Make no mistake, there are multiple reasons for this law. A good law has good points, but also can cover up less noble intentions as well. The free flow of information, out of the control of self-appointed opinion-shapers and news curators/gatekeepers, is very troublesome to those same people. If the implicit censorship can hide behind the skirt of the "noble intentions", so much the better, and so much the more difficult to discuss it.
And I want to clarify: you're suggesting that when a company liquidates, the value of the company's assets will divvied up among all the ownership stakes, Class A-C stockholders and debtors. There is however a hierarchy of payoff, with bondholders being highest, and even in bonds, there are tiers of bonds, and the lower tiers take a loss at a minimum. Stock holders typically don't get anything, and class C holders are the very bottom of the hierarchy to get paid. And if the company would have enough money to actually pay Class C shareholders, they probably wouldn't need to liquidate in the first place.
Bitcoin has essentially nothing in common with stocks. Stocks are ownership in a real world corporation that, ideally, pays regular dividends to share holders.
What about non-voting, non-dividend paying shares? Google class C's are non-dividend-paying and non-voting and are going for over a thousand bucks a pop. I suppose with a stock, if you sell it at a loss, you can write it off on your taxes. I doubt you can do that with bitcoin. Just need a Congresscritter to update the law and that will change (if they haven't already - if someone in the donor class starts getting involved with bitcoin, that should change).
The Aaron Schwartz tragedy, really, was that the young man was clowning a system (MIT) that had rewarded such behavior in the past, rather than punished it. I think he was caught off guard.
The system bit back this time because there was money involved.
It's interesting, we have laws because otherwise, it would be the rule of the jungle. The biggest, strongest and most ruthless would be calling the shots according to their whims. As happens in many dictatorships. We all benefit from the predictability, security and autonomy (freedom) the law allows. It improves all of our welfare.
But what happens when a small group subverts the law, and begins using it as a method to extract rents or to control, outside the bounds of justice, other people? I guess as long as the cost imposed by this subversion is perceived to be small, and the net result of the law is perceived to be positive, the law can continue.
But... what happens when the system itself that writes the law is openly subverted, and presents itself as being for sale to the highest bidder? What happens when the politicians entrench themselves via gerrymandering and rigged primaries? What happens when the system stops being responsive to the populace in general? I guess we're starting to see.
The law is written by politicians and it's backed by force. Just because you don't think it's right doesn't mean squat. Run afoul of it and you will likely be sanctioned, especially when money is at stake and your opponents have deep pockets. Aaron Swartz realized this too late, when the law credibly threatened to put him in jail for decades, and he decided end his existence on his own terms instead.
Until you can convince a politician that you can personally benefit him, those that can (lobbyists - professional persuaders), and those that can bring money and votes to his benefit, he's not going to pay you a lick of attention. And seriously, how many outside of the academic community care about this? A handful of angry post-baccalaureates sure isn't going to persuade any pol to switch sides.
It's absurd that taxpayer funded research, done ostensibly for the advancement of society, is not available publicly. But it's the law. And until you can change the law, you're pissing into the dark. And somewhere in the dark is an electrified fence.
Try and change the law. But follow it until you can change it, cause brother, it got teeth. And it don't care what you think of it.
I've seen this myself. Managers wave it off with an "It'll be fine" brush off. IT workers just want to get their deliverable done and out the door. Until you have a group that is a first class citizen in your organization, and is concerned with security, these sorts of thing will remain common occurrences.
Money comes into the company. It has to be distributed somehow. The guys at the top do the distributing. They are few and typically good negotiators so they get the lions share. The farther down the food chain you go, the more people there are and can be negotiated with individually and they typically have quite limited information, much less than management. Unions just put professionals in charge of negotiating for the worker's cut of the profit. There are costs and benefits. Would it be possible to organize unions so that they are efficient in allocating productive capacity? Perhaps.
As other posters have noted, take "The Internet" out of it. People are still in thrall of the digital sophistication of the Internet, though those of us in the technology business know how easy it is for anyone to put up a website and post what they want. It gives everyone a printing press, and most of those digital tabloids are worse than the Weekly World News, i.e. they are not merely idiotic, but also uninteresting.
People who believe Alex Jones are also the sort who would believe the Weekly World News. As the Internet becomes less dazzling and more mundane to the populace, they will more and more figure out what is true and what is not.
Do Alex Jones and Weekly World News knowingly disseminate false information? Of course. But if someone lets on they believe something because they saw it in a Facebook comment or in the Weekly World News, it's a cue to indicate their level of sophistication.
