Just for clarity for people that know as much about ham as I do (nothing hehe), the code test that Bruce Perens was referring to was a morse code test. I assume that you needed to pass a morse code test to get a license. When I saw code and software in the same sentence, my brain didn't make the leap to 'morse'.
Same sight you linked to had the vote buried in some text. Quick glance at the vote does indeed show 100% republicans in favor, 100% dems against, with a few of the dem's not voting.
I can understand frustrations about pricing of digital content, but my frustration comes from lack of availability most of the time.
20,30,40 year old movies that are impossible to find through any legal means sometimes, short of buying a physical DVD if you are lucky. But that snail mail system completely destroys the well known advantage that impulse buying has for content owners.
I just can't imagine why any media publisher (music, movies, books, tv) wouldn't want 100% of their content available for purchase right at a person's finger tips at all times. Case in point: Blade Runner, the re-mastered version. I got the urge to watch it after the recent slashdot thread about prequel/sequels possibly coming out. I power up the xbox: check netflix, nope. check zune video store, nope. Why? I managed to find a copy at one of the few small DVD stores remaining in town (the big ones are, of course, bankrupt).
TV shows on Hulu are the same way. Some let you view a full season. Some only 5 shows, and the most popular ones like American Idol, not at all. There is no legal way to watch an American Idol if you missed an episode. In the mind of Fox do they think I'll wait an entire year, then buy the Idol DVD set, just to watch the one episode I missed? Surely some revenue is better than none, put the damn thing on Hulu.
Yeah, we have a doctor in the family, and I can't imagine calling him and expecting free check-ups on a regular basis. The social norms are probably different around computer fixing because 1) usually there are no special tools involved except your brain (a doctor might need to use an MRI), 2) there isn't any well known certification process, and hourly wage and cost varies widely, so most people have little understanding of the value of the computer fixer's skills, (unlike a Doctor, which everyone knows had a particular set of training, and who's high fees garner him a level of respect), and 3) Sometimes the fix is very simple. As simple as, "Are you sure it is plugged in?" Some people know so little about computers that they have no grasp of when something is going to be an easy fix vs a very hard fix.
Nope. About the only time public colleges raise tuition is when politicians change how much money they are going to allocate to education (or other external funding or revenue changes). I'm not sure if all public colleges have this, but I know that the ones I've worked for/with have mission statements/board of director policies that say that tuition must be as low as possible.
When facing a budget shortfall, the very last thing considered is raising tuition.
Expulsion does seem fairly harsh though. I would have thought that an in person apology, facebook account deletion, and some suspension would have been more appropriate.
It isn't like the whole world could see the conversation. They only found out when a principal ordered a student to log into their account, and read the thread. And in one case, "Taylor Tindle was expelled for posting that the same teacher is bipolar. " So "I think my teacher is mental" in a private thread between kids is grounds for expulsion? Harsh.
I'm not sure where Chapel Hills Middle School is, but if it is a small town with one school, expulsion would be a very impacting sentence.
As with any new communication medium, I think it will just take a full generation, or generation and a half, before the average person is fully aware of the potential pitfalls and changes their behavior accordingly. Also, it may take a decade or two before enough law suits are brought and decided before there is ample precedence about what problems one could run into using pervasive social media.
I don't see the average person ever deciding that social media is not worth it, but I do see the average person using more forethought about what parts of their lives belong on certain types of social media. There are a lot of people using Facebook now, who probably were raised by parents that have never used, and have therefore never cautioned their child about it. The next generation raising the next set of kids is going to be teaching their children about privacy in the online world as a matter of daily life, and/or restricting and overseeing social media use to varying degrees as their children mature.
I know if I had a 12 year old, I might consider letting them use facebook, but a requirement would be that they had to 'friend' me and I would know their user/pass. I would certainly want to read everything they were posting/reading daily. If I saw my kid make a potentially damaging or stupidly offensive post, they would be punished in the usual ways that a 'real world' posting would be punished. For instance, if my kid spray painted a wall with something dumb, they'd A) Lose privileges, and B) clean it up, and C) potentially pay for or make good on the situation. So in the case of 'spray painting something stupid on facebook', they'd A) Have their account deleted (immediate cleanup), B) be able to make a new account with a sorry message on it only, and C) lose the privilege of being on any social sites for some length of time.
