uh, the only reason drugs are smuggled into the country is because you can't plant large fields of coca/poppies/marijuana in the U.S. without the DEA finding out about it. if it were legal, then they wouldn't be imported from countries with laxer drug enforcement agencies.
that's quite interesting. while i use Foxit reader on Windows, i still have a lot of respect for anyone who's worked for free to give users the choice of using an alternate PDF viewer, not to mention holding Adobe true to their word.
now that PDF is finally an ISO standard, i wonder if Adobe is still in control of feature updates in future versions, or if the further development of the PDF format will involve community members. i'm not sure how this kind of stuff is handled.
well, i recently spoke to my boss about it. he's not really a power user, though since i began working at the company a few years ago he's become a lot more interested in technology, possibly because i've helped him integrate it into his business. anyways, we started talking about municipal/public wi-fi access, and since he does a lot of traveling he's had a lot of experience with public wi-fi access in different cities. i was surprised at how many cities he mentioned had free public wi-fi access. i can't remember their names off the top of head because many were smaller cities (most were in Southern California), but he seemed to have pretty good experiences with them.
it's interesting to see things from the perspective of a casual computer user. he says he finds commercial wi-fi services (like that offered at airports) to be too much of hassle, whereas he finds municipal setups much more useful. we both agreed that we'd like to see a municipal wi-fi network set up in our city.
i think a lot of Universities are also starting to offer campus-wide wi-fi access, and as bandwidth and hardware costs drop, i wouldn't be surprised to see it become a standard resource at most schools. most people i've spoken to who've attended schools with campus-wide wi-fi access also seem to have a lot of good things to say about it.
well, the wealthy minority may have enjoyed more privileges under the rule of his predecessors, but the majority of Venezuelans are not the ones driving in mercedes or bmws and banging pots and pans in the streets of their upper class suburban neighborhoods.
it's almost farcical watching the anti-Chavez protesters wearing their Gucci sunglasses as they denounce the first leader in Venezuelan history to actually act in the interest of the lower-class majority rather than simply marginalize the poor to cater to the rich.
Chavez should be praised if on for nationalizing the nation's oil resources so that oil profits actually go towards helping the impoverished native citizens rather than line the pockets of overseas oil companies--which is why he's so unpopular in the U.S.--not to mention the fact that literacy rates have increased significantly since his progressive reforms began, and he actually allowed the Venezuelan people to draft their own constitution via mass referendum. and, yes, buying up unused land from the rich and redistributing it amongst the poor to set up food co-ops to feed the local community is such a terrible thing to do. god forbid Venezuelan people actually get to eat.
but maybe he should adopt the American model and simply lock up the poor, or let them die from lack of health care.
i completely agree with you. the way i see it, the larger a government gets (in terms of the size of the population it governs) the less democratic it becomes, not only due to bureaucratic inefficiencies which are incurred as an organization increases in size, but also because of the logistical problems presented by trying to satisfy such a large population.
there's a huge political spectrum covering the vast American cultural landscape. that diversity is one of our strengths. however, being part of one large nation creates a single political hegemon which rules over this diverse cultural landscape. it's impossible to homogenize such a vast population spread over such a large geographical area, and even if it were possible, it wouldn't necessarily be a good thing.
i think it would be preferable to adopt the European model, whereby "states" are actually states, but their political autonomy and cultural diversity do not prevent them from working together to achieve common interests through the European Union. you could still have federal-level initiatives, for things like FEMA, but they would be run as international agencies similar to UNICEF or the IPCC.
did i say there were no cultural differences? i'm simply saying that the trait you're describing is a universal _human_ trait, not a Portuguese one.
granted, i've never traveled to Europe, but i've traveled to different parts of Asia and spent a significant part of my life outside of the U.S. i've even spent most of childhood adjusting to the cultural differences between Taiwan and the United States. i know very well how different cultural values can affect a society's development. but some things are constant. as much as you'd like to look down on another society for what you perceive as cultural shortcomings, people are generally more alike than they are different. we're just socialized to not see the corruption which goes on in our own society. that is the result of your cultural lens.
some governments are indeed more corrupt than others, but people in capitalist societies possess certain traits regardless of what culture they were raised in. do you honestly think that greed and corruption are distinctly Portuguese characteristics? you don't think Swedish or Finnish CEOs embezzle from their companies or exploit the economic system to their advantage?
