Not crazy about replying to myself, but I wanted to add something.
What I'd like to see would not be bullying of India in any way. It's simply a mutual agreement or a lack thereof.
RIM could say "as a soverign nation, you don't *have to* respect the privacy of your citizens, just like we don't *have to* do business with you. You could always develop your own domestic industry that operates in a way you find more tasteful and we won't lift a finger to try to stop you."
It would not be bullying because it does not involve the use of force or fraud.
Yes, because the only alternative to instantly obeying any desire of any government is suicide.
The desired outcome is that countries like India have a choice:
1) Fail to respect the rights and the privacy of your citizens
-- or --
2) Benefit from trading with first-world nations that are more prosperous and more technologically advanced
This is perfectly acceptable unless you are prepared to argue that a principled company should be forced to do business with foreign nations against its will.
Besides, India is not RIM's only market. No longer doing business in India would mean less profit. It would not mean no profit. It is not a "corporate suicide" scenario. It's more like a scenario of "which is more important to us: our integrity, or a few more points added to our stock price?"
there is no ethical reason to give away your REAL customer's security.
the government is not your customer even though you sell a lot to them.
PEOPLE (who deserve privacy) are your customers.
If RIM caves, the correct response to this is to divest yourself of any stocks or funds that involve this company. If they cave, it will be because money is more important to them than the refusal to support institutionalized domestic spying, same story as always. If they cave, they would do it to preserve a profitable market. If the response to that causes their stock to be devalued and the company to have a very hard time retaining any capital, it would send the message that if you really care about profit, this is the wrong action to take.
So, like with so many things, it's up to us. It's a matter of what we will and won't tolerate, what we will and won't support and go along with. Any single-mindedness regarding profit can also be used to discourage companies from following this example. In that sense it is both the problem and a solution. Which it will be is ultimately up to us, up to We the People. If we don't care enough to back that up with action, neither should RIM.
'It need not have escalated to this level. Folks like RIM have to understand business is done differently here.'
Sure. And if someone installed live cameras that monitor your bedroom and your bathroom 24/7, well that would just be "different" from the privacy you now enjoy.
It's like Aesop said: "any excuse will serve a tyrant."
It's really very simple. Consenting adults should have the right to do anything and everything they want, until and unless they harm another person (or another person's property) against their will. We do something like this with alcohol today. Want to stay at home and have a drink? Go ahead, you're being responsible. Want to get drunk and then drive? Now we have the right and the duty to arrest you because now you're being irresponsible and posing a threat to others. It's that simple, except that there's nothing special about alcohol other than its legal status.
Also, the very first myth about the War on (some) Drugs is that it is preventing anyone who wants drugs from obtaining them. Anybody who wants to do drugs is already buying them and already doing them. They cannot even keep drugs out of prisons (look it up yourself). The idea that legalizing them is going to suddenly result in more addiction is silly.
About overdosing, if an adult person wants to ingest a substance without fully understanding what it can do or how to safely use it, they are knowingly taking a risk. If that risk doesn't work out so well for them, that's too bad but it isn't the government's business. Adults have the right to take risks with their own body, their own property, and their own money.
I also think the prescription drug system should be eliminated. The reason you'd still go to a doctor to get a recommendation about which drug you should take is because it's a really, really good idea. You'd do it because taking a substance you know little or nothing about to try curing a disease you also know little or nothing about would be stupid. You'd recognize the bleedin' obvious, which is that there's a reason people have to study for years and years before they can claim expertise in this subject. Or you'd knowingly take a risk and be willing to face the consequences.
Others have already pointed out that the subprime mortgage fiasco involved government forcing banks to make loans to people that the banks would have deemed unworthy of credit if left to their own devices.
Here's the real issue. I will unmask it. This is what's behind all the back-and-forth: freedom is not for the faint of heart. Stupid people might hurt themselves in a truly free society. You might have to be responsible for your mistakes in a truly free society. People might say and do things that you really don't like in a truly free society, though they would not have the right to force you to participate.
We have a nation of mostly cowards who cannot stand all of the above. Of course they don't say "I'm a coward and that's why I don't like freedom unless it's the freedom to do what I would approve of". They don't see it that way. If they knew that they were cowards they'd be much more humble. Instead they are in denial about their cowardice, so they call it something different (often quite sincerely). They call it a concern for their fellow man, for society, or a worry about what might go wrong. In the process they ignore the tremendous social costs of things like the War on (some) Drugs, the nanny state we have today and are increasingly empowering, and the nation of cowards we are creating who have no self-control and no personal responsibility and therefore need some politician to guide every choice they could make lest something bad happen.
Two words: fuck that. The rest of the world is already that way. I want this to be the one free nation. Let those who don't like it vote with their feet. I for one am tired of them instituting their childishness and cowardice here.
That's probably a troll but yes there are people who seriously get this upset over a software license. Well, they don't precisely get upset over the license itself. They get upset that anyone else would use a license that they would not use. The fact that your choice to use whatever license you like for what you create does not prevent them from using any license they like for what they create won't give them a moment's pause.
Unfortunately, that's not entirely true. The GPL seeks to restrict the license you may use for any software you make that depends on the covered software. If someone else chooses GPL, and you want your software to use their software, suddenly you have a lot less licenses to choose for your own software.
If I want to write software, no one else has any obligation to help me out by providing components that enhance the functionality of my software. Their labor and their skills belong to them to use as they see fit. If they choose to assist me, it is appreciated. If they do not choose to assist me, they have that right.
If they choose to assist me under certain conditions, then I have a choice to make. I either accept their aid under their conditions, or, I decline their offer and either do it myself or seek aid from someone else with conditions more to my liking. As the author of their work, they have the right to set the conditions under which it will be used just like I have the right to use the GPL or some other license or public domain.
What you want is to have a claim on someone else's labor. You are complaining that someone might create a useful tool, make it available to you at no monetary cost, but then do so in a way that doesn't suit your desires or purposes. They have no obligation to do anything for you in the first place, let alone to do anything for you according to your precise instructions at your convenience. If you want a programmer to do that, hire him as a contractor or an employee but don't complain when random strangers don't suit your wishes for free.
Please get over this entitlement mentality. It damages a lot more than discussions about software. It's quite literally killing free society.
lots of them around . They typically aim for positions of power.
