And please, do not forget that we (I'm human FYI) are becoming smarter, not at the same fast pace as computers are getting faster, but I believe that the end result is that we are always ahead of the machines we create.
Ah, but how many people are smarter than the one Einstein who makes a that-much-more-than-average intellect computer? But it's a good point, to be sure: Lots of people on the planet now understand Einstein's contributions very well.
The event horizon is when computers can make themselves smarter, and it is believed they will do so at an exponential rate, quickly outstripping human intelligence as the most dominant. The trick is in getting computers with decent and amicable personalities, and not trigger-happy hack-the-Pentagon cowboy computers.:o)
I'm shocked no-one has mentioned this yet. It's useful for ads. As you walk past an LCD your angle changes, thus exposing you to three distinct moving pictures. People are drawn to moving pictures - we're psychologically hard-wired for it. I suspect we will see these in the entrance to stores, at eye-level, because as we walk past the store, we will be drawn to the changing images and moving patterns. It's 10 seconds of attention that wasn't there before.
Imagine walking past a video-game store. As you walk past an LCD advertisement you see three different video games depending on your angle. Two of which may not be interesting. But that third, may. All done with one screen, saving money.
The compactness of one video-screen emphasizes the efficiency. Instead of having to avert our eyes to see another image we focus on the single screen, thus avoiding a clutter of LCD's, which has the school-of-fish impact, where we can't focus on any of them.
And, of course, everyone if fascinated with optical effects.
Which is precisely why military radar capabilities are, to this day, classified. ICBM's are one thing, but the fear is a short-range, undetected launch of missles by mobile platforms such as nuclear submarines. While not likely, it is a known possibility.
It is no exaggeration to say that the modern computing world as we know it, the innovations of bittorrent, the deep and involving fun of World of Warcraft, the wide ranging social networks of Myspace and Facebook, none of these would have been possible without Windows XP.
I use all of those - World of Warcraft, Myspace, Facebook, bittorrent, and I've never used Windows XP. So I would say that it is more than an exaggeration, but rather incorrect, to state that Windows XP was somehow necessary for these to come about. Windows 2000 or Mac's would have provided the same base for these successful innovations. I just don't see what, if anything, Windows XP had to do with it.
I must suggest that may have misread Locke - his concern, I do believe, was with natural economies of scale and ultimately the monopolies on capital arising from exclusive possession and benefit from land (as a natural monopoly). This has nothing to do with the 'natural' reward that his honestly and reasonably expected for effort, which drives us to succeed in a competitive capitalist economy, for example.
Locke said that land, as a property ("real property" as solicitors of common law say) diminishes the common good. I neither agree nor disagree with his assessment - it is beyond my competencies. But it is different, more specific in application and more general in conclusion, than my assertion that property is a liberty. Property is a liberty, whereas common benefit as Locke asserts is an entitlement - the distinction is semantic, but then semantics are all we have at this point!
On the other hand, property as a chattel or, more liquidly, remuneration, is quite a natural and appropriate liberty. Human nature, indeed all nature, is gratified by reward from efforts (or at least competitive advantage, arising generally from effort). The expenditure of energy in return for compensation is the motivation for all things - hence Nietzche's Will to Power, on point. Thus, compensation for work is a liberty in that the compensation is an exclusive entitlement guaranteed precisely in return for your effort. To be without this compensation would be existence without the natural reward, and thus a denial of the liberty of personal benefit in return for effort.
Two 'conclusionary' questions arise. Liberty must have property because compensation is a property to which we naturally expect for our efforts? Second, motivation exists to exert effort generally against the trend of sufficiency precisely in the presence of expected natural property rights, compensation, as recognized and enforced by the state? I submit that the answer to both is that liberty requires property rights because property rights imply an entitlement to compensation for efforts. In the absence of property rights, we are not free to be compensated for our efforts, which may lead us to an entirely different sense of "self" (i.e. tribalism), which is far and long from the sense of individual entitlement that we commonly accept - and I certainly won't dispute its theoretical potential, I do emphasize its practical applicability and lack of historical success.
I hope I have not convoluted the issue - please reply if this doesn't assert the point clearly.
Or turning them and four baby turtles into ninjas, heros in a half-shell so to speak, which grow up to be a crime-fighting team of pizza-loving mutants.
Liberty is a right to be free of an oppression. It is not a dipole to property, per se.
This is just word play. It is only true because of the way libertarians define liberty. A more conventional description might discuss how in order to have a civilised society we have to sacrifice liberties and among those liberties are the liberties you sacrifice in order to have property. It's standard practice for libertarians, not only to use an unconventional definition of liberty, but to deliberately confuse people by cashing in on the value placed on the conventional meaning of the word, even though it's not what they mean.
Note that I'm not criticising libertarianism here, I'm criticising libertarian propaganda.
I'm not sure I understand what you are trying to say. I'm going to disagree with what you have said, because you started with a refutation, but it's quite possible that I completely missed your point. Are you disagreeing with the definition that liberty is freedom from oppression? That's quite well founded, as I stated it.
