Oh please stop peddling this "republic" nonsense. Yes, the US is a republic. All that means is that you don't have a king. China, Syria and Zimbabwe are also republics. Being a republic says pretty much nothing about how your country is run.
The US is a representative liberal democracy just like pretty much all the other democracies in the world. Some of them are republics while others (such as the UK, the Netherlands, Canada and the Scandinavian countries) are not.
Only if you think that the rights of sovereign nations include invading other sovereign nations. Usually territorial integrity is taken as a cornerstone of sovereignty.
The founding point of the UN was to stop WWII happening again. That's there in the first lines of the charter and it flows through the whole way the charter works. The ONLY organ of the UN which can coerce countries to do anything (hence the only one which is relevant to the question of sovereignty) is the security council and its mandate is to prevent wars where possible. Somewhat counterintuitively, one of the ways it's supposed to do this is by authorising military action. The thing is, the structure of the council is such that such that military action can only be authorised when there is consensus among (what were the) 5 most important military powers - hence there can never be authorised military action between major powers.
Now the UN has LOTS of problems not least that the permanent membership of the security council doesn't really reflect the balance of power in 2004 but being a conspiracy to undermine state sovereignty is not one of them.
#2 -- Medicare is ~22% of the Federal budget. Which is in the vicinity of $400 billion per year. Or about $1500 per person per year. Since my health insurance is closer to $5000 per year than to $1500 per year, I seriously doubt we could cover ALL healthcare costs for Medicare's budget, even if things were done correctly.
Actually, if you look at what Western European countries spend on health care, it's about $2000 per capita per year with bit over $1500 spent by the government. In the US, it's closer to $5000 per year with $2000 per year spent in the public sector. It doesn't therefore seem unreasonable to suppose that if the US chose to run a European style national health system, it could do so on the current public health sector budget.
Except that the Electoral Act was changed after the Langer incident and Langer votes are now invalid. See: the AEC website.
A Langer vote is now a completely wasted vote.
Given that first past the post is just round one of Hare-Clark wouldn't it be fairly easy to do that bit?
You obviously also have to modify the input to only take one vote but you'd have to modify the input quite a bit for any other use of the system because you presumably want it to look like the local traditional ballot paper.
What might be a lot more work is ramping it up to deal with multiple simultaneous elections. I don't think eVACS can do that can it? The Yanks have lots of elections on the same day while in Australia that's usually banned (at least you can't hold a state or local election on the same day as a federal one - whether you can do state and local at the same time may vary and obviously doesn't apply in Canberra).
I just read the Debian-user thread on this and I think that Debian has screwed this one up. It is not politically neutral to use the name "Taiwan, Province of China" even if that's in the ISO standard recognised by the UN. Apart from anything else, Taiwan is a member of neither ISO nor the UN so it is a mistake to treat ISO and UN rulings as definitive in this matter.
Of course there is also an issue in asking the Taiwanese authorities since that implies an answer to the political question so it turns out that there is no definitive standard in this matter and Debian therefore has to choose a name. Choosing the non-definitive UN/ISO standard is just as political as choosing the generally (outside of government) accepted name "Taiwan"
Really wanting to be a pedantic prick, had you bothered to read the website you pointed to, you'd know that ACT students don't do the School Certificate either (the ACT Year 10 Certificate has nothing to do with the NSW School Certificate and, particularly relevant in this case, does not involve external examinations).
Um, no. There are two groups of EU powers, unanimous and qualitified majority. A few, normally high profile and controversial, areas are by unanimous vote. The Common Agricultural Policy is a good example. Most areas are qualified majority voting and that includes this one. Spain voted against this measure in the Council. If your analysis were correct, we wouldn't be having this discussion.
Actually, it doesn't say that. The important phrase is "Necessary Claims" and the word "reciprocal" gives a good hint too. This is just a defensive patent licence. It says that Microsoft won't sue you for breach of patent for implimenting the standard or dealing in implimentations and you promise the same to Microsoft and everyone else.
It is NOT a copyright licence to Microsoft to use and sell YOUR implimentation. It only affects you if you hold patents which Microsoft or someone else infringes by implementing this standard. It effectively sets implimentations of this standard in a "patent free zone".
Absolutely. For example you have Microsoft Word which is a word processor from Microsoft and you have Scientific Word which is a totally unrelated LaTeX based word processor from MacKichan Software. Since "Word" is a generic name, both companies are equally entitled to use it in their product names. The fact that Microsoft is better known is irrelevant.
