Sounds dangerous to me. While I can imagine the Bush government being corrupt or stupid enough to go along with this, there is still the possibility that it will lead to a landslide in public opinion towards an anti-corporation party. Which might result in a more or less communist government.
hrmm... that already happened in Cuba.
That is part of the reason, perhaps all of the reason, Bush (and every American government in the last 40 years) has had such a hard on for crushing Castro. Any success in Cuba might inspire other latin american populations to revolt against their corporate controlled governments.
There is nothing close to a backlash against corporations in the united states. People are far to busy hating the government to notice the government is only doing what corporations pay it to do.
I disagree that any anti-corporate party is necessarily communist.
The Corporation is not the natural evolution of capitalism. There is NOTHING in capitalism which mandates "limited liability".
You can have a free market with full liability.
Taking responsibility for your actions is not "communist". It would make capitalism a morally viable economic system.
If you try to explain limited liability to any child I suspect they will think you are fibbing. It sounds like a scam. And it is just as much of a scam as it sounds.
There is nothing wrong with groups of people working together to achieve a common goal. But they are all jointly responsible for the outcome. Allowing corporations to evade liability for their screw ups simply is another form of public subsidy. Ultimately someone has to pay when corporations screw up. And that someone (thanks to limited liability) is not the shareholders. It is the PUBLIC (or other innocent bystanders.. i.e. creditors)
In exchange for limited liability, you would think that corporations would perhaps have to pay exhoribitant tax rates... but you would be wrong.
Corporations should follow the rules of capitalism and succeed or die trying. But in fact the PUBLIC will often step in to save a corporation rather than let it die.
Does the public then OWN a fair share of that corporation? (no. It is considered to be immoral for the public to own anything which makes profit because that would be COMMUNISM).
I suggest people read the book: The Soul of Capitalism by William Greider.
You can also find an article by the same author published online here.
How are we supposed to pay for this with the dollar at an all time low against the Euro? How are we supposed to pay for this and have the tax cuts made permanent? How are we supposed to pay for this and reduce the deficit (at an all time high off of a budget surplus just five years ago)? How are we supposed to pay for this and the new stealth spy satellite program that is currently under congressional review?
I dont think there is any intention to pay for any of this (at least no intention to pay it off). The idea is that the States should become bankrupt. This would make it easier for global corporations to more directly run the country (world) without needing to answer to democratic institutions.
If you think that the public has to much power, then how better to put the unwashed masses under control than by bankrupting the only institution which must (at least partially by way of elections) answer to it.
When the government spends billions of dollars on this or that defense project, (it doesn't matter which one) who do you think gets most of the money? (answer: privately owned global corporate conglomerates).
Sure it creates a few "temporary" jobs. Just as any government spending project creates jobs. But it creates a lots of profit.
It doesn't matter if missile defense works, as long as it costs a lot of public money.
Not only should taxpayers expect to pay more (not less) taxes during war, but corporations should be compelled to contribute to the war effort by providing services and goods(for the war effort) AT COST. no profit (from those war based earnings). This is morally equivalant to the draft (except that morally corporations do not have rights, whereas the soldiers we compell to fight do)
War should not be a profit making exercise, and if this makes investers shy of going to war, perhaps it would be for the best. War should be waged because it is morally necessary. Not for profit.
The statement "until you're sued and a judge makes up his mind about what is the idea and expression (at stake), no one knows" applies equally well to patent law.
Just because a patent is granted it doesn't mean the patent will hold up in court.
It still comes down to a judges interpretation.
How exactly he thinks a system where patents are granted essentially on an ex parte basis by a patent office which lacks the technical and scientific knowledge to identify truly novel and non-trivial inventions constitutes DUE PROCESS is beyond me.
Even worse... patent monopolies prohibit items which were NEVER copied, but are genuine inventions. (unfortunately for them, but without any moral blaimworthyness, invented independantly and patented by another).
Under patent law, you can invent something completely indepentantly and still be liable for patent infringement. The fact that you invented it yourself and independantly is irrelevant.
At least with copyright, if you create something novel yourself it is almost statistically impossible that it will be exactly the same as someone elses copywritten material (or so materially similar as to be considered a copy).
Patent law seems to put a burden on inventers to waste their time doing patent searches instead of being creative and inventing things (lest they accidentally make a duplicate invention).
Engineering is in even worse shape, and in many ways resembles some of the worst examples of government research gone amuck. Big budgets and not much to show for it.
When private research runs amuck, it is a tax right-off and the public pays the price. When private research does well, the public grants a monopoly by way of patent protection and the public yet again pays the price. (and it is still a tax right off).
Government budgets are out of control, not because of spending on public research, but because corporate welfare is our new international priority. We can't transfer public money into corporate hands fast enough.
I will agree with you about the centralization of power issues as well. If it turns out that something like a powercell can generate a lifetime supply of power for a home without the need of overhead powerlines, it would destroy a balance of political power that has huge amounts of money and no real reason to allow it to occur...even if it meant a substantially better life for ordinary citizens.
It would certainly threaten the economic stranglehold the privately owned (and government subsidized) oil companies have on the population.
actually it probably wouldn't as long as we made corporate welfare out #1 priority, we would quickly pass laws to insure that you have to keep paying (a private concern) for the right to use your powercell even after you bought it.
Of course, the notion that such devices could be owned by the public for the good of humanity is absurd.
Democratic governments do not need to use coercion against its own citizens to stay in power. A lifetime powercell is no threat to democracy.
It is only a threat to private corporate energy producers.
All innovation is a threat to the established multi-national corporate entities. It is naive to think Big Business is going to invent something which will lift humanity out of gutter the we now condemn 3 quarters of the world population to live.
Such an invention if it could ever come, could only come from public research.
"I think he meant that it's easier for a smaller nation to keep up with its education program, which is true. Things start to break down in larger systems."
Well, that doesn't sound anything like what he said.
But in any event, you are stating conventional wisdom (which being conventional wisdom is no more likely to be correct than a guess). It would be interesting to look at the results of this test and determine what exactly the correlation was between population and educational results.
