Well, I'm not impressed by openlinux.com's parody skills.
If it is a parody, they went to impressive lengths. According to whois, openlinux.org does belong to SCO. Registering a domain under a false name only for a parody? It's a bit far-fetched.
the only thing Iran has to worry about from the US is caused directly by their nuclear weapon ambitions in the first place
The US has wanted to remove Iran's government ever since it came to power. Relationships have historically been bad, originally because the US supported the previous dictator, the Shah of Persia, over the popular and democratically elected Mohammed Mossadegh. Iraq was not threatening to build WMDs, but this did not stop Bush.
the US maintains its stockpiles of nuclear weapons solely to serve as a deterrent against other nations
I think I heard that the Bush administration planned devising a smaller nuclear bomb that could be used in the battlefield or for bunker busting. It is obvious, since there is no longer a nuclear-capable adversary (except North Korea, which is left alone just because of that).
it may very well use nuclear weapons in a first-strike effort against Israel, and even the threat of this occurring destabilizes the Middle East further than it already is.
Israel usually denies, but everybody knows they have extensive nuclear capability and that they can deliver it to Iran if they wanted. Attacking a nuclear power far stronger than you are, which is tightly allied to the major nuclear power on the planet with whom you don't have a good relationship to begin with is such a stupid thing not ever Ahmadinejad can possibly contemplate that. On the other hand, nukes have caused the longest period of peace in Europe in centuries, the cold war. If anything, nukes have a stabilising effect as they effectively make it impossible to wage a war in which a side gains something.
Iran's government maintains a stranglehold over its people
No doubt about that, but an invasion did not help in Iraq. People were killed before, now they are still killed—only now it's more like random violence. In addition, the country became a gigantic terrorist training ground, so if peace were to come to Iraq we would have a few thousands terrorists on the loose. Want to do it over in Iran?
The chances of Iran's government collapsing at some point in the future, relegating their nuclear weapons to whoever can get their hands on them first, are significant.
Sure. But the same can be said about North Korea and especially Pakistan, home to most Talibans. Pakistan is also a dictatorship, but an "aligned" one. In your source about state instability, Iran is 53rd, Pakistan is 9th. If you have to be seriously worried about terrorists getting nukes, that's the most likely place to look at.
if developing a new nuclear weapon design allows [...] reducing the cost of maintaining those weapons
If it costs less I find it more likely that the government will keep funding constant and just have more warheads. The weapon industry will surely lobby not to cut into their profits, and they have influence. "You don't want to give the terrorists a sign of weakness by reducing our military expenditure, do you?"
I am an European, born and grown up in Italy and living in Norway.
The US Allows Immigration
In my experience I have not seen any country being so fiendish at visitors as the US. The mega-fence on the border with Mexico is one example. The continuous controls for what-the-hell-they-are-looking for at airports is another. Then again I have not been to Uzbekistan or Iran.
The US Is a Rich Country
Comes down on how you define "rich". I was definitely not impressed (in fact, a bit disappointed) by American infrastructure. In 2004 I could not even call Europe from a public phone in Chicago airport (maybe I hit a streak of broken phones). The same year, a conference I attended in Austin, TX had 5,000 participants and not a single Internet connection available. Then again, Italy is worse, but America is not really so impressive.
The US Is Not (Yet) a Police State
See above for the requests of fingerprints, the queues when entering the country and the like. They gathered so much data about me they probably know me better than my mother.
You Can Fire People in America
That's why I am staying here, thanks. I prefer to be able to plan my life beyond this week. Of course you can fire people in Europe, only you cannot fire at a whim. If you don't have a good reasons you can get sued, which happens way more often in the US than in Italy (about 10 cases a year for 58 million people; not sure about the US but I suspect it's way higher).
America Is Not Too Fussy
Who said it is illegal to work in your garage? What laws should prevent it? Why would that swiss lady report to the police the start-up in the garage? Have you Americans this sort of laws? For I am totally unaware of such laws in Italy, Norway or elsewhere. Of course, if the start-up is a mechanic workshop that keeps the neighbourhood up all night, people have a right to protest, but it does not seem to be the case discussed in TFA.
However, for better or worse it looks as if Europe will in a few decades speak a single language
This is the most ludicrous claim ever. Italy has been under foreign domination for 1,500 years (Ostrogoths, Byzantines, Franks, French, Northmen, Arabs, Spaniards, French, Germans, and a bunch of others I cannot remember), and we got at most a few words. Thinking that a country can shift language as often as a geek changes his underwear is patently insane. And changing for what, English? Wake up, you will all soon have to learn Chinese!
A friend of mine started a company in Germany in the early 90s, and was shocked to discover, among many other regulations, that you needed $20,000 in capital to incorporate.
I do not know American or German law in much detail, but in Italy (and presumably in Germany as well) there are different levels of incorporation. To start a SpA ("shareholder society") you need about 100,000 euros in capital; if you cannot make it, you have to limit yourself to a Srl (limited-responsibility company). The difference is in practice small; the friend probably looked at the GmbH level in Germany and thought it was the minimum threshold; instead, that threshold is meant for investors to be sure they are investing in a company that actually has capital, and not an Enron of some sort. Then again, I am not much in the details.
