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The New York Times on Hypocrisy of US IP Policies
jwinterboy writes "
The New York Times has an article (free blah di blah) criticizing the intellectual property framework that the U.S. places on developing countries, given that it was a large pirate of intellectual property during it's own industrialization.
"
Indeed. British authors used to get very upset over the way their books were pirated in the US, and the practice didn't really stop until the US publishing industry was sufficiently large and international to want protection of their own. But then developing nations, like entrepreneurs, always need a bit of help up the ladder. Who was it said "I never ask a man how he made his first million dollars?"
Panurge has posted for the last time. Thanks for the positive moderations.
As much as I dispise american (and western) IP laws and attitude. How can you hold people accountable for something someoneelse did 200 years ago, and how can it possibly be hypocrisy?
When IP law was first passed, the spirit was basically "Let the guy why invented something cool have a monopoly for a while. After a decade or so, give other people a chance." The problem is now copywrite is valid for such an insane length of time that there's little competition. End result: citizen loses (I hate the word 'consumer'). When did companies earn the priviledge to own copywrite?
Take a look at history: The USA became the nation with the biggest influence on other countries. Can't let that happen with the USA being on the other side of the story, right?
but ...
My dad used to drive drunk occasionally when he was young. He's in AA now and thinks that drunk drivers should lose their licenses and go to jail.
Hypocrisy? Perhaps. But maybe he just wised up in his old age.
Just like how the US clearcut vast forests for the lumber and turned millions of square miles of diverse swampland into flat farmland, but we're now trying to stop Brazil from doing the same for their individual economic gains.
You know, some of those people behaving so hypocritically are descended from Goths who sacked Rome. Should the be equally ashamed over atrocities committed by their great^17th grandfather as by their grandfather?
This is not to say that we should blow off injustice. It really sucks to be on the receiving end, and knowledge of that suction should temper our dealings with those who claim to be feeling the vacuum.
But let's not wear the hair shirt too excessively...
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
Through this NY Times article, one could only hope that it would open some poeple's eyes enough to see the problems with copyright law in this country and have a positive effect on Eldred v. Ashcroft.
This is probably another very uneducated opinion, but IMHO the patent system is traditional On/Off system. When on, it should enforce equal rights and limitations to everyone - otherwise people will just find ways to exploit it. When off, it should be off for everyone.
It is not just IP that the US is trying to clamp down on, the whole U. S. policy towards emerging countries is hypocritical: but there has always been a good historical president for it:
/. know so well: silicon is litteraly dirt cheep, ic chips made from silicon are perhaps the most expensive substance by weight.
Just to take one example: the U. S. is pushing for all sorts of free trade agreements. Why? Well, for the first hundred years of our existence, the main form of revenue for our government had been tariffs (taxes on imports---taxes on exports are actually prohibited by the constitution.) At the time of the Revolutionary War, the main U.S. exports were cotton, tobacco, from the South and lumber from New England. You may notice that these are either raw materials or agricultural goods. But the money is in the value added, as readers of
It is no secret that the U.S. used protective tariffs to protect early manufacturer's (who otherwise could not compete with England). It is also no secret that the U. S. really did not like it when others tried to do the same. Now we are doing it with GATT. Throughout the last century we were not so sublte: Marines were sent throughout this hemesphere to make sure that bananas were grown and local governments were not too concerned about the welafare of the common man at the exoence of U. S. buisness interests.
The tragic thing is, just as with development of manufacture, this colonial IP policiy hurts both the developin countries and the people in developed nations. They can't form a manufacturing base, we can't get real, honest, labor unions. And of course, by keeping so many people in the unmechanized fields and unsecured mineshafts, we are really missing out on the increadible behefits that a well educated _global_ populace could bring.
La de da... so we did in the past what we don't want people to do now.. and ya know somthing.. if 100 or more years ago we had instant communications like we do now, we probably would not have been able to get away with it.. but we did..
So do you really think that matters to the Democrats & Republicans that the we the american people elect to represent us and our global corporate interests?
Come on...
The article is about a report which criticizes the intellectual property framework which the U.S. places on developing countries. The article itself is not criticizing the framework.
The NY Times can be a bit biased at times, but let's at least give them a little credit...
Which of course is the reason that the japanese put
their electronics industry in the city "Usa", so
they could put "Made in Usa" on everything.
I am a Brazilian and in this case - just in this case - I think they are right. We as mankind have already destroyed more forests than we need.
Instead, we should earn money with the forests. Yes, this is possible. We use a concept called "agroforest". The idea is that, instead of growing a lot of the same plant in a plain field, you grow a lot of different native plants with the forest. This way all the nature framework (plague control, natural selection etc.) works for you, and you actually helps the forest recover. The model is also very economically attractive for poor rural families, that can free themselves of the big farmers.
It is a shame that US is always patenting our native plants.
Prescriptive grammar:linguistics
Typefaces/fonts are an interesting area. American companies apparently used typefaces (which tradionally all came from European type design houses) without paying any royalties or licences, but are now starting to try to get protection.
http://nwalsh.com/comp.fonts/FAQ/cf_14.htm
"The reluctance of Americans to press for typeface copyright may have been influenced by a feeling that typeface plagiarism was good for U.S. high-tech businesses who were inventing new technologies for printing, and plagiarizing types of foreign origin (Europe and England). If the situation becomes reversed, and foreign competition (from Japan, Taiwan, and Korea) threatens to overcome American technological superiority in the laser printer industry, then American firms may do an about-face and seek the protection of typeface copyright to help protect the domestic printer industry. Such a trend may already be seen in the licensing of typeface trademarks by Adobe, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Imagen, and Xerox in the U.S. laser printer industry."
With added commentary by yours truly...
Everyone realises and acknowledges that Microsoft is a business, there to make a profit to share with it's marjor stakeholders, from it's shareholders to it's employees. However
For example, Microsoft's Internet Explorer containscurrently 20 unpatched vulnerabilities, a disproportionately high number in comparison to all the other browers on the market today. Also, because of a general disregard for security in the past, many of those same vulnerabilities are exploitable though other Microsoft applications.
And there is many a CIO discovering that the new Microsoft enterprise licensing agreement is far more expensive than before.
The next section is very IMPORTANT.
In fact, the term "intellectual property" is a misnomer, a more correct term would be intellectual monopoly. Patents, Copyrights and even Trademarks are a government granted monopoly, they do not occur naturally. That does not mean that they are a bad thing per-say, but their use should be dictated by the benefit to socitety in general, with approprate limits so their use cannot be abused.
