In a word, corruption. Favoritism and graft. He was wary of those possibilities. Perhaps his fears were increased by having been ticketed a few times for traffic violations when there was some doubt that he did anything wrong.
Governments also suffer from corruption, of course, but at least in democracies they are formally accountable to the people. An example of the kind of abuse private policing routinely leads to are those red light cameras. Local governments have been too negligent, permissive, and trusting of these private camera operators such as Redflex. Giving these private companies a cut of the fines is a big conflict of interest, motivating them to find ways to cause more violations, rather than work towards the stated goal of improving safety. And they have responded with ways to generate more tickets even at the expense of the very safety they are supposed to be improving. Rear end collisions have increased. They've been caught using too short yellow lights, and even shortening them. They've been sloppy about getting license plate numbers correct, making sure that an incident is not actually a perfectly legal right turn on red, and other little nicieties like that that would improve accuracy but increase their expenses. So instead the public's expenses go up, in more mailings to and actions against victims who protest by refusing to pay or respond, more hearings, court cases, and the like. And if a few of the victims of such slop roll over and pay up without a fight, why not get even sloppier?
Can you imagine the havoc and hate that would ensue if a rapacious private company were given permission to enforce ordinances against home owners? Suddenly, half the home owners would not be able to keep a lawn, house, or car neat enough to satisfy them. We already have that here and there, with these HOAs. HOA horror stories are legion, and, seemingly more excessive on average than the typical horror story about government.
Even my most radically conservative friend who wants to turn all highways and streets into private toll roads, wants government severely reduced in scope and have what's left of the government's budget be balanced no matter what, and believes that Climate Disruption is not caused by man, balked at the notion of privatizing the police.
There's another way an insurer can profit: earn interest on the money they hold. All they need is enough time between the collection of premiums and the payment of claims. It actually is possible to pay out more than they take in and still profit, as long as the pay out is less than the take plus the interest it earns. Many insurers have to keep large reserves. They don't just sit on that money, they invest it.
Standards committees should not waste time on things of zero or negative value. Can you agree on that at least?
It is not political to observe and state facts. DRM is worse than worthless, it has negative value and that's a fact, not an opinion. You seem to be stuck on the thought that DRM has some positive value.
The ease of an idea is not that relevant to the question of whether it should go into a standard. An idea should not go into a standard if it is not useful, or known to be just plain wrong, no matter how easy or hard it is. And by wrong, I don't mean immoral, I mean incorrect. DRM does not belong anywhere, same as Creationism has no standing as a credible theory equal to evolution. Earth is not flat, the solar system should not be modeled with Earth at the center and the orbits of the other planets described with epicycles, the elements are not the 4 called air, earth, fire, and water, and DRM should not contaminate any standard.
"HTML users" are all who use web browsers, not just web page designers and programmers. Just because many people don't know or care about what is under the hood doesn't mean they don't use it.
You aren't aware that you don't own medical records about you? Your doctors and hospitals own that. Nor do you own arrest and conviction records about you. The public owns that. And should own that.
What's wrong with doctors sharing info about their patients among themselves? They absolutely have to do that, to do their jobs! In addition to the permissions they already have to seek, you want to force your doctors to go through a lengthy technical process to get permission every single time they need to access their records about you? Still want to, if you have to pay for the time it takes them to do that? Maybe you'd also like to have them sit through unskippable FBI warnings about medical malpractice and HIPAA laws, and the like, every time they need to access records about you? What if all the local doctors decided to boycott you? If you demand all that, I hope my doctor wouldn't accept you as a patient!
DRM doesn't prevent anything. It's a technical attempt to force us all to not participate in highly beneficial natural workings of the universe, so that these workings can be reserved for a privileged few. These privileged dangle before us all the prospects of becoming one of them, to keep us hoping. For almost everyone, it's a lie, and an entirely too seductive one, to judge from the number of people who fall for it. Lot of people wistfully hope to become the next J. K. Rowling, or Justin Bieber, refusing to face up to the extreme odds against it, particularly for those who lack the talent and drive. Lotteries, bad as they are, are a better deal than that. At least you don't have to work yourself to death to buy a few lottery tickets.
Sharing is a fact of nature, and cannot be stopped by technical means, or by legal means. Nor should we or do we want sharing prevented. We engage in this activity known as "education" in which we freely share our knowledge with our children, and not only out of pure altruism, but for very good practical reasons, such as the functioning of Democracy. We should not meekly submit to this ugly vision of fascist control of every scrap of information.
You support copyright, and DRM. I've read enough of your other statements to know that. It is disingenuous for you to claim that you don't necessarily support DRM, but that, as a totally disinterested party, you nevertheless think it would be a good idea to shove it into the HTML standard.
If a significant percentage of internet traffic was going to be tic-tac-toe games
Are you seriously arguing that anything whatever, such as tic-tac-toe or the Evil Bit, ought to go into the standard, if there's enough Internet traffic plus a few other things? DRM certainly does not meet the traffic requirement. What DRM traffic there is, is unwilling on the part of nearly all users. There will never be enough people using tic-tac-toe, because it just isn't that interesting. So that's a nonstarter right there. But suppose anyway that somehow there was lots of tic-tac-toe activity. It still wouldn't justify adding it to HTML, because it is both trivial and solved. DRM has the same status. Trivially broken, and solved, and not willingly used.
Tic-tac-toe is superior to DRM in at least one respect, in that it is merely trivial. DRM is actually against the interests of HTML users, which is almost everyone. And most people understand that. Adding DRM to HTML makes less sense than changing the HTML header from !DOCTYPE="html" to !DOCTYPEPIRACYISSTEALING="htmldontcopythatfloppy".
I wonder why you are so passionately supportive of copyright and DRM. Do you hold a lot of copyrights? Or do you have delusions that you may one day be a big name author or musician? Maybe you're the heir to a huge estate of some famous but aging performer? Or maybe you're a shill, lobbyist, or a bootlicker hoping for a few scraps and pats on the head? Your thinking on the subject is so weak.
If none of that-- if you have no personal reason to favor copyrights, why do you favor them so? You're only hurting yourself. You're like a slave arguing in favor of slavery. DRM is like a wire mesh fence in a nation armed with wirecutters. DRM isn't even that good. A fence can be repaired. Not DRM. Once breached, the protected content is available to everyone, and no amount of fence repair can change that. Further, it has to have a gate for the consumer, and for copying, a gate can be as good as a breach. As such, DRM is a stupid idea. We should not junk up HTML5 with DRM any more than we should junk it up with standards for displaying tic-tac-toe games. It would be a total waste to do so.
The "national defense" has been a tempting way to fund science, at least since 2000. In many cases it's been easier to make up some way to tie proposed research to defense and fund it that way, than to compete for the ever shrinking funds the NSF has.
Unfortunately, that route has big problems. Military people can't let be. Many are paranoid control freaks, and they've got to control the research. They will insist on such things as that all the data and equipment must be kept at military bases. Then you have to get clearances and permissions and exemptions just to do the work. At any time, they can set the research back simply by denying access. Finally, they are likely to think results should be treated as national secrets.
It's a pity you posted this anonymously. Else, that snippet of code might have done this for you: Ranking = ranking ^ 10. (Where '^' is exponentiation, not an XOR operation.)
