And your attempt to challenge the data has failed over and over again. Unless you call a college drop out turned weather man's attempt at challenging the surface temp readings a success.
Yeah and what DOES determine truth ? The process of science , the scientific method. But that's WHY 98% of scientists agree with AGW. You're talking as if they just agree for no reason.
It's not right because they agree on some personal, philosophical non professional level . They agree because it's right and it's right because of the studies and the science that has gone into to showing it is right.
So now scientific consensus which is the result of due consideration of peer reviewed studies and 30 years of scientific investigation doesn't mean anything.
What does- a CATO Institute "study?".
The debate is over. Too bad you and CATO missed it, but since you have nothing of any scientific value to contribute anyway, really, who gives a fuck what you think?
Yeah the problem is directly and linearly related to the head count of GHG molecules in the atmosphere.
So Step 1- reduce GHG molecules as much as possible.
Step one pretty much means YOU do everything YOU can do .
As to China and India, The US is pretty good at getting other countries to go along with us when we want to be, aren't we?
We need to reduce GHG emissions NOW and RADICALLY. As it happens we either are number one or two. That pretty much means what we do matters and in fact decides the earth's fate. If we continue, we're all fucked, It's enough to know that. We can prevail on China and India at the same time and we'll have more clout AFTER WE TAKE NEEDED STEPS.
Who gives a flying fuck what Penn and Teller think? Why would I ask them what they thought on a scientific matter? Why? Why? have we just thrown away the concept of duly qualified expert? Why not ask Bozo the Clown. he dressed up for kids and did magic and such like on TV too.
Yeah the problem with your argument is it's thirty years behind the times. The arguing over the theory the testing and attacking and checking that IS the scientific method is what scientists have been doing .
Of course they did that out of the limelight and glare of the media.
NOW that they - that is 98% of them- have checked, double checked, reaffirmed and reaffirmed their reaffirmation that the theory that carbon emitted by human activity is causing the temperature to rise faster and will reach a point where civilization cannot be sustained, NOW they are sounding the alarm.
What else did you want them to do?
And here comes FoxNews and the Koch brothers and the oil and coal industry and the whole gullible denier dittoheads , showing up to the party and saying "say... we need to prove these here theories!.. say I have an idea!!!"
You know what this boils down to? You chose the wrong career path to influence this discussion buddy. If you want to be an expert in something, then you have to pay the dues real scientists pay.
care about this topic? climate change denial is brought to your courtesy of the exact same people and PR firms and think tanks who brought you the smoking is not related to cancer meme 40-50 years ago.
And it's taken up by the same demographic who deny evolution, so yes, it is the present day evolution debate in another form.
The only difference between those earlier debates is not accepting Darwinism, while it's a scientific tragedy for anyone who takes it seriously is not going to destroy the habitability of earth.
And smoking kills you and maybe your family, but not everyone on earth.
But this time it's different. the propagation of Climate Change Denial is a Crime Against Humanity pure and simple.
The Nazis objected to their prosecution also. They said it was ex post facto lawmaking to try them for killing the Jews and homosexuals and Gypsies. They argued that they really believed their philosophical load of crap, and they were entitled to make their nation's laws.
And you know what? There was some truth to that argument. Until we decided there wasn't that is and went ahead and charged them for things which had not been crimes before- Crimes Against Humanity- which was just a free floating idea and no law anywhere , until we used it in Nuremberg.
The prosecutor there pointed out that probably the first person to be charged with murder had the same argument- you can't charge me because the law doesn't exist.
Some sociopath somewhere always thinks he's going to use the law to evade the law. I have a right to say whatever I believe!
Here's the bottom line. Criminals decide what laws there will be. If your "free speech and freedom of opinion" results in horrific death and disruption on a scale never imagined before then your "free speech and freedom of opinion" will be curtailed for the good of humanity and in fact its exercise under certain circumstances will be deemed criminal and it will be deemed criminal ex post facto and you won't like that any more than the Nazis liked it and you'll make the same arguments they made and you'll end up just like they ended up. Because criminals determine through their behavior what acts are criminal and society always acts to circumscribe that behavior, no matter what.
It's not that hard to put together a case right now. Essentially they're shouting "no fire" in a crowded theater on that is on fire. That's manslaughter already. And no,. no one cares if you *really* believe it because *you're not qualified to perform surgery and you're not qualified to adjudicate this scientific matter and you know it in both cases.*
No one cares if you think you are and in the future, when the ravages of climate change are actually playing out and the people who are young today are looking to assign culpability they're REALLY not going to give a shit what you *really believed*.
Exactly. Lawyers have been able to inject themselves into the business of software and design to the degree they have because it represents a new source of revenue for them. Executives are all agreed on it because as bad as being sued is, it's better than facing an openly competitive field with no barriers to entry.
Artificial barriers to entry like these patents increase the cost of goods, reduce the competitive field and drive monopoly rents.
Without these rents, you would not have obscene profits and obscene salaries arrived at in this manner.
You'd still have obscene profits but it would be in exchange for extreme value.
But that would mean real work instead of lawyering, and the lawyers can't have that.
It would also democratize opportunity, and the CEOs and politicians that are funded by them can't have THAT!
We all know this is exactly true. We all know it's a game that is genuinely rigged to self reinforce the societal position of whoever has power and money currently.
This is a deeply poison pill the effects of which no nation or civilization ever escapes no matter how draconic a regime they try to enforce.
It's not substantially different than the corruption that drove the Arab Spring to topple its dictators.
Software patents turn each and every programmer on this board a criminal on a daily, no, an hourly basis. That's not even an exaggeration, or hyperbole, or overstating the case; that's a material fact . It drive developers out of business and stops them from starting businesses every day
How is this different from the events that set off the Arab Spring?
Mohammed Bouazizi, 26, sold fruit and vegetables illegally in Sidi Bouzid because he could not find a job.
Last month he doused himself in petrol and set himself alight when police confiscated his produce because he did not have the necessary permit.
Call them what you like. The 1%. The Royal Family. The Coke Snorting Class. The Lawyers. The Politicians. The Executives. The Parasites. Whatever you want to call them, the fact is they never see it coming because they're so out of touch with the rage hey engender in everyone else. They think they can keep all "those" people under control because "those people" don't matter, have no power and are so fucked they'll never get unfucked.
