This is absolutely correct for process patents. This is a requirements of the 1994 TRIPs (Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights) treaty. Here is the text of Article 34:

1. For the purposes of civil proceedings in respect of the infringement of the rights of the owner referred to in paragraph 1(b) of Article 28, if the subject matter of a patent is a process for obtaining a product, the judicial authorities shall have the authority to order the defendant to prove that the process to obtain an identical product is different from the patented process. Therefore, Members shall provide, in at least one of the following circumstances, that any identical product when produced without the consent of the patent owner shall, in the absence of proof to the contrary, be deemed to have been obtained by the patented process:

(a) if the product obtained by the patented process is new;

(b) if there is a substantial likelihood that the identical product was made by the process and the owner of the patent has been unable through reasonable efforts to determine the process actually used.

2. Any Member shall be free to provide that the burden of proof indicated in paragraph 1 shall be on the alleged infringer only if the condition referred to in subparagraph (a) is fulfilled or only if the condition referred to in subparagraph (b) is fulfilled.

3. In the adduction of proof to the contrary, the legitimate interests of defendants in protecting their manufacturing and business secrets shall be taken into account.

Whether this applies to software patents I am not sure (IANAL). As business process patents, it may, though it's not clear to me what the "product" would be. In any case, this is clearly the direction in which the law has been moving.

Ironically, by the way, negotiation that resulted in TRIPs was initiated by developing countries who found their economic development was being retarded by patents held by developed countries. Once the process started, however, it was hijacked by an unholy alliance of the pharmaceutical and entertainment industries. Poor countries were then effectively forced to join by developed countries, who withdrew from GATT leaving a choice between losing access to western markets and enacting onerous patent and copyright laws. Because of the impact on the cost of drugs for poor people, patents are a life-and-death issue. IP regulations, meanwhile, are expensive to implement, particularly in countries that lack the legal expertise:

the US Agency for International Development (USAID) now spends around a quarter of its annual budget on legal and regulatory training, including technical assistance from the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), to help bring domestic legislation into compliance with TRIPs, including assessments of draft laws and recommendations regarding existing laws. (Christopher May and Susan K. Sell, Intellectual Property Rights: A Critical History, 2006

Your response to my comment are fair enough.

The worry about informal leaders may be trivial, but it's also relevant: it seems many people are willing to subscribe to the ideal of non-hierarchical decision-making. This was a legitimate concern about Occupy, for example (maybe it has been addressed?). In fact (and in contrast to common wisdom), flat hierarchies correspond to centralized power. The better models for direct democracy do not eliminate hierarchy, but they structure it to prevent the acquisition of privilege by individuals (e.g. through temporary positions and random assignment).

As a Canadian, I'm implicitly comparing the American system with ours. I guess that's a little parochial. In theory, their system seems to me better structured than what we have here. In Canada we have an unelected senate, leaders who rule with very little restraint, a foreign monarch as head of state, cities with no powers except those granted by the provinces, a constitution that is almost impossible to amend. At this moment in time some of these features may benefit us, blocking radical antidemocratic change, but in the long run I am doubtful. That our democracy seems more secure than theirs is probably less a result of good design than a result of historical contingency, such as the legacy of slavery, the scale of the country, and the effect of a variety of specific measures such as elected judges, large-scale gerrymanding, and the exclusion of third parties. Today, U.S. politicians venerate the constitution like a holy document while disregarding whatever bits they find inconvenient.

I agree with your criticism of the U.S. constitution. I should probably have called it "relatively good" rather than "excellent." Unfortunately, political institutions just about everywhere have been designed to limit actual democracy - and for this there is popular support! The masses do not trust the masses - but "the masses" is us! Between popular rule on the one hand, and technocratic rule on the other, we have neither: decent human beings though many of them are (at least in Canada), our politicians do not represent us, nor are they experts at much beyond persuasion. Technocratic rule descends into tyranny, so that leaves actual democracy. It's about time we had it.

Your critique of naive direct democracy - that leaders arise, but are informal and therefore not subject to safeguards - is an excellent one. But it's not enough.

Consider that the United States today suffers under exactly this scenario. Informal unelected elites have captured the levers of power to the point where the U.S. is not looking much like a democracy any more. This was accomplished despite the excellence of the design of the American system the strength of democratic principles among the American people - a citizenry still fairly engaged, and which was formerly also relatively well educated and informed.

