As a US citizen that works abroad, I have to FILE taxes, but pay nothing. I basically declare that I made a certain amount working abroad and was taxed in that country. I declare I made 0 in the US, and I owe 0 US taxes. Apparently making rather large sums of money overseas is different, according to the H&R Block person who helps me file.
I used to work abroad too. OP is right and you have to pay U.S. taxes on all income regardless of where you earned it. It's just that if the country you're working in has a tax treaty with the U.S., then you get to apply taxes paid in that country against your income taxes. Since most countries have a higher personal income tax rate than the U.S., you frequently end up owing nothing in U.S. taxes. (Basically, you end up paying that country's taxes or U.S. taxes, whichever is higher.) If the country has no such treaty, then you're subject to double-taxation.
Tax treaties normally cover earned income (wages), but not unearned income. When I was working in Canada, the interest on my Canadian bank account got double-taxed by both Canada and the U.S. Retirement accounts are a grey area too - Canada didn't recognize the tax-deferred status of some U.S. retirement accounts.
This is why I like the book/record model of licensing. Buy this digital resource, and you can use or lend or trade it just like you'd do with a hard media book or record or tape in days of yore. The problem with "piracy" in the digital age is that enforcement of copyright is no longer strongly supported by the limitations of the (physical) media that carries the copyrighted information. To me, this is a true "middle of the road" licensing position.
No, if you think about it, the publishers are going for a worst of both worlds (best of both worlds from their perspective) approaching to licensing. Their products have the worst limitations of physical media combined with the worst limitations of licenses. You're limited in what you can do with the digital files as if it were a license (no public performances, can't make copies, sometimes can't even make backups because of DRM). But if you somehow manage to lose or destroy your copy, or if a new and improved version comes out, cases where a license would be beneficial to you, they treat it like it was physical media and expect you to pay full price for a replacement.
The software industry has the true "middle of the road" licensing position. Like physical media, you can loan it to someone if you uninstall it from your computer (some apps like Photoshop even let you install it on both a desktop and a laptop), you can resell it if you don't need it anymore. But if you accidentally destroy the CD it was shipped on, they will send you a replacement for a nominal fee and proof of ownership. You can make backups to avoid the fee. And when a new, improved version comes out, they recognize that you've already paid to license most of the features in the new version. So you can buy the new version at a discounted "upgrade" price.
but you will never see the "Defense Budget" getting fitted for a hair cut. Never. All in the name of "national security".
Scroll down to figure 1 and you will plainly see that defense spending is the budgetary item receiving the biggest cuts over the last 50 years. (Post-9/11 it's grown by about 35% as percent of GDP.)
Have any sources for those numbers? The U.S. alone spends over $500 billion a year on public education. So I find it highly unlikely that $465 billion would feed and educate every child on earth for 5 years.
At its heart, all Facebook is is a way for users to verify that another user is who they claim to be. If a dozen of my friends create websites and want me (but not the general public) to have access, I don't have to create a dozen logins and passwords. I only need to make one which gives me access to all their sites. Facebook just locks you into their web site to use this "feature".
Open Source Software could've done the same thing with public/private keys. In fact I'm still hopeful it will. My dozen friends could make websites anywhere, and by using public/private keys they could verify that it's really me visiting their site. But PGP keys never took off because the interface was clumsy and the immediate benefit (secure email) wasn't a big enough carrot. Facebook took off because it let people share photos and messages, which apparently was a big enough carrot.
I can't for the life of me understand why people would want to have a company run by a person of dubious character as Zuckerberg in control of such a crucial interface like a universal login for the Internet.
To figure out the average of two vehicles with MPG1 and MPG2, the answer is not (MPG1 + MPG2) / 2. It's 2/MPGavg = 1/MPG1 + 1/MPG2.
e.g. Say a family has vehicle 1 which gets 50 MPG and vehicle 2 which gets 10 MPG, and both are driven the same distance each day. Your average MPG for both vehicles is not (50+10)/2 = 30 MPG. It's 2/(1/50+1/10) = 16.7 MPG.
