It's actual functionality that it has really been needing. [...] they've done a very credible job of addressing many of the major shortcomings from the original KDE4(.0) releases.
It is one thing to call a set of libraries a "4.0 release", and another thing altogether calling a Desktop the same thing. Why anyone would label a major and respected Desktop environment as a technology preview and at the same time slap the 4.0 tag on it is beyond me...
The decision to go with 4.0 rather than 4.0 beta 5 was a mistake, in my opinion. Have a look at the release announcement and tell me where it does not describe KDE 4.0 as the immediate successor to KDE 3.5.x? Despite the obvious PR blunder, all this nonsense could have been easily avoided by continuing with the beta series until a product had been ready (rather than a technology). I personally fault KDE for the negative perception that followed their last release.
Please understand I do not contest Microsoft's significance in the context of PC history, what they accomplished was indeed remarkable... what I do contest is the claim that the PC begins with Microsoft..., it did not, they were just part of it.
And, I did not pick out GNU userland as a point of innovation, I pointed out that Linux would not likely have achieved anything without the GNU software stack in place to begin with...
Besides, Free Software has never been about innovation, Free Software has always been about Free Software. Failure to understand that is failure to understand Free Software.
My argument is that there was nothing remarkable about Microsoft until Windows 95, wherein they became the dominant market player and started to dictate the computer industry, and obviously its history as well.
However, without Microsoft software, we would have never seen the price of computing dive into regular joe range.
Never? Really? That's truly an extraordinary claim... So basically you are saying Moore's law would have seized to apply without Microsoft? Amazing...
The FSF didn't accomplish anything noteworthy without Linus' blind and aggressive campaign to write a great kernel for some strange reason.
Correction: "Linus didn't accomplish anything noteworthy without FSF's blind and agressive campaign to write a great free software stack for some obvious reason."
[...] the PC begins with Microsoft.
Correction: what we call PC today used to be called the IBM PC, which was IBM's response to the hugely successful Apple II (the first mass produced personal computer), and which came with the 86-DOS operating system created by Seattle Computer Products and purchased by Microsoft.
A friend asked me to help him clean up his hard drive on a laptop, throughly. It ran Vista and he had to hand it over to someone else at work. There was no way of wiping the C drive with the format command, which would have been possible in XP, there was no DOS available when booting in Vista, the Vista DVD would only allow re-installation (which takes forever) or repair, and the XP CD could not even detect the hard drive!
Without knowing of any simpler alternative, I used a Ubuntu live CD, booted, sound, graphics, network... everything working perfectly. Next, wipe out all partitions, done. Only took a few minutes to solve his problem...
Ironically, it is now impossible to install XP (I believe it is because it lacks SATA drivers, so you would need to use a floppy containing the drivers during installation, on a laptop without a floppy driver), or Vista (guessing that it is because it was a OEM DVD that came with the laptop and that it expected the presence of at least one "hidden" partition, which was no longer there). Ubuntu can be installed without problems though.
What if FF3 is downloaded through linux distribution channels (say a Debian or RPM package etc) rather than from the firefox website, does that count? According to Wikipedia, at the end of 2006, more than eight million people uses Ubuntu; that would be a lot of downloads towards the record if they timed it correctly.
However, the links to spreadfirefox and getfirefox seems dead at the moment... I guess something other than the record has been broken...
Okay, so like I said, you don't have any evidence? You can base your beliefs on whatever you want, but me, I'm a man of science, I like evidence.
The entire structure of a democracy is necessarily based on scepticism - accordingly, the population needs to apply critical thinking when pondering the nature of their electoral process. I agree that paranoia doesn't help, but not reacting with alarm on unprecedented anomalies is careless, I think. Taken from a research report by the University of Pennsylvania:
Assuming independent state polls with no systematic bias, the odds against any two of these
statistical anomalies occurring together are more than 5,000:1 (five times more improbable than
ten straight heads from a fair coin). The odds against all three occurring together are 662,000-to-
one. As much as we can say in social science that something is impossible, it is impossible that
the discrepancies between predicted and actual vote counts in the three critical battleground states
of the 2004 election could have been due to chance or random error.
Since you already pointed out that "exit polls are not representative and can be rather inaccurate", then please provide the evidence that scientifically invalidates the above findings. I don't mind counter-proofs.