Actually when speaking of positions of power they are like useful idiots. They elect people who are only too happy to grow government to where it can stamp out whatever practice of consenting adults they deem offensive. If a strict view of the Constitution would make the resulting laws unenforcable then they find clever ways to interpret phrases like "Congress shall make no law" or "shall not be infringed" or in the case of the 4th Amendment "shall not be violated".
The people they elect likely don't really care what the excuse is, so long as one is provided, so long as it gets enough of the voters stirred up about something, so long as enough of them demand that some action be taken.
Is this just a troll or are there people who seriously get this upset over a software license?
If so can I get a link to a description of the controversy please?
Serious question.
That's probably a troll but yes there are people who seriously get this upset over a software license. Well, they don't precisely get upset over the license itself. They get upset that anyone else would use a license that they would not use. The fact that your choice to use whatever license you like for what you create does not prevent them from using any license they like for what they create won't give them a moment's pause.
It's like the people who will get upset that you might drink alcohol, because they don't drink. Prohibition never could have gotten off the ground without folks like them. Or the people who think it's a good idea to arrest you if you smoke marijuana, because they wouldn't smoke marijuana. Or the people who think you should go to hell, or at least that they certainly shouldn't associate with you and treat you with respect, because their religion is not your religion. Or the people who think that all adults should have porn banned/censored for them because they themselves do not wish to see pornography. Or the people who think that anything which offends them is inherently evil and must be stopped at all costs, rather than viewing that as the way they have chosen to react to something that is otherwise harmless.
I like the term Bill Hicks used, which was "fevered egos". Just be glad that when people like this make new laws, they have largely overlooked the realm of software development.
SN 1987A was a supernova in the outskirts of the Tarantula Nebula in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a nearby dwarf galaxy. It occurred approximately 51.4 kiloparsecs from Earth,[1] close enough that it was visible to the naked eye. It could be seen from the Southern Hemisphere. It was the closest observed supernova since SN 1604, which occurred in the Milky Way itself. The light from the supernova reached Earth on February 23, 1987. As the first supernova discovered in 1987, it was labeled "1987A". Its brightness peaked in May with an apparent magnitude of about 3 and slowly declined in the following months. It was the first opportunity for modern astronomers to see a supernova up close.
[...]
Approximately three hours before the visible light from SN 1987A reached the Earth, a burst of neutrinos was observed at three separate neutrino observatories. This is due to the neutrino emission (which occurs simultaneously with core collapse) preceding the emission of visible light (which occurs only after the shock wave reaches the stellar surface). At 7:35am Universal time, Kamiokande II detected 11 antineutrinos, IMB 8 antineutrinos and Baksan 5 antineutrinos, in a burst lasting less than 13 seconds.
I really didn't know there was one that recent. The event I had in mind when I wrote the previous post was the 1604 supernova you mentioned. Thank you for setting me straight on that, and for answering the question of whether such events could significantly increase neutrino flux on Earth.
Oh, I don't know. Apple has made a fair amount of money in selling one that they claim to be a lot closer to an appliance that you don't need to know the innards of in order to use it. I don't know it it's truly that easy to use or that much secure -- but the people I know with Macs are just as happy to not deal with most of the crap involved in running a Windows machine (and, several of those have Masters degrees in CS, so we're not talking about stupid people here). I've personally never gotten to play with OSX, so I can't speak to it.
About the folks with CS degrees, the ability to tinker does not necessarily imply the willingness to do so. I am also more than capable of administering any Windows system or network of Windows systems, but those require a lot more maintainence, babysitting, and cause a lot more headaches than the Linux systems I run. Generally, Linux just works. Windows can just work too but you're going to put a lot more effort into making sure it stays that way.
I like to say it this way: on Linux, if something does break, it broke for a very good reason. I can find out what that reason is. It'll stay broken until I fix it. When I fix it, it will stay fixed. That has never been my experience on Windows.
Regarding Apple, they've done a much better job of designing a product for a non-technical audience who really do want something more like an appliance. I think designing a good GUI with a solid, proven Unix implementation under the hood has a lot to do with that.
You're not alone in knowing people who bought an OSX machine and went from not liking their computer to actually enjoying it. The folks I've talked to who said that were not technically inclined and mostly just wanted to read e-mail and browse the Web. For them, Windows has been too flimsy and too high-maintainence and generally a lot more trouble than they thought worthwhile.
A big part of that involved its numerous security issues, either directly or indirectly in the form of problems with A/V software and antispyware utilities and all the other anti-something-or-another scanners one must run on that platform to have a barely-acceptable level of security.
I can see that as computers become ubiquitous, people will begin to see them as just that. Essentially like a TV -- they don't care how it works, as long as when they click the button it does what they expect.
Windows is a very poor design for that crowd. It's getting better but it's not nearly there yet. It bears mentioning that I would be reluctant to recommend Linux for that crowd as well. The difference is that most Linux distributions do not target non-technical users and do not claim to be something one can use with no understanding. The closest thing to that is Ubuntu/Kubuntu and they don't claim to be some magical silver bullet. They just represent the progress that's been made towards reaching this audience.
I think if Microsoft would stop doing things like allowing marketing to be sure they can sell advertising instead of allowing browsing to be private and secure by default, we'd be making some progress.
I think if no single vendor ever reached anything remotely approaching 90% marketshare then the decisions of individual marketing departments would be irrelevant. Interoperability would also receive more emphasis as a goal, since no single vendor running the show means that going with any proprietary format/standard risks alienating a large number of potential customers.
Depends on the energy.
(A more detailed energy slicing won't be necessary)
Low energy neutrinos order of few KeV, come mostly from the sun.
High energy neutrinos Above the few KeV threshold mostly comes from Cosmic rays hitting the atmosphere.
As for cosmic neutrinos, well good luck with that!
I work in a neutrino experiment (ANTARES) , and I wish that we can detect cosmic neutrinos with abundance, it's just that there isn't enough to influence anything.
What I meant were those caused by transient and relatively nearby events like supernovae or gamma-ray bursts -- things that haven't happened since we had detectors for neutrinos or even knew what neutrinos were. We haven't had a supernova that was visible to the naked eye in Earth's night-time sky in quite a long time, yet when an extremely energetic event like that does happen it may affect the cosmic neutrinos we receive.
Or maybe someone knows a reason why it couldn't possibly do that. My intented point was, once your realize that this set-in-stone constant isn't, it calls into question how steady, uninterrupted and unaltered the current conditions have been throughout geological periods of time. That does tend to raise questions about methods of dating based on nuclear decay, but as other posters have pointed out, the observed difference (as it stands now) would actually tend to make things a little older than we previously thought.
