I still hate that answer. What company ISN'T a solutions company. That is just a chicken-out answer for- "I dunno- whatever will make us money is what we'll try to do".
But it's mostly true that companies will do whatever they think they can to earn more money. For instance, when you think about where Microsoft was 5 years ago, did you have any reason to believe it was going to be a major player in video game consoles?
This has absolutely nothing to do with corporate personhood.
Think of this another way: Say a US agency (which can legally be only the FBI) wants to intercept a US citizen's phone calls. If they do this legitimately, they have to gather evidence enough to create probable cause, get it to a judge to approve a warrant, and then go to AT&T to intercept the calls. However, if they're willing to break the rules, they can have AT&T just intercept everything and send it to them, grant AT&T immunity from being investigated for wiretapping, and keep everything classified so that nobody can actually bring the issue to court.
They could do this whether or not AT&T had the free speech rights of a person, because this is all about doing things and *not* talking about it.
"Fascism should rightly be called Corporatism, as it is the merger of corporate and government power." -Benito Mussolini
What we currently have is corporations acting as arms of the government, and government acting as an arm of corporations, to the point where they aren't very distinguishable.
Which is nonsense. Anyone can already pay anyone else to vote for anyone else. Always could.
Try this scenario out for size: A SuperPAC supporting Smith sets up a program in which all people who vote for Smith get $100.
If there's a truly secret ballot, with no voter-verifiable trail whatsoever, then I can tell the SuperPAC I voted for Smith, collect my $100, and actually vote for Jones. If there is no secret ballot, if there's any way whatsoever to figure out after the fact whether I voted for Smith or not, then I can't do that. It doesn't matter if you employ cell phones, encryption that would make Bruce Schneier proud, physical dongles, or some sort of security tool that hasn't been invented yet - if I can demonstrate that I voted a particular way to myself, then I can demonstrate the same thing to somebody working for the Smith SuperPAC (the Smith SuperPAC employee watches me do whatever you were planning on doing to allow me to remotely verify my vote).
Civilized countries already know how to do voting properly. It goes something like this: 1. International observers, representatives of opposing parties / factions verify that the ballot box is empty, and securely locked. 2. Voter shows up at the polls. Voter identifies themselves in a way that convinces the poll workers that they are a citizen voting in the correct district. Poll worker also checks for a mark that would indicate that the voter already voted, and turns away anybody with that mark. Party representatives ensure that nobody is inappropriately turned away. 3. Voter signs for and receives a physical ballot, and an empty (verified by the party representatives) container to hide the physical ballot in temporarily (e.g. an envelope for a paper ballot). This physical ballot contains clear instructions on how to mark votes, and no identifying information as to the voter casting the vote. 4. Voter take the physical ballot to a private location, and then marks the ballot with their preferences. 5. Voter places the ballot in the container, and walks back to the ballot box. 6. Voter moves the ballot from the container to the ballot box. If double-voting is a concern, the party representatives could check things like the weight of the container. 7. Voter receives a mark, such as purple ink on a finger, to indicate that they've already voted and should not be allowed to vote again. 8. Ballot box(es) remains under the watchful eye of multiple observers throughout the day. 9. When the polls close and the last vote is cast, counters (observed by party representatives) open the box, and count the physical ballots in full view of everybody. 10. Counted ballots go into another secured box, and are transported (again, with multiple observers from opposing factions) to an appropriate archive for future verification.
I'm sick to death of seeing knuckle dragging Neanderthals (who have voted the way their television told them to) have as much say as myself (if I don't understand what the vote is on, I'll make sure I read up on it).
There are a bunch of flaws with this sort of thinking:
* If your sources are not providing useful unbiased expertise on the subject, then your vote is no smarter than the "knuckle-dragging Neanderthals". For instance, if the main issue is tax policy, you'll get wildly different answers depending on whether you check with the Tax Policy Center, Americans for Tax Reform, FairTax.org, or the Cato Institute.
* If it's an issue like "Should we approve this school tax levy?", checking the sources won't help you make several value judgements (Should there be a well-funded public education system? Does the improvement in home values that comes from having a good school district outweigh the cost of the higher tax? What effects, if any, will the tax change have on local businesses?)
* For candidates rather than ballot issues, you may find yourself in the position of "I agree with Smith because of ABC, but disagree with him about DEF, while I like Jones' position on GHI but dislike JKL." Again, you're making value judgments which have nothing to do with level of education or research.
You must understand that in the United States, elections are so corrupt that Fidel Castro once offered to send Cuban election observers to Florida. Proof the old man has a sense of humor!