At any rate, I agree that nuclear is the right solution given our current tech, but until political red-tap is streamlined, and public opinion is changed, we should be building anything we can that makes environmental and economic sense (when taking into account external costs: security, environment/climate, sustainable, pollution, etc..). Solar thermal isn't dangerous at all, is relatively simple construction, doesn't necessarily need to harm the desert if done right, and has been proven to work well in many areas already.
I'd also like to see more symbiotic systems in place, like solar thermal towers. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_updraft_tower
The interesting thing about them, is that condensation forms on the underside of the collector at night, and could be used to grow crops underneath the collector if partial areas of transparency would allow light though. It is less efficient than other solar methods, but if it could provide power while simultaneous making the land arable underneath, it would be ideal for poor countries with lots of dry land.
I think the difference between now and then isn't so much a question of bias, but of efforts to remain impartial, or at least projecting the appearance of impartiality.
Judges are supposed to excuse themselves from rulings when they have a conflict of interest. Many people hold that the large amounts of money that Clarence Thomas' wife receive through her Tea Party activities should have been cause for Thomas to excuse himself from the Citizen's United ruling.
Likewise, I think you'll be hard pressed to find very many instances of judges attending political strategy retreats, such as the Koch brothers event where two judges attended.
They may be biased, but they are supposed to, at the very least, appear impartial.
My vindictive side thinks the man should die in a fire, but I am trying REALLY HARD not to give in to my vindictive side.
I find it disappointing that people here are joking about killing a guy who basically annoyed them with some e-mail. Yeah, spam is annoying, but really? Where were you people when wall street ruined the economy, and the government opened an illegal prison in Cuba?
You're right of course, but I think the reaction you see is because many people actually were affected by spam daily for years. The ruined economy and some folks locked up hasn't really impacted the daily life of the majority of slashdot posters.
Now, it it was your relative laid off, or your relative locked up without trial......
I'm guessing that nothing is really different historically. People in general have a fairly low level of empathy. I'd like to think that our corporate owned politics, unconstituational jailing, torture, etc.. would actually stir people to action, but it seems like the combination of our campaign finance laws, political system, and the concentrated media ownership, form a system that has mastered pacifying the masses. And that system has certainly mastered the ability to convince people to support ideas that are not in their best interest.
The one thing I'm still confused about is the shooting of the people who came to help the wounded. When they shot up the van that arrived.
I've seen all sorts of comments about this, but have never heard from someone 'in the know' about apache rules. Once the enemy was neutralized, is it alright to then shoot at what amounts to an ambulance? I'm not sure what the pilot/gunner was seeing, but it was pretty easy for me to see that at least one occupant was a child, and that none that showed up in the van had any weapons.
You said, "The whole reason for corporate personhood is to protect the rights of the people involved with the corporation."
And I said, no, personhood has nothing to do with protecting shareholder rights. It protects the shareholders from liability. Maybe that is what you meant to say?
On charter's being revoked and corporations having to benefit the public interest:
I doubt that was ever true. The UK never did that, for example. Further, given the often vile envy and hate that cuts through any human society, it is better that US society currently has no say in corporate charters.
See: http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Corporations/Hx_Corporations_US.html or just google "corporation history charter revoke"
From the above link: "The two hundred or so corporations operating in the US by the year 1800 were each kept on fairly short leashes. They weren't allowed to participate in the political process. They couldn't buy stock in other corporations. And if one of them acted improperly, the consequences were severe. In 1832, President Andrew Jackson vetoed a motion to extend the charter of the corrupt and tyrannical Second Bank of the United States, and was widely applauded for doing so. That same year the state of Pennsylvania revoked the charters of ten banks for operating contrary to the public interest. Even the enormous industry trusts, formed to protect member corporations from external competitors and provide barriers to entry, eventually proved no match for the state. By the mid-1800s, antitrust legislation was widely in place."
I not sure how you read what mrvan wrote and decided that corporate personhood is a bad idea.
