Completely agreed! The US government "purchased" and "owns" much of the mineral rights as well, and also collects a lot of revenue from its harvest. The people of the rest of the United States should demand that their cut be distributed directly to them. Same with lumber cut in national forests, in my state or any other (though really we're talking about my state, since we have more trees than you all combined).
Still, to directly answer your question, the answer is that we have a legal system based on federated governance. It's more my land than yours because I live in Alaska and you don't. It's more the land of the people who live on the North Slope than mine, because they live there and I don't, and that's why tons of money is poured into the small communities up there.
When I emphasized that it's "our" resource, I was pointing out that it doesn't "belong" to "the government" or whatever, because I am and we are the government, so it belongs to us.
The resource belongs to the people who live here. The Inuit are part of that. Their historical claim to the land is no more relevant than the claim of the people they displaced when they moved in; and no less valid than the people who will eventually, someday come to displace those of us who are here now.
Incorrect. The people of Alaska pay taxes. We have various kinds of taxes including property taxes and sales taxes (no state sales tax, but some municipalities). We also have taxes on many specific things, such as hotel taxes, gasoline taxes, and cruise ship taxes, among others.
The government doesn't "pay" us to live here (I live in Juneau, Alaska). The people receive a portion of the proceeds from the exploitation of our primary natural resource, oil; which is only fair, considering it's our resource. Frankly, I find it daft and pathetic that everyone else in the world, especially everyone else in America, doesn't demand the same deal from their governments. Look, democracy is of, by, and for the people, which means public resources are the property of the people, which means when the government sells the rights to those resources for harvest, they are literally selling the property of the people. Doesn't it stand to reason that the people should receive the proceeds? Me, I'm a little miffed that the government gets a cut at all, I think all the proceeds should be distributed, and the government should keep its grubby fingers off my loot.
the Constitution doesn't explicitly say anything about privacy
Yes, and that is a gigantic shame, but the Court was still correct when they found that right in the penumbras of the other rights. Although, I think you might be wrong when you say they used the 9th Amendment for that ruling, I think they didn't use the 9th, though they should have. The 9th is my absolute favorite amendment, and I think it's a let-down that it hasn't been used hundreds of times to strike down all sorts of ridiculous laws. The right to privacy was, by the way, the one right which was so blindingly obvious that the writers of the constitution literally let it go without saying.
I agree with you. I think the human standard should be a legal standard. If a human police officer couldn't do it, then we shouldn't allow a computer to do it. Nevertheless, there has never been any court of law which supported such a standard, so it would be extraordinary if this case was decided in that way.
Yes, thank you. Everybody tag this story 'correlationnotcausation'.
I think the obvious cause is that people feel pressure to be sexually attractive, but only relative to their peers. It's a marginal thing. If you have nasty fat peers, you only need to be marginally less fat and less nasty. That's why chicks are mad hot in Florida and California, and dumpy in Wisconsin and Alaska: the few naturally hot chicks all take off their clothes, which creates a pressure on other chicks to look that good; whereas in Alaska, those same hot chicks leave on their baggy jeans and sweatshirts, meaning all the rest of the chicks feel very little pressure to be any hotter than you can tell the hot girls are.
Are you trying to say that the electorate holds politicians to a high standard? Sorry, brother, but from where I stand, it seems people don't hold politicians to ANY standard.
The most dangerous facet of this administration has been their certainty in every single thing they do
Well, no, the most dangerous facet isn't their certainty that they are right, but rather the fact that they are ALWAYS WRONG.
Seriously, I can't think of a single thing Bush has been right about *and gotten* during his Presidency. The few things he HAS been right about, he hasn't gotten: social security reform, immigration reform, and the mid-east peace process. Everything that he has been allowed to do has been an unmitigated disaster.
I'm sick of lies and lying liars. I'm sick of people who rewrite the facts to justify doing something and then rewrite history to protect themselves from that fuckup.
Me too. I just wish we were a majority. If elections are evidence, then the evidence suggests that populations in all democratic countries LOVE lying liars.
So my question is this: Imagine that the machine was faulty in the other direction, that it was rigged to never come up with a win, no matter how long you played.
I don't think casinos consider that "faulty". I think that's the way it's supposed to work. At least, that's the way it's always worked for me.
The matter at hand is 1.) clearly the casino's fault 2.) clearly a crime on the part of the gamblers 3.) clearly not something for which I give the casino any sympathy 4.) still, clearly a crime.
