Pursuant to the precedents you've mentioned, it is true that they have no obligation to protect private individuals who are not in any immediate danger.... if, however, your family has already been kidnapped and such a threat is made against you, then the only justification the police might have to not investigate is if they did not believe that you were telling the truth, in which case they would then be obligated to arrest *YOU* for filing a false police report. They would, of course, need to have some basis for such a conclusion, and in practice, they would probably take such a claim quite seriously.
If your family is not in any immediate danger, then there is every reason to think that the people making a threat wouldn't be able to carry out their intentions on your family in the first place, particularly since you have been made aware of someone's intention to do so, and can take precautions of your own. You may, however, still go to the police... not so much for any protection in that case as much as to make them aware of the situation, which may equip them better to deal with a larger scale problem.
Thousands of dollars in damage that will only cost me a phone call to my insurance company and a two hundred dollar deductible to take care of, and I will be able to use a rental car while mine is getting fixed.
Breaking into cars is easy... driving off with one without a proper key, when they have sophisticated anti-theft systems in place is considerably less so.
Law enforcement is presumably better equipped than I am to handle such people... so no, the same thing does not apply to them.
Also, they do have an obligation to help, just as certain as a fire department has an obligation to put out a fire even if you have not paid the applicable annual fees for emergency service to your home (although you would get billed quite heavily afterwards if that were the case), because to leave the situation unchecked can result in a much bigger problems if it should escalate beyond just the isolated incident,
On the contrary, I love my family dearly, and value them greatly, but I do not assume that everything that I am presented with is necessarily within the jurisdiction of my direct control. Rather than follow the directives of someone who clearly means my family harm, the most productive thing I can do at this point is attempt to secure a rescue without giving the people I am dealing with any further advantage by cooperating with them. I have ZERO assurance from them that they won't harm my family regardless, and even though it might seem like I would have nothing to lose by cooperating with them, in the end, doing what they say would still leave them with more of an advantage than they would have had otherwise, so in actuality, by *NOT* cooperating, I am actually maximizing my ability to subvert them.
Sometimes it goes well, sometimes it doesn't. But to say that dealing with kidnappers never yields a desirable result is just false.
I'm not saying it never yields a desirable result.... only that overall, it has the best chance of yielding the most desirable result.
It's not terribly unlike it how it is statistically better to switch doors when Monty Hall gives you a choice to do so after opening one of the prize doors that you didn't pick.
What would be irrational is to prematurely count your family as a sunk cost, simply because you don't feel comfortable dealing with criminals who *might* intend to kill them regardless
In such a circumstance, they've already said they intend to harm them if I don't do what they say anyways, so it's obvious that they have no compunction about harming my family in the first place. The notion that they wouldn't harm them if I do what they say because the penalties would be harsher for them if they did is one to be highly skeptical of because, again, they have already said they are willing to do such a thing if I don't do what they say, indicating an indifference towards how severe the punishment for harming them as opposed to kidnapping them is liable to be. In fact, if there *IS* any validity to the notion that harsher penalties would keep them from harming my family, then that would apply just as much to either buying me or the police some time to actually rescue them, so the most rational course of action is for me to at least *try*. Is there any reason that I *should* take them at their word beyond clinging to an entirely blind hope that they might actually be honest criminals? Sure, it's *POSSIBLE* that they might not harm my family if I do what they say, but that's not really up to me... my family's fate lies not in *my* hands, but in those of criminals. It's not that my family itself that is a sunk cost at that time, but unfortunately any feelings I possess for them are, because those feelings are not going to help them.
Some people love their families enough to try to save them, even if they are not 100% certain that the criminals they are dealing with are trustworthy../blockquote>
Not surprising... Emotions tend to cloud rational judgement. Are you familiar with the sunk costs fallacy?
Oh, and also no, it wouldn't stick to the ground at all. It's not the orientation of the magnets in the board that cause it to repel, it's what those magnets are made of and that they are kept cold enough to maintain the effect.
Perhaps... but even if it did flip over, it would not be drawn to the track at all. As I said, this levitation is not being accomplished by simple fixed magnets.
So you'd actually rather blindly choose to cling to what must be the tiniest shred of *hope* that people who would threaten your family's well being might somehow actually not hurt you or your family if you just do what they tell you before you'd trust the police to help? Wow... a true skeptic. I'd dare say that your mistrust is founded more on emotion than reason, however.
