There are few disciplines that have gleaned as much from exceptions to the norm as have biology and it's attendant practise medicine. Genetics and Morgan's studies of fruit flies by subjecting them to stresses, brain lesions and cognitive science, the list goes on and gives more than adequate support that biology experiments in space will pay dividends. The classic idea of a ceteris paribus experiment at 1 atmosphere, 20 degress C (? 25), done at sea level should make anyone want to jump on a chance to do experiments of any nature on the space station where one of the key fundamentals is changed.
Aside from international cooperation inherent in maintaining a space station and the sharing of information, I suspect space biology experiments, perhaps more so in terms of medicine, will pay ample dividends.
Been there done that, wouldn't recommend it. I had a compression fracture of my left femur (that hurts!) and elected for a steel rod rather than a cast. If give the choice again I'd go with a cast. Unsurprisingly having, in my case, your thigh cut open to the bone, the core of the bone hollowed out and a steel rod inserted hurts real bad for a long time. When I tried to regain use of my leg with the rod still in I found the screws irritated tissue when I walked or, later, ran for more than a couple of blocks. I then discovered doctors are not especially given to removing rods and attendant hardware unless the patient is in their teens or twenties. I had to tell them to take it out. Having your thigh cut open down to the bone to have a steel rod and some screw removed hurts real bad for a real long time. Lastly I think the damage done to the muscle tissue impedes recovery more than would a cast, but I've yet to do a comparison:)
After the rod had been removed and the surgery, tissue damage had healed, I went in for my first X-ray to see if the bone marrow was regenerating and watch the bone spurs grow. I pointed out that the near femur long core drilled out of my bone was not straight, it slanted, noticeably up and away from a straight line. When I pointed this out to the doctor who had done the surgery he replied: "Oh, yea, those drills have a tendency to do that."
Cerebral achromatopsia will give you a different take on colour blindness as a result of brain damage. Localized brain damage can drain all the colour from your world and leave you in a world of the grey hued zombies. What we tend to think of as our vision isn't just a straight run from the retina back to the occipital lobe, and, much of what we think of a vision is a complex production of various brain modules.
No lasers back then boy, then there was just good and evil. Real evil, the kind you could sell your soul to. God, demi gods, spirits, sprites, ghouls, and, of course, Old Nick himself. But, then came the great Schism.
It started with just the most basic machines, toys really. They're were inspired by God because He'd taken it into His thought about His thought thinking about His thought that since He'd created the place, He was best seen as the Designer, an Intelligent Designer. The Devil argued God hadn't really designed anything at all, had just set things out then let things "Go to Hell", as the Devil put it. But God went on about Intelligent Design and how Man, in His image, should be an Intelligent Designer too. That's when it all started about the machines. The Devil can't stand infernal machines. It's his hearing, it's too acute. He has to be that way to hear even the slightest hint of malicious intent. He finally had enough and headed out with all the lesser spirits in attendance. The lesser spirits were spooked by the machines, called them unnatural.
I was probably the last one to get a good deal on my soul. Soon after I cut my deal, the Devil just didn't make any more offers. His heart just wasn't in it anymore.
God likes the way things have gone. His creations creating. Turning out machines intelligently designed, or nearly so. We haven't spoken in a while, but, when last we spoke He was big on the idea of the entire world as a giant Dyson sphere. I miss the old days when evil had some value.
Regards
A. Faustus
it's past my bedtime, i'm over tired and am probably gonna be sorry i posted this, but what the hell.
There are only 3 professions open to a canadian eh, bush pilot, hockey player, or RCMP officer. Which are you hoser? Bet ya won't even get yer moose bai.
My Aspire One running ubuntu is just great thanks. Cost me 250 loonies. Best of all, it's 8" screen means I can manipulate it almost like a medium sized book. I can kick back on the couch, at a table, on the subway, where ever and twist and turn it as needed. I stick with the SSD drive because I it affords me even less worry about jostling it around. With wifi and 10/100 built in, how could anyone go without one. $250 bucks, you can't afford not to own one. Best tech toy to come down the pike ever.