Many people are so afraid of losing what they have or think they have, that they will pass up a great deal of gain no matter how favorable the risks, in order to avoid loss. This is often not a rational position, but it's how people tend to think.
So entertainment moguls think they own content, and that it is in danger of slipping from their control. They have responded by trying to lock everything down, with laws, DRM, terror campaigns, and hysterical, overwrought appeals to our morals and sense of fairness to poor starving artists. They have shown themselves to be unprincipled liars, thieves, fools, and bullying muggers themselves, thinking anything whatever is justified, for the sake of addressing their fears. They have elevated copyright to the status of the holiest of holy dogmas, the staff upon which all culture depends and not to be questioned for any reason whatever. As for DRM, they have continued to try to make it viable despite being repeatedly told it does not work. They so desperately want DRM to work that they keep trying it anyway. None of that were well considered moves, but such is the power of fear, and greed. DRM is a trap for fear filled thinking, nothing more. Now they mope about, resigned to the inevitability of the ongoing loss they believe they are suffering, while still trying to fight rearguard actions. It's like Roosevelt said, "the only thing we have to fear is fear itself." They and we would have all been richer had we not listened to these foolish fears. Think how much more would be available and how much we could be saving if our public libraries and book and music stores could have gone digital the moment it was technologically feasible. The bookstore would not exist in its present form of a bricks and mortar repository of paper. Instead, taxpayers and consumers are still spending a great deal of money to track and house and move physical media. Technology has handed us immeasurable wealth and possibility, but these bozos are crying over the loss of obsolete business models while they do all they can to stop the rest of us from progressing. Might as well cry over the buggy whip market, and spilled milk too.
Many artists on the other hand, know that they should fear the entertainment moguls, not their fans.
Hit by a fricking wall of water several times larger than anybody had ever planned for
We knew tsunamis could be that large. The plant owners were told the wall was not adequate, but to save a few pennies, they opted to ignore the warnings and lean hard on any balky engineers and safety inspectors to accept it. They also used propaganda to discredit and minimize the warnings. Took nature to show the world how very wrong they were. Then, it turned out that the failsafes also hadn't been maintained, to save a few more pennies. Don't buy their bull about the "unprecedented" size of the tsunami, and that no one could have predicted it. There was precedent, it was predicted, and the predictions were correct. There's no excuse for the reckless gambles they took. Fukushima was entirely a human failure.
no renewables will NOT cut it
Ultimately, renewables will have to cut it. Or what do you think we will do when the non-renewables run out? And they will run out, that's why they are called non-renewables.
I'll happily accept nuclear power as a stopgap the moment someone figures a way to stop criminally reckless and irresponsible disregard of safety. Same goes for offshore oil drilling. We will decide how much risk we will accept. We should not allow a few greedy fools to take far higher risks than known or agreed to. If we cannot be sure nuclear power operators will behave responsibly, then we shouldn't use it at all. And there is another reason not to use nuclear power. It's too easy to turn power plants into bomb factories. How else can you explain the preference for uranium and plutonium reactors, over thorium? I'd rather see the nation awash in small arms easily obtained by mentally disturbed people, than see idiot politicians and gung ho generals with easy access to nuclear bombs.
What struck me about this is that the complaint is coming from the medical field, which is notorious for overcharging more than any other field. Yeah, really sucks when you're charged sky high rates for service, doesn't it, doc?
Authorities have always wanted magically accurate identification. And yes, they want to use it everywhere. They don't appreciate the difficulties inherent in applying a system that can match people in high quality images against a database of a few hundred high quality images, to poor pictures against a database of over a million tiny, poor quality mug shots. Even if they upgrade all the photos, a system with a fantastically good 0.01% false positive rate will still find about 100 matches for every person.
Some would force everyone to have serial numbers tattooed to foreheads if they could. They are suckers for this kind of technology, all too ready to sell themselves on what they very badly want.
If you are saying Democrats and Republicans are equally bad, I don't agree. Republicans have become much worse.
The Republican Party is riddled with contradictions. What principles do the Republicans stand for these days? Trickle down economics, military power, and a particularly harsh vision of Christianity. And stubbornness that goes beyond idiocy. They reject science that doesn't align with their preconceptions, preferring to cling to their notions no matter what evidence and results show. Besides, to change their minds would be flip-flopping. That's not the Republican Party of the 1950s. In those days, they recognized that science was crucial to military power, and supported it for that reason. Now they treat science with such disrespect they tar it as nothing more than liberal propaganda.
So if we shouldn't follow where science leads, and certainly we shouldn't do so blindly, what or who should we follow? The Pope? No, they aren't yet crazy enough to anoint some religious authority as the Great Leader. So what does that leave? Why, the rich of course! They have a dangerous, unreasoning faith in rugged individualism, and the mythical self-made individual who can guide the nation like he guided his own fortunes and whose success will magically rub off on the rest of us, and think these people are to be found amongst the wealthy. That many among the wealthy got there through parasitic leeching off the rest of us is conveniently overlooked. They really seem to think wealth is a sign of God's favor, and poverty a sign of the opposite, and are readily persuaded to kick the poor. Punishing people for being poor is for their own good, you see, as they chose to be lazy and poor and maybe they can be forced to quit being so damn poor. Get a job, you lazy bum! Never mind that we wrecked the economy and there aren't any jobs to be found, make a job if you can't find one. This directly contradicts all Jesus had to say about poverty, charity and mercy. Then there's the Pro-Life plank, which thanks to Akin and Mourdock has been revealed as actually Pro-Rape, which fits very well with a party that is turning so hideously patriarchal.
Yes, but I would put it differently. Not fewer planks, instead make a very few "major" and have the rest be "minor".
The Justice Party sounds very leftist. Combines the Pirates, Greens, and Socialists into one big tent. In a way, good. The Democrats have shifted so far to the right that calling them the left is sad. We don't have a real left in the US anymore. The Republicans have responded by shifting so far to the right, to stay to the right of the Democrats, that they're about to fall off the political spectrum. They've turned crazy, and I think they are in serious danger of collapsing. They've managed to anger women, homosexuals, Hispanics, blacks, and even Asians, and the young, poor, immigrants, Muslims, atheists and agnostics, environmentalists, and scientists. That's almost everyone. And they've made a lot of plain stupid moves. People who appreciate competence can't be too thrilled with the Republicans these days. They've become so snottily exclusive, they aren't even trying to win over the "47%"! The only voters left who really like Republicans are rich, old, Christian white men, and that group is no longer big enough to keep a major political party viable.
I don't think planks is the problem as much as eloquence. More than that, need exposure and coverage. How to get that when there's enough corruption to make sure their voices are never heard is a hard problem. Perhaps the best chance is hope the Republicans really do collapse and implode.
I suspect you already know the answer to this one. Optimistic, of course.
We all know Moore's Law can't last. Computing speed, like most improvements, follows an S-curve. At first, slow improvement as an idea becomes known and accepted, then rapid improvement as the easier stuff with big dividends is worked on, then diminishing returns as we reach for harder and more marginal improvements. It's that way in oil exploration and extraction, and automobile and engine design, and it will be that way in Transhumanism.