Fortunately it is very easy to do. The populations of all participating countries is known.
It is interesting to note that Japan scored 7th overall, and yet Japan has about 125 million people. A larger population than most of the countries participating.
Canada scored 3rd overall, and Canada with over 30 million people, also has a larger population than many of the countries on the table. (aproximately 1/2 of them).
It is bizzare to believe that on a day-to-day basis, an individual student learns less MATH in the United States simply because the USA is a large country.
It is much easier to think this is because the USA on the whole, does not value intellect as a virtue. In the USA, "faith" seems to be more highly esteemed than intellect. And the actual study of proving things with numbers borders on blasphemy.
Far better to spend your time memorizing harmless trivia such a sports statistics.
"A country with a lot fewer people is a lot more likely to have a better percentage of children that excel in math, etc. That's pretty simple logic."
I hope that was a joke.
By that pretty simple "logic" such a country would also be expected to be a lot more likely of have a higher percentage of women than the United States.
Not to mention a higher percentage of left handed people.
Presumably a higher percentage of its population would also reside in prison. And everyone knows, the USA is #1 in incarceration.
You "pretty simple logic" does have the at least 1 virtue: It is simple.
You say you were studying languages? Imagine practicing your language of choice with a fluent artificial intelligence who is standing right in front of you.
that presumes the invention of a fluent artificial intelligence. And if there were a fluent artificial intelligence, why would it want to waste its time teaching some clueless mortal how to speak latin.
You do realize that it is perfectly legal and ethical to refuse to do business with anyoen under 5' tall, don't you? Last I checked, "people with slightly below-average height" is not a protected class. And even then it varies by industry.
It may be perfectly legal. It is NOT perfectly ethical.
At least when a democratically elected government which recognizes the principles of the supremacy of law tells us what to do, it can only tell us what to do according to law, and such laws would apply to everyone and not merely specifically one person or one website.
When a private corporations tell us what to do, we cant vote on the matter (and never could vote), and the only principle they recognize is the supremacy of profit, growth and increased market share. Corporations do not even pay lip service to due process or justice (which are just marketing buzzwords to exploit when it is advantageous to do so).
Those of us who fear big Brother, should keep a wary eye on our (ermm.. we even call them "citizens" now? ) "corporate citizens".
In this case Big Pond made a unilateral decision that a corporate error in a print ad justifies "changing reality" to fit the advertisement.
What difference does it make that the URL belonged to a gay porn web site? Should BigPond have the authority to use redirection in the event the error simply promotes a competetors lawful web page?
Why didn't other ISP's step in and do the redirection?
If *you* make a mistake and accidentally advertise the wrong website, will BigPond step up to the plate and redirect traffic from the other web site to your own page?
BigPond should be charged with criminal fraud.
The purpose of this redirection was not to protect heterosexual children. It was to insure that people would be able to find the Australian Idol web site, notwithstanding that the advertisement was misprinted.
there is nothing wrong with modifying a contract prior to signing it.
I was executor for an estate and signed a life insurance benefits claim by crossing out virtually the entire thing before signing it and mailing it back. The only things I left on it were my name, address, the fact that the deceased person did not smoke and that I was telling the truth and gave the insurance company permission to keep whatever information they had. (which would be their right to do anyway, but it was necessary to leave the paragraph gramatically correct after I crossed out most of the rest of it). The insurance company first sent a letter saying they were directing the claim to their legal department. 3 days letter they sent the cheque without comment. It was for 6 figures.
The original agreement they wanted me to sign gave them permission to do obtain medical information as well as any other information on the deceased person from any institution or any person, and required me to provide the names of every doctor the deceased had ever visited in 10 years prior to death, as well as every hospital they were ever treated at.
I felt that if they wanted to do background checks they should get permission from the buyer of the life insurance at the time of purchase and not retroactively.
Unfortunately the buyer of the life insurance policy is now deceased. They should have thought about that before agreeing to insure that persons life.
It was the "any other information" clause which really pissed me off and convinced me not to cooperate in any way beyond what is minimally required to allow them to make payment.
You can send them the game and they will refund the purchase price.
Once you have notified them that they are breeching the original sales agreement at a minimum they can refund the purchase price, pay you damages for wasting your time, and come and retrieve their product at their own expense within a reasonable period of time (probably 10 days) or else you are in your rights to simply throw the product in the garbage and still get your money back.
Alternatively you can also file a civil suit for misleading advertising and sue for actual and punitive damages. And just once I wish someone would.
This notion that a software developer can sell you something and retain a residual right to change the terms of the agreement merely by offering you your money back is not supported in law.
This type of activity is generally called extortion.
You could even take the retailer to court as they are a party to the crime. The court merely needs to find that the retailer knew (or ought to have known) that the packaging was misleading and then the retailer is liable because the retailer knowingly displayed the misleading advertising.
In that case the obvious thing to do is distribute source only, or alternatively when someone clicks to download the binary create the tagged source then compile and send both the binary and the source.
This procedure would satisfy the GPL.
This assumes that tagging code would be considered different from the build source for the purposes of complying with the GPL. I honestly don't know the law enough to say, for all I know it (or a court ruling) says something like comments or other code that in no way changes the functionality do/don't apply.
If you copy and distribute another persons copywritten material, regardless of whether or not you change it, you must have permission to do so. In order to recieve permission based on the GPL, you must follow certain procedures, which is that if you distribute a binary, you must distribute the "complete corresponding" source code.
The requirement is not "corresponding or functionaly equivalent source code" it is "complete corresponding" source code.
from the GPL:
3. You may copy and distribute the Program (or a work based on it, under Section 2) in object code or executable form under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above provided that you also do one of the following:
a) Accompany it with the complete corresponding machine-readable source code, which must be distributed under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above on a medium customarily used for software interchange; or,
b) Accompany it with a written offer, valid for at least three years, to give any third party, for a charge no more than your cost of physically performing source distribution, a complete machine-readable copy of the corresponding source code, to be distributed under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above on a medium customarily used for software interchange; or,
c) Accompany it with the information you received as to the offer to distribute corresponding source code. (This alternative is allowed only for noncommercial distribution and only if you received the program in object code or executable form with such an offer, in accord with Subsection b above.)
