I'm not complaining about the good work done by the dedicated volunteers who keep the servers running and write the software. And if I were to suggest that Wikipedia is understaffed and doesn't have adequate hardware resources, I'm not sure where I think the remedy for that would come.
They need to include (small and easily to disable) text ads. Sure, begging for money is raising a lot, but with text ads they could be raising many times that much, and frankly I'd rather look at an ad for something I might actually be interested in than a plea for money.
Plus, ads let businesses deduct their donations as a business expense, as opposed to regular old charity donations which can only be deducted up to 10% of income.
The stock WIkipedian comment on such things is that being GFDL, anyone can mirror Wikipedia and many sites do
Is it really? The stock Wikipedian tends to not like the mirrors. And Wikipedia certainly doesn't make it very easy to legally mirror them.
but I always verify the info with another source or two because people (even the majority) are sometimes wrong.
Not sure how a source or two is going to help if most people are wrong about something, but I agree with you that Wikipedia is cool as long as you take everything with a huge grain of salt. It's kind of like a really cool search engine in a way.
Blatant falsehoods are usually spotted quickly and fixed, at least in my experience.
Depends where they are. I found a few physics pages about a year ago which were filled with references to the "POOP equation". The references had been there for months.
I work on a lot of the political pages that get mucked with a lot.
Those are usually the high trafficked pages, so yeah things get fixed more quickly, unless they're popular myths among Wikipedians. Try reading some of the pages on the GPL for instance. I go back every once in a while and fix it, but it's constantly filled with misnomers and propaganda.
It is a pain though and it only works because so many editors devote so much time to keeping articles accurate.
What's probably worse is that many of the long standing editors overcompensate and will delete many things that are indeed true thinking that they're not. I'm not sure what the sense is in letting anonymous users contribute if you're going to have 100 non-anonymous users each fact checking anything they contribute anyway. Might as well just force the anonymous users to leave a message and let one of the logged in users fix things themselves.
There is no guarantee that an entry is correct at any given time, but by and large corrections are made quickly, and it is very often a useful starting place for doing research or finding answers to questions.
I completely agree there. In fact, I think Wikipedia *usually* shines when it comes to current events and obscure subjects or subjects with multiple points of view. Of course, they kind of totally screwed up in their initial coverage of the Menezes murder, but the vast majority of the media did too.
Well, that's not _quite_ an accurate summation of the deadly force laws extant in Florida. One is permitted to use deadly force to defend life (but not property).
It looks like they've either just changed it or are in the process of it, but at the beginning of 2005 the law was that you had to use "every reasonable means to avoid the danger, including retreat." Ah, here it is, they've changed it effective October 1. But what didn't make sense to me was under Florida law the restrictions on using a handgun were equivalent to the restrictions on displaying them. (This is how I interpret http://licgweb.doacs.state.fl.us/weapons/self_defe nse.html which says "Using or displaying a handgun in any other circumstances could result in your conviction for crimes such as improper exhibition of a firearm, manslaughter, or worse." So if someone threatens you with a knife, but it is reasonable for you to retreat, you can either try to take away the knife or you can run away. You can't shoot them, which is fine as that's a bit excessive, but you can't even take out your gun and repeat your request that he drop the knife.
Yes, retreat is the _first_ thing that a [good] tactical defense course will teach you.
Well, having never taken such a course maybe I just have no clue what I'm talking about, but I would think that there are some cases where it's appropriate to threaten force without necessarily using it. "Never display a handgun to gain "leverage" in an argument. Threatening someone verbally while possessing a handgun, even licensed, will land you in jail for three years." (from the same link) So apparently you can't even *tell* the guy with the knife that you have a gun.
As for the 'theft detectors', I've adopted a policy in the last couple years to simply keep walking. I've yet to be challenged by store employees.
I've done this a bunch of times with the same results. But apparently it's legal for them to actually stop you here in Florida. Anyway, my girlfriend is usually with me when I'm at the store, and even if I keep walking she'll stop, so it kind of defeats the purpose.
Those chains, again, won't make more than a token effort to stop you, lest you sue them if you're truly innocent.
My understanding is that in Florida you can't sue them, even if you're totally innocent, if the alarm goes off.
As I am tall-but-skinny, I can always make the 98-# weakling case when it comes to a determination of whether or not -- in my mind -- I was in fear for my life, which is the current standard in such cases.
Hopefully they won't find this slashdot post and know that it was premeditated.
What? You'd expect a non-standard UPS to be somehow more suitable?
