"In what utopian world is "advancing society" a business objective?"
Actually, it's a key underlying reason for a "free market" society. In theory, a free market is "better" because it inherently rewards businesses that make "a better mousetrap" or make the same mousetrap for a lower prices. In the former case, we get better products and technology. This is why companies are always pushing the envelope trying to build better, faster, etc. (Just look at AMD vs Intel for a key example.) In the latter case, more people can afford the products so the technology is more integrated into society on average. Either way, this could be considered "advancing society".
But yes, that's not the direct goal of the business. It's the reason the rewards they're after are there in the first place.
I tend to agree with this, and in fact I recall a survey that suggested about double the current price would stop people from using vehicles except for when absolutely necessary, which is certainly better for the environment and would reduce a lot of frivilous waste.
The problem is, unforunately, economics is not that simple. Japan has a large population in a small area. Very high density. Public transit is therefore relatively efficient and feasible and well established.
North America tends to be very spread out, and doesn't have the infrastructure for mass public transit nor is it as economically feasible. The design of cities, infrastructure, and economy are somewhat reliant on longer distance traveling for work and shopping. If people reduced they're travelling a significant amount, this would likely have economic impacts.
In reality, what would more likely happen is that the cost of living would go up (travel for work and shopping) and so salaries would have increase to match, creating inflation.
Well, economics is always a difficult system to predict, so I'm not claiming any of these predictions are accurate. I guess I'm trying to point out that this is not a clear cut as greed or whining. There are legitimate concerns about fuel prices, regardless of what they are here relative to other places. It's more important what they are here tomorrow relative to what they were here yesterday.
"people should be free to ask a lawyer "I've done X -- was that a crime?" "
That doesn't exactly fit this scenario. First, priviledge doesn't apply to ongoing or future crimes. Heller did this before the 2004 election (and possibly before the March primaries, though didn't make it to publication until April). Second, a competent lawyer could probably argue that Jones Day, knowing that the law was being broken (in their own opinion) and providing legal advice to Diebold in contining of this illegal activity, had become a de facto accessory and therefore priviledge does not apply.
Third, I believe violation of priviledge is a civil offense, not criminal. The charges against Heller have nothing to do with violation of priviledge. The three criminal charges here are felony access to computer data, commercial burglary, and receving stolen property.
My question then is, are there exceptions to what is basically "theft" laws here when doing so to expose illegal activity? For instance, if you work in a store and review a security videotape of the store owner killing someone, can you be charged with theft for taking that videotape? In that case, it's a past crime as well. What if it's evidence of an ongoing or future crime? Does it matter if it's the police or someone else you give it to if the point is to expose the criminal activity (rather than, say, blackmail them)?
I'm not sure of the law for such a case. I certainly think there should be an exception.
Actually, that's the problem. It's impossible to cover all circumstances under the law. Laws represent intention. Language is imperfect, as is imaganation for all possible scenarios. This allows some people who violate the intention of the laws to get off because of loopholes ("technicalities"), but also means that someone might break the letter of the law but not the intention. It would be silly to think that the wording of the law is what should strictly govern guilt or innocence in a trial. Juries do actually have the power to provide a not-guilty verdict even if they believe the person violated the letter of the law, but not the intention. So, I guess it depends on your definition of "justice".
Incidentally, in practice individual jurists can pretty much decide based on whatever they want. There are certainly invalid reasons that can be appealed, but that's only if the jurists' true reasons can be revealed.
"Most consumer electronics get more expensive, not less, when shoehorned into a smaller form-factor."
Over the short-term, absolutely. But a $200 Pocket PC nowadays can outperform my 486 that cost $2000 12 years ago. The break-even timeframe is probably on the order of 3-5 years I'm guessing on most of these types of technologies. So, yes, it could kill off LCD/Plasma sets, but probably not for about 7-10 years (adding in a few years to get a colour version of comparable performance to market). I suspect other technologies will be in play by then.
Joke aside, not all prostitutes or prostitution environments are the same. GTA tends to portray the cliche streetwalker/drug addict/forced-into-by-pimp hookers. Brothels, escorts, call-girls, strippers, and porn actresses (including the amateur/web stuff) have different environments from this.
