Are you joking? Did you play Torment? Torment is about as western of a game as you can get without playing Fallout. The only thing that made it 'not western' was that is forsook the traditional western setting. Even then, I would hardly call Planescape's setting all that inspired by anything eastern either.
In terms of gameplay it was about as archetypal "western" of CRPG as you can possibly get. "Western" CPRGs tend to be very open and offering a broad diversity of types of characters you can play. "Eastern" CRPGs tend to be far more story focused, but very linear. Both are obviously generalizations with exceptions.
If you want to look a the archetypal "western" and "eastern" CPRGs, you are talking about Fallout and Final Fantasy. Those two franchises sum up the extremes extremely well. Final Fantasy has a very heavy emphasis on a tight linear story with very set outcomes and character types. Fallout on the other hand is wide open allowing you to play pretty much any character you can conceive of in any manner you want, but at the expense any substantive cut scenes and some sacrifices on making a "tight" plot. They both have their merits. Calling a CPR "western" or "eastern" isn't a slur, just a broad generalized description of the style.
Would you take offense if I called Batman "western" in style and themes and Evangelion "eastern" in style in themes too? It isn't a slur. It is just an observation.
So instead we have an increase in religious discrimination...
Discrimination is a fact of life. It will never go away. The best you can do is make sure that it isn't institutionalized and try and educate people. Religious discrimination in the US is at an all time low. The few whack jobs who discriminate don't even number enough to organize into something like the KKK. At best, we have the same old boring marginalized neo-nazi's and the like who get the shit beat out of theme by vigilantes every time they make too much noise. Hell, I was at an anti-KKK rally just a few months back. There were about a dozen tools in white robes preaching the evils of Arabs and blacks in a cage surrounded by a few hundred very pissed off people ralling against them. If they didn't have a cage and riot squad protecting them, they would have been torn limb from limb. The only thing the average person is intolerant over is intolerance.... exploitation of anybody with a low income...
Right, because the coal mines of the of middle America, the cotton farms of Southern America, and the industrial factories of Northern America were always kind to the poor. Now the poor have terrible jobs like McDonalds, mopping the floors, and working at Wal-Mart. Oh god, the humanity of it all. Give me the good old days of black lung....the inability to effectively protest without being labeled a terrorist...
You have got to be joking me. You are complaining that people label protests terrorist? Hi! Welcome to the US! The first amendment is in full effect here. This means that you can call Bush a fucking psycho Nazi from hell come to eat little children, and his dumb red neck supporters can call you terrorist. You don't have a "right" to not be called inane names. Any and every public group in the US gets names flung at them, from right wing think tanks to ultra-left environmentalist groups. If you are a public group or movement, someone is going to call you names. Suck it up and try and remember the old childhood saying. Sticks and stones will break my bones......and people living to work not working to live.
Remember back in the good old days when this didn't happen? Remember when we had a large social safety net, adequate health care for all, and no one worked long hard hours? Oh shit. That time never existed.
If you are living to work, I suggest cutting the fuck back on your spending, getting a new job, and getting your life in order. I personally have followed my own advice and refused jobs that had a slave driver as a boss. Some people get off on sacrificing their lives for few extra dollars. More power (and money) to them.
You are not going to starve in the US. If you have ever left the US and seen a third world nation you will quickly realize that even if you lived in the darkest US ghetto, you have in fact never actually seen a starving person in your entire life. You have it good, your hours are not that long, and the pay is pretty damn good. Don't like what you have? Get something else. If you have use citizenship, even a high school drop out can work to do more then live. Granted, you might not live in the lap of luxury, but you sure as shit don't need to work 80 hours a week to keep from starving to death.
As for people doing getaways? They're criminals - what stops them from buying a rocket to shoot down drones? They don't cost that much on the black market supposedly and a criminal isn't going to care where the thing lands as long as they can get away. At least with a police helicopter the pilot has a damn good reason for landing the thing intact and not on someone's house.
I'm sorry, but are you a fucking idiot? Do you think your person who gets into a high speed chase has a fucking anti-aircraft missile on hand? Have you ever heard of a criminal using a fucking rocket to shoot down a police helicopter? Have you ever even heard of a police helicopter being shot do
And we'll do it again and again and again because the people that are in power now are the children of the people in power then and are taught AND BELIEVE the same as their parents.
No, we won't and we haven't. We couldn't achieve the civil rights abuses that we already have had if we tried. If you are suggesting that this nation is worse off then say 1940, you are bat shit crazy. We will never ever again have segregation laws. Women will never again make up a minority of the college educated people in this world. No, people do not feel the same way they did in 1940. The fact that 57% of all college grads are women pretty squarely rebukes this insane belief. Times and people have changed. The past was not a fairy tale land and today the nightmare. Only in our fairytale imagination can we delude ourselves into thinking that things have actually gotten worse.
Instead we live in a country where we're still fighting a war in a foreign land that uses children occasinally for suicide bombers, has no strategic value other than oil, is eating soldiers and resources by the C5-full, and is rife with corporate greed.
We are on what, year 3 of this conflict? We have lost fewer than 2,500 soldiers. That makes Iraq a lesser killer in the US then swimming pools. Get a grip on reality. We have fought major wars at least once every 20 years since 1900. World War I, World War II, Korea, and Vietnam make Iraq look like pocket change. Further, of all of those wars, only Iraq was fought with an all volunteer army. I don't know about you, but I consider a war with under 3000 casualties fought with a volunteer army a pretty damn big improvement over draft armies that managed to score hundreds of thousands of casualties and kill millions in their wake. Again, you are dealing with some serious delusional revisionist history if you think things are getting worse and NOW is the time to run to Canada. You missed the boat. If you don't like this shit, your great grand parents should have bailed because things are only getting better, not worse.
Oh and then there's our internal conflicts like a corrupt government that is following the instructions of large corporations and to hell with it's people, that produces drugs with multiple side-effects so they can get the drugs to market and make money at the expense of people's lives (you used to only be allowed one - maybe)...
Right. Unlike in the good old days when the only psyche drug was lithium which was great shit with no side effects. Unlike in the good old days when all surgery involved being split down the middle, pulled apart, and having a pretty moderate to fair chance of being killed. Unlike in the good old days when poorly tested birth control drugs resulted in a rash of babies being born without limbs. In these new and horrible day of drug company abuse, for some reason we seem to be living longer and longer. Why do you think that is? Have we collectively suddenly started eating better (I'll give you a hint, the answer is no, we eat like shit)? Again, you are suffering from some hardcore revisionist history if you think medicine has somehow gotten worse. You are also blatantly ignoring the fact that even though we exercise less and eat worse, we keep on living longer and longer. The good old days when America was wonderful and proper never existed.