But then again, when vote counting is handed over to a couple of private corporations, well... I can't really find words to describe the absurdity in that. To me, common sense would suffice - it really shouldn't be that hard to grasp why giving control of vote counting to private corporations can only result in "widespread endemic election fraud", but if you need direct and undeniable evidence supporting that notion, then I guess only time will tell.
Do you have evidence of widespread endemic election fraud? If not, on what do you base the suggestion that our elected representatives don't listen to the will of the people?
The fact that Diebold and ES&S combined counted an estimated 80% of U.S. election votes, and neither companies provided voter-verifiable ballots to my knowledge, begs the question: how much faith do you have on your electoral process? Considering that no one has provided an explanation for the 2004 exit poll discrepancy, I see no reason to assume election fraud did not occur. But you may prefer to give those companies the benefit of a doubt.
You are correct and I was wrong, whether it was a flop or not was beside the point. Apologies for going off-topic. However, I still disagree with the basic premise that a backstory necessarily yields a dull movie, even if I also agree that Star Wars EP 1-3 (and Titanic) weren't good movies. Perhaps, because a movie tells a backstory, it makes it harder to arrive at good results.
Although ethics and integrity are fundamental to well functioning journalism, it is important not to confuse theory with reality. The level of corruption and incompetence today is rampant and affects not only journalism with ad-driven business models, it is an affliction across the board. Unfortunately, a democracy can not function when journalism is overcome by corruption and incompetence (read about the CBS' Cowardice and Conflicts Behind Purge for a simple example among many). Maturity in journalism is not necessarily the same thing as honesty in journalism.
In fact, there are so many problems with the prequels that it would take a considerable amount of time to debate them all. Certainly, the lack of a compelling character such as Han Solo is significant, but with a plot so disastrously put together it would take a character ten times more interesting than Han Solo, played by the best actor alive on this planet, to salvage the prequels as they were.
The way by which the midi-chlorian twist was an ill-conceived idea, to say the least, also explains why the prequels suck so much more than they would have had the sequels not existed in the first place. Basically, it seemed as if everything that was enigmatic about the original triology had to be demystified and degraded to the point where even the sequels would start to look bad. For example, take the most enigmatic character in the entire Star Wars story, Boba Fett, who had a large and loyal fan following in spite of his extremely brief appearances... obviously it would have been thrilling for the fans to see Boba Fett appear in at least one of the prequels, so how does George Lucas decide to satisfy their appetite? Naturally, he delivers not one, but a gazillion Boba Fett clones so that they are now everyone and everywhere in the freaking imperial forces... *sigh*...
Terrorists want us to stop screwing around in the Middle East and Central Asia -- specifically they want us to stop supporting Israel and to stop propping up various dictatorships in countries where there'd be a good chance of overthrowing the government and creating a theocracy.
And hopefully some other saviour country may apply your +5 insightful comment to the US and put in place a strong american dictatorship lest it slip into a theocracy...
Well, that FFII press release was from September 17 regarding the verdict of the EU's anti-trust case while this EU commision press release is brand new in which Microsoft now presumably addresses the problem of open-source incompatibilities in the MCPP. Until seeing Jeremy Allison's comments on the latest updates I won't be entirely convinced, but the EU commission appears to have been interested in ensuring that Samba could benefit from this.
Any decisions as to wether Microsoft complies will be made by an English court [...]
Again from the press release, this appears to be meant to provide efficacy to the agreement, not to worsen matters. Before concluding this is a bad thing, I would like to know how private enforcement complementing public enforcement would help in the first place?
The press release if filled with patent-talk (with consequences) even while software patents are still not recognised in the EU. In this respect, this IS a full blown victory for the huge patent troll that is MSFT, because the commission plays by US-UK rule.
Put differently, the EU recognizes the reality of software patents in the US, Japan, possibly itself in the future, and so forth, and intelligently ensured projects like Samba could still benefit worldwide since "Microsoft will publish an irrevocable pledge not to assert any patents it may have over the interoperability information against non-commercial open source software development projects".
That reminds of a trip I made from Italy to Denmark with my girlfriend. Taking the opportunity of clear weather in midday, I had watched the beautiful sky and terrain from my window seat for over an hour when the plane suddenly made an abrupt adjustment to its flight path. The maneuver was not too brusque as no one seemed alarmed, but I distinctively remember it as unusual since such adjustments were usually much smoother. Some five seconds later I saw another passenger airplane pass by alarmingly close to ours and flying in the opposite direction in what seemed to be our flight path just moments ago. I looked around with apprehension and nobody seemed to have noticed what had just occurred. Looking at my girlfriend, I contemplated waking her up to tell her what happnned, but decided she would be better off without all the "excitement".
