A "right" is a declared and well defined action that you may take under specific circumstances as defined by the parent society.
Concrete example: You have a right to call a lawyer if you are arrested, because this is defined. You do not have a right to repair a television if you are arrested - even though such action is not specifically denied to you. Get it now?
I think so - you're saying that free men do and should have precisely the same rights as criminals. OK, I got it.
It is criminals, and specifically prisoners that have no rights except those explicitly defined. Free men have every right not specifically denied, and it is up to the state to prove they don't have a particular right, not up to them to prove they do. In the US, that's the 9th amendment. I think I'll go repair a TV now.
So when you get the constitution rewritten until all the "wrongheaded" and "stupid" parts are removed, you will have the laws you are claiming to already have, but simply dont.
You made a deal, whether you want to admit it or not. The constitution says you were given something, and got something in return. You did your work under the terms it then spelled out. You got paid what it said you were to be paid. Then the government renegotiated the deal 3 times in your favor, and you're still whining it's not enough. Oh, you didn't sign a contract? It's called the social contract. There are a thousand cases under that law you seem to think only applies to other people, where you don't get to sign a contract before you are forced to abide by it, and this is one of them. Now the social contract has been repeatedly rewritten in your supposed favor. You seem to uncritically believe that claim: "Hi, I'm from the government, and I'm here to help you.". WHEN it gets rewritten the other way, will you still claim that is society's right to do it any way it chooses, or will you turn then to the concepts you now reject.
If someone feels that their creations - whatever they might be - are being taken from them without whatever they consider to be adequate recompense, they may well stop creating things.
You thought you got a fair deal when you did it. You're definition of 'adequate' changed after the fact. Looks like before you stop creating, you'd better create a time machine and go tell your earlier self to hold up until the better deal comes along.
I do assert I have rights to your works. I have a right to read any copy that is made available to me. I have a right to quote from it, even if the parts I choose to quote embarrass you later, or I write a book that shows how internally contradictory your arguements are.
Depending on what form your works take, I may have other rights, such as converting a digital format to another one for my personal use. If your work exists in fixed printed form, I have a right to resell my copy, or to lend it to others, whether by personal means or by stocking a public library with it. I have a right to convert your CD track to an.MP3, even if its only for such trivial reason as my MP3 player fits better in my pocket when I go running than a CD player would. Oh, you thought I was advocating a right to compel you to work for free? That's not what this is about, but with Halloween coming up, you can make a nice scarecrow out of that strawman.
If you don't like me enough to accept I have those rights, please do stop creating. In fact, as your honest customers learn that they are considered thieves for wanting their children and grandchildren to get what was promised to them, I'm pretty sure you will stop creating, whether you have realized that you need customers as much as they need you, or not, by then.
You, on the other hand, have a right to make unwarrented Leroy threats against people for excercising these rights (it's that same natural right to free speech you will have to also remove form the Constiution (and hope it somehow still protects you when it stops protecting me), if you want to stop me from using it here).
Re:Personally, I blame...
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Good Bad Attitude
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· Score: 2, Insightful
You can't live to see your copyright expire under current law. It's currently set at Life+70 years. Here's one reason I don't think you should have it (and I shouldn't either).
Original copyright law set the bar at a finite time (once 14 years/+14 years more with renewal). The way the constitution was set up, nothing was indexed to a variable time (as in one man's life may be much longer than another's - that's variable). People such as Thomas Jefferson specifically avoided using life or life+ variable times because they didn't think that should be legal, and several of them wrote in their papers and memoirs about why they thought it was unfair. The government now seems to disagree with those founding fathers. Doesn't that make you in the least uncomfortable?
Copyright involves a trade, a quid-pro-quo, as it is originally expressed in the constitution. The public gives up the natural right to make copies for a fixed time. The creator gains protection that will encourage him to create. The public gains the release of the work to themselves and their posterity for all coming generations after the copyright expires.
During the first 30 years of my life, a fixed time law meant that I was supposed to be respecting an artist's created rights and refrain from using my natural ability to make copies, but he was expected to see that, in turn, those works would become available to my kids, and their kids, as part of the general culture they could draw upon.
Maybe they'd even be available to me if I lived long enough, to be a comfort in my declining years when I might be poor and infirm. That was the deal. The deal has been re-written, each time more in the author's favor. It has been rewritten 5 times in my own lifetime.
If you've dome any of your work before 1994, your government unilaterally renegotiated your contract to simply give you some more of what was once my natural right. In your case, starting in the 70's, you've already had your contract with me renegotiated 3 times in your favor. How about you start honoring your end of the deal?
Copyright law has become an ethical morrass, where some people who have had the law bent in their favor five times since they joined the contract (or their heirs) are now calling other people thieves. I urge you not to slip into that mode.
There were rules in effect at the time you wrote your works. You knew what they were, or you had every chance to learn. You presumably thought the law of that time was fair when you put the works into publication. Do you want to stand by the promises you made, or at least let the government make for you then, or let new governments keep breaking it for you, just so long as they do it for your side each time?
And why do you trust the government on this? They gave you my natural right to copy. That ends for me, at the very best, when I die. I may get lucky and be able to make a copy of yiour works right up to the time an anvel mysteriously falls on me, but I guarentee 1 second after I die I will be unable to copy your work.
So where did you get the +70 years of that life+70 clause? The government now takes the position that it made that +70 years up out of nothing. In practice, it's taken from my children's and grandchildren's natural rights, but legally, copyright becomes a created right instead of a transferred one.
Once the government is seen as creating your rights, it can take them away as well. You're dependant on a government handout, just like anyone on welfare, and if the government decides to take that right away, what principle will you claim they are violating? If they shorten your copyright, will they give the natural right back to me and generations to come, or will they keep the parts they trim off for themselves? And if they can keep it for themselves, how long do you think it will be before that shortening begins?