Because those UAVs have only one use - surveillance. Do you honestly believe that they are only going to use them for crowd control? It's too far and too fast down the "slippery slope" - almost unchecked at this point. Once they get permission to fly them it will be easy enough to widen the search pattern so that they cover the local areas for any "terrorist" - which if you recall by law is whatever GWB or Congress Co. says one is. How many sheeple are going to just think "Oh! A Drone! There must be a crowd close by!" and let it pass?
Have you ever seen a police helicopter? What did you do when you did? Did you freak the fuck out because they
I await the inevitable mod down by those that think I'm OT, Troll, Overrated, or Flamebait...
Right. Take a look at this thread. Do you see piles of people saying "Hey guys, be chill, they are just UAVs taking top down shots at people in public?" Not really. At worst you are going to get an overrated for adding nothing to the conversation then the usual "Fuck it! I'm moving to Canada!". Making this line of thinking roughly as reasonable as the "some country did something horrible" story getting responded to with "yeah, but the US sucks too!!!11!!"
At least we have not imprisoned citizens of Japanese ancestry, segregate out the blacks, kept the women in the damn kitchen, draft everyone of age into the army, and then went out and utterly flatten and destroy cities, kill tens of millions in indiscriminate bombing, and then occupy at a couple of civilizations, doesn't it?
Oh wait, we have.
Get a grip on reality. The US has steadily gotten better. The "good old days" as you seem to remember them are a delusion. Hell, it wasn't like Vietnam and the atrocities committed on the citizens (via the draft) and others (via machine guns, bombs, napalm, Agent Orange, exc.) are a distant memory. Exactly what good old days are you pining away for?
The good old days are here. Discrimination is lower then at any point in history, women make up 57% of college gradates, we have not imprisoned every single person of the same ancestry as we are fighting, and the people are so sensitized to war that some psycho bitch who apparently likes naked Arab men gets the headlines for being an example of the horrific treatment of an occupied nation (versus, you know, US soldiers lining women and children up on the street and executing them Vietnam style).
Is the best we can find to bitch at being that some fat cop is going to get a fly a UAV to watch a large gathering rather then have to get up off his ass and watch it on foot? Have you ever been to any large gathering of people in the public space? There are always a pile of cops there to break up fights, keep people from pouring into the traffic, and keep the counter-protests for getting murdered/murdering someone. So who gives a flying fuck if instead of one more cop in a cruiser standing on the ground with a beating stick they have a UAV?
That is the sound of my point going way over your head.
To dismiss this research as simply "xenophobia" is rather delusional.
Try and take a look back at what I wrote. I said that: A) Japan is xenophobic compared to the US.
1) I showed that this is true by giving you links explaing their immigration policies. B) This higher level of xenophobia has resulted in more interest in finding ways to reduce the demand for labor that other nations (namely the US) would simply fill with immigrants from poorer nations.
There are both true statements. Japan has had a near constant labor shortage since the end of World War II. Japan could easily fill their labor shortage by opening up the many poorer nations around them. Japan DOES have a labor shortage problem and Japan COULD fix it by opening up to immigration. The growing size of their already massive retired persons population is simply straining the labor shortages. Japan realizes that they have a demographic problem and Japan does not want to solve it by allowing in influx of immigrants. Japan has in the past and continues to seek methods of automation that allows them to continue operating despite labor shortages. This is a FACT, not a moral judgments.
Understanding why something happens isn't a moral judgment. In this case, Japan is driven to find solutions to problems that Americans are less worried about because Japan has different demographics and immigration laws.
I am terribly sorry if my facts offended you, but take a deep breath, stop taking offense, and realize that I was explaining what is motivating them, not passing some sort of judgment on the research.
If you really want to get old school in terms of what a "liberal" is, Libertarians are the only "true" liberals left. They believe in traditional liberal economies (free trade, open market) and liberal society (an open society, free speech, fuck whoever you want, exc). I call myself a moderate libertarian, but just for shits and giggles I like to call myself an old sk00l liberal just to confuse the kiddies.
Modern day American political parties irritate me. I get the choose between some nuts who think that Jesus, capitalism, complete fiscal irresponsibility, and a surveillance society all go together, or I can pick the nuts who want more socialism, a liberal society, a nanny state, complete fiscal irresponsibility, and a kinda-sorta surveillance society. Shit, most of that stuff is contradictory even within the party. Every time I hear a "conservative" talk about fiscal responsibility I want to smack him in the face.
Bah. I am happy with how I vote each and every year. I vote libertarian. Would I really want those crazy bastards to win? Hell no. They have their head shoved very far up their ass when it comes to reality. That said, I sure as shit don't want a Republican or Democrat to win. Better to just vote "fuck you" and hope and vain that one of the party moves to a more moderate libertarian position.
Interesting to note that even though the US has tougher immigration and naturalization policies than Japan...
Bullshit. Look up the word "jus sanguinis". Better yet, let me just tell you what it means.
Japan is a jus sanguinis state, meaning that it recognizes citizenship by blood, not by birth (as is the case in the United States, Ireland and many other countries). Article 2 provides three situations in which a person can become a Japanese citizen at birth:
1) When either parent is a Japanese citizen at the time of birth 2) When the father dies before the birth and is a Japanese citizen at the time of death 3) When the person is born on Japanese soil and both parents are unknown or stateless These rules are very strictly applied, which often creates problems for unmarried non-Japanese mothers. In such cases, unless the Japanese father gives express recognition of paternity before the birth, the child is generally not recognized as a Japanese citizen
I think the bigger reason why the US is not pouring money into elderly helping robots is that the US is significantly less xenophobic then Japan. The US is happy to throw open the borders and let cheap labor in. Robots are highly unlikely to be cheaper then Mexican labor any time soon. Japan on the other hand has fanatically strict anti-immigration rules and are extremely xenophobic. Their xenophobia goes double and triple if you are black or another Asian.
To give you an idea of there level of xenophobia and anti-immigration policies, my dad told me a story about the last time he visited Japan on business. Apparently he was sitting around with Japanese colleagues when the server came over. The Japanese at the table immediately identified her as a non-Japanese. My dad ended up talking to her later on that night and her sad story turns to be that she was the descendent of Koreans - two generations ago. She and her parents were both born in Japan but were still not considered citizens. She had a family line that started in Japan since just before the invention flight, yet she still wasn't considered a citizen.
To be fair to Japan, they are not the only ones. A lot of Asian nations still have large (but very slowly shrinking) xenophobic population. My girlfriend's mother for instance is from Taiwanese. I love her to death, but when it comes to Japanese and blacks she is racist enough that could easily sit around bullshitting with the worst American racists you can imagine.
Science makes bold predictions, and it moves at a snails pace. We're not any different than people who lived 20 years ago, just like people who lived 20 years ago were not that different than people who lived 40 years ago. Consider how many major changes there have been in the past 100 years? Automobiles, television, and airplains. If you then throw out those 100 years, and go back from 1800 to 1500, how much change was there in 300 years? Someone invents gunpowder and that is the major catalyst of change.
