That's what I thought. When I joined it was 21 in almost every state (Iowa and maybe another were 18 still, I think), so it was 21 on base almost everywhere. I didn't get deployed out of the country till I was 21 so I never gave any thought about it. I do know that we didn't have anything stronger than Kool-Aid in Saudi. As one guy there said, "silly bathrobe guys don't even allow beer! BEER!"
Same in Canada, we all kinds of nudity on our TV's. The problem in the US is so many people are against it for some reason. If it was on TV, people would learn to deal with it and spend their time debating over issues that acutually matter instead of trying to follow some useless moral agenda
Yeah, that's one of the annoying things about living in a nation where they people originally started coming here because they wanted the freedom to live by their absurdly strict religious beliefs. We got the freedom motivation which turned out to be a good thing, but then we got the religious fundamentalism, which has been a bit of a thorn in the side.
So now we have people who think nudity and the "F" word are bad because, well, if they weren't bad they'd be allowed on TV, right? But they're not allowed on TV because people think they're bad... Tough cycle to break. With cable slowly eroding the FCC's power to censor (not broadcast over the air, FCC can't touch it), we're seeing a little progress though. I don't expect to see breasts on network TV in my lifetime, though.
If you are in the military, the drinking age is 18 on base. Its still 21 if you go off base though.
Huh? When did that happen? I was in the US Army from '87-'91 and you had to be 21 to buy alcohol at the Enlisted Club, NCO Club, and the Package Store on every CONUS base I was stationed at (Ft.LeonardWood,MO;GoodfellowAFB,TX;Ft.Campbell,KY;Ft.Ord,CA;Ft.Hood,TX;Ft.Devens,MA). Are you perhaps remembering the Good Old Days? I believe they changed the on-base drinking age to match the Federally "suggested" age of 21 about the same time they started making states go to 21 or risk losing highway funds.
What if you were an inventor and had a great idea for a Gizzmo-matic. This will also make tons of money. Now, you can go ahead, and make it, copywright it, and either manufacture it or liscense it.
First, it's "copyright", as in the right to make copies, and Second, inventions are covered by patent law and have their own laws seperate from copyright law and are therefore irrelevant to this discussion. Copyrights have to do with writings, music, movies and the like.
Whoever modded the above post up to "4 - Informative" is as ill-informed as the author of said post. Get with the program, people.
Material property is a much different thing than intellectual property, but they are still both properties
Actually, the term "intellectual property" is a legal fiction made up in the mid-1800's in order to lend credence to the ludicrous notion that anyone can actually own an idea. They are not both called property because they have anything in common, the later was named property in order to give it the same attribute of "ownability" as the former. An idea, method, or string of words have nothing in common with a real, physical piece of property. Well, they do now, but only because of the aforementioned legal fiction.
the reasons for NOT doing it in consumer cars is totally different than for military aspects.....
Huh? I never said they don't do it in cars because of any "military aspects" (whatever you mean by that). I said that the reason they don't put HUDs in cars is that it takes time and effort to become accustomed to using a HUD and until you're used to it it can be distracting and irritating. Very few people are willing to invest the time necessary (particularly when it's a feature they never needed before), so most simply turned it off and never used it. A feature that 95% of users find annoying doesn't make a good selling point, so there's no point in continuing to include it in the design. Cost was not the issue, so cheap OLED devices (which aren't usefull as HUD screens since they're not completely transparent) are not going to lead to HUDs in cars.
You're creating a display in your line of sight out of... say a cockpit window of a jet... using a thin, clear plastic lining inside the window......how is that not a HUD?
The plastic/glass sheet in an aircraft HUD is a reflector. The most critical attribute of this reflector is that it must be completely transparent. OLED screens aren't completely transparent. The reason cars don't have HUDs has nothing to do with the cost. Nissan put a HUD-like projector in late 80's Maximas that displayed your speed on the windshield. They quit doing it, not because of cost, but because nobody liked it. A HUD is distracting. It takes quite a while to become accustomed to looking both at and through your windshield. It's not about price, it's about consumer resistance.
Once you go flat, you never go back. Everything else just looks blurry.
That all depends on the kind of tube monitor you had before. If you have a 15" Shamrock, anything is an improvment. If you have a decent monitor (I have a 21" Sun w/ aperture grille) moving to LCD is not an improvement in clarity.
I meant the ratio of waste heat vs
the actual computation.
This is the problem with your premise. It is the computation itself that produces the heat. Whether that computation is something usefull or is just housekeeping/clockwatching is totally irrelevant. Heat is the inevitable byproduct of the CPU doing anything. "Theoretical computation" is irrelevant. In the real world of CMOS, we have to deal with resistance, capacitance, saturation, etc. and all these thing inevitably result in electrical energy lost to heat.
"The average Wintel home user spends around 50 hours per year troubleshooting their computer, while the average Mac user spends less than 5."
This "conclusion" at which they arrive is in itself inconclusive. Just because group A spends more time troubleshooting than group B does not mean that group A's computers require more troubleshooting. I know that if I were included in the survey that produced the above statistic I would definitely skew the PC side towards "more time troubleshooting" because I'm a compulsive tinkerer. I can't leave my settings, drivers, and services alone so I end up spending hours balancing it all. I have a Win 98 PC I use at work that NEVER needs troubleshooting. A friend of mine has a Mac that requires reinstallation of the OS every 3 months. It's all about how you use 'em. Besides, the TCO they're talking about also includes the cost of retraining, repurchase of software, and downtime due to switching over. Hardly the "from scratch" sort of TCO you're talking about. Find me a TCO analysis that doesn't rely on nebulous calculations involving "retraining" and "man-hours spent troubleshooting Uncle Bob's PC vs Aunt Eunice's I-Mac" and I'll take notice.
Mmm yeah, except the Libertarian party is economically conservative....meaning screw you as long as I've got mine, a.k.a. what poor people?
No, libertarian philosophy only says that it's not the government's job to "help" the poor. Rather, it is up to us to personally help those that need it. The main reason why people don't help one another directly now is that the government has taken it over; subsequently, when someone sees poverty, their first thought is "why isn't the government doing something about that? I pay enough in taxes that there should be NO poverty." If the government wasn't in the charity business, people would be more inclined to help, particularly if they weren't pissing away 50% of their income to taxation.
I'm happy you fought a war for oil. Be proud, too bad you didn't finish the job because shocking development here we are again.
I was only a sergeant. Sergeants don't decide where wars are fought and when they end. There is no politics on the front line in the military. Only war and survival. Go argue the whys and wherefors of the conflict with the Ivy League policy numbskulls at the DoD and the State Department. I was just a grunt.
I guess you're just pissed off you are poor and the great Republican lie isn't working out for you.
