Nuclear isn't bad IF regulated properly so as to not allow greedy companies to get away with cutting corners on safety. Things can go terribly wrong but usually the worst nuclear problems are due to human fuckups.
And if someone suffers, the blame falls on who caused the suffering to begin with.
Suppose that I'm a victim of aids, and the only way to treat me would be to kill a million rats and find an antidote.
Pretty unethical, but gee, maybe I wouldn't have gotten aids in the first place if I'd kept my pants on?
Ditto for emphysema. It's pretty easy to be well if you don't get sick in the first place. Staying away from cigarettes and pollution is a good start.
And for diabetes, lay the fuck off the sweets and get some damned exercise.
I could go on and a lot of health problems that we torture rats for are much cheaper, both economically AND ethically, to prevent. You don't need to torture rats to get exercise, eat right, get sunshine, drink plenty of water, and so on.
To be blunt, if I wanted to make the world a better place, there are sure as hell a lot of better ways to do it than to breed a pack of rats to test new pharmaceuticals on. If people simply got fresh air, exercised, ate right, and drank healthy fluids, and got sunshine, the pharmaceutical industry would go bankrupt in a month...
In a way, fossil fuels are expensive because they pollute like crazy and are finite. It's rather like getting a loan with long terms than making profit because sooner or later you are going to run out and even until then pollution is going to build up.
The reason fossil fuels are a big business is because of a few things:
1. Pollution is an externality that something like a coal plant doesn't have to pay for, ergo society at large gets billed for it 2. Once it's been exploited to exhaustion the mining company's already made it's fortune and left society a big bill in the form of fewer resources.
Fossil fuels only win because they cheat. If they had to eat all their downsides themselves instead of burdening everyone else they would be much less attractive.
As part of his resignation did Cmdrtaco get banned from slashdot entirely or did "not able to post" only mean he couldn't submit stories as an editor anymore?
My point is that if you strike out with the USPTO, you lose affirmative defenses if you are sued later by the owner of the patent you went after.
Paradoxically this means that if there IS prior art, you are a big fat sitting duck and can get sued to oblivion, but someone else can use the same prior art to defend themselves.
This gives patent holders incentive to selectively retaliate only against people who request reexams, and also gives people incentive not to challenge them in the first place.
A contract is only a two-way agreement when both sides have equal bargaining power.
When one side holds all the cards and is in a position to dictate terms, it is very much a one way take it or leave it agreement usually riddled with the company getting all rights and you getting none.
And in an economy where people are desperate for jobs and willing to sell their souls to the lowest bidder, the boss will win.
Copying incident to a judicial proceeding qualifies as fair use, and I'm sure that prosecuting someone for copyright infringement qualifies as a judicial proceeding.
Whatever they call it, it will be rotten to the core. It already has a seedy reputation as it is and I don't find very appeeling what could stem from such a union.
Slashdot Mirror
The biggest problem I have with GMO is that it can get people sued by Monsanto even if they're not at fault.
So basically we should accept it simply because it's going to happen whether we like it or not?
Sounds like an appeal to authority based on fait accompli in the status quo.
I could make the same argument for the wonders of modern medicine and pharmaceuticals you recently bashed.
Personally I think that pumping dirty CO2 rich air through sunny pools of oily algae that are then ground up for biodiesel is a dynamite idea.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Algae_fuel
Nuclear isn't bad IF regulated properly so as to not allow greedy companies to get away with cutting corners on safety. Things can go terribly wrong but usually the worst nuclear problems are due to human fuckups.
Depends on who is playing the pipe.
And if someone suffers, the blame falls on who caused the suffering to begin with.
Suppose that I'm a victim of aids, and the only way to treat me would be to kill a million rats and find an antidote.
Pretty unethical, but gee, maybe I wouldn't have gotten aids in the first place if I'd kept my pants on?
Ditto for emphysema. It's pretty easy to be well if you don't get sick in the first place. Staying away from cigarettes and pollution is a good start.
And for diabetes, lay the fuck off the sweets and get some damned exercise.
I could go on and a lot of health problems that we torture rats for are much cheaper, both economically AND ethically, to prevent. You don't need to torture rats to get exercise, eat right, get sunshine, drink plenty of water, and so on.
To be blunt, if I wanted to make the world a better place, there are sure as hell a lot of better ways to do it than to breed a pack of rats to test new pharmaceuticals on. If people simply got fresh air, exercised, ate right, and drank healthy fluids, and got sunshine, the pharmaceutical industry would go bankrupt in a month...
In a way, fossil fuels are expensive because they pollute like crazy and are finite. It's rather like getting a loan with long terms than making profit because sooner or later you are going to run out and even until then pollution is going to build up.
The reason fossil fuels are a big business is because of a few things:
1. Pollution is an externality that something like a coal plant doesn't have to pay for, ergo society at large gets billed for it
2. Once it's been exploited to exhaustion the mining company's already made it's fortune and left society a big bill in the form of fewer resources.
Fossil fuels only win because they cheat. If they had to eat all their downsides themselves instead of burdening everyone else they would be much less attractive.
As part of his resignation did Cmdrtaco get banned from slashdot entirely or did "not able to post" only mean he couldn't submit stories as an editor anymore?
My point is that if you strike out with the USPTO, you lose affirmative defenses if you are sued later by the owner of the patent you went after.
Paradoxically this means that if there IS prior art, you are a big fat sitting duck and can get sued to oblivion, but someone else can use the same prior art to defend themselves.
This gives patent holders incentive to selectively retaliate only against people who request reexams, and also gives people incentive not to challenge them in the first place.
So basically if they fuck up a reexam, everyone but them gets to defend themselves if they get sued.
Sounds like an incentive not to gamble on the reexam in the first place.
All they care about on the technical details is making sure they obey their corporate lobbyist overlords on what to write down.
Which is why it's sound engineering for a computer to have a bios loader burned into a rom chip that can reflash the bios.
Material Defender.
Descent.
They'll just blame the inept cashiers that are driven to the madness of pissing off the customers to get their sales quota.
Just like the MAFIAA blames pirates for revenue loss on box office bombs that wouldn't have made money anyway.
A contract is only a two-way agreement when both sides have equal bargaining power.
When one side holds all the cards and is in a position to dictate terms, it is very much a one way take it or leave it agreement usually riddled with the company getting all rights and you getting none.
And in an economy where people are desperate for jobs and willing to sell their souls to the lowest bidder, the boss will win.
So is he being prosecuted under US or NZ law?
No no no, the FBI did not violate copyright by taking the data.
http://www.copyright.gov/fls/fl102.html
Prosecution of MU counts as a judicial proceeding which is an exemption.
http://www.copyright.gov/fls/fl102.html
The copying was incident to a judicial proceeding.
http://www.copyright.gov/fls/fl102.html
Copying incident to a judicial proceeding qualifies as fair use, and I'm sure that prosecuting someone for copyright infringement qualifies as a judicial proceeding.
He may have been ordered to join it by his boss.
Just because you work at a lawfirm doesn't mean you get to call the shots.
If the espionage is state sponsored, whoever is doing the censorship (and is presumably exempt from it) is probably in league with them
The TSLS was a confused deputy.
Considering the recent escalations in state sponsored cyberwarfare I wouldn't be surprised if the NSA was involved in microsoft singing this stuff.
Whatever they call it, it will be rotten to the core. It already has a seedy reputation as it is and I don't find very appeeling what could stem from such a union.
You just know it would be rotten to the core.
Expecting virus writers to follow copyright law is ludicrous.
Same argument for banning handguns...only honest people will disarm.
Presumably to make sure that demand returns when the movies do.