Oh God what has Samsung done???!!! Don't they realize that by imitating the singular genius that Apple represents, they're sure to share their fate???!!!
Maybe we should just let Apple executives shoot Samsung executives AND all their workers also then seize their goods and throw them into the ocean.
Germany has a law that let's you effectively patent NON functional aspects of your design- like rounded corners. I am not sure if this is a EU wide thing or not.
Sorry about teh unformatted post previous.. I am sure Slashdot is moving to WYSIWYG any day now;)
Let's be clear about one thing- IP lawyers are succeeding in creating a parasitic lifestyle on our industry and on our lives and futures.
They impose themselves as non-value producing entities on an industry and then begin siphoning off money from that industry.
They do not add value, they remove value; they do not promote progress, they retard progress. There are so many dollars being thrown off from any given product, and lawyers have conspired to insert themselves into that revenue stream, directly and negatively effecting your bottom line.
This parasitic lifestyle is as good an example of the 1% staging a systematic assault on the 99%.
In fact, The imposition of a software patent regime is as clear cut a case of the 1% consciously organizing to cut off economic opportunity from the 99% as you're going to find outside of a smoke filled room in Texas.
There are about the same percentage of software developers who favor software patents as there are climatologists who don't believe in global warming. 98% of software developers want to write software, create a product, and add value.
Precious few look at the patent troll lifestyle with envy and wish to pursue a career litigating over simple minded applications of middling value.
But for those that do favor software patents, just exactly how do you propose to win at this game?
That the realistic cost of acquiring a software patent starts at 15-30k and goes well north of there.
although note that one IP lawyer comments that "In Los Angeles it is not unusual for partners to charge in excess of $600/hour which makes your estimates on the low side."
which is more than you're likely to make from your patent:
The cost of patents is greater than the revenue they generate. ÃoeAbout 97 percent of patents generate less revenue than the patent costs." Return on patent costs. How much does it cost to patent an invention? (Andy Gibbs, CEO of PatentCafe.com Inc., quoted in Celia Lamb, ÃoeNew program at Sierra College aims to help would-be Pre Plastics,Ã Sacramento Business Journal, February 7, 2003)
But never mind that, now that you have spent more than your likely savings on your one single patent, exactly what is it you're thinking about doing with this patent?
Licensing it? Do you think that licensing is automatically negotiated and enforced by the government?
No, you're going to pay a lawyer an hourly rate which is two to ten times what your own hourly rate is to approach, approach and then re-approach company after company none of whom are even slightly sympathetic to your request for a taxation on their profits and will, in fact, do everything they can to resist any kind of licensing deal, including using the tactic of exhausting the rent-seeker's financial ability to pursue rent.
Oh so let them use your "intellectual property" you'll sue! For millions! Well, good luck with that. Because you're sure as hell not going to be doing that on your own unless you're in the 1% or can find some subset of 1% who are sympathetic to your quest to join their ranks via litigation.
The cost to sustain an infringement claim starts at one million US and goes to 5 million and beyond. So unless you're befriended by some part of the 1%, you're not going to be enforcing your "intellectual property rights" anytime soon.
So what do we have, really?
We have a system which has the net effect of imposing an impossibly high barrier- call it a poll tax- upon the most vibrant and valuable form of economic participation our economy has - starting a company.
And who created that barrier?
Highly paid (1%) lawyers working for highly compensated (1/10 of 1% ) CEOs.
Let's be clear about one thing- IP lawyers are succeeding in creating a parasitic lifestyle on our industry and on our lives and futures.
They impose themselves as non-value producing entities on an industry and then begin siphoning off money from that industry.
They do not add value, they remove value; they do not promote progress, they retard progress. There are so many dollars being thrown off from any given product, and lawyers have conspired to insert themselves into that revenue stream, directly and negatively effecting your bottom line.
This parasitic lifestyle is as good an example of the 1% staging a systematic assault on the 99%.
In fact, The imposition of a software patent regime is as clear cut a case of the 1% consciously organizing to cut off economic opportunity from the 99% as you're going to find outside of a smoke filled room in Texas.
There are about the same percentage of software developers who favor software patents as there are climatologists who don't believe in global warming. 98% of software developers want to write software, create a product, and add value.
Precious few look at the patent troll lifestyle with envy and wish to pursue a career litigating over simple minded applications of middling value.
But for those that do favor software patents, just exactly how do you propose to win at this game?
That the realistic cost of acquiring a software patent starts at 15-30k and goes well north of there.
http://www.ipwatchdog.com/2011/01/28/the-cost-of-obtaining-patent/id=14668/
although note that one IP lawyer comments that "In Los Angeles it is not unusual for partners to charge in excess of $600/hour which makes your estimates on the low side."
which is more than you're likely to make from your patent:
The cost of patents is greater than the revenue they generate. ÃoeAbout 97 percent of patents generate less revenue than the patent costs." Return on patent costs. How much does it cost to patent an invention? (Andy Gibbs, CEO of PatentCafe.com Inc., quoted in Celia Lamb, ÃoeNew program at Sierra College aims to help would-be Pre Plastics,Ã Sacramento Business Journal, February 7, 2003)
But never mind that, now that you have spent more than your likely savings on your one single patent, exactly what is it you're thinking about doing with this patent?
Licensing it? Do you think that licensing is automatically negotiated and enforced by the government?
No, you're going to pay a lawyer an hourly rate which is two to ten times what your own hourly rate is to approach, approach and then re-approach company after company none of whom are even slightly sympathetic to your request for a taxation on their profits and will, in fact, do everything they can to resist any kind of licensing deal, including using the tactic of exhausting the rent-seeker's financial ability to pursue rent.
Oh so let them use your "intellectual property" you'll sue! For millions! Well, good luck with that. Because you're sure as hell not going to be doing that on your own unless you're in the 1% or can find some subset of 1% who are sympathetic to your quest to join their ranks via litigation.
The cost to sustain an infringement claim starts at one million US and goes to 5 million and beyond. So unless you're befriended by some part of the 1%, you're not going to be enforcing your "intellectual property rights" anytime soon.