Science make bold and utterly false prediction, just to have some other upstart technology steal the show. Sure, we don't have flying cars. We do have a world wide communications grid though that is having rapidly changing society in ways that a few flying cars couldn't even begin to compete with. The reason why science seems slow these days is because we are so damn used to change.
Few people even remember what it was like to look up information before Google. A lot of people forget that less then 10 years ago you couldn't instant get in contact with anyone you wanted via a cell phone. While we were waiting for rocket ships, a significantly more profound technology in the guise of the Internet and communications technology made itself at home. Multinational corporations used to be disjointed heads only vaguely sharing the same financial body, now they are well oiled machines that operate with ease across thousands of miles.
There absolutely have been profound changes in just the past 20 years. Our society is being remolded in reshaped by technology at a blinding speed. The only reason why we can look back with a 'ho-hum' attitude is that one of the changes this technology has made to our society is a near complete acceptance of constant change. Most people complain that nothing change all the while ignoring the fact that they get pissed off when someone leaves their cell phone off or can't find an address or a movie time without using the Internet.
The future is here and we are running head long into it faster and faster. Open your eyes to the science and society that is rapidly changing around you and stop looking for flying cars.
We ARE a paradigm shift though. In the same way a fungus is no better then a cloud of hydrogen or a few organic molecules, there is a fundamental difference between them. Humanity absolutely has created a new paradigm with technology, and is likely well on its way to use technology to create another one through strong AI or what not. If in a billion years from now the galaxy is saturated with strong AI or something else that has its roots in humanity, well, if nothing else we could say that we left a lasting mark.
Humanity does offer a potential paradigm shift in the same way life was a paradigm shift from simple organics. Nature might not give that any more or less value, but we certainly can. Is it hubris to feel pride over such things? Sure. Then again, I also feel pride that I can understand the concept of hubris and feel pride, while a lump of hydrogen can't. Maybe I am just vain that way. Shit, that is another human quality too, isn't it?
Yeah, well, this "pond scum" is going to transcend biologics within the next 100 years and spread its intelligence across the universe. No, global warming is not going to kill us even if the most dire prediction are true. This pond scum has a nasty habit of survival and environmental manipulation.
If this "pond scum" for some reason doesn't spread itself to the wind to cover every nook and cranny within its little sphere of light, it is only because it doesn't want to or someone else did it first.
I know knocking humanity is cool and all, but passing off humanities achievements and its potential to reshape the universe in ways that make supernovas look trivial is just silly. Humanity (as far as we can tell) IS something unique. We are the next step in a grand evolution that has taken literally billions of years. Nuclear parts formed atoms, atoms formed molecules, molecules formed complex organic molecules, complex organic molecules formed the beginnings of life, the beginnings of life developed into diverse single celled organism, single celled organisms developed into multi-cellular organism, multi-cellular organisms developed into animals with complex behavior, animals with complex behavior developed into intelligent creatures, intelligent creatures developed technology.
Ever since the first atoms were formed this 'evolution' has speed along its way developing new paradigm shifts. We tend to forget that the evolution was taking place long before life and that life is just one of the newest attempts towards greater complexity. Technology is just the latest step in this long chain of evolution. What is next? Transcended biotech humans? Strong AI? Who knows? Whatever the case, I would bet my bottom dollar that whatever is next, we are apart of it.
Pond scum we might be, but I personally think that this pond scum is going to leave a lasting mark on this universe.
Then again, I could have just been reading too much Kurzweil
If nobody ever signed up at all, there would be no WARS. Period.
That is an utterly untrue statement. Many nations still have a draft, in which case you are signed up at the barrel of a gun. Hell, I was surprised to learn from my Austrian ex-girlfriend that they still draft every male citizen in Austria of all places (granted, you can do also choose to work as a civil servant for a longer period of time if you want to get out of military service).
A lack of volunteers has never stopped anyone from starting a war.
This day and age a lack of volunteers in the US might present a substantial obstacle to starting a war due to the very strong stigma associated with a draft. In the end though, if say China invaded Taiwan and the US at the time decided it wanted to rumble, it would rumble, volunteers or not. If it couldn't find enough volunteers, it would simply start drafting people.
The genie has been out of the bottle for a good 150 years or so. Nation states have been given enough power to force their citizens to fight, regardless if they want to or not. A lack of voluntary cooperation isn't stopping anyone.
I fail to see how this is a first amendment issue. Nowhere in the first amendment does it say nor even imply that newspapers are immune from following the law.
The issue is this; if they had simply gotten classified information from the coroner in question, they would be a-okay. The coroner is in trouble, but they would be fine. The problem comes in when they try and access the data themselves by logging on AS the coroner. That IS a hacking attempt which is a violation of the law.
Moral of the story? If you are a newspaper and want to publish material that was obtained illegally, DON'T be the one who did the illegal obtaining.
Clearly it isn't good for all uses. Does it sound damn tempting for a person a few gig of personal documents they want backedup? Hell yes. HDs and DvDs can break or be lost. For a couple of bucks a month you could back up everything, have it in a safe place that is not going to break or burn down, and know exactly where it is.
Google has NOT been ordered to "hand over all the search data". Google has not been ordered to do anything in fact. The judge has hinted that he intends to give the government a random sampling of the websites Google has indexed, but not individual search terms.
As far as the government wanting a pile of businesses data bases to search for porn or what not, that is simply illegal and would result in a prompt judicial smack down. If they want to know what is on someone's serve, they need to do it the old fashion way, with a search warrant... well, in theory at least. The executive branch these days seems to consider search warrants as being optional.
While we are airing out misconceptions... I hear you Europeans have a sadomasochistic sex fetish. Is that true? I dated and Austrian woman who came to the US for a few months while in college. Let me tell you, that woman did not convince me that that is just a stereotype. Shit, I still have the scars and burn marks, and that woman was a virgin when I started dating her...
I actually have a lot of faith in the court systems. You clearly do not understand what the ruling was that lead to the Florida results. Further, the judge that told the ID folks in no uncertain terms to go fuck themselves in Dover was appointed by G.W. Bush. The courts take their job damn seriously. I see no evidence of the court system breaking down. Are there instances of crappy rulings? Sure, but the system is run by humans so I sorta expect that. On the most though, do they take what they do seriously? Hell yes.
You see, not only is this the "land of the free", much to the surprise and horror of tyrants everywhere, it is also "land of the lawyers and civil societies" who love nothing more then a good old fashion 1st amendment smack down.
This law will not make it out of committee.
This law will not make it through the House.
This law will make it to the president's desk.
Should this law actually somehow become law, it absolutely will contested and struck down by the courts.
The reason why you let the citizens of a nation arm themselves isn't so that you can shoot politicians when they piss you off (no matter how appealing that might sound at times). The reason why you let citizens arm themselves is two fold.