"It is a pure tradeoff between the the security of the investors and the rights of creditors and has nothing to do with enforcement of pre-existing rights."
The personhood part of a corporation basically sets up a fake 'fall guy' so that shareholders and investors aren't sued into oblivion if the corporation goes bankrupt. No one would become a shareholder/investor if the risk wasn't just "lose the money you invested" but was "lose the money you invested, and your house, car, and everything else you own".
The limited liability aspect is a good thing.
I think what you should be pointing at is the specifics rights that corporations have gained over time. Not rights given to them because they are 'fake people', but rights given to them just because some body of decision makers either thought it was good for business or constitutionally correct.
Way way back in the beginning, those corporate rights were given, but there were strings attached. I forget all the specifics, but it was basically along the lines of "must benefit society" or something like that. There are instances where corporate charters were revoked.
Thanks for posting, and thanks mods for giving mrvan some points.
People in this thread are seriously confusing what the purpose of the artificial personhood was used for: a way to create a fake person so that the charter could be given to one name, and as the fake fall guy, so that shareholders are protected from lawsuits/liability/bankruptcy.
All the new 'rights' that have been given to corporations over time (eg, citizens united vs scotus) have nothing to do with personhood. However, the media, being the bastion of intelligence that it is, has muddied the waters. People should be specifically saying "corporate Right X is bad", not "personhood is bad". The personhood part is generally a good idea. It encourages people to get together, invest, and try to start a business.
we still have quite a few other personal rights that have been given to corporations that shouldn't have
I'll be glad when this fad goes away. The whole reason for corporate personhood is to protect the rights of the people involved with the corporation.
That isn't true at all. The purpose of a corporation is to create a separate legal entity for the purpose of protecting the shareholders of the corporation from liability if the business fails or is sued. This encourages people to band together and try to start a business. In general, it is a good thing.
Corporate personhood, on the other hand, was never considered real personhood. It was a fake way of granting the charter to a single name, instead of all the shareholders. From wikipedia: "The process is called “incorporation,” referring to the abstract concept of clothing the entity with a "veil" of artificial personhood"
Now, over time, corporations have gained many other privileges, to the point where many in the media (most notably people like Thom Hartman, read his book on corporations), basically consider corporate rights equal to, and in some cases greater than, a real person's rights.
And way way back, those extra rights were given to corporations with the understanding that the corporation was to benefit society in some way. Make money, sure. Destroy the environment, no. And corporate charters were reviewed, and revoked from time to time.
I found them cheesy in a good way, and sometimes serious in a very serious way. The final episode of the 10 year run with them aging on that ship. I don't know how anyone could say that was bad...
At any rate, if all the SG shows were bad, what are some examples of sci-fi shows that you enjoyed? I might be missing out on something hehe.
But it is the perfect combination of decent science fiction and an entertaining plot with likable and relatable characters.
I believe you are referring to Babylon 5, not Stargate. B5 had deep, conflicted characters and pretty decent acting. Stargate....not so much. SG always impressed me as B5-lite.
I've watched all of the SG series and enjoyed them. I've seen several comments on slashdot stating that B5 was better. How would you rate the "fun level" of B5 though? Action? Jokes? Variability of episodes? I've never seen B5, but the stargate, being well.... a stargate, meant that each episode could be entirely different, which was enjoyable. I've always shied away from B5 because it is.... well, one base.
If B5 is just deep, conflicted characters on a base in space, acting well together, it doesn't sound very fun. If I'm wrong, let me know:), I'm almost out of Sci-Fi to watch again hehe.
The one thing I don't get about people who are skeptical of the consensus, is that you can throw out Mann's work if you want, and there is still mountains of evidence left supporting AGW. I don't know much about Steig's Antartic paper, but I would be willing to bet that you could throw his out also, and find other papers by other research teams that come to similar conclusions.
Here are 3 completely separate 2000 year climate graphs shown together, from 3 different teams using 3 different methods. http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/globalwarming/paleolast.html
Links to more evidence and explanation http://www.grist.org/article/series/skeptics/
I don't have the expertise to judge the methods or conclusions of the scientists who research climate, but as long as there is a consensus on many of the issues, I feel that I would be foolish to ignore them. In some ways, it is almost like refusing to drive over any bridge because you can pick out a few incompetent engineers who designed bridges that failed in the past.
