Or at minimal, if you have a bank of lawyers who can outspend the prosecution to explain why they stayed 'within the rules', then you have no fear of recourse. Time and time again we see the little guy still fail even if they stay within the strict or literal interoperation of the rules if they violate the 'spirit' of them.
There is a lot of middle ground though. Go into any DIY home improvement center and there will be a wide range of tools available for consumers to support any number of wood or metal projects. Some machines (like a CNC or vacuform frames) end up being outside what the average DIY consumer will utilize, but many others (drill press, table saw, etc) have found their way into many non-producers homes and projects. It is still pretty early to guess which way these plastic fabricators will go.
Well, it is a viable business model. We have not gotten away from it because it tends to work.
People complain about proprietary consumables when it comes to printers, yet people keep buying the ones that use them. Printers exist that are pretty favorable to 3rd party refills, but they are more expensive so people tend not to buy them.
You can have low initial cost + higher recurring cost, or high initial cost + low recurring cost. There is enough consumer demand for both models that options exist, but just because both exist does not mean we can easily mix and match, not if we want the company to keep building then devices.
Congress has a pretty poor, or at least erratic, track record of actually enforcing the 'under oath' part of testifying in front of congress. Unless you are really small or really unpopular, even getting caught in outright lies is unlikely to have any consequences.
yeah, but the goal is to become one of the people working against other's interests. If one tries to make the system better it reduces their god given payout that such intelligent people are entitled to, and if they don't get it that means some sinister force like the government is keeping it from them.
Sadly there is a bit of an attitude that collective bargaining is something only poor/weak people do, and the better class of people negotiate as individuals, even if it means they loose a lot. Which I guess makes sense, the middle class is already doing pretty well, so they can afford it... individual negotiation is a philosophical luxury since they are generally negotiating amount of luxury in their life.
Well, no. That is why we do not have a free market, pure free markets require a very idealized society where all sorts of things that states and regulation take care of simply do not exist, and thus are not very resilient when having to deal with other parts of the system. It is kinda like communism or anarchism... it would work great if humans were, well, not humans, and some magical force prevented defacto forces influencing things.
Oh I agree in this case it would have been to their benefit to talk to a lawyer, but unfortunately people tend to overestimate just what contracts can do.
I was more referring to the general problem that doing so is not a panacea if one's resources are limited and an official wants to make your life difficult for some reason. It only really helps when you can afford to defend yourself in court, and even if you do everything perfectly unless you hire a lawyer to handle demonstrating this to the court the best one can hope is that they can get the other party to back down rather then bother with court.
I would go another direction and say that the problem with the legal system is how arbitrarily it is applied. Critics of the ruling have pointed out that the law was not really intended for this usage and this is the first time it has been applied this way by a state service that does not exactly have the best reputation for tracking down deadbeats who actually are a parent. So it was an unusual usage of the law and an unusual amount of state effort put into it, all to go after someone who helped lesbians in a political climate where certain people are having additional weight put on them for fear they are being 'uppity'.
Sadly, even crossing your Is and dotting your Ts is less important then when you have officials looking to score points by hurting you....officials who have all their expenses paid while the person who it is being applied to pays out of their own pocket.
True, individuals anticipated all sorts of things (both right and wrong), but so much of it was rooted in personal philosophy and so little could be backed up with any kind of historical evidence or models, even when they were right it was little more then an personal guess.
Unfortunately the way our voting system was constructed, you WILL always end up with 2 parties. End stop. Every other country that uses the US system has also ended up with 2 parties, it is built into the math, and no matter how much enthusiasm there is for any particular 3rd party, the 2 party system is what it will stabilize to every, single, time.
One can philosophize all they want, but the way our system was built, voting 3rd party streghtens the position of the candidate furthest from the voter's preferences. It is no throwing your vote away, it is helping the worst candidate. This can not be changed any more then 'if we all think positively and stop believing in gravity we can all fly!'.
It would be better if people who voted 3rd party just stayed home and spent their time on forums talking about how pure they are. They do not contribute to politics, all they do is a bit of blame shifting and making themselves feel better while actually helping the candidate furthest from their position.