The bottom half of the S-curve looks like exponential growth. Moore's Law is wrong. It describes as exponential what is actually an S-curve of which we have so far seen about the 1st half. The Technological Singularity is not just one but a whole bunch of nearly simultaneous S-curves. Can the number of things to improve, the number of S-curves, itself actually be an exponential curve? Or is it really another S-curve? I suspect the latter, and that therefore there will not be a Singularity. Singularity is a bad name for it anyway. Should be Inflection.
Consider technological advancement from the point of view of the History of Life. For about 3 billion years, life was microbial. Then 0.5 billion years ago was the Cambrian Explosion, resulting in plants and animals, which could do many things never before seen on Earth. But after, things settled back down, and while life continued to evolve and improve, there was no improvement to match the sheer staggering size of the jump from bacteria to plant and animal. Now we have arrived on the scene, and learned to manipulate matter and energy in ways no mere dumb animal can hope to match. Evolution created biological machines. Now we are making our own machines based on very different processes, and with hugely different and often far greater capability. The horse cannot compete with the automobile, the tractor, or the train engine. Our communication abilities far outstrip what animals can do with howls, whistles, rumbles, clicks, and the like. The past 5000 to 10000 years may prove to be as significant in the History of the Earth as the Cambrian Explosion. The Inflection has already arrived, and we are in the midst of it. As before, assuming we don't kill off ourselves and all life through mishandling of this vast increase in resourcefulness we have found, things will settle back down eventually.
I keep hoping for the battery that will finally allow the electric motor to kill the combustion engine. What little the article says sounds great, but it doesn't speak to a lot of questions, and too soon concludes with trite superlative and celebratory statements. "... breaks the normal paradigms of energy sources." Sure it does-- if such batteries aren't prohibitively expensive to manufacture, can be scaled up to power cars, don't have memory problems, will last for thousands of discharge cycles, aren't prone to catching on fire or blowing up, and also can withstand significant damage without burning or detonating, can handle a wide range of temperatures and altitudes, and are not difficult to recycle or scrap. At least the article covers one essential feature: they recharge quickly.
This kind of reporting is dreadfully common and tiresome. Seems every month brings us another announcement of a fantastic battery or fuel cell breakthrough. Evidently, it's asking too much of journalists to be a little more sober and thoughtful.
The OP made a big deal out of a policy it turns out he has enforced just 3 times in 20 years. He played for your sympathies and hatred of cell phone abuse, and you fell for it.
You think I want to receive a call during a movie? The only reason I would have a phone on during a movie is if I'm on call. No one wants to get that kind of call. But no one had better be jamming or blocking reception in case it is that kind. If a theater is not willing or able to accommodate a need like that, then I simply do not go. Good thing we have such large screen TVs these days.
You talk as if DRM is plausible. It's not. It's amazing how many people just don't understand this. DRM has to rank up there with things like the Maginot Line and other border walls and fences, and dirigible aircraft carriers for stupid ideas that were just sane sounding enough to sucker large numbers of fools into squandering big money.
Even if DRM could work, the uses envisioned are not strictly limited to protection of copyrighted works. We've all seen content producers attempting to extend this capability to force such abominations as unskippable commercials, region encoding, gathering of private data and snooping on your emails and instant chats and the like, and deletion of previously purchased content. Indeed, entire collections have been rendered unusable at a stroke with the shutdown of a license server. Ultimately, the only way DRM can work is for everyone to surrender control of their computers. This would include a ban on homebrew computers that don't include the DRM baggage. You wouldn't own a computer anymore, you'd only rent or otherwise license the use of a computer from "approved" organizations. Fortunately, the public reacts quite negatively to such schemes.
Don't let yourself be mesmerized by the entertainment industry's talk of DRM as if it had legitimate purposes, which implies that it works. I mean, think about it, who do you trust to better understand the powers and limitations of new technology? Surely not a bunch of people whose expertise and business is Hollywood accounting, and, oh yes, acting and music. Even many of the folks who are into both entertainment and software, such as computer game makers, go for DRM like flies go for manure. They at least should know better. Consider how insulting to our intelligence their marketing is, trying to sell us the idea that DRM is an "enhancement" because it "protects" us from violating copyright. Would you feel that your car was "enhanced" if it had a speed limiter so that you could not go faster than 70 mph? And then, perceiving what a bad odor DRM has acquired, they even go as far as trying to claim that a required constant connection to the Internet is not a form of DRM, and that it is "necessary" for the smooth operation of the product without spelling out just why. They can't say why of course, because even they realize that if they did so, there would be no way to deny that it is DRM. A recent example of this kind of contempt for our rights and smarts is the latest SimCity game. These suits and entertainers use new techonolgy, sure, but they've always been slow to really get it.
No refund for people you kick out, I expect. Why don't you confiscate the cell phone for the length of the movie? Or at least, offer that option? And, exercise it the first time? They can always leave if they don't want to check their phones. That way, it's their choice.
When I visit the theater, it's always with others. If I was the offender, and I was subjected to the humiliation of being publicly kicked out, as well as being cheated out of the money I paid for my ticket, everyone would know about it and I'd feel much too ashamed and angry to ever come back. I'd still feel that way even if it was entirely my fault, but more likely it was something so important I have to leave early anyway. You might think "good riddance", and believe that permanently alienating cell phone "abusers" is a public service. But I think your policy is needlessly rude.
salaries are extremely high and it's therefore clear there aren't enough American workers
I agree that overly high salaries are an indication that there is a problem. If, that is, salaries really have risen, which I am not convinced has happened. But supposing pay has gone up, then is "not enough workers" the problem, or are there other reasons?
Clearly, "not enough workers" is not the case for finding people to fill CEO and other upper management positions, because there are relatively few such positions. Nor is it a matter of skills. This should be clear from the many times businesses have paid top dollar for talent, only to see this "talent" make obviously stupid, costly moves, and also illegal, unethical and immoral moves that could have and should have been more carefully vetted. Yet the pay for those positions is sky high. Even after making stupid or illegal moves of stunning brazenness, they still get the golden parachute. Why? Cronyism, bribery, and fawning, that's why. Even when the press does their job and doesn't just pile on after something is already known but actually breaks stories about scandalous stupidity, many people remained mesmerized by the money. We have far too much respect for wealth, and we're far too unbelieving and forgiving of white collar crime. We don't respect wealthy drug dealers, and too nakedly obvious scams such as pyramid schemes, but stock market manipulations like pump and dump mostly fly under the radar. How many people, even now, wouldn't mind palling around with Tony Hayward, Dick Fuld, Angelo Mozilo, and ilk of that sort, because, in spite of their mistakes and crimes, they are still very, very, very rich? Some would even hang out with O.J. Simpson, if he still had money. There's no such thing as bad publicity, so some people have asserted.
Corruption or incompetence at the top doesn't stay contained, it leaks out and filters downward. It should not be any surprise that hiring practices are arbitrary and capricious, seemingly designed to skirt all standards of fairness. We know this supposed worker shortage is a lie. We know that our unemployment statistics have been gamed, and that real unemployment (now known as the U-6 rate) is still over 17%, even as official unemployment is declared to be about 10%. As to claims that while the overall unemployment rate may be high, there is a shortage of particular skills, that we also know to be wrong. This supposed shortage, if real, is entirely a manufactured problem. Some employers, particular smaller ones, may indeed be experiencing difficulties finding talent, but that's not because talent is not out there, it's because they're caught up in the storm.