Dawkins himself pointed out some large problems with the concept 'meme'. First among those, he cited how the frequency of errors for verbal or graphic memes was very high per copying, compared to the error rate for DNA based genetics, or even that of DNA's suspected immediate precursor, RNA. He then went on to say perhaps some way around this difficulty could be found. He didn't actually offer one though, and without it, 'meme' theory is a theory that has no solid underpinnings and appears to make one big prediction that goes exactly opposite Darwin's own theory of natural selection, while claiming to be derived from it.
That's why I hate to see people dismiss anything, (particularly a religious or political opinion) with which they disagree by invoking memetics to explain why it has become or remained popular. It becomes just another argumentum ad hominem attack, with the user thinking they are standing on the solid high ground of science instead of recognizing they are stooping to implying the other person is a mindless drone who lacks rational grounds for his opinions.
I admit that several of the related ideas, for example that there could be objective grounds for classifying some clusters of ideas as monolithinc blocks that contain so many self-reinforcing links they are very slow to change, have some interest. For most purposes though, old fashioned words such as ideas, beliefs, opinions and thoughts, seem to describe the real world situation more accurately than memes.
So have you noticed there's this popular product, a cupcake called a Hostess snowball? This best selling line is made in domed shapes, has a white, creamy filling, is covered with pink icing and dusted with coconut (to make the association with milk, maybe?), and they sell them in twin packs in a mostly transparent wrapper.
No, this is gloating: 2 21" monitors, on a WW2 era steel desk that is built like a Crysler from that era and has room for a third monitor if I wanted to bother. Six people have stood on this desk at one time, and it doesn't creak. And this is whining: One monitor is a Trinitron, one is a genuine IBM. Trinitron shifts towards reds, IBM towards blues. No standard settings on the two monitors overlap. I think of it as a way to test graphics I do on the widest likely variety of different monitors.
Thank you all for letting me gloat and whine.
Incidentally, graphics design is one of the best reasons I can think of to actually need dual monitors.
Re:patents and nukes: not extreme comparison
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Rob Pike Responds
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One advantage of this compararison is that it stays analogous if you extend it. The big nuclear powers engaged in the arms race used the system not jsut to discourage others actually building nukes, but to try and keep smaller countries from growing economically enough to be capable of joining the nuclear club - the big corporations engaged in hoarding patents use the system both to keep smaller companies from growing up enough to join the patent club and from ever becoming the current corporation's new competition.
Given how useful this analogy becomes, using it as an excuse to blow off the question is simply cheesy. I lost confidence in both the speaker and the slashdot editor that praised him for candor.
I hit preview on this, and somehow still looked right past the first line. Please make that "two" and "options". Thank goodness I didn't keep cranking out typos at that rate.
1. Onboard computers and controllers get fast and smart enough to fly them safely even with fools and drunkards at the yoke. This takes hardware we probably already can build are are pretty close to building, plus years to centuries of rewriting software for efficiency, robustness, and scope.
2. People get improved enough to all make good pilots. That's not necessariliy as hard as it sounds. We could be talking about genetic engineering and such, but there are lots of changes short of becoming super cyborgs that could make widespread adoption of flying cars reasonably safe.
For example, currently there are debates about whether commercial and military pilots should be able to count having laser keretotomy corrected vision scores apply to their qualifications. If RK's turn out to be safe and stable enough, we can allow a lot of people to get higher level pilot's liscences that are currently barred to them.
Sky cars would probably work with liscencing limited to about the top 70% of potential citizen operators. Right now, it's things such as allowing people to take a vehicle out at highway speeds after a test that tops out at 25 miles an hour, or letting a convicted drunk ever get behind the wheel again, that have made land based driving such a risky experience. Get the worst 10% of drivers off the road, and your accident rate drops by about half, get the next worst 10% off and you see another 30% or so reduction. In general, operator based accidents don't fit the 80%/20% rule only because they probably fit an even stiffer one.
We don't have to turn flying cars from a privledge enjoyed by people willing to test every couple of years, have their craft inspected every year, or log a hundred hours or so in instrument based training before they can solo, to a universal right of every 16 year old, just to have flying cars.
Sounds like an old print article I recall. It took a large number of famous, historic figures, and estimated a numeric I.Q. for them. Like the research you mention, an attempt to chunk the number of steps required to make a gien accomplishment was part of the methodology. Unlike the works you cite, Mozart scored very high, above 210, because of his early accomplishments. Other people were estimated to fall at various places on the curve (i.e. Abe Lincoln 160, Gothe 185, and so on.) Some famous scientists and engineers, such as Watt, Maxwell, and Carnot, all ended up with estimated ratings of 105-110. Why? Because their biggest accomplishments came in late middle age, after they had time to get trained to expert status in multiple areas.
To all this, I'm inclined to reply, if Mozart had had to invent the Harpsicord, Piano, and all the other instruments he wrote for before he could have written any music for them, he would have been a lot later than age 6 getting off the block.
Some intellectual achievements are more constrained by external factors than others, and any theory that talks about chunks required without measuring how many of those chunks are part of a teachable, external, formalized system, and how many must be derived by the introspection and innovation of the thinker, will make absolutely zero useful predictions.
Wondering just what Echelon is looking for? The word lists used by Echelon are highly classified (which of course makes sense if the goal is to keep people such as terrorists from knowing what words to avoid using). However, this also means that public oversight is impossible. Some information does get leaked to us outsiders from time to time, but always as unconfirmable rumors.
Here's a few of those that seem likelyest to have at least a grain of truth.
1. Echelon lists include lots of specific words that are used by people with training, and few general words widely used by the public. Words such as "Explosive" or phrases such as "Blow Up" won't get a hit, but more specific terms, i.e. "PETN", or "Semtex", may be on the list.
