There is a lot of "sky is falling" rhetoric going on about this that is just wrong-headed. Clearly, it would be a bad idea to make a company liable in perpetuity for a software product, with that liability beginning the moment a vulnerability is reported to them, or worse yet, discovered.
However, it is possible to write reasonable legislation around this. Consider: you can do any software task in hardware, albeit possibly less efficiently and frequently less easily and at higher cost. If you were to make a circuit which performed some function, and that circuit were to have an error which caused economic harm to someone, that person could sue you for damages. Thus, why should it not be legal to sue for damages a company which makes a product which *could* be reduced to a circuit, provided that the other circumstances were the same?
If a law were written to allow users to sue a software company for liability, under the conditions that the company had known of the vulnerability for some time (say, 30 days just to be arbitrary, or say 3 years - whatever), and knowing that, had neither produced a fix nor issued a recall to all registered customers, I don't see a problem.
You would certainly want a grace period for the company to fix the flaw or recall the product. You would probably want limitations on liability to the provable immediate losses, or the cost of the software, whichever is higher (possibly with some limited damages above that). You would likely want such a law to exempt programs distributed as or with complete and understandable source code, on the same basis that you couldn't sue someone who printed a design from which you built your own circuit. (That is, including source code would transfer liability from the producer to the user.)
This would allow companies which depend on commercial products that they cannot inspect to have legal protection, while not bankrupting companies who act responsibly by fixing problems within a short period after they are found.
The entertainment industry gets copying of content banned. This pisses off consumers, who paid for the content, and drives them to download cracked versions to actually use, while the paid-for version is just kept for the license. Consumers realize that the paid-for copy doesn't really do anything physically. Consumers start just downloading the cracked version.
I don't think that this is what the content owners want, but it's what would happen if they got their way.
Well hello Mr property owning snob. What about all the poor disenfranchised people who don't have their own property. Pity about them really.
I'm laughing from the 1/4 acre on which my house sits. The point is that the tax is theoretically avoidable, in that if you really don't want to pay it, you have alternatives. They may not be practical for, say, me or you, but certainly my parents could grow enough food on their property to support themselves, if not well.
Some of you sound like Gollum
on
Google Juice
·
· Score: 4, Funny
Mmmm...Google my precious...musn't let the nasty bloggers get it, no, not my Google precious, no...
Wether IP is real or not, it has value. Or do you think what makes software (or books or CDs etc.) sell is not the programs, writing or music, but the media it is printed on? Would you pay the exact same amount for the same media if there was just semi-random information on that media? Of course you wouldn't, you just pirate it anyway.
You are making a civil law argument - that in law an idea or expression has marketable value, protected by trademark, copyright and patent laws - in the face of a natural law problem, which is that you cannot steal intellectual property. If I use your code and without paying you, I have not deprived you of its use. If I take your car without paying you, I've deprived you of its use. Intellectual property makes no logical sense. The intent is to create the conditions for more inventions, artistic works and the like to come into the public domain, but the result has been the opposite, at least in the US. If you patent a gene's expression (this has been done in the US), and I carry that gene in my DNA, can you sue me? Believe it or not, the answer is likely yes, though the suit would almost certainly get the law thrown out by the courts.
The only tax that makes sense is income tax. Even sales tax doesn't make sense, let alone all these weird specialized taxes.
OK, you obviously have not thought through taxation very well, if you make this statement. So let's walk through it a bit.
A government (theoretically, anyway) provides services to its citizens. Universally, these include infrastructure development, provision for the common defense, a criminal justice system and so on. Some countries provide more, and some countries have failed, and essentially the government is an armed gang of extortionists. Other than the latter, though, governments generally exist to provide services to their citizens. To do that, a government must have access to resources (people, property, material, etc). To get those resources in a basically free-market system, such as is prevalent in the developed world, requires money, because money is the medium of exchange and because we don't like the government to show up unpredictably with guns to take things from us that the government needs.
