You're talking about the Star Wars franchise, though, not any individual piece of creative work. Even if the original three films were out of their copyright periods, and thus able to be freely redistributed, trademark law could possibly be used to prevent someone from creating a new "Star Wars" movie with the same characters or locations. If this isn't already the case, personally I'd be willing to support adding it to trademark law in exchange for shorter copyright periods.
There are four time zones in the continental United States: Eastern, Central, Mountain, and Pacific. Alaska and Hawaii are each in different time zones as well.
Guess you slept through all of December, huh? There were a large number of members of Congress that refused to do anything until their single priority was dealt with.
Microsoft can compete on merits but they stopped selling it the year after release? Could the one be the disproof of the other perhaps?
Perhaps, but not necessarily. The product could be better than any competitor's, but the marketing department decided to pull the plug for whatever reason. Recent history is full of examples of superior technology being defeated by superior marketing.
The Patent Office is structured to be self-sustaining, surviving on payments for patent applications, patent issuances and periodic fees that keep a patent alive for its full 20-year term. But Congress retains the authority to determine whether the agency can keep all of its fees.
If the USPTO kept all of the money that it brings in, there would be no backlog. Examiners could probably get a pretty large pay increase, along with another few thousand examiners being hired. In reality, the USPTO gets to keep a pretty small percentage of the money that it collects.
Additionally, use up your vacation hours now- extra time for the search. Chances are those hours will vanish if not used soon.
In Massachusetts, which is the only one I know about for sure, though I would guess most other states are the same way, vacation time is considered deferred compensation. If you lose your job, your employer has to pay you for any unused vacation time.
And what, pray tell, is the theoretical reason for the existence of the PR department in a corporation?
To send out press releases that make the corporation look good?
The question of intent also comes into play. If you start a letter-writing campaign to a congressman or even a company's corporate headquarters to raise awareness for an issue, such as a law that should or should not be passed or a safety issue with one of the company's products, you're far less likely to get arrested than if it's clear that your intention was to flood the mailroom so that they couldn't receive any other mail.
The frequently-used tactic of deliberately flooding congresscritters with explicitly intentioned postcards, letters, faxes and phone calls disagrees with you.
Except that the theoretical reason for existence of the congresscritters is to listen to their constituents. Receiving communications from the voters is supposed to be a major part of their job, especially when the communications are sent to their government-owned offices.
The cell providers make you sign the same contract whether you buy a phone or not.
As a couple other people have mentioned, this isn't the case for T-Mobile. Phone/data plans are $20/month cheaper if you don't have a contract with a subsidized phone. I paid about $550 for my N900, so if I keep it for exactly two years, it's the same as if I had paid $70 for it with a standard contract, which is a pretty good deal. For anyone that can afford the higher up-front cost, I would definitely recommend going to T-Mobile and buying a phone at regular retail price.
Even when my phone is locked I can press 9-1-1-Talk and get connected to help. Hopefully this technology would work in a similar fashion such that emergency calls were always allowed to go through.
I may be wrong, but I'm pretty sure that radio jammers can't distinguish 911 calls.
The Hebrew language is a lot like the roman numeral system in that when you put numbers beside each other, they are added together. 666 would actually be 18, 666666 would be something like 36. There are rules in how it's done but I don't know them well enough to say anything.
The idea is that each letter also has a numeric value. Using Latin letters as an analogy, A-J would be 1-10, K-S would be 20-100, in increments of 10, and T-V would be 200-400, in increments of 100 (Hebrew has 22 letters). To get a number like 42, you would use the letters for 40 and 2. The exception is 15, which is written as 9 and 6 instead of 10 and 5, since the letters for 10 and 5 are also the first two letters of the Hebrew name for God. Normally you would use the simplest way of writing a number, so you would never write 18 as 6+6+6, but as 10+8.
Perhaps we should just get rid of the whole problematic institution.
If you want to argue that government should have nothing to do with marriage, that's fine. It's a reasonable argument to make, and I wouldn't object to it happening. However, as long as the government is involved in marriage, the fourteenth amendment requires that "any person within its jurisdiction [is not denied] the equal protection of the laws."
