"Sales are down, for everything except the iPhone. Not cynic, just stupid."
But why are they down? That is the question.
There is always the sluggish economy, of course. AND the fact that desktop sales are down across the board. But there are two other relevant facts to consider:
(A) Apple has been neglecting its desktop market to some degree, to concentrate on phone development and sales. That is bound to have diminishing returns due to competition in the phone market. The iPhone is not the be-all end-all that it used to be. Their overall sales may be up but market share is down. Which brings up (A1): A lot of people are getting fed up with Apple's "walled garden" and want a more open ecosystem. Their products may be (are) great in many ways but they're turning off people and market share with their "me me me" all the time.
(B) Their expected upgrade to the MacBook line has been delayed, and the new Mac Pro, while a very nice machine in many ways, appears at this time to lack upgradability and is also very late.
"With 64 cores, I'd say it's already a cluster. A dozen of these ($1200) would have 768 cores and fit in a microatx case.:)"
But what about performance? For example, how does it perform at parallel integer math (arguably the most common use for these things), as compared to a top-line, price-comparable GPU card?
That's what I want to know. I didn't search for a long time, but I didn't find info on that.
"I'll take it. The Post Office provides incredibly good, reliable service, despite the way it is micro-managed by Congress, and expected to operate like a private corporation while providing universal service, which no corporation would do, and prefunding retirement benefits for workers, some of whom aren't even born yet."
The service it provides is only "good" and "reliable" when you have nothing to compare it to. So let me clue you in on a little history.
Before I get to any depth I'll just tell you what I have experienced personally. When I was a small child I had this conversation with my father when he was preparing to mail a letter at the post office. And it stuck in my mind ever since: You could pay about 2-3 times the cost of a "regular" stamp, for an Airmail stamp. And you were guaranteed 2-day delivery anywhere in the contiguous 48 states. In contrast, today, the analogous category of mail is "Priority Mail." It costs more than 10x a regular stamp, and nothing is guaranteed. They say it "usually" takes 2 days. But I have seldom had priority mail I sent actually arrive in 2 days. In the past I had very important mail sent "2nd Day Delivery" (this was shortly before the "Priority Mail" designation) take 9 and 10 days to go from major Western cities to major Eastern cities. When I complained, all I got was a shrug and the comment "You should have sent it FedEx."
But now some real history: one thing that people seem to forget is that a major reason for the very existence of the Post Office is to postmark mail. It is NOT just about cancelling stamps so they can't be re-used. (Although they can be combined and often are... a stamp cancellation along with the dated postmark.) The postmark creates a legal, court-accepted record of when it was sent. But take a look in your mailbox from day to day now, and see how much of your mail is actually postmarked. Very little of mine is. Bulk mail has no postmark, and doesn't really need any. So that's a gimme. But what about the rest?
Well, half of the STAMPED mail I've received lately hasn't even been properly cancelled. Much less postmarked. No visible date anywhere. And metered mail? The Post Office has decided it doesn't need to postmark metered mail. Even though it could have been "metered" two months ago and only sent 3 days ago. I know, because I've sent metered mail myself and in many cases you can set the date to whatever you want. And even if you don't, you can meter it today and send it a month from now. No record anywhere of when it was actually mailed. This is a Big Fail. (I want to point out here, too, that I'm not talking about what Postal regulations say they have to do today. I'm talking about the historical -- and current -- justifications for the Post Office to even exist.
I'm not talking about Certified Mail. That's another matter, and it's very expensive. But there are lots of times when your mail is a legal record, certified or not, and not having a postmark can be a huge problem.
That is just one way in which the Post Office is simply not doing the job it exists to do.
As for retirement funds... do you know WHY they have to pre-fund retirement? That requires a little more history.
Always keep in mind that the Post Office is a government-mandated monopoly. In the very beginning, the government was really the only entity that could establish reliable mail service. But it wasn't always that way and it doesn't have to be that way.
