First of all, all joking and argument aside, thank you for your service in the armed forces. There is never enough that can be said or done to thank you and every serviceman for putting their life on the line for freedom. Know that I respect your military service more than I can possibly say.
Now, however, I'm going to argue with you.;-) And it's going to take a while.
The Terri Schiavo case that you refer to is probably the worst case you could have brought up. The conservatives were not fighting against Terri's right to die, but acting on the side of preserving life. I know that's hard to swallow, but I'll give you the reasons. Consider, first, the situation as the press reported it:
Michael and Terri are a loving couple, but Terri suffers from an eating disorder, bulimia, this causes a lack of potassium in her blood that doctors fail to diagnose, causing brain damage and leaving her in a vegatative state. A team of doctors examine her and inform Michael that her condition will never improve. Her grief struck husband informs the doctors that she didn't wish to be kept alive in this state and then suddenly the *EVIL REPUBLICANS* step in and cause 14 years of court battles.
If that were the case, I'd be the one down there trying to pull the tube out. But now, let's see what the real facts of the case are, and this'll take a while:
Michael and Terri do NOT have a good marriage. Michael has been having an affair, and his girlfriend is now pregnant. Michael also has a temper. He's been arrested three times for domestic abuse against Terri, including one instance where he apparently knocked her unconscious. On the night that Terri goes into a coma, the neighbors report hearing, "a blazing row" going on.
Terri has already been unconcious for up to three hours (we'll never know for sure how long) before Michael calls paramedics. Paramedics remember that the house is in disarray, but Michael has taken the time to shower and put on clean clothes while his wife lay collapsed in the middle of the living room.
Doctors work feverishly to find the problem, and only after three separate blood tests do they find the low potassium level. Upon providing potassium, Terri begins to regain a semi-concious state. But she is horribly brain damaged and unable to communicate. A team of neurosurgeons is called in and they determine that Terri might, with therapy, regain a portion of her former abilities.
Michael doesn't know this, because he has spent the last three days with his girlfriend. Upon returning to the hospital, a nurse overhears him comment upon learning that Terri is out of the coma, "why can't that bitch just die?"
Upon hearing that it took three tests to find the Potassium deficiency, Michael takes immediate action. He moves Terri from the best hospital in the state to a hospice care facility run by a fraternity brother, and sues the hospital for malpractice. Michael is told repeatedly that the hospice center cannot provide the kind of care and therapy that might allow Terri to recover. He ignores this.
At this point, Terri's parents, knowing Michael no longer loves their daughter ask to take custody of her, and provide all care and services for her. Michael refuses. In fact, Michael gets the county judge, an old friend of his family, to file a restraining order preventing Terri's own parents from seeing their daughter. Now, had Terri remained in the hospital, she wouldn't have been in this county, and a different judge would have heard the case. Michael moved her to a hospice that clearly couldn't provide adequate care in a county where he knew the judge. Coincidence?
You see, Michael can't divorce Terri, because the three million dollar settlement from the hospital is in her name. If he divorces her, the money goes with her. Michael sells their home and moves in with his girlfriend and soon to be born child.
Hospice care workers working with Terri during this time report that she is often alert and reco
Apparently you don't believe in reading parent articles, or you'd know that I don't consider the current crop of Republicans as conservative. But for as far as that goes, you obviously have issues with the meaning of words as well, given that you proclaim that celebrating the institution of Marriage and the meaning it has held for nearly 6000 years is "redefining marriage" as opposed to what your definition of "preserving marriage" must mean, namely the idea that two hairy men participating in sodomy is somehow good for the country and future of society and revered in religion and culture.
No?
As for activist judges, I believe this whole conversation started because the *liberal* judges on the bench just threw out the 5th Amendment, with the Conservative judges writing a scathing defense. It's also a Conservative group that has decided to put Justice Souter's Majority Opinion to the test by making a claim of eminent domain against his house. It's Conservatives who have already forwarded amendments in 23 states to limit those state's power of eminent domain in reaction to this obscene ruling. Turn on any conservative show (Hannity, Rush, Savage) and they'll be railing against this decision. Over on Air America they're probably gleefully counting the new tax money it'll bring in when they throw families out of homes they've owned for ten generations.
Redefining "Freedom of Speech" I suppose refers to the Patriot Act, which has absolutely nothing in it to limit speech. If you want to complain, complain about the "McCain-Feingold Campaign Finance Reform Bill." Never in a single swoop has a whacko liberal (Feingold D-WI, who once said that "aborting" a child who had been fully delivered from the mother would be "up to the mother and doctor.") and left-leaning moderate (Mc Cain has voted against the republicans more often than with them, despite the R after his name) removed more free speech rights in the history of the country. The FEC is now even claiming that MC-F would limit the ability of private citizens to blog on the web. Someone wants to take your speech away here, but it's not the conservatives.
The modern "conservative" example would be Rep. Dan Tancredo of Colorado who calls for strong national defense, the closing of the borders and the cutting back of federal spending.
Bush and Cheney are both examples of "Neo-Cons" who are, at best, marginally conservative, and lately have been cozying up to the whacko left-wing fringe. If it weren't for the fact that Bush actually is sticking to his promise of fighting the war on terror overseas instead of in the streets of America, and doing it right instead of bombing Asprin Factories in the Sudan, launching Tomahawk missiles at empty tents, and apparently deciding that Bosnia represented a greater threat to U.S. security than a man who was harboring at least three of the men who planned 9-11, he'd be no different then Clinton.
So, no, Jefferson wouldn't be in that group either, nor did I ever claim he would be.
Oh, and in case you didn't get it, probably being too young, the reference to "hic-splash"... Well, just ask Mary Jo Kopeckne. Oh wait, you can't, Teddy Kennedy killed her.
All in all, I understand *your* use of the word liberal in this conversation, but the more general use of the term in society no longer has anything to do with your definition. In modern parlance, I'd say that the term "liberal" means "believer in a giant overacrching government that protects you and coddles you [read: taxes you into oblivion and runs every aspect of your life] from cradle to grave."
The modern "liberal" example would be Ted "hic-splash" Kennedy.
You might see why I'd be offended by anyone throwing Jefferson into that category.
I took offense with your characterization of Jefferson as libertarian because you called yourself (and libertarians by extension) fiscally conservative and socially liberal. From your statements, I'd argue that you are *not* "Liberal" in any sense of the word.
I agree that we need "social programs" that are established through charitable contributions. I don't think we should leave the old, sick, and infirm out in the street to die. I don't think anyone does that. I don't think that qualifies as "socially liberal" but more like, "Human."
In fact, like I said, I agree with about 97% of the libertarian philosophy. It's the last 3% that really bugs me.
I understand the "naturalist" lifestyle, and I even had a friend in college who was a naturalist/nudist/whatever you want to call it. I don't have a problem with setting aside places for naturists to run around in the alltogether to their heart's content. My issue is that you (and I'm using the royal all-inclusive "you" here, not necessarily *you* in particular) want to *force* that lifestyle onto me by claiming you should have the right to go to the grocery store in the buff.
I, personally, don't want to see it. I would be offended by it. As such, you have done "harm" to me, and infringed on my rights. I can't protect myself from this harm, because in the "clothing optional everywhere" society, I can't get away from it. Call me a prude, but dangly bits in the fruit aisle just turns my stomach.
And this is that 3%. I've heard libertarians in favor of pedophilia. That's just nasty. I've heard libertarians in favor of selling drugs to minors. Again, that's just dangerous. It's these fringe items that really make me shy away from the Libertarian point of view.
I'm not a "Republican," (Well, okay I am. Card carrying committee member in fact, but...) I'm a Conservative. I believe in 97% of what the Libertarians do, and about another 2% so long as I can close the door on it and not be forced to participate. The last 1% (the NAMBLA crowd) really makes me shudder.
So, we probably have more in common with Jefferson than different. I'd argue that he'd be the same way, i.e. "[do what you want] so long as it neither breaks my leg nor picks my pocket" with the things I agree with, and I think he'd agree that the remaining 1-3% is over the edge.
But, I could be wrong. He may have had affairs with up to six women, some married, some not, and even one slave. So, maybe he did run around naked at Monticello, but I doubt it...
Oh, and for clarification, when I said "States should have control of everything else," what I meant was that, that's up to the people to decide what powers to give to their state, which should be as little as possible, with most powers handed down to the county level, where the people of that county decide what powers to grant the county, which should be as little as possible, with most powers handed down to the city or municipality level where the people decide what powers to limit them to, which should be as little as possible, and then retain most of their rights for themselves, leaving the city governments to make the most important decisions locally, and only those decisions which can't be decided by a group of municipalities to make it to the county level, and vis-a-vis to the state level, and finally, only those issues that cannot be handled at *any* lower level, and that concern national defense or interstate commerce, being decided at the Federal level. That entire run-on sentence is what I meant by "up to the state".
