I've familiarized myself thoroughly with common implementations of IP, thank you very much.
Unlike you, I've also familiarized myself with the historical background of IP, typical motivations, and arguments for & against.
They are, however, entitled to the exclusive distribution rights of any IP that they control, for the time period permitted by law.
No, they are _allowed_ to do so, not entitled. And the _reason_ they were permitted such control over is because it was thought that such an legislated-control would encourage innovation to the overall benefit of society.
Unfortunately, even though there are a lot of people like yourself who firmly believe that companies have the "right" to protect their so-called "intellectual property" by violating the actual private property rights of individuals, there have never been any properly-controlled studies to indicate that the concept of IP, as currently implemented, has provided any net benefit to society. Furthermore, there is an increasingly large body of anecdotal evidence indicating that the current implementation of IP is _inhibiting_ innovation, causing countries with strong enforcement of IP laws to be at a economic competitive disadvantage with countries that don't.
And... socialist experiment? That's amusing. If anything is socialist in the conversation, it is the belief that specific works should be instantly public no matter what.
Way to distort the argument. Ideas are ideas. Property is property. The two aren't the same, no matter how much you try and make them so.
Free markets only deal with real, physical property (goods) and services, not "pretend" property like IP. If you have to use the government to enforce any other kind of behavior other than private property ownership and/or contracts, then the market can no longer be considered "free". If the government enforcement of an artificially-legislated "right" is motivated by a desire to "encourage innovation", then this is a _socialist_ activity, not capitalist.
Until you acknowledge that all IP laws are a government-enforced legal construct designed to artificially distort normal market forces, you are going to construct your arguments on a fundamentally-flawed logical framework.
When I read things like this, it makes me hang my head in shame.
Yeah, I agree - with your statement, about your statement.
What, do you think you're entitled to music?
What, do you think that companies are entitled to profit? It sure would be nice to get special laws to protect any old business model you can think of, even if you can't prove it's providing a net benefit to society.
Big hint: IP doesn't count as "free market". It's more of a socialist experiment than anything related to capitalism; it's a method of distorting normal market economics to try and encourage "innovation". (I've got major doubts about using a mechanism which prevents the free flow of ideas to encourage innovation, but I suppose it sounded reasonable when they were writing the legislation.)
Thomas Jefferson would have explained to you that in a free market...
You shouldn't use the quotes of people without making sure that you know what their true feelings are. Jefferson argued strongly against any intellectual property protection at all, since he felt that ideas of any kind should be free.
Even after he eventually went along with the Constitutional phrase about IP, he argued for a strong interpretation of the "limited time" part of the IP clause. Here's an interesting link to some quotes from Jefferson & Madison concerning this subject (found with a quick Google).
Actually, all you'd have to do is test each machine against the standard. With something as simple as assigning either a letter or a write-in to each position in a list, you should be able to have a bullet-proof mathematically proven specification for the standard.
That's not really good enough, unless your "standard" includes every single possible combination of data that might possibly be entired into the machine(s).
Actually, you don't really want your testing standard available to the people who are making the machines, since they might be able to program the machines to recognize when they are being tested for standards-compliance and to provide "fake" results in that situation. Basically, you want your testers to do their best to try and "break" the machines, and use those results to improve your specifications for the next batch of machines.
although it should still be pretty much required because it eliminates the "doubt" that humans have when counting, of "Is this a B or a D?"
Part of the reason for having a _machine_ print the results of the ballot is to make sure that the machine is using a font which is easily readable by both humans & machines. There are such fonts that have been designed so that problems like the "D" or "B" one that you pointed out are greatly minimized. You don't get that benefit if you don't have your ballot printed out with such a font, however.
Heh - made me go back & look at my high school physics book on angular acceleration:-)
Makes me seriously rethink how fast space stations/colonies would have to spin to provide 1G gravity, especially realizing what a small radius a space station/colony is going to have relative to the moon. I suppose there's no real engineering difficulty at building structures that can stand 1G stresses (although I wonder how easy that will be if we're trying to build a colony several miles in diameter)?
Now I'm wondering how significant the Coriolis effect is going to be on the inhabitants of a smaller space station/colony. For simplicity, let's try a 100ft radius space colony:
From Wikipedia, acceleration due to Coriolis effect is:
a = -2 * omega (x) v
where (x) is vector multiplication & v is velocity w/in rotating reference.
