That line might make more sense if Mozilla wasn't offering the source code under the GPL and LGPL in addition to the MPL (Source). If you find the MPL restrictive you can always choose one of the others.
Talk about taking a passage out of context! The quoted text instructs the rich to give voluntarily of their own possessions. It says nothing about seizing and distributing the property of others. In fact, if you really want a religious pretext for your political views you'll have to look much further back; the entire New Testament is decidedly apolitical in nature, dealing with the actions of individuals rather than nation-states or other organized groups.
I fully support the use of force by government in many cases, especially for cases like arresting murderers and enforcing contracts.
You might have a point if governments were actually required to arrest murders or enforce contracts. Fortunately, they aren't.
You seem mainly annoyed that a large group of people can push a smaller group around, but this isn't a problem of government, it's a problem wherever there is a large group of people.
No, I'm annoyed that anyone can push anyone else around without the action being seen as criminal. Yes, crime will probably always exist. I get that. There's no need to endorse and legitimize it, however.
On the flip side, so long as no government exists, there's no such thing as "criminal" behavior - as it is, by definition, the kind of behavior that breaks criminal law
Criminal:
* condemnable: bringing or deserving severe rebuke or censure;...
* guilty of crime or serious offense;... (Source)
You're ignoring several common definitions. No, "criminal" is not exclusively defined by governments, even ignoring the international sense where no one government has any jurisdiction. An obvious counter-example would be common law, which arose from private dispute-resolution unassociated with any government. In any event, whenever you see me using the term it is synonymous with "aggression", or the use of force (i.e. violation of natural property rights) against a non-aggressor.
any entity doing so would be government in effect, even if it calls itself differently
Defense from aggression is not the only qualification for government. Among other things, to be a government an organization must (a) claim a monopoly on the use of defensive force; (b) use non-defensive force, a.k.a. aggression; (c) claim that it has a "legitimate" right to act as it does, when any other organization in its place would be classified as organized crime. Note that (b) is required to enforce (a).
You can consider other organizations "governments" if you like, but if they don't meet criteria (a) or (b) above then I am not opposed. It is the behavior which is important, not the label.
So, with a government, you have legitimized but limited coercion. Without a government, you have coercion by anyone who is stronger than you, without any limits or recourse.
With a government, you have legitimized coercion by someone who is stronger than yourself, without any effective limits or recourse. So long as others consider the coercion "legitimate" you cannot organize any defense. Without a government others may attempt aggression against you, but this aggression is clearly illegitimate and you are free to work with others to voluntarily defend yourself and your community. If your goal, like mine, is to eliminate aggression then only the latter choice offers any hope at all. From the perspectives of ideology and practicality alike, there really is no choice at all but to oppose aggression in all its forms.
In practice, the most common aggression most people experience originates with their own governments, not private criminals. What thief could escape unscathed after taking thousands of dollars from millions of people, year after year? What extortionist could get away with unjust demands on the scale of those handed down by government bureaucrats? True crime is the domain of rare and degenerate individuals, but governments make criminals of ordinary citizens and label it "public service."
The founders of the United States would disagree with you. The goal was to create a multi-branch government with equal power, such that each has the power to keep the other branches in check.
Perhaps that was the intent, but if so they overlooked a major flaw: What incentive does any branch have to limit the powers of the other two? The power exercised by any branch increases the influence of all three to a greater or lesser extent. Occasionally one might speak out, as a PR move or power play or due to the sparse influence of rogue reformers, but it should be no surprise that the long-term trend is toward greater power for every branch.
As for the standard form of "direct democracy", that is mob rule, regardless of how much misplaced trust you have in your fellow citizens. Among other issues, there is always a push for greater intrusiveness simply because the benefits to special interests are concentrated whereas the costs are diffuse. It's easy to organize people to vote for measures which directly benefit them, but difficult to get similar numbers to vote against the gradual erosion of their liberty.
