Remember that I said "a college degree is useless in most professions". That doesn't mean that the learning obtained while getting the college degree is useless, but that the degree itself rarely qualifies one for work in the profession that requires that degree.
Mathematics is a degree I did not consider, and a rather good example of a degree that might actually be useful right from the point of graduation. But then I did say "most" and not "all".
I've had the rare opportunity to study a variety of recently-degreed people who've gone to work in fields that their degree supposedly relates to. The fact is, most of these people are entirely unprepared for the actual WORK of that profession. The work itself must be taught to them, often from scratch, by people who're already employed in that profession. And it's my observation that in many cases someone without a degree could do the actual WORK just as well as someone with the degree; and I've seen this observation confirmed when people who did not have the degree supposedly needed for the profession had no problem at all actually mastering the work.
The only real exceptions I've discovered are professions which immerse the student in work as part of the degree. Doctors are a very good example of this.
A degree would be worth far more, I think, if the learning involved in getting that degree were modeled after the learning the doctor must go through for the same thing. That is, if much of the course of learning revolved around actual WORK in a real-world environment. Sadly this isn't a requirement of most degrees, and I think it's the reason why so many college graduates come to the work environment so utterly useless until trained. And if they have to be trained, it's often just as easy to train any smart, able-bodied person.
This might explain why more than 90% of all college graduates end up in a job unrelated to their degree. Not because they're underqualified (which they are), but because their supposed qualifications simply aren't worth that much in the work environment - and they can easily be swapped about in most work environments (as indicated by the fact that while 90% of them end up in jobs unrelated to their majors, *they do end up with jobs, most of which require college degree other than the one they got*).
Max
Re:intellectual property is artificial
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Is IP Property?
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And even then it must be maintained by force, even if the majority of people agree with it.
This is true of all laws. No law is enforceable unless it's ultimately backed by the threat of violent death.
Even if IP ownership is the will of the people, they still must make an explicit decision that they, as a society, will create and fund and direct the enforcement of it.
And this is also true, but that decision was made when the Constitution was drafted. It's implicit in the Constitutional decree allowing Congress to set the terms of copyrights and patents. Any attempt to eliminate IP would probably be overturned by the Supreme Court without a Constitutional Amendment.
Valuable lessons can be learned alone, but you can reduce the time it takes by a factor of 10 or more with structured lessons.
That's rather amusing, given how useless a college degree is in most professions - CS included. Structured learning often does very little to teach CS students anything of actual, real-world value.
I'd argue for self-learning (the way most of us have done it, I'd imagine), with liberal doses of research on the internet and question/answer sessions on the newsgroups. There are a lot of people out there who'll lend you a helping hand if you ask for it.
Some - a very few - current administrators and programmers are also good at apprenticeship situations. Many aren't; not because they lack some indefinable skill, but because they're too busy with other things to be bothered with training up a newbie.
I'd say take a class as a very last resort. Avoid a college course as if your professional life depended on it.
"See those 30 comps?" your in charge now and we don't know how they work.
And this will teach more than any college course or class in existence.
This is much how I learned, right from the beginning, e.g., "we don't know how this here mainframe actually works. Figure it out. If you can't, we'll fire you and hire someone else to give it a shot."
This should be a degree requirement for everyone in CS. It would do a lot to weed out the often-useless trash passing themselves off as CS majors these days.
Max
Re:intellectual property is artificial
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Is IP Property?
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· Score: 1
You seem to underestimate the fact that the US can use their economical power to impose their IP laws on other countries by the WIPO and "free trade" agreements. The EU for example has just introduced draconian copyright laws and if we have bad luck, they will also introduce software patents here.
I don't underestimate that. Europe isn't any better than the U.S. concerning IP laws; in fact, it seems they're bent on enacting even worse laws than the ones we have. But your assumption here is that I think Europe will be the body to outcompete the U.S., and I don't think it will. Ever.
In fact, I believe the countries which will outcompete the U.S. are ones that regular Americans can't even point out on a map. And while these countries may or may not pay lip service to various trade agreements which mention IP, in actual practice they won't enforce American IP laws - and aren't, in fact, enforcing them even as we speak. Examples would include Brazil (a slumbering superpower if there ever was one) and Singapore.
These countries have nothing to gain by voluntarily allowing wealth, in the form of IP, to remain in American and European hands; they have everything to gain by ignoring IP laws and forging ahead on their own. And while they may sign treaties confirming the American and European right to hold the rest of world in intellectual slavery, they will never in actual fact commit more than a token effort to upholding their end of the bargain. And why should they? IP laws are just another way for the First World to hold the Third World as colonial subjects, this time through the slavery of IDEAS. What idiot would voluntarily enslave his mind to a master for the sole benefit of that master?
India may or may not figure in this equation, but India seems so intent on currying the favor the West (because of the influx of Western jobs) they may very well start complying with IP laws in order to keep those jobs coming into the country. If those jobs dry up...who knows which way they'll go?
Japan has a vested interest in IP, but only AT THE MOMENT. Once Japan sees America slipping into second-rate status, you can bet your bottom dollar they aren't going to follow us into the hole. The Japanese are far too savvy to allow themselves to be dragged down by the U.S., and they think in terms much longer than 5-year profit/loss statements. While disentangling themselves from the U.S. will result in short-term economic difficulties, the long-term effects of supporting American economic stupidity will be obvious to the Japanese even if it isn't obvious to us.