Great Republican lie? Try the Great Mainstream Political Lie. Neither party can claim the moral high ground here, in my opinion.
Maybe instead of killing Iraqi's you could have tried for an education.
You come off as the kind of dickhead who, 30 years ago, would have spit on returning drafted VietNam vets and called them "babykiller". I didn't choose to go to war, I simply honored my commitment when we went. I had nothing against the Iraqi soldiers and they had nothing against me, I'm sure. War isn't a philosophical debate at the level I saw it. It was just war: kill or be killed. Boring, terrifying, tedious war. I wouldn't wish it upon anyone, even sneering neo-hippies who think soldiers like going into combat. (p.s. We don't)
I have worked on base here (AWACs) and have TS clearance.
This is supposed to impress me? I was a 98C(01LF8) Signal Intelligence Analyst (Tactical/Linguist) and I had a TS clearence. 80% of the people who are in or work with the military have TS clearance. All it means is that you passed a background check. BFD. You were allowed on board an Air Force E-3 Sentry and I was a low-level operative in Military Intelligence. I guarantee that neither of us saw any secrets of any consequence.
The only military people with a brain make a lot more money than I do and when they retire actually make money. You were obviously not one of these people. When you finally make SSgt at age 45 I wouldn't consider that a success.
Nope, I'm not one of those people. I did my 4 years and decided not to re-up because I didn't agree with the political positions of our leadership. I'm currently underemployed because my Army job has no civilian counterpart and I'm slowly working on educating myself for something else. Difficult to find time/money with a wife and kid, but not impossible. I'm not unhappy either. Happiness isn't about money. You know, with all your talk about money , you're the one who sounds like a Republican.
Are you sure you don't hate gays? I mean come on I thought that was beat into your head in the military.
There you go again, mistaking the positions of political bozos in the DoD for the positions of those in the ranks. All that crap about gays in the military? It was just a pissing match between a grandstanding liberal clown of a president and a bunch of "chairborne" general officers in the DoD who were throwbacks from the 50's. There are, and always have been, gays in the military. Everyone in the military knows it. I served with several of them and no, I never once worried that one of them might be "lookin' at me". Why? Because the military is built on self discipline. Harassment of any sort, be it hetero- or homosexual, is viewed as unprofessional and undisciplined behavior and is therefore quite rare. One's sexuality is essentially a non-issue among the ranks. The only people who care about it are political grandstanders and social activists. Contrary to what you may think, the military is not entirely filled with hee-hawing backwoods georgia cracker boys flying the confederate flag and beating up queers for laughs. Most service members are polite, reserved and remarkably non-judgemental. I'm not saying there aren't a few jerks, but I reckon there's a lot less than you'd find in a similar sampling of the civilian population.
If you want to live only by the constitution go form your own country because in case you didn't notice your president seems to ignore it altogether.
You seem to be stuck in a strange black-and-white, either-or universe where, if someone is not a liberal Democrat like you, they must be a Conservative Republican. I'm neither. He's not "my" president. When he chooses to ignore the constitution it only serves to illustrate how the current implementation of our constitutional system is corrupt and needs fixing. I don't need to form my own country.
So I guess that's your rebuttal to my arguments? Call me "babykiller" and sneer at me for failing to pick a Military Occupational Specialty with a lucrative civilian application when I enlisted at 18? Nothing to say about your mutual fund? Nothing to counter my arguments in support of the premise that smaller government works better? Just ad hominem attacks? Impressive.
No national security. Lol, you want none. I guess the boy scouts can protect us (as long as none of those evil doer gays join).
What do you have against gays? Or are you implying that I (because I dislike big government liberals and therefore must be a religious-right republican) hate homosexuals? Sorry pal, that dog won't hunt. I've lived in Los Angeles my whole life, so sexual preference is pretty much a non-issue for me. It ain't Muskogee here-- we let gays walk around free and even HAVE JOBS. As for national security, our nation ends at the borders. Or it should, anyway.
If you don't want to help on a national level, why would you want to help on a local level?
because on a local level one can help directly. Government involves waste. The larger the bureaucracy, the more money gets siphoned off before it can get to the actual people who need it. I would rather get together with my neighbors and bring a carload of groceries to a neighbor who's out of work than send $400 to the feds who'll send him a check for $200 after they've taken their "cut". The neighbor eats either way, but the former costs less and now all of us neighbors know we can call on one another if we're in a bind. Do you think a federal program really cares? Should some cog in a giant machine based in D.C. be deciding whether or not my neighbor deserves a little help based on a three-inch book of regulations? Or do you think something local might work better?
Nothing NEEDS do to be done on the national level (your contention is true). However, only 6 states contribute over 75% to the GDP. Every other state would be like Mexico. Do you really want that? Good luck driving through Kansas and having your car break down.
GDP has no direct relation to standard of living. And what sort of federal program is it that maintains the viability of auto repair shops? Food stamps? No, that's actually a Dept of Agriculture program to artificially inflate food prices which, if they weren't propped up, would become more affordable. Again, things would be simpler WITHOUT.
Fed's out of banking. Lol, I guess you want your local load shark to be able to charge you credit card rates for your mortgage.
This isalready not entirely a federal issue. Ever notice how all the big credit card companies are in Maryland? ever wonder why?
Ever hear of Fannie Mae? How about Sallie Mae? No federal student loans?
I contend that government interference is largely to blame for the fact that one even NEEDS a loan to buy property or get an education. Here in Los Angeles there is a large community of Korean immigrants who own their own businesses and they didn't borrow from a bank to start up. The Korean community has a tradition of investing in each other (a co-op, of sorts) and not trying to fleece the borrower. If it works for them, it could work for any group of people. Which is more efficient: forty people pitching in a little cash at a low interest rate to help a neighbor start a business, or a huge corporate behemoth like Bank of America which gets guaranteed loans from the feds at low rates and then loans it to south american countries (which then default) and has to pass the cost on to you (5%+prime rate) when you want to buy a freakin' shack in the ghetto for $250K?The feds encourage wastefull mega-banking like this with all their inane programs. Do you think a huge multinational bank could really ever happen if it wasn't for the feds agreeing to loan it huge chunks of money at prime rate to play with?
If you truly believe everything could be better on the local level you've just got your head in the sand. The only reason the USA out performs most other countries in the world is 99% of issues are standardized at the national level so everyone conforms to the same law. This prevents every state from signing treaties with one another and having to pass various laws that are essentially the same.
I do concede that we ned a federal government in cases of interstate matters. My real concern, however, is those things the feds do that would be better if devolved to the local level. My EPA example was a bit of a stretch and was only meant as an example of how large government breeds indifference to individuals.
