Property rights are not like any other human rights; they are graceful given out by the government and usually have many very particular clauses of what you can and cant do with it. You will find the government still holds a very strong hold on the plot you call Home Sweet Home. Your human rights include living happily and other such wonderful things, but the American Bill of Rights does not give every American a plot of land to own.
In the case of the hand-waving raving lunatic on your lawn, the government has two individuals rights that it needs to protect. In the case of a peaceful lunatic impeding on my use of my property, say for example someone with Downs syndrome pissing on my roses, I must acknowledge that the government does not care whether it is the land that I have property rights too; the trespasser has rights too.
Many western cultures have introduced very open laws regarding the right to peaceful protests. If that happens to be on your lawn, you do not have the right to remove them forcibly, otherwise you are assaulting them. The appropriate way to deal with it is to negotiate with them or call the police. Remember you do not own your land in the sense it is yours to do with as you want. Property rights are given to you by the government, and they are limited by the laws that prevail.
As another example, if you walk onto my lawn with metal spikes in the ground, you can and probably would sue me.
It kind of reminds me of the people who jokingly talk about blowing schools up. They're not serious, but at some point they have to be taken seriously.
Why? Most first world countries protect a wide range of speech. For example, Americans have a Bill of Rights; Amendment I reads to me as allowing Americans to do and say what they like, with the exception that if assembling together must be peaceably. It doesnt take too much to infer that speech is not limited in this way, and so hate speech is still O.K..
When they alter the laws, or sufficiently alter the publics perception of illegal file trading, a new protocol wont help, because only the purists will be allowed to use those protocols or applications.
These groups define a large percentage of the american life, and they will not give in easily.
If that is the requirements of antitrust law, then it is understandable that antitrust cases are only slaps on the wrist.
Stops The Unlawful Conduct
Antitrust is a civil matter, and business operations are a very dynamic problem. A suitable outcome could be: We fired the person responsible. Of course the position would eventually be filled by someone with the same objectives.
Prevents Recurrence Of Unlawful Conduct
This is similar to the first; Judges are not business consultants, providing guidance on how a company should alter its future practises. Judges cant rule: For 3 years the company motto will be "Don't be evil".
Restores Competitive Conditions To The Market
This requirement would nesitate a economist provide the judgement!
The outcomes of anti-trust should be similar to SEC powers, and escalate with repeat offenses:
Provide a large disincentive; like the current payouts to competitors,
Force the business to undertake measures to rectify the market changes they have made.
Bar the entity from a section of the market for a period of time.
Its not important whether Microsoft notices the drop in the bank balance or not. The continual slaps on the wrist make public display of the bad practises at Microsoft, and that may make others think twice about the yummy lollies MS offers. Also, these payouts put money in the coffers of Microsofts competitors; it may be trivial to Microsoft, but it is real hard cash that allows others to keep competing.
Consider what $850M could buy IBM in terms of OSS software project funding, and the effect that will have on Microsoft.
So, instead of talking to the nice folks at mysql.com (the business), they hit the mailing lists looking for legal consultation on licensing issues with the expected results, and in the end decided to talk to the nice folks at Oracle and rewrite the project?
My guess is they wanted to go with Oracle anyway, otherwise they would have invested the legal and project management time required to keep using the existing project codebase.
The dual licenses of Qt and berkleydb are good examples of why the GPL is not good for commerce. These software dev. firms have a business plan that depends on other software dev. firms not releasing source code.
Now I love Qt and think Trolltech are doing a great job; I am merely pointing out that these OSS-firms know their industry: Software dev. firms do not want to release source code! As a result, there is a short-term market created out of providing the OSS production improvements to firms that cant grasp it, and are willing to pay to purchase the voodoo.
And besides the obvious virtual part of this patent, sales staff have been doing it for a while now.
A person walks into the clothes shop wearing denim jeans and is looking for a jacket. The attendant will suggest what is most likely to be purchased based on what purchases other denim wearing consumers have made.
Its called sales, and you can find out lots of other great tactics at your local library, and now apparently the patent office is a repository of knowledge, so you may want to check there as well.
Maybe I should patent using the patent database to lookup known facts and mathematical formulas. Its definately looking like a trend that is on the increase.
... and with Amazon aggressively hunting down all forms of absurdity, they would have a constant income stream to defend; the patent system would be propped up, and a new bill would be passed to determine a patents life-span alphabetically.
A diverse set of XML-ified configuration files could be more complicated than the current text file soup in/etc.
XML configuration files would end up with very handy binary objects, and references to other parts of the XML file or other XML files, and other monstrosities yet to be conceived.
And it is quite likely that the validity of many of the new XML configuration files could not be checked anyway. As an example, Ant, touted as more sensical than make, uses a XML configuration file that cant be validated without creating a chick-and-egg problem.
It is a requirement here in Australia to hold a license for 12 months on a motorcycle with a lower engine capacity. This would be perfect, but it appears that the requirements only permit 260cc or below; there is no mention of a horsepower or top speed restriction. Has anybody heard of these rules being bent?
