no matter who you are, you have to admit that the ACLU prevents you from losing anything that might be considered a civil liberty.
The ACLU is a left wing organization, and their actions show it. On some issues, such as the First Amendment ("Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion..."), they argue and stretch the meaning beyond the clear wording (i.e. States are not "Congress," so the prohibition does not apply to State establishment of religion, although most states have similar Constitutional prohibitions). Yes, I recognize that the Supremes have in this matter already said that the amendment says something other than what it clearly does. In other matters, such as the Second Amendment, they argue against civil liberties in opposition to the clear wording and intent ("..the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed."), by arguing it somehow doesn't recognize an individual right.
A newspaper saying ballplayer X has a.241 batting average is legal because of freedom of the press and the fact that the newspaper is not using the identity of the player for commercial reasons.
Where did you find a non-commercial newspaper? All of the major newspapers around here are for-profit, some owned by quite large corporations (i.e. Advance Publications). Both the newspaper and the fantasy league are reporting sports statistics for profit making, entertainment purposes. There is no distinction based on profit.
Hitler became Supreme Commander of the German armed forces. In 1938, Hitler occupied Austria. In 1938, Hitler formed an alliance with Mussolini. In 1938, Goering warned all Jews to leave Austria. In 1938, Chamberlain thought he had appeased Hitler with the Sudetenland. In 1938, the Kristallnacht occurred. In 1938, Hitler had such an impact, he was named Time's "Man of the Year." By the end of 1938, about 82 percent of eligible youths were members of the "Hitler Youth."
This is all well documented fact. Yet, you're silly enough to try to claim that Hitler was "far from established" in 1938.
We should have immediately stopped trading with China after Tianamen. In 2005, there was a $167 billon trade deficit, and it consists mostly of cheap crap. It was $10 billion in 1990, the year after Tianamen.The US isn't encouraging reform, it's rewarding the status quo.
that turning a blind eye to Chinese violations of civil and IP rights and continuing, even encouraging, trade and economic development will be harmful, to the US and the rest of the world, in the long run. Are you suggesting that refusing to trade with them would result in their attacking us?
To build on your dog training analogy, they're a dog begging at the table, and the rest of the world is giving them table scraps, hoping they'll go away. It doesn't work like that - it only encourages them.
China has the power to plunge the world into violent chaos, if it does not get its way, and if its needs are not met.
What would you have the U.S. government do? Forsake peace and prosperity and an incremental approach to reforming China, in favor of cutting them off, putting their backs against a wall, and taking us all straight to World War IV?
-Susano Otter, 1/10/2006
We are resolved that the method of consultation shall be the method adopted to deal with any other questions that may concern our two countries, and we are determined to continue our efforts to remove possible sources of difference, and thus to contribute to assure the peace of Europe...My good friends this is the second time in our history that there has come back from Germany to Downing Street peace with honor. I believe it is peace in our time.
is apparently based on trade secrets, since Apple didn't threaten suit when Real reverse engineered the technology. Had it been a patented technology, not only would that patent be publically known (no one has cited a patent number), but Apple would no doubt be using that status to protect its interests.
the general concept, sending more than you know the recipient can handle, has been around for a long time - Zmodem is obvious prior art, as are printer buffers. Those are just some simple examples from within my own experience, there are no doubt predecessors to those applications of the concept. Taking an obvious concept (buffering) and trying to claim uniqueness through specificity (i.e. this is inventive, because we're applying it to video) is disingenuous.
They only want us to think it's dead for two reasons, first, content cannot be securely protected (like they hoped). Second, you can now get a player for twenty bucks (same as in town), so there's little profit left.
TiVo has shown that the old paradigm of viewing channels is no longer used by many people - it has changed to one of time shifting programs to watch as desired. When used in this way, there is little, if any, need for entering channel numbers (one records programs based on other attributes, such as title or keyword). Choices for viewing are picked from a menu of available selections, not by entering channel numbers.