These statutes give the power that the ol' Mercantile laws gave to those monopolies. There is no true effective choice in the market. Compainies like Microsoft are sustaining it's dominate position in the markerplace by using a state-constructed and granted monopoly, which gives Microsoft the monopoly over it's protocols, effectively just as restrictive as the East India Trading Company trading zone monopoly of the Orient.
Compulsory licensing of IP at a rate like this:
Take the lowest bulk licensing rate in the G8 (if they don't license, then the lowest rate per pill or copy of the software or whatever minus the expected costs of producing each copy).
Multiply this by the ratio of country Foo's MIN(mean, median) income over the G8's MAX(mean, median) income.
Then the industrialized nations have a reason to increase their income equality and they have a reason to make poorer nations less poor. And, poorer nations have the chance to make things without being overburdoned by the IP laws of the rich nations.
And for those of you keeping score at home, YES this is effectively giving away IP to poorer nations, but so what? The richer nations should be paying for their own IP within their own economies and they should look at any money gotten from poorer nations only as gravy.
Best. Comment. Ever. Enjoy!
Interesting use of the AIDS drug issue to highlight the possible negative effects of strong IP. The author got one thing on AIDS in Africa wrong when he said: an estimated 30 million people have H.I.V. in Africa. That is just plain wrong and is an indication of the ignorance of the problem. Zambia, Zimbabwe, Botswana, South Africa and Malawi together probably has that amount on their own! And on top of that people are starving right now, so AIDS-deaths are only really starting to impact right now. These people do not have the money to pay IP cost on top of the manufacturing cost of a drug - and usually IP is 95% of that. This huge tragedy prompted the scrapping of IP on those products.
Now we ask ourselves - WHY does it take something of this scale for people to let go of IP? and then only after lots of lobbying, pressure and pleading. I mean W.T.F.!!!
Tis said that in ~1810 he memorized the schematics to the automated weaving machine to get around the British prohibition on the export of technical schematics.
Whole cities (some bearing his name) in Massachusetts sprung up around this invention, and it lead to a spread of large scale agriculture in the south and west. Previously textile raw materials had to be exported to England for manufacture into garments, then imported back to the US for sale- and enormous impediment for efficiency and growth.
The development of American factories also changed the face of urban demographics- large quantities of the lower classes were pulled into dense cities that were previously enclaves of the wealthy (and their abundant domestic help). Since the best (most nimble & most managable) factory workers were girls, unmarried single women finally got the opportunity to support themselves financially while mantaining their virtue.
The violation of patents lead to progress like this, which had a much greater impact than breaking copyright and reading Dickins on the cheap.
shoppa wrote:
:(
> Just like how the US clearcut vast forests for the
> lumber and turned millions of square miles of
> diverse swampland into flat farmland, but we're
> now trying to stop Brazil from doing the same for
> their individual economic gains.
Make that clearcuts and turns. It is still going on today. Didn't you hear that our fearless President's excellent plan to prevent forest fires is to let the logging companies into the national forests to give them a "trim" (cut them all down)? As for the wetlands, I don't see them surviving the West Nile virus hysteria.
But that's nothing to worry about. Our glorious president (being fitted for his halo even as we speak) has championed the great Yucca Mountain Project. Basically, we take a bigger amount of nuclear waste than the largest Godzilla (77,000 tons vs. 66,000 tons), and stuff it all into a sacred mountain we don't even own, a hundred miles from a major city, in an unstable, earthquake prone area. And we hope nothing bad happens in the next 10,000 years (worse case scenario has the thing making life on this planet impossible). I just hope the gods to whom the mountain is sacred and Godzilla, a Shinto deity in a rubber suit, shake that mountain until they shake some sense into somebody.
If you want an example of a country that wisely manages its resources and takes good care of the environment, the USA under the Bush administration is not the place to look, I am very sad to say.
Sonora:"New Godzilla reading. He's moving inward toward Tokai."
Shinoda: "The nuclear plants, I knew it.
Sonora: "Afraid so."
Yuki: "Well, that's just lovely. Another Chernobyl."
"Godzilla 2000" (US version dialog)
Search google for 'Tokai criticality 1999'.
That really gets on my nerves too. Take that whole Save the Whales thing. It is easy to be an enviromentalist when you are just trying to forbid a bunch of Scandinavian Rednecks from killing some whales or shooting a few sealinos because they are so cute. It is even easyer to jump all over African or Pakistani tribesmen for shooting mountain sheep. But when it comes to the Germans, French English or Americans paying 3% more for the Kg of meat so an animal can be kept in a pen that is not full of filth and so narrow the animal can not even lie down with the result that it gnaws the skin off its neighbors shoulders crazed with the monotony of its existance that is an outrage. In the idealism of most enviromentalists ends at the point where they have to pay for their ideals in hard or $$$.
Only to idiots, are orders laws.
-- Henning von Tresckow
I disagree. Let's say he [Mr. Drunk Driver] made $1 million by driving drunk, could he still take a position against driving drunk today? Yes!
If binge drinking and driving drunk brought himself large degrees of pleasure and self satisfaction for years and years, could he still now take a position against drunk driving? I believe so.
What makes his position not hypocritical is that if he were to have his earlier, drunk driving years back, he would act differently. (A safe assumption given his AA attendance.) If the US were to go back to 1800s and our current leadership would have strong IP control, then the US leadership would also not be hypocritical.
Or at least something like that: I quote out of memory.
So the Germans stole from the Brits but the Yanks stole from the Germans. I recall that the Germans invented the Mauser bolt-action rifle mechanism, considered the finest in the world at the that time. After the First World War, the US Springfield arsenal was sued for failing to pay royalties on their wartime production of the 1903 Springfield rifle, the standard US Army rifle for WWI. Of course, this was heard in a US court that was not sympathetic to a German claim.
"Love is a familiar; Love is a devil: there is no evil angel but Love." --William Shakespeare ('Love's Labors Lost')
"What makes his position not hypocritical is that if he were to have his earlier, drunk driving years back, he would act differently. (A safe assumption given his AA attendance.) If the US were to go back to 1800s and our current leadership would have strong IP control, then the US leadership would also not be hypocritical."
Nope, what makes you think the US would have strong IP laws if one could go back to 1800s ?.
The US decided these changes based on their current industries and economic state. Why would the US of 1800 look on IP controls the same way as today ?
on that topic, of hypocrisy wrt ones past, it brings up another point... more recent world events...