If you truly believe everything could be better on the local level you've just got your head in the sand. The only reason the USA out performs most other countries in the world is 99% of issues are standardized at the national level so everyone conforms to the same law. This prevents every state from signing treaties with one another and having to pass various laws that are essentially the same.
I'm a strict constitutional constructionalist. I'm not saying we should fracture into fifty or moire independent fiefdoms; I simply believe that we should actually abide by the 10th amendment, which basically says "if it ain't specifically written in the constitution, the feds ain't allowed to do it". Half the crap the feds foist on us is put out under a sham definition of "interstate commerce" and the other half is coercively forced on state legislatures by threatening to withhold money gained via vicious taxation. You talk about the threat of usury if the feds weren't there? Tell me, is it worse to pay %20 on a loan (which I doubt would happen anyway-- see my co-op argument) or to have over 50% of your money disappear in taxes? One could argue that we get some back, but I contend that most of it goes down the rathole of government itself.
Could you imagine trying to have a business that sells in every state where each law is different? I guess you don't have the ability to foresee the negatives.
Hello, we already have that. Ever hear disclaimers like "not valid in wisconsin" or "cannot be shipped to New York or New Jersey"? I daresay law wouldn't be so widely disparate as to throw interstate commerce into disarray, because states have a vested interest in unfettered commerce.How long do you think, say, a "10% out of state purchase surtax" would last once people realized that meant mailorder purchasing is out of the question? Not long, man.
When you say the government doesn't care, remember you elected (if you can call it that) George W. who would rather kill peoples kids for war than look for a diplomatic solution first. So in that regard you are correct. However, the government is only made up of American people, and these are the ones you want governing on a local level? If they don't care on a national level why the hell would it be different locally? Have you ever been to a local council meeting? It's worse than the senate & house of reps.
I never said government would be fun if it were more local, only that it would work better. Does your cogressperson care about your concerns? Not likely. State assemblymember? A little more likely, but not much. Town council? more likely than the other two, plus you can show up and address them all in person if you wish.
If coercion is the worst way to do things then everyone in the Military should be able to vote for themselves if they want to be on the frontline in Iraq.
Idiot. Coercion is forcing someone to do something without their consent. The military is all volunteer, so consent is clearly given. I know. I was on the front line in Iraq the FIRST time we went (101st ABN) and also a year earlier in Panama (7th LID) so I suggest you choose your armchair-liberal examples from things you know about, rather than things you smugly assume to be true.
People are selfish and you're a perfect example. You talk about how you would prefer it to be at the local level, yet I doubt you'd give a dime.
Apparently you didn't read my previous post, or worse, think I'm lying to make a point. Like I said, I give both time and money when I can.
In reality I should love GWBush since I'll probably save an extra 10-15 thousand this year. Realistically I would have rather paid those taxes and seen them go to stopping the financial bleeding from our local economy
You saved $10K-$15K in taxes? How much do you make? You must be one of those guilt-ridden liberal professionals who can't seem to reconcile their own greed with their ivy-league dorm-room politics. So what're you going to do with this saved tax money?
Trickle down doesn't work because when I save 15k in taxes it simply sits in my money market until the market recovers somewhat
Oh, I see. You're squirreling away this tax windfall for your own benefit and then you have the gall to complain that it's not going to help the needy because the government didn't take it from you? Fucking hypocrite. I make $22K a year which, here in Los Angeles, isn't shit. I don't have a money market account. I can't afford to register my car. Yet I daresay I give away a greater percentage of my income than you do. Why don't you put your money where your mouth is and donate that $15K to a scholarship fund? Or a freakin' food bank? You sit there whining about how the government doesn't do enough while you sit on your money market account and then claim to somehow have a heart? Give me a break. You can take your degree in finance and minor in economics and shove 'em. You're a typical armchair progressive who likes to pontificate about how people need to give more and then only gives enough to stave off the guilt. Get stuffed, fool.
You assume too much. Just because I dislike big-government liberals doesn't mean I like saber-rattling notionalists.
want the government out of your pocket then I guess we should eliminate:
1) National Security - yep, except for border patrol
2) Social Security / Medicare / Medicaid indeed, kill those all NOW and let us do it on a local level. Give us the satisfaction of helping our neighbors personally and we might even feel a sense of community. Weird, eh?
3) The highway system / road projects this doesn't need to be federal issue. Just because the feds did a satisfactory job with the interstate highway system doesn't mean that they are the end-all be-all of road building.
4) OSHA / EPA / and all other regulatory boards
None of this needs to be administered at the national level. Smaller is better. Devolve it to local level. That way, if there's corruption, it'll be small and easily corrected. It's easy for a gov't employee to sell influence to, say, a polluter dumping crap 3000 miles away. It gets harder when the poluter gets permission to dump crap in the gov't employee's neighbor's yard. The neighor will likely ask "WTF, man?" and call the gov't guy on his actions.
5) Get rid of the Treasury hell who needs a common currency, just let the states do it. Oh wait that might cost something, guess it's back to bartering.
nah. common currency is useful. Get the feds out of the banking industry though.
This list could go on forever. Things you take for granted now as necessities were all federally funded projects.
But I contend that they didn't need to be and in fact they could be done better locally.
And in case you were not aware any project done by the government for the advancement of the people, is a social program and something that wouldn't exist without callous individuals that really provide no benefit to the masses.
I'm sorry, but this sentence is gramattically incomprehensible. Are you saying social programs are there because people don't care enough to help? I say people don't care because the government has taken over the role and driven people who would otherwise care OUT.
I'm interested to see if you think you receive no benefits from social programs.
Government has its fingers in so many things that it's impossible not to be on the receiving end of some of it, just as it's impossible to avoid paying for some of it. All I contend is that it need not be so.
Sad really, guess your parents forgot to teach you compassion and caring for others.
No, I do indeed care. I just don't think the government does, or ever will, care. No matter how well-intentioned the program, it'll end up being another machine to strip people of their humanity.
You're probably just a religious hypocrite that "gives" to the church for the BIGGEST CROSS IN TOWN. Pathetic platform, pathetic people.
No, that wouldn't be me. My personal religion is mine only. I go to no church. I help people when I can. I do work for free when I can. I give money to those that need it when I can. I don't wait for a government program to come along and do the caring for me, I do it myself. Screw government. Why don't you get off your ass and help people personally rather than trying to get government to force others to do it? Coercion is the worst way to help people.
upon further examination, it becomes quite obvious to me that the initial patent was intended to be for a method implemented on a specially designed (in his words) "posting terminal". This is the '265 patent that he's trying to beat eBay over the head with. What's funny is that he has a SECOND patent issued in March 2001 that is tailored to eBay's internet-centric business model, but also it was clearly issed long after eBay was already in business. Whatever happened to prior art? This guy is a total sleazebag.