I'd argue that it's a fundamentally bad idea, for reasons which have absolutely nothing to do with technology.
It's very simple: If you go to a polling place, you are in a situation where you can be observed by poll workers, who will notice things like somebody standing over your shoulder with either a gun or $10 to get you to vote the way that somebody wants you to. Whereas if you can vote anywhere, it's quite possible for an organization to do those sorts of things.
The same arguments also apply to voting by mail, or over the phone, or absentee ballots. For instance, it was not uncommon for political parties to stop by my grandmother's nursing home to help the residents vote, helpfully filling it out for the voter (including checking the boxes for their preferred candidates).
Personally I think it's the lack of consequences that entertainment-based violence offers.
I'm going to have to disagree with you there: Historically, there were gladiator games and Mayan ball court games with very real risks to the players. Even the modern somewhat-less-violent versions (full-contact sports like football, UFC, boxing, WWE) has significant consequences to the participants in the form of concussions, broken limbs, problems related to steroid use, and shorter life spans. And then there's the people who seem to treat real warfare casually and as entertainment (who are never the people actually fighting it).
Humans do seem to accept violence that risks other people's lives as entertainment.
Yeah, that would almost be as silly as building your killbots with a pre-set kill limit, so you could defeat them by sending wave after wave of your own men at them.
You're coming as close as you can to building Linux on a bare machine without manually inputing machine code - the purpose of the host machine is to give you things like:
* a running kernel
* a shell
* a C compiler
* a linker
* The standard C libraries
* Some very basic text processing tools, like awk and sed
* A way to download the source code
* A way to set up a file system on the disk IIRC, Linus Torvalds used an existing Unix for most of this when he was first writing Linux.
The first steps involve setting up a completely empty partition, then compiling the C library (glibc), linker (binutils), C compiler (gcc), a shell (bash), and a few other tools. Then you chroot onto the partition you just set up and work in your chroot jail, with the only dependency on the original distro being the running kernel. Once you get to the point of having a bootable system, you leave the original distro completely behind.
There's something missing from your prescription: Ensuring that the new laws that get passed actually get enforced.
That is unfortunately not a minor issue. For instance, Massey Coal has routinely violated laws on mine safety for decades, and donated heavily to the campaigns of the state prosecutors and judges to prevent those laws from ever being enforced - it took the bad press of the Upper Big Branch deaths to put the CEO (who had specifically told his subordinates to break the law) on trial. Similarly, Goldman Sachs probably (although they've never admitted it in court, they're willing to settle the case) committed fraud worth billions, and is going to be let off with paying a fine that's a fraction of the revenue they received for the fraud. And Dick Cheney told the world he committed war crimes (specifically, he ordered torture of prisoners, using the definitions of torture the US used after WW II) on national television, and is still free.
Welcome to the future, brought to you by free trade agreements and completely intended consequences.
FTFY.
Arguments in favor of completely removing all tariffs on Chinese imports occurred in the 1980's and were passed in the 1990's. Then Secretary of the Treasury Larry Summers was giving talks about how globalization ought to be applauded because it made things more efficient (i.e. cheaper) and how it would ultimately benefit Americans because they could pay 15 cents for stuff at Walmart that used to cost 85 cents at the local general store. Both parties were all in favor of increasing the number of available H1B visas, and for making the process convoluted enough that large American firms would have the "efficiency" of hiring people who couldn't make a fuss about low pay or working conditions without risking getting deported, while the smaller firms couldn't jump through the necessary hoops.
This wasn't an accident or an unintended consequence - it was the direct and stated goal of the economic policies of George HW Bush, Bill Clinton, George W Bush, and Barack Obama.
However, he continued to vote for funding it as Senator. Dennis Kucinich and Ron Paul both regularly opposed war funding measures in the House, which was one major reason why Kucinich accurately argued that he was actually the only anti-war candidate running for the Democratic nomination in 2008.
Actually, according to the most recent census, about 80% of Americans live in or near a major city. Now, obviously, the remaining 20% is still a lot of people, but doing something about city and suburban transportation would make a big difference overall.
In the same universe where Obama was solely responsible for:
* Invading Iraq and Afghanistan (he voted for it as senator, but so did almost everyone else)
* Causing the financial crisis (he wasn't in the senate when most of the deregulation occurred that caused the problems)
* Allowing illegal immigrants to take over the country (actually, he's deported more illegal immigrants than any other president)
* Taking away your guns (actually, the only gun-related legislation he passed made it legal to carry guns in national parks)
* Massive increases in federal spending (the food stamps and unemployment spending were just the Obama administration following pre-existing law)
But if you listen to the Republican debates at all, you'll find that these are the kinds of things a lot of that party really believe.