Funny, and they are also (because they were victors (those who control the present control the past)) describe their Revolution is a just and honourable war.
The US Revolution was really a terrorist effort. Disproportional warfare was fought by the Americans, the British, and other power powers of the time had strict rules of engagement. Certain things were "allowed" and "unallowed" during warfare. The Americans, outmatched by the British Forces employed distinctly divergent tactics (raids, ambushes etc) that were -- at the time -- considered barbaric, disgraceful and un-honourable.... Terrorism.
Today, the US, faced with a rebellion; fought against them by a weaker force -- required to employ techniques that change the rules of engagement -- the Americans are now condemning them as barbaric, disgraceful: terrorists.
Am i trying to justify recent acts of violence? No. I just find it INCREDIBLY amazing that a country, that has, to be exceeded by no other -- Chosen to live by the sword -- are so self-righteous and smug wrt the barbarians at the gate. My American neighbours: Witness the fruits of Neo-Imperialism. BTW, anyone who harms another is barbarian - you cannot except yourself from the label just because you tell yourselves so on CNN.
What else do you expect the US to do today wrt IP? We have not progressed beyond State-Politics to the point where international or non-national policies are employed. Presently, the Americans enjoy a great deal of influence in a world's dynamics that they have spent a great deal influencing. "They've made the rules", within the framework of national power (recent history)... America, the present world power is the only one (short of revolution and uprising or a challenge of that power, often bloody - but not absolutely mandatory. The Americans have the opportunity to ADJUST THE SYSTEM OF POWER. To say finally, the present system is broken (look at the war, famine, etc etc) and we will be a part of devising a NEW system.... they shun most all international effort that doesn't serve them explicitly. So, am i surprised that the NYT sees Yankee IP law as hypocrisy? not at all, its more of the same, and not at all unique.
There are few countries in the industrial world who has not done behaved the same way in one fasion or another. In capitalism, laws generaly come about when there is the econimic pressure to make them happen. In some countries this happened sooner than others.
This is not to condone the practice, only explain it.
-- Many men would appreciate a woman's mind more if they could fondle it
The example you give of economic incentives to do the "right thing" is the best route, but I don't see this happening as much as it should.
At the Commission on Intellectual Copyright website.
You can download the whole thing in PDF format, or browse online.
(btw I submitted a story about this over a month ago)
Not a grammar nazi, just for those who are interested: (I always thought the president/precedent mix-up was an odd one for slashdot, because a similar distinction exists in most other European languages)
next time can you set up a mirror site for the article on a NY Times,
you could set up a geocities mirror and allow everyone to mirror NY times articles
There are a large group of Americans who wholeheartedly agree with you.
A significant bunch who live here would sooner move than suddenly be required to "digitally sign" a grocery list. (or whatever crap big business will force on us)
.... What would the world be like if there was no IP to speak of?
ie you weren't able to patent and monopolize(sp?) an idea. I hear the arguments that it would stifle innovation, BUT is this entirely true? Through out history there was no concept of IP and yet innovation occurred. Anyone remember the wheel, the steam engine, + others.
I'll grant you that the pace of innovation in the last 50 years shadows over that of the thousands of years before that. But is this thanks to IP?
I'm not sure if developing countries really benefit from not having IP laws in the long run. For example, I know people in Malaysia (a country where almost all software and movies are sold openly by pirates) who tried to produce a home-grown music videotape of songs by local singers.
Guess what happened - pirated immediately copied it, and the original producers ended up with thousands of unsellable tapes! So maybe the US is actually doing these countrys a favour by encouraging them to enforce IP laws.
What else can we expect from a nation born in revolution but denies others the same beginnings, as this article so eloquently submits.
- Snow White and the Seven Dwarves - stolen
- Pinnochio - stolen
- Cinderella - stolen
- Mary Poppins -stolen
- 20,000 Leagues under the sea - stolen
- Beauty and the Beast - stolen
- Robinhood - stolen
- The Jungle Book - stolen
- Tarzan -I believe they actually pay royalties to the Burroughs estate -- and hate having to do it
- The Little Mermaid - stolen
- Mary Poppins - stolen
- Peter Pan - stolen
The list goes on and on. In fact, it appears that the whole success of the second phase of the Disney corp (The first wave of animated features) rides firmly on the back of the public domain. When they start producing their own stories in the 70's they fail miserably ("Escape from Witch Mountain", "The World's Greatest Athelete", ad nauseum).It's not so much the re-using the public domain for source material that I have a problem with, it's the bald-faced refusal to let "their" "intellectual property" loose when it's legitimately part of the common public culture. For damn sure now, every westerner knows who Mickey Mouse is, that's why he's worth so much. But he wouldn't be worth so much if everyone didn't know him. That is exactly the same reason why Disney found value in the commons when it was establishing itself as a company. The same reason their first feature was "Snow White".
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Because I certainly don't.. What matters to people isn't how how envious of the rich they can be, but their standard of living.
I'd rather live in a country where I make $20k/year, and the richest person makes 100,000x as much as that, than live in a country where I make $10k/year, and the richest person makes 10x that.
You might rather be poorer, but I don't.
Sure, throw in some adjustment on prices based on, say, median income... But basing *ANY* social policy on envy (which is what is occuring if people complain about 'income inequality' between the rich and poor) is STUPID and NONPRODUCTIVE.
Are people better off in, say, India, where the median income is $2500, with the lowest 10% of households consuming 3.5% of total GNP? Or the US, where its $36000 and 1.8%? [numbers from CIA world factbook 2002 edition]
Either this is a bad example, or the point of the article is just wrong.
This country's economy wasn't built around books. Our economy wouldn't have taken off slower if we had had to pay more for Charles Dicken's books.
It's just silly.
I this Shoppa is mistaken. Brazil clear-cuts most (approximately 95%) of the forests it cuts down for domestic wood consumption (mostly cooking wood and to farm the land in non-intensive modern farming. They use very little for paper exports.
y _r eport_america/resources.html
Sure, we chopped down a huge amount of US forests for paper, furniture, cooking and ship building purposes. But then we got rich. Then this happened:
<i>Today, the volume of wood in U.S. forests is about 25 percent greater than it was 40 years ago. The United States has about the same amount of land covered by trees today as it did 80 years ago. In Vermont, for example, forest cover has more than doubled - from 37 percent in 1850 to 77 percent forest today. In New Hampshire, forest cover was 50 percent in 1850 compared to 87 percent today.