So let's assume a slow walk of 1mph in whatever direction will maximize the Corilios effect:
a = -2 * 0.567029373/sec * (1mph) = -0.506969622 m / sec^2
so about 5% of 1G.
I supposed that'd probably be a bearable side effect for most people, although I suspect there'd be a higher susceptability to motion sickness for some.
Think of what kind of weird effects a fast baseball would have:
-2 * 0.567029373/sec * (100mph) in g = -5.16965143 g
Not necessarily a good thing to have many different manufacturers of the same product (like the counting machine), since that means you'll end up testing every single variation of each machine.
It is definitely a good idea to make sure that different companies manufacture the different machines that are using in the voting system (and even in some cases the different parts that are used inside each machine), and the companies are prohibited from communicating with each other.
I read somewhere that banks often use different companies in this kind of arrangement, where the two or more companies built just a part of the overall bank system according to a spec. (which often includes the ability to audit & double-check the _other_ company's parts of the system), and then another party (often the inhouse bank staff) is responsible for assembling the parts together & making sure that they are working.
This reduces the chance that the people who make the equipment will sneak some kind of trojan horse into the equipment that can't be detected. (Doesn't eliminate it of course, but it improves the odds.)
Just daydreaming whether you could turn the Moon into a mind-boggling huge "space colony" with people living in the inside of a shell, yet still be able to achieve 1G.
This doesn't handle the big deep scratches, of course, but it seemed to do pretty well for me at fixing scuff marks & small scratches.
Actually, the _worst_ thing I've ever done to one of my CDs was try and "fix" it using one of those "scratch-fixing" kits from the Video store - the stupid kit destroyed the surface of the disc so badly I thought I'd never be able to use it again.
Agreed, the manual recounts have to be done regardless of the method - but by using OCRable text, you don't have to provide the additional potentially-hackable step of translating a bar code into a human-readable form.
If some journalist comes out with a sensationalist/controversial story, then it behooves other journalists & members of the public to check & double-check the "facts" in that story to see if they can be substantiated. If it turns out that the facts are false or can't be substantiated, then that journalist's credibility will be significantly reduced (ala Dan Rather).
About the only valid reasons to prevent a journalist from publishing a story is to stop them from disseminating info on how to kill large #s of people (instructions on building WMDs for instance), to protect undercover intelligence resources, or to protect short-term military objectives. (Let me know if you can think of any other valid reason not in this list.)
Any other attempt to stifle the press is more likely to protect the government/agents of the government rather than serving the public good, and should not be allowed by any agent of any branch of the government.
The random audits would verify that the barcodes correspond with the human readable text.
As long as you can trust the audit machines used to read the bar codes - hopefully they weren't made by the same company.
Using a bar code that supposedly means the same thing as the text is an unnecessary additional level of complexity - why not just use a font easily OCReable by both human & computer? Not only does it make people feel more comfortable that the machine has accurately recorded that they know what they voted for, but if the counting machines fail for some reason, you can always fall easily back onto a handcount voting procedure.
I _could_ see using a bar code as a "checksum" type of deal, to make sure that the text hasn't been modified after it was printed.
In a controlled environment like a prison, I'm sure it's possible to set up a voting system which satisfies most requirements for a decent voting system - as long as the prison guards/warden aren't the people who design & operate the voting system, and you don't have any way for anyone (guards or other prisoners) to make sure that people can be pressured into voting the "right" way.
You can certainly make a voting system that would be more protected than a typical absentee voting setup.
The idea of printing a readable ballot is good, but you don't want a barcode & the readable ballot since the user can't verify that the barcode says the same thing as the readable text.
OCR has gotten good enough, especially when reading computer-printed output, that the counting machine could read the text part of the ballot without needing some sort of encoding.
Allowing criminals to vote is an important negative feedback mechanism against bad lawmakers.
One of the classic techniques for a minority to gain control over the law-making system is to pass laws that prevent criminals from voting (why should criminals get to vote?), then turn around and pass laws which they can use to disenfranchise the parts of the society that might not go along with their legislative agenda.
