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User: agrippa_cash

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  1. Re:Result on Man Tries To Use Explosive Device On US Flight · · Score: 1

    I don't disagree in principle, but there are very sound arguments for not allowing people to be armed in a pressurized compartment with 200+ people crammed in it. Additionally I wonder if the type of person who arms himself for flight would have risked bodily injury by wrestling this guy to the ground or if he would have 'subdued' the perp perminantly, thus depriving the alphabet agencies of a valuable intelligence resource.

  2. Re:Result on Man Tries To Use Explosive Device On US Flight · · Score: 1

    We'll see, I suppose. What I've heard is consistent (to the extent I know anything about the subject) with a primer charge failing to detonate some poorly manufactured explosive. I certainly prefer to think that some important plot was foiled, since on some level it seems that there is a practical maximum number of serious plots, but an essentially unlimited number of idiots.

  3. Re:Love the spin on 22 Million Missing Bush White House Emails Found · · Score: 1

    Have you seen the Beckian conspiracy diagrams? These tend to involve or implicate thousands of individuals. A diagram of the Bush/Cheney email/DOJ/bad intelligence/Plame conspiracies would collectively require fewer arrows than Obama's nefarious plan to eliminate the meal of Dinner.

  4. Re:Too bad the US can't comprehend this concept on Microsoft Fined In India For Using "Money Power" Against Pirates · · Score: 1

    Again, the problem is that for a corporation, like paypal, it is entirely reasonable to spend $100k to preserve the enforceability of a user agreement, therefore the corporation would be able to recover $100k from the Plaintiff, even if the Plaintiff's demand was $1k.

  5. Re:Common sense? on DVD-by-Mail Services Cleared In Patent Troll Case · · Score: 1

    The amount was chosen because it was McDonalds coffee sales for a day (or week or something). It wasn't to compensate the woman, but to punish McD for perceived uncivil behavior. Think the Pinto writ small (pint size you might say. Because , see the cups...)

  6. Re:Seems like the wrong approach. on California Moving Forward With Big-Screen TV Power Restrictions · · Score: 1

    Sufficient, but inefficient because it increases the transaction costs for consumers who must RTFM for every potential purchase. By establishing minimal standards, regulation encourages the buying of goods.

  7. Re:More classics and sources on What Belongs In a High School Sci-Fi/Fantasy Lit Class? · · Score: 1

    You probably would have had to read it anyway. Shirley Jackson never even drove past my HS and I had to read it more than once.

  8. Re:Waste MORE time!? on Obama Makes a Push To Add Time To the School Year · · Score: 1
    Thank you for attempting to nip this unconventional wisdom factoid in the bud.

    I read a pseudo-memoir called Farmington (uninteresting except for who wrote it) and the author writes about his love of summer vacation in rural Pennsylvania the 1880's or so.

  9. Re:Proves my point on Professor Wins $240K In Fair Use Dispute · · Score: 1

    You are trading one fiction for another. Offhand I'd say that this obscures the value of the work, and more importantly deprives the public free access to the work for a longer time because we'd have to wait for both Mrs. and Miss Grant to die.

  10. Re:Proves my point on Professor Wins $240K In Fair Use Dispute · · Score: 4, Interesting

    This case illustrates the value of having copyright extend beyond the life of the author, since it was his daughter who seemed to suffer for Joyce's art. A better example is US Grant, who was near penniless and diagnosed with cancer and wrote his well regarded memoir hoping to providing for his wife and daughter.

  11. Re:CA also has a history of unconstitutional laws. on California Publishes Television Efficiency Standards For 2011 · · Score: 1

    http://www.scorecard.org/ranking/ was the first google hit for "pollution for state" VA is ahead of CA in Total Toxic Chemical Emissions.

  12. Re:CA also has a history of unconstitutional laws. on California Publishes Television Efficiency Standards For 2011 · · Score: 1

    Although most of the BoR is now applied against the states, even the most ardent States Rightist must concede that the 10th Amendment reservation of powers suggests that it has always been anticipated that the states would (and should be permitted to) do things that the either expressly forbidden or not iplicitly permitted to Federal Government.

  13. Re:See the D before the Patent Number? on Google Patents Its Home Page · · Score: 1
    You may be sick of it, but it is the key point. My recollection is that design patents always seemed not worth pursuing and when pursued not worth granting; I imagine most "just a design patent" commentators have the same impression. I understand your frustration at the lack of citations and half-assedly looked up design patents.

    Emmanuel Outlines are not legal authorities, but p C-14 of Margreth Barret's IP outline states that 1) the standard for infringement is similar to trademark infringement and 2) when a patented design encompasses both functional and ornamental elements it must be common ornamental features that confuse Joe User. FWIW. IANLTPLIAJ.