This need to raise funds for the government can be met with:
tarriffs and the like - essentially, money paid to the government to bring goods into the country
export duties - money paid to the government to be able to send goods out of the country
sales or value-added taxes - payments to the governnment to sell something or provide a service, based on the market value of the product or service
user fees - payment for use of a government service, such as admission to a park
property taxes - payments to the government for services provided for the property (such as keeping foreign armies from seizing the property), based on the value of the property
income taxes - payments to the government for services that allow you to earn a living, based on the amount you earn (and typically relatively higher if you earn more)
The amount of funds raised depends upon which taxes are imposed, and how much money is behind each source of funds. So let's look at the government's incentive with each tax, the relative amount of funds behind it, and the impact on the society of collecting funds in a certain way.
tarriffs - The government's motivation is to increase exports and tarriffs, in order to generate more funds. But there is a balance, because excessive tarriffs result in less exports, and thus less funds. As a result, the government will normally keep such a tax low. The increase in exports generates jobs in the economy, and the impact of excessively raising taxes is directly felt by the government in lower revenues. There is no impact on individual liberty, because an individual can avoid the tax by not exporting goods.
import duties - The government's motivation is to restrict imports (to protect domestic jobs) and to raise tarriffs in order to maximise funds. However, this again is a balanced tax, because excessive import duties make it difficult to bring in necessary goods, and thus cost jobs as well as consumer spending power. There is no impact on individual liberty, because a person can avoid the tax by not importing goods. It is my understanding that the funds raised by current US tarriffs and import duties is sufficient to run a government similar to the one initially created for the US, but sized for the current US. That is, these funds couldn't support an expeditionary army or a welfare state, but could support a defensive army, police force, treasury, Congress, etc.
sales taxes - The government's motivation is to set the tax as high as possible, to raise maximum revenue. However, people would buy less, causing loss of employment and loss of revenue at the same time. As a result, sales taxes tend to be low. There is no impact on individual liberties, because the tax can be mitigated by buying used goods, less goods or making it yourself (you can grow your own food, build your own house if you have wood or stone on your property, etc).
user fees - The government's motivation is to set these fees as high as possible, to raise the most funds. However, setting the fees too high will result in people not using optional government services, and thus will decrease revenue. The built-in feedback keeps this tax low. There is no impact on individual liberties because an individual can refuse to use the service, and thus avoid the tax. This is not a big revenue generator, but can be used to pay for government services of real use, like parks, maps, weather data and the like.
property taxes - The motivation is to set the tax as high as possible to maximize funds. However, doing that causes people to not own property, which reduces the revenue stream. Thus the tax tends to be reasonable. In addition, the US originally made real property ownership a requirement in order to vote, thus providing an offsetting incentive and allowing the property tax to be higher than it otherwise would be. There is a small impact to individual liberties, since the government has to know what property you own and what its value is. However, they don't have to know what you do with or on the property, so the impact is fairly low. This is the main funding method for many states still today.
income taxes - The government's motivation is to set the tax rate as high as possible without sparking a revolution, in order to maximize funds. Since there is no feedback loop (you have to work to eat, after all), these taxes tend to be very high - particularly so since the higher income earners are disproportionately taxed. (Putting 50% of the taxes on 3% of the voters is not likely to get you kicked out of office.) Further, the government needs to know how much you earn, which is an invasion of your privacy. On top of that, they have to look through your bank account records to prevent cheating, regulate the use and transfer of your money to prevent tax avoidance, and many, many other tyrannies. It is for this reason that direct taxes, except based on head count, were prohibited in the US Constitution: to prevent the govenment from invading every aspect of your life.