Think about it: if your legal system basically seems common-sensical to the general populace, then you're not going to have many criminals, and they shouldn't have much of an effect in any given election (unless you've got a really controversial closely-divided issue).
If the legislators are starting to run amuck, however, and are passing a lot of laws which end up making a significant fraction of the populace criminals, then it's important that the people being affected be able to "push back" against the legal system being used to oppress them.
Unfortunately, many citizens seem to be content with the kneejerk "criminals shouldn't be allowed to vote" reaction, and thus we end up with the situation where more and more laws are passed, more and more citizens are disenfranchised, and the people running the country represent the general population less and less.
But it's still a compelling argument to most people, since it fits their (instinctive or not) expectations based on observations of "typical" societal behavior.
Yeah, poker's a bit different, but I don't think most casinos count on poker to make most of their "guaranteed" money. I also suspect that a "typical" poker player (myself included) would have better luck at the slot machines than at the poker table:P
Nah, it's just that Americans are judged to be more likely to sue if they (the Americans) start their own car while it's in gear & damage something/someone, whereas people in most other countries would just apologize like crazy & try to remember not to do that again.
Rich or poor, no matter what game you're playing, it doesn't really matter - in the long run, the casino will always end up with more of your money than you got from them. Any casino that doesn't do this will almost inevitably go bankrupt. That's why the casinos bill themselves as "entertainment", rather than an investment opportunity.
The only difference is that rich people will still have money left when they leave the casino.
They're still there, and will be for a while. I'll beleive that things have changed when these guys have gone through real court hearings & have been convicted or released.
I can't think of _anyone_ in this Administration who has willingly paid more than lip service to the other two branches of the government (much less the public).
I don't think I was disagreeing with you (I was picking my words fairly carefully), but I do think that based on our current understanding of physical law & what little empirical evidence exists, there is a very low probability that a significant (repeatedly measurable) ESP effect actually exists.
Is there some fundamental law of nature which states that two people cannot communicate over a distance without sound or visual cues? Obviously, you'd have to identify a mechanism for the communications.
It's because the mainstream scientific community can't think of any obvious mechanism that would work at a distance given our current understanding of physics, plus the lack of hard empirical evidence, that causes most reasonable people to think there is a very low probably of ESP claims being true.
We haven't been able to find focussed point-to-point radio transmitters in our brains, and the generalized EM "chatter" given off by our brains seems so weak compared to the threshhold voltages required to make neurons fire (esp. taking into account distance) that it seems highly unlikely that any kind of EM effect would be responsible for such an effect.
There aren't too many other options in our current understanding of physical "law" that could account for a significant ESP effect, so if it can be empirically determined that there _is_ such an effect, discovering its cause would probably cause mainstream science to react like it had collectively gone on a Pan-Galactic Gargleblaster bender...
Unfortunately, there hasn't been any formal studies showing that IP in general does or doesn't encourage "sharing", much less whether or not the current implementation does so. Certainly there is much anecdotal "evidence" being thrown about by both sides for & against whether IP promotes sharing. My personal feeling is that it is very difficult to promote sharing by using a mechanism which, by its very definition, inherently prevents sharing.
If society _truly_ wanted to promote sharing, then it would be much simpler & more direct for there to be some kind of institutional method to simply pay people to release their ideas into the public domain. Taxpayer-subsidized basic research & development is one form of this idea, where the scientists are paid to "discover" new ideas which might be too expensive or "far-out" for the private sector to justify pursuing. Once the basic ideas have been uncovered, however, entrepreuneurs are _very_ good at taking those ideas & running with them.
Of course, many people don't trust this form of idea-generation, since such institutionalized funding tends to attract corruption & complacency. Another possible idea, which might sidestep some of the problems with the former, is to simply allow people to choose where their tax monies will be spent, e.g., the taxpayer could pick which research programs or artists they thought were worth funding & direct the mandated % of their tax payment toward those people. The government's role in this kind of scenario would be simply to detect & prevent fraud.
Frankly though, I don't think that the people running the government would like that kind of setup - they have a vested interest in being able to control where the taxpayer money goes, so I'm sure they'd fight such a scheme.
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I've familiarized myself thoroughly with common implementations of IP, thank you very much.
