Wait, someone actually got angry over Free? My anime-savvy friends just shrugged and said: "Hey, fanservice for women." And that was their entire reaction - it's just the kind of blatant fanservice Japan already produces by the truckload aimed at people who find men attractive. News at eleven.

But I guess people can get angry over everything. (Interestingly, as far as Twilight is concerned, I've heard more complaints about how much of an object the protagonist is than about the slightly less two-dimensional guys she deals with.)

That's true. To be honest, my laptop runs on Intel, too. That's a market semgnet Intel is very good at. Still, budget desktop exists and I hope they will continue to keep AMD afloat because I really don't want to see what happens when Intel has x86/amd64 for itself. (Of course Intel probably doesn't want to see that, either; monopolies have this pesky habit of falling under antitrust regulations...)

It's all about target demographics. The last few times I've built desktop PCs I've been on a budget and that's where AMD becomes really interesting. AMD CPUs are usually good enough (especially in gaming rigs where desktop CPU performace has become essentially irrelevant years ago) and can be faster than Intels at the same price point - not because AMD is better but because Intel is more expensive, especially once you factor in that Intel mainboards also tend to have higher prices.

Sure, Intel CPUs are better. But if you don't do heavily CPU-intensive tasks (ie. if you use your computer for generic consumer-type stuff) AMD's ones are adequate and cheap. Intel is great in workstations but most people don't need a workstation. That's why AMD is still alive. It's pretty much the VHS of x86/amd64.

Well, the IE patches should matter. They might affect the rendering engine, which is used everywhere.

I never said that I deserve automatic business success. "Reward" and "getting paid" are two different things. I do agree, however, that I expressed myself poorly. Of course the mere idea is not enough to get a patent: At the very least I should supply enough information to make my valve. Still, I shouldn't need to actually produce valves in order to deserve patent protection; after all there are dedicated research entities like CSIRO who do expend significant effort to develop technologies even though they don't develop physical products based on those technologies.

If the non-company actually came up with a working prototype and wrote a patent that explains in detail how to copy it and demonstrably came up with the whole thing first then yes, the non-company deserves the patent. Of course this scenario is utterly unlikely. Still, patents shouldn't be about how much it cost to come up with something; they should be about whether this something advances the state of the art and is described in a precise manner that allows an average worker in the field to reproduce it. If your company spends $10m and mine spends $100k and we independently arrive at the same method of solving a particular problem then your company's claim isn't automatically more valid than mine.

If we could ensure that all granted patents are for things that advance the state of the art in a reproducible manner we'd be much closer to a reasonable system (although there'd still be work left to be done).

Patents are not inherently evil. If I get the idea for a new valve design that uses some obscure property of gasoline to make direct injection engines five percent more efficient then I deserve to be rewarded for that. But do I deserve a reward for taking something we already do and adding "via electronic transmission" without even detailing how exactly that transmission would work? Do I deserve a reward for taking the concepts of HTTP redirects and credit card processing and coming up with a redirect to a credit card processing software?

We have a few problems right now that need fundamental changes to how patents work in order to be resolved:

Firstly, there is a flood of patents far too great to allow patent examiners to examine each patent in detail. We can't solve this by adding more examiners; there's no money for that. We can't solve this by allowing an arbitrary backlog; sooner or later we'd get to a point where you'd spend longer for your application to be processed than the patent would last once approved, which would hurt legitimately useful applications. The current solution, just doing less work per patent, just means that more junk patents come through.

Additionally, we don't have enough experts. A patent on "storing a word processor document in a single XML file" (real patent) might not sound obvious to a patent examiner who doesn't have a deep understanding of IT but to an IT professional it's blindingly obvious; after all XML is a universal format and we store all sorts of other documents in XML form already. Still, a patent has been granted for this "innovation", most likely because the patent office can't afford enough IT experts to properly evaluate every IT patent. (Admittedly, the patent is specific enough that one can, with effort, create a non-infringing XML text document format. But it's still obvious.)

Of course it doesn't help that some granted patents are overly generic. Many patents just declare dominion over an idea, sometimes even without providing technical information on how to make the idea actually work. This can be hard to see for the examiner because of the relative dearth of domain experts.

Compounding that is the fact that willful infringement nets harsher punishment. However, if I actually do the research to make sure I don't violate certain patents it becomes reasonable to assume that I know about all relevant patents in the field. If I overlooked some and end up infringing them it becomes difficult to prove that I didn't know about them, costing me more money. Thus, the safest course of action is to never read any patents at all so I can at least claim ignorance. This keeps me open to surprise litigation, of course, and it also perverts the entire point of the patent system: Patents are not there so that someone can control an idea, they are there so that someone provides his idea and technical work to everyone else in exchange for some royalties.