One thing's for sure though: if these casinos are dumb enough to start suing their customers or trying to put them in jail, it's not going to entice a whole lot of people to take a trip to vegas... look at how well that plan worked for the music industry.
Are you referring to the fact that everyone has stopped listening to RIAA music?
We can sit around all day saying it's dumb to sue your customers, but if it were bad for business, then businesses wouldn't do it. It's a simple cost-benefit analysis.
Incorrect. There is a check/balance, which is that he is a rightly elected leader in a functioning democracy. If you have a problem with his policies, you should take it up with the majority who elected him. His policies have the support of all the people who elected him, and those are the appropriate people to blame. Luckily, I don't like him or his policies, didn't vote for him, and take no blame. Still though, the people spoke; in a democracy, the people get whatever government they want, so evidently they want this kind.
Why are unpaid medical bills on a credit report? It is not credit
Explain to me in what way an unpaid bill is not credit. There was a service performed, which you did not pay for at the time of service, or at the time of first billing. After your first opportunity to pay is past, it's credit.
Also: The problem of people using credit reports for things other than granting credit is big and getting a lot bigger
Well, it's a report on your past use of credit, so it's called a Credit Report. But that doesn't naturally limit its applicability. We may decide as a matter of policy that we only want to use credit reports for the issuance of new credit, but it's certainly not a foregone conclusion, and I'd have to think about ramifications before I supported that kind of policy.
I do not object to other things you said in your post.
Oh, great, you must have more details than the rest of us, which is good because the story offered very little. Me, I assumed the defendant was guilty, that's why he even offered the three bills. Can you provide a link to information showing how poor the case was, and how there was absolutely no detective work?
I agree but when you write it down as a formula, make sure your "number of people" variable subtracts one, by which I mean only two or more programmers will tend to produce crufty code.
so for n = number of programmers; n >= 1 tn = the time spent by each programmer indexed by n T = t1 + t2 +.. + tn T/n = of course, average time spent C = cruftiness K = constant coefficient
the formula might be something like
C = K * T/n * (n - 1) = KT - KT/n
Which basically says that cruftiness is a product of time, minus a little bit because programmers tend to uncruft other people's stuff, but only a little bit, and less when he is working with more and more stuff written by other people.
It's interesting to note that by this formula if n=1, when there is one programmer, there is no cruftiness. If you as an individual allow cruftiness into your code, you might modify it to include cruftiness over time.
Also note that when T = 0, when no code has yet been written, then there is not yet any cruftiness.
I think much of the issue is that the GPLv2 people might very soon find themselves in a tight spot being left out of free software development. If they decide they really want to use a neato piece of new code which the author released under GPLv3, then they are out of luck and can't use it. Likely, over time, more and more individual projects will turn to GPLV3. Then GPLv2 will eventually become a minority player, and will be very unattractive for use, since it will be so limiting in terms of what software you are able to use.
It's true, they could just, you know, not use the GPLv3 code. But that's a problem, and Linus is complaining about it. It would benefit him more if the license evolution had gone a different way. His favorite policy lost out to a different policy. He lost a fight. He's complaining about it; he thinks he should have won.
That's an interesting point. I would say that all algorithms are science/math/abstract knowledge, and as such, only really really innovative new algorithms rise to the level of patentability, at which point I would be okay with a patent in either hardware or software. If you can, say, figure out a way to solve a problem one order of magnitude faster than anyone else ever has, then you can enjoy profits on that for fifteen years.
On the other hand, if all you do is design a solution to a new problem, you don't get a patent. I believe the two legal words are "novel" and "non-obvious". If you solve a new problem, then your solution is "novel", but unless it's "non-obvious", then you shouldn't get a patent. That's an elastic requirement, which needs to be defined by law. Me myself, I would support a very high threshold for it.
So, in conclusion, in principle I'm okay with software patents, but I have literally never heard of one which was novel enough and non-obvious enough to be above my threshold. Given that, I'm inclined to support the abolition of software patents, since *evidentally*, they are useless and bothersome.
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Completely agreed! The US government "purchased" and "owns" much of the mineral rights as well, and also collects a lot of revenue from its harvest. The people of the rest of the United States should demand that their cut be distributed directly to them. Same with lumber cut in national forests, in my state or any other (though really we're talking about my state, since we have more trees than you all combined).
Still, to directly answer your question, the answer is that we have a legal system based on federated governance. It's more my land than yours because I live in Alaska and you don't. It's more the land of the people who live on the North Slope than mine, because they live there and I don't, and that's why tons of money is poured into the small communities up there.