Unlike you, I've also familiarized myself with the historical background of IP, typical motivations, and arguments for & against.
No, they are _allowed_ to do so, not entitled. And the _reason_ they were permitted such control over is because it was thought that such an legislated-control would encourage innovation to the overall benefit of society.
Unfortunately, even though there are a lot of people like yourself who firmly believe that companies have the "right" to protect their so-called "intellectual property" by violating the actual private property rights of individuals, there have never been any properly-controlled studies to indicate that the concept of IP, as currently implemented, has provided any net benefit to society. Furthermore, there is an increasingly large body of anecdotal evidence indicating that the current implementation of IP is _inhibiting_ innovation, causing countries with strong enforcement of IP laws to be at a economic competitive disadvantage with countries that don't.
Way to distort the argument. Ideas are ideas. Property is property. The two aren't the same, no matter how much you try and make them so.
Free markets only deal with real, physical property (goods) and services, not "pretend" property like IP. If you have to use the government to enforce any other kind of behavior other than private property ownership and/or contracts, then the market can no longer be considered "free". If the government enforcement of an artificially-legislated "right" is motivated by a desire to "encourage innovation", then this is a _socialist_ activity, not capitalist.
Until you acknowledge that all IP laws are a government-enforced legal construct designed to artificially distort normal market forces, you are going to construct your arguments on a fundamentally-flawed logical framework.
What's the recording labels' justification for trying to control the distribution of music?
"We deserve to make money?"
Yeah, I agree - with your statement, about your statement.
What, do you think that companies are entitled to profit? It sure would be nice to get special laws to protect any old business model you can think of, even if you can't prove it's providing a net benefit to society.
Big hint: IP doesn't count as "free market". It's more of a socialist experiment than anything related to capitalism; it's a method of distorting normal market economics to try and encourage "innovation". (I've got major doubts about using a mechanism which prevents the free flow of ideas to encourage innovation, but I suppose it sounded reasonable when they were writing the legislation.)
You shouldn't use the quotes of people without making sure that you know what their true feelings are. Jefferson argued strongly against any intellectual property protection at all, since he felt that ideas of any kind should be free.
Even after he eventually went along with the Constitutional phrase about IP, he argued for a strong interpretation of the "limited time" part of the IP clause. Here's an interesting link to some quotes from Jefferson & Madison concerning this subject (found with a quick Google).
That's not really good enough, unless your "standard" includes every single possible combination of data that might possibly be entired into the machine(s).
Actually, you don't really want your testing standard available to the people who are making the machines, since they might be able to program the machines to recognize when they are being tested for standards-compliance and to provide "fake" results in that situation. Basically, you want your testers to do their best to try and "break" the machines, and use those results to improve your specifications for the next batch of machines.
Part of the reason for having a _machine_ print the results of the ballot is to make sure that the machine is using a font which is easily readable by both humans & machines. There are such fonts that have been designed so that problems like the "D" or "B" one that you pointed out are greatly minimized. You don't get that benefit if you don't have your ballot printed out with such a font, however.
Heh - made me go back & look at my high school physics book on angular acceleration :-)
Makes me seriously rethink how fast space stations/colonies would have to spin
to provide 1G gravity, especially realizing what a small radius a space station/colony
is going to have relative to the moon. I suppose there's no real engineering difficulty
at building structures that can stand 1G stresses (although I wonder how easy that will
be if we're trying to build a colony several miles in diameter)?
Now I'm wondering how significant the Coriolis effect is going to be on the
inhabitants of a smaller space station/colony. For simplicity, let's try a 100ft
radius space colony:
omega = sqrt(9.8m/sec^2 / (100ft)) = 0.567029373/sec
(I'm letting Google take care of unit conversion)
From Wikipedia, acceleration due to Coriolis effect is:
a = -2 * omega (x) v
where (x) is vector multiplication & v is velocity w/in
rotating reference.
So let's assume a slow walk of 1mph in whatever direction
will maximize the Corilios effect:
a = -2 * 0.567029373/sec * (1mph) = -0.506969622 m / sec^2
so about 5% of 1G.
I supposed that'd probably be a bearable side effect for most
people, although I suspect there'd be a higher susceptability
to motion sickness for some.
