Sorry guys, I love my country but the Brits have us on this one. Here's the story:
Before the 20th century, aluminium, while very common in the earth's crust, was extremely rare in it's metallic form. The reason was that no one could figure out a cheap way to convert it from ore form (bauxite) to a metal. Once a process was discovered to do this cheaply, new companies started up refine and manufacture aluminium products.
One of these companies, the Aluminium Corporation Corporation of America, forerunner of Alcoa, sent an order out to a printer for stationary, forms, etc. Somewhere along the line, someone dropped the 'i' and everything wound up getting printed up as "aluminum". The company decided, since not that many people had ever heard of the stuff, to go with the new spelling instead of going through the expense of having everthing reprinted. There it is: a spelling mistake that got institutionalized (institutionalised for the Brits).
This is not unique: The national park up in Maine, Acadia, is called that because when the first maps were made of the park, the mapmaker dropped the r in Arcadia. The Park Service decided to just go with it instead of reprinting the maps.
Also, here's the reason we are not the United States of Columbia: A few years after Columbus landed in the New World, another Italian, Amerigo Vespucci, was running around Europe claiming he disovered the New World. German mapmakers (the best in the world at the time)had nothing else to go on and started making maps based on his descriptions. They then misspelled his name as America and that's what got put on all the maps.
IMO, you have to think for more than one second, if that's possible. Just because you can't see the point doesn't mean it's not there.
Let me illuminate... It is punishment (death may be final but it just would come sooner than otherwise). It is a deterrent (not everybody is a suicidal fanatic, some actually want to outlive their atrocities). Killing him would achieve a lot. People would feel better knowing there is one less mass murderer out there trying to kill them.
And here's some more... It would destroy his aura of invincibility (hence his ability to recruit and retain followers to his cause). In a religious sense, it would make it seem that Allah had turned against him (because his cause was not righteous).
Rights (including the right to live) have to be defended otherwise they do not exist. You think that rights don't come with a price tag only because you never had to pay the bill.
I live in New York and work about three miles from the WTC. I didn't have to watch it on TV. I saw it on fire with my own eyes. I got the point all too well.
If you go down there, the perspective you get is that you're looking at a mass grave. Everybody here realizes it could have been any of us that they were trying to kill and it's just plain luck that some of us are alive and some of us are dead.
You can spend your time if you want analyzing the motives of people who are trying to kill you. I'll put flowers on your grave.
Technically correct. He should have said jet aircraft. The first jet aircraft was the He-178 which first flew Aug 27, 1939. Another German wartime invention: the cruise missle (V1).
Japan did not disarm. At least not permanently. After Korea, the U. S. allowed Japan to rebuild their military. The Japanese just renamed their army and navy to "Self Defense Forces". The only reason was to comply with their constitution which, by the way, was written by American lawyers on MacArthur's staff.
Yes, you "Europians" do a good job putting dictators in jail like Erich Honneker (former dictator of East Germany). Let's see, you "Europians" let him get asylum in the Chilean embassy and then let him get away to Moscow. So Pinochet gets prosecuted by the same government that gave Honneker asylum. Makes perfect sense, right wing dictators bad, left wing dictators good.
Two words for why this suit goes nowhere: sovereign immunity.
In the world of communications in dead tree protocol, i.e. printing, a point is a unit of measurement and is defined as 1/72nd of an inch or 72 dpi. Early Macs were set to this resolution so that you could see what something would look like before you printed it.
I don't know where the hell 96dpi comes from but it certainly isn't any kind of standard.
Anyone looking for a good one should check out No. 3,556,239. Here is the abstract:
A battery powered automobile includes an air operated turbine fed by front and side air scoops for providing both charging current to the batteries and driving power for the automobile. An auxiliary internal combustion engine is included for use when necessary. Deceleration and wind sensitive controls operate door structure on the front air scoop so that it opens, increasing drag, only under predetermined conditions. Braking energy is utilized to help charge the batteries.
Yes, you too can patent your own perpetual motion machine! Only don't use those words, say something like "reclaimed energy" or "useful continuous work".
What's the difference? Once an innovation has been introduced society gains no benefit from rewarding the inventor.
The point is that if an inventor did not expect to be rewarded afterward, the invention would probably not been created in the first place. By and large, most inventors invent because they dream of hitting on some great idea and becoming rich as a result. The idea of someone inventing solely to make society a better place is, for the most part, a fairy tale. Thomas Edison invented (more accurately, got others to invent for him) pretty much for the benefit of Thomas Edison.
IMO, software patents should be abolished for a number of reasons. First, programming as we know it had been going on for almost 40 years before it could be patented and there's lots of old ideas that are getting regurgitated as a software patents. Remember the patent for "multimedia"? Second, nobody can agree on what software actually is: a machine? a method? a process? a mathematical abstraction?
Other problems with the patent process in general are fixable. One problem is that the patent application is kept secret until granted. Making public applications and inviting comment could nip a lot of problems in the bud while still protecting the inventor. Another is to make it easier to have a patent invalidated. Right now, the only way to invalidate a patent is in court, never a cheap proposition.
