I guess I'll take living in this dictatorship, as you call it, to living in a real one, like say, Nigeria, Saudi Arabia, Zimbabwe, N. Korea, etc.
The only sad part will be when the President meets a joint session of Congress, and on national TV, raises a simple question to Congress and those who don't answer correctly are removed from the chamber never to be seen again (this is how Saddam Hussain came to power), or perhaps, during the next Democratic National Convention (or Republican...), a "crisis" is run on the press, the people in the convention hall are kept in there, and a Big Bad Terrorist Bomb goes off, killing just about everyone in the building.
the vote (nationally) they'd get 4% of the seats in the House. The senate could be left as it is so that the states would have representation -- plus it's harder to gerrymander state borders. The idea that people who live geographically close to each other have the same political interest is just plain silly in this age.
If you lived in Washington State, this would not be further from the truth. If you live on the Eastside [i.e., Bellevue, Redmond, etc.], the $$$ are Republican. If you live in Seattle, it's generally Democrat. If you live in Eastern Washington, it's generally anti-Puget Sound. If you live in the Cascades, it's anti-anti-logging. If you live in Bellingham, it's anti-Georgia Pacific.
Illinois is basically Chicago vs. rest of state/burbs. New York state is similar: NYC vs rest of state.
My interests, living in the Willamette Valley, and actually trying to do something agricultural, are more in line with those who live around me doing the same thing [but on a bigger scale]. I don't want suburbanites living on urban fringe, ranchers in E. Oregon, etc., to screw up what is here.
People are frustrated, yes. But unless you've lived where there is little development control, you don't know the frustration of moving to the suburban edge only to see it move 20 miles further out in 5 years, all while thinking, "what if Brazil and Argentine decides they want to sit on their wheat crop for a year or two?" while farm production is ending up in fewer and fewer hands, and outsourced more and more...
The only problem with your argument now is that the US is so committed to Iraq that it cannot conduct significant operations elsewhere.
There are only 4 Ranger Battalions, 10 Special Forces Groups, and 10 SEAL teams [and whatever other smaller SpecOp groups there are, known and unknown], and because the SFGs and SEAL Teams are job-restricted or geography-restricted, the US' really has stuck both hands into the cookie jar.
Of course, as I recall, not a lot of noise was made when Israel pulled off bombing Saddam's nuke reactor, any more than the now-obligatory anti-Israel media noise that is now. Israel did the whole region a favor...
Yes, the problem I have now, after thinking, is that GW Bush acted to serve a personal score for either his dad or Dick Cheney.
In the small scheme of things, getting rid of Saddam Hussain and his 2 sons is basically a good thing. Should have been done to Pol Pot, Idi Amin, et al., too.
In the grand scheme of things, though, the real evil doers are still operating, and its focal point remains unaccounted for.
Because the US is the US, it can't pull the traditional king or emperor crap [cut heads off in public, post them on a spear to let the birds eat them, or worse, in this particular case, to throw their bodies into a pen of hungry pigs to eat, and then get Al Jazheera to run the videos.
Heck, there are people in prison [seen the interviews with the "Ice Man", or whatever his name is, on HBO? Somehow I think he could figure out a way to get OBL. If he can work it as a homosexual to get at someone in a gay bar...] who could probably get to OBL as well, but then we run the risk of them being turned back against the US.
Of course, many of the more prominent anti-US countries have their own dirty shit they keep out of the press or diplomatic chest thumping. France & Algeria is probably what comes to my mind, along with France & Green Peace and France & its nuclear testing program. etc.
Plus how about all the contracts France and Russia had with Saddam Hussein? Of course they're pissed about losing those contracts!
That is largely because the rest of the world sees what many in America seem unwilling to: Osama Bin Ladan and the fight against al Quada is still in Afghanistan, but we moved on to Iraq without finishing the job.
Well, remember that in most polls, the error bar is +/- 3%, right?
So that 2%, while significant to you, is basically statistically not significant in the whole scheme of things, unless it qualifies the party for Federal election $$$.
