In the case of Union Carbide that I cited above - is the corporation's assets really worth more than the lives of the people affected? I say, absolutely NOT!
Depending on your age and health - twenty minutes is about a mile, three mile per hour is a nice steady walking pace that doesn't exhaust most people. Even walking, I want to know the miles.
Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening BY ROBERT FROST Whose woods these are I think I know. His house is in the village though; He will not see me stopping here To watch his woods fill up with snow.
My little horse must think it queer To stop without a farmhouse near Between the woods and frozen lake The darkest evening of the year.
He gives his harness bells a shake To ask if there is some mistake. The only other sound’s the sweep Of easy wind and downy flake.
The woods are lovely, dark and deep. But I have promises to keep, And miles to go before I sleep, And miles to go before I sleep.
Point is, the whole thing is less easy than some people believe. Did you miss the part about my knees not working? As a youngster, I never dreamed that one day I might not be able to run a mile just for the pleasure of running. I never came up with a back-up plan to stay fit, running was a huge part of my life.
Miles are more important to me, the guy relying on an internal combustion engine to get him there. I have an aversion to pushing my ride to the nearest gas station. The car gets 29.9 miles to the gallon, the bike gets 53 miles to the gallon. I want to know how many miles it is from point A to point B, and I'll get there in my own good time. Believe me, that time will be considerably faster than the bus you guys are riding on. In most cases, my time will rival that of a train that doesn't make stops along the way, and I'll always beat the train that has to make stops at every hamlet along the way.
That is actually kinda scary to a guy like me. When I leave home, I know where I'm going, I know how to get there under my own power even if my car dies on me. I don't have to rely on a phone, or an app, or the kindness of strangers. I know how to get from point A to point B, and when I decide that a stop at point C is advisable, I just turn the wheel and go to point C. Something comes up that I need to go to point D, where I've never been before, all I insist on is a proper address, like "123 Main Street, Backwater, Nowhere, USA".
I simply can't imagine heading out the door, hoping that I can figure out how to make bus lines, train lines, subways and ferries all fit together.
Have you ever been in a hurry, and found that the connections would deliver you where you wanted to be, but four hours late? You would have been better off just canceling your plans, because everyone has gone home for the day!
In a car, or on a motorcycle, I can make my mind up that I can make meet the schedule, or that I can't. And, if I can't make the schedule, then I can reschedule for tomorrow, knowing that I'll just have to leave home some hours earlier than I might like.
You can eat tons of stuff that isn't so good for you, right? Cool. And, how old are you?
I was underweight for much of my life. Around age 25 or so, I FINALLY "bulked up" to 160 pounds. I stayed near that weight right up to about age 47.
Age has some nasty surprises for some of us. One day I looked down, and realized that I had a pot belly. Wow, man! That ain't me!
At the same time, my knees started giving out on me. I don't run any more, can't run. Oh - to be honest, I CAN run, but a quarter mile jog is going to leave me suffering for a week or more.
So, I got a pot belly, I'm far less active, and that pot belly now tips the scales at ~195, has actually reached 200 a couple of times.
At six foot tall, 200 pounds isn't "obese" - but it's unhealthy. For me, at least, YMMV depending on your body build.
When you're over 50, getting close to 60 years old, let us know how easy it is to lose those unwanted pounds. If taking a pill could reduce the number of fat cells for me, I would seriously consider getting some.
However, I do understand the equations very well. Those pills aren't going to do anything good that is permanent. About the only way to remove fat permanently, without serious exercise and diet, is surgery.
"A corporation is not capable of good and evil, capable of saving a life, or taking a life."
I have to disagree with that. Please don't tell me that some corporations aren't run be evil bastards who simply do not care about human life. The individuals responsible for the corporate dealings should be facing the death penalty. And, the corporation's assets should be liquidated, and given to it's victims. I could find a lot more like this - but I'm sure you can do it yourself, if you care to look.
It isn't me that is pretending - it is the corporate bigwigs and government who are pretending.
A "person" is indeed a sentient entity, capable of good and evil, capable of saving a life, or taking a life. A corporation is a tool, an artifact. It cannot be a person, not now, not ever.
Exactly - and it was wrong. Copyright was never meant to apply for decades, or centuries, or longer. Copyright law today is a corruption of copyright, plain and simple.
There should be no surprise that few people have any respect for copyright law.
Globalists are mostly fools. Those who actually understand what they are doing may or may not be fools, but the masses who believe in the hype are most certainly fools.
