Who's ethics? Mine or yours? Because mine doesn't agree. Whenever someone uses the words "ethics" or "morals" you know he's about to sell you his point of view of the matter. Do you not understand that ethics and morals are highly individual and to even assume that the opposite party shares yours is insanely egocentric. Let me tell you when it is OK to "hurt the small player" or the "big player" or any "player", for me: when I profit from it -- period. That's the way any profitable company play and that's the way any smart consumer plays. Nobody in their right mind goes into business because it's "nice", people go into business to make profit. And the consumer, aka the demandee -- which is on the other side of the tug of war of that which we call trade -- can only benefit from more suppliers. But seriously, you want to keep drawing the shorter straw because it helps you sleep at night, go ahead -- I can tell you I won't, no matter how many times you invoke your "ethics" or "morals" speach.

You're right, I didn't read the preamble. Still it was one sentence. You'd think there would be at least something pointing to what pending patents in specific. I don't understand how the article can be so long with so little actual substance.

I don't understand. TFA mentions nothing about any legal issues. Unless there's any patent infringement or trademark issues I don't see why this should be frowned upon. I don't care if Reframe is a small struggling company, as a consumer I want as many companies tearing eachother apart at the same time -- providing me with better services and lower prices. This is exactly the kind of nonsense that hinders development, and no the product might be very similar but it is not an exact copy, and even if it was I would never side with the people whom I do business with -- as that would be completely idiotic. I'm not even going to bother with the car analogies as you all know how silly this type of reasoning would be if it was applied there. What's next? Are we going to point fingers at Mozilla for not inventing the concept of the browser?

Google wave will change that. When people start migrating from Facebook (already a privacy scare for many, not to mention the "help" the media is giving), and even email, to wave -- Google will slap up some nice "propositions", such as "Oops! You're not running the Google frame. Click here to see how you can improve your wave experience!", or better yet "Oops! You're not using Google Chrome! ..." -- click, smack, and done. Shortly thereafter netbook manufacturers will start shipping their hardware with Chrome OS, which fits like a glove to wave, youtube -- you name it. It doesn't take a genious to see how Google will make all this fit together. You might be wondering "why Google frame and not Chrome right away?" -- easy, it's their wave... wave (hah)... to surf on that is. You see if wave is slow, it won't catch on, but with the Google frame it won't be, and people don't need to leave their comfortable IE environment at all. Hence Google frame is just a stepping stone towards promoting wave, and it will be abandoned in due time. Basically: anybody who ever visits a Google owned page with IE will have a very, very easy way of installing the Google frame. Most people will probably not even know what hit them -- and they wouldn't even care if they did.

Let me turn this around. What if the rest of the world were like China in this matter? Isn't that more ideal? Companies fighting over pennies and adopting eachothers ideas constantly, and consumers that just keep getting better and cheaper products. With this in mind, is it so easy to say that the model in China is flawed? Rather than the artificial scarcity which the rest of the world has accepted.

Except if it wasn't for GNOME Qt would still be proprietary. It's easy to neglect the impacts OSS projects have on eachother, even if they don't share one single row of code.

You're correct, but only if that single injured member was impossible to save. Saving lives is also a part of evolutionary effects, as it further aids reproduction chances of the organism. Evolution is the extended arm of relativity, and evolution is solely based on individual vs. environment. Not smart vs. dumb, or ugly vs. beautiful, or strong vs. weak. It cannot be rightfully explained in any other way than that the organism which is best fitted to its environment will have the best chances of reproduction. If being saved is a real possibility then this factor is also included in the equation of evolution.
 
It is true that ultimately drugs (medicine) will end up removing our own built in abilities of coping with reality as those who are born with a complete lack of this mechanism also reproduce with the rest. This is however not to be feared because reality for us now is not what the reality for us was when we were in the jungle. So it would be a real slap in the face to evolution to say that we're "messing" with it, because you'd be so ignorant to think that you can control evolution. It is only a product of reality, it is only a product of relativity. You can't cheat evolution.
 