A UPS that is meant to be hooked up to a whole house circuit is more suitable for hooking up to a house circuit than a UPS that is meant to be plugged into the wall. I thought that was kind of obvious.
Do I think the government will drop coverage of people predisposed to cancer? No. What I do think is that they will eventually be persuaded into selling the database to insurance companies which will.
Why, because it's so hard for the insurance company to ask you for a strand of hair? If the insurance companies want your DNA, they're just going to get it from you directly. It makes no sense for them to buy it from the government, especially when the government's database only contains the DNA of a small subset of the population.
And incase you misunderstand the idea behind health insurance, the idea is to spread the risk.
If you really want to spread the risk, don't get health insurance from a company that checks your DNA. Sure, you're going to pay a lot more, but it'll be the same price as the others.
As a relatively healthy, 29 year old, non-smoking, white male, my risk to my insurance company is pretty low. While many of my aged coworkers who's health is declining present more of a loss. The idea is that when I eventually shift into their shoes, there will be enough people like I formerly was to offset the difference.
It sounds like what you're looking for is an investment plan, not an insurance plan. Do you really think you as a 29 year old, non-smoking, white male, should pay as much as an 54 year old, smoking, alcoholic white female? It seems like you're looking for a government program to even things out for everyone, because otherwise what's supposed to be the incentive for a healthy person to pay into health insurance if they have to pay the same costs as someone who is unhealthy? Sure, they might get sick one day, but some people are a lot more likely to get sick than others.
If you want everyone treated fairly, then just have the government provide a single health insurance program to everyone. Then they can force everyone to buy in regardless of their health, at an equal rate.
I typically agree that insurance is a scam. But the alternative is universal healthcare. In which case, the government will deny coverage for predisposed illness.
Why would they do that? The whole point of universal healthcare is that it's universal.
This is kind of a nice idea, but totally impractical to implement fairly.
Perfectly fairly, of course not. The whole point of insurance is you're dealing with uncertainties. But it's more fair to have accurate information than less accurate information.
In the end, it would just be another excuse for insurance companies to fuck over the people on their plans, and for both them and the medical industry to make more money.
It's not like anyone is forcing you to get health insurance. If you don't like it, don't buy it. You can even set up your own health insurance company.
I'm willing to accept the theory that what you are predisposed to and what I am predisposed to will generally even out once you look at everything, and pay the same as you.
Actually, I kind of doubt it. Some people probably have much higher likely medical costs than others. But it sounds like what you want is for everyone in the country to be covered by insurance on an equal basis from the start. I could probably live with that, but it really doesn't have anything to do with DNA.
You get rejected for health cover because you have a gene giving you a predisposition to cancer.
I don't have health cover, but what does this have to do with the government? You don't think the govt. is going to drop medicare coverage for people predisposed to cancer, do you?
By the way, what the health insurance company is more likely to do is exempt cancer from your coverage, unless of course you're willing to pay specifically for that coverage. I don't see this as a bad thing. If you are predisposed to cancer, then you should pay more for health insurance covering cancer treatment.
You can't get a drivers licence because you have a gene giving you a predisposition to bad eyesight.
Please. They give people drivers' licenses who *have* bad eyesight. It's ridiculous to think they're going to take them away from people who are merely predisposed to getting it.
You can't get a job because you have an X chromosome giving you a predisposition to violence.
Again, you're talking about private industry, not the government.
Get the drift?
No, I don't, not at all. The only example you gave that was even related to the government was the drivers' license one, and it seemed pretty silly to me. If the government really does get that crazy, I don't think details of a few people's DNA is going to matter.
You might as well argue that it's wrong for the DMV to store your driver's license photo, because they might take drivers' licenses away from all black people. Or because health insurance companies might drop people with fair skin who are more likely to develop skin cancer.
Well, I don't have health insurance. But what does the government having your DNA have to do with your health insurance? Are you suggesting that the government is going to drop medicare coverage from people who are predisposed to cancer?
I actually happened to run across this just yesterday, when I was looking up Florida's weapons laws. I found it strange that security guards were required to open carry their weapons but the average citizen was required to conceal them. I always assumed that getting a permit to carry a concealed weapon would be tougher than getting a permit to open carry. But I've lived most of my life in New Jersey, so the whole concept of the government allowing average citizens to exercise their constitutional rights is a bit new to me:).