Luckily the detected difference is somewhere around.0001% so I don't think we'll be rewriting history even if their observation is confirmed. Such a small change really makes me wonder if they've actually done the statistical analysis on the results to make sure that they are significant. I'd bet that they will find some relatively run of the mill explanation the explain the changes; something like the detector's efficiency changing based on humidity or temperature. Although something like that would go a long way to explaining seasonal variations, it might be harder to explain the changes that were detected during solar storms/calms.
Of course, it would be more interesting if this is a real effect. After all, "That's strange" is much more exciting than "We were right".
The question is that if the difference is that small now, what guarantees do we have that it was always so small and insignificant in the past? Especially when you consider that the Sun is not the only source of neutrinos and radiation in the galaxy.
Whether Cheney was in office or not, that company would have seen the same benefits from the wars. Claiming that he steered benefits to them is a bit crazy as it has been pointed out time and time again that the infrastructure involved was already in place under different presidents including Clinton and Haliburton also carried the best bid once the bidding was opened.
You are being fooled by your own ignorance and will to remain under that spell.
The fact that multiple officials in high office had connections to this company prior to one of its executives becoming an official in high office only illustrates the revolving door that exists between well-connected large corporations and politicians. That doesn't contradict anything I've said. In fact it reinforces it.
This is exactly what Eisenhower warned us about when he talked about the advancement of the military-industrial complex. From this speech:
Our military organization today bears little relation to that known by any of my predecessors in peacetime, or indeed by the fighting men of World War II or Korea.
Until the latest of our world conflicts, the United States had no armaments industry. American makers of plowshares could, with time and as required, make swords as well. But now we can no longer risk emergency improvisation of national defense; we have been compelled to create a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions. Added to this, three and a half million men and women are directly engaged in the defense establishment. We annually spend on military security more than the net income of all United States corporations.
This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence -- economic, political, even spiritual -- is felt in every city, every State house, every office of the Federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society.
In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the militaryindustrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.
We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.
That speech was given in 1961. I'll leave it up to you to reconcile what I am talking about with the fact that a fairly sharp politician saw it happening and beginning to establish itself 49 years ago. Of course that won't be as easy as claiming that I'm "under [a] spell" but it will be far more worthwhile.
Wow, decades old news on the front page of slashdot
I ask this as someone who knows next to nothing about jet engines and nothing at all about the precise kind of airflow they require for their intake. Having said that... how difficult would it be to design some kind of screen or grating to protect the intake vents of an engine so that birds could not get sucked into the engine and damage it? Once such a design is perfected it could become standard equipment and the cost would probably be negligible compared to what is already paid to design and manufacture a jet engine. We routinely try things much more ridiculous than this in the name of saving lives.
Is there some kind of insurmountable aerodynamic technical difficulty that prevents us from doing this?
Microsoft has consistently opted to ignore security in favor of ease of shooting yourself in the foot. I lay the blame squarely at their feet for deciding to essentially run anything that they encounter and hope that it isn't malicious.
That's why I'd like to see some product liability for Microsoft so long as they insist on selling Windows to the clueless on the basis of its "ease of use". Either accept liability for any damages caused by security vulnerabilities in Windows, or, start marketing Windows as software designed for experienced and knowledgable users and not recommended for beginners. Because as it stands now, Microsoft profits from selling to the clueless but Microsoft does not have to bear the cost of the problems they experience (or the costs of third parties who receive spam from their infected machines). That makes Microsoft little more than a sophisticated parasite.
As much as we don't like to, to a lot of people the computer is an appliance.
Those people happen to be wrong. I'd say the unending problems they experience from trying to treat it like an appliance is pretty strong evidence that it is not, in fact, a mere appliance. It's really that simple.
Their refusal to catch on to this simple and self-evident fact is the only reason why there is any discussion at all about this. Otherwise people tend not to discuss obvious things like grass being green or the sky being blue...
They're just not fully aware of all of this stuff.
People tend to be "just not fully aware" of anything that would imply they should put forth more effort or take on more responsibility. Examples include learning something about the tool you use on a daily basis or taking responsibility for whether it becomes a botnet zombie instead of viewing this as something that "just happens", as though it were normal and not out of order.
So there you have it, the two complementary sides to this equation. Microsoft promises "easy to use!" and "more secure than ever" with little to back that up with. Most of its customers are only too happy to believe this even when it isn't so believable because it absolves them of responsibility. It's a sort of feedback loop or self-sustaining cycle.
Is the actual news here that Apple is ripping people off? Or... is this supposed to be new somehow? Maybe they just assume we have really short memories?
I never owned an Atari 2600, but I remember the same phenomenon on the C64. Box art was usually colourful and cartoony. Very few games (at least until you got to the tail end of the C64's popular life span, when you had games like the Creatures series) could come even close to living up to this. It was a good lesson at an early age that you should never take promotional material at face value.
Marketing is based on deception and considers it an important tool. This is nothing new.
It's like when a toothpaste brand says "9 out of 10 dentists recommend it!". In reality they may have interviewed hundreds dentists in groups of ten, over and over again, until they finally found a group of ten out of which 9 preferred their brand. What they strongly imply but do not actually go so far as to claim is that their group of ten is a representative sample of all dentists. Because they do not actually make this positive claim, they escape any accusations of false advertising. Yet it's quite misleading.
It's the same deal with the box art. They do not actually print "this is an in-game screen shot" yet they count on creating that impression. The intent behind this is clear enough.
This should be called "The Misleading World of Marketing" that happens to use the Atari 2600 as an example of a much wider phenomenon. Like politics and public relations, marketing is a field that is very attractive to liars who can say anything with a straight face while performing just enough CYA to perpetuate their ability to do it. Maybe "How to Turn a Pathological Personality Disorder into Profit" would be a better title. I don't think the general public has enough appreciation for the fact that making demonstrably false factual statements is a very crude and inefficient way to deceive someone. The state of the art in those fields is far more advanced than that, relying instead on framing, subtle implication, emotional appeals, misleading use of statistics, selective presentation of information, etc.
If the a test were to be applied, it should rather be to votees, so they actually have notions of economy, science, history, etc. That would keep people like G.W. Bush out of the office.
I would like to believe that but it's unfortunately not true. Empirical observation can be used to test this.
