In France, you apply for a patent, nobody looks at it except to check that it fits the technical requirements. There is no check in advance. The only check happens in court. You might wonder at this point: does that mean that I can patent anything? Yes. But that also means that the court will look at it more cautiously, since it won't have the seal of an official authority like the PAtent Office -- seal which does'nt prove anything anyway since we all know how the PTO cant't do his job!
I don't understand why everybody keeps being so PARANOID about those SURVEILANCE cameras, LOOKING AT YOU everywhere you go, after all if you're a GOOD CITIZEN, you don't RISK MUCH, as you're not a COMMIE, are'nt you?
In cafés, it is illegal to have an ashtray on the bar (it's ok on a table but not on the bar)
In my neighborhood in Paris, there is about 50 night bars that serve alcoholic beverages all night long, but it is forbidden to buy any kind alcohol from te grocery store after 8 PM.
Most bars have to close at 2AM. So some of them DO close at 2AM and open back a 2:30AM.
It is legal to do prostitution, but it is lillegal to profit indirectly from it. So prostitutes can't be married -- their spouse would be and are prosecuted.
The thing to keep in mind when making sweeping statements like this is that these corporations could not produce these products if we didn't buy them.
The thing to keep in mind is that 'we' would not buy those products if it weren't for the enormous amount of mind control material thrown at 'us', AKA advertising.
I've heard the argument that we're just too ignorant to buy better products, or that there simply aren't enough alternatives available, but I think that with the advent of the "one world economy" this argument is becoming less and less relevant...
For the free market to actually function properly, and according to the most hard core pro free market economists, 2 things (among others) are required: 1- that people have the information, and 2- that they have choice. Without information and choice, there is no free trade.
... but they are not the definite solution as libertarians would want us to believe. Not every government is fully corrupted, and not every corporation is fully efficient, and even then, for a corporation to function as a responsible 'citizen', it has to be subject to a direct consumer feedback, i.e. 'you do something bad, we don't buy your stuff'. But that kind of feedback requires trustable, reliable, and unbiased information. You have to know that product 'A' is made by corportion 'B' if you want to lobby the corporation into not acting badly. How do you do that if 'A' is one of its thousand of brands? Also, what if said company is not consumer oriented, but is otherwise business oriented? How would businesses care about other companies morales? Sure, you could boycott products from companies who use the evil corporation's services... but it can be really far fetched and the information is hard to find!
The problem with WTO, as there was with the once rejcted AMI (dunno the american acronym for, it's the agreement on investment), is the fact that it has very little possible democratic feedback. Plus, to advance their own immediate interests, governments will accept some stupid 'side notes' (that might have been instilled by some weird lobbying groups). Then... well it's too late, you can't really change it, you can't opt out easily,...you're screwed. It deprives citizens of the signing countries of most of their democratic rights. And I'm not even talking about the poor folks living in China.
How can an US court enforce a $10000 fine on Europeans? Also... in this kind of cases, I *think* that normally, at least here in France, the ruling court should be the in the defendants' jursidiction. But IANAL.
Per Megabyte / Per time charge make sense with switched circuit networks -- think telephone. On a packet switching network, it's does'nt fit in the economic model.
What you want to charge for is PRIORITY. For, the beauty of the internet is the fact that it can be used at 100%, total efficiency. You've started a long download? It will go very fast during the night, and slowdown during peak hours. There is NO reason why they should charge offpeak hours at all!!!
So to get back to priority. You want to make sure you always have good priority? You pay premium, and you get some guaranteed amount of the total bandwidth. You want to stay on the cheap? Well you can still use the offpeak hours at the max since not many people use it anyway.
What is it to gain from accepting hormons? NOTHING. Your analogy with crossroads is stupid: you need crossroads. We don't NEED hormons. As for the WTO ruling on this... my take on this is simple: the argument is flawed. The WTO treats the issue as black or white; it's either 'there is a proven risk and you're allowed to ban' or 'there's no proven risk so you should'nt ban'. That kind of reasoning makes sense when you're talking ANYTHING *BUT* security.
Re:Internet Explorer on Windows 2000 Professional (Score:1) by oki900 on 14:33 01 December 1999 FST (#64) (User Info) I have to agree that IE is soo much better than anything in linux for web browsing. I design web pages and they are designed with IE in mind and anyone using something else is unlikely to be able to even access the pages at all. My disclaimer that pops up for netscape
WARRING: you are using netscape, a now inferior browser due to it's desier to try to compete with microsoft instead of doing what it did best. It was crushed and hasn't worked properly since version 3. Please change your browser as soon as possible.
I design websites for a living, and have been for what, over 3 years maybe? And I find this utterly ridiculous. There is no reason to do this. It requires just a little bit more effort on the designer's part, but it's not like you would need to spend months of it. I think this is totally unnecessary.
who have dynamic IP addresses? And use AOL, and as a result, proxies? So in the end you can't count on IP addresses to track people. There is no way to know who's on a dynamic IP in a log.