To be honest, I'm kind of stumped as to how carrying a concealed firearm is going to help you protect yourself when you're not even allowed to take out that gun unless you're being attacked and are unable to run away. At that point it seems like it'd be pretty risky to introduce a gun into the struggle. If you're in the home it's a different story, and if the attacker is actually attacking someone else then the gun might be useful. Anyway, I probably wouldn't be very good at handling a gun personally, so my investigation was mainly just for the sake of knowing the actual laws.
In addition to letting store employees detain suspects upon probable cause, there's another law that says that activation of one of those theft detectors is cause: "The activation of an antishoplifting or inventory control device as a result of a person exiting an establishment or a protected area within an establishment shall constitute reasonable cause for the detention of the person so exiting by the owner or operator of the establishment or by an agent or employee of the owner or operator, provided sufficient notice has been posted to advise the patrons that such a device is being utilized. Each such detention shall be made only in a reasonable manner and only for a reasonable period of time sufficient for any inquiry into the circumstances surrounding the activation of the device." It's all in 812.015(3) of the statutes.
but in most states, it is necessary for a security guard / store employee / whatever to have _proof_ of theft before any detention takes place.
Here in Florida, they need probable cause. "If you should enter a retail establishment where goods are placed on display and for sale, the merchant or the employees may detain you on the premises for a reasonable time for questioning if they have probable cause to believe that you have stolen or have attempted to steal goods for sale." http://library.findlaw.com/1997/Sep/1/130723.html
Just as it is not necessary to let the guy at Best Buy check your receipt.
Unless the guy at Best Buy has probable cause that you stole something. Otherwise, it's false imprisonment and you can sue.
A blockbuster card does not have the clout of infallibility, as the DNA does.
I'm not sure how a Blockbuster card is going to fail. I mean, the employees testify that they saw you in the Blockbuster store getting the Blockbuster card. It *is* your Blockbuster card. Your lawyer probably isn't even going to attempt to refute that.
Jurors know what a card is, and they comprehend very well how such a card can be lost and found. They have no comparable understanding of minute matters, like hairs.
Really? You don't think jurors understand how easy it is to lose a hair?
When you lose the card you know it. You have only one such card, and it is a macroscopic object. When you lose a hair you never know it.
Actually, I have a bunch of Blockbuster cards, and I very well could lose one and not know it. But I really don't see how this matters, because the fact that your hair showed up at the crime scene and was identified as yours tells you right there that you must have lost a hair.
A criminal is not likely to accidentally pick up a card; he either wants to frame someone, or he doesn't, in either case he won't be relying upon a chance occurence. However the criminal can contaminate the crime scene with other people's DNA without him even knowing it, even if he is not bright enough to frame someone intentionally.
Yes, and this happens all the time. And the police know it. And the judges know it. And the lawyers know it. And unless these people are *all* grossly incompetant, the jurors are going to know it too.
The person was thinking of an arrest, not a detention. If you are pulled over for a traffic stop, that's a "Terry Stop", and is a type of detention. But since the detention is of a short duration and is limited in scope it is not considered an arrest. I wouldn't say there are *many* legal ways to detain someone which do not require an arrest. For the police, there's basically just a Terry Stop. In some jurisdictions, including Florida, there are a few other avenues for legal detention for non-police, though. For instance, it's legal here for a security guard of a supermarket to detain someone they suspect of theft.
One cannot tell, from looking at a fingerprint, the owner's gender, age, race, etc.
Well, I don't see how DNA is going to tell you anything about a person's age, but a person's race and gender can generally be figured out just by looking at the person. And in fact, the government already has a database of this for every single person in the US in the census records (well, personally I wrote "human" as my race but most people probably didn't do that).
When one has a DNA sample of someone, one can run it screen it for a number of things beyond just physical characteristics: it can pinpoint you as someone that has a predisposition to some disease, reveal race and ethnic details beyond one's appearance, could even show you have a predisposition to rage and mental illness.
That notion - that the government could have a searchable database of anyone ever brought in to the station with such information - really scares me.
I guess it makes it slightly easier for a corrupt government to for instance wipe out all people with a predisposition to rage (or homosexuality or pedophilia). But then again, once the government has decided to do such a thing, is it really that difficult for them to start taking the DNA samples right then?
About the only person I think would be worse off having such a database would be my insurance company - but that's a different topic.
That one's probably inevitable. Of course, at some point people will have to start getting insurance on the test results themselves.
Couldn't that same argument be used to argue against anything? I mean, you drop your blockbuster card on the ground, right next to that location, someone is murdered. The police arrive, find the blockbuster card, and arrest you for murder. You have no alibi. There is no other evidence. Seventeen blockbuster employees testify in court that the blockbuster card is yours. You can't explain how it got there. There are no other defendants (not that police even looked for them, having you.) You are convicted.