In 1844, Lysander Spooner established the American Letter Mail Company, which competed very successfully with the U.S. Post Office. To the point that Congress outlawed companies that compete with the Post Office (for the simple reason that the Post Office could not compete). That put Spooner out of business of course. He became bitter and he was an outspoken critic of the U.S. government ever since.
My point here though is that it is not only possible for pri
"Is an image/CAD/MP3 file not merely a listing of inputs to the cook/graphics program/CAD/music player?"
Yes, but...
The "recipe" is a process. An image is not. This has all been settled by the courts long ago.
The argument in the player-piano roll cases, over 100 years ago, was that the rolls were "special" because they were instructions for a machine. The courts (very strongly) disagreed. The ruling was that the form of the written work (sheet music or roll of paper) was completely immaterial; they are both simply different forms of the written work. For example, it is theoretically possible (and recently a reality) to make machines that read sheet music. That doesn't change the essential nature of the sheet music as a written, copyrighted work.
This same reasoning has been applied by the courts to blueprints, CNC files, and other such WRITTEN works. Note that it should also be true of any software. It doesn't matter that they are instructions to machines. They are written works covered by copyright (not patent, or other such laws).
"If its a tangible, three dimensional object, in which the allegedly copyrightable aspects of it are embodied in the shape of its overall physical form, it's got to be either a sculptural or architectural work"
Not at all.
People have been making "written" instructions for CNC machines for many years, CAD drawings (which are legally the same thing) for many more years, blueprints for machine parts for many more years, player piano rolls for many years before that, and punch cards for looms for hundreds of years. (Machine instructions in these forms are considered copyrightable WRITTEN works.) But that doesn't make a milled steel machine part either architecture or art. Or a rug, for that mater. It is arguable that some rugs are art, but many aren't.
My point though is that generally, an end physical product is legally separate from the instructions for making it.
Can we not also make a deal saying "I'll give you my designs if you agree not to sell the objects I designed"?
Probably, but that's not the kind of situation I was directly addressing.
A deal like that is a contract, as long as there is consideration on BOTH sides... something a lot of people tend to forget. I'm not saying there isn't any here, I'm just reminding that it is necessary. Okay. So as long as there is consideration and the agreement does not otherwise violate law, it's a contract.
But contracts have nothing to do with copyright law. (Except that First Sale Doctrine says there are certain kinds of contracts you can't make... and I don't think that applies here.) But what I was referring to was copyright law. The fact that an artist might enforce copyright on his drawing does not mean he can automatically enforce it on a physical object made from that drawing. By law they are two different things.
But again, that's aside from any agreement. I don't know of any reason that agreement would not be valid, if indeed that is the agreement that was made.
"Yes, you would. The difference hear is that 3D printing opens up a whole market for these devices where only a few people can or willing to carve stuff out of wood. Those that do are low enough to fly under the radar sort of speak. So it's not an issue now."
That is not a valid comparison. You aren't manually squirting plastic out of a tube and shaping it, either.
It is much more like making a part with a CNC machine.
See my comment further up about what laws cover what. This general issue has already been tackled by the courts (a long time ago, actually), and it is pretty well settled.
"Think if you were handy with a paint brush and drew Disney's copyrighted characters on a T-shirt and tried to sell them, I bet you will receive a letter from a Disney lawyer."
Disney is probably the worst possible example you could use here. They were instrumental in getting the unreasonable extension of copyrights passed, and even then don't follow the laws they helped establish.
The instructions (or CAD drawing) are copyrightable. If the finished object is considered a work of art, it is also copywritable (but separately from the CAD or instruction file). If the final object is an object of utility, it might get a utility or design patent.
But those are all separate things. I have seen here on Slashdot a lot of people confusing them. There is no need to confuse them, or to pass new laws, as we have had this capability, in somewhat different forms, for hundreds of years. We have already had all the necessary lawsuits and court cases to establish perfectly good law and precedent for these activities.
