Yeah, I saw that and I started wondering who's doing the typesetting? (Last book I bought from Amazon didn't indent paragraphs. It was slightly annoying...)
So I can get the government to tell GE to stop dumping stuff in the creek (and thereby regulating them) but only if I can afford to sue or can find a lawyer to do it on contingency. And GE doesn't know whether it can dump in the creek until it tries it and gets burned, or doesn't. I'm not seeing how that's better for them or for me than just having a rule that you can't dump stuff in the creek.
Who's doing this protecting the liberties of the individual (me, for example) from the whims of the company (GE, for example)? I don't have enough clout (more precisely, enough money to buy enough shares to have power over GE) to tell GE to stop pouring chemicals in the creek. Me and everyone else living on that creek put together don't have that much money. People not living on the creek are unlikely to care enough to boycott them. So who's making GE not dump stuff in the creek?
That's the theory. In practice you can get a vague enough description of the implementation past the PTO to claim that anything implementing the idea infringes. To get past that you have to convince a court that you're right, which is an uphill battle at best.
Regulation is the only way I know of to keep business from pushing its externalities off on the public, generating monopolies, and otherwise using its concentrated power to the detriment of the public. If you have an alternative method that has not already been proven to be breakable (starting up a competing company, for example, is very difficult if the incumbent has enough reserves to undersell you for a while, or to buy out the supply chain, or enough power to just get the local politicians to harass you), I'd love to hear it.
Oh? I didn't realize that. It seems to be PD in the US, and I assumed erroneously that it was PD everywhere. My mistake. Good thing his stuff is popular enough to stay in print.
I have no problem with the author, editor, proofreader, typesetter, et al getting paid for their effort. What I do have a problem with is stuff that was good enough for me to enjoy, but not good enough to stay in print forever, _ceasing_to_exist_ when the printed copies of (e.g.) Analog from the 1970s have all rotted away. The publisher probably won't believe enough people will pay for the Adventures of Ferdinand Feghoot to reprint them commercially (and they're probably right), but nobody else can reprint them at all... leaving the only copies of this stuff on pulp paper.
H. G. Wells's work seems to be some of the most recent stuff that's in public domain without the author explicitly saying so. With Disney trying to protect Steamboat Willie forever, I don't see that changing. So from now on (almost certainly for the rest of my life, at least) there will be essentially two bodies of work that can be gotten: reprints of stuff older than about 1920, and whatever is currently for sale. That's it. And that's not fine. That's not "Progress in the Useful Arts" in my book.
So while I understand why you as an author want your rights protected, and I'm happy to keep you fed and housed and producing new work if it's any good, I'm not happy enough to keep your grandchildren fed and housed off your work that I'm willing to watch the good-but-not-fantastic stuff just vanish.
But then they won't have reason to pull things back out of the vault, shine 'em up, and put them on the latest media format! (Except, of course, that they're the only ones who have the masters, so at best anyone else doing it would be upconverting DVDs.)
I wonder how we could get them to release Song of the South. (I know it's not PC, but neither is Huckleberry Finn.)
Depends how you look at it. What I've seen of defamation/false advertising/shouting fire in a theater laws seems to indicate a "You can say anything you want. But if it's demonstrably false you're on the hook for any repercussions." approach. The problem I see with this proposed law is that it moves from "demonstrably false" to "allegedly disturbing to someone".
I agree, but I question how the people who don't have a shitload of money will be able to get access to the tools required to live like a king for cheap.
I think before we get back to computers the size of a house we'll have reached the limit on how big the typical unit needs to be to do everything required of it. Google and the NSA will probably have house-sized units, but I have a feeling a 3-inch cube will handle everything I can possibly throw at it as an individual user, unless we have holodecks by then.
I think his comment was less about the idea of them selling the _data_ to your insurance company and more about the idea of them selling _their data processing group_ to your insurance company.
yeah, but once your case gets to the court, you'll lose on prior art. (If it makes it that far. A patent examiner might recognize the wheel and reject you.)
Yeah, just like every other online company. Amazon's problem with having to collect the tax is that its competitors don't and that means the competitor has an advantage.
The question is, will a car-sized thorium reactor spread more bad stuff around than a car-sized battery pack in a crash? I don't know the answer. It depends how they're shaped and packaged.
