How can you educate children if you offer a closed source product and a capitalistic greed based philosophy where the only reason to use a computer is to make money?
Why do you want to give control of their laptop to Microsoft when you can give control of these laptops to the users/students?
Why should you force your software on them? They never asked for Windows and probably wouldn't choose it if given the option. So why force them to use closed source software?
It's closed source. There is no argument you can make that can convince me that the learning experience of using a closed source OS is equal to the learning experience of using an open source OS.
You just want the third world to be consumers and be forced into Microsofts hands. You want the third world to be trapped and less free.
Would it matter to you if you had to use inferior software just because some US corporation wants to control what you do with your laptop?
I mean come on, you have to be able to see that it's not in your best interest to be limited in what you can do with your laptop, and Windows LIMITS what you can do.
That and, why should people in the third world be forced to trust an American OS? What if they don't want to use American software? We should just force them to?
Next you'll be asking if it would make a difference if we force them to convert to Christianity and study our religion from the Bible we choose!
I've had similar experiences. I didn't learn most of what I know in the classrooms. I went to the poorly funded urban schools which didn't even have books in some cases.
But I had access to the library, and I went to the library every single day to use the computer and access the internet. Eventually I got my own computer and through my own determination I taught myself what I needed to know to get into community college and now university.
If these laptops are given to children in the third world, with todays internet, I think we will see great things happen. When I was on the internet there was no wikipedia, and the computer I had probably was worse than the laptop these kids use. So I agree with you that these kids need access to as much information as possible.
I have a theory, that if someone is smart, if you give them access to unlimited information, and you give them some tools which allow them to structure that information and then some tools so they can us their knowledge to actually produce new forms of information, learning will take place. Just letting a kid gain access to Google and Wikipedia will change their lives, and when you combine it with access to unlimited source code, unlimited technical information, then you allow for the student to teach themselves.
And while I'm not from Brazil, I'm certainly not rich or even an upper class member of US society and I can say that having access to technology has helped me immensely. I don't even see how anyone can debate whether or not increased information access improves life.
Unfortunately, Bruce, that does not the match reality of how these laptops are being used.
I don't see teachers in sufficient numbers being prepared to take advantage of open source. In Brazil (where I live), I see teachers that can barely teach their subject with a blackboard and white chalk.
What I see is cool and nice that kids have it, but it is miles away form Seymour Papert's dream. Or Alan Kay's dream.
When I was in 5th grade, I was taught Logo. I thought it was the coolest thing in the world. These kids have Squeak. Squeak has the potential to blow your mind, because Squeak is multimedia-ready (and cool projects like Scratch have been developed on top of it).
But it seems that it ammounts to having a cool little laptop that can network.
There's nothing intrinsic to it that demands open source OS. Unfortunately, because ideally one would want to be able to go very, very deep. The project seems to fall short in that respect.
What are these kids learning that will teach them that it is the human that makes the computer?
That, to me, is the true "technological transfer."
So, the way the project has been led has been self-defeating, IMHO.
The last point I would like to make is that the GPL license does not, and will not, empower people in India, Brazil, or any other developing nation. This was a big mistake. Only a liberal license like the BSD license can empower people, permiting them to compete in a hostile commercial environment, contributing to a common source but not naively exposing one self to bigger corporations that would crush their businesses (unless they want to play the hypocritical "dual-licensing" - an euphemism to proprietary licensing). You don't make sense. If I had a laptop when I was growing up, I would have used it to learn whatever I wanted.
You assume that kids who have these laptops can ONLY use them in the context of a western style classroom where a teacher gives them instructions on what to learn and how.
Did you consider that there might be some students who for lack of a better word, are geniuses, who can teach the class themselves? And their friends?
If you give an intelligent person access to unlimited information, and combine it with free time, and tools such as this laptop, learning will happen.
Just like if you give a kid a TV, the kid can find ways to learn from that for good or bad, if you give a kid a laptop, the kid can learn how to write code, how computers work, how the internet works, and eventually they'll be able to get on the internet and learn how the world works through wikipedia or whatever else happens to be on the internet.
I don't think this would be as powerful under windows because first of all, no one knows what the windows source code is. If I were a kid and I wanted to learn how windows works, I couldn't look at the code to find out.
How can you claim something is built for educational purposes if it's closed source? That's the anti-thesis of what you are trying to do with the project.
Report all the horror stories and unethical tactics of the bad bosses to the bad boss newsletter, complete with a brief biography of the person as well as their corporate history and how they run their business.
