I (like many) have had a nightmarish experience trying to get 501(c)(3) status for the open-source NGO I've started, a process that has taken over 2 years now. I could probably write a book about the experience. The IRS tax-exemption process is out-of-touch and ineffective at best, and political and corrupt at worst. There are many anecdotes I could share, but here are a couple:
We met with Lois Lerner and members of her team about our tax-exempt status, and the whole meeting was about the dysfunctional relationship between the IRS and another USG department, not a word about the merits of the case.
At one point in a recent meeting with the IRS, they said my anti-censorship software could be used to spread child porn. I asked, well, what if 20 years ago the Web itself was being created by an NGO seeking tax-exempt status? Would the IRS block it because the Web could be used to spread child porn? The IRS lawyers indicated a probable yes.
It looks like the recent IRS "scandal" has been a political fabrication (cherry-picked transcripts, false insinuations against Obama), but I hope it leads to a complete overhaul of the tax-exemption process. My experience makes me wonder how many great projects have died on the vine waiting for their tax-exempt status from the IRS.
FYI, for 501(c)(3) status, there is a list of "exempt purposes" that qualify, as interpreted by IRS lawyers with a mountain of very opaque precedent. Two of the exempt purposes that open-source software *should* qualify under are "scientific" (computer science) and "educational" (open-source software teaches programming). But to the out-of-touch IRS, open-source is a "new" concept, and so they are overly cautious.
5. Indeed, at least AJAX enables somewhat sane masking of this, but the only-one-request-per-response character of the protocol means a lot of things cannot be done efficiently. If HTTP had allowed arbitrary server-side HTTP responses for the duration of a persistent http connection, that would have greatly alleviated the inefficiencies that AJAX methods strive to mask.
Well... what's wrong with using HTTP 1.1 persistent connections? They do allow multiple arbitrary HTTP responses over a single connection, efficiently.
I'm coming here late, but after reading the comments I still don't see the problems with HTTP. There does seem to be a lot of misunderstanding of the protocol and its history, though.
There are lots of alternatives. I like my own CGIProxy, but there's also Tor, Glype, PHProxy, UltraReach, etc. etc. Some of these have been around since the 1900's.
Land lines are laid with significant cost to our "commons", i.e. rights-of-way, etc. But similarly, the EM spectrum, and therefore wireless bandwidth, is a part of our commons too.
Don't know if you were getting at this, but wireless companies have certainly *not* made their whole business with no cost to the rest of us. It's perfectly reasonable to regulate them.
Hmm, I seem to recall Eric Schmidt (Google CEO) saying the same thing a few years ago. However, when someone at CNET published personal info about him that was found only through Google, there was quite an uproar.
So, I wonder what we can find out about Mark Zuckerberg?
If that news report was the recent article on PBS' News Hour, then don't forget that those students they interviewed were hand-picked by the Chinese authorities for the interview.
Not that it wasn't informative. Maybe there are many who share their view. One interesting thing the students said was that non-Chinese people don't appreciate how much change the Chinese government *has* allowed, how much different it is now than it was. While I hope that's true, I'd counter that the Chinese government hasn't changed voluntarily, they've been forced to by modern global changes, or else they'd miss out on the huge benefits of e.g. the Internet.
Also, "conservatives" in the US support greater freedoms in all situations, with one or two exceptions. That's why you never hear actual examples of conservatives taking freedoms away (abortion being the exception). Beyond abortion, what are 3 examples?
Um, that's easy.
Freedom to engage in certain private sexual acts among consenting adults.
Freedom to engage in peaceful demonstrations against the policies of the current administration.
Freedom to use the intoxicants of ones choice.
Freedom to talk frankly about sex (horrors!) over the airwaves.
OK, that's four. The full list is much longer, but it's a start. "Conservativism" has little to do with personal freedoms, despite that being part of the illusion they maintain.
Easy there, cowboy-- I'm not against any new software models, and I don't look down on software forking; I never mentioned either, nor anything about any 99.999% . From my site, it's easy to tell that I have long supported OSS, and even intentionally write my software to be easy to modify. Please do not put words in my mouth.
