Sigh. Highly dubious to you. Not to the rest of the world, where academically and in practice the link has shown to be about as solid as anything that can be proven in the world of economics.
I see. In other posts I actually provided some proof that clearly shows how how patents HINDER, notpromote innovation, I also challanged you to provide actual proof that it can also promote inventions.
A statement where I can provide examples of it not being true from the back of my head is indeed a statement that is highly dubious to me, sorry for actually thinking for myself there..
If you want to bring an argument against it, it has to be more then just repeating your claim and then calling on all economists in the world. I'm also extremely sure that there are quite a few economists who disagree with you seeing that there are publications from economists arguing against the patent system and I talked to economists who strongly disbelieve in the patent system.
As with regards to the 'tiger economies', you are right that those produce initially a very few inventions, and indeed start with cheap production. Matter of fact is that IP protection would only hinder them in growing and developing. This has nothign to do with inventing, and everything to do with economic growth and your previous claim that more IP protection resulted in more wealth and economic growth.
More wealth and economic growth in themselves stimulate inventions, there is more money to be made with them, and there is more money to do research. Poor countries lack this research, so on average will produce less inventions.
As you can see the link between economic development and technological inventions can be easily shown without a need for IP protection.
Look, it's nice because you are still have beginner thoughts about all this. And you're right, there are legitimate debates about the length of protection required and so forth. But the basic idea that IPR promotes innovation in economies in general is as obvious to economists (and many others) as evolution is to biologists.
If you want to actually have a usefull discussion, try being consistent in what you argue:
First claim was that STRONGER IP protection meant more wealth and growth, now it is all of a sudden:
there are legitimate debates about the length of protection required and so forth. But the basic idea that IPR promotes innovation in economies in general
So what is it? more is better? a little bit is enough?
At any rate, try to make an actual argument instead of mindlessly repeating what others have told you. Also, just claiming it is such and such without providing some reasoning as to why it is such and such is not helping in getting others to consider your point of view.
Last but not least, screaming also does not make your argument stronger, it makes you look more like an adolecent however.
There is a long list of such examples, the oldest that I know about dates back to the 1600s and regards some required technology for a wind driven sawing machine (sawmill), its most likely not the oldest documented case however.
Another example is the patent battle surrounding the invention of the traditional TV system and camera technology. While there were definitely genuine patents involved here, it goes to show that a small inventor has little power over big companies even when winning a patent dispute after a few decades and how this can completely stall the development of some invention and anything directly related to it.
Here's a simple example: compare the number of new pharmaceuticals developed in countries with strong IP regulations compared to those that don't.
Its absolutely not clear what is cause and what is effect there, just as with your other example:
Now, expand your 'test' into virtually any avenue of economic endeavour that you can think of: aviation, automotive, medical devices, consumer electronics, manufacturing process, chemical production, etc etc and you will see that in essentially every case, the systems with stronger IPR have historically done better in providing a better quality and quantity of items for their citizens. EVERY TIME.
The fact that things coincide does not mean they are linked, not to mention that your 'every time' is highly dubious.
I'd rather say that when a country becomes more wealthy, it starts putting more efford into protecting the things that makes it wealthy. Interlectual property protection is just an example of that.
This view is substantiated when looking at almost any country that made it from 'developing nation' into 'economic tiger'. Almost all tend to get aroundd the concept of IP during their rapid development, and start caring about it when things stabilize and they start having a need to protect what they have.
This did not happen in the USA you say?
The provision in the constitution is a response to the much more draconian patents as were in use in Europe at the time of its conception, and ignoring those, and only providing a minimum of protection has helped the USA a lot to change itself from colony into self sustaining nation into the superpower that we have today.
Bottomline, your statement that history supports that strong IP laws favor wealth and growth is imho not sustainable, rather, strong IP laws are a consequence of the need to protect gathered wealth and deminishing growth.
