This post seems to have caused a buffer overflow in the part of my brain responsible for syntax parsing. I swear I read it three times, decided that it was correct, and then read it another three times just to enjoy the mental gymnastics.
This is an excellent example, the common sense statement that the gov't can't take your property without paying you and it has to be for some legit *public* use.
The test for `public use' has gotten weaker over time, following a long slippery slope. The original intent was to allow for property seizures to secure land required for public utilization: roads, waterways, courthouses, etc. The courts first extended this to allow the government to transfer property to private utilities for their rights-of-way, based on the notion that such utilities provided for the public; thus land can be expropriated for utility lines or water pipes, which are then owned by their private companies.
Later the definition of public use was expanded to include the government forced transfer of property from one private owner to another for development based on the idea that certain properties were causing public harm. That is, if your house was falling apart and was being used as a hideout for drug pushers or others of criminal bent, the public had a vested interest in righting the harms caused. While I believe this is of questionable Constitutionality, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of this `public harm' test to allow condemnation with the intent to transfer to another private owner.
Now there's no test; no rule remains to protect property from seizure. Even if I take the best care of my house possible and act as the most responsible citizen a community could want, I am still in danger of losing my house to another private entity who promises some greater Public Good, even if only the possibility of additional tax revenues.
When did tax revenues become the measure of Public Good?
All the posts I've seen so far discuss only the expropriation of land, but the term property deals with so much more. And now that the government can force the movement of any property from one private entity to another based solely on the promise of increased tax revenue (good for the Public, right?), what's to stop them from doing so with intellectual property?
You write a nice bit of code, you GPL it for the community. Free code isn't bringing in any sales taxes, so the government seizes the code and makes it available to a large private corporation for further development, paying you a one time compensation for your work. Large private corporation uses your code to increase jobs, increasing sales, which increases tax revenue for government. That is for the Public Good, right?
If they can seize the products of my physical work, they can take the fruits of my mental work as well.
I wish I could submit my weekly reports at work in this format! Management would pay more attention to the flashy colors, and because I'd have to limit the information to fit into the small number of panels, I'd only have to put in actual highlights. It's a win-win for all!
Why do I feel like I'm being drawn into the world controlled by IT from A Wrinkle In Time? IT knows what I should want, what I should do, where I should be, who I should be!?! Are the people around me really that controlled, bouncing the ball and skipping rope in glorious synchronization with IT? I (being but an individual) feel the constant pressure of IT to be like IT. I just know one day IT will send ITs agents and I will be readjusted.
I haven't yet grown so cynical that I truly believe my fellow human beings are that ingorant; I just don't see how people can be so blind. But I think if I keep reading Slashdot a little more, I can squash this irrational optimism toward my fellow man. Someone ready a foil hat for me...
Sadly no. The fileservers, mailservers, and compute farms are all protected, but for some reason that policy does not extend to valuable compute hardware not actually residing inside a server room. I have never understood this. Then again, our calendar service is through MS Exchange, which is convenient for management but unuseable for almost all of engineering. It tells you which group IT actually serves.
I work at a large semiconductor company in the Austin (Texas) area -- we've been running Solaris for years upon years. After a lot of grassroots work we've begun to get Linux desktops to replace the aging Sun workstations.
Lightning stuck a power pole outside, cycling the power in the building. The Linux boxes were up within a minute, whereas the Sun workstations were busy repairing their non-journaling filesystems and (in many cases) failing.
I can't wait for them to roll one of those puppies out on my desktop!
If someone isn't the most preposessing individual in the world...
I am ashamed to admit, but I read that as `the most preprocessing individual in the world...' I need to stop looking at poorly-written C code and start looking at anything in the Real World(tm).
If you allow passive shielding, at least make the property owner post a notice that the building is shielded against pagers/phones. I'd hate to duck into a restaurant and order a quick bite of lunch while waiting for a phone call, be polite enough to set my phone on vibrate, and find out far too late that I missed the call because the building proprieter demands peace.
Of course, I'm one of those Luddites who prefers to wear absolutely nothing electronic on my person. *sigh* Here's my official Geek Membership card, take me away, let me be crucified...
Slashdot Mirror
I'm not sure... is it a good idea for slaves to forge the chains that bind them?
This post seems to have caused a buffer overflow in the part of my brain responsible for syntax parsing. I swear I read it three times, decided that it was correct, and then read it another three times just to enjoy the mental gymnastics.
Thank you!
