Actually, I'd say it's because the products of engineering and science are considered more valuable to society. Nobody's too gravely affected by being prevented from selling their own non-Disney Mickey Mouse products, but companies being able to keep inventions under patent protection for a century would seriously impede the progress of technology, which arguably relies on building on prior developments far more than Art does. It's easier to make a wholly original painting than it is to build a machine using no products or processes that have already been invented.
There isn't always a shoulder to pull onto, and even if there is, swerving across multiple lanes of traffic while decelerating to get to it is hardly safe driving. Talking on the phone while driving is dangerous because it distracts you from the activity of driving... but what about when what you're talking about is the driving you're currently doing?
The only time I ever am on the phone behind the wheel is to exchange minimal information about what is happening driving-wise right now, e.g. "Make a right past this blue house? Got it... Three blocks? See you in a minute." No extraneous conversation, no lengthy involved bullshit, I am talking directly about what I am looking at.
Truckers, cops, race drivers, pilots... all of them have somehow been managing to communicate with each other while controlling large unwieldy vehicles at high speeds for many decades now. Did the popularity of CB sets correspond with an increase in truck accidents? Would commercial aircraft be safer without radios?
It's not the tool that's the problem, it's the fool who doesn't know how to use it properly. Substitute "cellphone" or "CB radio" or "vehicle" or "email client" for "tool" and you'll see it's still true, although you lose the little rhyming bit there.
The perceived personality that TFA talks about has little to do with a car's actual performance characteristics and more to do with how the car owner wishes to be perceived, at least to anyone who knows the first thing about cars. Round "open-eyed" headlights and a surprised mouth may suggest some sort of anime-style "passive femininity" to people who aren't familiar with, say, a Shelby Cobra or Ferrari Barchetta, but eventually even the nonenthusiast consumer will learn that "angry aerodynamic eyebrow" headlights and "low-slung frowny grilles" can be just as easily applied to mediocre grocery-getting minivans as high-end sports cars. The face of one's car tends to say far more about its owner than it does about the car itself.
Look at the front of a Prius. Obviously not marketed towards macho leadfoot NASCAR wannabes, but look: The grille is clearly smiling at you, but the headlights connote a high-tech aerodynamic (albeit not unfriendly) robot, in contrast to the helpful eager puppy look of, say, a new Thunderbird.
(For my (nonexistent) money, the new car that strikes the best balance is the new Challenger. The headlights are browed just right to look serious without being psychopathically aggressive, and in combination with the slightly smirking lower (intercooler?) intake the whole face looks confident without being obnoxiously threatening. It would have been a much better Bumblebee than that stupid Camaro.)
It's a little archaic/British, but "employ" can be a noun, as in "Jeeves is no longer in our employ." But in context of the post it would have been better as "employment."
Right. The feds come to your office demanding you turn over spreadsheets pertaining to their investigation of your boss' frauds and embezzlements. You hold fast, resolute, secure in the knowledge that your probably criminal employers will go to the mat for you, rather than pinning the whole malfeasance on you and leaving you twisting in the wind!
Hey, you should come work for me. I'm running low on stooges lately.
Okay, I may have oversimplified -- there may be a very few reasons one can refuse to fully cooperate with a supoena, "executive privilege" being among them. I honestly don't know under what circumstances that might apply to a state governor. Regardless, Palin's status has not changed due to her VP nomination. Any grounds she has now to claim immunity from investigation existed (or didn't) well before she entered the national spotlight. Is she claiming that her gubernatorial counsel was incompetent, and only the superior advice of the McCain campaign's crack legal team showed her the light? Again, "it's politically motivated!" is not itself sufficient cause to break the law. The subpoenas are valid. She needs to come up with a reasonable rationale for blowing them off, and so far she hasn't done so.
P.S. "B-b-b-but Clinton!" doesn't cut any ice here, any more than "B-b-b-but Nixon!" would have during Clinton's impeachment proceedings.
