No, we really have each other by the balls. China can induce inflation in our economy by dumping our cash. The US on the other hand takes in a huge amount of Chinese exports. If the US was to suddenly refuse to buy from China, China would be severely economically crippled. The US can just move their imports to some other country that pays their workers shitty practically over night. China on the other hand can't induce another nation to suddenly start consuming 1/5 of the worlds GDP over night so that they can sell to them.
Further, a tanking American economy has implications beyond just the direct pain it does to China. If the US tanks, the world economy tanks. When the US economy goes down, it drags everyone else down with it. So not only are they cut off from the US, but everyone of their other trading partners will descend into recession or (more likely) depression.
This is the beauty/curse of the globalized world. The big economic powers are simply too interconnected to inflict harm upon each other. Any sort of economic action they take against another power is going to directly affect them in a very big way. China and the US can inflict massive economic harm on each other because they are so interconnected, but the harm they inflict on the other is harm that they inflict on themselves and the rest of the world.
If you don't like the play and the work, get a new profession. I would really love for it to be my job to play video games all day long. The reality is that in order to make money off of it I would need to have awesome talent and willingness to move to Korea and learn Korean. I don't have the desire to do any of the above so I went and got a college degree and do something that is satisfying in its own right, but I would quit and never do again if someone dropped a 100 million dollars in my lap.
You don't have a right to do the job you want. You have the right to make a go at it, but you sure as shit are not guaranteed anything. Don't like the pay? Do whatever other bloke does. Go find a shit job that pays that you can tolerate and put your 40 hours a week in.
I don't mind limited copyright. I do have a very big problem with the creativity of this nation being monopolized so that a few artists can make a living. Everything should NOT be automatically copyrighted like it is today. Hell, this post is technically copyrighted unless I declare otherwise. The default should not be for everything to be copyrighted. The monopoly on creative work should not be forever (which it currently is for all practical purposes). You should have 5, at most 15 years to squeeze what you can out of a creative work before it is released to the public domain. Yes, I know all artist want to be the one to invent the next happy birthday song so that they don't have to work again, but tough. Go play the lottery like everyone else.
Copyright law is slowly strangling American creativity. The insanity of multimillion dollar fines for downloading a single CD is beyond words. A doctor who cuts off my leg by accident when faces much less sever financial penalties then a kid who downloads a single CD. The system is fucked up and out of whack. It desperately needs to be fixed. There MUST be sane copyright times, STRONG fair use laws, and REASONABLE fines for violating copyright.
Personally, I am so absolutely disgusted with the state of copyright that I have stopped buying music all together. I have not paid a single cent for music in over 4 years. There is enough free (non-pirated) music out there to satisfy me that there is not a shot in hell I will buy into this insane copyright system and support it in any way shape or form.
I think Wikipedia answer its use as an encyclopedia better then I can.
From "Reasearching on Wikipedia": First you should question the appropriateness of citing any encyclopedia as a source or reference. This is not simply a Wikipedia-specific issue, as most secondary schools and institutions of higher learning do not consider encyclopedias, in general, a proper citable source.
This does not mean Wikipedia is not useful: Wikipedia articles contain many links to newspaper articles, books with ISBN numbers, radio programming, television shows, Web-based sources, and the like. It will usually be more acceptable to cite those original sources rather than Wikipedia since it is by nature, a secondary source. At the same time, simple academic ethics means that you should actually read the work that you cite: if you do not actually have your hands on a book, you should not misleadingly cite it as your source.
The Wikipedia is not a glorified message board. It does indeed have standards. When those standards are violated, they edit the content such that the basic standards are met. The standards that fit in these three cases is that bio articles must be on 'known' people, and they must have been covered by reliable sources. This is just a basic bare bones standard.
Now, can it be argued that these three articles might have met those criteria? Sure. They are subjective criteria for sure. Does it matter? Not really. The fact that these three people have had their bios deleted isn't going to cause me to lose any sleep at night. If these are the worst examples of editorial abuse that the Wikipedia has to offer, I consider that pretty damn good.
Look, the Wikipedia is good at what it does. The Wikipedia is a great place to start if you want to get an overview of a particular subject without too much pain. The Wikipeida is NOT something to cite in a scientific journal or to get detailed and exact information that is critical to some endeavor simply because that information could be wrong. Nor is the Wikipedia trying to achieve all information in exists. Wikipedia isn't Google, it isn't a hard scientific reference, it isn't even an encyclopedia. Wikipedia is its own beast, and trashing a few irrelevant articles that might or might not have met their guidelines is no great tragedy.
Someone give me a call when the editor's rewrite the Bush page with their own personal opinion and lock it, then I'll take note.
This isn't something that is going to set off the radar in terms of monopoly practices. This is basically a way to help ensure that their product stays up to date. As anyone who has installed from an unpatched version of windows can attest to, you are racing against the clock to get everything updated and firewalled. A smart user will have their updates and firewall in place before they connect to the Internet, but well, not everyone is a smart user.
Does this give Microsoft an advantage? Eh, maybe, but not by much. Most anti-malware/virus/exc software packages are also fanatical about keeping windows up to date. This helps them almost as much as it helps Microsoft. Finally, this doesn't really do much. If you have something running on your machine that can screw with your HOSTS file, you are already pretty much screwed. This is like welding a little wedge of steel to the door of your Humvee. Yeah, it might on a good day stop a stray non-armor piercing round, but it probably is not going to give an RPG much of a pause or stop a hail of gunfire if it comes at your from the dozens of other unarmored spots.
I wouldn't lose any sleep over this. This is a sensible thing for Microsoft to do that really isn't going to harm anyone. At worst, this will do no harm. At best, it will offer a thin layer of protection against some unsophisticated viruses.
The article was by an American website and was posted on Slashdot which, while certainly having a sizable non-American following, is also very American centric. The politics section in particular makes it pretty clear how American centric this website is. I am not saying that this is a good or bad thing. I am just pointing out that it is pretty well implied that when they talk about "no one" wanting to watch video games, they are talking about Americans. Reading Slashdot is like reading an American newspaper. Unless they specify another country, they are talking about the US.
For those who don't read much foreign media though, give it a try. Maybe I am just weird, but I always get a little kick about reading about what "the Americans" are up to. Reading about your nation in third person is very refreshing. I personally have bookmarked media from Japan, Taiwan, China, India, Russia, Britain, South Africa, and Al-Jazeera. Even state media is interesting, if for no other reason then trying to see how other governments spin different things.
If you are serious about filing a patent, I would highly suggest consulting with a patent lawyer. Write up the patent as best as you think it should be, then go have a chat with an IP lawyer. They will be able to help you with wording it such that you grab up as large of a swath of IP as you can. Yes, a patent lawyer cost a few bucks, but it isn't like you need to higher them full time. You just need to consult with someone, get some information, then throw the finished product back to them so they can give it a once over.
