No, you don't understand business. The business of business is to pragmatically make money in the current environment. Screw trying to be idealistic and change the environment -- that's for fat cats who donate millions and take Cabinet positions. Most business people have learned the hard way that they do what it takes with the system as it is, and that means patents. Has nothing to do with whether they like patents or abhor them. They have to deal with patents or take up some other line of work.
Business is really really simple, altho it takes a lot of skill. It's people who don't understand that simplicity that find all sorts of bogus ulterior motives for everything business people do.
So if a programmer writes code that you like in your phone, should you pay every time you use it?
If an ironworker installs an elevator, does everyone who rides it pay a fee, inclduing for 75 years after his death?
If you take a trip on the subway, does the driver get paid for that trip until he dies, and his children and grandchildren collect royalties for 75 years more?
If you have a really good juicy apple some day, should the farmer who grew it collect royalties for the rest of his life, and his children for 75 years after?
Fuck you. Everyone is people too, and enrich your life far more than songs. They also have families and bills to pay. Unlike songwriters, they don't expect to collect royalties for every use, or for their descendants to keep collecting said royalties for 75 years after they die.
But patents are a legal creation and can be easily destroyed, unlike nukes.
As for foreign patents and foreign companies suing US companies in their home countries for patent infringement, not much can be done about that, other than US legislation forbidding those companies doing business in the US, or something similar. But the likelihood of the US abolishing patents is pretty unlikely, so I won't worry about that yet.
However, there are indeed domains where a period of exclusive commercial exploitation makes sense. Drug research, movie production.
I don't by that at all. Most copyrighted items make all their money in the first few months. That's the lead time when your imitators are copying you and when you should be already working on the next project.
As for copying books and such, I know many people who are quite happy only buying the real thing. I have no doubt that enough people do that to make it worthwhile. If movie budgets have to be cut back and movie stars no longer get $20M for phoning in a mediocre performance, I won't be crying.
Then there are artists who actually make statues and paint pictures. I do not think it makes any difference if someone copies their work. There are far too many fat cats willing to pay premiums for certified works. The people who buy copies couldn't afford to buy the real thing, so what sale has been lost?
It's just like people who download thousands of tunes they couldn't afford to buy. What sale has been lost?
Yes I do. Intellectual property is no more property than vibrations in air.
The idea that someone can write a song and retire and the grandkids can probably retire at birth too is disgusting. Whereas I write a program and have a job. Did K&R retire from writing C? No, it just gave them the reputation to get further work. That's all anyone should get.
I have a neighbor whose father wrote some famous songs, and now he spends half his time ferreting out bands who don't pay the proper respect. Nice for him, does nothing for productivity or creating new works or making anyone, including him, any happier.
I am convinced that at least 99% of patents are useless. They are trivial expansions on previous patents, maybe changing the temperature of an annealing, maybe adding.01% more chromium, or changing the angle of a gear surface by a degree. Software patents are far worse them mechanical patents, and I have not heard of a single one that is not obvious to someone skilled in the arts.
If those companies spent half on research what they spend on patent lawyers, they'd beat the competition in products and build up their internal skills to keep their edge.
There are indeed statistics on such crimes. Go look them up. Far more are used to prevent crime.
Someone did a study of conceal carry permit holders and off duty policeman. Guess who committed fewer crimes per capita?
Gun owners are pretty damn responsible. Half the adult own guns. Most deaths are suicides (which numerous studies have shown remain as numerous when guns are banned) and gang warfare.
British gun crime went up after handguns were banned.
You ought to get some reliable sources instead of just making up 98.7% of your statistics.
Most defensive guns uses are yelling "I got a gun", or making gun noises, or pointing it. If there really were millions of shots fired for defensive purposes, not only would we here reports about it, but there'd be a lot more dead crooks.
We're not talking about people who practice every weekend.
No, dipshit, guns don't have intentions OR intended uses. People with guns have intentions. 99.99% of gun uses are not intended for killing or even hurting, except paper, or tin cans, or jugs of water.
That specific question dpends on who has the gun and what they want to do with it.
However, the primary *benefit* of guns has been to equalize right and might. As the saying goes, God may have created man, but Sam Colt made them equal.
Look up the Deacons for Defense, where black WW II and Korean War vets in Louisiana in the 1960s used their guns to hold the KKK-infested local and state governments accountable. Look up the battle of Athens in 1946, where WW II vets used their guns to outs a corrupt government and overturn a fraudulent election.
It takes a lot of practice to be good with bows and arrows, or swords, and both take a lot of strength. It takes very little skill, only strength, to kill someone with your fists. Defending yourself from any of these requires faster feet or more skill and strength. It takes only a little skill, and no unusual strength, to defend yourself with a gun. I would rather justice depended on both sides having guns than bad guys having fists.