I've summed this up once before: Europe was. America is. Asia will be. And part of this, I think, is an Asian willingness to ignore American and European laws designed solely to keep wealth in American and European hands, and forge ahead on their own if need be. The only exception I currently see to this is, as I've said, Brazil, which doesn't seem to give a damn what anyone else thinks (and good for them).
Max
Re:intellectual property is artificial
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Is IP Property?
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· Score: 1
No, it doesn't exist because we allow it to, but because we enforce it.
If the government is truly representative then these two ideas are one and the same, i.e., it's the will of the people that IP be allowed to exist, under certain terms, and this will is ENFORCED by the government which represents the people against those who would violate this directive.
Your argument assumes that the government is no longer representative in the construction and enforcement of laws. I agree with you. I do not believe that current IP laws have anything to do with the will of the majority of the populace of the United States, and are being enforced by a government acting at the behest of a minority interested only in maintaining it's own hegemony.
In a perfect world, or even a representative one, IP would exist (if at all) because we ALLOW it to exist. In our own often non-representative circumstances, laws concerning IP are ENFORCED regardless of the will of the populace at large.
But this applies to a great many laws, and not just those governing IP.
My point, in using the term ALLOW, is that a strict interpretation of the Constitution gives the people the absolute authority to define IP in any way they choose, to set the terms of its existence, and to enforce laws concerning artificial property in any way they please. Artificial property is an imaginary construct, not an absolute one, as so many people argue today, and is not even remotely subject to 'natural' laws regarding ownership (those which transcend even the Constitution and are obvious on their face to any rational mind).
Max
Re:Uh, 9th and 10th amendment.
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Is IP Property?
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So, yes... you have the right to a TRY to make a profit.
I don't know whether you're agreeing or disagreeing with me. I did indeed say you have the right to ATTEMPT to make a profit, but you have no right to profit from your activities. These are two distinct and separate things, and the second is not a right enshrined by the Constitution, nor is it guarranteed by the 9th and 10th amendments.
My argument was that folks within the RIAA/MPAA/Disney et. al., and those who argue for them, tend to conflate these two concepts, i.e., they deliberately confuse the implicit right to ATTEMPT to make a profit with the 'right' to profit, the latter which doesn't, and has never, existed.
It's the same sort of doublespeak which turns copyright violation into 'theft' or 'piracy'. Copyright violation has never come close to meeting the definition of either theft or piracy, and yet the mouthpieces of these organizations have done such a good job of confusing the issue that even OPPONENTS of the RIAA/MPAA/etc. often refer to copyright violation as theft or piracy. It's brilliantly Orwellian in scope and objective.
Small 'l' libertarians aren't party-oriented; it rather goes against the grain of libertarian beliefs to support a large purely political organization.
Which, up until recently, meant that the Libertarian Party could only be dominated by wack-jobs. Only wack-jobs would conveniently forget about libertarian principles in order to build a political party with the intent of competing with the two major parties. Building a party that strong and that powerful is *anti-libertarian* and would, like all political parties past and present, quickly fall to corruption and smooth-talking egomaniacs interested only in power.
However, with the widespread incorporation of the internet into most American households, small-l libertarians now have the means to organize, temporarily and towards certain specific goals, without having to do so through an old-style, established party. An organization which lasts so long as it's required, then dissolves when the need disappears. The idea isn't far-fetched; such spontaneous and short-lived, goal-directed organizations have come and gone with increasing frequency all over the internet, although rarely for political purposes. It's only a matter of time before this same process is applied to political matters, and I think the appeal of it to those who're disenfranchised by the current system (e.g., libertarians, and anyone who's even remotely moderate during any election) will surprise - and scare - the DemoRepublicans. The Libertarian party can be attacked, can be subverted, can be ridiculed, and ultimately, can be bought; but what do you do when millions of individuals band together to accomplish a set goal, then wander away to do other things when that goal is accomplished?
The current political system can't cope with that. And I think we might see a serious challenge to DemoRepublican power by 2008. My only concern is that they'll act to protect the current system in much the same was that the RIAA/MPAA/Disney have done: by attempting to ban or regulate the technologies that allow this challenge to manifest.
Max
intellectual property is artificial
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Is IP Property?
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· Score: 4, Insightful
It isn't absolute. Absolute property is defined by being physical property, unique and in your possession. No one can deny the existence of that property, although they may deny your continued ownership of it (communists, thieves).
Intellectual property is artificial. It doesn't exist in the real world. It exists only because we allow it to exist, and (currently, at least) grant it the status of absolute property, supposedly for a certain limited period of time. Under the Constitution, the ONLY reason for the existence of artificial property is "to promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries". Nowhere in the Constitution does it mention that copyright is to be used as an absolute guarrantee of profit, nor does it say anywhere that anyone has a right to profit. Profit doesn't enter the equation, except indirectly, by allowing an inventor or creator time to ATTEMPT to make a profit, if he or she so desires.
All arguments concerning copyright and the 'right' to profit are pure bullshit. The Constitution never mentions a right to profit, or the right to make a profit from copyrighted materials. That right doesn't exist. Many people here and elsewhere seem to (deliberately) be confusing copyright with a right to profit that does not, and never has, existed. That includes profit which is dressed up in the doublespeak known as 'lost sales'.