----- end quote
The only possible source of contention is the definition of "complete corresponding".
Since a binary can be used in many different ways, and some of thos ways may be dependant on the exact value of such "TAGS". It is easily shown that in general modification in a so called "TAG" renders the binary to be functionally not-equivalent (and thus not corresponding by any definition of the word).
But at a minimum it would be easy to convince a judge that "complete" means "complete" and if the source code is lacking in the actual tags used to compile that binary, then the source code is incomplete and therefore not "complete corresponding".
" Where do you get "flavours" out of this concept?
The working code is 100% identical. All that's different is unused strings used for tracking the code. Nobody blinks an eye with
static const char rcsid[] = "$Id$";
and this is nothing more than a variant that tracks who the code was distributed to. Unless they have a clue and strip out the strings. "
There is no concept in copyright law which differentiates so called "working code" from "non-working code". And there is no mention in the GPL of free usage of such so called "non-working code".
Even preceding the above line of code with// would not give you the right to distribute.
You have no right to modify someone elses copyrighted material and then distribute modified copies or works derived from someone elses copyrighted material. Even if your modifications are tiny or "non-working". You dont even have the right to modify the COMMENTS in copywritten source code (and then distribute it, or binaries of it) without permission.
Arguing with me isn't going to change that.
Copyright law is what prohibits you from freely making such changes. Don't blaim the GPL. It didn't take away any rights you did not already lack.
I disagree. The original question was "Does that violate the GPL?"
And my answer was. "If you do what you seem to be implying then Yes, it would."
I think that is pretty direct.
Now your claim is that:
"The question is, would doing so be considered source code control."
My response: No that was not the question. The only reference to source code control in the original post were the statements:
"which I might claim is a source control code but which is really a hidden serial number that ties the source to a particular CD. Compiling the code gives you a slightly different, but functionally identical, binary. But it also gives me a mechanism to test for my code in your commercial products. (So it really is a "source control code"!) Does that violate the GPL?"
To which I answered. Yes it would.
It doesn't matter if what you are doing is "source code control". If it involves distributing or publishing a derivative binary (or the original binary itself), you must include the corresponding source code. Not a variant of it. The GPL makes no special exemptions for "source code control" or any other excuse for distributing a binary and refusing to distribute the corresponding source. It does not allow it.
If you want to distribute source code ID tags or whatever with your product and those TAGS are derived from the original code in any way (say by MD5SUM or other means) then you must license the tags themselves as GPL work or else not distribute the original work.
In any event, the GPL does not license you to make special flavours of binaries and only release the vanilla source code. It makes no difference if the special flavours taste the same as authentic vanilla. You must make the source code of the special flavours available and you must license the corresponding source code to the recipient under the GPL.
If you do what you seem to be implying then Yes, it would.
You must make the source code available essentially by the same means as you made the binary available. So if you only distributed the binary on CD, you dont need to make source code available online. But if your binary is online, then you must make the source available online by essentially the same means.
You must also distribute and licence via the GPL the actual code used, not merely a functionally equivalent piece of code.
Whatever you distributed, you are obligated to make the souce code for THAT particular derivative version of the original GPL program available and licencable via GPL. You can't offer a substitute version no matter what your intention is.
If dont make available the actual source code used for that particular binary, no matter how similar, then you had no licence to distributed the binary and you infringed on the original author's copyrights.
In the event that a foreign country invades Canada, I now support allowing them to proceed and fire bombing the entire U.S./Canadian border (from the line to 50km north) and mining the whole damned thing.
Your government only answers to its corporate overlords and not the people. Hence, no one cares what you support.
"you also do not spend on national defense because the US protects you."
Canada has never requested the United States to "protect" it. Canada simply has no designs on world domination or interfering with global markets with threats of violence. The USA has military might which far exceeds the needs of defense alone. The US military is offensive. In fact the US military expenditure exceeds the next 3 biggest spenders combined.
The US would not need to spend so much money on military if it wasn't so determined to artificially depress the cost of OIL and interfere with world economies.
The United States is not "defending" Canada out of altruism. The USA is defending Canada in the same way it defends Saudi Arabia and Iraq. To defend the oil. Which Americans buys from canadian based (corporations) in order to fuel the huge SUV's you have been tricked into believing you must all drive.
Fortunately the "people" of Canada had enough sense to put some taxation on oil rather than simply allow corporations to steal it for free. This is probably more to the Crown's credit rather than the people of Canada, as traditionally the "Crown" reserves all mineral rights.
If military expenditure is a great way to transfer public weath into private corporate hands.... well that serves american corporate interests as well.
"America" is doing very well. It is only the american people who are feeling the pinch.
"you dont have any borders to patrol."
Were you expecting to be attacked by Mexico? You already mentioned that Canada has no military.
"you have a relatively small population and most of your country in uninhabited or frozen over..."
You make being frozen over and uninhabited sound like an advantage.
Anyone find it extremely ironic that groups of people who really hate Bush chastise Bush about the US losing manufacturing and blue collar jobs - and in fact whole companies - overseas, and that other groups of people who really hate Bush (sometimes the same groups, in fact) chastise Bush for not signing onto Kyoto, when those two positions in this context are essentially diametrically opposed?
They are not diametrically opposed positions. They are ultimately the same position. Anti-free trade.
If there were no free trade then companies would not be able to move overseas. The PEOPLE would be able to impose environmental protection laws.
(we have no free migration. why have free trade?)
Putting all the blaim on Bush however is naive. Both the Democrats and Republicans are to blaim for selling out the "people" in favour of private corporate interests.
All Bush has done is taken the gloves off and made it blatantly obvious. Corporate values are the only thing which are important in American politics. (oh and making sure the public is focused either on non-economic issues (which corporations could care less about) such as gay marriage or abortion, or focused on profit making issues such as the war on drugs.
