From I've read, NTP backed out when RIM wanted a provision that would force NTP to pay back some of the settlement fees if their patents were later ruled invalid.
I mean, really - if you're going to bluff, go all the way. Once you have the money, then it's up to RIM to try and collect later. Instead, they tried to double down against RIM, and they lost.
Well, you still have to worry about CO2 production. The "ideal" from a CO2 perspective is to pull it out of the atmosphere and bury it. Normally, the CO2 in cow dung would be left to sit there and get quickly turned into new plant material (since it has all that juicy energy locked up in it still). Once burned, it's less accessible to new plants. They have to use sunlight to fix it from the atmosphere, so it's a bit slower.
Unless biology has changed a lot since HS, plants, by definition REQUIRE C02 as part of the way they fix it into sugars. As far as I know, this process requires some sort of external energy source - sunlight. Plants cannot metabolize raw carbon from the soil - the soil is there strictly as a medium for holding the roots in place, providing nutrients, etc. The CO2 comes from the air - and although we do get CO2 from decomposition of the cow dung (from bacteria etc., feeding on residual sugars), it still gets incorporated into the plant, from the air.
The process of burning the cow dung releases the carbon as C02, thus making it available to the plant. Otherwise, it would just sit there, and if there was enough of it, buried beneath the ground, we'd get something similar to peat bogs. It would NOT get converted into new plant material.
and more UHF stations than you can shake a stick at: KCET (PBS 28), KLCS (PBS 58), KOCE (PBS 50), KDOC (56), KSCI (international programming 18), KXLA (asian programming 44), KVEA (Telemundo 52), and a bunch of other spanish-language stations.
This is just the analog off the air programming, I believe we've got close to a dozen digital transmitters operating as well.
Of course, in a couple of years a lot of the higher-band UHF stations will be forced to shut off analog transmission, but get your free off the air tv on your current TV set, while you still can!
But what happened to all the official servers? I remember when I started playing years ago, there were servers all over. Now? Only a handful, and they're usually empty...
Is my browser busted, or is everyone off playing World of Warcraft these days?
In most countries you can't just walk into a store, purchase a shotgun & shells, then carry the firearm right out of the door with you.
Remember, the United States is a big place. You'd only be able to walk out of the store on the same day, provided you pass the instant background check AND you're in a state that does not impose its own waiting period. Add to that various local restriction on the purchase of ammo.
However, yes, there are places in the US where you can walk into your local hardware or sporting goods store in the morning, pick up a shotgun, a box of shells, and some clays, and drop by the local range in the afternoon. Unfortunately, with urban creep, and the diaspora of urbanites who tend to bring their laws with them, these places are starting to become fewer and fewer.
So Verizon has deliberately underpriced their service, and now they're looking to subsidize themselves by declaring that everybody else using the Internet owes them money. Sheesh, the last time I looked, the only people who were really allowed to do this was the government, and the recording industry...
Don't forget. Paying fines counts as an expense, which you can claim against revenue, thus cutting your taxes. As such, the hit is never as bad as it seems at face value. Now, if you had to pay fines out of your after-tax profits...
I think the problem is that Sony is dropping their R&D products in favor of going for what will soon be commodity items. Not a smart thing to do, but it's the "safe" thing to do. The problem is, competition in Korea and Taiwan ate that lunch a long time ago. The more Sony retreats from the markets it currently occupies (Clies, for example), the more consumer mindshare it's giving up. At that point, they're competing pretty much just on price, and I'm afraid that all it's going to do it kill Sony, ESPECIALLY if they're still being hamstrung by directives from their Media Entertainment division.
Wait, wait - a PowerMac 9600? Is there a write-up about this somewhere? I was about to sacrifice a spare PIII box to the altar of experimentation, but if I can find work for my old PowerMacs, I'd be extremely happy.
8k for your first implementation - would you care to share how that was broken down? I have a small collection of PC parts I'd like to recycle into a phone system - what do I need to get?