Democracy is often present as the mechanism through which individuals, born citizens with their own preferences and interests, express and negotiate those preferences and interests, ideally with an eye to the common good. According to many advocates of direct democracy, this is wrong. We are not born citizens. It is not citizens who create democracy: rather it is the practice of democracy that creates citizens. We do not come to politics as individuals with already developed preferences and interests. It is by engaging with others in public discourse and debate that we learn to be citizens, to reason, to participate in public discourse, and through this process we discover and develop our preferences and interests. Democracy is thus a process of education. One of the great failings of representative democracy is that instead of treating us as active and evolving partners, it relegates us to the role of disengaged consumers who occasionally choose one option over another.

Yet realistically, even if we were to provide the perfect mechanism for people to participate, most of us, lacking interest and starved of time, wouldn't: with results like those you describe. One intriguing alternative draws on the jury system and the elections of ancient Athens. Decisions would be made not by professional politicians, but by randomly-selected groups of citizens with their range of private expertise. Such groups would be charged with investigating a particular issue for a period of time, after which they would disband.

I realize juries (chosen by counsel more for ignorance than independent thought) are typically reported as dysfunctional, and I don't doubt that this is so. Yet it only confirms that we do not know how to be citizens: and when it is demanded of us, we fail. Through failure, though, we can learn, and teach others. Forming a jury today, when virtually no one has substantial experience, amounts to throwing together a bunch of greenhorns and expecting them to spontaneously become experts.

For an idealized view of how a jury can teach its participants to be jurors, I suggest the film 12 Angry Men. I admit am not convinced of the wisdom of such a system. But if I was forced to choose, I would place my fate in the hands of a court rather than a politician. I would trust a random selection of my fellow citizens over a self-selected professional of politics. For with the crises we face today, our common fate is indeed the question.

That aside, if global catastrophe is such a big deal e.g. An asteroid is headed directly for Earth, every person is going to be affected in the same way therefore every person is equally responsible for dealing with it

You are wrong in fact and wrong in logic.

The impact of climate change is not equal. The poor live disproportionately in vulnerable areas. This is true not just for climate change, but for environmental disasters in general. It is mostly the poor, not the rich, who live on the deforested hillsides that collapse in landslides. It is mostly the poor, not the rich, who live in flood-prone areas. It is mostly the poor, not the rich, who make a living from dry and marginal soils susceptible to droubt. And it is the poor who lack the resources to cope when the water dries up, when food prices rise, when hit by torrential rains or brush fires. Global warming is not like an asteroid. It will not wipe out all life. But it will create great suffering, and that suffering will fall disproportionately on the poor. That is your error in fact.

Your error in logic is your claim of equal responsibility. If you and I are in a car crash, are we equally responsible because we both suffer the same loss? Even though I was speeding, talking on my cell phone and weaving in traffic while you were driving predictably and defensively, but were unable to avoid me when I suddenly swerved in front of you? Of course not. Responsibility results from the actions we take and the choices we make. We in the developed countries have produced most of the emissions and reaped most of the benefits. We are far more responsible for climate change than the peasants of India or Mexico or Bangladesh. Responsibility flows from actions, not consequences.

cyberpunk is not a libertarian utopia in the least

Oh, I agree! Utopia is not the only other choice (and I agree that cyberpunk has dystopian tendencies). In many ways it is very much like the world we live in. I'm not sure where your reference to libertarianism comes from. I would expect a libertarian "utopia" to be cruelly controlled by corporate elites - in that way I suppose cyberpunk fits the bill. Perhaps I was wrong to use the word "choice" given its association to rational choice theory and neoclassical economics. Libertarianism was certainly not in my mind. In Marcuse and Benjamin I'm quoting Marxists, after all. I could just as well have talked about action as Hannah Arendt uses the term, as a form of public citizenship through which we reveal and discover our differences.

The massive federation is overall peaceful because times are good and people don't have a reason to stir up shit. They aren't dissenting because their leaders are doing a good job. If you see that as impeding your personally freedom... Dude, you're straying into evil supervillian level ranting.