The only answer I can see lies in Unanimous Consent—the principle of which is that an action can only be taken with the approval of all those it affects. If you wish, this can be considered a form of direct democracy which avoids tyranny-of-the-majority through universal veto, but at the same time circumvents the issue of deadlocks by silencing those with no legitimate stake in the outcome. It is also equivalent to the strict enforcement of property rights.
If you cant do that because its not illegal in the country they happen to reside in, extradite them to a country where it is illegal...
Extradition treaties generally only cover actions which are illegal in both jurisdictions, for which you should be grateful. Just consider some of the more oppressive regimes you've heard of, and whether you'd care to be extradited to their jurisdiction to be tried for actions which aren't illegal in your home country.
Democracies don't give you good government, they give you the government you deserve.
Democracies don't give you the government you deserve[1], they give you the worst government any 50.1% or more of your fellow citizens can be tricked into voting for.
[1] As if anyone actually deserved to be ruled by any government. Democracies have advantages and disadvantages relative to other forms of government, but these minor differences pale in comparison to the disadvantages inherent in government itself, of any type. Among other issues, so long as any government exists we will never be free of "legitimized" coercive—that is, criminal—behavior.
I expect that the idea is that instead of calls like glClearBuffer(...) which take their context from the program's global environment, you'd have calls like glClearBuffer(context,...). The point of this would be to make it easier for a given program to work with multiple contexts at once, e.g. for mixing render-to-texture with normal rendering. (Note: I am not an OpenGL expert, by any means.)
I'm certain no one is suggesting that the GPU become stateless, just the API.
You can't make a contract whereby someone becomes a slave, for instance.
Not everyone agrees. Among those who do agree, the underlying reason is the inalienable nature of self-ownership. The details of regional constitutions have nothing to do with it. A constitution might limit a government's power to enforce property claims in human beings, but has no influence whatsoever over whether those claims are valid.
If self-ownership is alienable then you can sell yourself into slavery, and that contract would be perfectly valid whether the government is able or willing to enforce it or not. On the other hand, if self-ownership is inalienable then you cannot sell yourself into slavery even if you choose to do so. Again, this is true even if the government is able and willing to enforce the terms of your servitude.
Regardless of the legal status of the contract, I would not look very favorably on anyone who knowingly and voluntarily agreed to act as someone's slave in exchange for some form of consideration, yet later went back on their word without compensating the other party for the breach.
As a final matter, it should be clear that self-ownership means you cannot sell someone else into slavery, regardless of other considerations. This is where most of the practical trouble with the concept originates, as most slavery historically originated via force (kidnapping), not contract.
That's exactly what I'm saying. Contracts are binding agreements between individuals. The Constitution defines the limited powers granted to the federal government by the states and/or "the People". Laws derive their authority from the Constitution; contracts derive from property rights. The two have absolutely nothing to do with each other.
Here in the US, we all operate under the idea that several rights are unalienable, ie: life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness...
As I said, the right to self-ownership, of which the Bill of Rights describes a subset. Also, not everything in the Bill of Rights is considered inalienable; for example, you can forfeit your right to freedom from warrantless searches.
Life: Property right in one's own body, should be self-evident.
Liberty: Derives from self-ownership and exercise of alienable property rights.
"Pursuit of happiness": Watered-down nearly to the point of meaninglessness (was originally just "property"), but can be understood as the inalienable right to obtain and hold alienable rights in property, again deriving from self-ownership.
As for contracts, almost all contracts have sections that clearly state that if a portion of the contract is found to be illegal or unconstitutional, it doesn't invalidate the rest of the provisions.
And...? I'm sorry, but—putting aside the fact that constitutionality doesn't apply to private contracts in the first place—I'm not sure what you're responding to here.
If they "put a gun to his head" then the contract is automatically void. For there to be a valid contract both parties must accept it voluntarily, and there must be a reasonable "meeting of the minds", i.e. agreement on the nature of the contract. Note that if you claim to understand a contract before signing you should expect to be taken at your word, whatever your actual understanding may be. See also: due diligence.