People like that are not ignorant or stupid, though they may enjoy presenting themselves that way in order to be underestimated. They know exactly what they are doing and what effect it will have. The fact that most others don't understand this is what they are counting on. If you want to keep them out of power then it is the general population that needs to have understanding.
Consider this carefully: however stupid you may think G.W. Bush is, how do you reconcile that with the fact that few other presidents in our history have done so much to expand federal executive power in so short a time? He is not stupid at all. He only appears to be a stupid failure when you think that his goals and your goals are the same.
To perhaps over-simplify, there are two broad categories of evil. One is rooted in ignorance and doesn't really understand the damage it does or why it is wrong. It may even have good intentions. The other exists with the full knowledge of what it is doing and the misery it causes for others. In fact it counts on that in order to further its power, because a miserable and broken people are much, much easier to rule over.
On the federal level, just about all of our politicians come from that second category. No amount of education would fix it. The electorate on the other hand would be horrified if they truly, truly understood whom they were putting into power. That one can be fixed with education.
But another way of wording what you're saying is that stupid people don't deserve to be represented. It sounds perfectly reasonable that people who are illiterate, or who know nothing about the Constitution or civics or what-have-you shouldn't be involved with the construction of our government. But these people deserve to be represented. They deserve to be protected because they actually have a voice, and not because we their "betters" have deigned to protect them today.
Three words for you: rule of law.
The proposal essentially is to give the least voice to the people most likely to be helped by their government, instead preferring middle-to-upper class white guys because we know best.
I am not (materially) wealthy by any standard of the word that you could name with a straight face. And I don't want to be "helped" by government. I want government to leave me alone so long as I do not use force or fraud to deprive anyone else of their civil rights (which I have no intention of ever doing). If you prefer a government that sees itself as existing in order to give you a helping hand, the term for that is Socialism. In that case there are a multitude of European nations where you would be happier, but that was not the intention of the USA's founders. The defense of the nation against foreign hostilities and the defense of civil liberties are the only purposes for the government of the USA, though you certainly wouldn't know that from taking a hard look at it today.
Yes. Poor people have just as much right to self-determination as anyone else. Especially in countries like India where a large number of people don't need to read or write to live their daily lives and presuming that not knowing something they don't necessarily need should disqualify them from having a valid opinion is the kind of elitism that rationalizes a dictatorship.
Actually if you study history you will find one consistent theme: the naive and uneducated who are very easily manipulated into a state of fear and then offered a relief from their fears that naturally includes the expansion of state power is what creates dictatorships. That's if you study history instead of proceeding from an emotional argument based on feeling sorry for poor people, which might make you feel noble but has no place in a discussion about dictatorships and how they work.
By your logic, the USA should have immediately become a dictatorship right after its foundation. That's because only white men who owned property (a very tiny segment of the population) were allowed to vote at that time. That was a small minority. Why didn't they make themselves into an elite that oppressed everyone else? Oh yeah, because they were an educated minority that was savvy and extremely difficult to deceive. Therefore they understood the principles of freedom and were not the sort of naive cowards who could be frightened into giving them up.
Your rhetoric sounds good on the surface but it does not withstand examination.
Surely you know that restricting voting rights is outside the enumerated powers of the Federal Government in that consitution you claim so much knowledge of. So the Federal Government can't do that.
Actually voting is the domain of the states. You do not even have a Constitutional right to cast a ballot (one reason why i.e. convicted felons can be denied suffrage). This would be conducted at the state level.
So you want the states to limit their own pools of voters to exclude the ones that the politicians can manipulate the best. And for it to survive challenge and not result in a 15th 19th, and 21st style amendment?
The problem is that the manipulation you mention has become an established practice. It is corrupt and inexcusable but has been accepted as normal. There is a reason why my paragraph began with "if it were up to me". That's going to have different content than a paragraph beginning with "this is what I realistically expect will happen". I'm not sure why that needed to be pointed out, but there you go.
So you ask me, do I want the states to do that? Yes, yes I do.
There's one more serious oft-overlooked problem with DRM. For every copy of DRM'd software they sell they spend money every time somebody calls or emails with an activation problem. There's an on-going cost of maintaining servers and software to keep giving permission for installs. Basically, over time, their profits are getting eaten away by their own customer service. Sadly I think it'll take a couple of years before anybody realizes the problem with this. Heh.
They say that if many people protest by simply not buying games, or not buying games with DRM, that the companies will blame this loss on piracy and use it to further their agenda. There is some truth in that. You gave me the idea of a way to make this much harder to do.
Instead of protesting by not buying the games with DRM, just decide you're going to have a lot of difficulty and will need to call tech support. You're not so familiar with all this newfangled technology and you just want to play your game, after all. It's the kind of thing that might make them want to produce games that are as reliable and idiot-proof as possible. As DRM is extra complexity it would be contrary to that goal.
Do you really want illiterate people voting? What makes you believe they would be informed about the issues and candidates, especially when you consider that the literate have a huge advantage in this area and still remain so ignorant? If you agree that they are likely to be uninformed about those things, what makes you desire that people who are uninformed about their system of government and the issues of their time should vote?
If it were up to me you'd have to pass an incredibly tough civics test before being permitted to vote. You'd have to pass it each election during which you vote. Particularly emphasized would be what the Constitution does and does not say, the notion that the federal government has no powers at all (AT ALL!) except those granted to it by the Constitution, the difference between a republic and a democracy, the difference between interstate and intrastate affairs, the separation of powers, the correct role of the executive, legislative, and judicial branches and the checks/balances available to each. That would make for a good start.
The civics test would be limited to facts that are not in dispute. It would include the facts and just the facts but not the multitude of interpretations available for them. That part, the interpretation of how they should manifest and the specifics of their implementation, is what voting is supposed to decide.
If only 3% of the entire US adult population were able to pass this test, I really wouldn't care. It'd be sad that so few are actually qualified to understand how our system works before deciding who is fit to run it, but so be it. The remaining 97% retain the option of learning and may decide whether this is important to them. If 95% of the entire US adult population wanted to educate themselves about our system and passed this test, I'd be fine with that too. It'd be a drastic improvement, an eradication of ignorance and would likely transform the media away from deciding elections by 5-second sound bites and emotional rhetoric and towards rational justifications for proposed policies. But in either case, the test must be both very tough and comprehensive.
When it comes to voting, quantity in and of itself is undesirable. What you need is quality. If you can have both, that's wonderful. If you must choose, quantity is expendable.