In the end, it is the income tax that allows the government to control your life. It is the income tax that makes possible a government of barely-restricted size and power. It is the income tax that allows the government to bribe the majority with money coerced from the minority. It is the income tax which spawns most of the tyranny that the US government practices (admittedly, still less than most places in the world). It is the income tax which sterilizes citizenship by removing the ability of citizens to control their government's behavior by changing their own behavior. It is the income tax which poisons public debate by allowing people to obtain benefits without costs, and thus makes the incentive for an individual to go along with a government program - lest their own government teat be attacked by the beneficiaries of another program - unless they are in the unheard minority who have to fund whatever the latest government program might be. It is the income tax which is LEAST useful and sensible to a free people.
One further point, on bonds: the government can raise money in the short term by taking on debt. This is not a valid long-term means of financing the government, however, because that debt eventually has to be paid back, with interest, thus reducing future funding abilities.
Actually, it was an honest question. Your tone indicated a certain amount of partisanship. Frankly, I can't tell if Fox is a little right of center, or just looks that way because of how left of center CNN and the networks tend to be. My news source of choice is NPR, because it's the only really balanced, really fair and really deliberative news I can find. Second rank for me are Fox and the BBC, and everything else trails off from there.
I don't live in a world where there are only two political opinions, each of which is based on saying the opposite of the other while doing the same thing. That may be what the political parties in the US have foisted on us, but that doesn't mean I have to fall for it hook, line and sinker, even if most everyone else seems to.
The article was not about "the evils of the SSSCA," but instead was about "opportunities for Republicans" to take advantage of a political position taken by the Democrats that goes against the Democrats' normal instincts. Given your tone, I wonder if you would consider the article a rant if the parties were reversed?
Exactly. This is why I love my mac. At most times, for most things, it just works. If I want to reconfigure it, it works also. No secret knowledge required. You don't have to be a card carrying unix weenie.
And said weenies love to mock you just becuase you're not familar with an throwback interface full of archane details, largely undocumented, convoluted and anything but intuative. More likely they should be mocked.
As a UNIX weenie, I'd like to inform you that many UNIX weenies have been Mac heads for years (in my case, since 1988). Along with the Windows people, it's some of the Linux guys - many of whom come from the PC camp, which seems to believe that if your computer isn't disassembled regularly you don't know enough about it or haven't been pushing it enough - who regularly bash Macs. I like Linux OK for low-end hardware, though I prefer AIX or *BSD when I can get it, but it's a different breed from the professional UNIX types.
I would almost certainly reduce the number of times per day that I look at/. from about 10 to 1 or 2. It would reduce costs for/., while not seriously affecting my enjoyment of the site (I'll just browse at a higher level).
Things that would make me likely to pay for subscriptions:
- remove per-user limits on karma (keeping per-article limits); allow high-karma users to get discounts - the higher the karma the better the discount - so that someone with a karma of 100+ would only pay $1 for 1000 views, for example
- be very clear on what constitutes a view, and do not charge a view for posting stories, moderating or metamoderating
Things that would make me leave:
- too annoying to read slashdot any more - big intrusive ads, popunders, spyware ads, etc
- punished for contributing (with higher cost or more intrusive ads)
- ads which appear for some number of seconds, as the only content on the page, between clicking to get to a story and getting there
Frankly, I have no problem paying for the site either by having advertising or directly, as long as I feel I'm getting something worthwhile for it, and getting more than karma in return for contributing to the site's success.
I guess I'll have to tell my boss I can no longer do Perl scripting for him. And I suppose I'll have to stop writing the shareware game I'm working on until I have time to convert the existing Objective-C to C# - assuming that there will be a MacOS X C# runtime and IDE that I can use. And I suppose all of that C code I've written in the past will have to be junked by the people using it.
pencil/pen and paper typewriter word processors floppy disks hard disks any network which links 2 or more computers serial, parallel, network, USB and firewire cables modems VCRs and PVRs
The basis of property ownership is natural law, under which who has a thing owns it. However, under our civil law, we have said that merely taking a thing does not transfer ownership, thus to protect the original owners from unjust siezures of valuable property.