If you're not using the Mac as a time shifting DVR and want to watch live TV, just use the TV remote. My assumption is that most people will prefer a TV with an add-on PC/DVR and not a PC/DVR used as a TV.
as long as it's a true free market. That includes them negotiating with me for right of way to pass Internet traffic through the cable which runs across my property (they have an easement for cable TV and telephone, but not for any data services). And I won't even demand much - just stop blocking ports and don't eavesdrop on my traffic.
Of course, the next guy along the line might want $500/month for rights of way.
since they reference the Bayh-Dole Act of 1980, and the patent term prior to 1995 was 17 years from grant or 20 years from application, they're just talking about making available stuff where the patents have expired anyway, but trying to get good PR for doing so. i.e. stuff prior to 1985 or 1988.
A transistor radio, which was the logical result of technology which allowed radios to get smaller. Interestingly, Sony was also at the forefront in using technology to make radios smaller. Their first profitible product was a portable tape recorder. Clearly, using technology to make media devices smaller was a common theme at Sony.
The Walkman-type cassette player was an obvious (and therefore supposedly unpatentable) step in the evolution of tape recorders and players. Sony simply applied the same formula which had worked for them with radios and earlier tape recorders and which they would later apply to videotape (uMatic->beta->8mm...). There's no inventive thought involved in the overall concept, athough there might be patentable things involved as a result of miniaturization work.
I'll note your lack of response in regard to the willingness of the general public to support scientific research as acceptance of my view. But if you don't, and still feel most people would be willing to fund extraterrestrial science, feel free to support replacement of government funding with voluntary funding, through some organization such as The Planetary Society http://www.planetary.org/home/. If you're correct, there's no risk.
for the most part these guys were paid by the people in control of the governments.
But not as government representatives. Newton had many patrons. It might be argued that Charles Montagu was part of the government, but his patronage was political, not economic. Newton's principle economic patron appears to have been John Thornton, a wealthy merchant and private citizen.
Galileo's court appointment occurred long after his refinement of the telescope and the writing of the Sidereus Nuncius, which were done while under private employment as a professor at Padua. Large government payment followed, but for rights to the telescope, for use in practical military applications, not for astronomical research. Implying that Galileo was government supported is misleading, as even the later Medici patronage was provided at the personal discretion of aristocracy.
"But you are quite wrong (or possibly dissembling) about Einstein being an amateur. He wasn't being paid as a researcher in 1905,"
"amateur - A person who engages in an art, science, study, or athletic activity as a pastime rather than as a profession." - Am. Heritage, 4th Ed.
Einstein's profession at the time was as a patent examiner, not a theoretical physicist, nor was his work on the Special Theory funded. To argue that his work on it wasn't amateur, in the accepted meaning of that word, is disingenuous. You might as well argue that Archimedes Plutonium http://www.iw.net/~a_plutonium/, the King of Science, is a professional.
My wife's got a degree in Political Science. Is she a professional scientist, even though she's paid to do accounting? Won't she be surprised!
"why do you care about getting an early crack at the data, given that you don't support the idea of pure research in the first place?"
I personally don't care, but support the rights of others who have funded the research, in true fairness. Why, as someone who depends upon public funding, do you want to bite the hand that feeds you?
I think most folks don't mind throwing a *couple* of bucks a year down the IRS rabbit hole so that we can have a NASA, an NSF, a DOE, etc.
Let me be clear, I'm not making a blanket criticism of all research - some is imminently useful to society. I might draw the line beyond earth-orbital (satcom, GPS) and solar (don't take down my power/TV). I, and I believe the vast majority of taxpayers, can't see any real benefit from studying fountains in the distant solar system, however.
To your point, give people the choice of spending $10 on seeing a new Matrix movie sequel or seeing some pictures from a probe to Neptune and which do you think they'd choose? The reason government funding is "needed" for such projects is because most people wouldn't choose to fund them given free choice, government provides a means of forcing them. Counter arguments based on democracy and elected official are non-starters - people vote on issues which most directly affect them, not on whether the candidate is going to vote to spend some fraction of a percent of their tax money on something of minor interest but no real impact.