And once you have that, you'll actually be able to coordinate and organize in a way which can influence members of the board of directors.
This is a situation where you have to choose your boss! Do you want the good boss or the bad boss?
Each corporation has a boss or bosses. Do you know who they are? Yet you'll give them all your money, all your labor, all your ideas(copyrights), all your patents.
So if you give them all your shit, of course they'll pimp the hell out of you, because that's the lifestyle of a bad boss.
A bad boss does not have to work for a living, because you'll be dumb enough to do all the work for them. And if you are dumb enough to give up your freedom in music to the bad bosses, then you can't be surprised if you lose your freedom everywhere else.
Look at how artists have given up on having freedom? Sure most artists might support Napster, but lets be serious here, the current copyright laws are not set up to benefit artists or consumers. The current copyright laws are set up to help bad bosses profit by increasing costs to consumers while reducing profits to artists, thus they get rich by merely controlling access to information. They don't produce or do anything else for a living.
They get rich by telling us what we can't do. It's that simple!
Good Bosses want to get rich by increasing the amount of things we CAN do with what we produce and buy.
This situation, like the situation in every industry, or anywhere in society, is a situation of bad bosses vs good bosses.
Bad bosses tend to make bad short sighted decisions. These decisions might include destroying the world to maintain profitability. These decisions may destroy the music industry, the software industry, and many other industries, just so the shareholders can have access to cheap money. The thinking goes "If I can get paid without having to do any work, just by the stroke of my pen, why not join the darkside?"
A bad boss does not have to produce any new ideas, or produce any information, or anything really. A bad boss simply has to control the information, the ideas, and the results of the labor that other people produce.
A bad boss wants to get rich, or in some cases wealthy, off other peoples labor, off the natural resources in the environment, or by pimping artists.
The good boss cares about the artist and consumers, and wants to maximize the freedom and profitability for the artists, while also limiting the costs and maximizing the flexibility to the customers. The artist to the good boss is not simply a resource to be exploited, but is the corporation itself, and how the artist is treated represents the values of the corporation and of the Good boss running the corporation. The Good boss also wants the costumers to have an increased quality of life, so that the impact of the work of that corporation has some meaning to society.
And thats the difference right there. It's the good bosses vs the bad bosses, in a never ending battle for control. Who do you want to control the worlds information? People who want to increase your freedom, or people who want to control information in a way in which you have to pay a license fee just to access books, and where you can be sued if you tell anyone what you read in the book?
I'd rather promote a more open free society, where information production is a service and not a product. That would mean more information for us!
Imagine if the web worked through copyright where every site required a fee? Some of these people wanted to use that scheme for the WWW back when the discussions were on how to make the WWW profitable. They were wrong then and they are still wrong today.
The truth is, the media does not have a choke on Congress. The media is just better organized than you.
If you believe in Free Software, the Creative Commons, Open Source, and if you don't think downloading mp3s is equal to stealing, then it's up to you to set up your businesses and do business with people who have the same agenda as you.
Congressmen, even people who work for the RIAA, probably have downloaded mp3s, or mpegs that are in violation of the copyright, and if not that then perhaps they are using pirated software, and if not that then perhaps they use source code in violation of the GPL.
This is not about whether or not artists should be paid. Artists are going to be paid no matter who wins. This is about who should be in control of information, the producers/consumers, or rich folks who happen to own all the patents and copyrights.
One way to reform copyright law would be to make it far more expensive for a corporation to buy an individuals patent or copyright. If it costs tens of millions or hundreds of millions to buy a patent from a content producer, then the actual producers would make money. Another reform option would be to maximize freedom or customers.
Content creation should become a service. The artist should be a service provider. The consumer should be able to buy a CD and actually own the information on it, however they should not own the right to profit from that information.
This would mean you'd be able to listen to and share music, just not get rich by selling someone elses music. The current RIAA does not even want to allow you to control the music you legally purchased. They don't want you to be able to copy it, and that limits your free speech rights because you aren't PROFITING from it in any way, nor are you claiming you produced it.
It's real simple, there are two positions and two kinds of people. On one side it's those who support the old way of profiting, and on the other side it's those who support the new way of profiting. NEITHER side is anti-profit, and the old way of doing things is anti-artist and anti-consumer.
So my advise, KNOW who runs the corporations you do business with. Don't worry about politicians.
Political support will come after you are organized enough to put your politicians in. Organization is what you lack, your network is made up of college students and most of them aren't even organized enough to form a music consumers union with a mailing list.