Yes I forgot to mention the provisional patent application within the US. It's like submitting an abstract for a paper (the paper being the actual patent application later.) I also forgot to mention that I am not a lawyer, and that you should refer all patent-related questions to a qualified attorney before you make any decisions. Lawyers (at least the ones that I've dealt with) will usually give you at least a half hour free, enough to ask a question or two, assuming you've done your homework.
Re:a friend of mine in high school
on
The Patent Epidemic
·
· Score: 4, Informative
That's why publishing your invention (assuming you're willing to give up overseas patent protection) is so important to keeping knowledge in the public space. In the US, you can publish and still file within a year of disclosure, which means you can get feedback on your invention and introduce it to the public, without fearing that some asshole patent portfolio will scoop it up and use it as another tollbooth against industry and innovation.
A lot of people will tell you that you should file before disclosing, but who can afford to file? Big companies with lawyers on salary, research universities with lawyers on salary, and companies that are made up of nothing but lawyers.
If you can't make truckloads of money on something you invented, at least you can make sure that people can benefit by the knowledge that you have gained. And if enough people start believing in the stuff that you've created, you might stand a better chance of getting the money and support to patent, produce, and market your NEXT invention.
At least, this is my opinion, having researched the process for something I built and thought was obvious in the field, but people kept telling me I ought to patent.
So if Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo collude to make their consoles cost $1000 each and games cost a minimum of $150, that would be illegal?
If they all sent their reps into a room, and walked out with a gentleman's agreement to keep consoles at $1000, and games at $150, so that the customers had no choice (in terms of price) if they wanted to buy a console system, then yes, that's price fixing.
Same as if the 3 grocery stores in your area "leaked" pricing flyers to each other to ensure that their prices on items would be so similar as to be status quo, or if the gas stations in an area (regardless of brand) looked at a master price table of prices for their area instead of setting them in accordance with their wholesale price, amount of traffic, desired profit margin, etc.
The idea is that you can set your own prices independently of your competitors, but as soon as you start sharing that information so your competitors know ahead of time what you will be pricing, with the understanding that they then know the floor at which they can price something and not get undersold, then that hurts competition (you're colluding against normal market forces, and making sure that the customer doesn't get the money left on the table based on normal pricing.)
You can get inside information on your competitor's pricing - you're just not allowed to use that information to set your own prices in order to maximize your profit on per unit sales!
The problem becomes how do you charge them? Network them? Get data on/off them? Fix them when they break down in Ghana? - since the machines are long out of date, and parts/batteries are hard to get (unless you manage to get enough volume to estabish what amounts to a manufacturing operation over there, in which case, they can take care of themselves.)
The concept behind the $100 laptop is to create a commodity computing device tailored for an area where power and communications infrastructure are absent. In fact the laptop BECOMES the communications infrastructure (with ad-hoc nodes). Sending over relatively fragile devices that were designed for 1st world power and communications (and repair) networks just won't cut it... at least not in the rural areas where this is targeted.
Your idea works fine for the cities, however, and I think there are actually used equipment import/export companies, who send over refurbished heavy equipment and computers. But again, different target user, different infrastructure.
All of my LCD panels are turned to the minimum brightness and contrast for the environment I'm working in. However, recently (after about 2 years of use), one of my LCD panels started to have problems on startup - flickering light, inability to complete lighting up. I've had to leave that panel on (and turn off the energy saver setting that shuts the monitor off automatically), for fear that one of these days the problem will be so bad that no combination of turning the panel on/off will fix it. Evidently, the tube is going bad, although mind you, it was a refurb to begin with. However, if you do stress the equipment a lot (lots of starts and stops, and many hours of use), it's a good bet that at some point, the tube will begin to die on you.
I'm thinking the headlines are going to be more like the following in the next 60 days:
EMI DROPPED BY iTUNES - Jobs says: Greedy morons don't deserve to survive in the modern era, cuts off label in favor of signing their artists directly.
Buying green is great if you have the money, acting green is a great start for everyone else.
Amen. I take the bus and ride my bike during the week, so my Ford Escape (V6, non-hybrid) just sits in the driveway. Every couple of weeks or so, I take it out on a weekend trip.
I think go through a tank of gas every couple of months.