I'm surprised nobody has made the argument that the violence against hookers (the streetwalking/drug addict/pimp kind) in GTA might actually educate youngsters that hooking (SW/DA/pimp kind) can be dangerous and undesirable, as opposed to "Pretty Woman" and similar portrayals which may cause more women to get into prostitution.
Of course for that to happen it would have to be little girls that play GTA, which is the main demographic to play it, right? Guys? Hello? Why are you all looking at me funny?
"If you'd thought about it, it would be obvious why this is the case."
Well, I'm not sure I'd say it's obvious, more like callous. But yes, you've hit the key point. I'd say it's more of an issue of responsibility not "volunteers". Hospitals aren't responsible for sick people getting sick, so any help is a benefit even if more could be done. It's really a balance of how much help we're willing to pay for. NASA is responsible for the people it puts in danger.
Keep in mind that all I said was that it's "interesting". I don't think it's necessarily wrong or much could be done about it until cheap, automated, multi-failure safety systems come into play.
"The data for that cure would be my intellectual property and, therefore, private."
Sorry to go slighly off topic, and to do some lecturing myself, but I find it incredibly sad that we've (rather, the influence of the MPAA/RIAA and similar) have created a society that actual believes your statement above. That the absurdity of owning an idea as if it were tangible property is not apparent to everyone, but rather embraced by many if not the majority, almost brings me to tears over the future of civilized society. The really sad part is that this concept of private ownership goes well beyond existing IP laws. People don't actually "own" IP; the laws allow a limited (in time and extent) right of denial for copying, distributing, or implementing the IP depending on it's form. This limited monopoly is not an inherent right of ownership, but rather an incentive to publicize the IP so that others can learn from it and use it in the long run, thus benefiting society.
"If
nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of
exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an
idea, which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps
it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into
the possession of every one, and the receiver cannot dispossess
himself of it. Its peculiar character, too, is that no one possesses
the less, because every other possesses the whole of it. He who
receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without
lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light
without darkening me. That ideas should freely spread from one to
another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man,
and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and
benevolently designed by nature, when she made them, like fire,
expansible over all space, without lessening their density in any
point, and like the air in which we breathe, move, and have our
physical being, incapable of confinement or exclusive appropriation.
Inventions then cannot, in nature, be a subject of property."
I bet one of two things happens. Either someone tries to patent it 5 years after being on the market, and perhaps succeeds since by then patent agents will only have 8 seconds to decide if an idea is patentable, or somebody currently has an obscure patent of a vague rough idea that they never produced that sounds slightly similar to this, which doesn't show up on searches, and they'll keep quiet about it until this thing makes billions and then say "Hey, you owe me money!".
"The goal of compettition is to beat the other compettitors."
While you are not strictly wrong, you are out of context. You've defined competition in the most generic, generalized sense, not in the market sense, and don't accept that it can mean something else in another context. By your definition violations of anti-trust laws can still qualify as competition. But at least you'd have at least one major supporter of your definition. (If you look, you'll even see that word "anti-competitive" used in the same context as here.)
Competition is making a better product or doing it for a cheaper price. Anti-competition is forcing people to use your product by artificially limiting another product that people want to only work with yours. This is just a bullying tactic. Now, Skype with 10-way conferencing isn't exactly a big stick, but it's still a stick we're being hit with. But the principle is even worse than some of Microsoft's monopolistic tactics. It's not just integration or bundling, it'd be more like only allowing Windows to play mp3 files above 128 kbps using Windows Media Player and artificially crippling others. (The fact that it's two companies here instead of two MS departments doesn't make much of a difference to the harm to the end user.)
I'm wondering if they factored in the anti-marketing this does for them. I'm less interested in using Intel and Skype products now.
"I can't offhand think of anything like dog tags or drivers licenses (i.e., specific identity) that are forcibly and permanently marked upon an individual's body other than the Nazi tattoos."