The definition of "liberty" I used is from a Oxford dictionary: "the state of being free within society from oppressive restrictions imposed by authority on one's way of life, behavior, or political views", or as I shortened it (hoping to make the point without oversimplifying) "free from oppression". Black's Law Dictionary accords, "freedom from arbitrary or undue external restraint", and as the courts interpret it, "[Liberty] denotes not merely the freedom from bodily restraint but also the right of the individual to contract, to engage in any of the common occupations of life, to acquire useful knowledge, to marry, establish a home and bring up children, to worship God..., and generally to enjoy those privileges long recognized at common law as essential to the orderly pursuit of happiness by free men." Meyer v. Nebraska 262 U.S. 390 (1923).
Clearly, liberty in the common dictionary, pseudo-legal, and common law directly and unequivocally includes the pursuit of property and proprietary interests. Liberty includes the right to exclusively enjoy those things to which you have a proprietary interest (property right), by definition. Preventing the exclusive enjoyment of property is an oppression of that right, and concurrently a limitation on your liberty.
Are you saying Libertarians advocate society without property? That would also be incorrect. Property is intrinsic to Libertarianism - without property, what could you possibly want to protect from state interference? Libertarians are definitely not advocating primitive communism. Property rights are intrinsic to Libertarianism, by definition.
Are you hinting at society without proprietary interests? That would not be libertarianism, per se, but Libertarian Socialism, which advocates not the abolition of personal property, but the abolition of private property. Proprietary personal interests remain, and are inherent to the philosophy, but there is a limitation on "tyrannical" proprietary interests (my interpretation, but it's savvy). In any event, liberty is the right to enjoy your property, though the definition of that property may be limited. Other than those, I am not quite sure what point you are trying to make. In any event, in the accepted sensees, liberty and property go hand in hand, by definition, and are not as the grandparent suggested, mutually exclusive, by any stretch of the imagination.
I know nothing about Libertarian propaganda, so I can't really comment on that. But I am sure the semantics of the phrases I used were in line with the commonly accepted definitions.
Property is essentially the opposite to liberty. So, I'm not sure why libertarians bang on about freedom, when what they really want is ownership.
You bang on an interesting point.
Property is a right to exclusive enjoyment. (A right is a power, enforceable through the state's monopoly on force.) Freedom to enjoy property not your own, ends where the right to exclusive enjoyment of the owner begins.
Liberty is a right to be free of an oppression. It is not a dipole to property, per se. The idea of property - a right to exclusive enjoyment - is a liberty. Without that liberty, you cannot have property. You would not be 'at liberty' to own property, in the common sense.
Libertarians advocate strong, nigh absolute, property rights by individuals, sanctioned by the state but without state interferrence other than when that property right is infringed upon. Most notably, the philosophy abhors tax (which is ridiculousness, IMHO). Thus, the Libertarian philosophy requires both property and liberty, as they act in tandem.
Should too many countries decide that it's worth the risk to drop a currency that is backed by (and at the whim of) only one singular government and adopt one that is backed by a lot of governments.
Actually, quite a few governments have basket currency reserves. Many, notably in Asia have a basket of foreign currency reserves, typically the USD, Japanese Yen, British Pound, and the Euro.
Interestingly, many of the Asian states (ASEAN less Oceania Commonwealth) have entered into novel currency-swap agreements. In the event that one country's reserves fail, the others in the swap-agreement pick up the slack. After the Thailand crisis, they're not putting all their eggs in one basket anymore, so to speak, since national currency failure is a regional capital flow problem. Attuned to the problem and its consequences, they don't seem to be hedging their bets on any one currency nowadays, either.
One of the touted reasons that became a regional crisis was because institutional investors make regional investments, and the failure of one Asian state (Thailand) trickles down into a geographical branding of uncertainty, in the way only fickle institutional investors can. That, and George Soros said it would happen and the investors believed him.
A few misconceptions I may be able to shed some light on.:-)
Agriculture is heavily subsidized. As in many/almost all "western" countries. In other words, a lossy business for the state. It's kept running to remain at least in a moderate way able to sustain itself, just in case the world starts treating them like, say, Cuba and shuts down international trade (or in case some country/ies decide it's fun to sink ships going for US harbors). It's a war insurance, if you want. And many other countries do exactly the same.
In the USA, two factors most heavily affect the continued subsidization of agriculture: Lobbies and the electoral system. Powerful lobbying groups have huge sway over these problems, usually very large corporations who operate under the façade of being the small farmer. Through this, they yield the power of the college-electoral system through those American states with little else but primary industry, and unemployment is a huge electoral issue. Thus, this "farming the mailbox" is steadfast.
Protection from war is an illusion, and known to be. Despite thoughts to the contrary, trade continues during war, especially agricultural trade - for every country lost to trade in foodstuffs, there are ten who want the barriers to exporting food to, e.g., the USA, dropped.
So what remains as the bringer of foreign money (besides the biggest bringer, the ability to "tax" internationally by having the foreign trade currency at your pressing fingertips, the USD) and balances the foreign trade at least to some degree is content, patents and copyright.