Even if somehow you manage to explain the blockbuster card away, or wiggle out on thinness of evidence, you are ruined anyway. None of that could have happened if the police has no way to match the blockbuster card to you.
Stop voting for Democrats and Republicans, for starters. Honestly though, I don't see how this is so bad. It's not good, but I don't really see how the government having your DNA is a bad thing. I've given the IRS my fingerprints. How much worse is DNA? What is the potential harm?
If you can find a way to make patronage work in the modern world, I'm certain many people would be interested. Until then, I am of the opinion that we should fix what is broken with copyright, not throw it out.
It already does work. Look at the Free Software Foundation. Look at Wikipedia. People are going to create works whether you offer them copyright or not. Yes, these works are still copyrighted, but realistically that copyright is meaningless. The revenues these organizations obtain are based on donations, not licensing agreements. There's no reason to believe that in the absense of copyright law the revenues would go away. In fact, they'd only increase.
Saying the purpose of copyright is not to enlarge the public domain, but to provide incentives for creation/publication is like saying the purpose of an engine is not to move the car but to rotate the crankshaft.
No it's not. It's like saying reason I bought Windows is because I wanted to use an operating system, not because I wanted free software. Copyrighted works are not in the public domain. The purpose of copyright is to provide incentives for works. Yes, those works will eventually be in the public domain, but that's not the purpose.
Madison, Jefferson, Franklin, etc., did not subscribe to the "natural law" theory of copyright, which holds that an author's work "naturally" belongs to him and should therefore be controlled by him.
Nor did I say they did.
No, the authors of the US Constitution understood copyright to be an exchange... a temporary monopoly granted by society in order to ensure the broad distribution of works, in order that the public domain may be enriched.
Well, I suppose if you repeat it enough times you'll believe that it's true.
Then why didn't they last forever from the start? Why are copyrights secured for "a limited time" then?
The theory was that the benefits of copyright outweigh the detriments when they are secured for limited times, but that the benefits do not outweigh the detriments when they are secured for unlimited times.
My point was that you don't need patents if copyrights last forever.
I don't understand what you're saying. You don't need patents at all.
And anyway patents just cover "inventions". Infinitely extended copyright plus a large body of work and money to pay lawyers allows you to own all ideas period.
Again, copyright doesn't cover ideas.
Various "similarity tests" can be employed and twisted if one owns a sufficiently large corpus of work.
Similarity is irrelevant if the work wasn't copied. You can produce an identical work to one copyrighted and it's perfectly fine if you came up with that work independently.
There is already a court precedent somewhere that says 4 notes of similarity suffices to establish a work as infringing.
You're either completely wrong about that or you're misinterpreting something.
Also it would appear that Thomas Jefferson at the very least very much intended copyrights to be limited to prevent just such a scenario:
His main argument here is "that the earth belongs in usufruct to the living; that the dead have neither powers nor rights over it." I'm not sure how you're relating those quotes to "just such a scenario". Maybe you're confusing the fact that every copyright is a grant of a monopoly, regardless of the scope of the copyright grant.
Maybe you could provide a reference for that, because I've always been under the impression that this was an urban legend. The constitutional purpose, of course, is "to promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts", not to enhance the public domain.
If copyrights last forever then it is only a matter of time before the right to even have an idea in the first place is concentrated in the hands of the very few. After all, the instant someone does create some "new" work, an existing large copyright holder can always mine his extensive repositories for works resembling the new one and use it a legal bludgeon to steal it.
You're confusing copyrights with patents. Copyrights don't cover ideas, and if you independently come up with something without having copied it from somewhere else, then you are not violating copyright law.
Here's another quote which is a bit more clear IMO.
Copyright infringement is not necessarily wrong, but distributing software without respecting the freedom of the users is necessarily wrong. If we ever need to sue to enforce the GPL, the ethical justification won't be "you disobeyed us" but rather "you are trampling other people's freedom, and we are here to defend it."
The GPL goes above and beyond that, and requires you to redistribute the source code. That is not merely the lack of copyright law.
I agree with you, and this is where I personally part with the views of RMS. Kudos to him for popularizing the copyleft (AFAIK he didn't invent the concept), but I'd rather see software protected by CC-BY-SA, or something even less restrictive.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm not complaining about the good work done by the dedicated volunteers who keep the servers running and write the software. And if I were to suggest that Wikipedia is understaffed and doesn't have adequate hardware resources, I'm not sure where I think the remedy for that would come.
