Real geeks hack their tech. And when it comes to cooking, you can buy something that is half as good as what you can build, for twice the price -- as this ridiculous article handily demonstrates. Food hacking (or Modernist Cuisine, if you prefer) is a very big field these days. Want a great steak? Start with sous vide immersion cooking to get the perfect medium rare, then hit it with a flamethrower for the char. Play with your food.

Immersion Cooker (about $100 all-in):
http://beach.traxel.com/img/hopped-up/whole-rig.jpg

Weedburner Charring (about $35 at Harbor Freight):
http://beach.traxel.com/img/sous-vide/weedburner-char.jpg

Here's some more info on building your own meat jacuzzi:
http://qandabe.com/2011/70-diy-sous-vide-universal-controller/

a world without software patents would be 'open slather for anybody who can just go faster than the next person.'

Well, yes -- that is pretty much the essential nature of "Open." Anyone who has the skill, time, and energy can build whatever they want, even if it is based on someone else's work. It has its ups and downs, but saying the software world would be more Open if it were more restrictive is an internally inconsistent statement. It is logically self-contradictory.

There are those who believe that using the system against itself is better than changing the system. Some believe the GPL is better than would be the elimination of software copyright. I actually fall into this camp (though I do believe in reducing the strength and duration of patent and copyright). But it would not be more Open. Open has some shortcomings, and that may lead a rational person to believe that absolute Open-ness is less efficient than some degree of Closed-ness. But that does not mean you can redefine Open to mean partially Closed. Just say you believe in a balance between Open and Closed. It's OK to believe in shades of gray.

Not every question demands an absolutist answer, but rational discourse does rely on words like Open having a clear and unequivocal meaning in a given context. Dilute your hard-core ideology, not the terminology you use to describe it.

Investment income is the reward you get by risking your money by investing in a business ... It is not something that should be discouraged

Agreed. Similarly, having an income-earning job should not be discouraged. However, we tax both types of income, so the fact is that we are discouraging both, in order to fund our government. We can all agree we should cut spending, and in the meantime we have to pay our bills, so we will have to tax things. It is just a question of which things we tax and how we balance the taxes.

Aside: There is also the question of whether we have the fiscal discipline to pay our bills even when we don't agree with what those idiots are spending our money on. In my world you don't cut off your nose to spite your face. It's bloody and it makes you look stupid. But I digress.

Right now, our government taxes regular income earners at a higher rate than capital investors. Some will argue the double taxation angle, but it does not hold up to scrutiny of actual corporate fiscal policy. The Sage of Omaha believes there is a problem with capital gains being under-taxed, and it is pretty hard -- maybe impossible -- to find a more hard-assed, ultra-wealthy, fiscal perfectionist than Mr. Buffett.

So, the question is this: Can we show solid empirical evidence that supports our treatment of capital gains versus regular income? Do we know something that has escaped The Oracle? If not, we need to take a very hard and honest look at that policy -- regardless of what our long-held beliefs may be or where our self-interests lie.

He has previously stated this is the bill that you either support, 'or you stand with the child pornographers.'"

Damn, Vic -- must be tough. Most people actually think you are a greater threat than a child pornographer. I mean, I think you are a wildly irrational authoritarian with far more power to harm the Canadian populace than any person with your mind-set should have, but.... well... OK, maybe they're right. I guess you are more of a threat than a child pornographer.

Heh, I guess, maybe you should be careful with the comparisons you draw. You might just wind up on the wrong side.

The productive resources of which you speak are controlled entirely by private individuals. How do you propose to "allocate" them, good, bad, or indifferent?

Copyright is a fiat of government, and it is a variable thing. It is a knob that we can turn up or down to increase or decrease the amount of resources that private individuals choose to dedicate to the production of copyrighted works. When we strengthen copyright, capital lenders are encouraged to shift more resources into the production of copyright goods, because the probable ROI improves. When we weaken it, the resources shift out of copyright production into the next highest ROI alternative application of those resources.

It's the same as anything in our economy works -- except that copyright is a fiat monopoly of government, so it does not naturally self-regulate in a free market like soda pop or automobiles do. Since monopolies do not naturally self-regulate via market forces, we must control the dial manually, by considering whether we are investing too much or too little of our limited resources into the production of copyrighted works, and adjusting the expected reward.

Both Facebook and Google share many business practices and monetizing practices. While Google had the unfortunate timing for their IPO (2004) after dot com bubble burst, the exact same thing could had been said about them. Many slashdotters, however, still believe that Google does the right thing.

