Alas, too few people understand the idea of context. No wonder they're clamoring (as in the WSJ article) for an impossibly concise general rule that says something like "30 seconds but not 31 seconds".
I think you refer to the concept of "empathy", and I'm not sure how being able to recognize yourself in the mirror plays into it.
If you aren't aware of the self object, you can't project it into imagined future states. If you can't project the self into imagined future states, and choose among them, then you are not volitional (aka free-willed aka proactive). If you aren't volitional, then morality doesn't apply to you.
A deer, for example, does not contemplate her welfare in the coming winter, and make decisions about how to lay up food or migrate; she relies on hard-coding. So even if we could speak to her, she wouldn't understand the idea of right or wrong or choice.
Well, I'm not sure I agree that they are always anti-your-own-survival. Giving your life to save someone unrelated to you is generally bad in Darwinian terms, but "good" morally.
According to which moral code? Altruism?
Have you noticed that Altruism is the code that everyone wants everyone else to practice? And have you ever considered the final implications of a sacrifice-the-good-to-strangers principle?
The first world deserves a good share of the blame for the third world's population explosion. After all, Christianity and Islam forbid family planning and contraception while encouraging women to have many children. First kick out the missionaries, and then with good family planning and good health, I'm confident that the third world birth rates would fall under replacement level, just like in the first world.
Why do you assume anybody listens to and obeys that claptrap? We sure don't. Individuals use religion to reinforce their feelings, not to change them.
The third world creates lots of children because they can't afford contraception, and because they need the farmhands. Same reasons that the first world had, so long ago now.
We need a way to take a quantum snapshot of the whole of the Earth at least once every 24 hours and then to send that data out into space as a broadcast in all directions. To retrieve the quantum structure, we'd simply pop out of a wormhole near where the data is passing and retrieve it, then retransmit it back to here and reconstruct the Earth as it was before catastrophe struck.
That service is already available. However, only the ultra-rich can afford it, and what with the whole galaxy in a bit of a recession right now, I think the company is mothballed.
Why would we run that risk for a problem that can be handled through immunization and treatment?
Malaria isn't feasible to handle through immunization and treatment, because malaria occurs in wet, nasty, remote, impoverished, quarrelsome places. You may now argue that such problems can be handled with a sufficient application of dumptruck loads of money, but again, the dumptruck loads of money are not interested in being applied to those areas of the world.
Indeed, malaria has probably killed more humans than anything else in history. And now you sound like Marie Antoinette -- "Let them get treatment!"
The unintended consequences of these GM mosquitoes would have to be severe in order to outweigh such a colossal improvement in lifespan and quality-of-life as this would bring to all the unfashionable places in the world.
Well, if the research I painstakingly conducted in high school is accurate, the new mosquitoes will zoom down from the sky, snatch up humans, haul them up into the clouds, and transform them into mutants. The mutants fly erratically, fire weapons in all directions, and will be hella difficult for even the new F-22 Raptors to shoot down.
No offense, but I think part of the problem is the publics lack of understanding how difficult these things are (too much watching Armageddon) combined with ignorance as to what NASA is currently doing.
No offense, but I think most of the problem is NASA's lack of desire to commit bureaucratic suicide. Now that free markets are en vogue again, NASA is willing to dribble out some small (relative to the size of the overall mission) prizes... but no real prizes, such as would get Ford Motor Company's attention, such as would instantly obsolete whole NASA wings.
The really sad part is, it wouldn't cost NASA a thing to offer a $10B prize for a successful private Mars mission, unless the mission succeeded, in which case it has already paid for itself in side benefits (if NASA's own justifications are valid). If (as you imply) $10B is not enough to motivate any private enterprise to give it a try, then what harm is there in offering?
Both NASA and the military are giving SpaceX serious consideration for their future contracts and that will do more to shake up the launcher industry than a silly competition ever will.