2. The list is updated, both by a general review board every few months, and immediately if a particular concern warrents it. (This rummor is apperently the only thing about the system that has been officially confirmed by testimony before congress in an open session).
3. The list is largely focused on detecting Nuclear weapons tech. It looks for correct technical names of bomb components, among other things. Lately, this has been expanded to focus more on bio-weapons.
4. The list includes names of some public officials. Rumor has it that Attourny Generals and FBI and CIA directors have had their names placed on the list to help protect them. Janet Reno was supposedly kept on the list for a year after she left office because of concerns right-wing U.S. domestic terrorists were especially likely to target her. People running the system are reluctant to put public figures on the list, because they get too many false positives to wade through.
5. The system looks for multiple hits and grades them algorythmicly. Several entries in the same phone call, particularly entries that are logically related, will add up to a conversation that crosses a critical threshold and is brought to the attention of a human supervisor.
It's easy to see some ways this could be abused. For example, it could be used to help protect all the presidential candidates in an election year, but just looking for the candidate's last names would generate billions of fales positives. So, in order to 'protect' all the candidates, it would be necessary to monitor for less well known information, like the names of various campaign advisors, private addresses, or other such info, which would give the people running the system a lot of leeway in listening to calls made by the opposition during their run for the office.
"Reified" is a swell word, nothing wrong with it. It's even preferable in some situations, for example calling what happens in Quantum Mechanincs reification is far better than using the phrase "Collapse of the state vector", which comes with all the emotionally negative baggage of that word, collapse. "Postmodern", OTOH, is a shooting offense word. When used with any other uncommon word, in a work with philosophical overtones, it signals a complete lack of common sense on the part of the author, or else that he is a) a French Intellectual, and b) didn't catch that "Transgressing the Boundaries" was a hoax. (In this case, lack of common sense is already assured even if they avoid using the word postmodern).
If you're going to rule on people's logic, try being logical yourself. There are really only three options. Do as you would be done by, do as you were done by, or be a real bastard. If it's illogical to hope that the people with the most power to change things experience the results of their misguided policies and learn what problems they are imposing on everyone else, then you are ruling out options 1 and 2, so we're left with a downhill race to see who's the baddest sumbeech in the valley.
I second the motion to have the next war in the Bahamas. Move to add a "Squirtguns only weapons clause", and a "beaches are neutral territory for manditory daily R&R" clause. All in favor? If we get it going now, maybe we can bring the boys home by 2037.
I wouldn't guarentee It's made me all that well informed about New Zealand's politics, but when it became obvious to me that the U.S. media were getting absorbed by a few massively corporate owners, I started bookmarking overseas internet news sources for comparison. They can be real eye openers. Even Americans who don't speak any languages save English can use these:
"You just suspect everyone whose traffic stats look abnormal."
Open Office = (roughly) 50 Mb. Red Hat, Gentoo, BSD, etc. = 2 or 3 CDs worth each. 20 perfectly legal to download DivX format shorts from Atom Films = 200 Mb.
So the RIAA looks at #1, and assumes I've just pirated the new Metallica CD. The MPAA looks at #2 and assumes I just pirated Shrek 2 or Teminator 3. And I'm sure the Software anti-piracy association can find something that is the right size to fit #3.
So if I stay away from big files...
Alice sends me a.jpg of baby Bob - Ooops! it's the same size as Harry_Potter_and_the_Muggle_Porn_Ring.txt
Every single person paying for broadband access looks 'abnormal'. All of us. A nation of high speed criminals.
is give context for the existing text rather than simplify it.
For example, the 'robolawyer' could identify whole sentences and paragraphs that are widely used, like the typical paragraph giving the user limited rights to make an archival copy, and could tell a user when these paragraphs fit a particular model (i.e. the fairly common warning against reverse engineering). Perhaps it could detect the usual Microsoft, Sun or IBM type EULA clauses that many smaller software companies seem to have copied almost or entirely verbatum.
This would free up the user to concentrate on understanding the unusual clauses.
There are clauses that are almost invariably the same in use. Most EULAs have one that says in effect, "if part of this contract is unenforcable, that doesn't mean the rest of it is thrown out too.". Even in law, where apparently nothing goes without saying, that's such a standard legal principle in the U.S. that it would apply anyway, to anything contractual. Something that could find clauses like that one and display them in subdued font, while boldfacing the ones that look possibly to actually affect the cuatomer's rights, would be welcome.
There's also a particular clause I'd love to see it tackle. Ever read a EULA and run across a phrase such as "Some states do not allow these exemptions...". I'd love for some software to tell customers that their state specifically does or doesn't allow X. Even if it only indicated that the state had a ruling on X, and it was up to the user to find out what it was, it would helpful to know it existed.
Except it is precisely life that isn't that way. This new strategy is like allowing unselfish genes in an evolutionary model. In a living model, a strategy like this allows "winning" for a few given example of the 'species', but only by driving the whole 'species' towards extinction. Extinction is certainly an odd definition of winning.
Here's some real alternatives: 1. The general consensus among doctors and medically oriented biochemists is that Crack is dangerous to the user's health and intensely addictive, just like regular cocaine. Let's bring penalties for the two in line with each other. 2. We've sold the "war on drugs' to cops and the public by treating drug arrests as our second chance to get crooks we failed to get when they were comitting their other crimes, like burglary. Let's admit that if we can't catch a person committing a crime most people are opposed to, with an obvious victim who will cooperate with law enforcement, we have very little chance of catching a person committing a crime that more than half the community looks the other way, there is no victim present who will report it or cooperate with the police, and it can even be done in what is normally the privacy of the criminal's home. (Little chance unless we ignore the bill of rights).