The PBS special, titled "The Brain's Big Bang", suggested gossip accounts for 2/3 of our speech activity. The episode went on to offer the now widely touted conjecture that social networking may have been one of the prime movers behind development of our comparatively big brains. Idle conjecture can take it to a simpler, more fundamental level. Apoptosis or programmed cell death is thought to be initiated by lack of inter cellular communication. Cells programme themselves to die when they no longer receive communications requiring them to live. It's easy to extrapolate from those findings to an individual's need to socially interact.
Informed, rational investors can likely use game theory and an auction model to structure functional investment strategies in efficient markets. Irrational investors likely need to be viewed as lepers and those fleeing lepers. Irrational investors might even be more effectively treated as what they are. They're hunter-gathers with a built in reward system that fuels their investments as something akin to a huge rack of a recent kill nailed to the rec room wall, or, an equally huge rack on their trophy wife.
If irrational investors are seen as irrational and efficient markets must necessarily allow them to play then don't questions arise in terms of interference in efficient markets and the rights of irrational investors when attempts are made to circumscribe their irrational responses?
Lastly, it's been my experience that irrational investors driven by their primitive reward system tend to incorporate any rational response to their activity much as children in a playful frenzy will incorporate any attempt to control their behaviour into their play, or, more drastically, the way a mob fleeing an outbreak of leprosy will trample anyone attempting to instill order. (the last bit about children at play is borrowed from ideas suggested by Gregory Bateson)
I won't bore you by pointing to past posts that show I'm very pro Russian, but I am. For about a decade I've been very nearly yelling that close ties with Russia and Russian democracy are crucial keys to a sane world. I'm just afraid there's an historically unprecedented chance slipping away.
I've read as much as possible in areas of Russian history and literature, but time constraints leave me pretty ignorant. I've logged a lot of hours reading in history and philosophy just to try get even a slight insight into world geopolitical circumstances. I've come away very sure that if democracy can grow and mature in Russia then there's a very real chance we, as a species, can sanely manage world affairs. Unfortunately Putin, from a Canadian perspective, seems intent on a fascist state, but again, I can't represent myself as well informed. Although, as a Canadian raised on ice and hockey, I'm inclined to see Russians, with a folk culture and sports culture similar to our own, as a people who should be close neighbours.
I think, in what is fast becoming a fascist state of one part gangsterism and one part corporatism, the programmers they're talking about aren't the programmers you're thinking about.
Ya, OK, point taken, but I've worked in corporate settings, and, while I'd agree, academia fosters it's own cliques and barriers to innovation, I really think corporations, outside of R&D labs, necessarily have barriers to innovating, testing, revising, implementing and extending that Open Source doesn't. Plus, putting aside Google's one time adventure in letting engineers give ~15% (?) of their time to play on any project they cared to, I don't think profit driven enterprises can innovate as fast. Karl Popper said we are in a position to let our hypotheses die in our stead, and, by implication, such a luxury is in large part what allows us to thrive. By analogy I think Open Source is better suited to take advantage of playfulness and mistakes than a profit driven, publicly held venture.
People who develop and know how to use Linux are a different bred. They tend to be self reliant and innovative. Corporations like MS tend to naturally harbour fiefdoms around which barriers are effected that can stifle just the type of innovation Linux is driven by. The adage "faster nervous systems eat slower nervous systems" can apply where institutions allow barriers like glass ceilings to protect managers, the barriers erected can be seen as speed bumps and additional costs that Open Source skirts. Open Source may look haphazard in it's development but then so does evolution and both do OK in the long run.