"Intellectual property" is a little different. The natural law right is to use any ideas that you come across. If you have a great idea about how to make a device to catch troublesome pests, I have not stolen from you to use that idea to make such a device. If I steal your book, I've stolen from you, because your property holding has been diminished, while if I simply reprint it, I have not stolen from you, because you still have the book. It was a novel point to our Constitution to allow for any concept of a monopoly on works of creativity or invention. The intent was to spur creative and inventive acts by giving those who created or invented a monopoly to earn money for a limited period. Then, the public would have those ideas and creative works for free use, which they would not have had for any use had the creator or inventor not had an incentive to create them beyond the natural desire to create or invent. The intent was never to reward past creativity or invention.
It is clear to me that the law has become skewed in such a way as to *reduce* the amount of ideas and inventions available for free public use, rather than to enhance it. Why should Disney create new characters and stories, for example, when the existing ones are so profitable, and can be rehashed essentially forever?
Because the states are intervening in these private bodies in ways that are suspect at best. Or are the Democrats and Republicans (and presumably any other party that holds primaries using public polling places) just an arm of government? In which case, we have the choice of two government parties, and are no better than the one-party systems in China, Cuba and the like.
Ralph Nader says this cash pile is distortion of capitalism. Traditionally companies pay out dividends once they have grown into profitibility. The stockholders are being screwed.
Despite the fact that Ralph Nader is a git, he has a point here. Unfortunately, companies now manage to stock value, rather than dividend payout. As a result, companies make decisions that can result in them losing money, but still returning value to their investors (by increasing stock price) until the bottom falls out, and the stock drops precipitously. Of course, they only do this because it's what the investors want. Investors want their stock to increase in value, so they can make money selling it, rather than for the stocks to return a cash dividend to them. Part of the reason is taxation laws which tax dividends more heavily than capital gains, and part of the reason is sheer shortsightedness on the part of the investors.
A primary is the process used by private bodies (the political parties) to determine who will be their candidate for the election. A primary should not in any way be regulated, nor should any public funds or resources be used to support it (for example, public polling places), because it is not a public function. Nor should the governments of the states be allowed, as they are now, to force these private bodies to allow non-members to have a part in the selection process of the private bodies. Thus your argument does not hold water, though the intention behind it is good. I particularly like the idea of a binding none of the above vote, though I'm not sure that would really help third parties at all.
I don't understand the call for ending "soft money." OK, a few definitions: "hard money" is money given to a political candidate or party under the rules adopted after Watergate, intending to limit the influence of money on elections; "soft money" is any other money used for political purposes. So, money used to promote a candidate is "hard money" and is regulated, while money given to build a party's membership (for example) is "soft money" and is unregulated.
One way to build the party is to run "issue ads". For the uninitiated, "Bill Clinton blows goats. Al Gore says Clinton is the best President ever." is an issue ad. On the other hand, "Bill Clinton blows goats. Al Gore says Clinton is the best President ever. Vote Gore." is supporting a political candidate, and thus is subject to hard money limits.
Now, on the one hand, the regulation of this spending means that there is no way that I could take out an ad saying "Vote for " on TV, because it's more costly than the rules allow. (This is blatantly unconstitutional.) On the other hand, I could take out an ad saying " is a total wad" and I'd be perfectly legal. Political parties can also take out such ads.
So you want to ban "soft money". Sorry, you can't. The Supreme Court has already held that "money is expression" in that preventing someone from airing their views violates the first amendment.
The Shays-Meehan (sp?) bill would instead ban unregulated contributions to political parties. There would be no prohibition on companies, unions or PACs running all the issue ads they want, or all the get out the vote campaigns they want, on behalf of a party, so long as the party does not direct their activities. Could somebody explain to me how preventing one body of private citizens (a political party) from doing something, while allowing another (say, a PAC) to do that thing, would be constitutional? It smacks of a bill of attainder, and certainly violates the first amendment in the event that what's being prevented is the expression of political views.