That's the whole point of inalienable rights: so you can't be forced to give them up.
A contract allowing a third-party to shoot your dog does not forfeit any inalienable rights. Domestic animals are property, and can be killed ("put to sleep") by the owner, or anyone granted permission by the owner. A contract is a perfectly valid way to grant such permission. For that matter, the contract could just as easily have transferred ownership of the animal, after which its fate would be entirely up to the other party.
Pretty much the only right universally recognized as inalienable—among those who recognize inalienable rights at all—is the right to self-ownership, i.e. the right to one's own mind and body. This is usually considered self-evident, as the mind and body cannot be separated from one's sense of self. Everything else, however, is separable (alienable) and thus may be contractually transferred with the current owner's permission.
If all you have is a single video stream then you don't really need a container. However, once you start adding in audio tracks, subtitles, and interactive features (e.g. menus), you need some way to combine these streams together in a manner which minimizes the need for buffering and/or random access (seeking) during normal playback. Container formats also supply the format identification, tags/metadata, and indexing/seeking support which raw formats typically lack.
Using this logic (and assuming you cannot see spaces - I can - spacing is VERY obvious to me), this implies that you believe that a program should be entirely parse-able with all spacing and line breaks removed.
Not at all. Clearly it is possible to see whether whitespace is present (assuming "whitespace" includes only space, tabs, and newlines, and not e.g. backspaces). However, one frequently cannot visually distinguish between a space and a tab, or even a space or tab and a newline in the presence of line-wrapping—to say nothing of mixed tabs and spaces, and editors with varying tabstops. It would be more accurate to say that I believe all programs should parse identically should any of their unquoted whitespace be replaced by other whitespace, an inline comment, or any other token-separator applicable to the language.
The use of whitespace as a token separator is not an issue, as would have been perfectly obvious if you had bothered to actually read my earlier comment. The problem lies entirely in assigning syntactic value to specific amounts or kinds of whitespace, such that programs which appear identical can nonetheless manifest distinct behavior.
Some spacing is syntactically significant in EVERY language. This is certainly true in literals...
Ah, but spaces in strings are not syntactically significant. The parser treats the string literal as a single, atomic token, including any internal spaces; changes in the number or types of internal spaces have no effect whatsoever on the shape of the parse tree.
It's clear the OP meant "significant indentation"...
Indentation is only part of it. C-style languages (including Java, I believe) make no distinction between varying amounts or types of whitespace anywhere in the syntax, treating it purely as a token separator. Significantly, there are no token emitted to record the presence of whitespace, much less individual spaces, tabs, or newlines, separately from comments or other boundaries (i.e. operators).
The principle behind this lack of distinction, which I happen to agree with wholeheartedly, is that the meaning of a program should not be influenced by characters the programmer cannot see. Of course, one could employ an editor which substitutes visible glyphs for whitespace, but this amounts to changing the character set to suit the language. It seems better to my mind to simply use a sane syntax in the first place.
That line would go over so much better if your "infrastructure" were not defined by intimidation (regulation) and theft (taxes).
What is actually necessary for a free market is strict enforcement of property rights. That can exist—in fact, can only exist—without any government, legislature, or centralized/tax-funded police. Self-defense and privately-funded security are more than sufficient for the task.
Regardless, the futures contract is... associated with tangible property at some point.
The ticket the GP described is also tangible property.
What you're describing with "vlm 69642 will pay the owner of this ticket $1 if Ms. Jolie's next movie is an absolute stinker" is gambling, not commodity futures trading.
You're right that the system described is a form of gambling, but so is commodity futures trading. Gambling occurs any time you make a choice where the resulting profit or loss depends on some as-yet-undetermined future state. It makes little differences whether that future state is the price of a traditional commodity or the success of a movie.
If you want to argue over whether the ticket counts as a "commodity" be my guest, but that's not really the issue here.
