This would be a colossal economic hit to the major media companies, and to the US economy.
Of course, they conveniently overlook the possible economic burst which would occur by making all those copyrighted works public domain, probably because most of that would come out of small & new companies which jump to take advantage of this new resource, rather than old, large, established companies (typical supply-side economic thinking).
Well, if competence is measured merely by profit, than they aren't incompetent if they get people to pay money for a license, right?
Not if they're forcing people to pay them money through lawsuits. That just means they've got competent lawyers, it doesn't mean that they exploited their own technology competently.
The theorists have an answer for the conservation of momentum thing - we anchor it to a sizable asteroid at geosync, and stretch the tether outward to slingshot loads into space. Plus, whenever one "elevator car" starts up, another starts down.
I believe some engineers have also proposed interacting with the Earth's magnetic field using power drawn from solar panels so that the space elevator can react to (relatively small) unbalancing forces all along its length.
They had their opportunity to make money off those ideas, but screwed up. Why should they get anything for their incompetence? Because they spent money?
it only makes sense for the states to be able to tax us for the upkeep and maintainence of this valuable service.
That would be a viable argument if the states were actually responsible for the upkeep and maintenance of the Internet. Since the Internet is being primarily supported by private enterprise, your argument doesn't make much sense.
Us folks in Oregon (which has no sales tax, and is not likely to get one anytime soon) wouldn't mind having all those companies move their headquarters here. We could use the employment.
Ultimately the difference between Democrats and Republicans is this: 1. Democrats cater to the poor and pander to the middle class, Republicans cater to the poor and pay lip service to the middle class.
That's not quite how I see them. Democratic leadership: pay lip service to the poor, cater to their friends. Republican leadership: pay lip service to the poor & middle class, cater to their friends. (I distinguish between the leadership & the overall parties of sheep.)
"Friends", in either case, is a small subset of overall society.
I do think the Republicans have a little more economic focus: they're still pushing "trickle-down" economics (making the rich MUCH richer so that the rest of society can live off their crumbs), although they don't call it that any more because the name has (rightfully) bad connotations.
Unfortunately, the Democrats haven't really whole-heartedly adopted the ideological opposite economic platform of "trickle-up" economics (where you give the people at the bottom a chance to dig their way out of their hell lives, and leave the rich to their own devices), since the Republicans have successfully (and in many cases, rightfully) pointed to the social program attempts at such actions as massive wastes of money & encouragements of sloth in the general populace.
Oh yeah, and since most poor people don't really vote (especially if they've been labeled felons by many laws which are doing a great job of disenfranchising & alienating huge chunks of the population which need the most help), the Democratic leadership doesn't really have an incentive to help those people out, since it won't help them get into/stay in power.
That would be bad for RedHat, since their entire software portfolio is based on GPLed software. If they tried to enforce any of their patents, then they would lose the right to distribute any of their software (given an appropriate legal followthrough by GPL advocates, of course).
The only reason that acquiring patents is useful to RedHat is for defensive purposes.
I could see doing that, as long as you don't breathe it or get it in your eyes. If it's just refined pepper/mustard juice, then it wouldn't be any more annoying to your throat/stomach than drinking tabasco (and chasing it with the beer probably kept it from sitting around too long on unexposed flesh, then diluted it in the stomach).
The black hole doesn't "suck up" light because it has mass. It sucks up light because the black hole has bent & stretched the space immediately around the black hole which the light is traveling through so much that the light will take an infinite amount of time to get out.
I don't think General Motors is a good example; the company is so large, and creates products spanning so many industries, that you'd have to be applying the trademark to something like fashionable clothing (the new spring shorts line from General Motors!) before you would escape the trademark violation.
Electric motors is probably a product which General Motors sells somewhere, or that a "reasonable' person would assume that that they would sell.
Actually, I've always thought that a TRUE Libertarian would say that the government shouldn't be responsible for enforcing the concept of a "corporation", i.e., there would be no legal construct of corporation. (That wouldn't stop people from banding together as a cooperative economic organization, however.)
