After I posted, I was thinking that, instead of a strict yearly renewal, a registrant could register for multiple years in a single shot.
However, I like your idea as well. How does this sound: $20 gets you the first ten years, and each subsequent year doubles. You can buy ahead if you wish. This gives them fifteen years of relatively cheap protection, and it starts making it economically nonviable to retain protections for much beyond 25 years.
I believe there should be two types of intellectual property protections: private and commercial. Private is for things like personal photos and trade secrets; things that are not intended for public consumption. If something IS intended for public consumption, like a book or a film, then it must be registered. Registration lasts for one year, and is not automatically renewed. The cost of registration starts off at 1 cent for the first year of protection; and for each subsequent year, the cost is double the previous year. The owner of the intellectual property is free to renew registration for as long as they can afford to do so. Once the registration expires, the work becomes public domain.
The first 20 years of protection would be fairly easy for a corporation to pay for: a little over $5000 for a year's protection. At 30 years, you'd better have a lucrative item, because it would cost $5million to protect. At 40 years, it would cost nearly 5.5 billion dollars.
The system has three advantages:
1 - It is easy to tell if something is still under copyright. Simply look up the registration number and see if it has been paid for.
2 - It is self cleaning. No corporation on the planet has deep enough pockets to keep something registered forever. I doubt even Disney could afford the 5 trillion dollar price tag for keeping a movie until the 50th anniversary of their release.
3 - It is a revenue stream for the government. Someone has to collect those license fees.
It's also explained by having 70% of the votes split between numerous parties. For example, with eight parties, the vote could be split 30%,10%,10%,10%,10%,10%,10%,10%. The 30% party gets in because they are the most popular, even though 70% of the voters hate their guts.
Just because they have capitulated and installed this "feature" doesn't mean they are going to advertise the fact to consumers. In fact, it would not surprise me if they were legally unable to divulge the existence of such features.
I really hate that Google calculate has been dumbed down. Time was you could type in "7 billion seconds in years" and it would tell you. Now it just searches.
I may be mis-remembering, but it seems like a summer or 2 ago, there was a day with 2 leap seconds in it.
Not possible. The leap second committee folks have a mandate never to let the difference between the UTC and UT1 (mean solar time) readings exceed 0.9 seconds. They usually decide to apply a leap second whenever the difference between UTC and UT1 approaches 0.6 seconds. Furthermore, they can add a leap second at the end of any month, although there is a preference for June and December and a second preference for March and September.
For there to be two leap seconds in a day, something catastrophic would have had to have happened, like California sliding into the ocean, the Yosemite supervolcano blowing, or the Maple Leafs winning the Stanley Cup.
There's a big difference between knowing something is possible, and actually doing it.
In 1848, Sir George Cayley built a glider that carried a child, years before the Wright brothers were even born.
In 1856, Frenchman Jean-Marie Le Bris made the first flight higher than his point of departure, by having his glider "L'Albatros artificiel" pulled by a horse on a beach. He reportedly achieved a height of 100 meters, over a distance of 200 meters.
In 1877, Enrico Forlanini developed an unmanned helicopter powered by a steam engine. It rose to a height of 13 meters, where it remained for some 20 seconds, after a vertical take-off in Milan.
in 1894, Sir Hiram Maxim constructed a large test rig to investigate aerodynamic lift. It's twin propellers were powered by two lightweight compound steam engines and it took three people to operate. It didn't have any flight controls so it ran on rails, with a second set of rails above the wheels to restrain it. On its third run it broke from the rail, became airborne for several hundred feet at two to three feet altitude.
On 14 August 1901, Gustave Whitehead carried out a controlled, powered flight in his Number 21 monoplane at Fairfield, Connecticut.
Wilbur and Orville Wright... Last inventors of the airplane.
looks a bit like Han Solo's Millennium Falcon, towed in for repairs after a run-in with the Imperial fleet.
Sure, in the same way a croissant does.
Meaning, not at all.
Indeed! In every encounter I've seen between the Millennium Falcon and Imperial ships, whether it's dodging TIE fighters in an asteroid belt, playing tag with Imperial Star Destroyers, or tackling a Death Star, it's the Imperial ships that wind up being turned into scrap metal.
Well, if the most amazing and capable spacecraft ever developed was the most complex, useless, inappropriate boondoggle in the history of mankind, it doesn't speak very well to our ever having a practical, working space program, does it?