It's not just that "nu" means "now", it's also that it at least used to be the case that there were huge administrative restrictions on getting.se domains. Basically I think you had to be a Swedish corporation and you could only get one related to your name. We had a lecture back when I studied at Uppsala by a guy from a government department who said that they couldn't even get.se for major government projects! Even the government was using.nu.
When I was there (in 1999) there was talk of the government more or less forcibly changing the registrar in order to change the policies. I don't know if anything happened.
You misunderstand copyright. You do not violate copyright for writing down something that someone else has already written down. You violate copyright when you copy their work. In fact, being able to show that you never had access to the other company's source code would be a pretty good way of showing that you hadn't violated copyright.
This aspect of copyright law (and the fact that copyright law only protects the expression of ideas, not the ideas themselves) is the reason that clean room implementations are legally possible.
Incidentially, this is all OT to what SCO is reported to have done. They are just copying source code in breach of copyright which has nothing to do with the situation you raise.
It is illegal to change the copyright of ALREADY published works.
Check contractual law for details and see if one part can unilaterally change the terms of the contract...
That is utter rubbish. Copyright is a statutory scheme. Copyright is not a contract between anyone. When people talk about contractual theories of copyright they are talking about justifications of copyright law based on an exchange: copyright protection in return for the author going to the effort of producing the work. This does not mean that as a matter of law copyright is a contract.
Since copyright is a statutory scheme, the parliament can change it by passing a law.
Incidentally, before some clueless Yank steps in and starts talking about "limited times". The Australian parliament's copyright power is set out in s51.(xviii.) of the constitution:
51.The Parliament shall, subject to this Constitution, have power to make laws for the peace, order, and good government of the Commonwealth with respect to: -...
(xviii.) Copyrights, patents of inventions and designs, and trade marks:
Restrictions on the length of copyright that the parliament can legislate for are conspicuous by their absence. Not that "limited times" seems to mean much in the US anyway.
No, UK is not Ukraine. The iso country code of Ukraine is UA. UK is a reserved code - basically because it is in widespread use for the UK so it would cause confusion if allocated to another country.
Some of the smaller European countries have a lot more programs in English that do big countries like Germany. For example, here at TUDelft all of our MSc. programs are now taught in English instead of Dutch specifically so that foreign students can follow them.
Note that many of Europe's most prestigious universities are in small countries (think Uppsala, Leiden, some of the Irish ones, Helsinki, even (dare I say it) TU Delft).
I can't speak for Germany but here at TUDelft the BaMa system as is is known introduces minimal changes in the curriculum. The difference is that at the end of 3 years we hand the students a BSc. and it's a bit easier than it was for people who did the first 3 years somewhere else to join at 4th year. The TU is still working through the subtleties of BaMa e.g. if you have a BSc. in mechanical engineering or physics, should you be allowed to switch to civil engineering for the last two years? (I think the answer in that particular case was yes but it might restrict your master specialisation within civil engineering).
This raises some interresting problems and questions, as Sweden, Denmark and Finland are all members of EU/Schengen,
For added fun, Denmark isn't a member of the-treatry-formerly-known-as Schengen (and I'm not sure Norway is either). I've certainly been through passport controls between Denmark and Sweden (although I wasn't stopped - because I'm white - they did stop everyone of vaguely dark complexion). On the other hand, if you fly NL to SE there are no controls (both Schengen).
As a matter of copyright law, yes. If you wrote it working for yourself then, all other things being equal*, you own the copyright and you can license it to anyone you like on whatever terms you like. Obviously for it to be accepted and distributed as a part of the Linux kernel, you have to agree to license it to everyone under GPL 2 but, as the copyright owner, you can do that. The fact that you've licensed the code under the GPL doesn't prevent you from also licensing it to anyone you like under any other terms (for example a proprietary licence as a part of your own kernel).
Of course there is also the matter of getting Linus to accept your code. As can be seen from the example of IBM, Linus has no problem with accepting kernel code from people who also develop other (even proprietary) kernels. The only thing that remains is the mere triviality of producing code useful enough and of a high enough quality that Linus would want it:-).
*In other circumstances the copyright may belong to your employer or someone else whom you have contracted to give the copyright to. In that case it is they who could grant licences to it on whatever terms they like.