"Even if it's original and creative, the utility doctrine still applies to sculptural works: only the non-useful portions are copyrightable, and that's only if they're separable from the useful portions. If the gear had a decorative pattern on the side, the pattern might be protectable, but not the gear."
An object made from a CAD drawing (or 3D printer instructions, which are, by long precedent, legally exactly the same thing) are not "sculptural works". They are parts made from instructions.
You can make a set of instructions to get a CNC machine to carve out a sculptural work, too. If you made the instructions, fine. Copyright them. If you created a "sculpture" from them, copyright or get a design patent for that, too. But the instructions are completely different things, and subject to completely different laws, from the finished object. And there is no need for it to be any other way.
"The cad files or what ever they are to the object as source code is to a binary."
Quite. 3D printer instructions are nothing more than a form of CAD file, which is a copywritable, WRITTEN work.
Items printed are no more than any other physical object made from a CAD drawing. You can't copyright the actual part (but you can get a design patent if it applies).
"But, hey, that doesn't stop the UK, Canada, Britain, or Germany from doing the same thing in violation of their Constitutions, either."
Why are you excluding the United States? The US government has been doing its own astounding circumventions of our Constitution as well.
Take just for one very relevant example: the illegal, retroactive immunity granted telcos for illegally allowing the government to listen in on your communications.
---
"No bill of attainder or ex post facto Law shall be passed." -- U.S. Constitution, Article 1, Sec. 9.
"You fall into an informal fallacy here by using a unitary "they", as though climate scientists formed some secret cabal who, upon discovering that their warming predictions had proven false, concluded that they must change the language they use to continue to deceive the public."
I am not impressed by your pseudo-logical argument.
Fact: the issue was popularly referred to, by the scientists and the press, as "global warming". Fact: the same issues, whether they exist or not (I am studiously avoiding judgment here), are now being referred to, by the vast majority of scientists and press, as "climate change". There are no assumptions behind those observations. And since a pretty much across-the-board change HAS BEEN made, then there is a motivation behind it. It did not happen accidentally... if it had, it would have taken longer and would not have been so uniformly adopted. Again, that is a logical conclusion flowing from the facts, not an assumption.
"But you're questioning them based on two misunderstandings which you refuse to rectify despite evidence offered to you by a great many here. On the one hand, you suspect the motives because you falsely believe scientists just up and changed their terminology to deceive the public. When people have presented you with arguments and evidence to the contrary you have dismissed it as irrelevant. This is just as well since recognizing the relevance of the response would require that you present evidence to the contrary."
YOU are the one doing the assuming here, and I will reply in the same way I did to the other person who brought this up: you are doing the very thing you have accused me of doing. Specifically:
"On the one hand, you suspect the motives because you falsely believe scientists just up and changed their terminology to deceive the public."
That is an assumption on your part, not a fact. Nowhere have I stated such. You are assuming motivations behind my actions. All I did was ask a question, which has a perfectly rational and logical basis (see my 1st paragraph above). In short, YOU are assuming MY motivations. And you didn't just ask about my motivations, you stated your false assumption in clear English.
"When people have presented you with arguments and evidence to the contrary you have dismissed it as irrelevant."
They have not done so. They have certainly made arguments, which were largely baseless. And presented NO evidence whatever. The only actual evidence that was presented WAS irrelevant, because it was backing an argument that had nothing to do with the actual question I asked. It simply represented another ASSUMPTION of MY motives, and did not address my actual question.
If you are going to do more of the same, don't bother. I won't answer.
"Those two statements are not mutually exclusive."
They may not be mutually exclusive, but the first one is irrelevant, because my statement was that I was simply going to ignore, not that I was going to "dictate the conditions of the conversation". I did not claim I would do the latter, and I have not tried to do it. However, again I am excercising my right to ignore. And again, I did not read more than the first sentence.