You have me chuckling pretty hard at the thought of me as a supervillain. Best insult evar. But I guess I'm not being clear. I think that people hold fundamentally different values that are valid but that can never be reconciled. Christian vs atheist, pro-life vs pro-choice, the pursuit of excellence vs the pursuit of equality. These can all be reasoned and honorable positions. Although I prefer the latter of each category, and believe it necessary to pursue such values vigorously through politics, I can respect the integrity and decency of many of those with whom I disagree (while also acknowledging the craven selfishness of many who are of like mind).

A free and democratic society will always have to deal with the tension and conflict between such sources of fundamental disagreement. Dissent is not something to be overcome: it is the condition of a healthy democratic society. A society without dissent is a society without democracy. This is actually the meaning of the word totalitarian. It does not simply mean dictatorship; it refers to a society that is like a unified organism, into which individual people fit like cells or organs, united in thought and purpose. Such a society might be peaceful, happy, wealthy, and well-governed (a possibility I sincerely doubt) - by restricting the ways in which its members could think, it might even have the appearance of democracy. But it could not be truly democratic or free.

To me the real tipping point seems to be as the "corporate dystopia" of which William Gibson and Cyberpunk was part.

At least not in my opinion. In classic dystopias like 1984 or Brave New World, there is virtually no space left for individual freedom and choice. Cyberpunk, however, is all about the spaces in between in which individuals can make choices and possibly change things. Philosopher Andrew Feenberg agrees:

The world Gibson describes is grim but not strictly speaking dystopian. It is true that elites rule it with immensely powerful means, but those means are so complex that they give rise to all sorts of phenomena over which no one really has control. There are many small openings through which a clever hacker can enter the system and commit a variety of unprogrammed deeds. The future is not clear but may yet be altered by human action on the network. (Alternative Modernity: The Technical Turn in Philosophy and Social Theory, 1995, p. 140)

The happy happy, joy joy world of Star Trek: The Next Generation, on the other hand, strikes me as truly static and dystopian. Nearly all cultural expression is centuries old. Every conflict can be solved through reason: there are no genuinely intractable differences of opinion or incompatible values among honest people. Only a totalitarian society could so thoroughly crush dissent and eliminate difference. I think I would go stark raving mad.

I believe a better future is possible and worth fighting for, but compared to ST:NG I'd rather have Gibson's grungy cyberpunk any day. It is dirty, flawed, corrupt - but also iredeemably human. Its diversity and vigor are resistant to the totalitarian disease. The tragedy is that cyberpunk came true: but now we seem to be passing out the other side. A cyberpunk world might be a let-down beside visions of the future we once thought we would enjoy, but compared to many genuine possibilities it's possitively upbeat. Take a look at the world of Paulo Bacigalupi's Windup Girl, for example (which despite its fantastic elements feels right in the same way that Neuromancer once did) - though even he leaves a small space for hope.

While I agree about the worth of utopian visians, I do not agree with the criticism of dystopian science fiction. The scholars of the Frankfurt School struggled to find an alternative to what they saw as a damaged society. When the human imagination limits itself to the realistic limitations of the world we live in, it serves to accept and conceal that world's flaws. Between the horrors of Stalinism and the alienation of capitalism, the Frankfurt scholars could not imagine an plausible alternative. So to find hope, they were deliberately negative. The injustices of the existing order pointed to the possibility of something better. Herbert Marcuse writes:

The critical theory of society possesses no concepts which could bridge the gap between the present and its future; holding no promise and showing no success, it remains negative. Thus it wants to remain loyal to those who, without hope, have given and give their life to the Great Refusal. At the beginning of the fascist era, Walter Benjamin wrote: It is only for the sake of those without hope that hope is given to us. (One Dimensional Man, 1964, p. 257)

So scientific truth is determined by taking a vote. Riight.

You confuse the hammer with the nail. Science is not truth: it is a method of accessing truth. With it, we construct models of reality, not reality itself. Reality is not determined by consensus - but good science is (hence science may be mistaken).

Rationality relies on us categorizing continuous physical phenomena into distinct categories. Such rationalization is never perfect: measurements suffer from error; theory and evidence never match up exactly. The problem remains: what is good evidence? Where exactly do we draw the line between one category and another? These are questions for human judgement. This is not relativism. There are better and worse answers, but no final ones.