Each year, there are 1.5 billion tree seedlings planted in the United States - that's more than five new trees for each American, and nearly 2,000 for every bear. Forest planting in the United States currently averages about 2.4 million acres per year. </I>
http://www.timberhunt.com/country_report/countr
Reality is that which refuses to go away when I stop believing in it. --Phillip K. Dick (remove SPAM to email)
I just did a quick check on IMDB, and it appears that the case is even stronger that I had thought. Just looking at Walt Disney's credits, it is striking how much of his early work was taken from the public domain. What he does to poor Alice for "Alice in Wonderland" is amazing -- 47 short subjects based around putting somebody else's character in new stories!!! It will take some work, but I bet that it can be proven that half his work from before 1965 is in some way derivative of the public domain!
Talk about slamming the door in the face of the people behind you! What hypocrisy!
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
A scheme where the developing nations were allowed to ignore IP and Copyright law while producing goods to be used only in their own internal markets could be introduced with minimal cost to the IP owners.
The G8 countries wouldn't make significant loss, because the developing nations are generally unable to afford the licensed products anyway. Piracy would be no worse, because the pirates already ignore Copyright and IP law.
Have a look at was the US did to Enercon.
This is one of the few english language
articles I found:
After the war of Northern Aggression
(fought mostly in the Southen states BTW),
the Steel industry in the South (e.g., Birmingham,
Ala.) had to pay additional taxes up until
about 1940 to keep their steel prices on par with
those in PA and other northern states.
This was an illegal tax restricting free trade WITHIN its borders with the only goal protecting the northern industries profits.
The result was to
prevent the flow of wealth from the north to the
South (a primary cause of the war to begin with
as the South was growing and becoming more
prosperious prior to the war).
I used to be one of those people who thought those anti-globalization protesters were just treehugging tenderhearts looking for something to do. Mostly because I'm for free trade on principle. But then I realized how our farm subsidies caused starvation in poorer countries by destroying local food production industries. But our attack on those countries industrial sector with IP laws is part of the same picture.
The IMF orders those same third world countries we dump our subsidized food into on good years to stop helping local farmers buy chickens with something as simple as insurance that if the chick they buy doesn't become a 1 year old chicken it will be replaced. Then the free trade negotiators show up and tell them they can get rid of that 33% tariff on the president's widgets if he will just get rid of that tariff that protects his countries maize production and well prevents his family's competitors from coming out with better widgets by making those patent laws stronger, err in line with American standards.
What does it mean when we complain about a 55 year copyright in Taiwan, which hasn't even been around that long, much less democratic in that time? They are in line with international standards, and have trouble policing such an overlong copyright already, much less the kind of permanent monopoly the US wants them to establish on words.
PS As I understand it the farm subsidies are even worse in the EU, esp France, and this is causing problems with Eastern European countries who wouldn't get the subsidies if they joined the EU. This is from the economist which isn't an unbiased source; is it true?
Now I like to consider myself moderately intelligent, well-read, and decently informed, but what, exactly, is a free "blah di blah"? And is that free as in speech or free as in beer?
I do not have a signature
Troll bait.
These developing countries are soveriegn nations, after all. They can adopt any internal IP polices they want, much like the US did in it's past. And the fact is that they do. It's up to these countries to decide what is in their own self-interest,
Well parts of it at least. The textile industry in the US was built on stolen technology from the British. The designs for the advanced British machines was memorized by Samuel Slater who came to the US and started buildin the machines in Rhode Island.
How quickly we forget...
...was rather bothered by American bootleggers, too. But unlike Charles Dickens, he didn't go on a big U.S. tour to lobby for stronger international copyright protection. He and his publisher issued a higher-quality print of his novels, sold them for a reasonable price (a bit higher than the bootlegs, but not much), and made an appeal to his fanbase to boycott the unauthorized version.
The result was, he made a lot of money, and the unauthorized version didn't sell very well.
Neat, huh?
I'm a US citizen, and I agree with you.
But let me tell you...we have *no* control.
Our lawmakers are bought and sold by big IP interests.
The press is owned by the same big IP interests, so we don't even have a good policy debate on this.
Lets look at Lessig's suite against the Bono act.
NPR (public radio) did a balanced piece. But the major news outlets said that Lessig was trying to get rid of copyrights. Public opinion is thus shaped.
I don't know what to do, but as a citizen, I am in despair.
Ok, well stolen is a bit harsh. There's nothing wrong with taking something as a starting point. It's just that their stance on their IP is incredibly hypocritical. And I'm sure that there's plenty of sources that Disney does pay royalties on.
(I'll have to remember the duplicate list item ploy for future debates!)
The US certainly doesn't want third world countries copying all of our things. Then we can't sell them anything, and they can actually start to COMPETE with us.
To stay rich, you have to keep 'em poor.
A slip of the foot you may soon recover, but a slip of the tongue you may never get over. -Benjamin Franklin
"I feel that to systematically violate IP is not right"
I feel that to claim overly broad and long protection for IP is not a right either.
In fact, I don't recognize IP as a right, but as a product of recent laws. IP is hardly handed down from common-law.
IP is protectionism for large businesses. Don't ever forget that.
"Some of us want the federal government to compensate Native Americans for the genocide that was comitted during the American expansion west"
...a freaking INDIAN. And let me talk to you in my native tongue.
Right. As soon as the Germans and French compensate the Italians for taking land away from the Roman Empire.
No seriously, right after Fidel Castro compenstates taking away Cuba from the natives.
No No, really, as soon as the africans start paying primitive men for stealing their Wooly Mammoth hunting grounds away from them.
You really really really really really really really are a dumbass.
I'll bet you don't have many friend. And that's putting it kindly.
Oh, and to sign off, let me tell you that I am a "native american"
"OOOOH boo boo boo OOOOOOH boo boo bo"
I dare you to take your greenish preachings among the people who lost their houses due to forest fires. ..
I doubt you would survive long
Yea, we don't want any Yankee businesses (e.g., NYT) benefitting from the ip theft of the printing press and newsprint manufacturing.
This is a long rant, late in the game, but here goes...