The sole purpose of copyright is to spur development by allowing an inventor or creator a LIMITED AMOUNT OF TIME to get the jump on potential competitors. Current copyright laws, while they may fulfill the technical definition of 'limited', are ridiculously long. The copyright has been extended several times to keep works of art which belong to certain powerful corporations out of the public domain, and for no other reason. This directly contradicts the purpose of copyright as defined by the Constitution, even if it doesn't violate the letter of the law. But it seems that the purpose of a law means little these days, and it's only the actual wording that counts in court.
It's rather clear that extending copyright to an absurd extreme does nothing whatsoever for the public welfare, and is designed solely to protect the profits of a few vested interests with the ability to buy Congressmen through bribes (colloquially known as 'campaign contributions' or 'a weekend in Tahiti with a teenage hooker'). But it's gone even farther than this, in that copyright laws are being used to prop up outdated business models in the face of advancing technology, an attempt to put a halt to that technology altogether. Copyright laws are being used as a weapon AGAINST innovation in a vicious, winner-take-all fashion. If the RIAA, MPAA, Disney et. al. have their way a number of new technologies would be banned from the United States altogether.
That's what the most serious issue is. It isn't about a 'right' to profit, which doesn't exist, and it isn't about the 'rights' of authors or musicians or movie makers, who only have the rights we feel like granting them when it comes to artificial property (re the Constitution). The biggest issue is that current vested interests are using whatever weapons they have at their disposal (or 'encouraging' Congress to create new ones) to slow down or put a complete halt to a variety of new technologies. They are, in fact, doing their very best to cripple innovation and impose a form of stasis over the entire American economy (with the help of a whole lot of other businesses who are doing the same thing by abusing the patent system) so that they'll remain at the top of heap, forever, secure that the government will destroy their competition for them.
Whether or not you happen to agree with free market principles (I'm a libertarian, so you can guess my take on this whole sorry business), the only logical outcome of this tangled mess is that America will no longer be a leader in technologica
If this is true, then the Republicans aren't even close to being conservative. The government has *increased* in size since Bush took office, and we now have the largest deficit in U.S. history. A true conservative is also FISCALLY conservative, which the Republicans are not. In fact, it seems they're even worse at wasting tax money than the Democrats now.
A real conservative under your definition would be, I think, a libertarian.
Liberals believe that what is good for the people is good for everyone.
Only so long as it's their definition of "what is good for the people" that's used. Most liberals refuse to believe that there might be more approaches to solving a problem than the one they happen to favor, or that solving a particular problem simply isn't possible in the manner they wish to pursue. Or, at times, that their 'solution' may do more harm than good.
No, I rather despise the DemoRepublican party and all that they stand for.
Your education is lacking, and sorely, if you think our founding fathers were in favor of democracy. THEY WERE NOT. They said so, time and time again, and their words have been immortalized in a wide variety of publications.
I learned this in school; why didn't you?
But I'll say it again. You can confirm this yourself. The American State Papers, the Federalist, Jefferson's abundant ruminations on the nature of democracy and the republic - THEY'RE ALL PUBLICLY AVAILABLE. NO ONE IS HIDING ANYTHING FROM YOU.
Not a single one of our founding fathers thought democracy was a good idea. They all - each and every one of them - favored an extremely weak republic tightly restricted by Constitutional decree, where individual freedoms outweighed public desires.
What the hell do you think the 9th and 10th amendments were all about, anyway?
The fact that the federal and state governments are formed as republics isn't a due to idealism or even cynicism -- rather, it's one chosen because of the impossibility of direct democracy at anything other than the very local level.
That simply isn't true. The founding fathers publicly and repeatedly stated that they thought direct democracy to be a very bad idea. I've already told you where to look if you want to confirm that, which you're welcome to do at any decent public library (or perhaps online, by now).
I repeat myself, but they said that direct democracy was nothing more than a tyranny of the majority, and no better than the tyranny enforced by a single man - a king. The Constitution specifically limited government power through the First through Fifth Amendments, and later the Ninth and Tenth Amendments, to keep the majority from ever using the tool of government to oppress the minority.
All of this is public record and should have been taught to you in high school. I find it surprising that your education has been so lax and so full of misinformation. But you're perfectly capable of going to the source and correcting these deficiencies yourself, which I encourage you to do.
Problem is that people like you get hung up on the small points
You mean like people deliberately lying to me? Yeah, I guess I'm old-fashioned that way. Color me crazy, but when I know you're a liar I have a pretty hard time trusting the veracity of what comes out of your mouth.
but for many people giving out one free gun is one too many.
Well, now ain't that something! "Many people", in this case, represents a tiny but annoyingly vocal segment of the American population. The vast majority has no desire whatsoever to ban gun ownership, and would never consider repealing the Second Amendment.
In fact, it appears that the anti-gun lobby is losing ground since the number of Americans in favor of an outright ban in firearms is lower now than it's been any time during the last twenty years, and more Americans go armed today since the immediate post-World War II period.
Gun ownership is not fascism, by the way. To imply such a thing is to mark yourself as a loon.
