The basic patents have already expired. The main patent 3D Systems sued over is effectively a software patent on a detail that improves printing quality of some objects. The Formlabs hardware has many non-infringing uses, so there was no justification on preventing its shipment based on that patent. In addition, 3D Systems had no way of knowing whether the Formlabs software would be infringing it (there are workarounds that can be used to achieve the same effect in a different way). The whole lawsuit looks like they were simply trying to make a nuisance of themselves to hinder the launch of the Formlabs printer.
(As for the later patents by 3D Systems, they look pretty crappy to me.)
The basic 3D Systems patents have expired or are expiring within less than a year. They have some later patents, but they are not essential. Since Formlabs hadn't started shipping anything when 3D Systems filed their suit, this was also a bit of a fishing expedition, since they really couldn't know what, if anything, Formlabs was infringing.
This is some last gasp effort to hold back the tide of low cost competitors a little longer. I'm not sure whether that makes them "patent trolls", you have to decide that for yourself.
What I think is that it should be obvious that parties that are 95% financed from public sources, individual donations, and government matching funds are not "owned by the exact same abusive feudalistic companies". Since they behave in many ways like US parties, therefore there is something wrong with attributing US political behavior to big money.
Unless its in the wallet on your own computer, how do you know its not fiat money?
One can debate at length about what "defines" fiat money. But the distinguishing property that Bitcoin has (and that fiat currencies don't have) is that no political entity can control the money supply.
When your bitcoins are with Mt. Gox, how can you verify that they haven't been shuffled off somewhere else?
Because ensuring that is the primary purpose of the Bitcoin protocol (however, as noted above, that has nothing to do with whether Bitcoin is fiat currency or not).
Fluoridation is probably not harmful to most people. But it is not used in Europe and probably not very effective either. Where it survives a cost benefit analysis is doubtful. I doubt it would pass today, unless there was a big industry lobby pushing it.
How are European politicians "owned by the exact same abusive feudalistic companies"? Many European nations have public campaign financing and little corporate money in their elections.
Last time this came up (half a dozen years ago? a dozen years ago?) someone made exactly such a plugin for Firefox. You'd give it a bunch of keywords and it would go out perform searches and random page downloads. It doesn't seem to exist anymore, though.
The short answer is: if you want some measure of anonymity, boot your laptop from a DVD (or other read-only medium) with a pure Linux distribution on it, then use public WiFi to access the Internet. You may want to verify the DVD checksum multiple ways.
It's not perfect, but it has better chances than anything more complicated you are likely to be able to come up with.
Trouble is, I don't see any business offered on his site. There aren't even ads, let along paid services. That makes getting a trademark iffy (at least in the US).
Seems to me like there are plenty of Obama supporters here. Change one vote at a time, where you actually happen to be.
I think there is another reason this community is particularly important: Europeans keep misrepresenting the success of progressive policies in Europe (mostly out of ignorance, partly out of nationalism and anti-Americanism), and Obama's policies are mostly just warmed over European progressive policies. People need to stand up and speak out so that we don't repeat Europe's mistakes.
It says that they are young idealists who got taken in by a marketing machine. I dunno, what are you trying to get at?
I mean, we live in a democracy, so anybody from closet-Marxists to closet-fascists, from illiterate to Nobel prize winners, from homeless to Bill Gates votes. So to change their votes, we need to talk. Isn't that what we are doing?
If you don't register it, your protections are more limited. You still need to indicate an unregistered trademark with "TM". And you actually need to use it to identify a product or service.
It doesn't need to be registered, but it does need to be marked. He doesn't seem to have done that. Furthermore, if you don't register it, your options for enforcing it are limited. Also, you can only trademark an actual product or service; what product or service is he offering? I don't even see advertising on his site.
What Adecco did is sleazy and dishonest. But you do have to take some minimal (and cheap) measures to actually protect your business. And nothing will protect you from competition.
No, it doesn't defeat the point at all. A "central bank" controls the money supply according to political and economic whims. Nobody can do that for Bitcoin. Bitcoin works like gold and banknotes used to work, not like fiat currency in an account.
Oh, please keep going! It is fascinating to see what kinds of bizarre rationalizations Europeans come up with for their anti-American bigotry, and how blind they are to how their own political systems work.
Did you vote in your last local, state, and federal elections? Did you vote for a third party candidate? If not, don't complain about "candidates being owned by anyone".
Obama certainly had better IT, but that was far down on the list of factors.
Quite to the contrary: being able to tell each audience the lies that audience was vulnerable to, and being able to discredit Romney with just the right accusations for each segment of voters, was why Obama managed to get a second term. Objectively, based on his record and the contradictions between his promises and policies, he should have been kicked out and lost badly.
Romney wasn't as good as Obama at lying, that's why he lost. (It might also have made him a slightly better president.)
This isn't the Land of the Free my grandfather and great-grandfather fought for and that isn't me saying it, straight from the horses mouth.
You think bad stuff wasn't happening 30 or 60 or 90 years ago in the US? Nixon, Hiroshima, the Dust Bowl, the stock market crash, the robber barons, Jim Crow, slavery? In many ways, the country has greatly improved. In some ways it has gotten worse, and those are the ones this generation needs to tackle. Each generation in every country has its cross to bear. Ours is comparatively light these days.