Think of what kind of weird effects a fast baseball would have:
-2 * 0.567029373/sec * (100mph) in g = -5.16965143 g
Or better yet, what about a bullet?
(((-2) * 0.567029373) / sec) * (896 (m / s)) = -103.615061 g
That sure would make target practice in a space colony an interesting experience...
I'd love to see a science fiction show that actually simulated these
kinds of effects accurately instead of using magic "gravity control"
systems.
Not necessarily a good thing to have many different manufacturers of the same product (like the counting machine), since that means you'll end up testing every single variation of each machine.
It is definitely a good idea to make sure that different companies manufacture the different machines that are using in the voting system (and even in some cases the different parts that are used inside each machine), and the companies are prohibited from communicating with each other.
I read somewhere that banks often use different companies in this kind of arrangement, where the two or more companies built just a part of the overall bank system according to a spec. (which often includes the ability to audit & double-check the _other_ company's parts of the system), and then another party (often the inhouse bank staff) is responsible for assembling the parts together & making sure that they are working.
This reduces the chance that the people who make the equipment will sneak some kind of trojan horse into the equipment that can't be detected. (Doesn't eliminate it of course, but it improves the odds.)
Just daydreaming whether you could turn the Moon into a mind-boggling huge "space colony" with people living in the inside of a shell, yet still be able to achieve 1G.
I wonder how fast you'd have to spin the Moon and how much you would have to hollow it to get a 1G environment on the inside of it?
This doesn't handle the big deep scratches, of course, but it seemed to do pretty well for me at fixing scuff marks & small scratches.
Actually, the _worst_ thing I've ever done to one of my CDs was try and "fix" it using one of those "scratch-fixing" kits from the Video store - the stupid kit destroyed the surface of the disc so badly I thought I'd never be able to use it again.
Agreed, the manual recounts have to be done regardless of the method - but by using OCRable text, you don't have to provide the additional potentially-hackable step of translating a bar code into a human-readable form.
_Truth_ provides a check on the press.
If some journalist comes out with a sensationalist/controversial story, then it behooves other journalists & members of the public to check & double-check the "facts" in that story to see if they can be substantiated. If it turns out that the facts are false or can't be substantiated, then that journalist's credibility will be significantly reduced (ala Dan Rather).
About the only valid reasons to prevent a journalist from publishing a story is to stop them from disseminating info on how to kill large #s of people (instructions on building WMDs for instance), to protect undercover intelligence resources, or to protect short-term military objectives. (Let me know if you can think of any other valid reason not in this list.)
Any other attempt to stifle the press is more likely to protect the government/agents of the government rather than serving the public good, and should not be allowed by any agent of any branch of the government.
As long as you can trust the audit machines used to read the bar codes - hopefully they weren't made by the same company.
Using a bar code that supposedly means the same thing as the text is an unnecessary additional level of complexity - why not just use a font easily OCReable by both human & computer? Not only does it make people feel more comfortable that the machine has accurately recorded that they know what they voted for, but if the counting machines fail for some reason, you can always fall easily back onto a handcount voting procedure.
I _could_ see using a bar code as a "checksum" type of deal, to make sure that the text hasn't been modified after it was printed.
In a controlled environment like a prison, I'm sure it's possible to set up a voting system which satisfies most requirements for a decent voting system - as long as the prison guards/warden aren't the people who design & operate the voting system, and you don't have any way for anyone (guards or other prisoners) to make sure that people can be pressured into voting the "right" way.
You can certainly make a voting system that would be more protected than a typical absentee voting setup.
I believe he talked about how it could be done, not an admission that he had actually done it (at least not in any form other than proof-of-concept).
http://www.acm.org/classics/sep95/
The idea of printing a readable ballot is good, but you don't want a barcode & the readable ballot since the user can't verify that the barcode says the same thing as the readable text.
OCR has gotten good enough, especially when reading computer-printed output, that the counting machine could read the text part of the ballot without needing some sort of encoding.
Allowing criminals to vote is an important negative feedback mechanism against bad lawmakers.
One of the classic techniques for a minority to gain control over the law-making system
is to pass laws that prevent criminals from voting (why should criminals get to vote?),
then turn around and pass laws which they can use to disenfranchise the parts of the
society that might not go along with their legislative agenda.