Yes, Kuhn might be wrong (and Habermas, who also roots reason in communication) - but the question perfectly illustrates the point. How do we decide? Is there a foolproof scientific experiment that will resolve the question for all time? No: we are left with human reason, deliberation, and consensus. The consensus is that in significant ways he is right. Here is some of what he has to say about what he calls "normal science" (my argument is not concerned with his theory of revolutionary paradigm shifts):

No process yet disclosed by the historical study of scientific development at all resembles the methodological stereotype of falsification in direct comparison with nature. (p. 77)

anomalous experiences may not be identified with falsifying ones. Indeed, I doubt that the latter exist. . . . no theory ever solves all the puzzles with which it is confronted at a given time; nor are the solutions already achieved often perfect. On the contrary, it is just the incompleteness and imperfection of the existing data-theory fit that, at any time, define many of the puzzles that characterize normal science. If any and every failure to fit were ground for theory rejection, all theories ought to be rejected at all times. On the other hand, if only severe failure to fit justifies theory rejection, then the Popperians will require some criterion of "improbability" or of "degree of falsification". (pp. 146-7).

You accuse me of handing religion a victory against science. But if you credit science with objective access to truth you are only making it into its own religion - a truly grievous blow against science. At the heart of science is an understanding of its limitations. It is precisely by exaggerating science's perfectability and treating its ordinary imperfections as exceptional failures that its opponents discredit it, as has been the case with climate change.

(By the way, I have no interest in slandering religious folk. Though I am an atheist and do not share their faith, I remain a sceptic, and do not see why faith must always conflict with reason.)

science is not consensus based. One experiment is all it takes to create new insights, models, theories.

This is not true, although many scientists believe it. The idea of falsification was thoroughly debunked by Thomas Kuhn in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions half a century ago, now one of the most widely cited scholarly works. Kuhn is the originator of the term "paradigm shift."

Science is consensus based. We imagine that science compares theory with evidence, adjusting the theory to account for evidence that contradicts it. But in the final instance it is not and can never be objective: scientists must agree on what counts as good evidence, and there is no objective or scientific way to do that. It can only be done through communication and consensus. Kuhn writes, "Scientific knowledge, like language, is intrinsically the common property of a group or else nothing at all" (p. 210).

the solutions that satisfy him [the scientist] may not be merely personal but must instead be accepted as solutions by many. The group that shares them may not, however, be drawn at random from society as a whole, but is rather the well-defined community of the scientist's professional compeers. One of the strongest, if still unwritten, rules of scientific life is the prohibition of appeals to heads of state or to the populace at large in matters scientific. . . . The group's members, as individuals and by virtue of their shared training and experience, must be seen as the sole possessors of the rules of the game or of some equivalent basis for unequivocal judgements. (p. 168)

Thus scientists are notoriously poor at communicating their research to the public - because being a scientist means only respecting the scientific views of other scientists. Some people react emotionally to the tone of science, feeling that scientists talk down to them as ignorant outsiders. Guess what? They do - because we are. I can accept that: as someone with some measure of expertise in a few areas, I can appreciate the years of study and experience required to develop expertise in others.

But where does this leave us? Is science simply a game of popularity and politics? Of course not. Science works, it works very well - and it works by consensus. This does not undermine the claims of climate science: it underlines consensus-based science as the best method we've got. To deny the importance of consensus is to throw the baby out with the bath water. If you reject the consensus of scientists about climate change, your only recourse is to appeal to some other consensus. I'll take the consensus the scientists, thank you very much.

[*] Quotes from Thomas S. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions 2nd ed, University of Chicago Press, 1970.

History is an excellent guide. Plenty of societies have been faced with existential challenges. Some of them died. Others fell under the domination of societies that coped better or did not face the same limitations[1]. A very few survived (you can probably count them on your fingers).

History is written by the survivors. Our history is that of the societies that survived. In North America, that recent history is exceptional: over a hundred years of peace within our borders. If by "history" you mean living memory, you are correct. Though if you back just a little farther and consider history from a native perspective, many societies died or fell under domination here. People adapt - but that's no guarantee that our society will be among the survivors.

Market societies are extremely recent, arising only in late 18th century England, before which point the vast majority of the population lived from subsistence agriculture[2]. Market society was then deliberately constructed through government action. How markets are constructed matters very much: they do fail, particularly when it comes to public goods and the environment.