While PotUS has a great deal of dejure power, their defacto power is actually much less then people think. It is a political position that constant navigation around institutional powers that pre-existed the person and will be there long after they are gone. If one does not keep them happy, one's ability to actually do anything quickly evaporates, no matter how much 'on the books' power PotUS technically has.
No, voting 3rd party does not actually help. It, unfortunately, is tightly integrated into the problem and contributes to the very effect proponents claim it counters. Voting 3rd party is for people who have a great deal of idealism but a poor grasp of math, politics, or history.
Sadly, the math pretty much guarantees this outcome. The people who designed the system we use had few models to look to and did not have the background to anticipate the problems that would arise.
Even when the government is not corrupt, dishonest, or incompetent, the people in power often believe in what they are doing and that their actions lead to a better world, thus even with the best of intentions on both sides the government view can still be that the person is a traitor. This is even more the case when more then one view on what a 'better world' is comprised of and where they see priorities lay, who is important and who should 'take one for the team'.
This really strikes me as something going very wrong in the tech industry, or perhaps where it intersects the financial industry. Any time you start seeing such offers it is generally a good sign that there is too much investment money and not enough good investments floating around... or some very dangerous group think is going on.
It means they are claiming they are keeping to the spirt of trademark law and only going after companies that might cause consumer confusion by using the trademark for a product that is similar to their own. So they claim they are defending it but not attempting to be overly broad and apply it outside the narrow usage they intend.
This of course is pretty similar to simply using limited resources to only go after companies that are direct competitors, then again that is kinda the point of trademarks....
To be fair, trademarks are probably the least damaging 'fencing off' you can have of ideas. In fact they are not even walling off ideas, just branding. Trademarks are part of how consumers associate a product with the company that produces it. They say nothing about the product (outside the industry it is in since trademarks are fairly narrow in what they cover) or the ideas contained within it, only what title you can market it as. It makes it difficult for companies to pretend to be each other, but does not stop companies from using each other's ideas and designs.
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Only if I have enough lawyers and subtle political threats to explain why a corporate fine is more appropriate then jail time.
Or at minimal, if you have a bank of lawyers who can outspend the prosecution to explain why they stayed 'within the rules', then you have no fear of recourse. Time and time again we see the little guy still fail even if they stay within the strict or literal interoperation of the rules if they violate the 'spirit' of them.
Meh, the wealthy and well connected have always gotten a different brand of justice then the general population.
There is a lot of middle ground though. Go into any DIY home improvement center and there will be a wide range of tools available for consumers to support any number of wood or metal projects. Some machines (like a CNC or vacuform frames) end up being outside what the average DIY consumer will utilize, but many others (drill press, table saw, etc) have found their way into many non-producers homes and projects. It is still pretty early to guess which way these plastic fabricators will go.
Well, it is a viable business model. We have not gotten away from it because it tends to work.
People complain about proprietary consumables when it comes to printers, yet people keep buying the ones that use them. Printers exist that are pretty favorable to 3rd party refills, but they are more expensive so people tend not to buy them.
You can have low initial cost + higher recurring cost, or high initial cost + low recurring cost. There is enough consumer demand for both models that options exist, but just because both exist does not mean we can easily mix and match, not if we want the company to keep building then devices.
Congress has a pretty poor, or at least erratic, track record of actually enforcing the 'under oath' part of testifying in front of congress. Unless you are really small or really unpopular, even getting caught in outright lies is unlikely to have any consequences.
yeah, but the goal is to become one of the people working against other's interests. If one tries to make the system better it reduces their god given payout that such intelligent people are entitled to, and if they don't get it that means some sinister force like the government is keeping it from them.
Sadly there is a bit of an attitude that collective bargaining is something only poor/weak people do, and the better class of people negotiate as individuals, even if it means they loose a lot. Which I guess makes sense, the middle class is already doing pretty well, so they can afford it... individual negotiation is a philosophical luxury since they are generally negotiating amount of luxury in their life.
Well, no. That is why we do not have a free market, pure free markets require a very idealized society where all sorts of things that states and regulation take care of simply do not exist, and thus are not very resilient when having to deal with other parts of the system. It is kinda like communism or anarchism... it would work great if humans were, well, not humans, and some magical force prevented defacto forces influencing things.
Oh I agree in this case it would have been to their benefit to talk to a lawyer, but unfortunately people tend to overestimate just what contracts can do.