I don't doubt that they might have had reasons to write it that way... but that doesn't do any more to impress me. The uncalled-for sensationalism actually ends up giving me a negative impression.
"Maybe they'll start making... (gasp)... actual plots to accompany those stars/explosions/special effects?"
They think they've found some "formulas" that are common to blockbuster movies... and maybe they're right. BUT... as much as I hate to say this again, correlation does not equal causation. The fact that many blockbusters may have followed particular patterns does not mean that following those patterns will automatically make a good movie.
All formulas aside... it STILL has to be a good movie.
"People don't want to sign up for the armed services knowing that they're just going to be shipped off immediately to one of these middle-eastern hell holes to fight some undeclared war over some bullshit "terror" campaign to "keep us safe" from that big, evil Constitution that is making government's job so difficult."
Corollary: maybe we should make Wall Street and Washington bigwigs be the pilots, since they are the ones who have benefited from all this.
"The finding shakes up our ideas about how sex chromosomes influence gender and also suggests that at least some parts of the X chromosome are playing an unexpectedly dynamic role in evolution."
Huh? What? Shakes up WHOSE ideas? Certainly not mine.
YY babies don't tend to go very far (not XYY, just YY).
Seriously... I don't see how this perfectly obvious stuff "shakes up" much of anything.
According to IPCC's WORST-CASE estimates (from which they have recently backed off), sea levels were not projected to rise by more than about a meter over the next 100 years.
Slashdot Mirror
"Sales are down, for everything except the iPhone. Not cynic, just stupid."
But why are they down? That is the question.
There is always the sluggish economy, of course. AND the fact that desktop sales are down across the board. But there are two other relevant facts to consider:
(A) Apple has been neglecting its desktop market to some degree, to concentrate on phone development and sales. That is bound to have diminishing returns due to competition in the phone market. The iPhone is not the be-all end-all that it used to be. Their overall sales may be up but market share is down. Which brings up (A1): A lot of people are getting fed up with Apple's "walled garden" and want a more open ecosystem. Their products may be (are) great in many ways but they're turning off people and market share with their "me me me" all the time.
(B) Their expected upgrade to the MacBook line has been delayed, and the new Mac Pro, while a very nice machine in many ways, appears at this time to lack upgradability and is also very late.
GUAno DECoder?
It seems to be some kind of GNOME conference?
It may be a bit outdated now. "Knock you up" generally means a personal visit, but for a while was also used as slang for "call you on the phone."
"With 64 cores, I'd say it's already a cluster. A dozen of these ($1200) would have 768 cores and fit in a microatx case. :)"
But what about performance? For example, how does it perform at parallel integer math (arguably the most common use for these things), as compared to a top-line, price-comparable GPU card?
That's what I want to know. I didn't search for a long time, but I didn't find info on that.
"I'll take it. The Post Office provides incredibly good, reliable service, despite the way it is micro-managed by Congress, and expected to operate like a private corporation while providing universal service, which no corporation would do, and prefunding retirement benefits for workers, some of whom aren't even born yet."
The service it provides is only "good" and "reliable" when you have nothing to compare it to. So let me clue you in on a little history.
Before I get to any depth I'll just tell you what I have experienced personally. When I was a small child I had this conversation with my father when he was preparing to mail a letter at the post office. And it stuck in my mind ever since: You could pay about 2-3 times the cost of a "regular" stamp, for an Airmail stamp. And you were guaranteed 2-day delivery anywhere in the contiguous 48 states. In contrast, today, the analogous category of mail is "Priority Mail." It costs more than 10x a regular stamp, and nothing is guaranteed. They say it "usually" takes 2 days. But I have seldom had priority mail I sent actually arrive in 2 days. In the past I had very important mail sent "2nd Day Delivery" (this was shortly before the "Priority Mail" designation) take 9 and 10 days to go from major Western cities to major Eastern cities. When I complained, all I got was a shrug and the comment "You should have sent it FedEx."