"Nuances?" Are you serious? It's a subpoena. You have to answer it. To ignore it is illegal. Any lawyer that advises you to break the law is himself breaking the law. "But it's politically motivated!" is not an excuse. Once you're under oath before the legislature, there may be various grounds for you to refuse to testify, but you can't just not show up.
There may be nuance involved elsewhere in "Troopergate," but there's none here.
She said she would cooperate with the investigation. After she was picked for the VP slot she changed her mind. Not that cooperation with a legislative investigation is voluntary to begin with.
And if you believe that every member of her staff -- independently, with no guidance or direction from their boss whose actions the subpoenas pertained to -- decided to risk a conviction, $500, and six months in jail by ignoring legal subpoenas, well, I've got a bridge to nowhere to sell you. Even in that unlikely scenario, she's got no excuse for not explicitly instructing them to obey the law by responding to the subpoenas. If you become aware that your subordinates are doing something illegal, you don't get a pass by saying "Well, I didn't tell them to do that" while allowing them to continue to engage in illegal activity.
"Alaska Attorney General Talis Colberg said the governor, who was not subpoenaed, declined to participate in the investigation and said Palin administration employees who have been subpoenaed would not appear."
Palin's staff is ignoring supoenas, but parent has misstated what the subpoenas are about. They pertain to "Troopergate," not campaign financing.
You're conflating two very different things. Of course the longer one practices an activity the better one gets at it, but practice time is far from the sole determining factor. No matter how long you shoot baskets in your driveway, you're not going to be able to dunk on Kevin Garnett. Rolling white paint onto apartment ceilings is not going to make you Michelangelo. On the other hand, the WoW model, like a punch clock, directly rewards time spent. The unemployed guy who has 80 hours a week to play WoW isn't rewarded more handsomely because his experience has honed his pointing and clicking skills to a razor's edge, he's rewarded simply because 80 hours > 15 hours.
Maybe not individually, but in aggregate they certainly might. One guy deciding to become, say, a homeless crackhead is unlikely to affect me, but multiply that by a few thousand in my city and then I'm getting hassled for change while stepping over puddles of shit and rotting corpses on my way to work. Of course homeless crackheads don't map directly to ex-football players with blown knees, shriveled testicles, and anger-management issues, but they do illustrate the fundamental fallacy in your Randroid fantasy worldview.
I don't even know where to begin. Health is a private matter? All this money we've wasted on the CDC! Don't mind me coughing on you in this elevator, I'm sure it's not tuberculosis again. I mean, what are the chances?
And you want paramedics to make an on-the-spot decision as to whether you were being a dumbass who brought his injuries upon himself? Incentivize emergency responders to not do their jobs, genius idea.
Society pays for those paramedics and cops and guys who hose down the red streak you left on the freeway. Society pays for the nursing home you wind up in after you knock a big chunk out of the less-unimportant part of your brain. Society shields its childrens' eyes from your gruesome remains as it drives by, slowly, in the traffic jam you caused. If you want to risk your health and life in order to feel wind in your hair, do it on your own property. We're trying to have a civilization here.
I really don't think anyone with a lick of sense would infer endorsement from the presence of even the unaltered logo. Yes, the goal is to promote (not "sell") an idea and to imply IOC complicity with -- or at least willful ignorance of -- Chinese human rights abuses. But consumer confusion is the aspect trademark law cares about, and I'm just not seeing it here.
Of course, you (and the IOC) may reasonably disagree with my assessment; you're not saying anything utterly demented in doing so. But when two parties disagree on a legal matter, they're supposed to take it to court for an impartial judgement. DMCA takedown notices effectively do an end run around that jurisprudence. That amounts to legalized privately-exercised prior restraint (aka "bullying.")
Most companies DO try to limit their liability as much as possible. That's the whole point of "Limited Liability Corporations".
No it isn't. The liability being limited in an LLC is the personal liability of the investors, so that if the company goes broke its creditors can't come after the partners' homes and other personal assets.
If they did not go after each and every unlicensed use, it wouldn't take long at all for the logo to become unprotected.
