They don't care about software patents, they care about patents on intellectual property. I... can't find a reference, but basically the pharma companies wanted to make sure that other countries wouldn't be able to exclude drugs when considering patent worthiness. So they got their legislators to put some sweeping language into a trade agreement insisting that all patents on intellectual property must be respected. The fact that software is patentable in the first place in the United States is thanks to a court decision, it's not legislative.
NPR had a good story about patents that covered this. I'd link it if I could find it.
It's actually the pharmaceutical companies that have lobbied most strongly for uncompromising patents on intellectual property. They make money hand over fist in the United States because they're allowed to patent drugs but, unlike every other country which allows drug patents, there are no laws in the US which set limits on the price of drugs. Hence, the pharmaceutical companies have an extreme interest in making sure that things stay this way.
I'm sure that the patent trolls also do their share of lobbying, but they're small fries comparatively.
We never and still don't have a cure for Small Pox, we have a vaccine. And, while I'm not an expert, saying that we have a "cure" for Scurvy is just silly. I'm not really supporting the GP here, I don't really know, but your examples aren't much better.
If they want to "license" us a copy of the game, then we should be able to exchange media when ours is scratched by our kids playing frisbee. We should also be able to get a replacement if we break the disc.
Some companies will do this, not out of the goodness of their hearts but to preserve this fabrication that when you go into a store and buy a thing you haven't really bought it - you've just licensed it in a manner indistinguishable from a purchase.
Rights over copyrighted material distributed on physical media isn't new or legally ambiguous. First sale doctrine is more than a hundred years old and it comes from almost the same situation - book publishers trying to control books after they'd been purchased. The only new thing here is the ability for copyright holders to build failure into their product: I'm sure that book publishers would have been ecstatic if they had had a way to get the books to automatically erase themselves.
The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act was the first step in very much needed healthcare reform. Reform which will both improve quality of live for a very large number of Americans who have previously only had access to emergency rooms, but save us money in the long run ($143 billion over ten years according to the Congressional Budget Office):
Interestingly, but not surprisingly, if you search for "Obamacare saves money", using the derisive name for the act coined by the neo-cons, you get editorial after editorial from conservative sources using anecdotal evidence to try a refute the CBO's finding. "I know a doctor who now prescribes Aspirin! Aspirin people!" Naturally, none of them have actually done any research on the subject. They're just haters, and they gonna hate.
See? See?!? Responsible, consumer-friendly legislation doesn't have to be anti-business.
We've got this thing in my country with the one political party saying that they're pro-consumer and trying to push laws that limit corporate abuses, and the other party saying that they're pro-business and trying to squash anything that would reduce corporate size and influence with the claim that it's necessary for jobs, the economy, etc. Well bullshit. Some consumer-friendly legislation may be anti-established business, but that's not a negative, just thinning the herd. Get rid of the sick and bring on the new.
How can a price be a 'market price' when it's the result of a government-granted monopoly? If you want people to pay a market price for a drug, then eliminate drug patents.
Exactly. There's no such thing as a free market for drugs - when people literally have a choice between paying whatever the drug company wants or dying, there's no room for market forces.
This is only an issue because the United States is unique as the only country in the world which allows people to be subjected to this choice. Every other country which allows for drug patents also regulates the price of drugs, so that companies can't just charge whatever they want.
Okay, I'll buy that. I'm not sure that most theists really believe that they can prove the existence of god, but most that I've talked to do seem to have some rational for their belief.
By the way, agnosticism, in the proper sense of the word, actually makes a strong claim - that whether god exists or not - is fundamentally unknown and cannot ever be determined. In other words, it is a belief system, unlike e.g. weak atheism. Unfortunately, because many people don't quite understand what this actually means, it evolved into a misguided synonym for weak atheism.
By your definition just about everyone, from theist to atheist, is also an agnostic. That's the whole crux of faith - belief without proof. Maybe you're right about the original meaning of the word, I don't know, but sticking by that definition makes the word essentially useless, because it applies to everyone.