"I defy you to name two instances where the PATRIOT Act prevented a terrorist attack or wherein a terrorist was successfully prosecuted because of the PATRIOT Act."
In testimony before the Justice Committee, Tom Ridge revealed that 400 individuals have been prosecuted under the Patriot Act. Most of these were reduced to immigration infractions, and the defendant was deported. However 12 individuals have been convicted for violations of "terrorism" statutes and imprisoned under the Patriot Act. The most famous being the man who was attempting to build a "Dirty Bomb" and already had collected some of the radioactive materials needed to use in it.
...originally Ashcroft was against the act.
Actually it was the CIA head, George Tennet(sp?) who was against the Patriot Act, because it effectively made him an underling to the NSA, and then to the Director of Homeland Security. In other words, he wanted to protect his "empire". After meeting with Ashcroft and seeing that it would help to combine national intelligence on terrorists and save American lives, he changed his position.
Thomas Jefferson wasn't only a Democrat-Republican, he was also a Liberal, today's Libertarian. He just as the LP, and I do, believed in a small and limited government as well as Liberty!
I'm not sure that Jefferson would have qualified as a "Libertarian" in today's views. Definitely he would be considered strongly conservative, but he was also strongly against social programs. He knew, just as Locke did, that the moment a people can choose to vote themselves handouts, it was the end of Democracy. Conservatives believe in as small a federal government as possible, which, in my opinion would mean: the Armed forces (including the Coast Guard), Immigration/Border Patrol, and the Interstate Commerce Committee to assure that prices remain the same between states (i.e. they regulate interstate commerce.) That's it. States should have control of everything else. I believe there should be a national sales tax to support the government, because that most fairly taxes those who consume the most and benefits those who produce the most.
Libertarians believe in total personal responsibility and freedom -- an idea which they carry a little too far. I'll never forget the time the LP candidate for POTUS showed up at the college campus to speak. I listened to 90% of the speech and was thinking, "Wow, this guy is really hitting the points on the head. Small government, state's rights, limited taxation..." And then he said, "And I believe that clothing should be optional at all times."
Jefferson would have had a heart attack at that moment. Remember that he once said, "A lady who has been seen as a sloven or slut in the morning will never efface the impression she has made, with all dress and pageantry she can afterwards involve herself in...I hope therefore, the moment you rise from bed, your first work will be to dress yourself in such style as that you may be seen by any gentleman without his being able to discover a pin amiss." To him, the idea of women (or men) traipsing around naked would have been repugnant.
His Conservative views don't end there. He contrasted American women to the French by lauding them as they "who have the good sense to value domestic happiness above all other...Our good ladies, I trust, have been too wise to wrinkle their foreheads with politics. They are contented to soothe and calm the minds of their husbands returning from political debate...It is a comparison of Amazons to Angels."
I could also site hundreds of quotations where Jefferson rails against social programs, saying that "milking the breast of government" is the greatest ill that can befall a society.
So don't think of Jefferson as a Libertarian, because he so clearly held many Conservative beliefs. And before anyone gets angry at me as a sexist pig, I don't have any problems with women in politics or jobs. I'm trying to point out that Jefferson would be considered far more Socially conservative than Falcon would have us believe.
You are right, who offered up an appointee means nothing, voting records do.
So, you are correct, three of the five were republican nominees. Kennedy, the waffler, who sometimes, although rarely, votes conservative, was appointed by Reagan when he had to get an appointee through a *MASSIVELY* Democrat controlled senate. If I remember right, it was a 65-35 margin back in those days.
Ford's appointee, who has voted left of even Ruth Vader Ginsburgh, a former ACLU lawyer, was appointed after the Watergate affair, when Ford would have been lucky to get a cup of coffee, much less the nominee he wanted.
And, finally, Bush Sr's appointee, who has, again, voted to the left of everyone except maybe Ford's nominee.
Then the two Clinton nominees round out the five. Now they've voted to form, voting left-wing all the way.
On the other hand, the "EVIL" Clarence Thomas voted for the little guy, Sandra Day O'Connor -- little guy, etc.
In fact, the four most right-leaning voting record justices all vote for the little guy, with Kennedy swinging to the left side of the equation.
Now, as for the rest of your letter, let me re-phrase some of your statements.
"The current party with power is trying to ram through the PATRIOT act." Tough talk for a bill that passed 99-0. It dares to extend to "terrorist acts" powers that law enforcement already posesses against organized crime. I defy you to name even two cases where the Patriot Act has been abused. You do know that *EVERY TIME* it's invoked, the Attourney General has to report to the Congress as to why and how it was used, and what the result was. You did know that, right? You wouldn't just be knee-jerking from what Nancy Pelosi and Ted Kennedy have been spouting?
Have you *EVER* actually read the Patriot Act? If not, I implore you to do so before commenting. The Patriot act has it's flaws, but the idea that the Bush administration wants to use it to declare martial law isn't one of them.
Secondly, I find the current administration to be extremely left-leaning in many of it's actions. It's done nothing to improve border security, or to remove punative taxation. It's expanded social programs, exportation of jobs, apparent blindness to illegal workers, and constant growth of the national debt -- all hallmarks of the opposition party. The left may hate "W", but I'm not especially fond of him either.
And as for the "Party of the Little Guy" line, only one party has been using that as their official mantra while standing for the exact opposite.
I am, as I have pointed out in previous messages, a Conservative. The Republican party is moving more left every day, leaving a huge vacuum behind. On the other hand, the Democrats are now approaching realms that Karl Marx could only dream of. Thomas Jefferson founded the Democrats (as the Democratic-Republicans, how ironic...) but he would be considered a "Whacko Conservative Nut-Job" today. I'm sure that whatever is left in his tomb could be used as an alternative energy source if we could just tap the spinning after today's ruling.
Excuse me, but in what respect? Five of the most revered, supposedly wisest, liberals hand down a, supposedly intellectually arrived at, decision which stomps on the rights of individuals in favor of a more persavive and all-powerful government, and you compare it to an individual spitting on a sidewalk?
I am referring to the "big-lie" of liberalism that it is "for the people" when in truth, it stands for taking as many rights away from you, the individual, as possible. Something they've been lying about for nearly 70 years.
Uhm. The Contract "with" America was a Conservative Republican document, and the four most conservative (Republican) leaning judges *DISSENTED* on this ruling, with the five most liberal (Democrat) judges voting to take away your property.
Which says more about the truth of liberalism and democrats than anything else. They lean towards socialism, while the conservatives lean towards individual rights. Get it through your head that the "Party of the Little Guy" is not the Democrats.
Yes, but I can survive a year or two of high taxes before the outraged masses vote the bums out of office. However, once the house is bulldozed, I'm pretty much screwed. You can bet that the bulldozers are already being delivered to these houses and within a week's time there'll be nothing but empty lots, with the houses emptied by moving companies with the residents held back by police officers with guns.
Be careful to actually read the amendment in question before commenting. The relevant portion of the fifth amendment is:
"nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation."
Note that the framers did not use the ambiguous term "public good" but the term "public use" which is much more well defined. If they take away property, it must be for the use of the public as a whole and not for any small part of it. This ruling basically strikes those three words ("for public use") right off the paper.
Your entire comment is null and void because you didn't read the Fifth Amendment.
The issue *IS* black and white, because the difference between your hypothetical running water situation and this one is that in your hypothetical, the Government is stepping in to create a publicly held resource (water supply) for use by the public.
In this case, a *PRIVATE CORPORATION* went to the land-owners with their check, the landowners said, "We don't want our neighborhood to become a soulless strip mall/condo forest" and then the corporation convinced the city government to take their houses away *AND HAND THE PROPERTY TO A PRIVATE CORPORATION.*
Do you see the difference? In your hypothetical, the whole city prospers with a publicly held water supply. In the second, a small group of campaign contributors^h^h^h^h fat cats get to make millions.
The fact that 5 of the most liberal voting judges in the history of the Supreme Court sided with the rich fat cats tells you all you ever needed to know about the truth of liberalism.
That's because at low enough pressure (about 1% of 1 atmosphere) the water boils right out of the leaves at room temperature. The lower the pressure, the lower the temperature that water boils. I live at 6300 ft (2000m) above sea level, and water boils as low as 199 degrees f (~91C) here on a stormy day.