The story summary says "the fact that software like Psiphon is becoming publicly available is interesting." That is what I was correcting, because such software has been publicly available since at least 1996. Although, apparently, it needs better marketing, since many people don't seem to know about it.
Yes, encryption is very important. That's why CGIProxy and (probably) others support it.
CGIProxy requires a server and is not stand alone
PsiPhon is supposed to be installable on any PC connected to the internet in an uncensored country. Plug and go, if we ever see it.
Actually, CGIProxy is installable on just about any machine, regardless of OS. For Windows, there is an automatic installer that includes a secure Apache server and Perl, so the package is, in effect, stand-alone. The installing person does not need technical skills. It's already "plug and go".
The primary this is easy to install and use. The software package will be designed for easy installation on most operating systems. If you have a friend using a state-filtered 'net connection, then it will be can help them without understanding the specifics of port forwarding, encryption, or web servers. Ease of use allows ease of distribution.
Actually, CGIProxy has had automatic installers for several years, for both Unix and Windows. The Windows installer includes a secure Apache server and Perl, and is by design trivial to install for non-technical users-- no need for knowledge of port forwarding, encryption, or web servers.
CGIProxy does not currently encrypt the data itself, but as long as it's installed on a secure server, traffic between it and the user is already encrypted.
As far as I can tell, this is nothing new-- there are a variety of publicly available programs that have done the same thing since as early as 1996, when China and Singapore first announced their intentions to censor the Web. One such tool is CGIProxy, but there are others. Or is there something else about Psiphon, am I missing something?
... because of the State's desire for more power and money and the control of the expansion of both power and money.
Large businesses do the same thing. The difference is that the government has to at least pretend to be acting in the interest of the voters. With private industry in power, there is no voting them out.
I'm sure you can name a few large corporations whose fiercely-guarded monopolies and influence on our governments makes them more resemble Soviet-era state-owned industries than a "free market".
Here's a tool to get around Web censorship. It's the censorhip-circumventing software itself, not just a site that runs it; anyone can downlad and install it on a Web server for their own use. It's been around since 1996, first developed when Singapore and China first announced they would try to censor the Web. I think this approach is more effective than the various sites running public proxies, because those can be blocked by censors much more easily than when everyone has their own private proxy.
If you try CGIProxy and find any shortcomings, please let me know so I can fix them. To my knowledge, it's the only such software out there that solves certain kinds of problems, such as proxifying JavaScript (in beta, but almost there); for example, this means that most Web-based email and other complex sites can work through it.
Note that out of the box, the CGIProxy isn't optimally configured for privacy, but there are config options to change that. The code is heavily commented, with the intention that users can customize it in several ways to make it unrecognizable to censors.
Communism and capitalism are economic systems; dictatorships and democracy are political systems.
Thank you. This is exactly what I was going to say, and most people seem to have missed this.
Capitalism has nothing to do with democracy; they are orthogonal (though arguably, capitalism actually opposes democracy, in their effects on power structures). It is perfectly possible to have a democratic communist country. In fact, that's what the Czechs were moving toward in 1968 before the Soviet regime invaded them to stop it. There are other examples. Various dictatorships (e.g. Soviets, China) have used the "communism" label to attract the public's support to get into power, but what we really object to in those nations is not communism; it's human rights issues, and a lack of democracy.
It would behoove us to separate the economic-system vector from the government-type vector. Otherwise, these kinds of discussions will remain as muddled as they have been for the last half-century.
Note: I am not a communist or even a socialist, though I've met some and they are very nice people.:)
I've thought about this before. It seems that publishing all votes in a huge data file (or even in a newspaper) solves this. No voter names are used, of course; the votes are listed by the unique number on the little receipt you get after voting.
That way, any voter can verify that their own vote is correct. Further, anyone with a computer and a vote-counting program can verify that the stated outcome is correct. And people's votes are still private. Maybe only implement this for some minimum vote count (100? 1000?) so votes in tiny elections can't be analyzed to break privacy.
