So how exactly can we prevent large corporations buying their way into influencing the law to their corporate advantage?
I suggest, corporate dealth penalties - government-enforced breakups of any corporation over a certain size. As antitrust regulators say "this is not punishment, this is remedy". And 100% taxes on all personal wealth over and above say $1 million. Simultaneous, all over the world (Simultaneous Policy, SP), so that people and corps can't just run someplace else (ok, space, but who cares). That way you limit how much influence any single commercial entity or person can have. Of course, very difficult to get any government to do that - let alone all of them.
So, any better ideas? The libertarians, when they even look at this question at all, tend to say "elect non-corruptable politicians", but this doesn't explain how these mythical "non-corruptable" politicians will be elected, or even distinguished. Their "solution" is at least as laughable and naive as mine - possibly even more! Just because a politician claims to be true-blue libertarian, doesn't mean they really are, or that they will stay that way under the real-life pressures of government. At least I've made an initial stab at explaining how corporations could be restrained from influencing government (thru government). Libertarians don't have a clue how to do it without contradicting themselves.
At last, someone on Slashdot stands up in favor of "whining", and makes the obvious point that making a fuss can make a difference! Hooray!!!:-)
I'm getting sick and tired of all the "libertarians" who just use "stop whining" on their opponents all the time to make their opponents look like spoilt brats. (Yes, OT I know.) There should be some kind of law like Godwin's Law against that;) j/k
also, I saw someone say that so-and-so wasn't a crime but it can get a countersuit.. i thought you could only sue when the law was broken?
There is a distinction between civil law and criminal law. If you break only civil law (e.g. some breaches of contract), you can only be sued, not jailed, and you can't be called a "criminal" for it. However, some things are both civil and criminal violations (e.g. copyright violation). IANAL.
P.S. To anyone who knows - I've always wondered - is the MS trial a criminal trial or a civil trial? Why do posters on slashdot keep denying that it is either?
ICANN is a non-profit. (Amazingly, considering how much cash they rake in; where does it all go?)
I would guess: Very, very expensive international meetings (but why don't they shift the cost onto the governmental and commercial reps?) and high salaries for directors.
Yet another reason to code in Java!;-) Fine-grained dynamic linking, so if a few of your identifiers are different, that provides plausible grounds to believe that you developed it independently.
The fact is, RMS's belief that GPL can infect even software that only dynamically links is ridiculous
It does indeed seem so. Although the FSF seems to get a lot of mileage out of the fact that the GPL has not been tested in court - no company has yet been willing to call their bluff.
Remember, you'll never hear a politician saying 'We need fewer laws'
No, they do all the time! They just don't call them "laws". When they want to get rid of something they call it "regulations" or "red tape" or "big government" (there's a good one!) or "restricting our God-given freedoms" or "political correctness gone mad". When they want to pass a law they call it a law.
I think so too. If you're into highly technical reasons for thinking that AI on algorithmic computers is misconceived, check out the excellent book "Shadows of the Mind" by Oxford mathematical physicist Roger Penrose.
It was resoundingly bashed by a number of contributors to a special issue of the journal Psyche (which is on the web somewhere) - but Roger came back, undettered, with a rebuttal to all of them. Very technical stuff.
The trouble is, amazing though it is, there is and never has been an official term for... er... the thing that your computer case is a case for. "CPU" is technically incorrect. The nearest thing to an official term is "base unit", although this is far from universally used - and doesn't really make so much sense for a tower case.
Ed Regis also wrote "Great Mambo Chicken and the Transhuman Condition" (yes really!) and "Nano", fantastic popular accounts of transhumanism and nanotechnology, respectively - he was also one of the better writers for Wired magazine (back in the days before it went bland and businesslike). In case anyone is too lazy to click on that link, here is a sample review from a microbiologist:
[4 of 5 stars] The Biology of Doom - aaaaarrrgh!, January 29, 2001
Reviewer: Ed Rybicki (see more about me) from Cape Town, Western Cape South Africa
I was fascinated from this book from the moment I picked it up: Ed Regis has the knack of being able to immerse his reader so deeply in the moment that it is a wrench to put it down. I am a practising microbiologist with a morbid fascination with biological weaponry and nasty zoonoses; this book certainly informed me perhaps better than I needed to be about things I had only previously read about at third- or fourth-hand, or heard as apocryphal anecdotes.
The only things I could fault in this book are that a) it is too short; b) it does not cover some of the more interesting recent biowar developments, such as Iraq's and South Africa's ventures into the field (but see a).
Apart from this, it is a fascinating, detailed and scholarly account of one of the darker areas of recent scientific history. It sits happily on my shelf next to his "Virus Ground Zero : Stalking the Killer Viruses With the Center for Disease Control", which I consider a masterwork (but then, I love Ebola...). --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
--- end quote ---
Disclaimer: I haven't personally read this yet, but based on the Amazon reviews and Regis' past writings, I think it's a good bet.
"Donated"?! What grade of crack have you been smoking? Profit-making companies donate stuff to nonprofits sometimes, yes - but since when have they ever "donated" money to another profit-making company with no expectation of reward?
The reality is that identifying genes in raw sequence is very much a work in progress.