Without that guy, and all the porn-meisters who followed him to cash in on geek sexual frustration, the internet would still be nothing more than a curiosity.
As long as Reality TV carries on and comes out of the box in their living room they don't care what else is going on.
You've got that backwards. Because they see just how ineffectual they are at changing a system which seems intent on screwing them no matter who's in charge, they ESCAPE to reality TV in order to avoid despair.
People don't care to have the ability to look ahead and see what is possible down the road.
They do, but they don't like what they see: more of the same.
If you want to address why people turn away from the political process and spend their time on 'trivial' things, neither stupidity nor apathy is the way to go. It would be more appropriate to take a look at an overwhelming feeling of powerlessness (perceived or real, it doesn't matter) and why it pervades much of the voting public. Especially the moderates, who don't have the unthinking fires of zealotry to spur them on in their endeavors.
Political discussions almost always devolve into "my god is better than your god" arguments. Your god is always right, always true, always possessed of superhuman qualities, while the other guy's god is scum of the worst sort.
The political atheists among us realize that neither god is actually a god, but just a charlatan posing as divinity. A charlatan with an army of believers willing to turn off the critical faculties of their brain so they can overlook the not-so-divine aspects of their deities.
People aren't idiots; if they were, evolution would've wiped them out a long, long time ago. But it appears that a great many people work very, very hard to become idiots, and let others do their thinking for them.
Democracy isn't and never has been the best form of government. Our founding fathers weren't interested in democracy and saw it as nothing more than a dictatorship by a mob in place of a king.
That's why we have a REPUBLIC. That's why the Constitution clearly limited the powers of government AND OF THE PEOPLE TO OPPRESS THEIR NEIGHBORS. Because that is precisely what unchecked democracies will do: oppress those who don't have the votes to block the will of the majority. The Bill of Rights wasn't just about limiting the powers of elites within government, but also of limited the powers of the majority to inflict harm on the minority via the tool of government.
You might want to educate yourself by reading "The American State Papers" and "The Federalist" to see what our founders thought about democracy and why they were so adamantly in favor of a republic in it's place.
Television would be totally unwatchable for months at a time. Oh, wait...
The problem here isn't that television is being manipulated to push political agendas, but that people consider television - especially commercials - to be a credible source of information at all. No amount of legislation will 'fix' the problems of political ads on TV when the respect that Americans give to TV itself is the fundamental problem.
An important aspect of any reasonable political system is to acknowledge that there are no truths (except in math and physics). All political systems have to, therefore, be quite open to anyone's interpretation of what has happened. You have no way to know whether someone else's interpretation is better than your own.
This is commonly the retreating tactic of someone who can't argue his own case effectively: to claim that there are no "truths" and that everyone's point of view is equally valid, no matter how inane or ridiculous.
Anyone with an ounce of facility in critical reasoning will see your statement for what it is: pandering bullshit with an attempt to subvert the discussion. There are indeed facts, and truths, and opinions that are much better informed than others. To assert the contrary is a fool's game, the extension of sophomoric college Philosophy 101 into real life.
That someone publishes something "with a spin" is not wrong, it is inevitable.
Nice apologia. It doesn't excuse Michael Moore from factual presentation of his evidence regardless of what you might like to believe. His 'documentary' is no better than some of the crap that's come out of the White House over the last four years.
You can try to justify Moore's deliberate distortion of the facts all you like, but those of us who don't worship him and have more than a few neurons to rub together find his approach distasteful and arrogant. We'd think the same thing about the methods no matter who was using them.
Oh, and we're called 'moderates'. We the folks who comprise the vast majority of the American public, yet are conveniently marginalized and forgotten about whenever an election is held. Moderates tend to despise extremists of all kinds, whether left or right, and Moore is a deceptive extremist outstripping even Rush Limbaugh for vile practices.
Moore even said in all his interviews that of course the movie is biased, the facts were all facts, and they were framed by his opinions.
Moore said the same thing about "Bowling for Columbine", but then deliberately staged the bank/rifle scene several months in advance by lying to bank officials about his intentions. It was never possible to pick up a rifle AT THE BANK by opening an account and bank officials allowed him to do it, for promotional purposes, precisely because he lied about his aims.
He then went on to say that anyone could do what he had done at the bank, which was utterly untrue. This isn't 'framing the facts by his opinions', it's a goddamned, bald-faced lie. And it wasn't the only lie in "Bowling" either.
And now you expect me to believe that "Farenheit 9/11" is completely devoid of lies, that somewhere between "Bowling" and "Farenheit" Moore decided to turn over a new leaf? Give me a fucking break! A sucker I may be, but brain-damaged I am not.
And that is what we call 'bullshit'. The internet isn't a democracy, and neither is Slashdot. Like it or not the owners determine the mission; and while I (and many others) may complain about the execution of that mission at times, no one in their right mind would challenge their absolute authority, and their absolute right, to administer Slashdot in whatever fashion they see fit.
Again, if that bothers you, start your own site. Then *you* get to determine the mission and purpose. But here and now your opinion on the matter is entirely irrelevent, regardless of what you might think to the contrary.
The document is the embodiment of the freedoms you speak of. Loyalty to the Constitution is loyalty to the preservation of those freedoms; it's really that simple.
Other countries have nothing to do with the conversation, and certainly nothing to do with enlightenment.