America's biggest currency stabilizer, where currency is economic purchasing power parity, is their own currency. The US dollar replaced gold as the ab initio staple currency after the Bretton Woods system failed, being the most liquid and stable currency available. Because other countries are subject to currency crises (i.e. Argentina, Thailand, etc.), they stock reserves in American dollars (foreign currency reserves).
The US dollar, then, is effectively backed by every other nation-state interested in preserving its currency against crises. Whenever the US dollar gets "cheaper", foreign countries soak it up. Thus, the biggest "export", in terns of preservation of purchasing power parity, is the US dollar's stability. There are arguments about the Euro, but it's still not a proven currency, though it has all the qualities necessary to substitute for the US dollar, and someday it may.
This isn't to say that patents and copyright are irrelevent. While they are a useful export, that contributes to continued economic growth in the USA, and particularly relevant as you say, as the USA has become essentially uncompetitive in most other areas. However, the laurels, as you could say, rest on the US dollar itself.
Healthcare does not really build value. Nothing has been made because Aunty Tilly got a $20,000 bypass instead of a $5 bottle of asprin.
That's not entirely true, from an economic standpoint. The horizontal redistribution of wealth to a services industry keeps money moving about (where imports and exports are vertical, entries/exits). While it may not appear "useful", the greater the services industry, the greater the capacitance effect (currency in circulation), before money starting in exports goes to paying off imports, thus (a) preserving the currency value by marginalizing primary industries and imports, (b) increasing taxable transfers, and (c) creating more service industry consumers who compound the effect.
While export industries are great, and as seen in especially with South Korea, potentially capable of building an economy and boosting a currency's value, they are fragile.
If the "value" of a loaf of bread increases from $1 to $5, then that is seen as inflation, not growth. When a house goes from $100k to $300k this should be seen as inflation too.
Bread is a commodity and fungible, thus any one supplier can easily be replaced by another, hence subject to traditional competitive market forces. Houses are unique properties in unique neighborhoods with an assortment of qualities that affect the prices, notably crime, job trends, mortgage interest rates, etc, and all subject to limited supply. Thus, the greatest influence on bread is inflation, whereas a great many other factors affect housing. While inflation is one of the factors affecting housing prices, it is often marginalized by the others (but it's still there, though owners may call it appreciation:) ), especially when the housing prices are associated with neighborhoods, and the uniqueness inherently limits supply.
but also a learning process modeled on Microsoft's management techniques
Because a company with virtually no accountability and the most infamous monopoly in the world and has essentially unlimited revenue is the ideal model for a taxpayer-funded cash-strapped public school system. Exactly what qualities are they planning to transfer from Microsoft's management to the school. Let's see... what qualities do we have, here?
* The complete lack of vision and focus on imitation instead of innovation? (Copying is preferred to original thought) * Operating in the absolute absence of competence? * Treating your customers like criminals? * The dancing, shouting spokesperson who embarasses beyond recognition of the point? * The pouting, nigh Asperger's founder who cries at CEO dinners when he doesn't get his way? * Avoid any capitalistic urge to play by the rules, rather simply being rich enough to buy out, or drown out by imitation and unlawful anti-competitive integration, all competitors? * Do illegal things, even get caught, just have enough political pull to get off the hook?
Which of these is supposed to make the school better, again? What sort of models are we trying to set? The idea of Microsoft having influence over school children makes me very sad.
Agreed - good post. Maybe an even more appropriate example: when was the last time you upgraded your video card for its 2D capabilities? There's no tangible benefit to the 2D performance of these cards anymore, only the 3D performance capabilities are relevant as it's the only actual way to differentiate the benefit between cards. The 2D capabilities are all roughly equivalent, just like DVD is roughly equivalent in so many ways to these HD formats as to make it an irrelevant distinction.
The distinction between 'ethical' and 'legal' doesn't matter to me in this case. These people are simply DISHONORABLE. I move for a change of venue to a Klingon court.
Haha. You make a great distinction, actually. It is legal, clearly. It could be construed as ethical because lawyers are supposed to zealously represent their clients - it's how the advocacy system attempts to resolve disputes over conflicting interests. SCO's lawyers are representing their interests by exploiting an evidentiary opportunity. But it's not honourable.
However, tables turned, it could be a different story. If IBM were hiding information particularly relevant to the case, but harmful to them, it is not only within the rights of SCO to seek it out, but their lawyers have a duty to diligently seek it out. Of course, that relies on there being some suspicion of bad faith on the part of IBM, which I think is clear there isn't. They seem to simply be stalling to create an air of doubt over Linux et al., maybe even barratry or champerty.
This whole thing could have been resolved months ago if the administration were willing to just say, "Oh, yeah, you're right, we should be getting warrants for this sort of thing. We'll start doing so immediately." End of controversy, they can still listen in on suspects, it's still done without revealing state secrets.
Warrants are through a public schema. I can think of two big reasons not to want the existence of monitoring made public:
1. it tips off the bad guys to their being monitored and they respond with counter-surveillance, and
2. unsavoury corporate or political espionage, notably when designed to subvert competition in either area
The prior is legitimate, but could maybe be appeased with a time-delay on making the warrant public. The latter is not a proper exercise of executive authority in a democratic nation, in my humble but correct opinion.:-)
In either case, there are reasons to want warrantless spying by the government on its own citizens, though they don't seem to be good ones. But the incentive is there.
