The National Security Agency has been spying on the communications of people within the United States without a warrant since 2001. Though I suppose the folks at the New York Times knew that this time last year (they just didn't feel like sharing).
"While the rest of the world is trying to figure out how to stop the assault of anti-consumer intellectual property laws, Australia is breaking free from them."
When the United States Constitution was being drafted, Madison (et al) is on record as being opposed to the idea of having a Bill of Rights (it's my understanding that similar thinking kept a bill of rights out of Australia's federal government), as its existence implies that the Bill contains all the rights retained by the people and the states. He eventually had to backpedal a bit when he himself introduced the Bill of Rights to the first Congress, but even then they're carefully phrased in such away as to remove powers from government rather than giving them to the people ("Congress shall make no law..." instead of, say, Canada's "Everyone has the following fundamental freedoms...") and the Tenth Amendment was included.
My problem with this law is that it implies that VCR recording and CD ripping were illegal to begin with, and it required legislative action in Canberra for the government to grant these rights to the people it's supposed to be subservient to (in practice if not necessarily in legal theory). Basically, this is the Australian federal government telling the people "We can take away your right to do with your property as you please, but we're feeling magnanimous today."
"Actually, in a free market, the best outcome is born out of mutual profit through cooperation -- not dog eat dog. My biggest successes came out of trading my skills for income when my customer made a profit from the trade. This is the free market."
No, the free market more resmbles the prisoners' dilemma. As you were selling your expertise, your client can be assumed to have little (if any) in the field you are operating in. Therefore, you were likely free to sell (and charge) your customers more than what was required and could have taken them for a ride, complete with higher profit. Perhaps you chose not to, but personal ethics aside there is little preventing you from doing so.
"Consumers are free to organize research companies to look into products."
And as an anarcho-capitalist, you would also assert that the (e. g.) meatpackers would be free to refuse to allow these research companies to come on to their property to conduct inspections. The force of government is the only way you're going to make sure that the entire food supply is monitored for basic health and safety standards.
Yes, initially there may be some meatpackers that will allow such private inspectors, but history has show that it is only a matter of time before an oligopoly of companies are able to get together and able to dictate the quality of food sold to the public, regardless of any attempt at consumer oversight.
"Herbicide resistance has been seen time and time again for decades."
Then you're suggesting that this new strain of weed "just happened" to show up in a crop that uses markedly higher dosages of herbicides, instead of years before and miles away in any number of unmodified crop fields?
Yes, they show up, but they don't just show up within a single generation like this, and they don't just show up where the hostile chemical is at a higher concentration than elsewhere. This is something you'd expect to see either over a period of time, with successive generations and gradually increasing dosages of herbicide, or in a case of cross-pollenization.
"As an aside it should also be noted that cross-pollenization is the mechanism that genes are distributed Within a Species not from species to species."
Cross-species reproduction is possible (e. g. horse + donkey = mule), the question is whether the offspring can reproduce. Sometimes, through random mutations, natural selection, etc. the offspring will be fertile. The odds of that happening may be low, but I'd say it's greater than the odds of this particular kind of herbicide-resistant mutation showing itself for the first time at this particular place and this particular time.
"So humans dreamed up a few chemicals designed to kill certain types of plants. Big deal. Plants have been ruthlessly trying to kill each other through chemical warfare for millions of years."
Perhaps, but I think the Twentieth Century alone shows that we are far more efficient at killing things than any natural impetus or process of natural selection. It doesn't take "millions of years" for us to develop more efficient tools of destruction because we don't rely on random encounters.
Humans can fly faster, higher, and often with more finesse than birds. But you're going to declare that birds are "just better" because they've developed their flight through natural selection over tens of millions of years and ours came about only in the past two or three centuries or so?
"An assumption like yours is probably what caused the problem. Think of it, assuming the chemical will kill all of something? Killing 100% or at least enough such that the remaining survivors doesn't reproduce? There aren't many times that absolute assumptions work like that."
Between the before-market testing the herbicides were put through to make sure the chemical would be competitive and the after-market continual use over the course of decades eliminates any need for me to assume anything; it was designed to kill things, it was tested to ensure it killed things, and it is still used today because it kills things. If it were not extremely effective, it would likely not be used and this entire fiasco would be a non-issue.
And as for potential survivors, we're talking about "herbicide resistant" rather than "herbicide immune" (if you use enough herbicide, even the GM crops would be killed). If an herbicide resistant strain of a weed is going to develop independent of cross-pollenization, it is going to develop in fields where the dosages of herbicide used are survivable for the weed, and perhaps strengthened over time to be strong enough to survive in GM fields where higher dosages are used.