Slashdot Mirror
Remember that I said "a college degree is useless in most professions". That doesn't mean that the learning obtained while getting the college degree is useless, but that the degree itself rarely qualifies one for work in the profession that requires that degree.
Mathematics is a degree I did not consider, and a rather good example of a degree that might actually be useful right from the point of graduation. But then I did say "most" and not "all".
I've had the rare opportunity to study a variety of recently-degreed people who've gone to work in fields that their degree supposedly relates to. The fact is, most of these people are entirely unprepared for the actual WORK of that profession. The work itself must be taught to them, often from scratch, by people who're already employed in that profession. And it's my observation that in many cases someone without a degree could do the actual WORK just as well as someone with the degree; and I've seen this observation confirmed when people who did not have the degree supposedly needed for the profession had no problem at all actually mastering the work.
The only real exceptions I've discovered are professions which immerse the student in work as part of the degree. Doctors are a very good example of this.
A degree would be worth far more, I think, if the learning involved in getting that degree were modeled after the learning the doctor must go through for the same thing. That is, if much of the course of learning revolved around actual WORK in a real-world environment. Sadly this isn't a requirement of most degrees, and I think it's the reason why so many college graduates come to the work environment so utterly useless until trained. And if they have to be trained, it's often just as easy to train any smart, able-bodied person.
This might explain why more than 90% of all college graduates end up in a job unrelated to their degree. Not because they're underqualified (which they are), but because their supposed qualifications simply aren't worth that much in the work environment - and they can easily be swapped about in most work environments (as indicated by the fact that while 90% of them end up in jobs unrelated to their majors, *they do end up with jobs, most of which require college degree other than the one they got*).
Max
And even then it must be maintained by force, even if the majority of people agree with it.
This is true of all laws. No law is enforceable unless it's ultimately backed by the threat of violent death.
Even if IP ownership is the will of the people, they still must make an explicit decision that they, as a society, will create and fund and direct the enforcement of it.
And this is also true, but that decision was made when the Constitution was drafted. It's implicit in the Constitutional decree allowing Congress to set the terms of copyrights and patents. Any attempt to eliminate IP would probably be overturned by the Supreme Court without a Constitutional Amendment.
Max
Valuable lessons can be learned alone, but you can reduce the time it takes by a factor of 10 or more with structured lessons.
That's rather amusing, given how useless a college degree is in most professions - CS included. Structured learning often does very little to teach CS students anything of actual, real-world value.
I'd argue for self-learning (the way most of us have done it, I'd imagine), with liberal doses of research on the internet and question/answer sessions on the newsgroups. There are a lot of people out there who'll lend you a helping hand if you ask for it.
Some - a very few - current administrators and programmers are also good at apprenticeship situations. Many aren't; not because they lack some indefinable skill, but because they're too busy with other things to be bothered with training up a newbie.
I'd say take a class as a very last resort. Avoid a college course as if your professional life depended on it.
Max
"See those 30 comps?" your in charge now and we don't know how they work.
And this will teach more than any college course or class in existence.
This is much how I learned, right from the beginning, e.g., "we don't know how this here mainframe actually works. Figure it out. If you can't, we'll fire you and hire someone else to give it a shot."
This should be a degree requirement for everyone in CS. It would do a lot to weed out the often-useless trash passing themselves off as CS majors these days.
Max
You seem to underestimate the fact that the US can use their economical power to impose their IP laws on other countries by the WIPO and "free trade" agreements. The EU for example has just introduced draconian copyright laws and if we have bad luck, they will also introduce software patents here.
I don't underestimate that. Europe isn't any better than the U.S. concerning IP laws; in fact, it seems they're bent on enacting even worse laws than the ones we have. But your assumption here is that I think Europe will be the body to outcompete the U.S., and I don't think it will. Ever.
In fact, I believe the countries which will outcompete the U.S. are ones that regular Americans can't even point out on a map. And while these countries may or may not pay lip service to various trade agreements which mention IP, in actual practice they won't enforce American IP laws - and aren't, in fact, enforcing them even as we speak. Examples would include Brazil (a slumbering superpower if there ever was one) and Singapore.
These countries have nothing to gain by voluntarily allowing wealth, in the form of IP, to remain in American and European hands; they have everything to gain by ignoring IP laws and forging ahead on their own. And while they may sign treaties confirming the American and European right to hold the rest of world in intellectual slavery, they will never in actual fact commit more than a token effort to upholding their end of the bargain. And why should they? IP laws are just another way for the First World to hold the Third World as colonial subjects, this time through the slavery of IDEAS. What idiot would voluntarily enslave his mind to a master for the sole benefit of that master?
India may or may not figure in this equation, but India seems so intent on currying the favor the West (because of the influx of Western jobs) they may very well start complying with IP laws in order to keep those jobs coming into the country. If those jobs dry up...who knows which way they'll go?
Japan has a vested interest in IP, but only AT THE MOMENT. Once Japan sees America slipping into second-rate status, you can bet your bottom dollar they aren't going to follow us into the hole. The Japanese are far too savvy to allow themselves to be dragged down by the U.S., and they think in terms much longer than 5-year profit/loss statements. While disentangling themselves from the U.S. will result in short-term economic difficulties, the long-term effects of supporting American economic stupidity will be obvious to the Japanese even if it isn't obvious to us.