And copying a King Kong DVD rip is not one of them. Its sad when people take the legitmate point about anonymity that you might need for political organisations, journalists and whistle-blowers, and just use it as an excuse to facilitate warez and music copying.
An interesting point you bring up. While on the one hand the guise of anonymity and capacity to organize movements in private, or more precisely without being subject to the scrutiny of a government with vested interest, is a tool designed to keep government in check (not corporations), on the other hand there is a blur between government and corporations.
Corporations of sufficient clout are subverting the role of government, both in its legislative form and in its scrutiny of private citizens. In particular, the intellectual property seems to be aiming for self-government (see, e.g. EU Patent Wars to Resume, 15 August 2006), and the judiciary seems to be the second hand of the RIAA of late. Are citizens not entitled to self-governance, at least insofar as they are entitled to organize without scrutiny or prejudice.
One might consider intellectual property to be of such a minor importance as to not warrant anti-establishment, however the very existence of a "Pirate Party" is evidence to the contrary. While they may be frivilous, I suspect they are a reaction to the concerted force of the IP industry upon their government.
I agree that it is sad when the masses use anonynimity only to pirate. However, there is something to be said for the right of the masses to act against any force that imposes itself as a governance upon the people. While I don't agree with opposing IP stakeholders through piracy, it is hard to deny that it will be an effective method of encouraging a re-evaluation of their draconian methodology of rent-seeking, as Ann Kreuger would put it.
As a final note, these corporations will never stop their policy of rent-seeking. In fact, they cannot: they owe a duty to shareholders to continue this policy (and they seem to lack the foresight to construct more savy revenue streams). They have saturated the market and their only perceived method of revenue growth is changing the market situation. They have every incentive to go down that path, and virtually no cost for failure... save public relations, but how much would that really affect a monopoly?
Maybe they should have built their systems near a deep lake, and instead of paying ridiculous prices for AC, they could just pump water from the lake and circulate it. The water at the bottom of lakes is always around 4C, and the cost of pumping it through a radiator type system is relatively very-cheap, reliable, and consistent. It's quite a popular method of cooling near the great-lakes region, I do believe.
In terms of the law, trespass and photography are separate events; the former is illegal, but the latter is not. Only if the use of photographic equipment itself violates a person's privacy (e.g., by using a long lens to look into someone's private room) might it violate privacy law. Further, while people have a right of privacy, businesses do not except as it relates to trade secrets.
Subject to specific limits, photographers can publish any photos they take, provided those photos do not violate the privacy of the subject. This includes photos taken while trespassing or otherwise being someplace they shouldn't be. Taking photos and publishing photos are two separate issues.
This opens up a whole kettle of fish. The law is a bit fuzzy on trespass and privacy, trying to protect competing rights. First, though, a minor note: in addition to being a crime in some jurisdictions, trespass is a tort, a civil suit between private litigants for damage caused by incursion on state-sanctioned exclusive property rights. So it is generally an enforceable right, but not always criminally.
There are a myriad of cases about privacy and trespass. One famous case involved a radio station watching horse races through a telescope without having paid for the rights to broadcast the race, and I seem to recall the courts came down on the side of "it's publicly viewable, they can broadcast what they see". On the other hand, if you take aerial photographs of private property, that may be an invasion of privacy by way of trespass, if you wish to publish them.
The law tries to balance private landowner's right to exclusive enjoyment of their property, and the right of the public to sensible uses. Often the arguments are commercially centric.
The reference is a touch allegory... in the game Wilco is a human with no known purpose (like us, consumers), playing games that have no point in and of themselves, like a flying chicken game (for us, all that stuff invented solely for the purpose of space exploration), for some self-serving but irrelevant purpose, avoiding taxes in his case (going to the moon, as a political statement), but to some ultimate but incidental good, which in-game causes some harm to some mega-evil corporation (ala. the R&D spinoffs of space exploration).
I don't know why, but your use of emphasis on the word "*HUMAN*" makes me think we are going to send Roger Wilco from Space Quest 3 out there, while good at successfully landing chickens at the intergalactic burger joint, does it all just to avoid paying overdue taxes.
If you were Microsoft, and you tried that, you might see your copyrights voided in Europe. Oops.
Revocation of copyrights is not a solution typically ever available to courts, at least for cases not about the the copyright itself. It would violate two basic principles of law. First, law operates on the concept of damages (fines) because, while not necessarily easy to assess, they create a transaction of damages that cannot be debated in terms of value and it's relatively easy to levy a fine. Second, copyright is a form of intellectual property protected by international law. Revocation of the copyright would violate intrinsic rights granted by a treaty (probably WIPO) that has been ratified into law in the EU. Taking Microsoft's copyright away for failure to comply with a court order is akin to repossessing your car for violating the building standards on your house.
There are narrow exceptions, usually in the formation of the copyright. For example, you may have your copyright revoked if it was not yours to copyright, such as with public domain or prior art. Alternatively, if you used your copyright as collateral for a loan, if you defaulted on your payments the courts could assign the copyright to the lien-holder. Similarly, if you are insolvent, it may be sold to satisfy debts to creditors. However, those situations aside, it is generally an inappropriate, or at least extremely unlikely, remedy.
