I hear the early digital watches used LEDs and LCD displays were a later improvement, though I've never seen one myself.
Feh. You kids today. Back in the late 70s and early 80s, a digital watch meant the cheerful red glow of LEDs - you pushed a button to make it show the time, since otherwise your battery would die really quick. If you have retro sensibilities you can own a modern replica
I also had a TI programmable calculator with LED display, might have been a TI-58 C though I don't recall for sure.
These folks are all expressing intolerance and aversion, and many are fearful. "Homophobia" is exactly a precise and correct word.
Freedom of speech and thought has a negative side, and there's nothing wrong with it.
Sure, they have a legal right to be assholes, to fear and hate and wallow in their own ignorance, and I'll stand up for that right. They can choose not to invite gay folks to the cotillion - and gays can choose not to invite them to the drag show.
But neither group has a right to make discriminatory and unconstitutional laws.
Not sure about the illiterate statement you made....kinda hard to tell with the spelling mistakes.:-)
Just bcause I kan reed doesn't meen I kan speelll or tipe.:-)
Would a "free" state be forced to recognize the "slave" status of an escaped slave under this clause?
Seeing as how slavery is banned in all states by Amemendment XIII, not so much.
If you mean prior to that, it gets interesting. Seems to me a free state would have to recognize the "public Acts, Records, and judicial Proceedings" of a slave state, and vice-versa. A free state would have to recognize a slave-owners claim - but on the other hand, a slave state would have to recognize a free state's grant of citizenship. I'm not sure how that would all work out.
But the fact that the full faith and credit clause might have protected slave-owner's rights doesn't mean it's bad. A slave-owners "rights" would also have been protected by Amendment IV's protection agsint seizure, Amendment V's guarantee of due process and protection againt taking, and Amendment VII's right to a jury trial in civil cases involving the value of slaves
For a diagnosis of APD there needs to be an evaluation by a psychiatric professional whose knowledge of the subject goes beyond what a Slashdotter can copy-and-paste from Wikipedia.
Thank you, Captain Obvious.
The doesn't mean we lay folk can't discuss the critera they use for such evaluation.
A trained and skillful driver who is soberly and attentively pushing his well-maintained sports car through traffic is not demonstrating sociopathic behavior.
"Pushing through traffic"? An interesting choice of phrase.
Imagine if you will a footbridge over a gorge, with no rails on the sides. It's fairly crowded. I'm in a hurry and believe I am more important than other people, so I (soberly and attentively) start pushing my way through the crowd. I might push somebody off the edge, but hey, too bad for them.
"Pushing through traffic" is no different than pushing through such a crowd. It's forcing your way through a group and putting them at risk.
I've ridden with real trained drivers, folks who've done speedway racing. They certainly might exceed the posted limit if conditions were right, but they certainly aren't going to "push through" traffic and fsck over other drivers.
Oh, and your firing-a-gun-down-a-crowded-street analogy is bogus: It equates giving somebody reason to think they are being shot at with giving them reason to think they are being overtaken by a fast car.
The issue is not what people think the motivation is. Or if I took a bullhorn and annoucned "Hey down there, I'm not shooting at anyone, just having fun plinking on this crowded street, woo-hoo!" before I opened fire, would that make it ok in your mind?
The issue is the risk at which non-consenting other people are being put so that someone can get their jollies.
Well if that's the case I hope we can shut down the Dept. of Health and Human Services along with the Social Security administration, both of which fall far outside the scope of what the framers intended, and combined account for over $1.3 Trillion of the $2.8 Trillion 2007 federal budget.
Anyway. There is a little bit of wiggle room in Article I Section's grant of power "to pay the debts and provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States"; I'm willing to consider that this gives the fed broad powers to buy goods and services on behalf of the nation, though block grants to states to run their own programs might be better.
There were 133,092,565 tax returns filed last year, which means if we shut down HHS and SSA each and every taxpayer could be refunded $9,768.00. Think you can fund your own health care insurance and retirement with $10k per year?
You do understand that with progressive taxation, people with lower incomes benefit less from tax breaks, right? I certainly would not get a check for $10k.
If Massachusetts wants to mary gays, and the gays themselves want it, then it's none of the other states' business. They don't have to recognize the marriage
Actually, yes, they do, or would if the Constitution meant anything: "Full faith and credit shall be given in each state to the public acts, records, and judicial proceedings of every other state." If you're married in one state, you're married in every state.
No bullshit about a "public policy exception", please, there is no such thing in the Constitution. The Full faith and credit clause does not say "...unless the other state really, really, really doesn't want to."
In another generation, the kids are going to read about homophobic and illiterate state legistlatures from making asses of themselves the way we read about miscenegation laws today, and wonder how people could be so stupid.
the FSF position is incompatible with a company that wishes to produce software and sell a license to use it. It completely destroys that business model.