But now some real history: one thing that people seem to forget is that a major reason for the very existence of the Post Office is to postmark mail. It is NOT just about cancelling stamps so they can't be re-used. (Although they can be combined and often are... a stamp cancellation along with the dated postmark.) The postmark creates a legal, court-accepted record of when it was sent. But take a look in your mailbox from day to day now, and see how much of your mail is actually postmarked. Very little of mine is. Bulk mail has no postmark, and doesn't really need any. So that's a gimme. But what about the rest?
Well, half of the STAMPED mail I've received lately hasn't even been properly cancelled. Much less postmarked. No visible date anywhere. And metered mail? The Post Office has decided it doesn't need to postmark metered mail. Even though it could have been "metered" two months ago and only sent 3 days ago. I know, because I've sent metered mail myself and in many cases you can set the date to whatever you want. And even if you don't, you can meter it today and send it a month from now. No record anywhere of when it was actually mailed. This is a Big Fail. (I want to point out here, too, that I'm not talking about what Postal regulations say they have to do today. I'm talking about the historical -- and current -- justifications for the Post Office to even exist.
I'm not talking about Certified Mail. That's another matter, and it's very expensive. But there are lots of times when your mail is a legal record, certified or not, and not having a postmark can be a huge problem.
That is just one way in which the Post Office is simply not doing the job it exists to do.
As for retirement funds... do you know WHY they have to pre-fund retirement? That requires a little more history.
Always keep in mind that the Post Office is a government-mandated monopoly. In the very beginning, the government was really the only entity that could establish reliable mail service. But it wasn't always that way and it doesn't have to be that way.
In 1844, Lysander Spooner established the American Letter Mail Company, which competed very successfully with the U.S. Post Office. To the point that Congress outlawed companies that compete with the Post Office (for the simple reason that the Post Office could not compete). That put Spooner out of business of course. He became bitter and he was an outspoken critic of the U.S. government ever since.
My point here though is that it is not only possible for pri
"A British study found that the U.S. postal service is the most efficient in the world."
Who gives a damn if it's most efficient, if 90% of it is corporate junk mail?
Give me an efficient postal service WITHOUT government-subsidized junk mail. Then I'll be impressed.
Go up to an American female cop and tell her you'll "knock her up" sometime. See how well THAT goes over, if she's not familiar with British slang.
"Is an image/CAD/MP3 file not merely a listing of inputs to the cook/graphics program/CAD/music player?"
Yes, but...
The "recipe" is a process. An image is not. This has all been settled by the courts long ago.
The argument in the player-piano roll cases, over 100 years ago, was that the rolls were "special" because they were instructions for a machine. The courts (very strongly) disagreed. The ruling was that the form of the written work (sheet music or roll of paper) was completely immaterial; they are both simply different forms of the written work. For example, it is theoretically possible (and recently a reality) to make machines that read sheet music. That doesn't change the essential nature of the sheet music as a written, copyrighted work.
This same reasoning has been applied by the courts to blueprints, CNC files, and other such WRITTEN works. Note that it should also be true of any software. It doesn't matter that they are instructions to machines. They are written works covered by copyright (not patent, or other such laws).
"If its a tangible, three dimensional object, in which the allegedly copyrightable aspects of it are embodied in the shape of its overall physical form, it's got to be either a sculptural or architectural work"
Not at all.
People have been making "written" instructions for CNC machines for many years, CAD drawings (which are legally the same thing) for many more years, blueprints for machine parts for many more years, player piano rolls for many years before that, and punch cards for looms for hundreds of years. (Machine instructions in these forms are considered copyrightable WRITTEN works.) But that doesn't make a milled steel machine part either architecture or art. Or a rug, for that mater. It is arguable that some rugs are art, but many aren't.
My point though is that generally, an end physical product is legally separate from the instructions for making it.