Slashdot Mirror
Property rights are not like any other human rights; they are graceful given out by the government and usually have many very particular clauses of what you can and cant do with it. You will find the government still holds a very strong hold on the plot you call Home Sweet Home. Your human rights include living happily and other such wonderful things, but the American Bill of Rights does not give every American a plot of land to own.
In the case of the hand-waving raving lunatic on your lawn, the government has two individuals rights that it needs to protect. In the case of a peaceful lunatic impeding on my use of my property, say for example someone with Downs syndrome pissing on my roses, I must acknowledge that the government does not care whether it is the land that I have property rights too; the trespasser has rights too.
Many western cultures have introduced very open laws regarding the right to peaceful protests. If that happens to be on your lawn, you do not have the right to remove them forcibly, otherwise you are assaulting them. The appropriate way to deal with it is to negotiate with them or call the police. Remember you do not own your land in the sense it is yours to do with as you want. Property rights are given to you by the government, and they are limited by the laws that prevail.
As another example, if you walk onto my lawn with metal spikes in the ground, you can and probably would sue me.
Seriously, it's an ideology. Some people have them.
With Bush at the helm, it may make more sense to nominate HAL for the job.
http://www.lucidcafe.com/library/96mar/oconnor.htm l
It kind of reminds me of the people who jokingly talk about blowing schools up. They're not serious, but at some point they have to be taken seriously.
Why? Most first world countries protect a wide range of speech. For example, Americans have a Bill of Rights; Amendment I reads to me as allowing Americans to do and say what they like, with the exception that if assembling together must be peaceably. It doesnt take too much to infer that speech is not limited in this way, and so hate speech is still O.K..When they alter the laws, or sufficiently alter the publics perception of illegal file trading, a new protocol wont help, because only the purists will be allowed to use those protocols or applications.
These groups define a large percentage of the american life, and they will not give in easily.
Stops The Unlawful Conduct
Antitrust is a civil matter, and business operations are a very dynamic problem. A suitable outcome could be: We fired the person responsible. Of course the position would eventually be filled by someone with the same objectives.
Prevents Recurrence Of Unlawful Conduct
This is similar to the first; Judges are not business consultants, providing guidance on how a company should alter its future practises. Judges cant rule: For 3 years the company motto will be "Don't be evil".Restores Competitive Conditions To The Market
This requirement would nesitate a economist provide the judgement!The outcomes of anti-trust should be similar to SEC powers, and escalate with repeat offenses:
Its not important whether Microsoft notices the drop in the bank balance or not. The continual slaps on the wrist make public display of the bad practises at Microsoft, and that may make others think twice about the yummy lollies MS offers. Also, these payouts put money in the coffers of Microsofts competitors; it may be trivial to Microsoft, but it is real hard cash that allows others to keep competing.
Consider what $850M could buy IBM in terms of OSS software project funding, and the effect that will have on Microsoft.
So, instead of talking to the nice folks at mysql.com (the business), they hit the mailing lists looking for legal consultation on licensing issues with the expected results, and in the end decided to talk to the nice folks at Oracle and rewrite the project?
My guess is they wanted to go with Oracle anyway, otherwise they would have invested the legal and project management time required to keep using the existing project codebase.
The dual licenses of Qt and berkleydb are good examples of why the GPL is not good for commerce. These software dev. firms have a business plan that depends on other software dev. firms not releasing source code.
Now I love Qt and think Trolltech are doing a great job; I am merely pointing out that these OSS-firms know their industry: Software dev. firms do not want to release source code! As a result, there is a short-term market created out of providing the OSS production improvements to firms that cant grasp it, and are willing to pay to purchase the voodoo.
And besides the obvious virtual part of this patent, sales staff have been doing it for a while now.
Its called sales, and you can find out lots of other great tactics at your local library, and now apparently the patent office is a repository of knowledge, so you may want to check there as well.
Maybe I should patent using the patent database to lookup known facts and mathematical formulas. Its definately looking like a trend that is on the increase.
... and with Amazon aggressively hunting down all forms of absurdity, they would have a constant income stream to defend; the patent system would be propped up, and a new bill would be passed to determine a patents life-span alphabetically.
In related news, herds of Firefox users experienced difficulties installing the toolbar.
Netcraft was not available for comment.
A diverse set of XML-ified configuration files could be more complicated than the current text file soup in /etc.
XML configuration files would end up with very handy binary objects, and references to other parts of the XML file or other XML files, and other monstrosities yet to be conceived.
And it is quite likely that the validity of many of the new XML configuration files could not be checked anyway. As an example, Ant, touted as more sensical than make, uses a XML configuration file that cant be validated without creating a chick-and-egg problem.
It is a requirement here in Australia to hold a license for 12 months on a motorcycle with a lower engine capacity. This would be perfect, but it appears that the requirements only permit 260cc or below; there is no mention of a horsepower or top speed restriction. Has anybody heard of these rules being bent?