I've summed this up once before: Europe was. America is. Asia will be. And part of this, I think, is an Asian willingness to ignore American and European laws designed solely to keep wealth in American and European hands, and forge ahead on their own if need be. The only exception I currently see to this is, as I've said, Brazil, which doesn't seem to give a damn what anyone else thinks (and good for them).
Max
No, it doesn't exist because we allow it to, but because we enforce it.
If the government is truly representative then these two ideas are one and the same, i.e., it's the will of the people that IP be allowed to exist, under certain terms, and this will is ENFORCED by the government which represents the people against those who would violate this directive.
Your argument assumes that the government is no longer representative in the construction and enforcement of laws. I agree with you. I do not believe that current IP laws have anything to do with the will of the majority of the populace of the United States, and are being enforced by a government acting at the behest of a minority interested only in maintaining it's own hegemony.
In a perfect world, or even a representative one, IP would exist (if at all) because we ALLOW it to exist. In our own often non-representative circumstances, laws concerning IP are ENFORCED regardless of the will of the populace at large.
But this applies to a great many laws, and not just those governing IP.
My point, in using the term ALLOW, is that a strict interpretation of the Constitution gives the people the absolute authority to define IP in any way they choose, to set the terms of its existence, and to enforce laws concerning artificial property in any way they please. Artificial property is an imaginary construct, not an absolute one, as so many people argue today, and is not even remotely subject to 'natural' laws regarding ownership (those which transcend even the Constitution and are obvious on their face to any rational mind).
Max
So, yes... you have the right to a TRY to make a profit.
I don't know whether you're agreeing or disagreeing with me. I did indeed say you have the right to ATTEMPT to make a profit, but you have no right to profit from your activities. These are two distinct and separate things, and the second is not a right enshrined by the Constitution, nor is it guarranteed by the 9th and 10th amendments.
My argument was that folks within the RIAA/MPAA/Disney et. al., and those who argue for them, tend to conflate these two concepts, i.e., they deliberately confuse the implicit right to ATTEMPT to make a profit with the 'right' to profit, the latter which doesn't, and has never, existed.
It's the same sort of doublespeak which turns copyright violation into 'theft' or 'piracy'. Copyright violation has never come close to meeting the definition of either theft or piracy, and yet the mouthpieces of these organizations have done such a good job of confusing the issue that even OPPONENTS of the RIAA/MPAA/etc. often refer to copyright violation as theft or piracy. It's brilliantly Orwellian in scope and objective.
Max
Small 'l' libertarians aren't party-oriented; it rather goes against the grain of libertarian beliefs to support a large purely political organization.
Which, up until recently, meant that the Libertarian Party could only be dominated by wack-jobs. Only wack-jobs would conveniently forget about libertarian principles in order to build a political party with the intent of competing with the two major parties. Building a party that strong and that powerful is *anti-libertarian* and would, like all political parties past and present, quickly fall to corruption and smooth-talking egomaniacs interested only in power.
However, with the widespread incorporation of the internet into most American households, small-l libertarians now have the means to organize, temporarily and towards certain specific goals, without having to do so through an old-style, established party. An organization which lasts so long as it's required, then dissolves when the need disappears. The idea isn't far-fetched; such spontaneous and short-lived, goal-directed organizations have come and gone with increasing frequency all over the internet, although rarely for political purposes. It's only a matter of time before this same process is applied to political matters, and I think the appeal of it to those who're disenfranchised by the current system (e.g., libertarians, and anyone who's even remotely moderate during any election) will surprise - and scare - the DemoRepublicans. The Libertarian party can be attacked, can be subverted, can be ridiculed, and ultimately, can be bought; but what do you do when millions of individuals band together to accomplish a set goal, then wander away to do other things when that goal is accomplished?
The current political system can't cope with that. And I think we might see a serious challenge to DemoRepublican power by 2008. My only concern is that they'll act to protect the current system in much the same was that the RIAA/MPAA/Disney have done: by attempting to ban or regulate the technologies that allow this challenge to manifest.
Max
It isn't absolute. Absolute property is defined by being physical property, unique and in your possession. No one can deny the existence of that property, although they may deny your continued ownership of it (communists, thieves).
Intellectual property is artificial. It doesn't exist in the real world. It exists only because we allow it to exist, and (currently, at least) grant it the status of absolute property, supposedly for a certain limited period of time. Under the Constitution, the ONLY reason for the existence of artificial property is "to promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries". Nowhere in the Constitution does it mention that copyright is to be used as an absolute guarrantee of profit, nor does it say anywhere that anyone has a right to profit. Profit doesn't enter the equation, except indirectly, by allowing an inventor or creator time to ATTEMPT to make a profit, if he or she so desires.
All arguments concerning copyright and the 'right' to profit are pure bullshit. The Constitution never mentions a right to profit, or the right to make a profit from copyrighted materials. That right doesn't exist. Many people here and elsewhere seem to (deliberately) be confusing copyright with a right to profit that does not, and never has, existed. That includes profit which is dressed up in the doublespeak known as 'lost sales'.