"Level 3: Conditional autonomy. Many automakers such as Ford and Volvo have indicated that they'll skip this step—and for good reason. Unlike Level 2 cars, Level 3 autonomy can control a car in all situations and the car is constantly monitoring the road, but unlike higher levels on the SAE scale, Level 3 cars will return to human control if the system can't function correctly. According to the SAE definition, Level 3 cars will ask drivers to intervene when the self-driving systems fail, but for many automakers that presents a safety problem for drivers who rely too much on the systems and may not be prepared to take over."
More specifically, what's the difference between bitcoin and a non-dividend-paying, non-voting stock?
Both are worth how much someone is willing to pay for them, but bitcoin has a bit less friction in being able to be used in a transaction. Otherwise very similar.
You espoused a clear and concise argument that is logical. As a fellow C/C++/Java programmer who believes in using the right tool for the right job (each tool has its advantages) you don't seem to understand modern "brogrammer millenial culture:" It has nothing to do with being an effective tool to solve a problem and everything to do with popularity and coolness.
Building something that works isn't necessarily the goal anymore; it's "likes" on social media. Or however that stuff work.
Because object oriented languages FORCE a measure of readability and organization and preliminary design on the developer, which improves maintainability. It's not just Java, but also C# (the interpreted object oriented languages) as well as C++ (which executes cpu-native code).
With C, a developer can just start hacking away. "I need a function to do this, lemme write it." Put it in some file, update the makefile, done. Object-oriented languages add the "class" data structure, which is just a (required) way to group code. One is forced to stop and think what class a function should go in, and why. It's not much but it is a brake on a lazy or hurried developer, a brake which improves maintainability and readability.
As far as Java in particular... what is the benefit relative to its closest relative C#? If one goes with the whole enterprise IBM solution (Websphere), it has more out-of-the-box support for failover support and data replication. C# is easier to get started with because one doesn't have to do all the configuration required with an enterprise IBM Java setup, because much of the configuration is already done since C# is integrated with Windows.
Fluoride rinse induces "remineralization" I've personally seen it. If you have a soft spot in a tooth, using fluoride rinse twice a day will help harden it back up (remineralize it) with a few days.
Location: Baltimore-DC region Eyewear: Didn't get glasses in time. Didn't make it a priority because we weren't getting totality, but now I wish I did. I'm going to order a set to have on hand. How watched: I took off work, came home, brought up NASA TV on the computer (Nasa's DC raw feed was broken, disappointingly). Kept looking outside, and yes, the light became weird. Things became dimmer, like under heavy late-day cloud cover, yet shadows were still visible. Then it started brightening. I didn't bother making the pinhole projector. Did it once years ago in college, was underwhelmed. Do plan to get quality eclipse/solar glasses going forward.
From the summary: "Etched in copper, plated with gold, and sealed in aluminum cases, the records are expected to remain intelligible for more than a billion years, making them the longest-lasting objects ever crafted by human hands."
All while existing in the interstellar cold and radiation of space. Wow. I'd be stoked if they could make a terrestrial, commercial storage medium which could last a fraction as long. We've got too much data for stone tablets.
US fake news is not a result of solely government action. It's primarily a result of heavily biased private media. The US government does not have an official news organ (PBS is, to some degree). US fake news is primarily a result of private media and business interests aligning with a political party, which are wholly private organizations (which many people often forget and the illusion of being public entities is pushed heavily by the parties).
Other country's fake news comes straight from the government, as a result of their governments having official and unofficial news organs.
I think the net result is the same: a successfully misinformed population.
Slashdot Mirror
Make no mistake, there are multiple reasons for this law. A good law has good points, but also can cover up less noble intentions as well. The free flow of information, out of the control of self-appointed opinion-shapers and news curators/gatekeepers, is very troublesome to those same people. If the implicit censorship can hide behind the skirt of the "noble intentions", so much the better, and so much the more difficult to discuss it.
And I want to clarify: you're suggesting that when a company liquidates, the value of the company's assets will divvied up among all the ownership stakes, Class A-C stockholders and debtors. There is however a hierarchy of payoff, with bondholders being highest, and even in bonds, there are tiers of bonds, and the lower tiers take a loss at a minimum. Stock holders typically don't get anything, and class C holders are the very bottom of the hierarchy to get paid. And if the company would have enough money to actually pay Class C shareholders, they probably wouldn't need to liquidate in the first place.