I think that's correct, yes. Since the software produced by that business model is mostly a large pile of suck, and since that business model requires draconian measures to supress people's natural inclination to share information and does not respect freedom, let it die. Why in the world should we make and enforce copyright laws to prop up a model that's not in the public interest to benefit the stockholders of COTS companies?
There would still be plenty of software jobs. As I said, most software is bespoke - ESR estimated that 90-95% of software produced is not meant for sale.
I'm not interested in putting myself out of work. (Even though, as I see outsourcing and age discrimination playing a larger role, I have decided to get skills in another field.) I've made my living from creating software since the early 90s, and only about one year of that was in environment where we were selling "licenced" software - and really, even there we were more selling a supported system to a handful of customers, and probably could have GPLed our software without affecting revenues. (That company failed anyway...opening the source might have prodded them to fix their code before it got so ugly it couldn't be maintained.)
One of these things is IP. You can play games with the exact wording all you want, but the passage you quote gave the right to create Intellectual Property as we know it, AND, once that right has been granted it becomes a PROPERTY RIGHT in the same vein as the land you live on.
Courts and politicos can play games all you want, but the passage I quoted makes no mention of property. Calling copyrights and patents "intellectual property" is a deliberate misnomer by those who would like ideas to be treated the same way as real property; the phrase was almost unknown until the founding of the "World Intellectual Property Association" in the 1960s.
Court rulings - even SCOTUS rulings - don't change the text or meaning of the Constitution. But it seems you've already bought into the "living document" fallacy, whereby the courts can redefine phrases like "right of the people" or "commerce...among the several states" and give us bullshit like Wickard v. Filburn, to allow the federal government to absorb more and more power.
#1 is not really correct -- maybe a piece of paper is issued by the state government giving you deed to the land, BUT, the RIGHTS to that land are protected by the Federal Government in the 4th and 14th Amendments.
The Fourth protects my house against search by the federal government, the Fifth says they can't take it without paying me, and the Fourteenth extends that to the states. But none of these protects any of the rights that makes property useful. It's the armed might of the State of Maryland (through the chartered government of Baltimore County) that kicks kids off my lawn and prevents my neighbor from dumping trash in my backyard, not the federal government. And if the Constitution meant a damn, it would even be the militia of the State of Maryland, not a standing army, protecting my house from invasion by Canada. Trying to make rights of real property into a federal issue is a huge stretch.
#3 is not entirely correct -- gaining land possession through squatters rights is a parallel to "authors and inventors" (you build on the land and live there and it becomes yours).
Building on the land would at best be analogous to creating a derivied work. But the point is you don't have to live there to get a land deed, they are often issued to speculators who do jack shit to improve or preserve the land.
Besides, the IP rights are transferrable.
Not if the Constition were strictly followed. "[S]ecuring for limited Times to Authors and Inventors" - not their assignees, heirs, employers, or anyone else, and not to anyone after the author is dead. Of course the author can allow agents to exercise his rights for him, but they remain his. (Yes, I recognize this is just about a lost cause. Doesn't change the wording of Article I Section 8 and Amendment X.)
Jefferson may not have believed that Ideas could be property, but he did support the concept of Patent Rights for the same reasons that I do: to encourage invention through financial incentive.
Not a point under dispute. Said encouragement is however a merely trade-off between our right to use inventions and creations and our desire to have more inventions and creations made. There is no "natural right" of authors and inventors to copyrights and patents.
And - getting back to the point - it certainly doesn't mean that software patents, which impede rather than promote the progress in software development, ought to be permitted.
"Lack of any ability to love" is not one of the criterea mentioned in the DSM.
As for "failure to conform to social norms with respect to lawful behaviors as indicated by repeatedly performing acts that are grounds for arrest" anybody that regularly speeds one mile over the limit or snokes pot has sociopathic tendancies?
You can be arrested for driving one mile over the limit where you live? (Yes, in LEO jargon a ticket is an "arrest" but I assume the DSM refers to the more common notion of getting dragged off and put in a cage.) Similarly, smoking pot (or even getting a blow job, in some states) in the privacy of your own home is a crime but is so unlikely to lead to arrest that it can be discounted. Though if you go and smoke up on the steps of the police station for the thrill of it, yes, there might just be some faulty wiring in your brainpan.
Getting involved in high-speed pursuits, on the other hand, is likely to and should lead to you being caged.
It would be more accurate to say "some perfectly notmal people so things that are one of the (7? 10?) DSM-IV diagnostic criteria of sociopathy."
Certainly that is true, indeed for the diagnostic criteria of almost any condition. (It's why people who study abnormal psych often start to wonder about their own sanity..."Hey, I do that..." And I'm not necessarily a huge fan of the DSM as the "official" arbiter of who is sane - after all, just a few decades ago homosexuality was a "mental illness".)