The prizes would be in billions, not millions. A billion will get everyone's attention. Corporations can handle space exploration if there is a quantifiable return, such as a cash prize. They can budget for it, calculate risk/return tradeoffs, and manage it to completion -- precisely the three behaviors that corporations are organized to perform.
And if two billion is not enough to swing the project, then make it ten. Or twenty. How much is NASA already planning to spend to go to Mars, especially considering that they must necessarily overspend on safety?
This is something that the general public is fairly misinformed about. The majority of rocket launches in the US are using rockets designed and build by private companies like Lockheed Martin, Boeing, and Orbital Sciences. This includes NASA launches. Space X would be competing with these companies, not with NASA.
Now if we could only do the same with the exploration missions, such as Mars and the moon.
Can you imagine the glorious caucophony if NASA turned its budget into prizes? $1B for the first Mars rock returned to Earth. $2B for the first Mars ground base active for one year. $4B for the first human on Mars. $4B for the first man-year on Mars.
And what a fantastic spectator sport it would become again. GE, Lockheed, Chevrolet, HP, maybe even Google might all be in a literal race for the prizes. It would be consensually dangerous, as corners got cut to save time and money. The risks would attract more volunteers than ever.
To my eye, one of the great benefits of space exploration is its entertainment and inspirational value. NASA has managed to destroy that by becoming bureaucratically risk-averse. They can't allow even a broken fingernail during a mission, else they get castigated in the next Senate budget conference. And that ruins the experience of being a fan, of the sort we once had in the 1960s.
Does this mean that things don't burn above 6,000 altitude? I guess that I just imagined having camp fires above 8,000 feet in the Rockies. I saw the remains of a wooden building at over 14,000 feet that had burned to the ground. Something doesn't smell right with this article.
At 6,000 feet or wherever, the oxygen concentration is still ~20%, albeit at lower pressure. This new product doesn't reduce the air pressure, it reduces the oxygen concentration. The effect on a human is approximately equivalent to being at 6,000 feet, but not exactly. In any event, it'll be a minor difference to you but a major difference to a fire.
Think of it in reverse: you can breathe oxygen at 100% concentration and not feel a whole lot different, whereas wood and plastic burn like gunpowder at that concentration.
Yes. Also extremely stupid unless you can deliver it from more than "half a galaxy" away:P.
GRBs are thought to emanate only from the poles of a supernova. So no, a GRB can indeed be 'aimed'.
I've often wondered if GRBs aren't simply the result of some technological civilization stumbling onto a new law of physics, and wiping themselves out in the process. It would certainly explain the absence of any voices in a galaxy that -- by now -- ought to be teeming with life.
Yeah, that's where they lost me. I don't see how they can draw any conclusions about real-life driving behavior from this. They've discovered that playing one video game can influence one's behavior when playing another, more realistic video game. Woohoo.
Well said.
What we need to do now, is outfit 100 cars with 3D accelleromoters, data-logging speedometers, and front and rear proximity radars. An onboard computer will record all the data and digest it into a set of scores for how aggressively the person drove that day: average speed, average accelleration and deceleration, average distance to vehicle in front, average gee force during turns, average speed per degree of turn, etc. etc.
We order our 100 volunteers to drive these cars for a month to establish a baseline, and to let them familiarize themselves with the cars. Then we order the volunteers to play a different videogame each week for a two-month period. Then we can crunch the vehicle data to see if their driving habits changed depending on which game is being played and which game was played the preceding week.
Such an experiment shouldn't cost that much to run.
A lot of other useful data could be culled from it too, such as how the weather and local news events influence driving habits, whether talking on a cellphone had any effect, you name it. And this study wouldn't raise an "endangers non-participants" objection because the volunteers are simply leading their usual lives, albeit in different cars.
1. Steal somebody's decoder box.
2. Make and distribute pirated videos.
3. Profit !!
And there is a hidden benefit here. You know how Thomson is saying "if consumers know the watermark is there, they'll be disincented to pirate videos"? Well it works the same way in reverse. If media companies know the watermark is there, they'll be disincented to commit further acts of DRM.