This is interesting. Is the Republican Party in IL *THAT* bad? It was bad last year before we left, with Sen. Fitzgerald having burned more bridges in less time than even the retreating Germans tried to do in WWII. Gov. George Ryan ["People of Illinois, this is Gov. Ryan. I am not a crook!"... a hillarious call-in to John William's "mail box" on WGN radio] certainly did his part to help bring down the ship, also. Then the problems with finding a good Republican senator candidate?
Geez...
How many IL republicans are voting Demo this year just to spite their own party?
I hear you. I almost thought about voting for Alan Keys the last go around. Not because I had faith in his entire platfor, but simply because of his eloquence and ability to clearly state arguments and answers. He is just too wacky, though.
So I voted for Nader [in IL] instead. Do I feel guilty? Nope. Not one bit.
Of course, the Two Parties learned from 2000, and Nader is having a MUCH tougher go-around to get on states' ballots this time. Even in Oregon. Of course, it doesn't help him that even the Greens wouldn't accept him this year [because Nader is Nader, not a Green].
Nah, I bought a gas-powered trimmer at one of the two big US home centers, but it had been returned. OK, no problem.
Tried to use it twice. Engine would rev up, but cut out after about 10-15 seconds on throttle, plus was leaking gas, but it would idle or run at low speeds fine.
I thought perhaps there was a fuel flow problem related to the gas leak (sort of like sucking soda through a cracked straw).
Engine guy at the store agreed, and said it would probably be a warranty fix for the carb.
Cool beans.
The store calls back, saying that it was determined to need a "piston replacement", at $260.00 (probably not including labor). I paid $220 for it on the rack [at the time retail was $270, but now they're $200!]! No way will I pay that, I said, when a new one was only $200!
Was getting ready to go complain to the store, but then got a phone call, after learning a bit more about the particular unit's history from the store, they agreed that it would be best to just exchange with a new unit. Good enough for me, because I do want to/need to use it.
Now, we just need a look at life from the Empire's side. The president has got big ears and a goofy way of talking. The Emporor is really Dick Cheney. Throw in a Herman Goering-esque Attorney General, and a sneaky villain to look like Wolfsburg lurking in the shadows of a more legitimate-looking Donald Rumsfeld, and we might be close. Throw in the rebel media network (Al Jazheera) that gets the periodic missive from Yoda or Obi-Wan Kenobi [top enemies of the Empire], and frequent press conferences between the Empire's staffers on the talk shows about how they're tracking down and destroying the terrorist training camps, before cutting over to look at the world from Luke's Brownian Motion Jedi Training Carni...er, Camp...
Then, throw in the current election by having some other Empire general who has quite the following, but is a bit of a threat to Darth Yada (yada yada), who gets recalled back to the Death Star 8 (now with DTS and stadium seating!) for an Imperial Senate election... [WWJD = What Will John Kerry...er, Darth Julius, Do?}, and some other group of phantom menaces called "Unit 529 Veterans for Truth" spreading all sorts of misinformation, etc.... (there, I threw in the election)
Probably a little too close to home for some folks with no sense of humor or appreciation for satire, though.
Since no one would want to write a story like this (because the obvious title was taken by another great movie: "A Mighty Wind". Remember the final part of that? "It's blowing me and you!"), because it would just be seen as some other Michael Moore wanna-be movie...
A bookseller? It just makes it easy to keep the geeks (i.e., scifi/fantasy) readers, along with horror/mystery (how do those two get lumped together?), away from all the other groups, and for the usual big-box book seller, Sci-Fi/Fantasy works out conveniently to one or two book shelf units, as does Horror/Mystery.
That is, unless you go to a store like Powell's Books in Portland, OR, or its equivalent in Boston.
Hmm... if it were wired at the lowest level, then it probably would not mean you could do something to "send" that keystroke or trap it to do something else. DameWare Remote Control, VNC, etc., all must do this to catch alt-ctl-del to send to the remote window, or send it to the remote window.