Is there any historical, real world example of this happening? When a company liquidates, typically its stock has gone to zero.
What about non-voting, non-dividend paying shares? Google class C's are non-dividend-paying and non-voting and are going for over a thousand bucks a pop. I suppose with a stock, if you sell it at a loss, you can write it off on your taxes. I doubt you can do that with bitcoin. Just need a Congresscritter to update the law and that will change (if they haven't already - if someone in the donor class starts getting involved with bitcoin, that should change).
The system bit back this time because there was money involved.
It's interesting, we have laws because otherwise, it would be the rule of the jungle. The biggest, strongest and most ruthless would be calling the shots according to their whims. As happens in many dictatorships. We all benefit from the predictability, security and autonomy (freedom) the law allows. It improves all of our welfare.
But what happens when a small group subverts the law, and begins using it as a method to extract rents or to control, outside the bounds of justice, other people? I guess as long as the cost imposed by this subversion is perceived to be small, and the net result of the law is perceived to be positive, the law can continue.
But... what happens when the system itself that writes the law is openly subverted, and presents itself as being for sale to the highest bidder? What happens when the politicians entrench themselves via gerrymandering and rigged primaries? What happens when the system stops being responsive to the populace in general? I guess we're starting to see.
The law is written by politicians and it's backed by force. Just because you don't think it's right doesn't mean squat. Run afoul of it and you will likely be sanctioned, especially when money is at stake and your opponents have deep pockets. Aaron Swartz realized this too late, when the law credibly threatened to put him in jail for decades, and he decided end his existence on his own terms instead.
Until you can convince a politician that you can personally benefit him, those that can (lobbyists - professional persuaders), and those that can bring money and votes to his benefit, he's not going to pay you a lick of attention. And seriously, how many outside of the academic community care about this? A handful of angry post-baccalaureates sure isn't going to persuade any pol to switch sides.
It's absurd that taxpayer funded research, done ostensibly for the advancement of society, is not available publicly. But it's the law. And until you can change the law, you're pissing into the dark. And somewhere in the dark is an electrified fence.
Try and change the law. But follow it until you can change it, cause brother, it got teeth. And it don't care what you think of it.
I've seen this myself. Managers wave it off with an "It'll be fine" brush off. IT workers just want to get their deliverable done and out the door. Until you have a group that is a first class citizen in your organization, and is concerned with security, these sorts of thing will remain common occurrences.
Art being sold for 10s of millions of dollars.
Non-voting, non-dividend-paying stocks.
There are plenty of examples of items being purchased, physical or virtual, with the primary goal of trusting a greater fool to pay yet more for it (there are tax advantages to certain losses and gains however).
Spectrum magazine has a current series on blockchain technology.
If money is speech, corporations have a lot more of it than you do.
Money comes into the company. It has to be distributed somehow. The guys at the top do the distributing. They are few and typically good negotiators so they get the lions share. The farther down the food chain you go, the more people there are and can be negotiated with individually and they typically have quite limited information, much less than management. Unions just put professionals in charge of negotiating for the worker's cut of the profit. There are costs and benefits. Would it be possible to organize unions so that they are efficient in allocating productive capacity? Perhaps.
As other posters have noted, take "The Internet" out of it. People are still in thrall of the digital sophistication of the Internet, though those of us in the technology business know how easy it is for anyone to put up a website and post what they want. It gives everyone a printing press, and most of those digital tabloids are worse than the Weekly World News, i.e. they are not merely idiotic, but also uninteresting.
People who believe Alex Jones are also the sort who would believe the Weekly World News. As the Internet becomes less dazzling and more mundane to the populace, they will more and more figure out what is true and what is not.
Do Alex Jones and Weekly World News knowingly disseminate false information? Of course. But if someone lets on they believe something because they saw it in a Facebook comment or in the Weekly World News, it's a cue to indicate their level of sophistication.
From the Washington Post article:
"Level 3: Conditional autonomy. Many automakers such as Ford and Volvo have indicated that they'll skip this step—and for good reason. Unlike Level 2 cars, Level 3 autonomy can control a car in all situations and the car is constantly monitoring the road, but unlike higher levels on the SAE scale, Level 3 cars will return to human control if the system can't function correctly. According to the SAE definition, Level 3 cars will ask drivers to intervene when the self-driving systems fail, but for many automakers that presents a safety problem for drivers who rely too much on the systems and may not be prepared to take over."