I am inclined to agree with you and would also add that in practice, both quantum teleportation and the no-cloning theorem exacerbates your point by establishing that creating identical copies of an object is actually impossible. Hence, if teleportation means reconstructing your copy, then not only would it be speculative to say that you were transported, it would also be wrong according to quantum mechanics. More correctly, one could posit that technology may allow a version of you to be reconstructed elsewhere, but again, that would not be you, so what does that tell us about the idea of destroying the original?
Still, if we ignore the problem (or impossibility) of creating exact duplicates, destroying the original would not be less an act of killing whether a duplicate was created or not. Perhaps the knowledge that a duplicate exists would make one feel more comfortable about dying, and some may even convince themselves that they never really die. Kind of reminds me of how so many people find a deeper meaning in life when they have a child. Going further, who is to say that (the original) dying is such a big problem? Alternatively, who is to say it isn't?
Further still, if we ignore the problem of dying (assuming it is a problem), and pretend that teleportation "transported" you in space and time, there would still remain a slight uncertainty with regard to who it is that arrived at the other end. That is a very old philosophical question known as Theseus' paradox which seems particularly appropriate in this context. Even if this paradox isn't a cause of confusion in normal everyday life (a river is still the same river no matter what time of the day it is), it would be hard to ignore the fact that upon arrival you would essentially be a "completely new person" (insofar matter is concerned).
The mission will deliver to the International Space Station (ISS) the second starboard truss segment (the S3/S4 Truss) and its associated energy systems, including a set of solar arrays.
During the course of the mission the crew will install the new truss segment, retract one set of solar arrays, and unfold the new set on the starboard side of the station. STS-117 will also bring Expedition 15 crewmember Clayton Anderson to the station, and will return with ISS crewmember Sunita Williams. For more information, see also the Wikipedia STS-117 article.
Indeed, since copyright is a violation of Laissez-faire economics by being a coercive monopoly (specifically a government-granted monopoly), it is obviously anti-capitalist. It may be fruitful to contrast your opinion of copyright as "anti-capitalist" with the Copyright Act of 1790, which begins with the introductory words "An Act for the Encouragement of Learning". Its motivation was stated in the Copyright Clause of the US Constitution, but looking at the rationale (see Senate Report No. 104-315) for its extension (see Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act) from the original total of 28 years to today's 95 years (corporate ownership), "the continued economic benefits of a healthy surplus balance of trade", there is an obvious shift towards a economic mindset. Actually, there is a complete shift I would rather say. When devised, copyright was never intended as a direct instrument of economics, so its effect as "anti-capitalist" would have been subordinate to its original goal of being an instrument "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts". Instead, what we see today is rather bizarre. For a truly eerie prospect of what to expect, consider this statement by Mary Bono (see Congressional Record No 139, pages H9951 and H9952):
Actually, Sonny wanted the term of copyright protection to last forever. I am informed of by staff that such a change would violate the Constitution. I invite all of you to work with me to strengthen our copyright laws in all of the ways available to us. As you know, there is also Jack Valenti's proposal for term to last forever less one day. Perhaps the Committee may look at that next Congress.
(Yes, the evidence is there, despite denials). In plain english, and for all practical purposes, there is no limit to copyright protection anymore - by 2018, both houses of the United States Congress will pass a new act to further extend copyright, as a formality. How one concludes that "securing for limited Times" should mean "forever less one day" rather than a reasonable amount of time, as in reasonably within ones life-time, or more meaningfully as in reasonably useful within ones life-time (such as, say, 6 years for software), is beyond me. The economic reasoning behind perpetual copyright is explained by professor Neil W. Netanel (see Copyright and a Democratic Civil Society):
This "neoclassicist" approach posits that, far from simply inducing the creation and dissemination of new expression, copyright serves as a vehicle for directing investment in existing works. Neoclassicists would accordingly treat literary and artistic works as "vendible commodities," best made subject to broad proprietary rights that extend to every conceivable valued use. In this manner, neoclassicists contend, market pricing can direct resource allocation for the marketing and development of existing creative expression in an optimally efficient manner.
