is no new vegetation.
Surprisingly, dams are not clean energy sources. Many of them produce a large amount of carbon dioxide http://www.newscientist.com/nl/0603/stink.html, so they wouldn't help with global warming.
All inventions are easier to copy than to develop in the first place and corporations will spend less on R&D if they can't expect to get a good return on their investment.
I think some software patents are legitimate. Ullman cited the best example--the RSA encryption method. There's nothing obvious about it and it was novel at the time. The people at RSA still had to put a lot of work into it in order to develop it into something useful, too. Look at the PKCS series of papers as well as the software written.
Actually, inner city schools tend to be well-funded. The terrible Washington, D.C. system has one of the highest per-student spending in the country. Throwing billions of dollars at the Kansas City schools didn't improve them at all.
In fact, extensive studies have shown that there's very little association between school funding and student performance.
See Does Money Matter or the work of Eric Hanushek
Individual and family factors are the dominant forces. Asian immigrants often attend poor schools yet manage to achieve. Conversely, there are many bad students in rich schools.
Of course scientists have already made huge contributions to fighting world hunger, and there's less starvation and malnutrition in the world than ever before.
Let's see, has the idea about putting caring above economics been tried before? Yes, come to think of it, in the USSR and China, among other places. The result? 100 MILLION people died.
Also, what's this bullshit about "right to life" got to do with it? The "right to life" Catholic Church is one of the biggest charity providers in the third world.
I can't be the only one who that that XFL stood for eXtensible Football Language.
"I would have scored if Jesus hadn't made me drop the ball."
The punch card system used in some counties is obsolete and hasn't been manufactured for years. The U.S. federal and state governments created standards for voting machines in the 1980s and the punch card systems don't meet them. Counties have not been forced to upgrade old systems.
There have been a few proposals along this line, but I don't remember hearing about any actually being built. The proposals I've heard included pumping water uphill during the night so that you can run turbines during the day; or, pumping pressurized air into underground storage tanks/caverns/salt domes--they have to be airtight, obviously.
And, yes, I do believe that we would have fewer inventions if people didn't have the hope of getting rich.
Are you serious? The Communist party is the only legal party. Castro is president for life. So they held local elections...big deal. There were local elections in the Soviet Union, too. Check out the Amnesty International annual report on Cuba