In fact, if you go up to the top of Pike's peak here (14110ft/~4500m), it becomes impossible to hard boil an egg, because you can't get the water hot enough (about 160F/78C) to cook the egg.
Wow. After that I can only add one thing. Basically all of the studies used by the Kyoto treaty were based on the predictions made by the 1995 IPCC conference report. Every one of those predictions have been off by huge factors, including the rate of release of CO2, the prediction of which, over a mere 7 years, was off by a factor of 300%. In science, the standard deviation is the measure of accuracy. The first standard deviation is less than 10% of variance. To accept Kyoto you must accept that something 9 standard deviations out is still acceptable science.
Otherwise, I think the original response hit just about every point I would have brought up. Thanks for saving me the typing.
Obviously no one in Canada did, because the extent of the "revisions" this guy made was to add the word, "extremely" in front of the word "difficult" in the sentence "Because there are so many factors involved in the determination of systems producing and sequestering greenhouse gases, the determination of the exact amount of greenhouse gases added by any particular souce is extremely difficult."
He also removed a paragraph which speculated on the effect on farming caused by the future melting of glaciers as being "speculative and in the opinion of the researchers unbacked by finding of fact."
Oh boy, let's crucify the guy. This in a 20+ page report. And the guy's job was specifically to review and edit such final reports for clarity.
Yup, I can see where that totally changed the meaning of the report.
You're either amazingly stupid, or amazingly illogical. Your statement that rights don't center around incentive or reward is almost laughable. Let's enumerate a right or two and see where it leads: Freedom of Speech - incentive: I am oppressed, because I have the right of Freedom from Opression, I want change. With Freedom of Speech, I have the right to speak out against my oppression. My reward, if my speech is found by others to make sense and be logically sound, is to have that oppression lifted. In the ideal society, the original perpetrator of that oppression is then punished to insure that such oppression will not occur again. Thus is law born from the rights of man. Go read John Locke if you don't understand this.
You claim that the *use* of invention does not damage an the inventor, and then make a fallacious comparison. If I work my fingers to the bone to build mud pies, I have no control over the mud. But the two are not the same. I never claimed control over the mud, just that I have found a use for it. You have chosen to be lazy, to see mud only as something that is squishy and brown. I have chosen to use my intellect and my effort to derive a new use for mud. If you then, being incredibly lazy, simply steal that process and make your own mud pies, I have received no recompense for my work, and you *HAVE* done damage to me. Even moreso, if you already have a factory which you can retool to make mud pies at a lower cost than I can to build a new factory, staff it, and produce those mud pies, and you corner the market, then you have done damage to me again.
You seem to think that individuals who participate in abstract thought deserve no recompense and can't be damaged or harmed by others. This is fallacious.
You also make the assumption that no idea is unique or revelatory. You must assume that if Einstein hadn't come along that all his work would have been found anyway, a position that most physicists would *DISAGREE* with (most consider his work in General Relativity to be so profound and groundbreaking that it would have taken decades if not centuries to discover.)
Should we discount this as having "no value", and therefore its theft and misuse as causing "no damage"?
Going back to the mud pies, no one can claim control of the mud itself. It is a resource. However, while you may make mud pies, I might choose to find a way to bake the mud with charcoal, then take the resulting material and use acids to etch it, chemicals to plate it, and techniques to shape it with light. In the end, I have a silicon microchip. They're both mud, but in your world, one has no more value than the other.
You talk about individual innovation being wasteful compared to group effort (there's that whole Community > Individuals problem again) while I can show you study after study that shows the group is more wasteful and less productive than the individual or small group. In fact productivity in groups larger then five goes down by orders of magnitude.
And I never *EVER* in all my items said that work can't be done without patents. What I said is that if an individual *CHOOSES* to take such a *RISK*, that they deserve a *LIMITED* protection from the misuse or theft of their work. I can't walk into a store and steal a physical item without facing consequences, why should I be able to do the same thing with 5 years of someone's blood, sweat, and tears?
Groups can accomplish things, but, by their nature, *THEY SPREAD THE RISK*. If something fails, no individual suffers overly, if they succeed, no individual profits greatly either. But if an individual risks all, then they deserve to reap all the rewards if they succeed, and all the damages if they fail.
Then you go on once again to say I'm in favor of big government and forced charity. Did you read where I said, "The government is bloated and has no right to distribute funds?" I again can't see how you can claim to say I'm in favor of big government. I stated that the decision was made according to th
Wow, there are so many logical fallacies in your arguments, I don't even know where to start.
You use the term "Scalable Process" -- that doesn't mean anything. All processes, by definition, are scalable. By your argument no process should be patentable. You make the assumption that people do not deserve reward for invention or creation, and that is your entire argument in a nutshell. Everything -- in your philosophy -- must be open and done "for the good of society". Libertarian? I think not.
If R&D is a labor expense, so what? Are you claiming that people shouldn't be paid for labor? Again, there's an economic system that works that way, but it's not in the Libertarian philosophy.
And you point at the article and say, "See, they spend more on marketing then on R&D!" But I'll point out that most of them spend a far smaller percentage on marketing than practically any other manufacturer of products out there. The last company I worked for spent 87% of it's annual budget on marketing. Are they *EVIL*? Or are they trying to sell a product to a market. A market that is being continually handed stories about cheap grey-market goods.
Again, there's an economic model where marketing isn't necessary, but it ain't Libertarianism.
Your next diatribe, calling me a Marxist is so completely laughable I barely feel a need to respond. But, in the spirit of good dialogue...
I said "...THE AMERICAN PEOPLE, THROUGH THEIR REPRESENTATIVES, CHOSE TO SPEND..." Now, the last I checked, we live in a Representative Republic. The people chose, through the voting process, a group of representatives to travel to Washington D.C. and represent them at the Federal level. Those representatives chose to spend that money. Whatever I, as an individual think about that expenditure is unimportant (although -- again for the sake of argument -- I'll tell you that I think sending any money to any country is a poor use of taxpayer funds. As a strict Constituionalist I don't even think the U.S. has the right to do so) because the majority (as represented by their elected officials) have spoken, and they favor sending money.
I'm personally all in favor of letting the African nations go it alone. Right now that's resulting in widespread genocide (millions dead in Somalia, Rawanda and the Congo), starvation (Ethiopia, Zimbabwe, and others) and feudalistic warlords sending death squads through the streets. Me, I'd pull out completely and leave them on their own because all we're doing now is sending money and aid that the despotic regimes steal and misuse.
But you see, that's where compassion comes in. I don't like the thought of millions being slaughtered and dying of diseases. I don't like the idea of funding warlords. I don't like the idea of propping up despots. You, on the other hand are willing to hand them the keys to the kingdom. Give them money, give them the means to produce medicines, technology, and weapons, all without the wisdom earned by having to develop them. You'd like to let the genie out of the bottle. You'd give them the technology to create genocide weapons. Oh, they'd wipe out AIDS in Africa all right. Just make one of those capsules out of pure cyanide and they won't have an AIDS problem anymore. That's what happens if we give them the ability to make the medicines.
As for your final paragraph, the complete lack of logic in it is staggering. You would have called Edison a bastard for inventing the light bulb. James Watt was an asshole for that whole steam thing. Orville and Wilbur Wright were the embodiment of evil.
Tell me, do you have a job? Do you get paid? Do you make a product? Or, like most people on/. is your work mostly intangible, like software?
If it is, how can you justify, in your philosophy, earning a salary? Surely, you should just turn it over to someone who is better than you. Stop working and hand it off, because your selfish need to produce something is harming society as a whole. And you claim that
The problem in this case is how to separate a trivial patent from a meaningful one. Under the current law, you can patent "business methods". Well, arguably I could then patent a "means of consolidating related business information into a connected whole using a wire bending apparatus" and then sue every company that uses a stapler to bind their documents together.
That's bullshit.
And the real problem is, how do we separate something that simple from something truly revolutionary. You talk about a revolutionary process, and I'll tell you that such a process is either going to be a minor change or collaboration of already existing processes, and thus shouldn't be patent protected, or, it's such a huge and sweeping change that the magnitude of code it requires would fall far outside the "fair use" clause of copyright and would thus be protected. That's what the whole slew of lawsuits in the 80's was all about, and why "look and feel" is actually now a legal term.
You say "software is a set of instructions for how the machine works" -- how is that different from telling me that "You can't swing the hammer that way, I patented it." You're defining the use of a machine in very specific terms (i.e. programming languages). That's the same as trying to patent the way to swing the hammer. It's insane. Now, if you have worked out a new way of swinging that hammer and use a lesson plan to teach it to someone, and then they try to sell that lesson plan as their "NEW HAMMER SWING version 2.0" you can sue them for copyright infringement.