If your fairy godmother could wave her wand and eliminate all guns, the world would not be better off. There would of course be fewer gun deaths, but there would be more "might makes right" criminals and governments, and suicides would not drop.
If you think a law against guns and the police sweeps necessary to enforce it would eliminate guns, you are deluded and naive. When anything is outlawed, only the outlaws have it.
Another thing you may not be aware of. The Center for Disease Control hates guns, and when they did a congressional mandated study on defensive gun uses, they found 1.5 million of them. Most of these were just scaring a burglar away by showing the gun or racking the slide, no actual shots fired. But at the very least, tens of thousands of lives are saved by guns every year.
Don't read much about that kind of thing, do you? Too scary to your preconceived notions, I reckon.
It has happened. A parishioner at a church stopped a madman before he did much damage. Someone in Utah at a mall brought down the killer before the cops showed up. Of course, those don't make the big news because they are so... distasteful... to the hoplophobes, don't make for nearly as scary headlines, and provide almost no scary followup headlines which the increasing death toll, trial, appeals, punishment, and survivor interviews do. The news media is in the business of selling ads to news readers, so no news is not news.
The best thing, of course, is to just ban guns from the country. Grab them from every household. The gun-nuts can easily get a different hobby, such as gardening.
Prohibition of alcohol worked, prohibition of drugs works now, so yeh, let's do that, make it 3 for 3.
When someone presents a scientific idea, there are tests to prove it, and it can be disproven if those tests fail.
When someone presents and idea and says the proof is "God said so" or "God moves in mysterious ways", there is no test which can disprove it. Therefore it isn't science.
Or, to put it another way, science tries to understand how things work, religion takes them on faith and doesn't care how they work.
You may think of the idea of science as a religion, in that scientists have faith in the idea of testable and falsifiable ideas, but science itself is not a religion, it is the set of testable and falsifiable ideas.
Slashdot Mirror
We gun nuts know of these events. It's the mainstream media which don't want to report it.
No, you don't understand business. The business of business is to pragmatically make money in the current environment. Screw trying to be idealistic and change the environment -- that's for fat cats who donate millions and take Cabinet positions. Most business people have learned the hard way that they do what it takes with the system as it is, and that means patents. Has nothing to do with whether they like patents or abhor them. They have to deal with patents or take up some other line of work.
Business is really really simple, altho it takes a lot of skill. It's people who don't understand that simplicity that find all sorts of bogus ulterior motives for everything business people do.
Then either it's pure dumb luck and they need to get a day job, or it's a skill, and they can keep doing it.
Neither justifies life + 75 years of living off royalties.
So if a programmer writes code that you like in your phone, should you pay every time you use it?
If an ironworker installs an elevator, does everyone who rides it pay a fee, inclduing for 75 years after his death?
If you take a trip on the subway, does the driver get paid for that trip until he dies, and his children and grandchildren collect royalties for 75 years more?
If you have a really good juicy apple some day, should the farmer who grew it collect royalties for the rest of his life, and his children for 75 years after?
Fuck you. Everyone is people too, and enrich your life far more than songs. They also have families and bills to pay. Unlike songwriters, they don't expect to collect royalties for every use, or for their descendants to keep collecting said royalties for 75 years after they die.
But patents are a legal creation and can be easily destroyed, unlike nukes.
As for foreign patents and foreign companies suing US companies in their home countries for patent infringement, not much can be done about that, other than US legislation forbidding those companies doing business in the US, or something similar. But the likelihood of the US abolishing patents is pretty unlikely, so I won't worry about that yet.
Exactly. Thank you.
Say what? Are you saying we need patents to protect companies from other companies who sue them for patent infringement?
To be fair ... are you serious? Should we be fair to serial killers or politicians who know no other line of work?
So you are claiming that a patent which no one ever violates is a tool for innovation?
I say the patent holder could have better invested that money in other ways. Patent lawyers are overhead.
However, there are indeed domains where a period of exclusive commercial exploitation makes sense. Drug research, movie production.
I don't by that at all. Most copyrighted items make all their money in the first few months. That's the lead time when your imitators are copying you and when you should be already working on the next project.
As for copying books and such, I know many people who are quite happy only buying the real thing. I have no doubt that enough people do that to make it worthwhile. If movie budgets have to be cut back and movie stars no longer get $20M for phoning in a mediocre performance, I won't be crying.
Then there are artists who actually make statues and paint pictures. I do not think it makes any difference if someone copies their work. There are far too many fat cats willing to pay premiums for certified works. The people who buy copies couldn't afford to buy the real thing, so what sale has been lost?
It's just like people who download thousands of tunes they couldn't afford to buy. What sale has been lost?
Yes I do. Intellectual property is no more property than vibrations in air.