We've lied to our cops in claiming that drug arrests are a fair chance for them to "get that guy you missed off the streets, this time". They can't enforce the law in general fairly with us treating drug arrests like they are a second chance to catch crooks we really wanted to catch for something else, but missed. 3. Organized crime likes our drug laws. As long as laws vary from state to state, and between state and federal govt., well organized drug sellers can make sure their high up people are at little risk of being ratted out by their front line flunkys, And they can stifle their less organized competition with the help of the law instead of having to get into running gun battles. We can't get around that without requiring all 50 states to adopt the exact same laws, with very close to the same degree of enforcement. All US and state judges involved would have to be brought into near lockstep on sentencing and evedentiary requirements.
Local law enforcement would have to somehow be induced to cooperate with the FBI and DEA even if the FBI and DEA didn't seem to give them proper credit for it, or the FBI and DEA would somehow have to be induced to help local DA's and sherrifs get reelected by giving them strong pats on the back for their assistance. Politicians running for such offices would have to be told that using an incumbant's state conviction rate, without looking at their record of federal assists on drug related charges, was hurting the war effort, and would draw federal pressures.
This in turn would require rewriting the constitution a great deal to do legally (and the last part would require rewriting human nature). We've already pushed federal manditory sentencing guidelines and such much farther than we've been willing to do for any other classes of crimes to try and get around this problem.
So one alternative is to mean that phrase "War on Drugs". As one prison guard put it to me: "If this ever becomes a real war on drugs, I can take out those idiots wearing the red bandannas at 1,000 yards!". We put troops into all major drug abuse zones for house to house fighting, we nationalize all drug arrests and use military courts to process them under martial law, we inform all states having significant drug traffic with us that we will invade them if they don't bring their drug laws into line with ours and stop harboring the enemy, and since the weapon the enemy is using is biochemical, invoke our right to use biological and chemical weapons in return, for example by spraying agent orange all over Afghanistan and Columbia.
Don't like that approach? Neither do I. My way around it is to start by adjusting the existing laws, and to educate people. Not just educating the drug users, although that really does work. We need to educate the general public about what their rights are, why those rights are threatened by the way we are conducting these wars on everything, and why there are alternatives to giving up those rights just to stop drug abuse.
For those who don't think education works. The average conses
That's exactly the sort of thing everyone should ask themselves about any form of personal information tech:
If the worst government on Earth is voted into power here, how would they abuse this technology?
If somebody with a strong personal grudge against me works for the company that handles this data, what will he do with it?
The answers to those questions may not make the technology totally unjustifiable, but they are the answers that should be weighed against whatever benefits it claims to offer.
I've heard some pretty heated discussions on the whole Mark of the Beast thing, but one opinion that sticks out is that by some commentaries the mark is supposed to involve a consious acceptance of the beast as the person's lord, and a consious rejection of God/Jesus. That is, someone is going to say something along the lines of "To get this mark, you first have to swear that you will worship the Grand High Emperor Exalto-natas instead of this Christ guy". Only when that condition is met is the 666 bit supposed to make sense, as a confirmation of what you ought to have figured out anyway even without it.
If this interpretation is true, that means that the only way something like Social Security numbers or UPCs, or even this, could be the actual mark is if the person swears some sort of oath, i.e. in the form of "The state that issues this is my new god", before they are allowed to use them. (That still doesn't make anything like this a good idea, mind you).
This illustrates one of the most important things for fixing the election process.
I'm an appointed poll officer again this November. As site supervisor, I get information on the primary voting records of the other workers at the site. This is regrettable, in that it intrudes on their privacy to tell me this information, but it's done so, in cases where voter assistance is needed, I can make sure two workers from opposite partys are assisting the disabled voter.
Right now, whenever, a volunteer can't make it for an election, Everyone involved has to scramble to find a replacement that doesn't imbalance the party affiliations. That means we have husband and wife teams, parent and child teams, or even the occasional case where several people are employed at the same location, working at the same polling places, because the risks of having a clique of some sorts from these sources is less than the problems of having all D's or R's. Some precincts tend to be heavily D or R, and volunteers tend to want to serve in their own precinct, if only so they can vote too. (Imagine having to choose to skip voting yourself becauser there's such a heavy turn out at the location where you are working you can't afford to get away for 30 minutes or so).
If you want fairer elections, there need to be enough people available so that all the cliques can be broken up. There need to be additional people volunteering to be poll watchers for the partys, and others checking various precinct's posted results for the local newspapers and radio stations (and more papers need to think like it's worth paying a reporter to check the numbers).
Sure, this points up other things that need fixed, like places where the local precinct results aren't posted for the local press, or places where the local radio stations are part of big national chains that have a decided disinterest in sending people out to check the local numbers, but those other problems are waiting on there being enough people involved as a start.
When the recording industry glorifies and promotes criminal activity,
That's one thing that started this mess. The music industry saw a spike in shoplifting with certain CDs that promoted shoplifting. However, going in front of higher management and saying "I picked an artist that told listeneres to steal his new CD, and they did, and we're getting lots of complaints from retailers and our profit margin on this item sucks.", won't let you keep you your job.
Saying, "It's a new kind of problem, it involves the internet. Nobody could have anticipated that.", will let you keep your job, at least until boards of directors and CEO's wise up to the fact that you are using internet piracy to cover up a host of other mistakes.
The Ancient Maya supposedly had a legal system where the penalties for various things increased as the person's social status increased. Drunk and disorderly in public? Farmers got a small fine. Merchants got locked away for a few days. Beurocrats got paddled publicly and fired. Priests were lashed and exiled, and Generals beheaded. This system hasn't been used too much. The opposite, in one form or another, is almost universal.
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A "right" is a declared and well defined action that you may take under specific circumstances as defined by the parent society.
Concrete example: You have a right to call a lawyer if you are arrested, because this is defined. You do not have a right to repair a television if you are arrested - even though such action is not specifically denied to you. Get it now?