Ah, it appears that Amazon, for whatever reason, are charging VAT based on where the products are shipped to. I know companies can do this but I don't know what the circumstances are. 6% is the Dutch rate for books (it's also the Swedish rate so it presumably applies to the OP too).
Really? While I agree that Amazon is cheaper, I usually find Amazon.co.uk a lot cheaper than Amazon.com even with 6% VAT. Remember under EU rules you pay UK VAT if you order from the UK even if you live in Sweden or (as I do) in the Netherlands.
I suspect that the new enforcement mechanisms (remember that, in theory books, you buy from Amazon.com are already subject to VAT - or MOMS in your case) are driven by national treasuries who are concerned about missing out on revenue just as much as by a desire to protect local industry.
it strikes me that the ownership of the physical property reverts back to the distributor or publisher.
Only if the contract says so. And even if it did, the retailer then holds and/or disposes of the property as the agent of the distrbutor - this is important.
the retailer could be on the hook for not properly disposing of the distributor's property
Correct but totally irrelevant to Monsterpatterns. Privity of contract is like that.
Monsterpatterns could be in some hot water for taking property that isn't theirs.
Um, no. Merely taking property which isn't yours is not illegal (theft has to involve dishonesty and there is no dishonesty in the current case). Monsterpatterns immediately aqcuires a posessory title at equity to the patterns which is good against all the world except someone with a better title (it's called relative title, it's a pretty fundamental concept in property law).
Now, the only people with a better title will be the title holders at common law. That might be the retailer or the distributor depending on the contract. It doesn't really matter because the retailer is the publisher's agent in this matter. The retailer has dumped the property which is a pretty clear representation to anyone coming accross it that the retailer does not intend to further enforce it's title to the patterns. Monsterpatterns picks up the patterns and goes to effort and expense to retrieve them and put them up for sale. This is important because it means Monsterpatterns has acted in detrimental reliance on the retailer's representation and the retailer is therefore estopped from asserting the title to the patterns against Monsterpatterns.
Monsterpatterns therefore has title good against the whole world. Anyone who subsequently buys the patterns from Monsterpatterns acquires Monsterpatterns' title and therefore also have title good against the whole world.
While it's true that the oil in Eucalypts can produce some spactacular effects, the trees themselves are pretty fire-hardy and have fire-triggered regrowth behaviour which helps them recover. Many of the parts of Canberra which have been badly affected are actually near pine plantations which are much more of a fire hazard than the natural bush. (This also applies to Mt. Stromlo - the trees on the hill itself are Eucalypts but the hill is in the middle of a pine plantation). The locations of pine plantations near Canberra are being reassessed due to the fires (or so says the Canberra Times).
Slashdot Mirror
Oh please stop peddling this "republic" nonsense. Yes, the US is a republic. All that means is that you don't have a king. China, Syria and Zimbabwe are also republics. Being a republic says pretty much nothing about how your country is run.
The US is a representative liberal democracy just like pretty much all the other democracies in the world. Some of them are republics while others (such as the UK, the Netherlands, Canada and the Scandinavian countries) are not.
Only if you think that the rights of sovereign nations include invading other sovereign nations. Usually territorial integrity is taken as a cornerstone of sovereignty.
The founding point of the UN was to stop WWII happening again. That's there in the first lines of the charter and it flows through the whole way the charter works. The ONLY organ of the UN which can coerce countries to do anything (hence the only one which is relevant to the question of sovereignty) is the security council and its mandate is to prevent wars where possible. Somewhat counterintuitively, one of the ways it's supposed to do this is by authorising military action. The thing is, the structure of the council is such that such that military action can only be authorised when there is consensus among (what were the) 5 most important military powers - hence there can never be authorised military action between major powers.
Now the UN has LOTS of problems not least that the permanent membership of the security council doesn't really reflect the balance of power in 2004 but being a conspiracy to undermine state sovereignty is not one of them.
Actually, if you look at what Western European countries spend on health care, it's about $2000 per capita per year with bit over $1500 spent by the government. In the US, it's closer to $5000 per year with $2000 per year spent in the public sector. It doesn't therefore seem unreasonable to suppose that if the US chose to run a European style national health system, it could do so on the current public health sector budget.
The source of the above figures is the World Health Organisation 2004 Annual Report. Figures are approximate and based on the 2001 figures which are the most recent available.