Simple. The EC declares Microsoft in contempt, leevies a larger fine. Files a complaint with the WTO, files a complaint with the U.S. FTC and SEC. The fine continues to accrue interest.
It's not quite that simple.:-) Just an interesting note - The WTO is a government-government body, designed to resolve international trade disputes, to help governments find ways to reduce tarriffs (taxes) on imports and increase global trade. It only has jurisdiction between nations. The ruling against Microsoft is domestic court ruling of the EU. In addition to Microsoft not having standing to file a complaint with the WTO, the WTO has no jurisdiction to overturn an EU court's ruling (subject to compliance with EU treaties, notably for the WTO, the GATT et al.). However, there is no enforcement mechanism through the GATT, save permitting 'legal' sanctions by the 'victim' state against the 'guilty'. To file under the WTO, Microsoft would have to convince the US government to file on their behalf.
What will most likely happen is the EU will come to a negotiated compromise with Microsoft. Microsoft wants to stall, and is apparently willing to pay for it. They will likely propose settlement at a fraction of the amount owed. Alternatively, if Microsoft plays the hard-bargaining positional game, they will likely end up having their accounts frozen, credit rating demerited, and income garnished, in addition to other consequences. If they choose to go down that road, they will probably turn to the USA for a solution. It is possible that they could argue that this judgment is an unfair tarriff on their software importation into the EU in violation of the national treatment aspect of the GATT, but that is a weak argument, in my humble opinion. The reason the EU courts found Microsoft anti-competitive have their own merit, not based upon (at face value anyway) whether Microsoft is domestic or foreign corporation. Again though, it would be effective at stalling.
While not quite technically perfect, I think you are quite on the money in terms of the tone portrayed of stubborn and aloof defiance and stalling by Microsoft.
Trust the mainstream media to make him sound like some kind of twisted, tortured genius.
Apparently he was valedictorian at his high school, from jail. Perhaps this says something about the public education system. Or the available outlets for intellectual stimulation for his demographic.
Slashdot Mirror
Ah, but how many people are smarter than the one Einstein who makes a that-much-more-than-average intellect computer? But it's a good point, to be sure: Lots of people on the planet now understand Einstein's contributions very well.
The event horizon is when computers can make themselves smarter, and it is believed they will do so at an exponential rate, quickly outstripping human intelligence as the most dominant. The trick is in getting computers with decent and amicable personalities, and not trigger-happy hack-the-Pentagon cowboy computers.
I'm shocked no-one has mentioned this yet. It's useful for ads. As you walk past an LCD your angle changes, thus exposing you to three distinct moving pictures. People are drawn to moving pictures - we're psychologically hard-wired for it. I suspect we will see these in the entrance to stores, at eye-level, because as we walk past the store, we will be drawn to the changing images and moving patterns. It's 10 seconds of attention that wasn't there before.
Imagine walking past a video-game store. As you walk past an LCD advertisement you see three different video games depending on your angle. Two of which may not be interesting. But that third, may. All done with one screen, saving money.
The compactness of one video-screen emphasizes the efficiency. Instead of having to avert our eyes to see another image we focus on the single screen, thus avoiding a clutter of LCD's, which has the school-of-fish impact, where we can't focus on any of them.
And, of course, everyone if fascinated with optical effects.
Which is precisely why military radar capabilities are, to this day, classified. ICBM's are one thing, but the fear is a short-range, undetected launch of missles by mobile platforms such as nuclear submarines. While not likely, it is a known possibility.
I use all of those - World of Warcraft, Myspace, Facebook, bittorrent, and I've never used Windows XP. So I would say that it is more than an exaggeration, but rather incorrect, to state that Windows XP was somehow necessary for these to come about. Windows 2000 or Mac's would have provided the same base for these successful innovations. I just don't see what, if anything, Windows XP had to do with it.
I must suggest that may have misread Locke - his concern, I do believe, was with natural economies of scale and ultimately the monopolies on capital arising from exclusive possession and benefit from land (as a natural monopoly). This has nothing to do with the 'natural' reward that his honestly and reasonably expected for effort, which drives us to succeed in a competitive capitalist economy, for example.
Locke said that land, as a property ("real property" as solicitors of common law say) diminishes the common good. I neither agree nor disagree with his assessment - it is beyond my competencies. But it is different, more specific in application and more general in conclusion, than my assertion that property is a liberty. Property is a liberty, whereas common benefit as Locke asserts is an entitlement - the distinction is semantic, but then semantics are all we have at this point!
On the other hand, property as a chattel or, more liquidly, remuneration, is quite a natural and appropriate liberty. Human nature, indeed all nature, is gratified by reward from efforts (or at least competitive advantage, arising generally from effort). The expenditure of energy in return for compensation is the motivation for all things - hence Nietzche's Will to Power, on point. Thus, compensation for work is a liberty in that the compensation is an exclusive entitlement guaranteed precisely in return for your effort. To be without this compensation would be existence without the natural reward, and thus a denial of the liberty of personal benefit in return for effort.