Of course, the police might not be able to save your family... I can't refute that possibility remains, but that's entirely outside of your control.... And there's certainly no small chance that the people who threatened your family would continue to blackmail you again and again, and in actuality even doing what they say doesn't remove your family from danger at all, so in actuality nothing you can possibly do in such a circumstance can give you any *real* control over the outcome, the most rational course of action in such a circumstance is to get help.
And that's not even considering the fact that having the police act on such a circumstance actually *IS* actually acting to protect the society, because if they threaten one person's family, they can threaten others... and keep on going through people's families, since the police supposedly wouldn't take any action to protect them (they protect society and not individuals after all, right?), until there's no society left.
The board doesn't "want" to flip over at all... if it did, it would spontaneously flip over when nobody was on it.
That said, there's nothing remotely unusual about the forces they are employing here... but it's a but more complicated than just two-like poles on magnets repelling eachother.
Assuming they have the ability to carry out such a threat, they are equally as capable of harming your family if you do what they say as they would be if you don't, so all you are doing by following directions that you wouldn't otherwise do for them is surrendering your own agency to them on nothing more than the *hope* that they won't carry out their threat. Can you honestly say you would trust such people to not harm your family regardless of what you do more than you'd trust the police to do everything in their ability to at least do their best to help?
And with that, you then just call the cops.... if someone is actually capable of hurting your wife and children if you don't do what they say, they are also capable of doing so even if you do... The reality is that in that situation, you are completely powerless to determine your family's future, as much as one might wish it to be otherwise, and the smartest thing you can do is get help, if you can summon it. If someone is willing to be so morally bankrupt as to do such a thing in the first place, why would you think they should be somehow morally obligated to be telling you the truth about not hurting your family if you do what they tell you?
I realize that the emotional pressure in such a situation can be enormous, but in actuality, maintaining a clear and rational mind in such circumstances is still ultimately your best course of action.
Spider car, spider car,
Goes wherever that spiders are.
Climbs terrain, any type,
At least that's what they say in the hype,
Look out!
Here comes the spider car.
If the MICKEY MOUSE mark describes the character, and the copyright on the Mickey Mouse character
The Mickey Mouse character has trademark protections, not copyright protections. Steamboat Willie has copyright protections and not trademark protections, even though it prominently features a trademarked character, that character is used within that work with permission. Derivative works could be created of Steamboat Willie once the copyright expires, but COULD *NOT* feature Mickey Mouse because Mickey Mouse would still be protected by trademark. Those trademark protections would not be able to keep people from making copies of Steamboat Willie because Steamboat Willie itself always had authorized use of the character.
Talk to a friggen IP lawyer if you don't believe me, which you clearly don't. Trademark and copyright protect entirely different things, and you cannot reasonablyy use both to protect the same work, just as certainly as "Shredded Wheat" could not be both protected by trademark and patent after the patent had expired. Oh... and the laws where I live are not significantly different than those in the USA with respect to either trademark or copyright, except with respect to duration of the latter... and that copyright actually does expire. You might not care about the laws where I live, but I mention that point to bring to mind that how things already are in some other countries with respect to Mickey Mouse and Steamboat Willie is almost certainly exactly how things would be in the USA once Steamboat Willie's copyright expires there... assuming that Disney ever allows it Of course, if Disney keeps extending copyright duration, then the entire issue is moot for you, and there's no reason for you to keep debating what would happen if Disney let the copyright lapse on the work in the first place.
If you are going to debate hypothetical situations, you should probably ask a lawyer or somebody else with a sufficient experience in IP law how it will go down, if you aren't willing to listen to somebody from another country.
it's maybe benign but also possibly extremely dangerous.
Which ultimately boils down to a fear of the unknown, and is therefore superstition.
Although it's worth mentioning, in fact, that the statement seems to be entirely true for any new technology.... and when talking about any new technology the real problem always boils down to not the technology itself, but how that technology is ultimately used.
So perhaps you have no faith in mankind to use AI for the betterment of mankind? That, at least, might be a viewpoint that is substantiated by historical precedent far more than the notion that we should have anything to fear from AI, or anything else that may be invented by man, simply because it doesn't happen to have millions of years of evolution behind it.
