Actually its more likely that people would call the bluff. "saying you have a bomb" from the otherside of a locked door is OOOOOHHHH so convincing.... seriously, I could claim that right now.
Actually even the campaign finance reform is less of a problem than the 2 party system. Currently we have evil A vs evil B..... so people think they have a choice when they really have virtually none.
We need voting system reform (which seems easier to justify than putting restrictions on donations which could easily be shot down in the courts as anti 1st amendment).
What we need is a voting system where throwing away votes is impossible, then a true 3rd or 4th party might emerge.
Best system I saw was score voting. You assign a score of 0-10 for every candidate on the ballot. Therefore you could throw your full weight behind as many candidates as you liked without your support for a particular one in any way effecting your opinions about the others. And the best thing is, anyone who has ever watched the Olympics or any contest type show with judges will be able to understand this system immediately.
While the arguments that this system can (and probably) will create economic dependency on the pre-refined uranium supply are indeed valid. I think the major push of this is to take the wind out of the sails of countries like iran that "claim" to be developing this technology for energy purposes. If we offer them a dirt cheap way (research free) to attain nuclear power, but not weapons then suddenly their arguments loose a lot of traction. They can still argue that they want the tech for themselves so that the dependence issue isn't there, but when the research costs involved keep adding up, it looks more and more attractive.
So long as the regulated pool of uranium cannot be simply withheld as a further method of sanctions everything is good.
As a side note, anything encouraging nuclear power is a step towards reducing carbon emissions especially in the developing world where its growing rapidly.
What if (software) patents worked in the following way.
The patent application had an actual software implementation of the operation to be protected.
The patent would be graded on novelty (maybe an A-F scale or something).
Once granted, any individual/corporation could "license" that code verbatim from the patent office directly.
The license money would be routed to the original inventor via the patent office.
The amount of money is weighted based on the Novelty of the code.
What this does, is forces the actual innovation to have taken place (code was actually written, not just psudocode) and allows new software development to quickly look through the patent database find code they need to make their software work, pay the inventors and move on without having to re-implement. Let your software devs develop NEW code or frameworks instead of core components over and over again. Furthermore, the novelty scale removes a great deal of burden from the patent examiners. They can cut a large portion of their research time (helps with the backlog) because basically every piece of software that is sent in (if it conforms to the submission requirements eg IT WORKS) is just graded and then approved. If the patent seems extremely similar to something they've seen before, then it can be rated F grade (low payment). Its still worthy of something though, cause by having the code instantly available for a license, it would save some time (which has value).
The only hurdle is determining the actual payments per rating. I suppose that could be legislated. I would suggest a % of profits earned from the derivative software (would be a small %) that way it wouldn't become a barrier to entry for new companies/individuals, but would assure that adequate compensation was granted in the case of blockbuster software sales.
I could see a similar system adopted for standard patents, but lets not dwell on that.
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Actually its more likely that people would call the bluff. "saying you have a bomb" from the otherside of a locked door is OOOOOHHHH so convincing.... seriously, I could claim that right now.
Actually even the campaign finance reform is less of a problem than the 2 party system. Currently we have evil A vs evil B..... so people think they have a choice when they really have virtually none.
We need voting system reform (which seems easier to justify than putting restrictions on donations which could easily be shot down in the courts as anti 1st amendment).
What we need is a voting system where throwing away votes is impossible, then a true 3rd or 4th party might emerge.
Best system I saw was score voting. You assign a score of 0-10 for every candidate on the ballot. Therefore you could throw your full weight behind as many candidates as you liked without your support for a particular one in any way effecting your opinions about the others. And the best thing is, anyone who has ever watched the Olympics or any contest type show with judges will be able to understand this system immediately.
While the arguments that this system can (and probably) will create economic dependency on the pre-refined uranium supply are indeed valid. I think the major push of this is to take the wind out of the sails of countries like iran that "claim" to be developing this technology for energy purposes. If we offer them a dirt cheap way (research free) to attain nuclear power, but not weapons then suddenly their arguments loose a lot of traction. They can still argue that they want the tech for themselves so that the dependence issue isn't there, but when the research costs involved keep adding up, it looks more and more attractive. So long as the regulated pool of uranium cannot be simply withheld as a further method of sanctions everything is good. As a side note, anything encouraging nuclear power is a step towards reducing carbon emissions especially in the developing world where its growing rapidly.
What if (software) patents worked in the following way.
The patent application had an actual software implementation of the operation to be protected.
The patent would be graded on novelty (maybe an A-F scale or something).
Once granted, any individual/corporation could "license" that code verbatim from the patent office directly. The license money would be routed to the original inventor via the patent office.
The amount of money is weighted based on the Novelty of the code.
What this does, is forces the actual innovation to have taken place (code was actually written, not just psudocode) and allows new software development to quickly look through the patent database find code they need to make their software work, pay the inventors and move on without having to re-implement. Let your software devs develop NEW code or frameworks instead of core components over and over again. Furthermore, the novelty scale removes a great deal of burden from the patent examiners. They can cut a large portion of their research time (helps with the backlog) because basically every piece of software that is sent in (if it conforms to the submission requirements eg IT WORKS) is just graded and then approved. If the patent seems extremely similar to something they've seen before, then it can be rated F grade (low payment). Its still worthy of something though, cause by having the code instantly available for a license, it would save some time (which has value).
The only hurdle is determining the actual payments per rating. I suppose that could be legislated. I would suggest a % of profits earned from the derivative software (would be a small %) that way it wouldn't become a barrier to entry for new companies/individuals, but would assure that adequate compensation was granted in the case of blockbuster software sales.
I could see a similar system adopted for standard patents, but lets not dwell on that.