Media companies have already demonstrated writ large that they are too stupid to grasp the implications of (and hackability of) software and media technology. So even though this Thomson scheme is obviously stupid to us, it may be enough to calm down the media companies.
Of course there's a price to be paid here. Like sacrificial lambs selected randomly from the herd, the occasional John Q. Couchpotato is going to get slammed by a MAFIAA lawsuit when his decoder's ID got cloned by a pirate. But hey, no more DRM!
And another thing: why do you assume that a hydrogen ICEs aren't feasible? Already we have kits to convert gasoline ICEs over to burn methane and propane. Why couldn't they burn gaseous hydrogen?
If this new powder-storage technique works as well as advertised, and if the hydrogen can be converted back to gas without too much difficulty, then we're golden. No platinum or batteries or anything at all would be needed.
Witty. Yet you forget that this is slashdot... you should've used a car analogy instead of a sports analogy. Woulda got more +1 insightfuls that way.:)
Did you ever notice that the creation story in Genesis is told, not from a spacecraft observer perspective, but from the perspective of the surface of the earth, where a human being (to whom the story is being communicated) would best understand it?
It's arguable whether the idea that "The sun was created afterward to rule the daytime" made reality easier for groundlings to understand. If anything, it would mislead their attempts at cosmology. As a groundling myself, I'd have preferred something more accurate, like "And God created the sun to fill the darkness with light, and He set the Earth to circle round it. And then He commanded the Earth itself to spin, so as to cause night and day."
But that's an aside. What is far more perilous, is to declare that the Bible contains passages which are false when read plainly, but whose real meaning is contorted for the benefit of the 2000 B.C. worldview. If we declare as much, then the whole book must be tossed as uselessly ambiguous.
And while you're buying rechargeable batteries, buy the new Sanyo 'eneloop' batteries. They are the first NiMH batteries that don't quickly self-discharge. Sanyo says they'll still be at 90% of charge even after a year sitting on a shelf.
The eneloop AAs are 2000mAH, which isn't the best compared to the cutting edge (~3000mAH), but you'll probably come out "electrons ahead" when daily self-discharge rates are factored in.
...there was nothing. Then, God said, "Let there be light".
And there was still nothing, but at least you could see it.
Very witty.:)
Did you ever notice that the Creation story in Genesis gets the order wrong? God creates light and dark, day and night, and then waits until the next day to create the sun, moon, and stars. Oops.
Perhaps Genesis' author was too busy coveting his neighbor's ass during astronomy class, because this sort of mistake is major lunch!
Oh, wait. God wrote it. God did it. And everyone knows that He, being omnipotent, can do it out of order if He wants to!
"Some wireless industry supporters argue that statutes barring texting while driving are too specific. What is needed, they say, is not narrowly focused legislation, but a campaign to educate the public about all driver distractions. In Washington, D.C., an industry lobby group called CTIA -- The Wireless Association has begun tracking legislation, including Ms. McDonald's bill, and scratching out a strategy to counter it."
CTIA: "Yeah! It is discriminatory for the legislature to focus only on wireless devices. There are myriad other driving distractions that should be addressed also."
Ms. McDonald (D-RL): "Such as?"
CTIA: "Well, you know... other stuff..."
Ms. McDonald: "..."
CTIA: "Oh, I know! Billboards! Those are definitely distracting. Especially the kind with lights or moving parts."
Ms. McDonald: "We've had lighted, moving billboards for six decades now. I do not think it urgent that they be addressed in my Bill."
CTIA: "Uh."
Ms. McDonald: "Is that all you've got?"
CTIA: "Windshield wipers?"
Ms. McDonald: "No."
CTIA: "Speedometers?"
Ms. McDonald: "No."
CTIA: "Satellite radio?"
NAB: "Yeah!"
Ms. McDonald: "No!"
CTIA: "Alright, look. Is your, ah, how shall we put this? How is your reelection fund coming along?"