I note also that you confined yourself to a few big companies in Silicon Valley. If they are having such problems finding talent there, maybe they should take other measures? Like, opening offices in cheaper parts of the nation? And not being so unreasonable about the skills they demand? Seems they don't want raw talent, they only want highly trained talent, for peanuts.
Another custom that has become too popular is turning over too much of the hiring process to Human Resources. HR has become its own little fiefdom, with less interest in helping the company make good hires than in maintaining their power, to everyone's detriment. Good managers have been frustrated by HR. They find good candidates, and then HR prevents them from hiring these people. Or HR runs off all the best before the managers ever learn about them. HR does not have the competence to judge the fitness of engineering candidates, yet they constantly usurp that privilege and do so anyway, using not unfair prejudice so much, but brainless formulas that "throw the baby out with the bathwater". Then they complain that they can't find anyone.
No, I do not believe that an actual shortage of skilled workers is the cause.
Point being, you don't end harassment with harassment.
Then hold these prosecutors accountable for their misdeeds!
They abused their powers, and suffered no official consequences. No reprimand, no firings, not even a bit of unpaid leave. The President has been petitioned to fire these people, but nothing has happened. How do we get justice? The alternatives to activism are looking pretty thin and feeble.
Fight these guys up front and in their face
So you disapprove of some kinds of activism. Ever do any yourself? It's real easy to tell someone else to stand up and get in others' faces. In this particular case, with these people being pros at winning long sentences, doing that could see you end up spending the next decade in jail. With such an imbalance of power, activists need all the advantages they can get. Anonymity is not to be lightly discarded.
There are a lot of problems with all this. Why does the drug company get a monopoly? Why not the university? Or the research team? In cases where the drug comes from a substance that native peoples used for centuries, shouldn't they get something too? At the least, they shouldn't suddenly be denied the use of their own cure!
Another fundamental problem with patents is that they don't account for parallel work. Particularly in the West, there's too much admiration for the mythical loner genius. It's like everyone unconsciously accepts the implication that this person exists in a vacuum. Research teams provide giant shoulders to stand on. Also, suppose 2 or more teams are independently following the same promising lead. 1 wins, perhaps by mere hours, and gets a patent. The other teams get at best nothing. At worst, they may even be told to quit and discard their own work, or be sued because it's now infringing. Research shouldn't be run like a sports playoff. It discourages cooperation and publication of results.
Still another problem is summed up in that word "monopoly". The free market works on competition. But with a monopoly in hand, there's little incentive for a sole producer to work on improvements, shop around for better deals on raw materials, and the like. They don't have to get better. Instead, they can simply charge higher prices, and keep right on being inefficient. They can even indulge in cronyism. With drugs, there's an even worse potential problem: gouging. With lives at stake, they can hold people over a barrel like no other monopolists can.
Another bad aspect of all this is the notion that you should ask for permission. In research, you don't need permission to cite someone else's work, you just do it. And they like being cited! For the next example, I'm shifting here from patents to copyright, but the essential problem of having to get permission is the same. In the entertainment world, with one exception, you have to get permission or you're a dirty rotten copycat, despised for your lack of originality, even when you aren't just copying. No artist is allowed to make a cover without permission. The exception is parody. Otherwise, it's so bad, you can get in trouble for just a few notes. Consider the song "Land Down Under", which allegedly used a few bars from another song, Kookaburra. Even crazier is the criticism and, I recall hearing, threats of a lawsuit, against Terry Brooks over his Sword of Shannara work being too similar to the Lord of the Rings.
I'd be interested to hear alternative means
We have a centuries old way called patronage. The many little European states vied with each other in more ways than purely military or commercial. They also tried to compete culturally, and this meant every respectable court had a court composer. It was this that was largely responsible for the flowering of western music. We use it still today, but you don't hear much about it. Every major Western city has an orchestra, and these orchestras get much support from patronage. Today, with vastly improved communications, the existence of recording and storage technologies, and more subtle advances we can do patronage so much better. Unfortunately, the established players have been more interested in flogging copyrights and patents as hard as possible for a few more rounds of earnings, and have neglected patronage. It has fallen to new organizations to come up with and harness ways to profit through patronage. Kickstarter is a form of patronage. Universities are fundamentally another variety of patronage, known as "publish or perish".
Consider also the difference between railroads and roads. Railroads are for the most part private companies. Roads are public. We created a great public road system. Why not something along the same lines for the writing of music and books? We already have public libraries in place. If we had a patronage system centered around libraries, rather than our current syst
No pharma company would invest in a new drug, especially the huge cost of clinical trials, without having some exclusivity.
Lots of problems with this statement. He cleverly said "invest" instead of "invent". Pharma companies don't do much actual discovery or invention, they offload that expense on to the public, which pays for it through funding of universities and their research.
As for the "huge cost" of clinical trials, I expect that is all tax deductible. Other industries also have huge expenses. I can't think of any reason why pharma's expenses should get special treatment. And granting them exclusivity through patents is definitely too special.
There is also a perverse incentive here, to continue to push new drugs even when an older drug is as good or actually better. One such example is statins. Lovastatin has been available for years as a generic, and works fine. But the medical community pushes newer statins such as Crestor and Lipitor when there is no medical reason to do so, only reasons of profit. This is an example of how drug patents have warped medical care in the US. The outcome we want is maximizing everyone's health. Drug company profits should not be a consideration.
In poor nations, the warping of medical care has sometimes gone to inhumane extremes. Drug companies tried to bully poor nations into paying the extremely inflated fantasy US list prices for AIDS medication. Poor nations have responded in several ways. Some have done without these drugs, and even ignored the whole problem, as thousands die. In those places, AIDS is the new leprosy-- victims are shunned and isolated. Others have pushed back, threatening to nationalize the drugs if the companies won't cut a deal. Still others have quietly encouraged a black market. I think a few have been more or less forced to pay up, trapped by conditions attached to loans from the IMF.
I wonder why any company makes generic drugs. There should be no exclusivity in generics, at least, not from patents. Yet they do make generics. Even, of quite new drugs. Rather spoils his argument.
Of course those dam failures contributed to more deaths than nuclear accidents! But I said deaths is not a good measure. Didn't you read?
Put it this way: Amount of land rendered uninhabitable by dam failures is 0. Amount of land rendered uninhabitable by nuclear accidents is 2800 sq km. Therefore dams failures are less disastrous than nuclear power plant failures.
Or, put it another way: Damage from all dam failures ever is very roughly $20 billion. Damages from Fukushima alone is roughly $60 billion. Dam failures are less damaging than nuclear accidents.
Finally, the Johnstown dam failure occurred in 1889, long before we had nuclear power. Ought to account for that by looking at damages on an annualized basis. Doing that shows dams in an even better light when compared to nuclear power plants. Might also consider that technology has come a long ways since 1889. As for Banqiao Dam, that, like Chernobyl, suffered from reckless top down dictatorial Communism which forced through substandard design and construction over the protests of engineers.