Well, artificially I can't think of any others. But nature does a pretty good job of that already. (Fingerprints, DNA, retinal pattern, etc.) But then biometrics are known to be unreliable and are generally flawed in that they once your biometrics information is known/hacked, you can't change it.
I find the whole field of biometrics intersting but fundamentally flawed when it comes to security. How can an unchangeable identifier that acts as both username and password, that is visible in general without you knowing (e.g., fingerprints are everywhere), ever be made secure? The RFID tag can at least be changed so it's one up on that, but it can be read and duplicated easily. Redundancy seems the answer. Passcards, usernames, passwords, perhaps biometrics. I guess inconvenience becomse the main factor then.
"If they had lost that connection, they would not have had sufficient staff to keep every patient adequately monitored."
Hmm. Interesting. I work for a NASA contractor and the safety systems need to be 3 failures deep to go without being addressed as safety hazards, and that includes non-life-threatening risks (like laser damage to eyes). The above described scenario is one failure deep to become life-threatening. It's interesting that we put more emphasis on astronaut safety, who volunteer for dangerous jobs, than we do for ICU patients.
"a) it's not very probable we happen to be in the warm part of a cycle"
Not that I disagree with the overall belief that it is humans causing the warming trend, but your arguments are not valid. Pick any part of a cycle and you can say the same thing as above. Replace "warm" with "cold". If you believe the models we are on the way upward too, so it's not even a distinct point like a peak high or low. If the cycle is 1000 years of normal temps, 10 years of high temps, and 1000 years of normal temps, then I can see your argument (a 1/100 chance of being in the warm spot when we happen to figure out the cycle). But not something that could cycle over hundreds to thousands of years that we don't have sufficient data to get full cycles for. (Or even not a cycle, just a natural trend with or without us.)
The second argument (b) says nothing about the validity of a cycle argument. Newton's models of motion accurately portray what happens if I drop a hammar. That doesn't make them "right" and rule out other explanations such as relativity. (Fine, pick on the analogy, but the point is that 1 model working in some cases does not invalidate other possible models.)
I do think that we play a part in global climate change. But that's just a belief on enough circumstantial evidence. The data is not conclusive and no model (natural or human-caused) explains some of the major observations.
And yes, I note that the article mentions Linux and OSX, but as I mention in the parent post, I would argue security isn't a big reason why people switch. It's just a bonus.
Why is this necessary? How many people actually run UNIX at home and where's the push to get it at home? Linux is another story, but security is only one of many reasons there.
In this case, we need a "-5 Made Me Spit My Drink On My Shirt". Gotta be the best "really-bad yet on topic and makes use of the set-up" pun I've heard in a long time.
"Dude, that's "G" String Theory, which is easily observable at the macro scale, the only detector needed being an eyeball."
Yes, but an interesting principle of G-string Theory is that obvserving XXL and above strings can permanently destroy the measuring device, i.e., the eyeball, and hence can't readily be observed.
"If nobody has any idea on how to even begin to falsify it, what's the difference?"
It's a huge difference. But beyond that, if a theory/model makes predictions about how the universe works, and it is impossible to ever prove it wrong (falsifiable), by definition you've just demonstrated that it is a perfect model of the universe. That is, after all, the goal of the Theory of Everything, to have a model that explains and can predict everything.
Religion is not falsifiable because it makes no predictions about the interactions of reality that can be checked. (This is arguable, however, depending on the belief of the religion. For example, faith-healers are falsifiable and have been demonstrated to be false. Really we're talking about the existence of God, not religion as a whole.)
String/M- theory is a mathematical construct that makes predictions about reality. That we don't have the technology to check them yet, and that all of the predictions haven't been derived yet, is different from being non-falsifiable. In fact, one can argue that it already has. It predicts the existence of gravity, and our observations match the prediction. If they didn't, it would be false, hence it's falsifiable.
Put yet another way, if string/M- theory is not falsifiable then it is not making any predictions about reality and hence it is useless as a model to tell us anything. That's hardly the case.