If you are not terribly serious about this and just want to drop the $150 and get a patent, then at the very least go pick up a book on patentning. A lawyer is probably the easiest rout, but picking up a book is probably the cheapest. If you are serious and might want to try and make money off of this though, you really should talk with an IP lawyer. If nothing else, they can give you an idea of the overall cost before wasting time and money.
Most of the time the GLBT folks anger me because they want to introduce negative rights into the world -- forcing people how they have to act on their own land. I don't believe in negative rights (the ability to criminalize or penalize someone for their speech through government) because I believe it destroys property rights. If I want to sit around in my home, my restaurant, or my office and criticize whites, blacks, gays, straights, midgets, tall people, or geeks, it is my property and my right. If my customers don't like it, they'll go next door to the guy who ISN'T prejudiced. Heck, I even think you could have a "straight women additional fee" on food served if you really wanted to be an idiot.
The majority of legislation that GLBT folks want has nothing to do speech. All GLBT groups right now are pushing the right to marry and have their partners receive equal treatment under the law that heterosexual couples receive. The other thing they push are hate crime laws. Hate crime laws simply make it so that if you commit a criminal act against someone and the fact that they are gay/black/whatever was what motivated you to commit that crime, you can serve some extra time. Our legal system takes into account intent when dolling out punishment. The reasoning for this type of law is the same as differentiating between 1st and 2nd degree murder.
Now, are there GLBT folks trying to push stupid laws? Sure. Is that what the majority are focused on? Not really. Most of these groups are just pushing to be allowed to marry, serve in the armed services, and in general be viewed as equals to heterosexuals in the eyes of the government, which they most certainly are not right now. As far as the other stuff like hate speech laws; the civil rights movement didn't ban the KKK or keep the KKK from spewing their bigotry in public, treating GLBT folks like humans too isn't going to strip anyone of their free speech rights either.
I think the point is about the government being utterly against recreational drugs, no matter how benign. It is pretty damn hard to imagine anything more benign then THC (the active ingredient of marijuana), yet that is still considered to be illegal.
As for the drugs you list, most people who have used those drugs will likely tell you that they hardly fall under the "recreational" category. My girlfriend went through half of that list trying to find something that would work for her and it was far from pleasant to watch. Zoloft in particular actually drove her insane on the first (and last) dose she took. She found the right combination eventually, but not before going through others that made her miserable, crazy, apathetic, insane, or some combination thereof. Even if the drugs do end up working, they can have some very ugly side effects.
The government is simply against recreational drugs in any shape or form. If you can't go buy THC, it is pretty safe to say that they will never allow any sort of recreational drug.
In Canada (I'm sure the USA is similar), the overall cancer rate is now 1 in 2... that's right 50% of the population will contract cancer at some point in their life (most of those will eventually die from it).
More people die of cancer because fewer people die of other things. Most (certainly not all) cancer is related to age. We are getting very good at living a very long time compared to what is "natural". The result is that old age disease take a heavier portion of our deaths. We have dramatically slashed the number of deaths to viruses and infection in first world nations.
Even cancer is less of a killer then it used to be. More people get cancer because they live longer, but more people survive cancer then ever. As far as sucking air goes, there has not been a better time to be alive (in terms of life span) so long as you are in a first world nation. It is entirely possible that most kids born in 2000 will live to see 2100. Hell, it is very likely that a large portion of the people who are just now leaving college will live to see 2100.
This is exactly what the insurgents want. Their peace won't last. There will be violence and a lot of death. In the end, Iraq would be far worse off then when Hussein was in power. The US really messed this country up - they owe it to the Iraqi people to maintain security until the elected government can hold it's own. If not, it'll be the Taliban all over again.
The problem right now is the Iraqi political process. It is in a word, fucked. They were elected into power months ago yet still have not formed a government while they watch their nation slowly crumble. They need to get their shit in gear and start functioning as an elected government. One of the best ways to spurn them on might be to simply tell them that we are going to leave.
Think about it. You have these people who have joined the government and entered into the democratic process. Some of these people joined for noble reasons. Others (many) are simply looking to scoop up power. They are okay to watch their country burn while they bicker over who gets to hold the reins of power. If the US simply gave them a date and told them that we are leaving one way or the other, it might very well kick their ass into gear. These people KNOW that they keep on living because the US is there to protect them. Threaten to take away our protection and suddenly their lives are really on the line. If the government collapses and they descend into civil war, the current heads of government are going to be the first people killed.
If you really wanted to spur them on, tell them that they have 1 year to get their shit together. As for the civilians we endanger, offer them US citizenship (and some other options for anyone willing to volunteer taking a few immigrants) and a small pile of startup cash for anyone who wants out. Even if the entire country decided to pick up and move (which they wouldn't), the US could easily absorb them without flinching.
We screwed the pooch when we went in. We fucked it up hardcore. We didn't have the resolve as a nation to spend the money and commit the troops to occupy and rebuild the nation properly. We wanted a 3 day war, a few months of occupation, and a shining Japan in the Middle East after a couple of years. We also didn't want to foot the bill or fight in a manner that might result in the loss of US soldiers.
If we REALLY wanted to win and had the resolve, we should have gone in like Iraq was an occupied 51st state. That would have meant minimizing civilian casualties even at the expense of the lives of soldiers. It would have meant some serious spending to rebuild that nation and a comprehensive program to get it back on its feet.
It is a day late now and we are a dollar short now. If we think we can't win and don't have the resolves to win, the best thing to do is apologize for mucking shit up, get our friends out, and tell them that if they manage to win the civil war and get their shit together they will get some sweet trading perks and warm feelings.
They are not targeting "traitors". When you ram a truck bomb into a packed Shiite mosque, you just got kicked out of the 'resistance fighter' category and now are simply an extremist Sunni Arab fascist. It is one thing to attack a police station or even a government building filled with civilians. Both of those things could be argued to fall under 'resistance' operations even if civilians are the targets. When you load up a truck with explosives and hit a mosque of the religion that you are not during worship hours, you are now simply a religious fascist that has it in his head that the other guys are so wrong that they need to be completely purged, women, children, and all. The fact that these are religious fascist willing to blow themselves up to purge the other side just makes them all the worse.
At least a fucking Nazi has some sense of self preservation and isn't inclined to drive a truck bomb in a synagogue. These people that ram truck bombs into mosques are the lowest of the low. Personally, I hope that the same thing that happened to all of histories other genocidal fascist happens to these fuckers... I hope they get wiped so completely that their grand kids will be mortified by any other position then pacifism.
Cute but wrong numbers. First off, the 100,000 number is flat out wrong. Even less then objective sources put the number at no more 38,000 (http://www.iraqbodycount.net/). Official numbers put them even lower. Of those 38,000, the actual number that were civilians is unknown, but 80% is clearly an massive overshoot. I don't think we even managed pull off 80% civilian casualties when we firebombed cities during World War II.