I would be inclined to conclude that, in a world of conglomarates, market forces replace Learning as the "optimally efficient manner" by which creative expression can be developed. Obviously, this is utter nonsense, but I would say it captures the essence of what proponents of perpetual copyright would have us believe. The true and unstated objective is, of course, to preserve existing monopolies. As pointed out by Timothy R. Phillips, "The framers assumed, as did Adam Smith, th
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It's actual functionality that it has really been needing. [...] they've done a very credible job of addressing many of the major shortcomings from the original KDE4(.0) releases.
It is one thing to call a set of libraries a "4.0 release", and another thing altogether calling a Desktop the same thing. Why anyone would label a major and respected Desktop environment as a technology preview and at the same time slap the 4.0 tag on it is beyond me...
The decision to go with 4.0 rather than 4.0 beta 5 was a mistake, in my opinion. Have a look at the release announcement and tell me where it does not describe KDE 4.0 as the immediate successor to KDE 3.5.x? Despite the obvious PR blunder, all this nonsense could have been easily avoided by continuing with the beta series until a product had been ready (rather than a technology). I personally fault KDE for the negative perception that followed their last release.
Please understand I do not contest Microsoft's significance in the context of PC history, what they accomplished was indeed remarkable... what I do contest is the claim that the PC begins with Microsoft..., it did not, they were just part of it.
And, I did not pick out GNU userland as a point of innovation, I pointed out that Linux would not likely have achieved anything without the GNU software stack in place to begin with...
Besides, Free Software has never been about innovation, Free Software has always been about Free Software. Failure to understand that is failure to understand Free Software.
My argument is that there was nothing remarkable about Microsoft until Windows 95, wherein they became the dominant market player and started to dictate the computer industry, and obviously its history as well.
However, without Microsoft software, we would have never seen the price of computing dive into regular joe range.
Never? Really? That's truly an extraordinary claim... So basically you are saying Moore's law would have seized to apply without Microsoft? Amazing...
The FSF didn't accomplish anything noteworthy without Linus' blind and aggressive campaign to write a great kernel for some strange reason.
Correction: "Linus didn't accomplish anything noteworthy without FSF's blind and agressive campaign to write a great free software stack for some obvious reason."
[...] the PC begins with Microsoft.
Correction: what we call PC today used to be called the IBM PC, which was IBM's response to the hugely successful Apple II (the first mass produced personal computer), and which came with the 86-DOS operating system created by Seattle Computer Products and purchased by Microsoft.
A friend asked me to help him clean up his hard drive on a laptop, throughly. It ran Vista and he had to hand it over to someone else at work. There was no way of wiping the C drive with the format command, which would have been possible in XP, there was no DOS available when booting in Vista, the Vista DVD would only allow re-installation (which takes forever) or repair, and the XP CD could not even detect the hard drive!
Without knowing of any simpler alternative, I used a Ubuntu live CD, booted, sound, graphics, network... everything working perfectly. Next, wipe out all partitions, done. Only took a few minutes to solve his problem...
Ironically, it is now impossible to install XP (I believe it is because it lacks SATA drivers, so you would need to use a floppy containing the drivers during installation, on a laptop without a floppy driver), or Vista (guessing that it is because it was a OEM DVD that came with the laptop and that it expected the presence of at least one "hidden" partition, which was no longer there). Ubuntu can be installed without problems though.
What if FF3 is downloaded through linux distribution channels (say a Debian or RPM package etc) rather than from the firefox website, does that count? According to Wikipedia, at the end of 2006, more than eight million people uses Ubuntu; that would be a lot of downloads towards the record if they timed it correctly. However, the links to spreadfirefox and getfirefox seems dead at the moment... I guess something other than the record has been broken...
The entire structure of a democracy is necessarily based on scepticism - accordingly, the population needs to apply critical thinking when pondering the nature of their electoral process. I agree that paranoia doesn't help, but not reacting with alarm on unprecedented anomalies is careless, I think. Taken from a research report by the University of Pennsylvania:
Since you already pointed out that "exit polls are not representative and can be rather inaccurate", then please provide the evidence that scientifically invalidates the above findings. I don't mind counter-proofs.