(In my mind) the ideal solution would be to let any nation violate other nation's technology IP, as long as any immediate fruits of that IP remain in that nation. So, if a nation wants to steal IP to make a drug or food to save its own people, fine. If they want to make technology for their own use, fine. If they want to use steal MS word, it might be fine under some circumstances. However, if the software or technology is used to create products that are exported, the nation receiving the products is justified by levying a tax to make up for the stolen IP. The point is to allow the poor nations to be able to afford products. However, it is not unreasonable for the richer nations to protect their economies. (It is simply unreasonable for the richer nations to rape the poorer ones).
You'll note that this conflicts with of free trade. Free trade is a great thing, but it does not actually exist unless all the nations involved level the playing field. (I. e., similar incomes and employee treatment, similar IP rules, similar environmental rules, etc). If the playing field isn't level, then what you call free trade isn't free trade at all. It's free trade of one product (the piece actually sold) without free trade of whatever went into making this product. So, let's just throw away any illusions of free trade between rich and poor nations, and say that the goal should be maximum benefit in trade for all countries. Or, at least, maximum benefit for the poorer nations without adversely affecting the richer ones.
Just one comment about entertainment, (books, movies, etc). I don't think we should care about what happens within a poor nation. Most of the people in such a nation have no money anyway, so if entertainment can't be stolen, they'll just go without.
There are problems with this idea. For one thing, creating import taxes that are fair (and divvying them up to the right people) may be difficult. The idea is to compensate the companies that created the IP. The idea is not to protect companies against cheaper imports. Of course, the biggest issue may be the black market. If you are selling products within a poor nation cheaply, there's a lot of incentive to try to get them to a rich nation, illegally. I'm not going to suggest I know any solutions for these issues, I am just suggesting what I think is a reasonably ethical starting point.
One last comment to the people who think that pharmaceutical companies won't invest in research for drugs which would mostly help third world nations. You are absolutely right, but unfortunately there's not much that can be done about it. The reality is that what you are asking is the company to spend millions of dollars to simply help someone else. Where I come from we call this charity. Don't get me wrong, charity is a great thing, but please recognize what you are asking for. The most we can hope for is that companies will create drugs that will help them, and, as a side benefit, can be used by poor countries.
Wasn't the Asprin patent also swiped from Bayer AG in WWI? I seem to recall there were a number of German patents that were basically nullified in WWI.
I don't know how many were related to war materiels specifically and how many were just US businesses looking for a reason to steal something.
i agree with you in the fact that US situation in relation to it's forests is better then it was i the recent past
but, since when this areas have the same biodiversity they had?
-- SouNerd.com
Constitutional amendment banning patents and copyrights. Bomb countries that keep their IP systems (with open-source bombs of course). Problem solved, and most slashdotters agree.
Actually I'm happy to pay more. That's why I don't buy supermarket meat anymore. Don't pigeonhole a group just because you've had some bad expiriences.
Feminism is the radical notion that women are people.
The problem is the very existence. This is a problem on the level of slavery, and needs a constitutional amendment (or a nuclear weapon) to end it. Abolish all IP laws.
"...during it's own industrialization."
Aaaarrrrggggh! The apostrophe! The apostrophe!
The Master Plan Always Fails
In China, Disney's DVD is sold in department stores and music stores for merely US$3, slightly higher than the pirated version of $1.5 dollars.
I think Disney fully regonizes it can't play the Chinese government as it has been with US government. It goes down to play head-to-head with the pirating industry.
Give it a rest.
The U.S. was only able to grow its economy in the 19th century by boot legging illegal copies of Charles Dickens novels. Hmmm...
Seriously if the developing world uses technology from the U.S. to grow their economies then why is it so over the top to ask for some compensation? If we had an arrangement that U.S. companies could get a fraction of the profits then everyone wins and the developing world would never pay if the technology failed them.
For instance, let's suppose Zimbabwe used genetically enhanced corn seeds and the U.S. firmed asked for 10% of the crop. If the crop fails then no payment is made, if the crop succeeds then some payment is made.
Look, we can work out the details, I'm just saying that we can find some way to encourage technology that benefits everyone and I don't think that U.S. firms are evil for wanting to make a profit if someone uses their IP to benefit themselves.
The whole "free enterprise" and whatnot that's supposed to encourage entrepreneurship is nothing more than national propoganda.
::IRAQ::
::PANAMA (oldie but goodie)::
::VIETNAM::
::BOMBING AFGHANISTAN::
::ISRAEL/PALESTINE::
::WORLD WAR II:
::REVOLUTIONARY WAR::
::CIVIL WAR::
::THE ENVIRONMENT::
::BIOLOGICAL WARFARE (this is reaching into speculation, mind you)::
::NUCLEAR WEAPONS::
::MILITARY STRUCTURE::
::AL QAEDA::
...well, look no further than right here at home.
the US govt can't see why the rest of the World...takes offense at this
You really think that the US govt can't see? It's the normal US citizenry that can't see, because they get fed piles upon piles of propoganda.
Let's take a look:
Gov't line: We need to bomb them to protect the freedoms of the Kuwaiti people
Reality: we have big oil ties with the whole area, and any one country becoming dominant enough to be able to set oil prices or do anything but lie their passively while we import their national resources at dirt-cheap prices would be an economic unpleasantness. Much better to keep them afraid (at least for fifty years, until their oil runs out, at which point we couldn't care less what happens, just like we don't care what happens in places like Africa).
Gov't line: We need to suppress rebels and ensure stability, so we're moving in troops.
Reality: We want to build a canal at some really awful terms for Panama. Panama doesn't bite. We fund rebel groups, stir up a bit of unrest, move in troops to "maintain Western Hemisphere stability", and build the canal in the middle of their country, letting Panama know that they can have it back in a hundred years. Quite profitable for us.
Government line: we want to protect democratic rights in Vietnam, so we're helping fund a fair government
Reality: we want a lapdog government on the borders of communist nations to stop the spread of communism.
Government line: We're bombing terrorist camps, protecting the human rights of women and others who the Taliban is suppressing.
Reality: There's no big signs on people saying "I am a terrorist." There are a shitload of warlords and private groups and villages. Basically, any faction that doesn't buy into the lapdog government that we're in the process of setting up is portrayed on CNN as a "terrorist group" that we're bombing. Of course, this kills lots of women and children and people that have never had the slightest to do with bombing things in the United States, but we can make up for it by finding the occasional poster person in Afghanistan who is now "freed from the bonds of the veil" and can partake of Western products.
Government line: we're "facilitating the peace process" because we're concerned about the parties involved. Palestine keeps breaking the peace agreements.