A lot of Open Source people use Linux and similar OSes because they need to be able to innovate on the spot and not go begging and pleading with Corporate masters for permission to alter a bit of code. Open Source, in my experience, is about innovation and extensibility. MS expected Linux to die of SIDS in its crib. It didn't. I now think MS sees the power and benefits of Open Source and is looking to undermine Linux by offering a similar environment to lure academics and scientists to a similar platform while mining their innovations.
It's kinda like the serpent wants to take a bite out of the apple.
As far as I know it's a common practise among police, perhaps worldwide, to try to find out who is a hothead and who isn't. When a cop is called to a dispute or fight, not always but often, s/he will ask each participant a few pointed, even brusque questions. Those who answer the questions calmly and act in a restrained manner are usually given the benefit of the doubt in terms of who started or heightened the altercation. Those who respond to a cops questions antagonistically, and/or don't calm down, are usually seen as hotheads and tend to get the shitty end of the stick. If you're stupid enough to react to a cop aggressively rather than addressing any wrongs later through the courts or a police complaints board then you're likely gonna get charges laid against you that otherwise might be let go.
Street sense isn't just how not to get robbed and beaten in the wrong part of town, it's also how to deal with cops when things are going bad. Street sense in today's world is as necessary to basic existence as a high school diploma, although I wouldn't suggest going onto any "higher" centres of learning.
Do you have the technology to rebuild it? Excuse the flippancy, but the article, in terms of the 1st part, was interesting and clear but insufficient in so far as it didn't allow me to draw any conclusions based upon your conjectured parallels. Having said that I think what you're attempting is vital and necessary. We're creatures of context and, as such, we're likely to take inferences from our more tested and experienced contexts and apply them out of context, or, more widely in other contexts. Abstracting the "rules of engagement", or, protocols from your profession and overlaying them on the outputs of a legislative body is a good thing. It's kinda like overlays. The abstracted take away message derived from one discipline can be very instructive and even beneficial to an alien discipline. It's the ability to overlay one set of abstracted readings or mappings to another discipline's readings or mappings that's difficult and rare. It's even more rare that someone can adequately project the two mappings to the two different parties and have anything like agreement ensue. IMHO it's not only worth the effort, it's necessary, but if I were you, I'd be hearing that famous line: "Imagine, if you will..." with the Eagles 'Hotel California', "you can check in, but you can never leave", playing in the background. Good luck with that.
I managed a +100mil real estate portfolio and my parents made me (paid for) take a lot of courses in economics, business law and accounting, (they had a very straight forward, cogent argument: "if you ever want to see any of our money you'd better know how we got it and how you can hang onto it".) Also I'm in a situation similar to the guy who posted the story.
My education and business experience lends a few additional points to the parent. * Never take on your lawyer or your accountant as business partners. More generally, and this should even apply to your financial backers, but it's not always feasible, never give an interest in your company to another company, or, someone whose job it is to act in your interests, such as a lawyer or accountant. More generally, try not to place your trust in others when the trust you've placed in them creates a conflict of interest. Personally, I believe in "partners" and agents who have conflicting interests and watch one another as potential antagonists. * Try to keep your initial outlays low. It's very realistic to think you'll realize no more than 10% of your outlay if you're forced to sell off a failed business. * Don't trust a handshake, get it in writing, and, make sure it's an enforceable contract.
My own personally gleaned bit of advice is to always pay for professional services, hiring reputable firms whose errors & omissions insurance premiums are paid up, then, if they screw up, sue the bastards for all they're worth. Really, I'm deadly serious on this one. Business is a dog eat dog world. Good luck.
>I fully expect to see Discworld books after Pratchett leaves us
I've been reading Prachett since day one, and, maybe you're right, but, I think, Mr. Pratchett might take steps to see that doesn't happen. It's nigh on impossible to get a true read on a writer by h/is/er works but Pratchett strikes me as a man of deep integrity. I've this recurrent, waking "nightmare" of writers like Pratchett having their work extended and raped by product placement ads.