...or, say, "why not do it this way instead, and it improves X by a factor of 2, halves the time spent doing Y, and reduces the memory footprint by 30% to boot?", along with a reference implementation to boot (to which you can double the numbers above with your own implementation of the standard)?
Now you've improved a standard to support your base more, you've improved good will amongst a group of people who are out to hate the playah, and not the game, etc., and just been an overall good team player for the whole industry, instead of trying to cut off everybody's heads and shit down their throat holes?
Uh, I think that was the point he was making, which is very similar to the hierarchy in VCL (you know, Delphi) to TButton.
The MS's side of the debate seems to want to take a quite different tack into the wind, as it were. So Anders Hjeilberg isn't in control if this part of the project, it appears...
While you may discover the right to perpetual youth, and throw away the formula, if you announce that you did discover it, and decided to throw the formula away, you've released the idea anyways to the world, so much so that some will be encouraged to try and do it again.
So you expect that if someone else figures it out, that you have some inherent interest in that other person's work?
Probably a better way to think of it is art. Sure, people have figured out how to paint in Rembrandt's, Monet's, or even Pollack's styles. But there is enough interest in the works by the original painters that ensures that, even hundreds of years after their deaths, that new, similar works by other artists, are not associated with the original artist. There is no rule against painting in the pontillist, impressionist, cubist, or abstract paint splattering styles. Just don't try to pawn off yoru paintings as someone else's works.
Re:death of IP is the death of investment in IP
on
Is IP Property?
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· Score: 1
...the cost of new drugs is not in the development, but in clinical trials and setting up production.
A new bioreactor facility costs about $1 billion US (or, more likely, in Puerto Rico...) to build. Do you not think this somehow factors into the price of drugs derived from recombinant techniques, for example?
Besides, Europe does just fine with its own medical research. Why else did Abbott Laboratories buy BASF's pharmaceutical division a couple of years ago (Humira)?
The big pharmas are international enough that national borders really do not matter much anymore.
Re:intellectual property is artificial
on
Is IP Property?
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· Score: 1
So where would you place farmers and ranchers in this scheme?
Re:Lemley's Retarded Reasoning
on
Is IP Property?
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· Score: 1
The stuff you create, whether physical or intellectual, should be yours, and you should be able to do what you want with it, at least for some period of time.
Unfortunately, the very fact that, once someone else knows your idea, the cat is out of the bag, seems to be obviously over your head.
All IP laws are attempts to allow the creator the illusion of being able to put the toothpaste back into the tube to some extent or another.
We have patents. Patents are too easily abused, both in their scope (someone should patent "rapid exothermic oxidation of materials by associating an energy source higher than the tipping point for the reaction, the use of accellerants, etc"., in other words, patent fire. This one could probably be slipped through if it was broadly worded enough).
Submarine patents should not be allowed, nor should patent squatting (i.e., buying patent portfolios to restrict competition).
Like a trademark, a patent should be used or lost.
Also, different entities should have different terms, say, 1-3 years for software patents. We already have differing terms between patents, copyrights and trademarks, so adding more time divisions to patents seems only natural.
It seems also silly to patent software, because I cannot patent other forms of written word. I cannot patent musical constructions. I cannot patent lyrical constructions.
Sure, I can copyright them, but copyright isn't a patent. Patents don't have Fair Use. Patents don't have First Sale doctrine. Etc.
The only people guaranteed to benefit from the current IP system in the US are IP lawyers, with large IP portfolio holders a close second. This is NOT what the IP system was set up to do.
Slashdot Mirror
I guess I'll take living in this dictatorship, as you call it, to living in a real one, like say, Nigeria, Saudi Arabia, Zimbabwe, N. Korea, etc.
The only sad part will be when the President meets a joint session of Congress, and on national TV, raises a simple question to Congress and those who don't answer correctly are removed from the chamber never to be seen again (this is how Saddam Hussain came to power), or perhaps, during the next Democratic National Convention (or Republican...), a "crisis" is run on the press, the people in the convention hall are kept in there, and a Big Bad Terrorist Bomb goes off, killing just about everyone in the building.