So what do we have, really?
We have a system which has the net effect of imposing an impossibly high barrier- call it a poll tax- upon the most vibrant and valuable form of economic participation our economy has - starting a company.
And who created that barrier?
Highly paid (1%) lawyers working for highly compensated (1/10 of 1% ) CEOs.
And what does that barrier do?
Discourages people of normal to modest means (99%) from starting companies at all. For those with the temerity to do so, it enables anyone in the 1% or with the backing of the 1% to deal them (the 99%) a fatal blow at will
YEah Google needs to start actively campaigning for the abolition of software patents.
You see what they did with SOPA and PIPA . They can do the same for SW patents if they want to.
I like Google. Who else have we got in the corporate world, IBM? Snark.
Google shares my values generally and certainly on the important issues AGW, freedom of speech, net neutrality. They need to seriously take stock here and make a decisive move here. It's not enough to play a crooked game well and reluctantly . They have to start fighting for what they know is right and just.
Let's be clear about one thing- IP lawyers are succeeding in creating a parasitic lifestyle on our industry and on our lives and futures.
They impose themselves as non-value producing entities on an industry and then begin siphoning off money from that industry.
They do not add value, they remove value; they do not promote progress, they retard progress. There are so many dollars being thrown off from any given product, and lawyers have conspired to insert themselves into that revenue stream, directly and negatively effecting your bottom line.
This parasitic lifestyle is as good an example of the 1% staging a systematic assault on the 99%.
In fact, The imposition of a software patent regime is as clear cut a case of the 1% consciously organizing to cut off economic opportunity from the 99% as you're going to find outside of a smoke filled room in Texas.
There are about the same percentage of software developers who favor software patents as there are climatologists who don't believe in global warming. 98% of software developers want to write software, create a product, and add value.
Precious few look at the patent troll lifestyle with envy and wish to pursue a career litigating over simple minded applications of middling value.
But for those that do favor software patents, just exactly how do you propose to win at this game?
That the realistic cost of acquiring a software patent starts at 15-30k and goes well north of there.
although note that one IP lawyer comments that "In Los Angeles it is not unusual for partners to charge in excess of $600/hour which makes your estimates on the low side."
which is more than you're likely to make from your patent:
The cost of patents is greater than the revenue they generate. âoeAbout 97 percent of patents generate less revenue than the patent costs." Return on patent costs. How much does it cost to patent an invention? (Andy Gibbs, CEO of PatentCafe.com Inc., quoted in Celia Lamb, âoeNew program at Sierra College aims to help would-be Pre Plastics,â Sacramento Business Journal, February 7, 2003)
But never mind that, now that you have spent more than your likely savings on your one single patent, exactly what is it you're thinking about doing with this patent?
Licensing it? Do you think that licensing is automatically negotiated and enforced by the government?
No, you're going to pay a lawyer an hourly rate which is two to ten times what your own hourly rate is to approach, approach and then re-approach company after company none of whom are even slightly sympathetic to your request for a taxation on their profits and will, in fact, do everything they can to resist any kind of licensing deal, including using the tactic of exhausting the rent-seeker's financial ability to pursue rent.
Oh so let them use your "intellectual property" you'll sue! For millions! Well, good luck with that. Because you're sure as hell not going to be doing that on your own unless you're in the 1% or can find some subset of 1% who are sympathetic to your quest to join their ranks via litigation.
The cost to sustain an infringement claim starts at one million US and goes to 5 million and beyond. So unless you're befriended by some part of the 1%, you're not going to be enforcing your "intellectual property rights" anytime soon.
So what do we have, really?
We have a system which has the net effect of imposing an impossibly high barrier- call it a poll tax- upon the most vibrant and valuable form of economic participation our economy has - starting a company.
And who created that barrier?
Highly paid (1%) lawyers working for highly compensated (1/10 of 1% ) CEOs.
Oh yes and thank god Ron Paul Mr. Get Govt Out Of Our Lives thinks that it's OK and in fact right to FORCE a woman to undergo an UNEEDED ultrasound before she can have an abortion even if her doctor thinks it's not a good idea for her and even if she doesn't want to.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/1002161152
Lets get govt off our backs and into our beds, shall we? Vote Ron Paul!
Yeah, I hate to be the one to break this to you but Ron Paul is a total fraud. He wants HIS VERSION of Big Government rammed right up every woman's body.
And of course he's was a massive racist, opposed as he is to the 1964 civil right's legislation that said among other things that blacks could drink out of the same drinking fountains as whites, could marry whites, couldn't be discriminated against in hiring and housing etc etc you know, all the basics of a civil society....
Oh and I think there was something in that legislation that said the government couldn't refer to them in legislation as 40 swiggin' porch monkey niggers who want our white women too.
piece of fucking shit dressed up as "a man of principle" and his schtick is bought only by infinitely gullible, extremely naive people who are too stupid to use Google and, of course, other racist, sexist homophobic Bible thumpers of which there are, it goes without saying, entirely too many .
Oh and one more thing. He's never ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever going to be the President of the United States of America.
So be sure to write-in vote for Ron Paul, because we need as many stupid people to throw away their votes as possible !
Well buddy if you think you're talking to a bible thumping republican conservatard you're just as mistaken about that as about everything else you believe.
Which basically sums it up, right? You're a fucking automaton of lunatic talking points you scraped off the bottom of the web and for which you have zero evidence.
Some people are lost souls, incapable not just of reasoned debate, but incapable of parsing their everyday world and interactions because, well, basically because they diagnosed or undiagnosed have major mental illness, that's why.
It doesn't actually help your "cause" , whatever that is, to make false claims about the intentions of the US government.
What you're saying is we are already the STASI. So why fight any step towards it? We're already there. There's nothing anyone can do. Drop out. Don't stick your head off. Get off the radar. Live in a hole. Eat out of a can. You might live to be fifty. If they let you.
This kind of sentiment is first and foremost factually inaccurate. The government is NOT the STASI, does not want to be the STASI and does not possess the motivations you ascribe to them.
Secondly, the beliefs you spread have a deleterious effect on the democratic process and to the extent anyone believes you, our democracy is diminished.