Does anyone see any drawbacks to this? Seriously, I'd like to see this implemented.
IIRC, Safeweb does attempt to clean up JS and other dangerous stuff from pages it displays to you, but it's still a risk.
They do a pretty good job of sanitizing JS, but not perfect. In about an hour, I found a couple ways for a malicious server to compromise anonymity through SafeWeb, using JS. I'll grant that it's a tough job to sanitize all JS, but SafeWeb should provide a way for users to browse without JS. In my opinion, this is the single biggest problem with using SafeWeb.
I sent email to the Safeweb folks about the fundamental "You're using Javascript" problem, and got a really prompt reply from their technical management, which was good, but they fundamentally didn't get it, which bothered me.
Their FAQ indicates they don't get it-- they dismiss the notion that JS is a privacy concern, and discredit those who say it is. However, I think they realize it internally. I know someone who used to work there. He says they get emails complaining about JS every day, but they don't want to do away with their current UI.
As I mentioned, Triangle Boy is really cool - it's a sort of distributed set of volunteer-run anonymizing servers, which keep moving around to prevent blocking services from blocking them...
The concept is old... some people (*cough*) have been doing this since at least 1996. All it takes is an anonymizing proxy script that is released for distribution. I wrote one called CGIProxy, and there are others out there. Triangle Boy has pros and cons compared to these-- it puts the bandwidth load on SafeWeb's machines rather than the volunteer Triangle Boy servers, but then it won't work at all if the SafeWeb server ever has a problem (the other scripts run independently).
Feel free to ask more questions; this particular topic is a specialty of mine.
They will have the attitudinal and navigational capabilities needed to maintain proper orbits...
... and avoid the millions of other tiny satellites that are launched under the same program? Got a plan for that one?
O' course, I'm picturing the future when they become miniaturized to a few ounces and cheap enough so that everyone can afford one. Maybe they'll be the bugs on the space shuttle's windshield.
As luck would have it, a new version of
this
was released today.
But certainly, even in the presence of such technical workarounds, we must directly confront what the German publishers are doing. It's always better to have the law on your side than to have their guns pointed at you.
Besides, to those who bash Microsoft for embracing and extending others standards, it's worth nothing who wrote the original XML spec:
... Jean Paoli, Microsoft...
As I understand it, Microsoft is just paying Paoli's way to get their name attached to XML. He was a respected researcher long before he was ever associated with MS, and when he was hired he insisted on liberal terms that gave him freedom from oversight or the need to follow marketing directives. I believe he is even critical of Microsoft sometimes.
I think this is all true; please correct me if I'm wrong.
Many possible responses here, but I'll answer only a few points:
Put simply, it is the so-called businessman that makes it happen.
More accurately, it's whoever takes the initiative that makes it happen. That doesn't have to be in a monetary framework. For example, an inventor (or programmer) invests time and energy, sometimes in great quantities. S/he's the one who "makes it happen" first. Sometimes a businessperson can help, but the gold they run away with is usually way out of proportion to their contribution.
Without "capitalists" like that...yeah, I think it's pretty safe to say this country would be no where today.
Ummmm, speak for yourself, I have more faith in our culture than that.
There it is again, the capitalist attitude taking credit for everything good that happens (and nothing bad?). I think it's more the spirit of taking initiative in general that contributed to whatever the USA is now. Again, that doesn't necessarily mean "free market". I can take initiative to build a log cabin, grow crops, or write a great Web server without money entering the equation.
It didn't hurt that the USA had vast arable land, a good climate, and two oceans to separate us from invaders. To credit all of our prosperity to merely our economic system is ignoring a lot.
Where are all the great inventions from China? Russia? Or even, to a lesser extent, Europe? They're few and far between...
If you're implying that the only contributions to the world are in the form of profitable inventions, then I respectfully say that you have a lot to learn. That's something I can't explain in one post. But consider music, other art, common sense, human wisdom, family wisdom, spiritual wisdom,... the list goes on.