Back in the seventies, I remember that IBM used to paint their big iron in grays with either pastel reds and blues. DEC used to do their PDP's in bright red. The first ones that I remember using beige as a standard for their products was Hewlett-Packard. I guess everybody else ripped them off. Now that would be a trade-dress lawsuit!
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Better get used to hearing that. Otherwise, congrats.
Before the 20th century, aluminium, while very common in the earth's crust, was extremely rare in it's metallic form. The reason was that no one could figure out a cheap way to convert it from ore form (bauxite) to a metal. Once a process was discovered to do this cheaply, new companies started up refine and manufacture aluminium products.
One of these companies, the Aluminium Corporation Corporation of America, forerunner of Alcoa, sent an order out to a printer for stationary, forms, etc. Somewhere along the line, someone dropped the 'i' and everything wound up getting printed up as "aluminum". The company decided, since not that many people had ever heard of the stuff, to go with the new spelling instead of going through the expense of having everthing reprinted. There it is: a spelling mistake that got institutionalized (institutionalised for the Brits).
This is not unique: The national park up in Maine, Acadia, is called that because when the first maps were made of the park, the mapmaker dropped the r in Arcadia. The Park Service decided to just go with it instead of reprinting the maps.
Also, here's the reason we are not the United States of Columbia: A few years after Columbus landed in the New World, another Italian, Amerigo Vespucci, was running around Europe claiming he disovered the New World. German mapmakers (the best in the world at the time)had nothing else to go on and started making maps based on his descriptions. They then misspelled his name as America and that's what got put on all the maps.
Let me illuminate...
It is punishment (death may be final but it just would come sooner than otherwise).
It is a deterrent (not everybody is a suicidal fanatic, some actually want to outlive their atrocities).
Killing him would achieve a lot. People would feel better knowing there is one less mass murderer out there trying to kill them.
And here's some more...
It would destroy his aura of invincibility (hence his ability to recruit and retain followers to his cause).
In a religious sense, it would make it seem that Allah had turned against him (because his cause was not righteous).
Rights (including the right to live) have to be defended otherwise they do not exist. You think that rights don't come with a price tag only because you never had to pay the bill.
If you go down there, the perspective you get is that you're looking at a mass grave. Everybody here realizes it could have been any of us that they were trying to kill and it's just plain luck that some of us are alive and some of us are dead.
You can spend your time if you want analyzing the motives of people who are trying to kill you. I'll put flowers on your grave.
Technically correct. He should have said jet aircraft. The first jet aircraft was the He-178 which first flew Aug 27, 1939. Another German wartime invention: the cruise missle (V1).
Japan did not disarm. At least not permanently. After Korea, the U. S. allowed Japan to rebuild their military. The Japanese just renamed their army and navy to "Self Defense Forces". The only reason was to comply with their constitution which, by the way, was written by American lawyers on MacArthur's staff.
Actually, since the original spelling is in Cyrillic, any phonetic equivalent in the Western alphabet is technically correct.
Two words for why this suit goes nowhere: sovereign immunity.
I don't know where the hell 96dpi comes from but it certainly isn't any kind of standard.
Hey moderators! A three? I think this guy actually meant what he wrote.
A battery powered automobile includes an air operated turbine fed by front and side air scoops for providing both charging current to the batteries and driving power for the automobile. An auxiliary internal combustion engine is included for use when necessary. Deceleration and wind sensitive controls operate door structure on the front air scoop so that it opens, increasing drag, only under predetermined conditions. Braking energy is utilized to help charge the batteries.
Yes, you too can patent your own perpetual motion machine! Only don't use those words, say something like "reclaimed energy" or "useful continuous work".
The point is that if an inventor did not expect to be rewarded afterward, the invention would probably not been created in the first place. By and large, most inventors invent because they dream of hitting on some great idea and becoming rich as a result. The idea of someone inventing solely to make society a better place is, for the most part, a fairy tale. Thomas Edison invented (more accurately, got others to invent for him) pretty much for the benefit of Thomas Edison.
IMO, software patents should be abolished for a number of reasons. First, programming as we know it had been going on for almost 40 years before it could be patented and there's lots of old ideas that are getting regurgitated as a software patents. Remember the patent for "multimedia"? Second, nobody can agree on what software actually is: a machine? a method? a process? a mathematical abstraction?
Other problems with the patent process in general are fixable. One problem is that the patent application is kept secret until granted. Making public applications and inviting comment could nip a lot of problems in the bud while still protecting the inventor. Another is to make it easier to have a patent invalidated. Right now, the only way to invalidate a patent is in court, never a cheap proposition.
Back in the seventies, I remember that IBM used to paint their big iron in grays with either pastel reds and blues. DEC used to do their PDP's in bright red. The first ones that I remember using beige as a standard for their products was Hewlett-Packard. I guess everybody else ripped them off. Now that would be a trade-dress lawsuit!