This is sad because the ideas as written down in the US constitution have some good arguments going for them but their current implementations are bad because instead of promoting usefull inventions and art, it creates a minefield for inventors and artists alike (try writing a song without accidetely using some lines from someone else)
What the consumer gets is new and better inventions - walkmen in this case. Point to ANY technological field - be it automobiles, machine parts, washers/dryers, consumer electronics - whatever! and try telling me honestly that the consumer hasn't been the ultimate winner thanks to a patent system that has, for all its faults, encouraged innovation well. It would take an incredible amount of self-deception to convince oneself that we'd have EVEN better cars and EVEN better everything else were it not for the patent system giving companies and individuals incentive over the years to invest as heavily in R&D as they did.
That is a statement of opinion. There is no proof whatsoever that the patent system helped that in general (or hindered it for that matter). What is there is annecdotal evidence of cases where it worked and cases where it failed.
In order to show that the patent system works, one has to show that the fact that an invention is patented furthers the development and encourages new inventions besides having encouraged the patented invention itself.
If you want to argue that it works, please provide some undisputable proof of that. Alternatively, realize that your statement is an opinion, and actually has a serious likelyhood of not being true.
If you look at the sequence of revolutions by 'the people' in eastern Europe and he former Soviet Union, there is a lot of reason to dismiss the idea that a population needs to be armed to deal with their tyranic government and its army.
There are older examples to be found. While seizure of weapons played a role in the French revolution, it did not start with an armed population either.
Of course there are examples where an unarmed population did not manage, but then, there are plenty examples where an armed population did not manage either so that really proves nothing.
There are historic reasons for the right to bear arms in the USA, and I am not arguing that it should change, but believing it is needed for protecting yourself from a tyrant government and its army is, and always has been a falacy. Believing it will result in less crime as about as big a falacy (there are well documented reasons why it can result in both an increase and a decrease of crime, but there is little doubt that an armed population results in the average crime being more violent because a criminal expecting his victim to have a gun is a lot more likely to resort to using one himself inmediately (and not just to threaten)
Would you feel differently if it was the university was suing instead?
Not at all. I would feel differently if I would see some way in which this advances science and/or usefull inventions. For all I can tell, this kind of patent and the lawsuits that are based on it do the opposite, they hinder invention by causing companies and individuals to waste time and money on needless duplication of obvious things.
Thanks for the clarifications, you are for what I know correct.
Actually, come to think of it, maybe they were a democracy very similar to the modern ideal..
I just hope this doesn't imply that we are going to end up with Emperor Bush (or whomever succeeds him and manages to get rid of those pesky limits on the time one can stay president)....
But yeah, the similarities are definitely there, and (as becomes even more clear from your clarifications I think) they have little to do with how the state was organized, and a lot with the underlying processes. That imho is what made them democratic,
It is also what imho makes countries like Belgium, The UK, The Netherlands, Belgium Thailand, Japan and quite a few others democracies (tho I bet some will make an argument to the contrary about the later 2) despite (or actually regardless of) the fact that those are monarchies, and it makes the USA a democracy regardless of it being a republic.
UK, Spain, Belgium, Holland, Danmark and Sweden, to name a few, are probably not working well then.
You can argue about those individually, but generally spoken those work pretty well.
They however are constitutional monarchies with various forms of indirect democracy (people elect representatives in parliament in all those cases). What Italy had before turning into a facist dictatorship was a constitutional monarchy with a form of direct democracy, ie, people got to vote directly on at least certain decisions.
While direct democracy can work, it is very difficult to make it work on a large scale, whereas representative or indirect democracy tends to be a lot easier to get to work on a large scale. Arguments regarding if direct democracy is a good idea to begin with are about as old as politics itself and tend to be partially religious (as in based on what people believe in and not so much on hard facts). No doubt it results in a better representation of the 'will of the people', but when looking at many of its implementations throughout history, it is easy to see how a single person or very small group can direct that will to work for them. Examples go back at least as far as the voting on the building of the Acropolis in Athens.
