You mean other than the actual footage of animals being tortured to death, or the infamous scene of a bloodied woman impaled through the vagina and mouth? Did you even read the Wikipedia article?
For the same reasons I won't go watch movies like Saw or Hannibal Rising. Silence of the Lambs was good, but Red Dragon and Hannibal Rising were nothing more than an excuse to see how disturbing they could get.
Put another way, where is your incentive to make the code better when you are the only one who can produce it?
The patent will expire, and the only way to keep patent protection is to improve it and file a new patent. This requires patents to expire within reasonable periods of time, of course, but that's a fair reform.
Hey, if I was a smart guy, I could sit around in my underwear, simply thinking up ideas and filing patents on those ideas, and possibly end up very rich someday; but what have I provided society as a whole?
The aforementioned ideas. Although you should be forced to license those ideas to others instead of just suing their asses when they independently invent the same thing. Marketing and daydreaming could be replaced by a massively peer-to-peer idea sharing network, where instead of paying some marketing droid to sit on his ass thinking of 99 ideas that won't work and 1 that will, you just buy that 1 idea and sell the product. Or you can read it and sell your own ideas for improvement on the same market.
Of course, the patent system is already controlled by people who want to make money for big corporations instead of smart guys in their underwear. Why do you think you need money and high-powered patent attorneys to file for patents?
Although four year olds are undoubtedly less expensive, the legal standard is actually that it shouldn't be obvious to someone of average ability working in the field. If the patent office drafted juries of engineers (paying them, of course, but allowing exemptions for those of above-average ability) and did the same whiteroom process with them, you'd get a fairer process. You could even save time by having them only sketch out vague design ideas without going into implementation-level detail--if the patent is for a specific implementation of one of those vague ideas, or seems obviously adapted from one, you reject it.
I know you were making a joke, but it was so close to a good idea I thought a response would be useful.
All copyright does is protect against cut-and-paste jobs of the basic code. If I devise a brilliant algorithm, there should be more protecting it than just that, because if someone implements the same algorithm using different code, I'm screwed.
There is an initiative for population control, and it's happening almost everywhere on earth. It's called economic development. Japan, western Europe, and the United States all have higher deathrates than birthrates. In fact, among the most developed countries, the only source of population growth is immigration. As societies become affluent enough to afford birth control and employ women, their population growth reverses. Societies that are still experiencing population growth increasingly offload their population into population sinks like the US and western Europe--insofar as these immigrant populations assimilate, they will also reduce their birthrate, while supporting their families in the old country. In the far future, we'll probably have a smaller, more affluent world population sharing a depleted but still high-per-capita amount of natural resources.
You think it's impossible to sell products or services to vast numbers of people in exchange for money without ripping them off? How do you get your food? Or your computers? Or your internet service? I mean, if you're being ripped off so badly, why do you continue paying your money?
I'm sure you can agree that this is the most sensible explanation for Kansas.
I thought their primary influence was British prog-rock, there was really little religious influence until the 1980's, when they became born-again Christians.
The most common Wikipedian pastime is to complain about what's wrong with Wikipedia. The community is pretty self-critical, it's just that they disagree on the specific criticisms, maintaining a status quo that leaves everyone dissatisfied. That's how you know you have compromise.
Nupedia had problems generating content, but it was very successful in controlling content quality. Wikipedia is very successful in generating content, but is not successful controlling quality. The solution should be obvious.
Questions like "In what year did Congress gain the right to prohibit the migration of persons to the states" go way beyond "basic understanding"....Using your source against you does not mean that I'm cherry-picking, it means you didn't bother to go through your own source before you linked to it.
I went through it, and I found one or two questions that were hard (like that one), but on the other hand, no one says you have to ace the test either. If this test was administered to everyone (although it wasn't) it would be perfectly fair.
I'd say most monarchs and their family held a greater disproportion of all of the above influences in most of human history.
That's not really a population. And while some countries have more political and military power (which are essentially the same thing), their people aren't quite as empowered as ours. China isn't a democracy, and Russia is only a democracy for show, in ways far more significant than in this country.
