Minority Report is based on a 1956 short story of the same name by Philip K. Dick.
Alfed Bester's 1953 novel The Demolished Man was not about potential criminals being arrested, it was about an actual criminal trying to get away from a police force which includes telepaths.
Also note that while Dick's story is set in a pretty thoroughly authoritarian society, in Bester's novel the police have to prove that the criminal committed the crime using actual evidence - they are not permitted to arrest anyone just because a telepath knows him to be guilty.
Anyway, the idea, and even the reality, of pre-emptive arrest is probably nearly as old as government itself. It was pretty popular among European royalty back in the day, for example; the first thing you do when you come into power is lock up anyone you think might rebel. The fact that the idea's been around a while doesn't make me feel any better about today's government putting it into effect in real life.
I believe you have to produce a working prototype in order to patent something. If you can produce a working FTL device you won't have to worry about scrimping for royalties, the Nobel alone should pay for your baby's shoes.
As for curing cancer, there's some prior art there. Cancer is not a disease, it is a general description applicable to lots of them, some of which have been cured. If you find (and can demonstrate) a cure for a previously incurable variety, you can have a patent. That's how pharmaceutical companies make their money.
And there's no obligation for the lawyer to be anything but an advocate for his client
Not true. Lawyers are also officers of the court. They are not allowed to encourage their clients to break the law; thus, IP lawyers might encourage a client to apply for a patent if the issue is in doubt, but they are not permitted to file claims which they know are fraudulent. To do so is a breach of ethics which may be punishable by disbarment.
Yeah, but you wrote 'spelt'. Please, tell me you are trolling. I could only be more ironic if you misspelled 'mispelt'.
spelt {Pronunciation Key (splt)}
v.
A past tense and a past participle of spell.
Spelt is as correct as spelled, even if it is the less common variant these days. Spell is an irregular verb. English has many irregular verbs. This is no more ironic than a black fly in your Chardonnay.
However, your use of "I" rather than "It" in a post criticizing a non-existent spelling error in someone else's post criticizing the spelling errors in a Slashdot article header partakes somewhat of ironicalness...;-)
Now if the number of users go up to 10000 you are saying that you still only have those same 10 people (now 0.1%) looking at the code and none of the new 9900 people are code checkers.
Actually, that comes fairly close to being the case for proprietary software. While I'm sure Microsoft has hired more programmers as their OSs have gained market share, I'm pretty sure the ratio of code checkers to code users has gone way, way down.
My entire post was nothing but an expression of respect. Referring to people by their initials isn't all that uncommon, nor is it normally considered an expression of disrespect; quite often the contrary holds true.
I am certainly not being disrespectful when I refer to RMS, ESR, LL et al. I doubt that any of them would "probably" take offense if I use their initials rather than their full names in a patently respectful comment. Similarly, I also doubt that Judge Kotar-Kotelly is as thin-skinned as all that..
This is a good sign that Kotar-Kotelly isn't afraid to take on the current powers that be. Many people, even ones with good track records, have taken up a don't-rock-the-boat attitude since you know when. It's good to see that it hasn't hit K-K. If she's willing to stand up to the PATRIOT-enabled FBI, it bodes well for her honesty in the Microsoft case.
I don't think the majority of the Linux community are anti-corporate per se, they tend to be anti-corporate-abuse from what I can see. Obviously just about any useful tool can be used for evil as well as good.
The advantage of open source software (including BSD, etc) is that it is apt (or can be made apt) for your purposes as opposed to someone else's, while the advantage of libre software (GPL and other "strong" licenses) is that it's resistant to abuse in certain common ways, albeit sometimes at some cost in flexibility.
Those are the things which make Linux appeal to the rebels out there, and even if one Evil Empire or another adopts it as well, those advantages will still accrue to the Light Side also.
There are a lot of people using UNIX flavors like Solaris at work, but I don't think SUN sells a lot of $995 Sun Blades 100 to them.
I don't think a lot of people use SUN desktops at their workplace; the heavy lifting behind the scenes is done on UNIX maybe, but most office-type work is still done on Windows machines. If the office worker gets used to Linux for word processing, spreadsheets etc. then it will definitely make using Linux at home less of a mystery. Remember, most people still haven't actually seen a Linux desktop.
You do not consider it the same because you probably don't attend theaters often and robbery of material goods affects you more.