However, some behaviors are more telling than others. Suicidal ideation is much more telling of clinical depression than disturbed sleep patterns. Reckless disregard for the safety of others, as these guys evinced, is much more telling of APD than breaking minor laws. It's appropriate to refer to suicidal ideation as "depressive", and it's appropriate to refer to reckless disregard for the safety of others as "sociopathic".
Since when does driving real fast qualify as sociopathy?
When it's putting other people at risk of death or serious injury so that you can enjoy youself. We're not talking about merely violating speed limits on an empty highway, which I've certainly been known to do myself; we're talking about weaving in and out of traffic inches from other cars, driving recklessly, hitting triple digits in downtown areas. These guys are a threat to the safety of other people, and should be locked up.
failure to conform to social norms with respect to lawful behaviors as indicated by repeatedly performing acts that are grounds for arrest
reckless disregard for safety of self or others
Two others may be met:
deceitfulness, as indicated by repeated lying, use of aliases, or conning others for personal
profit or pleasure
lack of remorse, as indicated by being indifferent to or rationalizing having hurt, mistreated, or stolen from another
For a diagnosis of APD, though, there needs to be "evidence of conduct disorder with onset before age 15 years", and of course we don't know their childhood. (But the ICD criterea are a little looser, with conduct disorder at a young age being suportive of a diagnosis but not necessary.) But regardless of whether a clinical diagnosis is appropriate, it's certainly accurate to refer to the behavior as "sociopathic".
It's no different than if I were to take my rifle and start shooting out of a window into a crowded street - even if I were aiming at inanimate targets, even if I were an expert marksman, putting others at risk so I can get my jollies is not tolerable behavior. You take your rifle to the range to shoot, you take your car to the track to drive fast.
You may sell a copy or two, but it will be available for free in short order, and your business is done.
If you're trying to sell a COTS product to a whole bunch of people, yes, it will probably make its way out into the world right quick if it's free software. Indeed, even if it's not free software - what percentage of Photoshop users have paid for it?
This mass market COTS it is already starting to be displaced by commercially developed open source. If that's your business model, I suggest you get out quick.
On the other hand, if you're selling a system to a few companies in a specific field, it's unlikely thery are going to share. If you make a telephony application and sell it to Sprint, they are not going to give a copy to Verizon. Of course, you're more likely to enter into a development contract with Sprint first, rather than make the product first then go trying to sell it.
but isn't it the position of the FSF that closed-source code is morally wrong? That all code should be open sourced and given away?
Please don't confuse the FSF with the open source movement.
Assuming that by "closed-source code" you mean software whose source is not available to its users, such code does not meet the Free Software Defintion, so yes, the FSF is opposed to it.
Nothing in the Free Software defintion requires that you give source code away. Just that if you distribute binaries (whether gratis or for $1,000 a copy) you have to also distribute the source to those same people. I don't see that including a source CD-ROM with a CD-ROM of binaries that you might charge $1,000 for qualifies as "giving away" either.
As the FSF says, "'Free software' does not mean 'non-commercial'. A free program must be available for commercial use, commercial development, and commercial distribution. Commercial development of free software is no longer unusual; such free commercial software is very important.".
They adopt the FSF malarkey that all code should be given away free. I put food on my family's table by developing software and the notion that it should be given away free just misses the mark. Market-based economics can bring out the best in innovation
You assertations about what the FSF says, just miss the mark. First, it's a long-standing point that selling free software is perfectly ok.
Second, most software that is developed is bespoke, so if all COTS makers went out of business there'd be plenty of work for talented coders.
Third, copyrights are a form of government interference in the market. Free software is very much pro-free market, it's proprietary software that is against it.
Business is good for all of us. Economic success and security is good for America.
But freedom is even better. And we can quite well have freedom and economic success; but not when large business interests push through laws like the DMCA, or when we allow them the conduct blitzkrieg BSA raids to shut down competitors.
Except in the eyes of the law and the United States constitution. Courts in this country, and almost anywhere in the first-world will support the definition of IDEAS as PROPERTY.
You really ought to read the Constitution before you comment on it, you know. It only grants Congress the power (though not the requirement) 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". It in no way mentions "intellectual property".
The authorized copyrights and patents are nothing like land deeds, which are 1) issued by states, 2) perpetual, 3) issuable to anyone, not just "authors and inventors" (I didn't create the land my house is on, after all) and 4) not are required to promote the public good. This is because the framers had the good common sense to understand that ideas are not like physical property.
As Jefferson (no mean author and inventor himself) put it,
If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea, which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of every one, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it. Its peculiar character, too, is that no one possesses the less, because every other possesses the whole of it. He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. That ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature, when she made them, like fire, expansible over all space, without lessening their density in any point, and like the air in which we breathe, move, and have our physical being, incapable of confinement or exclusive appropriation. Inventions then cannot, in nature, be a subject of property. [emphasis mine - tms]
As for the courts, Dowling v United States shows that copyright violation is not theft; that makes it pretty clear that songs are not property.