Can we not also make a deal saying "I'll give you my designs if you agree not to sell the objects I designed"?
Probably, but that's not the kind of situation I was directly addressing.
A deal like that is a contract, as long as there is consideration on BOTH sides... something a lot of people tend to forget. I'm not saying there isn't any here, I'm just reminding that it is necessary. Okay. So as long as there is consideration and the agreement does not otherwise violate law, it's a contract.
But contracts have nothing to do with copyright law. (Except that First Sale Doctrine says there are certain kinds of contracts you can't make... and I don't think that applies here.) But what I was referring to was copyright law. The fact that an artist might enforce copyright on his drawing does not mean he can automatically enforce it on a physical object made from that drawing. By law they are two different things.
But again, that's aside from any agreement. I don't know of any reason that agreement would not be valid, if indeed that is the agreement that was made.
"Yes, you would. The difference hear is that 3D printing opens up a whole market for these devices where only a few people can or willing to carve stuff out of wood. Those that do are low enough to fly under the radar sort of speak. So it's not an issue now."
That is not a valid comparison. You aren't manually squirting plastic out of a tube and shaping it, either.
It is much more like making a part with a CNC machine.
See my comment further up about what laws cover what. This general issue has already been tackled by the courts (a long time ago, actually), and it is pretty well settled.
"Think if you were handy with a paint brush and drew Disney's copyrighted characters on a T-shirt and tried to sell them, I bet you will receive a letter from a Disney lawyer."
Disney is probably the worst possible example you could use here. They were instrumental in getting the unreasonable extension of copyrights passed, and even then don't follow the laws they helped establish.
To clarify:
The instructions (or CAD drawing) are copyrightable. If the finished object is considered a work of art, it is also copywritable (but separately from the CAD or instruction file). If the final object is an object of utility, it might get a utility or design patent.
But those are all separate things. I have seen here on Slashdot a lot of people confusing them. There is no need to confuse them, or to pass new laws, as we have had this capability, in somewhat different forms, for hundreds of years. We have already had all the necessary lawsuits and court cases to establish perfectly good law and precedent for these activities.
"Even if it's original and creative, the utility doctrine still applies to sculptural works: only the non-useful portions are copyrightable, and that's only if they're separable from the useful portions. If the gear had a decorative pattern on the side, the pattern might be protectable, but not the gear."
An object made from a CAD drawing (or 3D printer instructions, which are, by long precedent, legally exactly the same thing) are not "sculptural works". They are parts made from instructions.
You can make a set of instructions to get a CNC machine to carve out a sculptural work, too. If you made the instructions, fine. Copyright them. If you created a "sculpture" from them, copyright or get a design patent for that, too. But the instructions are completely different things, and subject to completely different laws, from the finished object. And there is no need for it to be any other way.
There is nothing new here.
"The cad files or what ever they are to the object as source code is to a binary."
Quite. 3D printer instructions are nothing more than a form of CAD file, which is a copywritable, WRITTEN work.
Items printed are no more than any other physical object made from a CAD drawing. You can't copyright the actual part (but you can get a design patent if it applies).
There is nothing new here.
"But, hey, that doesn't stop the UK, Canada, Britain, or Germany from doing the same thing in violation of their Constitutions, either."
Why are you excluding the United States? The US government has been doing its own astounding circumventions of our Constitution as well.
Take just for one very relevant example: the illegal, retroactive immunity granted telcos for illegally allowing the government to listen in on your communications.
---
"No bill of attainder or ex post facto Law shall be passed." -- U.S. Constitution, Article 1, Sec. 9.
"You fall into an informal fallacy here by using a unitary "they", as though climate scientists formed some secret cabal who, upon discovering that their warming predictions had proven false, concluded that they must change the language they use to continue to deceive the public."
I am not impressed by your pseudo-logical argument.