But addressing the point directly-- Don't be fooled into thinking that communism in China and Russia are the only forms of non-capitalistic economy. Those two are/were merely military regimes. Soviet Russia, for example, actively squashed other more democratic forms of communism that tried to arise, like the Prague Spring in 1968. It's just as possible to have a democratic communist as a democratic capitalist system. (Chile had that with Allende until the US overthrew it and installed a dictator; the same happened with Nicaragua, I believe.)
For the record, I'm not a communist; I just see serious problems with our current capitalism that need to be addressed. One is the major blind spot that one's wealth measures one's contribution to the world, and the belief that people only create things out of greed. In believing that, we've created a system where it's very difficult to create things other than out of greed.
Where does all the money come from that allows these "scientists" to research? Do you think it's any coincidence that most early inventors were aristocrats or part of an emerging middle class?
It's true that to do R&D, it helps to not have to wonder where your next meal is coming from. In the old days, it helped to have a royal benefactor. But today, we have the means to ensure that few if any go hungry. I'm not talking about a life of luxury, I just mean not desperate. If we did that, more people would be able to research science, write software, create art, etc.
There are other things to say, but that's enough for one post.
God, I'm so sick of self-important capitalists taking credit for everything going right in this world. As if the computer and Internet revolutions wouldn't have happened without them to steer the way.
Walker demeans the scientific and academic world, while claiming that patent holders like him are "creating hundreds and thousands of jobs". Let me rephrase it-- the inventors and developers create jobs for people like him. Or more directly, the developers increase the general welfare of society by making computers useful in so many ways. That welfare may not be in cash form, but it improves our lives nonetheless. The businesspeople merely find a way to transform that welfare into cash and move it toward themselves, much like an engine transforms one kind of energy into another. One tool to do this is to claim ownership of technology by using patents, the equivalent of building a fence in a public park and keeping everyone out with a gun. Ultimately, patent enforcement uses guns, too.
What a familiar pattern in this world-- some people work to increase the total wealth for everybody, while other people work to grab as much of it for themselves as they can.
Slashdot Mirror
I (like many) have had a nightmarish experience trying to get 501(c)(3) status for the open-source NGO I've started, a process that has taken over 2 years now. I could probably write a book about the experience. The IRS tax-exemption process is out-of-touch and ineffective at best, and political and corrupt at worst. There are many anecdotes I could share, but here are a couple:
We met with Lois Lerner and members of her team about our tax-exempt status, and the whole meeting was about the dysfunctional relationship between the IRS and another USG department, not a word about the merits of the case.
At one point in a recent meeting with the IRS, they said my anti-censorship software could be used to spread child porn. I asked, well, what if 20 years ago the Web itself was being created by an NGO seeking tax-exempt status? Would the IRS block it because the Web could be used to spread child porn? The IRS lawyers indicated a probable yes.
It looks like the recent IRS "scandal" has been a political fabrication (cherry-picked transcripts, false insinuations against Obama), but I hope it leads to a complete overhaul of the tax-exemption process. My experience makes me wonder how many great projects have died on the vine waiting for their tax-exempt status from the IRS.
FYI, for 501(c)(3) status, there is a list of "exempt purposes" that qualify, as interpreted by IRS lawyers with a mountain of very opaque precedent. Two of the exempt purposes that open-source software *should* qualify under are "scientific" (computer science) and "educational" (open-source software teaches programming). But to the out-of-touch IRS, open-source is a "new" concept, and so they are overly cautious.
From analyzing gamma, wouldn't a speed greater than light imply the neutrino has either imaginary mass or imaginary energy?
Haskell will lose it's cool when someone writes a real program in it and not just code examples.
Actually, a major Perl 6 implementation, "Pugs", was written in Haskell. This is one reason Perl 6 has some Haskell features in it.
Thanks for this thoughtful response. But:
5. Indeed, at least AJAX enables somewhat sane masking of this, but the only-one-request-per-response character of the protocol means a lot of things cannot be done efficiently. If HTTP had allowed arbitrary server-side HTTP responses for the duration of a persistent http connection, that would have greatly alleviated the inefficiencies that AJAX methods strive to mask.
