The most controversial part of this for me is this:
[NZ/CL/PE/VN/BN/MY/SG/CA4/MX5 propose; US/JP oppose: The objectives of this Chapter are:
Who are these parties and why are they negotiating this in secret, away from the public eye. If it is just mundane boilerplate (not finished reading yet) then I have to say that the most surprising thing of all is that we are being governed by copy/paste. I don't think that is the case here.
New Zealand / Chile / Peru / Vietnam / Brunei / Malaysia / Singapore / Canada / Mexico propose; United States / Japan oppose.
International agreements are always negotiated privately before being submitted to legislatures for public comment and ratification.
Domestic laws are done the same way. The terms of any major bill before the U.S. Congress, for instance, are first negotiated in private among a smaller group of legislators before being introduced for public debate and amendment.
Business deals are usually done the same way. Two companies considering a merger negotiate the terms in private first, then present the deal to their boards/shareholders for approval.
While that is true, it does not mean that this is right.
Do note that domestic laws are actually brought up for discussion, and (at least in democratic countries), often have non trivial changes applied, some items dropped altogether, etc.
Similarly, a merger is brought to a vote/discussion, and the terms often change during this discussion - e.g., shareholders want more cash / more equity, and stuff like that.
Agreements like the TPP are take-it-or-leave-it, meaning there's basically no discussion except by the unelected negotiators - which, especially in WIPO related issues, seem to have their past and future employers' interest in mind more than they represent their public.
>> International agreements are always negotiated privately before being submitted to legislatures for public comment and ratification.
The whole problem with that is the folks doing the negotiating do not represent the public and they are in effect agreeing to have laws passed. One group is negotiating to have a second group pass laws, who are supposed to represent a third group - the people. I suppose they think bringing it to congress for a vote makes it all OK, but where was the real debate?
The negotiators are official representatives of these national governments. So, they represent their citizens to the extent that any government staff person does so in each respective country. For the U.S., negotiations are led by the U.S. Trade Representative, who is appointed by the President and confirmed by the Senate.
The best interests of the people being impacted are not being protected. Citizens are being excluded from a process that is supposed to be democratic. It is corrupt.
I think we don't acknowledge just how much of the Human Hive Mind we already have. I mean, there are individual humans: and then there is humanity. In between, many, many hives and collectives and corporations and aggregates, and so on.
This, I believe, points to a 'higher, greater good' which is the species itself. So to answer your question, no: its not strange at all to be perpetuating human DNA in spite of ownership. Its the species which owns you, not the other way around. None of us exist without others.
There were a couple of SGI Indy laptop prototypes in the works too, but I guess they didn't go anywhere. But .. just imagine this, all you althist'ers: what if SGI had been the one to release the tiBook, instead of Apple, and for a good price? Would we all be going into SGI stores and drooling these days? I bet that could've happened .. the spirit was there at SGI, even if the management wasn't. (It should also be noted that a lot of that spirit went elsewhere when SGI exploded: Transmeta, Nvidia, AMD, etc. Some good SGI talent even went to Apple! So .. there is a bit of SGI DNA all over the place these days, in fact ..)
I probably ratched up 100 hours or more on F-117 Steal Bomber, for DOS, back in the day. There is no reason not to play it even now, still today: consider the pixelation more of a consequence of "HUD"/"IFR" and be done with it. Fact is, those old games still run, and still work for simulating the death cult and its machines ..
Upon reading of RWR and its delights, at least one part of me, the techno-dweeb, goes "weeeh!" ..
Another part, more of a hippy tree-hugger, goes "wish we were using this to figure out where to drop the water/medicine/books instead of BOOMB devices" ..
I mean, seriously. Tell us where to drop the books, and BOOM there it is: how it should be.
It's a little bit of the spirit of The Well, and some USENET/BBS to boot. I think this is really missing from the modern web, so I cheer you on! It is a toast-worthy activity, your little blip on the horizon ..
>>>Mercedes, BMW, Cadillac, Volkswagen, Ford, etc. already have that.
So? None of these manufacturers have a carbon-friendly drive train. The fact that Tesla added a software feature "late in the game" is no 'bonus' to the already-contenders. Actually, lets see Mercedes' obstacle-avoidance compete with the SpaceX/Tesla crowd. I'm willing to suffer the down-votes until such a point is reached that we all, conscientiously, acknowledge the docking maneuvers allowed by a SpaceX/Tesla co-operation. In the meantime I'd like to point out to you: software features as an "also-ran" is not really a dilemma.
spectruino's ADC isn't fast enough to capture all the data from a CCD data frame, thus to get an entire spectrum one needs to sample multiple times and shift the ADC sample clock... or deal with not having all the pixels. This method would be fine if your samples aren't changing, but for something like enzyme kinetics this non-simultaneous method will likely yield poor results. For applications that can use a monochromator, this method should be fine (albeit with lower spectral resolution since monochromators usually have quite high spectral resolution)
I'm still yet to find an actual use for the thing, regardless of constraints/limitations. The fact is, until we have a use of the hardware which allows average-person to gain some advantage, we have little progress.
Australia is a country with free health care available to all citizens and no constitutional right to free speech. Hence laws banning making racist statements in public(amongst a great many other anti discrimination laws)
