Americans just enjoy an ok standard of living without it. America is the Everquest of nations, even though people bitch about the weird and sometimes unfair economics it still enjoys wild popularity and is the benchmark that other games use to determine their own success.
lol.. perhaps in your wild fantasy world... very few people look up to USA, except for one thing: money (ie. capitalism). Other than that, very few people even consider USA to be a model... I don't know where you get the wild popularity numbers from. Look up recent international polls which squarely place USA near the bottom of countries that people like...
Wealth discrepancy in China is far greater now than ever. The industrialists are all rich while the farmers are poor. Cities are being flooded with poor farmers from rural areas. If anything, the gap is spreading.
It seems like the world doesn't fit into your view of the world so you claim art is dead. First of all, people are creative and things change. Second, new devices, techniques, technology, etc alters the landscape. New forms of art have emerged. For example, the emergence of photography shifted some elements of art into photography. Doing paintings of what exists (ie. nature, people, etc) lost popularity because you can do a "similar thing" with photography. How many people have large posters or photographic pictures of nature whereas they would have had paintings in the past?
In addition, how about movies (motion picture)? Clearly that is art--is it not?
When you say art is dead, what you are really referring to is "classical" art. If you include all forms of art, like motion picture, photography, etc, art is no different than before. It has simply diversified...
But the NSA has been able to develop cryptosystems without outside review (by employing half of the experts at the time)...
How can you be sure of that? Since very few people even have access to the stuff, they may think they are secure. For all we know, they might have been compromised and some foreign govt might actually be accessing everything.
What you are saying is akin to how government departments or corporations always say how their stuff is all secure and safe. Yet it always turns out that some stuff is compromised here and there, your credit number is on the net all of a sudden, the so-called private highly secure customer database doesn't seem to be secure all of a sudden, etc. Granted, these guys don't really do any serious cryptology (unlike NSA) but still...
hmm...ok... I guess a billionare with $1b in wealth is poorer than another wtih $2b...
According to your notions, even USA is a poor country. A lot of Americans flee to Bahamas and various other tax-sheltered countries. It's not just people either; corporations, such as Enron, have a lot of wealth in foreign countries too...
Just remember, all the wealthy Canadians live someplace else.
Yep... that makes it even better... If you are rich, the last place on earth you want to be is a socialist-like state, like Canada... I was mainly addressing the not so wealthy people...:)
The cost of protesting in real life is very high. Not just in terms of money (eg. have to drive out to location, or take public transit, have to make up posters/signs/whatever, etc) but also in other aspects. For example, the govt might start tracking you after your protests (did you know that many police groups record protests on camcorders nowadays?). You might also run into a battle with your enemies which most people don't like (eg. if you are anti-Patriot Act, you would have to face the jeering and verbal abuse from the pro-Patriot Act crowd)...
You will only see large numbers of protestors when the cost of the protest is lowered OR the cost of failure with some policy is high...
How about Canada? I welcome my socialist friends up north...
Is the "War" on Drugs getting you down?
Is the "war" on terrorism depressing you?
Is your Imperial government making you uneasy?
Are you worried about your education systems?
Are you scared of walking in the "wrong" part of town?
At some point you are going to realize that there is more to life than productivity and wealth... Unfortunately most people on reach that state after they are in their 50's...
I don't know how these work but I'm sure the people who wrote them send them to their target audience. I don't think they just post it on the web or something without informing the letter target...
But what is not a minor thing is trivializing the horrors of the holocaust by comparing it to a software patch.
He/she is not trivializing the matter. If you understood his point you wouldn't say that. You know what was probably the most important thing that happened. It was stripping the Jews of property and putting them in concentration camps. This was probably the SINGLE most important thing that happened to them. If you wanted to stop the genocide, you HAD to stop that first step. Once they were put in camps, it was very difficult to reverse. Of course you don't realize that and will label me as antisemitic or something...
At least the holocaust deniers admit that, if it had happened, it would have been a horrible thing...
hmm... most holocause deniers deny it simply because it happened. You'll find that most--albeit not all--of these deniers are neo-Nazis. How come some dude off the street isn't into this holocaust denial stuff?
Most people are conformists, who do absolutely nothing. They simply follow the idealists...
Actually I'm against the chair thing too. The way the patent system works nowadays, I'll bet if someone makes a chair now, no one can make a device to sit on. I'm not supportive of that.