If a herbicide-resistant weed is going to "just happen" to pop up in a GM field, it must also "just happen" to pop up in non-GM fields and we should have seen this weed years ago (especially because of the lower dosages used). Either this is a remarkable coincidence on the verge of being miraculous, or it comes from cross-pollenization.
"Evolution within a species occurs when a great crisis happens: the particular survivor with the resistant genetics to the herbicide will breed with those genes intact."
Your assumption requires a survivor. We're talking about tailor-made chemicals designed to kill things.
If there were going to be a survivor, it'd be in the non-GM fields, where farmers would be less willing to use herbicides for fear of damaging the crop. The entire point of these GM food strains is to allow farmers to use herbicides much more than before.
"I don't believe that there was any cross-pollination or contamination from the genetically modified foods"
Then you don't understand what "controlled environment" means.
"The other reason to start a nuclear war is that you might think you could actually win. This was one if the reasons anyone with a brain was so against star wars (No not the prequels the space defence program of the reagan era) as it could make the US think it could win a nuclear war or even worse make the USSR think it had no choice but to strike before the US became invulnerable."
That's because a Star Wars program could let the US win a nuclear war. You win a nuclear war by hitting their nukes while still on the ground or otherwise preventing their nukes from hitting you. If Soviet missiles could be removed mid-flight, that gives the US the opportunity to win.
The other way to "win" is to nuke the other guy's silos before their launch. The problem with that is that is exactly what the other guy is planning on doing as well, and you end up with the vast majority of nukes pointed at The Other Guy's nukes, with only a slim minority left over targeted at something other than a missile silo. This is why the USA and the USSR each had thousand of nukes, to hit the other side's thousands of nukes.
"China is still there with the old goverment possibly feeling attacked by the capatalist west."
China doesn't have the missiles or the warheads. They never did. The US has around 2000 if I remember correctly, while PRC has maybe over 100, and not all of them are capable of crossing the Pacific (Hawaii and Alaska may be SOL, but...). If PRC tried to play catch-up with the US arsenal, the US could likely build 2 nuclear-tipped ICBMs for every 1 the Chinese could, and that's on top of the current disparity.
China has zero prosects for a successful nuclear war with the United States. The US could hit each and every one of China's launch sites and still have 3/4 of their missiles left over to do whatever. China's missiles are more intended for India or Japan than the US.
Now now, this is the Twenty-First Century now. The catch-all law for all things considered Bad is now the USA PATRIOT Act. After all, the Justice Department keeps on telling state and local law enforcement about how it can be used against drug dealers and the like.
Except there's a special word for that kind of lying, it's called "perjury." They send you to pound-you-up-the-ass federal penetentiaries for that. The only kind of "attention" her lying would get her is the kind you see in certain "womens' prison" themed movies on late-night Skinemax.
"You forgot the next step after they refuse to sign....the part where they lose their house and starve in the gutter."
That's why you try to organize a big enough union. It's called "collective bargaining," and ultimately a question of who will starve first: the unionized workers or the employers who are no longer able to churn out product (and hence profit).
"These workers would need to unionize within their own temp agencies"
Why? Unions are by definition independent from employers. The contract workers in the Seattle area would unionize and then refuse to sign contracts with employers who also sign contracts with non-union workers.
"Absolutely. But do they have the right to abuse the ISP's network by sending spam/DDoS attacks etc?"
If and when boxen start spitting out stuff, then you're entitled to cut them off. But this preemptive stuff isn't justified, especially when there's still so much room for improvement in enforcing existing service agreements and etiquette.
Instead of using the force of law to require people to use a "white list" of approved software, why not use the law to penalize ISPs that knowingly allow (or are willfully ignorant of) comrpomised boxen to continue to flood other peoples' networks?
Slashdot Mirror
The National Security Agency has been spying on the communications of people within the United States without a warrant since 2001. Though I suppose the folks at the New York Times knew that this time last year (they just didn't feel like sharing).
In some parts of the world Christmas doesn't end until January 6 (i. e. 12 days later).
"While the rest of the world is trying to figure out how to stop the assault of anti-consumer intellectual property laws, Australia is breaking free from them."
When the United States Constitution was being drafted, Madison (et al) is on record as being opposed to the idea of having a Bill of Rights (it's my understanding that similar thinking kept a bill of rights out of Australia's federal government), as its existence implies that the Bill contains all the rights retained by the people and the states. He eventually had to backpedal a bit when he himself introduced the Bill of Rights to the first Congress, but even then they're carefully phrased in such away as to remove powers from government rather than giving them to the people ("Congress shall make no law..." instead of, say, Canada's "Everyone has the following fundamental freedoms...") and the Tenth Amendment was included.