In the US, the bandwith works because it's standardized across the nation (hence you can go coast-to-coast on your cell phone on the same fricking network).
Have you ever been to the US with a mobile? There are multiple standards and a mobile that works in Chicago may not work in Austin, TX or Cincinnati, OH. At least that was my experience in 2004 and 2005 with a tri-band I bought in the EU, I am not sure of the technical details but I think the problem is that technologies (such as iDen, Digital AMPS, and IS-95) can differ across US states. In Europe it's pretty much all GSM/UMTS.
Having your cellphone work in England as well as Turkey should be a good boost for this plan.
They already do. My father's mobile worked fine in Turkey (both Instanbul and at a tourist resort on the south coast, probably not far from Antalya) already in 1997 when I did not have one myself yet. My Norwegian mobile has been tested to work fine in Italy, Ireland, England, Germany, Sweden, Denmark, Finland and pretty much everywhere I brought it, except parts of the US.
Running a nmap -P0 -O foreignpolicy.com, you get among other things:
Device type: general purpose|media device
Running: Linux 2.4.X, Pace embedded
OS details: Linux 2.4.18 - 2.4.27, Pace digital cable TV receiver
Uptime 175.187 days (since Tue Dec 6 19:18:51 2005)
So it's open source, Linux, and running continuosly for 6 months. Ahh, the coherence.
I recall a redacted PDF from italy that 'supported' the US gov'ts claims at the time..
You are recalling this report, that the US army released as a PDF and was "cracked" within minutes by multiple sources. It disclosed the names of US soldiers who shot at an Italian car because (in short) they had placed a blocking position incompetently (in this map, you can see they placed the BP at the end of the highway exit lane, not where it starts), that the reason for their mission was John Negroponte's visit, and that US troops used VOIP to communicate (cheap bastards), which had failed to work that evening. The report also disclosed bunches of troop movements, and AFAIK (I did read it) its supposed-to-be-undisclosed part did not support any particular US claims.
Not at all. Electrolysis is fairly efficient and up into the 90% range for some processes such as alkaline electrolysis. I think you mean the efficiency loss of getting electricity in the first place.
toxic catalysts
Who cares, a catalyst is not consumed by a reaction. It stays in the reactor, and even if it is toxic we will not have it in our gas tanks. Anyway I am not aware of so terribly toxic catalysts.
Guess why Bush is so hot to trot on Hydrogen?
I am all for hydrogen, but Bush is pushing for that so he can distract people from the more obvious short-term solutions: stop subsidizing SUVs, increase car efficiency requirements. Takes a minute and saves a bunch of money.
you've got to do some nasty processes to natural gas to get the hydrogen, and you have to do something with the carbon leftover when you remove all the hydrogen atoms
Not really. It's called steam reforming and it's not especially nasty. CH4+H2O3H2+CO. It's also a very standard process. About the carbon, since you are doing this at a plant and not in a car, you can re-inject in a rock formation (back where the oil was).
Not to mention, natural gas is NOT RENEWABLE!
It is not, but it is not the only source of hydrogen. When a new source is phased in (solar, wind, any other), cars do not have to know where the H2 comes from. You cannot do that with gasoline or diesel.
"Fuel cells!" you say. Except they're very expensive, have toxic catalysts in them, and have a very finite lifetime unless you use very, very clean water.
No I don't say that. Fuel cells consume hydrogen, they do not produce it. And you are thinking maybe alkaline FCs (it's not that simple though), more common and modern PEM FCs do not need external water output, since they create their own consuming hydrogen.
Perl is used for legitimate purposes. There is no such legitimate, day-to-day purpose for guns. In case someone tries to rob you, any expert's advice is do not react or try to be the hero: chances are they are much better than you at shooting, and have drawn their guns first. Again, check the murder rate in the US vs. in Europe.
You make the example of Montana (which is not so much of a hunter-gatherer society, but whatever). I suppose there are places where it does make sense to have a gun. On Svalbard you are actually supposed to carry a rifle anytime you are outdoors, since there are polar bears around. But that's because more people get eaten by bears than killed by guns (last one eaten was an Austrian tourist a few years ago).
Following your argument, we may legalize pretty much anything: cocaine makes politicians and CEOs work better, crack can be used responsibly, acetyc anhydride is useful for a lot of chemical reactions (also production of heroine, that's why you have to fill a ton of paperwork to buy/move/use it), and whatever dangerous stuff that has some sort of far-fetched legal use (nukes have been used in civil engineering).
In short, the point is: are the costs/benefits to society enough to justify the right to own X? Is that going to increase the total welfare of the population? Or is one's freedom becoming the next guy's threat?
[...] a kerosene fire could reach well past steel annealing temperatures and get to steel melting temperatures, depending on the specifics of fuel and air flow in the fire.