Reality: We didn't care in the least about Israel back in the Six Day War, when Israel was about to get invaded by five or so armies. Why? Because we were convinced that Israel was about to get toasted, and we don't really have any interest in pulling anyone's feet out of the fire. After Israel pulled off the most stunning military feat in the last century and won, we decided that Israel was the person to buddy up to. Both Palestine and Israel have regularly violated the rights of each other's people, and both hate each other's guts -- Palestine is no worse here than Israel -- but because Israel is currently the top dog, we villify Palestine.
It goes on and on. US World War II propoganda is particularly amusing, if you ever look back at it, because it's so ridiculous. Speaking of which:
Government line: we need to go after Germany because they're evil and empire-building (in modern times, there is a perception that we got involved to "save the Jews").
Reality: Most people in the US were entirely uninterested in helping any Jews out, which were pretty much seen as job-taking immigrants. Germany's building an empire...but we didn't care when France was doing the same. No, we just happened to have significantly more economic ties to England and France.
Modern propoganda spin: Our Founding Fathers were noble idealists who were throwing off the shackles of an unjust government.
Reality: Our Founding Fathers were vandals (sorry, that's just what the Boston Tea Party was) who didn't want to pay taxes to pay for the military protection that they had had from Indians for decades.
Modern spin: fought to save the country from slavery
Reality: Slavery not primary issue to the majority of people fighting, Union or Confederacy. Union cared mostly about not allowing any states to leave the United States (which would weaken the states as a whole), and the Confederacy was mostly interested in being able to have much more power at a state level.
Government line: the US is the most environmentally conscious of nations, putting out extreme efforts to product emissions-free cars, and using as much clout as it can to require developing nations to be clean.
Reality: The US is quite interested in countries being environmentally conscious -- as long as it isn't us. It's in our interests to drive up their costs and down ours. We've been the single major holdout against international antipollution agreements over the past few years. We *do* care about polution that immediately impacts US citizens (dumping chemicals in rivers that go to reseviours), but as for conservation of international resources...we use so many times our share of energy that it's ridiculous.
Government line: We stopped offensive germ warfare efforts about twenty years ago. We focus only on defense now.
Reality: Not sure one way or another, but if you remember, when we were proposing the (very sweet for us economically) "food for oil" trade agreement after we arranged for an international embarge of Iraq, and Iraq was holding out, claiming that they had plenty of food resources, there was a very unusual sudden mass outbreak of hoof-and-mouth disease throughout Iraq's cattle. Go figure.
Government line: The US government wants to keep nuclear weapons out of the hands of "rogue states" and terrorists to keep the world safe for everyone.
Reality: The US wants to keep nuclear weapons away from *anyone else*. Our current nuclear weapon reductions are meaningless -- both Russia and us have easily enough to destroy the other, even enough to overwhelm antimissile defenses. We just ignore allies that have nukes. Yet a nuclear weapon is just about the only meaningful resistance a country can put up in case of a US attack -- the US doesn't want any resistance to be possible. We have overwhelming conventional force, and we want things to stay that way.
Government line: "Defense spending". Our military is for "defense".
Reality: And yet, over the last fourty years, almost all our military spending has gone into making our military faster, lighter, and easier to move around the world via ships in battle groups. Why? Not cost effective at all for defense -- we can defend our shores just fine traditional approaches -- but amazingly good at bombardment and intimidation of countries that we aren't getting along with.
Government line: Al Queda is a bunch of cowards who can't take an honest fight who went after innocent people.
Reality: Assuming bin Laden himself was behind Sept. 11, he's one of the most successful military tacticians in the last hundred years. Think about it. He has a force that is outgunned, and outmanned. The people he's working with, Afghanis, have been used by the US governent as disposable tools against US enemies and then dropped when they were no longer useful (much like the Kurds, the Cuban revolutionaries at the Bay of Pigs). The understandably feel some resentment. Their religion (at least the political side of said religion) has been rather oppressed and attacked by Western culture that seems quite evil to them (loss of emphasis on the family, sexual promiscuity, etc). Most of the eastern countries being exploited for their oil are Islamic, and the US has had quite a hand in dirty work in the region. So what does he do, with no tanks, airplanes, or anything else? He uses our own airplanes against us. Who does he attack? Not the US soldiers, the grunts who are being paid to attack other countries, but against the people who are directly responsible for the decisions that caused so much damage to his country and people -- US politicians (the White House), the overbearing US military (the Pentagon), and the powerful corporations that have been encouraging said oil exploitation (rich suits in the World Trade Center).
The US government is just as guilty as the Soviets, the Chinese, and anyone else in putting out bogus propoganda. It's more successful because people are happy and rich. If you think that people that bought into Soviet or North Korean propoganda must have been incredibly stupid
Now, that doesn't mean that US propoganda is *bad* for us. US citizens enjoy an extremely high standard of living, rights (even in other countries) to ignore local laws that are simply unheard of (Clinton can get a vandal off in Singapore from being punished for his crimes, but if Taiwan tried to get someone off for copyright infringement, I doubt they'd have any success). Most of this comes, counter to said propoganda, not from "rights" or the long-dead "American self-sufficiency" or anything along those lines. It's because we're happy to use our military power to whack people if it gives us an economic benefit. You get to live the good life because there are people in our government who are willing to do the dirty, unethical work that keeps you enjoying your life.
What let most of our modern economy be built? Roads and fuel. Centralization of manufacturing and specialization came directly from those. Why do we get our oil so much cheaper than people in any other countries? Because we club the crap out of anyone that opposes us exporting their oil at dirt-cheap prices. We happily put tariffs up against countries importing, but use every last bit of our clout to prevent countries from taxing US imports. And it's been enormously successful over the past two centuries, making us the dominant economic power, and making us extremely successful.
No, I'm not arguing that this should stop. I'd just like to see that people be aware of what we're doing, and make a conscious decision to do what they're doing. Being the bully on the block can be pretty pleasant, but something feels vaguely wrong about being the bully on the block and thinking that you're the saint.
May we never see th
Well, forest fires are a natural thing (except those started by humans obviously) AND they are good for the land.
I have no sympathy for those who:
There are many advantages to breaking the above rules, but when you take a risk you cannot whine when it doesn't go your way.
Those ::HEADER:: lines should each be on their own line. Slashcode likes randomly stripping lines to make things "more concise". Dammit.