The problem in Italy is a criminal matter, that should be handled by the police. Forcing people to vote in secret booths doesn't change much. The criminals could have just as easily forced known "liberals" (or whatever group they were trying to defeat) to stay home and not vote, thereby increasing the odds of the "conservatives" winning.
We've had mail-in ballots in Oregon for a long time and I can't recall any serious issues around vote tampering. If there were people in Italy that were pressured, they should report it to the police. If the police can't make arrests or resolve the criminal behavior, that is an indication of a broken justice system, not a broken voting system.
And bribes can just as easily be used to influence booth voting. The briber wouldn't have a 100% guarantee that his bribe succeeded, but that in and of itself would not stop the influence of bribes from being somewhat effective. People willing to accept bribes for votes are likely fairly apathetic about politics to begin with.
What I think is a much larger issue, is the inability to verify that your vote actually counted towards the candidate of your choice. When you vote you should receive some code back, that you can use to check against a database of all votes, find yours, and verify that it counts towards your candidate. If enough people check, that random sampling should ensure that the total vote count has not be tampered with.
Well, in my mind, you are ensuring that the government more accurately reflects its populace.
When you have low voter turnout, it usually means that the outcome is only determined by people with very strong opinions. That population segment likely has a higher percent of radical left/right than the average population. That means more radical candidates, and more deadlocks in congress.
I think that low voter turnout also can lead to politicians only running on the most hot button topics: abortion for example. Most of America is probably far less concerned with those controversial issues, and would rather vote for politicians that are intelligent, well rounded, competent, and truly have their best interests in mind.
And then you need to consider the demographics of voters/non-voters. Young/Poor have a lower voting rate than Old/Rich. This tends to make any election with low voter turnout greatly favor conservative candidates. Now, some percent of those Young/Poor had no excuse for not voting. Some percent may have had legitimate issues (overrun voting stations in urban centers, could not get off work/took too long to reach voting station, etc...). Regardless, it leads to people feeling that their voice was not heard.
meant to say, "but it wasn't a 1:1", as in, cutting one tax dollar doesn't mean 1 tax revenue. Indeed, when adjusted by inflation and natural revenue growth as gdp grows, cutting taxes can negatively impact revenue very visibly.
I don't have time to go through each of their points, but the first one, using the roaring 20's as a sign that lower taxes increases revenue is way way misleading. A casual glance at the 20's history shows that there were tons of factors involved in the booming economy: most notably all the service men coming home with saved up money, and massive unsustainable speculation in the market. Which, we all know how well that went... I think that the tax changes, in combination with many other factors (government growth policies, etc..) did increase revenue some, but it was a 1:1, cut and dry situation. And in the end, it was unsustainable.
Now contrast the Heritage Foundations article with others that seem to contradict the notion that lowering taxes increases revenue: http://arec.oregonstate.edu/jaeger/taxation/FAQtax2.html - says no. http://blogs.marketwatch.com/fundmastery/2010/07/02/does-hiking-tax-rates-raise-more-revenue/ - says "its complicated, not always, yes sometimes". (I liked this one the best. It seemed to do less cherry picking than heritage or the others and showed longer term trends). http://www.cbpp.org/cms/?fa=view&id=165 - says no http://politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2010/nov/09/mike-pence/mike-pence-says-raising-taxes-lowers-tax-revenues/ - says no
I would attribute the mandatory military training as damping any future gun crime in Switzerland. But what accounts for Canada's lower gun crime rate than the US?
Slashdot Mirror
Just for clarity for people that know as much about ham as I do (nothing hehe), the code test that Bruce Perens was referring to was a morse code test. I assume that you needed to pass a morse code test to get a license. When I saw code and software in the same sentence, my brain didn't make the leap to 'morse'.
http://republicans.energycommerce.house.gov/Media/file/Markups/Telecom/030911_HJRes37/passage.pdf
Same sight you linked to had the vote buried in some text. Quick glance at the vote does indeed show 100% republicans in favor, 100% dems against, with a few of the dem's not voting.
you fools gave your houses to the right wing party. politicians anywhere around the world, always support corporations over people. .