Did you even read what I wrote? I said software should be protected by copyright not by patent. Your argument about OS copying was about copying the OS *whole cloth*, not about copying bits and pieces and using algorithms. That's protected under copyright not patent. Talk all you want about open source and Linux, but a hobby project that's grabbed a whopping.7% of the desktop OS marketplace isn't exactly what I call "a giant success". Those lawsuits were about people literally stealing/reverse engineering the operating system, rebranding it and selling it as their own product. I know -- I was already working in the industry back then. They'd take 20 man years of someone else's work, and 15 minutes later they'd be selling their own CASH-DOS for $5 less than Micro$oft. Sorry, but no matter how much you hate Bill Gates, that's still theft, and those lawsuits were about fixing copyright law to close the software loopholes, not patent law.
I think software patents are bullshit. How can you patent a shadow casting algorithm based on a text description of it? You can *copyright* specific code, but the algorithm itself is too intangible to be patented. You can patent a hammer, but not how you swing it.
On the other hand, solid, mechanical or chemical devices don't fall into this category. They represent real cash outlay to devise and develop. This costs money. If it didn't there would be "Open Source Cars" on the road right now, and "Open Source Microwave Ovens" in the kitchen that you walk into the "Open Source Store" and pull off the shelf for free.
If anyone has a premise that's broken, it's you.
And as for R&D costs, I happen to know people who work at pharmaceutical companies, and my sister-in-law works at 3M (another big R&D firm). It's not unusual for 3M to spend $10 million to develop a new type of adhesive that's "just a little stickier" then their current one. Research is *DAMNED* expensive. Drug research is doubly so, because you are looking at a 7-15 *YEAR* cycle of testing through the FDA. Fast-tracked drugs might cut that down to 3-5 *YEARS*. That's time where your R&D is complete, all the money is spent, and you can't make a penny of profit, because you can't sell a thing. *NOR SHOULD YOU* as the drug has not proven to be safe. At the end of a cycle of R&D, Testing, Studies, Review, Testing, and finally Marketing (and yes, marketing is part of drugs in the modern market. It's part of every other market, why are Pharmas *evil* for daring to market?) the costs can *easily* be in the Billions of dollars.
You cite insulin as a drug "discovered by accident". Well, if you consider "by accident" as 5 years of lab work, 10 years of refinement and testing, and hundreds of man-years in the succeeding decades to improve, perfect, and synthesize the drug as "an accident" then you're right. Read about how insulin was discovered. Yes, the "lab assistant" found the insulin link "by accident" (in a controlled study with hundreds of tests, etc., etc.), but it's not like they were selling it over the counter the following Tuesday. So, you want to call bullshit, I call bullshit on you.
I've watched the patent process first hand when my dad developed a (we'll call it a widget, since it's for a very specialized and technical field) widget. He designed it, developed prototypes, tested it, showed it worked, put the protoypes into the hands of the industry experts in order to improve it, perfect it, and finally, after spending about $250,000 of his own money, he went on to patent it. He was able to negotiate with an industry company to manufacture and use the widget, but unfortunately passed away (from cancer) before he could make one red cent of profit from it. The company has since started manufacturing the widget without owning the patent and my mother (who now owns the patent) has started the process to sue them for patent infringement.
You run a pharmaceutical company. You make a minor discovery that a certain concoction may have an effect on cancerous cells. You spend the next 15 years and $100 Billion dollars to develop this. The result: the cure for cancer.
However, under your system, the patent system has been eliminated. You can't file a patent on this medicine. However, you've staked the future of the company on it. If it fails, your company goes under.
You amortize the cost of the research so that, over the next 7 years, you can recoup all the research costs, and maybe turn a 5% profit. The pills cost $90 each, but, hey, they cure cancer. No one, you are sure, will complain.
You launch amid a press fanfare, the world heralds your name, and everyone loves you, you are the savior of the moment. Your name will stand with Salk and Pasteur in the annals of medicine.
However, two days later, a rival company buys one of your pills, throws it into a mass spectrograph and, a week later, they start selling the same pills for $2 each. Their research cost -- about $90. They will make $10,000,000 in profit in the first month alone. Bereft of income, your company collapses, you go bankrupt, and die in poverty.
Patents have their place, and they should last 7 years as they were originally intended, with no extensions and no "50-year patents".
Just because a pharamceutical company doesn't want to go bankrupt (putting thousands of people out of work and depriving the market of all the drugs they produce) does not make them evil. Your comparison is not equivalent to the slave on the plantation being "treated well." What you are asking is for the master of the plantation, having just built a new manor house to hand over the keys to the slaves and start sleeping in the corn field.
Software is a written work, and should be protected by Copyright, not patent.
You are suffering from a severe case of "throwing the baby out with the bathwater."
I hate to point out the obvious, but this bill eliminates the possibility of using prior art to strike down a patent. Since it also says that "First Filer" not "First Inventor" gets the patent, then it doesn't matter if there's prior art. You are, ipso facto the first to file, and therfore the owner.
Am I the only one who sees that this bill gives you a gun and then points it irrevocably at one's own feet?
Wow, the parent gets modded as flamebait, but this post gets modded up for calling anyone and everyone evil.
The republicans, who follow a generally conservative bent, are supposed to be (although with Bush it's not clear) for smaller, less-intrusive, government. Distribution of control to the local level, not the federal. Personal responsibility and unlimited opportunity. And most of all, a free and unfettered capitalist marketplace. We also believe in a strong national defense against outside forces. We believe in keeping our country safe.
On the other hand, a small group of Muslim terrorists, upset about the fact that the U.S. has become the world's policeman and happens *not* to want to see Israel wiped from the face of the Earth, has decided that the best way to strike us is to engage in cowardly, unprovoked attacks on our unarmed citizens. They would like to kill as many of them as possible, but fear a frontal confrontation because that would reveal them as a small minority that cannot maintain their power if faced with the majority. So they strike from the darkness with fervor and whatever weapons can be improvised and stolen.
If they had a weapon of mass destruction, they would use it. Immediately. On a civilian target, not a military one.
So, the conservative viewpoint is this case is simple. We cannot wait for such an attack, because our people will die. We cannot negotiate with these terrorists because, a) they're fanatical and won't negotiate with us, and b) they represent tyranical minorities who do not represent their people. This pretty much leaves four options. One - throw them into a cage that they can't get out of -- but such a thing doesn't exist, two -- give them what they want and hope they go away (the Saudi Arabian method), three -- convert to a police state to prevent anyone from sneaking in or out or doing anything bad (some people will point at the Patriot Act, but the fact those people aren't currently in "dissident prison" shows that it's not *that* all-encompassing), or four - kill the terrorists before they kill you.
In this case, we didn't initiate the violence, 19 Muslim terroists did that by hijacking 4 planes and killing 3000 people.
As for your statement that they all use violence to enforce charity, well, conservatives are against most taxation, could care less about your religion (yeah, really, we don't want you all to be bible-thumpers), and only want war as a last resort, although we won't compromise our core principles to stay out of a war (think Neville Chamberlain vs. Winston Churchill).
I will agree that the level of socialists/socialism on SlashDot is somewhat frightening, as I can't imagine a worse system of government and economy shy of the extreme socialist view (i.e. Communism or National Socialism).
While it may provide pressure to develop more "energy efficient" (Read: environmentally friendly) technologies, at the same time, it squashes the means to do so. The financial outlay for the United States has been estimated at 6 Trillion dollars. That's 3 years of the entire federal budget and nearly 30% of GNP.
That kind of expenditure will cause wide-spread unemployment, famine, and basically destroy the economic engine of the nation. In return, it cuts U.S. emissions by less than 10%.
Of course, all those unemployed people won't be able to buy the new "green cars" and will be running old and poorly maintained vehicles, heaters, etc. They won't pay for more expensive "green power" and will turn towards cheap "dirty power" instead. The overall effect might be to actually *increase* overall emissions.
Oil will eventually run out. As it does so, the price will increase and it will become less and less attractive as a power source. When that happens, alternatives will become more attractive and more money will be spent to develop them. In other words, as the oil runs out, we'll work to find a way to replace it.
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First of all, all joking and argument aside, thank you for your service in the armed forces. There is never enough that can be said or done to thank you and every serviceman for putting their life on the line for freedom. Know that I respect your military service more than I can possibly say.
;-) And it's going to take a while.
Now, however, I'm going to argue with you.