Yabut, Moorecock wrote at a time when there were few outlets for the pulp fiction, fantasy guys like him had to pump out to survive. I always liked Stormbringer more than Elric who was just a weak, albino freak kept alive by magic potions and favours owed his family line by various spirits and gods. Much of Moorecock's stuff was cut 'n paste, but, again, those guys had to pump stuff out like junkies bleeding out in back alleys.
Thanks for posting that, because I couldn't read the guy's stuff even though I'm a big fantasy, sword & sorcery 'n scifi fan. I'd rather reread ancient stuff like Zelazny, Moorecock or even, tier down stuff like 'The Black Company'. I tried a couple of times and just couldn't bear up under his prose.
Corporations began as a means to limit risk exposure to investors in adventures in trade and, thus, encourage investment. Putting aside, for the purposes of my comment, their current morals & ethics, Corporations still function to turn a profit and limit liability for investors. The world has grown small and overcrowded and everyone wants a big piece of the pie. Urbanization can be viewed as our attempts to deal with relatively high populations and scare resources. The results are often bottlenecks that force compromise and innovation. In a small, overpopulated world wherein we can't export our surplus populations or pollution, problems become even more acute. Corporations, especially where publicly held, are double binded by being forced to maximize profits and protect their investors capital. Due diligence has become a catch phrase used throughout various subcultures, but it serves as the modern day equivalent of caveat emptor. What happens in a situation wherein there's too many players all jostling for scare resources? Double binds, or, multiple ungiving constraints appear. Government is put in place to oversee market conditions, inter alia, and, ideally find ways to ease the pressures coming from too many players and too few resources. Unfortunately when there's no room to export surplus populations and home made externalities like pollution can't be exported and impinge on neighbouring sovereign states things just get worse. Investors want a good return on their investment and a reward for saving against future contingencies, corporations are forced to protect investors' capital and return a profit, Government is saddled with playing all players off one another and borrowing from Peter to pay Paul. It's an ugly situation and IP rights and abuses are just a symptom of more systemic problems.
May you live long and prosper in interesting times.:)
Microsoft floated it's first long term debt instruments recently (within the last year). I took their issuing long term debt instruments as the surest sign their earnings had flattened out and they wanted to pocket some money before their earnings began to fall off. I also think their move into brick and mortar is another sign that their traditional revenue bases are diminishing. MS has done a good job of staying within their game, kinda like a ballplayer, and not trying to long jump onto a far off, new revenue base; but, I think, they have to look further afield than just cranking out the same old, same old, while opening boutiques. Why they're not looking at something new isn't clear, but Ballmer has openly stated he can't understand why a software company would get involved in hardware manufacturing, and, he may be right, but, that said, I agree with your analysis, and think MS has to buy into a new revenue stream.
Slashdot Mirror
There are few disciplines that have gleaned as much from exceptions to the norm as have biology and it's attendant practise medicine. Genetics and Morgan's studies of fruit flies by subjecting them to stresses, brain lesions and cognitive science, the list goes on and gives more than adequate support that biology experiments in space will pay dividends. The classic idea of a ceteris paribus experiment at 1 atmosphere, 20 degress C (? 25), done at sea level should make anyone want to jump on a chance to do experiments of any nature on the space station where one of the key fundamentals is changed.
Aside from international cooperation inherent in maintaining a space station and the sharing of information, I suspect space biology experiments, perhaps more so in terms of medicine, will pay ample dividends.
Been there done that, wouldn't recommend it. I had a compression fracture of my left femur (that hurts!) and elected for a steel rod rather than a cast. If give the choice again I'd go with a cast. Unsurprisingly having, in my case, your thigh cut open to the bone, the core of the bone hollowed out and a steel rod inserted hurts real bad for a long time. When I tried to regain use of my leg with the rod still in I found the screws irritated tissue when I walked or, later, ran for more than a couple of blocks. I then discovered doctors are not especially given to removing rods and attendant hardware unless the patient is in their teens or twenties. I had to tell them to take it out. Having your thigh cut open down to the bone to have a steel rod and some screw removed hurts real bad for a real long time. Lastly I think the damage done to the muscle tissue impedes recovery more than would a cast, but I've yet to do a comparison :)
After the rod had been removed and the surgery, tissue damage had healed, I went in for my first X-ray to see if the bone marrow was regenerating and watch the bone spurs grow. I pointed out that the near femur long core drilled out of my bone was not straight, it slanted, noticeably up and away from a straight line. When I pointed this out to the doctor who had done the surgery he replied: "Oh, yea, those drills have a tendency to do that."