FTFY
I'm not sure that the Dem's in Wisconsin, fighting for the right of workers to collectively bargain, would agree with you.
I can understand frustrations about pricing of digital content, but my frustration comes from lack of availability most of the time.
20,30,40 year old movies that are impossible to find through any legal means sometimes, short of buying a physical DVD if you are lucky. But that snail mail system completely destroys the well known advantage that impulse buying has for content owners.
I just can't imagine why any media publisher (music, movies, books, tv) wouldn't want 100% of their content available for purchase right at a person's finger tips at all times. Case in point: Blade Runner, the re-mastered version. I got the urge to watch it after the recent slashdot thread about prequel/sequels possibly coming out. I power up the xbox: check netflix, nope. check zune video store, nope. Why? I managed to find a copy at one of the few small DVD stores remaining in town (the big ones are, of course, bankrupt).
TV shows on Hulu are the same way. Some let you view a full season. Some only 5 shows, and the most popular ones like American Idol, not at all. There is no legal way to watch an American Idol if you missed an episode. In the mind of Fox do they think I'll wait an entire year, then buy the Idol DVD set, just to watch the one episode I missed? Surely some revenue is better than none, put the damn thing on Hulu.
Yeah, we have a doctor in the family, and I can't imagine calling him and expecting free check-ups on a regular basis. The social norms are probably different around computer fixing because
1) usually there are no special tools involved except your brain (a doctor might need to use an MRI),
2) there isn't any well known certification process, and hourly wage and cost varies widely, so most people have little understanding of the value of the computer fixer's skills, (unlike a Doctor, which everyone knows had a particular set of training, and who's high fees garner him a level of respect), and
3) Sometimes the fix is very simple. As simple as, "Are you sure it is plugged in?" Some people know so little about computers that they have no grasp of when something is going to be an easy fix vs a very hard fix.
Nope. About the only time public colleges raise tuition is when politicians change how much money they are going to allocate to education (or other external funding or revenue changes). I'm not sure if all public colleges have this, but I know that the ones I've worked for/with have mission statements/board of director policies that say that tuition must be as low as possible.
When facing a budget shortfall, the very last thing considered is raising tuition.
Expulsion does seem fairly harsh though. I would have thought that an in person apology, facebook account deletion, and some suspension would have been more appropriate.
It isn't like the whole world could see the conversation. They only found out when a principal ordered a student to log into their account, and read the thread. And in one case, "Taylor Tindle was expelled for posting that the same teacher is bipolar. " So "I think my teacher is mental" in a private thread between kids is grounds for expulsion? Harsh.
I'm not sure where Chapel Hills Middle School is, but if it is a small town with one school, expulsion would be a very impacting sentence.
As with any new communication medium, I think it will just take a full generation, or generation and a half, before the average person is fully aware of the potential pitfalls and changes their behavior accordingly. Also, it may take a decade or two before enough law suits are brought and decided before there is ample precedence about what problems one could run into using pervasive social media.
I don't see the average person ever deciding that social media is not worth it, but I do see the average person using more forethought about what parts of their lives belong on certain types of social media. There are a lot of people using Facebook now, who probably were raised by parents that have never used, and have therefore never cautioned their child about it. The next generation raising the next set of kids is going to be teaching their children about privacy in the online world as a matter of daily life, and/or restricting and overseeing social media use to varying degrees as their children mature.
I know if I had a 12 year old, I might consider letting them use facebook, but a requirement would be that they had to 'friend' me and I would know their user/pass. I would certainly want to read everything they were posting/reading daily. If I saw my kid make a potentially damaging or stupidly offensive post, they would be punished in the usual ways that a 'real world' posting would be punished. For instance, if my kid spray painted a wall with something dumb, they'd A) Lose privileges, and B) clean it up, and C) potentially pay for or make good on the situation. So in the case of 'spray painting something stupid on facebook', they'd A) Have their account deleted (immediate cleanup), B) be able to make a new account with a sorry message on it only, and C) lose the privilege of being on any social sites for some length of time.
