One of the projects I'm most proud of was to build the supporting infrastructure required to transform a gaggle of several thousand work from home translators who specialize in medical translations into a coherent team, then to build infrastructure to allow them to be integrated into the corporate structure of several of the worlds largest pharmaceutical and medical equipment manufacturers as though they were just another internal department. I think I did pretty well for a guy working out of his living room.
It brings me a great deal of satisfaction knowing that somewhere out there, some kid I'll never meet didn't die today because of medicine I helped bring him.
Oh god, you're a fucking idiot.
How about, waitasecond... getting CREDIT for your works instead of someone else copying them and republishing them as their own?
Egocentric much? Who gives a flying fuck about you and your credit? Are you so insecure you can't just take pride in a job well done, you need people singing your praises?
If the most important thing to you is getting the credit, we probably don't need you. Why screw things up for the vast majority of us to entice some loser to do something useful with his time?
so.... you do your job for free?
seriously?
how do you pay the rent then?
Personally? I get paid upfront by people who want me to create something specific. My entire career has been that way, I've done very well for myself, and helped billions of people along the way.
I'm one of those creators of intellectual works copyright is supposedly in the best interest of, but really isn't.
Am I the only one that thinks being able to influence the hearts and minds of millions or billions of people ought to be its own reward?
Seriously, if Moses, Jesus and Muhammad were to spring from their graves and start imposing high license fees on the distribution of their creative works, does anyone seriously think their power and influence would become greater?
The thing that makes a programming language successful is the existence of a large group of programmers who are familiar enough with the language to use it. That's pretty much it.
If I can start a project in a particular language, get hit by a bus half way through, and finding someone else to sit in my seat and finish the project isn't a problem, then the language is a success. If I don't have that confidence, then the language is nothing but an interesting curiosity for academics.
For me, GMail equals unprofessional. It equals Mom and Pop.
It means you can't even afford to run your own mail server or have someone do it for you.
It means not knowing if the person I'm dealing with is really associated with the domain or the business in question.
It means that my communications are being scanned by a third party, and that I should self-censor accordingly.
It just doesn't reflect well on a person to use GMail for business, in my opinion, and would make me seriously question the credibility of the business.
Exactly. Neither fear, history, nor external absolutes are sufficient to justify a social order. There must be consensus, and absent a fair and equitable deal agreed to by all participants out of mutual respect, the only way to achieve it is violence. As the numbers in the secret and not so secret prisons swell, as greater numbers of people become disenfranchised, poor and desperate, the likelihood that the established order will be the ones to emerge victorious shrinks.
This is not the wild west, waiting to be tamed. It is a community perched on a round ball of dirt revolving around a star. It should be treated as such. Either all this idealizing of competition, nation states and capitalism bullshit needs to come to a stop, or vast numbers of people need to die and all these communication mechanisms need to be brought down so we don't bump elbows with people anymore.
You're full of arguments. But, you didn't answer the question.
The question is:
If the people who you need as customers to convert your highly specialized creation into something that will support your life are not willing to participate in the existing system because they consider it unfair and contrary to their own survival, will you recognize their position and be flexible enough to negotiate a new system, or will you stick to your guns and be ready to fight, kill and/or die when they ignore your claims?
This isn't a matter of absolutes and what is right and wrong in the abstract. Everyones opinion matters, and there is either consensus or their is violence. Either you get the people to agree and participate willingly, or you have no system at all.
Oh please don't go bleat on about having the right to food, housing or medical. Those things are important, yes, but, if they are so important than shouldn't you be willing to work for them?
I am willing to work for them. I am not willing to work at whatever task the person who already owns them dictates to me without question.
See, this response is flawed. Monsanto does own their seeds because they invested a lot of time and money in the traits of those seeds. Nothing is being stolen from the farmers...they can use the same old seeds they have been using for thousands of years. You, person who thinks scarcity is artificial, have never lived in a world in which you must fight for your food or you must kill in order to stay alive. Business must make profit in order to enrich your life. DO not expect freedom of existence without a fight for it...you must earn it.
Now, you've done a good job standing up for your rights and Monsantos rights, and justifying your position.
But, what if, when faced with the choice, we would genuinely prefer to fight and kill for our existence rather than allow what we consider expolitation to continue?
If that were true, would you make further compromises so that we can all work together, or would you sit in your stronghold with your poisoned seeds, waiting for us to come string you up by the neck and claim what you consider yours?
As an anarcho-communist, I have to say, I don't acknowledge property rights. Why? Because property rights boil down to "I was here first, I stuck a flag in it, it is mine", and everything had a flag stuck in it before I was born, and I refuse to acknowledge a system that considers all of this to be someone elses property. It is not. It is my birthright, to share with others of my generation. If you claim I do not have a right to my birthright, I consider that justification to kill you and take it by force.