They need to include (small and easily to disable) text ads. Sure, begging for money is raising a lot, but with text ads they could be raising many times that much, and frankly I'd rather look at an ad for something I might actually be interested in than a plea for money.
Plus, ads let businesses deduct their donations as a business expense, as opposed to regular old charity donations which can only be deducted up to 10% of income.
The stock WIkipedian comment on such things is that being GFDL, anyone can mirror Wikipedia and many sites do
Is it really? The stock Wikipedian tends to not like the mirrors. And Wikipedia certainly doesn't make it very easy to legally mirror them.
but I always verify the info with another source or two because people (even the majority) are sometimes wrong.
Not sure how a source or two is going to help if most people are wrong about something, but I agree with you that Wikipedia is cool as long as you take everything with a huge grain of salt. It's kind of like a really cool search engine in a way.
Blatant falsehoods are usually spotted quickly and fixed, at least in my experience.
Depends where they are. I found a few physics pages about a year ago which were filled with references to the "POOP equation". The references had been there for months.
I work on a lot of the political pages that get mucked with a lot.
Those are usually the high trafficked pages, so yeah things get fixed more quickly, unless they're popular myths among Wikipedians. Try reading some of the pages on the GPL for instance. I go back every once in a while and fix it, but it's constantly filled with misnomers and propaganda.
It is a pain though and it only works because so many editors devote so much time to keeping articles accurate.
What's probably worse is that many of the long standing editors overcompensate and will delete many things that are indeed true thinking that they're not. I'm not sure what the sense is in letting anonymous users contribute if you're going to have 100 non-anonymous users each fact checking anything they contribute anyway. Might as well just force the anonymous users to leave a message and let one of the logged in users fix things themselves.
There is no guarantee that an entry is correct at any given time, but by and large corrections are made quickly, and it is very often a useful starting place for doing research or finding answers to questions.
I completely agree there. In fact, I think Wikipedia *usually* shines when it comes to current events and obscure subjects or subjects with multiple points of view. Of course, they kind of totally screwed up in their initial coverage of the Menezes murder, but the vast majority of the media did too.
Well, that's not _quite_ an accurate summation of the deadly force laws extant in Florida. One is permitted to use deadly force to defend life (but not property).
It looks like they've either just changed it or are in the process of it, but at the beginning of 2005 the law was that you had to use "every reasonable means to avoid the danger, including retreat." Ah, here it is, they've changed it effective October 1. But what didn't make sense to me was under Florida law the restrictions on using a handgun were equivalent to the restrictions on displaying them. (This is how I interpret http://licgweb.doacs.state.fl.us/weapons/self_defe nse.html which says "Using or displaying a handgun in any other circumstances could result in your conviction for crimes such as improper exhibition of a firearm, manslaughter, or worse." So if someone threatens you with a knife, but it is reasonable for you to retreat, you can either try to take away the knife or you can run away. You can't shoot them, which is fine as that's a bit excessive, but you can't even take out your gun and repeat your request that he drop the knife.
Yes, retreat is the _first_ thing that a [good] tactical defense course will teach you.
Well, having never taken such a course maybe I just have no clue what I'm talking about, but I would think that there are some cases where it's appropriate to threaten force without necessarily using it. "Never display a handgun to gain "leverage" in an argument. Threatening someone verbally while possessing a handgun, even licensed, will land you in jail for three years." (from the same link) So apparently you can't even *tell* the guy with the knife that you have a gun.
As for the 'theft detectors', I've adopted a policy in the last couple years to simply keep walking. I've yet to be challenged by store employees.
I've done this a bunch of times with the same results. But apparently it's legal for them to actually stop you here in Florida. Anyway, my girlfriend is usually with me when I'm at the store, and even if I keep walking she'll stop, so it kind of defeats the purpose.
Those chains, again, won't make more than a token effort to stop you, lest you sue them if you're truly innocent.
My understanding is that in Florida you can't sue them, even if you're totally innocent, if the alarm goes off.
As I am tall-but-skinny, I can always make the 98-# weakling case when it comes to a determination of whether or not -- in my mind -- I was in fear for my life, which is the current standard in such cases.
Hopefully they won't find this slashdot post and know that it was premeditated.
What? You'd expect a non-standard UPS to be somehow more suitable?
A UPS that is meant to be hooked up to a whole house circuit is more suitable for hooking up to a house circuit than a UPS that is meant to be plugged into the wall. I thought that was kind of obvious.
