@Err...
I think the difference between cults and religions can be summed up succinctly as follows:
My group is a religion, yours is a cult.
350 publicly visible posts • joined 22 Jun 2007
"Apple doesn't invent the laws it has to work with. YOU do."
OMG, are you serious? Has there EVER been a time in all of History when any government took public opinion into account while drafting Patent and Copyright law?* It's always done behind closed doors between meetings of rightsholders and their lawyers, and the public interest be damned. If Apple didn't actually have a hand in drafting the laws it takes advantage of, it surely knows a man who did.
As Mark Twain pointed out more than a century ago, "If your vote counted, they wouldn't let you do it".
(* Ok, perhaps the EU took some notice of the public outcry when it was considering European software patents, but that was an anomaly.)
The three "creationists" you cite lived at a time when the penalty for not being a creationist was a warm one. I believe if the alternative was being burned alive after an indefinite period of imprisonment and torture, even I might profess the belief that the World was created six thousand years ago by an Almighty God.
What, a "terror" project dumped because it doesn't work and it's over budget? Since when has that ever been a factor? What happened - did the bean-counters at Raytheon cut back on the political donations, or was the project concentrated in too few congressional districts? Perhaps they don't have the right former Director of Homeland Security on the board. I think we should be told.
I agree - no patent should be defensible unless it has been "reduced to practice" by the actual grantee or assignee, at least as a prototype, though with something abstract like a software patent or business method it's rather hard to prove whether this has happened or not. It's an attractive ides but it's never going to happen that way by law, though I imagine if things get much worse the razing of offices might one day be carried out by Vigilance Committees representing the shareholders of the companies under attack.
Your point about the productive states in the US subsidizing the unproductive is quite topical here, given that the unproductive states are mostly governed by strident ideologues screaming about reducing the Federal budget. We should make a start with these states' welfare. But it will be interesting to see how it plays out in the EU. There's an alternative to leaving the Eurozone, which is to run the productive economy on an unofficial parallel currency and to hell with the central banks. That's what will happen anyway, in the event the austerity measures get too harsh, whether the alternative is drachma, dollars, gold, bitcoins or bottle caps. Of course that will also be illegal, but unlike the other illegal options, it will be popular.
Naughtyhorse, you must be very young. Anyone old enough to be buying the groceries when Heath took us into the (then) Common Market will remember with a shudder what happened to food prices. The EU has never subsidised food, at least not for Europeans. It subsidises farmers.
Of course this is just a variation on TOTC. For who will step forward to defend the anonymity of rapists? But that's not the real purpose of the database. Its use for rape cases will be an extremely small percentage and the majority of searches will be of the general dragnet variety.
I imagine the shadow home secretary is looking forward to the day when it can be used to identify and fine people who drop litter in the street out of sight of the cameras. Or perhaps, when Nu Lab is back in power, it will be used to identify dissidents.
Because, strangely enough, the US government CANNOT print money. The Federal Reserve (a wholly private enterprise) prints the money, and lends it to the US government in exchange for bonds and other debt instruments. The detailed workings of this arrangement are beyond me, not least because the Federal Reserve is exempt from normal oversight that might help to explain how the whole tottering house of cards is constructed and sustained.
In the majority of cases this is what happens anyway, regardless of whether you have a patent. Defending it through the courts is beyond the means of anyone without a huge pot of money or a VC backer, and even in those cases it can be a Pyrrhic victory where the costs outweigh the benefits. This is particularly true in the US, where costs are seldom granted.
Since abolishing software patents will scarcely impact the little guy, I can't see the AC's argument has any merit.
But we don't have many active volcanoes at the moment, it's been an unusually quiet couple of millennia, so that comparison isn't worth the carbon consumed in reading it . One major incident like Tambora (1815) would reset the balance. I hear Yellowstone is running a bit late. God help us if we ever see the likes of the Deccan Traps eruptions again (10^15 cubic meters).
Actually, Last Tango was banned for a different reason - it showed people having meaningless casual sex and, um, really enjoying themselves. Except that it wasn't really meaningless and they didn't really enjoy it, but you'd have to watch the movie with an open mind - probably more than once - to understand the subtle messages. There's a world of difference between Tango and torture porn.
"Oxfam's analysis is only a rehash of Thomas Malthus, the 18th century political economist's theory in which whenever population outstripped food production, starvation would cull the numbers until the equation was restored. As we know, this is failed theory and should be extended the contempt it deserves."
Perhaps you could tell us of one instance in which this theory has been known to fail? It may not have failed - yet - for the human species in recent years, but it has proved unerringly correct for every other species - including humans - in the previous history of life on Earth.
As a former junior naval ordnance techno boffin, I can assure you that the intended victim of a torpedo generally - and in the case of a submarine, certainly - knows it's coming the moment it's launched and immediately takes evasive action. No amount of additional noise makes a difference to the target once the fish is on the way, but a few seconds less time to evade or distract it certainly does. The noise may affect the torpedo's ability to identify a target by its acoustic signature, but that feature is most important for devices that sit quietly and spring into action when they spot a target - self propelled mines, in other words - and there are clear practical problems with keeping a loitering torpedo hot.
I was sitting on the floor half under a machine once, when someone knocked over a liter beaker of liquid nitrogen. I can confirm that the "Leidenfrost effect" works very well for LN on a tiled floor, causing it to speed about and rapidly cover the entire room, but fails utterly when the LN encounters the seat of a person's pants.
Don't wish a federal VAT on us, you sadistic bastard. We've seen how that diabolical French idea worked in Britain and Ireland, with a giant portion creamed off to the Eurocrat expense account in Brussels. If the Federal government administered one here, they would keep most (if not all) of it and the States would be even worse off.