Punish acts, not thoughts. Motives really DON'T matter.
I guess I don't want to live in your 'civilized society' then.
What you argue is that stealing bread because of not being able to feed yourself should be treated identical to stealing it because you don't want to pay for it. While I agree that both are wrong and deserve punishment, but I also think there is a few thousand years of history showing it is a bad idea to disregard the motivation in such things when you want what most would consider a civilized society.
No, thoughts themselves should not be punishable, but what motivates an action should play an important role in deciding how to deal with that action, because it makes the response more fair, and more effective.
You try and spin that as a positive.. imo it's actually a negative. Without the actual content of the conversation, that means that law enforcement is going to investigate using circumstantial evidence, aka guessing.
What I said is: While this is bad and stupid, it is not by far as bad as the blurb is trying to make it look.
Indeed I am arguing it is not as bad as storing all the conversations (or all data transfered). Where I live, just as in most of the EU, circumstantial evidence has no place in court. It has a place in providing law enforcement with clues as to where to look. They will still have to provide actual (non circumstantial) evidence, but don't get to keep a tap on everyone. That is indeed less bad, but as I already mentioned, the whole idea is still stupid and imho pointless because as I mentioned in my previous post:
Supposedly this is usefull to get an insight into the conenctions between individuals who might be involved in terrorist or criminal activities.
Of course, about all investigations resulting from attacks in the last half decade point at a lack of cooperation and not of information (usually the information was actually there), but who cares.
Well, my friend got a 400GB hard-drive for about 200 bucks. How much data will there be store? A terabyte a day? That isn't really that much.
Heh.. it only takes about 100 people like me to fill that up (averaging about 10GB/day data transfer at the moment).
To get any sense of proportion here you should go talk to an ISP that runs a somewhat complete usenet server. Just to keep track of all that passes through usenet and store it for a few weeks takes an insane amount of hardware and some serious bandwidth, more then many smaller ISPs can afford (hence they often keep articles for a few hours or with luck a few days, if they run a somewhat complete usenet server to begin with)
While having a sense of proportion can be bad for the mind when it comes to the entire universe, it definitely helps in understanding this kind of situation.
Of course the EU doesn't try to actually save all the data people transfer, they do however want a 'contact log', ie, who talked to whom and when, but not about what. This is still an insane idea, but it is somewhat doable.
It is illegal to kill people. Killing people in brutal ways gives you a harder sentence.
Race and the perpetrators' opinions on races are completely irrelevant. The crime is murder, not disagreeing with the majority. Oh, sorry, they SHOULD be completely irrelevant in any civilised society.
You are of course right, but you also forget to mention something pretty important.
A 'civilised society' should definitely care about the motivations behind a crime and adjust punnishment based on that.
This is reflected in most legal systems by the fact that for any given crime there is a possible range of pubbishment, and it is upto judges usually to decide what is fitting given the circumstances of the crime.
Racism is a possible motivation for murder, and according to gp this is a motivation that should result in a heavier punnishment. I tend to agree with this.
One thing to add to what you said.. engage the people in such communities who want to do something about it instead of oppressing them as dissonant voices wanting to change the status quo.
i cannot recall a situation in history, where a population had so much freedom -- that minorities and their rights had been infringed. if you know of one, please, feel free to fill us in. (you could have a valid point, with a few examples -- i am not, however, holding my breath).
Hmm.. Italy in the 1920s comes to mind...
They ended up with the freedom to 'demand' a 'strong leader', and at first glance they got one (tho he turned out to be quite a bit of a clown)
There are limits on freedom and those are needed to get as many as possible a fair share of it. Privacy doesn't come into the picture here. Protection of the freedom and rights of others does.
Last time I tried I got a nice about 30 minutes long lecture from a state trooper (with a Texan accent.. it really took efford to not laugh my ass off there)
If I call my friend up to chat about the old college days I absolutely have a right to privacy. What I talk to an old friend is ABSOLUTELY none of the governments business.