Where you got this from I don't know; I go to the theatre pretty often, actually, and I'm hardly ever robbed. The performances at my favorite local theatre are rarely interrupted because there is a no audible alert policy which the management reiterates before each performance, stating that offenders will be ejected without appeal. Don't tell me this kind of policy doesn't work, because I see it in action all the time and it does. It requires that the management take the issue seriously, and the only people who can make that happen are the customers. You know, the ones who actually provide the money that pays for the show.
I don't know what kind of half-assed theatres you patronise, but the ones I go to make serious efforts to ensure that the audience has a positive experience. I have to wonder, have you ever even tried asking for your money back, or even complained to the theatre management? Or did you merely assume that they wouldn't do so? Remember, theatres depend on repeat customers. If it's made apparent to them that they will lose custom unless the no-audible-alert policy is enforced, they will enforce it.
Chances are very good that they will listen to your complaint and take it seriously, and will in fact refund your money if the performance was disrupted. Few of the patrons are likely to abuse the policy, because most people will appreciate the efforts made to please the audience. At the very least, the theatre is going to try to please the majority because they want repeat business!
Try it. Next time a cell phone goes off, complain, and if you don't get satisfaction, ask for a refund. If you don't get one, write to the local paper and any local business organizations the theatre belongs to. Be an active force instead of waiting for the government to take care of every little niggle in your life. Buck the trend of insisting on your personal helplessness at every turn! You'll be amazed how easy it is to actually make a difference, especially when you're dealing with people who want you to give them money.
You face more "public danger" while driving to work in the morning (accidents, fumes, etc..) than you do from my one damn smoke that I may, or may not have in your vicinity.
No doubt they both pale in comparison to the danger of the smoke I've inhaled through my own cigarettes over the years.
So what? How many non-cell phone users die from hearing "Flight of the Bumblebee" in enclosed spaces each year?
I've often wondered why cell phone manufacturers don't allow you to record a short sound clip to use as your "ring"; that way everyone could have their own distinct alert. Of course then you wouldn't get the amusing mass clutch as everyone tries to answer the same sound, but everyone could vie to have the most amusing sound clip.
Hmmm, wait a minute... I'm proposing to give these same idiots who can't turn the ringer off the power to pick the sound it makes... "Is that my phone, or did you fart?"
It would, however, be interesting to see how spammers reacted if such filtering became widespread to the point of effectiveness against them. Spam attached to lists of jokes? Amusing AVIs? "Hey, look at this funny monkey sniffing its own butt! Wouldn't you find it funnier if you had a fantastically large penis?"
Actually, that would be a Good Thing, if it leads to spammers having to go back to some first principles of advertising, viz. you should make your mark want to see your ads.
If, for example, they could make me laugh as hard as your message just did...
(Note to self: Must remember to swallow liquids before opening messages!)
Actually, the scheme I proposed didn't really require any legislation at all, but that's a moot point since it is basically of no real help anyway!:-S
You're right that the jurisdictional issue is a big barrier to a legislative solution, making it impossible to institute a licensing scheme, for instance. There are some solutions which rely only on controlling systems within the country, but what they all have in common is that the cure is worse than the disease.
For example, putting a postage rate on each email... I can't see any way of restricting it to only volume mailers without hitting legitimate lists. Even if you could, the spammer could just run software which automatically sets up a slew of free email accounts and sends a few from each one; I'll bet some of them already do that.
how do you know what is spam to some people isn't useful to others? And who gets to decide?
Yes, I see your point; basically you have to hand the decision over to someone else. Perhaps private companies could compete with spamlists and you could go with the one that you trusted, which avoids the need for legislation completely.
Even so, it's not a complete solution since the spamlists will always be playing catch-up, and the only way to know if you agree with their latest choices is to check (defeating the purpose), and there'd be endless suing of the spamlisters by people saying, "But I'm not a spammer, and this isn't my nose, it's a false one!"
Bah, another beautiful idea slain by closer logical examination.:-( Back to the drawing board! So far the best idea I've seen was the filtering mechanism proposed by Paul Graham a short time ago. I'd love to give it a try, anyway, whenever it becomes generally available.
Other immoral, anti-social functions besides this exist--for example, stealing.