All that means is that people are happy enough with the way things are that they don't care enough to want to change anything
More likely, it means that they don't know anything about/don't like any of the choices being presented, and therefore don't bother voting. And the power-that-be like it that way, because then results of elections are determined more by die-hard supporterss & people who are easily swayed by public-relations campaigns.
The conservative philosophical sticking point is, these horrible gays *choose* to exhibit illegal, deviant behavior, and giving them the rights to do such behavior is tantamount to giving them rights above and beyond ordinary people.
Heh - good description. I'm sure that most homosexuals would be quite happy to give heterosexuals the right to marry & express physical love to members of the same sex, thereby ensuring equal rights for all concerned:-)
I understand your viewpoint, I just choose to distinguish between evil & dangerous for my own emotional purposes - I can allow myself to "hate" an evil person (and therefore rationalize extreme responses), whereas I might only fear a dangerous person (and would therefore concentrate on protecting me & mine).
My definition of an evil entity is one who acts in its own interest at the cost of other people's interests.
Sounds like a pretty loose definition of evil - I would call that greedy & selfish rather than evil (no, I don't believe they are the same thing).
My personal definition of an evil entity is someone who enjoys causing pain to others, in a non-consensual manner.
I distinguish between that definion of evil, and someone who causes pain to others, but because they wanted them to (small pain for long-term gain), or someone who causes pain to others but not primarily for enjoyment.
This last type of person, I might not call "evil", but I would certainly call them "dangerous", and would probably try and defend myself from them in a manner similar to the way I would defend myself from an "evil" person, except perhaps w/o the personal hatred.
Then you'd better hope that the universe doesn't end by becoming one black hole, otherwise we'll find all those lawyers waiting for us when it happens:-)
Nah, there's too great a chance that they'd get caught in the time dilation just on the other side of the event horizon. Once that happens, they'd exist (frozen in time) for the entire age of the rest of the universe. Do you really that?:-)
I'm perfectly willing to give the Spam Archive the rights to all of the physical copies of spam which have been sent to my e-mail account.
Since these copies have been given to me by the copyright owner and are therefore legal, then it should be fine for me to give them to the Archive, the same way that people can donate books to a library, right?
Slashdot Mirror
Of course, they conveniently overlook the possible economic burst which would occur by making all those copyrighted works public domain, probably because most of that would come out of small & new companies which jump to take advantage of this new resource, rather than old, large, established companies (typical supply-side economic thinking).
Not if they're forcing people to pay them money through lawsuits. That just means they've got competent lawyers, it doesn't mean that they exploited their own technology competently.
I believe some engineers have also proposed interacting with the Earth's magnetic field using power drawn from solar panels so that the space elevator can react to (relatively small) unbalancing forces all along its length.
They had their opportunity to make money off those ideas, but screwed up. Why should they get anything for their incompetence? Because they spent money?
That would be a viable argument if the states were actually responsible for the upkeep and maintenance of the Internet. Since the Internet is being primarily supported by private enterprise, your argument doesn't make much sense.
Us folks in Oregon (which has no sales tax, and is not likely to get one anytime soon) wouldn't mind having all those companies move their headquarters here. We could use the employment.
That's not quite how I see them. Democratic leadership: pay lip service to the poor, cater to their friends. Republican leadership: pay lip service to the poor & middle class, cater to their friends. (I distinguish between the leadership & the overall parties of sheep.)
"Friends", in either case, is a small subset of overall society.
I do think the Republicans have a little more economic focus: they're still pushing "trickle-down" economics (making the rich MUCH richer so that the rest of society can live off their crumbs), although they don't call it that any more because the name has (rightfully) bad connotations.
Unfortunately, the Democrats haven't really whole-heartedly adopted the ideological opposite economic platform of "trickle-up" economics (where you give the people at the bottom a chance to dig their way out of their hell lives, and leave the rich to their own devices), since the Republicans have successfully (and in many cases, rightfully) pointed to the social program attempts at such actions as massive wastes of money & encouragements of sloth in the general populace.