You're reasoning from a false premise, namely that gas taxes pay for non-transportation-related items. See Reason magazine's article on this exact issue, which states, among other things:
Myth 1: Highways and roads pay for themselves thanks to gasoline taxes and other charges to motorists. Fact 1: They don’t. Gas taxes and other highway user fees pay less today than ever before.
It seems like we're stuck in a vicious circle: The public transit system sucks, so anybody who can afford to not use it doesn't use it, so they don't care about funding it, so they don't approve funding for it, so it sucks more.
What's the challenge, you ask? Write a completely innocuous story using as many of the words as possible, like this:
"So I recall driving home down the interstate with a box full of Kahlua Mudslide in the trunk, but there was so much sleet that that I started sliding around a bit. But I wanted to get home so I could work on recruitment for my startup company, so I kept driving right through the blizzard. I'd grown up in cold weather, but I didn't expect a large brown animal to burst from the forest border right onto the road! Although I tried to slam on my brakes, I hit the moose and slid right into a ditch. Thanks to the erosion, my car lodged on a rock rather than falling down into the river, but even so I decided an evacuation was in order. I stepped outside, and realized if I wasn't careful I might die of exposure. So I struggled up off the side of the ditch, hoping to find some aid, and sat huddled on the side of the road, with my cell phone out of power, checking my watch to see how much longer I might have to live, when a road work gang showed up and stopped. I breathed a sigh of relief, and got into their truck, ignoring any bacteria or cold virus I might pick up in the process. The whole thing seemed almost like a plot to a soap opera or something."
(Really, NSA, I don't wish any kind of harm to the United States, I'm just proving a point)
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I still hate that answer. What company ISN'T a solutions company. That is just a chicken-out answer for- "I dunno- whatever will make us money is what we'll try to do".
But it's mostly true that companies will do whatever they think they can to earn more money. For instance, when you think about where Microsoft was 5 years ago, did you have any reason to believe it was going to be a major player in video game consoles?
This has absolutely nothing to do with corporate personhood.
Think of this another way: Say a US agency (which can legally be only the FBI) wants to intercept a US citizen's phone calls. If they do this legitimately, they have to gather evidence enough to create probable cause, get it to a judge to approve a warrant, and then go to AT&T to intercept the calls. However, if they're willing to break the rules, they can have AT&T just intercept everything and send it to them, grant AT&T immunity from being investigated for wiretapping, and keep everything classified so that nobody can actually bring the issue to court.
They could do this whether or not AT&T had the free speech rights of a person, because this is all about doing things and *not* talking about it.
"Fascism should rightly be called Corporatism, as it is the merger of corporate and government power." -Benito Mussolini
What we currently have is corporations acting as arms of the government, and government acting as an arm of corporations, to the point where they aren't very distinguishable.
Which is nonsense. Anyone can already pay anyone else to vote for anyone else. Always could.
Try this scenario out for size:
A SuperPAC supporting Smith sets up a program in which all people who vote for Smith get $100.
If there's a truly secret ballot, with no voter-verifiable trail whatsoever, then I can tell the SuperPAC I voted for Smith, collect my $100, and actually vote for Jones. If there is no secret ballot, if there's any way whatsoever to figure out after the fact whether I voted for Smith or not, then I can't do that. It doesn't matter if you employ cell phones, encryption that would make Bruce Schneier proud, physical dongles, or some sort of security tool that hasn't been invented yet - if I can demonstrate that I voted a particular way to myself, then I can demonstrate the same thing to somebody working for the Smith SuperPAC (the Smith SuperPAC employee watches me do whatever you were planning on doing to allow me to remotely verify my vote).
Civilized countries already know how to do voting properly. It goes something like this:
1. International observers, representatives of opposing parties / factions verify that the ballot box is empty, and securely locked.
2. Voter shows up at the polls. Voter identifies themselves in a way that convinces the poll workers that they are a citizen voting in the correct district. Poll worker also checks for a mark that would indicate that the voter already voted, and turns away anybody with that mark. Party representatives ensure that nobody is inappropriately turned away.
3. Voter signs for and receives a physical ballot, and an empty (verified by the party representatives) container to hide the physical ballot in temporarily (e.g. an envelope for a paper ballot). This physical ballot contains clear instructions on how to mark votes, and no identifying information as to the voter casting the vote.