Two 'conclusionary' questions arise. Liberty must have property because compensation is a property to which we naturally expect for our efforts? Second, motivation exists to exert effort generally against the trend of sufficiency precisely in the presence of expected natural property rights, compensation, as recognized and enforced by the state? I submit that the answer to both is that liberty requires property rights because property rights imply an entitlement to compensation for efforts. In the absence of property rights, we are not free to be compensated for our efforts, which may lead us to an entirely different sense of "self" (i.e. tribalism), which is far and long from the sense of individual entitlement that we commonly accept - and I certainly won't dispute its theoretical potential, I do emphasize its practical applicability and lack of historical success.
I hope I have not convoluted the issue - please reply if this doesn't assert the point clearly.
Or turning them and four baby turtles into ninjas, heros in a half-shell so to speak, which grow up to be a crime-fighting team of pizza-loving mutants.
I'm not sure I understand what you are trying to say. I'm going to disagree with what you have said, because you started with a refutation, but it's quite possible that I completely missed your point. Are you disagreeing with the definition that liberty is freedom from oppression? That's quite well founded, as I stated it.
The definition of "liberty" I used is from a Oxford dictionary: "the state of being free within society from oppressive restrictions imposed by authority on one's way of life, behavior, or political views", or as I shortened it (hoping to make the point without oversimplifying) "free from oppression". Black's Law Dictionary accords, "freedom from arbitrary or undue external restraint", and as the courts interpret it, "[Liberty] denotes not merely the freedom from bodily restraint but also the right of the individual to contract, to engage in any of the common occupations of life, to acquire useful knowledge, to marry, establish a home and bring up children, to worship God
Clearly, liberty in the common dictionary, pseudo-legal, and common law directly and unequivocally includes the pursuit of property and proprietary interests. Liberty includes the right to exclusively enjoy those things to which you have a proprietary interest (property right), by definition. Preventing the exclusive enjoyment of property is an oppression of that right, and concurrently a limitation on your liberty.
Are you saying Libertarians advocate society without property? That would also be incorrect. Property is intrinsic to Libertarianism - without property, what could you possibly want to protect from state interference? Libertarians are definitely not advocating primitive communism. Property rights are intrinsic to Libertarianism, by definition.
Are you hinting at society without proprietary interests? That would not be libertarianism, per se, but Libertarian Socialism, which advocates not the abolition of personal property, but the abolition of private property. Proprietary personal interests remain, and are inherent to the philosophy, but there is a limitation on "tyrannical" proprietary interests (my interpretation, but it's savvy). In any event, liberty is the right to enjoy your property, though the definition of that property may be limited. Other than those, I am not quite sure what point you are trying to make. In any event, in the accepted sensees, liberty and property go hand in hand, by definition, and are not as the grandparent suggested, mutually exclusive, by any stretch of the imagination.
I know nothing about Libertarian propaganda, so I can't really comment on that. But I am sure the semantics of the phrases I used were in line with the commonly accepted definitions.
You bang on an interesting point.
Property is a right to exclusive enjoyment. (A right is a power, enforceable through the state's monopoly on force.) Freedom to enjoy property not your own, ends where the right to exclusive enjoyment of the owner begins.
Liberty is a right to be free of an oppression. It is not a dipole to property, per se. The idea of property - a right to exclusive enjoyment - is a liberty. Without that liberty, you cannot have property. You would not be 'at liberty' to own property, in the common sense.
Libertarians advocate strong, nigh absolute, property rights by individuals, sanctioned by the state but without state interferrence other than when that property right is infringed upon. Most notably, the philosophy abhors tax (which is ridiculousness, IMHO). Thus, the Libertarian philosophy requires both property and liberty, as they act in tandem.
+1 Insightful.
Actually, quite a few governments have basket currency reserves. Many, notably in Asia have a basket of foreign currency reserves, typically the USD, Japanese Yen, British Pound, and the Euro.
Interestingly, many of the Asian states (ASEAN less Oceania Commonwealth) have entered into novel currency-swap agreements. In the event that one country's reserves fail, the others in the swap-agreement pick up the slack. After the Thailand crisis, they're not putting all their eggs in one basket anymore, so to speak, since national currency failure is a regional capital flow problem. Attuned to the problem and its consequences, they don't seem to be hedging their bets on any one currency nowadays, either.
One of the touted reasons that became a regional crisis was because institutional investors make regional investments, and the failure of one Asian state (Thailand) trickles down into a geographical branding of uncertainty, in the way only fickle institutional investors can. That, and George Soros said it would happen and the investors believed him.
In the USA, two factors most heavily affect the continued subsidization of agriculture: Lobbies and the electoral system. Powerful lobbying groups have huge sway over these problems, usually very large corporations who operate under the façade of being the small farmer. Through this, they yield the power of the college-electoral system through those American states with little else but primary industry, and unemployment is a huge electoral issue. Thus, this "farming the mailbox" is steadfast.
Protection from war is an illusion, and known to be. Despite thoughts to the contrary, trade continues during war, especially agricultural trade - for every country lost to trade in foodstuffs, there are ten who want the barriers to exporting food to, e.g., the USA, dropped.