Er, that nowhere in the article does it say they are gas giants, or indeed, anything-giants. The only available data so far is that they have mass of the same order as a known gas giant, but that doesn't necessarily imply that they have similar size. They could be microscopic fragments of collapsed matter.
I find that comment difficult to understand. In what way is it not "get(ting) behind our troops" to point out that the political side of the military has provided the useful side with inadequate equipment?
I'm glad you think Britain has an excellent navy. Indeed, I've seen it, and it does a splendid Fleet Review. Very smart. Just the thing we need. Ah, I see the sun's over the yard arm....
"However, he insisted that Google had learned its lessons the "hard way" about ensuring it put users', and governmental, concerns about privacy at the heart of its policy making process,"
Governmental concerns about privacy presumably revolve around the irritating nuisance that we still expect to have some. But not to worry - it won't be long before a new generation comes up that has never known what it is. Some future Schmidt will be able to say of those who knew what privacy was, "They're also dead because they were alive 100, or 500 years ago."
Better go - the woman on my telescreen is telling me to get off El Reg and do some work.
Surely the problem of "orphan works" could easily be solved by returning to the old system where the copyright holder has to file for an extension of copyright after, say, seven years, and every seven years after that. Then works still of value to the copyright holders could be protected effectively in perpetuity, and other works where they can't be bothered would enter the public domain in a more timely fashion. I can't imagine why the content industry would object to this, though I'm sure they would.
"The greens I have long suspected are one of the driving forces behind modern society being devolved into some sort of pre-industrialised cottage-industry-based wake-up-with-the-sun-and-go-back-to-bed-when-it-gets-dark pseudo feudal society"
Can this really be true? Here to tell us is an important and influential man called Maurice Strong. Read about him on Wiki to see how central he is to the whole thing. This is a verbatim quote from an interview with Canada West magazine in 1990 (sorry, I can't link the original source).
Quote:
"What if a small group of world leaders were to conclude that the principal risk to the Earth comes from the actions of rich countries? And if the world is to survive, those rich countries would have to sign an agreement reducing their impact on the environment. Will they do it? The group's conclusion is "no." The rich countries won't do it. They won't change. So, in order to save the planet, the group decides: Isn't the only hope for the planet that the industrialized civilizations collapse? Isn't it our responsibility to bring that about?"
Does this sound like the sort of person you want influencing your national energy policy?
There is no reason for the DVLC to keep a precise location diary of every vehicle, though they have acquired the ability thanks to ANPR. But that's an argument for another day. I'm touched by your naivette about the "hordes of spooks". Perhaps it's because I'm a 'merkin and live where such things are more obvious, but much spookery is now outsourced to politically-connected private enterprise, the main business of which seems to be a relentless search for more things to track. Government organizations may well be incompetent at delivering public service, but when it comes to looking out for their own interests they take second place to nobody.
"Geohot's actions were clearly violations of the DMCA."
Perhaps so. But no DMCA violation has ever made its way through the system to the court of ultimate appeal, at which point it would risk being found unconstitutional and struck down. Cynical observers might view that as a more likely reason why Sony settled.
I think my disagreement is adequately expressed by the follow-up from The Original Ash. But thank you for reminding me to go back and review your post so I could give it a thumbs-down.
I do not love Big Brother, nor am I a supporter of the Thought Police. Your original post is nothing more than advice on a more reliable way to fit people up next time.
"The best way to avoid risk is by advising that any activity is technically impossible for reasons that are far too complicated to explain. If that approach is not sufficient to halt the project, then the engineer will fall back to a second line of defense: "It's technically possible but it will cost too much."
In this they merely continue the traditions of the former Southern Region. It's been many years since I traveled that route but I remember frequent journeys from London to Portsmouth where I had to stand, in a crush reminiscent of a Tokyo subway, for more than half the distance.
At least they haven't adopted the French practice of fining travelers who don't have a seat.
Way way back, the spooks discovered how to read decrypted telex traffic in foreign embassies by monitoring electrical noise on the power lines going in to the code room. This varied minutely depending on what character was being set up to print next. I imagine that power lines have been carefully shielded and decoupled ever since this came to light, more than 50 years ago now.
If true, they appear to be passing off the task of vilifying Assange to more junior members of the team now. I wonder how many "undergrad courses" they have between them. Most individuals do only one.
I used to think they were State Department, but the recent change of tone and increase in sneering ad hominem comments leads me to suspect commercial mercenaries, possibly HBGary Federal.
I note with amusement the increasing frustration of IMG and co and their descent into ad hominem abuse of other commentards who challenge his lengthy and tedious diatribes. It surely must be obvious to all readers by now that Ian is not a person but a team, which is how he is able to spend unlimited time researching and posting around the clock. I look forward to a future El Reg article identifying the US Federal Government agency responsible for this inept COINTELPRO exercise.
But.. but .. Wait! That's what they told us they were going to do in the beginning, when VAT was first introduced! "It's 8% now", they said, "and when we phase out the income tax it may rise to 15%, but we'll all be better off because VAT can't be avoided and it's so efficient!".
Never mind that the last statement turned out to be complete bollocks. If they get a second bite at that cherry, I predict that VAT will go up to 30% in one jump, but the "phasing out" of income tax will begin and end with lowering the rate by 3% in the first year and creeping it back up to current levels later.
"...WikiLeaks, helmed by eccentric and – according to mainstream journalists with whom he has since worked – unkempt, smelly activist Julian Assange..."
That's a bit uncalled for, Lewis. True or not, it's irrelevant to a story about Bradley Manning, and it makes you look like a dick. Don't you have an editor?