First, bad guys will arm themselves like it not. Making arms illegal hampers their ability to arm, but they will always find their ways. Honest citizens who do not break the law on the other hand, and so when firearms are made illegal it leaves the criminals armed and the honest citizens unarmed. This is hardly an ideal state of affairs.
Second, allowing your citizenry to arm prevents the police from holding a monopoly on force. A citizen should not have to wait for the police to show up to save them if a criminal is breaking into their house or threatening to harm them. A citizen should have the means to defend themselves, and the truth is that a firearm is pretty much it when it comes to self defense. Only a gun is going to allow a 100 pound woman be able to fight off a 200 pound man. Certainly not all citizens will choose to arm themselves, and this is of course fine, but if someone feels that their life is in danger and they do not trust the police protect them, they should have the option of defending themselves. Banning firearms is in affect telling your citizens that they can not defend themselves against criminals in any other manner then waiting for the police to show up.
As far as revolution and the like, an armed citizenry is a populace that can inspire a little fear in politicians. In this day and age that means almost nothing because, as much as we like to bitch, our government is pretty evenhanded and fair. Most people have the things that they need to survive (and then some) and the thought of 'revolution' in the violent sense of the word is about as far from anyone's mind as you can imagine. We still have plenty of political options sitting around that we have yet to use to change things if we really want to. When the constitution was being framed this really was not true. The threat of an outside force conquering the country or even an internal force mucking things up was real. It certainly could be a real threat again in the not-so-foreseeable future.
I consider the need for revolution remote and really don't weight it much in the gun issue. The simple right to self defense is a far more important issue to me then the need for the tools of an unlikely revolution. But, as the grand parent poster pointed out in his own lovable red neck NRA fan way, it isn't a bad thing to keep a few guns around... just in case.
First, this proposed law will get shot pretty much instantly by the courts should it pass the senate (which it wont). This proposed law pretty much pisses on the first amendment, something that should be clear to senate, and something that is certainly clear to the courts. I really am not the least bit worried.
That said, I think that this law inspires me to want a law of my own. Let's call my new law the "three strikes, now stop fucking with the constitution" law. Any congressman that votes for three laws that are later over turned on the grounds of it being unconstitutional should have their seat revoked for their absolute and utter incompetence in upholding the constitution of the United States.
These worthless fuckers have sworn an oath to the constitution, and it really fucking pisses me off when they promptly turn around and drop one of these shit for laws. Not only does it piss me off that they are so incompetent as to not see the clear violation of the constitution that they are proposing, but it also pisses me off that my tax money has to be pissed away overturning these steaming piles of shit.
Would a "three strikes, now STFU and stop messing with the constitution law" be great? Sure. It won't happen, so let's do the next best thing. STOP VOTING FOR THESE DUMB FUCKER. I am not sure who to be more pissed off at, the spineless incompetent politicians that seem to think that upholding the constitution is optional, or the worthless and lazy voters that blindly support their parties candidate and vote for these dumb fucker.
Bah. This crap will be shot down. Thankfully, the court system still mostly works and takes its responsibility to the constitution seriously. It still pisses me off though that it even needs to go that far.
Why should policians be punished for such a simple mistake?
I am utterly unsympathetic. You would think that out of the hundreds of members of parliament/congress (pick your system), at least one of these idiots would bother to actually analyze the law, or at the very least have an aid do so. Politicians have been given and a charter on the limits of their powers. It is up to THEM to see that they follow their rules. One time is a mistake. Two times is incompetence. Three times is an utter failure to uphold your oath to the constitution and the people that it protects.
Whenever a politician votes for a law that will simply be forbidden to come into affect because it is unconstitutional, they are wasting MY money. They are pissing away time that they should be spending trying to solve real problem. They are wasting my money because not only do I have to pay these bastards, but I also have to pay the state lawyers and judges that eventually need to strike this crap down.
I am sick of politicians making bills 300 pages long that later then need to be picked apart by the courts. If this new "three strikes, now STFU" rule was put into affect, I imagine it would have the side affect of making politicians leery of throwing their name on a 300 page bill that they have not bothered to read. GOOD. This is a bonus, no a negative. Politicians have become lazy incompetent bastards that can't even seem to uphold their basic obligations. Punishment should be doled out to the worthless ingrates for their failure to uphold even the most basic requirements of their job. If that meant that the current crop of incompetent politicians were wiped clean and the next batch were people willing to read the shit they sign and understand its implications, GOOD.
Care to provide any kind of proof that patents have anything to do with this whatsoever?
Do you think that a pharmaceutical company would drop a billion dollars pushing a drug from discovery, to lab testing, to FDA approval if they were not guaranteed at least a few years to sell the drug without someone copying them for pocket change and under cutting them before they can turn a profit?
IMHO, copyrights can't survive the information age, but patents are far more evil. The imposition of patents in most cases is nothing short of plain physical coercion. The fact is that 99% of invention is progressive, just another stage built upon the countless other layers of understanding and invention already out there. The only competition that patents promote is trying to lock out new inventions that might allow new technology to bypass your patent portfolio.
That simply isn't true. There are issues with the patent system, but if you feel that 99% of the time they cause harm, you really just don't understand the entire issue. I can think of at least one industry that would literally die over night if patents were suddenly done away with.
Pharmaceutical research would pretty much grind to a halt without IP laws. It can take up to a billion dollars to push a single drug from discovery, to lab testing, past regulation, and into production. No one is going to drop a billion dollars just to have their closest competitor copy what they just achieved at not cost to themselves. It simply would not happen.
This is the case in a lot of leading edge fields. In a lot of fields you need to create something that is amazing complex and capital intensive. You need to drop millions or billions of dollars on developing a product before it becomes viable. IP protection is the only thing that gives you any sort of assurance that if you find something, someone just can't steal it.
I am not saying that the current IP system is all roses. In fact, it down right sucks in many ways. That said, claiming that IP in general is a great evil that needs to be done away with is utterly ignoring the role it serves in helping to spur R&D work.
I have an idea for a new law. Lets call this the "three strikes, now stop fucking with the constitution rule".
The way this bill would work is that any politician that votes for three bills that are later deemed unconstitutional by the courts and are prevented from coming into effect is kicked out of office. Any politician that blatantly fails to do their duty to uphold the constitution of the US three times in a row should have their ass thrown from office. End of story. They have violated the trust of the people far too many times and failed to uphold their oath to the constitution.
This is a non-story. This stupid bill, even if it is passed will be promptly struck down by the courts. What pisses me off is that I keep having to read about these stupid bills being passed and struck down. Someone needs to smack some sense into these dumb fuckers heads.
Slashdot Mirror
Are you joking? Did you play Torment? Torment is about as western of a game as you can get without playing Fallout. The only thing that made it 'not western' was that is forsook the traditional western setting. Even then, I would hardly call Planescape's setting all that inspired by anything eastern either.