Not true. Trademark infringment isn't simply any use whatsoever of a trademarked logo, it's using the logo in the context of selling something, or implying the approval of the trademark holder. (Otherwise the IOC would be going after people posting their "My summer in Beijing" home videos that happen to show the Olympics logo on a pennant in the background, and as far as I know they're not doing that.)
The crucial question, as far as IP law is concerned, is whether a reasonable person could mistake a specific appearance of a trademarked logo to indicate that the trademark holder has produced or endorsed the product, service, or expression of opinion using the logo. No "reasonable person" would think that the IOC is projecting "Free Tibet" videos on the sides of buildings, using their own logo as handcuffs. This is why specific court-ordered injunctions should be required to remedy IP violations, rather than giving legally dubious unilateral DMCA assertions the force of law.
The problem there is that there will always be heavily-backed "artists" selling crap to the masses, and making money at it due to sheer force of marketing. Miley Cyrus/Hannah Montana/Disney don't need copyright to sell out stadiums at $300 per nosebleed ticket. Smaller creators need copyright as protection from the corporate behemoths. If there were no copyright, there couldn't be a GPL or Creative Commons. .
Do you really think doing one good record and acting "cool" justifies the kind of money artist get as reward?
Veering OT here, but people complain about this all the time in sports and movies and any field with a large enough audience to make buckets of money off of. If casting Tom Cruise in your movie didn't pretty much guarantee at least ten million dollars in sales, no one would be paying Tom Cruise ten million dollars to be in a movie. Yes, it's hard to imagine getting paid $25M a year to play baseball, but would it be any better if the team owner were pocketing all the money that star player is bringing in?
Slashdot Mirror
The Mac crowd also doesn't answer this charge, either, so apparently Macs can't print UTF-8 text, either.
...
They were probably just ignoring you because you hadn't even tried to print a UTF-8 encoded document. If you had, you'd have found It Just Works.
I'd be happy to be proved an idiot here
Glad to be of service.
Actually, I'd say it's because the products of engineering and science are considered more valuable to society. Nobody's too gravely affected by being prevented from selling their own non-Disney Mickey Mouse products, but companies being able to keep inventions under patent protection for a century would seriously impede the progress of technology, which arguably relies on building on prior developments far more than Art does. It's easier to make a wholly original painting than it is to build a machine using no products or processes that have already been invented.
There isn't always a shoulder to pull onto, and even if there is, swerving across multiple lanes of traffic while decelerating to get to it is hardly safe driving. Talking on the phone while driving is dangerous because it distracts you from the activity of driving... but what about when what you're talking about is the driving you're currently doing?
The only time I ever am on the phone behind the wheel is to exchange minimal information about what is happening driving-wise right now, e.g. "Make a right past this blue house? Got it... Three blocks? See you in a minute." No extraneous conversation, no lengthy involved bullshit, I am talking directly about what I am looking at.
Truckers, cops, race drivers, pilots... all of them have somehow been managing to communicate with each other while controlling large unwieldy vehicles at high speeds for many decades now. Did the popularity of CB sets correspond with an increase in truck accidents? Would commercial aircraft be safer without radios?
It's not the tool that's the problem, it's the fool who doesn't know how to use it properly. Substitute "cellphone" or "CB radio" or "vehicle" or "email client" for "tool" and you'll see it's still true, although you lose the little rhyming bit there.
Empirical UK centred tidbit:
You misspelled "anecdotal."
And what exactly is wrong with a Studebaker?
The perceived personality that TFA talks about has little to do with a car's actual performance characteristics and more to do with how the car owner wishes to be perceived, at least to anyone who knows the first thing about cars. Round "open-eyed" headlights and a surprised mouth may suggest some sort of anime-style "passive femininity" to people who aren't familiar with, say, a Shelby Cobra or Ferrari Barchetta, but eventually even the nonenthusiast consumer will learn that "angry aerodynamic eyebrow" headlights and "low-slung frowny grilles" can be just as easily applied to mediocre grocery-getting minivans as high-end sports cars. The face of one's car tends to say far more about its owner than it does about the car itself.