For our society to grow, we need to accept that monopolies are always bad, and only government can create them. There are no natural monopolies. The 4 or 5 times there might have been in the past I'd argue weren't meant to last, but they're gone anyway.
Wha? You made a really good case that monopolies are really bad, and that we shouldn't have them. What makes a government sponsored monopoly (such as patents) any more palatable than a natural monopoly, and how is accepting that (the current default state of things) supposed to make the current situation better?
Given that Mark Dindal is directing Chicken Little (he did Emperor's New Groove and Cats Don't Dance previously) I'm willing to give it the benefit of the doubt.
I think that the publishers are protesting this, for the same reason the RIAA, and the MPAA are trying to stifle ways that make it easier to sell products. The reason is that they're all distribution channels, but in the age of the internet, there are easier, more cost-effective methods of distribution (ie, direct downloads, Amazon.com, etc.). More so than that, they are MARKETING MACHINES - the reason Author X, or Band Y wants to sign with Publisher Z, is that Publisher Z can front a million dollars pushing product into people's faces, and thus drum up large sales volumes... but only on NEW product.
You notice that many of the new technologies (iTunes, eBooks, etc.) really mostly benefit older back-list titles. This is because there is no marketing, production, or distribution budget for these things. There are few, if no jobs in promoting these backlist titles, whereas there is a lot of money in promoting the new stuff.
Things like Google Print will help promote sales of older items, and I think the fear is among the publishers, is that their ability to push new content will be drowned out, and they'll all lose their jobs. Hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of kickbacks, marketing contracts, air time, cushy offices, the whole idea of exclusivity - all down the toilet, because people only have so much time. If they can find what they're looking for without having the consumer Big Brother tell them what they want, then what use are these marketing organizations, especially when most of the new product they peddle is crap to begin with?
True libertarianism would dictate that lowest cost producer triumph, since copyrights and patents are artificial government-sanctioned monopolies. The default state of things is that some farmer invents a better plow, and others copy it for their own use. Someone tells a story or sings a song, and others embellish and change it in the retelling. Only when you can prevent someone from making something, and thus have an artificially restricted market, does it matter whether or not company X is in danger of losing "billions of dollars" through "piracy". Look at China and India (although things are starting to shift) as examples where they can take almost any input and produce at very low cost, to the benefit of consumers. I'm not talking about dangerous or deceitful ripoffs, but very well constructed generic copies of drugs, and of CDs and DVDs licensed for sale in China to compete with ripoffs that are a fraction of prices here in the states (US$3.00).
Speaking as a writer and designer who theoretically benefits from copyright law (I say theoretically, because if ever I had to go to court over copyright, the court fees alone would bankrupt me), copyright and patents, although they are treated as tangible property, to be bought, sold, and lent against, should not be enshrined in common law AS tangible property. You can see this attitude at work when businesses and controlling individuals have an expectation that this "property" can generate profits indefinitely, without any sort of maintenance, upkeep, or recompense to the government and the people, for an artificially maintained monopoly and the tax-supported infrastrucuture built around it (like the FBI anti-piracy division.)
The storyboards, the sets - why are we saving all that crap? Isn't the work itself the treasure, not necessarily the tools used to make it?
Why save drafts of scripts or books? Why save blueprints? Why save props and costumes? Why save sets after a show wraps up?
Well, there's historical value to researchers and collectors, as to what the thinking process was, how something was constructed. Sets and props can be reused to save costs. Actual physical objects are cool to look at (note that some of the items went on tour), and took a lot of work to make. Are you going to save EVERYTHING? Hells no, but I doubt that's what the warehouse was storing (except, probably a corner that the prop shop was using.)
I have to say personally, I was extremely discouraged while learning to draw, until I saw rough sketches and early works by painters and artists like Van Gough. They made the same mistakes in perspective and proportions in learning that everyone else does, but you'd never have known it from the final product. As an animator, I learned a lot from studying storyboards and other materials that audiences will rarely see outside of DVD special material.