The Terri Schiavo case that you refer to is probably the worst case you could have brought up. The conservatives were not fighting against Terri's right to die, but acting on the side of preserving life. I know that's hard to swallow, but I'll give you the reasons. Consider, first, the situation as the press reported it:
Michael and Terri are a loving couple, but Terri suffers from an eating disorder, bulimia, this causes a lack of potassium in her blood that doctors fail to diagnose, causing brain damage and leaving her in a vegatative state. A team of doctors examine her and inform Michael that her condition will never improve. Her grief struck husband informs the doctors that she didn't wish to be kept alive in this state and then suddenly the *EVIL REPUBLICANS* step in and cause 14 years of court battles.
If that were the case, I'd be the one down there trying to pull the tube out. But now, let's see what the real facts of the case are, and this'll take a while:
Michael and Terri do NOT have a good marriage. Michael has been having an affair, and his girlfriend is now pregnant. Michael also has a temper. He's been arrested three times for domestic abuse against Terri, including one instance where he apparently knocked her unconscious. On the night that Terri goes into a coma, the neighbors report hearing, "a blazing row" going on.
Terri has already been unconcious for up to three hours (we'll never know for sure how long) before Michael calls paramedics. Paramedics remember that the house is in disarray, but Michael has taken the time to shower and put on clean clothes while his wife lay collapsed in the middle of the living room.
Doctors work feverishly to find the problem, and only after three separate blood tests do they find the low potassium level. Upon providing potassium, Terri begins to regain a semi-concious state. But she is horribly brain damaged and unable to communicate. A team of neurosurgeons is called in and they determine that Terri might, with therapy, regain a portion of her former abilities.
Michael doesn't know this, because he has spent the last three days with his girlfriend. Upon returning to the hospital, a nurse overhears him comment upon learning that Terri is out of the coma, "why can't that bitch just die?"
Upon hearing that it took three tests to find the Potassium deficiency, Michael takes immediate action. He moves Terri from the best hospital in the state to a hospice care facility run by a fraternity brother, and sues the hospital for malpractice. Michael is told repeatedly that the hospice center cannot provide the kind of care and therapy that might allow Terri to recover. He ignores this.
At this point, Terri's parents, knowing Michael no longer loves their daughter ask to take custody of her, and provide all care and services for her. Michael refuses. In fact, Michael gets the county judge, an old friend of his family, to file a restraining order preventing Terri's own parents from seeing their daughter. Now, had Terri remained in the hospital, she wouldn't have been in this county, and a different judge would have heard the case. Michael moved her to a hospice that clearly couldn't provide adequate care in a county where he knew the judge. Coincidence?
You see, Michael can't divorce Terri, because the three million dollar settlement from the hospital is in her name. If he divorces her, the money goes with her. Michael sells their home and moves in with his girlfriend and soon to be born child.
Hospice care workers working with Terri during this time report that she is often alert and reco
Apparently you don't believe in reading parent articles, or you'd know that I don't consider the current crop of Republicans as conservative. But for as far as that goes, you obviously have issues with the meaning of words as well, given that you proclaim that celebrating the institution of Marriage and the meaning it has held for nearly 6000 years is "redefining marriage" as opposed to what your definition of "preserving marriage" must mean, namely the idea that two hairy men participating in sodomy is somehow good for the country and future of society and revered in religion and culture.
No?
As for activist judges, I believe this whole conversation started because the *liberal* judges on the bench just threw out the 5th Amendment, with the Conservative judges writing a scathing defense. It's also a Conservative group that has decided to put Justice Souter's Majority Opinion to the test by making a claim of eminent domain against his house. It's Conservatives who have already forwarded amendments in 23 states to limit those state's power of eminent domain in reaction to this obscene ruling. Turn on any conservative show (Hannity, Rush, Savage) and they'll be railing against this decision. Over on Air America they're probably gleefully counting the new tax money it'll bring in when they throw families out of homes they've owned for ten generations.
Redefining "Freedom of Speech" I suppose refers to the Patriot Act, which has absolutely nothing in it to limit speech. If you want to complain, complain about the "McCain-Feingold Campaign Finance Reform Bill." Never in a single swoop has a whacko liberal (Feingold D-WI, who once said that "aborting" a child who had been fully delivered from the mother would be "up to the mother and doctor.") and left-leaning moderate (Mc Cain has voted against the republicans more often than with them, despite the R after his name) removed more free speech rights in the history of the country. The FEC is now even claiming that MC-F would limit the ability of private citizens to blog on the web. Someone wants to take your speech away here, but it's not the conservatives.
The modern "conservative" example would be Rep. Dan Tancredo of Colorado who calls for strong national defense, the closing of the borders and the cutting back of federal spending.
Bush and Cheney are both examples of "Neo-Cons" who are, at best, marginally conservative, and lately have been cozying up to the whacko left-wing fringe. If it weren't for the fact that Bush actually is sticking to his promise of fighting the war on terror overseas instead of in the streets of America, and doing it right instead of bombing Asprin Factories in the Sudan, launching Tomahawk missiles at empty tents, and apparently deciding that Bosnia represented a greater threat to U.S. security than a man who was harboring at least three of the men who planned 9-11, he'd be no different then Clinton.
So, no, Jefferson wouldn't be in that group either, nor did I ever claim he would be.
Oh, and in case you didn't get it, probably being too young, the reference to "hic-splash"... Well, just ask Mary Jo Kopeckne. Oh wait, you can't, Teddy Kennedy killed her.
All in all, I understand *your* use of the word liberal in this conversation, but the more general use of the term in society no longer has anything to do with your definition. In modern parlance, I'd say that the term "liberal" means "believer in a giant overacrching government that protects you and coddles you [read: taxes you into oblivion and runs every aspect of your life] from cradle to grave."
The modern "liberal" example would be Ted "hic-splash" Kennedy.
You might see why I'd be offended by anyone throwing Jefferson into that category.
Sorry I took so long to respond.
:-D
I took offense with your characterization of Jefferson as libertarian because you called yourself (and libertarians by extension) fiscally conservative and socially liberal. From your statements, I'd argue that you are *not* "Liberal" in any sense of the word.
I agree that we need "social programs" that are established through charitable contributions. I don't think we should leave the old, sick, and infirm out in the street to die. I don't think anyone does that. I don't think that qualifies as "socially liberal" but more like, "Human."
In fact, like I said, I agree with about 97% of the libertarian philosophy. It's the last 3% that really bugs me.
I understand the "naturalist" lifestyle, and I even had a friend in college who was a naturalist/nudist/whatever you want to call it. I don't have a problem with setting aside places for naturists to run around in the alltogether to their heart's content. My issue is that you (and I'm using the royal all-inclusive "you" here, not necessarily *you* in particular) want to *force* that lifestyle onto me by claiming you should have the right to go to the grocery store in the buff.
I, personally, don't want to see it. I would be offended by it. As such, you have done "harm" to me, and infringed on my rights. I can't protect myself from this harm, because in the "clothing optional everywhere" society, I can't get away from it. Call me a prude, but dangly bits in the fruit aisle just turns my stomach.
And this is that 3%. I've heard libertarians in favor of pedophilia. That's just nasty. I've heard libertarians in favor of selling drugs to minors. Again, that's just dangerous. It's these fringe items that really make me shy away from the Libertarian point of view.
I'm not a "Republican," (Well, okay I am. Card carrying committee member in fact, but...) I'm a Conservative. I believe in 97% of what the Libertarians do, and about another 2% so long as I can close the door on it and not be forced to participate. The last 1% (the NAMBLA crowd) really makes me shudder.
So, we probably have more in common with Jefferson than different. I'd argue that he'd be the same way, i.e. "[do what you want] so long as it neither breaks my leg nor picks my pocket" with the things I agree with, and I think he'd agree that the remaining 1-3% is over the edge.
But, I could be wrong. He may have had affairs with up to six women, some married, some not, and even one slave. So, maybe he did run around naked at Monticello, but I doubt it...
Oh, and for clarification, when I said "States should have control of everything else," what I meant was that, that's up to the people to decide what powers to give to their state, which should be as little as possible, with most powers handed down to the county level, where the people of that county decide what powers to grant the county, which should be as little as possible, with most powers handed down to the city or municipality level where the people decide what powers to limit them to, which should be as little as possible, and then retain most of their rights for themselves, leaving the city governments to make the most important decisions locally, and only those decisions which can't be decided by a group of municipalities to make it to the county level, and vis-a-vis to the state level, and finally, only those issues that cannot be handled at *any* lower level, and that concern national defense or interstate commerce, being decided at the Federal level. That entire run-on sentence is what I meant by "up to the state".