Oh yeah, and since most poor people don't really vote (especially if they've been labeled felons by many laws which are doing a great job of disenfranchising & alienating huge chunks of the population which need the most help), the Democratic leadership doesn't really have an incentive to help those people out, since it won't help them get into/stay in power.
That would be bad for RedHat, since their entire software portfolio is based on GPLed software. If they tried to enforce any of their patents, then they would lose the right to distribute any of their software (given an appropriate legal followthrough by GPL advocates, of course).
The only reason that acquiring patents is useful to RedHat is for defensive purposes.
I could see doing that, as long as you don't breathe it or get it in your eyes. If it's just refined pepper/mustard juice, then it wouldn't be any more annoying to your throat/stomach than drinking tabasco (and chasing it with the beer probably kept it from sitting around too long on unexposed flesh, then diluted it in the stomach).
The black hole doesn't "suck up" light because it has mass. It sucks up light because the black hole has bent & stretched the space immediately around the black hole which the light is traveling through so much that the light will take an infinite amount of time to get out.
I don't think General Motors is a good example; the company is so large, and creates products spanning so many industries, that you'd have to be applying the trademark to something like fashionable clothing (the new spring shorts line from General Motors!) before you would escape the trademark violation.
Electric motors is probably a product which General Motors sells somewhere, or that a "reasonable' person would assume that that they would sell.
When you're in an unequal partnership with a company the size of Microsoft, you have very little or no leverage to insist on clauses like that.
Actually, I've always thought that a TRUE Libertarian would say that the government shouldn't be responsible for enforcing the concept of a "corporation", i.e., there would be no legal construct of corporation. (That wouldn't stop people from banding together as a cooperative economic organization, however.)
I've never thought of Schlafly as a "thoughtful" conservative writer; it scares me that she said so many things that I agreed with in one editorial.
More likely, it means that they don't know anything about/don't like any of the choices being presented, and therefore don't bother voting. And the power-that-be like it that way, because then results of elections are determined more by die-hard supporterss & people who are easily swayed by public-relations campaigns.
Therefore, by inductive proof, you can show that Amazon now owns any type of online shopping which requires any kind of clicking.
I wouldn't show the last episode to little kids though; it's named "Egregious" for a reason. It's still damned funny though.
Heh - good description. I'm sure that most homosexuals would be quite happy to give heterosexuals the right to marry & express physical love to members of the same sex, thereby ensuring equal rights for all concerned :-)
I understand your viewpoint, I just choose to distinguish between evil & dangerous for my own emotional purposes - I can allow myself to "hate" an evil person (and therefore rationalize extreme responses), whereas I might only fear a dangerous person (and would therefore concentrate on protecting me & mine).
Sounds like a pretty loose definition of evil - I would call that greedy & selfish rather than evil (no, I don't believe they are the same thing).
My personal definition of an evil entity is someone who enjoys causing pain to others, in a non-consensual manner.
I distinguish between that definion of evil, and someone who causes pain to others, but because they wanted them to (small pain for long-term gain), or someone who causes pain to others but not primarily for enjoyment.
This last type of person, I might not call "evil", but I would certainly call them "dangerous", and would probably try and defend myself from them in a manner similar to the way I would defend myself from an "evil" person, except perhaps w/o the personal hatred.
Then you'd better hope that the universe doesn't end by becoming one black hole, otherwise we'll find all those lawyers waiting for us when it happens :-)
Maybe Americans (the general culture) will become a little less uptight about sex.
On the other hand, I don't want to know what happens to those cultures who are already less uptight about sex.
We're working on it, though...
Nah, there's too great a chance that they'd get caught in the time dilation just on the other side of the event horizon. Once that happens, they'd exist (frozen in time) for the entire age of the rest of the universe. Do you really that? :-)
I'm perfectly willing to give the Spam Archive the rights to all of the physical copies of spam which have been sent to my e-mail account.
Since these copies have been given to me by the copyright owner and are therefore legal, then it should be fine for me to give them to the Archive, the same way that people can donate books to a library, right?