I suspect the reason for this is that Google wants to have an enforceable contract with developers. This was the quick and easy way to do it.
I am not a lawyer so this is a genuine question. Does money need to change hands in order to meet the "consideration" requirement of a contract?
If no money changes hands and the contract consists of "you write extensions" and "we provide visibility for them", is it then invalid and unenforcable?
I mean, by common standards a corporate lawyer of the largest software patents client who becomes head of the USPTO, that simply smells corruption.
In the United States no one seems to care.
The patent system is anti-free trade, it should be abolished altogether, it is merely about useless bureaucracy.
They can't care about this. So few cared about a corporate executive from the world's second-largest oilfields services corporation becoming the USA's vice president, only to have this company benefit extensively from government contracts due to a war prosecuted by the same administration. Cheney giving a few "favors" to the company with which he was so thoroughly involved would be cronyism, a form of corruption. I'd say vice president is a higher office than head of USPTO. If they don't care much about corruption there, then they won't be worried about the USPTO.
Slashdot Mirror
Not crazy about replying to myself, but I wanted to add something.
What I'd like to see would not be bullying of India in any way. It's simply a mutual agreement or a lack thereof.
RIM could say "as a soverign nation, you don't *have to* respect the privacy of your citizens, just like we don't *have to* do business with you. You could always develop your own domestic industry that operates in a way you find more tasteful and we won't lift a finger to try to stop you."
It would not be bullying because it does not involve the use of force or fraud.
Yes, because the only alternative to instantly obeying any desire of any government is suicide.
The desired outcome is that countries like India have a choice:
1) Fail to respect the rights and the privacy of your citizens
-- or --
2) Benefit from trading with first-world nations that are more prosperous and more technologically advanced
This is perfectly acceptable unless you are prepared to argue that a principled company should be forced to do business with foreign nations against its will.
Besides, India is not RIM's only market. No longer doing business in India would mean less profit. It would not mean no profit. It is not a "corporate suicide" scenario. It's more like a scenario of "which is more important to us: our integrity, or a few more points added to our stock price?"
like they 'didnt' for the saudis?
RIM is on my do-not-purchase list.
there is no ethical reason to give away your REAL customer's security.
the government is not your customer even though you sell a lot to them.
PEOPLE (who deserve privacy) are your customers.
If RIM caves, the correct response to this is to divest yourself of any stocks or funds that involve this company. If they cave, it will be because money is more important to them than the refusal to support institutionalized domestic spying, same story as always. If they cave, they would do it to preserve a profitable market. If the response to that causes their stock to be devalued and the company to have a very hard time retaining any capital, it would send the message that if you really care about profit, this is the wrong action to take.
So, like with so many things, it's up to us. It's a matter of what we will and won't tolerate, what we will and won't support and go along with. Any single-mindedness regarding profit can also be used to discourage companies from following this example. In that sense it is both the problem and a solution. Which it will be is ultimately up to us, up to We the People. If we don't care enough to back that up with action, neither should RIM.
I hope they stand their ground.
No joke. From the summary:
Sure. And if someone installed live cameras that monitor your bedroom and your bathroom 24/7, well that would just be "different" from the privacy you now enjoy.
It's like Aesop said: "any excuse will serve a tyrant."
It's really very simple. Consenting adults should have the right to do anything and everything they want, until and unless they harm another person (or another person's property) against their will. We do something like this with alcohol today. Want to stay at home and have a drink? Go ahead, you're being responsible. Want to get drunk and then drive? Now we have the right and the duty to arrest you because now you're being irresponsible and posing a threat to others. It's that simple, except that there's nothing special about alcohol other than its legal status.
Also, the very first myth about the War on (some) Drugs is that it is preventing anyone who wants drugs from obtaining them. Anybody who wants to do drugs is already buying them and already doing them. They cannot even keep drugs out of prisons (look it up yourself). The idea that legalizing them is going to suddenly result in more addiction is silly.
About overdosing, if an adult person wants to ingest a substance without fully understanding what it can do or how to safely use it, they are knowingly taking a risk. If that risk doesn't work out so well for them, that's too bad but it isn't the government's business. Adults have the right to take risks with their own body, their own property, and their own money.
I also think the prescription drug system should be eliminated. The reason you'd still go to a doctor to get a recommendation about which drug you should take is because it's a really, really good idea. You'd do it because taking a substance you know little or nothing about to try curing a disease you also know little or nothing about would be stupid. You'd recognize the bleedin' obvious, which is that there's a reason people have to study for years and years before they can claim expertise in this subject. Or you'd knowingly take a risk and be willing to face the consequences.
Others have already pointed out that the subprime mortgage fiasco involved government forcing banks to make loans to people that the banks would have deemed unworthy of credit if left to their own devices.
Here's the real issue. I will unmask it. This is what's behind all the back-and-forth: freedom is not for the faint of heart. Stupid people might hurt themselves in a truly free society. You might have to be responsible for your mistakes in a truly free society. People might say and do things that you really don't like in a truly free society, though they would not have the right to force you to participate.
We have a nation of mostly cowards who cannot stand all of the above. Of course they don't say "I'm a coward and that's why I don't like freedom unless it's the freedom to do what I would approve of". They don't see it that way. If they knew that they were cowards they'd be much more humble. Instead they are in denial about their cowardice, so they call it something different (often quite sincerely). They call it a concern for their fellow man, for society, or a worry about what might go wrong. In the process they ignore the tremendous social costs of things like the War on (some) Drugs, the nanny state we have today and are increasingly empowering, and the nation of cowards we are creating who have no self-control and no personal responsibility and therefore need some politician to guide every choice they could make lest something bad happen.
Two words: fuck that. The rest of the world is already that way. I want this to be the one free nation. Let those who don't like it vote with their feet. I for one am tired of them instituting their childishness and cowardice here.
That's probably a troll but yes there are people who seriously get this upset over a software license. Well, they don't precisely get upset over the license itself. They get upset that anyone else would use a license that they would not use. The fact that your choice to use whatever license you like for what you create does not prevent them from using any license they like for what they create won't give them a moment's pause.
Unfortunately, that's not entirely true. The GPL seeks to restrict the license you may use for any software you make that depends on the covered software. If someone else chooses GPL, and you want your software to use their software, suddenly you have a lot less licenses to choose for your own software.
If I want to write software, no one else has any obligation to help me out by providing components that enhance the functionality of my software. Their labor and their skills belong to them to use as they see fit. If they choose to assist me, it is appreciated. If they do not choose to assist me, they have that right.