Which is precisely why I don't want the courts to be tied up with more people trying to argue their way out of a fine, instead of getting on with more important cases. I do not consider a thief robbing me to be on the same level as an imbecile failing to turn off a cell phone. In the latter case I can make a difference more directly without calling on the force of government, simply by patronizing theatres which have a no-audible-alert policy, and asking the theatre for my money back if they fail to enforce it.
It wouldnt take many people doing that before the theatres started seriously throwing the bums out for disrupting the performance. Meanwhile cases of theft will be being dealt with by a fractionally less harried and overworked legal system.
No, I wasn't talking about free speech. If I had been, I'd have been a heck of a lot more vehement, since that's a subject very near and dear to my heart. Letting your phone disrupt a public performance can't be considered free speech without distorting the concept more than is useful.
I just don't like excessive legislation. There is a certain amount of legislation which is necessary to make society function well; there is also a certain amount beyond which society functions less well. The exact points at which the two boundaries occur evolves with society, but I think we're well past the excess-law limit for our present society now. Adding new laws for trivial purposes like this only makes a bad situation worse.
It should be possible for any reasonable educated adult to stay within the law under most circumstances; having to hire a specialist to interpret the law for you should be a rare occasion. If it were so, perhaps lawyers would be respected more than resented, and it would be possible for our legislative and judicial systems to keep up with the important cases rather than processing unimportant trivialities.
Just where the line between trivial and important should be drawn is open to debate, of course, but when we haven't even worked out the legal implementation of fundamental issues like free speech or the appropriate limits of intellectual property tools, whether people get annoyed in theatres by morons without manners doesn't even blip the radar as far as I'm concerned. It's not that it isn't important to the theatre or the theatre-goers, just that it doesn't rise to the level of requiring the force of law, and the machineries of the law would be better directed at other targets in my opinion.
Eventually we're likely to get some kind of legislation relating to spam. I believe in minimalist law, and this is one way it could be done while interfering as little as possible with free speech, nonabusive email marketing and other not so bad ideas that spammers tend to hide behind.
First, have a couple of universally available databases, one of email addresses which have expressed a wish not to receive any automated email, and another of sources which have been shown to violate this list.
If your email address is in the first database (and only you can put it there), your ISPs email system could be set to exclude any mail from the second list without affecting common carrier status.
The object is equivalent to blocking telemarketing numbers, but to be effective the consumer should be able to avoid having to block those spam sources one by one.
That's the basic idea. I'm sure the/. crowd can come up with a couple of dozen refinements in as many minutes.
Banning smoking in public places falls under the rubric of preventing a public danger. It's not merely obnoxious, it is a health hazard. While I didn't see a lot of purely non-smoking restaurants or bars prior to the rash of legislation, many (most) provided a non-smoking section simply because it was good business practice.
Banning young children from certain performances is already done in some theatres, for some performances. Sometimes this is because the performance is unsuitable for children, but often it is specifically to avoid possible disruptions. This happens even more often with certain kinds of musical performances.
I suspect that the owners of those theatres are as much in their right minds as any who do allow children; in many cases they are the same venues, applying different rules to different performances. In the former case they estimate that they please their intended audience better by excluding children, in the latter by including them. There's no law involved or needed in either case.
Slashdot Mirror
Alfed Bester's 1953 novel The Demolished Man was not about potential criminals being arrested, it was about an actual criminal trying to get away from a police force which includes telepaths.
Also note that while Dick's story is set in a pretty thoroughly authoritarian society, in Bester's novel the police have to prove that the criminal committed the crime using actual evidence - they are not permitted to arrest anyone just because a telepath knows him to be guilty.
Anyway, the idea, and even the reality, of pre-emptive arrest is probably nearly as old as government itself. It was pretty popular among European royalty back in the day, for example; the first thing you do when you come into power is lock up anyone you think might rebel. The fact that the idea's been around a while doesn't make me feel any better about today's government putting it into effect in real life.
"Put everything on it."
(Sorry Bob, couldn't resist!)
As for curing cancer, there's some prior art there. Cancer is not a disease, it is a general description applicable to lots of them, some of which have been cured. If you find (and can demonstrate) a cure for a previously incurable variety, you can have a patent. That's how pharmaceutical companies make their money.