I think so - you're saying that free men do and should have precisely the same rights as criminals. OK, I got it.
It is criminals, and specifically prisoners that have no rights except those explicitly defined. Free men have every right not specifically denied, and it is up to the state to prove they don't have a particular right, not up to them to prove they do. In the US, that's the 9th amendment. I think I'll go repair a TV now.
So when you get the constitution rewritten until all the "wrongheaded" and "stupid" parts are removed, you will have the laws you are claiming to already have, but simply dont.
.MP3, even if its only for such trivial reason as my MP3 player fits better in my pocket when I go running than a CD player would. Oh, you thought I was advocating a right to compel you to work for free? That's not what this is about, but with Halloween coming up, you can make a nice scarecrow out of that strawman.
You made a deal, whether you want to admit it or not. The constitution says you were given something, and got something in return. You did your work under the terms it then spelled out. You got paid what it said you were to be paid. Then the government renegotiated the deal 3 times in your favor, and you're still whining it's not enough. Oh, you didn't sign a contract? It's called the social contract. There are a thousand cases under that law you seem to think only applies to other people, where you don't get to sign a contract before you are forced to abide by it, and this is one of them. Now the social contract has been repeatedly rewritten in your supposed favor. You seem to uncritically believe that claim: "Hi, I'm from the government, and I'm here to help you.". WHEN it gets rewritten the other way, will you still claim that is society's right to do it any way it chooses, or will you turn then to the concepts you now reject.
If someone feels that their creations - whatever they might be - are being taken from them without whatever they consider to be adequate recompense, they may well stop creating things.
You thought you got a fair deal when you did it. You're definition of 'adequate' changed after the fact. Looks like before you stop creating, you'd better create a time machine and go tell your earlier self to hold up until the better deal comes along.
I do assert I have rights to your works. I have a right to read any copy that is made available to me. I have a right to quote from it, even if the parts I choose to quote embarrass you later, or I write a book that shows how internally contradictory your arguements are.
Depending on what form your works take, I may have other rights, such as converting a digital format to another one for my personal use. If your work exists in fixed printed form, I have a right to resell my copy, or to lend it to others, whether by personal means or by stocking a public library with it. I have a right to convert your CD track to an
If you don't like me enough to accept I have those rights, please do stop creating. In fact, as your honest customers learn that they are considered thieves for wanting their children and grandchildren to get what was promised to them, I'm pretty sure you will stop creating, whether you have realized that you need customers as much as they need you, or not, by then.
You, on the other hand, have a right to make unwarrented Leroy threats against people for excercising these rights (it's that same natural right to free speech you will have to also remove form the Constiution (and hope it somehow still protects you when it stops protecting me), if you want to stop me from using it here).
You can't live to see your copyright expire under current law. It's currently set at Life+70 years. Here's one reason I don't think you should have it (and I shouldn't either).
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Original copyright law set the bar at a finite time (once 14 years/+14 years more with renewal). The way the constitution was set up, nothing was indexed to a variable time (as in one man's life may be much longer than another's - that's variable). People such as Thomas Jefferson specifically avoided using life or life+ variable times because they didn't think that should be legal, and several of them wrote in their papers and memoirs about why they thought it was unfair. The government now seems to disagree with those founding fathers. Doesn't that make you in the least uncomfortable?
Copyright involves a trade, a quid-pro-quo, as it is originally expressed in the constitution. The public gives up the natural right to make copies for a fixed time. The creator gains protection that will encourage him to create. The public gains the release of the work to themselves and their posterity for all coming generations after the copyright expires.
During the first 30 years of my life, a fixed time law meant that I was supposed to be respecting an artist's created rights and refrain from using my natural ability to make copies, but he was expected to see that, in turn, those works would become available to my kids, and their kids, as part of the general culture they could draw upon
Maybe they'd even be available to me if I lived long enough, to be a comfort in my declining years when I might be poor and infirm. That was the deal. The deal has been re-written, each time more in the author's favor. It has been rewritten 5 times in my own lifetime.
If you've dome any of your work before 1994, your government unilaterally renegotiated your contract to simply give you some more of what was once my natural right. In your case, starting in the 70's, you've already had your contract with me renegotiated 3 times in your favor. How about you start honoring your end of the deal?
Copyright law has become an ethical morrass, where some people who have had the law bent in their favor five times since they joined the contract (or their heirs) are now calling other people thieves. I urge you not to slip into that mode.
There were rules in effect at the time you wrote your works. You knew what they were, or you had every chance to learn. You presumably thought the law of that time was fair when you put the works into publication. Do you want to stand by the promises you made, or at least let the government make for you then, or let new governments keep breaking it for you, just so long as they do it for your side each time?
And why do you trust the government on this? They gave you my natural right to copy. That ends for me, at the very best, when I die. I may get lucky and be able to make a copy of yiour works right up to the time an anvel mysteriously falls on me, but I guarentee 1 second after I die I will be unable to copy your work.
So where did you get the +70 years of that life+70 clause? The government now takes the position that it made that +70 years up out of nothing. In practice, it's taken from my children's and grandchildren's natural rights, but legally, copyright becomes a created right instead of a transferred one.
Once the government is seen as creating your rights, it can take them away as well. You're dependant on a government handout, just like anyone on welfare, and if the government decides to take that right away, what principle will you claim they are violating? If they shorten your copyright, will they give the natural right back to me and generations to come, or will they keep the parts they trim off for themselves? And if they can keep it for themselves, how long do you think it will be before that shortening begins?