How interesting to have a mis-representation of history about Iraq as post in a story about mis-representation of history for the Challenger disaster. While Hussein was a bad man, the justification for going is was WMDs which didn't actually exist. There was no danger to Americans from Iraq (until the invasion) and the purpose of the invasion was not to bring Saddam to trial. It's interesting to see that propaganda can succeed to re-write history in some people's minds though.
"There are reasons other than catastrophic global warming to reduce our pollution."
Yes, but unfortunately "greenhouse gases" and pollutants that cause respiratory and other problems are not the same chemicals. Efforts towards reducing greenhouse gases has, in some places, resulted in abandonment or reduction of efforts towards cleaning up these other pollutants.
Some people would say "clean them both up", but with limited resources and money, and ability to absorb the changes at a given time, it's unrealistic. So which is more important to clean up: pollutants that are known to cause health problems and kill people and organisms but are generally reversible, or greenhouse gases which are debatable as a cause of the global warming trend but if true could lead to runaway natural disasters that kill a lot of people and completely change the landscape, or worse?
It's a variation of the high risk / low impact versus low risk / high impact problem.
There might be one caveat to that. First, though, I'd add that it's not clear which IP law they're referring to. You can't patent it, neither the calculations which are standard mathematical formula nor the numbers that result from calculation. It can't be copyright. That's for a specific expression. For example, you can repeat the exact same information someone has written about and just use your own words. So as long as they don't copy, say, sports articles that quote statistics but just use the statistics, they should be fine.
That being said, I seem to recall a case a few years ago about compiled lists and copyright. Something like a company that wanted the copyright on their customer list because someone else was using it. Does anybody else remember something like that? I don't remember the outcome.
If something like compiled lists are copyrightable, it seems to me that it can't be held up if someone compiles their own list, i.e., does the statistical calculations themselves. The question then becomes where they get the raw data if MLB doesn't release it. Curious. This does seem dumb though.
"In the end, all of us will have to pay more since and jobs will be lost."
I love it when people over-simplify and fail to actually investigate both sides of this issue. It is thinking like the above that almost stopped VCR's with the claim they'd be the end of movies and theatres, when in fact they ended up increasing the rate of movies, the money in the movie business, and the profit of movie companies. This was accomplished by the movie industry changing their business models to exploit the new technology, not fight it. It's even more futile to fight it now as the end users don't rely on third parties (e.g., VCR manufactures) being legally able to build the technology. The users can create the technology themselves whether legal or not, and do so in secret.
Radio was going to kill music production. Cable TV was going to kill networks. VCR was going to kill movies. P2P/filesharing is going to kill movies/music. Sound familiar? I have yet to see a single example of where such claims have ever proven right. (Yes, automobiles put carriage manufactures out of buiness, but that's replacing an old technology with a new one, not destroying the content creation business by changing the delivery technology.)
Slashdot Mirror
Actually, it's a key underlying reason for a "free market" society. In theory, a free market is "better" because it inherently rewards businesses that make "a better mousetrap" or make the same mousetrap for a lower prices. In the former case, we get better products and technology. This is why companies are always pushing the envelope trying to build better, faster, etc. (Just look at AMD vs Intel for a key example.) In the latter case, more people can afford the products so the technology is more integrated into society on average. Either way, this could be considered "advancing society".
But yes, that's not the direct goal of the business. It's the reason the rewards they're after are there in the first place.
I tend to agree with this, and in fact I recall a survey that suggested about double the current price would stop people from using vehicles except for when absolutely necessary, which is certainly better for the environment and would reduce a lot of frivilous waste.
The problem is, unforunately, economics is not that simple. Japan has a large population in a small area. Very high density. Public transit is therefore relatively efficient and feasible and well established.
North America tends to be very spread out, and doesn't have the infrastructure for mass public transit nor is it as economically feasible. The design of cities, infrastructure, and economy are somewhat reliant on longer distance traveling for work and shopping. If people reduced they're travelling a significant amount, this would likely have economic impacts.
In reality, what would more likely happen is that the cost of living would go up (travel for work and shopping) and so salaries would have increase to match, creating inflation.
