Actually, it's the other way around, C++ is the poor mans objC. Unlike C++ it's a C superset, and way back with NeXT it was demonstrably leading to fewer bugs and less developer time on the same job. Apple has made some poor decisions in its role as de facto shepherd but the language is solid in its role.
Not the same issues. Telling me to obey copyright law is one thing. Telling me that you will control MY hardware and prevent me from doing things that *might* be copyright violations (or might not, the hardware has no way to tell) is an entirely different thing.
The modern state is quite a recent thing. If you look at say Saxon England, you dont have the modern concept of a state at all. yet you did have regulation in the broadest meaning - quite an impressive and organic system, in fact, which became the basis of English Common-law and thus of US Law, but which has parallels around the world, as close as Iceland and Scandinavia, as far away as the Iroquois Confederacy - as long as humans have been economic animals there have been markets, and as you said they cannot exist without regulation in the broadest sense.
There there was no state, but organic customs that set and enforced the ground rules in a more-or-less transparent way.
"The "market" has no lobbyists or campaign contributions, the market is not a player, it is the field on which the players compete."
And yet everyone involved will try to rebuild that field to their own advantage.
Exactly! This is the key conundrum of human government.
The point I am trying to make is that the same people who blame the politicians for effectively taking corporate "bribes" turn around and complain that regulation is an unfair infringement on free markets.
You say that as if you see some inconsistency?
I dont. Discriminatory legislation masquerading as "regulation" is the one side of the coin, bribery or improper influence of one form or another is the other side of the same coin. Quid pro quo. Get rid of one you get rid of the other. Why would businesses bother throwing money at congresscritters if those same congresscritters didnt have any power to tilt the market in favour of one against another? To ask the question is to answer it.
You seem to recognize this, because you are saying that it is the responsibility of politicians to make sure that CEOs can't, for example, make bribes (that is, that the government, like an umpire, needs to put limits on players in the game...i.e. regulation). Every game has rules.
Yes, every game has rules, and that means umpires, in one form or another. In our current system the politicians have the power to play umpire, and with that comes the responsibility to do so fairly.
BTW the same arguments you make to apologize for inscrupulous CEOs can be applied to less-than-ethical politicians. Politics is an expensive and dirty game, you can't get by without monetary contributions.
The difference is that a CEO never takes an oath to serve any other goal but profit, and lacks the coërcive power of the state. His job is to run a commercial enterprise successfully, which means turning a profit, and he is expected (indeed, required) to use any lawful means at his disposal to do so. A politician, on the other hand, takes an oath to serve the general welfare, and *does* wield the power of the state.
I believe you are saying that in an ideal world the free market should work perfectly and monopolies would not occur.
Well, depends on what exactly you mean by 'ideal world' I suppose but that isnt too far off. A free market may not work 'perfectly' but certainly better than any other option. Monopolies might arise in a free market under certain conditions, but without state power backing them they can only be ephemeral and unable to do the same sort of harm that a monopoly created and maintained by state power can do.
IRL, free markets cannot be both competitive and unregulated.
In a sense that is true, with a sufficiently broad definition of regulation. But regulation, understood that broadly, does not require a state; indeed it predates it.
The example that comes readily to mind of a monopoly at that time and place would be the railroads, and those railroad monopolies are in fact perfect examples of my point. These were built as much by cultivating legislation as by laying track. The land-grants alone make it clear that there was no free market involved.
If the "market" buys this outcome with corporate lobbyists and campaign contributions (i.e. regulatory capture) then the market is a huge part of the failure.
The "market" has no lobbyists or campaign contributions, the market is not a player, it is the field on which the players compete. Blaming the market itself for the actions of would-be monopolists is nonsensical. Like claiming the field is at fault when players cheat. The field is an inanimate object, it cannot be at fault in any meaningful sense. But the umpires - the umpires who have tremendous power and the obligation to use that power fairly, justly - they may be at fault. The umpires in the market are created by the state - no other organisation has that power.
Imagine a huge corporation lobbying their way into a monopoly type situation. And then rather than call it a market failure, you say, "Well it's the governments fault for essentially taking our bribes! You should have known better than to listen to us!"
Not for taking *our* bribes but for taking *their* bribes, thank you, and yes, the root of the problem is clearly on the government side.
It's a CEO's job to look after the business. If paying bribes is necessary to continue doing business, of course the CEO will be paying bribes. He didnt create the distorted market, he is just playing on the field he finds himself. It is NOT his job to look out for the general welfare, and even if he wants to he isnt in a position to do so.