May we never see th
I am not pigholing anyone. I shell out more money myself since I always buy products with an ecostamp. I have just seen too many European and American armchair enviromentalists shoulder their picket signs and merrily see to it that a couple of thousand people somewhere in Scandinavia, Greenland, Canada or Africa have to go witout a job to pacify their own guilty consience; only to see these same so called enviromentalists discrard their high and lofty ideals as soon as it ist THEY who have to pay more for their food or suffer in some way. For every person like us who is willing to pay more for Enviromentally friendly products there are 10 people whos concern for the enviroment ends at the clasp of their own wallet. Case in point the German "Green" party who has changed its tune considerably since the came into the government
Another thing I watched with a certain amount of sarcastic amusement was for example Greenpeace and its save the whales campaign. They went after Little Iceland who was just about the only country in the world to issue quotas on Whaling ships based on Scientific studys of population size. At the same time Greenpeace ignored large Pirate fleets of whalers who unlike the Icelanders and the Norwegians were killing large numbers of endangered species completely without control including animals that were had not even reached reproductive age. In Norway and Iceland you can actually end up doing hard time if you get cought catching fish under reproductive age. Examples of this sort of lynchmob behavior among enviromentalist groups are Legion, example of some or the other misguided Enviromentalist group going after somebody without even bothering to check their facts and sometimes and this includes Greenpeace, falsifying and fabricting evidence if they can't find any. Sadly enough the people who really know what they are talking about in matters enviroment regularly get shouted down by the Industrial lobby as well as the Fundamentalist Eviromentalists like Greenpeace.
Only to idiots, are orders laws.
-- Henning von Tresckow
Um, the battles in which Americans had their biggest losses against the British were those in which they fought 'by the rules.' Washington wanted their revolution to be recognized as legit, so every now and then he got his butt kicked by fighting their way. They lost alot more men then they had to because they fought 'the right way.'
So while Americans like to think of the civil war leaders as being bigtime into gurilla tactics, it isn't the whole truth.
Pardon me, but Snopes is full of bull.
Many of their articles are pure political spin
pieces. All of them are supercilious tripe, even
when they manage to get the facts right, but
worse they go on to derive invalid conclusions
from their "facts", in order to refute their
straw-man "legends".
Besides which, there was nothing -- nada -- zip --
zilch -- about the post to which you respond to
give it the credibility which would merit a
refutation, thus making your response a tendentious
pedantry up with which I cannot put.
-I like my women like I like my tea: green-
The origin of Yankee has been the subject of much debate, but the most likely source is the Dutch name Janke, meaning "little Jan" or "little John," a nickname that dates back to the 1680s. Perhaps because it was used as the name of pirates, the name Yankee came to be used as a term of contempt. It was used this way in the 1750s by General James Wolfe, the British general who secured British domination of North America by defeating the French at Quebec.
The Slashdot line: We want to protect starving artists who are being exploited by the RIAA.
Reality: Almost everyone on Slashdot pushing this has vague notions of "unlimited free music" available, without them having to put any resources into production of future music. As for people that claim (and frequently have rationalized their behavior to the point of believing it) that their goals really *are* to defend the artist rather than get free music...I ask, how many of you were crusading against the recording industry's exploitation of the artist *before Napster was around*?
The Slashdot line: Windows is highly insecure. Anyone using it is asking to get broken in to. Linux/Unix is much better.
Reality: Windows and other Microsoft products have had security holes, the same as Unix/Linux has. For every egregious MS bug (active content), there's an equally egregious Unix/Linux bug (massive numbers of buffer overflows in ssh, which is frequently deployed at secure sites and is relied upon to be solid). For every MS program with a miserable security history that runs with administrative permissions (IIS), there's a Unix program that does the same (sendmail).
Slashdot line: H1Bs exploit foreign workers by bringing them to come to the United States and then work at lower wages than other US workers. H1Bs produce workers that produce code of abysmal quality. H1Bs should be eliminated to protect the workers that are being exploited. The US economy would be better (by employing more US workers) if we got rid of the H1Bs.
Reality: H1Bs let people get into the country. Workers coming to the US are quite happy to work at lower wages for a period of time if it means they get their foot in the door and can get permanent residency. People aren't being forced to take H1Bs -- they want them! They work at lower wages than US workers because US tech wages are astronomical compared to the amount of effort required to gain the skillset necessary to do the job. Many H1B workers are *very* skilled, more so than their US counterparts. If a company is going to go all the way over to another country *and* sponsor a worker, it is damn well going to do an even more stringent examination of the worker's competence than it would a domestic worker. Eliminating H1Bs wouldn't make any H1B-users happy at all -- they *choose* to come to the United States and work at 90% the normal US wage because it beats the snot out of working at 10% the normal US wage in a foreign country. As for the US economy being better by helping domestic workers...that's simply not true. What US workers want is guaranteed jobs (or at least jobs with a heavy edge given them in hiring). Costs of paying US workers more is then passed down to the consumer. So people in favor of labor protectionism are asking the entire United States to subsidize their highly-paid lifestyle when there's a more efficient alternative. Plus, it's easy to move software development to another country -- everyone speaks C++, work is fairly independent, and collaboration (and tools for collaboration) are pretty good and easy. If the US does labor protection, in the long term, companies will either move to other countries or go out of business, beaten by companies in countries with cheaper workers. That's *bad* for the economy.
Slashdot line: Sweatshops are evil. They exploit the foreign worker. They should be eliminated.
Reality: This is mostly AFL/CIO-initiated propoganda. Sweatshops are hiring foreign workers at low prices because that's the only way they can be competitive. If you want to pay $50 more for your hard drive, go for it...but competition on price is what has driven down wages. Eliminating sweatshops, as some have proposed, wouldn't do anything to help the foreign worker -- they're willing to work at inhumanly low rates because that's the only way they can get enough for food. Wipe the sweatshops out, and they simply starve. The only people to benefit are US unskilled labor, which gets a short term boost in hiring. This is much the same as the H1B item mentioned above.
Slashdot line: Drug legalization is good because I'm concerned about the human rights of the nonviolent offenders that are put in jail. The Constitution doesn't give the federal government the right to ban drugs.
Reality: Most people taking this view are interested in smoking up, not primarily concerned about potential constitutional violations. Why? I don't see complaints of constitutional violations (libertarian types aside), despite the fact that most of the Bill of Rights is pretty much ignored by the federal government (I remember doing a breakdown at one point of how many are actually strictly followed...something like two of the amendments.)
May we never see th
..you know if that story gets widespread, there'll be a law passed to stop us from "seeing, hearing, smelling, touching, or otherwise accessing material protected by copyright unless specific permission is received from the copyright owner."