Well... what's wrong with using HTTP 1.1 persistent connections? They do allow multiple arbitrary HTTP responses over a single connection, efficiently.
I'm coming here late, but after reading the comments I still don't see the problems with HTTP. There does seem to be a lot of misunderstanding of the protocol and its history, though.
There are lots of alternatives. I like my own CGIProxy, but there's also Tor, Glype, PHProxy, UltraReach, etc. etc. Some of these have been around since the 1900's.
Land lines are laid with significant cost to our "commons", i.e. rights-of-way, etc. But similarly, the EM spectrum, and therefore wireless bandwidth, is a part of our commons too.
Don't know if you were getting at this, but wireless companies have certainly *not* made their whole business with no cost to the rest of us. It's perfectly reasonable to regulate them.
Hmm, I seem to recall Eric Schmidt (Google CEO) saying the same thing a few years ago. However, when someone at CNET published personal info about him that was found only through Google, there was quite an uproar.
So, I wonder what we can find out about Mark Zuckerberg?
Here's an earlier article about the case, by Elinor Mills at CNET.
If that news report was the recent article on PBS' News Hour, then don't forget that those students they interviewed were hand-picked by the Chinese authorities for the interview.
Not that it wasn't informative. Maybe there are many who share their view. One interesting thing the students said was that non-Chinese people don't appreciate how much change the Chinese government *has* allowed, how much different it is now than it was. While I hope that's true, I'd counter that the Chinese government hasn't changed voluntarily, they've been forced to by modern global changes, or else they'd miss out on the huge benefits of e.g. the Internet.
Also, "conservatives" in the US support greater freedoms in all situations, with one or two exceptions. That's why you never hear actual examples of conservatives taking freedoms away (abortion being the exception). Beyond abortion, what are 3 examples?
Um, that's easy.
OK, that's four. The full list is much longer, but it's a start. "Conservativism" has little to do with personal freedoms, despite that being part of the illusion they maintain.
Easy there, cowboy-- I'm not against any new software models, and I don't look down on software forking; I never mentioned either, nor anything about any 99.999% . From my site, it's easy to tell that I have long supported OSS, and even intentionally write my software to be easy to modify. Please do not put words in my mouth.
The story summary says "the fact that software like Psiphon is becoming publicly available is interesting." That is what I was correcting, because such software has been publicly available since at least 1996. Although, apparently, it needs better marketing, since many people don't seem to know about it.
Yes, encryption is very important. That's why CGIProxy and (probably) others support it.
CGIProxy requires a server and is not stand alone PsiPhon is supposed to be installable on any PC connected to the internet in an uncensored country. Plug and go, if we ever see it.
Actually, CGIProxy is installable on just about any machine, regardless of OS. For Windows, there is an automatic installer that includes a secure Apache server and Perl, so the package is, in effect, stand-alone. The installing person does not need technical skills. It's already "plug and go".
The primary this is easy to install and use. The software package will be designed for easy installation on most operating systems. If you have a friend using a state-filtered 'net connection, then it will be can help them without understanding the specifics of port forwarding, encryption, or web servers. Ease of use allows ease of distribution.
Actually, CGIProxy has had automatic installers for several years, for both Unix and Windows. The Windows installer includes a secure Apache server and Perl, and is by design trivial to install for non-technical users-- no need for knowledge of port forwarding, encryption, or web servers.
CGIProxy does not currently encrypt the data itself, but as long as it's installed on a secure server, traffic between it and the user is already encrypted.
As far as I can tell, this is nothing new-- there are a variety of publicly available programs that have done the same thing since as early as 1996, when China and Singapore first announced their intentions to censor the Web. One such tool is CGIProxy, but there are others. Or is there something else about Psiphon, am I missing something?
Large businesses do the same thing. The difference is that the government has to at least pretend to be acting in the interest of the voters. With private industry in power, there is no voting them out.
