Everyone knows that devil worship and witchcraft increase by orders of magnitude every time a new Harry Potter book or movie is released. Why do you hate Jesus?
If two words in a language can be spelled exactly the same way and pronounced differently, then all of the words in the language are not spelled how they sound.
I have a better idea. Let's strip the citizenship of anyone who's already here who's not of Native American descent who complains about there being too many immigrants, and deport them back to wherever their family came from. That should open up plenty of wide open spaces.
Not if the parties to the agreement have to suspect that it's fairly likely that some provision of the contract is illegal, and that the contract would become extremely unfavorable to one of them if that provision is struck down.
which it isn't : consider this analogy : if I buy legitimate CDs in Russia for $3 and take them back to the US, can the US distributor sue me because I did not buy my music from them? Of course not.
Unless you're willing to accept that copyright violation is the exact same thing as shoplifting a CD from a store, I call bullshit on that analogy. If the CD is really a "legitimate CD", it was physically produced by someone that had the right to produce it, and sold for a price set by that person. As long as it was legitimately acquired by the person selling it, there's no reason they can't sell it for whatever price they want to anywhere in the world they want to.
It's the act of making new copies and distributing them that violates copyright law, not the act of selling a legitimately-produced copy.
Ownership of physical objects doesn't exist in a natural sense either, and it too had to be created and expanded by men with vested interests. The fact that it happened long enough that it now intuitively "seems" natural to you doesn't make it any more or less legitimate than property rights created by more recent laws.
Personally I think a right to property based on the fact that the owner of that property created it purely through the intellect is a lot more legitimate than a right to property based on the fact that you can trace ownership back to a chain of sales and inheritances which began with someone at some point taking that property (or the capital used to produce it) from someone else by force.
Re:the suers will likely lose - Possibly not?
on
Microsoft Sued Over WGA
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· Score: 2, Insightful
If you can execute the software on your hardware without taking the action of copying the software into your computer's memory (and remember, copying is the basic right granted to the creator of a work by copyright, hence the name), you might have a point there. As it is, Microsoft grants permission through a license to do the copying that's required to run the software. It's their position that you own a single copy of the software on the physical media it was sold on. The fact that you need to copy it for it to be of any use to you is the whole basis for the EULA.
Now, you may argue that the copying needed to execute software once you've paid for it is noninfringing under Fair Use, and that you're legally free to use the software however you want without a license at all, but I don't think you'll find much case law to back you up at the moment.
You can probably also bet that if courts did start ruling in your favor, Congress would move quickly to close what they'd call "the fair use loophole" once the BSA's lobbyists made a few phone calls.
I can't seem to easily find statistics on how many unique individuals have flown on the shuttles, but there have been 703 crew members on the 114 flights, and 14 deaths.
I don't know how bad your neighborhood is, but most people would find it hard to believe that almost 2% of postal workers are killed on duty.
20 years ago, you would have said that the Winter Olympics couldn't occur in 2006. You think your prediction for the dates of sporting events on 2 centuries will be more accurate?
It's possible that companies trying to break into the music download service market might turn against DRM
Sure, and it's possible that someone will want to use a store that doesn't sell a single song released on a RIAA label, and that monkeys will fly out of my butt.
Go ahead, tell me how indy music is much better than anything on a RIAA label, and next Thursday every music-buying consumer in the country will wake up and suddenly realize that you have better taste than they do.
The issue isn't whether the person coming up with an idea wants it exposed our not, it's whether they can profit from it.
Patent holders agree to make public information about their ideas in exchange for the exclusive right to profit from those ideas for a limited time. The fact that they're taking the bets deal they can get doesn't make the Communists; a rational capitalist will choose to exploit an idea for X years to make a profit on that idea rather than choosing to keep the idea secret forever and get no profit whatsoever from it. Of course they would prefer to profit from the idea forever and never have to releaase it to the public, but that option isn't available to them.
Slashdot adds a rel=nofollow attribute to your link, specifically so you can't spam Slashdot to increase your page rank. Nice try, though.
Unfortunately, whatever moderator thought your completely wrong statement was "insightful" has moved you a bit closer to getting a karma bonus and taking away your nofollow attribute.
I'm sure it's a hell of a lot easier for a spider to read and index those pages than it is for an actual human to try to read them. For one thing, a computer program can read text that's the same color as the background picture just fine.
Uh, yes. As opposed to our existing capitalist system.
Regardless of what you think of Marx's ideas, if you think that the US Congress is going to implement Communism because there are some flaws in the patent system, you're seriously delusional. The relative merits of the two systems are completely irrelevant; it's simply not going to happen.
Feel free to engage in all the fantasizing you want, but quite frankly if we're discussing fantasy scenarios I can think of a lot of things more appealing than overhauling the patent system. Why not just suggest changing the Constitution to require the government to provide everyone with a free pony and the means to live like a millionaire without ever working again? It's exactly as likely to happen as implementing a patent system explicitly designed to harm big corporations.
Slashdot Mirror
You're so naive.
Everyone knows that devil worship and witchcraft increase by orders of magnitude every time a new Harry Potter book or movie is released. Why do you hate Jesus?
If two words in a language can be spelled exactly the same way and pronounced differently, then all of the words in the language are not spelled how they sound.
I have a better idea. Let's strip the citizenship of anyone who's already here who's not of Native American descent who complains about there being too many immigrants, and deport them back to wherever their family came from. That should open up plenty of wide open spaces.
Even a well-designed social networking website would not fall under any reasonable definition of "necessary".