Fixing this mess won't be easy. We need far more experts, more time per patent and fewer patent applications. The former two aren't going to happen because nobody's willing to pay that much money and the latter isn't going to happen as long as obtaining patents is as lucrative as it is today. While I don't think that killing off the entire patent system is the way to go it's easy to see how people come up with the idea.

Well, there are the schenanigans around the .iq domain. While accounts seem to differ it was a bit peculiar that .iq dropped off the root zone right around when the Iraq War happened. (I know that the guy administering the TLD was nasty but he wasn't convicted yet and I'm not sure it's reasonable to shut down a TLD because the Tech-C is being prosecuted.)

"Random people" includes any single government. Jon Postel might have been trustworthy but his government isn't. Not when international politics are involved. No single government or regional bloc truly is. (Neither are all governments combined but at least they'll have a harder time screwing everything up.)

Then again many people outside the USA aren't entirely comfortable with the USA having control over internet governance. Mind you, there are many other countries equally unsuited. The problem is that if one single country has control then one country might decide to use that control to further its own interests. And I don't think that it's a good trade to give all power to one country just to ensure that certain other countries get no power at all.

Of course this is about power shifting towards governments in general. This is to be expected - after all, we can't just have random people running the internet and governments happen to be the very things that represent their countries internationally. I expect ICANN to become something like the ITU: A UN agency that handles infrastructure governance. That does seem to be the safest and fairest option. Do Iran and North Korea get a voice? Yes, they do, just as they should. But that doesn't mean they run the show.

I like Apple as much as the next guy but their add-on prices are silly. The fact that their hardware tends to be good in general doesn't excuse the fact that they charge twice as much for an upgrade as you'd pay on the open market. This is obvious when looking at RAM where you pay huge markups on modules with identical stats made by the same company.

That's why I don't like their Retina lineup - less customer-serviceability (and parts in more expensive form factors) mean less independence from Apple's horrible add-on prices.

So now, you've tried to back up your claim, and you've failed. You did not show any evidence, at all, of me expressing support for impeachment. You're a liar, you know you're a liar, you have no regard for truth of any kind, and therefore nothing you have to say henceforth matters.

So, here's how this goes: nothing in your next comments matters until you back up or retract your claim that I have ever said impeachment of President Obama needs to happen, or in any way supported impeachment of President Obama. Anything else you say will be ignored until that happens. You need to learn to tell the truth, at least sometimes.

The Constitution says we don't. Stop being stupid.

You're a liar.

You're a liar. I implied no such thing. You appear to be under the impression that a. the House is not currently Republican, or b. that if the incoming House wants to impeach, the outgoing House would not, or c. the Senate has anything to do with impeachment before the House actually votes for impeachment. a. and c. are obviously false, and b. is nonsense. Stop being stupid.

You're a liar. I said no such thing. I simply proved you were wrong. And you still won't admit you were wrong. In fact, you repeated your lie, even after I proved it was a lie, that removal is a separate process and takes a long time.

You're a liar. It's never happened.

So, here's how this goes: nothing in your next comments matters until you back up or retract your claim that I have ever said impeachment of President Obama needs to happen, or in any way supported impeachment of President Obama. Anything else you say will be ignored until that happens. You need to learn to tell the truth, at least sometimes.

Simply put: the Constitution doesn't require an investigation, therefore it isn't necessary. This is easy, even for you, to understand.

You're a liar, or you can't read. (I could go either way on that one.)

I never implied they would. What are you blabbering about? (Note: this is a rhetorical question. I don't really care what you are blabbering about, because I am quite sure it won't make any sense, won't reflect reality, won't be honest, etc. As usual.)

You're a liar. I presented evidence: evidence that Clinton was impeached and tried in 5 months, evidence that removal can happen as part of the trial process and take no additional time, evidence that the Constitution requires no lengthy time period, evidence that no investigation is required, and so on. And make no mistake: all of this evidence is incontrovertible.

You have provided zero evidence. You simply asserted it would take two years or more, literally without any evidence at all.

You claimed it but you did not prove it.

You're a liar. I gave you the example of the former judge, Alcee Hastings (D-FL), whose removal was not a separate process and took no additional time. That is proof. I didn't prove it wouldn't be a separate process and wouldn't take much more time, only that you were obviously wrong to say it necessarily would. And it makes sense that you were wrong, because you are completely ignorant.

You're a liar. I have never once supported impeachment of President Obama. You're simply making shit up, as usual.

I ... are [sic] really enjoying how you just discarded the demonstration of your list of claims as being pure fantasy by trying to pick apart just one of them to try to make yourself feel better.

You're a liar. That never happened.

Let's see. You don't admit you were wrong about removal being a separate process and taking a long time, despite incontrovertible proof being presented. You don't admit you were wrong about Obama refusing to enforce the employer mandate, despite it being truly uncontested. You don't admit you were wrong about me supporting impeachment of President Obama, despite the fact that you have no, and have never seen any, evidence I ever did.

