The DOJ's job is not to determine if a *law as passed* is constitutional. That's the court system's job.
Umm, no. Yes, I do understand that the Supreme Court has claimed the privilege to be the final arbiter on the Constitutionality of laws. But that is written nowhere in the Constitution.
Do yourself a favour of looking at the Oath of Office for the President and for members of Congress.
Here's the one for the President (the only Oath of Office specified in the Constitution itself - note that it mentions laws not at all): I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.
There's no Oath specified for the Congress, but this is the one the First Congress used: I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support the Constitution of the United States.
And here's the one they've used for the last 122 years: I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter: So help me God.
Note the phrase "defend the Constitution" in the current Oaths of Office for both the President and Congress. Note the absence of any phrase even approaching "defend the laws of the United States"....
Further copyright law defines the distribution of a derivative work as copyright infringement. And that's that, I'm afraid. If you use a character from a book, your new book is based on that old book, therefore a derivative work, therefore a copyright violation.
Alas, derivative works only apply to things under Copyright. Since the Holmes canon is no longer under Copyright, there is no reason to believe that use of Holmes is a violation of Copyright (though it is clearly a violation of Trademark).
People, the DOJ's job is to defend the laws as standing as passed.
No, its job is to defend the Constitution first, the laws second.
Note, for the record, that very few DOJs have bothered with that nasty old Constitution thing. Though FDR's early DOJ prevented him from doing a few things that were unconstitutional, and GWB's actually argued once to overturn a law due to unconstitutionality....
remember that Hollywood greases Republican and Democrat pockets alike.
Though it should be noted that Hollywood contributes much more to the Democrats than the Republicans.
76% to Dems in 2010 (so far), 78% to Dems in 2008, not less than 62% in any election cycle in the last two decades.
So it's insane to assume that a Democratic administration is going to rein in the entertainment industry. It's not likely that a Republican administration will either, but they're more likely to be able to give up the relatively small amount of money they get from Hollywood than the Dems will.
For instance, the founders also intended that only landowning men could vote and that humans could be property (perhaps not universally, but they did all sign that document).
A common myth, but not true. There was no property requirement specified in the Constitution in order to gain a vote - thanks be to Benjamin Franklin for his rather eloquent summary of the fallacy: (to paraphrase) I own a donkey. I may vote. The donkey dies. I lose my vote. Therefore, the franchise lies not in me, but in the ass.
You can Trademark a character, but you can't Copyright him.
You can Copyright "The Hound of the Baskervilles" (which is in the Public Domain), but "Sherlock Holmes" isn't Copyrightable.
Note that much of the Holmes canon is in the Public Domain, since it was originally published in the 19th century. There are only a few Conan Doyle stories (and a great many movies and Holmes stories by other authors) that were Copyrighted late enough to still be under Copyright.
Note also that owning the Trademark for Holmes allows one to play goalkeeper for anyone who wants to do an original Holmes work (and extract money in the process), but it doesn't actually allow one to control the republishing of the original Holmes stories from the 19th Century.
A "character" can be Trademarked, but not Copyrighted.
Only individual works can be Copyrighted. And stories written in 1887 (when the first Holmes stories were written) are no longer under Copyright in the USA.
Note that I have in my possession (sitting on the desk next to me) a copy of "The Classic Illustrated Sherlock Holmes", which includes "The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes", "The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes", "The Hound of the Baskervilles", and "The Return of Sherlock Holmes". It was published in Connecticut is 1987, and contains no Copyright notices from the original stories, indicating that they were in the Public Domain at the time of printing.
The day they get eBooks down to $1 is they day I buy one. Until then, I'll stick with buying the paper version is is (often) cheaper, doesn't need an electronic device to read, and is not going to be affected by hard drive crashes or when the vendor changes DRM formats in 3-4 years.
Baen doesn't use DRM of any sort on its eBooks.
Baen's eBooks are downloadable forever once you pay for them. So if your harddrive crashes, you can just redownload them (for free).
