I make bare assertions... and you can't dispute them. All you can do is point out that they're bare assertions. Do you even realize that you are attempting to distract people from your inability to argue your point? Oops.
Does slashdot have a morons list? If so, welcome to it.
I'll never be able to compete with Giant Grocery's supply chain.
Good thing you weren't around when Jeff Bezos was doodling on a paper napkin. Or when Fred Smith was writing his senior thesis. Or when Sam Walton was frustrated with his local stores, and founded Walmart. "Don't try! You'll never succeed!"
Sorry, but your examples are pathetic. You have no sense of history.
In fact, I consider such regulation to be absolutely necessary to the operation of a free market.
Why? Because you're an advocate of free software? Remember, it's freeDOM, not zero cost. Regulations interfering with the relationship between two peacefully cooperating entities destroy, not create free markets. Freedom means you DO NOT have somebody forcing you to do things.
There are very few markets which have high costs of entry. In general, government regulation increases the cost of entry to a market, so regulation is no solution to monopolies.
The point of the cartel is to restrict output and raise prices (lower supply is needed to support higher prices). However, every cartel member has an incentive to cheat, and little reason to trust the other members not to cheat. Thus cartels always fall apart sooner rather than later.
I realize that some economists are idiots, and maunder the prattle you've been reciting. However, good economists predict that monopolies capture their regulators -- and isn't that the exact problem you've complained about a few posts earlier?
In no way does everyone know that the smiley face "came from Walmart".
Agreed. I'm not sure that they claim a trademark on the smiley face; either with or without hands. HOWEVER, their continued use of it is dependent upon their retaining control. So yes, they need to fight the other person's registration.
As far as I'm concerned, the USPTO should definitely rule that it has neither trademark nor copyright protection.
If a graphical logo is a creative work, you can indeed copyright it. No, you can't copyright something as short as a name. Ashleigh Brilliant created a whole collection of 19-word postcard sayings, and he managed to copyright them. At the time the Copyright Office was very hesitant to grant a copyright for something so short.
Terms such as [socialism] evolve as the world changes.
Sure. Every socialist society today is a market society, and yet socialism was initially predicated on the elimination of the market as a system for allocating goods.
There's no such thing [as a fair transaction].
In a free market, every transaction is a fair transaction **in the eye of the trader**. Since nobody is forcing them to trade, by definition if they trade, they must BOTH think they're gaining an advantage on the other.
Capitalism plays on greed and selfishness
Sure. That's why State Capitalism (such as you had in Russia) is so horrible, because it lacked the moderating influence of competition. Every uneven market intervention (subsidies, tariffs, price caps, minimum wages, windfall profit taxes) is a little tiny bit of State Capitalism trying to poke its nose into the tent.
Tell that to all the railroads that competed with each other. See http://russnelson.com/nyrr . You may try to point out that there are practically no competing lines now. Mostly true, yes. However, that is after 100 years of the ICC and STB. That just makes the parent poster's point that regulations are anti-competitive and favor the politically powerful over the market entrant.
I see that you are trying to shift the topic over to a definition of socialism. Do you think it will work?
How about you explain why monopolies aren't bad when they're regulated, when in the same posting, you acknowledge that monopolies in fact ARE bad because they're poorly regulated.
You *do* realize that a government is the ultimate monopoly? How can you expect a monopoly to rescue you from other monopolies?? Logically, you would expect them to cooperate. If you have faith in a class-based analysis of society, you would expect classes to assist others in the same class before assisting someone else.
The whole point behind ownership is that you have control. The state doesn't need to own the means of production if it can control it via regulation. Command and control socialism has shifted from ownership to regulation. Doesn't mean it's not socialism.
Capitalism is not "laissez-faire", capitalism collapses into cartels and monopolies in a laissez-faire environment.
Do you have any evidence for this? You realize that the theory is that cartels collapse and free markets don't sustain monopoly prices (monopolies per se are not bad; it is monopoly pricing that is not bad). If you're going to come up with something that goes against the theory, you need strong evidence.
Walmart is trying to avoid the same situation Linux was in a few years ago. Everybody knew that Linux came from Linus, and yet the USPTO (the "M" for Morons is silent) allowed some mental defective to register "Linux" as a trademark. Much confusion and angst ensued until Linus was able to wrest his trademark back. The way trademarks work, Walmart MUST try to defend their common-law trademark against a rogue trademark registration.
In this case, Walmart is the little guy defending itself against the Big, Bad USPTO.
It's a great hack, but completely impractical. If you had a flat surface on which you could put something, you'd put a keyboard there, not a simulation of one. Sure, this device is smaller, however, you can get a flex keyboard from Radio Shack that rolls up about as small. Sure, this device uses bluetooth, but given that you can only use it when you have a flat level surface, a cable wouldn't be much of a hinderance.
They're already being regulated... by the free market, which will decide whether the company will prosper, merely hang on by the skin of its teeth, or go bankrupt. The great thing is that the company gets to lobby us as much as it wants, but if it lobbies us too much, it will lose money, to be replaced by another company that won't lobby so much. Plus, we can collude with each other to vote on "bankrupt" if they treat us badly.
Slashdot Mirror
You defeat your own argument by making appeal to subsistance farming you tried to support.
That's not even BAD grammer. Its something worse that.
I make bare assertions ... and you can't dispute them. All you can do is point out that they're bare assertions. Do you even realize that you are attempting to distract people from your inability to argue your point? Oops.
Does slashdot have a morons list? If so, welcome to it.
I'll never be able to compete with Giant Grocery's supply chain.
Good thing you weren't around when Jeff Bezos was doodling on a paper napkin. Or when Fred Smith was writing his senior thesis. Or when Sam Walton was frustrated with his local stores, and founded Walmart. "Don't try! You'll never succeed!"
