If you own the property you live on, you are identified as the owner at the registry of deeds (or county clerk's office, or what have you). You can search many registries online -- I do it all the time.
I suppose there are various ways to get around this (set up a trust or shell corporation to own the land?) but it wouldn't be simple
Not quite. In 1922, the Supreme Court held that insofar as the federal antitrust laws apply only to interstate commerce, baseball is beyond the reach of those laws, because a baseball game is played in only one state at a time. (If you think this is peculiar reasoning, you are not alone. Legal scholars generally agree that this is one of the worst opinions Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. ever wrote, the other major contender being a case in which a woman was permitted to be sterilized because she had a low IQ.)
Congress has "granted" baseball an exemption insofar as it has not corrected the Supreme Court's decision, a decision which subsequent Supreme Court cases have treated as binding though they have more or less acknowledged that the original decision was wrong.
Obviously anyone could invent a formal system which generates inconsistencies, and if you did, no one would care. But if one of the formal systems in common use -- say, algebra or analysis -- were found to generate inconsistencies, I think "uproar" would not be an inappropriate term.
I understand that Chaitin's work builds on Gödel's work in interesting ways -- so it's not just a "restatement" of Gödel's work -- but you're right that it hasn't "thrown some of the basic foundations of math into question."
(For those who don't know, Gödel proved that there are some mathematical hypotheses that can't be proven true or false. That was very surprising, but it didn't call into question any theorem which has been proven true. The only thing which could really throw the foundations of mathematics into an uproar would be to show that some hypothesis can be proven to be both true and false.)
Under the U.S. Constitution, criminal laws can't retroactively make an act criminal (ex post facto). In general, however, there's no reason why a law can't be retroactive. By way of example, I believe at least one of the current tax cut proposals being debated in Congress would retroactively lower tax rates.
The old term "craft" seems more apt than "art" -- programming's a lot more like carpentry than painting or dance. Unfortunately, that term has been degraded to mean the practice of making toaster cozies from yarn and suchlike.
As for writing mathematical proofs, that strikes me as a unique sort of activity that has hardly anything in common with either the arts or craft work. That I might find a particular proof "beautiful" in the same way I find a painting, the Grand Canyon or the night sky beautiful doesn't mean all those things are works of art.
Likewise in the Tomb Raider series, where LC is required to execute several jumps in succession which are physically impossible (even if one assumed LC to have superhuman strength) to reach a goal not otherwise visible to the player.
The government takes estate tax only on estates with a value over the exemption (which will shortly be $1mm). The government doesn't benefit from very many wills.
As for the lottery, what exactly was your first clue that running it wasn't a wholly charitable act on the part of the government?
Which would indicate that copyright beyond the life of the author would be unjust...
Not necessarily. Gen. Grant wrote his memoirs while he was dying to provide for his family after his death. If copyrights were always limited to life, we wouldn't have that important book.
Also, to be picky, but a trust isn't a legal entity, but a fiduciary relationship between a settlor (the person who puts the property in trust) and the trustee(s) (the person(s) who hold legal title to the property in trust). A trust can't sue or be sued in the name of the trust, for example, whereas a corporation can.
Exactly right. For this reason, if you pick up the Columbia Journalism Review ("CJR") or Editor & Publisher or any other publication aimed at journalists, there are all kinds of ads along the lines of "Xerox(tm): Not Just Any Copier" and "There's Only One Jeep(tm)." Companies place these ads to urge journalists not to dilute their trademarks, and also to build a record they can point to in court showing that they've made efforts to protect their trademarks.
Interesting idea; won't work. If he stood by and did nothing while OpenSSH made use of his trademark, the trademark would be destroyed and he couldn't thereafter enforce it. For the same reason, if he explicitly gave OpenSSH permission to do that, the trademark would be destroyed and he couldn't enforce it.
Put another way, the trademark is created by and is enforceable because of the identification of the word (or logo, or whatever) with a particular product in the mind of the consumer. You can't make a private agreement to sever this identification and still enforce the trademark.
You're nearer, than my head is to my pillow,
Nearer, than the wind is to the willow.
[ . . . ]
You're nearer, than the ivy to the wall is,
Nearer, than the winter to the fall is.
Leave me, but when you're away, you'll know,
You're nearer, for I love you so!
It is very clear that you can waive some constitutional rights and that you can do so as part of a contract. What rights can't you waive? Well, you probably can't sell yourself into slavery, sell your right to refuse medical care, or sell your right to free speech in its entirety. But there's no general rule that says you can't agree as part of a contract not to say certain things, and in fact such contracts are regularly enforced.
And it shows. Nondisclosure, confidentiality and nondisparagement agreements are in most cases perfectly legal. That you have a right to free speech doesn't mean you can't bargain it away.
Interestingly, Paul Starr, a liberal commentator, has criticized Sim games on the ground that their hidden premises are too conservative:
While playing SimCity with my eleven-year-old daughter, I railed against what I thought was a built-in bias of the program against mixed-use development. "It's just the way the game works," she said a bit impatiently.