Every one of these "free trade" treaties compromises one or more nation's sovereignty. We, here, in the US, can clearly see that these "intellectual property" treaties are so much hogwash, are being sucked into the treaty. After signing, our (mostly bought and paid for) politicians can then refuse to pass laws that we demand, claiming that they would violate international treaties.
It's as bad, or worse, for other nations. Some third world nation, where people might make a couple thousand dollars PER YEAR, can't afford to pay the prices for our software under any circumstances. Today, the people might pirate an operating system, but with the trade agreements, piracy could result in a lifetime imprisonment. Or death.
Almost no one benefits from these treaties, almost no one benefits from globalization, except corporations.
I'm assuming that with a name like Anonymous Coward, you may not even be human. It CERTAINLY doesn't sound like a French name!
You do state that your research is funded by corporations. But, what about your education? Which corporations paid for your education? Or, like the rest of us, did you suck at the public teat while being educated?
Your holier-than-thou attitude has the credibility of a priest caught in the act with a naked little boy.
next_ghost gave you the essential details. Fact is, there is no benefit to society if you are permitted to keep your works secret. There is no benefit to society for "protecting" your "rights" for any extended period of time.
You are merely permitted those exclusive rights for a short period, as an incentive for you to produce more works that might benefit society. If you fail to capitalize on your ideas within five or ten years, certainly within fifteen years, then your idea really wasn't worth much.
No one in history has ever had an idea or discovered new knowledge that was worth a lifetime of luxury.
Who polices what gets to be an acceptable profession? No one. Certainly not the MAFIAA and it's associates. Those are the people who make entertainment a profession of ill repute.
Pay for the musician's upkeep? The musician pays, who else? What the hell you mean, he can't hold down a real job? He holds a job to pay for his necessities, and after that is taken care of, he can amuse himself, and others, with his music.
If you starve to death because people stop buying games and software, then the world will have lost nothing. You're talking to a man who has changed careers multiple times. If your career suddenly dries up, you do what I've done - learn some new skills and/or learn how to apply your skills to another field. Stop sniveling. You boys and girls who play with code are nothing special.
Could you please point to a generation that had no music? Cavemen had music, as far as I can determine. Which generation since has done without music?
The problem here is, that people expect to MAKE MONEY off of music.
I don't pay money for music, yet I have music. If the web just dried up, if television and radio stopped broadcasting music, I would still have music. Two of my three sons have learned to play guitars. I used to play the trumpet, I could relearn all that I've forgotten.
Grow up without music? Come on, just try to get in touch with reality.
Big deal, the big corporate honchos may find that they can no longer make mega-bucks from music. It's not like they actually CONTRIBUTE any thing to music. They are frigging parasites. Let them die off. Just starve them. The world won't miss them.
We will still have no-name kids playing music because they love music. And, if they are actually any good at it, people will reward them for playing. People will still be entertained.
Not only can the end user choose which algorithm, they can come up with their own. The right to read and modify the source code ensures that the truly paranoid can modify that source code, in whatever way they choose, to actually ensure that their stuff is secure.
Little Joey Nerd decides that he really, really, REALLY doesn't want anyone to read his stuff. Three pass encryption results - first with Blowfish, then with his own home brewed encryption, and finally with AES. So, the attacker understands AES quite well, and manages to strip away one level of encryption. What is he left with? A garbled mess for which there is no documented decryption anywhere, except in Joey's head, or on his device.
You can tamper with Joey's device, or his head, but chances are he is going to know about it.
How would I find out, personally, that Linux Mint is sharing keys with the NSA? The likelihood that I would personally discover that secret is somewhere between slim to none. I can't read code well enough, nor am I likely to spend the time necessary to read every line of code in the programs.
My assurance stems from,
1. Thousands (at least) of other end users actually do peruse the code, looking for errors, back doors, exploits, etc.
2. My OS comes from a "trusted source" - one which I personally trust.
Yes, there is a weakness in there. That weakness is, I have to trust someone. At the same time, there is a strength hidden right beside the weakness. I get to CHOOSE who I trust.
What, exactly, has convinced you that you can actually trust Microsoft? Has MS invited you to personally examine their code, to satisfy yourself that there are no exploits in their system? No? I didn't think so.
Linux, on the other hand, invites me to read any or all of their source.
You choose what you want, I'll choose what I want, thank you very much.
Spin around three times, widdershin, while standing in front of the mirror. It may help if there happens to be a Satanic mass in progress - or not. YMMV
"You seem to want free will without the consequences."
