We can create bioweapons. The main problems with creating them are:
1) Total lack of ethics - and the resources to get away with murdering thousands of human test subjects along the way.
2) Suicidal tendencies - not just for individuals, but for the funding group. Because any realistically dangerous weapon will have a good probability of killing it's creators first, and a very high probability of killing it's creators in the long term (either directly, by evolution, or by revenge nuclear attacks.
3) You still need Highly intelligent and highly trained people involved. Most of whom lack Suicidal tendencies.
This armegeddon scenario is actually far more likely than a nuclear war, as that requires far more people to behave far more stupidly and unlike nanite fears, is actually physically reasonable.
Decreasing excess human population. That's what is good for.
And we have quite a few potential human population decreases being set up right now - ISIS and Russia are just waiting to decrease some extra human population.
You have several choices here.
1) Sue, claiming that the government can neither force you to design your software differently, nor require them to sell a specific software. It is a very different thing than the existing system where people are required to provide access to existing backdoors, rather than being required to create backdoors.
2) Move your corporate headquarters off shore. Then tell them they have no authority over you, but if they want to sue your country or publicly demand you stop selling your product in the US, they can do it - but your warrant requiring secrecy does not affect them in any way shape or form.
3) Separate the hardware and software, using different sub-companies to produce each one. Then have the software company declare it is hereby closed, and will provide no more updates. Tell the government that they can't force you to be in business anymore. Hire a new company to provide software and REPEAT.
So true. If it's a real job, then you NEVER have to pay any amount of cash to get it. The employer should be paying the headhunter, not you.
Why? Mainly because of the exact kind of crap that they are describing here. The employer has the money, which he demonstrates by paying the headhunter. If he can't afford to pay the headhunter, he can't afford to pay you.
Also note they use the payment as a filter.
That is, they don't want smart people working for these crap jobs.The smart people refuse to give up their passport and call the police after you bring them to your country. So they make sure to only 'hire' less smart people by giving you an intelligence test - if you are unwise enough to bribe the broker to get a job they promise is 'good', then you are unwise enough to give them your passport and not call the police.
Primary examples would be installed on sea installations, like say oil drilling platforms. Why ship in fuel to an oil drilling platform, when you can simply install a wavepower generator to provide the power. Then, once you find oil, you don't have to get rid of the wave power generator. Keep it and use wave power to get the oil, rather than burning oil just to get more oil.
Also, I could easily see a small scale wave power generator designed for boats, particularly house boats.
Once Russians lived in a world where they KNEW communism would last forever.
Your cynicism reflects poorly on yourself, not on my hope for a better world.
Truecrypt is the perfect example proving you wrong. It is fairly obvious that the NSA came to them with a court order not to talk about the court order. They choose to close down as opposed to following that order.
If Truecrypt could do it, then other foundations can do it. In fact, so can a company.
The fact that you wallow in the filth of today's society and can not see a greater future does not prevent me and others like me from working toward that future.
The consumers are not aware what they are doing with their money. They know what they are doing with their money, so the responsibility is theirs.
Now, if we passed a law that required all meet raised with antibiotics to be labelled as such, then the consumers would either stop buying it or bear the responsibility for their actions.
People that buy technology, particularly the innovators that buy the new products like their privacy. You want to wire my home and be the company that sets the standard?
Make my personal privacy your priority.
Because honestly, that is my primary concern. I don't want to put a camera or microphone in my home and have ANY concern that someone else might look at it.
So you need to convince me that not only can I set up the password, but that I can trust your company not to put in a back door. That means convincing me that you will go BEYOND what I consider to be necessary. I need to believe that you will stand up to the NSA and close the company down if they come knocking on your door with a court order to not even talk about you getting the court order.
Otherwise, I would rather buy the equipment myself and pick the software myself. That way I know the software is not customized to open back doors on the hardware.
Because I am perfectly willing to give up the functionality you so loudly proclaim is helpful if I can't trust you.
No, I thought everything I said through. You ignored reality and substituted rather bad fiction about what the law is.
Large corporations are owned by these things called shareholders. It takes a LOT of work to make a company so multi-national that it's stock will not be 50% held by one country.
Secondly my law is NOT blocked by the first amendment, unless you are claiming that the US first amendment applies to non-citizens? Because I hate to tell you it doesn't work that way. The 1938 Foreign Agents Registration Act proved that.
It is perfectly legal for the US to tell other countries, their citizens and therefore corporations that are registered in another countries they can not lobby American congressmen. Doing so can be .
Also, when people pay lobbyists, it is generally recognized as an agent of the original person, so NO you can't just pay someone else to do that, as your payment to the lobbyist is itself illegal, under my scheme.
1) If a country is owned by more than 50% by citizens of X country, then it must pay taxes on all it's profits of the entire world, under Country X's laws.