In any case, there is a difference between the book and the chair. The book captures ideas and thoughts. The chair captures work and labour. This is not to say that they are mutually exclusive. But rather, the book's VALUE is more dependent on thoughts. I believe you shouldn't have the right--or monopoly--on those ideas...I'm open to you making money off the book and possibly event granting you a short term monopoly. HOWEVER, if someone reads your stuff and comes up with other ideas based off them, I don't think YOU own them.
I think SCO already has a patent on the concept of analogy. Anytime you use an analogy, you owe them $699. I suggest that you back down from your invoice threats or else I'm going to inform SCO of your 'analogy violation'. I might be weak and powerless but I have SCO on my side;)
YOur proposed shift towards pure capitalism will fail...
Some of the stuff you have mentioned will simply create massive discrepancies in wealth. This will result in class wars (of course, you probably wouldn't believe a socialist like me:) )...
As far as letting people invest in the stock market. You just better hope that you don't get into a long recession or deflation. Japan, a capitalist country by all standards, has been in a deflation for something like 10 years. I haven't kept up to date but the Japanese stock market index (ie. all blue chips) was at a 10 year low. If such a thing happened with social security, millions would literally be out on the street...
Utopian ideals are what guide society and control progress; pragmatic views are next to useless in the long term. Two hundread years ago, one with a pragmatic 'business view' would have said that owning slaves was ok and acceptable. Another with a more idealistic UTOPIAN view would have said it isn't. I'm not equating slavery to you. On the contrary. I am simply pointing out how you cannot dismiss "utopian silliness" when looking at society.
I classified your views as a 'business view' because they are based on a profit motive. I think that is a fairly accurate description. Whether someone thinks that is good or bad depends on your econopolitics. Capitalists would consider a 'business view' to be good while socialists would consider it to be bad. What I call it is irrelevant; What matters is your underlying ideal.
Please explain how someone other than myself has any rights to my creation...
The question boils down to what I highlighted above: creation. What exactly is the creation? My biggest concern and disagreement with intellectual property is not with art but more with science (although both are a problem). If I discover the theory of gravity, do *I* own it? Should the people that publish my theory pay a royalty to me? Should they get my permission? *I* discovered it through my hard work and through my own processes and techniques. So should I own it? You are saying it belongs to me and I'm saying it does not!
Your view is a business view--based on profit. You want me to PROFIT from my discoverty. I should get money from anyone that uses my experiment techniques, anyone that uses my equation relating gravity to mass, etc. You clearly cannot justify my intellectual property (on gravity) if you didn't consider a profit motive. From a societal point of view, society would be better off if the theory of gravity was owned by no one.
Patenting--or whatever concept you call it--the theory of gravity might seem silly and far-fetched. But is it? This is EXACTLY what is happening now in science, in particular the biological field. All the press, the businesses, and the govt talk about innovation in bioscience and how it helps everyone, creates jobs, and so on. But does it really? Many firms are gaining patents to biological processes, techniques, and outright concepts. Firms are even attempting to patent genes that cause certain diseases/defects/etc. Do these firms have the right to OWN the ideas on biology? These firms spent billions on research yet do they own it?
Move to the tech field. You see the same thing happening. Everyone is trying to patent EVERYTHING. If you didn't own patents, you really can't even do business anymore because you are likely infringing on someone's ideas/patents/whatever. For the most part, nothing will happen to you. BUT when some large company like IBM (or SCO:) ) wants to step on you, they will.
Let's move to art. You make a movie, which ends up being a classic. In 25 years (I'm just making up a number here), it would be FAR MORE preferable if your movie were free than if it weren't. If I want to study your movie or capture frames and put it on my website, or whatever, I should have the right to your movie--not just me, but everyone (ie. society). Will you lose profit? Yes! But it is better for society that thins like that b free.
My view (I'm a socialist BTW:) ) is that things that benefit society should be free. If you want to make money off your work, fine. In fact, I'm totally supportive of that, and would even be totally against people who profit off you without consent (ie. I wouldn't want someone selling your stuff without paying you what YOU want). What I don't like is the CAPITALIZATION of science, art, etc. The problem really isn't ideals. I'll bet that most humans (once educated) would suppport my ideals more than yours. The real complication is things like peer/peer transfers, and things like that. I would be supportive of you ma
Actually most people on SlashDot are more like centre-left. If you are left, you are basically close to a socialist (although you don't have to be) and I dont' see too many people supporting socialism except me:) Also, there are A LOT of conservatives here. I don't know where you get the idea that conservatives are extinct here...