You are absolutely right there.
With regards to this new EU rule, the slashdot blurb of course doesn't mention this, but what they are going to store is the fact that you chatted to your friend between this and this time, but not the content of this conversation. While this is bad and stupid, it is not by far as bad as the blurb is trying to make it look.
Supposedly this is usefull to get an insight into the conenctions between individuals who might be involved in terrorist or criminal activities.
Of course, about all investigations resulting from attacks in the last half decade point at a lack of cooperation and not of information (usually the information was actually there), but who cares.
There are many western democracies that do not use a first-past-the-post voting system, and I even dare say that for Europe, most have a small barrier to entry (you must at least get x% of the votes to get in) but definitely not a frst-past-the-post system.
Why don't more people actually research candidates before voting instead of bitching after an election?
Lots of people like to point fingers
THat is how far I got reading before getting a laughing fit.
At any rate, looks like you are just another one to point fingers, and no, your party is not going to be the savior of the USA either. The political system needs a change to make it more dynamic so that new ideas and new movements actually get a chance, without destabikizing it completely. What is there now is basicly a 2 party dictatorship (when a substantial minority of the people can vote for a party and end up not having any representation, something is seriously broken)
Republic and Democracy are strikingly similar, not opposites.
They not strikingly similar, but you are right that they are not eachothers opposites.
They were eachothers opposites one day in the far past, when Athens was fighting Sparta.
The Roman republic already 'married' the 2 and ended up with something that is a republic in the sense of having an 'appointed' leadership, but it also had a form of representive democracy through the senate.
Ever since, a republic is a form of state, and primarily an alternative for a monarchy. Democracy is not a form of state and it can exist in both republic and monarchy (and other alternative forms of state), and a few countries even managed the combination of monarchy and forms of direct democracy (tho that usually doesn't work well, see Italy untill Mussolini came to power)
In short, originally both were a form of state, but for the last 2000+ years, a republic has been a form of state while democracy has been a process that can be used to decide on specific things. Obviously those 2 are not mutually exclusive, and actually make a good combination. To say they are very similar is however not true.
"THUMP-THUMP" A sound everyone in my family dreaded. He hated every other person on the planet and would growl like a demon at them. He had all his shots. I was the only one who could hold him for any reason and would restrain him at the vet. They were all deathly afraid of him but I never let him scratch or bite anyone.
Heh, this sounds all too familiar:) Mine did get to attack a few people over time tho.. In one case it felt that I was threatened by someoen and didn't think twice, other cases usually involved people being on our property without me or my mother (whom could deal equally well with the cat) being around. Yes, we did have a 'mind the cat' sign, but who'd take that serious (the first time they see it that is)
besides, when is a burglar going to think twice about a "warning: cat on premises" sign?
Heh, I owned a cat that did have little trouble changing a burglars mind about that (think Garfield and postman like scenes). It also made a point of chasing dogs, no matter their size, which resulted in some quite funny situations (imagine a really large dog fleeing with some loud howling, being chased by a small black furry, and the owner of that dog rolling on the floor laughing)
Despite being half wild, it was a fun animal to have around.
Doubtless it includes the implementations of new research that they've done since the original SPARC code was released, research that was probably patented, so I don't think you can say with any certainty that there aren't encumbrances.
You have a good point but I think that the parent was pointing at the fact that even when the original SPARC was still 'encimbered', it was not so bad that it was beyond the reach of someoen wanting to toy with it as a hobby. Pasr results don't guarantee anything for the future, but at least it is reasonable to expect we won't see huge submarine patent issues here either.
Not to mention - there's still a need for machines with 8 or 12 procs, and not to many companies selling them. Certainly none with the reputation for reliability sun has.
Slashdot Mirror
Sigh. Highly dubious to you. Not to the rest of the world, where academically and in practice the link has shown to be about as solid as anything that can be proven in the world of economics.
