The issue is that in Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific R. Co., 118 U. S. 394 (1886), the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that corporations were persons entitled to protection under the 14th Ammendment to the U.S. Constitution, a decsion regarding which Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas later said, "There was no history, logic, or reason given to support that view."
Before this decsion things were decidedly different. An excerpt from Kalle Lasn's excellent article on the subject USA(TM) proves informative:
Early American charters were created literally by the people, for the people as a legal convenience. Corporations were "artificial, invisible, intangible," mere financial tools. They were chartered by individual states, not the federal government, which meant they could be kept under close local scrutiny. They were automatically dissolved if they engaged in activities that violated their charter. Limits were placed on how big and powerful companies could become. Even railroad magnate J. P. Morgan, the consummate capitalist, understood that corporations must never become so big that they "inhibit freedom to the point where efficiency [is] endangered."
The two hundred or so corporations operating in the US by the year 1800 were each kept on fairly short leashes. They weren't allowed to participate in the political process. They couldn't buy stock in other corporations. And if one of them acted improperly, the consequences were severe. In 1832, President Andrew Jackson vetoed a motion to extend the charter of the corrupt and tyrannical Second Bank of the United States, and was widely applauded for doing so. That same year the state of Pennsylvania revoked the charters of ten banks for operating contrary to the public interest. Even the enormous industry trusts, formed to protect member corporations from external competitors and provide barriers to entry, eventually proved no match for the state. By the mid-1800s, antitrust legislation was widely in place.
Furthermore, consider the information given on They Rule and Open Secrets. This information clearly points to a unhealthy shift towards plutocracy.
The original purpose of corporations was exactly as you describe, to spread the risk of an enterprise among multiple investors such that a failure wouldn't ruin them. Since Santa Clara, corporations have grown to the point where they are almost completely unaccountable to the people. A corporation is not a human person, so it is not subject to Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. Yet, alarmingly, as corporate power has grown in the last century so has their collective control over the necessities of Maslow's Hierarchy for the rest of us.
In conclusion, while I agree that a legal and financial fiction very much like what we call a corporation is necessary for the continued economic health of the United States, I dispute that what we call a corporation today was the intent of the framers or is defensible by any measure other than the economic benefit to the corporate "person" itself.
Why isn't there a price on the freaking page? If I wanted to talk to someone on the phone, I wouldn't be using the web!
I mean, I'd really like a solaris laptop. It would beat the hell out of my portable rack rig. But damn it, I don't want to have to fend off sales reptiles just to find out how much it is.
All I can think is that they want to "personalize" the price based on how much money they think they can get out of you.
By the way, if anyone here is in advertising or marketing, kill yourself. Thank you, thank you. Just a little thought. I'm just trying to plant seeds. Maybe one day they'll take root, I don't know. You try. You do what you can. Kill yourselves. Seriously though, if you are, do. No really, there's no rationalisation for what you do, and you are Satan's little helpers, OK? Kill yourselves, seriously. You're the ruiner of all things good. Seriously, no, this is not a joke. "There's gonna be a joke coming..." There's no fucking joke coming, you are Satan's spawn, filling the world with bile and garbage, you are fucked and you are fucking us, kill yourselves, it's the only way to save your fucking soul. Kill yourself. I know what all the marketing people are thinking right now too. "Oh, you know what Bill's doing? He's going for that anti-marketing dollar. That's a good market. He's very smart." Oh man, I am not doing that, you fucking evil scumbags. "You know what Bill's doing now, he's going for the righteous indignation dollar, that's a big dollar, a lot of people are feeling that indignation, we've done research, huge market. He's doing a good thing." Godammit, I'm not doing that, you scumbags, quit putting a godamn dollar sign on every fucking thing on this planet.
I never told anyone about the metor I heard explode during a party one October night about 10 years ago. I figured that no one would believe me. For years I thought I must have had an "auditory halucination" or some such. (It was a hell of a party.)
Then while I was watching Discovery one night about a year ago I heard an astronomer talk about exactly what I saw: A fireball that burst into a shower of sparks with an audible explosion. It's called a bolide.
I wanted basically the same thing as you want. I got my machine hooked up to my network, and for about a week I had what I wanted: Wiki, Slash, ssh, et cetera. Then the folks at the head-end of my broadband connection blocked all the ports (and before you ask, I wasn't using the defaults, and I wasn't running P2P of any kind).
They don't want you to have a home server, even if it's just for family or personal use. I'm almost mad enough to cancel the service, but then I'd be back to dial-up and we all know what fun that is.
So I'd advise you to check your Terms of Service carefully before you invest any money in this scheme. It's been said before here, but what the broadband people want you to do is what they show in the commercials: Send video e-mail (as if), and download streaming "content" (or is that steaming?) from their "partners."