Dropping out of participating is a the best way to create a self fulfilling prophesy, supposing in the first instance that people who think the STASI was just great are assembling somewhere, presumably in Texas.
Whether you believe it or not, there are people who are completely driven by religious and political ideologies who would love nothing more than to kill as many Americans as they can.
Compound this with the fact that increasingly we're living in a time where it takes fewer and fewer such people to inflict greater and greater casualties both in headcount and degree of damage upon a population and you have a situation you need to protect yourself against. These people are not going away and are immune to the charms of reasoned debate and compromise and have nothing but contempt for anything in the way of social progress that happened after the 13th century.
Unless we all begin to discuss the undiscussable- what level of damage are we willing to sustain to the nation and the body politic without changing anything with respect to civil rights?- then we can all sit by and watch as DHS and others try to do teh impossible- protect us absolutely from the machinations of the terrorists.
And when DHS fails, as it must eventually, you can then stand by and watch another round of lawmaking you can't stand happen.
And why does it have to be this way? Because no one wants to quantify exactly how mcuh death and mayhem they're willing to endure and still not pass laws that erode civil rights.
We have to have that discussion. We need to say what we're personally willing to see happen in terms of casualties and economic damage without touching anything in the Bill of Rights.
Let me throw a number out there. I am willing to lose an average of 10,000 a year to terrorism.
The reason I say that is because it's well below what we experience already from things like drunk driving and homicides and because it's a nearly unachievable goal for terrorists to reach, and I want my civil liberties to stay in tact.
After that, let's have a discussion about what needs to be changed and how exactly it's going to provide better security.
If your answer is my question is ZERO ! then you can pretty well expect to be gradually kissing your civil liberties goodbye as the years go by.
If the response on the part of the body politic is hysteria and disbelief and then reactionary paranoia against the government's intentions every time there is a successful terrorist attack of any magnitude, then each of those events will be met with new laws and less liberty and more disunion.
That is what's known as "letting the terrorists win"
But that is the world we live in now- hysteria and cries for that the impossible be done- we all be kept perfectly safe all the time at no cost to privacy and freedom.
We live in a world of car accidents and drunk drivers and disease and homicide and suicide and terrorism. There is not another world available.
Given that fact, for the part of the world you CAN control, what do you want it to look like? Do you want civil liberties or not? I know I do.
The way to retain civil liberties is to counter the hysteria with clear thinking a
Yeah but a derivative work is one that has the same characters as the ones made up by Disney. Sleepy Dopey Etc. Sure you can't rip Disney off directly (although Mickey should have come into public domain, I think we're agreed) in that way, but the story that Sleeping Beauty is based on, the IDEA of it you can do whatever you want with.
Some of what's said here on Slashdot is wrong and bad for Slashdotters to believe because it has the net effect of de-motivating them from expending effort and engaging with the world.
Who wants to put effort into anything if you're just going to have it all taken away because THEY own everything?
It's not true. If you're wondering where the lines are drawn in this war, and we're all on the same side in this, Lawrence Lessig is a reliable source. recomend
I agree. It's not like everyone decided that M$ were dicks for no reason. A US court found them to be dicks. In fact, the court surprised most observers when they detailed just how big a dick M$ had been. So M$ gets no love , but only because they EARNED no love.
I don't know how I would hire and control employees in Kenya and India so as to make sure they never made a dick move. I don't think I could. What I would do is fire anyone who made a dick move.
Let's wait and see what Google does, then update our opinion based on that.
I would be with you 100% if copyright were enforced with the same broad latitude afforded patents, but its not.
In a nutshell, you're free to retell Sleeping Beauty to suit yourself and sell it and profit from it. Disney HAS raided the collective cultural heritage for ideas, but they don't OWN those ideas the way ideas are OWNED in software patents.
The point about "so many notes" is interesting. There are not more or less notes, clefs, keys, time signatures and rhythms than there have ever been. yet we've gone through innumerable musical styles and songs since the Gregorian Chants and all of them are original to their owners and in the eyes of the law.
There's no reason to expect that we're running out of new combinations. Apparently, the human mind (ear) is very sensitive to slight differences in music. Thus people love or panic over Elvis in his time and love the Beatles or KNOW they represent cultural Armageddon.
Only very direct and sustained copying is going to get anyone into court. It's a fad to rip and remix now; IMHO with an emphasis on the H there, this is just laziness trying to pass itself off as "a right".
If you listen to pop long enough, you start to feel like it's ALL a remix until something really new comes along, say once every 25 years or so. But no one prosecutes anyone for being lame-o. Perhaps this is a shame.
My point is, you have to deliberately and malignantly RRRRRIIIIPPP! an artist off to end up with a copyright infringement ala My Sweet Lord/She's So Fine. .
Now some artists deliberately remix old things into something that is arguably new. I have mixed (rimshot!) feelings on this. basically I think the old artists should be glad someone cared enough about his shitty song to give it a second life and check his bank account to see if it's getting goosed by the remix.
But they don't take this attitude and off to court we go. How would I decide? I guess a cut of the profits of the new song for the old guy but no hard and fast damages.
There's my attempt to be Solomon on Slashdot.
But back to your point. If you genuinely feel oppressed and stymied because you think Disney owns all ideas or we're running out of note combinations, research the law in this area and just consider your worries about note combinations to have been an error and go get your guitar....
But you're overlooking the fact that the people who buy it and use it are not the people who are effected by it.
India is not a unified *thing* when it comes to who breathes in asbestos. One Indian buys it, puts up the school and a bunch of other Indian children who are not him or his kids die from it.
This is why we have government. To stop this kind of abuse.
Be glad for that dullness. I hear Sweden and Norway and Denmark are even duller. That's a good thing. When politicians are dull, the affairs of the country are generally in order and the people are happy (ancient Slashdot saying)
Slashdot Mirror
Meet Anthony Watts of WattsUpWithThat infamy.
http://thinkprogress.org/romm/2009/07/29/204427/the-video-that-anthony-watts-does-not-want-you-to-see-the-sinclair-climate-denial-crock-of-the-week/
It's not right because they agree on some personal, philosophical non professional level . They agree because it's right and it's right because of the studies and the science that has gone into to showing it is right.