I agree with most of your post, but let me state once and for all: the fire did not have to melt steel. It only had to weaken it. Steel gradually loses its tensile strength with temperature. It is a known fact and a pretty well researched one, since it is very important in warehouses containing flammable materials—they can easily collapse during a fire. As you could guess, the steel of an extreme building as the WTC is strained to the limit. Since the second tower to be hit was hit at a lower level (more strain because of the weight), it collapsed first (Ok, sorta simplistic).
The "in no case be exercised contrary to the purposes and principles of the United Nations" clause is used twice in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, namely:
Article 14:
Everyone has the right to seek and to enjoy in other countries asylum from persecution.
This right may not be invoked in the case of prosecutions genuinely arising from non-political crimes or from acts contrary to the purposes and principles of the United Nations.
Article 29:
Everyone has duties to the community in which alone the free and full development of his personality is possible.
In the exercise of his rights and freedoms, everyone shall be subject only to such limitations as are determined by law solely for the purpose of securing due recognition and respect for the rights and freedoms of others and of meeting the just requirements of morality, public order and the general welfare in a democratic society.
These rights and freedoms may in no case be exercised contrary to the purposes and principles of the United Nations.
In short, you do not have right to political asylum in Argentina just because you happen to be a Nazi criminal of war, nor can you be drafted to gas Jews. Ssorry for the double invocation of Goodwin's law, but just after the war that's probably the sort of people they were thinking about.
As for the "purposes and principles of the United Nations", these are not just the swaying opinion of the secretary general of the day, but they are clearly written in the first chapter of the Charter of the United Nations, that sum up to pacifism, freedom, antiracism, and lots of lofty ideals.
Just to get back in topic, see principle number 7:
Nothing contained in the present Charter shall authorize the United Nations to intervene in matters which are essentially within the domestic jurisdiction of any state or shall require the Members to submit such matters to settlement under the present Charter; but this principle shall not prejudice the application of enforcement measures under Chapter VII.
So, the broadcasting treaty may actually be violating the UN's principles and be thusly busted, as broadcasting laws seem an unnecessary intrusion that has nothing to do with peacekeeping. Chapter VII, in case you wondered, is about "Action with respect to threats to the peace, breaches of the peace, and acts of aggression", nothing to do with broadcasting rights.
Before everybody correctly points out that the Internet is not a reliable source, I would like to point out that newspapers are not really up to the standards they are purported to be. Every time I read a newspaper article on a subject I know well, I very, very rarely read anything insightful, and very often loads of bullshit. Most of the times, the writer probably had to finish an article and deliver X lines, and put a few "facts" together—possibly naïvely got from the Internet as well.
I tend to trust sources where readers can write down their views, integrate, and if necessary insult the writer. I trust Slashdot commentaries (the whole page, not single comments), an often-edited Wikipedia article or a high-traffic blog way more than an article in a newspaper, because if there is something to be known you will probably find it. Even if you have to wade through flame wars and moderators on crack, it's likely there.
There's no such thing as a totally reliable news source, anyway.
Cause, you know, just look at the US - Internet access for the past 10 years has turned the current crop of high schoolers into a bunch of geniuses, all just itching to discover antigravity or write a new sociopolitical theory that eliminates inflation and market swings...
I think the difference is that US students already had access to colleges and universities. The Internet did not improve their study options because they were already pretty good. Chinese villagers of some godforsaken valley, on the other hand, have much less choice.
Are you insane? All rights are granted to individuals only, never to "society"
I said for the benefit of society. Society works better if individuals have a well-defined set of rights. As for the vocabulary, for "society" I mean "everybody", you seem to have understood "the ruling class".
However, without a patent on your new method, all the established companies copy you immediately.
They cannot copy me immediately. The WMV and WMA formats have been out there for years and still mplayer fails on them at times. Flash has bunches of books documenting how it is programmed, but free players are still in their infancy (you probably noticed I am on AMD64). This living in a software-patent-free continent. The gist being, just because the idea is out, it does not mean that implementation is just as fast. In fact, implementation is usually the hardest part: learning C perfectly takes much less than programming the whole GCC from scratch.
If the method is so easy to implement, it is probably trivial and should not be patented at all. If it is more complex, it requires (a lot of) reorganization and formation, which you just cannot do "immediately".
Not only did you not benefit from your hard work, you basically did all your competitors a favor by giving it away for free. You worked for nothing. What's the point in doing it again next time you have a good idea? You tell your story to a few friends, who tell it to a few more friends, and all of a sudden no one wants to innovate.
It's the competition, baby. You have to deliver. Sharing knowledge is simply the most efficient way of doing things. It does not benefit directly the inventor (who may be however be hired by a leading company, or found his start-up to show he's right and wait for a hefty buyout check, or be rewarded in other ways), but benefits everybody else. Sometimes really important inventions are not patented anyway because the best inventors are more interested in the science than in the money (they are scientists after all: Einstein did not patent laser, for instance). The point of market competition is to benefit society, if you want to benefit a company look up "monopoly".
The limited term of patents (currently 20 years) means that eventually, yes, all your competitors will be able to use the same business method that made you so fantastically successful. Know what that means? Time to innovate again.