Uh... Why'd y'all pick the Harpsichord?
on
Lego Addictions
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· Score: 1
The US has to be weary about doing this or they will suffer a huge brain drain. I think alot of intelligent individuals will feel the same way you do and also leave the country.
Interesting point. I've been looking into emigration myself. There's just one problem... There's nowhere left to run.
There are no more frontiers. Well, none I can get to anyway. Sure I could disappear into a jungle, or forest, or even the ocean, but I wouldn't really be safe from the forces that made me want to flee. Just ignored, for now. Until the next invocation of "the public good."
There are also no countries I've looked into that don't have the same sorts of state welfare systems, stupid legislatures, corrupt executive branches, and immoral corporations that I desperately want to get away from.
But... If you know of place where there isn't much crime or pollution, where there are no politicians standing in line to be bought by the highest bidder, where the leaders are wise and benevolent, where the people live in harmony and don't mind each other's business, I'd love to know about it. Sadly, I believe such a place only exists in fiction anymore, if it there ever was one.
Re:The more I think on it...
on
Portable Hubs?
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· Score: 1
Google Answers might be more appropriate when you can't get google to cough up something. It isn't free (US$2.50), but there is a money-back guarantee on the answer. Note though that browsing previous questions and answers is free.
Of course, if you are truely desperate, you could always contact the Sacred Knights of Cyberspace. Between Ask Jeeves and Google Answers, there's not much call for us anymore, but back in the day I'd get questions. Usually from kids needing help with finding information for their school assignments.
Ah, the old days... When the 'net, while not exactly innocent, was still at least collectively naive.
Re:The Constitution doesn't need amending
on
Want Freedom?
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· Score: 1
While I agree with you, I think that the "leave it to the states" option went out the window with the increase in Federal power after The US Civil War. Since that time, the growth of Federal authority over damn near everything has made the wishes of the people and governments of the states increasingly irrelevant.
It is the same old story really: The people who rise to the top in government are those with the greatest will to power. This drives the entire legislative/bureaucratic (exceutive)/judical power cycle in this country.
Bread and Circuses
on
Want Freedom?
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· Score: 2, Interesting
As long as we're whoring with gratuitous quotes...
"A perfect democracy, a 'warm body' democracy in which every adult may vote and all votes count equally has no internal feedback for self correction. It depends solely on the wisdom and self-restraint of citizens...which is opposed by the folly and lack of self-restraint of other citizens. What is supposed to happen in a democracy is that each sovereign citizen will always vote in the public interest for the safety and welfare of all. But what does happen is that he votes his own self-interest as he sees it...which for the majority translates as 'Bread and Circuses'
Bread and Circuses is the cancer of democracy, the fatal disease for which there is no cure. Democracy often works beautifully at first. But once a state extends the franchise to every warm body, be he producer or parasite, that day marks the beginning of the end of the state. For when the plebs discover that they can vote themselves bread and circuses without limit and that the productive members of the body politic cannot stop them, they will do so, until the state bleeds to death, or in its weakened condition the state succumbs to an invader--the barbarians enter Rome."
-- RAH, To Sail Beyond Sunset
Post Scriptum: In accordance with Sircar's Corollary, and since Fascism is already mentioned somewhere in this thread, I'm pre-emptively invoking Godwin's Law.
On the whole though, I'd rather trust the old-ladies that generally run the precincts in Georgia than software that hasn't been verified by anyone besides the people who are selling it.
Post Scriptum: I think part of the problem might be our media in the US. People who get all their information from the nightly news don't see the real horrors perpetuated world-wide in their name. And rightly so, if they did they might develop a crisis of concience and do something about it.
The facts in the cases of US Citizens being held as enemy combatants are not clear. We are told they indeed bore arms against US Military personnel, but that fact has not been established using the standard of evidence normally required by US Courts. (And let us not forget that the same groups that are now our "terrorist enemies" were once the "freedom fighters" we established to prosecute a war by proxy versus the USSR in Afghanistan.) If the facts have been established beyond a resonable doubt in a court of law, I haven't heard about it.
That being said, I can't really disagree with your conclusion on why someone should be declared an enemy combatant except for one thing: We are not at war. War can only be declared by congress, and unless I missed it this was not done. We have procedures for the establishment of a state of war, and these were not followed.
There are those who say that declarations of war are passe, but I am not one of them. If the goal is "regime change", be it in Afghanistan or Iraq or anyplace else, and our intention is to use military force to cause this to happen we should use our sovreign right to make war on another country and declare war. Using military or para-military force to impose our will on another country without declaring war is, by definition, terrorism.
If someone is charged and brought to trial, it'll be in the press.
Why would they bother with a trial when they could just declare you an enemy combatant and hold you without charge until they feel like letting you out?