So now scientific consensus which is the result of due consideration of peer reviewed studies and 30 years of scientific investigation doesn't mean anything.
What does- a CATO Institute "study?".
The debate is over. Too bad you and CATO missed it, but since you have nothing of any scientific value to contribute anyway, really, who gives a fuck what you think?
Yeah the problem is directly and linearly related to the head count of GHG molecules in the atmosphere.
So Step 1- reduce GHG molecules as much as possible.
Step one pretty much means YOU do everything YOU can do .
As to China and India, The US is pretty good at getting other countries to go along with us when we want to be, aren't we?
We need to reduce GHG emissions NOW and RADICALLY. As it happens we either are number one or two. That pretty much means what we do matters and in fact decides the earth's fate. If we continue, we're all fucked, It's enough to know that. We can prevail on China and India at the same time and we'll have more clout AFTER WE TAKE NEEDED STEPS.
Who gives a flying fuck what Penn and Teller think? Why would I ask them what they thought on a scientific matter? Why? Why? have we just thrown away the concept of duly qualified expert? Why not ask Bozo the Clown. he dressed up for kids and did magic and such like on TV too.
The CATO institute is funded through the Koch brothers who make money by the release of carbon.
Read The Merchants of Doubt -
http://www.amazon.com/Merchants-Doubt-Handful-Scientists-Obscured/dp/1596916109
become an informed citizen- and then come back to us with the "debate that is being stifled" argument.
Of course they did that out of the limelight and glare of the media.
NOW that they - that is 98% of them- have checked, double checked, reaffirmed and reaffirmed their reaffirmation that the theory that carbon emitted by human activity is causing the temperature to rise faster and will reach a point where civilization cannot be sustained, NOW they are sounding the alarm.
What else did you want them to do?
And here comes FoxNews and the Koch brothers and the oil and coal industry and the whole gullible denier dittoheads , showing up to the party and saying "say... we need to prove these here theories!.. say I have an idea!!!"
You know what this boils down to? You chose the wrong career path to influence this discussion buddy. If you want to be an expert in something, then you have to pay the dues real scientists pay.
care about this topic? climate change denial is brought to your courtesy of the exact same people and PR firms and think tanks who brought you the smoking is not related to cancer meme 40-50 years ago.
And it's taken up by the same demographic who deny evolution, so yes, it is the present day evolution debate in another form.
The only difference between those earlier debates is not accepting Darwinism, while it's a scientific tragedy for anyone who takes it seriously is not going to destroy the habitability of earth.
And smoking kills you and maybe your family, but not everyone on earth.
But this time it's different. the propagation of Climate Change Denial is a Crime Against Humanity pure and simple.
The Nazis objected to their prosecution also. They said it was ex post facto lawmaking to try them for killing the Jews and homosexuals and Gypsies. They argued that they really believed their philosophical load of crap, and they were entitled to make their nation's laws.
And you know what? There was some truth to that argument. Until we decided there wasn't that is and went ahead and charged them for things which had not been crimes before- Crimes Against Humanity- which was just a free floating idea and no law anywhere , until we used it in Nuremberg.
The prosecutor there pointed out that probably the first person to be charged with murder had the same argument- you can't charge me because the law doesn't exist.
Some sociopath somewhere always thinks he's going to use the law to evade the law. I have a right to say whatever I believe!
Here's the bottom line. Criminals decide what laws there will be. If your "free speech and freedom of opinion" results in horrific death and disruption on a scale never imagined before then your "free speech and freedom of opinion" will be curtailed for the good of humanity and in fact its exercise under certain circumstances will be deemed criminal and it will be deemed criminal ex post facto and you won't like that any more than the Nazis liked it and you'll make the same arguments they made and you'll end up just like they ended up. Because criminals determine through their behavior what acts are criminal and society always acts to circumscribe that behavior, no matter what.
It's not that hard to put together a case right now. Essentially they're shouting "no fire" in a crowded theater on that is on fire. That's manslaughter already. And no,. no one cares if you *really* believe it because *you're not qualified to perform surgery and you're not qualified to adjudicate this scientific matter and you know it in both cases.*
No one cares if you think you are and in the future, when the ravages of climate change are actually playing out and the people who are young today are looking to assign culpability they're REALLY not going to give a shit what you *really believed*.
We're not all at fault. It isn't a s
Artificial barriers to entry like these patents increase the cost of goods, reduce the competitive field and drive monopoly rents.
Without these rents, you would not have obscene profits and obscene salaries arrived at in this manner.
You'd still have obscene profits but it would be in exchange for extreme value.
But that would mean real work instead of lawyering, and the lawyers can't have that.
It would also democratize opportunity, and the CEOs and politicians that are funded by them can't have THAT!
We all know this is exactly true. We all know it's a game that is genuinely rigged to self reinforce the societal position of whoever has power and money currently.
This is a deeply poison pill the effects of which no nation or civilization ever escapes no matter how draconic a regime they try to enforce.
It's not substantially different than the corruption that drove the Arab Spring to topple its dictators.
Software patents turn each and every programmer on this board a criminal on a daily, no, an hourly basis. That's not even an exaggeration, or hyperbole, or overstating the case; that's a material fact . It drive developers out of business and stops them from starting businesses every day
How is this different from the events that set off the Arab Spring?
from: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-12120228
Mohammed Bouazizi, 26, sold fruit and vegetables illegally in Sidi Bouzid because he could not find a job. Last month he doused himself in petrol and set himself alight when police confiscated his produce because he did not have the necessary permit.
Call them what you like. The 1%. The Royal Family. The Coke Snorting Class. The Lawyers. The Politicians. The Executives. The Parasites. Whatever you want to call them, the fact is they never see it coming because they're so out of touch with the rage hey engender in everyone else. They think they can keep all "those" people under control because "those people" don't matter, have no power and are so fucked they'll never get unfucked.
That's what they think.
Maybe we should just let Apple executives shoot Samsung executives AND all their workers also then seize their goods and throw them into the ocean.
The simplest solution is always the best.
Germany has a law that let's you effectively patent NON functional aspects of your design- like rounded corners. I am not sure if this is a EU wide thing or not.
truly it did and I deserved even more :(
modded up as funny. Very.