But then again, when vote counting is handed over to a couple of private corporations, well... I can't really find words to describe the absurdity in that. To me, common sense would suffice - it really shouldn't be that hard to grasp why giving control of vote counting to private corporations can only result in "widespread endemic election fraud", but if you need direct and undeniable evidence supporting that notion, then I guess only time will tell.
The fact that Diebold and ES&S combined counted an estimated 80% of U.S. election votes, and neither companies provided voter-verifiable ballots to my knowledge, begs the question: how much faith do you have on your electoral process? Considering that no one has provided an explanation for the 2004 exit poll discrepancy, I see no reason to assume election fraud did not occur. But you may prefer to give those companies the benefit of a doubt.
You are correct and I was wrong, whether it was a flop or not was beside the point. Apologies for going off-topic. However, I still disagree with the basic premise that a backstory necessarily yields a dull movie, even if I also agree that Star Wars EP 1-3 (and Titanic) weren't good movies. Perhaps, because a movie tells a backstory, it makes it harder to arrive at good results.
I can't argue with that :-)
No pun intended I presume? :-)
Although ethics and integrity are fundamental to well functioning journalism, it is important not to confuse theory with reality. The level of corruption and incompetence today is rampant and affects not only journalism with ad-driven business models, it is an affliction across the board. Unfortunately, a democracy can not function when journalism is overcome by corruption and incompetence (read about the CBS' Cowardice and Conflicts Behind Purge for a simple example among many). Maturity in journalism is not necessarily the same thing as honesty in journalism.
In fact, there are so many problems with the prequels that it would take a considerable amount of time to debate them all. Certainly, the lack of a compelling character such as Han Solo is significant, but with a plot so disastrously put together it would take a character ten times more interesting than Han Solo, played by the best actor alive on this planet, to salvage the prequels as they were.
The way by which the midi-chlorian twist was an ill-conceived idea, to say the least, also explains why the prequels suck so much more than they would have had the sequels not existed in the first place. Basically, it seemed as if everything that was enigmatic about the original triology had to be demystified and degraded to the point where even the sequels would start to look bad. For example, take the most enigmatic character in the entire Star Wars story, Boba Fett, who had a large and loyal fan following in spite of his extremely brief appearances... obviously it would have been thrilling for the fans to see Boba Fett appear in at least one of the prequels, so how does George Lucas decide to satisfy their appetite? Naturally, he delivers not one, but a gazillion Boba Fett clones so that they are now everyone and everywhere in the freaking imperial forces... *sigh*...
Well, that FFII press release was from September 17 regarding the verdict of the EU's anti-trust case while this EU commision press release is brand new in which Microsoft now presumably addresses the problem of open-source incompatibilities in the MCPP. Until seeing Jeremy Allison's comments on the latest updates I won't be entirely convinced, but the EU commission appears to have been interested in ensuring that Samba could benefit from this.
Any decisions as to wether Microsoft complies will be made by an English court [...]Again from the press release, this appears to be meant to provide efficacy to the agreement, not to worsen matters. Before concluding this is a bad thing, I would like to know how private enforcement complementing public enforcement would help in the first place?
The press release if filled with patent-talk (with consequences) even while software patents are still not recognised in the EU. In this respect, this IS a full blown victory for the huge patent troll that is MSFT, because the commission plays by US-UK rule.Put differently, the EU recognizes the reality of software patents in the US, Japan, possibly itself in the future, and so forth, and intelligently ensured projects like Samba could still benefit worldwide since "Microsoft will publish an irrevocable pledge not to assert any patents it may have over the interoperability information against non-commercial open source software development projects".
That reminds of a trip I made from Italy to Denmark with my girlfriend. Taking the opportunity of clear weather in midday, I had watched the beautiful sky and terrain from my window seat for over an hour when the plane suddenly made an abrupt adjustment to its flight path. The maneuver was not too brusque as no one seemed alarmed, but I distinctively remember it as unusual since such adjustments were usually much smoother. Some five seconds later I saw another passenger airplane pass by alarmingly close to ours and flying in the opposite direction in what seemed to be our flight path just moments ago. I looked around with apprehension and nobody seemed to have noticed what had just occurred. Looking at my girlfriend, I contemplated waking her up to tell her what happnned, but decided she would be better off without all the "excitement".