America's biggest currency stabilizer, where currency is economic purchasing power parity, is their own currency. The US dollar replaced gold as the ab initio staple currency after the Bretton Woods system failed, being the most liquid and stable currency available. Because other countries are subject to currency crises (i.e. Argentina, Thailand, etc.), they stock reserves in American dollars (foreign currency reserves).
The US dollar, then, is effectively backed by every other nation-state interested in preserving its currency against crises. Whenever the US dollar gets "cheaper", foreign countries soak it up. Thus, the biggest "export", in terns of preservation of purchasing power parity, is the US dollar's stability. There are arguments about the Euro, but it's still not a proven currency, though it has all the qualities necessary to substitute for the US dollar, and someday it may.
This isn't to say that patents and copyright are irrelevent. While they are a useful export, that contributes to continued economic growth in the USA, and particularly relevant as you say, as the USA has become essentially uncompetitive in most other areas. However, the laurels, as you could say, rest on the US dollar itself.
That's not entirely true, from an economic standpoint. The horizontal redistribution of wealth to a services industry keeps money moving about (where imports and exports are vertical, entries/exits). While it may not appear "useful", the greater the services industry, the greater the capacitance effect (currency in circulation), before money starting in exports goes to paying off imports, thus (a) preserving the currency value by marginalizing primary industries and imports, (b) increasing taxable transfers, and (c) creating more service industry consumers who compound the effect.
While export industries are great, and as seen in especially with South Korea, potentially capable of building an economy and boosting a currency's value, they are fragile.
Bread is a commodity and fungible, thus any one supplier can easily be replaced by another, hence subject to traditional competitive market forces. Houses are unique properties in unique neighborhoods with an assortment of qualities that affect the prices, notably crime, job trends, mortgage interest rates, etc, and all subject to limited supply. Thus, the greatest influence on bread is inflation, whereas a great many other factors affect housing. While inflation is one of the factors affecting housing prices, it is often marginalized by the others (but it's still there, though owners may call it appreciation
Because a company with virtually no accountability and the most infamous monopoly in the world and has essentially unlimited revenue is the ideal model for a taxpayer-funded cash-strapped public school system. Exactly what qualities are they planning to transfer from Microsoft's management to the school. Let's see
* The complete lack of vision and focus on imitation instead of innovation? (Copying is preferred to original thought)
* Operating in the absolute absence of competence?
* Treating your customers like criminals?
* The dancing, shouting spokesperson who embarasses beyond recognition of the point?
* The pouting, nigh Asperger's founder who cries at CEO dinners when he doesn't get his way?
* Avoid any capitalistic urge to play by the rules, rather simply being rich enough to buy out, or drown out by imitation and unlawful anti-competitive integration, all competitors?
* Do illegal things, even get caught, just have enough political pull to get off the hook?
Which of these is supposed to make the school better, again? What sort of models are we trying to set? The idea of Microsoft having influence over school children makes me very sad.
Agreed - good post. Maybe an even more appropriate example: when was the last time you upgraded your video card for its 2D capabilities? There's no tangible benefit to the 2D performance of these cards anymore, only the 3D performance capabilities are relevant as it's the only actual way to differentiate the benefit between cards. The 2D capabilities are all roughly equivalent, just like DVD is roughly equivalent in so many ways to these HD formats as to make it an irrelevant distinction.
Haha. You make a great distinction, actually. It is legal, clearly. It could be construed as ethical because lawyers are supposed to zealously represent their clients - it's how the advocacy system attempts to resolve disputes over conflicting interests. SCO's lawyers are representing their interests by exploiting an evidentiary opportunity. But it's not honourable.
However, tables turned, it could be a different story. If IBM were hiding information particularly relevant to the case, but harmful to them, it is not only within the rights of SCO to seek it out, but their lawyers have a duty to diligently seek it out. Of course, that relies on there being some suspicion of bad faith on the part of IBM, which I think is clear there isn't. They seem to simply be stalling to create an air of doubt over Linux et al., maybe even barratry or champerty.
Warrants are through a public schema. I can think of two big reasons not to want the existence of monitoring made public:
1. it tips off the bad guys to their being monitored and they respond with counter-surveillance, and
2. unsavoury corporate or political espionage, notably when designed to subvert competition in either area
The prior is legitimate, but could maybe be appeased with a time-delay on making the warrant public. The latter is not a proper exercise of executive authority in a democratic nation, in my humble but correct opinion.
In either case, there are reasons to want warrantless spying by the government on its own citizens, though they don't seem to be good ones. But the incentive is there.
An interesting point you bring up. While on the one hand the guise of anonymity and capacity to organize movements in private, or more precisely without being subject to the scrutiny of a government with vested interest, is a tool designed to keep government in check (not corporations), on the other hand there is a blur between government and corporations.
Corporations of sufficient clout are subverting the role of government, both in its legislative form and in its scrutiny of private citizens. In particular, the intellectual property seems to be aiming for self-government (see, e.g. EU Patent Wars to Resume, 15 August 2006), and the judiciary seems to be the second hand of the RIAA of late. Are citizens not entitled to self-governance, at least insofar as they are entitled to organize without scrutiny or prejudice.