  14. Re:I can't be the only one on "District 9" Best Sci-fi Movie of 09? · · Score: 1

    I haven't seen the movie and your review semi-confirms the suspicions that made me not want to see it. I'm always glad when SF takes on Big Ideas, but if you are going to lecure me I expect the same level of care in mechanics as in message. This means aliens burned by water do not invade a planet with rain and oceans and squirtguns without at least putting on some clothing. Children of Men suffered from similar logical flaws, as did the sequel to 28 Days Later. Aliens in posession of superior technology should use it to their advantage, or failing that, a minimally competant government should deliver a whole assload of buttermilk (sorry) catfood to completely disarm the aliens. Maybe the filmmakers address this point with a global catfood shortage, fair enough. The last film that engendered this level of loyalty was Equilibrium: a steamy load of allegory made outside Hollywood that was, if nothing else, at last as sloppy in its message as in its mechanics. Maybe District 9 is better than Equilibrium, but if the commercials suggests WTF-level plot holes it will take more than a creamy review from Knowles to get me in the theater. I'm glad to read one post that allows that I may not be completely wasting my life between now and whenever I get the movie from Netflix.

  15. Re:why is it great? on AP Will Sell You a "License" To Words It Doesn't Own · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Copyright exists to encourage new works. If your judgment, expressed through your selection and arrangement of public domain elements is more than minimal, you can claim a copyright. A book of public domain phrases used to tell a story would be copyrightable. A book of phrases in alphabetical order would not.

  16. Re:bankrupt then what? on RIAA Awarded $675,000 In Tenenbaum Trial · · Score: 1
    I appreciate your continuing engagement in this subject, and your discomfort with being forced to have some sort of insurance. However . . . I imagine the lenders who ate your debits are just as annoyed with bankruptcy as you are at the thought of mandatory heathcare. Why should they be unable to contract for an inescapable debit? Why should you be unable to risk an escapable debit in the form of healthcare bills (if you think that is a good bet)?

    Since universal healthcare would help creditors and debitors alike, and since borrowing is a voluntary transaction, would a tax on credit be an acceptably noncoercive way to fund universal healthcare?

  17. This is a great idea! on Amazon Wants Patent For Inserting Ads Into Books · · Score: 1

    I've already started going through old software patents and adding "in the real world" to them. My one-click vending machine should allow me to buy an island.

  18. Re:Yeah... on EPA Quashed Report Skeptical of Global Warming · · Score: 1

    The free market will always have a solution to the problem.

    But what about people who can't afford swimming lessons?

  19. Re:"Smitten", not "smote" on 14-Year-Old Boy Smote By Meteorite · · Score: 2, Funny

    There are actually two types of Americans who say 'smitten': those who become lovestruck and those who play D&D. These groups are mutually exclusive.

  20. Ugh on Open Source Textbooks For California · · Score: 5, Interesting

    It is a huge industry that I understand deals in a widely dispursed form of petty graft. I'd much rather we use our public university system (which is well regarded) to compile text books and withhold state funds from districts that insist on going elsewhere. Of course, we would have to pay the UCs something, but we wouldn't have to pay them enough to bribe local school districts. I think textbooks are a racket all up and down the line, but up through the HS level I have a hard time believing that you need or can even attract top level scholars to explain Algebra II (as someone else mentioned) or the Whiskey Rebelion or TekWar.

  21. Re:Why in the world on Samsung Papyrus E-Book Reader, Coming Soon · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Because it claims to do something better than a netbook can. I am slightly eccentric though: I use a watch to tell time, a cellphone to talk and a camera to take pictures. It may seem silly, but there are a lot of people like me.

    I'll hold off until they are cheaper though.

  22. Re:!TimeCube on Cops To Start CrimeTube To Report Offenses · · Score: 1

    You aren't the only one

  23. Re:Bad time for movies on Watchmen 50 Days On, Was It Worth the Gamble? · · Score: 1

    In LA tickets are about $10 or so, so you're at $120 just going to a completely run of the mill theater. At the Arclight it is $13 or $14, then there is parking, popcorn, drinks. $300 isn't implausible.

  24. Re:ha ha on Columnist Fired For Reviewing Pirated Movie · · Score: 1

    I don't think a court would find that this is fair use. Otherwise anyone could download anything so long as they intended to write a review.

  25. Re:Fascinating on HIV Transmission Captured On Video · · Score: 1
    I disagree. The humor of "I'm *, you insenstitive clod!" is fairly transparant: it isn't about animus it is about insensitivity (and clodishness).

    I try not to make fun of people who suffer from some bizarre and cruel disadvantage because I don't know what it is like to, say, have my family mauled by amok giraffes. If I make a joke about that unfortunate circumstance and someone says "My family was mauled by amok giraffes, you insensitive clod!" the humor is 1) that there is no misfortune so unlikely that someone hasnt' suffered from it and 2) that I really should have known that someone sho suffered such a fate was likely to see their personal trajedy made into a punch line.

    I think what makes the invocation of this line from an actual sufferer of the malady when it wouldn't be OK otherwise is that the statement is both true and a punchline and therefore the joker presumably has some insight into the actual amount of hurtfulness that is going to be inflicted (I've given the matter less thought than the length of this post would indicate, so there are likely other reasons as well).