And thanks to the nominative use doctrine of trademark law, anyone who does make LEGO compatible bricks is allowed to say that they are compatible with LEGO bricks
Actually, no.... if they used the LEGO term, even to say they were compatible with LEGO, even with all explicit trademark acknowledgements, it would be at LEGO's discretion to either issue a C&D or not to bar them from continuing to refer to them, unless they company were somehow able to show that they were not a competitor for LEGO in any way (which a toy company would not be able to do, but a website, such as Bricklink, was able to do, because they only provide a marketplace for second hand goods, and do not actually make a or sell the products that are available through the site).
Are you suggesting that MICKEY MOUSE does not 'accurately describe' a product including the Mickey Mouse character?
I am suggesting that Steamboat Willie describes the cartoon, and Mickey Mouse describes the character. Making an unauthorized copy of one does not constitute an unauthorized copy of the other... That's probably why the whole Shredded Wheat thing was an issue.... they were trying to apply two pieces of intellectual property to the same thing, and you can't do that. Copyright and Trademark protect different things, and one does not actually affect the other.
So if one makes an unauthorized copy of Steamboat Willie, they are not actually using the trademark in Mickey Mouse without permission, and if Disney were to *EVER* try and argue that, they very easily *COULD* wind up losing their trademark status on the character. As I said, even though their trademark continues to be respected, the copyright on their oldest cartoons have already expired in several first-world countries with IP laws quite similar to those in the USA, and that did not extend their copyright as the US did. I live in one such country. The character was never freely copyable here even though the cartoon itself was.
If another species on the planet had evolved to a similar intelligence of man, why would you suppose that one of them would extinguish the other short of either possessing warlike tendencies?
And while I won't argue that mankind has such tendencies, why would you think that AI would have any? And if they did not, why should we fear it any more than a naturally evolved AI?
And why would you even think that AI would even have any so-called instinct to survive at all? It would be, as you put it, missing all of those millions of years of evolutionary pressures.
And without the behavioral driving patterns of man, there is no basis to assume that an intelligent machine would behave like a man.
Suggesting we would have anything to fear from them as we might a psychopath who had similar ability is ultimately just anthropomorphizing.
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Pursuant to the precedents you've mentioned, it is true that they have no obligation to protect private individuals who are not in any immediate danger.... if, however, your family has already been kidnapped and such a threat is made against you, then the only justification the police might have to not investigate is if they did not believe that you were telling the truth, in which case they would then be obligated to arrest *YOU* for filing a false police report. They would, of course, need to have some basis for such a conclusion, and in practice, they would probably take such a claim quite seriously.
If your family is not in any immediate danger, then there is every reason to think that the people making a threat wouldn't be able to carry out their intentions on your family in the first place, particularly since you have been made aware of someone's intention to do so, and can take precautions of your own. You may, however, still go to the police... not so much for any protection in that case as much as to make them aware of the situation, which may equip them better to deal with a larger scale problem.
Right... but it didn't used to be. That's my point... there's nothing new under the sun here.
I'm saying that this so-called "new world" isn't really new... cars have always been hackable.
As opposed to the old world where a car that didn't have any sophisticated electronics was trivial for someone to steal?
Thousands of dollars in damage that will only cost me a phone call to my insurance company and a two hundred dollar deductible to take care of, and I will be able to use a rental car while mine is getting fixed.
If not, then ho-hum...
Breaking into cars is easy... driving off with one without a proper key, when they have sophisticated anti-theft systems in place is considerably less so.
Law enforcement is presumably better equipped than I am to handle such people... so no, the same thing does not apply to them.
Also, they do have an obligation to help, just as certain as a fire department has an obligation to put out a fire even if you have not paid the applicable annual fees for emergency service to your home (although you would get billed quite heavily afterwards if that were the case), because to leave the situation unchecked can result in a much bigger problems if it should escalate beyond just the isolated incident,
On the contrary, I love my family dearly, and value them greatly, but I do not assume that everything that I am presented with is necessarily within the jurisdiction of my direct control. Rather than follow the directives of someone who clearly means my family harm, the most productive thing I can do at this point is attempt to secure a rescue without giving the people I am dealing with any further advantage by cooperating with them. I have ZERO assurance from them that they won't harm my family regardless, and even though it might seem like I would have nothing to lose by cooperating with them, in the end, doing what they say would still leave them with more of an advantage than they would have had otherwise, so in actuality, by *NOT* cooperating, I am actually maximizing my ability to subvert them.