When I emphasized that it's "our" resource, I was pointing out that it doesn't "belong" to "the government" or whatever, because I am and we are the government, so it belongs to us.
The resource belongs to the people who live here. The Inuit are part of that. Their historical claim to the land is no more relevant than the claim of the people they displaced when they moved in; and no less valid than the people who will eventually, someday come to displace those of us who are here now.
Incorrect. The people of Alaska pay taxes. We have various kinds of taxes including property taxes and sales taxes (no state sales tax, but some municipalities). We also have taxes on many specific things, such as hotel taxes, gasoline taxes, and cruise ship taxes, among others.
The government doesn't "pay" us to live here (I live in Juneau, Alaska). The people receive a portion of the proceeds from the exploitation of our primary natural resource, oil; which is only fair, considering it's our resource. Frankly, I find it daft and pathetic that everyone else in the world, especially everyone else in America, doesn't demand the same deal from their governments. Look, democracy is of, by, and for the people, which means public resources are the property of the people, which means when the government sells the rights to those resources for harvest, they are literally selling the property of the people. Doesn't it stand to reason that the people should receive the proceeds? Me, I'm a little miffed that the government gets a cut at all, I think all the proceeds should be distributed, and the government should keep its grubby fingers off my loot.
-1, Troll
Come on, mods.
the Constitution doesn't explicitly say anything about privacy
Yes, and that is a gigantic shame, but the Court was still correct when they found that right in the penumbras of the other rights. Although, I think you might be wrong when you say they used the 9th Amendment for that ruling, I think they didn't use the 9th, though they should have. The 9th is my absolute favorite amendment, and I think it's a let-down that it hasn't been used hundreds of times to strike down all sorts of ridiculous laws. The right to privacy was, by the way, the one right which was so blindingly obvious that the writers of the constitution literally let it go without saying.
I find it very surprising that a police department would even have interest in building a tool that is so incredibly ripe for abuse
You do? I don't.
Everything else in your post was +5 Interesting though.
I agree with you. I think the human standard should be a legal standard. If a human police officer couldn't do it, then we shouldn't allow a computer to do it. Nevertheless, there has never been any court of law which supported such a standard, so it would be extraordinary if this case was decided in that way.
I wish it wasn't cool to be a curmudgeon.
Oh yeah? Well I wish it *weren't* cool to misuse the subjunctive mood.
Yes, thank you. Everybody tag this story 'correlationnotcausation'.
I think the obvious cause is that people feel pressure to be sexually attractive, but only relative to their peers. It's a marginal thing. If you have nasty fat peers, you only need to be marginally less fat and less nasty. That's why chicks are mad hot in Florida and California, and dumpy in Wisconsin and Alaska: the few naturally hot chicks all take off their clothes, which creates a pressure on other chicks to look that good; whereas in Alaska, those same hot chicks leave on their baggy jeans and sweatshirts, meaning all the rest of the chicks feel very little pressure to be any hotter than you can tell the hot girls are.
Heh heh heh, yeah, that's a good one.
Even if you were serious, your response is not germane, because the needed reform is not to improve efficiency, but to establish solvency.
Touche. I've never heard anything about that.
And if that is the most positive thing Bush does during his presidency, then that will be illustrative.
Are you trying to say that the electorate holds politicians to a high standard? Sorry, brother, but from where I stand, it seems people don't hold politicians to ANY standard.
The most dangerous facet of this administration has been their certainty in every single thing they do
Well, no, the most dangerous facet isn't their certainty that they are right, but rather the fact that they are ALWAYS WRONG.
Seriously, I can't think of a single thing Bush has been right about *and gotten* during his Presidency. The few things he HAS been right about, he hasn't gotten: social security reform, immigration reform, and the mid-east peace process. Everything that he has been allowed to do has been an unmitigated disaster.
I'm sick of lies and lying liars. I'm sick of people who rewrite the facts to justify doing something and then rewrite history to protect themselves from that fuckup.
Me too. I just wish we were a majority. If elections are evidence, then the evidence suggests that populations in all democratic countries LOVE lying liars.
So my question is this: Imagine that the machine was faulty in the other direction, that it was rigged to never come up with a win, no matter how long you played.
I don't think casinos consider that "faulty". I think that's the way it's supposed to work. At least, that's the way it's always worked for me.
The matter at hand is 1.) clearly the casino's fault 2.) clearly a crime on the part of the gamblers 3.) clearly not something for which I give the casino any sympathy 4.) still, clearly a crime.