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah, I saw that and I started wondering who's doing the typesetting? (Last book I bought from Amazon didn't indent paragraphs. It was slightly annoying...)
So I can get the government to tell GE to stop dumping stuff in the creek (and thereby regulating them) but only if I can afford to sue or can find a lawyer to do it on contingency. And GE doesn't know whether it can dump in the creek until it tries it and gets burned, or doesn't. I'm not seeing how that's better for them or for me than just having a rule that you can't dump stuff in the creek.
Who's doing this protecting the liberties of the individual (me, for example) from the whims of the company (GE, for example)? I don't have enough clout (more precisely, enough money to buy enough shares to have power over GE) to tell GE to stop pouring chemicals in the creek. Me and everyone else living on that creek put together don't have that much money. People not living on the creek are unlikely to care enough to boycott them. So who's making GE not dump stuff in the creek?
That's the theory. In practice you can get a vague enough description of the implementation past the PTO to claim that anything implementing the idea infringes. To get past that you have to convince a court that you're right, which is an uphill battle at best.
How did they figure they were getting the other 20.2m/s^2 of vertical acceleration?
Regulation is the only way I know of to keep business from pushing its externalities off on the public, generating monopolies, and otherwise using its concentrated power to the detriment of the public. If you have an alternative method that has not already been proven to be breakable (starting up a competing company, for example, is very difficult if the incumbent has enough reserves to undersell you for a while, or to buy out the supply chain, or enough power to just get the local politicians to harass you), I'd love to hear it.
Oh? I didn't realize that. It seems to be PD in the US, and I assumed erroneously that it was PD everywhere. My mistake. Good thing his stuff is popular enough to stay in print.
So does http://dilbert.com/fast/2011-08-02/
H. G. Wells's work seems to be some of the most recent stuff that's in public domain without the author explicitly saying so. With Disney trying to protect Steamboat Willie forever, I don't see that changing. So from now on (almost certainly for the rest of my life, at least) there will be essentially two bodies of work that can be gotten: reprints of stuff older than about 1920, and whatever is currently for sale. That's it. And that's not fine. That's not "Progress in the Useful Arts" in my book.
So while I understand why you as an author want your rights protected, and I'm happy to keep you fed and housed and producing new work if it's any good, I'm not happy enough to keep your grandchildren fed and housed off your work that I'm willing to watch the good-but-not-fantastic stuff just vanish.
I wonder how we could get them to release Song of the South. (I know it's not PC, but neither is Huckleberry Finn.)
But this is someone under 18; they're not allowed to be naked on camera, ever.
Depends how you look at it. What I've seen of defamation/false advertising/shouting fire in a theater laws seems to indicate a "You can say anything you want. But if it's demonstrably false you're on the hook for any repercussions." approach. The problem I see with this proposed law is that it moves from "demonstrably false" to "allegedly disturbing to someone".
You presume there will be a toggle. Maybe there will. Maybe there won't. Depends what costs the vendor more money.
yeah, but that'd take amendments at this point and they'd never make it through.
I agree, but I question how the people who don't have a shitload of money will be able to get access to the tools required to live like a king for cheap.
I think before we get back to computers the size of a house we'll have reached the limit on how big the typical unit needs to be to do everything required of it. Google and the NSA will probably have house-sized units, but I have a feeling a 3-inch cube will handle everything I can possibly throw at it as an individual user, unless we have holodecks by then.
Six for the transistor, plus some for the connections... http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2009/12/functional-molecular-transistor/
I think his comment was less about the idea of them selling the _data_ to your insurance company and more about the idea of them selling _their data processing group_ to your insurance company.
And then we can reverse the polarity of the neutron flow and fix everything!
yeah, but once your case gets to the court, you'll lose on prior art. (If it makes it that far. A patent examiner might recognize the wheel and reject you.)
Yeah, just like every other online company. Amazon's problem with having to collect the tax is that its competitors don't and that means the competitor has an advantage.
Only until they go VonNeumann, after which the repair robots can fix each other or build their own replacements.
quick! Patent that!
Inkjets? While I would not doubt that there are PS-capable inkjets, I haven't run into one that I'm aware of...
The question is, will a car-sized thorium reactor spread more bad stuff around than a car-sized battery pack in a crash? I don't know the answer. It depends how they're shaped and packaged.