Nope. One accepts the consequences of his actions, that goes without saying. Among other things, I'm a motorcycle rider. I choose my actions, and I suffer the consequences when I am wrong. You learn that lesson very soon after hopping on a bike for the first time. For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction, and when the reaction involves tearing off some of your hide, you learn.
What I object to is, the author who apparently feels qualified to set himself up as judge and arbiter of good and bad, and to punish those with whom he disagrees.
Submitter doesn't like humanity very much. He wishes there were laws, rules, regulations, and guide lines for everything. He wants to hold engineers responsible for their discoveries. He wants to judge each discovery as "good" or "bad", then reward or punish the engineers, scientists, and the craftsmen for whatever results.
Sad as it is, I prefer the world we have, in which men and woman exercise free will.
I just finished watching a pirated Blue Thunder. I watched some of the series when I was a kid, never saw the movie before. You should maybe watch it yourself. Keep in mind our current monitoring by NSA and the militarization of police forces, including drones, as you watch the movie.
I thought my statement was reasonably clear. Between 25 and 33% of all of Planned Parenthood's funds are allocated directly by the federal government. PP admits to 25%, various organizations claim 33% minimum, and some actually claim that 50% of PP's money comes through the government. I don't find the 50% claim to be exactly credible, but I can't discredit it either.
To spell out what I know for fact: If the federal government wasn't funding PP, then PP couldn't keep all their clinics open, and they would probably have to cut pretty deeply into the abortions they perform.
PP's OTHER objectives, of providing gynocology care, and family planning, are perfectly legitimate. There is no problem with tending to women's health - only an idiot or a genuine misogynist would object to it. It's the abortions that so many of us find objectionable. Worse, is the lack of meaningful counseling. PP's counseling ALWAYS tends to push women toward choosing abortion, rather than helping women to find alternatives.
I am not one who wants to end all abortions, for any reason. But, I find PP's methods and goals to be very objectionable.
Slashdot Mirror
You should submit this for publishing in the biggest newspapers. Rupert Murdoch should approve!
In the case of Union Carbide that I cited above - is the corporation's assets really worth more than the lives of the people affected? I say, absolutely NOT!
Depending on your age and health - twenty minutes is about a mile, three mile per hour is a nice steady walking pace that doesn't exhaust most people. Even walking, I want to know the miles.
Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening
BY ROBERT FROST
Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.
My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.
He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound’s the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.
The woods are lovely, dark and deep.
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.
Point is, the whole thing is less easy than some people believe. Did you miss the part about my knees not working? As a youngster, I never dreamed that one day I might not be able to run a mile just for the pleasure of running. I never came up with a back-up plan to stay fit, running was a huge part of my life.
Or, maybe I'm just making excuses, I don't know.
Miles are more important to me, the guy relying on an internal combustion engine to get him there. I have an aversion to pushing my ride to the nearest gas station. The car gets 29.9 miles to the gallon, the bike gets 53 miles to the gallon. I want to know how many miles it is from point A to point B, and I'll get there in my own good time. Believe me, that time will be considerably faster than the bus you guys are riding on. In most cases, my time will rival that of a train that doesn't make stops along the way, and I'll always beat the train that has to make stops at every hamlet along the way.
That is actually kinda scary to a guy like me. When I leave home, I know where I'm going, I know how to get there under my own power even if my car dies on me. I don't have to rely on a phone, or an app, or the kindness of strangers. I know how to get from point A to point B, and when I decide that a stop at point C is advisable, I just turn the wheel and go to point C. Something comes up that I need to go to point D, where I've never been before, all I insist on is a proper address, like "123 Main Street, Backwater, Nowhere, USA".
I simply can't imagine heading out the door, hoping that I can figure out how to make bus lines, train lines, subways and ferries all fit together.
Have you ever been in a hurry, and found that the connections would deliver you where you wanted to be, but four hours late? You would have been better off just canceling your plans, because everyone has gone home for the day!
In a car, or on a motorcycle, I can make my mind up that I can make meet the schedule, or that I can't. And, if I can't make the schedule, then I can reschedule for tomorrow, knowing that I'll just have to leave home some hours earlier than I might like.
You can eat tons of stuff that isn't so good for you, right? Cool. And, how old are you?
I was underweight for much of my life. Around age 25 or so, I FINALLY "bulked up" to 160 pounds. I stayed near that weight right up to about age 47.
Age has some nasty surprises for some of us. One day I looked down, and realized that I had a pot belly. Wow, man! That ain't me!
At the same time, my knees started giving out on me. I don't run any more, can't run. Oh - to be honest, I CAN run, but a quarter mile jog is going to leave me suffering for a week or more.