I am inclined to agree with you and would also add that in practice, both quantum teleportation and the no-cloning theorem exacerbates your point by establishing that creating identical copies of an object is actually impossible. Hence, if teleportation means reconstructing your copy, then not only would it be speculative to say that you were transported, it would also be wrong according to quantum mechanics. More correctly, one could posit that technology may allow a version of you to be reconstructed elsewhere, but again, that would not be you, so what does that tell us about the idea of destroying the original?
Still, if we ignore the problem (or impossibility) of creating exact duplicates, destroying the original would not be less an act of killing whether a duplicate was created or not. Perhaps the knowledge that a duplicate exists would make one feel more comfortable about dying, and some may even convince themselves that they never really die. Kind of reminds me of how so many people find a deeper meaning in life when they have a child. Going further, who is to say that (the original) dying is such a big problem? Alternatively, who is to say it isn't?
Further still, if we ignore the problem of dying (assuming it is a problem), and pretend that teleportation "transported" you in space and time, there would still remain a slight uncertainty with regard to who it is that arrived at the other end. That is a very old philosophical question known as Theseus' paradox which seems particularly appropriate in this context. Even if this paradox isn't a cause of confusion in normal everyday life (a river is still the same river no matter what time of the day it is), it would be hard to ignore the fact that upon arrival you would essentially be a "completely new person" (insofar matter is concerned).
A small summary of the planned mission:
The mission will deliver to the International Space Station (ISS) the second starboard truss segment (the S3/S4 Truss) and its associated energy systems, including a set of solar arrays. During the course of the mission the crew will install the new truss segment, retract one set of solar arrays, and unfold the new set on the starboard side of the station. STS-117 will also bring Expedition 15 crewmember Clayton Anderson to the station, and will return with ISS crewmember Sunita Williams. For more information, see also the Wikipedia STS-117 article.Indeed, since copyright is a violation of Laissez-faire economics by being a coercive monopoly (specifically a government-granted monopoly), it is obviously anti-capitalist. It may be fruitful to contrast your opinion of copyright as "anti-capitalist" with the Copyright Act of 1790, which begins with the introductory words "An Act for the Encouragement of Learning". Its motivation was stated in the Copyright Clause of the US Constitution, but looking at the rationale (see Senate Report No. 104-315) for its extension (see Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act) from the original total of 28 years to today's 95 years (corporate ownership), "the continued economic benefits of a healthy surplus balance of trade", there is an obvious shift towards a economic mindset. Actually, there is a complete shift I would rather say. When devised, copyright was never intended as a direct instrument of economics, so its effect as "anti-capitalist" would have been subordinate to its original goal of being an instrument "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts". Instead, what we see today is rather bizarre. For a truly eerie prospect of what to expect, consider this statement by Mary Bono (see Congressional Record No 139, pages H9951 and H9952):
Actually, Sonny wanted the term of copyright protection to last forever. I am informed of by staff that such a change would violate the Constitution. I invite all of you to work with me to strengthen our copyright laws in all of the ways available to us. As you know, there is also Jack Valenti's proposal for term to last forever less one day. Perhaps the Committee may look at that next Congress.
(Yes, the evidence is there, despite denials). In plain english, and for all practical purposes, there is no limit to copyright protection anymore - by 2018, both houses of the United States Congress will pass a new act to further extend copyright, as a formality. How one concludes that "securing for limited Times" should mean "forever less one day" rather than a reasonable amount of time, as in reasonably within ones life-time, or more meaningfully as in reasonably useful within ones life-time (such as, say, 6 years for software), is beyond me. The economic reasoning behind perpetual copyright is explained by professor Neil W. Netanel (see Copyright and a Democratic Civil Society):
This "neoclassicist" approach posits that, far from simply inducing the creation and dissemination of new expression, copyright serves as a vehicle for directing investment in existing works. Neoclassicists would accordingly treat literary and artistic works as "vendible commodities," best made subject to broad proprietary rights that extend to every conceivable valued use. In this manner, neoclassicists contend, market pricing can direct resource allocation for the marketing and development of existing creative expression in an optimally efficient manner.
I would be inclined to conclude that, in a world of conglomarates, market forces replace Learning as the "optimally efficient manner" by which creative expression can be developed. Obviously, this is utter nonsense, but I would say it captures the essence of what proponents of perpetual copyright would have us believe. The true and unstated objective is, of course, to preserve existing monopolies. As pointed out by Timothy R. Phillips, "The framers assumed, as did Adam Smith, th