Nope. Megaphones are restricted in many cities - permit required. It's one of those restrictions of dubious legal standing, I'm not sure that it has ever been tested in court, so you might make the claim that it's constitutionally protected even though it's not allowed. None the less, the fact remains that if Sockatume walks around in a city using a microphone to broadcast the notion that Jackie_Chan_Fan's post is sophomoric and inane he will probably attract the attention of police and receive a fine.
Steam activation is better than Ubisoft activation, but it's still activation. It's still a negative feature. There are plenty of good games that don't use Steam DRM, or any DRM, that you might consider.
The Humble Indie Bundle said that their most requested feature was Steam support. It just blew me away that people would be so dependent that they would be asking for DRM.
Prince of Persia (2008) was released on the PC completely DRM free. When I heard that I bought it immediately and then emailed Ubisoft to let them know why. They never responded. There was a statement by someone from Ubisoft at the time as well, "This way no one can make any excuses." (I'm paraphrasing, I don't remember it exactly.)
Shortly after that is when they started experimenting with their ridiculous DRM. Really wish they had released the sales numbers, and whatever piracy data they have, for this and their other games. There doesn't seem any compelling reason to keep it secret and being able to actually do some real analysis could go a long way towards addressing the problem.
Of course, that assumes that it's really about piracy. I think DRM is really about control, but that's a separate issue.
Console games don't require activation, or at least most of them don't. That's the real key here - yes they're DRMed to the gills, but you still retain control of your purchased games. As long as you don't want to play online anyway. And as long as you buy things on disc and not through the online store.
Many people here are saying that we need to get away from DNS as it is now, use Namecoin or some other distributed method. That's great for the long term, certainly something we should work towards, but for the moment there doesn't seem to be too much that's wrong with the OPEN Act as an alternative to SOPA. It gives no power to private organizations, it combats piracy without censorship, and the *IAAs hate it - that can only be a plus. So the White House is looking for a positive answer to the question, why not that?
Other physicists do. Seriously, it's a huge deal among physicists. Huge. More than one of my textbooks came with a list of nobel prize winners in the back alongside the periodic table, basic constants, etc. My professors would always point out when we discussed a topic for which someone got the prize.
Hawking radiation only came up in class when a student brought it up. Granted I only had one course in cosmology, maybe it would be discussed more thoroughly if I had continued on that path, but there are a thousand different things with people's names on them. I'm not trying to be down on Hawking, but I think he's a little resented among physicists for his reputation.
If you qualify for public healthcare (Medicare) then it's okay. Like you said, not great but functional most of the time. The big issue is for people who have jobs and don't qualify, but who aren't rich - a medical emergency which isn't covered by their insurance, if they have insurance, will easily bankrupt any middle class family.
I've got an instinctive negative reaction to news like this since it usually has something to do with the RIAA or such extorting money, but as long as this only applies to sites that really are just leaching off of newspaper content I'm not going to cry about it. Or course that isn't what's going to happen, in a few months we'll hear about how they're suing some sap with a two-bit blog who made a comment about such-and-such.
Ah well. I give a little more slack to the newspapers since they're one of the few commercial enterprises that actually do provide a necessary public service. Ideally, of course, they would be not-for-profit - every time we spend seven weeks hearing about Micheal Jackson and about nothing important I punch a stockholder in the teeth. None the less, we would be far worse off if the New York Times and the Washington Post weren't around.
Clicking a hyperlink may result in being directed to a malicious site.
Is this still a problem? Unless I was still using Internet Explorer 6 or whatever, I don't see why I'd be afraid of a website. Running an unknown executable, yes. Links that contain personal information in the URL, yes, though those wouldn't be in an email or QR code. But I don't see what there is to worry about here.
You're basically saying "well, I had such and such disease, so I know 'alternative' therapy doesn't work and people die"
He said, "I knew a bunch of people who tried stuff like this and they're all dead now." It's still anecdotal his anecdote is a more substantial one than what you suggest.
cf. Sony Music's rootkit code for the other one that comes up all the time on Slashdot.