I think this is the bigger problem with using MPG instead of GPM. To the mathematically disinclined, MPG exaggerates the benefit of having a high mileage vehicle (people think they can offset using a gas-guzzling SUV by buying a hybrid for commuting), while downplaying the disadvantage of having a low mileage vehicle (people think trading in their old 14 MPG SUV for a 12 MPG SUV is not that big a difference in gas mileage).
How much fuel is saved by replacing a vehicle that gets 10 MPG with one that gets 50 MPG?
Chances are the 10 MPG vehicle is a truck for hauling stuff while the 50 MPG is an econobox with limited cargo capacity. So if the vehicle is used just to transport the driver (as most suburbanites drive their SUVs), then the answer is what you want it to be - the 50 MPG vehicle is better.
But what if the driver needs to haul something that won't fit in the 50 MPG vehicle? Then he has to drive the 50 MPG to a friend's house, he and the friend drive it to a truck rental, he rents a 10 MPG truck, they drive both vehicles home, he hauls the stuff he needed to haul using the 10 MPG truck, he and his friend drive back to the rental place to return the truck, he drives his friend home in the 50 MPG vehicle, and then he finally drives home. Net result is replacing the 10 MPG vehicle with a 50 MPG vehicle increases the amount of gas consumed considerably. It wastes a lot more time and money (for the rental) too.
Just to play devil's advocate, my hunch is that most recordings start after the incident has developed. People see cop pull guy over and think nothing of it. People see the guy sucker punch the cop and think, "whoa, this might get interesting," and start recording. People record the cop fighting back against the guy and treating him like he's armed and extremely dangerous when he's apparently not offering any resistance.
I have no problem with recording cops (they are our employees after all, and last I checked an employer has the right to monitor his employees in the workplace). But I can see merit to the argument that video recordings of them at work usually don't show the whole story, and tends to be slanted against them. Like TV stations stopped airing shuttle launches live because they became routine. But then the Challenger blew up and that failure was replayed over and over for years.
It's amazing that BP can drill for oil with no provable solution to a catastrophic failure.
The provable solution to a catastrophic failure was supposed to have been the blowout preventer. Unfortunately it failed in this case. A review of BOP failures has turned up evidence that perhaps they're not as reliable as they should be for a last-resort backup mechanism. Couple that with the BP executive in charge who took the Fifth but from other testimony appears to have deliberately ordered the rig operators to do things which left the BOP as the only failsafe to try to get the well completed quicker, and you have a recipe for disaster.
As Douglas Adams said, the problem with trying to make things completely foolproof is that people usually greatly underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools.
Or does the fault lie with the farmer and have nothing at all to do with the people who purchase the apples?
I think the point of the GP was that fault likes with both the farmer and the people who vehemently demand the lowest priced apples possible. The U.S. State and Federal governments can't even pass a tax on gasoline (used primarily by passenger vehicles) that comes anywhere close to what other industrialized countries tax. The old adage of fast, cheap, or well-made, pick two would seem to apply here.
There's a lot of indirect water use associated with modern life. The food you eat comes from crops and animals which need water irrigation and feed. The computer you're using has parts in it which were smelted and refined in processes which used lots of water. The electricity you're using comes from a plant which uses water as part of its cooling system. etc.
An important detail is missing here: Scientists don't say those things! The media does.
That would indicate that the problem does not reside with the people who tend to disbelieve scientists. The problem is with the media and the relationship scientists have with it. And rather than wasting time studying and critiquing the behavior of people who disagree with scientists, the article should be studying and critiquing the media and how scientists interact with it.
When the media consistently distorts what you're saying to the point where it's detrimental to your credibility, you have a PR problem. Rather than getting upset at the symptom (the people who get their info from the media), scientists should be working on the problem (their dysfunctional relationship with the media). As I've gotten older, one thing I've come to realize is that the world won't automatically stop and take notice and shower you with praise just because you're right. You have to work to get your message out there, and fight to make sure the message is portrayed accurately. You can't expect the messenger (the media in this case) to do it for you. They're gonna do whatever is easiest for themselves, like everyone else does.
f I take my purchased CD's and transcode them to a compressed format for personal use that could be fair use, bit for bit copies might not be but compressed should be.