...shuttles' wasteful irresponsible uselessness, and total failure to achieve almost all of intended goals. everything they did do could have been done more efficiently in other ways.
It was still the most amazing and capable spacecraft ever developed.
There was also the "length of a pendulum that has a half period of one second", and "1650763.73 wavelengths in a vacuum of the radiation corresponding to the transition between the 2p10 and 5d5 quantum levels of the krypton-86 atom" definitions. Also don't forget that there were three different chunks of metal a various times that had the distinction of being the prototype metre.
1/3 of a metre is 333 1/3 mm exactly. (hey, if you can do a third of a sixty-fourth, then I can do a third of a thousandth). That's not the issue. The issues are that the US customary system almost always uses multiple units for the same measure: A person is 5'7 1/2" and weighs 157 lbs 6 oz. Feet+Inches+fractions. Pounds plus ounces. Conversion are always happening. Further, the type of unit depends on what you're measuring. A pound of gold weighs less than a pound of feathers? Where's the sense in that? Landmarks surveyed to be exactly a mile apart are 63360 1/8 inches apart if you measure them by ruler.
In SI, it doesn't matter you're measuring the mass of plumage or of precious metals, the unit is the same. It doesn't matter if you are surveying or measuring, the unit is the same. Length is length. Mass is mass.
It goes back further than that. The Mendenhall Order switched the US from having physical reference artifacts for the yard and pound to basing them on the metre and kilogram way back in 1893. The US has been officially metric behind the scenes for 122 years.
Saucer separation was a capability of the TOS generation, Constitution class starship. Kirk even told Scottie to jettison the nacelles and get the saucer section out of danger on two occasions (The Savage Curtain and The Apple). The saucer could only be re-connected to the nacelles at a repair dock, though.
The opening music for ST:DS9 and ST:Voyager were pretty lame. It was like you were waiting for the theme to start, but all that they played was background music.
Slashdot Mirror
After I posted, I was thinking that, instead of a strict yearly renewal, a registrant could register for multiple years in a single shot. However, I like your idea as well. How does this sound: $20 gets you the first ten years, and each subsequent year doubles. You can buy ahead if you wish. This gives them fifteen years of relatively cheap protection, and it starts making it economically nonviable to retain protections for much beyond 25 years.
The paper trail should not be optional for commercial content. The Happy Birthday incident shows that anyone can claim they own the copyright.
I believe there should be two types of intellectual property protections: private and commercial. Private is for things like personal photos and trade secrets; things that are not intended for public consumption. If something IS intended for public consumption, like a book or a film, then it must be registered. Registration lasts for one year, and is not automatically renewed. The cost of registration starts off at 1 cent for the first year of protection; and for each subsequent year, the cost is double the previous year. The owner of the intellectual property is free to renew registration for as long as they can afford to do so. Once the registration expires, the work becomes public domain.
The first 20 years of protection would be fairly easy for a corporation to pay for: a little over $5000 for a year's protection. At 30 years, you'd better have a lucrative item, because it would cost $5million to protect. At 40 years, it would cost nearly 5.5 billion dollars.
The system has three advantages:
1 - It is easy to tell if something is still under copyright. Simply look up the registration number and see if it has been paid for.
2 - It is self cleaning. No corporation on the planet has deep enough pockets to keep something registered forever. I doubt even Disney could afford the 5 trillion dollar price tag for keeping a movie until the 50th anniversary of their release.
3 - It is a revenue stream for the government. Someone has to collect those license fees.
It's also explained by having 70% of the votes split between numerous parties. For example, with eight parties, the vote could be split 30%,10%,10%,10%,10%,10%,10%,10%. The 30% party gets in because they are the most popular, even though 70% of the voters hate their guts.
Just because they have capitulated and installed this "feature" doesn't mean they are going to advertise the fact to consumers. In fact, it would not surprise me if they were legally unable to divulge the existence of such features.
Love Canal... Is that where they used to hold the submarine races?
That would be Herr Fusion.
Spock died back in February.
You're right. My mistake.
I really hate that Google calculate has been dumbed down. Time was you could type in "7 billion seconds in years" and it would tell you. Now it just searches.
I may be mis-remembering, but it seems like a summer or 2 ago, there was a day with 2 leap seconds in it.