This is just about the worst example that you could possibly have come up with. The rootkit was one example of an issue from a very problematic company. Hell, Slashdot had a pole for Sony gaffes: http://slashdot.org/pollBooth.pl?qid=2166
"Very few." Peh.
Obviously, a better example would involve cars. How about Toyota? Their only gaffe that comes to mind was that faulty accelerator issue from 2009 which turned out to be no more common in Toyotas than in any other company's cars.
Calling a government "stable" when they're creating an uncontrollably deadly super flu is a bit of a stretch. I don't think that any genuinely stable government would do this.
It's a good point that things could stand to be more equitable, but you can't expect a county to turn around so quickly - a high polluting country has a lot of infrastructure that they depend on.
On the other hand, forcing a high polluting country to pay a low polluting country for carbon credits would be both an incentive for change and a means to help alleviate wealth disparity caused, in part, by that very same pollution. Unfortunately, the highest polluters are also the most influential, so this is unlikely to happen.
It's not much of a surprise. Kyoto was designed (intentionally or not) as a subsidy that would allow business as usual while just writing a check to Eastern Europe.
Because Eastern European countries have such great international bargaining clout? Come on. It's not a subsidy, it's not a conspiracy, it's an effort to do something good about something bad. They picked a year with a target that they thought they could hit. Obviously some places would be effected by this to a greater degree than others.
Doubtless there was some weedling and self-centered manipulation going on, so what? Whenever you have a broad and painful treaty like this there will always be someone hurting more than others - you make it as fair as you can and then you suck it up, because it has to be done regardless. My own country, the United States, pollutes far more by every metric than any of the signatories of the Kyoto treaty so we, to my chagrin, decided to take our ball and go home. Hopefully we'll step up and own to some of the problems that we've caused with the next one.
High speed rail has a host of benefits, but you're right: the TSA will probably ruin this. That said, we do have 22 years before they have a chance to ruin it so maybe, fingers crossed, they'll be gone by then?
Slashdot Mirror
They don't care about software patents, they care about patents on intellectual property. I... can't find a reference, but basically the pharma companies wanted to make sure that other countries wouldn't be able to exclude drugs when considering patent worthiness. So they got their legislators to put some sweeping language into a trade agreement insisting that all patents on intellectual property must be respected. The fact that software is patentable in the first place in the United States is thanks to a court decision, it's not legislative.
NPR had a good story about patents that covered this. I'd link it if I could find it.
It's actually the pharmaceutical companies that have lobbied most strongly for uncompromising patents on intellectual property. They make money hand over fist in the United States because they're allowed to patent drugs but, unlike every other country which allows drug patents, there are no laws in the US which set limits on the price of drugs. Hence, the pharmaceutical companies have an extreme interest in making sure that things stay this way.
I'm sure that the patent trolls also do their share of lobbying, but they're small fries comparatively.
We never and still don't have a cure for Small Pox, we have a vaccine. And, while I'm not an expert, saying that we have a "cure" for Scurvy is just silly. I'm not really supporting the GP here, I don't really know, but your examples aren't much better.
If they want to "license" us a copy of the game, then we should be able to exchange media when ours is scratched by our kids playing frisbee. We should also be able to get a replacement if we break the disc.
Some companies will do this, not out of the goodness of their hearts but to preserve this fabrication that when you go into a store and buy a thing you haven't really bought it - you've just licensed it in a manner indistinguishable from a purchase.
Rights over copyrighted material distributed on physical media isn't new or legally ambiguous. First sale doctrine is more than a hundred years old and it comes from almost the same situation - book publishers trying to control books after they'd been purchased. The only new thing here is the ability for copyright holders to build failure into their product: I'm sure that book publishers would have been ecstatic if they had had a way to get the books to automatically erase themselves.
The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act was the first step in very much needed healthcare reform. Reform which will both improve quality of live for a very large number of Americans who have previously only had access to emergency rooms, but save us money in the long run ($143 billion over ten years according to the Congressional Budget Office):
http://cboblog.cbo.gov/?p=546
Interestingly, but not surprisingly, if you search for "Obamacare saves money", using the derisive name for the act coined by the neo-cons, you get editorial after editorial from conservative sources using anecdotal evidence to try a refute the CBO's finding. "I know a doctor who now prescribes Aspirin! Aspirin people!" Naturally, none of them have actually done any research on the subject. They're just haters, and they gonna hate.