There's a "play money" version of Intrade available which appears to track the events and prices/odds on the real site, so you can experiment risk-free right now if you wish.
Second, one of the points of a market like the HSX is to come to a consensus about the expectation of some future event.... If you exclude insiders, you lose the most valuable source of information.
That's true of stocks as well, with the future event being the price of the stock (or some influencing factor). The real problem with insider trading is conflict-of-interest: the insider, as an agent of the shareholders, is manipulating the stock prices or using privileged information for personal gain at the expense of his/her principle(s). If you're not in an agent/principle relationship then insider trading doesn't really apply. (Note that this can be an implied relationship. Further note that I am not a lawyer, and especially not your lawyer, and this is not legal advise.)
If you gave one group a pill and the other group nothing then you can't be sure that any differences in result were due to the pill, as opposed to mere belief in the pill. When measuring the efficacy of a drug against a real illness you need to control for these differences in beliefs, thus the placebo: a pill which has no medical effect, but which cannot be distinguished (by the patient) from the real pill. Naturally the process would be different if you were studying the Placebo effect itself, or trying to "cure" a psychological or psychosomatic ailment.
In fact, I think that such a convention should be mandatory about every 50 years and there should be very clear rules that each iteration must always err in favor of the rights of the people and never increase the power of government.
One way to accomplish this would be to require the government to abide by every version of the Constitution (incl. amendments), not just the latest version. Any action which is any version of the Constitution does not permit would thus be unconstitutional. In this way no amendment or Convention could grant the government additional powers.
There's still the issue of loose interpretation, unfortunately. That's where the original Constitution mostly went wrong—they seem to have assumed that their successors would share their ideals, or at least refrain from deliberately twisting their words. In retrospect that was a very poor assumption.
Slashdot Mirror
That line might make more sense if Mozilla wasn't offering the source code under the GPL and LGPL in addition to the MPL (Source). If you find the MPL restrictive you can always choose one of the others.
Talk about taking a passage out of context! The quoted text instructs the rich to give voluntarily of their own possessions. It says nothing about seizing and distributing the property of others. In fact, if you really want a religious pretext for your political views you'll have to look much further back; the entire New Testament is decidedly apolitical in nature, dealing with the actions of individuals rather than nation-states or other organized groups.
I fully support the use of force by government in many cases, especially for cases like arresting murderers and enforcing contracts.
You might have a point if governments were actually required to arrest murders or enforce contracts. Fortunately, they aren't.
You seem mainly annoyed that a large group of people can push a smaller group around, but this isn't a problem of government, it's a problem wherever there is a large group of people.
No, I'm annoyed that anyone can push anyone else around without the action being seen as criminal. Yes, crime will probably always exist. I get that. There's no need to endorse and legitimize it, however.
On the flip side, so long as no government exists, there's no such thing as "criminal" behavior - as it is, by definition, the kind of behavior that breaks criminal law
Criminal: ... ... (Source)
* condemnable: bringing or deserving severe rebuke or censure;
* guilty of crime or serious offense;
You're ignoring several common definitions. No, "criminal" is not exclusively defined by governments, even ignoring the international sense where no one government has any jurisdiction. An obvious counter-example would be common law, which arose from private dispute-resolution unassociated with any government. In any event, whenever you see me using the term it is synonymous with "aggression", or the use of force (i.e. violation of natural property rights) against a non-aggressor.
any entity doing so would be government in effect, even if it calls itself differently
Defense from aggression is not the only qualification for government. Among other things, to be a government an organization must (a) claim a monopoly on the use of defensive force; (b) use non-defensive force, a.k.a. aggression; (c) claim that it has a "legitimate" right to act as it does, when any other organization in its place would be classified as organized crime. Note that (b) is required to enforce (a).
You can consider other organizations "governments" if you like, but if they don't meet criteria (a) or (b) above then I am not opposed. It is the behavior which is important, not the label.
So, with a government, you have legitimized but limited coercion. Without a government, you have coercion by anyone who is stronger than you, without any limits or recourse.
