Actually, if the IP is given the same protection as tangible property, then it is very much more valuable than the tangible property. It can be reproduced at virtually no cost for profit. To make more copies of tangible property requires (ultimately limited) real-world resources. That's pretty much the argument for why IP rights must only be granted for a limited time.
Just in case you did bother to read the article, here's the contact information for NJ's legislative branch. If you happen to think that the state should welcome transprency and cease dealing with vendors that seek to suppress it, you may want to mention it to your representative. http://www.njleg.state.nj.us/legislativepub/contact.asp
Nope. The term you used is wrong. PoWs are entitled to protection under Geneva conventions (which even the Wehrmacht followed in case of US/Canadian PoWs).
Our esteemed leader has classified them under a new term invented by Himself: Enemy Combatants. What the hell is a enemy combatant? Is it the same English as Person Of Interest? Still just semantics. They very clearly are not US citizens (or even residents). I don't wanna get into the Gitmo flame war. I am just going to insist that treating of foreigners in a disgraceful manner is not quite enough to make you a totalitarian regime. Treating your own citizens as criminals and establishing overwhelming powers over their lives and liberties even when they commit no crimes does make you a totalitarian regime.
Planning and doing are different. For instance Britain may plan Total Surveillance, but our FBI, NSA and ultimately the president broke existing laws on surveillance on US citizens.
Don't try to smear the difference with a vague word like "surveillance". They have NSA autorecord and search for suspicious word patterns of calls incoming from other countries. That's not quite the same as having laws that institute compulsory behavior just because it would be useful for the regime to have citizens behave in that manner. That's not just "surveillance". That's dictatorship. Demanding DNA samples and requiring mandatory surrender of encryption keys (upon Police request) fit such category. Having NSA illegally spy on you without your knowledge is not. As you said it, the President broke laws when he did this. The UK is actually planning on giving the police this sweeping intrusive legal power to demand that citizens surrender their liberties at a police request (in other words at their whim).
Anything this US administration pales in comparison to what UK is proposing here. I am not even sure that China has gone that far. This is on the scale worthy of North Korea.
And secondly we face a lashback if EU Parliment imposes sanctions on us for Gitmo and Abu Ghraib abuses! Those are mistreatments of prisoners of war. There isn't a single instance in history of a sanction being imposed because of a mistreatment of prisoners of war. Britain is planning to violate human rights of its own citizens.
If we do that, we give a thumbs-up sign to Euro. Please, explain the chain of causalities there.
It were 2 weeks later. And this post would be just another April fools. But, I guess, Britain is Britain. They lead the charge. How long before Brits start asking for political asylums in China? Sigh.... Does this article really need commenting? Has Britain not pretty much resigned to being a parody of itself?
That's a rather ridiculous analogy. If people couldn't make any money on software, there would be a lot less of it, and especially a lot less commercial software and design for open source to emulate and 'replace'. Open source can grow faster than proprietary partly because they have taken ideas that were developed after much ado and investment by companies that actually had to pay to come up with it. I'm not saying open source is bad, but trying to kill proprietary software with it entirely is very bad. Perhaps your signature is very telling, as well:
Who is John Galt?
In that spirit, what would Howard Roark do if faced with the choice of writing software that can be easily "used by common men" vs writing software that was of the best quality? Almost no theoretical software research is conducted by private interests anymore. I would argue that it is because we don't have software patents and math patents (business-method patents are not the same thing), but that's a different argument. The fact is that under the current economic arrangement most innovation in software happens in research -- not in commercial establishments.
People who write OSS are not very likely to have killing of any software endeavor as their primary goal (heck I even heard Linus say that VB is very useful for its niche market). They are creators who want to create. Setting ones goals on destruction will only carry one so far. So your sentiment is probably misplaced. Although thew crowd of people which you are actually addressing is most likely composed of people who never write any software. Their sentiments might be quite destructive. That however doesn't change the fact that the monster you are trying to slay (people dedicating their lives to writing OSS for the purpose of killing commercial software) doesn't exist.
You laugh. But rather than mock the gp with your gedankenexperiment, try a real world experiment. See how much attention you get in a bookstore while reading and typing on a laptop with a penguin slapped on it vs typing on a slick Mac.
Unrelatedly -- regarding your sig:...besides, who would ever need a Slashdot number over 640k? you seem to be over your limit by about 0.3642578125K. That's really OK though, as playing your/. digits sequentially over a diatonic scale (or mode thereof) lends some nice tones. In Jazz Lingo you're a ii V7 I. Interesting as all hell. Well, I knew I could do something as soon as it hit me that it started with 655... I mean, everyone knows right away that 65536 is 2^16. But now that we got into it, I realized that I am over the 640k by the 13th palindrome prime....must restrain from numerology jokes... must restrain.... ok. http://www.research.att.com/~njas/sequences/A002385
The various wings of the radio don't really equal an opinion, they equal a sensationalist lunatic fringe based on marketing. If I told a bunch of liberals to listen to Bill O'Reilly they would learn nothing of conservatism, but they would learn to HATE conservatives because he really is an asshat who represents no-one. I can say the same of telling conservatives to read the Nation, you learn no valid points of view, only group think.