Shouldn't approvals be based on the law? Rejections are a refusal to grant special status to an individual. Approvals curtail the freedoms of all other individuals. Shouldn't approvals be held to the higher standard?
How would you enumerate what patents should be allowed? You can't list every possible invention. If you could create a list of patentable inventions, they probably wouldn't be patentable, since you clearly already have someone (or more likely a large number of people on a committee) that has come up with the idea. The list of reasons for rejection is relatively short, so it's much easier to consider an invention patentable unless there's a specific reason to reject it.
The use of "tap" to select a person for a job probably comes from the use of the word in tapping trees for sap, or the device that you get beer or water from. The analogy might be that you're extracting knowledge, experience, etc. in the same way that you extract sap from a tree or beer from a keg (hopefully without the leaving-them-empty part).
Also, I don't quite see how Obama/Biden are closer to Libertarian than all the rest of the mainstream candidates.
That graph was done during the 2008 campaign. Obama promised all kinds of socially progressive changes at the time. He probably would still like to follow through with those promises; assuming he does, he just doesn't have enough support in Congress to do it.
Maybe he just said that stuff to get elected. But a politician breaking a campaign promise is simply unthinkable.
since I'm pro-gay marriage, pro-polygamy, pro-marijuana, pro-Bill of Rights..... would probably be labeled "leftist" too
Maybe by the extreme wing of the Republican party. None of those are economic issues (unless you count taxing marijuana sales), they're all social/authoritarianism issues, so they're orthogonal to what is typically considered left vs. right.
Slashdot Mirror
You're talking about the Star Wars franchise, though, not any individual piece of creative work. Even if the original three films were out of their copyright periods, and thus able to be freely redistributed, trademark law could possibly be used to prevent someone from creating a new "Star Wars" movie with the same characters or locations. If this isn't already the case, personally I'd be willing to support adding it to trademark law in exchange for shorter copyright periods.
No, because having copyright expire on death would provide a perverse incentive for murdering authors of famous works, like George Lucas for instance.
I'm sorry, but why is this a bad thing?
Because eventually someone would murder an author that we want to stay alive.
In the USA, there are 3 time zones
There are four time zones in the continental United States: Eastern, Central, Mountain, and Pacific. Alaska and Hawaii are each in different time zones as well.
Congress can multitask.
Guess you slept through all of December, huh? There were a large number of members of Congress that refused to do anything until their single priority was dealt with.
A Buzzard Ramjet (if they can build it) does not need any fuel, it gathers it as it goes...
I don't think you'll find many dead animals on the side of the road going through space.
Microsoft can compete on merits but they stopped selling it the year after release? Could the one be the disproof of the other perhaps?
Perhaps, but not necessarily. The product could be better than any competitor's, but the marketing department decided to pull the plug for whatever reason. Recent history is full of examples of superior technology being defeated by superior marketing.
The US Patent Office get its funding from patent applications fees.
So the question is: WHAT THE #UcK DID YOU EXPECT!
Did you read the article you linked to?
The Patent Office is structured to be self-sustaining, surviving on payments for patent applications, patent issuances and periodic fees that keep a patent alive for its full 20-year term. But Congress retains the authority to determine whether the agency can keep all of its fees.
If the USPTO kept all of the money that it brings in, there would be no backlog. Examiners could probably get a pretty large pay increase, along with another few thousand examiners being hired. In reality, the USPTO gets to keep a pretty small percentage of the money that it collects.
Additionally, use up your vacation hours now- extra time for the search. Chances are those hours will vanish if not used soon.
In Massachusetts, which is the only one I know about for sure, though I would guess most other states are the same way, vacation time is considered deferred compensation. If you lose your job, your employer has to pay you for any unused vacation time.
And what, pray tell, is the theoretical reason for the existence of the PR department in a corporation?
To send out press releases that make the corporation look good?
The question of intent also comes into play. If you start a letter-writing campaign to a congressman or even a company's corporate headquarters to raise awareness for an issue, such as a law that should or should not be passed or a safety issue with one of the company's products, you're far less likely to get arrested than if it's clear that your intention was to flood the mailroom so that they couldn't receive any other mail.
The frequently-used tactic of deliberately flooding congresscritters with explicitly intentioned postcards, letters, faxes and phone calls disagrees with you.