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In France, you apply for a patent, nobody looks at it except to check that it fits the technical requirements. There is no check in advance. The only check happens in court.
You might wonder at this point: does that mean that I can patent anything? Yes. But that also means that the court will look at it more cautiously, since it won't have the seal of an official authority like the PAtent Office -- seal which does'nt prove anything anyway since we all know how the PTO cant't do his job!
I don't understand why everybody keeps being so PARANOID about those SURVEILANCE cameras, LOOKING AT YOU everywhere you go, after all if you're a GOOD CITIZEN, you don't RISK MUCH, as you're not a COMMIE, are'nt you?
I think you hit the "nail", so to speak, right on the head.
Well it was me. Forgot to login.
What you're trying to say is that nukes are designed not to do big holes in the ground.
Outlawing penises for being a rapist's tool? No kidding, that's exactly what some lesbian-feminists have in mind.
That's the weirdest computer programming article I've read in a long time!!! http://webster.cs.ucr.edu/ratc/ratc.html.
In cafés, it is illegal to have an ashtray on the bar (it's ok on a table but not on the bar)
In my neighborhood in Paris, there is about 50 night bars that serve alcoholic beverages all night long, but it is forbidden to buy any kind alcohol from te grocery store after 8 PM.
Most bars have to close at 2AM. So some of them DO close at 2AM and open back a 2:30AM.
It is legal to do prostitution, but it is lillegal to profit indirectly from it. So prostitutes can't be married -- their spouse would be and are prosecuted.
The point is that government action is often absolutely necessary, as opposed to what libertarians would want us to believe.
The central database has to be SOMEWHERE. Duh.
I have never had a problem where I was unable to find out who made a product I had purchased (for which I had a complaint).
Of course, smart ass!!! If you have no way of knowing it, you have no way of ever realising you were wrong either!
They won't get any money anyway, so what's the point?
FYI, there are several other registries than NSI now, including, among others, France Telecom ...
The thing to keep in mind when making sweeping statements like this is that these corporations could not produce these products if we didn't buy them.
The thing to keep in mind is that 'we' would not buy those products if it weren't for the enormous amount of mind control material thrown at 'us', AKA advertising.
I've heard the argument that we're just too ignorant to buy better products, or that there simply aren't enough alternatives available, but I think that with the advent of the "one world economy" this argument is becoming less and less relevant...
For the free market to actually function properly, and according to the most hard core pro free market economists, 2 things (among others) are required: 1- that people have the information, and 2- that they have choice. Without information and choice, there is no free trade.
... but they are not the definite solution as libertarians would want us to believe. Not every government is fully corrupted, and not every corporation is fully efficient, and even then, for a corporation to function as a responsible 'citizen', it has to be subject to a direct consumer feedback, i.e. 'you do something bad, we don't buy your stuff'. But that kind of feedback requires trustable, reliable, and unbiased information. You have to know that product 'A' is made by corportion 'B' if you want to lobby the corporation into not acting badly. How do you do that if 'A' is one of its thousand of brands? Also, what if said company is not consumer oriented, but is otherwise business oriented? How would businesses care about other companies morales? Sure, you could boycott products from companies who use the evil corporation's services ... but it can be really far fetched and the information is hard to find!
The problem with WTO, as there was with the once rejcted AMI (dunno the american acronym for, it's the agreement on investment), is the fact that it has very little possible democratic feedback. Plus, to advance their own immediate interests, governments will accept some stupid 'side notes' (that might have been instilled by some weird lobbying groups). Then ... well it's too late, you can't really change it, you can't opt out easily, ...you're screwed. It deprives citizens of the signing countries of most of their democratic rights. And I'm not even talking about the poor folks living in China.
How can an US court enforce a $10000 fine on Europeans? Also ... in this kind of cases, I *think* that normally, at least here in France, the ruling court should be the in the defendants' jursidiction. But IANAL.
What you want to charge for is PRIORITY. For, the beauty of the internet is the fact that it can be used at 100%, total efficiency. You've started a long download? It will go very fast during the night, and slowdown during peak hours. There is NO reason why they should charge offpeak hours at all!!!
So to get back to priority. You want to make sure you always have good priority? You pay premium, and you get some guaranteed amount of the total bandwidth. You want to stay on the cheap? Well you can still use the offpeak hours at the max since not many people use it anyway.
That's the internet model.
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As for the WTO ruling on this
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WARRING: you are using netscape, a now inferior browser due to it's desier to try to compete with microsoft instead of doing what it did best. It was crushed and hasn't worked properly since version 3. Please change your browser as soon as possible.
I design websites for a living, and have been for what, over 3 years maybe? And I find this utterly ridiculous. There is no reason to do this. It requires just a little bit more effort on the designer's part, but it's not like you would need to spend months of it. I think this is totally unnecessary.
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