Do I think the government will drop coverage of people predisposed to cancer? No. What I do think is that they will eventually be persuaded into selling the database to insurance companies which will.
Why, because it's so hard for the insurance company to ask you for a strand of hair? If the insurance companies want your DNA, they're just going to get it from you directly. It makes no sense for them to buy it from the government, especially when the government's database only contains the DNA of a small subset of the population.
And incase you misunderstand the idea behind health insurance, the idea is to spread the risk.
If you really want to spread the risk, don't get health insurance from a company that checks your DNA. Sure, you're going to pay a lot more, but it'll be the same price as the others.
As a relatively healthy, 29 year old, non-smoking, white male, my risk to my insurance company is pretty low. While many of my aged coworkers who's health is declining present more of a loss. The idea is that when I eventually shift into their shoes, there will be enough people like I formerly was to offset the difference.
It sounds like what you're looking for is an investment plan, not an insurance plan. Do you really think you as a 29 year old, non-smoking, white male, should pay as much as an 54 year old, smoking, alcoholic white female? It seems like you're looking for a government program to even things out for everyone, because otherwise what's supposed to be the incentive for a healthy person to pay into health insurance if they have to pay the same costs as someone who is unhealthy? Sure, they might get sick one day, but some people are a lot more likely to get sick than others.
If you want everyone treated fairly, then just have the government provide a single health insurance program to everyone. Then they can force everyone to buy in regardless of their health, at an equal rate.
I typically agree that insurance is a scam. But the alternative is universal healthcare. In which case, the government will deny coverage for predisposed illness.
Why would they do that? The whole point of universal healthcare is that it's universal.
This is kind of a nice idea, but totally impractical to implement fairly.
Perfectly fairly, of course not. The whole point of insurance is you're dealing with uncertainties. But it's more fair to have accurate information than less accurate information.
In the end, it would just be another excuse for insurance companies to fuck over the people on their plans, and for both them and the medical industry to make more money.
It's not like anyone is forcing you to get health insurance. If you don't like it, don't buy it. You can even set up your own health insurance company.
I'm willing to accept the theory that what you are predisposed to and what I am predisposed to will generally even out once you look at everything, and pay the same as you.
Actually, I kind of doubt it. Some people probably have much higher likely medical costs than others. But it sounds like what you want is for everyone in the country to be covered by insurance on an equal basis from the start. I could probably live with that, but it really doesn't have anything to do with DNA.
All it takes is one person with access to the dna database who's willing to give or greedy enough to sale said data to insurance companies.
What would be the point of the company stealing the information from the government when they could just require you to give it to them freely?
You get rejected for health cover because you have a gene giving you a predisposition to cancer.
I don't have health cover, but what does this have to do with the government? You don't think the govt. is going to drop medicare coverage for people predisposed to cancer, do you?
By the way, what the health insurance company is more likely to do is exempt cancer from your coverage, unless of course you're willing to pay specifically for that coverage. I don't see this as a bad thing. If you are predisposed to cancer, then you should pay more for health insurance covering cancer treatment.
You can't get a drivers licence because you have a gene giving you a predisposition to bad eyesight.
Please. They give people drivers' licenses who *have* bad eyesight. It's ridiculous to think they're going to take them away from people who are merely predisposed to getting it.
You can't get a job because you have an X chromosome giving you a predisposition to violence.
Again, you're talking about private industry, not the government.
Get the drift?
No, I don't, not at all. The only example you gave that was even related to the government was the drivers' license one, and it seemed pretty silly to me. If the government really does get that crazy, I don't think details of a few people's DNA is going to matter.
You might as well argue that it's wrong for the DMV to store your driver's license photo, because they might take drivers' licenses away from all black people. Or because health insurance companies might drop people with fair skin who are more likely to develop skin cancer.
Well, I don't have health insurance. But what does the government having your DNA have to do with your health insurance? Are you suggesting that the government is going to drop medicare coverage from people who are predisposed to cancer?
I actually happened to run across this just yesterday, when I was looking up Florida's weapons laws. I found it strange that security guards were required to open carry their weapons but the average citizen was required to conceal them. I always assumed that getting a permit to carry a concealed weapon would be tougher than getting a permit to open carry. But I've lived most of my life in New Jersey, so the whole concept of the government allowing average citizens to exercise their constitutional rights is a bit new to me :).