Look at the front of a Prius. Obviously not marketed towards macho leadfoot NASCAR wannabes, but look: The grille is clearly smiling at you, but the headlights connote a high-tech aerodynamic (albeit not unfriendly) robot, in contrast to the helpful eager puppy look of, say, a new Thunderbird.
(For my (nonexistent) money, the new car that strikes the best balance is the new Challenger. The headlights are browed just right to look serious without being psychopathically aggressive, and in combination with the slightly smirking lower (intercooler?) intake the whole face looks confident without being obnoxiously threatening. It would have been a much better Bumblebee than that stupid Camaro.)
Please look into the well-established concept of "case law" before parading your own ignorance around in a public forum. I'd suggest reading http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/conlaw/rightofprivacy.html for a start. If the words there have too many syllables for you, try http://www.harrybrowne.org/articles/PrivacyRight.htm
It's a little archaic/British, but "employ" can be a noun, as in "Jeeves is no longer in our employ." But in context of the post it would have been better as "employment."
Only Alaskans have to put up with Governor Palin. All Americans would have to put up with Senator Palin.
Commando teams don't wear underwear, hence the name.
Sorry, the tags weren't obvious, given how many people are suggesting the same thing with a straight face.
Right. The feds come to your office demanding you turn over spreadsheets pertaining to their investigation of your boss' frauds and embezzlements. You hold fast, resolute, secure in the knowledge that your probably criminal employers will go to the mat for you, rather than pinning the whole malfeasance on you and leaving you twisting in the wind!
Hey, you should come work for me. I'm running low on stooges lately.
Okay, I may have oversimplified -- there may be a very few reasons one can refuse to fully cooperate with a supoena, "executive privilege" being among them. I honestly don't know under what circumstances that might apply to a state governor. Regardless, Palin's status has not changed due to her VP nomination. Any grounds she has now to claim immunity from investigation existed (or didn't) well before she entered the national spotlight. Is she claiming that her gubernatorial counsel was incompetent, and only the superior advice of the McCain campaign's crack legal team showed her the light? Again, "it's politically motivated!" is not itself sufficient cause to break the law. The subpoenas are valid. She needs to come up with a reasonable rationale for blowing them off, and so far she hasn't done so.
P.S. "B-b-b-but Clinton!" doesn't cut any ice here, any more than "B-b-b-but Nixon!" would have during Clinton's impeachment proceedings.
"Nuances?" Are you serious? It's a subpoena. You have to answer it. To ignore it is illegal. Any lawyer that advises you to break the law is himself breaking the law. "But it's politically motivated!" is not an excuse. Once you're under oath before the legislature, there may be various grounds for you to refuse to testify, but you can't just not show up.
There may be nuance involved elsewhere in "Troopergate," but there's none here.
She said she would cooperate with the investigation. After she was picked for the VP slot she changed her mind. Not that cooperation with a legislative investigation is voluntary to begin with.
And if you believe that every member of her staff -- independently, with no guidance or direction from their boss whose actions the subpoenas pertained to -- decided to risk a conviction, $500, and six months in jail by ignoring legal subpoenas, well, I've got a bridge to nowhere to sell you. Even in that unlikely scenario, she's got no excuse for not explicitly instructing them to obey the law by responding to the subpoenas. If you become aware that your subordinates are doing something illegal, you don't get a pass by saying "Well, I didn't tell them to do that" while allowing them to continue to engage in illegal activity.
>> And she's telling her staff to ignore subpoenas about whether she campaigned with state resources.
> Reference, please.
http://www.adn.com/palin/story/530493.html
"Alaska Attorney General Talis Colberg said the governor, who was not subpoenaed, declined to participate in the investigation and said Palin administration employees who have been subpoenaed would not appear."
Palin's staff is ignoring supoenas, but parent has misstated what the subpoenas are about. They pertain to "Troopergate," not campaign financing.