The odd fact is that it is the liberals who proclaim to speak in the name of reason and the conservatives that proclaim to speak in the name of religion-based morality. While the reality is that the best publication from which to get a conservative view point is Reason(tm) and the best publication from which to get a liberal view point is the New Testament. The "pundits" on both sides no longer discuss ideas. They both attack personalities.
"Great minds discuss ideas; Average minds discuss events; Small minds discuss people." -Eleanor Roosevelt
instead of working for tips (like they do now... umm.. grants... that's right.. not tips... grants!), their work would be much more readable. Gentlemen, it's another Friday. So start your free-science-vs-software-patents engines.
Sderot is not Ashkenazi. Your Yiddishe Mama reference might be a bit misplaced there. It might also be part of the reason why Sderot residents believe that "the government just doesn't care". Israelis are developing the sentiment of viewing Ashkenazim almost with the same suspicion that Americans view white wasp males.
So New York citizens should also sue over the WTC attacks? Sure, why not? Sue the Saudi government, if you can prove a link. Sue the US government for not detecting it. Whatever - if someone has negligence, then so be it. If no one has negligence, then you don't sue. They did. I knew personally someone who was party to the suit. I am not sure what the current status of the suit is as I haven't spoken to the person in a few years. I do remember a nifty little detail about the suit though -- the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia was represented by James Baker, III.
Hey, I teach math, and I can assure you that most humans could never invent the wheel or new york. And most don't want to know anything about any war. So there. College students can rise to the level of dolphins.
If she's cute, seriously, who gives a shit what she believes?
1. Desperation is not a guide to decision making.
2. During the periods of not having sex, she'll probably want to talk (you might not, but most certainly will). If she is cute and dumb, you'll want to kill yourself (or at least never have sex again).
Also, it makes the false assumption that more scientists are men than women. False or unjustified? Do you have any evidence that more scientists are women than men? Otherwise, why do you claim that the assumption is false? If you have such evidence, is it anecdotal or based on a study? If the latter, can you link to the study?
Fine, I'll respond again. But this has to be it. I am running of fumes as it is. This reply was nothing but a very polite ad hominem. You took the accusations which (I assume) generally fly with those you debate and decided to knee-jerk throw them at me. You state premises and then conclusions, but never explain why they follow. And when I disagree and show why different conclusions follow from your premises, you tell me that I disagree because it doesn't sit right. Ok. It doesn't. But not because of some psychological needs that you seek to assign to me. But rather because it doesn't make sense. Your system of voluntary collusion will break as soon as it reaches critical point where backstabing will provide more benefit than cooperation. I don't need to do anything about it. It will collapase on its own. Thankfully, you are trying to start small and catch on virally -- so that when it does collapse it will only take some of the most devout members with it. You can't escape Prisoner's Dilemma. We have evolved to be constantly playing it as part of our person-to-person interaction. Wolves run in a pack. A man who runs in a pack and sees a rabit that can feed him in addition to what the pack catches will often go for the rabit. That's just the nature of the beast. The wolf would never leave the pack. You might hope to pick out from the society those individuals who'd always volunterily run in the pack and will therefore stick to your cult, but it won't work. Your are nihilistic and when pressed by nihilism on large scale, individualistic humans coalesce into institutions of power to fight for safety. If you ever do collect a group to your liking and achieve even the mildest of success, expect to see Galt's Strike. For all you know, you've seen it in GWB (destroying a house in a subversive manner because the house got rotten). You will fail. But only because you want the impossible. Life has evolved to fight for life and you want to stop life -- not as your means to an end. You want cesation of life as your goal. And you are willing to play within the framework of creation as your method. The more successful you become, the more vulnurable your scheme will be. Because, after all, the end goal of nihilism is annihilation. Sooner or later you'll achieve it. And those who remain will continue on living.
Slashdot Mirror
Actually, if the IP is given the same protection as tangible property, then it is very much more valuable than the tangible property. It can be reproduced at virtually no cost for profit. To make more copies of tangible property requires (ultimately limited) real-world resources. That's pretty much the argument for why IP rights must only be granted for a limited time.
Just in case you did bother to read the article, here's the contact information for NJ's legislative branch. If you happen to think that the state should welcome transprency and cease dealing with vendors that seek to suppress it, you may want to mention it to your representative. http://www.njleg.state.nj.us/legislativepub/contact.asp
incorporate the power-from-blood: http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/07/22/1323258
Don't try to smear the difference with a vague word like "surveillance". They have NSA autorecord and search for suspicious word patterns of calls incoming from other countries. That's not quite the same as having laws that institute compulsory behavior just because it would be useful for the regime to have citizens behave in that manner. That's not just "surveillance". That's dictatorship. Demanding DNA samples and requiring mandatory surrender of encryption keys (upon Police request) fit such category. Having NSA illegally spy on you without your knowledge is not. As you said it, the President broke laws when he did this. The UK is actually planning on giving the police this sweeping intrusive legal power to demand that citizens surrender their liberties at a police request (in other words at their whim).