I'm not sure who these "Many Slashdotters" are that you refer to -- some sort of expert panel on the morality of corporations I guess -- but they certainly are ignorant, and haven't been reading the website for which they are named. Google has become quite bent, particularly relative to their starting point, and that subject is discussed regularly and extensively on these forums (typically with a few ignorant twits starting the discussion by saying, "But you all love Google!" followed by a chorus of, "Are you daft? No we don't."). From cozying up to the U.S. surveillance state to embracing censorship in China, Google has become far more morally flexible since their IPO.

And bear in mind, Google started off as a hard-core moralist corporation. They were the poster-boys for "what a scientist/moralist company should be" until Eric Schmidt and the public shareholders came along. Facebook is starting with no discernible principles to act as a rudder.

Of course, I agree with your assessment of the investment potential. But that says a great deal more about the flaws in our economic policies than it does about whether Facebook is good for long-term United States growth.

What's your problem with her getting rich for bringing enjoyment to millions of people who felt it was worth their cash?

The question of whether it is an efficient allocation of our productive resources. The free market generally works well for physical goods which have a high cost of reproduction. Copyright goods do not work in a free market, and so government granted exclusive copy-right was created. That fiat of government is not a free market, so using intrinsically free-market concepts like "felt it was worth their cash" is out of context. Prices do not naturally regulate in a monopoly environment, and copy-right is a monopoly on the right to create copies. Choosing the degree of that exclusive privilege grant is a matter of balancing the needs of our society based on what we believe is cost effective.

If we grant too little protection for the creation of media, we become a bleak society lacking in culture. If we grant too much, we become decadent; awash in media spectacle. The objective is to provide enough motivation to creatives to author our cultural narrative, but not so much that we wind up investing too much of our productive resources into entertainment and not enough on advancing our industrial and technological capabilities.

So, what is your opinion? Should we be investing more of our productive resources into the creation of media, or should we be shifting the balance in favor of non-copyright advancement in areas such as industrial production or technology research? The government granted monopoly on the right to manufacture copies is a good thing -- when it is in balance with all the potential uses of productive resources in our economy.

Copyrighted works are rarely directly exported from the US. It usually exported from a shell company in a tax haven abroad.

I think I see what you're saying: If copyrighted works are not being taxed like other exports, then we can't make a direct dollar-to-dollar comparison with, for example, industrial equipment exports which pay a larger tax burden. A dollar worth of industrial equipment export contributes more to the public coffers than a dollar of copyright export.

Interesting. Good point to consider. Do you have any numbers?

I'm not sure if I get the exact point you're making relative to this thread. I like the info, but if I'm not seeing a direct point you were trying to make, could you clarify?

copyrighted works are one of the few things that the United States still successfully exports.

Citation needed. Here's what I found on Wikipedia:

Exports: $1.511 trillion (2011 est.)

Export Goods: agricultural products (soybeans, fruit, corn) 9.2%, industrial supplies (organic chemicals) 26.8%, capital goods (transistors, aircraft, motor vehicle parts, computers, telecommunications equipment) 49.0%, consumer goods (automobiles, medicines) 15.0%

Here's another good source:

1. Civilian aircraft: $74 billion (5.7% of total exports)
2. Semiconductors: $50.6 billion (3.9%)
3. Passenger cars: $49.6 billion (3.9%)
4. Pharmaceutical preparations: $40.4 billion (3.1%)
5. Automotive accessories: $39.9 billion (3.1%)
6. Other industrial machines: $38.1 billion (3%)
7. Fuel oil: $34.9 billion (2.7%)
8. Organic chemicals: $33.4 billion (2.6%)
9. Telecommunications: $32.9 billion (2.6%)
10. Plastic materials: $31.6 billion (2.5%)

So, copyright is not in the top 10, and it's not more than 2.5%.

This has the effect of increasing the portion of GDP that is flowing to copyrighted works.

Footnote: Another way to frame this is that it increases the portion of U.S. resources (land, labor, capital, entrepreneurship) that are being dedicated to the production of copyrighted works instead of producing something else.

Preferably ones that don't end up making a *lot* less money than the current system.

Why?

What data did you use to reach the conclusion that our current level of spending on copyrighted works is the right amount?