I don't see how I could have been clearer.
"I defy you to name two instances where the PATRIOT Act prevented a terrorist attack or wherein a terrorist was successfully prosecuted because of the PATRIOT Act."
...originally Ashcroft was against the act.
In testimony before the Justice Committee, Tom Ridge revealed that 400 individuals have been prosecuted under the Patriot Act. Most of these were reduced to immigration infractions, and the defendant was deported. However 12 individuals have been convicted for violations of "terrorism" statutes and imprisoned under the Patriot Act. The most famous being the man who was attempting to build a "Dirty Bomb" and already had collected some of the radioactive materials needed to use in it.
Actually it was the CIA head, George Tennet(sp?) who was against the Patriot Act, because it effectively made him an underling to the NSA, and then to the Director of Homeland Security. In other words, he wanted to protect his "empire". After meeting with Ashcroft and seeing that it would help to combine national intelligence on terrorists and save American lives, he changed his position.
Thomas Jefferson wasn't only a Democrat-Republican, he was also a Liberal, today's Libertarian. He just as the LP, and I do, believed in a small and limited government as well as Liberty!
I'm not sure that Jefferson would have qualified as a "Libertarian" in today's views. Definitely he would be considered strongly conservative, but he was also strongly against social programs. He knew, just as Locke did, that the moment a people can choose to vote themselves handouts, it was the end of Democracy. Conservatives believe in as small a federal government as possible, which, in my opinion would mean: the Armed forces (including the Coast Guard), Immigration/Border Patrol, and the Interstate Commerce Committee to assure that prices remain the same between states (i.e. they regulate interstate commerce.) That's it. States should have control of everything else. I believe there should be a national sales tax to support the government, because that most fairly taxes those who consume the most and benefits those who produce the most.
Libertarians believe in total personal responsibility and freedom -- an idea which they carry a little too far. I'll never forget the time the LP candidate for POTUS showed up at the college campus to speak. I listened to 90% of the speech and was thinking, "Wow, this guy is really hitting the points on the head. Small government, state's rights, limited taxation..." And then he said, "And I believe that clothing should be optional at all times."
Jefferson would have had a heart attack at that moment. Remember that he once said, "A lady who has been seen as a sloven or slut in the morning will never efface the impression she has made, with all dress and pageantry she can afterwards involve herself in...I hope therefore, the moment you rise from bed, your first work will be to dress yourself in such style as that you may be seen by any gentleman without his being able to discover a pin amiss." To him, the idea of women (or men) traipsing around naked would have been repugnant.
His Conservative views don't end there. He contrasted American women to the French by lauding them as they "who have the good sense to value domestic happiness above all other...Our good ladies, I trust, have been too wise to wrinkle their foreheads with politics. They are contented to soothe and calm the minds of their husbands returning from political debate...It is a comparison of Amazons to Angels."
I could also site hundreds of quotations where Jefferson rails against social programs, saying that "milking the breast of government" is the greatest ill that can befall a society.
So don't think of Jefferson as a Libertarian, because he so clearly held many Conservative beliefs. And before anyone gets angry at me as a sexist pig, I don't have any problems with women in politics or jobs. I'm trying to point out that Jefferson would be considered far more Socially conservative than Falcon would have us believe.
You are right, who offered up an appointee means nothing, voting records do.
So, you are correct, three of the five were republican nominees. Kennedy, the waffler, who sometimes, although rarely, votes conservative, was appointed by Reagan when he had to get an appointee through a *MASSIVELY* Democrat controlled senate. If I remember right, it was a 65-35 margin back in those days.
Ford's appointee, who has voted left of even Ruth Vader Ginsburgh, a former ACLU lawyer, was appointed after the Watergate affair, when Ford would have been lucky to get a cup of coffee, much less the nominee he wanted.
And, finally, Bush Sr's appointee, who has, again, voted to the left of everyone except maybe Ford's nominee.
Then the two Clinton nominees round out the five. Now they've voted to form, voting left-wing all the way.
On the other hand, the "EVIL" Clarence Thomas voted for the little guy, Sandra Day O'Connor -- little guy, etc.
In fact, the four most right-leaning voting record justices all vote for the little guy, with Kennedy swinging to the left side of the equation.
Now, as for the rest of your letter, let me re-phrase some of your statements.
"The current party with power is trying to ram through the PATRIOT act." Tough talk for a bill that passed 99-0. It dares to extend to "terrorist acts" powers that law enforcement already posesses against organized crime. I defy you to name even two cases where the Patriot Act has been abused. You do know that *EVERY TIME* it's invoked, the Attourney General has to report to the Congress as to why and how it was used, and what the result was. You did know that, right? You wouldn't just be knee-jerking from what Nancy Pelosi and Ted Kennedy have been spouting?
Have you *EVER* actually read the Patriot Act? If not, I implore you to do so before commenting. The Patriot act has it's flaws, but the idea that the Bush administration wants to use it to declare martial law isn't one of them.
Secondly, I find the current administration to be extremely left-leaning in many of it's actions. It's done nothing to improve border security, or to remove punative taxation. It's expanded social programs, exportation of jobs, apparent blindness to illegal workers, and constant growth of the national debt -- all hallmarks of the opposition party. The left may hate "W", but I'm not especially fond of him either.
And as for the "Party of the Little Guy" line, only one party has been using that as their official mantra while standing for the exact opposite.
I am, as I have pointed out in previous messages, a Conservative. The Republican party is moving more left every day, leaving a huge vacuum behind. On the other hand, the Democrats are now approaching realms that Karl Marx could only dream of. Thomas Jefferson founded the Democrats (as the Democratic-Republicans, how ironic...) but he would be considered a "Whacko Conservative Nut-Job" today. I'm sure that whatever is left in his tomb could be used as an alternative energy source if we could just tap the spinning after today's ruling.
Excuse me, but in what respect? Five of the most revered, supposedly wisest, liberals hand down a, supposedly intellectually arrived at, decision which stomps on the rights of individuals in favor of a more persavive and all-powerful government, and you compare it to an individual spitting on a sidewalk?
I am referring to the "big-lie" of liberalism that it is "for the people" when in truth, it stands for taking as many rights away from you, the individual, as possible. Something they've been lying about for nearly 70 years.
Uhm. The Contract "with" America was a Conservative Republican document, and the four most conservative (Republican) leaning judges *DISSENTED* on this ruling, with the five most liberal (Democrat) judges voting to take away your property.
Which says more about the truth of liberalism and democrats than anything else. They lean towards socialism, while the conservatives lean towards individual rights. Get it through your head that the "Party of the Little Guy" is not the Democrats.
A precedent that was set by the FDR administration as part of the massive socialism^h^h^h New Deal program.
Learn your history.
Yes, but I can survive a year or two of high taxes before the outraged masses vote the bums out of office. However, once the house is bulldozed, I'm pretty much screwed. You can bet that the bulldozers are already being delivered to these houses and within a week's time there'll be nothing but empty lots, with the houses emptied by moving companies with the residents held back by police officers with guns.
How do you survive that?
Be careful to actually read the amendment in question before commenting. The relevant portion of the fifth amendment is:
"nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation."
Note that the framers did not use the ambiguous term "public good" but the term "public use" which is much more well defined. If they take away property, it must be for the use of the public as a whole and not for any small part of it. This ruling basically strikes those three words ("for public use") right off the paper.
Your entire comment is null and void because you didn't read the Fifth Amendment.
The issue *IS* black and white, because the difference between your hypothetical running water situation and this one is that in your hypothetical, the Government is stepping in to create a publicly held resource (water supply) for use by the public.
In this case, a *PRIVATE CORPORATION* went to the land-owners with their check, the landowners said, "We don't want our neighborhood to become a soulless strip mall/condo forest" and then the corporation convinced the city government to take their houses away *AND HAND THE PROPERTY TO A PRIVATE CORPORATION.*
Do you see the difference? In your hypothetical, the whole city prospers with a publicly held water supply. In the second, a small group of campaign contributors^h^h^h^h fat cats get to make millions.
The fact that 5 of the most liberal voting judges in the history of the Supreme Court sided with the rich fat cats tells you all you ever needed to know about the truth of liberalism.
Except that I hate soft-boiled eggs.
That's because at low enough pressure (about 1% of 1 atmosphere) the water boils right out of the leaves at room temperature. The lower the pressure, the lower the temperature that water boils. I live at 6300 ft (2000m) above sea level, and water boils as low as 199 degrees f (~91C) here on a stormy day.