The sole purpose of copyright is to spur development by allowing an inventor or creator a LIMITED AMOUNT OF TIME to get the jump on potential competitors. Current copyright laws, while they may fulfill the technical definition of 'limited', are ridiculously long. The copyright has been extended several times to keep works of art which belong to certain powerful corporations out of the public domain, and for no other reason. This directly contradicts the purpose of copyright as defined by the Constitution, even if it doesn't violate the letter of the law. But it seems that the purpose of a law means little these days, and it's only the actual wording that counts in court.
It's rather clear that extending copyright to an absurd extreme does nothing whatsoever for the public welfare, and is designed solely to protect the profits of a few vested interests with the ability to buy Congressmen through bribes (colloquially known as 'campaign contributions' or 'a weekend in Tahiti with a teenage hooker'). But it's gone even farther than this, in that copyright laws are being used to prop up outdated business models in the face of advancing technology, an attempt to put a halt to that technology altogether. Copyright laws are being used as a weapon AGAINST innovation in a vicious, winner-take-all fashion. If the RIAA, MPAA, Disney et. al. have their way a number of new technologies would be banned from the United States altogether.
That's what the most serious issue is. It isn't about a 'right' to profit, which doesn't exist, and it isn't about the 'rights' of authors or musicians or movie makers, who only have the rights we feel like granting them when it comes to artificial property (re the Constitution). The biggest issue is that current vested interests are using whatever weapons they have at their disposal (or 'encouraging' Congress to create new ones) to slow down or put a complete halt to a variety of new technologies. They are, in fact, doing their very best to cripple innovation and impose a form of stasis over the entire American economy (with the help of a whole lot of other businesses who are doing the same thing by abusing the patent system) so that they'll remain at the top of heap, forever, secure that the government will destroy their competition for them.
Whether or not you happen to agree with free market principles (I'm a libertarian, so you can guess my take on this whole sorry business), the only logical outcome of this tangled mess is that America will no longer be a leader in technologica
If this is true, then the Republicans aren't even close to being conservative. The government has *increased* in size since Bush took office, and we now have the largest deficit in U.S. history. A true conservative is also FISCALLY conservative, which the Republicans are not. In fact, it seems they're even worse at wasting tax money than the Democrats now.
A real conservative under your definition would be, I think, a libertarian.
Max
Liberals believe that what is good for the people is good for everyone.
Only so long as it's their definition of "what is good for the people" that's used. Most liberals refuse to believe that there might be more approaches to solving a problem than the one they happen to favor, or that solving a particular problem simply isn't possible in the manner they wish to pursue. Or, at times, that their 'solution' may do more harm than good.
Max
No, I rather despise the DemoRepublican party and all that they stand for.
Your education is lacking, and sorely, if you think our founding fathers were in favor of democracy. THEY WERE NOT. They said so, time and time again, and their words have been immortalized in a wide variety of publications.
I learned this in school; why didn't you?
But I'll say it again. You can confirm this yourself. The American State Papers, the Federalist, Jefferson's abundant ruminations on the nature of democracy and the republic - THEY'RE ALL PUBLICLY AVAILABLE. NO ONE IS HIDING ANYTHING FROM YOU.
Not a single one of our founding fathers thought democracy was a good idea. They all - each and every one of them - favored an extremely weak republic tightly restricted by Constitutional decree, where individual freedoms outweighed public desires.
What the hell do you think the 9th and 10th amendments were all about, anyway?
Max
The fact that the federal and state governments are formed as republics isn't a due to idealism or even cynicism -- rather, it's one chosen because of the impossibility of direct democracy at anything other than the very local level.
That simply isn't true. The founding fathers publicly and repeatedly stated that they thought direct democracy to be a very bad idea. I've already told you where to look if you want to confirm that, which you're welcome to do at any decent public library (or perhaps online, by now).
I repeat myself, but they said that direct democracy was nothing more than a tyranny of the majority, and no better than the tyranny enforced by a single man - a king. The Constitution specifically limited government power through the First through Fifth Amendments, and later the Ninth and Tenth Amendments, to keep the majority from ever using the tool of government to oppress the minority.
All of this is public record and should have been taught to you in high school. I find it surprising that your education has been so lax and so full of misinformation. But you're perfectly capable of going to the source and correcting these deficiencies yourself, which I encourage you to do.
Max
Problem is that people like you get hung up on the small points
You mean like people deliberately lying to me? Yeah, I guess I'm old-fashioned that way. Color me crazy, but when I know you're a liar I have a pretty hard time trusting the veracity of what comes out of your mouth.
but for many people giving out one free gun is one too many.
Well, now ain't that something! "Many people", in this case, represents a tiny but annoyingly vocal segment of the American population. The vast majority has no desire whatsoever to ban gun ownership, and would never consider repealing the Second Amendment.
In fact, it appears that the anti-gun lobby is losing ground since the number of Americans in favor of an outright ban in firearms is lower now than it's been any time during the last twenty years, and more Americans go armed today since the immediate post-World War II period.
Gun ownership is not fascism, by the way. To imply such a thing is to mark yourself as a loon.
Max
Without that guy, and all the porn-meisters who followed him to cash in on geek sexual frustration, the internet would still be nothing more than a curiosity.
Thank god for porn!
Max
As long as Reality TV carries on and comes out of the box in their living room they don't care what else is going on.