We have a finite amount of money to spend on things (U.S. GDP, if the "we" we are talking about is the United States). Over the past 100 years, we have continually strengthened copyright. This has the effect of increasing the portion of GDP that is flowing to copyrighted works. Over the past 15 years, we have seen an escalating war between piracy and increased enforcement, and the data on whether this conflict has increased or decreased net proceeds to artists is *extremely* unclear and wildly misrepresented by all sides of the debate.

Seems to me in a data storm like that, it's pretty important to find some solid ground on which to stand. It behooves us to have some way of measuring whether the current approach to funding the production of copyrighted works is consuming too much or too little of our GDP. If we don't know whether we are spending too much or too little, we can't really say whether an alternative solution would do best to result in more or less funding.

Here's one example for spot-checking the situation: Are we more like the decadent side of Rome during the run-up to the decline, awash in circuses of spectacle, or are we more like Sparta in its prime, potent but lacking in culture? If the former, we may be spending too much on copyrighted works. If the latter, it would suggest we are spending too little.

There are other ways to hold a finger up to the wind, and still more to dig into harder data. Do you think we are under-spending or over-spending on the production of copyrighted works, and why?

There are distortions everywhere. Some are more subtle than others. When Kirstoff generically refers to "chemicals", most people recognize that he is either biased or using shorthand for "a compound which I did some research on and found to be risky in the context in question." Deciding which he is doing is an exercise for the reader, and must always be. Using "perfluorooctanoic acid" is certainly better for an educated audience that has the will, time, and ability to do its own research, but it is better for Kirstoff to do the research and shorthanding -- in a truly unbiased fashion, which may not be the case here -- for an audience that either lacks the will, time, or ability to dig deeper on their own. Perhaps ideal is for the article to have hyperlinks for more information.

While we're on the subject of distortion, I recently read a summery that had a couple of strong shorthand distortions in it, which may provide some interesting points of comparison:

"Pulitzer-prize winning science writer Deborah Blum" -- appeal to emotion -- it asserts that the reader should assume that Deborah Blum is an expert on science matters because she won an award for writing. If her article stands on its own, leave that bit out. If it rests on her expertise, this brief note is not enough to establish it. This sentence is fine for an audience that has the time, will, and ability to check on Deborah Blum's actual credentials, but relies upon the author's research and integrity for those audience which lack those criteria.

"decided to call out" -- appeal to emotion -- trying to get the listener to emotionally go along with a rebel who's fighting the power.

"have you found reporting on 'chemicals' to be as poor as Blum alleges or is this no more erroneous than any scare tactic used to move newspapers and garner eyeballs?" -- false dichotomy -- the options are "Kirstoff is wrong because Blum says so" or "Kirstoff is wrong because he uses scare tactics."

Distortions are everywhere, and journalism necessarily calls for using shorthand. Eldavojohn wanted to communicate the essence of Blum's piece without reproducing it verbatim. He used shorthand which he hopes will give a fair image of the underlying work, by using turns of phrase which would -- in isolation -- be clear-cut distortions. The point is elegantly made by Blum herself (though she gets it backward):

But if we, as journalists, are going to demand meticulous standards for the study and oversight of chemical compounds then we should try to be meticulous ourselves in making the case.

No, you are wrong. It is specifically the case that chemical compound oversight should be far more technical than public writing. Public writing, whether from Eldavojohn, Blum, or Kirstoff, is about communicating complex underlying issues in a brief and simplified form. That is its very nature. If such simplification is biased, then there is a very serious problem -- but the mere act of simplification is not a fault in itself.

Seems like an easy answer to me -- the government has the authority to inhibit free speech any time they declare martial law.

If you're corruptible and in a position in which your corruption gets people killed

He was never in that position, and could never be in that position. The FBI constructed a months-long distortion of reality, which could not have happened without the FBI, which created the delusion in the fool's mind that this thing was possible. Without that delusion, he never posed a credible threat. He-as-effective-terrorist was entirely a creation of the FBI.

Now, if you want to put him in jail because in his mind he believes that doing this thing is a good idea -- fine, argue that position. But don't pretend he would ever have been anything more than a thinker of foolish thoughts without the FBI fabricating the context in which he acted.

That is the fundamental question: Did the FBI prevent a credible threat? If not, then it can be nothing but theater. If no crime would have happened without the FBI's participation, then he cannot have been a harm and can hardly be considered a criminal unless you want to go down the road of thought-crime.

We're better at this sort of thing than management. By a lot. We're also a damned site more noble. We don't have much to fear, really. They do. Perhaps we should be using semantic analysis to discover cases of consumer fraud, tax fraud, influence trading, and misappropriation of funds.