Ms. McDonald: "Glad you asked. Perhaps my Bill is a little too narrowly-worded..."
CTIA: "Yes. We're looking for something very broad and vague, preferably so broad that the words 'wireless' and 'device' are not actually mentioned. To tell you the truth, we're really aiming for 'unenforceable', if you understand?"
Ms. McDonald: "Ah. Would you mind closing the door there? These legislative negotiations should be kept confidential, especially where Public Safety is concerned."
Assuming the energy needed to perform the condensation is not lossy, this technique is going to be da bomb.:)
Haha. But seriously, this is what the "hydrogen economy" needs. You could even grind the powder fine enough to be a slough, and 'pump' that into your vehicle's fuel tank.
When George Bush first proposed hydrogen as the solution to our fossil-fuel habit, everyone mocked him for failing to understand that hydrogen is just a storage medium, rather than an energy source. I suspect he knew that all along... but since most Americans don't know it, he persuaded them to (at least in principle) buy in to the idea.
Once there is enough interest in hydrogen, the "hydrogen economy" will indeed take off (e.g. today's breakthrough), and at that time we will be groping for a way to produce hydrogen in bulk. The optimal way to produce bulk hydrogen is of course a nuclear reactor. And so by this (alas necessarily) indirect route will Americans come to accept ubiquitous nuclear power. And that is exactly what Bush wanted (or at least should have wanted) all along.
Why? Imagine tomorrow I build a true,legit software house called "MicorSoft". Yes, I capitalize also on typosquatting maybe, but that's no more than a clever advertising technique. Does this harm Microsoft? Maybe, but also competition harms Microsoft, yet we don't feel the need to protect it from competition.
We don't protect them from competition, no, because everyone fares best with competition. But we do protect their identity from subversion. Bill Gates invested a massive amount of resources in developing an identity called 'Microsoft'... and the size of that investment, and the future value of that identity, both positively motivate Microsoft to behave itself. That is to say, nobody spends $5 billion to develop a brand name and then proceeds to sell a phoney product and flee to Mexico with the proceeds.
An interloper named 'Micorsoft' can damage that investment, even to the point of ruining the original company's positive incentives to behave to protect its name (though this is not likely in this case due to Microsoft's sheer size). Did you ever hear about the 'Ball Home' scam in Kentucky?
Actually we see the same thing with our own personal identities. You've presumably invested a lot of resources in your reputation, right? So I would damage you if I impersonated you to your friends, neighbors, and coworkers.
I support all these "cybersquatters". They are harming no one, and they just do a bit of profit from people mistyping. Not moral hard-earned hard work, sure, but surely less evil than suing them.
I wonder how you assessed the harm (or lack thereof) caused by typosquatting. From down there in your basement, perhaps you hadn't noticed that typosquat websites are loaded with pr0n, viruses, bogus search engines, and occasionally even attempts to pass themselves off as the real thing. These ills create the impression that it is perilous to seek out microsoft.com on the web. The harm from that impression is probably what prompted Microsoft to release the hounds.
Not to mention the harm to the customer (which Microsoft's lawyers are more or less acting as proxy for). Registering 'micorsoft.com' can only be an attempt to fraudulently subvert a customer's intention to pursue a relationship with microsoft. And that is real harm, no matter what value or dysvalue the cybersquatter website offers.
If a person wishes to bash Microsoft, then let them register 'microsoftsucks.com'. Or just do like everyone else: create a slashdot account.:)
Slashdot Mirror
:golf clap:
Well said.
Alas, too few people understand the idea of context. No wonder they're clamoring (as in the WSJ article) for an impossibly concise general rule that says something like "30 seconds but not 31 seconds".
If you aren't aware of the self object, you can't project it into imagined future states. If you can't project the self into imagined future states, and choose among them, then you are not volitional (aka free-willed aka proactive). If you aren't volitional, then morality doesn't apply to you.
A deer, for example, does not contemplate her welfare in the coming winter, and make decisions about how to lay up food or migrate; she relies on hard-coding. So even if we could speak to her, she wouldn't understand the idea of right or wrong or choice.