In fact, if you go up to the top of Pike's peak here (14110ft/~4500m), it becomes impossible to hard boil an egg, because you can't get the water hot enough (about 160F/78C) to cook the egg.
Wow. After that I can only add one thing. Basically all of the studies used by the Kyoto treaty were based on the predictions made by the 1995 IPCC conference report. Every one of those predictions have been off by huge factors, including the rate of release of CO2, the prediction of which, over a mere 7 years, was off by a factor of 300%. In science, the standard deviation is the measure of accuracy. The first standard deviation is less than 10% of variance. To accept Kyoto you must accept that something 9 standard deviations out is still acceptable science.
Otherwise, I think the original response hit just about every point I would have brought up. Thanks for saving me the typing.
Obviously no one in Canada did, because the extent of the "revisions" this guy made was to add the word, "extremely" in front of the word "difficult" in the sentence "Because there are so many factors involved in the determination of systems producing and sequestering greenhouse gases, the determination of the exact amount of greenhouse gases added by any particular souce is extremely difficult."
He also removed a paragraph which speculated on the effect on farming caused by the future melting of glaciers as being "speculative and in the opinion of the researchers unbacked by finding of fact."
Oh boy, let's crucify the guy. This in a 20+ page report. And the guy's job was specifically to review and edit such final reports for clarity.
Yup, I can see where that totally changed the meaning of the report.
You're either amazingly stupid, or amazingly illogical. Your statement that rights don't center around incentive or reward is almost laughable. Let's enumerate a right or two and see where it leads: Freedom of Speech - incentive: I am oppressed, because I have the right of Freedom from Opression, I want change. With Freedom of Speech, I have the right to speak out against my oppression. My reward, if my speech is found by others to make sense and be logically sound, is to have that oppression lifted. In the ideal society, the original perpetrator of that oppression is then punished to insure that such oppression will not occur again. Thus is law born from the rights of man. Go read John Locke if you don't understand this.
You claim that the *use* of invention does not damage an the inventor, and then make a fallacious comparison. If I work my fingers to the bone to build mud pies, I have no control over the mud. But the two are not the same. I never claimed control over the mud, just that I have found a use for it. You have chosen to be lazy, to see mud only as something that is squishy and brown. I have chosen to use my intellect and my effort to derive a new use for mud. If you then, being incredibly lazy, simply steal that process and make your own mud pies, I have received no recompense for my work, and you *HAVE* done damage to me. Even moreso, if you already have a factory which you can retool to make mud pies at a lower cost than I can to build a new factory, staff it, and produce those mud pies, and you corner the market, then you have done damage to me again.
You seem to think that individuals who participate in abstract thought deserve no recompense and can't be damaged or harmed by others. This is fallacious.
You also make the assumption that no idea is unique or revelatory. You must assume that if Einstein hadn't come along that all his work would have been found anyway, a position that most physicists would *DISAGREE* with (most consider his work in General Relativity to be so profound and groundbreaking that it would have taken decades if not centuries to discover.)
Should we discount this as having "no value", and therefore its theft and misuse as causing "no damage"?
Going back to the mud pies, no one can claim control of the mud itself. It is a resource. However, while you may make mud pies, I might choose to find a way to bake the mud with charcoal, then take the resulting material and use acids to etch it, chemicals to plate it, and techniques to shape it with light. In the end, I have a silicon microchip. They're both mud, but in your world, one has no more value than the other.
You talk about individual innovation being wasteful compared to group effort (there's that whole Community > Individuals problem again) while I can show you study after study that shows the group is more wasteful and less productive than the individual or small group. In fact productivity in groups larger then five goes down by orders of magnitude.
And I never *EVER* in all my items said that work can't be done without patents. What I said is that if an individual *CHOOSES* to take such a *RISK*, that they deserve a *LIMITED* protection from the misuse or theft of their work. I can't walk into a store and steal a physical item without facing consequences, why should I be able to do the same thing with 5 years of someone's blood, sweat, and tears?
Groups can accomplish things, but, by their nature, *THEY SPREAD THE RISK*. If something fails, no individual suffers overly, if they succeed, no individual profits greatly either. But if an individual risks all, then they deserve to reap all the rewards if they succeed, and all the damages if they fail.
Then you go on once again to say I'm in favor of big government and forced charity. Did you read where I said, "The government is bloated and has no right to distribute funds?" I again can't see how you can claim to say I'm in favor of big government. I stated that the decision was made according to th
Wow, there are so many logical fallacies in your arguments, I don't even know where to start.
/. is your work mostly intangible, like software?
You use the term "Scalable Process" -- that doesn't mean anything. All processes, by definition, are scalable. By your argument no process should be patentable. You make the assumption that people do not deserve reward for invention or creation, and that is your entire argument in a nutshell. Everything -- in your philosophy -- must be open and done "for the good of society". Libertarian? I think not.
If R&D is a labor expense, so what? Are you claiming that people shouldn't be paid for labor? Again, there's an economic system that works that way, but it's not in the Libertarian philosophy.
And you point at the article and say, "See, they spend more on marketing then on R&D!" But I'll point out that most of them spend a far smaller percentage on marketing than practically any other manufacturer of products out there. The last company I worked for spent 87% of it's annual budget on marketing. Are they *EVIL*? Or are they trying to sell a product to a market. A market that is being continually handed stories about cheap grey-market goods.
Again, there's an economic model where marketing isn't necessary, but it ain't Libertarianism.
Your next diatribe, calling me a Marxist is so completely laughable I barely feel a need to respond. But, in the spirit of good dialogue...
I said "...THE AMERICAN PEOPLE, THROUGH THEIR REPRESENTATIVES, CHOSE TO SPEND..." Now, the last I checked, we live in a Representative Republic. The people chose, through the voting process, a group of representatives to travel to Washington D.C. and represent them at the Federal level. Those representatives chose to spend that money. Whatever I, as an individual think about that expenditure is unimportant (although -- again for the sake of argument -- I'll tell you that I think sending any money to any country is a poor use of taxpayer funds. As a strict Constituionalist I don't even think the U.S. has the right to do so) because the majority (as represented by their elected officials) have spoken, and they favor sending money.
I'm personally all in favor of letting the African nations go it alone. Right now that's resulting in widespread genocide (millions dead in Somalia, Rawanda and the Congo), starvation (Ethiopia, Zimbabwe, and others) and feudalistic warlords sending death squads through the streets. Me, I'd pull out completely and leave them on their own because all we're doing now is sending money and aid that the despotic regimes steal and misuse.
But you see, that's where compassion comes in. I don't like the thought of millions being slaughtered and dying of diseases. I don't like the idea of funding warlords. I don't like the idea of propping up despots. You, on the other hand are willing to hand them the keys to the kingdom. Give them money, give them the means to produce medicines, technology, and weapons, all without the wisdom earned by having to develop them. You'd like to let the genie out of the bottle. You'd give them the technology to create genocide weapons. Oh, they'd wipe out AIDS in Africa all right. Just make one of those capsules out of pure cyanide and they won't have an AIDS problem anymore. That's what happens if we give them the ability to make the medicines.
As for your final paragraph, the complete lack of logic in it is staggering. You would have called Edison a bastard for inventing the light bulb. James Watt was an asshole for that whole steam thing. Orville and Wilbur Wright were the embodiment of evil.
Tell me, do you have a job? Do you get paid? Do you make a product? Or, like most people on
If it is, how can you justify, in your philosophy, earning a salary? Surely, you should just turn it over to someone who is better than you. Stop working and hand it off, because your selfish need to produce something is harming society as a whole. And you claim that
The problem in this case is how to separate a trivial patent from a meaningful one. Under the current law, you can patent "business methods". Well, arguably I could then patent a "means of consolidating related business information into a connected whole using a wire bending apparatus" and then sue every company that uses a stapler to bind their documents together.
That's bullshit.
And the real problem is, how do we separate something that simple from something truly revolutionary. You talk about a revolutionary process, and I'll tell you that such a process is either going to be a minor change or collaboration of already existing processes, and thus shouldn't be patent protected, or, it's such a huge and sweeping change that the magnitude of code it requires would fall far outside the "fair use" clause of copyright and would thus be protected. That's what the whole slew of lawsuits in the 80's was all about, and why "look and feel" is actually now a legal term.
You say "software is a set of instructions for how the machine works" -- how is that different from telling me that "You can't swing the hammer that way, I patented it." You're defining the use of a machine in very specific terms (i.e. programming languages). That's the same as trying to patent the way to swing the hammer. It's insane. Now, if you have worked out a new way of swinging that hammer and use a lesson plan to teach it to someone, and then they try to sell that lesson plan as their "NEW HAMMER SWING version 2.0" you can sue them for copyright infringement.