As far as intellectual property and creative works are concerned, there are two ways to measure the value of those. The first way of measuring the value is to determine how much leverage you can achieve over your fellow man with them, how much they are willing to sacrifice to get it. That is a valuation based entirely within the system of property rights. But there is another way to measure the value. These types of works can also be measured in the advantage they bring humanity. The more people who are enlightened, entertained, educated, cultured, the more value.
The first type of value is entirely arbitrary. The intellectual work doesn't create the physical work that was used to pay, the amount available to pay was fixed before you came on the scene, and you will get less than is available, because the creator needs some too, and he's inclined to compete and give you as little as he can.
The second type of value, the real value, it is destroyed the more you restrict the propagation of the intellectual or creative work. Your neighbours become a little more barbaric, their lives a little more desperate, their minds a little more closed, their thoughts a little less effective. You cripple their capacity to be your allies and friends, and give them reason to wish to break the system and take the wealth that is being destroyed, because they know it's being destroyed simply because you would pay armed men to keep from them what it would cost you nothing to share with them.
Private property is a bad system. But intellectual property in its myriad forms is a needlessly destructive and utterly stupid system for any person to support who doesn't have harming their fellow man and keeping him small as an agenda.
1) If you have a family medical history, you are required to divulge it. If you don't divulge it, and it comes up later, they will refuse to honour your coverage because your application was fraudulent, despite having taken your money. So, you're wrong.
2) In my experience, that is an outright falsehood. Cite a source.
Maybe not according to the rules. But, rules can be ignored. Organizations can be ignored. This type of thing will continue, and it will kill ISO because there will be no perception of either trust or authority.
If you open a hair salon with 20 hair stylists, they don't assess the 20 stylists for risk.
What they do is consult their actuary tables and determine the likelihood that someone will become ill or die based on their records for all hair stylists from all companies they have done business with in that industry over the last hundred years.
That is how they determine risk in groups. It doesn't have anything to do with the individual group, but on the demographic of the group.
When it comes time to make a claim, it WILL come out then
How will they prove it was preexisting if it was never documented anywhere (e.g. MIB, Google's big brother database, or what have you)?
Because the medical records are there, and have always been there. They aren't actually hard to find, it just takes time, so they don't bother to do it when you apply. They wait till they've gotten 10,000 of your money and are going to have to pay out 1,000,000 to care for you, then they pay someone to spend a few weeks digging for a way to refuse. That's the way the system works, and why it's such a cash cow.
You don't understand insurance in the slightest, or you wouldn't make statements like that.
1) When you get insurance as an individual, if you have a previously existing medical condition, and you manage to conceal it, they won't dig hard. They'll just take your money. When it comes time to make a claim, it WILL come out then, and they will refuse to cover you, even though they took your money. Transparency in medical records will protect people from doing this to themselves.
2) When you get group insurance, personal medical records don't come into it at all. Not at all. They calculate the risks based on the probability that any employee will require treatment based entirely on their demographic. That is what makes group insurance plans so appealing in the first place.
I used to sell the stuff for a brief period of time, until I learned how it really worked and realized I wouldn't be able to look myself in the mirror if I didn't get out of that industry. I know what I'm talking about.
By the time this has all panned out, there won't be any illusions of privacy, only an ever increasing number of people getting their information bought and sold and revealed all over the place until they finally demand to be in on the "knowing whats going on" like everyone else and demand a social order that doesn't revolve around secrets and leverage.
Go Google! Gather it all and screw up keeping control like you usually do!
MS had to know that they weren't going to actually be able to support this standard for a long time (if ever). This isn't "you win some you lose some". They won in every objective they set. It was bad goals, not bad execution.
Man, if I was a MS shareholder, I'd be fucking livid. OOXML supporting software won't be available for a long time, and after this move, all the people who care enough about using ISO supported standards are going to be entrenched in ODF.
Which means that all the administration costs, travel expenses, bribe money, etc that they spent to have the OOXML standard pushed through was just thrown away for nothing, even though they got what they were aiming for.
Talk about mismanagement. Hey Ballmer, why don't you try hitting yourself with the chair this time. Might knock some sense into you.
Slashdot Mirror
Yes.
One of the projects I'm most proud of was to build the supporting infrastructure required to transform a gaggle of several thousand work from home translators who specialize in medical translations into a coherent team, then to build infrastructure to allow them to be integrated into the corporate structure of several of the worlds largest pharmaceutical and medical equipment manufacturers as though they were just another internal department. I think I did pretty well for a guy working out of his living room.