I'm not saying it never yields a desirable result.... only that overall, it has the best chance of yielding the most desirable result.
It's not terribly unlike it how it is statistically better to switch doors when Monty Hall gives you a choice to do so after opening one of the prize doors that you didn't pick.
In such a circumstance, they've already said they intend to harm them if I don't do what they say anyways, so it's obvious that they have no compunction about harming my family in the first place. The notion that they wouldn't harm them if I do what they say because the penalties would be harsher for them if they did is one to be highly skeptical of because, again, they have already said they are willing to do such a thing if I don't do what they say, indicating an indifference towards how severe the punishment for harming them as opposed to kidnapping them is liable to be. In fact, if there *IS* any validity to the notion that harsher penalties would keep them from harming my family, then that would apply just as much to either buying me or the police some time to actually rescue them, so the most rational course of action is for me to at least *try*. Is there any reason that I *should* take them at their word beyond clinging to an entirely blind hope that they might actually be honest criminals? Sure, it's *POSSIBLE* that they might not harm my family if I do what they say, but that's not really up to me... my family's fate lies not in *my* hands, but in those of criminals. It's not that my family itself that is a sunk cost at that time, but unfortunately any feelings I possess for them are, because those feelings are not going to help them.
I would imagine that it was moving fast enough, the inertia of the board and the person standing on it might be enough to still push it off the ramp.
Oh, and also no, it wouldn't stick to the ground at all. It's not the orientation of the magnets in the board that cause it to repel, it's what those magnets are made of and that they are kept cold enough to maintain the effect.
But you wouldn't be able to kick flip this thing anyways... nor even steer by leaning, for that matter.
It is useless as a skateboard except for stunts that require travelling in a straight line such as jumps that use a ramp.
Really, it is obvious from the photos that it is using the Meissner Effect to produce repulsion, not static magnetic orientation.
The words you are looking for are actually The Meisnner Effect.
Perhaps... but even if it did flip over, it would not be drawn to the track at all. As I said, this levitation is not being accomplished by simple fixed magnets.
So you'd actually rather blindly choose to cling to what must be the tiniest shred of *hope* that people who would threaten your family's well being might somehow actually not hurt you or your family if you just do what they tell you before you'd trust the police to help? Wow... a true skeptic. I'd dare say that your mistrust is founded more on emotion than reason, however.
Of course, the police might not be able to save your family... I can't refute that possibility remains, but that's entirely outside of your control.... And there's certainly no small chance that the people who threatened your family would continue to blackmail you again and again, and in actuality even doing what they say doesn't remove your family from danger at all, so in actuality nothing you can possibly do in such a circumstance can give you any *real* control over the outcome, the most rational course of action in such a circumstance is to get help.
And that's not even considering the fact that having the police act on such a circumstance actually *IS* actually acting to protect the society, because if they threaten one person's family, they can threaten others... and keep on going through people's families, since the police supposedly wouldn't take any action to protect them (they protect society and not individuals after all, right?), until there's no society left.
The board doesn't "want" to flip over at all... if it did, it would spontaneously flip over when nobody was on it.
That said, there's nothing remotely unusual about the forces they are employing here... but it's a but more complicated than just two-like poles on magnets repelling eachother.
Assuming they have the ability to carry out such a threat, they are equally as capable of harming your family if you do what they say as they would be if you don't, so all you are doing by following directions that you wouldn't otherwise do for them is surrendering your own agency to them on nothing more than the *hope* that they won't carry out their threat. Can you honestly say you would trust such people to not harm your family regardless of what you do more than you'd trust the police to do everything in their ability to at least do their best to help?
And with that, you then just call the cops.... if someone is actually capable of hurting your wife and children if you don't do what they say, they are also capable of doing so even if you do... The reality is that in that situation, you are completely powerless to determine your family's future, as much as one might wish it to be otherwise, and the smartest thing you can do is get help, if you can summon it. If someone is willing to be so morally bankrupt as to do such a thing in the first place, why would you think they should be somehow morally obligated to be telling you the truth about not hurting your family if you do what they tell you?