Note to the US Kyoto activists: you can't have your cake and eat it, too. Either we lose jobs and US companies to places like China, or we sign on to Kyoto. Yes, there's a lot of nuance, but I'm afraid that it's that simple.
Who exactly is going to pay for cleaning up the atmosphere after corporations destroy it? Corporations?
Not likely! It is the poor and the middle class who will foot the bill. Not just Americans however. We have a global economy now. And the poor and middle class accross the planet are the ones who will be paying to correct the atmosphere, as the powerful elite minority continue to enjoy seemingly ever increasing profits.
Why bother upgrading a factory by 2012, when you are planning on closing it (taking your loss as a tax deduction) and moving production to malaysia anyway?
Kyoto didn't outsource americans their jobs. That was free trade.
You are right about 1 thing.
You *can't* have your cake and eat it to. Either you are living in a democracy or you are nothing more than disposable labour for private corporate interests. So which is it?
BTW: The american government has just decided to put each and every single american another $2k+ in debt. hooray for corporate tax relief.
Who does the american government work for?
That's a trick question.
The american government has no power to work anymore because it is owned by private corporate interests and the people are too scared of losing their jobs to exercise democracy.
Unless the people do something about it, the sole remaining task of the American government is to facilitate the efficient explotation of the labour pool and natural resources. And in case you don't know what that means, it means: provide the minimum possible education to enable people to labour without aspiring to anything higher, and assisting corporations to pay the minimum possible wages and exploit every last square inch of the natural environment as fast as technologically possible for the benefit of the 2% minority who own 80% of the earth.
The real purpose in applying for such an offensive patent is to provide ammunition for the American pro-corporate lobby to justify sanctions against the EU, or other socialist states, and to justify violating WTO rulings when they go against American (corporate) interests, on the basis that the international community conspires to unfairly exploit American intellectual property, such as the IsNot operation, which allows software developers to differentiate pointers which prior to the invention of IsNot would be unusable in software.
By virtue of the fact that this "exploitation" is condoned by states who fail to recognize the "benefit" to the global community, (meaning corporate conglomerates), of such software patents, which although lacking in invention or innovation were properly filed, it constitutes an unfair subsidy and unjust socialization of private property.
American corporate interests need a scapegoat to blaim the current downwards trend on the standard of living, education and healthcare as well as increase in poverty in order to deflect the criticism that it is American corporate interests themselves who are at fault. Filing for a patent which ought not be granted simply creates propaganda fuel.
When the patent office can say that thousands of patents are rejected each year, it would appear that the patent system is working, as the corporate community would have the electorate believe, when in fact the patent system is NOT working because it rewards monopolies, not for the purpose of encouraging the speed at which new ideas enter the public domain, which is its stated objective, but simply for the purpose of protecting the current established corporate conglomerates and encouraging corporate profit.
Whether or not this patent is ever granted or holds up in court, it has served its purpose.
Rearrange the above words to make a well-known logical fallacy."
"Privacy" is a fundamental human right. So is "life" and "security of person".
If you (or someone else) take the position that your "right to privacy" is waived the moment you are on property which is owned by someone else then it is completely legitimate for me to ask "Then why not the right to life or the right to own lunch?"
You seem to be implying that the right to privacy is a derivative right and not a fundamental human right.
That is my whole point.
i.e. that the right to privacy is as fundamental as the right to life.
You're in public. You have no right to privacy in terms of where you are, who you are, etc while your at skule.
Can you please define "PUBLIC". Because your argument is circular. You are in PUBLIC whenever you are not in private. And (by your definition) the right to privacy seems to only exist when you are in private. But if you are in private then you are alone and the right to privacy is irrelevant because when you are alone you *already have privacy* regardless of whether it is a right or not a right. So it seems to me that your position is that the right to privacy actually does not exist. It is waived whenever anyone can view or monitor us.
Sure you still have a right to keep things like your medical records, things at home, etc private.
Why do you relinquish the right to privacy in regards to your identity but preserve your right to privacy in regards to medical records?
Is that simply because your medical records are inconvenient to access? What if you are carrying your medical records with you?
Why would you have a right to privacy in regards to "things at home" but not "things on your person".
What if you do not "own" your home.
All the RFID tag should have is an encrypted student number which fed back to a server [which holds the AES key for instance] can then decrypt and compare.
Anyone who reads the RFID tag otherwise won't get your student number or name.
If I can track your whereabouts constantly. I hardly need your name to cause you serious harm.
The phrase "We know where you are and we know where you live" sounds so threatening because it *is* threatening. Whenever I collect information about you without your consent I am gaining power over you. And you (and I) have a right not to be subjected to that form of oppression without consent.
When you are compelled to carry an RFID you would not even know when you are being tracked or by who. When did you suddenly lose your rights in regards to these things?
I'd say a school staffer has a right to know who you are for shear safety reasons.
If they are so concerned, they can simply ASK you. The low probability of RFID's actually saving anyone needs to be balanced against the harm done by the violation of the rights of all students who BELONG in the school.
History has demonstrated that students are in most danger from one another or themselves. This is purely anecdotal, but far more of my childhood friends hurt or even killed themselves doing stupid things, than were ever harmed by the lack of an RFID.
How many children are killed each year in accidents. Absolutely nothing an RFID can do. However, if you really want to do something helpful, for about the same price, forcing kids to wear HELMETS while in public is more likely to do good than forcing them to wear RFIDs.
It is naive to presume that just because you have a valid RFID that you are "SAFE".
RFID manufacturers have great marketing departments to think up all the wonderful things that this type of invasive technology will do.
What it will mostly do, is teach children that being under constant surveilance is normal.
Slashdot Mirror
Sounds dangerous to me. While I can imagine the Bush government being corrupt or stupid enough to go along with this, there is still the possibility that it will lead to a landslide in public opinion towards an anti-corporation party. Which might result in a more or less communist government.
hrmm... that already happened in Cuba.