You're conflating two very different things. Of course the longer one practices an activity the better one gets at it, but practice time is far from the sole determining factor. No matter how long you shoot baskets in your driveway, you're not going to be able to dunk on Kevin Garnett. Rolling white paint onto apartment ceilings is not going to make you Michelangelo. On the other hand, the WoW model, like a punch clock, directly rewards time spent. The unemployed guy who has 80 hours a week to play WoW isn't rewarded more handsomely because his experience has honed his pointing and clicking skills to a razor's edge, he's rewarded simply because 80 hours > 15 hours.
There were lines to that effect in Running Scared :
Fleeing Suspect: Why you chasing me, man?
Pursuing Cop: Why you running?
Fleeing Suspect: Because you're chasing me!
Your streets and sidewalks are private property, right?
Wrong.
Their actions are causing you no harm.
Maybe not individually, but in aggregate they certainly might. One guy deciding to become, say, a homeless crackhead is unlikely to affect me, but multiply that by a few thousand in my city and then I'm getting hassled for change while stepping over puddles of shit and rotting corpses on my way to work. Of course homeless crackheads don't map directly to ex-football players with blown knees, shriveled testicles, and anger-management issues, but they do illustrate the fundamental fallacy in your Randroid fantasy worldview.
I don't even know where to begin. Health is a private matter? All this money we've wasted on the CDC! Don't mind me coughing on you in this elevator, I'm sure it's not tuberculosis again. I mean, what are the chances?
And you want paramedics to make an on-the-spot decision as to whether you were being a dumbass who brought his injuries upon himself? Incentivize emergency responders to not do their jobs, genius idea.
Society pays for those paramedics and cops and guys who hose down the red streak you left on the freeway. Society pays for the nursing home you wind up in after you knock a big chunk out of the less-unimportant part of your brain. Society shields its childrens' eyes from your gruesome remains as it drives by, slowly, in the traffic jam you caused. If you want to risk your health and life in order to feel wind in your hair, do it on your own property. We're trying to have a civilization here.
I really don't think anyone with a lick of sense would infer endorsement from the presence of even the unaltered logo. Yes, the goal is to promote (not "sell") an idea and to imply IOC complicity with -- or at least willful ignorance of -- Chinese human rights abuses. But consumer confusion is the aspect trademark law cares about, and I'm just not seeing it here.
Of course, you (and the IOC) may reasonably disagree with my assessment; you're not saying anything utterly demented in doing so. But when two parties disagree on a legal matter, they're supposed to take it to court for an impartial judgement. DMCA takedown notices effectively do an end run around that jurisprudence. That amounts to legalized privately-exercised prior restraint (aka "bullying.")
Most companies DO try to limit their liability as much as possible. That's the whole point of "Limited Liability Corporations".
No it isn't. The liability being limited in an LLC is the personal liability of the investors, so that if the company goes broke its creditors can't come after the partners' homes and other personal assets.
Not true. Trademark infringment isn't simply any use whatsoever of a trademarked logo, it's using the logo in the context of selling something, or implying the approval of the trademark holder. (Otherwise the IOC would be going after people posting their "My summer in Beijing" home videos that happen to show the Olympics logo on a pennant in the background, and as far as I know they're not doing that.)
The crucial question, as far as IP law is concerned, is whether a reasonable person could mistake a specific appearance of a trademarked logo to indicate that the trademark holder has produced or endorsed the product, service, or expression of opinion using the logo. No "reasonable person" would think that the IOC is projecting "Free Tibet" videos on the sides of buildings, using their own logo as handcuffs. This is why specific court-ordered injunctions should be required to remedy IP violations, rather than giving legally dubious unilateral DMCA assertions the force of law.
.
Veering OT here, but people complain about this all the time in sports and movies and any field with a large enough audience to make buckets of money off of. If casting Tom Cruise in your movie didn't pretty much guarantee at least ten million dollars in sales, no one would be paying Tom Cruise ten million dollars to be in a movie. Yes, it's hard to imagine getting paid $25M a year to play baseball, but would it be any better if the team owner were pocketing all the money that star player is bringing in?