Seems to me that if the law doesn't allow congress to pull their corperate charter for this, then the law needs to be fixed.
Corporate charters are issued by states, not by the feds; Congress has no power to revoke them.
However, it does have the power to regulate interstate and international commerce. The possibility of being limited to doing business in one state is a plenty big stick against a large corporation.
Unfortunately, the possibility of contributing millions of dollars to an electoral opponent is a plenty big stick for a large corporation to use against a member of Congress.
Honestly any economist who doesn't recognize the value of creating and protecting intellectual property rights in an information economy is a POORLY trained economist.
Honestly, anyone who doesn't recognize that using the term "intellectual property" to refer to several very different types of purely artificial monopolies created by government action is highly problematic, is ignorant on the subject. Copyrights are not patents and neither are trademarks; refering to them all as "intellectual property" is obfuscatory. And the obfuscataion is usually deliberate, as someone stands to benefit from fooling people into thinking that ideas should be treated the same way as objects, that learning or copying is theft. But it ain't so.
And anyone who believes that patents should apply to mathematical algorithms is a POORLY trained computer scientist.
Hernando de Soto has pegged a lack of real property rights as the primary issue that prevents wealth from being created in the third world (agricultural economies). It follows that in economies... which derive their wealth...from intellectual property, that the ability to protect those rights is ultimately to our benefit.
It does not follow at all, since ideas are a very different thing than land. You distort the issue by using the term "property" to refer to ideas.
It was blatantly clear that Rush Limbaugh and his caller were referring to Jesse MacBeth, who made himself a darling of the moonbats by passing himself off as a Ranger and an Iraq vet...never mind that he washed out of boot camp after 44 days
No, it was blatantly clear that Limbaugh and his caller were referring to people such as an earlier caller, a military veteran who was against our continued occupation in Iraq. Limbaugh has already stated "I am going to challenge the patriotism of people who disagree with [Bush] because the people that disagree with him want to lose."
It would sure be nice to have your "-1, Ad Hominem" option to mod him down in the national dialog (such as it is).
And it's also clear to any unbiased observer that despite Limbaugh's claims, Macbeth was never any sort of hero or "darling" to the anti-war movement, though he may have taken in a few suckers on its fringes. A "socialistalternative.org" interview doesn't make one a hero of the anti-war movement. Especially when it was taken down after a few weeks - even this fringe group figured him out. ("Fringe" not meant to agree or disagree with their positions on any issues, only to point out that they are not the mainstream of the anti-war movement. I'd never even heard of them before.)
Macbeth's main goal was scamming VA benefits; other scammers rounded up in Operation Stolen Valor claimed service in WWII, Korea, and Vietnam. Their phoniness has nothing to do with Iraq, it's all about the Benjamins.
know. You can't claim to speak with knowledge of the matter if all you have to go on is the out-of-context misrepresentation that Media Matters is serving up.
Yes, read it and see that the transcript Media Matters provided is perfectly accurate. See that the "phony soldiers" crack was a cut at a caller. (Caller: "I used to be military, okay, and I am a Republican." Limbaugh: "Right, I know. And I, by the way, used to walk on the moon.")
See that after that, he brings up Jesse Macbeth, a fraudster who tried to scam the VA. See Limbaugh's bullshit claims that Macbeth was some sort of "poster boy for the anti-war left". See Limbaugh repeat the lies about WMDs being found in Iraq. See his strange inability to properly pronounce the name of the Democratic Party.
(Looks like my first response to this didn't get submitted before the power went out the other day. Apologies if this is a dupe.)
Revoking a charter is a drastic action. It's the death penalty for corporations. Not only do you have to prove that they (i.e. the corporation itself, not its employees) had a hand in crimes enough to warrant killing it.
But that proves the point. If corporations only existed for the public good, then revoking a charter would be no more drastic than revoking a driver's license - significant, but hardly comparable to the death penalty.
In a society where continued incorporation was permitted only if it served the public interest, the burden of prooving that would be on the corporation, or it's charter would not be renewed.
Instead, in the wake of the fraudulent and misbegotten Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad decision of 1886, corporations are seen to have the same rights as citizens. And citizens exist for their own sake, not for the public good.
Well, excluding the people who don't care (and we need to, otherwise "the people" wouldn't "want" anything, ever)...most of them may not care, a fact that the media has already worked out.
Part of the problem is that ruling classes always seek to make the people not care. From the Roman circuses to reality TV, keeping the masses distracted has always been a key to maintaining power.
For more complete coverage, Physicians for a National Health Program suggest covering the remaining amount with a payroll tax (around 7%) on employers and an income tax (around 2%) on individuals.