When will a political party try to use US IP laws (copyright, trademark) to keep other parties from coopting its platform down the road?
What if Perot had copyrighted and trademarked the platform or even patented it (as a "business process")?
Hmm...
the vote (nationally) they'd get 4% of the seats in the House. The senate could be left as it is so that the states would have representation -- plus it's harder to gerrymander state borders. The idea that people who live geographically close to each other have the same political interest is just plain silly in this age.
If you lived in Washington State, this would not be further from the truth. If you live on the Eastside [i.e., Bellevue, Redmond, etc.], the $$$ are Republican. If you live in Seattle, it's generally Democrat. If you live in Eastern Washington, it's generally anti-Puget Sound. If you live in the Cascades, it's anti-anti-logging.
If you live in Bellingham, it's anti-Georgia Pacific.
Illinois is basically Chicago vs. rest of state/burbs. New York state is similar: NYC vs rest of state.
My interests, living in the Willamette Valley, and actually trying to do something agricultural, are more in line with those who live around me doing the same thing [but on a bigger scale]. I don't want suburbanites living on urban fringe, ranchers in E. Oregon, etc., to screw up what is here.
People are frustrated, yes. But unless you've lived where there is little development control, you don't know the frustration of moving to the suburban edge only to see it move 20 miles further out in 5 years, all while thinking, "what if Brazil and Argentine decides they want to sit on their wheat crop for a year or two?" while farm production is ending up in fewer and fewer hands, and outsourced more and more...
...but isn't this what Congress is supposed to represent?
The President is one person. Congress is 535.
The only problem with your argument now is that the US is so committed to Iraq that it cannot conduct significant operations elsewhere.
There are only 4 Ranger Battalions, 10 Special Forces Groups, and 10 SEAL teams [and whatever other smaller SpecOp groups there are, known and unknown], and because the SFGs and SEAL Teams are job-restricted or geography-restricted, the US' really has stuck both hands into the cookie jar.
Of course, as I recall, not a lot of noise was made when Israel pulled off bombing Saddam's nuke reactor, any more than the now-obligatory anti-Israel media noise that is now. Israel did the whole region a favor...
Yes, the problem I have now, after thinking, is that GW Bush acted to serve a personal score for either his dad or Dick Cheney.
In the small scheme of things, getting rid of Saddam Hussain and his 2 sons is basically a good thing. Should have been done to Pol Pot, Idi Amin, et al., too.
In the grand scheme of things, though, the real evil doers are still operating, and its focal point remains unaccounted for.
Because the US is the US, it can't pull the traditional king or emperor crap [cut heads off in public, post them on a spear to let the birds eat them, or worse, in this particular case, to throw their bodies into a pen of hungry pigs to eat, and then get Al Jazheera to run the videos.
Heck, there are people in prison [seen the interviews with the "Ice Man", or whatever his name is, on HBO? Somehow I think he could figure out a way to get OBL. If he can work it as a homosexual to get at someone in a gay bar...] who could probably get to OBL as well, but then we run the risk of them being turned back against the US.
Of course, many of the more prominent anti-US countries have their own dirty shit they keep out of the press or diplomatic chest thumping. France & Algeria is probably what comes to my mind, along with France & Green Peace and France & its nuclear testing program. etc.
Plus how about all the contracts France and Russia had with Saddam Hussein? Of course they're pissed about losing those contracts!
That is largely because the rest of the world sees what many in America seem unwilling to: Osama Bin Ladan and the fight against al Quada is still in Afghanistan, but we moved on to Iraq without finishing the job.
Yes, I'm thinking this more and more every day.
Well, remember that in most polls, the error bar is +/- 3%, right?
So that 2%, while significant to you, is basically statistically not significant in the whole scheme of things, unless it qualifies the party for Federal election $$$.
Sorry.
watching 30 second commerical spots does not count as 'learning about the issues'.
But reading policial commentary on Slashdot does!
Yeeeee-Haw!