And, yes, it is "the dole," or else it would produce a measurable benefit to society. It's government funding (albeit sometimes interesting and/or entertaining) busywork, with no definite or even expected return. Being able to get paid to work in a field of choice which produces no measurable return on investment (if it did, GE or IBM would be sending probes regularly) is, yes, enough of a reward. People don't choose to be, say, an astrophysicist, because they're making a decision based on expected wealth or fame (if they are, they're obviously not smart enough to be one) - they're choosing something they're interested in / enjoy doing. That they're able to do so by the pure grace of the rest of society is something they should appreciate as a priviledge, not an entitlement.
I hazard to say that most scientific advancement, even "pure" science has come as a result of private investment - DaVinci, Newton, Gallileo were all funded by private patrons. Get Bill Gates to fund a probe, then feel free to keep the data to yourselves.
Finally, the attitude that the established scientific aristocracy has first rights to publicly financed data assumes a system where truth is absolute, and only to be decided by those in the high caste. If there's a problem with "amateur analysis," it's that the public has not developed a healthy skepticism, for "amateur" does not imply lack of quality. Einstein wrote the Special Theory as an amateur, and scientific professionals announced the discovery of "cold fusion". If the established scientific community feels threatened by poor amateur analysis, they must not have much confidence in the strength/rationality of their own conclusions, or their ability to communicate them.
I think the real reason for complaints about amateur analysis come from a fear of the knowledge that there are people actually willing to put effort and resource into it without being paid - and that is a threat to those who are. It's enlightened (and very non-altruistic) self-interest.
If you want to head down this road, you're not going to get data at all. Scienists take a severe hit to their careers to PI an instrument like this. If they didn't get something back, like a period where they could have first pass at making discoveries in the data, you'd be hard-pressed to get anyone to build the things.
Well, that's pure conjecture, as those people actually get paid for their work (with the possible exception of some grad students), and without taxpayer funding, they wouldn't have their careers in the first place. Many get not only the data paid for by the taxpayer, but their salaries as well.
Do you really think they'd cut off their noses to spite their faces? The data is critical to their careers, of occasional minor entertainment value to the people who actually fund it. (Although some people actually like Tang!) Who do you think is going to care the most if it goes away?
Personally, I find the data occasionally interesting, but it has no (for 99.99% of it) other effect on my life or the lives of most other taxpayers (although it can provide some nationalistic bragging rights). I can find no ethical justification for spending taxpayer money on collecting it. I might throw in a buck or two now and then to help fund a private effort, but not if it were run by people with ingrateful attitudes like yours. Buncha people on the dole, not realizing who actually pays the bills, thinking they're entitled to preferential treatment.
That's actually rather unfair to us, since there's usually a one *year* propriatary period where the data are the kept by the people who put the work into designing, building, and operating the instrument. Thanks to JPL, anybody off the street can get up at 3 AM to grab the images of the website before we've woken up that morning,
What? Give the people who actually paid for the data equal access, why the nerve!
Maybe if you (and I'm assuming you're somehow earning money by using this data) paid for it instead of taxpayers, you'd have a legitimate complaint.
Slashdot Mirror
In other matters, such as the Second Amendment, they argue against civil liberties in opposition to the clear wording and intent ("..the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed."), by arguing it somehow doesn't recognize an individual right.
He also misspelled "misspelled."
Where did you find a non-commercial newspaper? All of the major newspapers around here are for-profit, some owned by quite large corporations (i.e. Advance Publications). Both the newspaper and the fantasy league are reporting sports statistics for profit making, entertainment purposes. There is no distinction based on profit.
FuKing generator.
Hitler became Supreme Commander of the German armed forces. In 1938, Hitler occupied Austria. In 1938, Hitler formed an alliance with Mussolini. In 1938, Goering warned all Jews to leave Austria. In 1938, Chamberlain thought he had appeased Hitler with the Sudetenland. In 1938, the Kristallnacht occurred. In 1938, Hitler had such an impact, he was named Time's "Man of the Year." By the end of 1938, about 82 percent of eligible youths were members of the "Hitler Youth."