Diversity IS good but I don't think it will work as you imply. Having incompatibility and no standard just for diversity isn't very useful. I think the ideal scenario is when you have MANY standards that all INTEROPERATE. This way, you could fall back on others if one fails while being guaranteed that they will work with others.
Perhaps the best example of this (although it is sort of different) is programming languages. You basically have a choice of at least 3 programming languags for a job. If one fails, a company can survive by switching (although there WILL be a cost to retrain etc). For example, let's say you pick Java. If SUN folds and doesn't release the Java intellectual property to the public (or to some non-profit organization), you can switch to C++. As I said, it isn't easy but you do have the choice. Your programming company is not going to be destroyed by this choice... Other examples include web browsers. Although it isn't perfect, you can have a choice of at least 2 web browsers. If one web browser dissapears, you can still carry on... In contrast, imagine if there were only one web browser or one programming language or something...
Needless to say, this is very anti-capitalistic and I doubt many corporations would want to do something like that. If anything, the #1 goal of a for-profit organization is to monopolize the market...
When lawyers took over the IP sector, it went insane...most lawsuits have nothing to do with protecting intellecutal property nowadays. Instead, it is nothing more than a money-making scheme...
Slashdot Mirror
Americans just enjoy an ok standard of living without it. America is the Everquest of nations, even though people bitch about the weird and sometimes unfair economics it still enjoys wild popularity and is the benchmark that other games use to determine their own success.
lol.. perhaps in your wild fantasy world... very few people look up to USA, except for one thing: money (ie. capitalism). Other than that, very few people even consider USA to be a model... I don't know where you get the wild popularity numbers from. Look up recent international polls which squarely place USA near the bottom of countries that people like...
Sivaram Velauthapillai
When are you Americans going to realize that the Democrats and the Republicans are different sides of the same coin?
Sivaram Velauthapillai
Wealth discrepancy in China is far greater now than ever. The industrialists are all rich while the farmers are poor. Cities are being flooded with poor farmers from rural areas. If anything, the gap is spreading.
Sivaram Velauthapillai
It seems like the world doesn't fit into your view of the world so you claim art is dead. First of all, people are creative and things change. Second, new devices, techniques, technology, etc alters the landscape. New forms of art have emerged. For example, the emergence of photography shifted some elements of art into photography. Doing paintings of what exists (ie. nature, people, etc) lost popularity because you can do a "similar thing" with photography. How many people have large posters or photographic pictures of nature whereas they would have had paintings in the past?
In addition, how about movies (motion picture)? Clearly that is art--is it not?
When you say art is dead, what you are really referring to is "classical" art. If you include all forms of art, like motion picture, photography, etc, art is no different than before. It has simply diversified...
Sivaram Velauthapillai
But the NSA has been able to develop cryptosystems without outside review (by employing half of the experts at the time)...
How can you be sure of that? Since very few people even have access to the stuff, they may think they are secure. For all we know, they might have been compromised and some foreign govt might actually be accessing everything.
What you are saying is akin to how government departments or corporations always say how their stuff is all secure and safe. Yet it always turns out that some stuff is compromised here and there, your credit number is on the net all of a sudden, the so-called private highly secure customer database doesn't seem to be secure all of a sudden, etc. Granted, these guys don't really do any serious cryptology (unlike NSA) but still...
Sivaram Velauthapillai
hmm...ok... I guess a billionare with $1b in wealth is poorer than another wtih $2b...
According to your notions, even USA is a poor country. A lot of Americans flee to Bahamas and various other tax-sheltered countries. It's not just people either; corporations, such as Enron, have a lot of wealth in foreign countries too...
Sivaram Velauthapillai
Are you saying Canada is as poor as Uganda? I suppose to the wealthy that may be true...
Sivaram Velauthapillai
Just remember, all the wealthy Canadians live someplace else.
:)
Yep... that makes it even better... If you are rich, the last place on earth you want to be is a socialist-like state, like Canada... I was mainly addressing the not so wealthy people...