20 years seem to be a way too long time for an innovation cycle. 20 years ago I used to try to understand what that Vic20 my cousin had bought was.
Also, for the other companies that cannot use your business method, they must innovate new and even more improved business methods to compete with *you* now - they can't just use your idea and stop there.
What if my method is so generic that no one else can bypass it? People are patenting mouse clicks these days. And anyway, if someone else is first on the market, I have to provide a better service anyway. If there is a patent, I cannot improve the idea, I must ignore it totally.
I wish you damn socialists
Please, please. Use the proper word. These days we proudly go by the name of coglioni, thanks to our nanito en jefe.
Show me something you've invented or created and shared with the whole world gratis - what's that? You can't? Oh.
Well, not much but I do have a few things.
An international keyboard layout to type pretty much all latin-alphabet languages. I also attached a SVG keymap so people can easily make theirs. I also made a draft for a new Italian keyboard, as th
But society appreciates ingenuity and creativity. There is going to be a design-around for the patent, you just have to use your wits to figure it out.
I think it's colloquially called "reinventing the wheel" in these boroughs.
[...]the whole anti-patent attitude lacks any true discussion on the merits of the patent system.
Then show me. I have never seen intelligent or sane of mind patents in my life. Maybe because I see the extreme examples like the combover patent, but also in my field of work I still have not seen a patent worth taking seriously. For example, this one and this one, other than demonstrating how poorly patents are screened, since they are about the same thing really, are fatally flawed and describe an apparatus that cannot work: you cannot control the power output of a fuel cell by changing the air flow into it any more than you can control the speed of your car by changing the gasoline level in your tank. Quite tellingly, no actual prototype has been presented.
I am not excluding that there is a legitimate use of patents (likely the one originally envisioned by Jefferson & Co.), but it seems to me there is more abuse than use. The baby's drowned in the bath water.
[if] that innovation has cost you a certain amount in development costs, should you not have the right to protect that investment?
I believe not at all. Rights are granted for the benefit of the whole of society, not single individuals: otherwise you might as well reintroduce slavery, as it was very beneficial to a few guys. Having a monopoly on something that can be reproduced indefinitely such as business or programming methods, and knowledge in general, means unfairly harming everybody else. You are not damaged by someone else who's using your methods (this does not block you from using them), unless you mean by competition, and last time I checked there is quite a load of legislation that actually protects competition, as it is demonstrated to improve product quality for society.
If your competition can just steal your methods, [...]
You cannot steal a method or an idea. You can only copy it. The original author still has it.
... then you would have no incentive to innovate.
On the contrary, if you know that the competition is going to figure out your methods and implement them after a while, you know also that you must keep innovating and leveraging your position as first in the market (it takes time to make a Webshop from just an idea: and if you are slow and competition is faster than you to commercialise, it's all your fault). In other words, you have to do actual work, not rest on your laurels because some law forbid everybody else from using your methods.
From the whole society's point of view (that is, our point of view), if Netflix wins we are going to see worse service from Blockbuster and less competition. If Blockbuster wins, competition will be closer between the companies and they will have to find a way to get more customers.
The more I think of the patent system the more I think that the whole concept is flawed. As generally with IP, Beethoven and Mozart died in poverty, Britney Spears is filthy rich.
both sites for now are only allowing the movies people buy through downloads to be stored on PCs or on devices like the game player Xbox outfitted with certain Microsoft software
Cue to DVD-Jon crack in 3.. 2.. 1..
Seriously, does anyone know how much effort it would take to crack these DRM'd formats and export to AVI? What sort of security is in place? And wouldn't anyone be able to make a "bootleg" analog copy anyway?
The USCC is an organ of the US Congress. These are the members. If I understand correctly, they are all politicians. Chinese do things cheaper than Americans, American politicians whine so they look like they are against outsourcing, then they buy happily.
Seriously, bugging thousands of PCs to get intelligence? Give me a break. Intelligence is not just about getting information, it is also about not getting caught and leaving no evidence. Thousands of PCs trying to send coded messages to Beijing would ring a bell even at the Department of Homeland Security. It's much simpler and safer to buy or blackmail a politician or an employee to provide information.
it could easily be argued that this is _because_ Reagan took steps to hinder the communist dictatorships
And it could easily be argued that the moon is made of cheese. Facts are facts.
unless the combined casualties of the Korean and Vietnamese civil wars we involved ourselves in were a lot smaller than I thought they were.
Duh, you noticed America was not invaded in those wars? America freely decided to interfere with other nations' business. It's not like America can legitimately complain if they shot back. And, those were only military casualties, it was only soldiers being killed (on the American side at least).
the soviets and communists weren't targeting our civillians at all.
Yeah right, they wanted to hit bunkers with ICBMs. Helloooo, when were you born? The whole concept of MAD (Mutual Assured Distruction) is based upon total mutual annihilation of the opposing nations. Do you think you or anyone in the US or USSR would have made it out alive of a World War III?