This is interesting. Is the Republican Party in IL *THAT* bad? It was bad last year before we left, with Sen. Fitzgerald having burned more bridges in less time than even the retreating Germans tried to do in WWII. Gov. George Ryan ["People of Illinois, this is Gov. Ryan. I am not a crook!"... a hillarious call-in to John William's "mail box" on WGN radio] certainly did his part to help bring down the ship, also. Then the problems with finding a good Republican senator candidate?
Geez...
How many IL republicans are voting Demo this year just to spite their own party?
I hear you. I almost thought about voting for Alan Keys the last go around. Not because I had faith in his entire platfor, but simply because of his eloquence and ability to clearly state arguments and answers. He is just too wacky, though.
So I voted for Nader [in IL] instead. Do I feel guilty? Nope. Not one bit.
Of course, the Two Parties learned from 2000, and Nader is having a MUCH tougher go-around to get on states' ballots this time. Even in Oregon. Of course, it doesn't help him that even the Greens wouldn't accept him this year [because Nader is Nader, not a Green].
I might just write-in RMS this year.
...also, the flash will eat up your batteries like mad, also.
No LCD, no flash. Battery should last for a few more pics.
Nah, I bought a gas-powered trimmer at one of the two big US home centers, but it had been returned. OK, no problem.
Tried to use it twice. Engine would rev up, but cut out after about 10-15 seconds on throttle, plus was leaking gas, but it would idle or run at low speeds fine.
I thought perhaps there was a fuel flow problem related to the gas leak (sort of like sucking soda through a cracked straw).
Engine guy at the store agreed, and said it would probably be a warranty fix for the carb.
Cool beans.
The store calls back, saying that it was determined to need a "piston replacement", at $260.00 (probably not including labor). I paid $220 for it on the rack [at the time retail was $270, but now they're $200!]! No way will I pay that, I said, when a new one was only $200!
Was getting ready to go complain to the store, but then got a phone call, after learning a bit more about the particular unit's history from the store, they agreed that it would be best to just exchange with a new unit. Good enough for me, because I do want to/need to use it.
Now, we just need a look at life from the Empire's side. The president has got big ears and a goofy way of talking. The Emporor is really Dick Cheney. Throw in a Herman Goering-esque Attorney General, and a sneaky villain to look like Wolfsburg lurking in the shadows of a more legitimate-looking Donald Rumsfeld, and we might be close. Throw in the rebel media network (Al Jazheera) that gets the periodic missive from Yoda or Obi-Wan Kenobi [top enemies of the Empire], and frequent press conferences between the Empire's staffers on the talk shows about how they're tracking down and destroying the terrorist training camps, before cutting over to look at the world from Luke's Brownian Motion Jedi Training Carni...er, Camp...
Then, throw in the current election by having some other Empire general who has quite the following, but is a bit of a threat to Darth Yada (yada yada), who gets recalled back to the Death Star 8 (now with DTS and stadium seating!) for an Imperial Senate election... [WWJD = What Will John Kerry...er, Darth Julius, Do?}, and some other group of phantom menaces called "Unit 529 Veterans for Truth" spreading all sorts of misinformation, etc....
(there, I threw in the election)
Probably a little too close to home for some folks with no sense of humor or appreciation for satire, though.
Since no one would want to write a story like this (because the obvious title was taken by another great movie: "A Mighty Wind". Remember the final part of that? "It's blowing me and you!"), because it would just be seen as some other Michael Moore wanna-be movie...
Oh well.
Star Wars
Episode IV: A New Republic
A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away...
It was there at the beginning of the movie. I remember thinking to myself, "huh? whatever..." when I first saw it.
A bookseller? It just makes it easy to keep the geeks (i.e., scifi/fantasy) readers, along with horror/mystery (how do those two get lumped together?), away from all the other groups, and for the usual big-box book seller, Sci-Fi/Fantasy works out conveniently to one or two book shelf units, as does Horror/Mystery.
That is, unless you go to a store like Powell's Books in Portland, OR, or its equivalent in Boston.