whenever conservatives talk about socialized services they seem to conflate problems of government corruption, bureaucratic inefficiency, and unpopular government with the socialized institution. but you're forgetting that public schools, law enforcement, fire departments, public libraries, roads, post offices, etc. are all socialized public infrastructure. if you really think that having government run infrastructure (in other words, having a government) is a bad idea, then wouldn't it be worse having them run the military, police, and writing laws?
if a country is a true democracy, then its government is merely a mechanism for carrying out the will of the people. i mean, most people like the idea of having free schools, but a single person cannot establish a free education system, so you do it through the government. likewise with roads, libraries, the legal system, etc.
if the government isn't acting in public interest, then that's a whole other fundamental problem that needs to be addressed regardless of whether ISPs should be socialized. i mean, why would a government ISP ignore problems any more than a commercial ISP would? would the gestapo come out and silence anyone who complains? or would they just ignore customer complaints like commercial ISPs do? at least the public has a voice in government, whereas they don't have a voice in private corporations.
all the people i've spoken to who've used public wi-fi access have commented on how great it is and seem quite satisfied with the way it works. there's no reason to think that just because a service isn't run based on corporate profits that it would be inherently inferior.
yea, what's a decent video card for a $150 laptop? anything mid-range would cost almost as much as the laptop itself. integrated graphics would be good enough for anything you'd look to do on a netbook.
it doesn't have to. i'm pointing out that you're attributing a universal human trait to the Portuguese people. either you're incredibly naive or just incredibly self deluded. i guarantee it's just as likely to happen in Sweden or Finland or any other nation for that matter as it is to happen in Portugal. the likelihood of people abusing the system for a better deal is 100% in any capitalist country.
oh c'mon. you don't think if the same deal were offered in the U.S., U.K., or any other western nation that you wouldn't also have people abusing the system?
i mean, 285 euros is pretty affordable for most Americans, but i still see people going into stores to buy these for their "kids" and then just keeping the laptop for themselves. consumers want the best deal possible as well. that's the flip side of capitalism.
rational people make rational choices. his socialist stance probably has something to do with his choosing an open source OS based on its merits. i mean, he had no problem ordering laptops from Intel. so i don't think he was trying to make a political statement with this purchase.
and in the interviews i've watched of Chavez, he comes off as a surprisingly intelligent person--i had no idea national leaders could be like that.
ah, i didn't realize that. i wonder why they took so long to submit PDF as an open standard (ISO 32000-1:2008).
but the question remains, can a EULA be used to lock users/organizations into a particular company's products? i mean, if George Mason University isn't allowed to export their custom-created styles from Endnote, then couldn't a word processor's EULA forbid users from converting/reading their proprietary file format with another editor? and same with image editors. so anything you create with a particular image editor must then be forever tied to that application, taking away the copyright holder's right to reproduce, edit, or even view their own work as they wish. and if your license for that particular application expires, or the company decides to discontinue the software, then your work is lost forever.
most software applications come with some sort of license agreement that forbids the user from reverse-engineering the application. but converting your own work from a proprietary format to an open format to extricate it from the proprietary application isn't reverse-engineering the application. otherwise Samba would be considered the reverse engineering of Windows, and i hardly think Microsoft would let that slide.
so you think Google spent twice the amount of money to use 2 separate satellite imaging services? or that they use two disparate censorship policies, so that if the government asks them to obfuscate the VP's residence they would only comply for one service but not the other?
i don't know if the summary is correct or not, but logic would suggest that Google would use the same satellite images for both sets of aerial maps, and if they were going to blur out a location in one service it would be done to the other as well.
i think most people recognize that. it's a pretty ethnocentric attitude to think that only the U.S. can conduct legitimate space research and everything China does must have an ulterior motive behind it. of course, if you see China as the enemy, then you can't concede to the fact that they might be genuinely interested in space exploration or recognize any achievements by the Chinese people.
it's really saying that we can be proud of our own space program, but China can't be proud of theirs. frankly, i think the more countries venture into space, the closer humanity as a whole gets to the possibility of space colonization. so who cares what flag is sewn onto their uniform? the are far worse things to spend time and resources on than space exploration.
ah, the innocence of youth... if only the world worked the way that elementary school students are told it does.
remember a drug that came out in the late 80's called fluoxetine, better known as Prozac? Eli Lilly's patent on fluoxetine expired in August, 2001, thus marking the beginning of a flood of generic fluoxetine preparations on the U.S. market. and it's true that, since then, if you wanted to get fluoxetine for depression or anxiety, you can get cheap generics for 1 or 2 cents per pill.