It seems to me that the better way to handle election finance issues is to require all money used for political purposes to be disclosed, and to prosecute those guilty of influence peddling or accepting bribes. In most cases, it won't be clear cut, but it would certainly be possible to recall politicians who are abusing their office by acting on behalf of those who spent money for them. And realistically, what would probably happen is that candidates would get more money directly, and outside spending would decrease.
What about a real window system? What about a real file system? What about a real database? What about 32bit addressing and memory protection?
What about any evidence that these features would provide a more useful product?
In my use of the Palm, I find that it does a lot of useful things very well: scheduling/calendar, ToDo management, field note taking, business card folder replacement (with searching and such). These things make my work life (and, to a lesser extent, my home life) easier than it would be without the Palm. If I wanted a portable audio or video player, I'd buy one. It's a different market.
This is a natural move for server (as opposed to host) vendors. Applications like Oracle typically are the only things on the server, or run with only minimal software designed specifically to run with them. (LDAP servers are another example, at least in the corporate space.) By using an existing OS that they can modify as they wish, they can optimize the system for their database, and vice versa. Because the OS is in use elsewhere, there are a number of available tools for administrators to use on their systems. At once, Oracle makes itself independent of large companies like Sun or Microsoft, and can potentially make a better product in the bargain. My guess is, there will be a specific flavor of Linux and specific supported hardware, once Oracle releases this into the marketplace.
Columbia: 2 billion dollars to fight leftist guerillas who are trying to win better conditions for the poor while the right wing wealthy landowners who they're opposing pump drugs into America and bullets into peasants.
You've got it backwards. The guerillas, who arguably started for valid reasons, have become thugs who use their safe zone (granted by the government to further peace talks) to grow and transport drugs, and who kill all those (peasants and intellectuals) who disagree with them.
Middle East: Immeasurable amounts of money to support the ghettoification of a large number of Arabs. It's as if the Israeli government is taking all their cues from the third reich (who got their cues from our excellent eradication of Native Americans).
Except that you leave out that the Palestinians spent the last 50 years trying to destroy Israel, so Israel has some reason to keep the Palestinians under control. Not to mention that the Israelis haven't yet tried to actually wipe out the Palestinians, though I can see the day coming when they might try it, or at least to expel them all into Jordan and Egypt.
Slashdot Mirror
There is a lot of "sky is falling" rhetoric going on about this that is just wrong-headed. Clearly, it would be a bad idea to make a company liable in perpetuity for a software product, with that liability beginning the moment a vulnerability is reported to them, or worse yet, discovered.
However, it is possible to write reasonable legislation around this. Consider: you can do any software task in hardware, albeit possibly less efficiently and frequently less easily and at higher cost. If you were to make a circuit which performed some function, and that circuit were to have an error which caused economic harm to someone, that person could sue you for damages. Thus, why should it not be legal to sue for damages a company which makes a product which *could* be reduced to a circuit, provided that the other circumstances were the same?
If a law were written to allow users to sue a software company for liability, under the conditions that the company had known of the vulnerability for some time (say, 30 days just to be arbitrary, or say 3 years - whatever), and knowing that, had neither produced a fix nor issued a recall to all registered customers, I don't see a problem.
You would certainly want a grace period for the company to fix the flaw or recall the product. You would probably want limitations on liability to the provable immediate losses, or the cost of the software, whichever is higher (possibly with some limited damages above that). You would likely want such a law to exempt programs distributed as or with complete and understandable source code, on the same basis that you couldn't sue someone who printed a design from which you built your own circuit. (That is, including source code would transfer liability from the producer to the user.)
This would allow companies which depend on commercial products that they cannot inspect to have legal protection, while not bankrupting companies who act responsibly by fixing problems within a short period after they are found.
-jeff
The entertainment industry gets copying of content banned.
This pisses off consumers, who paid for the content, and drives them to download cracked versions to actually use, while the paid-for version is just kept for the license.
Consumers realize that the paid-for copy doesn't really do anything physically.
Consumers start just downloading the cracked version.
I don't think that this is what the content owners want, but it's what would happen if they got their way.