Which molten salt plants operate at 10,000 degrees?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_thermal_energy#Molten_salt_storage says 550...
At any rate, I agree that nuclear is the right solution given our current tech, but until political red-tap is streamlined, and public opinion is changed, we should be building anything we can that makes environmental and economic sense (when taking into account external costs: security, environment/climate, sustainable, pollution, etc..). Solar thermal isn't dangerous at all, is relatively simple construction, doesn't necessarily need to harm the desert if done right, and has been proven to work well in many areas already.
I'd also like to see more symbiotic systems in place, like solar thermal towers.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_updraft_tower
The interesting thing about them, is that condensation forms on the underside of the collector at night, and could be used to grow crops underneath the collector if partial areas of transparency would allow light though. It is less efficient than other solar methods, but if it could provide power while simultaneous making the land arable underneath, it would be ideal for poor countries with lots of dry land.
I think the difference between now and then isn't so much a question of bias, but of efforts to remain impartial, or at least projecting the appearance of impartiality.
Judges are supposed to excuse themselves from rulings when they have a conflict of interest. Many people hold that the large amounts of money that Clarence Thomas' wife receive through her Tea Party activities should have been cause for Thomas to excuse himself from the Citizen's United ruling.
Likewise, I think you'll be hard pressed to find very many instances of judges attending political strategy retreats, such as the Koch brothers event where two judges attended.
They may be biased, but they are supposed to, at the very least, appear impartial.
My vindictive side thinks the man should die in a fire, but I am trying REALLY HARD not to give in to my vindictive side.
I find it disappointing that people here are joking about killing a guy who basically annoyed them with some e-mail. Yeah, spam is annoying, but really? Where were you people when wall street ruined the economy, and the government opened an illegal prison in Cuba?
You're right of course, but I think the reaction you see is because many people actually were affected by spam daily for years. The ruined economy and some folks locked up hasn't really impacted the daily life of the majority of slashdot posters.
Now, it it was your relative laid off, or your relative locked up without trial......
I'm guessing that nothing is really different historically. People in general have a fairly low level of empathy. I'd like to think that our corporate owned politics, unconstituational jailing, torture, etc.. would actually stir people to action, but it seems like the combination of our campaign finance laws, political system, and the concentrated media ownership, form a system that has mastered pacifying the masses. And that system has certainly mastered the ability to convince people to support ideas that are not in their best interest.
I was curious too: hitler rants
The one thing I'm still confused about is the shooting of the people who came to help the wounded. When they shot up the van that arrived.
I've seen all sorts of comments about this, but have never heard from someone 'in the know' about apache rules. Once the enemy was neutralized, is it alright to then shoot at what amounts to an ambulance? I'm not sure what the pilot/gunner was seeing, but it was pretty easy for me to see that at least one occupant was a child, and that none that showed up in the van had any weapons.
Umm, so when are you going to disagree with me?
You said, "The whole reason for corporate personhood is to protect the rights of the people involved with the corporation."
And I said, no, personhood has nothing to do with protecting shareholder rights. It protects the shareholders from liability. Maybe that is what you meant to say?
On charter's being revoked and corporations having to benefit the public interest:
I doubt that was ever true. The UK never did that, for example. Further, given the often vile envy and hate that cuts through any human society, it is better that US society currently has no say in corporate charters.
See: http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Corporations/Hx_Corporations_US.html or just google "corporation history charter revoke"
From the above link:
"The two hundred or so corporations operating in the US by the year 1800 were each kept on fairly short leashes. They weren't allowed to participate in the political process. They couldn't buy stock in other corporations. And if one of them acted improperly, the consequences were severe. In 1832, President Andrew Jackson vetoed a motion to extend the charter of the corrupt and tyrannical Second Bank of the United States, and was widely applauded for doing so. That same year the state of Pennsylvania revoked the charters of ten banks for operating contrary to the public interest. Even the enormous industry trusts, formed to protect member corporations from external competitors and provide barriers to entry, eventually proved no match for the state. By the mid-1800s, antitrust legislation was widely in place."