It is the state, not the commercial enterprise, which is tasked with looking out for the general welfare, and which has the power to do so. It is the state alone which has the power to "regulate" the market, for good or ill. If the state chooses to use that power to seek bribes, and to rig the market against those who do not pay them, this is no failure of the market, and it is no failure of the businesses who do what they must in order to compete.
Of course a monopoly is not an efficient outcome. Did you even read what I wrote before hitting reply? FFS.
The point is that the market doesnt create this outcome. The state does. That is not a market failure, it's a political failure.
Agreed, a market with a true monopoly player is not a free market.
Disagreed that it's necessarily a market failure. In every single instance I can think of, monopolies arise as the result of state interference in the market, either directly or indirectly, which only happens in command economies or "mixed" economies, not in free markets.
Studying economics, btw, is a common route to libertarianism.
Because T-Mobile service is pretty well nonexistent most places where I need my mobile to work. Also I have unlimited text, data, voice, and roaming with my current carrier - does TMobile even offer that?
Lagering is not secondary fermentation, but storage at low temperature.
Lagers are made with bottom-fermenting yeasts, at low temperatures. Ales are made with top-fermenting yeasts, at (relatively) high temperatures. Either type can and should have a secondary fermentation phase.
I'm not wrong, I did oversimplify. I've noticed that if I dont do that I tend to produce walls of text and people dont like that for some reason.:P
First adult-lactose-tolerance is NOT exclusive to Europeans. Evidence indicates probably 3 different strains of the gene, only one from Europe, but Europe is definitely the area where the evidence and effect is the strongest. Guess where else though? Middle-east, and East Africa, also appear to have indigenous strains of lactose-tolerance.
The mutation itself is very old and could be expected to have occurred many times, however under "normal" conditions (for the human race over time, hunting and gathering is normal, everything else is a very recent abberation) the gene gives no advantage. It wont be selected *against* mind you, so it can propagate and be found all around the world, but it's not selected *for* either, so it remains a rare and random thing. BUT, once you have animal husbandry, suddenly that changes. Whenever there is a tight year and food is scarce, but herd animals are part of the equation, the mutation becomes an advantage and can be selected for. Combined with the fact that the mutation is *dominant* over the ancestral form, it can be expected that it spread quite quickly in areas where it gave an advantage. And animal husbandry appears to have independently developed in all three places.
It nowhere else became so dominant as in Europe, however. Lactose intolerance is virtually nonexistent in Northern Europe, but affects roughly half the population in the Middle East and North Africa, and virtually everyone in South-east Asia or South Africa. Nor is lactose tolerance a completely binary affect - we all produce lactase at birth, and different individuals lose that ability at a different rate, so that while a japanese adult is quite unlikely to produce it at all, someone of middle-eastern extraction may well experience partial intolerance - this person DOES produce lactase, but in smaller amounts than the typical European, and will be fine consuming milk products in moderation, but will become temporarily intolerent after consuming a certain amount.
WRT Cheese and Yogurt the thing gets yet more complex. Yogurt made in traditional ways contains lactase (the chemical needed to digest lactose) already! So even a person who is completely lactose intolerent can consume it in moderation. However modern yogurt may contain reduced lactase as well as an increased amount of lactose as a result of modern techniques of manufacture. Traditionally made cheeses can vary greatly between varieties, but in general they will contain reduced amounts of lactose, in some cases greatly reduced, but again modern techniques boost the lactose level.
This is still greatly oversimplified, btw, but should be good enough to put your query in a better context.
In regards to developing a dairy culture, I think my initial point is still quite correct. The genetics and the 'dairy culture' are examples of co-evolution, really. Jumping from generalised animal husbandry to specialised dairy culture is simply not going to happen unless there is significant adult-lactase production in the population. Yet there is no way for adult-lactase production to become common in the absence of animal-husbandry which includes suitable milking animals. The unlikely, but obviously not impossible, convergence of both the genetic mutation and the material culture is the reason why Europeans, and to a lesser degree ME and NA populations, developed the dairy culture which produces cheese, among other things. Now it's perfectly feasible for a Japanese person to be introduced to imported cheese, develop a taste for it, etc. today. She could carefully select traditionally made cheeses with low lactose content, pop a lactase pill with it, and do fine. (I know someone who does just that, in fact.) But even 100 years ago that wasnt possible. And for that reason, it would make no sense at all to expect any sort of dairy culture to have developed in Japan, and therefore it is just supremely unsurprising that you would have a hard time finding good cheese there.