-jeff
I'm laughing from the 1/4 acre on which my house sits. The point is that the tax is theoretically avoidable, in that if you really don't want to pay it, you have alternatives. They may not be practical for, say, me or you, but certainly my parents could grow enough food on their property to support themselves, if not well.
Mmmm...Google my precious...musn't let the nasty bloggers get it, no, not my Google precious, no...
Love is valuable, but cannot be owned.
My children are valuable. I hope they cannot be owned.
Just because someone is willing to pay for something, that does not mean that you are entitled to have everyone pay for it in order to have it.
You are making a civil law argument - that in law an idea or expression has marketable value, protected by trademark, copyright and patent laws - in the face of a natural law problem, which is that you cannot steal intellectual property. If I use your code and without paying you, I have not deprived you of its use. If I take your car without paying you, I've deprived you of its use. Intellectual property makes no logical sense. The intent is to create the conditions for more inventions, artistic works and the like to come into the public domain, but the result has been the opposite, at least in the US. If you patent a gene's expression (this has been done in the US), and I carry that gene in my DNA, can you sue me? Believe it or not, the answer is likely yes, though the suit would almost certainly get the law thrown out by the courts.
OK, you obviously have not thought through taxation very well, if you make this statement. So let's walk through it a bit.
A government (theoretically, anyway) provides services to its citizens. Universally, these include infrastructure development, provision for the common defense, a criminal justice system and so on. Some countries provide more, and some countries have failed, and essentially the government is an armed gang of extortionists. Other than the latter, though, governments generally exist to provide services to their citizens. To do that, a government must have access to resources (people, property, material, etc). To get those resources in a basically free-market system, such as is prevalent in the developed world, requires money, because money is the medium of exchange and because we don't like the government to show up unpredictably with guns to take things from us that the government needs.
This need to raise funds for the government can be met with:
The amount of funds raised depends upon which taxes are imposed, and how much money is behind each source of funds. So let's look at the government's incentive with each tax, the relative amount of funds behind it, and the impact on the society of collecting funds in a certain way.
In the end, it is the income tax that allows the government to control your life. It is the income tax that makes possible a government of barely-restricted size and power. It is the income tax that allows the government to bribe the majority with money coerced from the minority. It is the income tax which spawns most of the tyranny that the US government practices (admittedly, still less than most places in the world). It is the income tax which sterilizes citizenship by removing the ability of citizens to control their government's behavior by changing their own behavior. It is the income tax which poisons public debate by allowing people to obtain benefits without costs, and thus makes the incentive for an individual to go along with a government program - lest their own government teat be attacked by the beneficiaries of another program - unless they are in the unheard minority who have to fund whatever the latest government program might be. It is the income tax which is LEAST useful and sensible to a free people.
One further point, on bonds: the government can raise money in the short term by taking on debt. This is not a valid long-term means of financing the government, however, because that debt eventually has to be paid back, with interest, thus reducing future funding abilities.
-jeff
I'm glad they cleared that up. For a while, there, I was really worried.
Actually, it was an honest question. Your tone indicated a certain amount of partisanship. Frankly, I can't tell if Fox is a little right of center, or just looks that way because of how left of center CNN and the networks tend to be. My news source of choice is NPR, because it's the only really balanced, really fair and really deliberative news I can find. Second rank for me are Fox and the BBC, and everything else trails off from there.
I don't live in a world where there are only two political opinions, each of which is based on saying the opposite of the other while doing the same thing. That may be what the political parties in the US have foisted on us, but that doesn't mean I have to fall for it hook, line and sinker, even if most everyone else seems to.
The article was not about "the evils of the SSSCA," but instead was about "opportunities for Republicans" to take advantage of a political position taken by the Democrats that goes against the Democrats' normal instincts. Given your tone, I wonder if you would consider the article a rant if the parties were reversed?