4. Voter take the physical ballot to a private location, and then marks the ballot with their preferences.
5. Voter places the ballot in the container, and walks back to the ballot box.
6. Voter moves the ballot from the container to the ballot box. If double-voting is a concern, the party representatives could check things like the weight of the container.
7. Voter receives a mark, such as purple ink on a finger, to indicate that they've already voted and should not be allowed to vote again.
8. Ballot box(es) remains under the watchful eye of multiple observers throughout the day.
9. When the polls close and the last vote is cast, counters (observed by party representatives) open the box, and count the physical ballots in full view of everybody.
10. Counted ballots go into another secured box, and are transported (again, with multiple observers from opposing factions) to an appropriate archive for future verification.
It's just a precaution, in case we meet the aliens. You don't want to alienate the aliens at your first alien encounter.
No, it's just a precaution in case they meet Congress. You don't want to be conned by Congress at your first Congress encounter.
(Oh, wait, that's really the same thing as what you said)
I'm sick to death of seeing knuckle dragging Neanderthals (who have voted the way their television told them to) have as much say as myself (if I don't understand what the vote is on, I'll make sure I read up on it).
There are a bunch of flaws with this sort of thinking:
* If your sources are not providing useful unbiased expertise on the subject, then your vote is no smarter than the "knuckle-dragging Neanderthals". For instance, if the main issue is tax policy, you'll get wildly different answers depending on whether you check with the Tax Policy Center, Americans for Tax Reform, FairTax.org, or the Cato Institute.
* If it's an issue like "Should we approve this school tax levy?", checking the sources won't help you make several value judgements (Should there be a well-funded public education system? Does the improvement in home values that comes from having a good school district outweigh the cost of the higher tax? What effects, if any, will the tax change have on local businesses?)
* For candidates rather than ballot issues, you may find yourself in the position of "I agree with Smith because of ABC, but disagree with him about DEF, while I like Jones' position on GHI but dislike JKL." Again, you're making value judgments which have nothing to do with level of education or research.
You must understand that in the United States, elections are so corrupt that Fidel Castro once offered to send Cuban election observers to Florida. Proof the old man has a sense of humor!
I'd argue that it's a fundamentally bad idea, for reasons which have absolutely nothing to do with technology.
It's very simple: If you go to a polling place, you are in a situation where you can be observed by poll workers, who will notice things like somebody standing over your shoulder with either a gun or $10 to get you to vote the way that somebody wants you to. Whereas if you can vote anywhere, it's quite possible for an organization to do those sorts of things.
The same arguments also apply to voting by mail, or over the phone, or absentee ballots. For instance, it was not uncommon for political parties to stop by my grandmother's nursing home to help the residents vote, helpfully filling it out for the voter (including checking the boxes for their preferred candidates).
Well, if you're so smart, when did Khan Noonien Singh show up?
A new documentary on the life of Mitt Romney.
Personally I think it's the lack of consequences that entertainment-based violence offers.
I'm going to have to disagree with you there: Historically, there were gladiator games and Mayan ball court games with very real risks to the players. Even the modern somewhat-less-violent versions (full-contact sports like football, UFC, boxing, WWE) has significant consequences to the participants in the form of concussions, broken limbs, problems related to steroid use, and shorter life spans. And then there's the people who seem to treat real warfare casually and as entertainment (who are never the people actually fighting it).
Humans do seem to accept violence that risks other people's lives as entertainment.
Yeah, that would almost be as silly as building your killbots with a pre-set kill limit, so you could defeat them by sending wave after wave of your own men at them.
You're coming as close as you can to building Linux on a bare machine without manually inputing machine code - the purpose of the host machine is to give you things like:
* a running kernel
* a shell
* a C compiler
* a linker
* The standard C libraries
* Some very basic text processing tools, like awk and sed
* A way to download the source code
* A way to set up a file system on the disk
IIRC, Linus Torvalds used an existing Unix for most of this when he was first writing Linux.
The first steps involve setting up a completely empty partition, then compiling the C library (glibc), linker (binutils), C compiler (gcc), a shell (bash), and a few other tools. Then you chroot onto the partition you just set up and work in your chroot jail, with the only dependency on the original distro being the running kernel. Once you get to the point of having a bootable system, you leave the original distro completely behind.
LFS can typically be built from any Linux host system - a Knoppix CD or a liveCD for any other distro would probably work.
Or you could just check the host requirements.
There's something missing from your prescription: Ensuring that the new laws that get passed actually get enforced.