I see. In other posts I actually provided some proof that clearly shows how how patents HINDER, notpromote innovation, I also challanged you to provide actual proof that it can also promote inventions.
A statement where I can provide examples of it not being true from the back of my head is indeed a statement that is highly dubious to me, sorry for actually thinking for myself there..
If you want to bring an argument against it, it has to be more then just repeating your claim and then calling on all economists in the world. I'm also extremely sure that there are quite a few economists who disagree with you seeing that there are publications from economists arguing against the patent system and I talked to economists who strongly disbelieve in the patent system.
As with regards to the 'tiger economies', you are right that those produce initially a very few inventions, and indeed start with cheap production. Matter of fact is that IP protection would only hinder them in growing and developing. This has nothign to do with inventing, and everything to do with economic growth and your previous claim that more IP protection resulted in more wealth and economic growth.
More wealth and economic growth in themselves stimulate inventions, there is more money to be made with them, and there is more money to do research. Poor countries lack this research, so on average will produce less inventions.
As you can see the link between economic development and technological inventions can be easily shown without a need for IP protection.
Look, it's nice because you are still have beginner thoughts about all this. And you're right, there are legitimate debates about the length of protection required and so forth. But the basic idea that IPR promotes innovation in economies in general is as obvious to economists (and many others) as evolution is to biologists.
If you want to actually have a usefull discussion, try being consistent in what you argue:
First claim was that STRONGER IP protection meant more wealth and growth, now it is all of a sudden:
there are legitimate debates about the length of protection required and so forth. But the basic idea that IPR promotes innovation in economies in general
So what is it? more is better? a little bit is enough?
At any rate, try to make an actual argument instead of mindlessly repeating what others have told you. Also, just claiming it is such and such without providing some reasoning as to why it is such and such is not helping in getting others to consider your point of view.
Last but not least, screaming also does not make your argument stronger, it makes you look more like an adolecent however.
There is a long list of such examples, the oldest that I know about dates back to the 1600s and regards some required technology for a wind driven sawing machine (sawmill), its most likely not the oldest documented case however.
Another example is the patent battle surrounding the invention of the traditional TV system and camera technology. While there were definitely genuine patents involved here, it goes to show that a small inventor has little power over big companies even when winning a patent dispute after a few decades and how this can completely stall the development of some invention and anything directly related to it.
Here's a simple example: compare the number of new pharmaceuticals developed in countries with strong IP regulations compared to those that don't.
Its absolutely not clear what is cause and what is effect there, just as with your other example:
Now, expand your 'test' into virtually any avenue of economic endeavour that you can think of: aviation, automotive, medical devices, consumer electronics, manufacturing process, chemical production, etc etc and you will see that in essentially every case, the systems with stronger IPR have historically done better in providing a better quality and quantity of items for their citizens. EVERY TIME.
The fact that things coincide does not mean they are linked, not to mention that your 'every time' is highly dubious.
I'd rather say that when a country becomes more wealthy, it starts putting more efford into protecting the things that makes it wealthy. Interlectual property protection is just an example of that.
This view is substantiated when looking at almost any country that made it from 'developing nation' into 'economic tiger'. Almost all tend to get aroundd the concept of IP during their rapid development, and start caring about it when things stabilize and they start having a need to protect what they have.
This did not happen in the USA you say?
The provision in the constitution is a response to the much more draconian patents as were in use in Europe at the time of its conception, and ignoring those, and only providing a minimum of protection has helped the USA a lot to change itself from colony into self sustaining nation into the superpower that we have today.
Bottomline, your statement that history supports that strong IP laws favor wealth and growth is imho not sustainable, rather, strong IP laws are a consequence of the need to protect gathered wealth and deminishing growth.