The payroll tax replaces current employer expenses; the income tax replaces insurance premiums, co-pays, deductibles, and out-of-pocket payments. Yes, government spending goes up - but since we're already paying for a large chunk of health care with government dollars, not as much as many people think. Tax rates go up but business and individuals are no longer paying insurance shareholders for the privilege of seeing a doctor; since billions in administrative costs would be saved by moving to single-payer, most people's total costs go down.
Remember if you borrow the money...
Irrelevant. I'm not suggesting borrowing money to fund health care, nor would anyone with a lick of sense. Money should be borrowed only to finance short-term projects over a longer term - things like building public works and conducting wars. One never borrows to fund on-going expenses. You might borrow money to re-wire your house; you don't borrow to pay your electric bill. (Unless you're in some sort of trouble and need a stop-gap.) The only borrowing relevant to health care is maybe local governments issuing muni bonds to build hospitals or buy ambulances. (And in many cities now, the problem isn't building new hospitals, it's that existing ones are being closed.)
Your insistence on bringing borrowing into this discussion suggests that either you are deeply confused, or that you are deliberately trying to cloud the issue.
You realise that this redistribution of wealth requires increased government borrowing.
Not at all true. The question of how much the government spends is seperate from what it spends it on; and these are seperate from how it gets funded.
If we wanted to increase social spending, we could do it and still have less government spending, if we decreased wasteful "defense" spending (we could halve our spending, save over $260 billion a year, and still outspend any other nation by a factor of five!), or spending on enforcing laws against "consensual crimes" ("War on Drugs" spending is about $50 billion a year).
And if we wanted to increase such spending without cutting other spending, we could - gasp! - raise taxes instead of borrowing. Just restoring the inheritance tax would raise about $20 billion a year. With that we could triple SCHIP expenditures (current a hair under $8 billion).
Slashdot Mirror
Unless you provide health care services they don't like. Or are homosexual or support the rights of people who are. Or if you belong to the wrong strain of Christianity.
Feh. You kids today. Back in the late 70s and early 80s, a digital watch meant the cheerful red glow of LEDs - you pushed a button to make it show the time, since otherwise your battery would die really quick. If you have retro sensibilities you can own a modern replica
I also had a TI programmable calculator with LED display, might have been a TI-58 C though I don't recall for sure.
Heavy sigh. No.
First, the ending "-phobia" also means "intolerance or aversion for" something.
Second, fear of their own repressed homosexual feelings is very often at the root of the intolerance these people exhibit. Really, only people whose heterosexuality is hanging by a thread can possibly argue that fully accepting gays is going to be a threat, will somehow "turn" people gay.
These folks are all expressing intolerance and aversion, and many are fearful. "Homophobia" is exactly a precise and correct word.
Sure, they have a legal right to be assholes, to fear and hate and wallow in their own ignorance, and I'll stand up for that right. They can choose not to invite gay folks to the cotillion - and gays can choose not to invite them to the drag show.
But neither group has a right to make discriminatory and unconstitutional laws.
Just bcause I kan reed doesn't meen I kan speelll or tipe. :-)
Ugh. I'll stick my with LucidaTypewriter Bold, thank you, at a nice large size.
Seeing as how slavery is banned in all states by Amemendment XIII, not so much.
If you mean prior to that, it gets interesting. Seems to me a free state would have to recognize the "public Acts, Records, and judicial Proceedings" of a slave state, and vice-versa. A free state would have to recognize a slave-owners claim - but on the other hand, a slave state would have to recognize a free state's grant of citizenship. I'm not sure how that would all work out.
But the fact that the full faith and credit clause might have protected slave-owner's rights doesn't mean it's bad. A slave-owners "rights" would also have been protected by Amendment IV's protection agsint seizure, Amendment V's guarantee of due process and protection againt taking, and Amendment VII's right to a jury trial in civil cases involving the value of slaves
Thank you, Captain Obvious.
The doesn't mean we lay folk can't discuss the critera they use for such evaluation.
"Pushing through traffic"? An interesting choice of phrase.
Imagine if you will a footbridge over a gorge, with no rails on the sides. It's fairly crowded. I'm in a hurry and believe I am more important than other people, so I (soberly and attentively) start pushing my way through the crowd. I might push somebody off the edge, but hey, too bad for them.
"Pushing through traffic" is no different than pushing through such a crowd. It's forcing your way through a group and putting them at risk.
I've ridden with real trained drivers, folks who've done speedway racing. They certainly might exceed the posted limit if conditions were right, but they certainly aren't going to "push through" traffic and fsck over other drivers.
The issue is not what people think the motivation is. Or if I took a bullhorn and annoucned "Hey down there, I'm not shooting at anyone, just having fun plinking on this crowded street, woo-hoo!" before I opened fire, would that make it ok in your mind?
The issue is the risk at which non-consenting other people are being put so that someone can get their jollies.