In terms of gameplay it was about as archetypal "western" of CRPG as you can possibly get. "Western" CPRGs tend to be very open and offering a broad diversity of types of characters you can play. "Eastern" CRPGs tend to be far more story focused, but very linear. Both are obviously generalizations with exceptions.
If you want to look a the archetypal "western" and "eastern" CPRGs, you are talking about Fallout and Final Fantasy. Those two franchises sum up the extremes extremely well. Final Fantasy has a very heavy emphasis on a tight linear story with very set outcomes and character types. Fallout on the other hand is wide open allowing you to play pretty much any character you can conceive of in any manner you want, but at the expense any substantive cut scenes and some sacrifices on making a "tight" plot. They both have their merits. Calling a CPR "western" or "eastern" isn't a slur, just a broad generalized description of the style.
Would you take offense if I called Batman "western" in style and themes and Evangelion "eastern" in style in themes too? It isn't a slur. It is just an observation.
So instead we have an increase in religious discrimination...
... exploitation of anybody with a low income...
...the inability to effectively protest without being labeled a terrorist...
...and people living to work not working to live.
Discrimination is a fact of life. It will never go away. The best you can do is make sure that it isn't institutionalized and try and educate people. Religious discrimination in the US is at an all time low. The few whack jobs who discriminate don't even number enough to organize into something like the KKK. At best, we have the same old boring marginalized neo-nazi's and the like who get the shit beat out of theme by vigilantes every time they make too much noise. Hell, I was at an anti-KKK rally just a few months back. There were about a dozen tools in white robes preaching the evils of Arabs and blacks in a cage surrounded by a few hundred very pissed off people ralling against them. If they didn't have a cage and riot squad protecting them, they would have been torn limb from limb. The only thing the average person is intolerant over is intolerance.
Right, because the coal mines of the of middle America, the cotton farms of Southern America, and the industrial factories of Northern America were always kind to the poor. Now the poor have terrible jobs like McDonalds, mopping the floors, and working at Wal-Mart. Oh god, the humanity of it all. Give me the good old days of black lung.
You have got to be joking me. You are complaining that people label protests terrorist? Hi! Welcome to the US! The first amendment is in full effect here. This means that you can call Bush a fucking psycho Nazi from hell come to eat little children, and his dumb red neck supporters can call you terrorist. You don't have a "right" to not be called inane names. Any and every public group in the US gets names flung at them, from right wing think tanks to ultra-left environmentalist groups. If you are a public group or movement, someone is going to call you names. Suck it up and try and remember the old childhood saying. Sticks and stones will break my bones...
Remember back in the good old days when this didn't happen? Remember when we had a large social safety net, adequate health care for all, and no one worked long hard hours? Oh shit. That time never existed.
If you are living to work, I suggest cutting the fuck back on your spending, getting a new job, and getting your life in order. I personally have followed my own advice and refused jobs that had a slave driver as a boss. Some people get off on sacrificing their lives for few extra dollars. More power (and money) to them.
You are not going to starve in the US. If you have ever left the US and seen a third world nation you will quickly realize that even if you lived in the darkest US ghetto, you have in fact never actually seen a starving person in your entire life. You have it good, your hours are not that long, and the pay is pretty damn good. Don't like what you have? Get something else. If you have use citizenship, even a high school drop out can work to do more then live. Granted, you might not live in the lap of luxury, but you sure as shit don't need to work 80 hours a week to keep from starving to death.
As for people doing getaways? They're criminals - what stops them from buying a rocket to shoot down drones? They don't cost that much on the black market supposedly and a criminal isn't going to care where the thing lands as long as they can get away. At least with a police helicopter the pilot has a damn good reason for landing the thing intact and not on someone's house.
I'm sorry, but are you a fucking idiot? Do you think your person who gets into a high speed chase has a fucking anti-aircraft missile on hand? Have you ever heard of a criminal using a fucking rocket to shoot down a police helicopter? Have you ever even heard of a police helicopter being shot do
And we'll do it again and again and again because the people that are in power now are the children of the people in power then and are taught AND BELIEVE the same as their parents.
No, we won't and we haven't. We couldn't achieve the civil rights abuses that we already have had if we tried. If you are suggesting that this nation is worse off then say 1940, you are bat shit crazy. We will never ever again have segregation laws. Women will never again make up a minority of the college educated people in this world. No, people do not feel the same way they did in 1940. The fact that 57% of all college grads are women pretty squarely rebukes this insane belief. Times and people have changed. The past was not a fairy tale land and today the nightmare. Only in our fairytale imagination can we delude ourselves into thinking that things have actually gotten worse.
Instead we live in a country where we're still fighting a war in a foreign land that uses children occasinally for suicide bombers, has no strategic value other than oil, is eating soldiers and resources by the C5-full, and is rife with corporate greed.
We are on what, year 3 of this conflict? We have lost fewer than 2,500 soldiers. That makes Iraq a lesser killer in the US then swimming pools. Get a grip on reality. We have fought major wars at least once every 20 years since 1900. World War I, World War II, Korea, and Vietnam make Iraq look like pocket change. Further, of all of those wars, only Iraq was fought with an all volunteer army. I don't know about you, but I consider a war with under 3000 casualties fought with a volunteer army a pretty damn big improvement over draft armies that managed to score hundreds of thousands of casualties and kill millions in their wake. Again, you are dealing with some serious delusional revisionist history if you think things are getting worse and NOW is the time to run to Canada. You missed the boat. If you don't like this shit, your great grand parents should have bailed because things are only getting better, not worse.
Oh and then there's our internal conflicts like a corrupt government that is following the instructions of large corporations and to hell with it's people, that produces drugs with multiple side-effects so they can get the drugs to market and make money at the expense of people's lives (you used to only be allowed one - maybe)...
Right. Unlike in the good old days when the only psyche drug was lithium which was great shit with no side effects. Unlike in the good old days when all surgery involved being split down the middle, pulled apart, and having a pretty moderate to fair chance of being killed. Unlike in the good old days when poorly tested birth control drugs resulted in a rash of babies being born without limbs. In these new and horrible day of drug company abuse, for some reason we seem to be living longer and longer. Why do you think that is? Have we collectively suddenly started eating better (I'll give you a hint, the answer is no, we eat like shit)? Again, you are suffering from some hardcore revisionist history if you think medicine has somehow gotten worse. You are also blatantly ignoring the fact that even though we exercise less and eat worse, we keep on living longer and longer. The good old days when America was wonderful and proper never existed.
Because those UAVs have only one use - surveillance. Do you honestly believe that they are only going to use them for crowd control? It's too far and too fast down the "slippery slope" - almost unchecked at this point. Once they get permission to fly them it will be easy enough to widen the search pattern so that they cover the local areas for any "terrorist" - which if you recall by law is whatever GWB or Congress Co. says one is. How many sheeple are going to just think "Oh! A Drone! There must be a crowd close by!" and let it pass?