however, just as their Prozac patent was about to expire, Eli Lilly found a new way to extend their patent on fluoxetine by using a legal loophole in pharmaceutical patent law. they created a new fluoxetine brand called Sarafem and marketed it as a new drug to treat "premenstrual dysphoric disorder" (also known as PMS). under U.S. patent law, new uses for old drugs can be granted as separate patents. and it is actually illegal for pharmacists to offer generic substitutions to Sarafem prescriptions, despite there being tons of cheap generic alternatives of the same exact compound.
so in spite of the fact that fluoxetine has existed for almost 4 decades, Eli Lilly has found a way to extend their patent on the same drug and continue to exploit their monopoly free from generic competitors. now, this is just a particularly well-known from the pharmaceutical industry, but i'm sure similar legal loopholes have been used/created for other corporate industries, such as Disney has done for their copyrighted IP.
but i'm not a patent lawyer, so maybe i'm wrong and this kind of patent abuse only happens in pharmaceuticals. however, i have to wonder what happens when one corporation sells their IP to another corporation. does their patent get extended for the new patent-holder? or do they only receive the time remaining on the original patent?
weren't there a bunch of alternative PDF readers long before Adobe made PDF an open format? and same with many disc image applications and proprietary file formats, non-Microsoft word processors and Word documents, Samba's interoperability with NetBIOS, etc.
this seems like a blatant attempt by a proprietary software vendor to lock Universities and other academic institutions into their software. even if Zotero does allow users to convert from EndNote's style format to other formats, there's nothing inherently illegal about that. if users wants to import their custom styles from EndNote to Zotero, then that's their right.
this is like suing filesystem developers because they include a copy feature in their software that allows users to potentially make illegal copies of files.
i get what you're saying, but i don't think we should equivocate web usage with internet usage. remember, smart devices are on the rise, and with VoIP, internet radio, digital TV, etc. we're seeing more and more specialized communications networks being supplanted by the internet.
my boss already finds Skype much more economical for his business than a regular land line, but he does complain that audio quality drops occasionally, which i suspect is a bandwidth or network throughput issue. i wouldn't at all be surprised if Japanese companies started broadcasting digital TV over the internet once this new infrastructure is up and running. and if they add municipal or public wi-fi to the mix, then we could start seeing portable internet radios replacing AM/FM receivers.
usually supply chases demand, but with infrastructure resources, demand also grows to fill supply. if people are given access to affordable 1 Gbps connections, and it becomes standard in homes, then you will see consumers start taking advantage of that bandwidth to stream higher quality video, host their own websites, etc.
i mean, people didn't start trading FLAC files or DVD images over the internet until broadband became widely available. you really can't pursue more bandwidth intensive applications until the infrastructure is up. but once the infrastructure is there, people will find use to exploit it, i'm sure.
if it's a small company in which the employees get some say in the running of the company as some more progressive employers do, then you can offer the suggestion that all company patents be allowed to expire within a reasonable amount of time rather than being renewed indefinitely, or sold to another company who will continually renew it and prevent it from ever being released into public domain.
software patents are inherently stupid, but patents are real & innovative inventions can be beneficial to society if patents are enforced the way they were meant to (with a hard time limit). none of that disney crap where their stolen characters/stories remain copyrighted as long as the company exists, which is a lot longer than the human lifespan and not what the copyright & patent system was designed for.
of course not. owning something doesn't require a purchase, and "purchased" doesn't imply current ownership. but those are petty semantics. the fact is, when you purchase something, you are trading money in exchange for the transfer of ownership--even if it's ownership of a license.
even if we ignore the issue of consumer rights, unless the seller explicitly states otherwise, when you purchase something it's assumed that you are in fact purchasing that item--not just a license to use it (i hope i don't have to explain this tautology). but i guess you'd like for the purchase of CDs, DVDs, electronics, etc. to mean the purchase of a license to use those devices as sanctioned by corporate industries, and not true ownership of the items themselves?
it seems like we're moving towards some form of twisted communist system whereby all physical property is owned by corporate industries, and individuals simply hold licenses to use "their" (i guess that word loses its meaning) computers, mp3/CD/DVD players, books, etc. within the terms specified by our corporate masters.