My favorite bit of vomitous marketroid slag on the website is the banner which says "MercXchange >>Generating Changes in Dynamic Markets".
Also fun is the paragraph on the home page. This guy is a classic suit-monkey:
Mercexchange's mission is to improve businesses through the application of new digital technologies, especially in networked environments. The businesses and products developed by MercExchange address large-scale consumer needs and business inefficiencies, resulting in new ways of doing business, new ways of creating value, and new industry paradigms.
Uh-oh. He used the word "paradigm". Beware! Basically, according to the home page, they specialize in taking old busniess ideas and adding "with a computer" to them. Lot's of people make money assisting others in computerizing their businesses. This moron doesn't do that, though. He just wants to patent it so others will have to pay him for having the idea. I say we form a lynch mob.
a computer locally connected to said digital image means, said user interface, said bar code scanner, said bar code printer, said storage device and said communications means, said computer adapted to receive said digital image of said good for sale from said digital image means, generate a data record of said good for sale, incorporate said digital image of said good for sale into said data record, receive a textual description of said good for sale from said user interface, store said data record on said storage device, transfer said data record to the market for goods via said communications means and receive a tracking number for said good for sale from the market for goods via said communications means, store said tracking number from the market for goods in said data record on said storage device and printing a bar code from said tracking number on said bar code printer.
this reminds me of the BT hyperlink patent. It looks like this guy had in mind some sort of dedicated network terminal of a specific design rather than generic HTML browsers on home computers. The clue is the barcode scanners. Who has a barcode scanner? (cuecat folks put your hands down, that doesn't count!) It seems to me that the patent is more about a dedicated auction network and the hardware it runs on than it is some nebulous notion as "electronic auctioning". He's trying to stretch the patent to cover ALL online auctions and that, IMHO, is the problem. Patents can't be that broad (well, some are, but shouldn't be).
Drifting a bit off topic but....
"...This lead Jefferson et. al to set up the first patent board some 200 years ago..."
Of course, outside of the US, patent systems have been in existence much longer much than that. For a history of the {yadda yadda}...
Cripes, man, he was talking about US Patent law and the USPTO. This story is about US patent law and the USPTO. The "first patent board" referenced can be contextually taken to mean "first patent board in the United States". We all know that other countries exist outside the US. Irrelevant defensive spoutings of "That wasn't first! We had it first! Not you!" make it sound like you have an inferiority complex. Try to be aware of context and you won't feel so offended.
That's sad, and possibly a lie, but just because you can endure doesn't make you a good person. This ain't an Edith Wharton novel. Give the puritanism/rugged individualism a break. You care for your wife because you are human--not because you are an indivudual.
The notion that a large, faceless government bureaucracy would even be capable of caring enough to help people is the biggest failing of the liberal-democrat-progressive camp. Do you really think the mindless federal machinery can do better than a real person? By giving this job to the soul-less behemoth that is government you are taking it away from those who actually care. Fool.
Since the airlines use some kind of blue dye in their toilets
It's not just blue dye; it's Sodium Hydroxide (or something similar) added to the waste tank to keep the stink down and to prevent stuff from growing in the effluvia. Also, it's not just the airlines-- all chemical toilets use it.
I see lots of people asking basic questions such as "What about...?" and "What if...?" and "How come...?"
Yeah, well I went and looked at those links and while the first one contains lots of explainations as to what didn't cause the ice blobs to form, there was no clear theory as to what did. There was, however, quite a number of links to sites and reports by the various Chicken Little departments of the UN, NASA, etc.
So, as far as I can tell, this dude says "it's not meteors, comets, or frozen piss from planes, so it must be global warming."
This is the fatal flaw. The only accurate model of climate/weather is a full-scale model which cannot be simulated electronically. The fact that they are depending on computer modeling to predict amything renders their predictions about as valuable as a random guess. Their point of oversimplification is where they expect a computer model to remain even remotely accurate beyond two or three months.
There is a danger. The consequences are too great to ignore it.
Hogwash. The computer models are based on such a high degree of assumption that their predictions of danger are equivalent to worrying about comet impacts. The assumption that the earth's climate is unstable enough to be thrown out of whack by the activities of such tiny bugs as we humans is the ultimate ego trip. You talk about scale, but you clearly have no idea of how insignificant we are. There have been events of much greater import in this planet's history that make our piddling about with "greenhouse gases" pale in comparison.
After all, even one degree is the difference between freezing and melting point, no?
Go back to elementary physics class, doodyhead. "Freezing point" and "melting point" are the same damn thing, therefore NO degrees of difference. It's a heat transfer thing, man.
No matter how you cut it, it is stealing. Stealing MONEY. Not realized money. But money that will come out of the companies productivity and out of some bill somewhere.
Maybe criminal tresspass, and criminal neglegance, would be more usefull? I still belive its theft. Plus the other 2. But thats just my opinion...
I'm sorry, but your opinion (by dictionary and legal definition of "theft") is provably wrong. Actual money in your pocket (or its virtual representation in your bank account) is indeed real property. Money that you never made is NOT real property. The distiction is important because theft of real property is a criminal matter (that means jail is a possibility), whereas "lost wages/revenue/productivity" is handled in civil court (monetary judgement, NO jail). Please understand, I'm not saying that unauthorized access of network resources is OK; I merely object to the attempt to label it as "theft". The stealing of real property always results in one person gaining said property at the expense of the previous posessor, and as such is nearly universally regarded as a Bad Thing (though extenuating circumstances are occasionally considered). Intent is rarely relevant in cases of theft because, in the end, someone took someone else's stuff. Intent is, however, very relevant in cases of trespass, unautorized access, etc. While the old saying may be "ignorance of the law is no excuse", in cases like that it can mean the difference between a small civil judgement and 6 months in the slam. The problem I see is that Large Entities with Vested Interests are attempting to redefine the language to make their targets (WAP snoopers, CD/DVD copying folks) appear premeditatedly malicious. While they may personally think it's as bad a actual theft, no amount of PR flacking will make it actually be theft. It's like the opponents of abortion here in the states when they say "abortion is murder". This is provably false. Murder is the unlawful taking of a human life. Abortion is legal. Therefore, it CANNOT be murder. The phrase is intended to arrouse passions rather than argue facts (a tactic that makes me uneasy). I understand their opposition, but no matter how much they dislike it, it's not murder.
I just want people to not buy into wholesale redefinitions of words. I hate to bring up something as worn out and hackneyed as 1984, but Orwell wasn't just whistling dixie about control of the language.