Not possible. The leap second committee folks have a mandate never to let the difference between the UTC and UT1 (mean solar time) readings exceed 0.9 seconds. They usually decide to apply a leap second whenever the difference between UTC and UT1 approaches 0.6 seconds. Furthermore, they can add a leap second at the end of any month, although there is a preference for June and December and a second preference for March and September. For there to be two leap seconds in a day, something catastrophic would have had to have happened, like California sliding into the ocean, the Yosemite supervolcano blowing, or the Maple Leafs winning the Stanley Cup.
There's a big difference between knowing something is possible, and actually doing it.
In 1848, Sir George Cayley built a glider that carried a child, years before the Wright brothers were even born.
In 1856, Frenchman Jean-Marie Le Bris made the first flight higher than his point of departure, by having his glider "L'Albatros artificiel" pulled by a horse on a beach. He reportedly achieved a height of 100 meters, over a distance of 200 meters.
In 1877, Enrico Forlanini developed an unmanned helicopter powered by a steam engine. It rose to a height of 13 meters, where it remained for some 20 seconds, after a vertical take-off in Milan.
in 1894, Sir Hiram Maxim constructed a large test rig to investigate aerodynamic lift. It's twin propellers were powered by two lightweight compound steam engines and it took three people to operate. It didn't have any flight controls so it ran on rails, with a second set of rails above the wheels to restrain it. On its third run it broke from the rail, became airborne for several hundred feet at two to three feet altitude.
On 14 August 1901, Gustave Whitehead carried out a controlled, powered flight in his Number 21 monoplane at Fairfield, Connecticut.
Wilbur and Orville Wright... Last inventors of the airplane.
We knew heavier than air flight was possible LONG before the Wright brothers got involved.
That's what you think.
When ITER ignites a plasma early next decade, people will be completely blindsided.
Don't worry. The US will have ground troops go in long before that happens.
looks a bit like Han Solo's Millennium Falcon, towed in for repairs after a run-in with the Imperial fleet.
Sure, in the same way a croissant does.
Meaning, not at all.
Indeed! In every encounter I've seen between the Millennium Falcon and Imperial ships, whether it's dodging TIE fighters in an asteroid belt, playing tag with Imperial Star Destroyers, or tackling a Death Star, it's the Imperial ships that wind up being turned into scrap metal.
Well, if the most amazing and capable spacecraft ever developed was the most complex, useless, inappropriate boondoggle in the history of mankind, it doesn't speak very well to our ever having a practical, working space program, does it?
...shuttles' wasteful irresponsible uselessness, and total failure to achieve almost all of intended goals. everything they did do could have been done more efficiently in other ways.
It was still the most amazing and capable spacecraft ever developed.
Right. Catering costs more than fuel.
Actually, it never was. The metre prototype bars had an X-shaped cross section, not cylindrical one.
No, the original definition of the metre was the length of a pendulum whose half period was one second.
There was also the "length of a pendulum that has a half period of one second", and "1650763.73 wavelengths in a vacuum of the radiation corresponding to the transition between the 2p10 and 5d5 quantum levels of the krypton-86 atom" definitions. Also don't forget that there were three different chunks of metal a various times that had the distinction of being the prototype metre.
1/3 of a metre is 333 1/3 mm exactly. (hey, if you can do a third of a sixty-fourth, then I can do a third of a thousandth). That's not the issue. The issues are that the US customary system almost always uses multiple units for the same measure: A person is 5'7 1/2" and weighs 157 lbs 6 oz. Feet+Inches+fractions. Pounds plus ounces. Conversion are always happening. Further, the type of unit depends on what you're measuring. A pound of gold weighs less than a pound of feathers? Where's the sense in that? Landmarks surveyed to be exactly a mile apart are 63360 1/8 inches apart if you measure them by ruler. In SI, it doesn't matter you're measuring the mass of plumage or of precious metals, the unit is the same. It doesn't matter if you are surveying or measuring, the unit is the same. Length is length. Mass is mass.
It goes back further than that. The Mendenhall Order switched the US from having physical reference artifacts for the yard and pound to basing them on the metre and kilogram way back in 1893. The US has been officially metric behind the scenes for 122 years.
Saucer separation was a capability of the TOS generation, Constitution class starship. Kirk even told Scottie to jettison the nacelles and get the saucer section out of danger on two occasions (The Savage Curtain and The Apple). The saucer could only be re-connected to the nacelles at a repair dock, though.
The opening music for ST:DS9 and ST:Voyager were pretty lame. It was like you were waiting for the theme to start, but all that they played was background music.