I'm sure you can name a few large corporations whose fiercely-guarded monopolies and influence on our governments makes them more resemble Soviet-era state-owned industries than a "free market".
Well, in a free society, "freedom" does not include the right to restrict others' freedom, eh?
Here's a tool to get around Web censorship. It's the censorhip-circumventing software itself, not just a site that runs it; anyone can downlad and install it on a Web server for their own use. It's been around since 1996, first developed when Singapore and China first announced they would try to censor the Web. I think this approach is more effective than the various sites running public proxies, because those can be blocked by censors much more easily than when everyone has their own private proxy.
If you try CGIProxy and find any shortcomings, please let me know so I can fix them. To my knowledge, it's the only such software out there that solves certain kinds of problems, such as proxifying JavaScript (in beta, but almost there); for example, this means that most Web-based email and other complex sites can work through it.
Note that out of the box, the CGIProxy isn't optimally configured for privacy, but there are config options to change that. The code is heavily commented, with the intention that users can customize it in several ways to make it unrecognizable to censors.
Have fun! Let me know if you have any questions.
At the risk of sounding "me too"--
Communism and capitalism are economic systems; dictatorships and democracy are political systems.
Thank you. This is exactly what I was going to say, and most people seem to have missed this.
Capitalism has nothing to do with democracy; they are orthogonal (though arguably, capitalism actually opposes democracy, in their effects on power structures). It is perfectly possible to have a democratic communist country. In fact, that's what the Czechs were moving toward in 1968 before the Soviet regime invaded them to stop it. There are other examples. Various dictatorships (e.g. Soviets, China) have used the "communism" label to attract the public's support to get into power, but what we really object to in those nations is not communism; it's human rights issues, and a lack of democracy.
It would behoove us to separate the economic-system vector from the government-type vector. Otherwise, these kinds of discussions will remain as muddled as they have been for the last half-century.
Note: I am not a communist or even a socialist, though I've met some and they are very nice people. :)
Getting in here a little late, but....
I've thought about this before. It seems that publishing all votes in a huge data file (or even in a newspaper) solves this. No voter names are used, of course; the votes are listed by the unique number on the little receipt you get after voting.
That way, any voter can verify that their own vote is correct. Further, anyone with a computer and a vote-counting program can verify that the stated outcome is correct. And people's votes are still private. Maybe only implement this for some minimum vote count (100? 1000?) so votes in tiny elections can't be analyzed to break privacy.
Does anyone see any drawbacks to this? Seriously, I'd like to see this implemented.
IIRC, Safeweb does attempt to clean up JS and other dangerous stuff from pages it displays to you, but it's still a risk.
They do a pretty good job of sanitizing JS, but not perfect. In about an hour, I found a couple ways for a malicious server to compromise anonymity through SafeWeb, using JS. I'll grant that it's a tough job to sanitize all JS, but SafeWeb should provide a way for users to browse without JS. In my opinion, this is the single biggest problem with using SafeWeb.
I sent email to the Safeweb folks about the fundamental "You're using Javascript" problem, and got a really prompt reply from their technical management, which was good, but they fundamentally didn't get it, which bothered me.
Their FAQ indicates they don't get it-- they dismiss the notion that JS is a privacy concern, and discredit those who say it is. However, I think they realize it internally. I know someone who used to work there. He says they get emails complaining about JS every day, but they don't want to do away with their current UI.
As I mentioned, Triangle Boy is really cool - it's a sort of distributed set of volunteer-run anonymizing servers, which keep moving around to prevent blocking services from blocking them...
The concept is old... some people (*cough*) have been doing this since at least 1996. All it takes is an anonymizing proxy script that is released for distribution. I wrote one called CGIProxy, and there are others out there. Triangle Boy has pros and cons compared to these-- it puts the bandwidth load on SafeWeb's machines rather than the volunteer Triangle Boy servers, but then it won't work at all if the SafeWeb server ever has a problem (the other scripts run independently).
Feel free to ask more questions; this particular topic is a specialty of mine.