Bit for bit copies must be legal. My reasoning goes as follows:
To the best of my knowledge, none of the RIAA labels have a replacement policy for a damaged CD. They expect you to buy a new CD.
The RIAA insists you are buying a license, not a copy. Destruction of the CD does not invalidate this license.
Since the RIAA does not provide a means to make whole my license should the CD be damaged, it is up to me to do it myself. I need to make a backup.
CDs are unencrypted, so there is no DMCA violation for making a backup copy. (I think this is a silly and artificial exclusion in the DMCA. But even if you accept it, copying CDs is not a violation of it.)
Prohibiting bit-for-bit backup copies of CDs would be like the airlines prohibiting you from making a photocopy of your flight ticket, while simultaneously having a policy where if you lose your ticket, you have to buy a new one at full price.
Every book and magazine you wanted to read ever on a 1 or 2 page Ebook reader way thinner than anything we have now.
You're thinking in the wrong dimension. This is working towards an ebook reader which you can roll up so you can carry it around in your shirt pocket. Back in ancient times, they rolled up parchment so it would take less storage space. Those scrolls got replaced by books with pages because you needed to keep scrolling parchment to continue reading, and it was easier to flip a bunch of pages than to scroll to the section you wanted.
Ebook readers eliminate the need to physically turn pages, and so once again rolling becomes the most space-efficient storage method.
The vast majority of Canada is unpopulated or sparsely populated. 90% of Canadians live in a 200 km strip along the U.S. border. Distance from Vancouver to Halifax is 4443 km, giving a 200 km strip an area of 888,600 sq km (which includes a lot of water, but ignore that). Canada's population is 33.2 million, 90% of that is 29.8 million. So 90% of Canadians live in a population density of 33.5 ppl / sq km. The U.S. has a population density of 32.1 ppl / sq km.
From net index site, the U.S. has an average connection speed of 10.16 Mbps. Canada has an average connection speed of 7.89 Mbps.
Alternative fuels do not protect the environment, they only reduce the damage slightly.
Depends how you define "damage". If you define it as "people shouldn't undo what nature has done" (ignoring for the moment that basically everything in nature undoes what something else in nature has done) then yeah it damages the environment. OTOH if you define it using a (more sensible IMHO) state-based system, then taking alternative fuel made from algae extracting CO2 from the atmosphere, and converting it back into CO2 just puts you right back at the original state things were in before you ever grew the algae in the first place. So there's no damage done to the environment. You're just (re)using the hydrocarbons as an energy storage and transport medium.
It's like a company that tries to patent an object that has four wheels, a steering wheel, a wind shield and an engine.
Been done before. Fortunately the saving grace in that case was that the patent was on a specific type of engine, and thus ruled inapplicable to most of the cars being made at the time. On a more general note, this is why it's important that patents be for a specific implementation of an idea. If someone can tweak your idea to make it better, they have to be able to do so without running afoul of your patent. That and patent expiration are the only ways for the system to promote progress.
Which would have given others with less money more of a chance to work on this
The "from each according to his ability, to each according to his need" idea has been tried before. It failed pretty miserably. Like it or not, greed is just about the best motivator there is to get people to actually do things.
What's the creepy part? I've become a cheerleader for the phone company. That just blows my mind.
While their customer service leaves a lot to be desired, keep in mind that the phone companies think 99.99% uptime isn't good enough. When is the last time you picked up a phone and didn't get a dial tone (natural disasters and national emergencies excepted)? They take reliability seriously, unlike the cable companies.
In this case, I think a fast-track process to get an obviously wrongly awarded patent invalidated would suffice. I would toss in treble damages awarded to the original inventor (if they're the one asking for the invalidation), to punish patent trolls trying to patent something someone else invented, but that's just me.
It bothers you because the RIAA/MPAA is trying to have their cake and eat it too. When it comes to copying and distribution, they want their products to be treated as a license. Even though you bought it, you're limited in how you can use it (no public performances, don't want you making backup copies, costs more for copies which are rented out, etc). But when it comes to replacements and upgrades, they want their products to be treated as physical media. "New version on better media comes out? Sorry, you didn't buy a license, you bought a copy, so you need to buy a new copy." "You accidentally scratched your DVD and it won't play anymore? Sorry, you need to buy a new one."