With a government, you have legitimized coercion by someone who is stronger than yourself, without any effective limits or recourse. So long as others consider the coercion "legitimate" you cannot organize any defense. Without a government others may attempt aggression against you, but this aggression is clearly illegitimate and you are free to work with others to voluntarily defend yourself and your community. If your goal, like mine, is to eliminate aggression then only the latter choice offers any hope at all. From the perspectives of ideology and practicality alike, there really is no choice at all but to oppose aggression in all its forms.
In practice, the most common aggression most people experience originates with their own governments, not private criminals. What thief could escape unscathed after taking thousands of dollars from millions of people, year after year? What extortionist could get away with unjust demands on the scale of those handed down by government bureaucrats? True crime is the domain of rare and degenerate individuals, but governments make criminals of ordinary citizens and label it "public service."
The founders of the United States would disagree with you. The goal was to create a multi-branch government with equal power, such that each has the power to keep the other branches in check.
Perhaps that was the intent, but if so they overlooked a major flaw: What incentive does any branch have to limit the powers of the other two? The power exercised by any branch increases the influence of all three to a greater or lesser extent. Occasionally one might speak out, as a PR move or power play or due to the sparse influence of rogue reformers, but it should be no surprise that the long-term trend is toward greater power for every branch.
As for the standard form of "direct democracy", that is mob rule, regardless of how much misplaced trust you have in your fellow citizens. Among other issues, there is always a push for greater intrusiveness simply because the benefits to special interests are concentrated whereas the costs are diffuse. It's easy to organize people to vote for measures which directly benefit them, but difficult to get similar numbers to vote against the gradual erosion of their liberty.
The only answer I can see lies in Unanimous Consent—the principle of which is that an action can only be taken with the approval of all those it affects. If you wish, this can be considered a form of direct democracy which avoids tyranny-of-the-majority through universal veto, but at the same time circumvents the issue of deadlocks by silencing those with no legitimate stake in the outcome. It is also equivalent to the strict enforcement of property rights.
The government shouldn't own the country, but in the case of China, they clearly do.
They clearly act like they own the country, but they have no natural property rights in it. Aggression cannot confer ownership.
If you cant do that because its not illegal in the country they happen to reside in, extradite them to a country where it is illegal...
Extradition treaties generally only cover actions which are illegal in both jurisdictions, for which you should be grateful. Just consider some of the more oppressive regimes you've heard of, and whether you'd care to be extradited to their jurisdiction to be tried for actions which aren't illegal in your home country.
Democracies don't give you good government, they give you the government you deserve.
Democracies don't give you the government you deserve[1], they give you the worst government any 50.1% or more of your fellow citizens can be tricked into voting for.
[1] As if anyone actually deserved to be ruled by any government. Democracies have advantages and disadvantages relative to other forms of government, but these minor differences pale in comparison to the disadvantages inherent in government itself, of any type. Among other issues, so long as any government exists we will never be free of "legitimized" coercive—that is, criminal—behavior.
I expect that the idea is that instead of calls like glClearBuffer(...) which take their context from the program's global environment, you'd have calls like glClearBuffer(context, ...). The point of this would be to make it easier for a given program to work with multiple contexts at once, e.g. for mixing render-to-texture with normal rendering. (Note: I am not an OpenGL expert, by any means.)
I'm certain no one is suggesting that the GPU become stateless, just the API.
Since when is energy measured in kilotons?
When you're talking about its explosive potential. (As in "kilotons of TNT".)
You can't make a contract whereby someone becomes a slave, for instance.
Not everyone agrees. Among those who do agree, the underlying reason is the inalienable nature of self-ownership. The details of regional constitutions have nothing to do with it. A constitution might limit a government's power to enforce property claims in human beings, but has no influence whatsoever over whether those claims are valid.