It all comes down to two opposing theories, fate vs. free will. It is very controversial to say that there is such a thing as fate, as it is usually associated with nonsensical TV-shows about anything from clarvoyants to fundamentalists (e.g. doomsday). However it seems that we tend to wish for the absence of fate and that we are in control of ourselves and our lives -- but then one has to question if this doesn't cloud our judgement of the truth. There is also the argument that if fate is "proven" then we would all just lie down and wait for death. The problem with this argument is that once again one makes the fatal assumption that all humans would be susceptible to this and that all humans would embrace it -- but without pointing any fingers I think we can conclude that even if you present the hardest evidence -- there are still many people who would deny it. This would then be another product of fate, that in return coexists with our existance, rather than our annihilation.
 
I think this is an effect of relativity and the fact that many people don't tend to accept proof of what they, with all their hearts, wish for is untrue further also becomes an effect of fate. What I'm trying to say is that even if fate is proven to exist, it wouldn't make a difference, as those who accept it and go down with it will die, those who accept yet ignore it and those who won't accept it will live on. And in evolutionary terms this would then lead to offspring less likely to go down with this "truth". Perhaps genetic, perhaps due to "alternative education." We would never accept murder or rape or genocide as an inevitable effect of the universe. If we do that, we're no longer what we consider human. We would be equal rocks, or water, the sun, or the moon. Peers with our futures written on our foreheads.
 
Then again -- as the uncertainty principle shows us -- we can never be sure of this. And if you think about it -- this is deeply rooted in our very definition of life itself -- uncertainty.

Hahaha I'm sorry, this one was very funny BadAnalogyGuy. Allow me let you in on a secret: professional lawyers don't give a shit about morals in court. They learn the legal system in order to play it in favor of their clients so that they get paid. It's a job, and you're a damn fool to even think for a second that they care about their clients other than how much money they make out of them. They get paid for getting their clients off the hook -- that's what they do, and that's what they'll always do, no matter if their client is RIAA, Hitler, Charles Manson, Ghandi, Martha Stewart or the god damn cookie monster himself -- period -- scene -- fin.

In the world that I live in things change and nothing lasts forever. It must be quite boring to live in your world where what once was will forever be.

You know, an easy and proper way to handle this would be to have a governmental entity maintain a blocklist which ordinary citizens can optionally install/use/turn on/turn off (with some easy to use software). See it like a seatbelt (I know the seatbelt is required by law in some countries but in this case it doesn't kill you to not use it) which you can switch on and off. This would be an excellent example of the government aiding the public instead of dictating the public. Those of us who know what we're getting ourselves into when we turn it off of never install it can choose freely, and those who don't bother to learn can fallback on this solution -- free to anytime educate themselves and turn it off.
This way the government offers a safe choice (with whatever blocked content, be it copyright infringement or not) yet is liberal enough to let you decide in the end. If you get "hurt", then you're to blame for deliberately turning it off while being uninformed. And the rest of us get to keep the net undictated. At the end of the day the friction is between people who know what they're doing and want to be free to do what they consider to be the best way to utilize the net, and those who don't know what they're doing that are in need of this type of protection.

Or two Plack cookies (Ö, pron. "yummy").

I completely [TOO SMALL? WANT TO GET IT BIGGER? VISIT XXXXX.COM] agree with you. There [THIRSTY? DRINK COKE, IT'S HEALTHY] is absolutely [ARE YOU TIRED? SLEEPY? TRY RED BULL, IT WILL MAKE YOU FLY!] nothing to be [TRY THE NEW MCBURGER, YOUR TONGUE WILL THANK YOU!] annoyed about.

I'm confused, are you replying to me? I only answered his question if we are concerned about votes not being counted. I never said nor did I imply that this was the right or the wrong way to do it.
 
But to answer your question, the only way to make sure of this is if the software that is in use is completely open source. That way anybody who's interested may view the source and follow the the procedure, from submission to results.

I was about to write a long reply about how democracy depends on the fact that bla bla bla... and how you cannot trust people, especially what in politics and bla bla bla... but you asked a simple question so I'll give you a simple answer:
 
  Yes.

That doesn't add up. According to this article the existing single-letter second-level domains were all registered before 1993, as in 1993 IANA reserved the remaining domains. Originally x.com was owned by Weinstein & DePaolis. Some half assed googling led me to this, which isn't much. And a quick whois showed that they also own x.cx, judging by the email used.