You can dual-licence code with GPL for open development and other agreements for people who want to develop closed source. That's what Trolltech does, and I never heard them whining for money—in fact they boast successes. If Apple had to pay up for using BSD as a basis for their Mac OS X, say one little dollar per sold copy, now that would be some cash flow.
During the 1980s Reagan was about as hated and villified as Bush Jr. For the American and European left it was the end of the world, he was the anti-christ. Twenty years later we have a better perspective than when were in the midst of the turmoil and emotion.
Reagan helped a number of terrorist organisations, such as the Contras in Nicaragua and the Mujaheddeen in Afghanistan, on the sole premises that they were "anti-communist". Reagan was elected in 1980, if my memory serves me. 21 years later, guess what one of those former mujaheddeens did in New York?
Did it really take a genius to fathom that giving guns to nutty fundamentalists is not a smart move? Islamic fundies killed more Americans than Soviets and communists ever did, mind you.
Try Antarctica. All inhabitants are scientists and have high education, no state religion (in fact no state at all), no police nor laws to restrain your freedom, and no one is checking who's coming in or out.
The article cannot be taken seriously. All it does is comparing Stallman to Savonarola, and quote Linus' comments on a mailing list. It gives the (false) impression that Linus is campaigning against the GPLv3. It does not actually discuss any flaw in the GPLv3 for a single line.
Which does not. Nuclear is more expensive than e.g. coal- or natural-gas-fired plants. Whereas the operating costs, including fuel and general maintenance, are small (and these are the figures the nuclear industry normally presents), the investments are gigantic. In fact, building the nuclear plant is an investment hardly going to return. In Paine, J. R., "Will nuclear power pay for itself?", The social science journal, Vol 33 N 4 (1996) 459-473, which I usually quote (it's peer-reviewed), the author states that:
The analysis shows that nuclear power is currently nowhere near meeting its costs [...] even under
the most optimistic conditions (where costs are cut considerably and revenues climb substantially), the current generation of the nuclear option over its lifetime may at best be economically marginal.
The reason countries do not build nuclear anymore is not that it is unpopular, coal is unpopular too but it does not get hindered in any significant way. They do not build nuclear because after 50 years they are still unable to turn a profit, and that is why nuclear plants are either state-owned or built with large subsidies.
Slashdot Mirror
If it is a parody, they went to impressive lengths. According to whois, openlinux.org does belong to SCO. Registering a domain under a false name only for a parody? It's a bit far-fetched.
The US has wanted to remove Iran's government ever since it came to power. Relationships have historically been bad, originally because the US supported the previous dictator, the Shah of Persia, over the popular and democratically elected Mohammed Mossadegh. Iraq was not threatening to build WMDs, but this did not stop Bush.
I think I heard that the Bush administration planned devising a smaller nuclear bomb that could be used in the battlefield or for bunker busting. It is obvious, since there is no longer a nuclear-capable adversary (except North Korea, which is left alone just because of that).
Israel usually denies, but everybody knows they have extensive nuclear capability and that they can deliver it to Iran if they wanted. Attacking a nuclear power far stronger than you are, which is tightly allied to the major nuclear power on the planet with whom you don't have a good relationship to begin with is such a stupid thing not ever Ahmadinejad can possibly contemplate that. On the other hand, nukes have caused the longest period of peace in Europe in centuries, the cold war. If anything, nukes have a stabilising effect as they effectively make it impossible to wage a war in which a side gains something.
No doubt about that, but an invasion did not help in Iraq. People were killed before, now they are still killed—only now it's more like random violence. In addition, the country became a gigantic terrorist training ground, so if peace were to come to Iraq we would have a few thousands terrorists on the loose. Want to do it over in Iran?
Sure. But the same can be said about North Korea and especially Pakistan, home to most Talibans. Pakistan is also a dictatorship, but an "aligned" one. In your source about state instability, Iran is 53rd, Pakistan is 9th. If you have to be seriously worried about terrorists getting nukes, that's the most likely place to look at.
If it costs less I find it more likely that the government will keep funding constant and just have more warheads. The weapon industry will surely lobby not to cut into their profits, and they have influence. "You don't want to give the terrorists a sign of weakness by reducing our military expenditure, do you?"
I am an European, born and grown up in Italy and living in Norway.
In my experience I have not seen any country being so fiendish at visitors as the US. The mega-fence on the border with Mexico is one example. The continuous controls for what-the-hell-they-are-looking for at airports is another. Then again I have not been to Uzbekistan or Iran.
Comes down on how you define "rich". I was definitely not impressed (in fact, a bit disappointed) by American infrastructure. In 2004 I could not even call Europe from a public phone in Chicago airport (maybe I hit a streak of broken phones). The same year, a conference I attended in Austin, TX had 5,000 participants and not a single Internet connection available. Then again, Italy is worse, but America is not really so impressive.
See above for the requests of fingerprints, the queues when entering the country and the like. They gathered so much data about me they probably know me better than my mother.