This is all well documented fact. Yet, you're silly enough to try to claim that Hitler was "far from established" in 1938.
Sorry, the debate is over. You have lost.
for verifying the validity of my initial observation. You support appeasement, for the same reasons as Sir Never Chainberlin.
We should have immediately stopped trading with China after Tianamen. In 2005, there was a $167 billon trade deficit, and it consists mostly of cheap crap. It was $10 billion in 1990, the year after Tianamen.The US isn't encouraging reform, it's rewarding the status quo.
To build on your dog training analogy, they're a dog begging at the table, and the rest of the world is giving them table scraps, hoping they'll go away. It doesn't work like that - it only encourages them.
-Neville Chamberlain, 9/30/1938
is apparently based on trade secrets, since Apple didn't threaten suit when Real reverse engineered the technology. Had it been a patented technology, not only would that patent be publically known (no one has cited a patent number), but Apple would no doubt be using that status to protect its interests.
the general concept, sending more than you know the recipient can handle, has been around for a long time - Zmodem is obvious prior art, as are printer buffers. Those are just some simple examples from within my own experience, there are no doubt predecessors to those applications of the concept. Taking an obvious concept (buffering) and trying to claim uniqueness through specificity (i.e. this is inventive, because we're applying it to video) is disingenuous.
They only want us to think it's dead for two reasons, first, content cannot be securely protected (like they hoped). Second, you can now get a player for twenty bucks (same as in town), so there's little profit left.
TiVo has shown that the old paradigm of viewing channels is no longer used by many people - it has changed to one of time shifting programs to watch as desired. When used in this way, there is little, if any, need for entering channel numbers (one records programs based on other attributes, such as title or keyword). Choices for viewing are picked from a menu of available selections, not by entering channel numbers.
If you're not using the Mac as a time shifting DVR and want to watch live TV, just use the TV remote. My assumption is that most people will prefer a TV with an add-on PC/DVR and not a PC/DVR used as a TV.
Used to indicate ability[...]
Yes, it became law in 1980. I pointed out that patents falling under that law dating from 1980 through 1985 or 1988 are now expired.
You can take your foot out of your mouth now.
Of course, the next guy along the line might want $500/month for rights of way.
since they reference the Bayh-Dole Act of 1980, and the patent term prior to 1995 was 17 years from grant or 20 years from application, they're just talking about making available stuff where the patents have expired anyway, but trying to get good PR for doing so. i.e. stuff prior to 1985 or 1988.
The Walkman-type cassette player was an obvious (and therefore supposedly unpatentable) step in the evolution of tape recorders and players. Sony simply applied the same formula which had worked for them with radios and earlier tape recorders and which they would later apply to videotape (uMatic->beta->8mm...). There's no inventive thought involved in the overall concept, athough there might be patentable things involved as a result of miniaturization work.
it's not a "hard drive," is it? It's just a blob of matter which used to be a hard drive.
just fine, and Sam Spade doesn't have a problem using HTTP 1.1:
...
12/08/05 21:38:34 Browsing http://www.photosparks.com/
Fetching http://www.photosparks.com/
GET / HTTP/1.1
Host: www.photosparks.com
Connection: close
User-Agent: Sam Spade 1.14
HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Date: Fri, 09 Dec 2005 02:38:34 GMT
Server: Apache/1.3.31 (Unix) mod_pointer/0.8 PHP/4.4.1
X-Powered-By: PHP/4.4.1
Connection: close
Transfer-Encoding: chunked
Content-Type: text/html
ee
Sparks Photography
0
... pigeons and seagulls have been doing it for a long time.
for the most part these guys were paid by the people in control of the governments.
But not as government representatives. Newton had many patrons. It might be argued that Charles Montagu was part of the government, but his patronage was political, not economic. Newton's principle economic patron appears to have been John Thornton, a wealthy merchant and private citizen.