It's a poor workman who blame his tools.
everything squared... it's either post nonsense or do dishes and cook brunch.
Cerebral achromatopsia will give you a different take on colour blindness as a result of brain damage. Localized brain damage can drain all the colour from your world and leave you in a world of the grey hued zombies. What we tend to think of as our vision isn't just a straight run from the retina back to the occipital lobe, and, much of what we think of a vision is a complex production of various brain modules.
It started with just the most basic machines, toys really. They're were inspired by God because He'd taken it into His thought about His thought thinking about His thought that since He'd created the place, He was best seen as the Designer, an Intelligent Designer. The Devil argued God hadn't really designed anything at all, had just set things out then let things "Go to Hell", as the Devil put it. But God went on about Intelligent Design and how Man, in His image, should be an Intelligent Designer too. That's when it all started about the machines. The Devil can't stand infernal machines. It's his hearing, it's too acute. He has to be that way to hear even the slightest hint of malicious intent. He finally had enough and headed out with all the lesser spirits in attendance. The lesser spirits were spooked by the machines, called them unnatural.
I was probably the last one to get a good deal on my soul. Soon after I cut my deal, the Devil just didn't make any more offers. His heart just wasn't in it anymore.
God likes the way things have gone. His creations creating. Turning out machines intelligently designed, or nearly so. We haven't spoken in a while, but, when last we spoke He was big on the idea of the entire world as a giant Dyson sphere. I miss the old days when evil had some value.
Regards
A. Faustus
it's past my bedtime, i'm over tired and am probably gonna be sorry i posted this, but what the hell.
There are only 3 professions open to a canadian eh, bush pilot, hockey player, or RCMP officer. Which are you hoser? Bet ya won't even get yer moose bai.
My Aspire One running ubuntu is just great thanks. Cost me 250 loonies. Best of all, it's 8" screen means I can manipulate it almost like a medium sized book. I can kick back on the couch, at a table, on the subway, where ever and twist and turn it as needed. I stick with the SSD drive because I it affords me even less worry about jostling it around. With wifi and 10/100 built in, how could anyone go without one. $250 bucks, you can't afford not to own one. Best tech toy to come down the pike ever.
The PBS special, titled "The Brain's Big Bang", suggested gossip accounts for 2/3 of our speech activity. The episode went on to offer the now widely touted conjecture that social networking may have been one of the prime movers behind development of our comparatively big brains. Idle conjecture can take it to a simpler, more fundamental level. Apoptosis or programmed cell death is thought to be initiated by lack of inter cellular communication. Cells programme themselves to die when they no longer receive communications requiring them to live. It's easy to extrapolate from those findings to an individual's need to socially interact.
Informed, rational investors can likely use game theory and an auction model to structure functional investment strategies in efficient markets. Irrational investors likely need to be viewed as lepers and those fleeing lepers. Irrational investors might even be more effectively treated as what they are. They're hunter-gathers with a built in reward system that fuels their investments as something akin to a huge rack of a recent kill nailed to the rec room wall, or, an equally huge rack on their trophy wife.
If irrational investors are seen as irrational and efficient markets must necessarily allow them to play then don't questions arise in terms of interference in efficient markets and the rights of irrational investors when attempts are made to circumscribe their irrational responses?