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The basic patents have already expired. The main patent 3D Systems sued over is effectively a software patent on a detail that improves printing quality of some objects. The Formlabs hardware has many non-infringing uses, so there was no justification on preventing its shipment based on that patent. In addition, 3D Systems had no way of knowing whether the Formlabs software would be infringing it (there are workarounds that can be used to achieve the same effect in a different way). The whole lawsuit looks like they were simply trying to make a nuisance of themselves to hinder the launch of the Formlabs printer.
(As for the later patents by 3D Systems, they look pretty crappy to me.)
Oh, my, the sky is falling!
Yes, and right there you have it: that's 27 years ago and the patents are expiring.
It is, and that is what is supposed to happen when patents expire.
The basic 3D Systems patents have expired or are expiring within less than a year. They have some later patents, but they are not essential. Since Formlabs hadn't started shipping anything when 3D Systems filed their suit, this was also a bit of a fishing expedition, since they really couldn't know what, if anything, Formlabs was infringing.
This is some last gasp effort to hold back the tide of low cost competitors a little longer. I'm not sure whether that makes them "patent trolls", you have to decide that for yourself.
No, they aren't "owned by the public", they are owned by a small political elite.
What I think is that it should be obvious that parties that are 95% financed from public sources, individual donations, and government matching funds are not "owned by the exact same abusive feudalistic companies". Since they behave in many ways like US parties, therefore there is something wrong with attributing US political behavior to big money.
One can debate at length about what "defines" fiat money. But the distinguishing property that Bitcoin has (and that fiat currencies don't have) is that no political entity can control the money supply.
Because ensuring that is the primary purpose of the Bitcoin protocol (however, as noted above, that has nothing to do with whether Bitcoin is fiat currency or not).
Fluoridation is probably not harmful to most people. But it is not used in Europe and probably not very effective either. Where it survives a cost benefit analysis is doubtful. I doubt it would pass today, unless there was a big industry lobby pushing it.
"TM" is for unregistered trademarks. Registered trademarks use R in a circle.
How are European politicians "owned by the exact same abusive feudalistic companies"? Many European nations have public campaign financing and little corporate money in their elections.
Last time this came up (half a dozen years ago? a dozen years ago?) someone made exactly such a plugin for Firefox. You'd give it a bunch of keywords and it would go out perform searches and random page downloads. It doesn't seem to exist anymore, though.
The short answer is: if you want some measure of anonymity, boot your laptop from a DVD (or other read-only medium) with a pure Linux distribution on it, then use public WiFi to access the Internet. You may want to verify the DVD checksum multiple ways.
It's not perfect, but it has better chances than anything more complicated you are likely to be able to come up with.
Trouble is, I don't see any business offered on his site. There aren't even ads, let along paid services. That makes getting a trademark iffy (at least in the US).
Seems to me like there are plenty of Obama supporters here. Change one vote at a time, where you actually happen to be.
I think there is another reason this community is particularly important: Europeans keep misrepresenting the success of progressive policies in Europe (mostly out of ignorance, partly out of nationalism and anti-Americanism), and Obama's policies are mostly just warmed over European progressive policies. People need to stand up and speak out so that we don't repeat Europe's mistakes.
It says that they are young idealists who got taken in by a marketing machine. I dunno, what are you trying to get at?
I mean, we live in a democracy, so anybody from closet-Marxists to closet-fascists, from illiterate to Nobel prize winners, from homeless to Bill Gates votes. So to change their votes, we need to talk. Isn't that what we are doing?
If you don't register it, your protections are more limited. You still need to indicate an unregistered trademark with "TM". And you actually need to use it to identify a product or service.
It doesn't need to be registered, but it does need to be marked. He doesn't seem to have done that. Furthermore, if you don't register it, your options for enforcing it are limited. Also, you can only trademark an actual product or service; what product or service is he offering? I don't even see advertising on his site.
What Adecco did is sleazy and dishonest. But you do have to take some minimal (and cheap) measures to actually protect your business. And nothing will protect you from competition.
No, it doesn't defeat the point at all. A "central bank" controls the money supply according to political and economic whims. Nobody can do that for Bitcoin. Bitcoin works like gold and banknotes used to work, not like fiat currency in an account.
Bank (US and European) also hate the competition; Bitcoin undermines and threatens a lot of the traditional revenue sources for banks.
Oh, please keep going! It is fascinating to see what kinds of bizarre rationalizations Europeans come up with for their anti-American bigotry, and how blind they are to how their own political systems work.
As I was saying: the issues apparently didn't play much of a role in Obama's reelection.
You really don't know much about either US or European politics, do you.
So you're saying Obama didn't win on the issues or his record, he won because he had a better organization.
Did you vote in your last local, state, and federal elections? Did you vote for a third party candidate? If not, don't complain about "candidates being owned by anyone".
Quite to the contrary: being able to tell each audience the lies that audience was vulnerable to, and being able to discredit Romney with just the right accusations for each segment of voters, was why Obama managed to get a second term. Objectively, based on his record and the contradictions between his promises and policies, he should have been kicked out and lost badly.
Romney wasn't as good as Obama at lying, that's why he lost. (It might also have made him a slightly better president.)
You think bad stuff wasn't happening 30 or 60 or 90 years ago in the US? Nixon, Hiroshima, the Dust Bowl, the stock market crash, the robber barons, Jim Crow, slavery? In many ways, the country has greatly improved. In some ways it has gotten worse, and those are the ones this generation needs to tackle. Each generation in every country has its cross to bear. Ours is comparatively light these days.