Let's be clear about one thing- IP lawyers are succeeding in creating a parasitic lifestyle on our industry and on our lives and futures. They impose themselves as non-value producing entities on an industry and then begin siphoning off money from that industry.
They do not add value, they remove value; they do not promote progress, they retard progress. There are so many dollars being thrown off from any given product, and lawyers have conspired to insert themselves into that revenue stream, directly and negatively effecting your bottom line.
This parasitic lifestyle is as good an example of the 1% staging a systematic assault on the 99%.
In fact, The imposition of a software patent regime is as clear cut a case of the 1% consciously organizing to cut off economic opportunity from the 99% as you're going to find outside of a smoke filled room in Texas.
There are about the same percentage of software developers who favor software patents as there are climatologists who don't believe in global warming. 98% of software developers want to write software, create a product, and add value.
Precious few look at the patent troll lifestyle with envy and wish to pursue a career litigating over simple minded applications of middling value.
But for those that do favor software patents, just exactly how do you propose to win at this game?
That the realistic cost of acquiring a software patent starts at 15-30k and goes well north of there.
http://www.ipwatchdog.com/2011/01/28/the-cost-of-obtaining-patent/id=14668/
although note that one IP lawyer comments that "In Los Angeles it is not unusual for partners to charge in excess of $600/hour which makes your estimates on the low side."
which is more than you're likely to make from your patent:
The cost of patents is greater than the revenue they generate. ÃoeAbout 97 percent of patents generate less revenue than the patent costs." Return on patent costs. How much does it cost to patent an invention? (Andy Gibbs, CEO of PatentCafe.com Inc., quoted in Celia Lamb, ÃoeNew program at Sierra College aims to help would-be Pre Plastics,Ã Sacramento Business Journal, February 7, 2003)
But never mind that, now that you have spent more than your likely savings on your one single patent, exactly what is it you're thinking about doing with this patent?
Licensing it? Do you think that licensing is automatically negotiated and enforced by the government?
No, you're going to pay a lawyer an hourly rate which is two to ten times what your own hourly rate is to approach, approach and then re-approach company after company none of whom are even slightly sympathetic to your request for a taxation on their profits and will, in fact, do everything they can to resist any kind of licensing deal, including using the tactic of exhausting the rent-seeker's financial ability to pursue rent.
Oh so let them use your "intellectual property" you'll sue! For millions! Well, good luck with that. Because you're sure as hell not going to be doing that on your own unless you're in the 1% or can find some subset of 1% who are sympathetic to your quest to join their ranks via litigation.
The cost to sustain an infringement claim starts at one million US and goes to 5 million and beyond. So unless you're befriended by some part of the 1%, you're not going to be enforcing your "intellectual property rights" anytime soon.
So what do we have, really? We have a system which has the net effect of imposing an impossibly high barrier- call it a poll tax- upon the most vibrant and valuable form of economic participation our economy has - starting a company.
And who created that barrier?
Highly paid (1%) lawyers working for highly compensated (1/10 of 1% ) CEOs.
Let's be clear about one thing- IP lawyers are succeeding in creating a parasitic lifestyle on our industry and on our lives and futures. They impose themselves as non-value producing entities on an industry and then begin siphoning off money from that industry. They do not add value, they remove value; they do not promote progress, they retard progress. There are so many dollars being thrown off from any given product, and lawyers have conspired to insert themselves into that revenue stream, directly and negatively effecting your bottom line. This parasitic lifestyle is as good an example of the 1% staging a systematic assault on the 99%. In fact, The imposition of a software patent regime is as clear cut a case of the 1% consciously organizing to cut off economic opportunity from the 99% as you're going to find outside of a smoke filled room in Texas. There are about the same percentage of software developers who favor software patents as there are climatologists who don't believe in global warming. 98% of software developers want to write software, create a product, and add value. Precious few look at the patent troll lifestyle with envy and wish to pursue a career litigating over simple minded applications of middling value. But for those that do favor software patents, just exactly how do you propose to win at this game? That the realistic cost of acquiring a software patent starts at 15-30k and goes well north of there. http://www.ipwatchdog.com/2011/01/28/the-cost-of-obtaining-patent/id=14668/ although note that one IP lawyer comments that "In Los Angeles it is not unusual for partners to charge in excess of $600/hour which makes your estimates on the low side." which is more than you're likely to make from your patent: The cost of patents is greater than the revenue they generate. ÃoeAbout 97 percent of patents generate less revenue than the patent costs." Return on patent costs. How much does it cost to patent an invention? (Andy Gibbs, CEO of PatentCafe.com Inc., quoted in Celia Lamb, ÃoeNew program at Sierra College aims to help would-be Pre Plastics,Ã Sacramento Business Journal, February 7, 2003) But never mind that, now that you have spent more than your likely savings on your one single patent, exactly what is it you're thinking about doing with this patent? Licensing it? Do you think that licensing is automatically negotiated and enforced by the government? No, you're going to pay a lawyer an hourly rate which is two to ten times what your own hourly rate is to approach, approach and then re-approach company after company none of whom are even slightly sympathetic to your request for a taxation on their profits and will, in fact, do everything they can to resist any kind of licensing deal, including using the tactic of exhausting the rent-seeker's financial ability to pursue rent. Oh so let them use your "intellectual property" you'll sue! For millions! Well, good luck with that. Because you're sure as hell not going to be doing that on your own unless you're in the 1% or can find some subset of 1% who are sympathetic to your quest to join their ranks via litigation. The cost to sustain an infringement claim starts at one million US and goes to 5 million and beyond. So unless you're befriended by some part of the 1%, you're not going to be enforcing your "intellectual property rights" anytime soon. So what do we have, really? We have a system which has the net effect of imposing an impossibly high barrier- call it a poll tax- upon the most vibrant and valuable form of economic participation our economy has - starting a company. And who created that barrier? Highly paid (1%) lawyers working for highly compensated (1/10 of 1% ) CEOs. And what does that barrier do? Discourages people of normal to modest means (99%) from starting companies at all. For those with the temerity to do so, it enables anyone in the 1% or with the backing of the 1% to deal them (the 99%) a fatal blow at will
There. Fixed that.
You see what they did with SOPA and PIPA . They can do the same for SW patents if they want to.