Lastly, it's been my experience that irrational investors driven by their primitive reward system tend to incorporate any rational response to their activity much as children in a playful frenzy will incorporate any attempt to control their behaviour into their play, or, more drastically, the way a mob fleeing an outbreak of leprosy will trample anyone attempting to instill order. (the last bit about children at play is borrowed from ideas suggested by Gregory Bateson)
I've read as much as possible in areas of Russian history and literature, but time constraints leave me pretty ignorant. I've logged a lot of hours reading in history and philosophy just to try get even a slight insight into world geopolitical circumstances. I've come away very sure that if democracy can grow and mature in Russia then there's a very real chance we, as a species, can sanely manage world affairs. Unfortunately Putin, from a Canadian perspective, seems intent on a fascist state, but again, I can't represent myself as well informed. Although, as a Canadian raised on ice and hockey, I'm inclined to see Russians, with a folk culture and sports culture similar to our own, as a people who should be close neighbours.
I think, in what is fast becoming a fascist state of one part gangsterism and one part corporatism, the programmers they're talking about aren't the programmers you're thinking about.
check it out, i still dunno, so meh
just my loose change
People who develop and know how to use Linux are a different bred. They tend to be self reliant and innovative. Corporations like MS tend to naturally harbour fiefdoms around which barriers are effected that can stifle just the type of innovation Linux is driven by. The adage "faster nervous systems eat slower nervous systems" can apply where institutions allow barriers like glass ceilings to protect managers, the barriers erected can be seen as speed bumps and additional costs that Open Source skirts. Open Source may look haphazard in it's development but then so does evolution and both do OK in the long run.
A lot of Open Source people use Linux and similar OSes because they need to be able to innovate on the spot and not go begging and pleading with Corporate masters for permission to alter a bit of code. Open Source, in my experience, is about innovation and extensibility. MS expected Linux to die of SIDS in its crib. It didn't. I now think MS sees the power and benefits of Open Source and is looking to undermine Linux by offering a similar environment to lure academics and scientists to a similar platform while mining their innovations.
It's kinda like the serpent wants to take a bite out of the apple.
As far as I know it's a common practise among police, perhaps worldwide, to try to find out who is a hothead and who isn't. When a cop is called to a dispute or fight, not always but often, s/he will ask each participant a few pointed, even brusque questions. Those who answer the questions calmly and act in a restrained manner are usually given the benefit of the doubt in terms of who started or heightened the altercation. Those who respond to a cops questions antagonistically, and/or don't calm down, are usually seen as hotheads and tend to get the shitty end of the stick. If you're stupid enough to react to a cop aggressively rather than addressing any wrongs later through the courts or a police complaints board then you're likely gonna get charges laid against you that otherwise might be let go.
Street sense isn't just how not to get robbed and beaten in the wrong part of town, it's also how to deal with cops when things are going bad. Street sense in today's world is as necessary to basic existence as a high school diploma, although I wouldn't suggest going onto any "higher" centres of learning.
You shouldn't dude, really, no one to see that. Thanking you in advance.
If you played dirty you grabbed your opponent's favourite playing piece. I always favoured the race car.
Do you have the technology to rebuild it? Excuse the flippancy, but the article, in terms of the 1st part, was interesting and clear but insufficient in so far as it didn't allow me to draw any conclusions based upon your conjectured parallels. Having said that I think what you're attempting is vital and necessary. We're creatures of context and, as such, we're likely to take inferences from our more tested and experienced contexts and apply them out of context, or, more widely in other contexts. Abstracting the "rules of engagement", or, protocols from your profession and overlaying them on the outputs of a legislative body is a good thing. It's kinda like overlays. The abstracted take away message derived from one discipline can be very instructive and even beneficial to an alien discipline. It's the ability to overlay one set of abstracted readings or mappings to another discipline's readings or mappings that's difficult and rare. It's even more rare that someone can adequately project the two mappings to the two different parties and have anything like agreement ensue. IMHO it's not only worth the effort, it's necessary, but if I were you, I'd be hearing that famous line: "Imagine, if you will..." with the Eagles 'Hotel California', "you can check in, but you can never leave", playing in the background. Good luck with that.