As for death squads, those are not US security. If you think a bunch of pasty ass white guys or black guys from the US are running around Iraq undetected killing off civilians, you are simply delusional. We kind of stick out a little. Even if we manage to blend in, the second anyone opens their mouth it is pretty clear they don't speak the regional accent of Arabic. Further, even if we could operate covert death squads, they wouldn't be hunting down random civilians. People disappearing in the night HURTS the US. We want the damn place to be a merrily little economic power house like Japan. Economic growth and people vanishing at night are pretty mutually exclusive. It would be a pretty retarded move to work against our own interests.
There are some credible reports of death squads in Iraq though. These death squads are generally militia (either Sunni or Shiite). There are even some reports of Iraqi army units acting as death squads.
How many of those are part of the US puppet government (nobody really believes that our government invades one strategic target after another to "spread freedom" I hope) and its security force. These individuals can all be safely considered traitors to natives who want a free Iraq.
As for who is getting hurt in the suicide attacks, do some fucking research before opening your ignorant mouth. Go to google news and type in "iraq mosque bombing". Unless all Shiites (women and children) are "traitors" because they are paying in a Shiite mosque, it is pretty clear that you have an ethnic/religious conflict going on.
If the US had a dictator and a foriegn government kicked him over and tried to set up a democracy then get the fuck out, I can absolutely promise you that my response would not be to go suicide bomb blacks, Jews, or Christians. It would be one thing if the insurgents were just trying to fight American forces. The issue is that they are blowing up their fellow citizens indiscrimently. They are not even limiting their targets to security forces of their government. They are hitting purely civilian targets with the intention of killing clearly innocent people.
I might become a "terrorist" if my country was invaded, but I sure as shit would not resort to belowing up my fellow citizens whole sale. These is not an insurgent war. This is a religious civil war that the US made possible by kicking over a strong man. We have taken sides in this war and so we are targets.
Now, I am not making a judgement on if the US should be there or not, but to declare this simply an insurgent war utterly ignores the reality of the targets they are picking. They are not fighting like an occupied nation. They are are fighting like they are in the middle of a religious civil war that a foriegn power just so happens to of stuck its nose in.
To be honest, I would merrily in favor of giving them a 1 year notice and telling them to get their shit together because we are getting out. Then drawing back simply defend the Iraqi borders to keep outside parties from entering Iraq, and letting them deal with their own shit.
The X-Box (or play station or nintendo) is fine for some games, but PCs simply are the no-holds-bar winner in many types of games. When it comes to strategy games, MMORPGs, FPS, and real time strategy games, consoles simply don't cut it. There is a damn good reason why when playing Halo online PC users and x-box users are not allowed to play each other. The reason ISN'T because they can't make the two talk. The reason why the two can't play together is because the keyboard and mouse combination is vastly more powerful then fooling around with those thumb sticks. Console users would get pwn3d.
That is not to say that console gaming is bad. In fact, console gaming kicks the piss out of PC gaming in many ways. I would never want to play Mario or a driving game on a PC unless I had a game pad. Consoles are awesome because you can invite a bunch of friends, crash on the couch with four controllers, and beat on each other. Console games have their place, but so do PC games.
This isn't like a video game where you need to go down the 'horrible biological weapons' research tree in order to get horrible biological weapons. The same technology that lets you engineer a crop that can end world hunger or create new organs from scratch is the same path that leads to horrible weapons. You can't simply pick the good over the bad. By advancing forward you WILL uncover the bad and make available the tools to do terrible things. The only option you have left is to either grind to a technological standstill or simply do your best to fend off dangers as they come.
The only way to stop technology is to put in place a world wide totalitarian government that ruthlessly enforces 'sustainable' living and the freeze of technology. By "sustainable", I don't mean the crunchy American tree hugger version that involves eating a lot of soy and riding a bike while still enjoying central heating and electricity. I mean brutal Maoist style raw utilitarianism that merrily sheds lives in favor of the higher goal of a "sustainable" society out our present technology level.
This of course is an utter impossibility. Our system is like a shark. It moves forward or we all die. No little tweaks on society is going to make it so that we can maintain this state of technology forever. We will run out of resources and technology will either have an answer waiting or everything collapses.
The only answer is to cross your fingers and hope to hell that a Kurzweil utopia is right around the corner. The best thing we can do now is try and build defense when it is possible and blindly sprint forward hoping to hell that somewhere along the way an answer jumps out before something terrible happens.
I have absolutely no problem with meat. So long as food prices remain as low as they are, I fully intend to eat a couple of cows and a few flocks of chicken each year. My point is that AT WORST, Americans might have to change their diet a little if we truly managed to 'over populate'. Granted, the entire argument is stupid. We grow more and more food on less and less land. The amount of arable land in the US is dropping, yet our food production is going up. As much fun as it is to play environmental-whacko-alarmist, some times they need a splash of reality and the understanding that technology, in addition to social change is perfectly capable of solving many problems.
The US grows more then enough food to feed the entire fucking world. The average American diet might require 3 acres of arable land per person per year (which is a bullshit number or one people don't agree on as this http://www.planorganic.com/about%20us%20.htm offers a number of 1.5), but the average American eats a few dozen pounds of meat per year as well. There is no danger of starvation. At the very worst, if prices for food was to dramatically go up, we would have to eat less meat.
Your argument defies simple logic. Food cost are going down and have been going down for over a hundred years. This implies a growing surplice of food, not a shortage. You also blatantly ignore the fact that the US, like Europe and Japan, is in a death cycle. That means that the number of kids we are having per year does NOT replace the next generation. How is it that our population could possibly be going up then? Immigration. If it wasn't for immigration, the US would be in the same ugly death cycle that Western Europe and Japan is in, and we would have all the same social ills that come when more and more of your population is old, dependent, and not working.
Wealth kills the drive to reproduce. The only reason why this isn't a great tragedy in the US is because immigration helps to bring in more and more young strong hard working people.
Personally, I liked the original US system of copyright. It was almost perfect. If I recall correctly you could register creative material for a 14 year copyright. The default was that copy write was an opt-in system. In the current system, EVERYTHING is copyright by default. This fucking message is copyright. After the first 14 years was up, you could renew for another 14. The idea was that only stuff that was worth copywriting was copyright, and that it was for a LIMITED amount of time. With copyright laws as they are, they might as well be forever....yeah, someone has been reading FreeCulture...
As far as patents, they are an entirely different beast. The biggest issue I have with patents are the mind numbingly low bar they have set to get an idea patented. Further, they also tend to scoop very wide swaths of "ideas" that have little to do with the original idea. The entire idea that you can patent business models and methods is infuriating. Speaking as someone who has been involved in getting things patented, the entire system is completely fucked. Don't get me wrong, I am all for patents. Patents do serve a very useful purpose and do indeed help innovation. I just am not a fan of the way they are set up now.