My daughter's words seemed oddly familiar. A few months earlier someone had said virtually the same thing to me, but where? It suddenly flashed back: the earlier conversation had taken place while I was working at the White House on the development of the Clinton health plan. We were discussing the simulation model likely to be used by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) to "score" proposals for health care reform. When I criticized one assumption, a colleague said to me, "Don't waste your breath," warning that it was hopeless to get CBO to change. Policy would have to adjust.
I am looking at an end-of-the-year pay stub for a number in the low six digits, of which approximately 36% was taken in all federal and Massachusetts taxes. Even rolling in a few more thousand for property taxes, sales taxes (5% here), gasoline and liquor taxes (not enormous but not insubstantial), I am hard pressed to see that "much more than half" -- hell, even half -- of that income is going to the government, and I am an exceedingly highly taxed individual. I can't believe that the average American pays a lot more.
One could make some more dodgy calculations, e.g., "I paid my contractor $5000, he'll pay $1500 in taxes, so that's another $1500 that I'm paying the government," but if you're going to go down that road you should back out the value of the government services received by that contractor (e.g., the expense saved by the contractor in not having to build a road to get to the job site).
Slashdot Mirror
No, both were civil cases. The jury in this case awarded damages.
I suppose there are various ways to get around this (set up a trust or shell corporation to own the land?) but it wouldn't be simple
Congress has "granted" baseball an exemption insofar as it has not corrected the Supreme Court's decision, a decision which subsequent Supreme Court cases have treated as binding though they have more or less acknowledged that the original decision was wrong.
Obviously anyone could invent a formal system which generates inconsistencies, and if you did, no one would care. But if one of the formal systems in common use -- say, algebra or analysis -- were found to generate inconsistencies, I think "uproar" would not be an inappropriate term.
(For those who don't know, Gödel proved that there are some mathematical hypotheses that can't be proven true or false. That was very surprising, but it didn't call into question any theorem which has been proven true. The only thing which could really throw the foundations of mathematics into an uproar would be to show that some hypothesis can be proven to be both true and false.)
Under the U.S. Constitution, criminal laws can't retroactively make an act criminal (ex post facto). In general, however, there's no reason why a law can't be retroactive. By way of example, I believe at least one of the current tax cut proposals being debated in Congress would retroactively lower tax rates.
At the very least, no one has the time to maintain a meaningful intimate relationship while also finding the time to configure X.
An excellent idea. Anyone got a pointer to a digital image of a perfect circle?
As for writing mathematical proofs, that strikes me as a unique sort of activity that has hardly anything in common with either the arts or craft work. That I might find a particular proof "beautiful" in the same way I find a painting, the Grand Canyon or the night sky beautiful doesn't mean all those things are works of art.
Likewise in the Tomb Raider series, where LC is required to execute several jumps in succession which are physically impossible (even if one assumed LC to have superhuman strength) to reach a goal not otherwise visible to the player.
As for the lottery, what exactly was your first clue that running it wasn't a wholly charitable act on the part of the government?
Not necessarily. Gen. Grant wrote his memoirs while he was dying to provide for his family after his death. If copyrights were always limited to life, we wouldn't have that important book.
Also, to be picky, but a trust isn't a legal entity, but a fiduciary relationship between a settlor (the person who puts the property in trust) and the trustee(s) (the person(s) who hold legal title to the property in trust). A trust can't sue or be sued in the name of the trust, for example, whereas a corporation can.
I don't think this works. The transfer of ownership takes place when you add your kids.
Exactly right. For this reason, if you pick up the Columbia Journalism Review ("CJR") or Editor & Publisher or any other publication aimed at journalists, there are all kinds of ads along the lines of "Xerox(tm): Not Just Any Copier" and "There's Only One Jeep(tm)." Companies place these ads to urge journalists not to dilute their trademarks, and also to build a record they can point to in court showing that they've made efforts to protect their trademarks.
Put another way, the trademark is created by and is enforceable because of the identification of the word (or logo, or whatever) with a particular product in the mind of the consumer. You can't make a private agreement to sever this identification and still enforce the trademark.
It is very clear that you can waive some constitutional rights and that you can do so as part of a contract. What rights can't you waive? Well, you probably can't sell yourself into slavery, sell your right to refuse medical care, or sell your right to free speech in its entirety. But there's no general rule that says you can't agree as part of a contract not to say certain things, and in fact such contracts are regularly enforced.
I am not aware of any general rule of law in any jurisdiction that says contracts cannot have terms binding in perpetuity.
And it shows. Nondisclosure, confidentiality and nondisparagement agreements are in most cases perfectly legal. That you have a right to free speech doesn't mean you can't bargain it away.
(Score:5, My Personal Hero Of The Day)
The player comes with a $25 rebate on Depends(tm).
(Score:5, Ultimate Pog)
One could make some more dodgy calculations, e.g., "I paid my contractor $5000, he'll pay $1500 in taxes, so that's another $1500 that I'm paying the government," but if you're going to go down that road you should back out the value of the government services received by that contractor (e.g., the expense saved by the contractor in not having to build a road to get to the job site).