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That's what I thought. When I joined it was 21 in almost every state (Iowa and maybe another were 18 still, I think), so it was 21 on base almost everywhere. I didn't get deployed out of the country till I was 21 so I never gave any thought about it. I do know that we didn't have anything stronger than Kool-Aid in Saudi. As one guy there said, "silly bathrobe guys don't even allow beer! BEER!"
Same in Canada, we all kinds of nudity on our TV's. The problem in the US is so many people are against it for some reason. If it was on TV, people would learn to deal with it and spend their time debating over issues that acutually matter instead of trying to follow some useless moral agenda
Yeah, that's one of the annoying things about living in a nation where they people originally started coming here because they wanted the freedom to live by their absurdly strict religious beliefs. We got the freedom motivation which turned out to be a good thing, but then we got the religious fundamentalism, which has been a bit of a thorn in the side.
So now we have people who think nudity and the "F" word are bad because, well, if they weren't bad they'd be allowed on TV, right? But they're not allowed on TV because people think they're bad... Tough cycle to break. With cable slowly eroding the FCC's power to censor (not broadcast over the air, FCC can't touch it), we're seeing a little progress though. I don't expect to see breasts on network TV in my lifetime, though.
If you are in the military, the drinking age is 18 on base. Its still 21 if you go off base though.
Y ;Ft.Ord,CA;Ft.Hood,TX;Ft.Devens,MA). Are you perhaps remembering the Good Old Days? I believe they changed the on-base drinking age to match the Federally "suggested" age of 21 about the same time they started making states go to 21 or risk losing highway funds.
Huh? When did that happen? I was in the US Army from '87-'91 and you had to be 21 to buy alcohol at the Enlisted Club, NCO Club, and the Package Store on every CONUS base I was stationed at (Ft.LeonardWood,MO;GoodfellowAFB,TX;Ft.Campbell,K
What if you were an inventor and had a great idea for a Gizzmo-matic. This will also make tons of money. Now, you can go ahead, and make it, copywright it, and either manufacture it or liscense it.
First, it's "copyright", as in the right to make copies, and Second, inventions are covered by patent law and have their own laws seperate from copyright law and are therefore irrelevant to this discussion. Copyrights have to do with writings, music, movies and the like.
Whoever modded the above post up to "4 - Informative" is as ill-informed as the author of said post. Get with the program, people.
Material property is a much different thing than intellectual property, but they are still both properties
Actually, the term "intellectual property" is a legal fiction made up in the mid-1800's in order to lend credence to the ludicrous notion that anyone can actually own an idea. They are not both called property because they have anything in common, the later was named property in order to give it the same attribute of "ownability" as the former. An idea, method, or string of words have nothing in common with a real, physical piece of property. Well, they do now, but only because of the aforementioned legal fiction.
but I highly recomend to read his works before thinking.
Don't think, just read. We'll think for you.
I feel like a robotnik.
the reasons for NOT doing it in consumer cars is totally different than for military aspects.....
Huh? I never said they don't do it in cars because of any "military aspects" (whatever you mean by that). I said that the reason they don't put HUDs in cars is that it takes time and effort to become accustomed to using a HUD and until you're used to it it can be distracting and irritating. Very few people are willing to invest the time necessary (particularly when it's a feature they never needed before), so most simply turned it off and never used it. A feature that 95% of users find annoying doesn't make a good selling point, so there's no point in continuing to include it in the design. Cost was not the issue, so cheap OLED devices (which aren't usefull as HUD screens since they're not completely transparent) are not going to lead to HUDs in cars.
You're creating a display in your line of sight out of... say a cockpit window of a jet... using a thin, clear plastic lining inside the window... ...how is that not a HUD?
The plastic/glass sheet in an aircraft HUD is a reflector. The most critical attribute of this reflector is that it must be completely transparent. OLED screens aren't completely transparent. The reason cars don't have HUDs has nothing to do with the cost. Nissan put a HUD-like projector in late 80's Maximas that displayed your speed on the windshield. They quit doing it, not because of cost, but because nobody liked it. A HUD is distracting. It takes quite a while to become accustomed to looking both at and through your windshield. It's not about price, it's about consumer resistance.
Once you go flat, you never go back. Everything else just looks blurry.
That all depends on the kind of tube monitor you had before. If you have a 15" Shamrock, anything is an improvment. If you have a decent monitor (I have a 21" Sun w/ aperture grille) moving to LCD is not an improvement in clarity.
I meant the ratio of waste heat vs the actual computation.
This is the problem with your premise. It is the computation itself that produces the heat. Whether that computation is something usefull or is just housekeeping/clockwatching is totally irrelevant. Heat is the inevitable byproduct of the CPU doing anything. "Theoretical computation" is irrelevant. In the real world of CMOS, we have to deal with resistance, capacitance, saturation, etc. and all these thing inevitably result in electrical energy lost to heat.
To quote from the site to which you link:
"The average Wintel home user spends around 50 hours per year troubleshooting their computer, while the average Mac user spends less than 5."
This "conclusion" at which they arrive is in itself inconclusive. Just because group A spends more time troubleshooting than group B does not mean that group A's computers require more troubleshooting. I know that if I were included in the survey that produced the above statistic I would definitely skew the PC side towards "more time troubleshooting" because I'm a compulsive tinkerer. I can't leave my settings, drivers, and services alone so I end up spending hours balancing it all. I have a Win 98 PC I use at work that NEVER needs troubleshooting. A friend of mine has a Mac that requires reinstallation of the OS every 3 months. It's all about how you use 'em. Besides, the TCO they're talking about also includes the cost of retraining, repurchase of software, and downtime due to switching over. Hardly the "from scratch" sort of TCO you're talking about. Find me a TCO analysis that doesn't rely on nebulous calculations involving "retraining" and "man-hours spent troubleshooting Uncle Bob's PC vs Aunt Eunice's I-Mac" and I'll take notice.
Mmm yeah, except the Libertarian party is economically conservative....meaning screw you as long as I've got mine, a.k.a. what poor people?
No, libertarian philosophy only says that it's not the government's job to "help" the poor. Rather, it is up to us to personally help those that need it. The main reason why people don't help one another directly now is that the government has taken it over; subsequently, when someone sees poverty, their first thought is "why isn't the government doing something about that? I pay enough in taxes that there should be NO poverty." If the government wasn't in the charity business, people would be more inclined to help, particularly if they weren't pissing away 50% of their income to taxation.
I'm happy you fought a war for oil. Be proud, too bad you didn't finish the job because shocking development here we are again.
I was only a sergeant. Sergeants don't decide where wars are fought and when they end. There is no politics on the front line in the military. Only war and survival. Go argue the whys and wherefors of the conflict with the Ivy League policy numbskulls at the DoD and the State Department. I was just a grunt.