The software industry "gets it." They treat software as a license, period. If they come out with a new, better version, they rationalize that you've already purchased a license for most of the features in the new versions, and the new features represent just an incremental upgrade. So they charge you less to buy the upgrade version. If you lose your media, you can just mail/fax them proof that you've bought it and they'll send you replacement media for a small fee.* Same goes for other industries where you own the physical product. Once you bought it, they don't care if you dismantle it, modify it, use it for unintended purposes, resell it. The worst they'll do is void your warranty.
But the MPAA/RIAA wants to have it both ways. Whenever it'll be favorable to them (at the expense of the consumer), they say you bought a copy. And whenever it'll be favorable to them (again at the expense of the consumer), they say you bought a license. That's why it bothers you, that's why the author in the linked story is conflicted. Because the MPAA/RIAA's stance is logically self-contradictory. *(Disney is the one exception I've been able to find. They will replace scratched DVDs, probably because so many kids destroy them that parents would file a class action suit if Disney didn't do this.)
With the actual size of the pipe, however, you can get a pretty accurate flow rate by estimating the pressure differential between the reservoir and the head. The pressure on the reservoir should be about 15,000 psi (not 150,000, like the article states) - 5,000 feet of water plus 11,000 feet of granite. The pressure of the water column is about 2,000 psi, rough estimate. With a pressure differential of about 13,000 psi, an 11,000 foot length of pipe, an estimated density of about 900 kg/m3 (it could actually be anywhere from 750-950, 900 seems close to what other oil is in area), and assuming a smooth pipe, you get about 15.6 gallons per second, or 0.37 barrels per second.
Don't forget the pressure of the oil column in the 11,000 foot pipe. At a 900 kg/m^3 density, that's another ~4000 psi you need to add to the 2000 psi water pressure.
We started at 5,000 barrels a day, then 20, 50 and 100,000 barrels a day. Yesterday I saw a figure quoted at 200,000, today I saw 210,000
But 1 million barrels a day? That's almost three full days ahead of schedule for the media. Didn't Slashdot get the memo?
I would take many of those estimates with a huge grain of salt. The largest recorded blowout on land was only a bit over 100,000 barrels/day. In their zeal to hype this as an environmental disaster, some people are assigning figures to this blowout an order of magnitude larger than that. A previous undersea blowout was about 10,000 barrels/day, and the environmental impact we're seeing with the current spill seems to be tracking pretty closely with that one.
On the basis of this the court found that Schmeiser had either known "or ought to have known" that he had planted Roundup Ready canola in 1998.'
'The courts at all three levels noted that the case of accidental contamination beyond the farmer's control was not under consideration but rather that Mr. Schmeiser's action of having identified, isolated and saved the Roundup-resistant seed placed the case in a different category.'
The judgment wasn't about accidental contamination. He intentionally identified and planted seeds containing the modification patented by Monsanto.
Doesn't the development of roundup-resistant weeds blow a huge hole that judgment's reasoning? The assumption in the Schmeiser case all along was that if he had canola crop which was resistant to Roundup, then everyone should have known it must have come from seeds containing Monsanto's patented genes. And that Mr. Schmeiser, by saving those seeds, deliberately kept and planted crop which he knew or should have known contained Monsanto's patents.
Weeds developing the resistance naturally proves that plants can develop resistance to Roundup naturally. That means Mr. Schmeiser could not have known that the crop was in violation of Monsanto's patents since it could also have come about naturally.
Slashdot Mirror
I used to work abroad too. OP is right and you have to pay U.S. taxes on all income regardless of where you earned it. It's just that if the country you're working in has a tax treaty with the U.S., then you get to apply taxes paid in that country against your income taxes. Since most countries have a higher personal income tax rate than the U.S., you frequently end up owing nothing in U.S. taxes. (Basically, you end up paying that country's taxes or U.S. taxes, whichever is higher.) If the country has no such treaty, then you're subject to double-taxation.