This is unsurprising.
Humans in general lose the ability to digest milk products before becoming adults. As a result there is no real dairy tradition through most of the world, and Japan is part of that majority.
There is a mutation which allows certain people to continue using dairy food in adulthood, and it is found primarily in European populations. So are dairy traditions - use of milk, cheese, etc. in daily meals. The Japanese, however, are normal - they dont have this mutation - so naturally they have little to no experience with that dairy tradition.
I'm sorry to say this, but sharing right-wing viewpoint on taxes and social programs - namely, that the poor should shoulder the majority of the tax burden and die rather than get any support - does make you an asshole. In fact it's pretty much the definition of an asshole. Perhaps you meant "those lunatics"?
Because the only possible reason to dislike high taxes and social programs is a deep and abiding hatred for the poor, right?
More likely: People who choose to use laptops on their 'nads will not breed as much as those who use laptops on tables, thus removing the laptops on 'nads tendencies from the population.
Closer, but still off. This would only happen if there was, you know, a genetic controller of the behaviour. But there almost certainly is no such thing. Like most behaviour, it's independent of actual DNA relationships, but learned through social proximity.
I dont use Flashblock so tell me, how exactly does it break hulu.com?
I do use NoScript, which does NOT break hulu.com. It simply improves the interface, allowing me to browse without a bunch of unwanted stuff starting inappropriately and grabbing control of my computer against my will. When I *want* to watch a video I temporarily whitelist it, the page reloads, and the video plays.
I use NoScript. All Flash is blocked by default. I temporarily whitelist sites where I want something to play, and otherwise it doesnt run. I save the battery, skip the annoying ads, and still get to use YouTube. I paid a lot less for this laptop than I would for a MacBook Air to boot.
Not that they arent nice. But I think this study, while bringing up a definite truth, is an after-the-fact justification/spin for Apple, who blocked Flash for entirely different reasons.
GPL V3 certainly has more robust patent protections, but V2, despite being less explicit on the matter, can definitely be argued to imply any patent grants necessary for someone downstream to exercise their rights as well. Exactly how far a court would imply has never to the best of my knowledge been tested, so if this does become an issue at trial it could be very interesting.
No, really, it's not. Dismissed means that if new evidence is found, the charges can be refiled.
No, really, it does not. "Dismissed without prejudice" means that. "Dismissed" otherwise means they cannot be refiled, just like a not guilty verdict. If the case makes it very far at all towards a trial then jeopardy is said to have "attached" and double jeopardy may be invoked. Whether or not jeopardy has "attached" has nothing at all to do with the facts of the case, in other words.
I'm always amused by people who think 'real property rights' are anything other than legal privileges.
And I always feel sorry for people whose mental maps are so muddled and confused they cannot tell the difference between a right and a privilege. Do you ever find yourself trying to eat a menu, wondering why the portrait of your dessert doesnt actually taste sweet, or make you feel full?
There is no reason that a content producer should have to choose between DRM and copyright protection. That's like saying that a homeowner should have to choose between locking his doors or having legal protection against home invasion.
No, actually, you are absolutely wrong. You are making an analogy between real property rights and legal privileges, as if they were equivelant, even while knowing damn well they arent. Typical.;)
The better analogy would be the one that I already gave you, between copyright privileges and trade secret privileges, since both are actually in the same broad category, and worlds away from a homeowner protecting real property rights.
Trade secret vs. copyright is an entirely different situation. The raeson they are mutually exclusive is and always has been that they two bodies of law as originally conceived (and as they should be codified today) serve fundamentally incompatible goals.
Let's look at that. The goal of copyright is (according to the US Constitution, at least) to promote progress in the useful arts and sciences. The original idea (now far corrupted) is that you encourage publication of works that might not otherwise be published, so that they will (eventually) enter the public domain rather than being lost for all time when the work is lost or destroyed. Since trade secrets defeat that purpose, they were (correctly) deemed incompatible with copyright - it's one or the other.
The analogy is very nearly perfect to DRM. Both trade secret treatment and DRM, equally, defy the purpose of copyright! (So does allowing copyright on software without publication of source code, but that is another discussion.) Keeping your work a trade secret will prevent it from ever effectively entering the public domain (assuming you do so effectively) and DRM (under the same assumption) does the exact same thing! It also is used to circumvent all the relevant caveats of copyright law concerning fair use, of course.
No, on the whole, I'd have to say my analogy is about as accurate as analogies ever are, while yours is wildly off the mark on every point.
A better law might simply make circumvention an aggrevating factor in an underlying act of infringement.