That's why I am staying here, thanks. I prefer to be able to plan my life beyond this week. Of course you can fire people in Europe, only you cannot fire at a whim. If you don't have a good reasons you can get sued, which happens way more often in the US than in Italy (about 10 cases a year for 58 million people; not sure about the US but I suspect it's way higher).
Who said it is illegal to work in your garage? What laws should prevent it? Why would that swiss lady report to the police the start-up in the garage? Have you Americans this sort of laws? For I am totally unaware of such laws in Italy, Norway or elsewhere. Of course, if the start-up is a mechanic workshop that keeps the neighbourhood up all night, people have a right to protest, but it does not seem to be the case discussed in TFA.
This is the most ludicrous claim ever. Italy has been under foreign domination for 1,500 years (Ostrogoths, Byzantines, Franks, French, Northmen, Arabs, Spaniards, French, Germans, and a bunch of others I cannot remember), and we got at most a few words. Thinking that a country can shift language as often as a geek changes his underwear is patently insane. And changing for what, English? Wake up, you will all soon have to learn Chinese!
I do not know American or German law in much detail, but in Italy (and presumably in Germany as well) there are different levels of incorporation. To start a SpA ("shareholder society") you need about 100,000 euros in capital; if you cannot make it, you have to limit yourself to a Srl (limited-responsibility company). The difference is in practice small; the friend probably looked at the GmbH level in Germany and thought it was the minimum threshold; instead, that threshold is meant for investors to be sure they are investing in a company that actually has capital, and not an Enron of some sort. Then again, I am not much in the details.
Have you ever been to the US with a mobile? There are multiple standards and a mobile that works in Chicago may not work in Austin, TX or Cincinnati, OH. At least that was my experience in 2004 and 2005 with a tri-band I bought in the EU, I am not sure of the technical details but I think the problem is that technologies (such as iDen, Digital AMPS, and IS-95) can differ across US states. In Europe it's pretty much all GSM/UMTS.
They already do. My father's mobile worked fine in Turkey (both Instanbul and at a tourist resort on the south coast, probably not far from Antalya) already in 1997 when I did not have one myself yet. My Norwegian mobile has been tested to work fine in Italy, Ireland, England, Germany, Sweden, Denmark, Finland and pretty much everywhere I brought it, except parts of the US.
Running a nmap -P0 -O foreignpolicy.com, you get among other things:
Device type: general purpose|media device
Running: Linux 2.4.X, Pace embedded
OS details: Linux 2.4.18 - 2.4.27, Pace digital cable TV receiver
Uptime 175.187 days (since Tue Dec 6 19:18:51 2005)
So it's open source, Linux, and running continuosly for 6 months. Ahh, the coherence.
You are recalling this report, that the US army released as a PDF and was "cracked" within minutes by multiple sources. It disclosed the names of US soldiers who shot at an Italian car because (in short) they had placed a blocking position incompetently (in this map, you can see they placed the BP at the end of the highway exit lane, not where it starts), that the reason for their mission was John Negroponte's visit, and that US troops used VOIP to communicate (cheap bastards), which had failed to work that evening. The report also disclosed bunches of troop movements, and AFAIK (I did read it) its supposed-to-be-undisclosed part did not support any particular US claims.
I agree with most of your post, but...
Not at all. Electrolysis is fairly efficient and up into the 90% range for some processes such as alkaline electrolysis. I think you mean the efficiency loss of getting electricity in the first place.
Who cares, a catalyst is not consumed by a reaction. It stays in the reactor, and even if it is toxic we will not have it in our gas tanks. Anyway I am not aware of so terribly toxic catalysts.
I am all for hydrogen, but Bush is pushing for that so he can distract people from the more obvious short-term solutions: stop subsidizing SUVs, increase car efficiency requirements. Takes a minute and saves a bunch of money.
Not really. It's called steam reforming and it's not especially nasty. CH4+H2O3H2+CO. It's also a very standard process. About the carbon, since you are doing this at a plant and not in a car, you can re-inject in a rock formation (back where the oil was).
It is not, but it is not the only source of hydrogen. When a new source is phased in (solar, wind, any other), cars do not have to know where the H2 comes from. You cannot do that with gasoline or diesel.
No I don't say that. Fuel cells consume hydrogen, they do not produce it. And you are thinking maybe alkaline FCs (it's not that simple though), more common and modern PEM FCs do not need external water output, since they create their own consuming hydrogen.
Perl is used for legitimate purposes. There is no such legitimate, day-to-day purpose for guns. In case someone tries to rob you, any expert's advice is do not react or try to be the hero: chances are they are much better than you at shooting, and have drawn their guns first. Again, check the murder rate in the US vs. in Europe.
You make the example of Montana (which is not so much of a hunter-gatherer society, but whatever). I suppose there are places where it does make sense to have a gun. On Svalbard you are actually supposed to carry a rifle anytime you are outdoors, since there are polar bears around. But that's because more people get eaten by bears than killed by guns (last one eaten was an Austrian tourist a few years ago).