If self-ownership is alienable then you can sell yourself into slavery, and that contract would be perfectly valid whether the government is able or willing to enforce it or not. On the other hand, if self-ownership is inalienable then you cannot sell yourself into slavery even if you choose to do so. Again, this is true even if the government is able and willing to enforce the terms of your servitude.
Regardless of the legal status of the contract, I would not look very favorably on anyone who knowingly and voluntarily agreed to act as someone's slave in exchange for some form of consideration, yet later went back on their word without compensating the other party for the breach.
As a final matter, it should be clear that self-ownership means you cannot sell someone else into slavery, regardless of other considerations. This is where most of the practical trouble with the concept originates, as most slavery historically originated via force (kidnapping), not contract.
That's exactly what I'm saying. Contracts are binding agreements between individuals. The Constitution defines the limited powers granted to the federal government by the states and/or "the People". Laws derive their authority from the Constitution; contracts derive from property rights. The two have absolutely nothing to do with each other.
None of which has anything to do with the validity of the contract—only one's ability to act on it free of coercion.
Here in the US, we all operate under the idea that several rights are unalienable, ie: life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness...
As I said, the right to self-ownership, of which the Bill of Rights describes a subset. Also, not everything in the Bill of Rights is considered inalienable; for example, you can forfeit your right to freedom from warrantless searches.
Life: Property right in one's own body, should be self-evident.
Liberty: Derives from self-ownership and exercise of alienable property rights.
"Pursuit of happiness": Watered-down nearly to the point of meaninglessness (was originally just "property"), but can be understood as the inalienable right to obtain and hold alienable rights in property, again deriving from self-ownership.
As for contracts, almost all contracts have sections that clearly state that if a portion of the contract is found to be illegal or unconstitutional, it doesn't invalidate the rest of the provisions.
And...? I'm sorry, but—putting aside the fact that constitutionality doesn't apply to private contracts in the first place—I'm not sure what you're responding to here.
TBH, though, most content does not need to be encrypted because you are serving up the same content to whoever asks for it.
True, but it does need to be signed so that you know you're getting the content you asked for.
Maybe they've put a gun to his head?
If they "put a gun to his head" then the contract is automatically void. For there to be a valid contract both parties must accept it voluntarily, and there must be a reasonable "meeting of the minds", i.e. agreement on the nature of the contract. Note that if you claim to understand a contract before signing you should expect to be taken at your word, whatever your actual understanding may be. See also: due diligence.
That's the whole point of inalienable rights: so you can't be forced to give them up.
A contract allowing a third-party to shoot your dog does not forfeit any inalienable rights. Domestic animals are property, and can be killed ("put to sleep") by the owner, or anyone granted permission by the owner. A contract is a perfectly valid way to grant such permission. For that matter, the contract could just as easily have transferred ownership of the animal, after which its fate would be entirely up to the other party.
Pretty much the only right universally recognized as inalienable—among those who recognize inalienable rights at all—is the right to self-ownership, i.e. the right to one's own mind and body. This is usually considered self-evident, as the mind and body cannot be separated from one's sense of self. Everything else, however, is separable (alienable) and thus may be contractually transferred with the current owner's permission.
If all you have is a single video stream then you don't really need a container. However, once you start adding in audio tracks, subtitles, and interactive features (e.g. menus), you need some way to combine these streams together in a manner which minimizes the need for buffering and/or random access (seeking) during normal playback. Container formats also supply the format identification, tags/metadata, and indexing/seeking support which raw formats typically lack.
Using this logic (and assuming you cannot see spaces - I can - spacing is VERY obvious to me), this implies that you believe that a program should be entirely parse-able with all spacing and line breaks removed.
Not at all. Clearly it is possible to see whether whitespace is present (assuming "whitespace" includes only space, tabs, and newlines, and not e.g. backspaces). However, one frequently cannot visually distinguish between a space and a tab, or even a space or tab and a newline in the presence of line-wrapping—to say nothing of mixed tabs and spaces, and editors with varying tabstops. It would be more accurate to say that I believe all programs should parse identically should any of their unquoted whitespace be replaced by other whitespace, an inline comment, or any other token-separator applicable to the language.