A better law would do the opposite, frankly. Just as you have to choose between copyright or trade secret protection, but cant get both, you should have to choose between copyright and DRM. Want copyright privileges? Dont use DRM. Use DRM? Fine, your choice, but you better do it well because if anyone beats it you will have no copyright to fall back on. That would be fair.
Instead we get this FUBAR system designed by rent-seeking business lobbyists where companies use cheap, easily circumvented DRM to deny their customers the rights copyright law left them with, then use that as a legal ploy to prosecute those same customers with, for 'circumvention' which was required in order for the customer to exercise their rights under the law.
Desertification as a result of warming seems quite unlikely, the usual pattern is the opposite, at least in terms of net effect. In the past, when climate has warmed (and yes, it's warmed far beyond what we see today, many many times) this has resulted in amplified monsoon patterns and turned areas like the Sahara green again, for a few millenia until the climate cooled and the Sahara went back to desert.
Slashdot Mirror
Actually, it's the other way around, C++ is the poor mans objC. Unlike C++ it's a C superset, and way back with NeXT it was demonstrably leading to fewer bugs and less developer time on the same job. Apple has made some poor decisions in its role as de facto shepherd but the language is solid in its role.
Freakishly large mammaries should work as well or better.
Not the same issues. Telling me to obey copyright law is one thing. Telling me that you will control MY hardware and prevent me from doing things that *might* be copyright violations (or might not, the hardware has no way to tell) is an entirely different thing.
Obviously.
Campaign contributions are not criminal acts.
The modern state is quite a recent thing. If you look at say Saxon England, you dont have the modern concept of a state at all. yet you did have regulation in the broadest meaning - quite an impressive and organic system, in fact, which became the basis of English Common-law and thus of US Law, but which has parallels around the world, as close as Iceland and Scandinavia, as far away as the Iroquois Confederacy - as long as humans have been economic animals there have been markets, and as you said they cannot exist without regulation in the broadest sense.
There there was no state, but organic customs that set and enforced the ground rules in a more-or-less transparent way.
Exactly! This is the key conundrum of human government.
Thanks.
You say that as if you see some inconsistency?
I dont. Discriminatory legislation masquerading as "regulation" is the one side of the coin, bribery or improper influence of one form or another is the other side of the same coin. Quid pro quo. Get rid of one you get rid of the other. Why would businesses bother throwing money at congresscritters if those same congresscritters didnt have any power to tilt the market in favour of one against another? To ask the question is to answer it.
Yes, every game has rules, and that means umpires, in one form or another. In our current system the politicians have the power to play umpire, and with that comes the responsibility to do so fairly.
The difference is that a CEO never takes an oath to serve any other goal but profit, and lacks the coërcive power of the state. His job is to run a commercial enterprise successfully, which means turning a profit, and he is expected (indeed, required) to use any lawful means at his disposal to do so. A politician, on the other hand, takes an oath to serve the general welfare, and *does* wield the power of the state.
Well, depends on what exactly you mean by 'ideal world' I suppose but that isnt too far off. A free market may not work 'perfectly' but certainly better than any other option. Monopolies might arise in a free market under certain conditions, but without state power backing them they can only be ephemeral and unable to do the same sort of harm that a monopoly created and maintained by state power can do.
In a sense that is true, with a sufficiently broad definition of regulation. But regulation, understood that broadly, does not require a state; indeed it predates it.
The example that comes readily to mind of a monopoly at that time and place would be the railroads, and those railroad monopolies are in fact perfect examples of my point. These were built as much by cultivating legislation as by laying track. The land-grants alone make it clear that there was no free market involved.
The "market" has no lobbyists or campaign contributions, the market is not a player, it is the field on which the players compete. Blaming the market itself for the actions of would-be monopolists is nonsensical. Like claiming the field is at fault when players cheat. The field is an inanimate object, it cannot be at fault in any meaningful sense. But the umpires - the umpires who have tremendous power and the obligation to use that power fairly, justly - they may be at fault. The umpires in the market are created by the state - no other organisation has that power.
Not for taking *our* bribes but for taking *their* bribes, thank you, and yes, the root of the problem is clearly on the government side.
It's a CEO's job to look after the business. If paying bribes is necessary to continue doing business, of course the CEO will be paying bribes. He didnt create the distorted market, he is just playing on the field he finds himself. It is NOT his job to look out for the general welfare, and even if he wants to he isnt in a position to do so.