One might consider intellectual property to be of such a minor importance as to not warrant anti-establishment, however the very existence of a "Pirate Party" is evidence to the contrary. While they may be frivilous, I suspect they are a reaction to the concerted force of the IP industry upon their government.
I agree that it is sad when the masses use anonynimity only to pirate. However, there is something to be said for the right of the masses to act against any force that imposes itself as a governance upon the people. While I don't agree with opposing IP stakeholders through piracy, it is hard to deny that it will be an effective method of encouraging a re-evaluation of their draconian methodology of rent-seeking, as Ann Kreuger would put it.
As a final note, these corporations will never stop their policy of rent-seeking. In fact, they cannot: they owe a duty to shareholders to continue this policy (and they seem to lack the foresight to construct more savy revenue streams). They have saturated the market and their only perceived method of revenue growth is changing the market situation. They have every incentive to go down that path, and virtually no cost for failure
Maybe they should have built their systems near a deep lake, and instead of paying ridiculous prices for AC, they could just pump water from the lake and circulate it. The water at the bottom of lakes is always around 4C, and the cost of pumping it through a radiator type system is relatively very-cheap, reliable, and consistent. It's quite a popular method of cooling near the great-lakes region, I do believe.
This opens up a whole kettle of fish. The law is a bit fuzzy on trespass and privacy, trying to protect competing rights. First, though, a minor note: in addition to being a crime in some jurisdictions, trespass is a tort, a civil suit between private litigants for damage caused by incursion on state-sanctioned exclusive property rights. So it is generally an enforceable right, but not always criminally.
There are a myriad of cases about privacy and trespass. One famous case involved a radio station watching horse races through a telescope without having paid for the rights to broadcast the race, and I seem to recall the courts came down on the side of "it's publicly viewable, they can broadcast what they see". On the other hand, if you take aerial photographs of private property, that may be an invasion of privacy by way of trespass, if you wish to publish them.
The law tries to balance private landowner's right to exclusive enjoyment of their property, and the right of the public to sensible uses. Often the arguments are commercially centric.
The reference is a touch allegory ... in the game Wilco is a human with no known purpose (like us, consumers), playing games that have no point in and of themselves, like a flying chicken game (for us, all that stuff invented solely for the purpose of space exploration), for some self-serving but irrelevant purpose, avoiding taxes in his case (going to the moon, as a political statement), but to some ultimate but incidental good, which in-game causes some harm to some mega-evil corporation (ala. the R&D spinoffs of space exploration).
I don't know why, but your use of emphasis on the word "*HUMAN*" makes me think we are going to send Roger Wilco from Space Quest 3 out there, while good at successfully landing chickens at the intergalactic burger joint, does it all just to avoid paying overdue taxes.
The only way that I'm going to play another game is if I can play it inside World of Warcraft. It's all part of the same zero-sum entertainment-time.
Revocation of copyrights is not a solution typically ever available to courts, at least for cases not about the the copyright itself. It would violate two basic principles of law. First, law operates on the concept of damages (fines) because, while not necessarily easy to assess, they create a transaction of damages that cannot be debated in terms of value and it's relatively easy to levy a fine. Second, copyright is a form of intellectual property protected by international law. Revocation of the copyright would violate intrinsic rights granted by a treaty (probably WIPO) that has been ratified into law in the EU. Taking Microsoft's copyright away for failure to comply with a court order is akin to repossessing your car for violating the building standards on your house.
There are narrow exceptions, usually in the formation of the copyright. For example, you may have your copyright revoked if it was not yours to copyright, such as with public domain or prior art. Alternatively, if you used your copyright as collateral for a loan, if you defaulted on your payments the courts could assign the copyright to the lien-holder. Similarly, if you are insolvent, it may be sold to satisfy debts to creditors. However, those situations aside, it is generally an inappropriate, or at least extremely unlikely, remedy.
Then again, nothing is impossible.
It's not quite that simple.
What will most likely happen is the EU will come to a negotiated compromise with Microsoft. Microsoft wants to stall, and is apparently willing to pay for it. They will likely propose settlement at a fraction of the amount owed. Alternatively, if Microsoft plays the hard-bargaining positional game, they will likely end up having their accounts frozen, credit rating demerited, and income garnished, in addition to other consequences. If they choose to go down that road, they will probably turn to the USA for a solution. It is possible that they could argue that this judgment is an unfair tarriff on their software importation into the EU in violation of the national treatment aspect of the GATT, but that is a weak argument, in my humble opinion. The reason the EU courts found Microsoft anti-competitive have their own merit, not based upon (at face value anyway) whether Microsoft is domestic or foreign corporation. Again though, it would be effective at stalling.
While not quite technically perfect, I think you are quite on the money in terms of the tone portrayed of stubborn and aloof defiance and stalling by Microsoft.
Trust the mainstream media to make him sound like some kind of twisted, tortured genius.
Apparently he was valedictorian at his high school, from jail. Perhaps this says something about the public education system. Or the available outlets for intellectual stimulation for his demographic.