There are some 300 million Americans, and some 40% are the aforementioned white American males. Less than 2% of the world population, and we have power comparable or greater than nations of billions? Crazy.
There's a certain floor level of spending that's required to sustain a living. You might talk about exemptions for food and stuff, but unless you exempt every single thing that poorer people buy (thus making your "sales tax" more of a "luxury tax"), it still affects them more than richer people who can and do invest.
The average white (caucasian) male American between 15 and 55 is the most discriminated and censored group in the US.
Other than holding the most disproportionate amount of economic, political, and military power of any population in world history, you're absolutely correct.
It's not difficult to distinguish at all though. The ability to perceive sound is better than the lack of said ability. There's no tradeoff. Being gay, you trade off screwing women in favor of screwing guys. Being asexual, you trade off not having sex for not needing sex. But deafness is the least tradeoffable thing there is.
OK, I understand how being autistic can give people neurological advantages, but deafness? If they're deaf from birth and the brain never developed to understand sound, then I can see wanting to be cautious, but if that setback can be fixed, how is the person not better off for having the capacity of hearing?
Criticisms of that idea aside, most people find it very emotionally upsetting to accidentally kill other people. It's worthwhile for the law to protect people from that.
Evolution works on populations, but it favors the individual gene, not the population. If you have the most successful offspring, you win evolution, even if by doing so you do really shitty things to the rest of the population. "Having females survive to help the next generation rather than die in late birthing is a big advantage to a given population"? Having females survive to help THEIR CHILDREN is a big advantage to THE PROPAGATION OF THEIR INDIVIDUAL GENES. Non-breeding individuals lose at evolution, unless they help their siblings to successfully reproduce. If you had stopped to think about how natural selection works you would realize this.
I think people should have a basic understanding of the government and its laws in order to vote. If the average high-school educated Alabaman can't pass that test, then Alabama's high schools need to brush up on civics. It's also convenient that you cherry-picked the hardest questions. Would you really trust someone to vote who couldn't identify what "responsibility" means, or who the US Attorney General was, or whether the President can be impeached? Or that the state you live in doesn't have debtor's prisons? Do you honestly want people voting who don't think the President can be removed from office, can't define the word "treaty", or don't know about search warrants? I also thought that many Slashdotters would appreciate the question about patents:)
My Mac won't compile my Brainfuck source but you don't see me complaining. If you pick obscure formats for silly ideological reasons, don't complain when the market doesn't cater to your needs.
Slashdot Mirror
You mean other than the actual footage of animals being tortured to death, or the infamous scene of a bloodied woman impaled through the vagina and mouth? Did you even read the Wikipedia article?
As opposed to such non-disturbing European films as Cannibal Holocaust?
The patent will expire, and the only way to keep patent protection is to improve it and file a new patent. This requires patents to expire within reasonable periods of time, of course, but that's a fair reform.
The aforementioned ideas. Although you should be forced to license those ideas to others instead of just suing their asses when they independently invent the same thing. Marketing and daydreaming could be replaced by a massively peer-to-peer idea sharing network, where instead of paying some marketing droid to sit on his ass thinking of 99 ideas that won't work and 1 that will, you just buy that 1 idea and sell the product. Or you can read it and sell your own ideas for improvement on the same market.
Of course, the patent system is already controlled by people who want to make money for big corporations instead of smart guys in their underwear. Why do you think you need money and high-powered patent attorneys to file for patents?
Although four year olds are undoubtedly less expensive, the legal standard is actually that it shouldn't be obvious to someone of average ability working in the field. If the patent office drafted juries of engineers (paying them, of course, but allowing exemptions for those of above-average ability) and did the same whiteroom process with them, you'd get a fairer process. You could even save time by having them only sketch out vague design ideas without going into implementation-level detail--if the patent is for a specific implementation of one of those vague ideas, or seems obviously adapted from one, you reject it.
I know you were making a joke, but it was so close to a good idea I thought a response would be useful.
All copyright does is protect against cut-and-paste jobs of the basic code. If I devise a brilliant algorithm, there should be more protecting it than just that, because if someone implements the same algorithm using different code, I'm screwed.