I was more referring to the general problem that doing so is not a panacea if one's resources are limited and an official wants to make your life difficult for some reason. It only really helps when you can afford to defend yourself in court, and even if you do everything perfectly unless you hire a lawyer to handle demonstrating this to the court the best one can hope is that they can get the other party to back down rather then bother with court.
You could also run A/UX, which if I recall correctly was a good 'best of both worlds' solution.
Medical issues, the type you really can not plan for and can happen to anybody.
I would go another direction and say that the problem with the legal system is how arbitrarily it is applied. Critics of the ruling have pointed out that the law was not really intended for this usage and this is the first time it has been applied this way by a state service that does not exactly have the best reputation for tracking down deadbeats who actually are a parent. So it was an unusual usage of the law and an unusual amount of state effort put into it, all to go after someone who helped lesbians in a political climate where certain people are having additional weight put on them for fear they are being 'uppity'.
.officials who have all their expenses paid while the person who it is being applied to pays out of their own pocket.
Sadly, even crossing your Is and dotting your Ts is less important then when you have officials looking to score points by hurting you...
True, individuals anticipated all sorts of things (both right and wrong), but so much of it was rooted in personal philosophy and so little could be backed up with any kind of historical evidence or models, even when they were right it was little more then an personal guess.
Unfortunately the way our voting system was constructed, you WILL always end up with 2 parties. End stop. Every other country that uses the US system has also ended up with 2 parties, it is built into the math, and no matter how much enthusiasm there is for any particular 3rd party, the 2 party system is what it will stabilize to every, single, time.
One can philosophize all they want, but the way our system was built, voting 3rd party streghtens the position of the candidate furthest from the voter's preferences. It is no throwing your vote away, it is helping the worst candidate. This can not be changed any more then 'if we all think positively and stop believing in gravity we can all fly!'.
It would be better if people who voted 3rd party just stayed home and spent their time on forums talking about how pure they are. They do not contribute to politics, all they do is a bit of blame shifting and making themselves feel better while actually helping the candidate furthest from their position.
While PotUS has a great deal of dejure power, their defacto power is actually much less then people think. It is a political position that constant navigation around institutional powers that pre-existed the person and will be there long after they are gone. If one does not keep them happy, one's ability to actually do anything quickly evaporates, no matter how much 'on the books' power PotUS technically has.
No, voting 3rd party does not actually help. It, unfortunately, is tightly integrated into the problem and contributes to the very effect proponents claim it counters. Voting 3rd party is for people who have a great deal of idealism but a poor grasp of math, politics, or history.
Sadly, the math pretty much guarantees this outcome. The people who designed the system we use had few models to look to and did not have the background to anticipate the problems that would arise.
Well, if they are making saner investment decisions then American companies right now, a little overlording might not be such a bad thing.
Even when the government is not corrupt, dishonest, or incompetent, the people in power often believe in what they are doing and that their actions lead to a better world, thus even with the best of intentions on both sides the government view can still be that the person is a traitor. This is even more the case when more then one view on what a 'better world' is comprised of and where they see priorities lay, who is important and who should 'take one for the team'.
This really strikes me as something going very wrong in the tech industry, or perhaps where it intersects the financial industry. Any time you start seeing such offers it is generally a good sign that there is too much investment money and not enough good investments floating around... or some very dangerous group think is going on.
But... but.. the PC is doomed! 3 months from now there will be nothing but tablets and cell phones!
It means they are claiming they are keeping to the spirt of trademark law and only going after companies that might cause consumer confusion by using the trademark for a product that is similar to their own. So they claim they are defending it but not attempting to be overly broad and apply it outside the narrow usage they intend.
This of course is pretty similar to simply using limited resources to only go after companies that are direct competitors, then again that is kinda the point of trademarks....
To be fair, trademarks are probably the least damaging 'fencing off' you can have of ideas. In fact they are not even walling off ideas, just branding. Trademarks are part of how consumers associate a product with the company that produces it. They say nothing about the product (outside the industry it is in since trademarks are fairly narrow in what they cover) or the ideas contained within it, only what title you can market it as. It makes it difficult for companies to pretend to be each other, but does not stop companies from using each other's ideas and designs.