Following your argument, we may legalize pretty much anything: cocaine makes politicians and CEOs work better, crack can be used responsibly, acetyc anhydride is useful for a lot of chemical reactions (also production of heroine, that's why you have to fill a ton of paperwork to buy/move/use it), and whatever dangerous stuff that has some sort of far-fetched legal use (nukes have been used in civil engineering).
In short, the point is: are the costs/benefits to society enough to justify the right to own X? Is that going to increase the total welfare of the population? Or is one's freedom becoming the next guy's threat?
I agree with most of your post, but let me state once and for all: the fire did not have to melt steel. It only had to weaken it. Steel gradually loses its tensile strength with temperature. It is a known fact and a pretty well researched one, since it is very important in warehouses containing flammable materials—they can easily collapse during a fire. As you could guess, the steel of an extreme building as the WTC is strained to the limit. Since the second tower to be hit was hit at a lower level (more strain because of the weight), it collapsed first (Ok, sorta simplistic).
The "in no case be exercised contrary to the purposes and principles of the United Nations" clause is used twice in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, namely:
In short, you do not have right to political asylum in Argentina just because you happen to be a Nazi criminal of war, nor can you be drafted to gas Jews. Ssorry for the double invocation of Goodwin's law, but just after the war that's probably the sort of people they were thinking about.
As for the "purposes and principles of the United Nations", these are not just the swaying opinion of the secretary general of the day, but they are clearly written in the first chapter of the Charter of the United Nations, that sum up to pacifism, freedom, antiracism, and lots of lofty ideals.
Just to get back in topic, see principle number 7:
So, the broadcasting treaty may actually be violating the UN's principles and be thusly busted, as broadcasting laws seem an unnecessary intrusion that has nothing to do with peacekeeping. Chapter VII, in case you wondered, is about "Action with respect to threats to the peace, breaches of the peace, and acts of aggression", nothing to do with broadcasting rights.
Before everybody correctly points out that the Internet is not a reliable source, I would like to point out that newspapers are not really up to the standards they are purported to be. Every time I read a newspaper article on a subject I know well, I very, very rarely read anything insightful, and very often loads of bullshit. Most of the times, the writer probably had to finish an article and deliver X lines, and put a few "facts" together—possibly naïvely got from the Internet as well.
I tend to trust sources where readers can write down their views, integrate, and if necessary insult the writer. I trust Slashdot commentaries (the whole page, not single comments), an often-edited Wikipedia article or a high-traffic blog way more than an article in a newspaper, because if there is something to be known you will probably find it. Even if you have to wade through flame wars and moderators on crack, it's likely there.
There's no such thing as a totally reliable news source, anyway.
This would actually be a good idea. Saves lives, and does not jeopardise your privacy.
I think the difference is that US students already had access to colleges and universities. The Internet did not improve their study options because they were already pretty good. Chinese villagers of some godforsaken valley, on the other hand, have much less choice.
I said for the benefit of society. Society works better if individuals have a well-defined set of rights. As for the vocabulary, for "society" I mean "everybody", you seem to have understood "the ruling class".
They cannot copy me immediately. The WMV and WMA formats have been out there for years and still mplayer fails on them at times. Flash has bunches of books documenting how it is programmed, but free players are still in their infancy (you probably noticed I am on AMD64). This living in a software-patent-free continent. The gist being, just because the idea is out, it does not mean that implementation is just as fast. In fact, implementation is usually the hardest part: learning C perfectly takes much less than programming the whole GCC from scratch.
If the method is so easy to implement, it is probably trivial and should not be patented at all. If it is more complex, it requires (a lot of) reorganization and formation, which you just cannot do "immediately".
It's the competition, baby. You have to deliver. Sharing knowledge is simply the most efficient way of doing things. It does not benefit directly the inventor (who may be however be hired by a leading company, or found his start-up to show he's right and wait for a hefty buyout check, or be rewarded in other ways), but benefits everybody else. Sometimes really important inventions are not patented anyway because the best inventors are more interested in the science than in the money (they are scientists after all: Einstein did not patent laser, for instance). The point of market competition is to benefit society, if you want to benefit a company look up "monopoly".
20 years seem to be a way too long time for an innovation cycle. 20 years ago I used to try to understand what that Vic20 my cousin had bought was.
What if my method is so generic that no one else can bypass it? People are patenting mouse clicks these days. And anyway, if someone else is first on the market, I have to provide a better service anyway. If there is a patent, I cannot improve the idea, I must ignore it totally.
Please, please. Use the proper word. These days we proudly go by the name of coglioni , thanks to our nanito en jefe.
Well, not much but I do have a few things.
I think it's colloquially called "reinventing the wheel" in these boroughs.
Then show me. I have never seen intelligent or sane of mind patents in my life. Maybe because I see the extreme examples like the combover patent, but also in my field of work I still have not seen a patent worth taking seriously. For example, this one and this one, other than demonstrating how poorly patents are screened, since they are about the same thing really, are fatally flawed and describe an apparatus that cannot work: you cannot control the power output of a fuel cell by changing the air flow into it any more than you can control the speed of your car by changing the gasoline level in your tank. Quite tellingly, no actual prototype has been presented.