Well, economics is always a difficult system to predict, so I'm not claiming any of these predictions are accurate. I guess I'm trying to point out that this is not a clear cut as greed or whining. There are legitimate concerns about fuel prices, regardless of what they are here relative to other places. It's more important what they are here tomorrow relative to what they were here yesterday.
That doesn't exactly fit this scenario. First, priviledge doesn't apply to ongoing or future crimes. Heller did this before the 2004 election (and possibly before the March primaries, though didn't make it to publication until April). Second, a competent lawyer could probably argue that Jones Day, knowing that the law was being broken (in their own opinion) and providing legal advice to Diebold in contining of this illegal activity, had become a de facto accessory and therefore priviledge does not apply.
Third, I believe violation of priviledge is a civil offense, not criminal. The charges against Heller have nothing to do with violation of priviledge. The three criminal charges here are felony access to computer data, commercial burglary, and receving stolen property.
My question then is, are there exceptions to what is basically "theft" laws here when doing so to expose illegal activity? For instance, if you work in a store and review a security videotape of the store owner killing someone, can you be charged with theft for taking that videotape? In that case, it's a past crime as well. What if it's evidence of an ongoing or future crime? Does it matter if it's the police or someone else you give it to if the point is to expose the criminal activity (rather than, say, blackmail them)?
I'm not sure of the law for such a case. I certainly think there should be an exception.
Actually, that's the problem. It's impossible to cover all circumstances under the law. Laws represent intention. Language is imperfect, as is imaganation for all possible scenarios. This allows some people who violate the intention of the laws to get off because of loopholes ("technicalities"), but also means that someone might break the letter of the law but not the intention. It would be silly to think that the wording of the law is what should strictly govern guilt or innocence in a trial. Juries do actually have the power to provide a not-guilty verdict even if they believe the person violated the letter of the law, but not the intention. So, I guess it depends on your definition of "justice".
Incidentally, in practice individual jurists can pretty much decide based on whatever they want. There are certainly invalid reasons that can be appealed, but that's only if the jurists' true reasons can be revealed.
Over the short-term, absolutely. But a $200 Pocket PC nowadays can outperform my 486 that cost $2000 12 years ago. The break-even timeframe is probably on the order of 3-5 years I'm guessing on most of these types of technologies. So, yes, it could kill off LCD/Plasma sets, but probably not for about 7-10 years (adding in a few years to get a colour version of comparable performance to market). I suspect other technologies will be in play by then.
Joke aside, not all prostitutes or prostitution environments are the same. GTA tends to portray the cliche streetwalker/drug addict/forced-into-by-pimp hookers. Brothels, escorts, call-girls, strippers, and porn actresses (including the amateur/web stuff) have different environments from this.
I'm surprised nobody has made the argument that the violence against hookers (the streetwalking/drug addict/pimp kind) in GTA might actually educate youngsters that hooking (SW/DA/pimp kind) can be dangerous and undesirable, as opposed to "Pretty Woman" and similar portrayals which may cause more women to get into prostitution.
Of course for that to happen it would have to be little girls that play GTA, which is the main demographic to play it, right? Guys? Hello? Why are you all looking at me funny?
Well, I'm not sure I'd say it's obvious, more like callous. But yes, you've hit the key point. I'd say it's more of an issue of responsibility not "volunteers". Hospitals aren't responsible for sick people getting sick, so any help is a benefit even if more could be done. It's really a balance of how much help we're willing to pay for. NASA is responsible for the people it puts in danger.
Keep in mind that all I said was that it's "interesting". I don't think it's necessarily wrong or much could be done about it until cheap, automated, multi-failure safety systems come into play.
Sorry to go slighly off topic, and to do some lecturing myself, but I find it incredibly sad that we've (rather, the influence of the MPAA/RIAA and similar) have created a society that actual believes your statement above. That the absurdity of owning an idea as if it were tangible property is not apparent to everyone, but rather embraced by many if not the majority, almost brings me to tears over the future of civilized society. The really sad part is that this concept of private ownership goes well beyond existing IP laws. People don't actually "own" IP; the laws allow a limited (in time and extent) right of denial for copying, distributing, or implementing the IP depending on it's form. This limited monopoly is not an inherent right of ownership, but rather an incentive to publicize the IP so that others can learn from it and use it in the long run, thus benefiting society.