I really have no problem with blowing a billion dollars to develop a new drug and getting a patent for it for a few years. That encourages innovation. Without that patent, they would be leery about spending so much money on developing novel new drugs. On the other hand, you have dumb shit like how a cereal bar have patents on "mixing different cereals" and filling a bowl 1/3 the way with milk. Patents in such cases are destroying innovation, not helping it.
I think the point people miss is that patents and copyright are NOT there to compensate IP holders or even the creators. They are there to encourage innovation and nothing more. When the law starts throwing wrenches in the cogs of innovation, the system is failing.
The question is certainly valid. Just because we lack an answer doesn't mean that we automatically assume OMFG it was GOD and JESUS!
400 years ago we couldn't explain lightening either. That doesn't make lightening mystical either. Hell, we couldn't explain germ theory or even a basic rough approximation of gravity. The lack of an explanation RIGHT NOW isn't proof of anything other then that we don't know the answer yet.
That said, if you are dying for a scientific answer, string theory has thrown out some tantalizing theories involving other exotic realities crashing together. I can't do much justice explaining them. The Elegant Universe offers up some musings from theoretical physics much better then I can.
In my opinion, building up a "God of Holes" is a rather sad and pathetic way to conduct religion. Religion should be something that you take on faith that describes how you should live in this world and prepare for the next. Religion shouldn't be something that you use to plug every and any gap in your preexisting knowledge. As history has shown very succinctly, a "God of Holes" tends to find itself quickly getting amputated by science on a regular basis.
If nothing else, your "God of Holes" is likely insulting to God himself. You have a brain, use it. Maybe God did create the universe, or maybe a god created something more ancient and fundamental that goes back farther then even the big bang. If God set in forth a motion of events to lead to this precise outcome, instead of trying to crudely plug the gaps in YOUR understanding of His universe by simply declaring it mysticism, try and understand how he built the universe.
More then one theoretical physicist has taken a look at how our universe has been put together and found it so elegant and beautiful that it has left them with a belief that at the very end there exists a higher power. That sure as shit doesn't mean that every time they run into a question they can't instantly answer they throw their hands up and declare that God did it. Instead, they press forward and trying and truly understand God's universe and its deepest inner working.
Ironically enough, if God did create the universe, a theoretical physicist is probably much closer to understanding the mind of God then your average bible thumping nut job whose eyes bleed every time evolution is mentioned. While the bible thumping nut job runs around like an idiot declaring the world a couple thousand years old and turning their mind off completely to understanding the universe, a physicist is carefully studying the most basic rules and laws of the universe. In a sense, the physicist is studying God's work and perhaps gaining some insight into the mind of God.
Patenting business models is ridiculous. End of story.
What if someone had patented the drive through window? What if someone had patented online MP3 stores? Hell, what if someone had patented the "business model" of operating a cell phone company? Would the world be better served if there was only a single company that could have a drive through window? Would we be better served if there was only a single corporation to buy MP3's from? Would the world be better served if only one corporation was allowed to cell cellular devices?
The simple fact of the matter is that "business models" are naturally sought after and vigorously pursued in a competitive environment regardless if there is patent protection or not.
People certainly balk at spending a billion dollars to bring a drug to market and through FDA approval only to have it instantly reproduced as a generic. There is certainly a good argument for these sort of patents for clearly novel and expensive to develop products. The same is not true for "business models". Business models don't require a multi-billion dollar lab and 15 years of R&D, testing, and validation by the FDA. Business models naturally develop as corporations seek to out do and one up each other.
The fact that efficient business models are quickly copied is a GOOD thing. Efficient business models SHOULD be copied so that the entire economy experiences increased efficiency and competition. Hell, that is what has made the American's so damn good at business. They might not have had a monopoly on good businesses ideas, but they are damn good at copying a winning business models and running with them resulting in mind numbingly high work productivity. When Japan started to beat on America in the 80's it was because the Japanese had started to copy and improve upon winning business models. The idea of developing a business model and having the rest of the market scramble to keep up is what drives us forward, not what holds us back.
What I read about the USA tells me that boundaries are fixed by the politicians in power. In theory they could use this power to fix things so that they win majorities in Congress with a minority of the popular vote. In practise they seem to use it to make all seats safe seats. So third parties are completely frozen out.
That is not completely true. How the lines are drawn varies from state to state. In the past, this power has mostly been in the hands of people getting voted in and it has resulted in some utterly bullshit lines being drawn. Thankfully, there has been a movement more towards like what the UK has with independent commissions drawing up the lines.
The hardest part is deciding how to draw lines. For instance, if you have a poor neighborhood and a rich neighborhood, how do you deal with it? Do you simply draw the line according to the simplest method (by county or what not), or do you try and group similar groups, such that you have a "poor" block and a "rich" block. Do you try and draw the lines such that elections are closely contested? If you do that though, don't you distort the will of the majority?
It is one thing to say "let someone else do it", but the next hard question is "how should they do it?" To be honest, I have no clue. I am curious; do you know how the British system works? Do they try and group similar neighborhoods, just draw lines arbitrarily, try and make elections closely contested?
There are more then drugs that take massive R&D budgets. I work in the nanotech field. This is a very boom of bust field. You basically have a pile of small companies taking as much venture capital as they can and researching as quickly as they can to build a viable product. These small companies basically take on the risk that large companies normally refuse to take. They pool together extremely creative and smart people who are willing to work on a hunch. Most of these start ups pay pocket change and equity. That is to say that you only end up making much of anything if the company as able to sell something.
Our economy depends greatly on these small companies. These companies take the risk that big companies won't. The only "assurance" they get is that if they actually make something work, they can patent it then sell it. Strip them of that shield, and these startup ventures would no long become viable. You would have to rely on large companies with large R&D budgets to plod along at their slow pace. Instead of having hundreds of small companies all banging away at ideas from different angles, you would have a small handful of large corporations with lumbering R&D labs. You would do great harm to the diversity of ideas and innovation that goes on.
Further, even when these companies fail (and they often do), they leave behind a blazed trail. As these companies push ahead into bridge the gap between practical and theory, they tend to publish a lot of papers and train a lot of people in these new fields. Their contribution isn't just a functional high tech product which is sold to a manufacturing corporation, but also the trail blazing they do in these emerging fields.
People dramatically underestimate how much of an affect these companies have on the economy. When you see something truly innovative come out, a lot of the time it was built of the work of these startups. Generally they build their innovative product, get bought up making the owner a rich guy who then goes out and starts up another company to do it all over again.
Don't get me wrong, speaking as someone who has to deal with IP all of the time, the patent system is really fucked up and needs a good thorough overhauling to weed out the 20:1 junk to worthwhile patents that get submitted. Hell, I would love to see copyright get a serious overhaul and consider myself a Free Culture advocate. That said, entirely stripping patent protection basically means that the guy with the most money wins. You don't want a system where innovation by smaller companies is near impossible and large companies only have to advance any kind of R&D beyond making sure that your reverse engineering division is top notch.