This is sad because the ideas as written down in the US constitution have some good arguments going for them but their current implementations are bad because instead of promoting usefull inventions and art, it creates a minefield for inventors and artists alike (try writing a song without accidetely using some lines from someone else)
What the consumer gets is new and better inventions - walkmen in this case. Point to ANY technological field - be it automobiles, machine parts, washers/dryers, consumer electronics - whatever! and try telling me honestly that the consumer hasn't been the ultimate winner thanks to a patent system that has, for all its faults, encouraged innovation well. It would take an incredible amount of self-deception to convince oneself that we'd have EVEN better cars and EVEN better everything else were it not for the patent system giving companies and individuals incentive over the years to invest as heavily in R&D as they did.
That is a statement of opinion. There is no proof whatsoever that the patent system helped that in general (or hindered it for that matter). What is there is annecdotal evidence of cases where it worked and cases where it failed.
In order to show that the patent system works, one has to show that the fact that an invention is patented furthers the development and encourages new inventions besides having encouraged the patented invention itself.
If you want to argue that it works, please provide some undisputable proof of that. Alternatively, realize that your statement is an opinion, and actually has a serious likelyhood of not being true.
That gave me a good laugh, thanks.
If you look at the sequence of revolutions by 'the people' in eastern Europe and he former Soviet Union, there is a lot of reason to dismiss the idea that a population needs to be armed to deal with their tyranic government and its army.
There are older examples to be found. While seizure of weapons played a role in the French revolution, it did not start with an armed population either.
Of course there are examples where an unarmed population did not manage, but then, there are plenty examples where an armed population did not manage either so that really proves nothing.
There are historic reasons for the right to bear arms in the USA, and I am not arguing that it should change, but believing it is needed for protecting yourself from a tyrant government and its army is, and always has been a falacy. Believing it will result in less crime as about as big a falacy (there are well documented reasons why it can result in both an increase and a decrease of crime, but there is little doubt that an armed population results in the average crime being more violent because a criminal expecting his victim to have a gun is a lot more likely to resort to using one himself inmediately (and not just to threaten)
Would you feel differently if it was the university was suing instead?
Not at all. I would feel differently if I would see some way in which this advances science and/or usefull inventions. For all I can tell, this kind of patent and the lawsuits that are based on it do the opposite, they hinder invention by causing companies and individuals to waste time and money on needless duplication of obvious things.
Heh, funny read.
While not by far as funny as what the Onion had to say, this was my take on it at the time
Thanks for the clarifications, you are for what I know correct.
Actually, come to think of it, maybe they were a democracy very similar to the modern ideal..
I just hope this doesn't imply that we are going to end up with Emperor Bush (or whomever succeeds him and manages to get rid of those pesky limits on the time one can stay president)....
But yeah, the similarities are definitely there, and (as becomes even more clear from your clarifications I think) they have little to do with how the state was organized, and a lot with the underlying processes. That imho is what made them democratic,
It is also what imho makes countries like Belgium, The UK, The Netherlands, Belgium Thailand, Japan and quite a few others democracies (tho I bet some will make an argument to the contrary about the later 2) despite (or actually regardless of) the fact that those are monarchies, and it makes the USA a democracy regardless of it being a republic.
UK, Spain, Belgium, Holland, Danmark and Sweden, to name a few, are probably not working well then.
You can argue about those individually, but generally spoken those work pretty well.
They however are constitutional monarchies with various forms of indirect democracy (people elect representatives in parliament in all those cases). What Italy had before turning into a facist dictatorship was a constitutional monarchy with a form of direct democracy, ie, people got to vote directly on at least certain decisions.
While direct democracy can work, it is very difficult to make it work on a large scale, whereas representative or indirect democracy tends to be a lot easier to get to work on a large scale. Arguments regarding if direct democracy is a good idea to begin with are about as old as politics itself and tend to be partially religious (as in based on what people believe in and not so much on hard facts). No doubt it results in a better representation of the 'will of the people', but when looking at many of its implementations throughout history, it is easy to see how a single person or very small group can direct that will to work for them. Examples go back at least as far as the voting on the building of the Acropolis in Athens.