That is part of the reason, perhaps all of the reason, Bush (and every American government in the last 40 years) has had such a hard on for crushing Castro. Any success in Cuba might inspire other latin american populations to revolt against their corporate controlled governments.
There is nothing close to a backlash against corporations in the united states. People are far to busy hating the government to notice the government is only doing what corporations pay it to do.
I disagree that any anti-corporate party is necessarily communist.
The Corporation is not the natural evolution of capitalism. There is NOTHING in capitalism which mandates "limited liability".
You can have a free market with full liability.
Taking responsibility for your actions is not "communist". It would make capitalism a morally viable economic system.
If you try to explain limited liability to any child I suspect they will think you are fibbing. It sounds like a scam. And it is just as much of a scam as it sounds.
There is nothing wrong with groups of people working together to achieve a common goal. But they are all jointly responsible for the outcome. Allowing corporations to evade liability for their screw ups simply is another form of public subsidy. Ultimately someone has to pay when corporations screw up. And that someone (thanks to limited liability) is not the shareholders. It is the PUBLIC (or other innocent bystanders.. i.e. creditors)
In exchange for limited liability, you would think that corporations would perhaps have to pay exhoribitant tax rates... but you would be wrong.
Corporations should follow the rules of capitalism and succeed or die trying. But in fact the PUBLIC will often step in to save a corporation rather than let it die.
Does the public then OWN a fair share of that corporation? (no. It is considered to be immoral for the public to own anything which makes profit because that would be COMMUNISM).
I suggest people read the book: The Soul of Capitalism by William Greider.
You can also find an article by the same author published online here.
thanks.
How are we supposed to pay for this with the dollar at an all time low against the Euro? How are we supposed to pay for this and have the tax cuts made permanent? How are we supposed to pay for this and reduce the deficit (at an all time high off of a budget surplus just five years ago)? How are we supposed to pay for this and the new stealth spy satellite program that is currently under congressional review?
I dont think there is any intention to pay for any of this (at least no intention to pay it off). The idea is that the States should become bankrupt. This would make it easier for global corporations to more directly run the country (world) without needing to answer to democratic institutions.
If you think that the public has to much power, then how better to put the unwashed masses under control than by bankrupting the only institution which must (at least partially by way of elections) answer to it.
When the government spends billions of dollars on this or that defense project, (it doesn't matter which one) who do you think gets most of the money? (answer: privately owned global corporate conglomerates).
Sure it creates a few "temporary" jobs. Just as any government spending project creates jobs. But it creates a lots of profit.
It doesn't matter if missile defense works, as long as it costs a lot of public money.
Not only should taxpayers expect to pay more (not less) taxes during war, but corporations should be compelled to contribute to the war effort by providing services and goods(for the war effort) AT COST. no profit (from those war based earnings). This is morally equivalant to the draft (except that morally corporations do not have rights, whereas the soldiers we compell to fight do)
War should not be a profit making exercise, and if this makes investers shy of going to war, perhaps it would be for the best. War should be waged because it is morally necessary. Not for profit.
The statement "until you're sued and a judge makes up his mind about what is the idea and expression (at stake), no one knows" applies equally well to patent law.
Just because a patent is granted it doesn't mean the patent will hold up in court.
It still comes down to a judges interpretation.
How exactly he thinks a system where patents are granted essentially on an ex parte basis by a patent office which lacks the technical and scientific knowledge to identify truly novel and non-trivial inventions constitutes DUE PROCESS is beyond me.
Even worse... patent monopolies prohibit items which were NEVER copied, but are genuine inventions. (unfortunately for them, but without any moral blaimworthyness, invented independantly and patented by another).
Under patent law, you can invent something completely indepentantly and still be liable for patent infringement. The fact that you invented it yourself and independantly is irrelevant.
At least with copyright, if you create something novel yourself it is almost statistically impossible that it will be exactly the same as someone elses copywritten material (or so materially similar as to be considered a copy).
Patent law seems to put a burden on inventers to waste their time doing patent searches instead of being creative and inventing things (lest they accidentally make a duplicate invention).
Engineering is in even worse shape, and in many ways resembles some of the worst examples of government research gone amuck. Big budgets and not much to show for it.
When private research runs amuck, it is a tax right-off and the public pays the price. When private research does well, the public grants a monopoly by way of patent protection and the public yet again pays the price. (and it is still a tax right off).
Government budgets are out of control, not because of spending on public research, but because corporate welfare is our new international priority. We can't transfer public money into corporate hands fast enough.
I will agree with you about the centralization of power issues as well. If it turns out that something like a powercell can generate a lifetime supply of power for a home without the need of overhead powerlines, it would destroy a balance of political power that has huge amounts of money and no real reason to allow it to occur...even if it meant a substantially better life for ordinary citizens.
It would certainly threaten the economic stranglehold the privately owned (and government subsidized) oil companies have on the population.
actually it probably wouldn't as long as we made corporate welfare out #1 priority, we would quickly pass laws to insure that you have to keep paying (a private concern) for the right to use your powercell even after you bought it.
Of course, the notion that such devices could be owned by the public for the good of humanity is absurd.
Democratic governments do not need to use coercion against its own citizens to stay in power. A lifetime powercell is no threat to democracy.
It is only a threat to private corporate energy producers.
All innovation is a threat to the established multi-national corporate entities. It is naive to think Big Business is going to invent something which will lift humanity out of gutter the we now condemn 3 quarters of the world population to live.
Such an invention if it could ever come, could only come from public research.
"I think he meant that it's easier for a smaller nation to keep up with its education program, which is true. Things start to break down in larger systems."
Well, that doesn't sound anything like what he said.
But in any event, you are stating conventional wisdom (which being conventional wisdom is no more likely to be correct than a guess). It would be interesting to look at the results of this test and determine what exactly the correlation was between population and educational results.
Fortunately it is very easy to do. The populations of all participating countries is known.
It is interesting to note that Japan scored 7th overall, and yet Japan has about 125 million people. A larger population than most of the countries participating.