Actually, /= does mean "not equals" - in Fortran 90 (or later).
Except that the Electoral Act was changed after the Langer incident and Langer votes are now invalid. See: the AEC website. A Langer vote is now a completely wasted vote.
Hi David :-)
Given that first past the post is just round one of Hare-Clark wouldn't it be fairly easy to do that bit?
You obviously also have to modify the input to only take one vote but you'd have to modify the input quite a bit for any other use of the system because you presumably want it to look like the local traditional ballot paper.
What might be a lot more work is ramping it up to deal with multiple simultaneous elections. I don't think eVACS can do that can it? The Yanks have lots of elections on the same day while in Australia that's usually banned (at least you can't hold a state or local election on the same day as a federal one - whether you can do state and local at the same time may vary and obviously doesn't apply in Canberra).
I just read the Debian-user thread on this and I think that Debian has screwed this one up. It is not politically neutral to use the name "Taiwan, Province of China" even if that's in the ISO standard recognised by the UN. Apart from anything else, Taiwan is a member of neither ISO nor the UN so it is a mistake to treat ISO and UN rulings as definitive in this matter.
Of course there is also an issue in asking the Taiwanese authorities since that implies an answer to the political question so it turns out that there is no definitive standard in this matter and Debian therefore has to choose a name. Choosing the non-definitive UN/ISO standard is just as political as choosing the generally (outside of government) accepted name "Taiwan"
Really wanting to be a pedantic prick, had you bothered to read the website you pointed to, you'd know that ACT students don't do the School Certificate either (the ACT Year 10 Certificate has nothing to do with the NSW School Certificate and, particularly relevant in this case, does not involve external examinations).
Um, no. There are two groups of EU powers, unanimous and qualitified majority. A few, normally high profile and controversial, areas are by unanimous vote. The Common Agricultural Policy is a good example. Most areas are qualified majority voting and that includes this one. Spain voted against this measure in the Council. If your analysis were correct, we wouldn't be having this discussion.
Actually, it doesn't say that. The important phrase is "Necessary Claims" and the word "reciprocal" gives a good hint too. This is just a defensive patent licence. It says that Microsoft won't sue you for breach of patent for implimenting the standard or dealing in implimentations and you promise the same to Microsoft and everyone else.
It is NOT a copyright licence to Microsoft to use and sell YOUR implimentation. It only affects you if you hold patents which Microsoft or someone else infringes by implementing this standard. It effectively sets implimentations of this standard in a "patent free zone".
Absolutely. For example you have Microsoft Word which is a word processor from Microsoft and you have Scientific Word which is a totally unrelated LaTeX based word processor from MacKichan Software. Since "Word" is a generic name, both companies are equally entitled to use it in their product names. The fact that Microsoft is better known is irrelevant.
It's not just that "nu" means "now", it's also that it at least used to be the case that there were huge administrative restrictions on getting .se domains. .se for major government projects! Even the government was using .nu.
Basically I think you had to be a Swedish corporation and you could only get one related to your name. We had a lecture back when I studied at Uppsala by a guy from a government department who said that they couldn't even get
When I was there (in 1999) there was talk of the government more or less forcibly changing the registrar in order to change the policies. I don't know if anything happened.
You misunderstand copyright. You do not violate copyright for writing down something that someone else has already written down. You violate copyright when you copy their work. In fact, being able to show that you never had access to the other company's source code would be a pretty good way of showing that you hadn't violated copyright.
This aspect of copyright law (and the fact that copyright law only protects the expression of ideas, not the ideas themselves) is the reason that clean room implementations are legally possible.
Incidentially, this is all OT to what SCO is reported to have done. They are just copying source code in breach of copyright which has nothing to do with the situation you raise.
Quoth Kindaian:
That is utter rubbish. Copyright is a statutory scheme. Copyright is not a contract between anyone. When people talk about contractual theories of copyright they are talking about justifications of copyright law based on an exchange: copyright protection in return for the author going to the effort of producing the work. This does not mean that as a matter of law copyright is a contract.
Since copyright is a statutory scheme, the parliament can change it by passing a law.
Incidentally, before some clueless Yank steps in and starts talking about "limited times". The Australian parliament's copyright power is set out in s51.(xviii.) of the constitution:
Restrictions on the length of copyright that the parliament can legislate for are conspicuous by their absence. Not that "limited times" seems to mean much in the US anyway.No, UK is not Ukraine. The iso country code of Ukraine is UA. UK is a reserved code - basically because it is in widespread use for the UK so it would cause confusion if allocated to another country.