I like Google. Who else have we got in the corporate world, IBM? Snark.
Google shares my values generally and certainly on the important issues AGW, freedom of speech, net neutrality. They need to seriously take stock here and make a decisive move here. It's not enough to play a crooked game well and reluctantly . They have to start fighting for what they know is right and just.
They impose themselves as non-value producing entities on an industry and then begin siphoning off money from that industry.
They do not add value, they remove value; they do not promote progress, they retard progress. There are so many dollars being thrown off from any given product, and lawyers have conspired to insert themselves into that revenue stream, directly and negatively effecting your bottom line.
This parasitic lifestyle is as good an example of the 1% staging a systematic assault on the 99%.
In fact, The imposition of a software patent regime is as clear cut a case of the 1% consciously organizing to cut off economic opportunity from the 99% as you're going to find outside of a smoke filled room in Texas.
There are about the same percentage of software developers who favor software patents as there are climatologists who don't believe in global warming. 98% of software developers want to write software, create a product, and add value.
Precious few look at the patent troll lifestyle with envy and wish to pursue a career litigating over simple minded applications of middling value.
But for those that do favor software patents, just exactly how do you propose to win at this game?
That the realistic cost of acquiring a software patent starts at 15-30k and goes well north of there.
http://www.ipwatchdog.com/2011/01/28/the-cost-of-obtaining-patent/id=14668/
although note that one IP lawyer comments that "In Los Angeles it is not unusual for partners to charge in excess of $600/hour which makes your estimates on the low side."
which is more than you're likely to make from your patent:
The cost of patents is greater than the revenue they generate. âoeAbout 97 percent of patents generate less revenue than the patent costs." Return on patent costs. How much does it cost to patent an invention? (Andy Gibbs, CEO of PatentCafe.com Inc., quoted in Celia Lamb, âoeNew program at Sierra College aims to help would-be Pre Plastics,â Sacramento Business Journal, February 7, 2003)
But never mind that, now that you have spent more than your likely savings on your one single patent, exactly what is it you're thinking about doing with this patent?
Licensing it? Do you think that licensing is automatically negotiated and enforced by the government?
No, you're going to pay a lawyer an hourly rate which is two to ten times what your own hourly rate is to approach, approach and then re-approach company after company none of whom are even slightly sympathetic to your request for a taxation on their profits and will, in fact, do everything they can to resist any kind of licensing deal, including using the tactic of exhausting the rent-seeker's financial ability to pursue rent.
Oh so let them use your "intellectual property" you'll sue! For millions! Well, good luck with that. Because you're sure as hell not going to be doing that on your own unless you're in the 1% or can find some subset of 1% who are sympathetic to your quest to join their ranks via litigation.
The cost to sustain an infringement claim starts at one million US and goes to 5 million and beyond. So unless you're befriended by some part of the 1%, you're not going to be enforcing your "intellectual property rights" anytime soon.
So what do we have, really?
We have a system which has the net effect of imposing an impossibly high barrier- call it a poll tax- upon the most vibrant and valuable form of economic participation our economy has - starting a company.
And who created that barrier?
Highly paid (1%) lawyers working for highly compensated (1/10 of 1% ) CEOs.
And what does that barrier do?
Discourages
Oh yes and thank god Ron Paul Mr. Get Govt Out Of Our Lives thinks that it's OK and in fact right to FORCE a woman to undergo an UNEEDED ultrasound before she can have an abortion even if her doctor thinks it's not a good idea for her and even if she doesn't want to. http://www.democraticunderground.com/1002161152
Lets get govt off our backs and into our beds, shall we? Vote Ron Paul!
Yeah, I hate to be the one to break this to you but Ron Paul is a total fraud. He wants HIS VERSION of Big Government rammed right up every woman's body.
And of course he's was a massive racist, opposed as he is to the 1964 civil right's legislation that said among other things that blacks could drink out of the same drinking fountains as whites, could marry whites, couldn't be discriminated against in hiring and housing etc etc you know, all the basics of a civil society....
Oh and I think there was something in that legislation that said the government couldn't refer to them in legislation as 40 swiggin' porch monkey niggers who want our white women too.
http://www.mediaite.com/tv/ron-paul-tells-cnns-candy-crowley-civil-rights-act-destroyed-privacy/
Ron Paul is a
homophobic
, ahref=http://www.mediaite.com/tv/ed-schultz-tears-into-ron-paul-for-anti-gay-stances-after-praising-rick-santorum/rel=url2html-32508http://www.mediaite.com/tv/ed-schultz-tears-into-ron-paul-for-anti-gay-stances-after-praising-rick-santorum/>
racist,
http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Elections/President/2011/1229/Racist-newsletter-timeline-What-Ron-Paul-has-said
http://www.towleroad.com/2011/12/ron-pauls-homophobia-in-context.html
sexist
http://www.ibtimes.com/articles/275198/20120102/ron-paul-laws-against-sexual-harassment-s.htm
Bible thumping
ahref=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6JyvkjSKMLwrel=url2html-32508http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6JyvkjSKMLw>
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/intersection/2011/08/29/ron-paul-doesnt-accept-evolution-as-a-theory/
piece of fucking shit dressed up as "a man of principle" and his schtick is bought only by infinitely gullible, extremely naive people who are too stupid to use Google and, of course, other racist, sexist homophobic Bible thumpers of which there are, it goes without saying, entirely too many .
Oh and one more thing. He's never ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever going to be the President of the United States of America.
So be sure to write-in vote for Ron Paul, because we need as many stupid people to throw away their votes as possible !
Someone's having an epileptic fit of rage....
Well buddy if you think you're talking to a bible thumping republican conservatard you're just as mistaken about that as about everything else you believe.
Which basically sums it up, right? You're a fucking automaton of lunatic talking points you scraped off the bottom of the web and for which you have zero evidence.
Some people are lost souls, incapable not just of reasoned debate, but incapable of parsing their everyday world and interactions because, well, basically because they diagnosed or undiagnosed have major mental illness, that's why.
Brother I wish you peace.
It doesn't actually help your "cause" , whatever that is, to make false claims about the intentions of the US government.