To be honest, I'm kind of stumped as to how carrying a concealed firearm is going to help you protect yourself when you're not even allowed to take out that gun unless you're being attacked and are unable to run away. At that point it seems like it'd be pretty risky to introduce a gun into the struggle. If you're in the home it's a different story, and if the attacker is actually attacking someone else then the gun might be useful. Anyway, I probably wouldn't be very good at handling a gun personally, so my investigation was mainly just for the sake of knowing the actual laws.
In addition to letting store employees detain suspects upon probable cause, there's another law that says that activation of one of those theft detectors is cause: "The activation of an antishoplifting or inventory control device as a result of a person exiting an establishment or a protected area within an establishment shall constitute reasonable cause for the detention of the person so exiting by the owner or operator of the establishment or by an agent or employee of the owner or operator, provided sufficient notice has been posted to advise the patrons that such a device is being utilized. Each such detention shall be made only in a reasonable manner and only for a reasonable period of time sufficient for any inquiry into the circumstances surrounding the activation of the device." It's all in 812.015(3) of the statutes.
I'm not sure where "here" is
I thought I said it was Florida.
but in most states, it is necessary for a security guard / store employee / whatever to have _proof_ of theft before any detention takes place.
Here in Florida, they need probable cause. "If you should enter a retail establishment where goods are placed on display and for sale, the merchant or the employees may detain you on the premises for a reasonable time for questioning if they have probable cause to believe that you have stolen or have attempted to steal goods for sale." http://library.findlaw.com/1997/Sep/1/130723.html
Just as it is not necessary to let the guy at Best Buy check your receipt.
Unless the guy at Best Buy has probable cause that you stole something. Otherwise, it's false imprisonment and you can sue.
A blockbuster card does not have the clout of infallibility, as the DNA does.
I'm not sure how a Blockbuster card is going to fail. I mean, the employees testify that they saw you in the Blockbuster store getting the Blockbuster card. It *is* your Blockbuster card. Your lawyer probably isn't even going to attempt to refute that.
Jurors know what a card is, and they comprehend very well how such a card can be lost and found. They have no comparable understanding of minute matters, like hairs.
Really? You don't think jurors understand how easy it is to lose a hair?
When you lose the card you know it. You have only one such card, and it is a macroscopic object. When you lose a hair you never know it.
Actually, I have a bunch of Blockbuster cards, and I very well could lose one and not know it. But I really don't see how this matters, because the fact that your hair showed up at the crime scene and was identified as yours tells you right there that you must have lost a hair.
A criminal is not likely to accidentally pick up a card; he either wants to frame someone, or he doesn't, in either case he won't be relying upon a chance occurence. However the criminal can contaminate the crime scene with other people's DNA without him even knowing it, even if he is not bright enough to frame someone intentionally.
Yes, and this happens all the time. And the police know it. And the judges know it. And the lawyers know it. And unless these people are *all* grossly incompetant, the jurors are going to know it too.
The person was thinking of an arrest, not a detention. If you are pulled over for a traffic stop, that's a "Terry Stop", and is a type of detention. But since the detention is of a short duration and is limited in scope it is not considered an arrest. I wouldn't say there are *many* legal ways to detain someone which do not require an arrest. For the police, there's basically just a Terry Stop. In some jurisdictions, including Florida, there are a few other avenues for legal detention for non-police, though. For instance, it's legal here for a security guard of a supermarket to detain someone they suspect of theft.
One cannot tell, from looking at a fingerprint, the owner's gender, age, race, etc.
Well, I don't see how DNA is going to tell you anything about a person's age, but a person's race and gender can generally be figured out just by looking at the person. And in fact, the government already has a database of this for every single person in the US in the census records (well, personally I wrote "human" as my race but most people probably didn't do that).
When one has a DNA sample of someone, one can run it screen it for a number of things beyond just physical characteristics: it can pinpoint you as someone that has a predisposition to some disease, reveal race and ethnic details beyond one's appearance, could even show you have a predisposition to rage and mental illness.
That notion - that the government could have a searchable database of anyone ever brought in to the station with such information - really scares me.
I guess it makes it slightly easier for a corrupt government to for instance wipe out all people with a predisposition to rage (or homosexuality or pedophilia). But then again, once the government has decided to do such a thing, is it really that difficult for them to start taking the DNA samples right then?
About the only person I think would be worse off having such a database would be my insurance company - but that's a different topic.
That one's probably inevitable. Of course, at some point people will have to start getting insurance on the test results themselves.