The use of whitespace as a token separator is not an issue, as would have been perfectly obvious if you had bothered to actually read my earlier comment. The problem lies entirely in assigning syntactic value to specific amounts or kinds of whitespace, such that programs which appear identical can nonetheless manifest distinct behavior.
Some spacing is syntactically significant in EVERY language. This is certainly true in literals...
Ah, but spaces in strings are not syntactically significant. The parser treats the string literal as a single, atomic token, including any internal spaces; changes in the number or types of internal spaces have no effect whatsoever on the shape of the parse tree.
It's clear the OP meant "significant indentation"...
Indentation is only part of it. C-style languages (including Java, I believe) make no distinction between varying amounts or types of whitespace anywhere in the syntax, treating it purely as a token separator. Significantly, there are no token emitted to record the presence of whitespace, much less individual spaces, tabs, or newlines, separately from comments or other boundaries (i.e. operators).
The principle behind this lack of distinction, which I happen to agree with wholeheartedly, is that the meaning of a program should not be influenced by characters the programmer cannot see. Of course, one could employ an editor which substitutes visible glyphs for whitespace, but this amounts to changing the character set to suit the language. It seems better to my mind to simply use a sane syntax in the first place.
That line would go over so much better if your "infrastructure" were not defined by intimidation (regulation) and theft (taxes).
What is actually necessary for a free market is strict enforcement of property rights. That can exist—in fact, can only exist—without any government, legislature, or centralized/tax-funded police. Self-defense and privately-funded security are more than sufficient for the task.
Regardless, the futures contract is ... associated with tangible property at some point.
The ticket the GP described is also tangible property.
What you're describing with "vlm 69642 will pay the owner of this ticket $1 if Ms. Jolie's next movie is an absolute stinker" is gambling, not commodity futures trading.
You're right that the system described is a form of gambling, but so is commodity futures trading. Gambling occurs any time you make a choice where the resulting profit or loss depends on some as-yet-undetermined future state. It makes little differences whether that future state is the price of a traditional commodity or the success of a movie.
If you want to argue over whether the ticket counts as a "commodity" be my guest, but that's not really the issue here.
There's a "play money" version of Intrade available which appears to track the events and prices/odds on the real site, so you can experiment risk-free right now if you wish.
Second, one of the points of a market like the HSX is to come to a consensus about the expectation of some future event.... If you exclude insiders, you lose the most valuable source of information.
That's true of stocks as well, with the future event being the price of the stock (or some influencing factor). The real problem with insider trading is conflict-of-interest: the insider, as an agent of the shareholders, is manipulating the stock prices or using privileged information for personal gain at the expense of his/her principle(s). If you're not in an agent/principle relationship then insider trading doesn't really apply. (Note that this can be an implied relationship. Further note that I am not a lawyer, and especially not your lawyer, and this is not legal advise.)
If you gave one group a pill and the other group nothing then you can't be sure that any differences in result were due to the pill, as opposed to mere belief in the pill. When measuring the efficacy of a drug against a real illness you need to control for these differences in beliefs, thus the placebo: a pill which has no medical effect, but which cannot be distinguished (by the patient) from the real pill. Naturally the process would be different if you were studying the Placebo effect itself, or trying to "cure" a psychological or psychosomatic ailment.
In fact, I think that such a convention should be mandatory about every 50 years and there should be very clear rules that each iteration must always err in favor of the rights of the people and never increase the power of government.
One way to accomplish this would be to require the government to abide by every version of the Constitution (incl. amendments), not just the latest version. Any action which is any version of the Constitution does not permit would thus be unconstitutional. In this way no amendment or Convention could grant the government additional powers.
There's still the issue of loose interpretation, unfortunately. That's where the original Constitution mostly went wrong—they seem to have assumed that their successors would share their ideals, or at least refrain from deliberately twisting their words. In retrospect that was a very poor assumption.