...when will "Corvette Summer II" come out? Any offers yet, Mark?
Hmm... if it were wired at the lowest level, then it probably would not mean you could do something to "send" that keystroke or trap it to do something else. DameWare Remote Control, VNC, etc., all must do this to catch alt-ctl-del to send to the remote window, or send it to the remote window.
No wonder then, along with Anders Hjeilberg [Delphi 1/2 architect], that Delphi 8.Net was a pretty easy port, along with VCL.Net.
I think it is probably evident, then, that Anders is not playing a primary role in the new stuff. Too bad.
...then instead of Avalon, why not piss off Apple and call it Coca, for the effect that Microsoft *DOES* hope it will have?
...or, say, "why not do it this way instead, and it improves X by a factor of 2, halves the time spent doing Y, and reduces the memory footprint by 30% to boot?", along with a reference implementation to boot (to which you can double the numbers above with your own implementation of the standard)?
Now you've improved a standard to support your base more, you've improved good will amongst a group of people who are out to hate the playah, and not the game, etc., and just been an overall good team player for the whole industry, instead of trying to cut off everybody's heads and shit down their throat holes?
Uh, I think that was the point he was making, which is very similar to the hierarchy in VCL (you know, Delphi) to TButton.
The MS's side of the debate seems to want to take a quite different tack into the wind, as it were. So Anders Hjeilberg isn't in control if this part of the project, it appears...
Trade "idea" with "opinion".
While you may discover the right to perpetual youth, and throw away the formula, if you announce that you did discover it, and decided to throw the formula away, you've released the idea anyways to the world, so much so that some will be encouraged to try and do it again.
So you expect that if someone else figures it out, that you have some inherent interest in that other person's work?
Probably a better way to think of it is art. Sure, people have figured out how to paint in Rembrandt's, Monet's, or even Pollack's styles. But there is enough interest in the works by the original painters that ensures that, even hundreds of years after their deaths, that new, similar works by other artists, are not associated with the original artist. There is no rule against painting in the pontillist, impressionist, cubist, or abstract paint splattering styles. Just don't try to pawn off yoru paintings as someone else's works.
...the cost of new drugs is not in the development, but in clinical trials and setting up production.
A new bioreactor facility costs about $1 billion US (or, more likely, in Puerto Rico...) to build. Do you not think this somehow factors into the price of drugs derived from recombinant techniques, for example?
Besides, Europe does just fine with its own medical research. Why else did Abbott Laboratories buy BASF's pharmaceutical division a couple of years ago (Humira)?
The big pharmas are international enough that national borders really do not matter much anymore.
So where would you place farmers and ranchers in this scheme?
The stuff you create, whether physical or intellectual, should be yours, and you should be able to do what you want with it, at least for some period of time.
Unfortunately, the very fact that, once someone else knows your idea, the cat is out of the bag, seems to be obviously over your head.
All IP laws are attempts to allow the creator the illusion of being able to put the toothpaste back into the tube to some extent or another.
We have patents. Patents are too easily abused, both in their scope (someone should patent "rapid exothermic oxidation of materials by associating an energy source higher than the tipping point for the reaction, the use of accellerants, etc"., in other words, patent fire. This one could probably be slipped through if it was broadly worded enough).
Submarine patents should not be allowed, nor should patent squatting (i.e., buying patent portfolios to restrict competition).
Like a trademark, a patent should be used or lost.
Also, different entities should have different terms, say, 1-3 years for software patents.
We already have differing terms between patents, copyrights and trademarks, so adding more time divisions to patents seems only natural.
It seems also silly to patent software, because I cannot patent other forms of written word. I cannot patent musical constructions. I cannot patent lyrical constructions.
Sure, I can copyright them, but copyright isn't a patent. Patents don't have Fair Use. Patents don't have First Sale doctrine. Etc.
The only people guaranteed to benefit from the current IP system in the US are IP lawyers, with large IP portfolio holders a close second.
This is NOT what the IP system was set up to do.