One thing's for sure though: if these casinos are dumb enough to start suing their customers or trying to put them in jail, it's not going to entice a whole lot of people to take a trip to vegas... look at how well that plan worked for the music industry.
Are you referring to the fact that everyone has stopped listening to RIAA music?
We can sit around all day saying it's dumb to sue your customers, but if it were bad for business, then businesses wouldn't do it. It's a simple cost-benefit analysis.
Dude do you have a 22 inch monitor which won't plug into your laptop? Damn that's crazy. I've never seen a monitor or laptop like that.
I have a laptop and a 20 inch screen, and my 20 inch screen has no problem plugging into my laptop.
Wrong. The 5th Amendment:
... be deprived of ... property, without due process of law.
No person shall
Something's gotta give eventually, right?
Heh, you must be too young to remember any of the other Presidents. Your great-grandparents said the same thing about Lincoln.
Incorrect. There is a check/balance, which is that he is a rightly elected leader in a functioning democracy. If you have a problem with his policies, you should take it up with the majority who elected him. His policies have the support of all the people who elected him, and those are the appropriate people to blame. Luckily, I don't like him or his policies, didn't vote for him, and take no blame. Still though, the people spoke; in a democracy, the people get whatever government they want, so evidently they want this kind.
Why are unpaid medical bills on a credit report? It is not credit
Explain to me in what way an unpaid bill is not credit. There was a service performed, which you did not pay for at the time of service, or at the time of first billing. After your first opportunity to pay is past, it's credit.
Also: The problem of people using credit reports for things other than granting credit is big and getting a lot bigger
Well, it's a report on your past use of credit, so it's called a Credit Report. But that doesn't naturally limit its applicability. We may decide as a matter of policy that we only want to use credit reports for the issuance of new credit, but it's certainly not a foregone conclusion, and I'd have to think about ramifications before I supported that kind of policy.
I do not object to other things you said in your post.
Oh, great, you must have more details than the rest of us, which is good because the story offered very little. Me, I assumed the defendant was guilty, that's why he even offered the three bills. Can you provide a link to information showing how poor the case was, and how there was absolutely no detective work?
I agree but when you write it down as a formula, make sure your "number of people" variable subtracts one, by which I mean only two or more programmers will tend to produce crufty code.
.. + tn
so for
n = number of programmers; n >= 1
tn = the time spent by each programmer indexed by n
T = t1 + t2 +
T/n = of course, average time spent
C = cruftiness
K = constant coefficient
the formula might be something like
C = K * T/n * (n - 1) = KT - KT/n
Which basically says that cruftiness is a product of time, minus a little bit because programmers tend to uncruft other people's stuff, but only a little bit, and less when he is working with more and more stuff written by other people.
It's interesting to note that by this formula if n=1, when there is one programmer, there is no cruftiness. If you as an individual allow cruftiness into your code, you might modify it to include cruftiness over time.
Also note that when T = 0, when no code has yet been written, then there is not yet any cruftiness.
I think much of the issue is that the GPLv2 people might very soon find themselves in a tight spot being left out of free software development. If they decide they really want to use a neato piece of new code which the author released under GPLv3, then they are out of luck and can't use it. Likely, over time, more and more individual projects will turn to GPLV3. Then GPLv2 will eventually become a minority player, and will be very unattractive for use, since it will be so limiting in terms of what software you are able to use.
It's true, they could just, you know, not use the GPLv3 code. But that's a problem, and Linus is complaining about it. It would benefit him more if the license evolution had gone a different way. His favorite policy lost out to a different policy. He lost a fight. He's complaining about it; he thinks he should have won.
That's an interesting point. I would say that all algorithms are science/math/abstract knowledge, and as such, only really really innovative new algorithms rise to the level of patentability, at which point I would be okay with a patent in either hardware or software. If you can, say, figure out a way to solve a problem one order of magnitude faster than anyone else ever has, then you can enjoy profits on that for fifteen years.
On the other hand, if all you do is design a solution to a new problem, you don't get a patent. I believe the two legal words are "novel" and "non-obvious". If you solve a new problem, then your solution is "novel", but unless it's "non-obvious", then you shouldn't get a patent. That's an elastic requirement, which needs to be defined by law. Me myself, I would support a very high threshold for it.
So, in conclusion, in principle I'm okay with software patents, but I have literally never heard of one which was novel enough and non-obvious enough to be above my threshold. Given that, I'm inclined to support the abolition of software patents, since *evidentally*, they are useless and bothersome.