Canada scored 3rd overall, and Canada with over 30 million people, also has a larger population than many of the countries on the table. (aproximately 1/2 of them).
It is bizzare to believe that on a day-to-day basis, an individual student learns less MATH in the United States simply because the USA is a large country.
It is much easier to think this is because the USA on the whole, does not value intellect as a virtue. In the USA, "faith" seems to be more highly esteemed than intellect. And the actual study of proving things with numbers borders on blasphemy.
Far better to spend your time memorizing harmless trivia such a sports statistics.
"A country with a lot fewer people is a lot more likely to have a better percentage of children that excel in math, etc. That's pretty simple logic."
I hope that was a joke.
By that pretty simple "logic" such a country would also be expected to be a lot more likely of have a higher percentage of women than the United States.
Not to mention a higher percentage of left handed people.
Presumably a higher percentage of its population would also reside in prison. And everyone knows, the USA is #1 in incarceration.
You "pretty simple logic" does have the at least 1 virtue: It is simple.
"How many careers actually use higher-end math at work? Even in programming for biz apps, one does not use much algebra, and zero Calculus."
If you ever wondered why applications are so often slow, buggy and incorrect, you have just found your answer.
You say you were studying languages? Imagine practicing your language of choice with a fluent artificial intelligence who is standing right in front of you.
that presumes the invention of a fluent artificial intelligence. And if there were a fluent artificial intelligence, why would it want to waste its time teaching some clueless mortal how to speak latin.
You do realize that it is perfectly legal and ethical to refuse to do business with anyoen under 5' tall, don't you? Last I checked, "people with slightly below-average height" is not a protected class. And even then it varies by industry.
It may be perfectly legal. It is NOT perfectly ethical.
"It only LOOKS digital"
It *is* digital. Digital means it displays DIGITS as in 1, 2, 3, 4.
"Digital" does not equal "electronic".
At least when a democratically elected government which recognizes the principles of the supremacy of law tells us what to do, it can only tell us what to do according to law, and such laws would apply to everyone and not merely specifically one person or one website.
When a private corporations tell us what to do, we cant vote on the matter (and never could vote), and the only principle they recognize is the supremacy of profit, growth and increased market share. Corporations do not even pay lip service to due process or justice (which are just marketing buzzwords to exploit when it is advantageous to do so).
Those of us who fear big Brother, should keep a wary eye on our (ermm.. we even call them "citizens" now? ) "corporate citizens".
In this case Big Pond made a unilateral decision that a corporate error in a print ad justifies "changing reality" to fit the advertisement.
What difference does it make that the URL belonged to a gay porn web site? Should BigPond have the authority to use redirection in the event the error simply promotes a competetors lawful web page?
Why didn't other ISP's step in and do the redirection?
If *you* make a mistake and accidentally advertise the wrong website, will BigPond step up to the plate and redirect traffic from the other web site to your own page?
BigPond should be charged with criminal fraud.
The purpose of this redirection was not to protect heterosexual children. It was to insure that people would be able to find the Australian Idol web site, notwithstanding that the advertisement was misprinted.
there is nothing wrong with modifying a contract prior to signing it.
I was executor for an estate and signed a life insurance benefits claim by crossing out virtually the entire thing before signing it and mailing it back. The only things I left on it were my name, address, the fact that the deceased person did not smoke and that I was telling the truth and gave the insurance company permission to keep whatever information they had. (which would be their right to do anyway, but it was necessary to leave the paragraph gramatically correct after I crossed out most of the rest of it). The insurance company first sent a letter saying they were directing the claim to their legal department. 3 days letter they sent the cheque without comment. It was for 6 figures.
The original agreement they wanted me to sign gave them permission to do obtain medical information as well as any other information on the deceased person from any institution or any person, and required me to provide the names of every doctor the deceased had ever visited in 10 years prior to death, as well as every hospital they were ever treated at.
I felt that if they wanted to do background checks they should get permission from the buyer of the life insurance at the time of purchase and not retroactively.
Unfortunately the buyer of the life insurance policy is now deceased. They should have thought about that before agreeing to insure that persons life.
It was the "any other information" clause which really pissed me off and convinced me not to cooperate in any way beyond what is minimally required to allow them to make payment.
You can send them the game and they will refund the purchase price.
Once you have notified them that they are breeching the original sales agreement at a minimum they can refund the purchase price, pay you damages for wasting your time, and come and retrieve their product at their own expense within a reasonable period of time (probably 10 days) or else you are in your rights to simply throw the product in the garbage and still get your money back.
Alternatively you can also file a civil suit for misleading advertising and sue for actual and punitive damages. And just once I wish someone would.
This notion that a software developer can sell you something and retain a residual right to change the terms of the agreement merely by offering you your money back is not supported in law.
This type of activity is generally called extortion.
You could even take the retailer to court as they are a party to the crime. The court merely needs to find that the retailer knew (or ought to have known) that the packaging was misleading and then the retailer is liable because the retailer knowingly displayed the misleading advertising.
In that case the obvious thing to do is distribute source only, or alternatively when someone clicks to download the binary create the tagged source then compile and send both the binary and the source.
This procedure would satisfy the GPL.
This assumes that tagging code would be considered different from the build source for the purposes of complying with the GPL. I honestly don't know the law enough to say, for all I know it (or a court ruling) says something like comments or other code that in no way changes the functionality do/don't apply.
If you copy and distribute another persons copywritten material, regardless of whether or not you change it, you must have permission to do so.
In order to recieve permission based on the GPL, you must follow certain procedures, which is that if you distribute a binary, you must distribute the "complete corresponding" source code.
The requirement is not "corresponding or functionaly equivalent source code" it is "complete corresponding" source code.
from the GPL:
3. You may copy and distribute the Program (or a work based on it, under Section 2) in object code or executable form under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above provided that you also do one of the following:
a) Accompany it with the complete corresponding machine-readable source code, which must be distributed under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above on a medium customarily used for software interchange; or,
b) Accompany it with a written offer, valid for at least three years, to give any third party, for a charge no more than your cost of physically performing source distribution, a complete machine-readable copy of the corresponding source code, to be distributed under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above on a medium customarily used for software interchange; or,
c) Accompany it with the information you received as to the offer to distribute corresponding source code. (This alternative is allowed only for noncommercial distribution and only if you received the program in object code or executable form with such an offer, in accord with Subsection b above.)