I am not excluding that there is a legitimate use of patents (likely the one originally envisioned by Jefferson & Co.), but it seems to me there is more abuse than use. The baby's drowned in the bath water.
I believe not at all. Rights are granted for the benefit of the whole of society, not single individuals: otherwise you might as well reintroduce slavery, as it was very beneficial to a few guys. Having a monopoly on something that can be reproduced indefinitely such as business or programming methods, and knowledge in general, means unfairly harming everybody else. You are not damaged by someone else who's using your methods (this does not block you from using them), unless you mean by competition, and last time I checked there is quite a load of legislation that actually protects competition, as it is demonstrated to improve product quality for society.
You cannot steal a method or an idea. You can only copy it. The original author still has it.
On the contrary, if you know that the competition is going to figure out your methods and implement them after a while, you know also that you must keep innovating and leveraging your position as first in the market (it takes time to make a Webshop from just an idea: and if you are slow and competition is faster than you to commercialise, it's all your fault). In other words, you have to do actual work, not rest on your laurels because some law forbid everybody else from using your methods.
From the whole society's point of view (that is, our point of view), if Netflix wins we are going to see worse service from Blockbuster and less competition. If Blockbuster wins, competition will be closer between the companies and they will have to find a way to get more customers.
The more I think of the patent system the more I think that the whole concept is flawed. As generally with IP, Beethoven and Mozart died in poverty, Britney Spears is filthy rich.
Cue to DVD-Jon crack in 3.. 2.. 1..
Seriously, does anyone know how much effort it would take to crack these DRM'd formats and export to AVI? What sort of security is in place? And wouldn't anyone be able to make a "bootleg" analog copy anyway?
The USCC is an organ of the US Congress. These are the members. If I understand correctly, they are all politicians. Chinese do things cheaper than Americans, American politicians whine so they look like they are against outsourcing, then they buy happily.
Seriously, bugging thousands of PCs to get intelligence? Give me a break. Intelligence is not just about getting information, it is also about not getting caught and leaving no evidence. Thousands of PCs trying to send coded messages to Beijing would ring a bell even at the Department of Homeland Security. It's much simpler and safer to buy or blackmail a politician or an employee to provide information.
And it could easily be argued that the moon is made of cheese. Facts are facts.
Duh, you noticed America was not invaded in those wars? America freely decided to interfere with other nations' business. It's not like America can legitimately complain if they shot back. And, those were only military casualties, it was only soldiers being killed (on the American side at least).
Yeah right, they wanted to hit bunkers with ICBMs. Helloooo, when were you born? The whole concept of MAD (Mutual Assured Distruction) is based upon total mutual annihilation of the opposing nations. Do you think you or anyone in the US or USSR would have made it out alive of a World War III?
You can dual-licence code with GPL for open development and other agreements for people who want to develop closed source. That's what Trolltech does, and I never heard them whining for money—in fact they boast successes. If Apple had to pay up for using BSD as a basis for their Mac OS X, say one little dollar per sold copy, now that would be some cash flow.
Reagan helped a number of terrorist organisations, such as the Contras in Nicaragua and the Mujaheddeen in Afghanistan, on the sole premises that they were "anti-communist". Reagan was elected in 1980, if my memory serves me. 21 years later, guess what one of those former mujaheddeens did in New York?
Did it really take a genius to fathom that giving guns to nutty fundamentalists is not a smart move? Islamic fundies killed more Americans than Soviets and communists ever did, mind you.
Try Antarctica. All inhabitants are scientists and have high education, no state religion (in fact no state at all), no police nor laws to restrain your freedom, and no one is checking who's coming in or out.
The article cannot be taken seriously. All it does is comparing Stallman to Savonarola, and quote Linus' comments on a mailing list. It gives the (false) impression that Linus is campaigning against the GPLv3. It does not actually discuss any flaw in the GPLv3 for a single line.
Which does not. Nuclear is more expensive than e.g. coal- or natural-gas-fired plants. Whereas the operating costs, including fuel and general maintenance, are small (and these are the figures the nuclear industry normally presents), the investments are gigantic. In fact, building the nuclear plant is an investment hardly going to return. In Paine, J. R., "Will nuclear power pay for itself?", The social science journal, Vol 33 N 4 (1996) 459-473, which I usually quote (it's peer-reviewed), the author states that:
The analysis shows that nuclear power is currently nowhere near meeting its costs [...] even under the most optimistic conditions (where costs are cut considerably and revenues climb substantially), the current generation of the nuclear option over its lifetime may at best be economically marginal.
The reason countries do not build nuclear anymore is not that it is unpopular, coal is unpopular too but it does not get hindered in any significant way. They do not build nuclear because after 50 years they are still unable to turn a profit, and that is why nuclear plants are either state-owned or built with large subsidies.It does not take much to check the ar link. Here you go. No pics included, however, except the cover of an Egyptian newspaper that published them.
However this is how it is right now, I would expect a few flame wars to have been waged about this.