Fact: the issue was popularly referred to, by the scientists and the press, as "global warming". Fact: the same issues, whether they exist or not (I am studiously avoiding judgment here), are now being referred to, by the vast majority of scientists and press, as "climate change". There are no assumptions behind those observations. And since a pretty much across-the-board change HAS BEEN made, then there is a motivation behind it. It did not happen accidentally... if it had, it would have taken longer and would not have been so uniformly adopted. Again, that is a logical conclusion flowing from the facts, not an assumption.
"But you're questioning them based on two misunderstandings which you refuse to rectify despite evidence offered to you by a great many here. On the one hand, you suspect the motives because you falsely believe scientists just up and changed their terminology to deceive the public. When people have presented you with arguments and evidence to the contrary you have dismissed it as irrelevant. This is just as well since recognizing the relevance of the response would require that you present evidence to the contrary."
YOU are the one doing the assuming here, and I will reply in the same way I did to the other person who brought this up: you are doing the very thing you have accused me of doing. Specifically:
"On the one hand, you suspect the motives because you falsely believe scientists just up and changed their terminology to deceive the public."
That is an assumption on your part, not a fact. Nowhere have I stated such. You are assuming motivations behind my actions. All I did was ask a question, which has a perfectly rational and logical basis (see my 1st paragraph above). In short, YOU are assuming MY motivations. And you didn't just ask about my motivations, you stated your false assumption in clear English.
"When people have presented you with arguments and evidence to the contrary you have dismissed it as irrelevant."
They have not done so. They have certainly made arguments, which were largely baseless. And presented NO evidence whatever. The only actual evidence that was presented WAS irrelevant, because it was backing an argument that had nothing to do with the actual question I asked. It simply represented another ASSUMPTION of MY motives, and did not address my actual question.
If you are going to do more of the same, don't bother. I won't answer.
"Those two statements are not mutually exclusive."
They may not be mutually exclusive, but the first one is irrelevant, because my statement was that I was simply going to ignore, not that I was going to "dictate the conditions of the conversation". I did not claim I would do the latter, and I have not tried to do it. However, again I am excercising my right to ignore. And again, I did not read more than the first sentence.
I don't doubt that they might have had reasons to write it that way... but that doesn't do any more to impress me. The uncalled-for sensationalism actually ends up giving me a negative impression.
"Maybe they'll start making... (gasp)... actual plots to accompany those stars/explosions/special effects?"
They think they've found some "formulas" that are common to blockbuster movies... and maybe they're right. BUT... as much as I hate to say this again, correlation does not equal causation. The fact that many blockbusters may have followed particular patterns does not mean that following those patterns will automatically make a good movie.
All formulas aside... it STILL has to be a good movie.
"People don't want to sign up for the armed services knowing that they're just going to be shipped off immediately to one of these middle-eastern hell holes to fight some undeclared war over some bullshit "terror" campaign to "keep us safe" from that big, evil Constitution that is making government's job so difficult."
Corollary: maybe we should make Wall Street and Washington bigwigs be the pilots, since they are the ones who have benefited from all this.
"The finding shakes up our ideas about how sex chromosomes influence gender and also suggests that at least some parts of the X chromosome are playing an unexpectedly dynamic role in evolution."
Huh? What? Shakes up WHOSE ideas? Certainly not mine.
YY babies don't tend to go very far (not XYY, just YY).
Seriously... I don't see how this perfectly obvious stuff "shakes up" much of anything.
"Look up "price fixing". It's an entirely unrelated concept."
It is nothing of the sort. Price fixing is collaborating on the price of a good, external to market forces.
The Fed fixes the price of LOANS. Loans are a product, too.
"Avatar wasn't a rubber stamp?"
Maybe. But it was a visually stunning, 3-D rubber stamp. That's worth something.
According to IPCC's WORST-CASE estimates (from which they have recently backed off), sea levels were not projected to rise by more than about a meter over the next 100 years.
I daresay we can adapt fast enough to that.