Tax treaties normally cover earned income (wages), but not unearned income. When I was working in Canada, the interest on my Canadian bank account got double-taxed by both Canada and the U.S. Retirement accounts are a grey area too - Canada didn't recognize the tax-deferred status of some U.S. retirement accounts.
No, if you think about it, the publishers are going for a worst of both worlds (best of both worlds from their perspective) approaching to licensing. Their products have the worst limitations of physical media combined with the worst limitations of licenses. You're limited in what you can do with the digital files as if it were a license (no public performances, can't make copies, sometimes can't even make backups because of DRM). But if you somehow manage to lose or destroy your copy, or if a new and improved version comes out, cases where a license would be beneficial to you, they treat it like it was physical media and expect you to pay full price for a replacement.
The software industry has the true "middle of the road" licensing position. Like physical media, you can loan it to someone if you uninstall it from your computer (some apps like Photoshop even let you install it on both a desktop and a laptop), you can resell it if you don't need it anymore. But if you accidentally destroy the CD it was shipped on, they will send you a replacement for a nominal fee and proof of ownership. You can make backups to avoid the fee. And when a new, improved version comes out, they recognize that you've already paid to license most of the features in the new version. So you can buy the new version at a discounted "upgrade" price.
Scroll down to figure 1 and you will plainly see that defense spending is the budgetary item receiving the biggest cuts over the last 50 years. (Post-9/11 it's grown by about 35% as percent of GDP.)
Have any sources for those numbers? The U.S. alone spends over $500 billion a year on public education. So I find it highly unlikely that $465 billion would feed and educate every child on earth for 5 years.
At its heart, all Facebook is is a way for users to verify that another user is who they claim to be. If a dozen of my friends create websites and want me (but not the general public) to have access, I don't have to create a dozen logins and passwords. I only need to make one which gives me access to all their sites. Facebook just locks you into their web site to use this "feature".
Open Source Software could've done the same thing with public/private keys. In fact I'm still hopeful it will. My dozen friends could make websites anywhere, and by using public/private keys they could verify that it's really me visiting their site. But PGP keys never took off because the interface was clumsy and the immediate benefit (secure email) wasn't a big enough carrot. Facebook took off because it let people share photos and messages, which apparently was a big enough carrot.
I can't for the life of me understand why people would want to have a company run by a person of dubious character as Zuckerberg in control of such a crucial interface like a universal login for the Internet.
To figure out the average of two vehicles with MPG1 and MPG2, the answer is not (MPG1 + MPG2) / 2. It's 2/MPGavg = 1/MPG1 + 1/MPG2.
e.g. Say a family has vehicle 1 which gets 50 MPG and vehicle 2 which gets 10 MPG, and both are driven the same distance each day. Your average MPG for both vehicles is not (50+10)/2 = 30 MPG. It's 2/(1/50+1/10) = 16.7 MPG.
I think this is the bigger problem with using MPG instead of GPM. To the mathematically disinclined, MPG exaggerates the benefit of having a high mileage vehicle (people think they can offset using a gas-guzzling SUV by buying a hybrid for commuting), while downplaying the disadvantage of having a low mileage vehicle (people think trading in their old 14 MPG SUV for a 12 MPG SUV is not that big a difference in gas mileage).
Chances are the 10 MPG vehicle is a truck for hauling stuff while the 50 MPG is an econobox with limited cargo capacity. So if the vehicle is used just to transport the driver (as most suburbanites drive their SUVs), then the answer is what you want it to be - the 50 MPG vehicle is better.
But what if the driver needs to haul something that won't fit in the 50 MPG vehicle? Then he has to drive the 50 MPG to a friend's house, he and the friend drive it to a truck rental, he rents a 10 MPG truck, they drive both vehicles home, he hauls the stuff he needed to haul using the 10 MPG truck, he and his friend drive back to the rental place to return the truck, he drives his friend home in the 50 MPG vehicle, and then he finally drives home. Net result is replacing the 10 MPG vehicle with a 50 MPG vehicle increases the amount of gas consumed considerably. It wastes a lot more time and money (for the rental) too.