Punish acts, not thoughts. Motives really DON'T matter.
I guess I don't want to live in your 'civilized society' then.
What you argue is that stealing bread because of not being able to feed yourself should be treated identical to stealing it because you don't want to pay for it. While I agree that both are wrong and deserve punishment, but I also think there is a few thousand years of history showing it is a bad idea to disregard the motivation in such things when you want what most would consider a civilized society.
No, thoughts themselves should not be punishable, but what motivates an action should play an important role in deciding how to deal with that action, because it makes the response more fair, and more effective.
You try and spin that as a positive.. imo it's actually a negative. Without the actual content of the conversation, that means that law enforcement is going to investigate using circumstantial evidence, aka guessing.
What I said is:
While this is bad and stupid, it is not by far as bad as the blurb is trying to make it look.
Indeed I am arguing it is not as bad as storing all the conversations (or all data transfered). Where I live, just as in most of the EU, circumstantial evidence has no place in court. It has a place in providing law enforcement with clues as to where to look. They will still have to provide actual (non circumstantial) evidence, but don't get to keep a tap on everyone. That is indeed less bad, but as I already mentioned, the whole idea is still stupid and imho pointless because as I mentioned in my previous post:
Supposedly this is usefull to get an insight into the conenctions between individuals who might be involved in terrorist or criminal activities.
Of course, about all investigations resulting from attacks in the last half decade point at a lack of cooperation and not of information (usually the information was actually there), but who cares.
Now, where was this positive spin you saw?
Well, my friend got a 400GB hard-drive for about 200 bucks. How much data will there be store? A terabyte a day? That isn't really that much.
Heh.. it only takes about 100 people like me to fill that up (averaging about 10GB/day data transfer at the moment).
To get any sense of proportion here you should go talk to an ISP that runs a somewhat complete usenet server. Just to keep track of all that passes through usenet and store it for a few weeks takes an insane amount of hardware and some serious bandwidth, more then many smaller ISPs can afford (hence they often keep articles for a few hours or with luck a few days, if they run a somewhat complete usenet server to begin with)
While having a sense of proportion can be bad for the mind when it comes to the entire universe, it definitely helps in understanding this kind of situation.
Of course the EU doesn't try to actually save all the data people transfer, they do however want a 'contact log', ie, who talked to whom and when, but not about what. This is still an insane idea, but it is somewhat doable.
It is illegal to kill people. Killing people in brutal ways gives you a harder sentence.
Race and the perpetrators' opinions on races are completely irrelevant. The crime is murder, not disagreeing with the majority. Oh, sorry, they SHOULD be completely irrelevant in any civilised society.
You are of course right, but you also forget to mention something pretty important.
A 'civilised society' should definitely care about the motivations behind a crime and adjust punnishment based on that.
This is reflected in most legal systems by the fact that for any given crime there is a possible range of pubbishment, and it is upto judges usually to decide what is fitting given the circumstances of the crime.
Racism is a possible motivation for murder, and according to gp this is a motivation that should result in a heavier punnishment. I tend to agree with this.
Amen brother.
One thing to add to what you said.. engage the people in such communities who want to do something about it instead of oppressing them as dissonant voices wanting to change the status quo.
i cannot recall a situation in history, where a population had so much freedom -- that minorities and their rights had been infringed. if you know of one, please, feel free to fill us in. (you could have a valid point, with a few examples -- i am not, however, holding my breath).
Hmm.. Italy in the 1920s comes to mind...
They ended up with the freedom to 'demand' a 'strong leader', and at first glance they got one (tho he turned out to be quite a bit of a clown)
There are limits on freedom and those are needed to get as many as possible a fair share of it. Privacy doesn't come into the picture here. Protection of the freedom and rights of others does.