It brings me a great deal of satisfaction knowing that somewhere out there, some kid I'll never meet didn't die today because of medicine I helped bring him.
Oh god, you're a fucking idiot. How about, waitasecond... getting CREDIT for your works instead of someone else copying them and republishing them as their own?
Egocentric much? Who gives a flying fuck about you and your credit? Are you so insecure you can't just take pride in a job well done, you need people singing your praises?
If the most important thing to you is getting the credit, we probably don't need you. Why screw things up for the vast majority of us to entice some loser to do something useful with his time?
so.... you do your job for free? seriously? how do you pay the rent then?
Personally? I get paid upfront by people who want me to create something specific. My entire career has been that way, I've done very well for myself, and helped billions of people along the way.
I'm one of those creators of intellectual works copyright is supposedly in the best interest of, but really isn't.
I guess it's just an observation. If you want copyright on your creative works, it's most likely because:
i) They're crap
ii) You know it
Am I the only one that thinks being able to influence the hearts and minds of millions or billions of people ought to be its own reward?
Seriously, if Moses, Jesus and Muhammad were to spring from their graves and start imposing high license fees on the distribution of their creative works, does anyone seriously think their power and influence would become greater?
The thing that makes a programming language successful is the existence of a large group of programmers who are familiar enough with the language to use it. That's pretty much it.
If I can start a project in a particular language, get hit by a bus half way through, and finding someone else to sit in my seat and finish the project isn't a problem, then the language is a success. If I don't have that confidence, then the language is nothing but an interesting curiosity for academics.
Pretty cut and dried.
So, how long before I can buy the Library of Alexandria in a Chinese market stall for 10c?
For me, GMail equals unprofessional. It equals Mom and Pop.
It means you can't even afford to run your own mail server or have someone do it for you.
It means not knowing if the person I'm dealing with is really associated with the domain or the business in question.
It means that my communications are being scanned by a third party, and that I should self-censor accordingly.
It just doesn't reflect well on a person to use GMail for business, in my opinion, and would make me seriously question the credibility of the business.
Exactly. Neither fear, history, nor external absolutes are sufficient to justify a social order. There must be consensus, and absent a fair and equitable deal agreed to by all participants out of mutual respect, the only way to achieve it is violence. As the numbers in the secret and not so secret prisons swell, as greater numbers of people become disenfranchised, poor and desperate, the likelihood that the established order will be the ones to emerge victorious shrinks.
This is not the wild west, waiting to be tamed. It is a community perched on a round ball of dirt revolving around a star. It should be treated as such. Either all this idealizing of competition, nation states and capitalism bullshit needs to come to a stop, or vast numbers of people need to die and all these communication mechanisms need to be brought down so we don't bump elbows with people anymore.
You're full of arguments. But, you didn't answer the question.
The question is:
If the people who you need as customers to convert your highly specialized creation into something that will support your life are not willing to participate in the existing system because they consider it unfair and contrary to their own survival, will you recognize their position and be flexible enough to negotiate a new system, or will you stick to your guns and be ready to fight, kill and/or die when they ignore your claims?
This isn't a matter of absolutes and what is right and wrong in the abstract. Everyones opinion matters, and there is either consensus or their is violence. Either you get the people to agree and participate willingly, or you have no system at all.
What would you choose?
Oh please don't go bleat on about having the right to food, housing or medical. Those things are important, yes, but, if they are so important than shouldn't you be willing to work for them?
I am willing to work for them. I am not willing to work at whatever task the person who already owns them dictates to me without question.
See, this response is flawed. Monsanto does own their seeds because they invested a lot of time and money in the traits of those seeds. Nothing is being stolen from the farmers...they can use the same old seeds they have been using for thousands of years. You, person who thinks scarcity is artificial, have never lived in a world in which you must fight for your food or you must kill in order to stay alive. Business must make profit in order to enrich your life. DO not expect freedom of existence without a fight for it...you must earn it.
Now, you've done a good job standing up for your rights and Monsantos rights, and justifying your position.
But, what if, when faced with the choice, we would genuinely prefer to fight and kill for our existence rather than allow what we consider expolitation to continue?
If that were true, would you make further compromises so that we can all work together, or would you sit in your stronghold with your poisoned seeds, waiting for us to come string you up by the neck and claim what you consider yours?
As an anarcho-communist, I have to say, I don't acknowledge property rights. Why? Because property rights boil down to "I was here first, I stuck a flag in it, it is mine", and everything had a flag stuck in it before I was born, and I refuse to acknowledge a system that considers all of this to be someone elses property. It is not. It is my birthright, to share with others of my generation. If you claim I do not have a right to my birthright, I consider that justification to kill you and take it by force.