I realize that the emotional pressure in such a situation can be enormous, but in actuality, maintaining a clear and rational mind in such circumstances is still ultimately your best course of action.
Spider car, spider car,
Goes wherever that spiders are.
Climbs terrain, any type,
At least that's what they say in the hype,
Look out!
Here comes the spider car.
The Mickey Mouse character has trademark protections, not copyright protections. Steamboat Willie has copyright protections and not trademark protections, even though it prominently features a trademarked character, that character is used within that work with permission. Derivative works could be created of Steamboat Willie once the copyright expires, but COULD *NOT* feature Mickey Mouse because Mickey Mouse would still be protected by trademark. Those trademark protections would not be able to keep people from making copies of Steamboat Willie because Steamboat Willie itself always had authorized use of the character.
Talk to a friggen IP lawyer if you don't believe me, which you clearly don't. Trademark and copyright protect entirely different things, and you cannot reasonablyy use both to protect the same work, just as certainly as "Shredded Wheat" could not be both protected by trademark and patent after the patent had expired. Oh... and the laws where I live are not significantly different than those in the USA with respect to either trademark or copyright, except with respect to duration of the latter... and that copyright actually does expire. You might not care about the laws where I live, but I mention that point to bring to mind that how things already are in some other countries with respect to Mickey Mouse and Steamboat Willie is almost certainly exactly how things would be in the USA once Steamboat Willie's copyright expires there... assuming that Disney ever allows it Of course, if Disney keeps extending copyright duration, then the entire issue is moot for you, and there's no reason for you to keep debating what would happen if Disney let the copyright lapse on the work in the first place.
If you are going to debate hypothetical situations, you should probably ask a lawyer or somebody else with a sufficient experience in IP law how it will go down, if you aren't willing to listen to somebody from another country.
Which ultimately boils down to a fear of the unknown, and is therefore superstition.
Although it's worth mentioning, in fact, that the statement seems to be entirely true for any new technology.... and when talking about any new technology the real problem always boils down to not the technology itself, but how that technology is ultimately used.
So perhaps you have no faith in mankind to use AI for the betterment of mankind? That, at least, might be a viewpoint that is substantiated by historical precedent far more than the notion that we should have anything to fear from AI, or anything else that may be invented by man, simply because it doesn't happen to have millions of years of evolution behind it.
Actually, no.... if they used the LEGO term, even to say they were compatible with LEGO, even with all explicit trademark acknowledgements, it would be at LEGO's discretion to either issue a C&D or not to bar them from continuing to refer to them, unless they company were somehow able to show that they were not a competitor for LEGO in any way (which a toy company would not be able to do, but a website, such as Bricklink, was able to do, because they only provide a marketplace for second hand goods, and do not actually make a or sell the products that are available through the site).
I am suggesting that Steamboat Willie describes the cartoon, and Mickey Mouse describes the character. Making an unauthorized copy of one does not constitute an unauthorized copy of the other... That's probably why the whole Shredded Wheat thing was an issue.... they were trying to apply two pieces of intellectual property to the same thing, and you can't do that. Copyright and Trademark protect different things, and one does not actually affect the other.
So if one makes an unauthorized copy of Steamboat Willie, they are not actually using the trademark in Mickey Mouse without permission, and if Disney were to *EVER* try and argue that, they very easily *COULD* wind up losing their trademark status on the character. As I said, even though their trademark continues to be respected, the copyright on their oldest cartoons have already expired in several first-world countries with IP laws quite similar to those in the USA, and that did not extend their copyright as the US did. I live in one such country. The character was never freely copyable here even though the cartoon itself was.
If another species on the planet had evolved to a similar intelligence of man, why would you suppose that one of them would extinguish the other short of either possessing warlike tendencies?
And while I won't argue that mankind has such tendencies, why would you think that AI would have any? And if they did not, why should we fear it any more than a naturally evolved AI?
And why would you even think that AI would even have any so-called instinct to survive at all? It would be, as you put it, missing all of those millions of years of evolutionary pressures.
And without the behavioral driving patterns of man, there is no basis to assume that an intelligent machine would behave like a man.
Suggesting we would have anything to fear from them as we might a psychopath who had similar ability is ultimately just anthropomorphizing.