... and avoid the millions of other tiny satellites that are launched under the same program? Got a plan for that one?
O' course, I'm picturing the future when they become miniaturized to a few ounces and cheap enough so that everyone can afford one. Maybe they'll be the bugs on the space shuttle's windshield.
But certainly, even in the presence of such technical workarounds, we must directly confront what the German publishers are doing. It's always better to have the law on your side than to have their guns pointed at you.
... Jean Paoli, Microsoft ...
As I understand it, Microsoft is just paying Paoli's way to get their name attached to XML. He was a respected researcher long before he was ever associated with MS, and when he was hired he insisted on liberal terms that gave him freedom from oversight or the need to follow marketing directives. I believe he is even critical of Microsoft sometimes.
I think this is all true; please correct me if I'm wrong.
Put simply, it is the so-called businessman that makes it happen.
More accurately, it's whoever takes the initiative that makes it happen. That doesn't have to be in a monetary framework. For example, an inventor (or programmer) invests time and energy, sometimes in great quantities. S/he's the one who "makes it happen" first. Sometimes a businessperson can help, but the gold they run away with is usually way out of proportion to their contribution.
Without "capitalists" like that...yeah, I think it's pretty safe to say this country would be no where today.
Ummmm, speak for yourself, I have more faith in our culture than that.
There it is again, the capitalist attitude taking credit for everything good that happens (and nothing bad?). I think it's more the spirit of taking initiative in general that contributed to whatever the USA is now. Again, that doesn't necessarily mean "free market". I can take initiative to build a log cabin, grow crops, or write a great Web server without money entering the equation.
It didn't hurt that the USA had vast arable land, a good climate, and two oceans to separate us from invaders. To credit all of our prosperity to merely our economic system is ignoring a lot.
Where are all the great inventions from China? Russia? Or even, to a lesser extent, Europe? They're few and far between...
If you're implying that the only contributions to the world are in the form of profitable inventions, then I respectfully say that you have a lot to learn. That's something I can't explain in one post. But consider music, other art, common sense, human wisdom, family wisdom, spiritual wisdom, ... the list goes on.
But addressing the point directly-- Don't be fooled into thinking that communism in China and Russia are the only forms of non-capitalistic economy. Those two are/were merely military regimes. Soviet Russia, for example, actively squashed other more democratic forms of communism that tried to arise, like the Prague Spring in 1968. It's just as possible to have a democratic communist as a democratic capitalist system. (Chile had that with Allende until the US overthrew it and installed a dictator; the same happened with Nicaragua, I believe.)
For the record, I'm not a communist; I just see serious problems with our current capitalism that need to be addressed. One is the major blind spot that one's wealth measures one's contribution to the world, and the belief that people only create things out of greed. In believing that, we've created a system where it's very difficult to create things other than out of greed.
Where does all the money come from that allows these "scientists" to research? Do you think it's any coincidence that most early inventors were aristocrats or part of an emerging middle class?
It's true that to do R&D, it helps to not have to wonder where your next meal is coming from. In the old days, it helped to have a royal benefactor. But today, we have the means to ensure that few if any go hungry. I'm not talking about a life of luxury, I just mean not desperate. If we did that, more people would be able to research science, write software, create art, etc.
There are other things to say, but that's enough for one post.
Walker demeans the scientific and academic world, while claiming that patent holders like him are "creating hundreds and thousands of jobs". Let me rephrase it-- the inventors and developers create jobs for people like him. Or more directly, the developers increase the general welfare of society by making computers useful in so many ways. That welfare may not be in cash form, but it improves our lives nonetheless. The businesspeople merely find a way to transform that welfare into cash and move it toward themselves, much like an engine transforms one kind of energy into another. One tool to do this is to claim ownership of technology by using patents, the equivalent of building a fence in a public park and keeping everyone out with a gun. Ultimately, patent enforcement uses guns, too.
What a familiar pattern in this world-- some people work to increase the total wealth for everybody, while other people work to grab as much of it for themselves as they can.