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No, we really have each other by the balls. China can induce inflation in our economy by dumping our cash. The US on the other hand takes in a huge amount of Chinese exports. If the US was to suddenly refuse to buy from China, China would be severely economically crippled. The US can just move their imports to some other country that pays their workers shitty practically over night. China on the other hand can't induce another nation to suddenly start consuming 1/5 of the worlds GDP over night so that they can sell to them.
Further, a tanking American economy has implications beyond just the direct pain it does to China. If the US tanks, the world economy tanks. When the US economy goes down, it drags everyone else down with it. So not only are they cut off from the US, but everyone of their other trading partners will descend into recession or (more likely) depression.
This is the beauty/curse of the globalized world. The big economic powers are simply too interconnected to inflict harm upon each other. Any sort of economic action they take against another power is going to directly affect them in a very big way. China and the US can inflict massive economic harm on each other because they are so interconnected, but the harm they inflict on the other is harm that they inflict on themselves and the rest of the world.
If you don't like the play and the work, get a new profession. I would really love for it to be my job to play video games all day long. The reality is that in order to make money off of it I would need to have awesome talent and willingness to move to Korea and learn Korean. I don't have the desire to do any of the above so I went and got a college degree and do something that is satisfying in its own right, but I would quit and never do again if someone dropped a 100 million dollars in my lap.
You don't have a right to do the job you want. You have the right to make a go at it, but you sure as shit are not guaranteed anything. Don't like the pay? Do whatever other bloke does. Go find a shit job that pays that you can tolerate and put your 40 hours a week in.
I don't mind limited copyright. I do have a very big problem with the creativity of this nation being monopolized so that a few artists can make a living. Everything should NOT be automatically copyrighted like it is today. Hell, this post is technically copyrighted unless I declare otherwise. The default should not be for everything to be copyrighted. The monopoly on creative work should not be forever (which it currently is for all practical purposes). You should have 5, at most 15 years to squeeze what you can out of a creative work before it is released to the public domain. Yes, I know all artist want to be the one to invent the next happy birthday song so that they don't have to work again, but tough. Go play the lottery like everyone else.
Copyright law is slowly strangling American creativity. The insanity of multimillion dollar fines for downloading a single CD is beyond words. A doctor who cuts off my leg by accident when faces much less sever financial penalties then a kid who downloads a single CD. The system is fucked up and out of whack. It desperately needs to be fixed. There MUST be sane copyright times, STRONG fair use laws, and REASONABLE fines for violating copyright.
Personally, I am so absolutely disgusted with the state of copyright that I have stopped buying music all together. I have not paid a single cent for music in over 4 years. There is enough free (non-pirated) music out there to satisfy me that there is not a shot in hell I will buy into this insane copyright system and support it in any way shape or form.
I think Wikipedia answer its use as an encyclopedia better then I can.
From "Reasearching on Wikipedia":
First you should question the appropriateness of citing any encyclopedia as a source or reference. This is not simply a Wikipedia-specific issue, as most secondary schools and institutions of higher learning do not consider encyclopedias, in general, a proper citable source.
This does not mean Wikipedia is not useful: Wikipedia articles contain many links to newspaper articles, books with ISBN numbers, radio programming, television shows, Web-based sources, and the like. It will usually be more acceptable to cite those original sources rather than Wikipedia since it is by nature, a secondary source. At the same time, simple academic ethics means that you should actually read the work that you cite: if you do not actually have your hands on a book, you should not misleadingly cite it as your source.
The Wikipedia is not a glorified message board. It does indeed have standards. When those standards are violated, they edit the content such that the basic standards are met. The standards that fit in these three cases is that bio articles must be on 'known' people, and they must have been covered by reliable sources. This is just a basic bare bones standard.
Now, can it be argued that these three articles might have met those criteria? Sure. They are subjective criteria for sure. Does it matter? Not really. The fact that these three people have had their bios deleted isn't going to cause me to lose any sleep at night. If these are the worst examples of editorial abuse that the Wikipedia has to offer, I consider that pretty damn good.
Look, the Wikipedia is good at what it does. The Wikipedia is a great place to start if you want to get an overview of a particular subject without too much pain. The Wikipeida is NOT something to cite in a scientific journal or to get detailed and exact information that is critical to some endeavor simply because that information could be wrong. Nor is the Wikipedia trying to achieve all information in exists. Wikipedia isn't Google, it isn't a hard scientific reference, it isn't even an encyclopedia. Wikipedia is its own beast, and trashing a few irrelevant articles that might or might not have met their guidelines is no great tragedy.
Someone give me a call when the editor's rewrite the Bush page with their own personal opinion and lock it, then I'll take note.
This isn't something that is going to set off the radar in terms of monopoly practices. This is basically a way to help ensure that their product stays up to date. As anyone who has installed from an unpatched version of windows can attest to, you are racing against the clock to get everything updated and firewalled. A smart user will have their updates and firewall in place before they connect to the Internet, but well, not everyone is a smart user.
Does this give Microsoft an advantage? Eh, maybe, but not by much. Most anti-malware/virus/exc software packages are also fanatical about keeping windows up to date. This helps them almost as much as it helps Microsoft. Finally, this doesn't really do much. If you have something running on your machine that can screw with your HOSTS file, you are already pretty much screwed. This is like welding a little wedge of steel to the door of your Humvee. Yeah, it might on a good day stop a stray non-armor piercing round, but it probably is not going to give an RPG much of a pause or stop a hail of gunfire if it comes at your from the dozens of other unarmored spots.
I wouldn't lose any sleep over this. This is a sensible thing for Microsoft to do that really isn't going to harm anyone. At worst, this will do no harm. At best, it will offer a thin layer of protection against some unsophisticated viruses.
The article was by an American website and was posted on Slashdot which, while certainly having a sizable non-American following, is also very American centric. The politics section in particular makes it pretty clear how American centric this website is. I am not saying that this is a good or bad thing. I am just pointing out that it is pretty well implied that when they talk about "no one" wanting to watch video games, they are talking about Americans. Reading Slashdot is like reading an American newspaper. Unless they specify another country, they are talking about the US.
For those who don't read much foreign media though, give it a try. Maybe I am just weird, but I always get a little kick about reading about what "the Americans" are up to. Reading about your nation in third person is very refreshing. I personally have bookmarked media from Japan, Taiwan, China, India, Russia, Britain, South Africa, and Al-Jazeera. Even state media is interesting, if for no other reason then trying to see how other governments spin different things.
If you are serious about filing a patent, I would highly suggest consulting with a patent lawyer. Write up the patent as best as you think it should be, then go have a chat with an IP lawyer. They will be able to help you with wording it such that you grab up as large of a swath of IP as you can. Yes, a patent lawyer cost a few bucks, but it isn't like you need to higher them full time. You just need to consult with someone, get some information, then throw the finished product back to them so they can give it a once over.