I've always wondered... what is a raw sequence? Is it just a list of all the base pairs in one person's DNA? And what does "the human genome has been sequenced" mean, anyway?
Sorry for my ignorance - but all the pop-science articles that were gushing about the human genome project never seemed to explain these simple points.
I'm sorry, approximately 652389234 people have already thought of that idea before you. Every year there's a new sucker - all of them act like it's a new idea - pretty tiresome.
Easy. Get programmers to rate each other. Any ra(n)tings that aren't backed up by solid, irrefuted (note I didn't say irrefutable) arguments are null and void.
Slashdot Mirror
I suggest, corporate dealth penalties - government-enforced breakups of any corporation over a certain size. As antitrust regulators say "this is not punishment, this is remedy". And 100% taxes on all personal wealth over and above say $1 million. Simultaneous, all over the world (Simultaneous Policy, SP), so that people and corps can't just run someplace else (ok, space, but who cares). That way you limit how much influence any single commercial entity or person can have. Of course, very difficult to get any government to do that - let alone all of them.
So, any better ideas? The libertarians, when they even look at this question at all, tend to say "elect non-corruptable politicians", but this doesn't explain how these mythical "non-corruptable" politicians will be elected, or even distinguished. Their "solution" is at least as laughable and naive as mine - possibly even more! Just because a politician claims to be true-blue libertarian, doesn't mean they really are, or that they will stay that way under the real-life pressures of government. At least I've made an initial stab at explaining how corporations could be restrained from influencing government (thru government). Libertarians don't have a clue how to do it without contradicting themselves.
Let the flames begin!
I'm getting sick and tired of all the "libertarians" who just use "stop whining" on their opponents all the time to make their opponents look like spoilt brats. (Yes, OT I know.) There should be some kind of law like Godwin's Law against that ;) j/k
Shurely shome mishtake? Wouldn't it be low interest, relatively speaking - because the US is not going to go bankrupt?
There is a distinction between civil law and criminal law. If you break only civil law (e.g. some breaches of contract), you can only be sued, not jailed, and you can't be called a "criminal" for it. However, some things are both civil and criminal violations (e.g. copyright violation). IANAL.
P.S. To anyone who knows - I've always wondered - is the MS trial a criminal trial or a civil trial? Why do posters on slashdot keep denying that it is either?
I would guess: Very, very expensive international meetings (but why don't they shift the cost onto the governmental and commercial reps?) and high salaries for directors.
It does indeed seem so. Although the FSF seems to get a lot of mileage out of the fact that the GPL has not been tested in court - no company has yet been willing to call their bluff.
No, they do all the time! They just don't call them "laws". When they want to get rid of something they call it "regulations" or "red tape" or "big government" (there's a good one!) or "restricting our God-given freedoms" or "political correctness gone mad". When they want to pass a law they call it a law.
Then it would be a dying/dead OS, because no-one would be starting to use it. CP/M, perhaps?
A trend per se does not an argument make.
Anyway, computers still can't play Go very well. compared to good human players.
It was resoundingly bashed by a number of contributors to a special issue of the journal Psyche (which is on the web somewhere) - but Roger came back, undettered, with a rebuttal to all of them. Very technical stuff.
Bad for companies like Microsoft, maybe - but not bad for patent law as a whole.
For the 6 millionth time, TRADEMARKS require enforcement to stay valid. PATENTS do not.
Indeed not. That's like citing Lego as an example of engineering excellence.
It must be the most common response ever to moral reformers.
Ed Regis also wrote "Great Mambo Chicken and the Transhuman Condition" (yes really!) and "Nano", fantastic popular accounts of transhumanism and nanotechnology, respectively - he was also one of the better writers for Wired magazine (back in the days before it went bland and businesslike). In case anyone is too lazy to click on that link, here is a sample review from a microbiologist:
[4 of 5 stars] The Biology of Doom - aaaaarrrgh!, January 29, 2001
Reviewer: Ed Rybicki (see more about me) from Cape Town, Western Cape South Africa
I was fascinated from this book from the moment I picked it up: Ed Regis has the knack of being able to immerse his reader so deeply in the moment that it is a wrench to put it down. I am a practising microbiologist with a morbid fascination with biological weaponry and nasty zoonoses; this book certainly informed me perhaps better than I needed to be about things I had only previously read about at third- or fourth-hand, or heard as apocryphal anecdotes.
The only things I could fault in this book are that a) it is too short; b) it does not cover some of the more interesting recent biowar developments, such as Iraq's and South Africa's ventures into the field (but see a).
Apart from this, it is a fascinating, detailed and scholarly account of one of the darker areas of recent scientific history. It sits happily on my shelf next to his "Virus Ground Zero : Stalking the Killer Viruses With the Center for Disease Control", which I consider a masterwork (but then, I love Ebola...). --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
--- end quote ---
Disclaimer: I haven't personally read this yet, but based on the Amazon reviews and Regis' past writings, I think it's a good bet.
I've always wondered... what is a raw sequence? Is it just a list of all the base pairs in one person's DNA? And what does "the human genome has been sequenced" mean, anyway?
Sorry for my ignorance - but all the pop-science articles that were gushing about the human genome project never seemed to explain these simple points.
I can dream! :)