Last time I tried I got a nice about 30 minutes long lecture from a state trooper (with a Texan accent.. it really took efford to not laugh my ass off there)
If I call my friend up to chat about the old college days I absolutely have a right to privacy. What I talk to an old friend is ABSOLUTELY none of the governments business.
You are absolutely right there.
With regards to this new EU rule, the slashdot blurb of course doesn't mention this, but what they are going to store is the fact that you chatted to your friend between this and this time, but not the content of this conversation. While this is bad and stupid, it is not by far as bad as the blurb is trying to make it look.
Supposedly this is usefull to get an insight into the conenctions between individuals who might be involved in terrorist or criminal activities.
Of course, about all investigations resulting from attacks in the last half decade point at a lack of cooperation and not of information (usually the information was actually there), but who cares.
There are many western democracies that do not use a first-past-the-post voting system, and I even dare say that for Europe, most have a small barrier to entry (you must at least get x% of the votes to get in) but definitely not a frst-past-the-post system.
Why don't more people actually research candidates before voting instead of bitching after an election?
Lots of people like to point fingers
THat is how far I got reading before getting a laughing fit.
At any rate, looks like you are just another one to point fingers, and no, your party is not going to be the savior of the USA either. The political system needs a change to make it more dynamic so that new ideas and new movements actually get a chance, without destabikizing it completely. What is there now is basicly a 2 party dictatorship (when a substantial minority of the people can vote for a party and end up not having any representation, something is seriously broken)
Republic and Democracy are strikingly similar, not opposites.
They not strikingly similar, but you are right that they are not eachothers opposites.
They were eachothers opposites one day in the far past, when Athens was fighting Sparta.
The Roman republic already 'married' the 2 and ended up with something that is a republic in the sense of having an 'appointed' leadership, but it also had a form of representive democracy through the senate.
Ever since, a republic is a form of state, and primarily an alternative for a monarchy. Democracy is not a form of state and it can exist in both republic and monarchy (and other alternative forms of state), and a few countries even managed the combination of monarchy and forms of direct democracy (tho that usually doesn't work well, see Italy untill Mussolini came to power)
In short, originally both were a form of state, but for the last 2000+ years, a republic has been a form of state while democracy has been a process that can be used to decide on specific things. Obviously those 2 are not mutually exclusive, and actually make a good combination. To say they are very similar is however not true.
"THUMP-THUMP" A sound everyone in my family dreaded. He hated every other person on the planet and would growl like a demon at them. He had all his shots. I was the only one who could hold him for any reason and would restrain him at the vet. They were all deathly afraid of him but I never let him scratch or bite anyone.
:) Mine did get to attack a few people over time tho.. In one case it felt that I was threatened by someoen and didn't think twice, other cases usually involved people being on our property without me or my mother (whom could deal equally well with the cat) being around. Yes, we did have a 'mind the cat' sign, but who'd take that serious (the first time they see it that is)
Heh, this sounds all too familiar
besides, when is a burglar going to think twice about a "warning: cat on premises" sign?
Heh, I owned a cat that did have little trouble changing a burglars mind about that (think Garfield and postman like scenes). It also made a point of chasing dogs, no matter their size, which resulted in some quite funny situations (imagine a really large dog fleeing with some loud howling, being chased by a small black furry, and the owner of that dog rolling on the floor laughing)
Despite being half wild, it was a fun animal to have around.
Doubtless it includes the implementations of new research that they've done since the original SPARC code was released, research that was probably patented, so I don't think you can say with any certainty that there aren't encumbrances.
You have a good point but I think that the parent was pointing at the fact that even when the original SPARC was still 'encimbered', it was not so bad that it was beyond the reach of someoen wanting to toy with it as a hobby. Pasr results don't guarantee anything for the future, but at least it is reasonable to expect we won't see huge submarine patent issues here either.
Not to mention - there's still a need for machines with 8 or 12 procs, and not to many companies selling them. Certainly none with the reputation for reliability sun has.
Oh really?