Anything this US administration pales in comparison to what UK is proposing here. I am not even sure that China has gone that far. This is on the scale worthy of North Korea.Is it, perhaps, time to write to your congressman and demand that we start imposing sanctions on Britain for human rights abuses?
It were 2 weeks later. And this post would be just another April fools. But, I guess, Britain is Britain. They lead the charge. How long before Brits start asking for political asylums in China? Sigh.... Does this article really need commenting? Has Britain not pretty much resigned to being a parody of itself?
In that spirit, what would Howard Roark do if faced with the choice of writing software that can be easily "used by common men" vs writing software that was of the best quality? Almost no theoretical software research is conducted by private interests anymore. I would argue that it is because we don't have software patents and math patents (business-method patents are not the same thing), but that's a different argument. The fact is that under the current economic arrangement most innovation in software happens in research -- not in commercial establishments.
People who write OSS are not very likely to have killing of any software endeavor as their primary goal (heck I even heard Linus say that VB is very useful for its niche market). They are creators who want to create. Setting ones goals on destruction will only carry one so far. So your sentiment is probably misplaced. Although thew crowd of people which you are actually addressing is most likely composed of people who never write any software. Their sentiments might be quite destructive. That however doesn't change the fact that the monster you are trying to slay (people dedicating their lives to writing OSS for the purpose of killing commercial software) doesn't exist.
Why would I do that, I'm married!
(I use Windows and Linux, but apparently not much linux, see line 1)
I see. So you pick up chicks the old-fashioned way? By flashing your ring?You laugh. But rather than mock the gp with your gedankenexperiment, try a real world experiment. See how much attention you get in a bookstore while reading and typing on a laptop with a penguin slapped on it vs typing on a slick Mac.
The odd fact is that it is the liberals who proclaim to speak in the name of reason and the conservatives that proclaim to speak in the name of religion-based morality. While the reality is that the best publication from which to get a conservative view point is Reason(tm) and the best publication from which to get a liberal view point is the New Testament. The "pundits" on both sides no longer discuss ideas. They both attack personalities.
"Great minds discuss ideas; Average minds discuss events; Small minds discuss people." -Eleanor Roosevelt
instead of working for tips (like they do now... umm.. grants... that's right.. not tips... grants!), their work would be much more readable. Gentlemen, it's another Friday. So start your free-science-vs-software-patents engines.
Even if it can lead to better-than-actual intelligence?
Sderot is not Ashkenazi. Your Yiddishe Mama reference might be a bit misplaced there. It might also be part of the reason why Sderot residents believe that "the government just doesn't care". Israelis are developing the sentiment of viewing Ashkenazim almost with the same suspicion that Americans view white wasp males.
Nah. The only thing that can destroy Israel is peace. Their infighting over demographics (among Jews) will tear it apart. Hostility only unites it.
Hey, I teach math, and I can assure you that most humans could never invent the wheel or new york. And most don't want to know anything about any war. So there. College students can rise to the level of dolphins.
And if their commercials are true, you'll have a full head of wavy natural blond hair.
Hillary Clinton's campaign commented that all the non-cat-owning freeriders must be taxed for what their lack of cat ownership costs society.
1. Desperation is not a guide to decision making.
2. During the periods of not having sex, she'll probably want to talk (you might not, but most certainly will). If she is cute and dumb, you'll want to kill yourself (or at least never have sex again).
Fine, I'll respond again. But this has to be it. I am running of fumes as it is. This reply was nothing but a very polite ad hominem. You took the accusations which (I assume) generally fly with those you debate and decided to knee-jerk throw them at me. You state premises and then conclusions, but never explain why they follow. And when I disagree and show why different conclusions follow from your premises, you tell me that I disagree because it doesn't sit right. Ok. It doesn't. But not because of some psychological needs that you seek to assign to me. But rather because it doesn't make sense. Your system of voluntary collusion will break as soon as it reaches critical point where backstabing will provide more benefit than cooperation. I don't need to do anything about it. It will collapase on its own. Thankfully, you are trying to start small and catch on virally -- so that when it does collapse it will only take some of the most devout members with it. You can't escape Prisoner's Dilemma. We have evolved to be constantly playing it as part of our person-to-person interaction. Wolves run in a pack. A man who runs in a pack and sees a rabit that can feed him in addition to what the pack catches will often go for the rabit. That's just the nature of the beast. The wolf would never leave the pack. You might hope to pick out from the society those individuals who'd always volunterily run in the pack and will therefore stick to your cult, but it won't work. Your are nihilistic and when pressed by nihilism on large scale, individualistic humans coalesce into institutions of power to fight for safety. If you ever do collect a group to your liking and achieve even the mildest of success, expect to see Galt's Strike. For all you know, you've seen it in GWB (destroying a house in a subversive manner because the house got rotten). You will fail. But only because you want the impossible. Life has evolved to fight for life and you want to stop life -- not as your means to an end. You want cesation of life as your goal. And you are willing to play within the framework of creation as your method. The more successful you become, the more vulnurable your scheme will be. Because, after all, the end goal of nihilism is annihilation. Sooner or later you'll achieve it. And those who remain will continue on living.