I guess you're just pissed off you are poor and the great Republican lie isn't working out for you.
Great Republican lie? Try the Great Mainstream Political Lie. Neither party can claim the moral high ground here, in my opinion.
Maybe instead of killing Iraqi's you could have tried for an education.
You come off as the kind of dickhead who, 30 years ago, would have spit on returning drafted VietNam vets and called them "babykiller". I didn't choose to go to war, I simply honored my commitment when we went. I had nothing against the Iraqi soldiers and they had nothing against me, I'm sure. War isn't a philosophical debate at the level I saw it. It was just war: kill or be killed. Boring, terrifying, tedious war. I wouldn't wish it upon anyone, even sneering neo-hippies who think soldiers like going into combat. (p.s. We don't)
I have worked on base here (AWACs) and have TS clearance.
This is supposed to impress me? I was a 98C(01LF8) Signal Intelligence Analyst (Tactical/Linguist) and I had a TS clearence. 80% of the people who are in or work with the military have TS clearance. All it means is that you passed a background check. BFD. You were allowed on board an Air Force E-3 Sentry and I was a low-level operative in Military Intelligence. I guarantee that neither of us saw any secrets of any consequence.
The only military people with a brain make a lot more money than I do and when they retire actually make money. You were obviously not one of these people. When you finally make SSgt at age 45 I wouldn't consider that a success.
Nope, I'm not one of those people. I did my 4 years and decided not to re-up because I didn't agree with the political positions of our leadership. I'm currently underemployed because my Army job has no civilian counterpart and I'm slowly working on educating myself for something else. Difficult to find time/money with a wife and kid, but not impossible. I'm not unhappy either. Happiness isn't about money. You know, with all your talk about money , you're the one who sounds like a Republican.
Are you sure you don't hate gays? I mean come on I thought that was beat into your head in the military.
There you go again, mistaking the positions of political bozos in the DoD for the positions of those in the ranks. All that crap about gays in the military? It was just a pissing match between a grandstanding liberal clown of a president and a bunch of "chairborne" general officers in the DoD who were throwbacks from the 50's. There are, and always have been, gays in the military. Everyone in the military knows it. I served with several of them and no, I never once worried that one of them might be "lookin' at me". Why? Because the military is built on self discipline. Harassment of any sort, be it hetero- or homosexual, is viewed as unprofessional and undisciplined behavior and is therefore quite rare. One's sexuality is essentially a non-issue among the ranks. The only people who care about it are political grandstanders and social activists. Contrary to what you may think, the military is not entirely filled with hee-hawing backwoods georgia cracker boys flying the confederate flag and beating up queers for laughs. Most service members are polite, reserved and remarkably non-judgemental. I'm not saying there aren't a few jerks, but I reckon there's a lot less than you'd find in a similar sampling of the civilian population.
If you want to live only by the constitution go form your own country because in case you didn't notice your president seems to ignore it altogether.
You seem to be stuck in a strange black-and-white, either-or universe where, if someone is not a liberal Democrat like you, they must be a Conservative Republican. I'm neither. He's not "my" president. When he chooses to ignore the constitution it only serves to illustrate how the current implementation of our constitutional system is corrupt and needs fixing. I don't need to form my own country.
So I guess that's your rebuttal to my arguments? Call me "babykiller" and sneer at me for failing to pick a Military Occupational Specialty with a lucrative civilian application when I enlisted at 18? Nothing to say about your mutual fund? Nothing to counter my arguments in support of the premise that smaller government works better? Just ad hominem attacks? Impressive.
No national security. Lol, you want none. I guess the boy scouts can protect us (as long as none of those evil doer gays join).
What do you have against gays? Or are you implying that I (because I dislike big government liberals and therefore must be a religious-right republican) hate homosexuals? Sorry pal, that dog won't hunt. I've lived in Los Angeles my whole life, so sexual preference is pretty much a non-issue for me. It ain't Muskogee here-- we let gays walk around free and even HAVE JOBS.
As for national security, our nation ends at the borders. Or it should, anyway.
If you don't want to help on a national level, why would you want to help on a local level?
because on a local level one can help directly. Government involves waste. The larger the bureaucracy, the more money gets siphoned off before it can get to the actual people who need it. I would rather get together with my neighbors and bring a carload of groceries to a neighbor who's out of work than send $400 to the feds who'll send him a check for $200 after they've taken their "cut". The neighbor eats either way, but the former costs less and now all of us neighbors know we can call on one another if we're in a bind. Do you think a federal program really cares? Should some cog in a giant machine based in D.C. be deciding whether or not my neighbor deserves a little help based on a three-inch book of regulations? Or do you think something local might work better?
Nothing NEEDS do to be done on the national level (your contention is true). However, only 6 states contribute over 75% to the GDP. Every other state would be like Mexico. Do you really want that? Good luck driving through Kansas and having your car break down.
GDP has no direct relation to standard of living. And what sort of federal program is it that maintains the viability of auto repair shops? Food stamps? No, that's actually a Dept of Agriculture program to artificially inflate food prices which, if they weren't propped up, would become more affordable. Again, things would be simpler WITHOUT.
Fed's out of banking. Lol, I guess you want your local load shark to be able to charge you credit card rates for your mortgage.
This isalready not entirely a federal issue. Ever notice how all the big credit card companies are in Maryland? ever wonder why?
Ever hear of Fannie Mae? How about Sallie Mae? No federal student loans?
I contend that government interference is largely to blame for the fact that one even NEEDS a loan to buy property or get an education. Here in Los Angeles there is a large community of Korean immigrants who own their own businesses and they didn't borrow from a bank to start up. The Korean community has a tradition of investing in each other (a co-op, of sorts) and not trying to fleece the borrower. If it works for them, it could work for any group of people. Which is more efficient: forty people pitching in a little cash at a low interest rate to help a neighbor start a business, or a huge corporate behemoth like Bank of America which gets guaranteed loans from the feds at low rates and then loans it to south american countries (which then default) and has to pass the cost on to you (5%+prime rate) when you want to buy a freakin' shack in the ghetto for $250K?The feds encourage wastefull mega-banking like this with all their inane programs. Do you think a huge multinational bank could really ever happen if it wasn't for the feds agreeing to loan it huge chunks of money at prime rate to play with?
If you truly believe everything could be better on the local level you've just got your head in the sand. The only reason the USA out performs most other countries in the world is 99% of issues are standardized at the national level so everyone conforms to the same law. This prevents every state from signing treaties with one another and having to pass various laws that are essentially the same.