-----
end quote
The only possible source of contention is the definition of "complete corresponding".
Since a binary can be used in many different ways, and some of thos ways may be dependant on the exact value of such "TAGS". It is easily shown that in general modification in a so called "TAG" renders the binary to be functionally not-equivalent (and thus not corresponding by any definition of the word).
But at a minimum it would be easy to convince a judge that "complete" means "complete" and if the source code is lacking in the actual tags used to compile that binary, then the source code is incomplete and therefore not "complete corresponding".
" Where do you get "flavours" out of this concept?
//
The working code is 100% identical. All that's different is unused strings used for tracking the code. Nobody blinks an eye with
static const char rcsid[] = "$Id$";
and this is nothing more than a variant that tracks who the code was distributed to. Unless they have a clue and strip out the strings.
"
There is no concept in copyright law which differentiates so called "working code" from "non-working code". And there is no mention in the GPL of free usage of such so called "non-working code".
Even preceding the above line of code with
would not give you the right to distribute.
You have no right to modify someone elses copyrighted material and then distribute modified copies or works derived from someone elses copyrighted material. Even if your modifications are tiny or "non-working". You dont even have the right to modify the COMMENTS in copywritten source code (and then distribute it, or binaries of it) without permission.
Arguing with me isn't going to change that.
Copyright law is what prohibits you from freely making such changes. Don't blaim the GPL. It didn't take away any rights you did not already lack.
"Great, except that wasn't really the question."
:
I disagree. The original question was "Does that violate the GPL?"
And my answer was. "If you do what you seem to be implying then Yes, it would."
I think that is pretty direct.
Now your claim is that:
"The question is, would doing so be considered source code control."
My response:
No that was not the question.
The only reference to source code control in the original post were the statements
"which I might claim is a source control code but which is really a hidden serial number that ties the source to a particular CD. Compiling the code gives you a slightly different, but functionally identical, binary. But it also gives me a mechanism to test for my code in your commercial products. (So it really is a "source control code"!) Does that violate the GPL?"
To which I answered. Yes it would.
It doesn't matter if what you are doing is "source code control". If it involves distributing or publishing a derivative binary (or the original binary itself), you must include the corresponding source code. Not a variant of it. The GPL makes no special exemptions for "source code control" or any other excuse for distributing a binary and refusing to distribute the corresponding source. It does not allow it.
If you want to distribute source code ID tags or whatever with your product and those TAGS are derived from the original code in any way (say by MD5SUM or other means) then you must license the tags themselves as GPL work or else not distribute the original work.
In any event, the GPL does not license you to make special flavours of binaries and only release the vanilla source code. It makes no difference if the special flavours taste the same as authentic vanilla. You must make the source code of the special flavours available and you must license the corresponding source code to the recipient under the GPL.
Does that violate the GPL?"
If you do what you seem to be implying then Yes, it would.
You must make the source code available essentially by the same means as you made the binary available. So if you only distributed the binary on CD, you dont need to make source code available online. But if your binary is online, then you must make the source available online by essentially the same means.
You must also distribute and licence via the GPL the actual code used, not merely a functionally equivalent piece of code.
Whatever you distributed, you are obligated to make the souce code for THAT particular derivative version of the original GPL program available and licencable via GPL. You can't offer a substitute version no matter what your intention is.
If dont make available the actual source code used for that particular binary, no matter how similar, then you had no licence to distributed the binary and you infringed on the original author's copyrights.
In the event that a foreign country invades Canada, I now support allowing them to proceed and fire bombing the entire U.S./Canadian border (from the line to 50km north) and mining the whole damned thing.
Your government only answers to its corporate overlords and not the people. Hence, no one cares what you support.
"you also do not spend on national defense because the US protects you."
Canada has never requested the United States to "protect" it. Canada simply has no designs on world domination or interfering with global markets with threats of violence. The USA has military might which far exceeds the needs of defense alone. The US military is offensive. In fact the US military expenditure exceeds the next 3 biggest spenders combined.
The US would not need to spend so much money on military if it wasn't so determined to artificially depress the cost of OIL and interfere with world economies.
The United States is not "defending" Canada out of altruism. The USA is defending Canada in the same way it defends Saudi Arabia and Iraq. To defend the oil. Which Americans buys from canadian based (corporations) in order to fuel the huge SUV's you have been tricked into believing you must all drive.
Fortunately the "people" of Canada had enough sense to put some taxation on oil rather than simply allow corporations to steal it for free. This is probably more to the Crown's credit rather than the people of Canada, as traditionally the "Crown" reserves all mineral rights.
If military expenditure is a great way to transfer public weath into private corporate hands.... well that serves american corporate interests as well.
"America" is doing very well. It is only the american people who are feeling the pinch.
"you dont have any borders to patrol."
Were you expecting to be attacked by Mexico?
You already mentioned that Canada has no military.
"you have a relatively small population and most of your country in uninhabited or frozen over..."
You make being frozen over and uninhabited sound like an advantage.
Anyone find it extremely ironic that groups of people who really hate Bush chastise Bush about the US losing manufacturing and blue collar jobs - and in fact whole companies - overseas, and that other groups of people who really hate Bush (sometimes the same groups, in fact) chastise Bush for not signing onto Kyoto, when those two positions in this context are essentially diametrically opposed?
They are not diametrically opposed positions. They are ultimately the same position. Anti-free trade.
If there were no free trade then companies would not be able to move overseas. The PEOPLE would be able to impose environmental protection laws.
(we have no free migration. why have free trade?)
Putting all the blaim on Bush however is naive. Both the Democrats and Republicans are to blaim for selling out the "people" in favour of private corporate interests.