There are five SAE accepted levels of autonomy:
Level 0: No self driving features
Level 1: Some driver assistance
Level 2: More driver assistance
Level 3: Conditional autonomy
Level 4: Nearly autonomous.
Level 5: Completely autonomous.
When will it get here? Dates range from 2017 (Ol' Musky) to 2026 (president of IIHS) and beyond, from people in the know.
Every bit of driver assistance I think is a good thing, but Level 5 - true autonomy - is still a ways off, it seems to me.
More specifically, what's the difference between bitcoin and a non-dividend-paying, non-voting stock?
Both are worth how much someone is willing to pay for them, but bitcoin has a bit less friction in being able to be used in a transaction. Otherwise very similar.
They're trying to reduce everything to statistics and numbers, like Robert McNamara did in Vietnam.
It's trying to make sense of something they don't really understand - the human element. The chaos. Motivation. Leadership. Ability.
"If you can't measure what's important, what you can measure becomes important."
You espoused a clear and concise argument that is logical. As a fellow C/C++/Java programmer who believes in using the right tool for the right job (each tool has its advantages) you don't seem to understand modern "brogrammer millenial culture:" It has nothing to do with being an effective tool to solve a problem and everything to do with popularity and coolness.
Building something that works isn't necessarily the goal anymore; it's "likes" on social media. Or however that stuff work.
Relevant: Resume Driven Development
(NTTAWT, as long as it doesn't interfere with the quality of the output)
Because object oriented languages FORCE a measure of readability and organization and preliminary design on the developer, which improves maintainability. It's not just Java, but also C# (the interpreted object oriented languages) as well as C++ (which executes cpu-native code).
With C, a developer can just start hacking away. "I need a function to do this, lemme write it." Put it in some file, update the makefile, done. Object-oriented languages add the "class" data structure, which is just a (required) way to group code. One is forced to stop and think what class a function should go in, and why. It's not much but it is a brake on a lazy or hurried developer, a brake which improves maintainability and readability.
As far as Java in particular... what is the benefit relative to its closest relative C#? If one goes with the whole enterprise IBM solution (Websphere), it has more out-of-the-box support for failover support and data replication. C# is easier to get started with because one doesn't have to do all the configuration required with an enterprise IBM Java setup, because much of the configuration is already done since C# is integrated with Windows.
Fluoride rinse induces "remineralization" I've personally seen it. If you have a soft spot in a tooth, using fluoride rinse twice a day will help harden it back up (remineralize it) with a few days.
It's a very powerful product.
"Laws are like spider webs. They will trap smaller insects but larger prey will break through." - multiple attributions
1) Donate lavishly to politicians.
2) Maintain a network of political contacts.
3) Have a team of highly capable, highly paid attorneys.
4) Be wealthy.
A primer on how to avoid prosecution.
Relevant: http://i.imgur.com/kpzUS.png
Location: Baltimore-DC region
Eyewear: Didn't get glasses in time. Didn't make it a priority because we weren't getting totality, but now I wish I did. I'm going to order a set to have on hand.
How watched: I took off work, came home, brought up NASA TV on the computer (Nasa's DC raw feed was broken, disappointingly). Kept looking outside, and yes, the light became weird. Things became dimmer, like under heavy late-day cloud cover, yet shadows were still visible. Then it started brightening. I didn't bother making the pinhole projector. Did it once years ago in college, was underwhelmed. Do plan to get quality eclipse/solar glasses going forward.
It was neat.
From the summary: "Etched in copper, plated with gold, and sealed in aluminum cases, the records are expected to remain intelligible for more than a billion years, making them the longest-lasting objects ever crafted by human hands."
All while existing in the interstellar cold and radiation of space. Wow. I'd be stoked if they could make a terrestrial, commercial storage medium which could last a fraction as long. We've got too much data for stone tablets.
"We can accept many transgressions, but we cannot accept thoughtcrime. It is the most dangerous to our authority."
And he's terminated as of now.
It is a business though. However, if they want out of the box thinkers... I dunno.
US fake news is not a result of solely government action. It's primarily a result of heavily biased private media. The US government does not have an official news organ (PBS is, to some degree). US fake news is primarily a result of private media and business interests aligning with a political party, which are wholly private organizations (which many people often forget and the illusion of being public entities is pushed heavily by the parties).
Other country's fake news comes straight from the government, as a result of their governments having official and unofficial news organs.
I think the net result is the same: a successfully misinformed population.