Sivaram Velauthapillai
The cost of protesting in real life is very high. Not just in terms of money (eg. have to drive out to location, or take public transit, have to make up posters/signs/whatever, etc) but also in other aspects. For example, the govt might start tracking you after your protests (did you know that many police groups record protests on camcorders nowadays?). You might also run into a battle with your enemies which most people don't like (eg. if you are anti-Patriot Act, you would have to face the jeering and verbal abuse from the pro-Patriot Act crowd)...
You will only see large numbers of protestors when the cost of the protest is lowered OR the cost of failure with some policy is high...
Sivaram Velauthapillai
ok...but once Patriot Act II passes (which will happen as soon as another terrorist attack happens) we'll see where you stand...
Sivaram Velauthapillai
How about Canada? I welcome my socialist friends up north...
:)
Is the "War" on Drugs getting you down?
Is the "war" on terrorism depressing you?
Is your Imperial government making you uneasy?
Are you worried about your education systems?
Are you scared of walking in the "wrong" part of town?
Fear not... Canada is the answer to all*...
* Please check in guns at the border. Thank you
Sivaram Velauthapillai
At some point you are going to realize that there is more to life than productivity and wealth... Unfortunately most people on reach that state after they are in their 50's...
Sivaram Velauthapillai
I don't know how these work but I'm sure the people who wrote them send them to their target audience. I don't think they just post it on the web or something without informing the letter target...
Sivaram Velauthapillai
Isn't MS part of a consortium that is pushing DRM?
Sivaram Velauthapillai
But what is not a minor thing is trivializing the horrors of the holocaust by comparing it to a software patch.
He/she is not trivializing the matter. If you understood his point you wouldn't say that. You know what was probably the most important thing that happened. It was stripping the Jews of property and putting them in concentration camps. This was probably the SINGLE most important thing that happened to them. If you wanted to stop the genocide, you HAD to stop that first step. Once they were put in camps, it was very difficult to reverse. Of course you don't realize that and will label me as antisemitic or something...
At least the holocaust deniers admit that, if it had happened, it would have been a horrible thing...
hmm... most holocause deniers deny it simply because it happened. You'll find that most--albeit not all--of these deniers are neo-Nazis. How come some dude off the street isn't into this holocaust denial stuff?
Sivaram Velauthapillai
Except... slashdot is immune to Goodwin's "law" :)
Sivaram Velauthapillai
Nonsense. People act in their own self-interest.
Most people are conformists, who do absolutely nothing. They simply follow the idealists...
Actually I'm against the chair thing too. The way the patent system works nowadays, I'll bet if someone makes a chair now, no one can make a device to sit on. I'm not supportive of that.
In any case, there is a difference between the book and the chair. The book captures ideas and thoughts. The chair captures work and labour. This is not to say that they are mutually exclusive. But rather, the book's VALUE is more dependent on thoughts. I believe you shouldn't have the right--or monopoly--on those ideas...I'm open to you making money off the book and possibly event granting you a short term monopoly. HOWEVER, if someone reads your stuff and comes up with other ideas based off them, I don't think YOU own them.
Sivaram Velauthapillai
Great minds think alike... what can I say ;)
;)
I think SCO already has a patent on the concept of analogy. Anytime you use an analogy, you owe them $699. I suggest that you back down from your invoice threats or else I'm going to inform SCO of your 'analogy violation'. I might be weak and powerless but I have SCO on my side
Sivaram Velauthapillai
If economics is all you care about, it's a great place. Probably in the top 10 countries in the world (in terms of wealth)...
Just make sure you stay clear of politics...for politics does not even exist there...
Sivaram Velauthapillai
YOur proposed shift towards pure capitalism will fail...
:) )...
Some of the stuff you have mentioned will simply create massive discrepancies in wealth. This will result in class wars (of course, you probably wouldn't believe a socialist like me
As far as letting people invest in the stock market. You just better hope that you don't get into a long recession or deflation. Japan, a capitalist country by all standards, has been in a deflation for something like 10 years. I haven't kept up to date but the Japanese stock market index (ie. all blue chips) was at a 10 year low. If such a thing happened with social security, millions would literally be out on the street...
Sivaram Velauthapillai
Are you talking about me or him? :)
Sivaram Velauthapillai
Utopian ideals are what guide society and control progress; pragmatic views are next to useless in the long term. Two hundread years ago, one with a pragmatic 'business view' would have said that owning slaves was ok and acceptable. Another with a more idealistic UTOPIAN view would have said it isn't. I'm not equating slavery to you. On the contrary. I am simply pointing out how you cannot dismiss "utopian silliness" when looking at society.