Have you ever seen a police helicopter? What did you do when you did? Did you freak the fuck out because they
I await the inevitable mod down by those that think I'm OT, Troll, Overrated, or Flamebait...
Right. Take a look at this thread. Do you see piles of people saying "Hey guys, be chill, they are just UAVs taking top down shots at people in public?" Not really. At worst you are going to get an overrated for adding nothing to the conversation then the usual "Fuck it! I'm moving to Canada!". Making this line of thinking roughly as reasonable as the "some country did something horrible" story getting responded to with "yeah, but the US sucks too!!!11!!"
At least we have not imprisoned citizens of Japanese ancestry, segregate out the blacks, kept the women in the damn kitchen, draft everyone of age into the army, and then went out and utterly flatten and destroy cities, kill tens of millions in indiscriminate bombing, and then occupy at a couple of civilizations, doesn't it?
Oh wait, we have.
Get a grip on reality. The US has steadily gotten better. The "good old days" as you seem to remember them are a delusion. Hell, it wasn't like Vietnam and the atrocities committed on the citizens (via the draft) and others (via machine guns, bombs, napalm, Agent Orange, exc.) are a distant memory. Exactly what good old days are you pining away for?
The good old days are here. Discrimination is lower then at any point in history, women make up 57% of college gradates, we have not imprisoned every single person of the same ancestry as we are fighting, and the people are so sensitized to war that some psycho bitch who apparently likes naked Arab men gets the headlines for being an example of the horrific treatment of an occupied nation (versus, you know, US soldiers lining women and children up on the street and executing them Vietnam style).
Is the best we can find to bitch at being that some fat cop is going to get a fly a UAV to watch a large gathering rather then have to get up off his ass and watch it on foot? Have you ever been to any large gathering of people in the public space? There are always a pile of cops there to break up fights, keep people from pouring into the traffic, and keep the counter-protests for getting murdered/murdering someone. So who gives a flying fuck if instead of one more cop in a cruiser standing on the ground with a beating stick they have a UAV?
*Woosh!*
That is the sound of my point going way over your head.
To dismiss this research as simply "xenophobia" is rather delusional.
Try and take a look back at what I wrote. I said that:
A) Japan is xenophobic compared to the US.
1) I showed that this is true by giving you links explaing their immigration policies.
B) This higher level of xenophobia has resulted in more interest in finding ways to reduce the demand for labor that other nations (namely the US) would simply fill with immigrants from poorer nations.
There are both true statements. Japan has had a near constant labor shortage since the end of World War II. Japan could easily fill their labor shortage by opening up the many poorer nations around them. Japan DOES have a labor shortage problem and Japan COULD fix it by opening up to immigration. The growing size of their already massive retired persons population is simply straining the labor shortages. Japan realizes that they have a demographic problem and Japan does not want to solve it by allowing in influx of immigrants. Japan has in the past and continues to seek methods of automation that allows them to continue operating despite labor shortages. This is a FACT, not a moral judgments.
Understanding why something happens isn't a moral judgment. In this case, Japan is driven to find solutions to problems that Americans are less worried about because Japan has different demographics and immigration laws.
I am terribly sorry if my facts offended you, but take a deep breath, stop taking offense, and realize that I was explaining what is motivating them, not passing some sort of judgment on the research.
If you really want to get old school in terms of what a "liberal" is, Libertarians are the only "true" liberals left. They believe in traditional liberal economies (free trade, open market) and liberal society (an open society, free speech, fuck whoever you want, exc). I call myself a moderate libertarian, but just for shits and giggles I like to call myself an old sk00l liberal just to confuse the kiddies.
Modern day American political parties irritate me. I get the choose between some nuts who think that Jesus, capitalism, complete fiscal irresponsibility, and a surveillance society all go together, or I can pick the nuts who want more socialism, a liberal society, a nanny state, complete fiscal irresponsibility, and a kinda-sorta surveillance society. Shit, most of that stuff is contradictory even within the party. Every time I hear a "conservative" talk about fiscal responsibility I want to smack him in the face.
Bah. I am happy with how I vote each and every year. I vote libertarian. Would I really want those crazy bastards to win? Hell no. They have their head shoved very far up their ass when it comes to reality. That said, I sure as shit don't want a Republican or Democrat to win. Better to just vote "fuck you" and hope and vain that one of the party moves to a more moderate libertarian position.
Interesting to note that even though the US has tougher immigration and naturalization policies than Japan...
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Bullshit. Look up the word "jus sanguinis". Better yet, let me just tell you what it means.
Japan is a jus sanguinis state, meaning that it recognizes citizenship by blood, not by birth (as is the case in the United States, Ireland and many other countries). Article 2 provides three situations in which a person can become a Japanese citizen at birth:
1) When either parent is a Japanese citizen at the time of birth
2) When the father dies before the birth and is a Japanese citizen at the time of death
3) When the person is born on Japanese soil and both parents are unknown or stateless
These rules are very strictly applied, which often creates problems for unmarried non-Japanese mothers. In such cases, unless the Japanese father gives express recognition of paternity before the birth, the child is generally not recognized as a Japanese citizen
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Japanese_Immigration
There is also some more good reading found here:
http://www.migrationinformation.org/Profiles/disp
Japan is better then it was, but that isn't saying much.
I think the bigger reason why the US is not pouring money into elderly helping robots is that the US is significantly less xenophobic then Japan. The US is happy to throw open the borders and let cheap labor in. Robots are highly unlikely to be cheaper then Mexican labor any time soon. Japan on the other hand has fanatically strict anti-immigration rules and are extremely xenophobic. Their xenophobia goes double and triple if you are black or another Asian.
To give you an idea of there level of xenophobia and anti-immigration policies, my dad told me a story about the last time he visited Japan on business. Apparently he was sitting around with Japanese colleagues when the server came over. The Japanese at the table immediately identified her as a non-Japanese. My dad ended up talking to her later on that night and her sad story turns to be that she was the descendent of Koreans - two generations ago. She and her parents were both born in Japan but were still not considered citizens. She had a family line that started in Japan since just before the invention flight, yet she still wasn't considered a citizen.
To be fair to Japan, they are not the only ones. A lot of Asian nations still have large (but very slowly shrinking) xenophobic population. My girlfriend's mother for instance is from Taiwanese. I love her to death, but when it comes to Japanese and blacks she is racist enough that could easily sit around bullshitting with the worst American racists you can imagine.
Science makes bold predictions, and it moves at a snails pace. We're not any different than people who lived 20 years ago, just like people who lived 20 years ago were not that different than people who lived 40 years ago. Consider how many major changes there have been in the past 100 years? Automobiles, television, and airplains. If you then throw out those 100 years, and go back from 1800 to 1500, how much change was there in 300 years? Someone invents gunpowder and that is the major catalyst of change.