There is an initiative for population control, and it's happening almost everywhere on earth. It's called economic development. Japan, western Europe, and the United States all have higher deathrates than birthrates. In fact, among the most developed countries, the only source of population growth is immigration. As societies become affluent enough to afford birth control and employ women, their population growth reverses. Societies that are still experiencing population growth increasingly offload their population into population sinks like the US and western Europe--insofar as these immigrant populations assimilate, they will also reduce their birthrate, while supporting their families in the old country. In the far future, we'll probably have a smaller, more affluent world population sharing a depleted but still high-per-capita amount of natural resources.
You think it's impossible to sell products or services to vast numbers of people in exchange for money without ripping them off? How do you get your food? Or your computers? Or your internet service? I mean, if you're being ripped off so badly, why do you continue paying your money?
I thought their primary influence was British prog-rock, there was really little religious influence until the 1980's, when they became born-again Christians.
What about your 80 "friends" from BitTorrent whom you've never met?
The most common Wikipedian pastime is to complain about what's wrong with Wikipedia. The community is pretty self-critical, it's just that they disagree on the specific criticisms, maintaining a status quo that leaves everyone dissatisfied. That's how you know you have compromise.
Nupedia had problems generating content, but it was very successful in controlling content quality. Wikipedia is very successful in generating content, but is not successful controlling quality. The solution should be obvious.
That's not really a population. And while some countries have more political and military power (which are essentially the same thing), their people aren't quite as empowered as ours. China isn't a democracy, and Russia is only a democracy for show, in ways far more significant than in this country.
There are some 300 million Americans, and some 40% are the aforementioned white American males. Less than 2% of the world population, and we have power comparable or greater than nations of billions? Crazy.
There's a certain floor level of spending that's required to sustain a living. You might talk about exemptions for food and stuff, but unless you exempt every single thing that poorer people buy (thus making your "sales tax" more of a "luxury tax"), it still affects them more than richer people who can and do invest.
I always consider SimCity "won" if the only way to further develop is to build more arcos. At that point I summon disasters and rebuild.
Other than holding the most disproportionate amount of economic, political, and military power of any population in world history, you're absolutely correct.
It's not difficult to distinguish at all though. The ability to perceive sound is better than the lack of said ability. There's no tradeoff. Being gay, you trade off screwing women in favor of screwing guys. Being asexual, you trade off not having sex for not needing sex. But deafness is the least tradeoffable thing there is.
OK, I understand how being autistic can give people neurological advantages, but deafness? If they're deaf from birth and the brain never developed to understand sound, then I can see wanting to be cautious, but if that setback can be fixed, how is the person not better off for having the capacity of hearing?
Criticisms of that idea aside, most people find it very emotionally upsetting to accidentally kill other people. It's worthwhile for the law to protect people from that.
Evolution works on populations, but it favors the individual gene, not the population. If you have the most successful offspring, you win evolution, even if by doing so you do really shitty things to the rest of the population. "Having females survive to help the next generation rather than die in late birthing is a big advantage to a given population"? Having females survive to help THEIR CHILDREN is a big advantage to THE PROPAGATION OF THEIR INDIVIDUAL GENES. Non-breeding individuals lose at evolution, unless they help their siblings to successfully reproduce. If you had stopped to think about how natural selection works you would realize this.
I think people should have a basic understanding of the government and its laws in order to vote. If the average high-school educated Alabaman can't pass that test, then Alabama's high schools need to brush up on civics. It's also convenient that you cherry-picked the hardest questions. Would you really trust someone to vote who couldn't identify what "responsibility" means, or who the US Attorney General was, or whether the President can be impeached? Or that the state you live in doesn't have debtor's prisons? Do you honestly want people voting who don't think the President can be removed from office, can't define the word "treaty", or don't know about search warrants? I also thought that many Slashdotters would appreciate the question about patents :)
That's a joke, son. Maybe if you expended some mental labor you'd have an idea what he was talking about.
My Mac won't compile my Brainfuck source but you don't see me complaining. If you pick obscure formats for silly ideological reasons, don't complain when the market doesn't cater to your needs.
Yeah, isn't this how the fall of the Twelve Colonies happened?