2) (This one I really like) If a company is not incorporated and paying the majority of it's taxes within a country, than it can not under any circumstance: A) lobby in that country, or in any way attempt to affect legislation or rules of that country B) nor can it t make any political - monetarily or directly - on any political subject for the 8 months preceding any primary or general election.
1) Build out infrastructure to give all customers speeds of 500 MBPS
2) Sell service to customers for speeds upto 300 MBPS. Make it clear that is what you are offering, at that price. You never advertise any speeds higher than 300 MBPS.
3) If however people are using content from approved fast lanes, you enable speeds upto 500 MBPS for content from those people.
4) Make a rule that if they ever choose to adverise speeds of over 300, they can no longer get paid for their fast lane service (and must pro-rate the money back if it was pre-paid).
THAT is something that most people would accept. Among other things, it would let the company upgrade their service much quicker if competition started coming around.
Of course, it would end up costing the ISP's a LOT more money than they make on the 'fast lanes', as actually have to BUILD the fast lane into their entire network, something they don't do and don't plan on doing.
In general, making positions 'electable' makes things WORSE.
Because most people don't care about anything short of President. So they vote the party, not the person, IF they bother to vote at all.
Judges for example. When judges are appointed they tend to have high qualifications - experience in the law, an actual law degree, etc. When you vote for them, you get whatever joe shmoe has put in the most time at the political party doing paperwork.
Voting is great for high end positions, but people just don't get excited about anything less than Supreme Court Judge.
Having the FCC get voted on would make things much much worse, not better.
True, but most people reading this article are in the Northern Hemisphere, and as such do not realize it is winter there. A whole bunch of fools are thinking "WOW, the most sea ice ever and at the end of SUMMER?"
First and foremost, remember that it is the end of winter. Having more sea ice at the end of winter is not surprising.
Second and more importantly, this is the Antartic, not the Artic. For those of you that are ignorant, the antartic consists of a huge land mass with ice sitting on it, and a little bit of ice surrounding it. The Artic on the other hand is just one solid mass of ice.
What that means is that more sea ice in the Artic is called by cold weather. More ice freezes, etc.
But more sea ice in the ANTARTIC is caused by global WARMING. hat is, the sea ice in the Antartic is caused by ice sitting on the land mass, sliding off into the water because it is just a tad too warm to stick to the land.
For such things, than 20 or 50 years is too short. If the government's rules and regulations delay (but not prevent) the sale of a product, all such patents should start from the day the product is legally approved for sale.
The basic idea of having drug patents start from the date of invention rather than the date of first legal sale is itself ridiculous. Worse, the idea of just 'extending' the patent length for them is pretty stupid, but the absolute WORST idea is to design the rules for ALL products based on this one industry. The only reason it is not done reasonable is because then non-medical community loves to use the problems with medical patents as an excuse to grab money for non-medical patents.
Your belief, while common, demonstrates general ignorance of economic theory.
First and foremost, most businesses do not make decisions about where to build factories, etc. on taxes. Otherwise NYC and California would be economic backwaters, rather than the powerhouses they are.
Note, corporate headquarters is different, I am talking about manufacturing factories and customer facilities for sports.
Sports stadiums are NEVER built based on tax rules, they are ALWAYS built based on customer location. It doesn't matter what the tax rules are, a stadium will be in NYC. It doesn't matter how much cash Boise City, Idaho offers, no national sports team will ever call them home. They are just too small a market
As for factories, the far majority of the time, taxes are such a small consideration, compared to prevailing wages, cost of real estate, cost of water, cost of power, skill level of local population, etc. etc. that taxes will almost NEVER be the deciding factor.
This is mainly true because despite conservative propaganda, actual, real corporate taxes in the US are very low. In addition, where it is a factor, it is FEDERAL tax that matters, not the State Tax. As such, states simply can not offer enough of a 'tax break' to bring a business to their state.
The weakening of patent protections mean some small guys will be killed.
Particularly small patent holders that present ideas to big companies, hoping to be bought out, but instead get the shaft.
Honestly, the real problem is that patents last too long.
If you can't make your profit in 5 years, then your product was never very good in the first place. In that time, you should be able to 'corner the market', develop a brand - including the reputation for quality, and most importantly, learn business secrets that will give you a leg up against the competition.
After that time, you are just holding back other people from improving your product.
Perhaps we need a graduated patent system. Most patents would get 5 years, particularly impressive products get 10 years, and entirely new products that create new types of businesses/industries get 20 years. That is, an improvement to a cellphone gets 5 years, but the creation of a cell phone gets 20 years.
Once the laws stop the practice from working against American citizens, it should quickly vanish and future Canadians will not suffer the same problem.