According to which moral code? Altruism?
Have you noticed that Altruism is the code that everyone wants everyone else to practice? And have you ever considered the final implications of a sacrifice-the-good-to-strangers principle?
Why do you assume anybody listens to and obeys that claptrap? We sure don't. Individuals use religion to reinforce their feelings, not to change them.
The third world creates lots of children because they can't afford contraception, and because they need the farmhands. Same reasons that the first world had, so long ago now.
That service is already available. However, only the ultra-rich can afford it, and what with the whole galaxy in a bit of a recession right now, I think the company is mothballed.
Malaria isn't feasible to handle through immunization and treatment, because malaria occurs in wet, nasty, remote, impoverished, quarrelsome places. You may now argue that such problems can be handled with a sufficient application of dumptruck loads of money, but again, the dumptruck loads of money are not interested in being applied to those areas of the world.
Indeed, malaria has probably killed more humans than anything else in history. And now you sound like Marie Antoinette -- "Let them get treatment!"
The unintended consequences of these GM mosquitoes would have to be severe in order to outweigh such a colossal improvement in lifespan and quality-of-life as this would bring to all the unfashionable places in the world.
Well, if the research I painstakingly conducted in high school is accurate, the new mosquitoes will zoom down from the sky, snatch up humans, haul them up into the clouds, and transform them into mutants. The mutants fly erratically, fire weapons in all directions, and will be hella difficult for even the new F-22 Raptors to shoot down.
Good thing we've got smart-bomb technology.
No offense, but I think most of the problem is NASA's lack of desire to commit bureaucratic suicide. Now that free markets are en vogue again, NASA is willing to dribble out some small (relative to the size of the overall mission) prizes... but no real prizes, such as would get Ford Motor Company's attention, such as would instantly obsolete whole NASA wings.
The really sad part is, it wouldn't cost NASA a thing to offer a $10B prize for a successful private Mars mission, unless the mission succeeded, in which case it has already paid for itself in side benefits (if NASA's own justifications are valid). If (as you imply) $10B is not enough to motivate any private enterprise to give it a try, then what harm is there in offering?
The prizes would be in billions, not millions. A billion will get everyone's attention. Corporations can handle space exploration if there is a quantifiable return, such as a cash prize. They can budget for it, calculate risk/return tradeoffs, and manage it to completion -- precisely the three behaviors that corporations are organized to perform.
And if two billion is not enough to swing the project, then make it ten. Or twenty. How much is NASA already planning to spend to go to Mars, especially considering that they must necessarily overspend on safety?
It'll damage your eyes. But you can breathe it just fine.
Now if we could only do the same with the exploration missions, such as Mars and the moon.
Can you imagine the glorious caucophony if NASA turned its budget into prizes? $1B for the first Mars rock returned to Earth. $2B for the first Mars ground base active for one year. $4B for the first human on Mars. $4B for the first man-year on Mars.
And what a fantastic spectator sport it would become again. GE, Lockheed, Chevrolet, HP, maybe even Google might all be in a literal race for the prizes. It would be consensually dangerous, as corners got cut to save time and money. The risks would attract more volunteers than ever.
To my eye, one of the great benefits of space exploration is its entertainment and inspirational value. NASA has managed to destroy that by becoming bureaucratically risk-averse. They can't allow even a broken fingernail during a mission, else they get castigated in the next Senate budget conference. And that ruins the experience of being a fan, of the sort we once had in the 1960s.
At 6,000 feet or wherever, the oxygen concentration is still ~20%, albeit at lower pressure. This new product doesn't reduce the air pressure, it reduces the oxygen concentration. The effect on a human is approximately equivalent to being at 6,000 feet, but not exactly. In any event, it'll be a minor difference to you but a major difference to a fire.
Think of it in reverse: you can breathe oxygen at 100% concentration and not feel a whole lot different, whereas wood and plastic burn like gunpowder at that concentration.