My problem with this law is that it implies that VCR recording and CD ripping were illegal to begin with, and it required legislative action in Canberra for the government to grant these rights to the people it's supposed to be subservient to (in practice if not necessarily in legal theory). Basically, this is the Australian federal government telling the people "We can take away your right to do with your property as you please, but we're feeling magnanimous today."
"Actually, in a free market, the best outcome is born out of mutual profit through cooperation -- not dog eat dog. My biggest successes came out of trading my skills for income when my customer made a profit from the trade. This is the free market."
No, the free market more resmbles the prisoners' dilemma. As you were selling your expertise, your client can be assumed to have little (if any) in the field you are operating in. Therefore, you were likely free to sell (and charge) your customers more than what was required and could have taken them for a ride, complete with higher profit. Perhaps you chose not to, but personal ethics aside there is little preventing you from doing so.
"Consumers are free to organize research companies to look into products."
And as an anarcho-capitalist, you would also assert that the (e. g.) meatpackers would be free to refuse to allow these research companies to come on to their property to conduct inspections. The force of government is the only way you're going to make sure that the entire food supply is monitored for basic health and safety standards.
Yes, initially there may be some meatpackers that will allow such private inspectors, but history has show that it is only a matter of time before an oligopoly of companies are able to get together and able to dictate the quality of food sold to the public, regardless of any attempt at consumer oversight.
"Herbicide resistance has been seen time and time again for decades."
Then you're suggesting that this new strain of weed "just happened" to show up in a crop that uses markedly higher dosages of herbicides, instead of years before and miles away in any number of unmodified crop fields?
Yes, they show up, but they don't just show up within a single generation like this, and they don't just show up where the hostile chemical is at a higher concentration than elsewhere. This is something you'd expect to see either over a period of time, with successive generations and gradually increasing dosages of herbicide, or in a case of cross-pollenization.
"As an aside it should also be noted that cross-pollenization is the mechanism that genes are distributed Within a Species not from species to species."
Cross-species reproduction is possible (e. g. horse + donkey = mule), the question is whether the offspring can reproduce. Sometimes, through random mutations, natural selection, etc. the offspring will be fertile. The odds of that happening may be low, but I'd say it's greater than the odds of this particular kind of herbicide-resistant mutation showing itself for the first time at this particular place and this particular time.
RTFA
"The entire reason we have GM foods is because this kind of "cross-pollinization" can't happen naturally!"
Do you know where mules come from?
I don't know about you, but my preferred "laptop" is around 50 kg and I certainly don't complain when she's on my lap.
"So humans dreamed up a few chemicals designed to kill certain types of plants. Big deal. Plants have been ruthlessly trying to kill each other through chemical warfare for millions of years."
Perhaps, but I think the Twentieth Century alone shows that we are far more efficient at killing things than any natural impetus or process of natural selection. It doesn't take "millions of years" for us to develop more efficient tools of destruction because we don't rely on random encounters.
Humans can fly faster, higher, and often with more finesse than birds. But you're going to declare that birds are "just better" because they've developed their flight through natural selection over tens of millions of years and ours came about only in the past two or three centuries or so?
"An assumption like yours is probably what caused the problem. Think of it, assuming the chemical will kill all of something? Killing 100% or at least enough such that the remaining survivors doesn't reproduce? There aren't many times that absolute assumptions work like that."
Between the before-market testing the herbicides were put through to make sure the chemical would be competitive and the after-market continual use over the course of decades eliminates any need for me to assume anything; it was designed to kill things, it was tested to ensure it killed things, and it is still used today because it kills things. If it were not extremely effective, it would likely not be used and this entire fiasco would be a non-issue.
And as for potential survivors, we're talking about "herbicide resistant" rather than "herbicide immune" (if you use enough herbicide, even the GM crops would be killed). If an herbicide resistant strain of a weed is going to develop independent of cross-pollenization, it is going to develop in fields where the dosages of herbicide used are survivable for the weed, and perhaps strengthened over time to be strong enough to survive in GM fields where higher dosages are used.
If a herbicide-resistant weed is going to "just happen" to pop up in a GM field, it must also "just happen" to pop up in non-GM fields and we should have seen this weed years ago (especially because of the lower dosages used). Either this is a remarkable coincidence on the verge of being miraculous, or it comes from cross-pollenization.