If you had asked whether the final product from George Lucas (the film - choose one) was the thing to treasure, and that all the props, models, costumes, and other materials should have been discarded, you'd probably get an argument from many folks. There's a lot of detail that goes in to prop work that is never shown on screen, and much of it is art in its own right. I think one person I ran into said it best - we aren't the best people to judge whether something is historic or not, because we lack the perspective that society in 20, 30 years will have on the times we're living in.
Google, how about asking publishers for a list of books to scan?
Because to do so runs contrary to public access to information. There are many books that may, or may not be protected by copyright. If you only scan books that are currently owned and controlled by someone, then you restrict yourself to a very small subset of the available literature. Consider if libraries only stocked books that publishers allowed to be lent out.
Although there are issues related to the copying of books in order to provide Google's indexing feature, I would argue that needlessly deferring to publishers grants those publishers rights (ie, the right of approval to allow works to be indexed) that they do not, and should never have.
Remember folks, copyright is meant to allow public access to works - compensation of the rights holder is merely a carrot to accomplish that task (foster the creative arts), and is not the main reason that copyright exists.
I quote, from Clause 8, Section 8, of the US Constitution:
Clause 8: [The Congress shall have Power] To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;
Google is providing a public service - indexing. To force them to pay (or spend money and time for rights clearances) in order to create another Library of Congress for indexing purposes, runs counter to the public interest, as Google would likely have to charge for access to their database in order to recoup costs, and pay the danegeld required by some rights holders for having a digital copy of their works. I would argue that Google's approach is a correct one - like a robots.txt file, assume that information is available for indexing, unless explicitly told that it is not for public consumption. Given that someone needs to do this (indexing), and we get positive side effects such as a digital backup of the work in question, in the event that all originals are lost, and the LOC doesn't have the money to do either preservation, or full-text indexing, I'm very much on Google's side on this one.
Having a Google index of every printed work would definitely help the "Progress of Science and useful Arts". Hampering their effort to do this would not.
Slashdot Mirror
From I've read, NTP backed out when RIM wanted a provision that would force NTP to pay back some of the settlement fees if their patents were later ruled invalid.
I mean, really - if you're going to bluff, go all the way. Once you have the money, then it's up to RIM to try and collect later. Instead, they tried to double down against RIM, and they lost.
Well, you still have to worry about CO2 production. The "ideal" from a CO2 perspective is to pull it out of the atmosphere and bury it. Normally, the CO2 in cow dung would be left to sit there and get quickly turned into new plant material (since it has all that juicy energy locked up in it still). Once burned, it's less accessible to new plants. They have to use sunlight to fix it from the atmosphere, so it's a bit slower.
Unless biology has changed a lot since HS, plants, by definition REQUIRE C02 as part of the way they fix it into sugars. As far as I know, this process requires some sort of external energy source - sunlight. Plants cannot metabolize raw carbon from the soil - the soil is there strictly as a medium for holding the roots in place, providing nutrients, etc. The CO2 comes from the air - and although we do get CO2 from decomposition of the cow dung (from bacteria etc., feeding on residual sugars), it still gets incorporated into the plant, from the air.
The process of burning the cow dung releases the carbon as C02, thus making it available to the plant. Otherwise, it would just sit there, and if there was enough of it, buried beneath the ground, we'd get something similar to peat bogs. It would NOT get converted into new plant material.
I dunno about the parent poster, but if he lives in LA, he'll get:
7 VHF stations: KCOP (UPN 13), KTTV (FOX 11), KCAL (9), KCBS (CBS 2), KNBC (NBC 4), KABC (ABC 7), KTLA (WB 5)
and more UHF stations than you can shake a stick at: KCET (PBS 28), KLCS (PBS 58), KOCE (PBS 50), KDOC (56), KSCI (international programming 18), KXLA (asian programming 44), KVEA (Telemundo 52), and a bunch of other spanish-language stations.
This is just the analog off the air programming, I believe we've got close to a dozen digital transmitters operating as well.
Of course, in a couple of years a lot of the higher-band UHF stations will be forced to shut off analog transmission, but get your free off the air tv on your current TV set, while you still can!