If you are not terribly serious about this and just want to drop the $150 and get a patent, then at the very least go pick up a book on patentning. A lawyer is probably the easiest rout, but picking up a book is probably the cheapest. If you are serious and might want to try and make money off of this though, you really should talk with an IP lawyer. If nothing else, they can give you an idea of the overall cost before wasting time and money.
Most of the time the GLBT folks anger me because they want to introduce negative rights into the world -- forcing people how they have to act on their own land. I don't believe in negative rights (the ability to criminalize or penalize someone for their speech through government) because I believe it destroys property rights. If I want to sit around in my home, my restaurant, or my office and criticize whites, blacks, gays, straights, midgets, tall people, or geeks, it is my property and my right. If my customers don't like it, they'll go next door to the guy who ISN'T prejudiced. Heck, I even think you could have a "straight women additional fee" on food served if you really wanted to be an idiot.
The majority of legislation that GLBT folks want has nothing to do speech. All GLBT groups right now are pushing the right to marry and have their partners receive equal treatment under the law that heterosexual couples receive. The other thing they push are hate crime laws. Hate crime laws simply make it so that if you commit a criminal act against someone and the fact that they are gay/black/whatever was what motivated you to commit that crime, you can serve some extra time. Our legal system takes into account intent when dolling out punishment. The reasoning for this type of law is the same as differentiating between 1st and 2nd degree murder.
Now, are there GLBT folks trying to push stupid laws? Sure. Is that what the majority are focused on? Not really. Most of these groups are just pushing to be allowed to marry, serve in the armed services, and in general be viewed as equals to heterosexuals in the eyes of the government, which they most certainly are not right now. As far as the other stuff like hate speech laws; the civil rights movement didn't ban the KKK or keep the KKK from spewing their bigotry in public, treating GLBT folks like humans too isn't going to strip anyone of their free speech rights either.
I think the point is about the government being utterly against recreational drugs, no matter how benign. It is pretty damn hard to imagine anything more benign then THC (the active ingredient of marijuana), yet that is still considered to be illegal.
As for the drugs you list, most people who have used those drugs will likely tell you that they hardly fall under the "recreational" category. My girlfriend went through half of that list trying to find something that would work for her and it was far from pleasant to watch. Zoloft in particular actually drove her insane on the first (and last) dose she took. She found the right combination eventually, but not before going through others that made her miserable, crazy, apathetic, insane, or some combination thereof. Even if the drugs do end up working, they can have some very ugly side effects.
The government is simply against recreational drugs in any shape or form. If you can't go buy THC, it is pretty safe to say that they will never allow any sort of recreational drug.
In Canada (I'm sure the USA is similar), the overall cancer rate is now 1 in 2 ... that's right 50% of the population will contract cancer at some point in their life (most of those will eventually die from it).
More people die of cancer because fewer people die of other things. Most (certainly not all) cancer is related to age. We are getting very good at living a very long time compared to what is "natural". The result is that old age disease take a heavier portion of our deaths. We have dramatically slashed the number of deaths to viruses and infection in first world nations.
Even cancer is less of a killer then it used to be. More people get cancer because they live longer, but more people survive cancer then ever. As far as sucking air goes, there has not been a better time to be alive (in terms of life span) so long as you are in a first world nation. It is entirely possible that most kids born in 2000 will live to see 2100. Hell, it is very likely that a large portion of the people who are just now leaving college will live to see 2100.
This is exactly what the insurgents want. Their peace won't last. There will be violence and a lot of death. In the end, Iraq would be far worse off then when Hussein was in power. The US really messed this country up - they owe it to the Iraqi people to maintain security until the elected government can hold it's own. If not, it'll be the Taliban all over again.
The problem right now is the Iraqi political process. It is in a word, fucked. They were elected into power months ago yet still have not formed a government while they watch their nation slowly crumble. They need to get their shit in gear and start functioning as an elected government. One of the best ways to spurn them on might be to simply tell them that we are going to leave.
Think about it. You have these people who have joined the government and entered into the democratic process. Some of these people joined for noble reasons. Others (many) are simply looking to scoop up power. They are okay to watch their country burn while they bicker over who gets to hold the reins of power. If the US simply gave them a date and told them that we are leaving one way or the other, it might very well kick their ass into gear. These people KNOW that they keep on living because the US is there to protect them. Threaten to take away our protection and suddenly their lives are really on the line. If the government collapses and they descend into civil war, the current heads of government are going to be the first people killed.
If you really wanted to spur them on, tell them that they have 1 year to get their shit together. As for the civilians we endanger, offer them US citizenship (and some other options for anyone willing to volunteer taking a few immigrants) and a small pile of startup cash for anyone who wants out. Even if the entire country decided to pick up and move (which they wouldn't), the US could easily absorb them without flinching.
We screwed the pooch when we went in. We fucked it up hardcore. We didn't have the resolve as a nation to spend the money and commit the troops to occupy and rebuild the nation properly. We wanted a 3 day war, a few months of occupation, and a shining Japan in the Middle East after a couple of years. We also didn't want to foot the bill or fight in a manner that might result in the loss of US soldiers.
If we REALLY wanted to win and had the resolve, we should have gone in like Iraq was an occupied 51st state. That would have meant minimizing civilian casualties even at the expense of the lives of soldiers. It would have meant some serious spending to rebuild that nation and a comprehensive program to get it back on its feet.
It is a day late now and we are a dollar short now. If we think we can't win and don't have the resolves to win, the best thing to do is apologize for mucking shit up, get our friends out, and tell them that if they manage to win the civil war and get their shit together they will get some sweet trading perks and warm feelings.
They are not targeting "traitors". When you ram a truck bomb into a packed Shiite mosque, you just got kicked out of the 'resistance fighter' category and now are simply an extremist Sunni Arab fascist. It is one thing to attack a police station or even a government building filled with civilians. Both of those things could be argued to fall under 'resistance' operations even if civilians are the targets. When you load up a truck with explosives and hit a mosque of the religion that you are not during worship hours, you are now simply a religious fascist that has it in his head that the other guys are so wrong that they need to be completely purged, women, children, and all. The fact that these are religious fascist willing to blow themselves up to purge the other side just makes them all the worse.
At least a fucking Nazi has some sense of self preservation and isn't inclined to drive a truck bomb in a synagogue. These people that ram truck bombs into mosques are the lowest of the low. Personally, I hope that the same thing that happened to all of histories other genocidal fascist happens to these fuckers... I hope they get wiped so completely that their grand kids will be mortified by any other position then pacifism.
Cute but wrong numbers. First off, the 100,000 number is flat out wrong. Even less then objective sources put the number at no more 38,000 (http://www.iraqbodycount.net/). Official numbers put them even lower. Of those 38,000, the actual number that were civilians is unknown, but 80% is clearly an massive overshoot. I don't think we even managed pull off 80% civilian casualties when we firebombed cities during World War II.