As far as intellectual property and creative works are concerned, there are two ways to measure the value of those. The first way of measuring the value is to determine how much leverage you can achieve over your fellow man with them, how much they are willing to sacrifice to get it. That is a valuation based entirely within the system of property rights. But there is another way to measure the value. These types of works can also be measured in the advantage they bring humanity. The more people who are enlightened, entertained, educated, cultured, the more value.
The first type of value is entirely arbitrary. The intellectual work doesn't create the physical work that was used to pay, the amount available to pay was fixed before you came on the scene, and you will get less than is available, because the creator needs some too, and he's inclined to compete and give you as little as he can.
The second type of value, the real value, it is destroyed the more you restrict the propagation of the intellectual or creative work. Your neighbours become a little more barbaric, their lives a little more desperate, their minds a little more closed, their thoughts a little less effective. You cripple their capacity to be your allies and friends, and give them reason to wish to break the system and take the wealth that is being destroyed, because they know it's being destroyed simply because you would pay armed men to keep from them what it would cost you nothing to share with them.
Private property is a bad system. But intellectual property in its myriad forms is a needlessly destructive and utterly stupid system for any person to support who doesn't have harming their fellow man and keeping him small as an agenda.
Ugly. I stand corrected. Sucks to be American, I guess... it doesn't work that way in Canada.
1) If you have a family medical history, you are required to divulge it. If you don't divulge it, and it comes up later, they will refuse to honour your coverage because your application was fraudulent, despite having taken your money. So, you're wrong.
2) In my experience, that is an outright falsehood. Cite a source.
Maybe not according to the rules. But, rules can be ignored. Organizations can be ignored. This type of thing will continue, and it will kill ISO because there will be no perception of either trust or authority.
It doesn't work like that.
If you open a hair salon with 20 hair stylists, they don't assess the 20 stylists for risk.
What they do is consult their actuary tables and determine the likelihood that someone will become ill or die based on their records for all hair stylists from all companies they have done business with in that industry over the last hundred years.
That is how they determine risk in groups. It doesn't have anything to do with the individual group, but on the demographic of the group.
When it comes time to make a claim, it WILL come out then
How will they prove it was preexisting if it was never documented anywhere (e.g. MIB, Google's big brother database, or what have you)?
Because the medical records are there, and have always been there. They aren't actually hard to find, it just takes time, so they don't bother to do it when you apply. They wait till they've gotten 10,000 of your money and are going to have to pay out 1,000,000 to care for you, then they pay someone to spend a few weeks digging for a way to refuse. That's the way the system works, and why it's such a cash cow.
You don't understand insurance in the slightest, or you wouldn't make statements like that.
1) When you get insurance as an individual, if you have a previously existing medical condition, and you manage to conceal it, they won't dig hard. They'll just take your money. When it comes time to make a claim, it WILL come out then, and they will refuse to cover you, even though they took your money. Transparency in medical records will protect people from doing this to themselves.
2) When you get group insurance, personal medical records don't come into it at all. Not at all. They calculate the risks based on the probability that any employee will require treatment based entirely on their demographic. That is what makes group insurance plans so appealing in the first place.
I used to sell the stuff for a brief period of time, until I learned how it really worked and realized I wouldn't be able to look myself in the mirror if I didn't get out of that industry. I know what I'm talking about.
This is good. Game-changing type of good.
By the time this has all panned out, there won't be any illusions of privacy, only an ever increasing number of people getting their information bought and sold and revealed all over the place until they finally demand to be in on the "knowing whats going on" like everyone else and demand a social order that doesn't revolve around secrets and leverage.
Go Google! Gather it all and screw up keeping control like you usually do!
It's a great deal of fun, and very liberating.
Until the tax man shows up.
MS had to know that they weren't going to actually be able to support this standard for a long time (if ever). This isn't "you win some you lose some". They won in every objective they set. It was bad goals, not bad execution.
Man, if I was a MS shareholder, I'd be fucking livid. OOXML supporting software won't be available for a long time, and after this move, all the people who care enough about using ISO supported standards are going to be entrenched in ODF.
Which means that all the administration costs, travel expenses, bribe money, etc that they spent to have the OOXML standard pushed through was just thrown away for nothing, even though they got what they were aiming for.
Talk about mismanagement. Hey Ballmer, why don't you try hitting yourself with the chair this time. Might knock some sense into you.
After years of being a digital pirate, I've been looking for the chance to branch out into naval piracy. This looks like a great career opportunity!
It can if you're not cut. Nothing like getting the morning wood and waking up screaming as your hairs are pulled out....