To quote Thomas Jefferson:
I bet one of two things happens. Either someone tries to patent it 5 years after being on the market, and perhaps succeeds since by then patent agents will only have 8 seconds to decide if an idea is patentable, or somebody currently has an obscure patent of a vague rough idea that they never produced that sounds slightly similar to this, which doesn't show up on searches, and they'll keep quiet about it until this thing makes billions and then say "Hey, you owe me money!".
While you are not strictly wrong, you are out of context. You've defined competition in the most generic, generalized sense, not in the market sense, and don't accept that it can mean something else in another context. By your definition violations of anti-trust laws can still qualify as competition. But at least you'd have at least one major supporter of your definition. (If you look, you'll even see that word "anti-competitive" used in the same context as here.)
Competition is making a better product or doing it for a cheaper price. Anti-competition is forcing people to use your product by artificially limiting another product that people want to only work with yours. This is just a bullying tactic. Now, Skype with 10-way conferencing isn't exactly a big stick, but it's still a stick we're being hit with. But the principle is even worse than some of Microsoft's monopolistic tactics. It's not just integration or bundling, it'd be more like only allowing Windows to play mp3 files above 128 kbps using Windows Media Player and artificially crippling others. (The fact that it's two companies here instead of two MS departments doesn't make much of a difference to the harm to the end user.)
I'm wondering if they factored in the anti-marketing this does for them. I'm less interested in using Intel and Skype products now.
Well, artificially I can't think of any others. But nature does a pretty good job of that already. (Fingerprints, DNA, retinal pattern, etc.) But then biometrics are known to be unreliable and are generally flawed in that they once your biometrics information is known/hacked, you can't change it.
I find the whole field of biometrics intersting but fundamentally flawed when it comes to security. How can an unchangeable identifier that acts as both username and password, that is visible in general without you knowing (e.g., fingerprints are everywhere), ever be made secure? The RFID tag can at least be changed so it's one up on that, but it can be read and duplicated easily. Redundancy seems the answer. Passcards, usernames, passwords, perhaps biometrics. I guess inconvenience becomse the main factor then.
Hmm. Interesting. I work for a NASA contractor and the safety systems need to be 3 failures deep to go without being addressed as safety hazards, and that includes non-life-threatening risks (like laser damage to eyes). The above described scenario is one failure deep to become life-threatening. It's interesting that we put more emphasis on astronaut safety, who volunteer for dangerous jobs, than we do for ICU patients.
Oh that's a load of rich, creamery butter.
Not that I disagree with the overall belief that it is humans causing the warming trend, but your arguments are not valid. Pick any part of a cycle and you can say the same thing as above. Replace "warm" with "cold". If you believe the models we are on the way upward too, so it's not even a distinct point like a peak high or low. If the cycle is 1000 years of normal temps, 10 years of high temps, and 1000 years of normal temps, then I can see your argument (a 1/100 chance of being in the warm spot when we happen to figure out the cycle). But not something that could cycle over hundreds to thousands of years that we don't have sufficient data to get full cycles for. (Or even not a cycle, just a natural trend with or without us.)
The second argument (b) says nothing about the validity of a cycle argument. Newton's models of motion accurately portray what happens if I drop a hammar. That doesn't make them "right" and rule out other explanations such as relativity. (Fine, pick on the analogy, but the point is that 1 model working in some cases does not invalidate other possible models.)
I do think that we play a part in global climate change. But that's just a belief on enough circumstantial evidence. The data is not conclusive and no model (natural or human-caused) explains some of the major observations.
And yes, I note that the article mentions Linux and OSX, but as I mention in the parent post, I would argue security isn't a big reason why people switch. It's just a bonus.
Why is this necessary? How many people actually run UNIX at home and where's the push to get it at home? Linux is another story, but security is only one of many reasons there.
Hold on. How do we know she's laundering clothes and not money? Hmmm.