I not sure how you read what mrvan wrote and decided that corporate personhood is a bad idea.
"It is a pure tradeoff between the the security of the investors and the rights of creditors and has nothing to do with enforcement of pre-existing rights."
The personhood part of a corporation basically sets up a fake 'fall guy' so that shareholders and investors aren't sued into oblivion if the corporation goes bankrupt. No one would become a shareholder/investor if the risk wasn't just "lose the money you invested" but was "lose the money you invested, and your house, car, and everything else you own".
The limited liability aspect is a good thing.
I think what you should be pointing at is the specifics rights that corporations have gained over time. Not rights given to them because they are 'fake people', but rights given to them just because some body of decision makers either thought it was good for business or constitutionally correct.
Way way back in the beginning, those corporate rights were given, but there were strings attached. I forget all the specifics, but it was basically along the lines of "must benefit society" or something like that. There are instances where corporate charters were revoked.
Thanks for posting, and thanks mods for giving mrvan some points.
People in this thread are seriously confusing what the purpose of the artificial personhood was used for: a way to create a fake person so that the charter could be given to one name, and as the fake fall guy, so that shareholders are protected from lawsuits/liability/bankruptcy.
All the new 'rights' that have been given to corporations over time (eg, citizens united vs scotus) have nothing to do with personhood. However, the media, being the bastion of intelligence that it is, has muddied the waters. People should be specifically saying "corporate Right X is bad", not "personhood is bad". The personhood part is generally a good idea. It encourages people to get together, invest, and try to start a business.
we still have quite a few other personal rights that have been given to corporations that shouldn't have
I'll be glad when this fad goes away. The whole reason for corporate personhood is to protect the rights of the people involved with the corporation.
That isn't true at all. The purpose of a corporation is to create a separate legal entity for the purpose of protecting the shareholders of the corporation from liability if the business fails or is sued. This encourages people to band together and try to start a business. In general, it is a good thing.
Corporate personhood, on the other hand, was never considered real personhood. It was a fake way of granting the charter to a single name, instead of all the shareholders. From wikipedia:
"The process is called “incorporation,” referring to the abstract concept of clothing the entity with a "veil" of artificial personhood"
Now, over time, corporations have gained many other privileges, to the point where many in the media (most notably people like Thom Hartman, read his book on corporations), basically consider corporate rights equal to, and in some cases greater than, a real person's rights.
And way way back, those extra rights were given to corporations with the understanding that the corporation was to benefit society in some way. Make money, sure. Destroy the environment, no. And corporate charters were reviewed, and revoked from time to time.
I found them cheesy in a good way, and sometimes serious in a very serious way. The final episode of the 10 year run with them aging on that ship. I don't know how anyone could say that was bad...
At any rate, if all the SG shows were bad, what are some examples of sci-fi shows that you enjoyed? I might be missing out on something hehe.
No, Stargate is not great science fiction.
But it is the perfect combination of decent science fiction and an entertaining plot with likable and relatable characters.
I believe you are referring to Babylon 5, not Stargate. B5 had deep, conflicted characters and pretty decent acting. Stargate....not so much. SG always impressed me as B5-lite.
I've watched all of the SG series and enjoyed them. I've seen several comments on slashdot stating that B5 was better. How would you rate the "fun level" of B5 though? Action? Jokes? Variability of episodes? I've never seen B5, but the stargate, being well.... a stargate, meant that each episode could be entirely different, which was enjoyable. I've always shied away from B5 because it is.... well, one base.
If B5 is just deep, conflicted characters on a base in space, acting well together, it doesn't sound very fun. If I'm wrong, let me know:), I'm almost out of Sci-Fi to watch again hehe.
The one thing I don't get about people who are skeptical of the consensus, is that you can throw out Mann's work if you want, and there is still mountains of evidence left supporting AGW. I don't know much about Steig's Antartic paper, but I would be willing to bet that you could throw his out also, and find other papers by other research teams that come to similar conclusions.
Here are 3 completely separate 2000 year climate graphs shown together, from 3 different teams using 3 different methods.