But what happened to all the official servers? I remember when I started playing years ago, there were servers all over. Now? Only a handful, and they're usually empty... Is my browser busted, or is everyone off playing World of Warcraft these days?
In most countries you can't just walk into a store, purchase a shotgun & shells, then carry the firearm right out of the door with you.
Remember, the United States is a big place. You'd only be able to walk out of the store on the same day, provided you pass the instant background check AND you're in a state that does not impose its own waiting period. Add to that various local restriction on the purchase of ammo.
However, yes, there are places in the US where you can walk into your local hardware or sporting goods store in the morning, pick up a shotgun, a box of shells, and some clays, and drop by the local range in the afternoon. Unfortunately, with urban creep, and the diaspora of urbanites who tend to bring their laws with them, these places are starting to become fewer and fewer.
So Verizon has deliberately underpriced their service, and now they're looking to subsidize themselves by declaring that everybody else using the Internet owes them money. Sheesh, the last time I looked, the only people who were really allowed to do this was the government, and the recording industry...
Wise words - mind if I quote you (probably for a sig)?
Don't forget. Paying fines counts as an expense, which you can claim against revenue, thus cutting your taxes. As such, the hit is never as bad as it seems at face value. Now, if you had to pay fines out of your after-tax profits...
I think the problem is that Sony is dropping their R&D products in favor of going for what will soon be commodity items. Not a smart thing to do, but it's the "safe" thing to do. The problem is, competition in Korea and Taiwan ate that lunch a long time ago. The more Sony retreats from the markets it currently occupies (Clies, for example), the more consumer mindshare it's giving up. At that point, they're competing pretty much just on price, and I'm afraid that all it's going to do it kill Sony, ESPECIALLY if they're still being hamstrung by directives from their Media Entertainment division.
Wait, wait - a PowerMac 9600? Is there a write-up about this somewhere? I was about to sacrifice a spare PIII box to the altar of experimentation, but if I can find work for my old PowerMacs, I'd be extremely happy.
8k for your first implementation - would you care to share how that was broken down? I have a small collection of PC parts I'd like to recycle into a phone system - what do I need to get?
Yes I forgot to mention the provisional patent application within the US. It's like submitting an abstract for a paper (the paper being the actual patent application later.) I also forgot to mention that I am not a lawyer, and that you should refer all patent-related questions to a qualified attorney before you make any decisions. Lawyers (at least the ones that I've dealt with) will usually give you at least a half hour free, enough to ask a question or two, assuming you've done your homework.
That's why publishing your invention (assuming you're willing to give up overseas patent protection) is so important to keeping knowledge in the public space. In the US, you can publish and still file within a year of disclosure, which means you can get feedback on your invention and introduce it to the public, without fearing that some asshole patent portfolio will scoop it up and use it as another tollbooth against industry and innovation.
A lot of people will tell you that you should file before disclosing, but who can afford to file? Big companies with lawyers on salary, research universities with lawyers on salary, and companies that are made up of nothing but lawyers.
If you can't make truckloads of money on something you invented, at least you can make sure that people can benefit by the knowledge that you have gained. And if enough people start believing in the stuff that you've created, you might stand a better chance of getting the money and support to patent, produce, and market your NEXT invention.
At least, this is my opinion, having researched the process for something I built and thought was obvious in the field, but people kept telling me I ought to patent.
So if Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo collude to make their consoles cost $1000 each and games cost a minimum of $150, that would be illegal?
If they all sent their reps into a room, and walked out with a gentleman's agreement to keep consoles at $1000, and games at $150, so that the customers had no choice (in terms of price) if they wanted to buy a console system, then yes, that's price fixing.
Same as if the 3 grocery stores in your area "leaked" pricing flyers to each other to ensure that their prices on items would be so similar as to be status quo, or if the gas stations in an area (regardless of brand) looked at a master price table of prices for their area instead of setting them in accordance with their wholesale price, amount of traffic, desired profit margin, etc.
The idea is that you can set your own prices independently of your competitors, but as soon as you start sharing that information so your competitors know ahead of time what you will be pricing, with the understanding that they then know the floor at which they can price something and not get undersold, then that hurts competition (you're colluding against normal market forces, and making sure that the customer doesn't get the money left on the table based on normal pricing.)