Except that the theoretical reason for existence of the congresscritters is to listen to their constituents. Receiving communications from the voters is supposed to be a major part of their job, especially when the communications are sent to their government-owned offices.
The cell providers make you sign the same contract whether you buy a phone or not.
As a couple other people have mentioned, this isn't the case for T-Mobile. Phone/data plans are $20/month cheaper if you don't have a contract with a subsidized phone. I paid about $550 for my N900, so if I keep it for exactly two years, it's the same as if I had paid $70 for it with a standard contract, which is a pretty good deal. For anyone that can afford the higher up-front cost, I would definitely recommend going to T-Mobile and buying a phone at regular retail price.
As much as you'd like to stop looking, you can't turn away. The horror!
See, the terrorists have won.
Traveling faster than light is what produces Cherenkov radiation.
Even when my phone is locked I can press 9-1-1-Talk and get connected to help. Hopefully this technology would work in a similar fashion such that emergency calls were always allowed to go through.
I may be wrong, but I'm pretty sure that radio jammers can't distinguish 911 calls.
The Hebrew language is a lot like the roman numeral system in that when you put numbers beside each other, they are added together. 666 would actually be 18, 666666 would be something like 36. There are rules in how it's done but I don't know them well enough to say anything.
The idea is that each letter also has a numeric value. Using Latin letters as an analogy, A-J would be 1-10, K-S would be 20-100, in increments of 10, and T-V would be 200-400, in increments of 100 (Hebrew has 22 letters). To get a number like 42, you would use the letters for 40 and 2. The exception is 15, which is written as 9 and 6 instead of 10 and 5, since the letters for 10 and 5 are also the first two letters of the Hebrew name for God. Normally you would use the simplest way of writing a number, so you would never write 18 as 6+6+6, but as 10+8.
I dont see a word about marriage in there.
Perhaps we should just get rid of the whole problematic institution.
If you want to argue that government should have nothing to do with marriage, that's fine. It's a reasonable argument to make, and I wouldn't object to it happening. However, as long as the government is involved in marriage, the fourteenth amendment requires that "any person within its jurisdiction [is not denied] the equal protection of the laws."
Sorry, but where in your constitution does it say that everyone has a right to marriage
Perhaps the Fourteenth Amendment?
It absolutely is calculatable, given enough data and research.
I believe that quantum mechanics would disagree with that statement.
Shouldn't approvals be based on the law? Rejections are a refusal to grant special status to an individual. Approvals curtail the freedoms of all other individuals. Shouldn't approvals be held to the higher standard?
How would you enumerate what patents should be allowed? You can't list every possible invention. If you could create a list of patentable inventions, they probably wouldn't be patentable, since you clearly already have someone (or more likely a large number of people on a committee) that has come up with the idea. The list of reasons for rejection is relatively short, so it's much easier to consider an invention patentable unless there's a specific reason to reject it.
He must work at Fox News
</flamebait>
The use of "tap" to select a person for a job probably comes from the use of the word in tapping trees for sap, or the device that you get beer or water from. The analogy might be that you're extracting knowledge, experience, etc. in the same way that you extract sap from a tree or beer from a keg (hopefully without the leaving-them-empty part).
isn't the Android Market supposed to be more open than the App store?
Exactly! How dare Google not help people do something illegal.
When I think hip, happening, cutting edge, pushing the envelope, fun.... I don't think Microsoft.
Fortunately for Microsoft, most large companies don't think those things anyway.
Also, I don't quite see how Obama/Biden are closer to Libertarian than all the rest of the mainstream candidates.
That graph was done during the 2008 campaign. Obama promised all kinds of socially progressive changes at the time. He probably would still like to follow through with those promises; assuming he does, he just doesn't have enough support in Congress to do it.
Maybe he just said that stuff to get elected. But a politician breaking a campaign promise is simply unthinkable.
since I'm pro-gay marriage, pro-polygamy, pro-marijuana, pro-Bill of Rights..... would probably be labeled "leftist" too
Maybe by the extreme wing of the Republican party. None of those are economic issues (unless you count taxing marijuana sales), they're all social/authoritarianism issues, so they're orthogonal to what is typically considered left vs. right.