It's not the companies that are bad. Companies are just methods of social organization. If you don't support these profit mechanisms that unethical individuals in corporations are using, then you should give your money to ethical individuals whereever you find them.
To start, you should at least KNOW about the people who run the company you do business with. Do you know about the people who run these companies like Sony? I doubt you even know their names.
Just look at what happened with Elliot Spitzer, he unleashed a war on prostitution and then we find he was seeing a prostitute himself.
How many of these people who work for Sony, actually have pirated versions of Windows?
How many of these people who verbally support the RIAA actually are downloading pirated music files?
Most of the people who talk about how downloading mp3s is stealing, probably have a folder on their pirated version of windows dedicated just to "stolen" music files.
This is about who should own the worlds information. Personally, I think the producers and consumers should own it, and not just a bunch of rich folks in suits who happen to have the money to buy all the patents and copyrights but who can't produce a damn thing.
The RIAA is not Sony Warner EMI Universal, at least the RIAA you are thinking of. It's actually a group of individuals who are on the board of directors of multiple corporations such as these but ultimately it's individuals and not corporations.
These individuals have decided to label anyone who does not agree with their agenda on how the industry should function, and how profits should be made, as "pirates". So they have a name for people who think like you, but what name do you have for people who think like them?
If you support copyright reform that frees/gives control to artists and fans, then you aren't one of them. Their network exists to keep control out of the hands of customers and fans. They want to control all information and keep that control away from the producers of the information and away from the consumers of the information.
So these people are trying to control the worlds information, and the people they label are pirates probably will eventually include those who support free software, those who are against software patents, those who want to actually OWN the music they buy in some way, those who want to MAKE music and completely control and own how it's distributed.
It's not as simple as a bunch of corporations, it's more like a battle to find out who should control the worlds information, the producers/consumers of it, or the people rich enough to own the rights.
I support the GPL and Creative Commons, just so you know where I stand. And I support Linux, Napster, P2P, and anything else which increases my freedom as a consumer and producer of information.
Instead of listing the big four corporations, why not do something called "social network analysis", and create a map of the entire RIAA network of individuals, corporations, and the entire list of supporters.
The RIAA is more than just a collection of corporations. What you are really dealing with is a vast network of people who hold similar views and goals. The RIAA includes all it's supporters, including the bribed politicians who support the agenda. The RIAA also includes all who run businesses that cling to the outdated profit models and who refuse to even consider new ways of making money.
It's not just the RIAA. It's the MPAA, it's all sorts of organizations united around the same agenda of creating a type of eternal intellectual property which never dies. They want intellectual property to be eternal so they can secure eternal profits in a very lazy way.
Basically it's a scheme which a lot of people are involved in, as a way to get paid by pimping artists. It's a way to make money while doing no real work at all beyond hiring lawyers and suing people.
Social network analysis is the kind of analysis that was done to figure out who the board members were at Enron. It's the kind of analysis that the site "They rule" used to figure out the individuals who are on the boards of multiple corporations.
It's not the corporations like Sony, EMI or Universal that are doing this. It's the individuals who decide that this is the only way to profit, and who support an agenda that is destroying the music industry, and will eventually destroy the software industry with the software patents, and eventually they'll try to patent and copyright all information and use that to control human thought/knowledge.
When I interviewed for my job, my soon to be boss discriminated by asking detailed technical questions that nobody without experience and a brain capable of some serious critical thinking ability would be able to answer. He did not need a gene test to tell him that I knew what I was doing.
That's because it's a job anyone can learn to do. There are some jobs that cannot be mastered through practice or learned through training. Some jobs rely on talent.
A genetic test can reveal who has the natural talent and who does not.
Slashdot Mirror
The only reason to use XP over Linux is if it's not about educating students, but about creating new consumers.
The point of the project is to promote liberty.
I'm guessing you want to promote slavery.
You want the third world to forever depend on the first word, to forever be dependent, like pets!
How can you claim to be for the best interest of the children if you don't want to give them the ability to fish? You want them to beg forever?
Beg for jobs, beg for food, or beg microsoft for software?
And if they use Windows they'll have to beg for books!
How can you educate children if you offer a closed source product and a capitalistic greed based philosophy where the only reason to use a computer is to make money?
Why do you want to give control of their laptop to Microsoft when you can give control of these laptops to the users/students?
Why should you force your software on them? They never asked for Windows and probably wouldn't choose it if given the option. So why force them to use closed source software?