That Jesus Christ guy is getting some terrible lag... it took him 3 days to respawn! -NJ CoolBreeze
In this case, snopes is right, Japan Has never imported anything under "made in USA." However, there ARE some small commonweaths and countries that can import as Made in USA or Made in US. (the latter more prevalent, but ignored in snopes article.) Contrary to some people's belief the United States of America does not OWN international rights to the letters US or USA, and some countries are legally capable of importing goods into the US as 'made in US' or made in 'USA' Japan, however Is Not one of those countries. Also, remember that the initials are generally produced from the native toung's native spelling, not the english translation. So while you may be used to looking a a map full of 'english' spelling those don't correlate to many countries abbreviations.
https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html
America in the 19th century was able to do this because they had very little in the way of dependency on foreign nations. The British cried bloody murder while Americans pirated books... but they where powerless to do anything about it. America didn't ask for a loan, protection, or anything else..
At the end of the day, America is not going to invade another country over music piracy. They may decide not to trade with them, but those countries are free to make their own laws. Where this gets sticky is when those countries want to borrow American money and particpate in the American economy, but don't want to play by American rules. They can simply do what America did, and play by their own rules but accept the economic repurcussions of it. They might just end up in the same spot America is 100 years down the road.
Turn s60 photos into awesome videos with mScrapbook for all S60 3rd edition phones!
Snopes is the calm voice of reason that people seem to ignore, in HTML form. People who are way too gullible for their own good will believe practically anything told to them by "trusted friends" (who, in turn heard it from "another friend"), even if it contradicts logic, facts, and everything else. They sum it all up in an easy-to-read format.
As for his/her post not being a response, I'd say you're wrong. It was a response to the fact that this person was repeating a lie like it was a fact. Stopping the spread of lies, and general enlightenment, is something that everyone in society should try to do. By ending stupidmemes like the girl who masturbated with a lobster dieing with baby-lobsters in a sensitive place, you make the society a better place to be.
--
Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
An AC wrote:
> I dare you to take your greenish preachings among
> the people who lost their houses due to forest
> fires.
I have every compassion for the poor people who have lost homes, etc., due to this summer's fires. However, I highly doubt massive mud slides and a new dust bowl crisis would be very helpful to them either, and that is what you get if you just start shaving the hills down to bare dirt.
Forests need fires as part of their life cycle. But there is no reason that wise management couldn't save people's homes and allow the forests to do their thing. Something as simple as a fire break around most towns would do the job.
I know there are wacked out environmentalists who forget human compassion and wisdom in their enthusiasm for the Earth. I am not one of them. We need to find a way to protect the Earth and provide for the needs of people too.
Clearcutting is one example of this. Lumber industries have little wood rushes, and like gold rushes, when the timber runs out, so do the jobs. Wise use of the resource would be to set up tree farms. That way, the environment for animals doesn't disappear, the forest provides oxygen and prevents erosion, and the people of logging communities have steady jobs that provide a future for their children and their communities.
"What do you think Mothra would do?" - Moll, "Mosura" 1996
...for the first amendment.
This sig no verb.
1. A CEO does not respect the environment if it stands in the way of profit. You don't see McDonalds campaigning to save the Amazon rainforest since it is being destroyed by Brazilian ranchers providing them with cheap beef.
2. A CEO demands military intervention if international interests are threatened. Nothing scares a multinational corporation more than a socialist uprising that limits their supply of cheap labor and/or raw materials. Or defaults on large loans.
Not too many tree-huggers promote military interventionism or discourage enironmental protection.
I am not quite clear which /. you are referring to here. As many people often try to make clear in the threads, Slashdot readers are far from an amorhpous blob that all believe and act the same way. Or do you mean the Slashdot Editors who I am sure disagree often enough?
The US doesn't even come close to being self sufficient in oil, so I doubt we are involved in the Middle East just for our allies.
From what I've read and seen in the world press most of the world wants the US to mind their own business.
And finally the real issue is that the US has made the rest of the world their business. The American economy would collapse if we stopped importing raw materials and exporting trade goods. Isolationism is an anachronism in this era of cheap shipping and cheaper foreign labor. So the US will continue to involve itself around the world not because the world sees the US as their knight in shining armor but because Coca-Cola is having labor problems or Chevron might have to pay an extra pennie per barrel of oil.
But thanks for flashback to 1950. Sometimes it is important to remember where we came from if we want to move ahead.
I believe that the US stole the magnetic tape, originally created by BASF from the germans after the 2nd world war...
1- Yes the RIAA is exploiting artists. 1$/CD or less goes to the artist, this is daylight robbery. Some people on Slashdot may be `pirates' (arrh) but the vast majority, I'll wager, pay for their music.
2- Windows is provably less secure than Linux. The SSH holes you are talking about are nothing like the ISS highways, bearing in mind that ISS is enabled by default on most installation of win2k (don't know about XP). Microsoft takes a lot longer to patch known security holes than the Linux vendors. Some DoA holes on windows have never been patched and some are now a permanent feature of WinNT.
3- I don't have an opinion of HB1s, but if you let people in when you need them you need be prepared that some time will come when you might need them less. I agree with you that this debate is silly, every country I know which has imported foreign workers during a time of boom has had problems later during the bust. The thing is there is no choice in the matter: if you don't employ these people when you need them most, the bust happens sooner and might last longer. There will be a boom again and tech workers will be needed again.
4- Yes, sweatshops are absolutely evil. Don't buy from manufacturers who run sweatshops. Yes their product might be more expensive, but often this is not even the case, eg: Nike, which sells the most expensive shoes around. If you think this is propaganda think again, in some sweatshops people have to work 12h+ in a row with no break whatsoever, even toilet breaks. If you think this is impossible do your research. Workers in Europe in the 19th century had similar working conditions. Read Emile Zola's `Germinal' if you don't believe me.
The battery in my motorcycle is a Yusa (Yuasa?) from Japan :-) Most motocycles use this brand. I don't know if that's a deliberate attempt to sound like a "USA" batt. or not.
Still a few bugs in the system... Someday I have to tell you about Uncle
Nahum from Maine, who spent years trying to cross a jellyfish with a shad
so he could breed boneless shad. His experiment backfired too, and he
wound up with bony jellyfish... which was hardly worth the trouble. There's
very little call for those up there.
-- Allucquere R. "Sandy" Stone
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...