See? See?!? Responsible, consumer-friendly legislation doesn't have to be anti-business.
We've got this thing in my country with the one political party saying that they're pro-consumer and trying to push laws that limit corporate abuses, and the other party saying that they're pro-business and trying to squash anything that would reduce corporate size and influence with the claim that it's necessary for jobs, the economy, etc. Well bullshit. Some consumer-friendly legislation may be anti-established business, but that's not a negative, just thinning the herd. Get rid of the sick and bring on the new.
This was well said, despite the Godwin. I hope some mod notices this.
How can a price be a 'market price' when it's the result of a government-granted monopoly? If you want people to pay a market price for a drug, then eliminate drug patents.
Exactly. There's no such thing as a free market for drugs - when people literally have a choice between paying whatever the drug company wants or dying, there's no room for market forces.
This is only an issue because the United States is unique as the only country in the world which allows people to be subjected to this choice. Every other country which allows for drug patents also regulates the price of drugs, so that companies can't just charge whatever they want.
Okay, I'll buy that. I'm not sure that most theists really believe that they can prove the existence of god, but most that I've talked to do seem to have some rational for their belief.
By the way, agnosticism, in the proper sense of the word, actually makes a strong claim - that whether god exists or not - is fundamentally unknown and cannot ever be determined. In other words, it is a belief system, unlike e.g. weak atheism. Unfortunately, because many people don't quite understand what this actually means, it evolved into a misguided synonym for weak atheism.
By your definition just about everyone, from theist to atheist, is also an agnostic. That's the whole crux of faith - belief without proof. Maybe you're right about the original meaning of the word, I don't know, but sticking by that definition makes the word essentially useless, because it applies to everyone.
Nope. Megaphones are restricted in many cities - permit required. It's one of those restrictions of dubious legal standing, I'm not sure that it has ever been tested in court, so you might make the claim that it's constitutionally protected even though it's not allowed. None the less, the fact remains that if Sockatume walks around in a city using a microphone to broadcast the notion that Jackie_Chan_Fan's post is sophomoric and inane he will probably attract the attention of police and receive a fine.
Steam activation is better than Ubisoft activation, but it's still activation. It's still a negative feature. There are plenty of good games that don't use Steam DRM, or any DRM, that you might consider.
The Humble Indie Bundle said that their most requested feature was Steam support. It just blew me away that people would be so dependent that they would be asking for DRM.
Prince of Persia (2008) was released on the PC completely DRM free. When I heard that I bought it immediately and then emailed Ubisoft to let them know why. They never responded. There was a statement by someone from Ubisoft at the time as well, "This way no one can make any excuses." (I'm paraphrasing, I don't remember it exactly.)
Shortly after that is when they started experimenting with their ridiculous DRM. Really wish they had released the sales numbers, and whatever piracy data they have, for this and their other games. There doesn't seem any compelling reason to keep it secret and being able to actually do some real analysis could go a long way towards addressing the problem.
Of course, that assumes that it's really about piracy. I think DRM is really about control, but that's a separate issue.
Console games don't require activation, or at least most of them don't. That's the real key here - yes they're DRMed to the gills, but you still retain control of your purchased games. As long as you don't want to play online anyway. And as long as you buy things on disc and not through the online store.
Many people here are saying that we need to get away from DNS as it is now, use Namecoin or some other distributed method. That's great for the long term, certainly something we should work towards, but for the moment there doesn't seem to be too much that's wrong with the OPEN Act as an alternative to SOPA. It gives no power to private organizations, it combats piracy without censorship, and the *IAAs hate it - that can only be a plus. So the White House is looking for a positive answer to the question, why not that?
Who remembers nobel prize winners?