It's closed source. There is no argument you can make that can convince me that the learning experience of using a closed source OS is equal to the learning experience of using an open source OS.
You just want the third world to be consumers and be forced into Microsofts hands. You want the third world to be trapped and less free.
Would it matter to you if you had to use inferior software just because some US corporation wants to control what you do with your laptop?
I mean come on, you have to be able to see that it's not in your best interest to be limited in what you can do with your laptop, and Windows LIMITS what you can do.
That and, why should people in the third world be forced to trust an American OS? What if they don't want to use American software? We should just force them to?
Next you'll be asking if it would make a difference if we force them to convert to Christianity and study our religion from the Bible we choose!
Why do you need outsourced jobs when you can develop your own talent and ability to create your own jobs?
Do we really want more outsourcing anyway?
They (Microsoft) sees them as consumers.
How are you going to free them if you treat the student as a consumer from the start?
Do you really believe these are the only two options?
You have the freedom to promote liberty. If you want to promote slavery, I'm not going to help you.
I promote only one kind of freedom. The Freedom to liberate yourself.
I don't support the freedom to be a slave. If you want to the freedom to be a slave, too bad, you haven't earned it.
If one corporation can claim an entire market as their property, then it's not a free market anymore.
I've had similar experiences. I didn't learn most of what I know in the classrooms. I went to the poorly funded urban schools which didn't even have books in some cases.
But I had access to the library, and I went to the library every single day to use the computer and access the internet. Eventually I got my own computer and through my own determination I taught myself what I needed to know to get into community college and now university.
If these laptops are given to children in the third world, with todays internet, I think we will see great things happen. When I was on the internet there was no wikipedia, and the computer I had probably was worse than the laptop these kids use. So I agree with you that these kids need access to as much information as possible.
I have a theory, that if someone is smart, if you give them access to unlimited information, and you give them some tools which allow them to structure that information and then some tools so they can us their knowledge to actually produce new forms of information, learning will take place. Just letting a kid gain access to Google and Wikipedia will change their lives, and when you combine it with access to unlimited source code, unlimited technical information, then you allow for the student to teach themselves.
And while I'm not from Brazil, I'm certainly not rich or even an upper class member of US society and I can say that having access to technology has helped me immensely. I don't even see how anyone can debate whether or not increased information access improves life.
I don't see teachers in sufficient numbers being prepared to take advantage of open source. In Brazil (where I live), I see teachers that can barely teach their subject with a blackboard and white chalk.
What I see is cool and nice that kids have it, but it is miles away form Seymour Papert's dream. Or Alan Kay's dream.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ovG_k2b3AXU
When I was in 5th grade, I was taught Logo. I thought it was the coolest thing in the world. These kids have Squeak. Squeak has the potential to blow your mind, because Squeak is multimedia-ready (and cool projects like Scratch have been developed on top of it).
But it seems that it ammounts to having a cool little laptop that can network.
There's nothing intrinsic to it that demands open source OS. Unfortunately, because ideally one would want to be able to go very, very deep. The project seems to fall short in that respect.
What are these kids learning that will teach them that it is the human that makes the computer?
That, to me, is the true "technological transfer."
So, the way the project has been led has been self-defeating, IMHO.
The last point I would like to make is that the GPL license does not, and will not, empower people in India, Brazil, or any other developing nation. This was a big mistake. Only a liberal license like the BSD license can empower people, permiting them to compete in a hostile commercial environment, contributing to a common source but not naively exposing one self to bigger corporations that would crush their businesses (unless they want to play the hypocritical "dual-licensing" - an euphemism to proprietary licensing). You don't make sense. If I had a laptop when I was growing up, I would have used it to learn whatever I wanted.
You assume that kids who have these laptops can ONLY use them in the context of a western style classroom where a teacher gives them instructions on what to learn and how.
Did you consider that there might be some students who for lack of a better word, are geniuses, who can teach the class themselves? And their friends?
If you give an intelligent person access to unlimited information, and combine it with free time, and tools such as this laptop, learning will happen.
Just like if you give a kid a TV, the kid can find ways to learn from that for good or bad, if you give a kid a laptop, the kid can learn how to write code, how computers work, how the internet works, and eventually they'll be able to get on the internet and learn how the world works through wikipedia or whatever else happens to be on the internet.
I don't think this would be as powerful under windows because first of all, no one knows what the windows source code is. If I were a kid and I wanted to learn how windows works, I couldn't look at the code to find out.