Science make bold and utterly false prediction, just to have some other upstart technology steal the show. Sure, we don't have flying cars. We do have a world wide communications grid though that is having rapidly changing society in ways that a few flying cars couldn't even begin to compete with. The reason why science seems slow these days is because we are so damn used to change.
Few people even remember what it was like to look up information before Google. A lot of people forget that less then 10 years ago you couldn't instant get in contact with anyone you wanted via a cell phone. While we were waiting for rocket ships, a significantly more profound technology in the guise of the Internet and communications technology made itself at home. Multinational corporations used to be disjointed heads only vaguely sharing the same financial body, now they are well oiled machines that operate with ease across thousands of miles.
There absolutely have been profound changes in just the past 20 years. Our society is being remolded in reshaped by technology at a blinding speed. The only reason why we can look back with a 'ho-hum' attitude is that one of the changes this technology has made to our society is a near complete acceptance of constant change. Most people complain that nothing change all the while ignoring the fact that they get pissed off when someone leaves their cell phone off or can't find an address or a movie time without using the Internet.
The future is here and we are running head long into it faster and faster. Open your eyes to the science and society that is rapidly changing around you and stop looking for flying cars.
We ARE a paradigm shift though. In the same way a fungus is no better then a cloud of hydrogen or a few organic molecules, there is a fundamental difference between them. Humanity absolutely has created a new paradigm with technology, and is likely well on its way to use technology to create another one through strong AI or what not. If in a billion years from now the galaxy is saturated with strong AI or something else that has its roots in humanity, well, if nothing else we could say that we left a lasting mark.
Humanity does offer a potential paradigm shift in the same way life was a paradigm shift from simple organics. Nature might not give that any more or less value, but we certainly can. Is it hubris to feel pride over such things? Sure. Then again, I also feel pride that I can understand the concept of hubris and feel pride, while a lump of hydrogen can't. Maybe I am just vain that way. Shit, that is another human quality too, isn't it?
Yeah, well, this "pond scum" is going to transcend biologics within the next 100 years and spread its intelligence across the universe. No, global warming is not going to kill us even if the most dire prediction are true. This pond scum has a nasty habit of survival and environmental manipulation.
If this "pond scum" for some reason doesn't spread itself to the wind to cover every nook and cranny within its little sphere of light, it is only because it doesn't want to or someone else did it first.
I know knocking humanity is cool and all, but passing off humanities achievements and its potential to reshape the universe in ways that make supernovas look trivial is just silly. Humanity (as far as we can tell) IS something unique. We are the next step in a grand evolution that has taken literally billions of years. Nuclear parts formed atoms, atoms formed molecules, molecules formed complex organic molecules, complex organic molecules formed the beginnings of life, the beginnings of life developed into diverse single celled organism, single celled organisms developed into multi-cellular organism, multi-cellular organisms developed into animals with complex behavior, animals with complex behavior developed into intelligent creatures, intelligent creatures developed technology.
Ever since the first atoms were formed this 'evolution' has speed along its way developing new paradigm shifts. We tend to forget that the evolution was taking place long before life and that life is just one of the newest attempts towards greater complexity. Technology is just the latest step in this long chain of evolution. What is next? Transcended biotech humans? Strong AI? Who knows? Whatever the case, I would bet my bottom dollar that whatever is next, we are apart of it.
Pond scum we might be, but I personally think that this pond scum is going to leave a lasting mark on this universe.
Then again, I could have just been reading too much Kurzweil
I think the consol you are looking for is known as a "computer". Yes, I believe "computer" is the correct answer.
If nobody ever signed up at all, there would be no WARS. Period.
That is an utterly untrue statement. Many nations still have a draft, in which case you are signed up at the barrel of a gun. Hell, I was surprised to learn from my Austrian ex-girlfriend that they still draft every male citizen in Austria of all places (granted, you can do also choose to work as a civil servant for a longer period of time if you want to get out of military service).
A lack of volunteers has never stopped anyone from starting a war.
This day and age a lack of volunteers in the US might present a substantial obstacle to starting a war due to the very strong stigma associated with a draft. In the end though, if say China invaded Taiwan and the US at the time decided it wanted to rumble, it would rumble, volunteers or not. If it couldn't find enough volunteers, it would simply start drafting people.
The genie has been out of the bottle for a good 150 years or so. Nation states have been given enough power to force their citizens to fight, regardless if they want to or not. A lack of voluntary cooperation isn't stopping anyone.
I fail to see how this is a first amendment issue. Nowhere in the first amendment does it say nor even imply that newspapers are immune from following the law.
The issue is this; if they had simply gotten classified information from the coroner in question, they would be a-okay. The coroner is in trouble, but they would be fine. The problem comes in when they try and access the data themselves by logging on AS the coroner. That IS a hacking attempt which is a violation of the law.
Moral of the story? If you are a newspaper and want to publish material that was obtained illegally, DON'T be the one who did the illegal obtaining.
Clearly it isn't good for all uses. Does it sound damn tempting for a person a few gig of personal documents they want backedup? Hell yes. HDs and DvDs can break or be lost. For a couple of bucks a month you could back up everything, have it in a safe place that is not going to break or burn down, and know exactly where it is.
Google has NOT been ordered to "hand over all the search data". Google has not been ordered to do anything in fact. The judge has hinted that he intends to give the government a random sampling of the websites Google has indexed, but not individual search terms.
c le/2006/03/14/AR2006031401519.html
As far as the government wanting a pile of businesses data bases to search for porn or what not, that is simply illegal and would result in a prompt judicial smack down. If they want to know what is on someone's serve, they need to do it the old fashion way, with a search warrant... well, in theory at least. The executive branch these days seems to consider search warrants as being optional.
As tempting as it is to go off topic on the case of the executive branch ignoring warrant laws, I'll just drop a link and declare both parties worthless and pathetic.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/arti
While we are airing out misconceptions... I hear you Europeans have a sadomasochistic sex fetish. Is that true? I dated and Austrian woman who came to the US for a few months while in college. Let me tell you, that woman did not convince me that that is just a stereotype. Shit, I still have the scars and burn marks, and that woman was a virgin when I started dating her...
I actually have a lot of faith in the court systems. You clearly do not understand what the ruling was that lead to the Florida results. Further, the judge that told the ID folks in no uncertain terms to go fuck themselves in Dover was appointed by G.W. Bush. The courts take their job damn seriously. I see no evidence of the court system breaking down. Are there instances of crappy rulings? Sure, but the system is run by humans so I sorta expect that. On the most though, do they take what they do seriously? Hell yes.
You see, not only is this the "land of the free", much to the surprise and horror of tyrants everywhere, it is also "land of the lawyers and civil societies" who love nothing more then a good old fashion 1st amendment smack down.
This law will not make it out of committee.
This law will not make it through the House.
This law will make it to the president's desk.