That is unfortunately not a minor issue. For instance, Massey Coal has routinely violated laws on mine safety for decades, and donated heavily to the campaigns of the state prosecutors and judges to prevent those laws from ever being enforced - it took the bad press of the Upper Big Branch deaths to put the CEO (who had specifically told his subordinates to break the law) on trial. Similarly, Goldman Sachs probably (although they've never admitted it in court, they're willing to settle the case) committed fraud worth billions, and is going to be let off with paying a fine that's a fraction of the revenue they received for the fraud. And Dick Cheney told the world he committed war crimes (specifically, he ordered torture of prisoners, using the definitions of torture the US used after WW II) on national television, and is still free.
Like that would ever happen: There's no way that 2 senior partners would interrupt their golf game to handle a simple C&D.
Welcome to the future, brought to you by free trade agreements and completely intended consequences.
FTFY.
Arguments in favor of completely removing all tariffs on Chinese imports occurred in the 1980's and were passed in the 1990's. Then Secretary of the Treasury Larry Summers was giving talks about how globalization ought to be applauded because it made things more efficient (i.e. cheaper) and how it would ultimately benefit Americans because they could pay 15 cents for stuff at Walmart that used to cost 85 cents at the local general store. Both parties were all in favor of increasing the number of available H1B visas, and for making the process convoluted enough that large American firms would have the "efficiency" of hiring people who couldn't make a fuss about low pay or working conditions without risking getting deported, while the smaller firms couldn't jump through the necessary hoops.
This wasn't an accident or an unintended consequence - it was the direct and stated goal of the economic policies of George HW Bush, Bill Clinton, George W Bush, and Barack Obama.
Also, I love it when he gets blamed for the bank bailout.
Actually, he supported that - that particular giveaway was bipartisan. There are very few in Congress who will buck the big banks.
However, he continued to vote for funding it as Senator. Dennis Kucinich and Ron Paul both regularly opposed war funding measures in the House, which was one major reason why Kucinich accurately argued that he was actually the only anti-war candidate running for the Democratic nomination in 2008.
Want to disrupt some boring political speech?
the vast amount of Ameicans don't live in cities.
Actually, according to the most recent census, about 80% of Americans live in or near a major city. Now, obviously, the remaining 20% is still a lot of people, but doing something about city and suburban transportation would make a big difference overall.
In the same universe where Obama was solely responsible for:
* Invading Iraq and Afghanistan (he voted for it as senator, but so did almost everyone else)
* Causing the financial crisis (he wasn't in the senate when most of the deregulation occurred that caused the problems)
* Allowing illegal immigrants to take over the country (actually, he's deported more illegal immigrants than any other president)
* Taking away your guns (actually, the only gun-related legislation he passed made it legal to carry guns in national parks)
* Massive increases in federal spending (the food stamps and unemployment spending were just the Obama administration following pre-existing law)
But if you listen to the Republican debates at all, you'll find that these are the kinds of things a lot of that party really believe.
You're reasoning from a false premise, namely that gas taxes pay for non-transportation-related items. See Reason magazine's article on this exact issue, which states, among other things:
Myth 1: Highways and roads pay for themselves thanks to gasoline taxes and other charges to motorists.
Fact 1: They don’t. Gas taxes and other highway user fees pay less today than ever before.
It seems like we're stuck in a vicious circle: The public transit system sucks, so anybody who can afford to not use it doesn't use it, so they don't care about funding it, so they don't approve funding for it, so it sucks more.
What's the challenge, you ask? Write a completely innocuous story using as many of the words as possible, like this:
"So I recall driving home down the interstate with a box full of Kahlua Mudslide in the trunk, but there was so much sleet that that I started sliding around a bit. But I wanted to get home so I could work on recruitment for my startup company, so I kept driving right through the blizzard. I'd grown up in cold weather, but I didn't expect a large brown animal to burst from the forest border right onto the road! Although I tried to slam on my brakes, I hit the moose and slid right into a ditch. Thanks to the erosion, my car lodged on a rock rather than falling down into the river, but even so I decided an evacuation was in order. I stepped outside, and realized if I wasn't careful I might die of exposure. So I struggled up off the side of the ditch, hoping to find some aid, and sat huddled on the side of the road, with my cell phone out of power, checking my watch to see how much longer I might have to live, when a road work gang showed up and stopped. I breathed a sigh of relief, and got into their truck, ignoring any bacteria or cold virus I might pick up in the process. The whole thing seemed almost like a plot to a soap opera or something."
(Really, NSA, I don't wish any kind of harm to the United States, I'm just proving a point)