How can you claim something is built for educational purposes if it's closed source? That's the anti-thesis of what you are trying to do with the project.
Who are the real fundamentalists here? What about the people who want to control who can and cannot access the worlds information, knowledge, etc?
And the one laptop per child project is SUPPOSED to be open source, it's an education product! It's not a corporate product.
Step 1.
Start a digital consumers union.
Step 2.
Create a mailing list.
Step 3.
Start a Bad Boss Newsletter
Step 4.
Report all the horror stories and unethical tactics of the bad bosses to the bad boss newsletter, complete with a brief biography of the person as well as their corporate history and how they run their business.
And once you have that, you'll actually be able to coordinate and organize in a way which can influence members of the board of directors.
This is a situation where you have to choose your boss! Do you want the good boss or the bad boss?
Each corporation has a boss or bosses. Do you know who they are? Yet you'll give them all your money, all your labor, all your ideas(copyrights), all your patents.
So if you give them all your shit, of course they'll pimp the hell out of you, because that's the lifestyle of a bad boss.
A bad boss does not have to work for a living, because you'll be dumb enough to do all the work for them. And if you are dumb enough to give up your freedom in music to the bad bosses, then you can't be surprised if you lose your freedom everywhere else.
Look at how artists have given up on having freedom? Sure most artists might support Napster, but lets be serious here, the current copyright laws are not set up to benefit artists or consumers. The current copyright laws are set up to help bad bosses profit by increasing costs to consumers while reducing profits to artists, thus they get rich by merely controlling access to information. They don't produce or do anything else for a living.
They get rich by telling us what we can't do. It's that simple!
Good Bosses want to get rich by increasing the amount of things we CAN do with what we produce and buy.
This situation, like the situation in every industry, or anywhere in society, is a situation of bad bosses vs good bosses.
Bad bosses tend to make bad short sighted decisions. These decisions might include destroying the world to maintain profitability. These decisions may destroy the music industry, the software industry, and many other industries, just so the shareholders can have access to cheap money. The thinking goes "If I can get paid without having to do any work, just by the stroke of my pen, why not join the darkside?"
A bad boss does not have to produce any new ideas, or produce any information, or anything really. A bad boss simply has to control the information, the ideas, and the results of the labor that other people produce.
A bad boss wants to get rich, or in some cases wealthy, off other peoples labor, off the natural resources in the environment, or by pimping artists.
The good boss cares about the artist and consumers, and wants to maximize the freedom and profitability for the artists, while also limiting the costs and maximizing the flexibility to the customers. The artist to the good boss is not simply a resource to be exploited, but is the corporation itself, and how the artist is treated represents the values of the corporation and of the Good boss running the corporation. The Good boss also wants the costumers to have an increased quality of life, so that the impact of the work of that corporation has some meaning to society.
And thats the difference right there. It's the good bosses vs the bad bosses, in a never ending battle for control. Who do you want to control the worlds information? People who want to increase your freedom, or people who want to control information in a way in which you have to pay a license fee just to access books, and where you can be sued if you tell anyone what you read in the book?
I'd rather promote a more open free society, where information production is a service and not a product. That would mean more information for us!
Imagine if the web worked through copyright where every site required a fee? Some of these people wanted to use that scheme for the WWW back when the discussions were on how to make the WWW profitable. They were wrong then and they are still wrong today.
The question to ask shouldn't be "which corporations are unethical", your question should be "Who are the bad bosses?".
When you figure out who the bad bosses are, then you'll know exactly who is responsible for what.
The truth is, the media does not have a choke on Congress. The media is just better organized than you.
If you believe in Free Software, the Creative Commons, Open Source, and if you don't think downloading mp3s is equal to stealing, then it's up to you to set up your businesses and do business with people who have the same agenda as you.
Congressmen, even people who work for the RIAA, probably have downloaded mp3s, or mpegs that are in violation of the copyright, and if not that then perhaps they are using pirated software, and if not that then perhaps they use source code in violation of the GPL.
This is not about whether or not artists should be paid. Artists are going to be paid no matter who wins. This is about who should be in control of information, the producers/consumers, or rich folks who happen to own all the patents and copyrights.
One way to reform copyright law would be to make it far more expensive for a corporation to buy an individuals patent or copyright. If it costs tens of millions or hundreds of millions to buy a patent from a content producer, then the actual producers would make money. Another reform option would be to maximize freedom or customers.
Content creation should become a service. The artist should be a service provider. The consumer should be able to buy a CD and actually own the information on it, however they should not own the right to profit from that information.