What about it?
There's no "unless it might save lives!" exception in the Bill of Rights, and for good reason.
Liberty entails risk.
Well, the Constitution should be interpreted based on its text, not by what we think the framers intended. The framers themselves were opposed to that notion. As Madison put it, "As a guide in expounding and applying the provisions of the Constitution, the debates and incidental decisions of the Convention can have no authoritative character." It's why the records of the proceedings of the Convention were not published until long afterward.
Anyway. There is a little bit of wiggle room in Article I Section's grant of power "to pay the debts and provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States"; I'm willing to consider that this gives the fed broad powers to buy goods and services on behalf of the nation, though block grants to states to run their own programs might be better.
You do understand that with progressive taxation, people with lower incomes benefit less from tax breaks, right? I certainly would not get a check for $10k.
Actually, yes, they do, or would if the Constitution meant anything: "Full faith and credit shall be given in each state to the public acts, records, and judicial proceedings of every other state." If you're married in one state, you're married in every state.
No bullshit about a "public policy exception", please, there is no such thing in the Constitution. The Full faith and credit clause does not say "...unless the other state really, really, really doesn't want to."
In another generation, the kids are going to read about homophobic and illiterate state legistlatures from making asses of themselves the way we read about miscenegation laws today, and wonder how people could be so stupid.
I think that's correct, yes. Since the software produced by that business model is mostly a large pile of suck, and since that business model requires draconian measures to supress people's natural inclination to share information and does not respect freedom, let it die. Why in the world should we make and enforce copyright laws to prop up a model that's not in the public interest to benefit the stockholders of COTS companies?
There would still be plenty of software jobs. As I said, most software is bespoke - ESR estimated that 90-95% of software produced is not meant for sale.
I'm not interested in putting myself out of work. (Even though, as I see outsourcing and age discrimination playing a larger role, I have decided to get skills in another field.) I've made my living from creating software since the early 90s, and only about one year of that was in environment where we were selling "licenced" software - and really, even there we were more selling a supported system to a handful of customers, and probably could have GPLed our software without affecting revenues. (That company failed anyway...opening the source might have prodded them to fix their code before it got so ugly it couldn't be maintained.)
Courts and politicos can play games all you want, but the passage I quoted makes no mention of property. Calling copyrights and patents "intellectual property" is a deliberate misnomer by those who would like ideas to be treated the same way as real property; the phrase was almost unknown until the founding of the "World Intellectual Property Association" in the 1960s.
Court rulings - even SCOTUS rulings - don't change the text or meaning of the Constitution. But it seems you've already bought into the "living document" fallacy, whereby the courts can redefine phrases like "right of the people" or "commerce...among the several states" and give us bullshit like Wickard v. Filburn, to allow the federal government to absorb more and more power.
The Fourth protects my house against search by the federal government, the Fifth says they can't take it without paying me, and the Fourteenth extends that to the states. But none of these protects any of the rights that makes property useful. It's the armed might of the State of Maryland (through the chartered government of Baltimore County) that kicks kids off my lawn and prevents my neighbor from dumping trash in my backyard, not the federal government. And if the Constitution meant a damn, it would even be the militia of the State of Maryland, not a standing army, protecting my house from invasion by Canada. Trying to make rights of real property into a federal issue is a huge stretch.
Building on the land would at best be analogous to creating a derivied work. But the point is you don't have to live there to get a land deed, they are often issued to speculators who do jack shit to improve or preserve the land.
Not if the Constition were strictly followed. "[S]ecuring for limited Times to Authors and Inventors" - not their assignees, heirs, employers, or anyone else, and not to anyone after the author is dead. Of course the author can allow agents to exercise his rights for him, but they remain his. (Yes, I recognize this is just about a lost cause. Doesn't change the wording of Article I Section 8 and Amendment X.)
Not a point under dispute. Said encouragement is however a merely trade-off between our right to use inventions and creations and our desire to have more inventions and creations made. There is no "natural right" of authors and inventors to copyrights and patents.
And - getting back to the point - it certainly doesn't mean that software patents, which impede rather than promote the progress in software development, ought to be permitted.
I mentioned "evidence of conduct disorder with onset before age 15 years". A child torturing animals would fit that criterion, but is certainly not the only way to meet it. And as I mentioned, the ICD criteria don't require it.
"Lack of any ability to love" is not one of the criterea mentioned in the DSM.
You can be arrested for driving one mile over the limit where you live? (Yes, in LEO jargon a ticket is an "arrest" but I assume the DSM refers to the more common notion of getting dragged off and put in a cage.) Similarly, smoking pot (or even getting a blow job, in some states) in the privacy of your own home is a crime but is so unlikely to lead to arrest that it can be discounted. Though if you go and smoke up on the steps of the police station for the thrill of it, yes, there might just be some faulty wiring in your brainpan.