GRBs are thought to emanate only from the poles of a supernova. So no, a GRB can indeed be 'aimed'.
I've often wondered if GRBs aren't simply the result of some technological civilization stumbling onto a new law of physics, and wiping themselves out in the process. It would certainly explain the absence of any voices in a galaxy that -- by now -- ought to be teeming with life.
Well said.
What we need to do now, is outfit 100 cars with 3D accelleromoters, data-logging speedometers, and front and rear proximity radars. An onboard computer will record all the data and digest it into a set of scores for how aggressively the person drove that day: average speed, average accelleration and deceleration, average distance to vehicle in front, average gee force during turns, average speed per degree of turn, etc. etc.
We order our 100 volunteers to drive these cars for a month to establish a baseline, and to let them familiarize themselves with the cars. Then we order the volunteers to play a different videogame each week for a two-month period. Then we can crunch the vehicle data to see if their driving habits changed depending on which game is being played and which game was played the preceding week.
Such an experiment shouldn't cost that much to run.
A lot of other useful data could be culled from it too, such as how the weather and local news events influence driving habits, whether talking on a cellphone had any effect, you name it. And this study wouldn't raise an "endangers non-participants" objection because the volunteers are simply leading their usual lives, albeit in different cars.
Good answer. :)
1. Steal somebody's decoder box.
2. Make and distribute pirated videos.
3. Profit !!
And there is a hidden benefit here. You know how Thomson is saying "if consumers know the watermark is there, they'll be disincented to pirate videos"? Well it works the same way in reverse. If media companies know the watermark is there, they'll be disincented to commit further acts of DRM.
Media companies have already demonstrated writ large that they are too stupid to grasp the implications of (and hackability of) software and media technology. So even though this Thomson scheme is obviously stupid to us, it may be enough to calm down the media companies.
Of course there's a price to be paid here. Like sacrificial lambs selected randomly from the herd, the occasional John Q. Couchpotato is going to get slammed by a MAFIAA lawsuit when his decoder's ID got cloned by a pirate. But hey, no more DRM!
And another thing: why do you assume that a hydrogen ICEs aren't feasible? Already we have kits to convert gasoline ICEs over to burn methane and propane. Why couldn't they burn gaseous hydrogen?
If this new powder-storage technique works as well as advertised, and if the hydrogen can be converted back to gas without too much difficulty, then we're golden. No platinum or batteries or anything at all would be needed.
Witty. Yet you forget that this is slashdot... you should've used a car analogy instead of a sports analogy. Woulda got more +1 insightfuls that way. :)
It's arguable whether the idea that "The sun was created afterward to rule the daytime" made reality easier for groundlings to understand. If anything, it would mislead their attempts at cosmology. As a groundling myself, I'd have preferred something more accurate, like "And God created the sun to fill the darkness with light, and He set the Earth to circle round it. And then He commanded the Earth itself to spin, so as to cause night and day."
But that's an aside. What is far more perilous, is to declare that the Bible contains passages which are false when read plainly, but whose real meaning is contorted for the benefit of the 2000 B.C. worldview. If we declare as much, then the whole book must be tossed as uselessly ambiguous.
Yep.
And while you're buying rechargeable batteries, buy the new Sanyo 'eneloop' batteries. They are the first NiMH batteries that don't quickly self-discharge. Sanyo says they'll still be at 90% of charge even after a year sitting on a shelf.
The eneloop AAs are 2000mAH, which isn't the best compared to the cutting edge (~3000mAH), but you'll probably come out "electrons ahead" when daily self-discharge rates are factored in.
Very witty. :)
Did you ever notice that the Creation story in Genesis gets the order wrong? God creates light and dark, day and night, and then waits until the next day to create the sun, moon, and stars. Oops.
Perhaps Genesis' author was too busy coveting his neighbor's ass during astronomy class, because this sort of mistake is major lunch!
Oh, wait. God wrote it. God did it. And everyone knows that He, being omnipotent, can do it out of order if He wants to!