Context matters.
Just to play devil's advocate, my hunch is that most recordings start after the incident has developed. People see cop pull guy over and think nothing of it. People see the guy sucker punch the cop and think, "whoa, this might get interesting," and start recording. People record the cop fighting back against the guy and treating him like he's armed and extremely dangerous when he's apparently not offering any resistance.
I have no problem with recording cops (they are our employees after all, and last I checked an employer has the right to monitor his employees in the workplace). But I can see merit to the argument that video recordings of them at work usually don't show the whole story, and tends to be slanted against them. Like TV stations stopped airing shuttle launches live because they became routine. But then the Challenger blew up and that failure was replayed over and over for years.
AT&T: I have altered the deal. Pray I do not alter it any further.
The provable solution to a catastrophic failure was supposed to have been the blowout preventer. Unfortunately it failed in this case. A review of BOP failures has turned up evidence that perhaps they're not as reliable as they should be for a last-resort backup mechanism. Couple that with the BP executive in charge who took the Fifth but from other testimony appears to have deliberately ordered the rig operators to do things which left the BOP as the only failsafe to try to get the well completed quicker, and you have a recipe for disaster.
As Douglas Adams said, the problem with trying to make things completely foolproof is that people usually greatly underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools.
I think the point of the GP was that fault likes with both the farmer and the people who vehemently demand the lowest priced apples possible. The U.S. State and Federal governments can't even pass a tax on gasoline (used primarily by passenger vehicles) that comes anywhere close to what other industrialized countries tax. The old adage of fast, cheap, or well-made, pick two would seem to apply here.
There's a lot of indirect water use associated with modern life. The food you eat comes from crops and animals which need water irrigation and feed. The computer you're using has parts in it which were smelted and refined in processes which used lots of water. The electricity you're using comes from a plant which uses water as part of its cooling system. etc.
That would indicate that the problem does not reside with the people who tend to disbelieve scientists. The problem is with the media and the relationship scientists have with it. And rather than wasting time studying and critiquing the behavior of people who disagree with scientists, the article should be studying and critiquing the media and how scientists interact with it.
When the media consistently distorts what you're saying to the point where it's detrimental to your credibility, you have a PR problem. Rather than getting upset at the symptom (the people who get their info from the media), scientists should be working on the problem (their dysfunctional relationship with the media). As I've gotten older, one thing I've come to realize is that the world won't automatically stop and take notice and shower you with praise just because you're right. You have to work to get your message out there, and fight to make sure the message is portrayed accurately. You can't expect the messenger (the media in this case) to do it for you. They're gonna do whatever is easiest for themselves, like everyone else does.
Bit for bit copies must be legal. My reasoning goes as follows:
Prohibiting bit-for-bit backup copies of CDs would be like the airlines prohibiting you from making a photocopy of your flight ticket, while simultaneously having a policy where if you lose your ticket, you have to buy a new one at full price.
You're thinking in the wrong dimension. This is working towards an ebook reader which you can roll up so you can carry it around in your shirt pocket. Back in ancient times, they rolled up parchment so it would take less storage space. Those scrolls got replaced by books with pages because you needed to keep scrolling parchment to continue reading, and it was easier to flip a bunch of pages than to scroll to the section you wanted.
Ebook readers eliminate the need to physically turn pages, and so once again rolling becomes the most space-efficient storage method.
The vast majority of Canada is unpopulated or sparsely populated. 90% of Canadians live in a 200 km strip along the U.S. border. Distance from Vancouver to Halifax is 4443 km, giving a 200 km strip an area of 888,600 sq km (which includes a lot of water, but ignore that). Canada's population is 33.2 million, 90% of that is 29.8 million. So 90% of Canadians live in a population density of 33.5 ppl / sq km. The U.S. has a population density of 32.1 ppl / sq km.
From net index site, the U.S. has an average connection speed of 10.16 Mbps. Canada has an average connection speed of 7.89 Mbps.