I managed a +100mil real estate portfolio and my parents made me (paid for) take a lot of courses in economics, business law and accounting, (they had a very straight forward, cogent argument: "if you ever want to see any of our money you'd better know how we got it and how you can hang onto it".) Also I'm in a situation similar to the guy who posted the story.
My education and business experience lends a few additional points to the parent. * Never take on your lawyer or your accountant as business partners. More generally, and this should even apply to your financial backers, but it's not always feasible, never give an interest in your company to another company, or, someone whose job it is to act in your interests, such as a lawyer or accountant. More generally, try not to place your trust in others when the trust you've placed in them creates a conflict of interest. Personally, I believe in "partners" and agents who have conflicting interests and watch one another as potential antagonists. * Try to keep your initial outlays low. It's very realistic to think you'll realize no more than 10% of your outlay if you're forced to sell off a failed business. * Don't trust a handshake, get it in writing, and, make sure it's an enforceable contract.
My own personally gleaned bit of advice is to always pay for professional services, hiring reputable firms whose errors & omissions insurance premiums are paid up, then, if they screw up, sue the bastards for all they're worth. Really, I'm deadly serious on this one. Business is a dog eat dog world. Good luck.
I've been reading Prachett since day one, and, maybe you're right, but, I think, Mr. Pratchett might take steps to see that doesn't happen. It's nigh on impossible to get a true read on a writer by h/is/er works but Pratchett strikes me as a man of deep integrity. I've this recurrent, waking "nightmare" of writers like Pratchett having their work extended and raped by product placement ads.
Yabut, Moorecock wrote at a time when there were few outlets for the pulp fiction, fantasy guys like him had to pump out to survive. I always liked Stormbringer more than Elric who was just a weak, albino freak kept alive by magic potions and favours owed his family line by various spirits and gods. Much of Moorecock's stuff was cut 'n paste, but, again, those guys had to pump stuff out like junkies bleeding out in back alleys.
Yes, but I much prefer showing contempt for snot nosed little shits like you, and, I'm a Gertrude Stein fan.
Thanks for posting that, because I couldn't read the guy's stuff even though I'm a big fantasy, sword & sorcery 'n scifi fan. I'd rather reread ancient stuff like Zelazny, Moorecock or even, tier down stuff like 'The Black Company'. I tried a couple of times and just couldn't bear up under his prose.
Corporations began as a means to limit risk exposure to investors in adventures in trade and, thus, encourage investment. Putting aside, for the purposes of my comment, their current morals & ethics, Corporations still function to turn a profit and limit liability for investors. The world has grown small and overcrowded and everyone wants a big piece of the pie. Urbanization can be viewed as our attempts to deal with relatively high populations and scare resources. The results are often bottlenecks that force compromise and innovation. In a small, overpopulated world wherein we can't export our surplus populations or pollution, problems become even more acute. Corporations, especially where publicly held, are double binded by being forced to maximize profits and protect their investors capital. Due diligence has become a catch phrase used throughout various subcultures, but it serves as the modern day equivalent of caveat emptor. What happens in a situation wherein there's too many players all jostling for scare resources? Double binds, or, multiple ungiving constraints appear. Government is put in place to oversee market conditions, inter alia, and, ideally find ways to ease the pressures coming from too many players and too few resources. Unfortunately when there's no room to export surplus populations and home made externalities like pollution can't be exported and impinge on neighbouring sovereign states things just get worse. Investors want a good return on their investment and a reward for saving against future contingencies, corporations are forced to protect investors' capital and return a profit, Government is saddled with playing all players off one another and borrowing from Peter to pay Paul. It's an ugly situation and IP rights and abuses are just a symptom of more systemic problems.
May you live long and prosper in interesting times. :)
just my loose change