It is the state, not the commercial enterprise, which is tasked with looking out for the general welfare, and which has the power to do so. It is the state alone which has the power to "regulate" the market, for good or ill. If the state chooses to use that power to seek bribes, and to rig the market against those who do not pay them, this is no failure of the market, and it is no failure of the businesses who do what they must in order to compete.
Of course a monopoly is not an efficient outcome. Did you even read what I wrote before hitting reply? FFS. The point is that the market doesnt create this outcome. The state does. That is not a market failure, it's a political failure.
Agreed, a market with a true monopoly player is not a free market.
Disagreed that it's necessarily a market failure. In every single instance I can think of, monopolies arise as the result of state interference in the market, either directly or indirectly, which only happens in command economies or "mixed" economies, not in free markets.
Studying economics, btw, is a common route to libertarianism.
You appear to be tragically uninformed.
Because T-Mobile service is pretty well nonexistent most places where I need my mobile to work. Also I have unlimited text, data, voice, and roaming with my current carrier - does TMobile even offer that?
A beer troll! How cute.
Lagering is not secondary fermentation, but storage at low temperature.
Lagers are made with bottom-fermenting yeasts, at low temperatures. Ales are made with top-fermenting yeasts, at (relatively) high temperatures. Either type can and should have a secondary fermentation phase.
I'm not wrong, I did oversimplify. I've noticed that if I dont do that I tend to produce walls of text and people dont like that for some reason. :P
First adult-lactose-tolerance is NOT exclusive to Europeans. Evidence indicates probably 3 different strains of the gene, only one from Europe, but Europe is definitely the area where the evidence and effect is the strongest. Guess where else though? Middle-east, and East Africa, also appear to have indigenous strains of lactose-tolerance.
The mutation itself is very old and could be expected to have occurred many times, however under "normal" conditions (for the human race over time, hunting and gathering is normal, everything else is a very recent abberation) the gene gives no advantage. It wont be selected *against* mind you, so it can propagate and be found all around the world, but it's not selected *for* either, so it remains a rare and random thing. BUT, once you have animal husbandry, suddenly that changes. Whenever there is a tight year and food is scarce, but herd animals are part of the equation, the mutation becomes an advantage and can be selected for. Combined with the fact that the mutation is *dominant* over the ancestral form, it can be expected that it spread quite quickly in areas where it gave an advantage. And animal husbandry appears to have independently developed in all three places.
It nowhere else became so dominant as in Europe, however. Lactose intolerance is virtually nonexistent in Northern Europe, but affects roughly half the population in the Middle East and North Africa, and virtually everyone in South-east Asia or South Africa. Nor is lactose tolerance a completely binary affect - we all produce lactase at birth, and different individuals lose that ability at a different rate, so that while a japanese adult is quite unlikely to produce it at all, someone of middle-eastern extraction may well experience partial intolerance - this person DOES produce lactase, but in smaller amounts than the typical European, and will be fine consuming milk products in moderation, but will become temporarily intolerent after consuming a certain amount.
WRT Cheese and Yogurt the thing gets yet more complex. Yogurt made in traditional ways contains lactase (the chemical needed to digest lactose) already! So even a person who is completely lactose intolerent can consume it in moderation. However modern yogurt may contain reduced lactase as well as an increased amount of lactose as a result of modern techniques of manufacture. Traditionally made cheeses can vary greatly between varieties, but in general they will contain reduced amounts of lactose, in some cases greatly reduced, but again modern techniques boost the lactose level.
This is still greatly oversimplified, btw, but should be good enough to put your query in a better context.
In regards to developing a dairy culture, I think my initial point is still quite correct. The genetics and the 'dairy culture' are examples of co-evolution, really. Jumping from generalised animal husbandry to specialised dairy culture is simply not going to happen unless there is significant adult-lactase production in the population. Yet there is no way for adult-lactase production to become common in the absence of animal-husbandry which includes suitable milking animals. The unlikely, but obviously not impossible, convergence of both the genetic mutation and the material culture is the reason why Europeans, and to a lesser degree ME and NA populations, developed the dairy culture which produces cheese, among other things. Now it's perfectly feasible for a Japanese person to be introduced to imported cheese, develop a taste for it, etc. today. She could carefully select traditionally made cheeses with low lactose content, pop a lactase pill with it, and do fine. (I know someone who does just that, in fact.) But even 100 years ago that wasnt possible. And for that reason, it would make no sense at all to expect any sort of dairy culture to have developed in Japan, and therefore it is just supremely unsurprising that you would have a hard time finding good cheese there.
That make more sense?