And let's not forget that bizarrely stupid claim you made about a grand jury being required! That was a bona fide howler.

You just can't stop making shit up. It's pretty funny.

And I also already proved no investigation here is necessary. There's nothing in the Constitution requiring it, obviously; and if the House feels that we know what we need to, then no investigation needs to be done. It's that simple.

You're a liar. Even if an investigation were done, it could start immediately in January. Actually, it could start this November, after the results of the Senate election are known. But it would likely begin in January.

That is not a problem with anything I said, no.

You're a liar. No such thing is reasonable to expect. In fact, the only evidence we have is that removals are not complicated and do not take a long time. Granted, a President is not a Judge, but you've offered zero evidence backing up your assertion that it would take a long time. None at all.

And to compound your dishonesty, you did not admit you were wrong about removal taking much more time and being a separate process, when I proved it doesn't and isn't. You stopped asserting it, which is fine, but maybe you should at least admit you were lying when you said it?

assuming of course that your fantasy of a conviction

You're a liar. I never said I hoped for that, and, in fact, I do not.

I have evidence that it does not need to take that long, which is more than your nonexistent evidence for your claim that it does need to take that long.

You're a liar. I am not. I've said from the beginning of this thread that I oppose impeachment ("Impeachment is a stupid idea ...").

Not that I don't expect you to not lie, but still, that one was beneath even you. Which is saying something.

I am not going to cast pearls here and go over all the cases, but one of these in particular is very funny, because it just shows how completely ignorant you are. Not that we didn't already know, with your idiotic claims of impeachment taking years, of removal being a separate more lengthy process, and so on.

But you just said it is merely my opinion that Obama has refused to enforce the employer mandate of the Affordable Care Act.

This fact is seriously not in dispute by anyone. It's a simple statement of fact. The law says it begins in 2014, and he signed an executive order pushing it to 2015. No one denies this.

Now, on this point I am actually on Obama's side, in that I think the President has the legitimate authority to not enforce punishments, as long as he does it without violating equal protection. So he cannot say, "I won't enforce the mandate against liberal companies," but he can say he won't enforce it against all companies. He can further take it on a case-by-case basis, if he chooses. It's basically prosecutorial discretion. The President can, and does, choose all the time which laws he will and will not enforce prosecution or punishment of. Suing the President for exercising his authority here, as Boehner is threatening, is legal nonsense.

Of course, you can impeach the President for anything you want to.

But, none of this takes away from the fact that Obama has refused to enforce the employer mandate of the Affordable Care Act. Everyone knows it.

Similarly, it's in my view a proven fact that Obama has given subsidies to people in violation of the law, and Obama's own advisor said this is the case. The law does not allow subsidies for the federal exchange. The wording of the law is absolutely clear, the intent of the law is very well-established, and Obama knew all this and did it anyway. But Obama denies this; he does not, however, deny that he has refused to enforce the employer mandates, though he wouldn't use those exact words to characterize it.

You're just full of shit, as usual, at every turn.

You're a liar. Clinton: five months. Johnson: 3.5 months. Yes, he was not removed, but that would not take an additional year or more.

You're a liar. Even if we said it took a year to impeach Clinton (including investigations etc.), that would still leave about a year to remove him.

You're a liar. The length of time pretty much has nothing to do with why they won't impeach him, because a. it wouldn't take that long, and b. it's a bad idea regardless of the length of time.

You're a liar, on both counts. For example, when Judge Alcee Hastings (currently in the House of Representatives, D-FL) was tried by the Senate, he was removed as soon as the voting on the impeachment articles was concluded. They voted on 17 articles, each of which read, "Wherefore, Judge Alcee L. Hastings is guilty of an impeachable offense warranting removal from office." And upon being found guilty on several of those articles, the judgment read "It is therefore ordered and adjudged that the said Alcee L. Hastings be, and is hereby, removed from office." The end. They summarized the vote on the last article, summarized all the votes on all the articles, and then removed him from office, all within a few minutes. The end.

It can be as quick as the Senate wants it to be, and does not need to be a separate process.

You're a liar. I clearly wrote: "Clinton's impeachment -- which took longer than necessary -- took a mere five months from beginning of Starr's submission of data ... We don't need to go through lots of information for Obama; most of his "crimes and misdemeanors" are well-known."

"Impeachable" means whatever the House wants, and the very fact that Obama said the IRS was not corrupt, but it was ... that is impeachable. And we know he has broken the law (federal exchange subsidies), we know he's refused to enforce the law (employer mandate), we know he lied about Benghazi, we know he lied about the IRS not being corrupt. We know all of this.

But they could also impeach him for being black, or for being a lousy basketball player. They can impeach him for anything they want; they get to define what a "high crime" or "misdemeanor" is in this context. They won't, of course, but that's a separate point, since they never would anyway, not for any of these things. But they could, and that's the point, that you dishonestly deny.