Couldn't that same argument be used to argue against anything? I mean, you drop your blockbuster card on the ground, right next to that location, someone is murdered. The police arrive, find the blockbuster card, and arrest you for murder. You have no alibi. There is no other evidence. Seventeen blockbuster employees testify in court that the blockbuster card is yours. You can't explain how it got there. There are no other defendants (not that police even looked for them, having you.) You are convicted. Even if somehow you manage to explain the blockbuster card away, or wiggle out on thinness of evidence, you are ruined anyway. None of that could have happened if the police has no way to match the blockbuster card to you.
Stop voting for Democrats and Republicans, for starters. Honestly though, I don't see how this is so bad. It's not good, but I don't really see how the government having your DNA is a bad thing. I've given the IRS my fingerprints. How much worse is DNA? What is the potential harm?
Yeah, like that's going to make a difference. If we could vote on things like this it already would have been implemented years ago.
If you can find a way to make patronage work in the modern world, I'm certain many people would be interested. Until then, I am of the opinion that we should fix what is broken with copyright, not throw it out.
It already does work. Look at the Free Software Foundation. Look at Wikipedia. People are going to create works whether you offer them copyright or not. Yes, these works are still copyrighted, but realistically that copyright is meaningless. The revenues these organizations obtain are based on donations, not licensing agreements. There's no reason to believe that in the absense of copyright law the revenues would go away. In fact, they'd only increase.
Saying the purpose of copyright is not to enlarge the public domain, but to provide incentives for creation/publication is like saying the purpose of an engine is not to move the car but to rotate the crankshaft.
No it's not. It's like saying reason I bought Windows is because I wanted to use an operating system, not because I wanted free software. Copyrighted works are not in the public domain. The purpose of copyright is to provide incentives for works. Yes, those works will eventually be in the public domain, but that's not the purpose.
Madison, Jefferson, Franklin, etc., did not subscribe to the "natural law" theory of copyright, which holds that an author's work "naturally" belongs to him and should therefore be controlled by him.
Nor did I say they did.
No, the authors of the US Constitution understood copyright to be an exchange... a temporary monopoly granted by society in order to ensure the broad distribution of works, in order that the public domain may be enriched.
Well, I suppose if you repeat it enough times you'll believe that it's true.
Then why didn't they last forever from the start? Why are copyrights secured for "a limited time" then?
The theory was that the benefits of copyright outweigh the detriments when they are secured for limited times, but that the benefits do not outweigh the detriments when they are secured for unlimited times.
My point was that you don't need patents if copyrights last forever.
I don't understand what you're saying. You don't need patents at all.
And anyway patents just cover "inventions". Infinitely extended copyright plus a large body of work and money to pay lawyers allows you to own all ideas period.
Again, copyright doesn't cover ideas.
Various "similarity tests" can be employed and twisted if one owns a sufficiently large corpus of work.
Similarity is irrelevant if the work wasn't copied. You can produce an identical work to one copyrighted and it's perfectly fine if you came up with that work independently.
There is already a court precedent somewhere that says 4 notes of similarity suffices to establish a work as infringing.
You're either completely wrong about that or you're misinterpreting something.
Also it would appear that Thomas Jefferson at the very least very much intended copyrights to be limited to prevent just such a scenario:
His main argument here is "that the earth belongs in usufruct to the living; that the dead have neither powers nor rights over it." I'm not sure how you're relating those quotes to "just such a scenario". Maybe you're confusing the fact that every copyright is a grant of a monopoly, regardless of the scope of the copyright grant.
Copyright was intended to do both from the start.
Maybe you could provide a reference for that, because I've always been under the impression that this was an urban legend. The constitutional purpose, of course, is "to promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts", not to enhance the public domain.
If copyrights last forever then it is only a matter of time before the right to even have an idea in the first place is concentrated in the hands of the very few. After all, the instant someone does create some "new" work, an existing large copyright holder can always mine his extensive repositories for works resembling the new one and use it a legal bludgeon to steal it.
You're confusing copyrights with patents. Copyrights don't cover ideas, and if you independently come up with something without having copied it from somewhere else, then you are not violating copyright law.
The purpose of copyright WAS to do both, back when copyright terms were 14 years.
Do you have any references to back up that assertion?
Is eternal copyright and special police powers for creators worth what we get in return?
Personally I'm opposed to all copyright laws, so of course my answer is "no".
Here's another quote which is a bit more clear IMO.
The GPL goes above and beyond that, and requires you to redistribute the source code. That is not merely the lack of copyright law.
I agree with you, and this is where I personally part with the views of RMS. Kudos to him for popularizing the copyleft (AFAIK he didn't invent the concept), but I'd rather see software protected by CC-BY-SA, or something even less restrictive.