Dawkins himself pointed out some large problems with the concept 'meme'. First among those, he cited how the frequency of errors for verbal or graphic memes was very high per copying, compared to the error rate for DNA based genetics, or even that of DNA's suspected immediate precursor, RNA. He then went on to say perhaps some way around this difficulty could be found. He didn't actually offer one though, and without it, 'meme' theory is a theory that has no solid underpinnings and appears to make one big prediction that goes exactly opposite Darwin's own theory of natural selection, while claiming to be derived from it.
That's why I hate to see people dismiss anything, (particularly a religious or political opinion) with which they disagree by invoking memetics to explain why it has become or remained popular. It becomes just another argumentum ad hominem attack, with the user thinking they are standing on the solid high ground of science instead of recognizing they are stooping to implying the other person is a mindless drone who lacks rational grounds for his opinions.
I admit that several of the related ideas, for example that there could be objective grounds for classifying some clusters of ideas as monolithinc blocks that contain so many self-reinforcing links they are very slow to change, have some interest. For most purposes though, old fashioned words such as ideas, beliefs, opinions and thoughts, seem to describe the real world situation more accurately than memes.
So have you noticed there's this popular product, a cupcake called a Hostess snowball? This best selling line is made in domed shapes, has a white, creamy filling, is covered with pink icing and dusted with coconut (to make the association with milk, maybe?), and they sell them in twin packs in a mostly transparent wrapper.
No, this is gloating:
2 21" monitors, on a WW2 era steel desk that is built like a Crysler from that era and has room for a third monitor if I wanted to bother. Six people have stood on this desk at one time, and it doesn't creak.
And this is whining:
One monitor is a Trinitron, one is a genuine IBM. Trinitron shifts towards reds, IBM towards blues. No standard settings on the two monitors overlap. I think of it as a way to test graphics I do on the widest likely variety of different monitors.
Thank you all for letting me gloat and whine.
Incidentally, graphics design is one of the best reasons I can think of to actually need dual monitors.
One advantage of this compararison is that it stays analogous if you extend it. The big nuclear powers engaged in the arms race used the system not jsut to discourage others actually building nukes, but to try and keep smaller countries from growing economically enough to be capable of joining the nuclear club - the big corporations engaged in hoarding patents use the system both to keep smaller companies from growing up enough to join the patent club and from ever becoming the current corporation's new competition.
Given how useful this analogy becomes, using it as an excuse to blow off the question is simply cheesy. I lost confidence in both the speaker and the slashdot editor that praised him for candor.
I hit preview on this, and somehow still looked right past the first line. Please make that "two" and "options". Thank goodness I didn't keep cranking out typos at that rate.
sky cars - We've got too quite possible optios.
1. Onboard computers and controllers get fast and smart enough to fly them safely even with fools and drunkards at the yoke. This takes hardware we probably already can build are are pretty close to building, plus years to centuries of rewriting software for efficiency, robustness, and scope.
2. People get improved enough to all make good pilots. That's not necessariliy as hard as it sounds. We could be talking about genetic engineering and such, but there are lots of changes short of becoming super cyborgs that could make widespread adoption of flying cars reasonably safe.
For example, currently there are debates about whether commercial and military pilots should be able to count having laser keretotomy corrected vision scores apply to their qualifications. If RK's turn out to be safe and stable enough, we can allow a lot of people to get higher level pilot's liscences that are currently barred to them.
Sky cars would probably work with liscencing limited to about the top 70% of potential citizen operators. Right now, it's things such as allowing people to take a vehicle out at highway speeds after a test that tops out at 25 miles an hour, or letting a convicted drunk ever get behind the wheel again, that have made land based driving such a risky experience. Get the worst 10% of drivers off the road, and your accident rate drops by about half, get the next worst 10% off and you see another 30% or so reduction. In general, operator based accidents don't fit the 80%/20% rule only because they probably fit an even stiffer one.
We don't have to turn flying cars from a privledge enjoyed by people willing to test every couple of years, have their craft inspected every year, or log a hundred hours or so in instrument based training before they can solo, to a universal right of every 16 year old, just to have flying cars.
Sounds like an old print article I recall. It took a large number of famous, historic figures, and estimated a numeric I.Q. for them. Like the research you mention, an attempt to chunk the number of steps required to make a gien accomplishment was part of the methodology. Unlike the works you cite, Mozart scored very high, above 210, because of his early accomplishments. Other people were estimated to fall at various places on the curve (i.e. Abe Lincoln 160, Gothe 185, and so on.) Some famous scientists and engineers, such as Watt, Maxwell, and Carnot, all ended up with estimated ratings of 105-110. Why? Because their biggest accomplishments came in late middle age, after they had time to get trained to expert status in multiple areas.
To all this, I'm inclined to reply, if Mozart had had to invent the Harpsicord, Piano, and all the other instruments he wrote for before he could have written any music for them, he would have been a lot later than age 6 getting off the block.
Some intellectual achievements are more constrained by external factors than others, and any theory that talks about chunks required without measuring how many of those chunks are part of a teachable, external, formalized system, and how many must be derived by the introspection and innovation of the thinker, will make absolutely zero useful predictions.
Wondering just what Echelon is looking for?
The word lists used by Echelon are highly classified (which of course makes sense if the goal is to keep people such as terrorists from knowing what words to avoid using). However, this also means that public oversight is impossible. Some information does get leaked to us outsiders from time to time, but always as unconfirmable rumors.
Here's a few of those that seem likelyest to have at least a grain of truth.
1. Echelon lists include lots of specific words that are used by people with training, and few general words widely used by the public. Words such as "Explosive" or phrases such as "Blow Up" won't get a hit, but more specific terms, i.e. "PETN", or "Semtex", may be on the list.
2. The list is updated, both by a general review board every few months, and immediately if a particular concern warrents it. (This rummor is apperently the only thing about the system that has been officially confirmed by testimony before congress in an open session).