I bought Wolfram's A New Kind of Science after reading the/. review of it. On the "copyright" page there is a license agreement that basically reads, "I invented all these ideas and they belong to me. Just because I published them in a widely distributed book doesn't mean you can use them." (I'm paraphrasing. I don't have the book at hand. The actual text is much worse in tone.)
This disturbed me because I thought the book was a work of scientific scholorship. To require me to agree to some sort of non-disclosure to read about what he claims is a fundamental scientific discovery seems at odds with the scientific method to me. How can I carry forward Wolfram's research, in the grand tradition of scientific inquiry, if I'm crippled by his "protection of Intellectual Property?"
What other books have micro-printed license agreements that we never noticed?
Slashdot Mirror
The issue is that in Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific R. Co., 118 U. S. 394 (1886), the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that corporations were persons entitled to protection under the 14th Ammendment to the U.S. Constitution, a decsion regarding which Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas later said, "There was no history, logic, or reason given to support that view."
Before this decsion things were decidedly different. An excerpt from Kalle Lasn's excellent article on the subject USA(TM) proves informative:
Furthermore, consider the information given on They Rule and Open Secrets. This information clearly points to a unhealthy shift towards plutocracy.
The original purpose of corporations was exactly as you describe, to spread the risk of an enterprise among multiple investors such that a failure wouldn't ruin them. Since Santa Clara, corporations have grown to the point where they are almost completely unaccountable to the people. A corporation is not a human person, so it is not subject to Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. Yet, alarmingly, as corporate power has grown in the last century so has their collective control over the necessities of Maslow's Hierarchy for the rest of us.
In conclusion, while I agree that a legal and financial fiction very much like what we call a corporation is necessary for the continued economic health of the United States, I dispute that what we call a corporation today was the intent of the framers or is defensible by any measure other than the economic benefit to the corporate "person" itself.
Just for the record, the proper protocol is to always give them the name Jonathon Shade, but use a fake address.
1060 West Addison St, Chicago, IL 60613 is one of my favorites.
Try this when you can get a good look at the screen and see how many different "Jonathon Shade"s come up in their database.
Really. Go on. Try it.
Just to remind folks, November 29th is Buy Nothing Day world-wide.
Buy Nothing and stand up for yourself!
Who'd have thought that the petswarehouse.com guy would have the balls to have a friend ask slashdot about how to sue slashdot?
Is the US government really that transparently corrupt?
Yes, but only to those with eyes to see.
Why isn't there a price on the freaking page? If I wanted to talk to someone on the phone, I wouldn't be using the web!
I mean, I'd really like a solaris laptop. It would beat the hell out of my portable rack rig. But damn it, I don't want to have to fend off sales reptiles just to find out how much it is.
All I can think is that they want to "personalize" the price based on how much money they think they can get out of you.
Just for the record, the word you're looking for is Palantír.
The heir to the hand scanner you mention is the CPen Pen Scanner. It seems like this is exactly what you're looking for.
"
Google Search: http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q="pen+scanner
I thought I was the only one to remember the Far Out Space Nuts.
Apparently, I was wrong.
I never told anyone about the metor I heard explode during a party one October night about 10 years ago. I figured that no one would believe me. For years I thought I must have had an "auditory halucination" or some such. (It was a hell of a party.)
Then while I was watching Discovery one night about a year ago I heard an astronomer talk about exactly what I saw: A fireball that burst into a shower of sparks with an audible explosion. It's called a bolide.
Google Search on Metor & Bolide
xrefer bolide entry
Whoever said this one was gonna be a hard one to google away was right.
However, you might try http://www.keyalt.com/kkeybrdp.htm for a fairly complete selection of ergonomic keyboards and related hardware.
You could also check out the Keyboard Google Directory Entry.
I wanted basically the same thing as you want. I got my machine hooked up to my network, and for about a week I had what I wanted: Wiki, Slash, ssh, et cetera. Then the folks at the head-end of my broadband connection blocked all the ports (and before you ask, I wasn't using the defaults, and I wasn't running P2P of any kind).
They don't want you to have a home server, even if it's just for family or personal use. I'm almost mad enough to cancel the service, but then I'd be back to dial-up and we all know what fun that is.
So I'd advise you to check your Terms of Service carefully before you invest any money in this scheme. It's been said before here, but what the broadband people want you to do is what they show in the commercials: Send video e-mail (as if), and download streaming "content" (or is that steaming?) from their "partners."
When there was a life size Natalie Portman Lego Sculpture?
No mention of what color or shape blocks he used for the grits though.
Interesting point. I've been looking into emigration myself. There's just one problem... There's nowhere left to run.
There are no more frontiers. Well, none I can get to anyway. Sure I could disappear into a jungle, or forest, or even the ocean, but I wouldn't really be safe from the forces that made me want to flee. Just ignored, for now. Until the next invocation of "the public good."
There are also no countries I've looked into that don't have the same sorts of state welfare systems, stupid legislatures, corrupt executive branches, and immoral corporations that I desperately want to get away from.