The idea that someone can write a song and retire and the grandkids can probably retire at birth too is disgusting. Whereas I write a program and have a job. Did K&R retire from writing C? No, it just gave them the reputation to get further work. That's all anyone should get.
I have a neighbor whose father wrote some famous songs, and now he spends half his time ferreting out bands who don't pay the proper respect. Nice for him, does nothing for productivity or creating new works or making anyone, including him, any happier.
I am convinced that at least 99% of patents are useless. They are trivial expansions on previous patents, maybe changing the temperature of an annealing, maybe adding .01% more chromium, or changing the angle of a gear surface by a degree. Software patents are far worse them mechanical patents, and I have not heard of a single one that is not obvious to someone skilled in the arts.
If those companies spent half on research what they spend on patent lawyers, they'd beat the competition in products and build up their internal skills to keep their edge.
Patents are the first refuge of the unskilled.
There are indeed statistics on such crimes. Go look them up. Far more are used to prevent crime.
Someone did a study of conceal carry permit holders and off duty policeman. Guess who committed fewer crimes per capita?
Gun owners are pretty damn responsible. Half the adult own guns. Most deaths are suicides (which numerous studies have shown remain as numerous when guns are banned) and gang warfare.
British gun crime went up after handguns were banned.
You ought to get some reliable sources instead of just making up 98.7% of your statistics.
Most people won't brandish without firing.
Most defensive guns uses are yelling "I got a gun", or making gun noises, or pointing it. If there really were millions of shots fired for defensive purposes, not only would we here reports about it, but there'd be a lot more dead crooks.
We're not talking about people who practice every weekend.
Heh, your point is that 1.5M != tens of thousands. You negated yourself, bud.
No, dipshit, guns don't have intentions OR intended uses. People with guns have intentions. 99.99% of gun uses are not intended for killing or even hurting, except paper, or tin cans, or jugs of water.
I said 1.5M minimum defensive gun uses a year, and tens of thousands of lives saved.
Please state the primary intended use for a gun.
That specific question dpends on who has the gun and what they want to do with it.
However, the primary *benefit* of guns has been to equalize right and might. As the saying goes, God may have created man, but Sam Colt made them equal.
Look up the Deacons for Defense, where black WW II and Korean War vets in Louisiana in the 1960s used their guns to hold the KKK-infested local and state governments accountable. Look up the battle of Athens in 1946, where WW II vets used their guns to outs a corrupt government and overturn a fraudulent election.
It takes a lot of practice to be good with bows and arrows, or swords, and both take a lot of strength. It takes very little skill, only strength, to kill someone with your fists. Defending yourself from any of these requires faster feet or more skill and strength. It takes only a little skill, and no unusual strength, to defend yourself with a gun. I would rather justice depended on both sides having guns than bad guys having fists.
If your fairy godmother could wave her wand and eliminate all guns, the world would not be better off. There would of course be fewer gun deaths, but there would be more "might makes right" criminals and governments, and suicides would not drop.
If you think a law against guns and the police sweeps necessary to enforce it would eliminate guns, you are deluded and naive. When anything is outlawed, only the outlaws have it.
Another thing you may not be aware of. The Center for Disease Control hates guns, and when they did a congressional mandated study on defensive gun uses, they found 1.5 million of them. Most of these were just scaring a burglar away by showing the gun or racking the slide, no actual shots fired. But at the very least, tens of thousands of lives are saved by guns every year.
Don't read much about that kind of thing, do you? Too scary to your preconceived notions, I reckon.
It has happened. A parishioner at a church stopped a madman before he did much damage. Someone in Utah at a mall brought down the killer before the cops showed up. Of course, those don't make the big news because they are so ... distasteful ... to the hoplophobes, don't make for nearly as scary headlines, and provide almost no scary followup headlines which the increasing death toll, trial, appeals, punishment, and survivor interviews do. The news media is in the business of selling ads to news readers, so no news is not news.
The best thing, of course, is to just ban guns from the country. Grab them from every household. The gun-nuts can easily get a different hobby, such as gardening.
Prohibition of alcohol worked, prohibition of drugs works now, so yeh, let's do that, make it 3 for 3.
how many rounds through a gun before the microstamp is occluded? (either by wear down, or but material filling the grooves).
Generally shown to be a couple hundred rounds, IIRC. A morning at the range.
When someone presents a scientific idea, there are tests to prove it, and it can be disproven if those tests fail.
When someone presents and idea and says the proof is "God said so" or "God moves in mysterious ways", there is no test which can disprove it. Therefore it isn't science.
Or, to put it another way, science tries to understand how things work, religion takes them on faith and doesn't care how they work.
You may think of the idea of science as a religion, in that scientists have faith in the idea of testable and falsifiable ideas, but science itself is not a religion, it is the set of testable and falsifiable ideas.
Oh, please, stop the hyperbole.
I should trademark "squaredbook" and "booksquared".