They do require the device to read. On the other hand, $6 is lower than most paperback prices today. It would be more expensive (as well as needing more storage space) to replace my eBooks with paperbacks than it would cost to replace the eReader.
Actually, I think it would be cheaper to replace the Reader and repurchase the books than it would cost to buy the paperbacks, come to that.
Yes, in the USA. While Sherlock Holmes movies and such are still in Copyright, the original Conan Doyle stories are in the Public Domain, with the possible exception of the "Casefile of Sherlock Holmes", which I believe was published late in the 1920's, and thus may still be under copyright as a result of the various extensions of same.
I take it you've actually done a cost estimate on rebuilding a city from scratch?
If so, can you share the results with the rest of us?
My back of the envelope guesstimate looks like somewhere between $100K and $1M per person to recreate a city elsewhere. Which isn't within my definition of "cheap"....
Well, we just need more idealists with better lawyers suing the coal plants.
Won't work. It's relatively easy to keep something from being built by tying it up in court. A lot harder to get it shutdown once it's in operation. After all, Judges and Lawyers like having electricity too....
The really pathetic thing is that the Greens are effectively fighting in favour of Coal Power. We're not going to wean ourselves from coal quickly, no matter what we do. But stomping on development of pretty much anything that has a possibility, however remote, of replacing Coal Power is just plain stupid. Haven't these knotheads heard of "the lesser of two evils"?
Greenhouses aren't millions of dollars per acre - using the half-assed technique I used to build my greenhouse the plastic sheeting (10-year polycarbonate) would cost under $150K/acre.
Hmm, $150k per acre, four square miles. Sounds like about $384 million for the greenhouse, using your "half-assed" technique. So in the timezone of this project....
A 4 square mile greenhouse in the middle of the dessert? No, that shouldn't be expensive to maintain... and keep the glass panels clean and unbroken in!
Given that the Greens are already opposing solar plants in desert locations, I expect that a four square mile greenhouse will never make it past all the legal challenges.
Obviously for the victim or his family it would be terrible, but once the scandal broke that the explosives had been planted on him by operatives there would no longer be any armed thugs in airports around the world, and we'd all be treated with a little more respect.
Whatever gives you the idea that something bad happening in an experiment like this would cause the removal of airport security theatre?
Sorry, not going to happen. Even if every one of these guys had been shot by airport security, all that would have been done is that the various governments involved would have (a) expressed condolences to widows and (b) pointed out that this proves the system mostly works, but needs a few more armed thugs to make it really work well (after all, if there'd been more armed guards, the armed guards that gunned down the victims wouldn't have been so fearful that they'd have shot first, asked questions later)....
No, Pi was never created, it simply is, and it is everywhere always the same. A universe with a different value of Pi would be impossible.
Last I checked, the value of Pi we use is the one for Euclidean geometry. For non-Euclidean geometry, pi has different values, depending on the curvature of the surface that is the basis for the geometry.
Note, by the by, that we don't actually live in a Euclidean geometry, but that the curvature is small enough that the ideal euclidean value of pi still works.
(as TFA says) BLIO is free. Seems logical since at this point it's a working concept.
Calibre is free. And will read pretty much any e-Book format currently in use. And convert from one form to another, if what you get isn't supported by your particular eBook reader.
And since it also allows you to read the eBooks on your PC, I'm not really sure what the special niche of this Blio thing will be....
Oddly, many religions are fans of this movement. [wikipedia.org]
At least among Christians, clerical celibacy wasn't about removing yourself from the gene pool.
It was about minimizing the extent to which the clergy used the Church to advance their own children - no children, no preferences for the children of priests.
It worked reasonably well, but by no means perfectly - note the number of bishops, archbishops, cardinals and popes with kids.
Note also that clerical celibacy has nothing whatsoever to do with the teachings of Jesus - it wasn't until the twelfth century that it became the norm.
The last time the US and Canada fought, how did that end again? Ah yes, your White House was lit on fire.
As I recall, that ended with Andy Jackson kicking the crap out of the Royal Army (and not just any odds-n-sods of the Royal Army - those lads were brought over here after kicking the crap out of Napolean in Spain) just outside N'Awlins.