My solution is not perfect, but good enough, and as such is more likely to get passed into law.
Slashdot Mirror
Grapes are round, so it is not a surprise that people slip on the rolling grape, rather than slip on a slippery surface.
1) Total lack of ethics - and the resources to get away with murdering thousands of human test subjects along the way.
2) Suicidal tendencies - not just for individuals, but for the funding group. Because any realistically dangerous weapon will have a good probability of killing it's creators first, and a very high probability of killing it's creators in the long term (either directly, by evolution, or by revenge nuclear attacks.
3) You still need Highly intelligent and highly trained people involved. Most of whom lack Suicidal tendencies.
This armegeddon scenario is actually far more likely than a nuclear war, as that requires far more people to behave far more stupidly and unlike nanite fears, is actually physically reasonable.
All the data that they are afraid cars will give out are already given out by people's phones.
So, basically exactly the same situation that we already have.
Decreasing excess human population. That's what is good for.
And we have quite a few potential human population decreases being set up right now - ISIS and Russia are just waiting to decrease some extra human population.
2) Move your corporate headquarters off shore. Then tell them they have no authority over you, but if they want to sue your country or publicly demand you stop selling your product in the US, they can do it - but your warrant requiring secrecy does not affect them in any way shape or form.
3) Separate the hardware and software, using different sub-companies to produce each one. Then have the software company declare it is hereby closed, and will provide no more updates. Tell the government that they can't force you to be in business anymore. Hire a new company to provide software and REPEAT.
They do that already. But they get so much that they still have to burn it off
In America, they use a similar technique to get desperate people, it's a variation on the "Multi Level Marketing Scheme".
Here they make you buy 'samples' to sell to your customers. No. If the company is real, they provide all samples and tools you need.
People that buy the samples are desperate. But paying a head hunter to send you to another country, that is not desperate, that is stupid.
Why? Mainly because of the exact kind of crap that they are describing here. The employer has the money, which he demonstrates by paying the headhunter. If he can't afford to pay the headhunter, he can't afford to pay you.
Also note they use the payment as a filter. That is, they don't want smart people working for these crap jobs.The smart people refuse to give up their passport and call the police after you bring them to your country. So they make sure to only 'hire' less smart people by giving you an intelligence test - if you are unwise enough to bribe the broker to get a job they promise is 'good', then you are unwise enough to give them your passport and not call the police.
Primary examples would be installed on sea installations, like say oil drilling platforms. Why ship in fuel to an oil drilling platform, when you can simply install a wavepower generator to provide the power. Then, once you find oil, you don't have to get rid of the wave power generator. Keep it and use wave power to get the oil, rather than burning oil just to get more oil.
Also, I could easily see a small scale wave power generator designed for boats, particularly house boats.
Your cynicism reflects poorly on yourself, not on my hope for a better world.
Truecrypt is the perfect example proving you wrong. It is fairly obvious that the NSA came to them with a court order not to talk about the court order. They choose to close down as opposed to following that order.
If Truecrypt could do it, then other foundations can do it. In fact, so can a company.
The fact that you wallow in the filth of today's society and can not see a greater future does not prevent me and others like me from working toward that future.
Now, if we passed a law that required all meet raised with antibiotics to be labelled as such, then the consumers would either stop buying it or bear the responsibility for their actions.
People that buy technology, particularly the innovators that buy the new products like their privacy. You want to wire my home and be the company that sets the standard?
Make my personal privacy your priority.
Because honestly, that is my primary concern. I don't want to put a camera or microphone in my home and have ANY concern that someone else might look at it.
So you need to convince me that not only can I set up the password, but that I can trust your company not to put in a back door. That means convincing me that you will go BEYOND what I consider to be necessary. I need to believe that you will stand up to the NSA and close the company down if they come knocking on your door with a court order to not even talk about you getting the court order.
Otherwise, I would rather buy the equipment myself and pick the software myself. That way I know the software is not customized to open back doors on the hardware.
Because I am perfectly willing to give up the functionality you so loudly proclaim is helpful if I can't trust you.
That is, they give it to livestock not because the livestock is sick, but because it makes the livestock larger - with more muscles.
As a direct result, the livestock develop antibiotic resistant bacteria.
Congress keeps letting them do this because the companies that sell it give them lots of money.
Large corporations are owned by these things called shareholders. It takes a LOT of work to make a company so multi-national that it's stock will not be 50% held by one country.
Secondly my law is NOT blocked by the first amendment, unless you are claiming that the US first amendment applies to non-citizens? Because I hate to tell you it doesn't work that way. The 1938 Foreign Agents Registration Act proved that.
It is perfectly legal for the US to tell other countries, their citizens and therefore corporations that are registered in another countries they can not lobby American congressmen. Doing so can be .