So, I got a pot belly, I'm far less active, and that pot belly now tips the scales at ~195, has actually reached 200 a couple of times.
At six foot tall, 200 pounds isn't "obese" - but it's unhealthy. For me, at least, YMMV depending on your body build.
When you're over 50, getting close to 60 years old, let us know how easy it is to lose those unwanted pounds. If taking a pill could reduce the number of fat cells for me, I would seriously consider getting some.
However, I do understand the equations very well. Those pills aren't going to do anything good that is permanent. About the only way to remove fat permanently, without serious exercise and diet, is surgery.
I'm NOT willing to go that route.
"A corporation is not capable of good and evil, capable of saving a life, or taking a life."
I have to disagree with that. Please don't tell me that some corporations aren't run be evil bastards who simply do not care about human life. The individuals responsible for the corporate dealings should be facing the death penalty. And, the corporation's assets should be liquidated, and given to it's victims. I could find a lot more like this - but I'm sure you can do it yourself, if you care to look.
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/death-toll-in-bangladesh-garment-factory-fire-rises/
http://worldnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/12/02/21714872-deadly-factory-fire-highlights-near-slavery-conditions-in-italy
It isn't me that is pretending - it is the corporate bigwigs and government who are pretending.
A "person" is indeed a sentient entity, capable of good and evil, capable of saving a life, or taking a life. A corporation is a tool, an artifact. It cannot be a person, not now, not ever.
Exactly - and it was wrong. Copyright was never meant to apply for decades, or centuries, or longer. Copyright law today is a corruption of copyright, plain and simple.
There should be no surprise that few people have any respect for copyright law.
Globalists are mostly fools. Those who actually understand what they are doing may or may not be fools, but the masses who believe in the hype are most certainly fools.
Every one of these "free trade" treaties compromises one or more nation's sovereignty. We, here, in the US, can clearly see that these "intellectual property" treaties are so much hogwash, are being sucked into the treaty. After signing, our (mostly bought and paid for) politicians can then refuse to pass laws that we demand, claiming that they would violate international treaties.
It's as bad, or worse, for other nations. Some third world nation, where people might make a couple thousand dollars PER YEAR, can't afford to pay the prices for our software under any circumstances. Today, the people might pirate an operating system, but with the trade agreements, piracy could result in a lifetime imprisonment. Or death.
Almost no one benefits from these treaties, almost no one benefits from globalization, except corporations.
I'm assuming that with a name like Anonymous Coward, you may not even be human. It CERTAINLY doesn't sound like a French name!
You do state that your research is funded by corporations. But, what about your education? Which corporations paid for your education? Or, like the rest of us, did you suck at the public teat while being educated?
Your holier-than-thou attitude has the credibility of a priest caught in the act with a naked little boy.
next_ghost gave you the essential details. Fact is, there is no benefit to society if you are permitted to keep your works secret. There is no benefit to society for "protecting" your "rights" for any extended period of time.
You are merely permitted those exclusive rights for a short period, as an incentive for you to produce more works that might benefit society. If you fail to capitalize on your ideas within five or ten years, certainly within fifteen years, then your idea really wasn't worth much.
No one in history has ever had an idea or discovered new knowledge that was worth a lifetime of luxury.
When a corporation is executed for causing the deaths of real people, then we might talk about corporate personhood.
In fact, when a corporation causes the deaths of hundreds, or even thousands of people, the corporation is protected.
Union Carbide seems to be doing quite well, despite major disasters such as this one.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bhopal_disaster
Who polices what gets to be an acceptable profession? No one. Certainly not the MAFIAA and it's associates. Those are the people who make entertainment a profession of ill repute.
Pay for the musician's upkeep? The musician pays, who else? What the hell you mean, he can't hold down a real job? He holds a job to pay for his necessities, and after that is taken care of, he can amuse himself, and others, with his music.
If you starve to death because people stop buying games and software, then the world will have lost nothing. You're talking to a man who has changed careers multiple times. If your career suddenly dries up, you do what I've done - learn some new skills and/or learn how to apply your skills to another field. Stop sniveling. You boys and girls who play with code are nothing special.
Most advertising is fraudulent - defrauding the fraudsters is really a crime?
Could you please point to a generation that had no music? Cavemen had music, as far as I can determine. Which generation since has done without music?
The problem here is, that people expect to MAKE MONEY off of music.
I don't pay money for music, yet I have music. If the web just dried up, if television and radio stopped broadcasting music, I would still have music. Two of my three sons have learned to play guitars. I used to play the trumpet, I could relearn all that I've forgotten.