Getting involved in high-speed pursuits, on the other hand, is likely to and should lead to you being caged.
Certainly that is true, indeed for the diagnostic criteria of almost any condition. (It's why people who study abnormal psych often start to wonder about their own sanity..."Hey, I do that..." And I'm not necessarily a huge fan of the DSM as the "official" arbiter of who is sane - after all, just a few decades ago homosexuality was a "mental illness".)
However, some behaviors are more telling than others. Suicidal ideation is much more telling of clinical depression than disturbed sleep patterns. Reckless disregard for the safety of others, as these guys evinced, is much more telling of APD than breaking minor laws. It's appropriate to refer to suicidal ideation as "depressive", and it's appropriate to refer to reckless disregard for the safety of others as "sociopathic".
When it's putting other people at risk of death or serious injury so that you can enjoy youself. We're not talking about merely violating speed limits on an empty highway, which I've certainly been known to do myself; we're talking about weaving in and out of traffic inches from other cars, driving recklessly, hitting triple digits in downtown areas. These guys are a threat to the safety of other people, and should be locked up.
The Wikipedia article on Antisocial personality disorder quotes the DSM diagnositic critera. Their actions definitely meet two of the them:
Two others may be met:
For a diagnosis of APD, though, there needs to be "evidence of conduct disorder with onset before age 15 years", and of course we don't know their childhood. (But the ICD criterea are a little looser, with conduct disorder at a young age being suportive of a diagnosis but not necessary.) But regardless of whether a clinical diagnosis is appropriate, it's certainly accurate to refer to the behavior as "sociopathic".
It's no different than if I were to take my rifle and start shooting out of a window into a crowded street - even if I were aiming at inanimate targets, even if I were an expert marksman, putting others at risk so I can get my jollies is not tolerable behavior. You take your rifle to the range to shoot, you take your car to the track to drive fast.
If you're trying to sell a COTS product to a whole bunch of people, yes, it will probably make its way out into the world right quick if it's free software. Indeed, even if it's not free software - what percentage of Photoshop users have paid for it?
This mass market COTS it is already starting to be displaced by commercially developed open source. If that's your business model, I suggest you get out quick.
On the other hand, if you're selling a system to a few companies in a specific field, it's unlikely thery are going to share. If you make a telephony application and sell it to Sprint, they are not going to give a copy to Verizon. Of course, you're more likely to enter into a development contract with Sprint first, rather than make the product first then go trying to sell it.
Please don't confuse the FSF with the open source movement.
Assuming that by "closed-source code" you mean software whose source is not available to its users, such code does not meet the Free Software Defintion, so yes, the FSF is opposed to it.
Nothing in the Free Software defintion requires that you give source code away. Just that if you distribute binaries (whether gratis or for $1,000 a copy) you have to also distribute the source to those same people. I don't see that including a source CD-ROM with a CD-ROM of binaries that you might charge $1,000 for qualifies as "giving away" either.
As the FSF says, "'Free software' does not mean 'non-commercial'. A free program must be available for commercial use, commercial development, and commercial distribution. Commercial development of free software is no longer unusual; such free commercial software is very important.".
You assertations about what the FSF says, just miss the mark. First, it's a long-standing point that selling free software is perfectly ok.
Second, most software that is developed is bespoke, so if all COTS makers went out of business there'd be plenty of work for talented coders.
Third, copyrights are a form of government interference in the market. Free software is very much pro-free market, it's proprietary software that is against it.
But freedom is even better. And we can quite well have freedom and economic success; but not when large business interests push through laws like the DMCA, or when we allow them the conduct blitzkrieg BSA raids to shut down competitors.
You really ought to read the Constitution before you comment on it, you know. It only grants Congress the power (though not the requirement) 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". It in no way mentions "intellectual property".
The authorized copyrights and patents are nothing like land deeds, which are 1) issued by states, 2) perpetual, 3) issuable to anyone, not just "authors and inventors" (I didn't create the land my house is on, after all) and 4) not are required to promote the public good. This is because the framers had the good common sense to understand that ideas are not like physical property.
As Jefferson (no mean author and inventor himself) put it,
As for the courts, Dowling v United States shows that copyright violation is not theft; that makes it pretty clear that songs are not property.
Corporate charters are issued by states, not by the feds; Congress has no power to revoke them.
However, it does have the power to regulate interstate and international commerce. The possibility of being limited to doing business in one state is a plenty big stick against a large corporation.
Unfortunately, the possibility of contributing millions of dollars to an electoral opponent is a plenty big stick for a large corporation to use against a member of Congress.
Honestly, anyone who doesn't recognize that using the term "intellectual property" to refer to several very different types of purely artificial monopolies created by government action is highly problematic, is ignorant on the subject. Copyrights are not patents and neither are trademarks; refering to them all as "intellectual property" is obfuscatory. And the obfuscataion is usually deliberate, as someone stands to benefit from fooling people into thinking that ideas should be treated the same way as objects, that learning or copying is theft. But it ain't so.