Slashdot Mirror
uh, the only reason drugs are smuggled into the country is because you can't plant large fields of coca/poppies/marijuana in the U.S. without the DEA finding out about it. if it were legal, then they wouldn't be imported from countries with laxer drug enforcement agencies.
that's quite interesting. while i use Foxit reader on Windows, i still have a lot of respect for anyone who's worked for free to give users the choice of using an alternate PDF viewer, not to mention holding Adobe true to their word.
now that PDF is finally an ISO standard, i wonder if Adobe is still in control of feature updates in future versions, or if the further development of the PDF format will involve community members. i'm not sure how this kind of stuff is handled.
well, i recently spoke to my boss about it. he's not really a power user, though since i began working at the company a few years ago he's become a lot more interested in technology, possibly because i've helped him integrate it into his business. anyways, we started talking about municipal/public wi-fi access, and since he does a lot of traveling he's had a lot of experience with public wi-fi access in different cities. i was surprised at how many cities he mentioned had free public wi-fi access. i can't remember their names off the top of head because many were smaller cities (most were in Southern California), but he seemed to have pretty good experiences with them.
it's interesting to see things from the perspective of a casual computer user. he says he finds commercial wi-fi services (like that offered at airports) to be too much of hassle, whereas he finds municipal setups much more useful. we both agreed that we'd like to see a municipal wi-fi network set up in our city.
i think a lot of Universities are also starting to offer campus-wide wi-fi access, and as bandwidth and hardware costs drop, i wouldn't be surprised to see it become a standard resource at most schools. most people i've spoken to who've attended schools with campus-wide wi-fi access also seem to have a lot of good things to say about it.
then why bother purchasing it in the first place?
i'm not going to say that i've never used pirated software. but generally it follows this pattern:
it doesn't make sense to buy a game just to crack it and then return it for your money back.
well, the wealthy minority may have enjoyed more privileges under the rule of his predecessors, but the majority of Venezuelans are not the ones driving in mercedes or bmws and banging pots and pans in the streets of their upper class suburban neighborhoods.
it's almost farcical watching the anti-Chavez protesters wearing their Gucci sunglasses as they denounce the first leader in Venezuelan history to actually act in the interest of the lower-class majority rather than simply marginalize the poor to cater to the rich.
Chavez should be praised if on for nationalizing the nation's oil resources so that oil profits actually go towards helping the impoverished native citizens rather than line the pockets of overseas oil companies--which is why he's so unpopular in the U.S.--not to mention the fact that literacy rates have increased significantly since his progressive reforms began, and he actually allowed the Venezuelan people to draft their own constitution via mass referendum. and, yes, buying up unused land from the rich and redistributing it amongst the poor to set up food co-ops to feed the local community is such a terrible thing to do. god forbid Venezuelan people actually get to eat.
but maybe he should adopt the American model and simply lock up the poor, or let them die from lack of health care.
no, i type my PI number into the AT machine.
i completely agree with you. the way i see it, the larger a government gets (in terms of the size of the population it governs) the less democratic it becomes, not only due to bureaucratic inefficiencies which are incurred as an organization increases in size, but also because of the logistical problems presented by trying to satisfy such a large population.
there's a huge political spectrum covering the vast American cultural landscape. that diversity is one of our strengths. however, being part of one large nation creates a single political hegemon which rules over this diverse cultural landscape. it's impossible to homogenize such a vast population spread over such a large geographical area, and even if it were possible, it wouldn't necessarily be a good thing.
i think it would be preferable to adopt the European model, whereby "states" are actually states, but their political autonomy and cultural diversity do not prevent them from working together to achieve common interests through the European Union. you could still have federal-level initiatives, for things like FEMA, but they would be run as international agencies similar to UNICEF or the IPCC.
did i say there were no cultural differences? i'm simply saying that the trait you're describing is a universal _human_ trait, not a Portuguese one.
granted, i've never traveled to Europe, but i've traveled to different parts of Asia and spent a significant part of my life outside of the U.S. i've even spent most of childhood adjusting to the cultural differences between Taiwan and the United States. i know very well how different cultural values can affect a society's development. but some things are constant. as much as you'd like to look down on another society for what you perceive as cultural shortcomings, people are generally more alike than they are different. we're just socialized to not see the corruption which goes on in our own society. that is the result of your cultural lens.
some governments are indeed more corrupt than others, but people in capitalist societies possess certain traits regardless of what culture they were raised in. do you honestly think that greed and corruption are distinctly Portuguese characteristics? you don't think Swedish or Finnish CEOs embezzle from their companies or exploit the economic system to their advantage?
whenever conservatives talk about socialized services they seem to conflate problems of government corruption, bureaucratic inefficiency, and unpopular government with the socialized institution. but you're forgetting that public schools, law enforcement, fire departments, public libraries, roads, post offices, etc. are all socialized public infrastructure. if you really think that having government run infrastructure (in other words, having a government) is a bad idea, then wouldn't it be worse having them run the military, police, and writing laws?