As a UNIX weenie, I'd like to inform you that many UNIX weenies have been Mac heads for years (in my case, since 1988). Along with the Windows people, it's some of the Linux guys - many of whom come from the PC camp, which seems to believe that if your computer isn't disassembled regularly you don't know enough about it or haven't been pushing it enough - who regularly bash Macs. I like Linux OK for low-end hardware, though I prefer AIX or *BSD when I can get it, but it's a different breed from the professional UNIX types.
-jeff
I would almost certainly reduce the number of times per day that I look at /. from about 10 to 1 or 2. It would reduce costs for /., while not seriously affecting my enjoyment of the site (I'll just browse at a higher level).
Things that would make me likely to pay for subscriptions:
- remove per-user limits on karma (keeping per-article limits); allow high-karma users to get discounts - the higher the karma the better the discount - so that someone with a karma of 100+ would only pay $1 for 1000 views, for example
- be very clear on what constitutes a view, and do not charge a view for posting stories, moderating or metamoderating
Things that would make me leave:
- too annoying to read slashdot any more - big intrusive ads, popunders, spyware ads, etc
- punished for contributing (with higher cost or more intrusive ads)
- ads which appear for some number of seconds, as the only content on the page, between clicking to get to a story and getting there
Frankly, I have no problem paying for the site either by having advertising or directly, as long as I feel I'm getting something worthwhile for it, and getting more than karma in return for contributing to the site's success.
If California gets its way, you might be required to.
I guess I'll have to tell my boss I can no longer do Perl scripting for him. And I suppose I'll have to stop writing the shareware game I'm working on until I have time to convert the existing Objective-C to C# - assuming that there will be a MacOS X C# runtime and IDE that I can use. And I suppose all of that C code I've written in the past will have to be junked by the people using it.
Oh, well. Another day, another stupid analyst.
Items which violate the DMCA include:
pencil/pen and paper
typewriter
word processors
floppy disks
hard disks
any network which links 2 or more computers
serial, parallel, network, USB and firewire cables
modems
VCRs and PVRs
I'm sure I've missed some obvious ones.
-jeff
The basis of property ownership is natural law, under which who has a thing owns it. However, under our civil law, we have said that merely taking a thing does not transfer ownership, thus to protect the original owners from unjust siezures of valuable property.
"Intellectual property" is a little different. The natural law right is to use any ideas that you come across. If you have a great idea about how to make a device to catch troublesome pests, I have not stolen from you to use that idea to make such a device. If I steal your book, I've stolen from you, because your property holding has been diminished, while if I simply reprint it, I have not stolen from you, because you still have the book. It was a novel point to our Constitution to allow for any concept of a monopoly on works of creativity or invention. The intent was to spur creative and inventive acts by giving those who created or invented a monopoly to earn money for a limited period. Then, the public would have those ideas and creative works for free use, which they would not have had for any use had the creator or inventor not had an incentive to create them beyond the natural desire to create or invent. The intent was never to reward past creativity or invention.
It is clear to me that the law has become skewed in such a way as to *reduce* the amount of ideas and inventions available for free public use, rather than to enhance it. Why should Disney create new characters and stories, for example, when the existing ones are so profitable, and can be rehashed essentially forever?
-jeff
My six-year old will be thrilled! Arrrh.
Because the states are intervening in these private bodies in ways that are suspect at best. Or are the Democrats and Republicans (and presumably any other party that holds primaries using public polling places) just an arm of government? In which case, we have the choice of two government parties, and are no better than the one-party systems in China, Cuba and the like.
Despite the fact that Ralph Nader is a git, he has a point here. Unfortunately, companies now manage to stock value, rather than dividend payout. As a result, companies make decisions that can result in them losing money, but still returning value to their investors (by increasing stock price) until the bottom falls out, and the stock drops precipitously. Of course, they only do this because it's what the investors want. Investors want their stock to increase in value, so they can make money selling it, rather than for the stocks to return a cash dividend to them. Part of the reason is taxation laws which tax dividends more heavily than capital gains, and part of the reason is sheer shortsightedness on the part of the investors.