Think about it: if your legal system basically seems common-sensical to the general
populace, then you're not going to have many criminals, and they shouldn't have much
of an effect in any given election (unless you've got a really controversial closely-divided
issue).
If the legislators are starting to run amuck, however, and are passing a lot of laws
which end up making a significant fraction of the populace criminals, then it's important
that the people being affected be able to "push back" against the legal system being
used to oppress them.
Unfortunately, many citizens seem to be content with the kneejerk "criminals
shouldn't be allowed to vote" reaction, and thus we end up with the situation where
more and more laws are passed, more and more citizens are disenfranchised, and
the people running the country represent the general population less and less.
But it's still a compelling argument to most people, since it fits their (instinctive or not) expectations based on observations of "typical" societal behavior.
Yeah, poker's a bit different, but I don't think most casinos count on poker to make most of their "guaranteed" money. I also suspect that a "typical" poker player (myself included) would have better luck at the slot machines than at the poker table :P
Nah, it's just that Americans are judged to be more likely to sue if they (the
Americans) start their own car while it's in gear & damage something/someone,
whereas people in most other countries would just apologize like crazy &
try to remember not to do that again.
Rich or poor, no matter what game you're playing, it doesn't really matter - in the long run, the casino will always end up with more of your money than you got from them. Any casino that doesn't do this will almost inevitably go bankrupt. That's why the casinos bill themselves as "entertainment", rather than an investment opportunity.
The only difference is that rich people will still have money left when they leave the casino.
They're still there, and will be for a while. I'll beleive that things have changed when these guys have gone through real court hearings & have been convicted or released.
I can't think of _anyone_ in this Administration who has willingly paid more than lip service to the other two branches of the government (much less the public).
You're joking, but I'm surprised that some companies haven't tried that yet - selling a "collection set" based on the vehicles seen in various movies.
I don't think I was disagreeing with you (I was picking my words fairly carefully), but I do think that based on our current understanding of physical law & what little empirical evidence exists, there is a very low probability that a significant (repeatedly measurable) ESP effect actually exists.
It's because the mainstream scientific community can't think of any obvious mechanism that would work at a distance given our current understanding of physics, plus the lack of hard empirical evidence, that causes most reasonable people to think there is a very low probably of ESP claims being true.
We haven't been able to find focussed point-to-point radio transmitters in our brains, and the generalized EM "chatter" given off by our brains seems so weak compared to the threshhold voltages required to make neurons fire (esp. taking into account distance) that it seems highly unlikely that any kind of EM effect would be responsible for such an effect.
There aren't too many other options in our current understanding of physical "law" that could account for a significant ESP effect, so if it can be empirically determined that there _is_ such an effect, discovering its cause would probably cause mainstream science to react like it had collectively gone on a Pan-Galactic Gargleblaster bender...
Unfortunately, there hasn't been any formal studies showing that IP in general does or doesn't encourage "sharing", much less whether or not the current implementation does so. Certainly there is much anecdotal "evidence" being thrown about by both sides for & against whether IP promotes sharing. My personal feeling is that it is very difficult to promote sharing by using a mechanism which, by its very definition, inherently prevents sharing.
If society _truly_ wanted to promote sharing, then it would be much simpler & more direct for there to be some kind of institutional method to simply pay people to release their ideas into the public domain. Taxpayer-subsidized basic research & development is one form of this idea, where the scientists are paid to "discover" new ideas which might be too expensive or "far-out" for the private sector to justify pursuing. Once the basic ideas have been uncovered, however, entrepreuneurs are _very_ good at taking those ideas & running with them.
Of course, many people don't trust this form of idea-generation, since such institutionalized funding tends to attract corruption & complacency. Another possible idea, which might sidestep some of the problems with the former, is to simply allow people to choose where their tax monies will be spent, e.g., the taxpayer could pick which research programs or artists they thought were worth funding & direct the mandated % of their tax payment toward those people. The government's role in this kind of scenario would be simply to detect & prevent fraud.
Frankly though, I don't think that the people running the government would like that kind of setup - they have a vested interest in being able to control where the taxpayer money goes, so I'm sure they'd fight such a scheme.