Public skepticism about nuclear energy claims may be overblown, but it's also been well-earned.
It should be noted that anti-nuke hysteria was strong well before either Chernobyl (moderately serious) or TMI (total non-issue, except to the insurance company who had to pay for a new reactor).
Those events did not cause the hysteria, they merely confirmed pre-existing hysteria (which developed with no real basis other than the KGB's disinformation campaign).
Slashdot Mirror
Umm, no. Yes, I do understand that the Supreme Court has claimed the privilege to be the final arbiter on the Constitutionality of laws. But that is written nowhere in the Constitution.
Do yourself a favour of looking at the Oath of Office for the President and for members of Congress.
Here's the one for the President (the only Oath of Office specified in the Constitution itself - note that it mentions laws not at all): I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.
There's no Oath specified for the Congress, but this is the one the First Congress used: I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support the Constitution of the United States.
And here's the one they've used for the last 122 years: I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter: So help me God.
Note the phrase "defend the Constitution" in the current Oaths of Office for both the President and Congress. Note the absence of any phrase even approaching "defend the laws of the United States"....
Alas, derivative works only apply to things under Copyright. Since the Holmes canon is no longer under Copyright, there is no reason to believe that use of Holmes is a violation of Copyright (though it is clearly a violation of Trademark).
No, its job is to defend the Constitution first, the laws second.
Note, for the record, that very few DOJs have bothered with that nasty old Constitution thing.
Though FDR's early DOJ prevented him from doing a few things that were unconstitutional, and GWB's actually argued once to overturn a law due to unconstitutionality....
Though it should be noted that Hollywood contributes much more to the Democrats than the Republicans.
76% to Dems in 2010 (so far), 78% to Dems in 2008, not less than 62% in any election cycle in the last two decades.
So it's insane to assume that a Democratic administration is going to rein in the entertainment industry. It's not likely that a Republican administration will either, but they're more likely to be able to give up the relatively small amount of money they get from Hollywood than the Dems will.
A common myth, but not true. There was no property requirement specified in the Constitution in order to gain a vote - thanks be to Benjamin Franklin for his rather eloquent summary of the fallacy: (to paraphrase) I own a donkey. I may vote. The donkey dies. I lose my vote. Therefore, the franchise lies not in me, but in the ass.
You can Trademark a character, but you can't Copyright him.
You can Copyright "The Hound of the Baskervilles" (which is in the Public Domain), but "Sherlock Holmes" isn't Copyrightable.
Note that much of the Holmes canon is in the Public Domain, since it was originally published in the 19th century. There are only a few Conan Doyle stories (and a great many movies and Holmes stories by other authors) that were Copyrighted late enough to still be under Copyright.
Note also that owning the Trademark for Holmes allows one to play goalkeeper for anyone who wants to do an original Holmes work (and extract money in the process), but it doesn't actually allow one to control the republishing of the original Holmes stories from the 19th Century.
A "character" can be Trademarked, but not Copyrighted.
Only individual works can be Copyrighted. And stories written in 1887 (when the first Holmes stories were written) are no longer under Copyright in the USA.
Note that I have in my possession (sitting on the desk next to me) a copy of "The Classic Illustrated Sherlock Holmes", which includes "The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes", "The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes", "The Hound of the Baskervilles", and "The Return of Sherlock Holmes". It was published in Connecticut is 1987, and contains no Copyright notices from the original stories, indicating that they were in the Public Domain at the time of printing.
Baen doesn't use DRM of any sort on its eBooks.
Baen's eBooks are downloadable forever once you pay for them. So if your harddrive crashes, you can just redownload them (for free).
They do require the device to read. On the other hand, $6 is lower than most paperback prices today. It would be more expensive (as well as needing more storage space) to replace my eBooks with paperbacks than it would cost to replace the eReader.
Actually, I think it would be cheaper to replace the Reader and repurchase the books than it would cost to buy the paperbacks, come to that.