A primary is the process used by private bodies (the political parties) to determine who will be their candidate for the election. A primary should not in any way be regulated, nor should any public funds or resources be used to support it (for example, public polling places), because it is not a public function. Nor should the governments of the states be allowed, as they are now, to force these private bodies to allow non-members to have a part in the selection process of the private bodies. Thus your argument does not hold water, though the intention behind it is good. I particularly like the idea of a binding none of the above vote, though I'm not sure that would really help third parties at all.
I don't understand the call for ending "soft money." OK, a few definitions: "hard money" is money given to a political candidate or party under the rules adopted after Watergate, intending to limit the influence of money on elections; "soft money" is any other money used for political purposes. So, money used to promote a candidate is "hard money" and is regulated, while money given to build a party's membership (for example) is "soft money" and is unregulated.
One way to build the party is to run "issue ads". For the uninitiated, "Bill Clinton blows goats. Al Gore says Clinton is the best President ever." is an issue ad. On the other hand, "Bill Clinton blows goats. Al Gore says Clinton is the best President ever. Vote Gore." is supporting a political candidate, and thus is subject to hard money limits.
Now, on the one hand, the regulation of this spending means that there is no way that I could take out an ad saying "Vote for " on TV, because it's more costly than the rules allow. (This is blatantly unconstitutional.) On the other hand, I could take out an ad saying " is a total wad" and I'd be perfectly legal. Political parties can also take out such ads.
So you want to ban "soft money". Sorry, you can't. The Supreme Court has already held that "money is expression" in that preventing someone from airing their views violates the first amendment.
The Shays-Meehan (sp?) bill would instead ban unregulated contributions to political parties. There would be no prohibition on companies, unions or PACs running all the issue ads they want, or all the get out the vote campaigns they want, on behalf of a party, so long as the party does not direct their activities. Could somebody explain to me how preventing one body of private citizens (a political party) from doing something, while allowing another (say, a PAC) to do that thing, would be constitutional? It smacks of a bill of attainder, and certainly violates the first amendment in the event that what's being prevented is the expression of political views.
It seems to me that the better way to handle election finance issues is to require all money used for political purposes to be disclosed, and to prosecute those guilty of influence peddling or accepting bribes. In most cases, it won't be clear cut, but it would certainly be possible to recall politicians who are abusing their office by acting on behalf of those who spent money for them. And realistically, what would probably happen is that candidates would get more money directly, and outside spending would decrease.
-jeff
What about any evidence that these features would provide a more useful product?
In my use of the Palm, I find that it does a lot of useful things very well: scheduling/calendar, ToDo management, field note taking, business card folder replacement (with searching and such). These things make my work life (and, to a lesser extent, my home life) easier than it would be without the Palm. If I wanted a portable audio or video player, I'd buy one. It's a different market.
This is a natural move for server (as opposed to host) vendors. Applications like Oracle typically are the only things on the server, or run with only minimal software designed specifically to run with them. (LDAP servers are another example, at least in the corporate space.) By using an existing OS that they can modify as they wish, they can optimize the system for their database, and vice versa. Because the OS is in use elsewhere, there are a number of available tools for administrators to use on their systems. At once, Oracle makes itself independent of large companies like Sun or Microsoft, and can potentially make a better product in the bargain. My guess is, there will be a specific flavor of Linux and specific supported hardware, once Oracle releases this into the marketplace.
You've got it backwards. The guerillas, who arguably started for valid reasons, have become thugs who use their safe zone (granted by the government to further peace talks) to grow and transport drugs, and who kill all those (peasants and intellectuals) who disagree with them.
Except that you leave out that the Palestinians spent the last 50 years trying to destroy Israel, so Israel has some reason to keep the Palestinians under control. Not to mention that the Israelis haven't yet tried to actually wipe out the Palestinians, though I can see the day coming when they might try it, or at least to expel them all into Jordan and Egypt.
You've come to the right place.