Get rid of trademarks

Let's get what trademarks are for out of the way right now. They're for protecting businesses who can't out-innovate (and would normally just out-advertise) their competition. They're also in part for helping the public against fraud, but that's more of a side-effect.

Consider I made an Operating System, and called it Windows. (Remember, "Windows" is just an every day word that people use for at least several concepts.) Regardless of the quality of my OS or the effectiveness of my advertising, I'm in trouble for violating trademarks.

What is the danger to customers? They may buy my OS thinking they're getting Microsoft's. That's all. "Customer confusion." But frankly, this happens regardless. People sent back laptops to Dell, when they sold Ubuntu-loaded machines, because they didn't realize they weren't getting Windows. "Ubuntu" looks nothing like "Windows", yet people still made mistakes. And how was that handled? They sent the product back, and all was well.

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Get rid of patents

Software patents have been under heavy heat recently and have never been favored to begin with; I'll talk about them a bit. But really, the problem is with all patents, not just software ones.

Software has very little manufacturing time. What amounts to an "invention" is a mere algorithm or data structure at best, and a vague "look and feel" at worst. In one corner we have a patent for a Linked List, one of the simplest data structures ever, and in the other corner we have Amazon's One-Click patent and Apple's multi-touch implementation.

Perhaps the biggest offense to those two patents is their obviousness. Linked lists are obvious data structures, if you tell any web programmer worth his salt "Make me a button people can click to instantly check out and ship", he'll just say "Okay." Patents are supposed to be for innovative (and new) ideas. In other words, these patents should never have been granted in the first place due to their obviousness alone. In the case of Linked Lists, those have been around probably since before computers.

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Laughing Powers

I've wondered how much it amuses those in power, the small acts the rest of us do. People preach non-violence, or violence as a last resort, and the powers snort and continue their wars. People preach full-blown unrestricted capitalism expecting money-makers to be virtuous, and the powers snort and continue to exploit and cheat. People preach against government regulation, and the powers appear to be on their side, but really they want regulation that they propose to raise the barrier to entry in the markets they control. All throughout history, people have used the government to maintain their positions of power. Then those of us who preach against the existence of government at all are branded crazies.

Without intelligence enhancement, I can't readily see a way out of this mess humanity has itself in. I don't trust us with nanotechnology one bit; we've already shown ourselves irresponsible with much lesser technology. I'm not all that keen on having humans that just think faster, either. No, a new intelligence is needed, one without the human errors built into it, to help us all see flaws even the best of us have overlooked.

Though perhaps some of these issues are simply in Gandhi Stage Two. "First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win." Though for some I know it's not even past stage one. People continue ignoring anti-aging, anti-death information. Humans are disgusting sometimes.

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Chaos is good?

Americans have no idea what it's like to be "terrorized". It'd be interesting if attacks actually escalated. I realize that the "terrorist" plan has so far worked; that is, getting the US and world economy to suffer, as well as lowering our image and letting our government enslave us. It'd be interesting if more violent attacks toward civilians were around, and even more so if those attackers were white or at least "non-Muslim", since that's what "terrorist" is equated to now...

What would be the common attitude if a heavy Christian conservative assassinated Obama?

In France, the government is fairly afraid of its people, since its people are no strangers to rioting, revolution, and other violent acts. Perhaps were humans less capable of being civilized, I would renounce non-violence as impractical and a waste of time and advocate constant terror on the government: fortunately we're not that horrible. "There have been tyrants and for a time they can seem invincible, but in the end they always fall. Always."

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Objectivists Go Home!

Some of you talk about how taxes are immoral and the government shouldn't be involved in your precious industries, you say that if the government gets just a little more socialist the producers will leave in arms and the former society will collapse. You complain about your wealth being frittered away. If only you had more control!

Here's some advice, in homage to Life of Brian: Objectivists Go Home! That is, pool your money together (you guys are supposed to be rich productive individuals, right?), buy an island or series of islands, set up a government of your choosing, and leave the rest of us alone. Trying to save America seems a little too...altruistic, don't you think? Better to start fresh. Don't give me the argument that this land belongs to you, too, the Native Americans were here first anyway...

In the meantime, you ought to stop using public services like roads, you should only buy bottled water, you should only pay for expensive private schools, don't take your kids to public parks, you shouldn't accept any stimulus checks from the government or medicaid, medicare, unemployment, or social security, in fact you shouldn't even pay taxes... I'unno, isn't it all a bit hypocritical? The step to change is either leaving and going somewhere else or using civil disobedience a-la Gandhi. (Or bloody revolution, but you guys aren't supposed to be for initiating force right?)

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Mega Shark Vs. Giant Octopus

And now for something completely different, a movie review!

Rating: Horrible. Would not watch again, not recommended, etc. etc.

If you go in expecting to see some epic mega shark and giant octopus battles, prepare to be sorely disappointed. Now, were this a movie from, say, the 70s, I'd be a bit more merciful. But this movie is from 2009. The shoddy CGI is inexcusable.

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The hidden justification for killing

tl;dr version: death happens anyway, why does it matter if it happens before the person's 80?

To that question, had I lived a century ago, I would have answered: it doesn't. So what's changed?

Our technology has increased. We're getting better at not only living longer, but living well. Before now, the existentialist idea of "We're all going to die anyway, so why care about anything?" was pretty irrefutable. People turned to deities and other external sources of Purpose to try and avoid the problem. At best, the only real argument that could be made was "Why not care? In any case, it's obvious that I as a human do care, and I would prefer a future of caring to not caring, even if there's no real good reason beyond human preferences why that should be." In many cases that's still the best argument that can be made.

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