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In a word, corruption. Favoritism and graft. He was wary of those possibilities. Perhaps his fears were increased by having been ticketed a few times for traffic violations when there was some doubt that he did anything wrong.
Governments also suffer from corruption, of course, but at least in democracies they are formally accountable to the people. An example of the kind of abuse private policing routinely leads to are those red light cameras. Local governments have been too negligent, permissive, and trusting of these private camera operators such as Redflex. Giving these private companies a cut of the fines is a big conflict of interest, motivating them to find ways to cause more violations, rather than work towards the stated goal of improving safety. And they have responded with ways to generate more tickets even at the expense of the very safety they are supposed to be improving. Rear end collisions have increased. They've been caught using too short yellow lights, and even shortening them. They've been sloppy about getting license plate numbers correct, making sure that an incident is not actually a perfectly legal right turn on red, and other little nicieties like that that would improve accuracy but increase their expenses. So instead the public's expenses go up, in more mailings to and actions against victims who protest by refusing to pay or respond, more hearings, court cases, and the like. And if a few of the victims of such slop roll over and pay up without a fight, why not get even sloppier?
Can you imagine the havoc and hate that would ensue if a rapacious private company were given permission to enforce ordinances against home owners? Suddenly, half the home owners would not be able to keep a lawn, house, or car neat enough to satisfy them. We already have that here and there, with these HOAs. HOA horror stories are legion, and, seemingly more excessive on average than the typical horror story about government.
Even my most radically conservative friend who wants to turn all highways and streets into private toll roads, wants government severely reduced in scope and have what's left of the government's budget be balanced no matter what, and believes that Climate Disruption is not caused by man, balked at the notion of privatizing the police.
There's another way an insurer can profit: earn interest on the money they hold. All they need is enough time between the collection of premiums and the payment of claims. It actually is possible to pay out more than they take in and still profit, as long as the pay out is less than the take plus the interest it earns. Many insurers have to keep large reserves. They don't just sit on that money, they invest it.
Standards committees should not waste time on things of zero or negative value. Can you agree on that at least?
It is not political to observe and state facts. DRM is worse than worthless, it has negative value and that's a fact, not an opinion. You seem to be stuck on the thought that DRM has some positive value.
The ease of an idea is not that relevant to the question of whether it should go into a standard. An idea should not go into a standard if it is not useful, or known to be just plain wrong, no matter how easy or hard it is. And by wrong, I don't mean immoral, I mean incorrect. DRM does not belong anywhere, same as Creationism has no standing as a credible theory equal to evolution. Earth is not flat, the solar system should not be modeled with Earth at the center and the orbits of the other planets described with epicycles, the elements are not the 4 called air, earth, fire, and water, and DRM should not contaminate any standard.
"HTML users" are all who use web browsers, not just web page designers and programmers. Just because many people don't know or care about what is under the hood doesn't mean they don't use it.
You aren't aware that you don't own medical records about you? Your doctors and hospitals own that. Nor do you own arrest and conviction records about you. The public owns that. And should own that.
What's wrong with doctors sharing info about their patients among themselves? They absolutely have to do that, to do their jobs! In addition to the permissions they already have to seek, you want to force your doctors to go through a lengthy technical process to get permission every single time they need to access their records about you? Still want to, if you have to pay for the time it takes them to do that? Maybe you'd also like to have them sit through unskippable FBI warnings about medical malpractice and HIPAA laws, and the like, every time they need to access records about you? What if all the local doctors decided to boycott you? If you demand all that, I hope my doctor wouldn't accept you as a patient!
DRM doesn't prevent anything. It's a technical attempt to force us all to not participate in highly beneficial natural workings of the universe, so that these workings can be reserved for a privileged few. These privileged dangle before us all the prospects of becoming one of them, to keep us hoping. For almost everyone, it's a lie, and an entirely too seductive one, to judge from the number of people who fall for it. Lot of people wistfully hope to become the next J. K. Rowling, or Justin Bieber, refusing to face up to the extreme odds against it, particularly for those who lack the talent and drive. Lotteries, bad as they are, are a better deal than that. At least you don't have to work yourself to death to buy a few lottery tickets.
Sharing is a fact of nature, and cannot be stopped by technical means, or by legal means. Nor should we or do we want sharing prevented. We engage in this activity known as "education" in which we freely share our knowledge with our children, and not only out of pure altruism, but for very good practical reasons, such as the functioning of Democracy. We should not meekly submit to this ugly vision of fascist control of every scrap of information.
You support copyright, and DRM. I've read enough of your other statements to know that. It is disingenuous for you to claim that you don't necessarily support DRM, but that, as a totally disinterested party, you nevertheless think it would be a good idea to shove it into the HTML standard.
If a significant percentage of internet traffic was going to be tic-tac-toe games
Are you seriously arguing that anything whatever, such as tic-tac-toe or the Evil Bit, ought to go into the standard, if there's enough Internet traffic plus a few other things? DRM certainly does not meet the traffic requirement. What DRM traffic there is, is unwilling on the part of nearly all users. There will never be enough people using tic-tac-toe, because it just isn't that interesting. So that's a nonstarter right there. But suppose anyway that somehow there was lots of tic-tac-toe activity. It still wouldn't justify adding it to HTML, because it is both trivial and solved. DRM has the same status. Trivially broken, and solved, and not willingly used.
Tic-tac-toe is superior to DRM in at least one respect, in that it is merely trivial. DRM is actually against the interests of HTML users, which is almost everyone. And most people understand that. Adding DRM to HTML makes less sense than changing the HTML header from !DOCTYPE="html" to !DOCTYPEPIRACYISSTEALING="htmldontcopythatfloppy".
I wonder why you are so passionately supportive of copyright and DRM. Do you hold a lot of copyrights? Or do you have delusions that you may one day be a big name author or musician? Maybe you're the heir to a huge estate of some famous but aging performer? Or maybe you're a shill, lobbyist, or a bootlicker hoping for a few scraps and pats on the head? Your thinking on the subject is so weak.
If none of that-- if you have no personal reason to favor copyrights, why do you favor them so? You're only hurting yourself. You're like a slave arguing in favor of slavery. DRM is like a wire mesh fence in a nation armed with wirecutters. DRM isn't even that good. A fence can be repaired. Not DRM. Once breached, the protected content is available to everyone, and no amount of fence repair can change that. Further, it has to have a gate for the consumer, and for copying, a gate can be as good as a breach. As such, DRM is a stupid idea. We should not junk up HTML5 with DRM any more than we should junk it up with standards for displaying tic-tac-toe games. It would be a total waste to do so.
The "national defense" has been a tempting way to fund science, at least since 2000. In many cases it's been easier to make up some way to tie proposed research to defense and fund it that way, than to compete for the ever shrinking funds the NSF has.
Unfortunately, that route has big problems. Military people can't let be. Many are paranoid control freaks, and they've got to control the research. They will insist on such things as that all the data and equipment must be kept at military bases. Then you have to get clearances and permissions and exemptions just to do the work. At any time, they can set the research back simply by denying access. Finally, they are likely to think results should be treated as national secrets.
It's a pity you posted this anonymously. Else, that snippet of code might have done this for you: Ranking = ranking ^ 10. (Where '^' is exponentiation, not an XOR operation.)