If they choose to assist me under certain conditions, then I have a choice to make. I either accept their aid under their conditions, or, I decline their offer and either do it myself or seek aid from someone else with conditions more to my liking. As the author of their work, they have the right to set the conditions under which it will be used just like I have the right to use the GPL or some other license or public domain.
What you want is to have a claim on someone else's labor. You are complaining that someone might create a useful tool, make it available to you at no monetary cost, but then do so in a way that doesn't suit your desires or purposes. They have no obligation to do anything for you in the first place, let alone to do anything for you according to your precise instructions at your convenience. If you want a programmer to do that, hire him as a contractor or an employee but don't complain when random strangers don't suit your wishes for free.
Please get over this entitlement mentality. It damages a lot more than discussions about software. It's quite literally killing free society.
lots of them around . They typically aim for positions of power .
Actually when speaking of positions of power they are like useful idiots. They elect people who are only too happy to grow government to where it can stamp out whatever practice of consenting adults they deem offensive. If a strict view of the Constitution would make the resulting laws unenforcable then they find clever ways to interpret phrases like "Congress shall make no law" or "shall not be infringed" or in the case of the 4th Amendment "shall not be violated".
The people they elect likely don't really care what the excuse is, so long as one is provided, so long as it gets enough of the voters stirred up about something, so long as enough of them demand that some action be taken.
Is this just a troll or are there people who seriously get this upset over a software license? If so can I get a link to a description of the controversy please?
Serious question.
That's probably a troll but yes there are people who seriously get this upset over a software license. Well, they don't precisely get upset over the license itself. They get upset that anyone else would use a license that they would not use. The fact that your choice to use whatever license you like for what you create does not prevent them from using any license they like for what they create won't give them a moment's pause.
It's like the people who will get upset that you might drink alcohol, because they don't drink. Prohibition never could have gotten off the ground without folks like them. Or the people who think it's a good idea to arrest you if you smoke marijuana, because they wouldn't smoke marijuana. Or the people who think you should go to hell, or at least that they certainly shouldn't associate with you and treat you with respect, because their religion is not your religion. Or the people who think that all adults should have porn banned/censored for them because they themselves do not wish to see pornography. Or the people who think that anything which offends them is inherently evil and must be stopped at all costs, rather than viewing that as the way they have chosen to react to something that is otherwise harmless.
I like the term Bill Hicks used, which was "fevered egos". Just be glad that when people like this make new laws, they have largely overlooked the realm of software development.
We haven't had a supernova that was visible to the naked eye in Earth's night-time sky in quite a long time
1987 wasn't very long ago.
SN 1987A was a supernova in the outskirts of the Tarantula Nebula in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a nearby dwarf galaxy. It occurred approximately 51.4 kiloparsecs from Earth,[1] close enough that it was visible to the naked eye. It could be seen from the Southern Hemisphere. It was the closest observed supernova since SN 1604, which occurred in the Milky Way itself. The light from the supernova reached Earth on February 23, 1987. As the first supernova discovered in 1987, it was labeled "1987A". Its brightness peaked in May with an apparent magnitude of about 3 and slowly declined in the following months. It was the first opportunity for modern astronomers to see a supernova up close.
[...]
Approximately three hours before the visible light from SN 1987A reached the Earth, a burst of neutrinos was observed at three separate neutrino observatories. This is due to the neutrino emission (which occurs simultaneously with core collapse) preceding the emission of visible light (which occurs only after the shock wave reaches the stellar surface). At 7:35am Universal time, Kamiokande II detected 11 antineutrinos, IMB 8 antineutrinos and Baksan 5 antineutrinos, in a burst lasting less than 13 seconds.
I really didn't know there was one that recent. The event I had in mind when I wrote the previous post was the 1604 supernova you mentioned. Thank you for setting me straight on that, and for answering the question of whether such events could significantly increase neutrino flux on Earth.
About the folks with CS degrees, the ability to tinker does not necessarily imply the willingness to do so. I am also more than capable of administering any Windows system or network of Windows systems, but those require a lot more maintainence, babysitting, and cause a lot more headaches than the Linux systems I run. Generally, Linux just works. Windows can just work too but you're going to put a lot more effort into making sure it stays that way.
I like to say it this way: on Linux, if something does break, it broke for a very good reason. I can find out what that reason is. It'll stay broken until I fix it. When I fix it, it will stay fixed. That has never been my experience on Windows.
Regarding Apple, they've done a much better job of designing a product for a non-technical audience who really do want something more like an appliance. I think designing a good GUI with a solid, proven Unix implementation under the hood has a lot to do with that.
You're not alone in knowing people who bought an OSX machine and went from not liking their computer to actually enjoying it. The folks I've talked to who said that were not technically inclined and mostly just wanted to read e-mail and browse the Web. For them, Windows has been too flimsy and too high-maintainence and generally a lot more trouble than they thought worthwhile.
A big part of that involved its numerous security issues, either directly or indirectly in the form of problems with A/V software and antispyware utilities and all the other anti-something-or-another scanners one must run on that platform to have a barely-acceptable level of security.
Windows is a very poor design for that crowd. It's getting better but it's not nearly there yet. It bears mentioning that I would be reluctant to recommend Linux for that crowd as well. The difference is that most Linux distributions do not target non-technical users and do not claim to be something one can use with no understanding. The closest thing to that is Ubuntu/Kubuntu and they don't claim to be some magical silver bullet. They just represent the progress that's been made towards reaching this audience.
I think if no single vendor ever reached anything remotely approaching 90% marketshare then the decisions of individual marketing departments would be irrelevant. Interoperability would also receive more emphasis as a goal, since no single vendor running the show means that going with any proprietary format/standard risks alienating a large number of potential customers.
Depends on the energy. (A more detailed energy slicing won't be necessary) Low energy neutrinos order of few KeV, come mostly from the sun. High energy neutrinos Above the few KeV threshold mostly comes from Cosmic rays hitting the atmosphere. As for cosmic neutrinos, well good luck with that! I work in a neutrino experiment (ANTARES) , and I wish that we can detect cosmic neutrinos with abundance, it's just that there isn't enough to influence anything.
What I meant were those caused by transient and relatively nearby events like supernovae or gamma-ray bursts -- things that haven't happened since we had detectors for neutrinos or even knew what neutrinos were. We haven't had a supernova that was visible to the naked eye in Earth's night-time sky in quite a long time, yet when an extremely energetic event like that does happen it may affect the cosmic neutrinos we receive.