And anyone who believes that patents should apply to mathematical algorithms is a POORLY trained computer scientist.
It does not follow at all, since ideas are a very different thing than land. You distort the issue by using the term "property" to refer to ideas.
No, it was blatantly clear that Limbaugh and his caller were referring to people such as an earlier caller, a military veteran who was against our continued occupation in Iraq. Limbaugh has already stated "I am going to challenge the patriotism of people who disagree with [Bush] because the people that disagree with him want to lose."
It would sure be nice to have your "-1, Ad Hominem" option to mod him down in the national dialog (such as it is).
And it's also clear to any unbiased observer that despite Limbaugh's claims, Macbeth was never any sort of hero or "darling" to the anti-war movement, though he may have taken in a few suckers on its fringes. A "socialistalternative.org" interview doesn't make one a hero of the anti-war movement. Especially when it was taken down after a few weeks - even this fringe group figured him out. ("Fringe" not meant to agree or disagree with their positions on any issues, only to point out that they are not the mainstream of the anti-war movement. I'd never even heard of them before.)
Macbeth's main goal was scamming VA benefits; other scammers rounded up in Operation Stolen Valor claimed service in WWII, Korea, and Vietnam. Their phoniness has nothing to do with Iraq, it's all about the Benjamins.
Yes, read it and see that the transcript Media Matters provided is perfectly accurate. See that the "phony soldiers" crack was a cut at a caller. (Caller: "I used to be military, okay, and I am a Republican." Limbaugh: "Right, I know. And I, by the way, used to walk on the moon.")
See that after that, he brings up Jesse Macbeth, a fraudster who tried to scam the VA. See Limbaugh's bullshit claims that Macbeth was some sort of "poster boy for the anti-war left". See Limbaugh repeat the lies about WMDs being found in Iraq. See his strange inability to properly pronounce the name of the Democratic Party.
(Looks like my first response to this didn't get submitted before the power went out the other day. Apologies if this is a dupe.)
But that proves the point. If corporations only existed for the public good, then revoking a charter would be no more drastic than revoking a driver's license - significant, but hardly comparable to the death penalty.
In a society where continued incorporation was permitted only if it served the public interest, the burden of prooving that would be on the corporation, or it's charter would not be renewed.
Instead, in the wake of the fraudulent and misbegotten Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad decision of 1886, corporations are seen to have the same rights as citizens. And citizens exist for their own sake, not for the public good.
Part of the problem is that ruling classes always seek to make the people not care. From the Roman circuses to reality TV, keeping the masses distracted has always been a key to maintaining power.
Depends on what's provided. Woolhandler and Himmelstein showed that almost 60% of health care spending is already publically financed. Some suggest that we could provide bare-bones health care for every American at that public spending level, if we cut administrative costs and paid providers less.
For more complete coverage, Physicians for a National Health Program suggest covering the remaining amount with a payroll tax (around 7%) on employers and an income tax (around 2%) on individuals.
The payroll tax replaces current employer expenses; the income tax replaces insurance premiums, co-pays, deductibles, and out-of-pocket payments. Yes, government spending goes up - but since we're already paying for a large chunk of health care with government dollars, not as much as many people think. Tax rates go up but business and individuals are no longer paying insurance shareholders for the privilege of seeing a doctor; since billions in administrative costs would be saved by moving to single-payer, most people's total costs go down.
Irrelevant. I'm not suggesting borrowing money to fund health care, nor would anyone with a lick of sense. Money should be borrowed only to finance short-term projects over a longer term - things like building public works and conducting wars. One never borrows to fund on-going expenses. You might borrow money to re-wire your house; you don't borrow to pay your electric bill. (Unless you're in some sort of trouble and need a stop-gap.) The only borrowing relevant to health care is maybe local governments issuing muni bonds to build hospitals or buy ambulances. (And in many cities now, the problem isn't building new hospitals, it's that existing ones are being closed.)
Your insistence on bringing borrowing into this discussion suggests that either you are deeply confused, or that you are deliberately trying to cloud the issue.
Not at all true. The question of how much the government spends is seperate from what it spends it on; and these are seperate from how it gets funded.
If we wanted to increase social spending, we could do it and still have less government spending, if we decreased wasteful "defense" spending (we could halve our spending, save over $260 billion a year, and still outspend any other nation by a factor of five!), or spending on enforcing laws against "consensual crimes" ("War on Drugs" spending is about $50 billion a year).
And if we wanted to increase such spending without cutting other spending, we could - gasp! - raise taxes instead of borrowing. Just restoring the inheritance tax would raise about $20 billion a year. With that we could triple SCHIP expenditures (current a hair under $8 billion).