Also, when people pay lobbyists, it is generally recognized as an agent of the original person, so NO you can't just pay someone else to do that, as your payment to the lobbyist is itself illegal, under my scheme.
1) If a country is owned by more than 50% by citizens of X country, then it must pay taxes on all it's profits of the entire world, under Country X's laws.
2) (This one I really like) If a company is not incorporated and paying the majority of it's taxes within a country, than it can not under any circumstance: A) lobby in that country, or in any way attempt to affect legislation or rules of that country B) nor can it t make any political - monetarily or directly - on any political subject for the 8 months preceding any primary or general election.
Basically, if you have the knowledge - and can demonstrate it, then your degree will not matter all that much.
Unless of course, you are trying for an extremely competitive position, being choosen by non-tech people.
But it could be re-worked to act like this:
1) Build out infrastructure to give all customers speeds of 500 MBPS
2) Sell service to customers for speeds upto 300 MBPS. Make it clear that is what you are offering, at that price. You never advertise any speeds higher than 300 MBPS.
3) If however people are using content from approved fast lanes, you enable speeds upto 500 MBPS for content from those people.
4) Make a rule that if they ever choose to adverise speeds of over 300, they can no longer get paid for their fast lane service (and must pro-rate the money back if it was pre-paid).
THAT is something that most people would accept. Among other things, it would let the company upgrade their service much quicker if competition started coming around.
Of course, it would end up costing the ISP's a LOT more money than they make on the 'fast lanes', as actually have to BUILD the fast lane into their entire network, something they don't do and don't plan on doing.
Judges for example. When judges are appointed they tend to have high qualifications - experience in the law, an actual law degree, etc. When you vote for them, you get whatever joe shmoe has put in the most time at the political party doing paperwork.
Voting is great for high end positions, but people just don't get excited about anything less than Supreme Court Judge.
Having the FCC get voted on would make things much much worse, not better.
True, but most people reading this article are in the Northern Hemisphere, and as such do not realize it is winter there. A whole bunch of fools are thinking "WOW, the most sea ice ever and at the end of SUMMER?"
Lasts thousands of years, just ask the egyptians. Or recognize that it is not worth the expense.
Second and more importantly, this is the Antartic, not the Artic. For those of you that are ignorant, the antartic consists of a huge land mass with ice sitting on it, and a little bit of ice surrounding it. The Artic on the other hand is just one solid mass of ice.
What that means is that more sea ice in the Artic is called by cold weather. More ice freezes, etc.
But more sea ice in the ANTARTIC is caused by global WARMING. hat is, the sea ice in the Antartic is caused by ice sitting on the land mass, sliding off into the water because it is just a tad too warm to stick to the land.
The basic idea of having drug patents start from the date of invention rather than the date of first legal sale is itself ridiculous. Worse, the idea of just 'extending' the patent length for them is pretty stupid, but the absolute WORST idea is to design the rules for ALL products based on this one industry. The only reason it is not done reasonable is because then non-medical community loves to use the problems with medical patents as an excuse to grab money for non-medical patents.
First and foremost, most businesses do not make decisions about where to build factories, etc. on taxes. Otherwise NYC and California would be economic backwaters, rather than the powerhouses they are.
Note, corporate headquarters is different, I am talking about manufacturing factories and customer facilities for sports.
Sports stadiums are NEVER built based on tax rules, they are ALWAYS built based on customer location. It doesn't matter what the tax rules are, a stadium will be in NYC. It doesn't matter how much cash Boise City, Idaho offers, no national sports team will ever call them home. They are just too small a market
As for factories, the far majority of the time, taxes are such a small consideration, compared to prevailing wages, cost of real estate, cost of water, cost of power, skill level of local population, etc. etc. that taxes will almost NEVER be the deciding factor.
This is mainly true because despite conservative propaganda, actual, real corporate taxes in the US are very low. In addition, where it is a factor, it is FEDERAL tax that matters, not the State Tax. As such, states simply can not offer enough of a 'tax break' to bring a business to their state.
Particularly small patent holders that present ideas to big companies, hoping to be bought out, but instead get the shaft.
Honestly, the real problem is that patents last too long.
If you can't make your profit in 5 years, then your product was never very good in the first place. In that time, you should be able to 'corner the market', develop a brand - including the reputation for quality, and most importantly, learn business secrets that will give you a leg up against the competition.
After that time, you are just holding back other people from improving your product.
Perhaps we need a graduated patent system. Most patents would get 5 years, particularly impressive products get 10 years, and entirely new products that create new types of businesses/industries get 20 years. That is, an improvement to a cellphone gets 5 years, but the creation of a cell phone gets 20 years.
My solution is not perfect, but good enough, and as such is more likely to get passed into law.