The test for `public use' has gotten weaker over time, following a long slippery slope. The original intent was to allow for property seizures to secure land required for public utilization: roads, waterways, courthouses, etc. The courts first extended this to allow the government to transfer property to private utilities for their rights-of-way, based on the notion that such utilities provided for the public; thus land can be expropriated for utility lines or water pipes, which are then owned by their private companies.
Later the definition of public use was expanded to include the government forced transfer of property from one private owner to another for development based on the idea that certain properties were causing public harm. That is, if your house was falling apart and was being used as a hideout for drug pushers or others of criminal bent, the public had a vested interest in righting the harms caused. While I believe this is of questionable Constitutionality, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of this `public harm' test to allow condemnation with the intent to transfer to another private owner.
Now there's no test; no rule remains to protect property from seizure. Even if I take the best care of my house possible and act as the most responsible citizen a community could want, I am still in danger of losing my house to another private entity who promises some greater Public Good, even if only the possibility of additional tax revenues.
When did tax revenues become the measure of Public Good?
It may worse than that.
All the posts I've seen so far discuss only the expropriation of land, but the term property deals with so much more. And now that the government can force the movement of any property from one private entity to another based solely on the promise of increased tax revenue (good for the Public, right?), what's to stop them from doing so with intellectual property?
You write a nice bit of code, you GPL it for the community. Free code isn't bringing in any sales taxes, so the government seizes the code and makes it available to a large private corporation for further development, paying you a one time compensation for your work. Large private corporation uses your code to increase jobs, increasing sales, which increases tax revenue for government. That is for the Public Good, right?
If they can seize the products of my physical work, they can take the fruits of my mental work as well.
I wish I could submit my weekly reports at work in this format! Management would pay more attention to the flashy colors, and because I'd have to limit the information to fit into the small number of panels, I'd only have to put in actual highlights. It's a win-win for all!
Now if I could just learn how to draw...
Or more mouth-watering monkeys!
Why do I feel like I'm being drawn into the world controlled by IT from A Wrinkle In Time? IT knows what I should want, what I should do, where I should be, who I should be!?! Are the people around me really that controlled, bouncing the ball and skipping rope in glorious synchronization with IT? I (being but an individual) feel the constant pressure of IT to be like IT. I just know one day IT will send ITs agents and I will be readjusted.
I haven't yet grown so cynical that I truly believe my fellow human beings are that ingorant; I just don't see how people can be so blind. But I think if I keep reading Slashdot a little more, I can squash this irrational optimism toward my fellow man. Someone ready a foil hat for me...
Sadly no. The fileservers, mailservers, and compute farms are all protected, but for some reason that policy does not extend to valuable compute hardware not actually residing inside a server room. I have never understood this. Then again, our calendar service is through MS Exchange, which is convenient for management but unuseable for almost all of engineering. It tells you which group IT actually serves.
True, true. Still, I'm glad we're replacing Solaris workstations with Linux desktop boxes. Twice the performance at a tenth the cost.
I work at a large semiconductor company in the Austin (Texas) area -- we've been running Solaris for years upon years. After a lot of grassroots work we've begun to get Linux desktops to replace the aging Sun workstations.
Lightning stuck a power pole outside, cycling the power in the building. The Linux boxes were up within a minute, whereas the Sun workstations were busy repairing their non-journaling filesystems and (in many cases) failing.
I can't wait for them to roll one of those puppies out on my desktop!
h4rm0ny wrote...
I am ashamed to admit, but I read that as `the most preprocessing individual in the world...' I need to stop looking at poorly-written C code and start looking at anything in the Real World(tm).
Wow... amazing framerate...
Are there examples of metastable electron states? How are they formed, and how are they induced to ground?
Why can't there be a moderation for PAINFUL!?
If you allow passive shielding, at least make the property owner post a notice that the building is shielded against pagers/phones. I'd hate to duck into a restaurant and order a quick bite of lunch while waiting for a phone call, be polite enough to set my phone on vibrate, and find out far too late that I missed the call because the building proprieter demands peace.
Of course, I'm one of those Luddites who prefers to wear absolutely nothing electronic on my person. *sigh* Here's my official Geek Membership card, take me away, let me be crucified...
Did I really see the phrase, ``Niagara will begin to trickle across the Sun server line''?
I want to be a bored tech writer, too!
My scanner's instructions say not to clean with rubbing alcohol...
Can I use peroxide instead?
How can someone with such good advice warrent the sobriquet `Angry Pixie'?
Could this count as vaporware?
I saw this is being directed by the producer of `Shreik'. (Or, produced by the director of `Shreik' perhaps?) Is it going to be CG as well?