David
Some of the smaller European countries have a lot more programs in English that do big countries like Germany. For example, here at TUDelft all of our MSc. programs are now taught in English instead of Dutch specifically so that foreign students can follow them.
Note that many of Europe's most prestigious universities are in small countries (think Uppsala, Leiden, some of the Irish ones, Helsinki, even (dare I say it) TU Delft).
I can't speak for Germany but here at TUDelft the BaMa system as is is known introduces minimal changes in the curriculum. The difference is that at the end of 3 years we hand the students a BSc. and it's a bit easier than it was for people who did the first 3 years somewhere else to join at 4th year. The TU is still working through the subtleties of BaMa e.g. if you have a BSc. in mechanical engineering or physics, should you be allowed to switch to civil engineering for the last two years? (I think the answer in that particular case was yes but it might restrict your master specialisation within civil engineering).
...which of course is any bug which bings the whole system down in a flaming heap!
For added fun, Denmark isn't a member of the-treatry-formerly-known-as Schengen (and I'm not sure Norway is either). I've certainly been through passport controls between Denmark and Sweden (although I wasn't stopped - because I'm white - they did stop everyone of vaguely dark complexion). On the other hand, if you fly NL to SE there are no controls (both Schengen).
As a matter of copyright law, yes. If you wrote it working for yourself then, all other things being equal*, you own the copyright and you can license it to anyone you like on whatever terms you like. Obviously for it to be accepted and distributed as a part of the Linux kernel, you have to agree to license it to everyone under GPL 2 but, as the copyright owner, you can do that. The fact that you've licensed the code under the GPL doesn't prevent you from also licensing it to anyone you like under any other terms (for example a proprietary licence as a part of your own kernel).
:-).
Of course there is also the matter of getting Linus to accept your code. As can be seen from the example of IBM, Linus has no problem with accepting kernel code from people who also develop other (even proprietary) kernels. The only thing that remains is the mere triviality of producing code useful enough and of a high enough quality that Linus would want it
*In other circumstances the copyright may belong to your employer or someone else whom you have contracted to give the copyright to. In that case it is they who could grant licences to it on whatever terms they like.
Ah, it appears that Amazon, for whatever reason, are charging VAT based on where the products are shipped to. I know companies can do this but I don't know what the circumstances are. 6% is the Dutch rate for books (it's also the Swedish rate so it presumably applies to the OP too).
Really? While I agree that Amazon is cheaper, I usually find Amazon.co.uk a lot cheaper than Amazon.com even with 6% VAT. Remember under EU rules you pay UK VAT if you order from the UK even if you live in Sweden or (as I do) in the Netherlands.
I suspect that the new enforcement mechanisms (remember that, in theory books, you buy from Amazon.com are already subject to VAT - or MOMS in your case) are driven by national treasuries who are concerned about missing out on revenue just as much as by a desire to protect local industry.
Now, the only people with a better title will be the title holders at common law. That might be the retailer or the distributor depending on the contract. It doesn't really matter because the retailer is the publisher's agent in this matter. The retailer has dumped the property which is a pretty clear representation to anyone coming accross it that the retailer does not intend to further enforce it's title to the patterns. Monsterpatterns picks up the patterns and goes to effort and expense to retrieve them and put them up for sale. This is important because it means Monsterpatterns has acted in detrimental reliance on the retailer's representation and the retailer is therefore estopped from asserting the title to the patterns against Monsterpatterns.
Monsterpatterns therefore has title good against the whole world. Anyone who subsequently buys the patterns from Monsterpatterns acquires Monsterpatterns' title and therefore also have title good against the whole world.
I prefer the
Legislative Acronym Reduction Title
David
While it's true that the oil in Eucalypts can produce some spactacular effects, the trees themselves are pretty fire-hardy and have fire-triggered regrowth behaviour which helps them recover. Many of the parts of Canberra which have been badly affected are actually near pine plantations which are much more of a fire hazard than the natural bush. (This also applies to Mt. Stromlo - the trees on the hill itself are Eucalypts but the hill is in the middle of a pine plantation). The locations of pine plantations near Canberra are being reassessed due to the fires (or so says the Canberra Times).