Or maybe someone knows a reason why it couldn't possibly do that. My intented point was, once your realize that this set-in-stone constant isn't, it calls into question how steady, uninterrupted and unaltered the current conditions have been throughout geological periods of time. That does tend to raise questions about methods of dating based on nuclear decay, but as other posters have pointed out, the observed difference (as it stands now) would actually tend to make things a little older than we previously thought.
Luckily the detected difference is somewhere around .0001% so I don't think we'll be rewriting history even if their observation is confirmed. Such a small change really makes me wonder if they've actually done the statistical analysis on the results to make sure that they are significant. I'd bet that they will find some relatively run of the mill explanation the explain the changes; something like the detector's efficiency changing based on humidity or temperature. Although something like that would go a long way to explaining seasonal variations, it might be harder to explain the changes that were detected during solar storms/calms.
Of course, it would be more interesting if this is a real effect. After all, "That's strange" is much more exciting than "We were right".
The question is that if the difference is that small now, what guarantees do we have that it was always so small and insignificant in the past? Especially when you consider that the Sun is not the only source of neutrinos and radiation in the galaxy.
Whether Cheney was in office or not, that company would have seen the same benefits from the wars. Claiming that he steered benefits to them is a bit crazy as it has been pointed out time and time again that the infrastructure involved was already in place under different presidents including Clinton and Haliburton also carried the best bid once the bidding was opened.
You are being fooled by your own ignorance and will to remain under that spell.
The fact that multiple officials in high office had connections to this company prior to one of its executives becoming an official in high office only illustrates the revolving door that exists between well-connected large corporations and politicians. That doesn't contradict anything I've said. In fact it reinforces it.
This is exactly what Eisenhower warned us about when he talked about the advancement of the military-industrial complex. From this speech:
Our military organization today bears little relation to that known by any of my predecessors in peacetime, or indeed by the fighting men of World War II or Korea.
Until the latest of our world conflicts, the United States had no armaments industry. American makers of plowshares could, with time and as required, make swords as well. But now we can no longer risk emergency improvisation of national defense; we have been compelled to create a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions. Added to this, three and a half million men and women are directly engaged in the defense establishment. We annually spend on military security more than the net income of all United States corporations.
This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence -- economic, political, even spiritual -- is felt in every city, every State house, every office of the Federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society.
In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the militaryindustrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.
We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.
That speech was given in 1961. I'll leave it up to you to reconcile what I am talking about with the fact that a fairly sharp politician saw it happening and beginning to establish itself 49 years ago. Of course that won't be as easy as claiming that I'm "under [a] spell" but it will be far more worthwhile.
Wow, decades old news on the front page of slashdot
I ask this as someone who knows next to nothing about jet engines and nothing at all about the precise kind of airflow they require for their intake. Having said that ... how difficult would it be to design some kind of screen or grating to protect the intake vents of an engine so that birds could not get sucked into the engine and damage it? Once such a design is perfected it could become standard equipment and the cost would probably be negligible compared to what is already paid to design and manufacture a jet engine. We routinely try things much more ridiculous than this in the name of saving lives.
Is there some kind of insurmountable aerodynamic technical difficulty that prevents us from doing this?
That's why I'd like to see some product liability for Microsoft so long as they insist on selling Windows to the clueless on the basis of its "ease of use". Either accept liability for any damages caused by security vulnerabilities in Windows, or, start marketing Windows as software designed for experienced and knowledgable users and not recommended for beginners. Because as it stands now, Microsoft profits from selling to the clueless but Microsoft does not have to bear the cost of the problems they experience (or the costs of third parties who receive spam from their infected machines). That makes Microsoft little more than a sophisticated parasite.
Those people happen to be wrong. I'd say the unending problems they experience from trying to treat it like an appliance is pretty strong evidence that it is not, in fact, a mere appliance. It's really that simple.
Their refusal to catch on to this simple and self-evident fact is the only reason why there is any discussion at all about this. Otherwise people tend not to discuss obvious things like grass being green or the sky being blue...
People tend to be "just not fully aware" of anything that would imply they should put forth more effort or take on more responsibility. Examples include learning something about the tool you use on a daily basis or taking responsibility for whether it becomes a botnet zombie instead of viewing this as something that "just happens", as though it were normal and not out of order.
So there you have it, the two complementary sides to this equation. Microsoft promises "easy to use!" and "more secure than ever" with little to back that up with. Most of its customers are only too happy to believe this even when it isn't so believable because it absolves them of responsibility. It's a sort of feedback loop or self-sustaining cycle.
Why not? It works for politicians...
Marketing is based on deception and considers it an important tool. This is nothing new.
It's like when a toothpaste brand says "9 out of 10 dentists recommend it!". In reality they may have interviewed hundreds dentists in groups of ten, over and over again, until they finally found a group of ten out of which 9 preferred their brand. What they strongly imply but do not actually go so far as to claim is that their group of ten is a representative sample of all dentists. Because they do not actually make this positive claim, they escape any accusations of false advertising. Yet it's quite misleading.
It's the same deal with the box art. They do not actually print "this is an in-game screen shot" yet they count on creating that impression. The intent behind this is clear enough.
This should be called "The Misleading World of Marketing" that happens to use the Atari 2600 as an example of a much wider phenomenon. Like politics and public relations, marketing is a field that is very attractive to liars who can say anything with a straight face while performing just enough CYA to perpetuate their ability to do it. Maybe "How to Turn a Pathological Personality Disorder into Profit" would be a better title. I don't think the general public has enough appreciation for the fact that making demonstrably false factual statements is a very crude and inefficient way to deceive someone. The state of the art in those fields is far more advanced than that, relying instead on framing, subtle implication, emotional appeals, misleading use of statistics, selective presentation of information, etc.
If the a test were to be applied, it should rather be to votees, so they actually have notions of economy, science, history, etc. That would keep people like G.W. Bush out of the office.
I would like to believe that but it's unfortunately not true. Empirical observation can be used to test this.
People like that are not ignorant or stupid, though they may enjoy presenting themselves that way in order to be underestimated. They know exactly what they are doing and what effect it will have. The fact that most others don't understand this is what they are counting on. If you want to keep them out of power then it is the general population that needs to have understanding.