"Evolution within a species occurs when a great crisis happens: the particular survivor with the resistant genetics to the herbicide will breed with those genes intact."
Your assumption requires a survivor. We're talking about tailor-made chemicals designed to kill things.
If there were going to be a survivor, it'd be in the non-GM fields, where farmers would be less willing to use herbicides for fear of damaging the crop. The entire point of these GM food strains is to allow farmers to use herbicides much more than before.
"I don't believe that there was any cross-pollination or contamination from the genetically modified foods"
Then you don't understand what "controlled environment" means.
"The other reason to start a nuclear war is that you might think you could actually win. This was one if the reasons anyone with a brain was so against star wars (No not the prequels the space defence program of the reagan era) as it could make the US think it could win a nuclear war or even worse make the USSR think it had no choice but to strike before the US became invulnerable."
That's because a Star Wars program could let the US win a nuclear war. You win a nuclear war by hitting their nukes while still on the ground or otherwise preventing their nukes from hitting you. If Soviet missiles could be removed mid-flight, that gives the US the opportunity to win.
The other way to "win" is to nuke the other guy's silos before their launch. The problem with that is that is exactly what the other guy is planning on doing as well, and you end up with the vast majority of nukes pointed at The Other Guy's nukes, with only a slim minority left over targeted at something other than a missile silo. This is why the USA and the USSR each had thousand of nukes, to hit the other side's thousands of nukes.
"China is still there with the old goverment possibly feeling attacked by the capatalist west."
China doesn't have the missiles or the warheads. They never did. The US has around 2000 if I remember correctly, while PRC has maybe over 100, and not all of them are capable of crossing the Pacific (Hawaii and Alaska may be SOL, but...). If PRC tried to play catch-up with the US arsenal, the US could likely build 2 nuclear-tipped ICBMs for every 1 the Chinese could, and that's on top of the current disparity.
China has zero prosects for a successful nuclear war with the United States. The US could hit each and every one of China's launch sites and still have 3/4 of their missiles left over to do whatever. China's missiles are more intended for India or Japan than the US.
Now now, this is the Twenty-First Century now. The catch-all law for all things considered Bad is now the USA PATRIOT Act. After all, the Justice Department keeps on telling state and local law enforcement about how it can be used against drug dealers and the like.
Except there's a special word for that kind of lying, it's called "perjury." They send you to pound-you-up-the-ass federal penetentiaries for that. The only kind of "attention" her lying would get her is the kind you see in certain "womens' prison" themed movies on late-night Skinemax.
"What's in Kim Jong ils PS2 right now you think?"
He doesn't know either. He's trying to build a nuclear power plant so he has enough electricity to turn the thing on.
"Pandering to their "base" is their job. If they didn't represent their constituents, they wouldn't have a job any more."
Not really. Why pander to voters when you can instead choose who votes for you? The joys of gerrymandering!
If they didn't need the contractors to make money, they wouldn't be hiring contractors to begin with.
So you're saying humans came out of DC?
"You forgot the next step after they refuse to sign....the part where they lose their house and starve in the gutter."
That's why you try to organize a big enough union. It's called "collective bargaining," and ultimately a question of who will starve first: the unionized workers or the employers who are no longer able to churn out product (and hence profit).
"Presented in H Y P N O V I S I O N"
I loved it! It was much better than 'Cats!' I'm going to see it again and again!
"These workers would need to unionize within their own temp agencies"
Why? Unions are by definition independent from employers. The contract workers in the Seattle area would unionize and then refuse to sign contracts with employers who also sign contracts with non-union workers.
"The reason that HTTP (... is) so popular is because support for those protocols were built into the browsers"
Where can I download a browser that doesn't support HTTP?
Isn't that kinda like write-only memory?
"Absolutely. But do they have the right to abuse the ISP's network by sending spam/DDoS attacks etc?"
If and when boxen start spitting out stuff, then you're entitled to cut them off. But this preemptive stuff isn't justified, especially when there's still so much room for improvement in enforcing existing service agreements and etiquette.
Instead of using the force of law to require people to use a "white list" of approved software, why not use the law to penalize ISPs that knowingly allow (or are willfully ignorant of) comrpomised boxen to continue to flood other peoples' networks?
"And after watching the original series again for the first time in over 20 years, it wasn't nearly as good as I remember"
Someone on a mailing list I used to be on summed it up like this:
New: Run away, they're right behind us!
Old: Run away, they're... oooh, a space casino!
G4TV makes better music TV than MTV.