This would mean you'd be able to listen to and share music, just not get rich by selling someone elses music. The current RIAA does not even want to allow you to control the music you legally purchased. They don't want you to be able to copy it, and that limits your free speech rights because you aren't PROFITING from it in any way, nor are you claiming you produced it.
It's real simple, there are two positions and two kinds of people. On one side it's those who support the old way of profiting, and on the other side it's those who support the new way of profiting. NEITHER side is anti-profit, and the old way of doing things is anti-artist and anti-consumer.
So my advise, KNOW who runs the corporations you do business with. Don't worry about politicians.
Political support will come after you are organized enough to put your politicians in. Organization is what you lack, your network is made up of college students and most of them aren't even organized enough to form a music consumers union with a mailing list.
It's not the companies that are bad. Companies are just methods of social organization. If you don't support these profit mechanisms that unethical individuals in corporations are using, then you should give your money to ethical individuals whereever you find them.
To start, you should at least KNOW about the people who run the company you do business with. Do you know about the people who run these companies like Sony? I doubt you even know their names.
Just look at what happened with Elliot Spitzer, he unleashed a war on prostitution and then we find he was seeing a prostitute himself.
How many of these people who work for Sony, actually have pirated versions of Windows?
How many of these people who verbally support the RIAA actually are downloading pirated music files?
Most of the people who talk about how downloading mp3s is stealing, probably have a folder on their pirated version of windows dedicated just to "stolen" music files.
This is about who should own the worlds information.
Personally, I think the producers and consumers should own it, and not just a bunch of rich folks in suits who happen to have the money to buy all the patents and copyrights but who can't produce a damn thing.
The RIAA is not Sony Warner EMI Universal, at least the RIAA you are thinking of. It's actually a group of individuals who are on the board of directors of multiple corporations such as these but ultimately it's individuals and not corporations.
These individuals have decided to label anyone who does not agree with their agenda on how the industry should function, and how profits should be made, as "pirates". So they have a name for people who think like you, but what name do you have for people who think like them?
If you support copyright reform that frees/gives control to artists and fans, then you aren't one of them. Their network exists to keep control out of the hands of customers and fans. They want to control all information and keep that control away from the producers of the information and away from the consumers of the information.
So these people are trying to control the worlds information, and the people they label are pirates probably will eventually include those who support free software, those who are against software patents, those who want to actually OWN the music they buy in some way, those who want to MAKE music and completely control and own how it's distributed.
It's not as simple as a bunch of corporations, it's more like a battle to find out who should control the worlds information, the producers/consumers of it, or the people rich enough to own the rights.
I support the GPL and Creative Commons, just so you know where I stand. And I support Linux, Napster, P2P, and anything else which increases my freedom as a consumer and producer of information.
Instead of listing the big four corporations, why not do something called "social network analysis", and create a map of the entire RIAA network of individuals, corporations, and the entire list of supporters.
The RIAA is more than just a collection of corporations. What you are really dealing with is a vast network of people who hold similar views and goals. The RIAA includes all it's supporters, including the bribed politicians who support the agenda. The RIAA also includes all who run businesses that cling to the outdated profit models and who refuse to even consider new ways of making money.
It's not just the RIAA. It's the MPAA, it's all sorts of organizations united around the same agenda of creating a type of eternal intellectual property which never dies. They want intellectual property to be eternal so they can secure eternal profits in a very lazy way.
Basically it's a scheme which a lot of people are involved in, as a way to get paid by pimping artists. It's a way to make money while doing no real work at all beyond hiring lawyers and suing people.
Social network analysis is the kind of analysis that was done to figure out who the board members were at Enron. It's the kind of analysis that the site "They rule" used to figure out the individuals who are on the boards of multiple corporations.
It's not the corporations like Sony, EMI or Universal that are doing this. It's the individuals who decide that this is the only way to profit, and who support an agenda that is destroying the music industry, and will eventually destroy the software industry with the software patents, and eventually they'll try to patent and copyright all information and use that to control human thought/knowledge.
When I interviewed for my job, my soon to be boss discriminated by asking detailed technical questions that nobody without experience and a brain capable of some serious critical thinking ability would be able to answer. He did not need a gene test to tell him that I knew what I was doing.
That's because it's a job anyone can learn to do. There are some jobs that cannot be mastered through practice or learned through training. Some jobs rely on talent.A genetic test can reveal who has the natural talent and who does not.
exactly.