Consider this carefully: however stupid you may think G.W. Bush is, how do you reconcile that with the fact that few other presidents in our history have done so much to expand federal executive power in so short a time? He is not stupid at all. He only appears to be a stupid failure when you think that his goals and your goals are the same.
To perhaps over-simplify, there are two broad categories of evil. One is rooted in ignorance and doesn't really understand the damage it does or why it is wrong. It may even have good intentions. The other exists with the full knowledge of what it is doing and the misery it causes for others. In fact it counts on that in order to further its power, because a miserable and broken people are much, much easier to rule over.
On the federal level, just about all of our politicians come from that second category. No amount of education would fix it. The electorate on the other hand would be horrified if they truly, truly understood whom they were putting into power. That one can be fixed with education.
Three words for you: rule of law.
I am not (materially) wealthy by any standard of the word that you could name with a straight face. And I don't want to be "helped" by government. I want government to leave me alone so long as I do not use force or fraud to deprive anyone else of their civil rights (which I have no intention of ever doing). If you prefer a government that sees itself as existing in order to give you a helping hand, the term for that is Socialism. In that case there are a multitude of European nations where you would be happier, but that was not the intention of the USA's founders. The defense of the nation against foreign hostilities and the defense of civil liberties are the only purposes for the government of the USA, though you certainly wouldn't know that from taking a hard look at it today.
Do you really want illiterate people voting?
Yes. Poor people have just as much right to self-determination as anyone else. Especially in countries like India where a large number of people don't need to read or write to live their daily lives and presuming that not knowing something they don't necessarily need should disqualify them from having a valid opinion is the kind of elitism that rationalizes a dictatorship.
Actually if you study history you will find one consistent theme: the naive and uneducated who are very easily manipulated into a state of fear and then offered a relief from their fears that naturally includes the expansion of state power is what creates dictatorships. That's if you study history instead of proceeding from an emotional argument based on feeling sorry for poor people, which might make you feel noble but has no place in a discussion about dictatorships and how they work.
By your logic, the USA should have immediately become a dictatorship right after its foundation. That's because only white men who owned property (a very tiny segment of the population) were allowed to vote at that time. That was a small minority. Why didn't they make themselves into an elite that oppressed everyone else? Oh yeah, because they were an educated minority that was savvy and extremely difficult to deceive. Therefore they understood the principles of freedom and were not the sort of naive cowards who could be frightened into giving them up.
Your rhetoric sounds good on the surface but it does not withstand examination.
Actually voting is the domain of the states. You do not even have a Constitutional right to cast a ballot (one reason why i.e. convicted felons can be denied suffrage). This would be conducted at the state level.
The problem is that the manipulation you mention has become an established practice. It is corrupt and inexcusable but has been accepted as normal. There is a reason why my paragraph began with "if it were up to me". That's going to have different content than a paragraph beginning with "this is what I realistically expect will happen". I'm not sure why that needed to be pointed out, but there you go.
So you ask me, do I want the states to do that? Yes, yes I do.
There's one more serious oft-overlooked problem with DRM. For every copy of DRM'd software they sell they spend money every time somebody calls or emails with an activation problem. There's an on-going cost of maintaining servers and software to keep giving permission for installs. Basically, over time, their profits are getting eaten away by their own customer service. Sadly I think it'll take a couple of years before anybody realizes the problem with this. Heh.
They say that if many people protest by simply not buying games, or not buying games with DRM, that the companies will blame this loss on piracy and use it to further their agenda. There is some truth in that. You gave me the idea of a way to make this much harder to do.
Instead of protesting by not buying the games with DRM, just decide you're going to have a lot of difficulty and will need to call tech support. You're not so familiar with all this newfangled technology and you just want to play your game, after all. It's the kind of thing that might make them want to produce games that are as reliable and idiot-proof as possible. As DRM is extra complexity it would be contrary to that goal.
Do you really want illiterate people voting? What makes you believe they would be informed about the issues and candidates, especially when you consider that the literate have a huge advantage in this area and still remain so ignorant? If you agree that they are likely to be uninformed about those things, what makes you desire that people who are uninformed about their system of government and the issues of their time should vote?
If it were up to me you'd have to pass an incredibly tough civics test before being permitted to vote. You'd have to pass it each election during which you vote. Particularly emphasized would be what the Constitution does and does not say, the notion that the federal government has no powers at all (AT ALL!) except those granted to it by the Constitution, the difference between a republic and a democracy, the difference between interstate and intrastate affairs, the separation of powers, the correct role of the executive, legislative, and judicial branches and the checks/balances available to each. That would make for a good start.
The civics test would be limited to facts that are not in dispute. It would include the facts and just the facts but not the multitude of interpretations available for them. That part, the interpretation of how they should manifest and the specifics of their implementation, is what voting is supposed to decide.
If only 3% of the entire US adult population were able to pass this test, I really wouldn't care. It'd be sad that so few are actually qualified to understand how our system works before deciding who is fit to run it, but so be it. The remaining 97% retain the option of learning and may decide whether this is important to them. If 95% of the entire US adult population wanted to educate themselves about our system and passed this test, I'd be fine with that too. It'd be a drastic improvement, an eradication of ignorance and would likely transform the media away from deciding elections by 5-second sound bites and emotional rhetoric and towards rational justifications for proposed policies. But in either case, the test must be both very tough and comprehensive.
When it comes to voting, quantity in and of itself is undesirable. What you need is quality. If you can have both, that's wonderful. If you must choose, quantity is expendable.
I suspect the reason for this is that Google wants to have an enforceable contract with developers. This was the quick and easy way to do it.
I am not a lawyer so this is a genuine question. Does money need to change hands in order to meet the "consideration" requirement of a contract?
If no money changes hands and the contract consists of "you write extensions" and "we provide visibility for them", is it then invalid and unenforcable?
I mean, by common standards a corporate lawyer of the largest software patents client who becomes head of the USPTO, that simply smells corruption.
In the United States no one seems to care.
The patent system is anti-free trade, it should be abolished altogether, it is merely about useless bureaucracy.
They can't care about this. So few cared about a corporate executive from the world's second-largest oilfields services corporation becoming the USA's vice president, only to have this company benefit extensively from government contracts due to a war prosecuted by the same administration. Cheney giving a few "favors" to the company with which he was so thoroughly involved would be cronyism, a form of corruption. I'd say vice president is a higher office than head of USPTO. If they don't care much about corruption there, then they won't be worried about the USPTO.