All Bush has done is taken the gloves off and made it blatantly obvious. Corporate values are the only thing which are important in American politics. (oh and making sure the public is focused either on non-economic issues (which corporations could care less about) such as gay marriage or abortion, or focused on profit making issues such as the war on drugs.
Note to the US Kyoto activists: you can't have your cake and eat it, too. Either we lose jobs and US companies to places like China, or we sign on to Kyoto. Yes, there's a lot of nuance, but I'm afraid that it's that simple.
Who exactly is going to pay for cleaning up the atmosphere after corporations destroy it? Corporations?
Not likely! It is the poor and the middle class who will foot the bill. Not just Americans however. We have a global economy now. And the poor and middle class accross the planet are the ones who will be paying to correct the atmosphere, as the powerful elite minority continue to enjoy seemingly ever increasing profits.
Why bother upgrading a factory by 2012, when you are planning on closing it (taking your loss as a tax deduction) and moving production to malaysia anyway?
Kyoto didn't outsource americans their jobs. That was free trade.
You are right about 1 thing.
You *can't* have your cake and eat it to. Either you are living in a democracy or you are nothing more than disposable labour for private corporate interests. So which is it?
BTW: The american government has just decided to put each and every single american another $2k+ in debt. hooray for corporate tax relief.
Who does the american government work for?
That's a trick question.
The american government has no power to work anymore because it is owned by private corporate interests and the people are too scared of losing their jobs to exercise democracy.
Unless the people do something about it, the sole remaining task of the American government is to facilitate the efficient explotation of the labour pool and natural resources. And in case you don't know what that means, it means: provide the minimum possible education to enable people to labour without aspiring to anything higher, and assisting corporations to pay the minimum possible wages and exploit every last square inch of the natural environment as fast as technologically possible for the benefit of the 2% minority who own 80% of the earth.
The real purpose in applying for such an offensive patent is to provide ammunition for the American pro-corporate lobby to justify sanctions against the EU, or other socialist states, and to justify violating WTO rulings when they go against American (corporate) interests, on the basis that the international community conspires to unfairly exploit American intellectual property, such as the IsNot operation, which allows software developers to differentiate pointers which prior to the invention of IsNot would be unusable in software.
By virtue of the fact that this "exploitation" is condoned by states who fail to recognize the "benefit" to the global community, (meaning corporate conglomerates), of such software patents, which although lacking in invention or innovation were properly filed, it constitutes an unfair subsidy and unjust socialization of private property.
American corporate interests need a scapegoat to blaim the current downwards trend on the standard of living, education and healthcare as well as increase in poverty in order to deflect the criticism that it is American corporate interests themselves who are at fault. Filing for a patent which ought not be granted simply creates propaganda fuel.
When the patent office can say that thousands of patents are rejected each year, it would appear that the patent system is working, as the corporate community would have the electorate believe, when in fact the patent system is NOT working because it rewards monopolies, not for the purpose of encouraging the speed at which new ideas enter the public domain, which is its stated objective, but simply for the purpose of protecting the current established corporate conglomerates and encouraging corporate profit.
Whether or not this patent is ever granted or holds up in court, it has served its purpose.
You didn't read the fine print. Electrical tape will be outlawed also.
"Sequitur. Non.
Rearrange the above words to make a well-known logical fallacy."
"Privacy" is a fundamental human right. So is "life" and "security of person".
If you (or someone else) take the position that your "right to privacy" is waived the moment you are on property which is owned by someone else then it is completely legitimate for me to ask "Then why not the right to life or the right to own lunch?"
You seem to be implying that the right to privacy is a derivative right and not a fundamental human right.
That is my whole point.
i.e. that the right to privacy is as fundamental as the right to life.
No one here so far as refuted this proposition.
You're in public. You have no right to privacy in terms of where you are, who you are, etc while your at skule.
Can you please define "PUBLIC". Because your argument is circular. You are in PUBLIC whenever you are not in private. And (by your definition) the right to privacy seems to only exist when you are in private. But if you are in private then you are alone and the right to privacy is irrelevant because when you are alone you *already have privacy* regardless of whether it is a right or not a right. So it seems to me that your position is that the right to privacy actually does not exist. It is waived whenever anyone can view or monitor us.
Sure you still have a right to keep things like your medical records, things at home, etc private.
Why do you relinquish the right to privacy in regards to your identity but preserve your right to privacy in regards to medical records?
Is that simply because your medical records are inconvenient to access? What if you are carrying your medical records with you?
Why would you have a right to privacy in regards to "things at home" but not "things on your person".
What if you do not "own" your home.
All the RFID tag should have is an encrypted student number which fed back to a server [which holds the AES key for instance] can then decrypt and compare.
Anyone who reads the RFID tag otherwise won't get your student number or name.
If I can track your whereabouts constantly. I hardly need your name to cause you serious harm.
The phrase "We know where you are and we know where you live" sounds so threatening because it *is* threatening. Whenever I collect information about you without your consent I am gaining power over you. And you (and I) have a right not to be subjected to that form of oppression without consent.
When you are compelled to carry an RFID you would not even know when you are being tracked or by who. When did you suddenly lose your rights in regards to these things?
I'd say a school staffer has a right to know who you are for shear safety reasons.
If they are so concerned, they can simply ASK you.
The low probability of RFID's actually saving anyone needs to be balanced against the harm done by the violation of the rights of all students who BELONG in the school.
History has demonstrated that students are in most danger from one another or themselves. This is purely anecdotal, but far more of my childhood friends hurt or even killed themselves doing stupid things, than were ever harmed by the lack of an RFID.
How many children are killed each year in accidents. Absolutely nothing an RFID can do. However, if you really want to do something helpful, for about the same price, forcing kids to wear HELMETS while in public is more likely to do good than forcing them to wear RFIDs.
It is naive to presume that just because you have a valid RFID that you are "SAFE".
RFID manufacturers have great marketing departments to think up all the wonderful things that this type of invasive technology will do.
What it will mostly do, is teach children that being under constant surveilance is normal.