3. The list is largely focused on detecting Nuclear weapons tech. It looks for correct technical names of bomb components, among other things. Lately, this has been expanded to focus more on bio-weapons.
4. The list includes names of some public officials. Rumor has it that Attourny Generals and FBI and CIA directors have had their names placed on the list to help protect them. Janet Reno was supposedly kept on the list for a year after she left office because of concerns right-wing U.S. domestic terrorists were especially likely to target her. People running the system are reluctant to put public figures on the list, because they get too many false positives to wade through.
5. The system looks for multiple hits and grades them algorythmicly. Several entries in the same phone call, particularly entries that are logically related, will add up to a conversation that crosses a critical threshold and is brought to the attention of a human supervisor.
It's easy to see some ways this could be abused. For example, it could be used to help protect all the presidential candidates in an election year, but just looking for the candidate's last names would generate billions of fales positives. So, in order to 'protect' all the candidates, it would be necessary to monitor for less well known information, like the names of various campaign advisors, private addresses, or other such info, which would give the people running the system a lot of leeway in listening to calls made by the opposition during their run for the office.
"Reified" is a swell word, nothing wrong with it. It's even preferable in some situations, for example calling what happens in Quantum Mechanincs reification is far better than using the phrase "Collapse of the state vector", which comes with all the emotionally negative baggage of that word, collapse.
"Postmodern", OTOH, is a shooting offense word. When used with any other uncommon word, in a work with philosophical overtones, it signals a complete lack of common sense on the part of the author, or else that he is a) a French Intellectual, and b) didn't catch that "Transgressing the Boundaries" was a hoax. (In this case, lack of common sense is already assured even if they avoid using the word postmodern).
If you're going to rule on people's logic, try being logical yourself. There are really only three options. Do as you would be done by, do as you were done by, or be a real bastard. If it's illogical to hope that the people with the most power to change things experience the results of their misguided policies and learn what problems they are imposing on everyone else, then you are ruling out options 1 and 2, so we're left with a downhill race to see who's the baddest sumbeech in the valley.
I second the motion to have the next war in the Bahamas. Move to add a "Squirtguns only weapons clause", and a "beaches are neutral territory for manditory daily R&R" clause. All in favor? If we get it going now, maybe we can bring the boys home by 2037.
I wouldn't guarentee It's made me all that well informed about New Zealand's politics, but when it became obvious to me that the U.S. media were getting absorbed by a few massively corporate owners, I started bookmarking overseas internet news sources for comparison. They can be real eye openers. Even Americans who don't speak any languages save English can use these:
World News Network in Berlin (English feed) -
http://www.worldnews.com/
News from Oz -
http://www.news.com.au/
The Moscow Times (English Feed) -
http://www.themoscowtimes.com/indexes/01.html
And a fine source for Americans who wish they were more informed about New Zealand's politics -
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/
Anyone who knows of particular systemic biases from any of these sites, please post the URLs of their competition.
"You just suspect everyone whose traffic stats look abnormal."
.jpg of baby Bob - Ooops! it's the same size as Harry_Potter_and_the_Muggle_Porn_Ring.txt
Open Office = (roughly) 50 Mb.
Red Hat, Gentoo, BSD, etc. = 2 or 3 CDs worth each.
20 perfectly legal to download DivX format shorts from Atom Films = 200 Mb.
So the RIAA looks at #1, and assumes I've just pirated the new Metallica CD.
The MPAA looks at #2 and assumes I just pirated Shrek 2 or Teminator 3.
And I'm sure the Software anti-piracy association can find something that is the right size to fit #3.
So if I stay away from big files...
Alice sends me a
Every single person paying for broadband access looks 'abnormal'. All of us. A nation of high speed criminals.
is give context for the existing text rather than simplify it.
For example, the 'robolawyer' could identify whole sentences and paragraphs that are widely used, like the typical paragraph giving the user limited rights to make an archival copy, and could tell a user when these paragraphs fit a particular model (i.e. the fairly common warning against reverse engineering). Perhaps it could detect the usual Microsoft, Sun or IBM type EULA clauses that many smaller software companies seem to have copied almost or entirely verbatum.
This would free up the user to concentrate on understanding the unusual clauses.
There are clauses that are almost invariably the same in use. Most EULAs have one that says in effect, "if part of this contract is unenforcable, that doesn't mean the rest of it is thrown out too.". Even in law, where apparently nothing goes without saying, that's such a standard legal principle in the U.S. that it would apply anyway, to anything contractual. Something that could find clauses like that one and display them in subdued font, while boldfacing the ones that look possibly to actually affect the cuatomer's rights, would be welcome.
There's also a particular clause I'd love to see it tackle. Ever read a EULA and run across a phrase such as "Some states do not allow these exemptions...". I'd love for some software to tell customers that their state specifically does or doesn't allow X. Even if it only indicated that the state had a ruling on X, and it was up to the user to find out what it was, it would helpful to know it existed.
Except it is precisely life that isn't that way. This new strategy is like allowing unselfish genes in an evolutionary model. In a living model, a strategy like this allows "winning" for a few given example of the 'species', but only by driving the whole 'species' towards extinction. Extinction is certainly an odd definition of winning.
Here's some real alternatives:
1. The general consensus among doctors and medically oriented biochemists is that Crack is dangerous to the user's health and intensely addictive, just like regular cocaine. Let's bring penalties for the two in line with each other.
2. We've sold the "war on drugs' to cops and the public by treating drug arrests as our second chance to get crooks we failed to get when they were comitting their other crimes, like burglary. Let's admit that if we can't catch a person committing a crime most people are opposed to, with an obvious victim who will cooperate with law enforcement, we have very little chance of catching a person committing a crime that more than half the community looks the other way, there is no victim present who will report it or cooperate with the police, and it can even be done in what is normally the privacy of the criminal's home. (Little chance unless we ignore the bill of rights).