Galileo's court appointment occurred long after his refinement of the telescope and the writing of the Sidereus Nuncius, which were done while under private employment as a professor at Padua. Large government payment followed, but for rights to the telescope, for use in practical military applications, not for astronomical research. Implying that Galileo was government supported is misleading, as even the later Medici patronage was provided at the personal discretion of aristocracy.
"But you are quite wrong (or possibly dissembling) about Einstein being an amateur. He wasn't being paid as a researcher in 1905,"
"amateur - A person who engages in an art, science, study, or athletic activity as a pastime rather than as a profession." - Am. Heritage, 4th Ed.
Einstein's profession at the time was as a patent examiner, not a theoretical physicist, nor was his work on the Special Theory funded. To argue that his work on it wasn't amateur, in the accepted meaning of that word, is disingenuous. You might as well argue that Archimedes Plutonium http://www.iw.net/~a_plutonium/, the King of Science, is a professional.
My wife's got a degree in Political Science. Is she a professional scientist, even though she's paid to do accounting? Won't she be surprised!
"why do you care about getting an early crack at the data, given that you don't support the idea of pure research in the first place?"
I personally don't care, but support the rights of others who have funded the research, in true fairness. Why, as someone who depends upon public funding, do you want to bite the hand that feeds you?
To your point, give people the choice of spending $10 on seeing a new Matrix movie sequel or seeing some pictures from a probe to Neptune and which do you think they'd choose? The reason government funding is "needed" for such projects is because most people wouldn't choose to fund them given free choice, government provides a means of forcing them. Counter arguments based on democracy and elected official are non-starters - people vote on issues which most directly affect them, not on whether the candidate is going to vote to spend some fraction of a percent of their tax money on something of minor interest but no real impact.
And, yes, it is "the dole," or else it would produce a measurable benefit to society. It's government funding (albeit sometimes interesting and/or entertaining) busywork, with no definite or even expected return. Being able to get paid to work in a field of choice which produces no measurable return on investment (if it did, GE or IBM would be sending probes regularly) is, yes, enough of a reward. People don't choose to be, say, an astrophysicist, because they're making a decision based on expected wealth or fame (if they are, they're obviously not smart enough to be one) - they're choosing something they're interested in / enjoy doing. That they're able to do so by the pure grace of the rest of society is something they should appreciate as a priviledge, not an entitlement.
I hazard to say that most scientific advancement, even "pure" science has come as a result of private investment - DaVinci, Newton, Gallileo were all funded by private patrons. Get Bill Gates to fund a probe, then feel free to keep the data to yourselves.
Finally, the attitude that the established scientific aristocracy has first rights to publicly financed data assumes a system where truth is absolute, and only to be decided by those in the high caste. If there's a problem with "amateur analysis," it's that the public has not developed a healthy skepticism, for "amateur" does not imply lack of quality. Einstein wrote the Special Theory as an amateur, and scientific professionals announced the discovery of "cold fusion". If the established scientific community feels threatened by poor amateur analysis, they must not have much confidence in the strength/rationality of their own conclusions, or their ability to communicate them.
I think the real reason for complaints about amateur analysis come from a fear of the knowledge that there are people actually willing to put effort and resource into it without being paid - and that is a threat to those who are. It's enlightened (and very non-altruistic) self-interest.
Do you really think they'd cut off their noses to spite their faces? The data is critical to their careers, of occasional minor entertainment value to the people who actually fund it. (Although some people actually like Tang!) Who do you think is going to care the most if it goes away?
Personally, I find the data occasionally interesting, but it has no (for 99.99% of it) other effect on my life or the lives of most other taxpayers (although it can provide some nationalistic bragging rights). I can find no ethical justification for spending taxpayer money on collecting it. I might throw in a buck or two now and then to help fund a private effort, but not if it were run by people with ingrateful attitudes like yours. Buncha people on the dole, not realizing who actually pays the bills, thinking they're entitled to preferential treatment.
Maybe if you (and I'm assuming you're somehow earning money by using this data) paid for it instead of taxpayers, you'd have a legitimate complaint.
Show some appreciation, and quityerbitchin.