Because it is basically a gentleman's way between them where neither side wants to start invalidating patents too much else the other side comes back at their patents. Both sides want to basically "win" while retaining their own patents intact.

A "win" without holding a deck of patents at the end isn't a win for either of them.

You could also apply the basic premise of MAD during the cold war to this, but replace nukes with patent invalidation.

See also:

Whooooosh.

I for one, am incented by your incenting statement about incent!

Hmmm, I don't get it - and if you don't mind giving me a quick lesson, I am more than happy to learn it.

If we start with two particles, moving in a similar direction and come towards a point. Why is it different for the outcome? If the particles interact in a physical way, they hit one another, equal out and move in a straight line together. If they don't collide, doesn't their individual gravity entangle them into a mirrored curve? Over time, the amplitude of the curve would decrease due to the constant force applied to them - and sooner or later, even if they are still two particles, can't they be treated as a single particle with their combined vector (sort of like a flat helix shape)? At that point, wouldn't they weild a greater influence on other particles that they come past?

I mean if dark matter didn't clump due to gravity, it would be distributed utterly equally everwhere in a homogenous manner rather than clumping. And if it does clump, why doesn't it follow the conservation or angular momentum?

The gravitational force between them acts as a perfect friction. The energy goes into accelerating the particles in the ring. I get that an accretion disc around a large body spinning at stupid high speeds gets very very hot and does radiate a lot of that energy away, but something that couldn't radiate would simply rotate faster, and over time expand the radius of the orbit. The gravitational force of the earth will still be tugging on it, effectively slowing it down.

Conservation of angular momentum would likely turn any small particles into an accretion disc - which is sort of like a a ring around the earth that they are suggesting. If dark matter only interacts through gravity, this would actually be strengthened as there would be no collisions to knock this matter out of the plane.

Rings actually do make a lot of sense. Why else do you think all the planets are pretty much on the same plane, why are so many galazies that lovely spiral shape? Why are the asteroid belts in our solar system rings?

If the sun and the moon are acting together, then anything on the side of the earth opposite to the sun and moon would perceive the earth to be heavier.

I think sex-ed sites that involve sheep probably could be blocked - and nothing of value will be lost.

*sips coffee*

Each religion wants to erect monuments to their own diety, I was thinking that Atheists don't believe in a god, ergo there would be loads of blank spaces donated by them next to the other statues...

I would argue that there are already a dozen monuments right next to the ten commandments one donated by atheists standing there...

*sips coffee*

No, really, I think you are the one that isn't realizing it. The whole, entire, only purpose of this from their part is to mock the ten commandments thing that was donated to that location already.

Actually, the internets disagree with you:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yin_and_yang

But not so much visible difference between a 400 year old tree compared to a 500 year old tree.

Also, there are two places to count clam rings - and the hinge is generally used as the better one (though opening the clam to see the hinge rings kills it), though in this case due to SOO many rings, the ones on the inner hinge were not as easy to count as the ones on the outer shell - hence some (or one in four) were missed.

It was actually named after the Ming Dynasty - which was around when the clam started life. Even with the additional 100ish years added, the name still fits as the Ming dynasty was still around at the time.

We on the other hand thought it was a glorious parody. Not amazingly well made, but the quality of the satire made up for what the movie was lacking. If anything I dare say that it might be hitting just a bit too close to home for a number of US folks to truly appreciate. For me, it was almost like being inside a ninety minute example of Poe's Law - dazzlingly brilliant in its dark undercurrent of ghastliness.