if a country is a true democracy, then its government is merely a mechanism for carrying out the will of the people. i mean, most people like the idea of having free schools, but a single person cannot establish a free education system, so you do it through the government. likewise with roads, libraries, the legal system, etc.
if the government isn't acting in public interest, then that's a whole other fundamental problem that needs to be addressed regardless of whether ISPs should be socialized. i mean, why would a government ISP ignore problems any more than a commercial ISP would? would the gestapo come out and silence anyone who complains? or would they just ignore customer complaints like commercial ISPs do? at least the public has a voice in government, whereas they don't have a voice in private corporations.
all the people i've spoken to who've used public wi-fi access have commented on how great it is and seem quite satisfied with the way it works. there's no reason to think that just because a service isn't run based on corporate profits that it would be inherently inferior.
only if you take the long route. the quickest way to get the government to listen is with an unattended briefcase full of cash.
that is, if you don't already have former board members in the White House.
yea, what's a decent video card for a $150 laptop? anything mid-range would cost almost as much as the laptop itself. integrated graphics would be good enough for anything you'd look to do on a netbook.
it doesn't have to. i'm pointing out that you're attributing a universal human trait to the Portuguese people. either you're incredibly naive or just incredibly self deluded. i guarantee it's just as likely to happen in Sweden or Finland or any other nation for that matter as it is to happen in Portugal. the likelihood of people abusing the system for a better deal is 100% in any capitalist country.
oh c'mon. you don't think if the same deal were offered in the U.S., U.K., or any other western nation that you wouldn't also have people abusing the system?
i mean, 285 euros is pretty affordable for most Americans, but i still see people going into stores to buy these for their "kids" and then just keeping the laptop for themselves. consumers want the best deal possible as well. that's the flip side of capitalism.
rational people make rational choices. his socialist stance probably has something to do with his choosing an open source OS based on its merits. i mean, he had no problem ordering laptops from Intel. so i don't think he was trying to make a political statement with this purchase.
and in the interviews i've watched of Chavez, he comes off as a surprisingly intelligent person--i had no idea national leaders could be like that.
i don't think you understand what generic means.
what exactly is unethical about allowing a patient to buy $0.01/pill fluoxetine 10 mg, instead of $3.00/pill brand name fluoxetine 10mg?
ah, i didn't realize that. i wonder why they took so long to submit PDF as an open standard (ISO 32000-1:2008).
but the question remains, can a EULA be used to lock users/organizations into a particular company's products? i mean, if George Mason University isn't allowed to export their custom-created styles from Endnote, then couldn't a word processor's EULA forbid users from converting/reading their proprietary file format with another editor? and same with image editors. so anything you create with a particular image editor must then be forever tied to that application, taking away the copyright holder's right to reproduce, edit, or even view their own work as they wish. and if your license for that particular application expires, or the company decides to discontinue the software, then your work is lost forever.
most software applications come with some sort of license agreement that forbids the user from reverse-engineering the application. but converting your own work from a proprietary format to an open format to extricate it from the proprietary application isn't reverse-engineering the application. otherwise Samba would be considered the reverse engineering of Windows, and i hardly think Microsoft would let that slide.
so you think Google spent twice the amount of money to use 2 separate satellite imaging services? or that they use two disparate censorship policies, so that if the government asks them to obfuscate the VP's residence they would only comply for one service but not the other?
i don't know if the summary is correct or not, but logic would suggest that Google would use the same satellite images for both sets of aerial maps, and if they were going to blur out a location in one service it would be done to the other as well.
i think most people recognize that. it's a pretty ethnocentric attitude to think that only the U.S. can conduct legitimate space research and everything China does must have an ulterior motive behind it. of course, if you see China as the enemy, then you can't concede to the fact that they might be genuinely interested in space exploration or recognize any achievements by the Chinese people.
it's really saying that we can be proud of our own space program, but China can't be proud of theirs. frankly, i think the more countries venture into space, the closer humanity as a whole gets to the possibility of space colonization. so who cares what flag is sewn onto their uniform? the are far worse things to spend time and resources on than space exploration.
ah, the innocence of youth... if only the world worked the way that elementary school students are told it does.
remember a drug that came out in the late 80's called fluoxetine, better known as Prozac? Eli Lilly's patent on fluoxetine expired in August, 2001, thus marking the beginning of a flood of generic fluoxetine preparations on the U.S. market. and it's true that, since then, if you wanted to get fluoxetine for depression or anxiety, you can get cheap generics for 1 or 2 cents per pill.