Okay algorithms, bump up my ranking!
Exactly.
DRM is all about fear, fear of loss.
Many people are so afraid of losing what they have or think they have, that they will pass up a great deal of gain no matter how favorable the risks, in order to avoid loss. This is often not a rational position, but it's how people tend to think.
So entertainment moguls think they own content, and that it is in danger of slipping from their control. They have responded by trying to lock everything down, with laws, DRM, terror campaigns, and hysterical, overwrought appeals to our morals and sense of fairness to poor starving artists. They have shown themselves to be unprincipled liars, thieves, fools, and bullying muggers themselves, thinking anything whatever is justified, for the sake of addressing their fears. They have elevated copyright to the status of the holiest of holy dogmas, the staff upon which all culture depends and not to be questioned for any reason whatever. As for DRM, they have continued to try to make it viable despite being repeatedly told it does not work. They so desperately want DRM to work that they keep trying it anyway. None of that were well considered moves, but such is the power of fear, and greed. DRM is a trap for fear filled thinking, nothing more. Now they mope about, resigned to the inevitability of the ongoing loss they believe they are suffering, while still trying to fight rearguard actions. It's like Roosevelt said, "the only thing we have to fear is fear itself." They and we would have all been richer had we not listened to these foolish fears. Think how much more would be available and how much we could be saving if our public libraries and book and music stores could have gone digital the moment it was technologically feasible. The bookstore would not exist in its present form of a bricks and mortar repository of paper. Instead, taxpayers and consumers are still spending a great deal of money to track and house and move physical media. Technology has handed us immeasurable wealth and possibility, but these bozos are crying over the loss of obsolete business models while they do all they can to stop the rest of us from progressing. Might as well cry over the buggy whip market, and spilled milk too.
Many artists on the other hand, know that they should fear the entertainment moguls, not their fans.
Hit by a fricking wall of water several times larger than anybody had ever planned for
We knew tsunamis could be that large. The plant owners were told the wall was not adequate, but to save a few pennies, they opted to ignore the warnings and lean hard on any balky engineers and safety inspectors to accept it. They also used propaganda to discredit and minimize the warnings. Took nature to show the world how very wrong they were. Then, it turned out that the failsafes also hadn't been maintained, to save a few more pennies. Don't buy their bull about the "unprecedented" size of the tsunami, and that no one could have predicted it. There was precedent, it was predicted, and the predictions were correct. There's no excuse for the reckless gambles they took. Fukushima was entirely a human failure.
no renewables will NOT cut it
Ultimately, renewables will have to cut it. Or what do you think we will do when the non-renewables run out? And they will run out, that's why they are called non-renewables.
I'll happily accept nuclear power as a stopgap the moment someone figures a way to stop criminally reckless and irresponsible disregard of safety. Same goes for offshore oil drilling. We will decide how much risk we will accept. We should not allow a few greedy fools to take far higher risks than known or agreed to. If we cannot be sure nuclear power operators will behave responsibly, then we shouldn't use it at all. And there is another reason not to use nuclear power. It's too easy to turn power plants into bomb factories. How else can you explain the preference for uranium and plutonium reactors, over thorium? I'd rather see the nation awash in small arms easily obtained by mentally disturbed people, than see idiot politicians and gung ho generals with easy access to nuclear bombs.
What struck me about this is that the complaint is coming from the medical field, which is notorious for overcharging more than any other field. Yeah, really sucks when you're charged sky high rates for service, doesn't it, doc?
Authorities have always wanted magically accurate identification. And yes, they want to use it everywhere. They don't appreciate the difficulties inherent in applying a system that can match people in high quality images against a database of a few hundred high quality images, to poor pictures against a database of over a million tiny, poor quality mug shots. Even if they upgrade all the photos, a system with a fantastically good 0.01% false positive rate will still find about 100 matches for every person.
Some would force everyone to have serial numbers tattooed to foreheads if they could. They are suckers for this kind of technology, all too ready to sell themselves on what they very badly want.
If you are saying Democrats and Republicans are equally bad, I don't agree. Republicans have become much worse.
The Republican Party is riddled with contradictions. What principles do the Republicans stand for these days? Trickle down economics, military power, and a particularly harsh vision of Christianity. And stubbornness that goes beyond idiocy. They reject science that doesn't align with their preconceptions, preferring to cling to their notions no matter what evidence and results show. Besides, to change their minds would be flip-flopping. That's not the Republican Party of the 1950s. In those days, they recognized that science was crucial to military power, and supported it for that reason. Now they treat science with such disrespect they tar it as nothing more than liberal propaganda.
So if we shouldn't follow where science leads, and certainly we shouldn't do so blindly, what or who should we follow? The Pope? No, they aren't yet crazy enough to anoint some religious authority as the Great Leader. So what does that leave? Why, the rich of course! They have a dangerous, unreasoning faith in rugged individualism, and the mythical self-made individual who can guide the nation like he guided his own fortunes and whose success will magically rub off on the rest of us, and think these people are to be found amongst the wealthy. That many among the wealthy got there through parasitic leeching off the rest of us is conveniently overlooked. They really seem to think wealth is a sign of God's favor, and poverty a sign of the opposite, and are readily persuaded to kick the poor. Punishing people for being poor is for their own good, you see, as they chose to be lazy and poor and maybe they can be forced to quit being so damn poor. Get a job, you lazy bum! Never mind that we wrecked the economy and there aren't any jobs to be found, make a job if you can't find one. This directly contradicts all Jesus had to say about poverty, charity and mercy. Then there's the Pro-Life plank, which thanks to Akin and Mourdock has been revealed as actually Pro-Rape, which fits very well with a party that is turning so hideously patriarchal.
Yes, but I would put it differently. Not fewer planks, instead make a very few "major" and have the rest be "minor".
The Justice Party sounds very leftist. Combines the Pirates, Greens, and Socialists into one big tent. In a way, good. The Democrats have shifted so far to the right that calling them the left is sad. We don't have a real left in the US anymore. The Republicans have responded by shifting so far to the right, to stay to the right of the Democrats, that they're about to fall off the political spectrum. They've turned crazy, and I think they are in serious danger of collapsing. They've managed to anger women, homosexuals, Hispanics, blacks, and even Asians, and the young, poor, immigrants, Muslims, atheists and agnostics, environmentalists, and scientists. That's almost everyone. And they've made a lot of plain stupid moves. People who appreciate competence can't be too thrilled with the Republicans these days. They've become so snottily exclusive, they aren't even trying to win over the "47%"! The only voters left who really like Republicans are rich, old, Christian white men, and that group is no longer big enough to keep a major political party viable.
I don't think planks is the problem as much as eloquence. More than that, need exposure and coverage. How to get that when there's enough corruption to make sure their voices are never heard is a hard problem. Perhaps the best chance is hope the Republicans really do collapse and implode.
I suspect you already know the answer to this one. Optimistic, of course.
We all know Moore's Law can't last. Computing speed, like most improvements, follows an S-curve. At first, slow improvement as an idea becomes known and accepted, then rapid improvement as the easier stuff with big dividends is worked on, then diminishing returns as we reach for harder and more marginal improvements. It's that way in oil exploration and extraction, and automobile and engine design, and it will be that way in Transhumanism.