Not true. Lawyers are also officers of the court. They are not allowed to encourage their clients to break the law; thus, IP lawyers might encourage a client to apply for a patent if the issue is in doubt, but they are not permitted to file claims which they know are fraudulent. To do so is a breach of ethics which may be punishable by disbarment.
spelt {Pronunciation Key (splt)} v. A past tense and a past participle of spell.
Spelt is as correct as spelled, even if it is the less common variant these days. Spell is an irregular verb. English has many irregular verbs. This is no more ironic than a black fly in your Chardonnay.
However, your use of "I" rather than "It" in a post criticizing a non-existent spelling error in someone else's post criticizing the spelling errors in a Slashdot article header partakes somewhat of ironicalness... ;-)
Actually, that comes fairly close to being the case for proprietary software. While I'm sure Microsoft has hired more programmers as their OSs have gained market share, I'm pretty sure the ratio of code checkers to code users has gone way, way down.
*Can hardly believe I spelled this right on the first try. Go me!
So I take it this is your second try?
s/concientious/conscientious
I am certainly not being disrespectful when I refer to RMS, ESR, LL et al. I doubt that any of them would "probably" take offense if I use their initials rather than their full names in a patently respectful comment. Similarly, I also doubt that Judge Kotar-Kotelly is as thin-skinned as all that..
This is a good sign that Kotar-Kotelly isn't afraid to take on the current powers that be. Many people, even ones with good track records, have taken up a don't-rock-the-boat attitude since you know when. It's good to see that it hasn't hit K-K. If she's willing to stand up to the PATRIOT-enabled FBI, it bodes well for her honesty in the Microsoft case.
It seemed to be keeping time to "blue Suede Shoes" too, but that's probably just a coincidence. Probably...
I don't think the majority of the Linux community are anti-corporate per se, they tend to be anti-corporate-abuse from what I can see. Obviously just about any useful tool can be used for evil as well as good.
The advantage of open source software (including BSD, etc) is that it is apt (or can be made apt) for your purposes as opposed to someone else's, while the advantage of libre software (GPL and other "strong" licenses) is that it's resistant to abuse in certain common ways, albeit sometimes at some cost in flexibility.
Those are the things which make Linux appeal to the rebels out there, and even if one Evil Empire or another adopts it as well, those advantages will still accrue to the Light Side also.
I don't think a lot of people use SUN desktops at their workplace; the heavy lifting behind the scenes is done on UNIX maybe, but most office-type work is still done on Windows machines. If the office worker gets used to Linux for word processing, spreadsheets etc. then it will definitely make using Linux at home less of a mystery. Remember, most people still haven't actually seen a Linux desktop.
Where you got this from I don't know; I go to the theatre pretty often, actually, and I'm hardly ever robbed. The performances at my favorite local theatre are rarely interrupted because there is a no audible alert policy which the management reiterates before each performance, stating that offenders will be ejected without appeal. Don't tell me this kind of policy doesn't work, because I see it in action all the time and it does. It requires that the management take the issue seriously, and the only people who can make that happen are the customers. You know, the ones who actually provide the money that pays for the show.
I don't know what kind of half-assed theatres you patronise, but the ones I go to make serious efforts to ensure that the audience has a positive experience. I have to wonder, have you ever even tried asking for your money back, or even complained to the theatre management? Or did you merely assume that they wouldn't do so? Remember, theatres depend on repeat customers. If it's made apparent to them that they will lose custom unless the no-audible-alert policy is enforced, they will enforce it.
Chances are very good that they will listen to your complaint and take it seriously, and will in fact refund your money if the performance was disrupted. Few of the patrons are likely to abuse the policy, because most people will appreciate the efforts made to please the audience. At the very least, the theatre is going to try to please the majority because they want repeat business!
Try it. Next time a cell phone goes off, complain, and if you don't get satisfaction, ask for a refund. If you don't get one, write to the local paper and any local business organizations the theatre belongs to. Be an active force instead of waiting for the government to take care of every little niggle in your life. Buck the trend of insisting on your personal helplessness at every turn! You'll be amazed how easy it is to actually make a difference, especially when you're dealing with people who want you to give them money.
No doubt they both pale in comparison to the danger of the smoke I've inhaled through my own cigarettes over the years.
So what? How many non-cell phone users die from hearing "Flight of the Bumblebee" in enclosed spaces each year?