But... If you know of place where there isn't much crime or pollution, where there are no politicians standing in line to be bought by the highest bidder, where the leaders are wise and benevolent, where the people live in harmony and don't mind each other's business, I'd love to know about it. Sadly, I believe such a place only exists in fiction anymore, if it there ever was one.
Google Answers might be more appropriate when you can't get google to cough up something. It isn't free (US$2.50), but there is a money-back guarantee on the answer. Note though that browsing previous questions and answers is free.
Of course, if you are truely desperate, you could always contact the Sacred Knights of Cyberspace. Between Ask Jeeves and Google Answers, there's not much call for us anymore, but back in the day I'd get questions. Usually from kids needing help with finding information for their school assignments.
Ah, the old days... When the 'net, while not exactly innocent, was still at least collectively naive.
While I agree with you, I think that the "leave it to the states" option went out the window with the increase in Federal power after The US Civil War. Since that time, the growth of Federal authority over damn near everything has made the wishes of the people and governments of the states increasingly irrelevant.
It is the same old story really: The people who rise to the top in government are those with the greatest will to power. This drives the entire legislative/bureaucratic (exceutive)/judical power cycle in this country.
As long as we're whoring with gratuitous quotes...
"A perfect democracy, a 'warm body' democracy in which every adult may vote and all votes count equally has no internal feedback for self correction. It depends solely on the wisdom and self-restraint of citizens...which is opposed by the folly and lack of self-restraint of other citizens. What is supposed to happen in a democracy is that each sovereign citizen will always vote in the public interest for the safety and welfare of all. But what does happen is that he votes his own self-interest as he sees it...which for the majority translates as 'Bread and Circuses'
Bread and Circuses is the cancer of democracy, the fatal disease for which there is no cure. Democracy often works beautifully at first. But once a state extends the franchise to every warm body, be he producer or parasite, that day marks the beginning of the end of the state. For when the plebs discover that they can vote themselves bread and circuses without limit and that the productive members of the body politic cannot stop them, they will do so, until the state bleeds to death, or in its weakened condition the state succumbs to an invader--the barbarians enter Rome."
-- RAH, To Sail Beyond Sunset
Post Scriptum: In accordance with Sircar's Corollary, and since Fascism is already mentioned somewhere in this thread, I'm pre-emptively invoking Godwin's Law.
No, that's Twiki. Although, coincidentally there is a Wiki system named Twiki. Go figure.
Perhaps he was dictat -- Arrrrrgh!
Actually they are quite easy to tamper with. (As long as you have no respect for the law.)
On the whole though, I'd rather trust the old-ladies that generally run the precincts in Georgia than software that hasn't been verified by anyone besides the people who are selling it.
Right On, Brother!
Post Scriptum: I think part of the problem might be our media in the US. People who get all their information from the nightly news don't see the real horrors perpetuated world-wide in their name. And rightly so, if they did they might develop a crisis of concience and do something about it.
Okay, I decided to take the bait...
The facts in the cases of US Citizens being held as enemy combatants are not clear. We are told they indeed bore arms against US Military personnel, but that fact has not been established using the standard of evidence normally required by US Courts. (And let us not forget that the same groups that are now our "terrorist enemies" were once the "freedom fighters" we established to prosecute a war by proxy versus the USSR in Afghanistan.) If the facts have been established beyond a resonable doubt in a court of law, I haven't heard about it.
That being said, I can't really disagree with your conclusion on why someone should be declared an enemy combatant except for one thing: We are not at war. War can only be declared by congress, and unless I missed it this was not done. We have procedures for the establishment of a state of war, and these were not followed.
There are those who say that declarations of war are passe, but I am not one of them. If the goal is "regime change", be it in Afghanistan or Iraq or anyplace else, and our intention is to use military force to cause this to happen we should use our sovreign right to make war on another country and declare war. Using military or para-military force to impose our will on another country without declaring war is, by definition, terrorism.
If someone is charged and brought to trial, it'll be in the press.
Why would they bother with a trial when they could just declare you an enemy combatant and hold you without charge until they feel like letting you out?
I bought Wolfram's A New Kind of Science after reading the /. review of it. On the "copyright" page there is a license agreement that basically reads, "I invented all these ideas and they belong to me. Just because I published them in a widely distributed book doesn't mean you can use them." (I'm paraphrasing. I don't have the book at hand. The actual text is much worse in tone.)
This disturbed me because I thought the book was a work of scientific scholorship. To require me to agree to some sort of non-disclosure to read about what he claims is a fundamental scientific discovery seems at odds with the scientific method to me. How can I carry forward Wolfram's research, in the grand tradition of scientific inquiry, if I'm crippled by his "protection of Intellectual Property?"
What other books have micro-printed license agreements that we never noticed?