however, just as their Prozac patent was about to expire, Eli Lilly found a new way to extend their patent on fluoxetine by using a legal loophole in pharmaceutical patent law. they created a new fluoxetine brand called Sarafem and marketed it as a new drug to treat "premenstrual dysphoric disorder" (also known as PMS). under U.S. patent law, new uses for old drugs can be granted as separate patents. and it is actually illegal for pharmacists to offer generic substitutions to Sarafem prescriptions, despite there being tons of cheap generic alternatives of the same exact compound.
so in spite of the fact that fluoxetine has existed for almost 4 decades, Eli Lilly has found a way to extend their patent on the same drug and continue to exploit their monopoly free from generic competitors. now, this is just a particularly well-known from the pharmaceutical industry, but i'm sure similar legal loopholes have been used/created for other corporate industries, such as Disney has done for their copyrighted IP.
but i'm not a patent lawyer, so maybe i'm wrong and this kind of patent abuse only happens in pharmaceuticals. however, i have to wonder what happens when one corporation sells their IP to another corporation. does their patent get extended for the new patent-holder? or do they only receive the time remaining on the original patent?
ah, but there are still analog transmission methods. the way i see it, eyeballs are the problem...
weren't there a bunch of alternative PDF readers long before Adobe made PDF an open format? and same with many disc image applications and proprietary file formats, non-Microsoft word processors and Word documents, Samba's interoperability with NetBIOS, etc.
this seems like a blatant attempt by a proprietary software vendor to lock Universities and other academic institutions into their software. even if Zotero does allow users to convert from EndNote's style format to other formats, there's nothing inherently illegal about that. if users wants to import their custom styles from EndNote to Zotero, then that's their right.
this is like suing filesystem developers because they include a copy feature in their software that allows users to potentially make illegal copies of files.
i get what you're saying, but i don't think we should equivocate web usage with internet usage. remember, smart devices are on the rise, and with VoIP, internet radio, digital TV, etc. we're seeing more and more specialized communications networks being supplanted by the internet.
my boss already finds Skype much more economical for his business than a regular land line, but he does complain that audio quality drops occasionally, which i suspect is a bandwidth or network throughput issue. i wouldn't at all be surprised if Japanese companies started broadcasting digital TV over the internet once this new infrastructure is up and running. and if they add municipal or public wi-fi to the mix, then we could start seeing portable internet radios replacing AM/FM receivers.
usually supply chases demand, but with infrastructure resources, demand also grows to fill supply. if people are given access to affordable 1 Gbps connections, and it becomes standard in homes, then you will see consumers start taking advantage of that bandwidth to stream higher quality video, host their own websites, etc.
i mean, people didn't start trading FLAC files or DVD images over the internet until broadband became widely available. you really can't pursue more bandwidth intensive applications until the infrastructure is up. but once the infrastructure is there, people will find use to exploit it, i'm sure.
oops, the second paragraph should say "patents on real & innovative inventions" not "are real & innovative inventions..."
if it's a small company in which the employees get some say in the running of the company as some more progressive employers do, then you can offer the suggestion that all company patents be allowed to expire within a reasonable amount of time rather than being renewed indefinitely, or sold to another company who will continually renew it and prevent it from ever being released into public domain.
software patents are inherently stupid, but patents are real & innovative inventions can be beneficial to society if patents are enforced the way they were meant to (with a hard time limit). none of that disney crap where their stolen characters/stories remain copyrighted as long as the company exists, which is a lot longer than the human lifespan and not what the copyright & patent system was designed for.
of course not. owning something doesn't require a purchase, and "purchased" doesn't imply current ownership. but those are petty semantics. the fact is, when you purchase something, you are trading money in exchange for the transfer of ownership--even if it's ownership of a license.
even if we ignore the issue of consumer rights, unless the seller explicitly states otherwise, when you purchase something it's assumed that you are in fact purchasing that item--not just a license to use it (i hope i don't have to explain this tautology). but i guess you'd like for the purchase of CDs, DVDs, electronics, etc. to mean the purchase of a license to use those devices as sanctioned by corporate industries, and not true ownership of the items themselves?
it seems like we're moving towards some form of twisted communist system whereby all physical property is owned by corporate industries, and individuals simply hold licenses to use "their" (i guess that word loses its meaning) computers, mp3/CD/DVD players, books, etc. within the terms specified by our corporate masters.