What you're saying is we are already the STASI. So why fight any step towards it? We're already there. There's nothing anyone can do. Drop out. Don't stick your head off. Get off the radar. Live in a hole. Eat out of a can. You might live to be fifty. If they let you.
This kind of sentiment is first and foremost factually inaccurate. The government is NOT the STASI, does not want to be the STASI and does not possess the motivations you ascribe to them.
Secondly, the beliefs you spread have a deleterious effect on the democratic process and to the extent anyone believes you, our democracy is diminished.
Dropping out of participating is a the best way to create a self fulfilling prophesy, supposing in the first instance that people who think the STASI was just great are assembling somewhere, presumably in Texas.
Whether you believe it or not, there are people who are completely driven by religious and political ideologies who would love nothing more than to kill as many Americans as they can.
Compound this with the fact that increasingly we're living in a time where it takes fewer and fewer such people to inflict greater and greater casualties both in headcount and degree of damage upon a population and you have a situation you need to protect yourself against. These people are not going away and are immune to the charms of reasoned debate and compromise and have nothing but contempt for anything in the way of social progress that happened after the 13th century.
Unless we all begin to discuss the undiscussable- what level of damage are we willing to sustain to the nation and the body politic without changing anything with respect to civil rights?- then we can all sit by and watch as DHS and others try to do teh impossible- protect us absolutely from the machinations of the terrorists.
And when DHS fails, as it must eventually, you can then stand by and watch another round of lawmaking you can't stand happen.
And why does it have to be this way? Because no one wants to quantify exactly how mcuh death and mayhem they're willing to endure and still not pass laws that erode civil rights.
We have to have that discussion. We need to say what we're personally willing to see happen in terms of casualties and economic damage without touching anything in the Bill of Rights.
Let me throw a number out there. I am willing to lose an average of 10,000 a year to terrorism.
The reason I say that is because it's well below what we experience already from things like drunk driving and homicides and because it's a nearly unachievable goal for terrorists to reach, and I want my civil liberties to stay in tact.
After that, let's have a discussion about what needs to be changed and how exactly it's going to provide better security.
If your answer is my question is ZERO ! then you can pretty well expect to be gradually kissing your civil liberties goodbye as the years go by.
If the response on the part of the body politic is hysteria and disbelief and then reactionary paranoia against the government's intentions every time there is a successful terrorist attack of any magnitude, then each of those events will be met with new laws and less liberty and more disunion.
That is what's known as "letting the terrorists win"
But that is the world we live in now- hysteria and cries for that the impossible be done- we all be kept perfectly safe all the time at no cost to privacy and freedom.
We live in a world of car accidents and drunk drivers and disease and homicide and suicide and terrorism. There is not another world available.
Given that fact, for the part of the world you CAN control, what do you want it to look like? Do you want civil liberties or not? I know I do.
The way to retain civil liberties is to counter the hysteria with clear thinking a
Yeah but a derivative work is one that has the same characters as the ones made up by Disney. Sleepy Dopey Etc. Sure you can't rip Disney off directly (although Mickey should have come into public domain, I think we're agreed) in that way, but the story that Sleeping Beauty is based on, the IDEA of it you can do whatever you want with.
Some of what's said here on Slashdot is wrong and bad for Slashdotters to believe because it has the net effect of de-motivating them from expending effort and engaging with the world.
Who wants to put effort into anything if you're just going to have it all taken away because THEY own everything?
It's not true. If you're wondering where the lines are drawn in this war, and we're all on the same side in this, Lawrence Lessig is a reliable source. recomend
I agree. It's not like everyone decided that M$ were dicks for no reason. A US court found them to be dicks. In fact, the court surprised most observers when they detailed just how big a dick M$ had been. So M$ gets no love , but only because they EARNED no love.
I don't know how I would hire and control employees in Kenya and India so as to make sure they never made a dick move. I don't think I could. What I would do is fire anyone who made a dick move.
Let's wait and see what Google does, then update our opinion based on that.
I would be with you 100% if copyright were enforced with the same broad latitude afforded patents, but its not.
In a nutshell, you're free to retell Sleeping Beauty to suit yourself and sell it and profit from it. Disney HAS raided the collective cultural heritage for ideas, but they don't OWN those ideas the way ideas are OWNED in software patents.
The point about "so many notes" is interesting. There are not more or less notes, clefs, keys, time signatures and rhythms than there have ever been. yet we've gone through innumerable musical styles and songs since the Gregorian Chants and all of them are original to their owners and in the eyes of the law.
There's no reason to expect that we're running out of new combinations. Apparently, the human mind (ear) is very sensitive to slight differences in music. Thus people love or panic over Elvis in his time and love the Beatles or KNOW they represent cultural Armageddon.
Only very direct and sustained copying is going to get anyone into court. It's a fad to rip and remix now; IMHO with an emphasis on the H there, this is just laziness trying to pass itself off as "a right".
If you listen to pop long enough, you start to feel like it's ALL a remix until something really new comes along, say once every 25 years or so. But no one prosecutes anyone for being lame-o. Perhaps this is a shame.
My point is, you have to deliberately and malignantly RRRRRIIIIPPP! an artist off to end up with a copyright infringement ala My Sweet Lord /She's So Fine. .
Now some artists deliberately remix old things into something that is arguably new. I have mixed (rimshot!) feelings on this. basically I think the old artists should be glad someone cared enough about his shitty song to give it a second life and check his bank account to see if it's getting goosed by the remix.
But they don't take this attitude and off to court we go. How would I decide? I guess a cut of the profits of the new song for the old guy but no hard and fast damages.
There's my attempt to be Solomon on Slashdot.
But back to your point. If you genuinely feel oppressed and stymied because you think Disney owns all ideas or we're running out of note combinations, research the law in this area and just consider your worries about note combinations to have been an error and go get your guitar....
India is not a unified *thing* when it comes to who breathes in asbestos. One Indian buys it, puts up the school and a bunch of other Indian children who are not him or his kids die from it.
This is why we have government. To stop this kind of abuse.
Shame on Canada BTW.
Be glad for that dullness. I hear Sweden and Norway and Denmark are even duller. That's a good thing. When politicians are dull, the affairs of the country are generally in order and the people are happy (ancient Slashdot saying)