You can get inside information on your competitor's pricing - you're just not allowed to use that information to set your own prices in order to maximize your profit on per unit sales!
The problem becomes how do you charge them? Network them? Get data on/off them? Fix them when they break down in Ghana? - since the machines are long out of date, and parts/batteries are hard to get (unless you manage to get enough volume to estabish what amounts to a manufacturing operation over there, in which case, they can take care of themselves.)
The concept behind the $100 laptop is to create a commodity computing device tailored for an area where power and communications infrastructure are absent. In fact the laptop BECOMES the communications infrastructure (with ad-hoc nodes). Sending over relatively fragile devices that were designed for 1st world power and communications (and repair) networks just won't cut it... at least not in the rural areas where this is targeted.
Your idea works fine for the cities, however, and I think there are actually used equipment import/export companies, who send over refurbished heavy equipment and computers. But again, different target user, different infrastructure.
All of my LCD panels are turned to the minimum brightness and contrast for the environment I'm working in. However, recently (after about 2 years of use), one of my LCD panels started to have problems on startup - flickering light, inability to complete lighting up. I've had to leave that panel on (and turn off the energy saver setting that shuts the monitor off automatically), for fear that one of these days the problem will be so bad that no combination of turning the panel on/off will fix it. Evidently, the tube is going bad, although mind you, it was a refurb to begin with. However, if you do stress the equipment a lot (lots of starts and stops, and many hours of use), it's a good bet that at some point, the tube will begin to die on you.
I'm thinking the headlines are going to be more like the following in the next 60 days:
EMI DROPPED BY iTUNES - Jobs says: Greedy morons don't deserve to survive in the modern era, cuts off label in favor of signing their artists directly.
Buying green is great if you have the money, acting green is a great start for everyone else.
Amen. I take the bus and ride my bike during the week, so my Ford Escape (V6, non-hybrid) just sits in the driveway. Every couple of weeks or so, I take it out on a weekend trip.
I think go through a tank of gas every couple of months.
For our society to grow, we need to accept that monopolies are always bad, and only government can create them. There are no natural monopolies. The 4 or 5 times there might have been in the past I'd argue weren't meant to last, but they're gone anyway.
Wha? You made a really good case that monopolies are really bad, and that we shouldn't have them. What makes a government sponsored monopoly (such as patents) any more palatable than a natural monopoly, and how is accepting that (the current default state of things) supposed to make the current situation better?
Given that Mark Dindal is directing Chicken Little (he did Emperor's New Groove and Cats Don't Dance previously) I'm willing to give it the benefit of the doubt.
I think that the publishers are protesting this, for the same reason the RIAA, and the MPAA are trying to stifle ways that make it easier to sell products. The reason is that they're all distribution channels, but in the age of the internet, there are easier, more cost-effective methods of distribution (ie, direct downloads, Amazon.com, etc.). More so than that, they are MARKETING MACHINES - the reason Author X, or Band Y wants to sign with Publisher Z, is that Publisher Z can front a million dollars pushing product into people's faces, and thus drum up large sales volumes... but only on NEW product.
You notice that many of the new technologies (iTunes, eBooks, etc.) really mostly benefit older back-list titles. This is because there is no marketing, production, or distribution budget for these things. There are few, if no jobs in promoting these backlist titles, whereas there is a lot of money in promoting the new stuff.
Things like Google Print will help promote sales of older items, and I think the fear is among the publishers, is that their ability to push new content will be drowned out, and they'll all lose their jobs. Hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of kickbacks, marketing contracts, air time, cushy offices, the whole idea of exclusivity - all down the toilet, because people only have so much time. If they can find what they're looking for without having the consumer Big Brother tell them what they want, then what use are these marketing organizations, especially when most of the new product they peddle is crap to begin with?