Other physicists do. Seriously, it's a huge deal among physicists. Huge. More than one of my textbooks came with a list of nobel prize winners in the back alongside the periodic table, basic constants, etc. My professors would always point out when we discussed a topic for which someone got the prize.
Hawking radiation only came up in class when a student brought it up. Granted I only had one course in cosmology, maybe it would be discussed more thoroughly if I had continued on that path, but there are a thousand different things with people's names on them. I'm not trying to be down on Hawking, but I think he's a little resented among physicists for his reputation.
If you qualify for public healthcare (Medicare) then it's okay. Like you said, not great but functional most of the time. The big issue is for people who have jobs and don't qualify, but who aren't rich - a medical emergency which isn't covered by their insurance, if they have insurance, will easily bankrupt any middle class family.
I've got an instinctive negative reaction to news like this since it usually has something to do with the RIAA or such extorting money, but as long as this only applies to sites that really are just leaching off of newspaper content I'm not going to cry about it. Or course that isn't what's going to happen, in a few months we'll hear about how they're suing some sap with a two-bit blog who made a comment about such-and-such.
Ah well. I give a little more slack to the newspapers since they're one of the few commercial enterprises that actually do provide a necessary public service. Ideally, of course, they would be not-for-profit - every time we spend seven weeks hearing about Micheal Jackson and about nothing important I punch a stockholder in the teeth. None the less, we would be far worse off if the New York Times and the Washington Post weren't around.
Clicking a hyperlink may result in being directed to a malicious site.
Is this still a problem? Unless I was still using Internet Explorer 6 or whatever, I don't see why I'd be afraid of a website. Running an unknown executable, yes. Links that contain personal information in the URL, yes, though those wouldn't be in an email or QR code. But I don't see what there is to worry about here.
You're basically saying "well, I had such and such disease, so I know 'alternative' therapy doesn't work and people die"
He said, "I knew a bunch of people who tried stuff like this and they're all dead now." It's still anecdotal his anecdote is a more substantial one than what you suggest.
cf. Sony Music's rootkit code for the other one that comes up all the time on Slashdot.
This is just about the worst example that you could possibly have come up with. The rootkit was one example of an issue from a very problematic company. Hell, Slashdot had a pole for Sony gaffes: http://slashdot.org/pollBooth.pl?qid=2166
"Very few." Peh.
Obviously, a better example would involve cars. How about Toyota? Their only gaffe that comes to mind was that faulty accelerator issue from 2009 which turned out to be no more common in Toyotas than in any other company's cars.
Calling a government "stable" when they're creating an uncontrollably deadly super flu is a bit of a stretch. I don't think that any genuinely stable government would do this.
It's a good point that things could stand to be more equitable, but you can't expect a county to turn around so quickly - a high polluting country has a lot of infrastructure that they depend on.
On the other hand, forcing a high polluting country to pay a low polluting country for carbon credits would be both an incentive for change and a means to help alleviate wealth disparity caused, in part, by that very same pollution. Unfortunately, the highest polluters are also the most influential, so this is unlikely to happen.
It's not much of a surprise. Kyoto was designed (intentionally or not) as a subsidy that would allow business as usual while just writing a check to Eastern Europe.
Because Eastern European countries have such great international bargaining clout? Come on. It's not a subsidy, it's not a conspiracy, it's an effort to do something good about something bad. They picked a year with a target that they thought they could hit. Obviously some places would be effected by this to a greater degree than others.
Doubtless there was some weedling and self-centered manipulation going on, so what? Whenever you have a broad and painful treaty like this there will always be someone hurting more than others - you make it as fair as you can and then you suck it up, because it has to be done regardless. My own country, the United States, pollutes far more by every metric than any of the signatories of the Kyoto treaty so we, to my chagrin, decided to take our ball and go home. Hopefully we'll step up and own to some of the problems that we've caused with the next one.
The TSA has already started randomly searching vehicles:
http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2011/10/like-tsa-youll-love-vipr/247221/
High speed rail has a host of benefits, but you're right: the TSA will probably ruin this. That said, we do have 22 years before they have a chance to ruin it so maybe, fingers crossed, they'll be gone by then?