Yes, in the USA. While Sherlock Holmes movies and such are still in Copyright, the original Conan Doyle stories are in the Public Domain, with the possible exception of the "Casefile of Sherlock Holmes", which I believe was published late in the 1920's, and thus may still be under copyright as a result of the various extensions of same.
I should note that Baen Books sells eBooks for about $6.
I take it you've actually done a cost estimate on rebuilding a city from scratch?
If so, can you share the results with the rest of us?
My back of the envelope guesstimate looks like somewhere between $100K and $1M per person to recreate a city elsewhere. Which isn't within my definition of "cheap"....
Won't work. It's relatively easy to keep something from being built by tying it up in court. A lot harder to get it shutdown once it's in operation. After all, Judges and Lawyers like having electricity too....
The really pathetic thing is that the Greens are effectively fighting in favour of Coal Power. We're not going to wean ourselves from coal quickly, no matter what we do. But stomping on development of pretty much anything that has a possibility, however remote, of replacing Coal Power is just plain stupid. Haven't these knotheads heard of "the lesser of two evils"?
Westinghouse makes submarine reactors, by the way.
Note that the solution to nuclear power phobia isn't thousands of nuclear power plants instead of hundreds of them.
Unfortunately, AGW will have to get a great deal worse before we can think about actually adopting a zero emission baseload.
Hmm, $150k per acre, four square miles. Sounds like about $384 million for the greenhouse, using your "half-assed" technique. So in the timezone of this project....
Unfortunately, it doesn't take many "idealists" to sink a large project. Keep it in court for a few years, and the funding will dry up and blow away.
Given that the Greens are already opposing solar plants in desert locations, I expect that a four square mile greenhouse will never make it past all the legal challenges.
Whatever gives you the idea that something bad happening in an experiment like this would cause the removal of airport security theatre?
Sorry, not going to happen. Even if every one of these guys had been shot by airport security, all that would have been done is that the various governments involved would have (a) expressed condolences to widows and (b) pointed out that this proves the system mostly works, but needs a few more armed thugs to make it really work well (after all, if there'd been more armed guards, the armed guards that gunned down the victims wouldn't have been so fearful that they'd have shot first, asked questions later)....
Last I checked, the value of Pi we use is the one for Euclidean geometry. For non-Euclidean geometry, pi has different values, depending on the curvature of the surface that is the basis for the geometry.
Note, by the by, that we don't actually live in a Euclidean geometry, but that the curvature is small enough that the ideal euclidean value of pi still works.
Calibre is free. And will read pretty much any e-Book format currently in use. And convert from one form to another, if what you get isn't supported by your particular eBook reader.
And since it also allows you to read the eBooks on your PC, I'm not really sure what the special niche of this Blio thing will be....
Note that Calibre seems to work just fine if you're insane enough to want an e-reader on your comp.
At least among Christians, clerical celibacy wasn't about removing yourself from the gene pool.
It was about minimizing the extent to which the clergy used the Church to advance their own children - no children, no preferences for the children of priests.
It worked reasonably well, but by no means perfectly - note the number of bishops, archbishops, cardinals and popes with kids.
Note also that clerical celibacy has nothing whatsoever to do with the teachings of Jesus - it wasn't until the twelfth century that it became the norm.
There. I just lit a dollar bill on fire. Seems you were wrong about me being able to burn money....
No law against burning money. I've never bothered, mind you, but I will if someone tries to make it illegal.
And yes, the mint CAN just print more money. It's called "inflation".
As I recall, that ended with Andy Jackson kicking the crap out of the Royal Army (and not just any odds-n-sods of the Royal Army - those lads were brought over here after kicking the crap out of Napolean in Spain) just outside N'Awlins.
It should be noted that anti-nuke hysteria was strong well before either Chernobyl (moderately serious) or TMI (total non-issue, except to the insurance company who had to pay for a new reactor).
Those events did not cause the hysteria, they merely confirmed pre-existing hysteria (which developed with no real basis other than the KGB's disinformation campaign).