In this case, we need a "-5 Made Me Spit My Drink On My Shirt". Gotta be the best "really-bad yet on topic and makes use of the set-up" pun I've heard in a long time.
Yes, but an interesting principle of G-string Theory is that obvserving XXL and above strings can permanently destroy the measuring device, i.e., the eyeball, and hence can't readily be observed.
It's a huge difference. But beyond that, if a theory/model makes predictions about how the universe works, and it is impossible to ever prove it wrong (falsifiable), by definition you've just demonstrated that it is a perfect model of the universe. That is, after all, the goal of the Theory of Everything, to have a model that explains and can predict everything.
Religion is not falsifiable because it makes no predictions about the interactions of reality that can be checked. (This is arguable, however, depending on the belief of the religion. For example, faith-healers are falsifiable and have been demonstrated to be false. Really we're talking about the existence of God, not religion as a whole.)
String/M- theory is a mathematical construct that makes predictions about reality. That we don't have the technology to check them yet, and that all of the predictions haven't been derived yet, is different from being non-falsifiable. In fact, one can argue that it already has. It predicts the existence of gravity, and our observations match the prediction. If they didn't, it would be false, hence it's falsifiable.
Put yet another way, if string/M- theory is not falsifiable then it is not making any predictions about reality and hence it is useless as a model to tell us anything. That's hardly the case.
How interesting to have a mis-representation of history about Iraq as post in a story about mis-representation of history for the Challenger disaster. While Hussein was a bad man, the justification for going is was WMDs which didn't actually exist. There was no danger to Americans from Iraq (until the invasion) and the purpose of the invasion was not to bring Saddam to trial. It's interesting to see that propaganda can succeed to re-write history in some people's minds though.
Yes, but unfortunately "greenhouse gases" and pollutants that cause respiratory and other problems are not the same chemicals. Efforts towards reducing greenhouse gases has, in some places, resulted in abandonment or reduction of efforts towards cleaning up these other pollutants. Some people would say "clean them both up", but with limited resources and money, and ability to absorb the changes at a given time, it's unrealistic. So which is more important to clean up: pollutants that are known to cause health problems and kill people and organisms but are generally reversible, or greenhouse gases which are debatable as a cause of the global warming trend but if true could lead to runaway natural disasters that kill a lot of people and completely change the landscape, or worse? It's a variation of the high risk / low impact versus low risk / high impact problem.
There might be one caveat to that. First, though, I'd add that it's not clear which IP law they're referring to. You can't patent it, neither the calculations which are standard mathematical formula nor the numbers that result from calculation. It can't be copyright. That's for a specific expression. For example, you can repeat the exact same information someone has written about and just use your own words. So as long as they don't copy, say, sports articles that quote statistics but just use the statistics, they should be fine.
That being said, I seem to recall a case a few years ago about compiled lists and copyright. Something like a company that wanted the copyright on their customer list because someone else was using it. Does anybody else remember something like that? I don't remember the outcome.
If something like compiled lists are copyrightable, it seems to me that it can't be held up if someone compiles their own list, i.e., does the statistical calculations themselves. The question then becomes where they get the raw data if MLB doesn't release it. Curious. This does seem dumb though.
I love it when people over-simplify and fail to actually investigate both sides of this issue. It is thinking like the above that almost stopped VCR's with the claim they'd be the end of movies and theatres, when in fact they ended up increasing the rate of movies, the money in the movie business, and the profit of movie companies. This was accomplished by the movie industry changing their business models to exploit the new technology, not fight it. It's even more futile to fight it now as the end users don't rely on third parties (e.g., VCR manufactures) being legally able to build the technology. The users can create the technology themselves whether legal or not, and do so in secret.
Radio was going to kill music production. Cable TV was going to kill networks. VCR was going to kill movies. P2P/filesharing is going to kill movies/music. Sound familiar? I have yet to see a single example of where such claims have ever proven right. (Yes, automobiles put carriage manufactures out of buiness, but that's replacing an old technology with a new one, not destroying the content creation business by changing the delivery technology.)