As for death squads, those are not US security. If you think a bunch of pasty ass white guys or black guys from the US are running around Iraq undetected killing off civilians, you are simply delusional. We kind of stick out a little. Even if we manage to blend in, the second anyone opens their mouth it is pretty clear they don't speak the regional accent of Arabic. Further, even if we could operate covert death squads, they wouldn't be hunting down random civilians. People disappearing in the night HURTS the US. We want the damn place to be a merrily little economic power house like Japan. Economic growth and people vanishing at night are pretty mutually exclusive. It would be a pretty retarded move to work against our own interests.
There are some credible reports of death squads in Iraq though. These death squads are generally militia (either Sunni or Shiite). There are even some reports of Iraqi army units acting as death squads.
How many of those are part of the US puppet government (nobody really believes that our government invades one strategic target after another to "spread freedom" I hope) and its security force. These individuals can all be safely considered traitors to natives who want a free Iraq.
As for who is getting hurt in the suicide attacks, do some fucking research before opening your ignorant mouth. Go to google news and type in "iraq mosque bombing". Unless all Shiites (women and children) are "traitors" because they are paying in a Shiite mosque, it is pretty clear that you have an ethnic/religious conflict going on.
If the US had a dictator and a foriegn government kicked him over and tried to set up a democracy then get the fuck out, I can absolutely promise you that my response would not be to go suicide bomb blacks, Jews, or Christians. It would be one thing if the insurgents were just trying to fight American forces. The issue is that they are blowing up their fellow citizens indiscrimently. They are not even limiting their targets to security forces of their government. They are hitting purely civilian targets with the intention of killing clearly innocent people.
I might become a "terrorist" if my country was invaded, but I sure as shit would not resort to belowing up my fellow citizens whole sale. These is not an insurgent war. This is a religious civil war that the US made possible by kicking over a strong man. We have taken sides in this war and so we are targets.
Now, I am not making a judgement on if the US should be there or not, but to declare this simply an insurgent war utterly ignores the reality of the targets they are picking. They are not fighting like an occupied nation. They are are fighting like they are in the middle of a religious civil war that a foriegn power just so happens to of stuck its nose in.
To be honest, I would merrily in favor of giving them a 1 year notice and telling them to get their shit together because we are getting out. Then drawing back simply defend the Iraqi borders to keep outside parties from entering Iraq, and letting them deal with their own shit.
Hrm... so that explains why I voted for Badnark last election.
The X-Box (or play station or nintendo) is fine for some games, but PCs simply are the no-holds-bar winner in many types of games. When it comes to strategy games, MMORPGs, FPS, and real time strategy games, consoles simply don't cut it. There is a damn good reason why when playing Halo online PC users and x-box users are not allowed to play each other. The reason ISN'T because they can't make the two talk. The reason why the two can't play together is because the keyboard and mouse combination is vastly more powerful then fooling around with those thumb sticks. Console users would get pwn3d.
That is not to say that console gaming is bad. In fact, console gaming kicks the piss out of PC gaming in many ways. I would never want to play Mario or a driving game on a PC unless I had a game pad. Consoles are awesome because you can invite a bunch of friends, crash on the couch with four controllers, and beat on each other. Console games have their place, but so do PC games.
You can't stop science.
This isn't like a video game where you need to go down the 'horrible biological weapons' research tree in order to get horrible biological weapons. The same technology that lets you engineer a crop that can end world hunger or create new organs from scratch is the same path that leads to horrible weapons. You can't simply pick the good over the bad. By advancing forward you WILL uncover the bad and make available the tools to do terrible things. The only option you have left is to either grind to a technological standstill or simply do your best to fend off dangers as they come.
The only way to stop technology is to put in place a world wide totalitarian government that ruthlessly enforces 'sustainable' living and the freeze of technology. By "sustainable", I don't mean the crunchy American tree hugger version that involves eating a lot of soy and riding a bike while still enjoying central heating and electricity. I mean brutal Maoist style raw utilitarianism that merrily sheds lives in favor of the higher goal of a "sustainable" society out our present technology level.
This of course is an utter impossibility. Our system is like a shark. It moves forward or we all die. No little tweaks on society is going to make it so that we can maintain this state of technology forever. We will run out of resources and technology will either have an answer waiting or everything collapses.
The only answer is to cross your fingers and hope to hell that a Kurzweil utopia is right around the corner. The best thing we can do now is try and build defense when it is possible and blindly sprint forward hoping to hell that somewhere along the way an answer jumps out before something terrible happens.
I have absolutely no problem with meat. So long as food prices remain as low as they are, I fully intend to eat a couple of cows and a few flocks of chicken each year. My point is that AT WORST, Americans might have to change their diet a little if we truly managed to 'over populate'. Granted, the entire argument is stupid. We grow more and more food on less and less land. The amount of arable land in the US is dropping, yet our food production is going up. As much fun as it is to play environmental-whacko-alarmist, some times they need a splash of reality and the understanding that technology, in addition to social change is perfectly capable of solving many problems.
The US grows more then enough food to feed the entire fucking world. The average American diet might require 3 acres of arable land per person per year (which is a bullshit number or one people don't agree on as this http://www.planorganic.com/about%20us%20.htm offers a number of 1.5), but the average American eats a few dozen pounds of meat per year as well. There is no danger of starvation. At the very worst, if prices for food was to dramatically go up, we would have to eat less meat.
Your argument defies simple logic. Food cost are going down and have been going down for over a hundred years. This implies a growing surplice of food, not a shortage. You also blatantly ignore the fact that the US, like Europe and Japan, is in a death cycle. That means that the number of kids we are having per year does NOT replace the next generation. How is it that our population could possibly be going up then? Immigration. If it wasn't for immigration, the US would be in the same ugly death cycle that Western Europe and Japan is in, and we would have all the same social ills that come when more and more of your population is old, dependent, and not working.
Wealth kills the drive to reproduce. The only reason why this isn't a great tragedy in the US is because immigration helps to bring in more and more young strong hard working people.
In Soviet Russia, the citizens monitor the government! ...wait a second...
Oh shit.
Personally, I liked the original US system of copyright. It was almost perfect. If I recall correctly you could register creative material for a 14 year copyright. The default was that copy write was an opt-in system. In the current system, EVERYTHING is copyright by default. This fucking message is copyright. After the first 14 years was up, you could renew for another 14. The idea was that only stuff that was worth copywriting was copyright, and that it was for a LIMITED amount of time. With copyright laws as they are, they might as well be forever. ...yeah, someone has been reading FreeCulture...
As far as patents, they are an entirely different beast. The biggest issue I have with patents are the mind numbingly low bar they have set to get an idea patented. Further, they also tend to scoop very wide swaths of "ideas" that have little to do with the original idea. The entire idea that you can patent business models and methods is infuriating. Speaking as someone who has been involved in getting things patented, the entire system is completely fucked. Don't get me wrong, I am all for patents. Patents do serve a very useful purpose and do indeed help innovation. I just am not a fan of the way they are set up now.