CTIA: "Yeah! It is discriminatory for the legislature to focus only on wireless devices. There are myriad other driving distractions that should be addressed also."
Ms. McDonald (D-RL): "Such as?"
CTIA: "Well, you know... other stuff..."
Ms. McDonald: "..."
CTIA: "Oh, I know! Billboards! Those are definitely distracting. Especially the kind with lights or moving parts."
Ms. McDonald: "We've had lighted, moving billboards for six decades now. I do not think it urgent that they be addressed in my Bill."
CTIA: "Uh."
Ms. McDonald: "Is that all you've got?"
CTIA: "Windshield wipers?"
Ms. McDonald: "No."
CTIA: "Speedometers?"
Ms. McDonald: "No."
CTIA: "Satellite radio?"
NAB: "Yeah!"
Ms. McDonald: "No!"
CTIA: "Alright, look. Is your, ah, how shall we put this? How is your reelection fund coming along?"
Ms. McDonald: "Glad you asked. Perhaps my Bill is a little too narrowly-worded..."
CTIA: "Yes. We're looking for something very broad and vague, preferably so broad that the words 'wireless' and 'device' are not actually mentioned. To tell you the truth, we're really aiming for 'unenforceable', if you understand?"
Ms. McDonald: "Ah. Would you mind closing the door there? These legislative negotiations should be kept confidential, especially where Public Safety is concerned."
Assuming the energy needed to perform the condensation is not lossy, this technique is going to be da bomb. :)
Haha. But seriously, this is what the "hydrogen economy" needs. You could even grind the powder fine enough to be a slough, and 'pump' that into your vehicle's fuel tank.
When George Bush first proposed hydrogen as the solution to our fossil-fuel habit, everyone mocked him for failing to understand that hydrogen is just a storage medium, rather than an energy source. I suspect he knew that all along... but since most Americans don't know it, he persuaded them to (at least in principle) buy in to the idea.
Once there is enough interest in hydrogen, the "hydrogen economy" will indeed take off (e.g. today's breakthrough), and at that time we will be groping for a way to produce hydrogen in bulk. The optimal way to produce bulk hydrogen is of course a nuclear reactor. And so by this (alas necessarily) indirect route will Americans come to accept ubiquitous nuclear power. And that is exactly what Bush wanted (or at least should have wanted) all along.
We don't protect them from competition, no, because everyone fares best with competition. But we do protect their identity from subversion. Bill Gates invested a massive amount of resources in developing an identity called 'Microsoft'... and the size of that investment, and the future value of that identity, both positively motivate Microsoft to behave itself. That is to say, nobody spends $5 billion to develop a brand name and then proceeds to sell a phoney product and flee to Mexico with the proceeds.
An interloper named 'Micorsoft' can damage that investment, even to the point of ruining the original company's positive incentives to behave to protect its name (though this is not likely in this case due to Microsoft's sheer size). Did you ever hear about the 'Ball Home' scam in Kentucky?
Actually we see the same thing with our own personal identities. You've presumably invested a lot of resources in your reputation, right? So I would damage you if I impersonated you to your friends, neighbors, and coworkers.
I wonder how you assessed the harm (or lack thereof) caused by typosquatting. From down there in your basement, perhaps you hadn't noticed that typosquat websites are loaded with pr0n, viruses, bogus search engines, and occasionally even attempts to pass themselves off as the real thing. These ills create the impression that it is perilous to seek out microsoft.com on the web. The harm from that impression is probably what prompted Microsoft to release the hounds.
Not to mention the harm to the customer (which Microsoft's lawyers are more or less acting as proxy for). Registering 'micorsoft.com' can only be an attempt to fraudulently subvert a customer's intention to pursue a relationship with microsoft. And that is real harm, no matter what value or dysvalue the cybersquatter website offers.
If a person wishes to bash Microsoft, then let them register 'microsoftsucks.com'. Or just do like everyone else: create a slashdot account. :)