We've lied to our cops in claiming that drug arrests are a fair chance for them to "get that guy you missed off the streets, this time". They can't enforce the law in general fairly with us treating drug arrests like they are a second chance to catch crooks we really wanted to catch for something else, but missed.
3. Organized crime likes our drug laws. As long as laws vary from state to state, and between state and federal govt., well organized drug sellers can make sure their high up people are at little risk of being ratted out by their front line flunkys, And they can stifle their less organized competition with the help of the law instead of having to get into running gun battles. We can't get around that without requiring all 50 states to adopt the exact same laws, with very close to the same degree of enforcement. All US and state judges involved would have to be brought into near lockstep on sentencing and evedentiary requirements.
Local law enforcement would have to somehow be induced to cooperate with the FBI and DEA even if the FBI and DEA didn't seem to give them proper credit for it, or the FBI and DEA would somehow have to be induced to help local DA's and sherrifs get reelected by giving them strong pats on the back for their assistance. Politicians running for such offices would have to be told that using an incumbant's state conviction rate, without looking at their record of federal assists on drug related charges, was hurting the war effort, and would draw federal pressures.
This in turn would require rewriting the constitution a great deal to do legally (and the last part would require rewriting human nature). We've already pushed federal manditory sentencing guidelines and such much farther than we've been willing to do for any other classes of crimes to try and get around this problem.
So one alternative is to mean that phrase "War on Drugs". As one prison guard put it to me: "If this ever becomes a real war on drugs, I can take out those idiots wearing the red bandannas at 1,000 yards!". We put troops into all major drug abuse zones for house to house fighting, we nationalize all drug arrests and use military courts to process them under martial law, we inform all states having significant drug traffic with us that we will invade them if they don't bring their drug laws into line with ours and stop harboring the enemy, and since the weapon the enemy is using is biochemical, invoke our right to use biological and chemical weapons in return, for example by spraying agent orange all over Afghanistan and Columbia.
Don't like that approach? Neither do I. My way around it is to start by adjusting the existing laws, and to educate people. Not just educating the drug users, although that really does work. We need to educate the general public about what their rights are, why those rights are threatened by the way we are conducting these wars on everything, and why there are alternatives to giving up those rights just to stop drug abuse.
For those who don't think education works. The average conses
That's exactly the sort of thing everyone should ask themselves about any form of personal information tech:
If the worst government on Earth is voted into power here, how would they abuse this technology?
If somebody with a strong personal grudge against me works for the company that handles this data, what will he do with it?
The answers to those questions may not make the technology totally unjustifiable, but they are the answers that should be weighed against whatever benefits it claims to offer.
I've heard some pretty heated discussions on the whole Mark of the Beast thing, but one opinion that sticks out is that by some commentaries the mark is supposed to involve a consious acceptance of the beast as the person's lord, and a consious rejection of God/Jesus. That is, someone is going to say something along the lines of "To get this mark, you first have to swear that you will worship the Grand High Emperor Exalto-natas instead of this Christ guy". Only when that condition is met is the 666 bit supposed to make sense, as a confirmation of what you ought to have figured out anyway even without it.
If this interpretation is true, that means that the only way something like Social Security numbers or UPCs, or even this, could be the actual mark is if the person swears some sort of oath, i.e. in the form of "The state that issues this is my new god", before they are allowed to use them. (That still doesn't make anything like this a good idea, mind you).
The trouble with this analogy is, You just called all the open source developers Oompa-Loompas...
This illustrates one of the most important things for fixing the election process.
I'm an appointed poll officer again this November. As site supervisor, I get information on the primary voting records of the other workers at the site. This is regrettable, in that it intrudes on their privacy to tell me this information, but it's done so, in cases where voter assistance is needed, I can make sure two workers from opposite partys are assisting the disabled voter.
Right now, whenever, a volunteer can't make it for an election, Everyone involved has to scramble to find a replacement that doesn't imbalance the party affiliations. That means we have husband and wife teams, parent and child teams, or even the occasional case where several people are employed at the same location, working at the same polling places, because the risks of having a clique of some sorts from these sources is less than the problems of having all D's or R's. Some precincts tend to be heavily D or R, and volunteers tend to want to serve in their own precinct, if only so they can vote too. (Imagine having to choose to skip voting yourself becauser there's such a heavy turn out at the location where you are working you can't afford to get away for 30 minutes or so).
If you want fairer elections, there need to be enough people available so that all the cliques can be broken up. There need to be additional people volunteering to be poll watchers for the partys, and others checking various precinct's posted results for the local newspapers and radio stations (and more papers need to think like it's worth paying a reporter to check the numbers).
Sure, this points up other things that need fixed, like places where the local precinct results aren't posted for the local press, or places where the local radio stations are part of big national chains that have a decided disinterest in sending people out to check the local numbers, but those other problems are waiting on there being enough people involved as a start.
When the recording industry glorifies and promotes criminal activity,
That's one thing that started this mess. The music industry saw a spike in shoplifting with certain CDs that promoted shoplifting. However, going in front of higher management and saying "I picked an artist that told listeneres to steal his new CD, and they did, and we're getting lots of complaints from retailers and our profit margin on this item sucks.", won't let you keep you your job.
Saying, "It's a new kind of problem, it involves the internet. Nobody could have anticipated that.", will let you keep your job, at least until boards of directors and CEO's wise up to the fact that you are using internet piracy to cover up a host of other mistakes.
The Ancient Maya supposedly had a legal system where the penalties for various things increased as the person's social status increased. Drunk and disorderly in public? Farmers got a small fine. Merchants got locked away for a few days. Beurocrats got paddled publicly and fired. Priests were lashed and exiled, and Generals beheaded. This system hasn't been used too much. The opposite, in one form or another, is almost universal.