[geeks] KVM for Sun Sparc Servers with USB keyboards

[Jonathan C. Patschke]

On Tue, 5 May 2009, nate at portents.com wrote:

> I think it is possible to make existing republics/democracies better
> than they are, though the task isn't easy.

Doing that requires buy-in from a sufficient number of voters, and
tenacity and vigilance among those voters to hold their "representatives"
to task.  We've been there and done that.

> and sue those people out of business for violations such as intellectual
> property rights, patent infringement, and seed piracy.  For *seed
> reclamation*!

They go one better than that.  Monsanto's genetic modifications include
pigment markers, so they can identify the GM crops with a simple nighttime
flyover.  It's been a while since I read the specifics, but I believe they
fluoresce in the presence of UV light.

If you're an organic (or "traditional") farmer, and your neighbor has GM
crops, there -will- be cross-pollination if your neighbor plants the same
type of plant, so the next year, your crops will express the marker
pigment, and you will be sued by Monsanto.

> We live in an age of the tyranny of the corporation, the corporation which
> has it's teams of lawyers and lobbyists.

Corporations which are, themselves, creations of government, which gain
their power through tax regulations and intellectual property protections
which are, again, creations of government.

> I don't see how the founders of the countries the people of this planet
> live in could have anticipated this scenario to any reasonable degree,
> and I don't hold them accountable for the mess we're in.

That largely went to hell when the ninth(?) circuit court proclaimed
corporations to be "persons"[0].

> Rather, I hold every single person on this planet collectively
> responsible for improving our existing systems of government to scale to
> the scope of these problems, myself included.  I just hope that we all
> continue to work at it, and make things better together.

I think the best thing people can do is to ignore some of the most
egregious of laws--laws purely of obedience, rather than of preventing
harm to others.  They can't arrest all of us.

While I'd rather no government at all, I do live in the real world, and,
if we got to a small-enough government, I'd have other things to worry
about rather than eliminating the not-so-very-oppressive bits that were
left.


[0] The rationale being that they can own property and be held accountable
     for breaking laws.  Rather than rewriting the entirety of the code to
     read "any person or corporation who ... commits an offense under this
     section", they just said "corporations are persons, too".
-- 
Jonathan Patschke ( "They don't have the right to read a book out loud."
Elgin, TX         (                  --Paul Aiken
USA               (                    Executive Director, Authors Guild