The bottom half of the S-curve looks like exponential growth. Moore's Law is wrong. It describes as exponential what is actually an S-curve of which we have so far seen about the 1st half. The Technological Singularity is not just one but a whole bunch of nearly simultaneous S-curves. Can the number of things to improve, the number of S-curves, itself actually be an exponential curve? Or is it really another S-curve? I suspect the latter, and that therefore there will not be a Singularity. Singularity is a bad name for it anyway. Should be Inflection.
Consider technological advancement from the point of view of the History of Life. For about 3 billion years, life was microbial. Then 0.5 billion years ago was the Cambrian Explosion, resulting in plants and animals, which could do many things never before seen on Earth. But after, things settled back down, and while life continued to evolve and improve, there was no improvement to match the sheer staggering size of the jump from bacteria to plant and animal. Now we have arrived on the scene, and learned to manipulate matter and energy in ways no mere dumb animal can hope to match. Evolution created biological machines. Now we are making our own machines based on very different processes, and with hugely different and often far greater capability. The horse cannot compete with the automobile, the tractor, or the train engine. Our communication abilities far outstrip what animals can do with howls, whistles, rumbles, clicks, and the like. The past 5000 to 10000 years may prove to be as significant in the History of the Earth as the Cambrian Explosion. The Inflection has already arrived, and we are in the midst of it. As before, assuming we don't kill off ourselves and all life through mishandling of this vast increase in resourcefulness we have found, things will settle back down eventually.
I keep hoping for the battery that will finally allow the electric motor to kill the combustion engine. What little the article says sounds great, but it doesn't speak to a lot of questions, and too soon concludes with trite superlative and celebratory statements. "... breaks the normal paradigms of energy sources." Sure it does-- if such batteries aren't prohibitively expensive to manufacture, can be scaled up to power cars, don't have memory problems, will last for thousands of discharge cycles, aren't prone to catching on fire or blowing up, and also can withstand significant damage without burning or detonating, can handle a wide range of temperatures and altitudes, and are not difficult to recycle or scrap. At least the article covers one essential feature: they recharge quickly.
This kind of reporting is dreadfully common and tiresome. Seems every month brings us another announcement of a fantastic battery or fuel cell breakthrough. Evidently, it's asking too much of journalists to be a little more sober and thoughtful.
The OP made a big deal out of a policy it turns out he has enforced just 3 times in 20 years. He played for your sympathies and hatred of cell phone abuse, and you fell for it.
You think I want to receive a call during a movie? The only reason I would have a phone on during a movie is if I'm on call. No one wants to get that kind of call. But no one had better be jamming or blocking reception in case it is that kind. If a theater is not willing or able to accommodate a need like that, then I simply do not go. Good thing we have such large screen TVs these days.
You talk as if DRM is plausible. It's not. It's amazing how many people just don't understand this. DRM has to rank up there with things like the Maginot Line and other border walls and fences, and dirigible aircraft carriers for stupid ideas that were just sane sounding enough to sucker large numbers of fools into squandering big money.
Even if DRM could work, the uses envisioned are not strictly limited to protection of copyrighted works. We've all seen content producers attempting to extend this capability to force such abominations as unskippable commercials, region encoding, gathering of private data and snooping on your emails and instant chats and the like, and deletion of previously purchased content. Indeed, entire collections have been rendered unusable at a stroke with the shutdown of a license server. Ultimately, the only way DRM can work is for everyone to surrender control of their computers. This would include a ban on homebrew computers that don't include the DRM baggage. You wouldn't own a computer anymore, you'd only rent or otherwise license the use of a computer from "approved" organizations. Fortunately, the public reacts quite negatively to such schemes.
Don't let yourself be mesmerized by the entertainment industry's talk of DRM as if it had legitimate purposes, which implies that it works. I mean, think about it, who do you trust to better understand the powers and limitations of new technology? Surely not a bunch of people whose expertise and business is Hollywood accounting, and, oh yes, acting and music. Even many of the folks who are into both entertainment and software, such as computer game makers, go for DRM like flies go for manure. They at least should know better. Consider how insulting to our intelligence their marketing is, trying to sell us the idea that DRM is an "enhancement" because it "protects" us from violating copyright. Would you feel that your car was "enhanced" if it had a speed limiter so that you could not go faster than 70 mph? And then, perceiving what a bad odor DRM has acquired, they even go as far as trying to claim that a required constant connection to the Internet is not a form of DRM, and that it is "necessary" for the smooth operation of the product without spelling out just why. They can't say why of course, because even they realize that if they did so, there would be no way to deny that it is DRM. A recent example of this kind of contempt for our rights and smarts is the latest SimCity game. These suits and entertainers use new techonolgy, sure, but they've always been slow to really get it.
No refund for people you kick out, I expect. Why don't you confiscate the cell phone for the length of the movie? Or at least, offer that option? And, exercise it the first time? They can always leave if they don't want to check their phones. That way, it's their choice.
When I visit the theater, it's always with others. If I was the offender, and I was subjected to the humiliation of being publicly kicked out, as well as being cheated out of the money I paid for my ticket, everyone would know about it and I'd feel much too ashamed and angry to ever come back. I'd still feel that way even if it was entirely my fault, but more likely it was something so important I have to leave early anyway. You might think "good riddance", and believe that permanently alienating cell phone "abusers" is a public service. But I think your policy is needlessly rude.
salaries are extremely high and it's therefore clear there aren't enough American workers
I agree that overly high salaries are an indication that there is a problem. If, that is, salaries really have risen, which I am not convinced has happened. But supposing pay has gone up, then is "not enough workers" the problem, or are there other reasons?
Clearly, "not enough workers" is not the case for finding people to fill CEO and other upper management positions, because there are relatively few such positions. Nor is it a matter of skills. This should be clear from the many times businesses have paid top dollar for talent, only to see this "talent" make obviously stupid, costly moves, and also illegal, unethical and immoral moves that could have and should have been more carefully vetted. Yet the pay for those positions is sky high. Even after making stupid or illegal moves of stunning brazenness, they still get the golden parachute. Why? Cronyism, bribery, and fawning, that's why. Even when the press does their job and doesn't just pile on after something is already known but actually breaks stories about scandalous stupidity, many people remained mesmerized by the money. We have far too much respect for wealth, and we're far too unbelieving and forgiving of white collar crime. We don't respect wealthy drug dealers, and too nakedly obvious scams such as pyramid schemes, but stock market manipulations like pump and dump mostly fly under the radar. How many people, even now, wouldn't mind palling around with Tony Hayward, Dick Fuld, Angelo Mozilo, and ilk of that sort, because, in spite of their mistakes and crimes, they are still very, very, very rich? Some would even hang out with O.J. Simpson, if he still had money. There's no such thing as bad publicity, so some people have asserted.
Corruption or incompetence at the top doesn't stay contained, it leaks out and filters downward. It should not be any surprise that hiring practices are arbitrary and capricious, seemingly designed to skirt all standards of fairness. We know this supposed worker shortage is a lie. We know that our unemployment statistics have been gamed, and that real unemployment (now known as the U-6 rate) is still over 17%, even as official unemployment is declared to be about 10%. As to claims that while the overall unemployment rate may be high, there is a shortage of particular skills, that we also know to be wrong. This supposed shortage, if real, is entirely a manufactured problem. Some employers, particular smaller ones, may indeed be experiencing difficulties finding talent, but that's not because talent is not out there, it's because they're caught up in the storm.