I really have no problem with blowing a billion dollars to develop a new drug and getting a patent for it for a few years. That encourages innovation. Without that patent, they would be leery about spending so much money on developing novel new drugs. On the other hand, you have dumb shit like how a cereal bar have patents on "mixing different cereals" and filling a bowl 1/3 the way with milk. Patents in such cases are destroying innovation, not helping it.
I think the point people miss is that patents and copyright are NOT there to compensate IP holders or even the creators. They are there to encourage innovation and nothing more. When the law starts throwing wrenches in the cogs of innovation, the system is failing.
The question is certainly valid. Just because we lack an answer doesn't mean that we automatically assume OMFG it was GOD and JESUS!
400 years ago we couldn't explain lightening either. That doesn't make lightening mystical either. Hell, we couldn't explain germ theory or even a basic rough approximation of gravity. The lack of an explanation RIGHT NOW isn't proof of anything other then that we don't know the answer yet.
That said, if you are dying for a scientific answer, string theory has thrown out some tantalizing theories involving other exotic realities crashing together. I can't do much justice explaining them. The Elegant Universe offers up some musings from theoretical physics much better then I can.
In my opinion, building up a "God of Holes" is a rather sad and pathetic way to conduct religion. Religion should be something that you take on faith that describes how you should live in this world and prepare for the next. Religion shouldn't be something that you use to plug every and any gap in your preexisting knowledge. As history has shown very succinctly, a "God of Holes" tends to find itself quickly getting amputated by science on a regular basis.
If nothing else, your "God of Holes" is likely insulting to God himself. You have a brain, use it. Maybe God did create the universe, or maybe a god created something more ancient and fundamental that goes back farther then even the big bang. If God set in forth a motion of events to lead to this precise outcome, instead of trying to crudely plug the gaps in YOUR understanding of His universe by simply declaring it mysticism, try and understand how he built the universe.
More then one theoretical physicist has taken a look at how our universe has been put together and found it so elegant and beautiful that it has left them with a belief that at the very end there exists a higher power. That sure as shit doesn't mean that every time they run into a question they can't instantly answer they throw their hands up and declare that God did it. Instead, they press forward and trying and truly understand God's universe and its deepest inner working.
Ironically enough, if God did create the universe, a theoretical physicist is probably much closer to understanding the mind of God then your average bible thumping nut job whose eyes bleed every time evolution is mentioned. While the bible thumping nut job runs around like an idiot declaring the world a couple thousand years old and turning their mind off completely to understanding the universe, a physicist is carefully studying the most basic rules and laws of the universe. In a sense, the physicist is studying God's work and perhaps gaining some insight into the mind of God.
Patenting business models is ridiculous. End of story.
What if someone had patented the drive through window? What if someone had patented online MP3 stores? Hell, what if someone had patented the "business model" of operating a cell phone company? Would the world be better served if there was only a single company that could have a drive through window? Would we be better served if there was only a single corporation to buy MP3's from? Would the world be better served if only one corporation was allowed to cell cellular devices?
The simple fact of the matter is that "business models" are naturally sought after and vigorously pursued in a competitive environment regardless if there is patent protection or not.
People certainly balk at spending a billion dollars to bring a drug to market and through FDA approval only to have it instantly reproduced as a generic. There is certainly a good argument for these sort of patents for clearly novel and expensive to develop products. The same is not true for "business models". Business models don't require a multi-billion dollar lab and 15 years of R&D, testing, and validation by the FDA. Business models naturally develop as corporations seek to out do and one up each other.
The fact that efficient business models are quickly copied is a GOOD thing. Efficient business models SHOULD be copied so that the entire economy experiences increased efficiency and competition. Hell, that is what has made the American's so damn good at business. They might not have had a monopoly on good businesses ideas, but they are damn good at copying a winning business models and running with them resulting in mind numbingly high work productivity. When Japan started to beat on America in the 80's it was because the Japanese had started to copy and improve upon winning business models. The idea of developing a business model and having the rest of the market scramble to keep up is what drives us forward, not what holds us back.
What I read about the USA tells me that boundaries are fixed by the politicians in power. In theory they could use this power to fix things so that they win majorities in Congress with a minority of the popular vote. In practise they seem to use it to make all seats safe seats. So third parties are completely frozen out.
That is not completely true. How the lines are drawn varies from state to state. In the past, this power has mostly been in the hands of people getting voted in and it has resulted in some utterly bullshit lines being drawn. Thankfully, there has been a movement more towards like what the UK has with independent commissions drawing up the lines.
The hardest part is deciding how to draw lines. For instance, if you have a poor neighborhood and a rich neighborhood, how do you deal with it? Do you simply draw the line according to the simplest method (by county or what not), or do you try and group similar groups, such that you have a "poor" block and a "rich" block. Do you try and draw the lines such that elections are closely contested? If you do that though, don't you distort the will of the majority?
It is one thing to say "let someone else do it", but the next hard question is "how should they do it?" To be honest, I have no clue. I am curious; do you know how the British system works? Do they try and group similar neighborhoods, just draw lines arbitrarily, try and make elections closely contested?
There are more then drugs that take massive R&D budgets. I work in the nanotech field. This is a very boom of bust field. You basically have a pile of small companies taking as much venture capital as they can and researching as quickly as they can to build a viable product. These small companies basically take on the risk that large companies normally refuse to take. They pool together extremely creative and smart people who are willing to work on a hunch. Most of these start ups pay pocket change and equity. That is to say that you only end up making much of anything if the company as able to sell something.
Our economy depends greatly on these small companies. These companies take the risk that big companies won't. The only "assurance" they get is that if they actually make something work, they can patent it then sell it. Strip them of that shield, and these startup ventures would no long become viable. You would have to rely on large companies with large R&D budgets to plod along at their slow pace. Instead of having hundreds of small companies all banging away at ideas from different angles, you would have a small handful of large corporations with lumbering R&D labs. You would do great harm to the diversity of ideas and innovation that goes on.
Further, even when these companies fail (and they often do), they leave behind a blazed trail. As these companies push ahead into bridge the gap between practical and theory, they tend to publish a lot of papers and train a lot of people in these new fields. Their contribution isn't just a functional high tech product which is sold to a manufacturing corporation, but also the trail blazing they do in these emerging fields.
People dramatically underestimate how much of an affect these companies have on the economy. When you see something truly innovative come out, a lot of the time it was built of the work of these startups. Generally they build their innovative product, get bought up making the owner a rich guy who then goes out and starts up another company to do it all over again.
Don't get me wrong, speaking as someone who has to deal with IP all of the time, the patent system is really fucked up and needs a good thorough overhauling to weed out the 20:1 junk to worthwhile patents that get submitted. Hell, I would love to see copyright get a serious overhaul and consider myself a Free Culture advocate. That said, entirely stripping patent protection basically means that the guy with the most money wins. You don't want a system where innovation by smaller companies is near impossible and large companies only have to advance any kind of R&D beyond making sure that your reverse engineering division is top notch.