...
:) ) wants to step on you, they will.
:) ) is that things that benefit society should be free. If you want to make money off your work, fine. In fact, I'm totally supportive of that, and would even be totally against people who profit off you without consent (ie. I wouldn't want someone selling your stuff without paying you what YOU want). What I don't like is the CAPITALIZATION of science, art, etc. The problem really isn't ideals. I'll bet that most humans (once educated) would suppport my ideals more than yours. The real complication is things like peer/peer transfers, and things like that. I would be supportive of you ma
I classified your views as a 'business view' because they are based on a profit motive. I think that is a fairly accurate description. Whether someone thinks that is good or bad depends on your econopolitics. Capitalists would consider a 'business view' to be good while socialists would consider it to be bad. What I call it is irrelevant; What matters is your underlying ideal.
Please explain how someone other than myself has any rights to my creation
The question boils down to what I highlighted above: creation. What exactly is the creation? My biggest concern and disagreement with intellectual property is not with art but more with science (although both are a problem). If I discover the theory of gravity, do *I* own it? Should the people that publish my theory pay a royalty to me? Should they get my permission? *I* discovered it through my hard work and through my own processes and techniques. So should I own it? You are saying it belongs to me and I'm saying it does not!
Your view is a business view--based on profit. You want me to PROFIT from my discoverty. I should get money from anyone that uses my experiment techniques, anyone that uses my equation relating gravity to mass, etc. You clearly cannot justify my intellectual property (on gravity) if you didn't consider a profit motive. From a societal point of view, society would be better off if the theory of gravity was owned by no one.
Patenting--or whatever concept you call it--the theory of gravity might seem silly and far-fetched. But is it? This is EXACTLY what is happening now in science, in particular the biological field. All the press, the businesses, and the govt talk about innovation in bioscience and how it helps everyone, creates jobs, and so on. But does it really? Many firms are gaining patents to biological processes, techniques, and outright concepts. Firms are even attempting to patent genes that cause certain diseases/defects/etc. Do these firms have the right to OWN the ideas on biology? These firms spent billions on research yet do they own it?
Move to the tech field. You see the same thing happening. Everyone is trying to patent EVERYTHING. If you didn't own patents, you really can't even do business anymore because you are likely infringing on someone's ideas/patents/whatever. For the most part, nothing will happen to you. BUT when some large company like IBM (or SCO
Let's move to art. You make a movie, which ends up being a classic. In 25 years (I'm just making up a number here), it would be FAR MORE preferable if your movie were free than if it weren't. If I want to study your movie or capture frames and put it on my website, or whatever, I should have the right to your movie--not just me, but everyone (ie. society). Will you lose profit? Yes! But it is better for society that thins like that b free.
My view (I'm a socialist BTW
Actually most people on SlashDot are more like centre-left. If you are left, you are basically close to a socialist (although you don't have to be) and I dont' see too many people supporting socialism except me :) Also, there are A LOT of conservatives here. I don't know where you get the idea that conservatives are extinct here...
Sivaram Velauthapillai
Diversity IS good but I don't think it will work as you imply. Having incompatibility and no standard just for diversity isn't very useful. I think the ideal scenario is when you have MANY standards that all INTEROPERATE. This way, you could fall back on others if one fails while being guaranteed that they will work with others.
Perhaps the best example of this (although it is sort of different) is programming languages. You basically have a choice of at least 3 programming languags for a job. If one fails, a company can survive by switching (although there WILL be a cost to retrain etc). For example, let's say you pick Java. If SUN folds and doesn't release the Java intellectual property to the public (or to some non-profit organization), you can switch to C++. As I said, it isn't easy but you do have the choice. Your programming company is not going to be destroyed by this choice... Other examples include web browsers. Although it isn't perfect, you can have a choice of at least 2 web browsers. If one web browser dissapears, you can still carry on... In contrast, imagine if there were only one web browser or one programming language or something...
Needless to say, this is very anti-capitalistic and I doubt many corporations would want to do something like that. If anything, the #1 goal of a for-profit organization is to monopolize the market...
Sivaram Velauthapillai
When lawyers took over the IP sector, it went insane...most lawsuits have nothing to do with protecting intellecutal property nowadays. Instead, it is nothing more than a money-making scheme...
Sivaram Velauthapillai