I do concede that we ned a federal government in cases of interstate matters. My real concern, however, is those things the feds do that would be better if devolved to the local level. My EPA example was a bit of a stretch and was only meant as an example of how large government breeds indifference to individuals.
If you truly believe everything could be better on the local level you've just got your head in the sand. The only reason the USA out performs most other countries in the world is 99% of issues are standardized at the national level so everyone conforms to the same law. This prevents every state from signing treaties with one another and having to pass various laws that are essentially the same.
I'm a strict constitutional constructionalist. I'm not saying we should fracture into fifty or moire independent fiefdoms; I simply believe that we should actually abide by the 10th amendment , which basically says "if it ain't specifically written in the constitution, the feds ain't allowed to do it". Half the crap the feds foist on us is put out under a sham definition of "interstate commerce" and the other half is coercively forced on state legislatures by threatening to withhold money gained via vicious taxation. You talk about the threat of usury if the feds weren't there? Tell me, is it worse to pay %20 on a loan (which I doubt would happen anyway-- see my co-op argument) or to have over 50% of your money disappear in taxes? One could argue that we get some back, but I contend that most of it goes down the rathole of government itself.
Could you imagine trying to have a business that sells in every state where each law is different? I guess you don't have the ability to foresee the negatives.
Hello, we already have that. Ever hear disclaimers like "not valid in wisconsin" or "cannot be shipped to New York or New Jersey"? I daresay law wouldn't be so widely disparate as to throw interstate commerce into disarray, because states have a vested interest in unfettered commerce.How long do you think, say, a "10% out of state purchase surtax" would last once people realized that meant mailorder purchasing is out of the question? Not long, man.
When you say the government doesn't care, remember you elected (if you can call it that) George W. who would rather kill peoples kids for war than look for a diplomatic solution first. So in that regard you are correct. However, the government is only made up of American people, and these are the ones you want governing on a local level? If they don't care on a national level why the hell would it be different locally? Have you ever been to a local council meeting? It's worse than the senate & house of reps.
I never said government would be fun if it were more local, only that it would work better. Does your cogressperson care about your concerns? Not likely. State assemblymember? A little more likely, but not much. Town council? more likely than the other two, plus you can show up and address them all in person if you wish.
If coercion is the worst way to do things then everyone in the Military should be able to vote for themselves if they want to be on the frontline in Iraq.
Idiot. Coercion is forcing someone to do something without their consent. The military is all volunteer, so consent is clearly given. I know. I was on the front line in Iraq the FIRST time we went (101st ABN) and also a year earlier in Panama (7th LID) so I suggest you choose your armchair-liberal examples from things you know about, rather than things you smugly assume to be true.
People are selfish and you're a perfect example. You talk about how you would prefer it to be at the local level, yet I doubt you'd give a dime.
Apparently you didn't read my previous post, or worse, think I'm lying to make a point. Like I said, I give both time and money when I can.
In reality I should love GWBush since I'll probably save an extra 10-15 thousand this year. Realistically I would have rather paid those taxes and seen them go to stopping the financial bleeding from our local economy
You saved $10K-$15K in taxes? How much do you make? You must be one of those guilt-ridden liberal professionals who can't seem to reconcile their own greed with their ivy-league dorm-room politics. So what're you going to do with this saved tax money?
Trickle down doesn't work because when I save 15k in taxes it simply sits in my money market until the market recovers somewhat
Oh, I see. You're squirreling away this tax windfall for your own benefit and then you have the gall to complain that it's not going to help the needy because the government didn't take it from you? Fucking hypocrite. I make $22K a year which, here in Los Angeles, isn't shit. I don't have a money market account. I can't afford to register my car. Yet I daresay I give away a greater percentage of my income than you do. Why don't you put your money where your mouth is and donate that $15K to a scholarship fund? Or a freakin' food bank? You sit there whining about how the government doesn't do enough while you sit on your money market account and then claim to somehow have a heart? Give me a break. You can take your degree in finance and minor in economics and shove 'em. You're a typical armchair progressive who likes to pontificate about how people need to give more and then only gives enough to stave off the guilt.
Get stuffed, fool.
If you pathetic republicans...
You assume too much. Just because I dislike big-government liberals doesn't mean I like saber-rattling notionalists.
want the government out of your pocket then I guess we should eliminate:
1) National Security
- yep, except for border patrol
2) Social Security / Medicare / Medicaid
indeed, kill those all NOW and let us do it on a local level. Give us the satisfaction of helping our neighbors personally and we might even feel a sense of community. Weird, eh?
3) The highway system / road projects
this doesn't need to be federal issue. Just because the feds did a satisfactory job with the interstate highway system doesn't mean that they are the end-all be-all of road building.
4) OSHA / EPA / and all other regulatory boards
None of this needs to be administered at the national level. Smaller is better. Devolve it to local level. That way, if there's corruption, it'll be small and easily corrected. It's easy for a gov't employee to sell influence to, say, a polluter dumping crap 3000 miles away. It gets harder when the poluter gets permission to dump crap in the gov't employee's neighbor's yard. The neighor will likely ask "WTF, man?" and call the gov't guy on his actions.
5) Get rid of the Treasury hell who needs a common currency, just let the states do it. Oh wait that might cost something, guess it's back to bartering.
nah. common currency is useful. Get the feds out of the banking industry though.
This list could go on forever. Things you take for granted now as necessities were all federally funded projects.
But I contend that they didn't need to be and in fact they could be done better locally.
And in case you were not aware any project done by the government for the advancement of the people, is a social program and something that wouldn't exist without callous individuals that really provide no benefit to the masses.
I'm sorry, but this sentence is gramattically incomprehensible. Are you saying social programs are there because people don't care enough to help? I say people don't care because the government has taken over the role and driven people who would otherwise care OUT.
I'm interested to see if you think you receive no benefits from social programs.
Government has its fingers in so many things that it's impossible not to be on the receiving end of some of it, just as it's impossible to avoid paying for some of it. All I contend is that it need not be so.
Sad really, guess your parents forgot to teach you compassion and caring for others.
No, I do indeed care. I just don't think the government does, or ever will, care. No matter how well-intentioned the program, it'll end up being another machine to strip people of their humanity.
You're probably just a religious hypocrite that "gives" to the church for the BIGGEST CROSS IN TOWN. Pathetic platform, pathetic people.
No, that wouldn't be me. My personal religion is mine only. I go to no church. I help people when I can. I do work for free when I can. I give money to those that need it when I can. I don't wait for a government program to come along and do the caring for me, I do it myself. Screw government. Why don't you get off your ass and help people personally rather than trying to get government to force others to do it? Coercion is the worst way to help people.
upon further examination, it becomes quite obvious to me that the initial patent was intended to be for a method implemented on a specially designed (in his words) "posting terminal". This is the '265 patent that he's trying to beat eBay over the head with. What's funny is that he has a SECOND patent issued in March 2001 that is tailored to eBay's internet-centric business model, but also it was clearly issed long after eBay was already in business. Whatever happened to prior art? This guy is a total sleazebag.