Not if the parties to the agreement have to suspect that it's fairly likely that some provision of the contract is illegal, and that the contract would become extremely unfavorable to one of them if that provision is struck down.
Maybe he's smart enough to use the best tool for a job. If you're not, then you fail it, Stalyn.
Unless you're willing to accept that copyright violation is the exact same thing as shoplifting a CD from a store, I call bullshit on that analogy. If the CD is really a "legitimate CD", it was physically produced by someone that had the right to produce it, and sold for a price set by that person. As long as it was legitimately acquired by the person selling it, there's no reason they can't sell it for whatever price they want to anywhere in the world they want to.
It's the act of making new copies and distributing them that violates copyright law, not the act of selling a legitimately-produced copy.
Why yes, Stephen Colbert may have also noticed that.
You know, "Funny" mods don't actually get you karma, so there's really no reason to plagiarize actual funny people in an effort to get modded up.
Ownership of physical objects doesn't exist in a natural sense either, and it too had to be created and expanded by men with vested interests. The fact that it happened long enough that it now intuitively "seems" natural to you doesn't make it any more or less legitimate than property rights created by more recent laws.
Personally I think a right to property based on the fact that the owner of that property created it purely through the intellect is a lot more legitimate than a right to property based on the fact that you can trace ownership back to a chain of sales and inheritances which began with someone at some point taking that property (or the capital used to produce it) from someone else by force.
If you can execute the software on your hardware without taking the action of copying the software into your computer's memory (and remember, copying is the basic right granted to the creator of a work by copyright, hence the name), you might have a point there. As it is, Microsoft grants permission through a license to do the copying that's required to run the software. It's their position that you own a single copy of the software on the physical media it was sold on. The fact that you need to copy it for it to be of any use to you is the whole basis for the EULA.
Now, you may argue that the copying needed to execute software once you've paid for it is noninfringing under Fair Use, and that you're legally free to use the software however you want without a license at all, but I don't think you'll find much case law to back you up at the moment.
You can probably also bet that if courts did start ruling in your favor, Congress would move quickly to close what they'd call "the fair use loophole" once the BSA's lobbyists made a few phone calls.
You seem to have misspelled "governments", "Slashdot", and "presumptuous".
Hope this helps, and good luck with your therapy!
I think you'll find that there are actually several governments on the Earth, and that your use of the singular is incorrect.
I think you'll also find that a vast majority of the Earth's goverments couldn't care less about precision in measurements of the Earth.
But thank you for introducing pedantry into a discussion of Earth sandwiches. Have a nice day.
You're really better off doing that anyway, to avoid having to dig through the solid iron in the center. That stuff can wreak havok on a shovel.
It doesn't. It uses longitude and latitude, which assume the Earth is a sphere.
I can't seem to easily find statistics on how many unique individuals have flown on the shuttles, but there have been 703 crew members on the 114 flights, and 14 deaths.
I don't know how bad your neighborhood is, but most people would find it hard to believe that almost 2% of postal workers are killed on duty.
20 years ago, you would have said that the Winter Olympics couldn't occur in 2006. You think your prediction for the dates of sporting events on 2 centuries will be more accurate?
It's possible that companies trying to break into the music download service market might turn against DRM
Sure, and it's possible that someone will want to use a store that doesn't sell a single song released on a RIAA label, and that monkeys will fly out of my butt.
Go ahead, tell me how indy music is much better than anything on a RIAA label, and next Thursday every music-buying consumer in the country will wake up and suddenly realize that you have better taste than they do.
Unless you're suggesting The Time Machine was a work of nonfiction.
The issue isn't whether the person coming up with an idea wants it exposed our not, it's whether they can profit from it.
Patent holders agree to make public information about their ideas in exchange for the exclusive right to profit from those ideas for a limited time. The fact that they're taking the bets deal they can get doesn't make the Communists; a rational capitalist will choose to exploit an idea for X years to make a profit on that idea rather than choosing to keep the idea secret forever and get no profit whatsoever from it. Of course they would prefer to profit from the idea forever and never have to releaase it to the public, but that option isn't available to them.
Slashdot adds a rel=nofollow attribute to your link, specifically so you can't spam Slashdot to increase your page rank. Nice try, though.
Unfortunately, whatever moderator thought your completely wrong statement was "insightful" has moved you a bit closer to getting a karma bonus and taking away your nofollow attribute.
Someone should tell those fools over a wikipedia that they just don't get it, and that they should do a rewrite to generate nonstandard HTML too.
I'm sure it's a hell of a lot easier for a spider to read and index those pages than it is for an actual human to try to read them. For one thing, a computer program can read text that's the same color as the background picture just fine.
Regardless of what you think of Marx's ideas, if you think that the US Congress is going to implement Communism because there are some flaws in the patent system, you're seriously delusional. The relative merits of the two systems are completely irrelevant; it's simply not going to happen.
Feel free to engage in all the fantasizing you want, but quite frankly if we're discussing fantasy scenarios I can think of a lot of things more appealing than overhauling the patent system. Why not just suggest changing the Constitution to require the government to provide everyone with a free pony and the means to live like a millionaire without ever working again? It's exactly as likely to happen as implementing a patent system explicitly designed to harm big corporations.
Don't worry, they won't make you give it back.
They'll just demand that every iPod owner send them $699 to buy a license for their patent.
That's just the word the lobbyist from Amazon's competitor told him to use. I'd bet he doesn't know what half of the things he says even mean.