Depends how you define "damage". If you define it as "people shouldn't undo what nature has done" (ignoring for the moment that basically everything in nature undoes what something else in nature has done) then yeah it damages the environment. OTOH if you define it using a (more sensible IMHO) state-based system, then taking alternative fuel made from algae extracting CO2 from the atmosphere, and converting it back into CO2 just puts you right back at the original state things were in before you ever grew the algae in the first place. So there's no damage done to the environment. You're just (re)using the hydrocarbons as an energy storage and transport medium.
Been done before. Fortunately the saving grace in that case was that the patent was on a specific type of engine, and thus ruled inapplicable to most of the cars being made at the time. On a more general note, this is why it's important that patents be for a specific implementation of an idea. If someone can tweak your idea to make it better, they have to be able to do so without running afoul of your patent. That and patent expiration are the only ways for the system to promote progress.
The "from each according to his ability, to each according to his need" idea has been tried before. It failed pretty miserably. Like it or not, greed is just about the best motivator there is to get people to actually do things.
While their customer service leaves a lot to be desired, keep in mind that the phone companies think 99.99% uptime isn't good enough. When is the last time you picked up a phone and didn't get a dial tone (natural disasters and national emergencies excepted)? They take reliability seriously, unlike the cable companies.
In this case, I think a fast-track process to get an obviously wrongly awarded patent invalidated would suffice. I would toss in treble damages awarded to the original inventor (if they're the one asking for the invalidation), to punish patent trolls trying to patent something someone else invented, but that's just me.
It bothers you because the RIAA/MPAA is trying to have their cake and eat it too. When it comes to copying and distribution, they want their products to be treated as a license. Even though you bought it, you're limited in how you can use it (no public performances, don't want you making backup copies, costs more for copies which are rented out, etc). But when it comes to replacements and upgrades, they want their products to be treated as physical media. "New version on better media comes out? Sorry, you didn't buy a license, you bought a copy, so you need to buy a new copy." "You accidentally scratched your DVD and it won't play anymore? Sorry, you need to buy a new one."
The software industry "gets it." They treat software as a license, period. If they come out with a new, better version, they rationalize that you've already purchased a license for most of the features in the new versions, and the new features represent just an incremental upgrade. So they charge you less to buy the upgrade version. If you lose your media, you can just mail/fax them proof that you've bought it and they'll send you replacement media for a small fee.* Same goes for other industries where you own the physical product. Once you bought it, they don't care if you dismantle it, modify it, use it for unintended purposes, resell it. The worst they'll do is void your warranty.
But the MPAA/RIAA wants to have it both ways. Whenever it'll be favorable to them (at the expense of the consumer), they say you bought a copy. And whenever it'll be favorable to them (again at the expense of the consumer), they say you bought a license. That's why it bothers you, that's why the author in the linked story is conflicted. Because the MPAA/RIAA's stance is logically self-contradictory. *(Disney is the one exception I've been able to find. They will replace scratched DVDs, probably because so many kids destroy them that parents would file a class action suit if Disney didn't do this.)
Don't forget the pressure of the oil column in the 11,000 foot pipe. At a 900 kg/m^3 density, that's another ~4000 psi you need to add to the 2000 psi water pressure.
I would take many of those estimates with a huge grain of salt. The largest recorded blowout on land was only a bit over 100,000 barrels/day. In their zeal to hype this as an environmental disaster, some people are assigning figures to this blowout an order of magnitude larger than that. A previous undersea blowout was about 10,000 barrels/day, and the environmental impact we're seeing with the current spill seems to be tracking pretty closely with that one.
Doesn't the development of roundup-resistant weeds blow a huge hole that judgment's reasoning? The assumption in the Schmeiser case all along was that if he had canola crop which was resistant to Roundup, then everyone should have known it must have come from seeds containing Monsanto's patented genes. And that Mr. Schmeiser, by saving those seeds, deliberately kept and planted crop which he knew or should have known contained Monsanto's patents.
Weeds developing the resistance naturally proves that plants can develop resistance to Roundup naturally. That means Mr. Schmeiser could not have known that the crop was in violation of Monsanto's patents since it could also have come about naturally.