Grow up without music? Come on, just try to get in touch with reality.
Big deal, the big corporate honchos may find that they can no longer make mega-bucks from music. It's not like they actually CONTRIBUTE any thing to music. They are frigging parasites. Let them die off. Just starve them. The world won't miss them.
We will still have no-name kids playing music because they love music. And, if they are actually any good at it, people will reward them for playing. People will still be entertained.
Grow up without music. Preposterous.
Not only can the end user choose which algorithm, they can come up with their own. The right to read and modify the source code ensures that the truly paranoid can modify that source code, in whatever way they choose, to actually ensure that their stuff is secure.
Little Joey Nerd decides that he really, really, REALLY doesn't want anyone to read his stuff. Three pass encryption results - first with Blowfish, then with his own home brewed encryption, and finally with AES. So, the attacker understands AES quite well, and manages to strip away one level of encryption. What is he left with? A garbled mess for which there is no documented decryption anywhere, except in Joey's head, or on his device.
You can tamper with Joey's device, or his head, but chances are he is going to know about it.
How would I find out, personally, that Linux Mint is sharing keys with the NSA? The likelihood that I would personally discover that secret is somewhere between slim to none. I can't read code well enough, nor am I likely to spend the time necessary to read every line of code in the programs.
My assurance stems from,
1. Thousands (at least) of other end users actually do peruse the code, looking for errors, back doors, exploits, etc.
2. My OS comes from a "trusted source" - one which I personally trust.
Yes, there is a weakness in there. That weakness is, I have to trust someone. At the same time, there is a strength hidden right beside the weakness. I get to CHOOSE who I trust.
What, exactly, has convinced you that you can actually trust Microsoft? Has MS invited you to personally examine their code, to satisfy yourself that there are no exploits in their system? No? I didn't think so.
Linux, on the other hand, invites me to read any or all of their source.
You choose what you want, I'll choose what I want, thank you very much.
It seems that ACTA was defeated, primarily because so many millions wrote or called their representatives.
What is the alternative to writing? Lie down, and whimper like a whipped dog? If that appeals to you, then go for it.
Spin around three times, widdershin, while standing in front of the mirror. It may help if there happens to be a Satanic mass in progress - or not. YMMV
"You seem to want free will without the consequences."
Nope. One accepts the consequences of his actions, that goes without saying. Among other things, I'm a motorcycle rider. I choose my actions, and I suffer the consequences when I am wrong. You learn that lesson very soon after hopping on a bike for the first time. For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction, and when the reaction involves tearing off some of your hide, you learn.
What I object to is, the author who apparently feels qualified to set himself up as judge and arbiter of good and bad, and to punish those with whom he disagrees.
Submitter doesn't like humanity very much. He wishes there were laws, rules, regulations, and guide lines for everything. He wants to hold engineers responsible for their discoveries. He wants to judge each discovery as "good" or "bad", then reward or punish the engineers, scientists, and the craftsmen for whatever results.
Sad as it is, I prefer the world we have, in which men and woman exercise free will.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YpCASVFyQoE
I just finished watching a pirated Blue Thunder. I watched some of the series when I was a kid, never saw the movie before. You should maybe watch it yourself. Keep in mind our current monitoring by NSA and the militarization of police forces, including drones, as you watch the movie.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0085255/
I'm sure you know how to use a torrent search.
Enjoy
I thought my statement was reasonably clear. Between 25 and 33% of all of Planned Parenthood's funds are allocated directly by the federal government. PP admits to 25%, various organizations claim 33% minimum, and some actually claim that 50% of PP's money comes through the government. I don't find the 50% claim to be exactly credible, but I can't discredit it either.
http://dailycaller.com/2013/08/06/gao-to-look-at-planned-parenthood-related-groups-federal-funding/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planned_Parenthood#Funding
To spell out what I know for fact:
If the federal government wasn't funding PP, then PP couldn't keep all their clinics open, and they would probably have to cut pretty deeply into the abortions they perform.
PP's OTHER objectives, of providing gynocology care, and family planning, are perfectly legitimate. There is no problem with tending to women's health - only an idiot or a genuine misogynist would object to it. It's the abortions that so many of us find objectionable. Worse, is the lack of meaningful counseling. PP's counseling ALWAYS tends to push women toward choosing abortion, rather than helping women to find alternatives.
I am not one who wants to end all abortions, for any reason. But, I find PP's methods and goals to be very objectionable.