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/globalwarming/paleolast.html
Links to more evidence and explanation
http://www.grist.org/article/series/skeptics/
I don't have the expertise to judge the methods or conclusions of the scientists who research climate, but as long as there is a consensus on many of the issues, I feel that I would be foolish to ignore them. In some ways, it is almost like refusing to drive over any bridge because you can pick out a few incompetent engineers who designed bridges that failed in the past.
The problem in Italy is a criminal matter, that should be handled by the police. Forcing people to vote in secret booths doesn't change much. The criminals could have just as easily forced known "liberals" (or whatever group they were trying to defeat) to stay home and not vote, thereby increasing the odds of the "conservatives" winning.
We've had mail-in ballots in Oregon for a long time and I can't recall any serious issues around vote tampering. If there were people in Italy that were pressured, they should report it to the police. If the police can't make arrests or resolve the criminal behavior, that is an indication of a broken justice system, not a broken voting system.
And bribes can just as easily be used to influence booth voting. The briber wouldn't have a 100% guarantee that his bribe succeeded, but that in and of itself would not stop the influence of bribes from being somewhat effective. People willing to accept bribes for votes are likely fairly apathetic about politics to begin with.
What I think is a much larger issue, is the inability to verify that your vote actually counted towards the candidate of your choice. When you vote you should receive some code back, that you can use to check against a database of all votes, find yours, and verify that it counts towards your candidate. If enough people check, that random sampling should ensure that the total vote count has not be tampered with.
Well, in my mind, you are ensuring that the government more accurately reflects its populace.
When you have low voter turnout, it usually means that the outcome is only determined by people with very strong opinions. That population segment likely has a higher percent of radical left/right than the average population. That means more radical candidates, and more deadlocks in congress.
I think that low voter turnout also can lead to politicians only running on the most hot button topics: abortion for example. Most of America is probably far less concerned with those controversial issues, and would rather vote for politicians that are intelligent, well rounded, competent, and truly have their best interests in mind.
And then you need to consider the demographics of voters/non-voters. Young/Poor have a lower voting rate than Old/Rich. This tends to make any election with low voter turnout greatly favor conservative candidates. Now, some percent of those Young/Poor had no excuse for not voting. Some percent may have had legitimate issues (overrun voting stations in urban centers, could not get off work/took too long to reach voting station, etc...). Regardless, it leads to people feeling that their voice was not heard.
meant to say, "but it wasn't a 1:1", as in, cutting one tax dollar doesn't mean 1 tax revenue. Indeed, when adjusted by inflation and natural revenue growth as gdp grows, cutting taxes can negatively impact revenue very visibly.
This is kinda similar to how lowering taxes can actually create More government revenue in the long term
I've heard this time and time before, but never really looked into it. It sure doesn't seem to clear cut to me.
One of the clearer articles explaining the 'lower taxes = more revenue' was from the Heritage Foundation: historical lessons of lower tax rates.
I don't have time to go through each of their points, but the first one, using the roaring 20's as a sign that lower taxes increases revenue is way way misleading. A casual glance at the 20's history shows that there were tons of factors involved in the booming economy: most notably all the service men coming home with saved up money, and massive unsustainable speculation in the market. Which, we all know how well that went... I think that the tax changes, in combination with many other factors (government growth policies, etc..) did increase revenue some, but it was a 1:1, cut and dry situation. And in the end, it was unsustainable.
Now contrast the Heritage Foundations article with others that seem to contradict the notion that lowering taxes increases revenue:
http://arec.oregonstate.edu/jaeger/taxation/FAQtax2.html - says no.
http://blogs.marketwatch.com/fundmastery/2010/07/02/does-hiking-tax-rates-raise-more-revenue/ - says "its complicated, not always, yes sometimes". (I liked this one the best. It seemed to do less cherry picking than heritage or the others and showed longer term trends).
http://www.cbpp.org/cms/?fa=view&id=165 - says no
http://politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2010/nov/09/mike-pence/mike-pence-says-raising-taxes-lowers-tax-revenues/ - says no
I would attribute the mandatory military training as damping any future gun crime in Switzerland. But what accounts for Canada's lower gun crime rate than the US?