This is unsurprising. Humans in general lose the ability to digest milk products before becoming adults. As a result there is no real dairy tradition through most of the world, and Japan is part of that majority. There is a mutation which allows certain people to continue using dairy food in adulthood, and it is found primarily in European populations. So are dairy traditions - use of milk, cheese, etc. in daily meals. The Japanese, however, are normal - they dont have this mutation - so naturally they have little to no experience with that dairy tradition.
Because the only possible reason to dislike high taxes and social programs is a deep and abiding hatred for the poor, right?
Have fun with your strawman.
Closer, but still off. This would only happen if there was, you know, a genetic controller of the behaviour. But there almost certainly is no such thing. Like most behaviour, it's independent of actual DNA relationships, but learned through social proximity.
I dont use Flashblock so tell me, how exactly does it break hulu.com?
I do use NoScript, which does NOT break hulu.com. It simply improves the interface, allowing me to browse without a bunch of unwanted stuff starting inappropriately and grabbing control of my computer against my will. When I *want* to watch a video I temporarily whitelist it, the page reloads, and the video plays.
I use NoScript. All Flash is blocked by default. I temporarily whitelist sites where I want something to play, and otherwise it doesnt run. I save the battery, skip the annoying ads, and still get to use YouTube. I paid a lot less for this laptop than I would for a MacBook Air to boot.
Not that they arent nice. But I think this study, while bringing up a definite truth, is an after-the-fact justification/spin for Apple, who blocked Flash for entirely different reasons.
GPL V3 certainly has more robust patent protections, but V2, despite being less explicit on the matter, can definitely be argued to imply any patent grants necessary for someone downstream to exercise their rights as well. Exactly how far a court would imply has never to the best of my knowledge been tested, so if this does become an issue at trial it could be very interesting.
No, really, it does not. "Dismissed without prejudice" means that. "Dismissed" otherwise means they cannot be refiled, just like a not guilty verdict. If the case makes it very far at all towards a trial then jeopardy is said to have "attached" and double jeopardy may be invoked. Whether or not jeopardy has "attached" has nothing at all to do with the facts of the case, in other words.
And I always feel sorry for people whose mental maps are so muddled and confused they cannot tell the difference between a right and a privilege. Do you ever find yourself trying to eat a menu, wondering why the portrait of your dessert doesnt actually taste sweet, or make you feel full?
No, actually, you are absolutely wrong. You are making an analogy between real property rights and legal privileges, as if they were equivelant, even while knowing damn well they arent. Typical. ;)
The better analogy would be the one that I already gave you, between copyright privileges and trade secret privileges, since both are actually in the same broad category, and worlds away from a homeowner protecting real property rights.
Let's look at that. The goal of copyright is (according to the US Constitution, at least) to promote progress in the useful arts and sciences. The original idea (now far corrupted) is that you encourage publication of works that might not otherwise be published, so that they will (eventually) enter the public domain rather than being lost for all time when the work is lost or destroyed. Since trade secrets defeat that purpose, they were (correctly) deemed incompatible with copyright - it's one or the other.
The analogy is very nearly perfect to DRM. Both trade secret treatment and DRM, equally, defy the purpose of copyright! (So does allowing copyright on software without publication of source code, but that is another discussion.) Keeping your work a trade secret will prevent it from ever effectively entering the public domain (assuming you do so effectively) and DRM (under the same assumption) does the exact same thing! It also is used to circumvent all the relevant caveats of copyright law concerning fair use, of course.
No, on the whole, I'd have to say my analogy is about as accurate as analogies ever are, while yours is wildly off the mark on every point.
A better law would do the opposite, frankly. Just as you have to choose between copyright or trade secret protection, but cant get both, you should have to choose between copyright and DRM. Want copyright privileges? Dont use DRM. Use DRM? Fine, your choice, but you better do it well because if anyone beats it you will have no copyright to fall back on. That would be fair.
Instead we get this FUBAR system designed by rent-seeking business lobbyists where companies use cheap, easily circumvented DRM to deny their customers the rights copyright law left them with, then use that as a legal ploy to prosecute those same customers with, for 'circumvention' which was required in order for the customer to exercise their rights under the law.
Corruption of the law is not a good thing.
Desertification as a result of warming seems quite unlikely, the usual pattern is the opposite, at least in terms of net effect. In the past, when climate has warmed (and yes, it's warmed far beyond what we see today, many many times) this has resulted in amplified monsoon patterns and turned areas like the Sahara green again, for a few millenia until the climate cooled and the Sahara went back to desert.