Should this law actually somehow become law, it absolutely will contested and struck down by the courts.
The reason why you let the citizens of a nation arm themselves isn't so that you can shoot politicians when they piss you off (no matter how appealing that might sound at times). The reason why you let citizens arm themselves is two fold.
First, bad guys will arm themselves like it not. Making arms illegal hampers their ability to arm, but they will always find their ways. Honest citizens who do not break the law on the other hand, and so when firearms are made illegal it leaves the criminals armed and the honest citizens unarmed. This is hardly an ideal state of affairs.
Second, allowing your citizenry to arm prevents the police from holding a monopoly on force. A citizen should not have to wait for the police to show up to save them if a criminal is breaking into their house or threatening to harm them. A citizen should have the means to defend themselves, and the truth is that a firearm is pretty much it when it comes to self defense. Only a gun is going to allow a 100 pound woman be able to fight off a 200 pound man. Certainly not all citizens will choose to arm themselves, and this is of course fine, but if someone feels that their life is in danger and they do not trust the police protect them, they should have the option of defending themselves. Banning firearms is in affect telling your citizens that they can not defend themselves against criminals in any other manner then waiting for the police to show up.
As far as revolution and the like, an armed citizenry is a populace that can inspire a little fear in politicians. In this day and age that means almost nothing because, as much as we like to bitch, our government is pretty evenhanded and fair. Most people have the things that they need to survive (and then some) and the thought of 'revolution' in the violent sense of the word is about as far from anyone's mind as you can imagine. We still have plenty of political options sitting around that we have yet to use to change things if we really want to. When the constitution was being framed this really was not true. The threat of an outside force conquering the country or even an internal force mucking things up was real. It certainly could be a real threat again in the not-so-foreseeable future.
I consider the need for revolution remote and really don't weight it much in the gun issue. The simple right to self defense is a far more important issue to me then the need for the tools of an unlikely revolution. But, as the grand parent poster pointed out in his own lovable red neck NRA fan way, it isn't a bad thing to keep a few guns around... just in case.
First, this proposed law will get shot pretty much instantly by the courts should it pass the senate (which it wont). This proposed law pretty much pisses on the first amendment, something that should be clear to senate, and something that is certainly clear to the courts. I really am not the least bit worried.
That said, I think that this law inspires me to want a law of my own. Let's call my new law the "three strikes, now stop fucking with the constitution" law. Any congressman that votes for three laws that are later over turned on the grounds of it being unconstitutional should have their seat revoked for their absolute and utter incompetence in upholding the constitution of the United States.
These worthless fuckers have sworn an oath to the constitution, and it really fucking pisses me off when they promptly turn around and drop one of these shit for laws. Not only does it piss me off that they are so incompetent as to not see the clear violation of the constitution that they are proposing, but it also pisses me off that my tax money has to be pissed away overturning these steaming piles of shit.
Would a "three strikes, now STFU and stop messing with the constitution law" be great? Sure. It won't happen, so let's do the next best thing. STOP VOTING FOR THESE DUMB FUCKER. I am not sure who to be more pissed off at, the spineless incompetent politicians that seem to think that upholding the constitution is optional, or the worthless and lazy voters that blindly support their parties candidate and vote for these dumb fucker.
Bah. This crap will be shot down. Thankfully, the court system still mostly works and takes its responsibility to the constitution seriously. It still pisses me off though that it even needs to go that far.
Why should policians be punished for such a simple mistake?
I am utterly unsympathetic. You would think that out of the hundreds of members of parliament/congress (pick your system), at least one of these idiots would bother to actually analyze the law, or at the very least have an aid do so. Politicians have been given and a charter on the limits of their powers. It is up to THEM to see that they follow their rules. One time is a mistake. Two times is incompetence. Three times is an utter failure to uphold your oath to the constitution and the people that it protects.
Whenever a politician votes for a law that will simply be forbidden to come into affect because it is unconstitutional, they are wasting MY money. They are pissing away time that they should be spending trying to solve real problem. They are wasting my money because not only do I have to pay these bastards, but I also have to pay the state lawyers and judges that eventually need to strike this crap down.
I am sick of politicians making bills 300 pages long that later then need to be picked apart by the courts. If this new "three strikes, now STFU" rule was put into affect, I imagine it would have the side affect of making politicians leery of throwing their name on a 300 page bill that they have not bothered to read. GOOD. This is a bonus, no a negative. Politicians have become lazy incompetent bastards that can't even seem to uphold their basic obligations. Punishment should be doled out to the worthless ingrates for their failure to uphold even the most basic requirements of their job. If that meant that the current crop of incompetent politicians were wiped clean and the next batch were people willing to read the shit they sign and understand its implications, GOOD.
Care to provide any kind of proof that patents have anything to do with this whatsoever?
Do you think that a pharmaceutical company would drop a billion dollars pushing a drug from discovery, to lab testing, to FDA approval if they were not guaranteed at least a few years to sell the drug without someone copying them for pocket change and under cutting them before they can turn a profit?
IMHO, copyrights can't survive the information age, but patents are far more evil. The imposition of patents in most cases is nothing short of plain physical coercion. The fact is that 99% of invention is progressive, just another stage built upon the countless other layers of understanding and invention already out there. The only competition that patents promote is trying to lock out new inventions that might allow new technology to bypass your patent portfolio.
That simply isn't true. There are issues with the patent system, but if you feel that 99% of the time they cause harm, you really just don't understand the entire issue. I can think of at least one industry that would literally die over night if patents were suddenly done away with.
Pharmaceutical research would pretty much grind to a halt without IP laws. It can take up to a billion dollars to push a single drug from discovery, to lab testing, past regulation, and into production. No one is going to drop a billion dollars just to have their closest competitor copy what they just achieved at not cost to themselves. It simply would not happen.
This is the case in a lot of leading edge fields. In a lot of fields you need to create something that is amazing complex and capital intensive. You need to drop millions or billions of dollars on developing a product before it becomes viable. IP protection is the only thing that gives you any sort of assurance that if you find something, someone just can't steal it.
I am not saying that the current IP system is all roses. In fact, it down right sucks in many ways. That said, claiming that IP in general is a great evil that needs to be done away with is utterly ignoring the role it serves in helping to spur R&D work.
I have an idea for a new law. Lets call this the "three strikes, now stop fucking with the constitution rule".
The way this bill would work is that any politician that votes for three bills that are later deemed unconstitutional by the courts and are prevented from coming into effect is kicked out of office. Any politician that blatantly fails to do their duty to uphold the constitution of the US three times in a row should have their ass thrown from office. End of story. They have violated the trust of the people far too many times and failed to uphold their oath to the constitution.
This is a non-story. This stupid bill, even if it is passed will be promptly struck down by the courts. What pisses me off is that I keep having to read about these stupid bills being passed and struck down. Someone needs to smack some sense into these dumb fuckers heads.