Sorry, but your examples are pathetic. You have no sense of history.
In fact, I consider such regulation to be absolutely necessary to the operation of a free market.
Why? Because you're an advocate of free software? Remember, it's freeDOM, not zero cost. Regulations interfering with the relationship between two peacefully cooperating entities destroy, not create free markets. Freedom means you DO NOT have somebody forcing you to do things.
No, you could create them yourselves. Never heard of subsistence farmers?
Trade is good, trade makes your life MUCH easier. You aren't forced to trade, though.
Don't you threaten not to reply to me, or I won't reply to you!!!
Could you rewrite your post, only addressing my point this time? The purpose of ownership is control. Why ELSE would you own something?
There are very few markets which have high costs of entry. In general, government regulation increases the cost of entry to a market, so regulation is no solution to monopolies.
The point of the cartel is to restrict output and raise prices (lower supply is needed to support higher prices). However, every cartel member has an incentive to cheat, and little reason to trust the other members not to cheat. Thus cartels always fall apart sooner rather than later.
I realize that some economists are idiots, and maunder the prattle you've been reciting. However, good economists predict that monopolies capture their regulators -- and isn't that the exact problem you've complained about a few posts earlier?
How much longer do you think Microsoft's monopoly is going to last? Free markets don't tolerate fools or monopolies gladly.
In no way does everyone know that the smiley face "came from Walmart".
Agreed. I'm not sure that they claim a trademark on the smiley face; either with or without hands. HOWEVER, their continued use of it is dependent upon their retaining control. So yes, they need to fight the other person's registration.
As far as I'm concerned, the USPTO should definitely rule that it has neither trademark nor copyright protection.
They're a smaller enterprise than the US Government. And besides, they're unarmed.
Don't call me dumbass, you dumb dumbass ass!
If a graphical logo is a creative work, you can indeed copyright it. No, you can't copyright something as short as a name. Ashleigh Brilliant created a whole collection of 19-word postcard sayings, and he managed to copyright them. At the time the Copyright Office was very hesitant to grant a copyright for something so short.
Terms such as [socialism] evolve as the world changes.
Sure. Every socialist society today is a market society, and yet socialism was initially predicated on the elimination of the market as a system for allocating goods.
There's no such thing [as a fair transaction].
In a free market, every transaction is a fair transaction **in the eye of the trader**. Since nobody is forcing them to trade, by definition if they trade, they must BOTH think they're gaining an advantage on the other.
Capitalism plays on greed and selfishness
Sure. That's why State Capitalism (such as you had in Russia) is so horrible, because it lacked the moderating influence of competition. Every uneven market intervention (subsidies, tariffs, price caps, minimum wages, windfall profit taxes) is a little tiny bit of State Capitalism trying to poke its nose into the tent.
Free markets don't work for most services.
Tell that to all the railroads that competed with each other. See http://russnelson.com/nyrr . You may try to point out that there are practically no competing lines now. Mostly true, yes. However, that is after 100 years of the ICC and STB. That just makes the parent poster's point that regulations are anti-competitive and favor the politically powerful over the market entrant.
I see that you are trying to shift the topic over to a definition of socialism. Do you think it will work?
How about you explain why monopolies aren't bad when they're regulated, when in the same posting, you acknowledge that monopolies in fact ARE bad because they're poorly regulated.
You *do* realize that a government is the ultimate monopoly? How can you expect a monopoly to rescue you from other monopolies?? Logically, you would expect them to cooperate. If you have faith in a class-based analysis of society, you would expect classes to assist others in the same class before assisting someone else.
The whole point behind ownership is that you have control. The state doesn't need to own the means of production if it can control it via regulation. Command and control socialism has shifted from ownership to regulation. Doesn't mean it's not socialism.
Capitalism is not "laissez-faire", capitalism collapses into cartels and monopolies in a laissez-faire environment.
Do you have any evidence for this? You realize that the theory is that cartels collapse and free markets don't sustain monopoly prices (monopolies per se are not bad; it is monopoly pricing that is not bad). If you're going to come up with something that goes against the theory, you need strong evidence.
Walmart is trying to avoid the same situation Linux was in a few years ago. Everybody knew that Linux came from Linus, and yet the USPTO (the "M" for Morons is silent) allowed some mental defective to register "Linux" as a trademark. Much confusion and angst ensued until Linus was able to wrest his trademark back. The way trademarks work, Walmart MUST try to defend their common-law trademark against a rogue trademark registration.
In this case, Walmart is the little guy defending itself against the Big, Bad USPTO.
fsck.ext2: No such file or directory while trying to open Walmart
You forgot to say "I'm not a lawyer, so you shouldn't listen to me."
You can copyright a logo.
Nokia 770. 800x480 screen. Grab a bluetooth keyboard and mouse, and you're all set. (sort-of)
It's a great hack, but completely impractical. If you had a flat surface on which you could put something, you'd put a keyboard there, not a simulation of one. Sure, this device is smaller, however, you can get a flex keyboard from Radio Shack that rolls up about as small. Sure, this device uses bluetooth, but given that you can only use it when you have a flat level surface, a cable wouldn't be much of a hinderance.
They're already being regulated ... by the free market, which will decide whether the company will prosper, merely hang on by the skin of its teeth, or go bankrupt. The great thing is that the company gets to lobby us as much as it wants, but if it lobbies us too much, it will lose money, to be replaced by another company that won't lobby so much. Plus, we can collude with each other to vote on "bankrupt" if they treat us badly.
Javascript is so passe'. These days you want AJAX.
Is that free as in beer, or free as in Open Source? :-)