In other words, the protection is already there.
Did you even read what I wrote? I said software should be protected by copyright not by patent. Your argument about OS copying was about copying the OS *whole cloth*, not about copying bits and pieces and using algorithms. That's protected under copyright not patent. Talk all you want about open source and Linux, but a hobby project that's grabbed a whopping .7% of the desktop OS marketplace isn't exactly what I call "a giant success". Those lawsuits were about people literally stealing/reverse engineering the operating system, rebranding it and selling it as their own product. I know -- I was already working in the industry back then. They'd take 20 man years of someone else's work, and 15 minutes later they'd be selling their own CASH-DOS for $5 less than Micro$oft. Sorry, but no matter how much you hate Bill Gates, that's still theft, and those lawsuits were about fixing copyright law to close the software loopholes, not patent law.
I think software patents are bullshit. How can you patent a shadow casting algorithm based on a text description of it? You can *copyright* specific code, but the algorithm itself is too intangible to be patented. You can patent a hammer, but not how you swing it.
On the other hand, solid, mechanical or chemical devices don't fall into this category. They represent real cash outlay to devise and develop. This costs money. If it didn't there would be "Open Source Cars" on the road right now, and "Open Source Microwave Ovens" in the kitchen that you walk into the "Open Source Store" and pull off the shelf for free.
If anyone has a premise that's broken, it's you.
And as for R&D costs, I happen to know people who work at pharmaceutical companies, and my sister-in-law works at 3M (another big R&D firm). It's not unusual for 3M to spend $10 million to develop a new type of adhesive that's "just a little stickier" then their current one. Research is *DAMNED* expensive. Drug research is doubly so, because you are looking at a 7-15 *YEAR* cycle of testing through the FDA. Fast-tracked drugs might cut that down to 3-5 *YEARS*. That's time where your R&D is complete, all the money is spent, and you can't make a penny of profit, because you can't sell a thing. *NOR SHOULD YOU* as the drug has not proven to be safe. At the end of a cycle of R&D, Testing, Studies, Review, Testing, and finally Marketing (and yes, marketing is part of drugs in the modern market. It's part of every other market, why are Pharmas *evil* for daring to market?) the costs can *easily* be in the Billions of dollars.
You cite insulin as a drug "discovered by accident". Well, if you consider "by accident" as 5 years of lab work, 10 years of refinement and testing, and hundreds of man-years in the succeeding decades to improve, perfect, and synthesize the drug as "an accident" then you're right. Read about how insulin was discovered. Yes, the "lab assistant" found the insulin link "by accident" (in a controlled study with hundreds of tests, etc., etc.), but it's not like they were selling it over the counter the following Tuesday. So, you want to call bullshit, I call bullshit on you.
I've watched the patent process first hand when my dad developed a (we'll call it a widget, since it's for a very specialized and technical field) widget. He designed it, developed prototypes, tested it, showed it worked, put the protoypes into the hands of the industry experts in order to improve it, perfect it, and finally, after spending about $250,000 of his own money, he went on to patent it. He was able to negotiate with an industry company to manufacture and use the widget, but unfortunately passed away (from cancer) before he could make one red cent of profit from it. The company has since started manufacturing the widget without owning the patent and my mother (who now owns the patent) has started the process to sue them for patent infringement.
Explain how that makes my dad or mom evil?
Hmm. Why do we *need* some patent protection?
You run a pharmaceutical company. You make a minor discovery that a certain concoction may have an effect on cancerous cells. You spend the next 15 years and $100 Billion dollars to develop this. The result: the cure for cancer.
However, under your system, the patent system has been eliminated. You can't file a patent on this medicine. However, you've staked the future of the company on it. If it fails, your company goes under.
You amortize the cost of the research so that, over the next 7 years, you can recoup all the research costs, and maybe turn a 5% profit. The pills cost $90 each, but, hey, they cure cancer. No one, you are sure, will complain.
You launch amid a press fanfare, the world heralds your name, and everyone loves you, you are the savior of the moment. Your name will stand with Salk and Pasteur in the annals of medicine.
However, two days later, a rival company buys one of your pills, throws it into a mass spectrograph and, a week later, they start selling the same pills for $2 each. Their research cost -- about $90. They will make $10,000,000 in profit in the first month alone. Bereft of income, your company collapses, you go bankrupt, and die in poverty.
Patents have their place, and they should last 7 years as they were originally intended, with no extensions and no "50-year patents".
Just because a pharamceutical company doesn't want to go bankrupt (putting thousands of people out of work and depriving the market of all the drugs they produce) does not make them evil. Your comparison is not equivalent to the slave on the plantation being "treated well." What you are asking is for the master of the plantation, having just built a new manor house to hand over the keys to the slaves and start sleeping in the corn field.
Software is a written work, and should be protected by Copyright, not patent.
You are suffering from a severe case of "throwing the baby out with the bathwater."
I hate to point out the obvious, but this bill eliminates the possibility of using prior art to strike down a patent. Since it also says that "First Filer" not "First Inventor" gets the patent, then it doesn't matter if there's prior art. You are, ipso facto the first to file, and therfore the owner.
Am I the only one who sees that this bill gives you a gun and then points it irrevocably at one's own feet?
Wow, the parent gets modded as flamebait, but this post gets modded up for calling anyone and everyone evil.
The republicans, who follow a generally conservative bent, are supposed to be (although with Bush it's not clear) for smaller, less-intrusive, government. Distribution of control to the local level, not the federal. Personal responsibility and unlimited opportunity. And most of all, a free and unfettered capitalist marketplace. We also believe in a strong national defense against outside forces. We believe in keeping our country safe.
On the other hand, a small group of Muslim terrorists, upset about the fact that the U.S. has become the world's policeman and happens *not* to want to see Israel wiped from the face of the Earth, has decided that the best way to strike us is to engage in cowardly, unprovoked attacks on our unarmed citizens. They would like to kill as many of them as possible, but fear a frontal confrontation because that would reveal them as a small minority that cannot maintain their power if faced with the majority. So they strike from the darkness with fervor and whatever weapons can be improvised and stolen.
If they had a weapon of mass destruction, they would use it. Immediately. On a civilian target, not a military one.
So, the conservative viewpoint is this case is simple. We cannot wait for such an attack, because our people will die. We cannot negotiate with these terrorists because, a) they're fanatical and won't negotiate with us, and b) they represent tyranical minorities who do not represent their people. This pretty much leaves four options. One - throw them into a cage that they can't get out of -- but such a thing doesn't exist, two -- give them what they want and hope they go away (the Saudi Arabian method), three -- convert to a police state to prevent anyone from sneaking in or out or doing anything bad (some people will point at the Patriot Act, but the fact those people aren't currently in "dissident prison" shows that it's not *that* all-encompassing), or four - kill the terrorists before they kill you.
In this case, we didn't initiate the violence, 19 Muslim terroists did that by hijacking 4 planes and killing 3000 people.
As for your statement that they all use violence to enforce charity, well, conservatives are against most taxation, could care less about your religion (yeah, really, we don't want you all to be bible-thumpers), and only want war as a last resort, although we won't compromise our core principles to stay out of a war (think Neville Chamberlain vs. Winston Churchill).
I will agree that the level of socialists/socialism on SlashDot is somewhat frightening, as I can't imagine a worse system of government and economy shy of the extreme socialist view (i.e. Communism or National Socialism).
While it may provide pressure to develop more "energy efficient" (Read: environmentally friendly) technologies, at the same time, it squashes the means to do so. The financial outlay for the United States has been estimated at 6 Trillion dollars. That's 3 years of the entire federal budget and nearly 30% of GNP.
That kind of expenditure will cause wide-spread unemployment, famine, and basically destroy the economic engine of the nation. In return, it cuts U.S. emissions by less than 10%.
Of course, all those unemployed people won't be able to buy the new "green cars" and will be running old and poorly maintained vehicles, heaters, etc. They won't pay for more expensive "green power" and will turn towards cheap "dirty power" instead. The overall effect might be to actually *increase* overall emissions.
Oil will eventually run out. As it does so, the price will increase and it will become less and less attractive as a power source. When that happens, alternatives will become more attractive and more money will be spent to develop them. In other words, as the oil runs out, we'll work to find a way to replace it.
All without Kyoto.
You mean, like Greenland and Europe was in the 1100's, at the end of the Medieval Optimum. Must have been all those SUVs in Atlantis...