I note also that you confined yourself to a few big companies in Silicon Valley. If they are having such problems finding talent there, maybe they should take other measures? Like, opening offices in cheaper parts of the nation? And not being so unreasonable about the skills they demand? Seems they don't want raw talent, they only want highly trained talent, for peanuts.
Another custom that has become too popular is turning over too much of the hiring process to Human Resources. HR has become its own little fiefdom, with less interest in helping the company make good hires than in maintaining their power, to everyone's detriment. Good managers have been frustrated by HR. They find good candidates, and then HR prevents them from hiring these people. Or HR runs off all the best before the managers ever learn about them. HR does not have the competence to judge the fitness of engineering candidates, yet they constantly usurp that privilege and do so anyway, using not unfair prejudice so much, but brainless formulas that "throw the baby out with the bathwater". Then they complain that they can't find anyone.
No, I do not believe that an actual shortage of skilled workers is the cause.
Point being, you don't end harassment with harassment.
Then hold these prosecutors accountable for their misdeeds!
They abused their powers, and suffered no official consequences. No reprimand, no firings, not even a bit of unpaid leave. The President has been petitioned to fire these people, but nothing has happened. How do we get justice? The alternatives to activism are looking pretty thin and feeble.
Fight these guys up front and in their face
So you disapprove of some kinds of activism. Ever do any yourself? It's real easy to tell someone else to stand up and get in others' faces. In this particular case, with these people being pros at winning long sentences, doing that could see you end up spending the next decade in jail. With such an imbalance of power, activists need all the advantages they can get. Anonymity is not to be lightly discarded.
There are a lot of problems with all this. Why does the drug company get a monopoly? Why not the university? Or the research team? In cases where the drug comes from a substance that native peoples used for centuries, shouldn't they get something too? At the least, they shouldn't suddenly be denied the use of their own cure!
Another fundamental problem with patents is that they don't account for parallel work. Particularly in the West, there's too much admiration for the mythical loner genius. It's like everyone unconsciously accepts the implication that this person exists in a vacuum. Research teams provide giant shoulders to stand on. Also, suppose 2 or more teams are independently following the same promising lead. 1 wins, perhaps by mere hours, and gets a patent. The other teams get at best nothing. At worst, they may even be told to quit and discard their own work, or be sued because it's now infringing. Research shouldn't be run like a sports playoff. It discourages cooperation and publication of results.
Still another problem is summed up in that word "monopoly". The free market works on competition. But with a monopoly in hand, there's little incentive for a sole producer to work on improvements, shop around for better deals on raw materials, and the like. They don't have to get better. Instead, they can simply charge higher prices, and keep right on being inefficient. They can even indulge in cronyism. With drugs, there's an even worse potential problem: gouging. With lives at stake, they can hold people over a barrel like no other monopolists can.
Another bad aspect of all this is the notion that you should ask for permission. In research, you don't need permission to cite someone else's work, you just do it. And they like being cited! For the next example, I'm shifting here from patents to copyright, but the essential problem of having to get permission is the same. In the entertainment world, with one exception, you have to get permission or you're a dirty rotten copycat, despised for your lack of originality, even when you aren't just copying. No artist is allowed to make a cover without permission. The exception is parody. Otherwise, it's so bad, you can get in trouble for just a few notes. Consider the song "Land Down Under", which allegedly used a few bars from another song, Kookaburra. Even crazier is the criticism and, I recall hearing, threats of a lawsuit, against Terry Brooks over his Sword of Shannara work being too similar to the Lord of the Rings.
I'd be interested to hear alternative means
We have a centuries old way called patronage. The many little European states vied with each other in more ways than purely military or commercial. They also tried to compete culturally, and this meant every respectable court had a court composer. It was this that was largely responsible for the flowering of western music. We use it still today, but you don't hear much about it. Every major Western city has an orchestra, and these orchestras get much support from patronage. Today, with vastly improved communications, the existence of recording and storage technologies, and more subtle advances we can do patronage so much better. Unfortunately, the established players have been more interested in flogging copyrights and patents as hard as possible for a few more rounds of earnings, and have neglected patronage. It has fallen to new organizations to come up with and harness ways to profit through patronage. Kickstarter is a form of patronage. Universities are fundamentally another variety of patronage, known as "publish or perish".
Consider also the difference between railroads and roads. Railroads are for the most part private companies. Roads are public. We created a great public road system. Why not something along the same lines for the writing of music and books? We already have public libraries in place. If we had a patronage system centered around libraries, rather than our current syst
Here's a whopper:
No pharma company would invest in a new drug, especially the huge cost of clinical trials, without having some exclusivity.
Lots of problems with this statement. He cleverly said "invest" instead of "invent". Pharma companies don't do much actual discovery or invention, they offload that expense on to the public, which pays for it through funding of universities and their research.
As for the "huge cost" of clinical trials, I expect that is all tax deductible. Other industries also have huge expenses. I can't think of any reason why pharma's expenses should get special treatment. And granting them exclusivity through patents is definitely too special.
There is also a perverse incentive here, to continue to push new drugs even when an older drug is as good or actually better. One such example is statins. Lovastatin has been available for years as a generic, and works fine. But the medical community pushes newer statins such as Crestor and Lipitor when there is no medical reason to do so, only reasons of profit. This is an example of how drug patents have warped medical care in the US. The outcome we want is maximizing everyone's health. Drug company profits should not be a consideration.
In poor nations, the warping of medical care has sometimes gone to inhumane extremes. Drug companies tried to bully poor nations into paying the extremely inflated fantasy US list prices for AIDS medication. Poor nations have responded in several ways. Some have done without these drugs, and even ignored the whole problem, as thousands die. In those places, AIDS is the new leprosy-- victims are shunned and isolated. Others have pushed back, threatening to nationalize the drugs if the companies won't cut a deal. Still others have quietly encouraged a black market. I think a few have been more or less forced to pay up, trapped by conditions attached to loans from the IMF.
I wonder why any company makes generic drugs. There should be no exclusivity in generics, at least, not from patents. Yet they do make generics. Even, of quite new drugs. Rather spoils his argument.
Of course those dam failures contributed to more deaths than nuclear accidents! But I said deaths is not a good measure. Didn't you read?
Put it this way: Amount of land rendered uninhabitable by dam failures is 0. Amount of land rendered uninhabitable by nuclear accidents is 2800 sq km. Therefore dams failures are less disastrous than nuclear power plant failures.
Or, put it another way: Damage from all dam failures ever is very roughly $20 billion. Damages from Fukushima alone is roughly $60 billion. Dam failures are less damaging than nuclear accidents.
Finally, the Johnstown dam failure occurred in 1889, long before we had nuclear power. Ought to account for that by looking at damages on an annualized basis. Doing that shows dams in an even better light when compared to nuclear power plants. Might also consider that technology has come a long ways since 1889. As for Banqiao Dam, that, like Chernobyl, suffered from reckless top down dictatorial Communism which forced through substandard design and construction over the protests of engineers.