True libertarianism would dictate that lowest cost producer triumph, since copyrights and patents are artificial government-sanctioned monopolies. The default state of things is that some farmer invents a better plow, and others copy it for their own use. Someone tells a story or sings a song, and others embellish and change it in the retelling. Only when you can prevent someone from making something, and thus have an artificially restricted market, does it matter whether or not company X is in danger of losing "billions of dollars" through "piracy". Look at China and India (although things are starting to shift) as examples where they can take almost any input and produce at very low cost, to the benefit of consumers. I'm not talking about dangerous or deceitful ripoffs, but very well constructed generic copies of drugs, and of CDs and DVDs licensed for sale in China to compete with ripoffs that are a fraction of prices here in the states (US$3.00).
Speaking as a writer and designer who theoretically benefits from copyright law (I say theoretically, because if ever I had to go to court over copyright, the court fees alone would bankrupt me), copyright and patents, although they are treated as tangible property, to be bought, sold, and lent against, should not be enshrined in common law AS tangible property. You can see this attitude at work when businesses and controlling individuals have an expectation that this "property" can generate profits indefinitely, without any sort of maintenance, upkeep, or recompense to the government and the people, for an artificially maintained monopoly and the tax-supported infrastrucuture built around it (like the FBI anti-piracy division.)
The storyboards, the sets - why are we saving all that crap? Isn't the work itself the treasure, not necessarily the tools used to make it?
Why save drafts of scripts or books? Why save blueprints? Why save props and costumes? Why save sets after a show wraps up?
Well, there's historical value to researchers and collectors, as to what the thinking process was, how something was constructed. Sets and props can be reused to save costs. Actual physical objects are cool to look at (note that some of the items went on tour), and took a lot of work to make. Are you going to save EVERYTHING? Hells no, but I doubt that's what the warehouse was storing (except, probably a corner that the prop shop was using.)
I have to say personally, I was extremely discouraged while learning to draw, until I saw rough sketches and early works by painters and artists like Van Gough. They made the same mistakes in perspective and proportions in learning that everyone else does, but you'd never have known it from the final product. As an animator, I learned a lot from studying storyboards and other materials that audiences will rarely see outside of DVD special material.
If you had asked whether the final product from George Lucas (the film - choose one) was the thing to treasure, and that all the props, models, costumes, and other materials should have been discarded, you'd probably get an argument from many folks. There's a lot of detail that goes in to prop work that is never shown on screen, and much of it is art in its own right. I think one person I ran into said it best - we aren't the best people to judge whether something is historic or not, because we lack the perspective that society in 20, 30 years will have on the times we're living in.
Sound like they had to tresspass in order to put those towers up. There was no way to stop them?
Google, how about asking publishers for a list of books to scan?
Because to do so runs contrary to public access to information. There are many books that may, or may not be protected by copyright. If you only scan books that are currently owned and controlled by someone, then you restrict yourself to a very small subset of the available literature. Consider if libraries only stocked books that publishers allowed to be lent out.
Although there are issues related to the copying of books in order to provide Google's indexing feature, I would argue that needlessly deferring to publishers grants those publishers rights (ie, the right of approval to allow works to be indexed) that they do not, and should never have.
Remember folks, copyright is meant to allow public access to works - compensation of the rights holder is merely a carrot to accomplish that task (foster the creative arts), and is not the main reason that copyright exists.
I quote, from Clause 8, Section 8, of the US Constitution:
Clause 8: [The Congress shall have Power] To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;
Google is providing a public service - indexing. To force them to pay (or spend money and time for rights clearances) in order to create another Library of Congress for indexing purposes, runs counter to the public interest, as Google would likely have to charge for access to their database in order to recoup costs, and pay the danegeld required by some rights holders for having a digital copy of their works. I would argue that Google's approach is a correct one - like a robots.txt file, assume that information is available for indexing, unless explicitly told that it is not for public consumption. Given that someone needs to do this (indexing), and we get positive side effects such as a digital backup of the work in question, in the event that all originals are lost, and the LOC doesn't have the money to do either preservation, or full-text indexing, I'm very much on Google's side on this one.
Having a Google index of every printed work would definitely help the "Progress of Science and useful Arts". Hampering their effort to do this would not.