Nor do markets somehow escape the limitations of nature. The rise of industrial capitalism corresponds to the exploitation of fossil fuels. Markets did not create coal and oil: they only discovered them. Would capitalism have been successful if they were not there to be found? One thing capitalism does extremely well is to replace one resource for another. When a resource grows scarce or expensive, something else is substituted. An efficient capitalist economy may not run out of anything: until it runs out of everything[3]. The problem-solving efficiency of markets can actually make the economy more fragile, not less.

[1] Jared Diamond's Collapse examines numerous examples.

[2] See Karl Polanyi's book The Great Transformation for a fascinating account of this. For a broader view of capitalism before this point, see Fernand Braudel's The Wheels of Commerce (Capitalism & Civilization 15th-18th Century Vol. 2).

[3] Joseph Tainter's The Collapse of Complex Societies argues that a societies develop they realize diminishing marginal returns from adaptation and innovation. When the marginal returns turn negative, they collapse. The only solution he sees is an external energy subsidy - which is where our problem lies.

I would really like to believe what you say. But a brief web search did not turn up any rational explanation. I have mod points to spend, but you won't get one - even if you're right - because I'm left asking for a citation.

What jumps out at me about bluray is not the resolution of the image, which on my 37" TV doesn't seem that significant for most scenes, but rather its stability. Subjectively, it feels much more solid. I think the difference may be the stability of the image due to the interlaced signal recorded on many DVDs. I realize it is deinterlaced for display, but that deinterlacing is not perfect.

That said, given how much DRM bluray is infested with I'm not sure it's worth it.

Political activists use legitimate methods to increase their influence.

And who, pray tell, decides what is legitimate?

Answering that question is what politics is all about. The point of engaging in politics is to determine legitimacy. Look at any political movement and you will see this struggle to define legitimacy. Legitimacy is not the starting point: it is the outcome. You are begging the question.

Which is, of course, because you are trying to propagate your definition of what is legitimate. You are not describing politics: you are engaged in it. You are not a disinterested obsever: you are a participant.

There is truth to what you say, yet I think it's a question of framing, not of whether there are actual sacrifices.

Many people support austerity, even though it means significant sacrifices for the majority (even as it is twinned with tax cuts for the few). You might argue this is because people do not perceive themselves as beneficiaries of government spending (see: Alaska), or because they have an aspirational view of themselves living the American dream and benefiting from tax cuts, because they believe that the pain is necessary in order to grow the economy and create jobs, because they believe current spending is unsustainable so there is no alternative, or because it is linked to their sense of patriotism or identity.

I don't buy any of this, but my point is: people are willing to accept sacrifices. While I don't deny that people are often too much focused on what's in it for them rather than the greater good of the society or the future of their children, if they believe it is necessary, or inevitable, or ultimately for the best they wholeheartedly embrace sacrifice, even making it a point of pride.

What the OP proposes is an agenda with long term benefits, one that is necessary if we are to avoid serious negative consequences. The sorts of arguments made for austerity could easily be made for it or something like it. Such arguments are not being presented by mainstream media - but that is for reasons of power, politics, ideology and institutional rigidity, not because it's not possible to get the American people on side. Therefore, we need to fight on the terrian of politics and communication. We cannot afford to surrender democracy, excusing ourselves because of a belief that the American people are iredeemably selfish.

The passage I quoted is actually from a 1852 document, "Declaration of the Immediate Causes Which Induce and Justify the Secession of South Carolina from the Federal Union." I think it's representative, but I was wrong to describe it as the declaration of secession and I believe it's important to correct the error.

"The Civil War was really a class war. The 1% who had slaves, wanted the rest of the workers who had to compete with slave labor to say; "Hey, you Northern oppressors -- we want to import cheap goods and not have to buy American, because we can't compete by selling good not made by slave labor."

The Slave Masters wanted everyone in the South to say; "WE are being harmed by the North economically" -- when really, slavery probably reduced wages for MOST Southerners.

Right on the money. I wish I had mod points to give you.

The Lost Cause may seem romantic, but anyone who doubts that the Civil War was really about slavery needs to read the declaration of secession:

We assert that fourteen of the States have deliberately refused, for years past, to fulfill their constitutional obligations, and we refer to their own Statutes for the proof. The Constitution of the United States, in its fourth Article, provides as follows: "No person held to service or labor in one State, under the laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in consequence of any law or regulation therein, be discharged from such service or labor, but shall be delivered up, on claim of the party to whom such service or labor may be due."

This stipulation was so material to the compact, that without it that compact would not have been made.