The difference here, oh Rush worshipping fool, is that the radio spectrum is limited. This necessitates the FCC, which distributes licenses for particular bands of the radio spectrum. A more appropriate analogy would be like a public square. You don't give only one set of people access to the public square while denying access to other sets of people. Noone is preventing any of your favorite AM radio loons from writing books or podcasting to their hearts' content. The question is how to fairly distribute what is (or at least was before Reagan) a public commodity. By letting all the right wing nuts (funded by media giants like Clear Channel) buy up all the spectrum, there is nothing left for anyone else to use.
Ah, but you see, "Bricks" require this thing called "Mortar". http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mortar_(masonry)
Legos don't have this problem, although insulation is probably a bit harder.
This is an awfully broad claim. I would think proving prior art here and invalidating the claim would be pretty easy.
True, but this is the initial application. Patent lawyers generally draft ridiculously broad claims at the start and leave it up to the examiner to reject it and thus make them amend the claims to something much more narrow (depending on the case). Usually what happens is a lot of give and take until something reasonable is set, although a few high profile cases makes that seem otherwise to the uninitiated.
There's NO WAY that anything Lucas or anyone else did would ever satisfy the "demanding fans" - the die-hards saw the originals when they were 8-12 years old, a long time ago.
I'm afraid I would have to disagree with this. What made the original movies enjoyable was not my age then. I can even enjoy them now. What makes the original SW trilogy better than the prequels is the fact that the original SW trilogy didn't take itself too seriously. The original trilogy was a bit cheesy and campy, but it was never meant to be anything else. It was simply a set of three fun space movies with lots of fighting and explosions and a rag-tag band of rebels fighting the evil empire, all with a set of great heroes and knights. In the prequel trilogy, Lucas seems to be under the delusion that he is some sort of enlightened philosopher. His attempt at esoterism is just plain stupid and takes away from the movies. He basically takes a fun-filled trilogy and then makes prequels that are not even as well thought out as a paper written by a freshman philosophy major.
ncidentally (and cutting short the Godwin Law), this is exactly what the Gestapo was doing prior to, and during WW2: they collected huge masses of information about everybody, and it was well know that they could pull a jacket on almost anybody in Germany and find enough "evidence" to arrest that person.
Sorry, not to get too off-topic, but this is one of the little things I really liked about ST:DS9. The writers understood that one thing despotic regimes have in common is a damn good system of filing and information tracking. The Cardassians were nothing if not excellent record keepers (as were, in reality, the Romans, the Nazis, Napolean, etc.).
Remember, advertisers: The more you tighten your grip, the more of us will slip through your fingers. We don't *want* to be barraged day and night with useless promotioh of inferior products dammit.
Actually, if it weren't for laws, advertisers would be setting up bullet-proof jumbotrons in every neighborhood and blaring ads at us 24/7. I could never understand why something is perfectly legal if the purpose is advertising, but is considered stalking and/or harassment if done as a private person. For instance, I can't keep calling or mailing someone I've never even met every couple of days. I'll have the law on me. But, I guess all our legislature are belong to them.
I already pay a lot of money for cell phone access.
This is why I'm glad I never signed up for Verizon. I'm glad/. posted this article. I can tell my dad, who is on Verizon, about this and he will hopefully have enough sense to switch. If all else fails, maybe I and the people I know can set up a morse code system and digitally encrypt signal we send out over wireless. But then, DFS (Department of Fatherland Security) would probably take an interest in us.
Yes, you're already paying for it... but the cell phone providers and advertisers are really just looking our for your best interest... as the article says:
"The interest of advertisers in the medium stems from a theory that ads placed on mobile phones could create a particularly intimate bond with consumers"
But I don't want an "intimate bond" with any advertisers! It looks like this whole setup is simply a form of rape.
Thirty years ago the same people who are now screaming that we must fight global warming were screaming that we needed to fight global cooling.
Stupid articles written by ignorant journalists notwithstanding (such as in US News), actual scientists realized the dangers of global warming as far back as the 60's. Carl Sagan, for example, helped demonstrate how greenhouse gases work and showed Venus as an extreme example. The physical mechanisms are well known, and we are aiding those physical mechanisms.
I am not sure it is "fact" if I can still hear high frequencies such as the noise from CRT TV's and such and I am an adult.
He should probably have said "most adults", which is true. Of course, there are people like you who naturally have exceptional hearing, but that is the exception rather than the norm.
Why is the DOJ worried more about aunt Eunice downloading MP3s than they are about people who are maliciously causing harm?
Well, I'm sure that given the clear illegality of this Market Research company's activities, the DOJ will hunt down and prosecute the people responsible, and those responsible will be heavily fined and have to spend a good bit of time in jail. Oh wait. I forgot. This is America, where corporations are given free rein to run roughshod over everyone and ordinary people are tossed in prison for anything and everything the government can think of. My mistake.
Remember to account for the counter argument that criminalizing gun possession in an effort to reduce the murder rate assumes that someone willing to commit murder is unwilling to possess an illegal firearm.
What you are forgetting to take into account are all the incidence of murders committed as "crimes of passion". While it is true that someone wanting to commit a premeditated murder will not balk at finding a gun illegally, reducing gun ownership will eliminate a lot of the murders committed in the second and third degree. It is much easier to grab a gun and pull the trigger a few times than it is to repeatedly stab someone with a knife.
This is also similar to how killing works with soldiers. It is easier for a soldier to kill someone on the battlefield if they are just "shooting into the brown [set of uniforms]", or bombing from thousands of meters up, or by remote control, than if they are up close and personal with their target.
More than that- you should allow the fool to die of his own foolishness. It's an argument against charity.
I don't think you understand the slightest thing about Buddhism. Compassion is one of the main virtues. Indifference is most decidedly frowned upon. Anyway, this whole thread is rather pointless now. Try to actually learn something first. If you had even read the Dhammapada (for example - there are many other sutras), you would realize that what you are saying is not at all true. But, since you want to believe that all religions are aggressive and exclusionary by nature, it doesn't matter what anyone says. You will simply keep believing it.
Depends on your interpretation- both of those books certainly claim that there's a difference between the wise man and the stupid man....
What do you mean? Just because they show the difference between a wise man and a fool doesn't mean that one should go out and kill other people who don't belong to your group. And the point is that you should strive to be like the wise man and not the fool.
Heck, I can't think of a single book of scripture that doesn't command us to kill those who aren't part of our tribe
The Dhammapada and the Tao Te Ching immediately come to mind. I'm sure there are others. Just because you can't think of them doesn't mean they don't exist.
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Legos don't have this problem, although insulation is probably a bit harder.
What's hidden under Greenland's ice? Simple. Shuggoths. Lots and lots of Shuggoths.
This is also similar to how killing works with soldiers. It is easier for a soldier to kill someone on the battlefield if they are just "shooting into the brown [set of uniforms]", or bombing from thousands of meters up, or by remote control, than if they are up close and personal with their target.
Instead of modding parent -1 Troll, perhaps he should have been modded -1 Truth Hurts Too Much and I'm a Stupid Fucking American.