You've got that backwards. Because they see just how ineffectual they are at changing a system which seems intent on screwing them no matter who's in charge, they ESCAPE to reality TV in order to avoid despair.
People don't care to have the ability to look ahead and see what is possible down the road.
They do, but they don't like what they see: more of the same.
If you want to address why people turn away from the political process and spend their time on 'trivial' things, neither stupidity nor apathy is the way to go. It would be more appropriate to take a look at an overwhelming feeling of powerlessness (perceived or real, it doesn't matter) and why it pervades much of the voting public. Especially the moderates, who don't have the unthinking fires of zealotry to spur them on in their endeavors.
Max
Political discussions almost always devolve into "my god is better than your god" arguments. Your god is always right, always true, always possessed of superhuman qualities, while the other guy's god is scum of the worst sort.
The political atheists among us realize that neither god is actually a god, but just a charlatan posing as divinity. A charlatan with an army of believers willing to turn off the critical faculties of their brain so they can overlook the not-so-divine aspects of their deities.
People aren't idiots; if they were, evolution would've wiped them out a long, long time ago. But it appears that a great many people work very, very hard to become idiots, and let others do their thinking for them.
Max
Democracy isn't and never has been the best form of government. Our founding fathers weren't interested in democracy and saw it as nothing more than a dictatorship by a mob in place of a king.
That's why we have a REPUBLIC. That's why the Constitution clearly limited the powers of government AND OF THE PEOPLE TO OPPRESS THEIR NEIGHBORS. Because that is precisely what unchecked democracies will do: oppress those who don't have the votes to block the will of the majority. The Bill of Rights wasn't just about limiting the powers of elites within government, but also of limited the powers of the majority to inflict harm on the minority via the tool of government.
You might want to educate yourself by reading "The American State Papers" and "The Federalist" to see what our founders thought about democracy and why they were so adamantly in favor of a republic in it's place.
Max
Television would be totally unwatchable for months at a time. Oh, wait...
The problem here isn't that television is being manipulated to push political agendas, but that people consider television - especially commercials - to be a credible source of information at all. No amount of legislation will 'fix' the problems of political ads on TV when the respect that Americans give to TV itself is the fundamental problem.
Max
An important aspect of any reasonable political system is to acknowledge that there are no truths (except in math and physics). All political systems have to, therefore, be quite open to anyone's interpretation of what has happened. You have no way to know whether someone else's interpretation is better than your own.
This is commonly the retreating tactic of someone who can't argue his own case effectively: to claim that there are no "truths" and that everyone's point of view is equally valid, no matter how inane or ridiculous.
Anyone with an ounce of facility in critical reasoning will see your statement for what it is: pandering bullshit with an attempt to subvert the discussion. There are indeed facts, and truths, and opinions that are much better informed than others. To assert the contrary is a fool's game, the extension of sophomoric college Philosophy 101 into real life.
Max
I definitely detest the attempted expediency of his methods.
Which seems to boil down to the age-old adage "the ends justify the means". No matter who's pandering this view, it's nevertheless evil.
Max
That someone publishes something "with a spin" is not wrong, it is inevitable.
Nice apologia. It doesn't excuse Michael Moore from factual presentation of his evidence regardless of what you might like to believe. His 'documentary' is no better than some of the crap that's come out of the White House over the last four years.
You can try to justify Moore's deliberate distortion of the facts all you like, but those of us who don't worship him and have more than a few neurons to rub together find his approach distasteful and arrogant. We'd think the same thing about the methods no matter who was using them.
Oh, and we're called 'moderates'. We the folks who comprise the vast majority of the American public, yet are conveniently marginalized and forgotten about whenever an election is held. Moderates tend to despise extremists of all kinds, whether left or right, and Moore is a deceptive extremist outstripping even Rush Limbaugh for vile practices.
Max
Moore even said in all his interviews that of course the movie is biased, the facts were all facts, and they were framed by his opinions.
Moore said the same thing about "Bowling for Columbine", but then deliberately staged the bank/rifle scene several months in advance by lying to bank officials about his intentions. It was never possible to pick up a rifle AT THE BANK by opening an account and bank officials allowed him to do it, for promotional purposes, precisely because he lied about his aims.
He then went on to say that anyone could do what he had done at the bank, which was utterly untrue. This isn't 'framing the facts by his opinions', it's a goddamned, bald-faced lie. And it wasn't the only lie in "Bowling" either.
And now you expect me to believe that "Farenheit 9/11" is completely devoid of lies, that somewhere between "Bowling" and "Farenheit" Moore decided to turn over a new leaf? Give me a fucking break! A sucker I may be, but brain-damaged I am not.
Max
And that is what we call 'bullshit'. The internet isn't a democracy, and neither is Slashdot. Like it or not the owners determine the mission; and while I (and many others) may complain about the execution of that mission at times, no one in their right mind would challenge their absolute authority, and their absolute right, to administer Slashdot in whatever fashion they see fit.
Again, if that bothers you, start your own site. Then *you* get to determine the mission and purpose. But here and now your opinion on the matter is entirely irrelevent, regardless of what you might think to the contrary.
Max
The document is the embodiment of the freedoms you speak of. Loyalty to the Constitution is loyalty to the preservation of those freedoms; it's really that simple.
Other countries have nothing to do with the conversation, and certainly nothing to do with enlightenment.
Max