Also fun is the paragraph on the home page. This guy is a classic suit-monkey:
- Mercexchange's mission is to improve businesses through the application of new digital technologies, especially in networked environments. The businesses and products developed by MercExchange address large-scale consumer needs and business inefficiencies, resulting in new ways of doing business, new ways of creating value, and new industry paradigms.
Uh-oh. He used the word "paradigm". Beware! Basically, according to the home page, they specialize in taking old busniess ideas and adding "with a computer" to them. Lot's of people make money assisting others in computerizing their businesses. This moron doesn't do that, though. He just wants to patent it so others will have to pay him for having the idea. I say we form a lynch mob.a computer locally connected to said digital image means, said user interface, said bar code scanner, said bar code printer, said storage device and said communications means, said computer adapted to receive said digital image of said good for sale from said digital image means, generate a data record of said good for sale, incorporate said digital image of said good for sale into said data record, receive a textual description of said good for sale from said user interface, store said data record on said storage device, transfer said data record to the market for goods via said communications means and receive a tracking number for said good for sale from the market for goods via said communications means, store said tracking number from the market for goods in said data record on said storage device and printing a bar code from said tracking number on said bar code printer.
this reminds me of the BT hyperlink patent. It looks like this guy had in mind some sort of dedicated network terminal of a specific design rather than generic HTML browsers on home computers. The clue is the barcode scanners. Who has a barcode scanner? (cuecat folks put your hands down, that doesn't count!) It seems to me that the patent is more about a dedicated auction network and the hardware it runs on than it is some nebulous notion as "electronic auctioning". He's trying to stretch the patent to cover ALL online auctions and that, IMHO, is the problem. Patents can't be that broad (well, some are, but shouldn't be).
Drifting a bit off topic but.... "...This lead Jefferson et. al to set up the first patent board some 200 years ago..."
Of course, outside of the US, patent systems have been in existence much longer much than that. For a history of the {yadda yadda}...
Cripes, man, he was talking about US Patent law and the USPTO. This story is about US patent law and the USPTO. The "first patent board" referenced can be contextually taken to mean "first patent board in the United States". We all know that other countries exist outside the US. Irrelevant defensive spoutings of "That wasn't first! We had it first! Not you!" make it sound like you have an inferiority complex. Try to be aware of context and you won't feel so offended.
That's sad, and possibly a lie, but just because you can endure doesn't make you a good person. This ain't an Edith Wharton novel. Give the puritanism/rugged individualism a break. You care for your wife because you are human--not because you are an indivudual.
The notion that a large, faceless government bureaucracy would even be capable of caring enough to help people is the biggest failing of the liberal-democrat-progressive camp. Do you really think the mindless federal machinery can do better than a real person? By giving this job to the soul-less behemoth that is government you are taking it away from those who actually care. Fool.
Since the airlines use some kind of blue dye in their toilets
It's not just blue dye; it's Sodium Hydroxide (or something similar) added to the waste tank to keep the stink down and to prevent stuff from growing in the effluvia. Also, it's not just the airlines-- all chemical toilets use it.
I see lots of people asking basic questions such as "What about...?" and "What if...?" and "How come...?"
Yeah, well I went and looked at those links and while the first one contains lots of explainations as to what didn't cause the ice blobs to form, there was no clear theory as to what did. There was, however, quite a number of links to sites and reports by the various Chicken Little departments of the UN, NASA, etc.
So, as far as I can tell, this dude says "it's not meteors, comets, or frozen piss from planes, so it must be global warming."
Climate is understood through computer modeling
This is the fatal flaw. The only accurate model of climate/weather is a full-scale model which cannot be simulated electronically. The fact that they are depending on computer modeling to predict amything renders their predictions about as valuable as a random guess. Their point of oversimplification is where they expect a computer model to remain even remotely accurate beyond two or three months.
There is a danger. The consequences are too great to ignore it.
Hogwash. The computer models are based on such a high degree of assumption that their predictions of danger are equivalent to worrying about comet impacts. The assumption that the earth's climate is unstable enough to be thrown out of whack by the activities of such tiny bugs as we humans is the ultimate ego trip. You talk about scale, but you clearly have no idea of how insignificant we are. There have been events of much greater import in this planet's history that make our piddling about with "greenhouse gases" pale in comparison.
After all, even one degree is the difference between freezing and melting point, no?
Go back to elementary physics class, doodyhead. "Freezing point" and "melting point" are the same damn thing, therefore NO degrees of difference. It's a heat transfer thing, man.
No matter how you cut it, it is stealing. Stealing MONEY. Not realized money. But money that will come out of the companies productivity and out of some bill somewhere.
Maybe criminal tresspass, and criminal neglegance, would be more usefull? I still belive its theft. Plus the other 2. But thats just my opinion...
I'm sorry, but your opinion (by dictionary and legal definition of "theft") is provably wrong. Actual money in your pocket (or its virtual representation in your bank account) is indeed real property. Money that you never made is NOT real property. The distiction is important because theft of real property is a criminal matter (that means jail is a possibility), whereas "lost wages/revenue/productivity" is handled in civil court (monetary judgement, NO jail). Please understand, I'm not saying that unauthorized access of network resources is OK; I merely object to the attempt to label it as "theft". The stealing of real property always results in one person gaining said property at the expense of the previous posessor, and as such is nearly universally regarded as a Bad Thing (though extenuating circumstances are occasionally considered). Intent is rarely relevant in cases of theft because, in the end, someone took someone else's stuff. Intent is, however, very relevant in cases of trespass, unautorized access, etc. While the old saying may be "ignorance of the law is no excuse", in cases like that it can mean the difference between a small civil judgement and 6 months in the slam. The problem I see is that Large Entities with Vested Interests are attempting to redefine the language to make their targets (WAP snoopers, CD/DVD copying folks) appear premeditatedly malicious. While they may personally think it's as bad a actual theft, no amount of PR flacking will make it actually be theft. It's like the opponents of abortion here in the states when they say "abortion is murder". This is provably false. Murder is the unlawful taking of a human life. Abortion is legal. Therefore, it CANNOT be murder. The phrase is intended to arrouse passions rather than argue facts (a tactic that makes me uneasy). I understand their opposition, but no matter how much they dislike it, it's not murder.
I just want people to not buy into wholesale redefinitions of words. I hate to bring up something as worn out and hackneyed as 1984, but Orwell wasn't just whistling dixie about control of the language.