Hmmm, wait a minute... I'm proposing to give these same idiots who can't turn the ringer off the power to pick the sound it makes... "Is that my phone, or did you fart?"
Actually, that would be a Good Thing, if it leads to spammers having to go back to some first principles of advertising, viz. you should make your mark want to see your ads. If, for example, they could make me laugh as hard as your message just did... (Note to self: Must remember to swallow liquids before opening messages!)
You're right that the jurisdictional issue is a big barrier to a legislative solution, making it impossible to institute a licensing scheme, for instance. There are some solutions which rely only on controlling systems within the country, but what they all have in common is that the cure is worse than the disease.
For example, putting a postage rate on each email... I can't see any way of restricting it to only volume mailers without hitting legitimate lists. Even if you could, the spammer could just run software which automatically sets up a slew of free email accounts and sends a few from each one; I'll bet some of them already do that.
Well, that wouldn't matter since your spam would be blocked at my ISP, which doesn't care whether your country cares or not... ;-)
There are other issues with the idea, though, as Unfallen points out above. It's a tough problem.
Yes, I see your point; basically you have to hand the decision over to someone else. Perhaps private companies could compete with spamlists and you could go with the one that you trusted, which avoids the need for legislation completely.
Even so, it's not a complete solution since the spamlists will always be playing catch-up, and the only way to know if you agree with their latest choices is to check (defeating the purpose), and there'd be endless suing of the spamlisters by people saying, "But I'm not a spammer, and this isn't my nose, it's a false one!"
Bah, another beautiful idea slain by closer logical examination. :-( Back to the drawing board! So far the best idea I've seen was the filtering mechanism proposed by Paul Graham a short time ago. I'd love to give it a try, anyway, whenever it becomes generally available.
If either one of those can be made to work inside the theatre and only inside the theatre, I'd say we had a winner! :-)
Which is precisely why I don't want the courts to be tied up with more people trying to argue their way out of a fine, instead of getting on with more important cases. I do not consider a thief robbing me to be on the same level as an imbecile failing to turn off a cell phone. In the latter case I can make a difference more directly without calling on the force of government, simply by patronizing theatres which have a no-audible-alert policy, and asking the theatre for my money back if they fail to enforce it.
It wouldnt take many people doing that before the theatres started seriously throwing the bums out for disrupting the performance. Meanwhile cases of theft will be being dealt with by a fractionally less harried and overworked legal system.
I just don't like excessive legislation. There is a certain amount of legislation which is necessary to make society function well; there is also a certain amount beyond which society functions less well. The exact points at which the two boundaries occur evolves with society, but I think we're well past the excess-law limit for our present society now. Adding new laws for trivial purposes like this only makes a bad situation worse.
It should be possible for any reasonable educated adult to stay within the law under most circumstances; having to hire a specialist to interpret the law for you should be a rare occasion. If it were so, perhaps lawyers would be respected more than resented, and it would be possible for our legislative and judicial systems to keep up with the important cases rather than processing unimportant trivialities.
Just where the line between trivial and important should be drawn is open to debate, of course, but when we haven't even worked out the legal implementation of fundamental issues like free speech or the appropriate limits of intellectual property tools, whether people get annoyed in theatres by morons without manners doesn't even blip the radar as far as I'm concerned. It's not that it isn't important to the theatre or the theatre-goers, just that it doesn't rise to the level of requiring the force of law, and the machineries of the law would be better directed at other targets in my opinion.
First, have a couple of universally available databases, one of email addresses which have expressed a wish not to receive any automated email, and another of sources which have been shown to violate this list.
If your email address is in the first database (and only you can put it there), your ISPs email system could be set to exclude any mail from the second list without affecting common carrier status.
The object is equivalent to blocking telemarketing numbers, but to be effective the consumer should be able to avoid having to block those spam sources one by one.
That's the basic idea. I'm sure the /. crowd can come up with a couple of dozen refinements in as many minutes.
Banning young children from certain performances is already done in some theatres, for some performances. Sometimes this is because the performance is unsuitable for children, but often it is specifically to avoid possible disruptions. This happens even more often with certain kinds of musical performances.
I suspect that the owners of those theatres are as much in their right minds as any who do allow children; in many cases they are the same venues, applying different rules to different performances. In the former case they estimate that they please their intended audience better by excluding children, in the latter by including them. There's no law involved or needed in either case.