Comment Re:What's more outrageous... (Score 1) 378
Your point is...?
Internet breaks things sometimes, but in this case they weren't even 'conducting business in Il' any more than a mail order company would by mailing purchases there.
Incidentally, if you run a business that mails purchases to IL, that means you have customers there, ergo, you conduct business in the state. Not a complicated concept.
Let me guess, you feel slighted because you're in an area slighted by the survey?
Let me also make a guess, you don't think you are a moron, do you? From my personal experience of living next to a well-respected university for the past fifteen years - after graduating from that same university - this is just a place were people who think they are smart naturally congregate. The people who are in fact smart prefer to congregate at the Cote d'Azure. Hopefully, one of these days I will finally do something smart that will allow me to sell my house in New Jersey to someone in need of proximity to the academia. And I will settle for groping silicone tits at some Mediterranean resort.
So the only people the current patent system helps, are the big companies and the courts.
Perhaps, but it would appear that the real problem is the incompetent assgobblins holed up in the US Patent and Trademark Orifice. I think a good first step would be to introduce compulsory IQ testing at the USPTO and lay off employees scoring below seventy, confiscating all of their square pegs and round holes. The remaining six patent analysts should be offered early retirement with full benefits and a conciliatory "years of service" plaque.
In Russia, mostly the corruption is not just in the system.
If I was Russia's prime minister, I would hire a recent comp sci grad as my anti-spam adviser. You know, somebody fresh out of college, unburdened with superfluous knowledge; somebody who once read a book about spamming. This way my reputation as a thrifty and ethical bureaucrat would be safe with the Russian tabloids.
Texas won its independence from Mexico
The word "won" has a positive connotation not appropriate in this particular case.
Yet time and time again, the half-spoken, implicit, veiled theory appears: drug companies don't want to cure diseases, they intentionally avoid developing cures, because that would lose them money. Why?
Probably because it makes sense. Most pharmaceutical companies are publicly traded and their primary obligation is to the shareholders and not to the customers. If you can charge a customer fifty grand for one course of chemo treatment for the rest of his life, then what is the incentive to find a cure? It's the process that makes them money, not the end result.
A tearful story usually follows comments like mine: what about all those wonderfully dedicated researchers working for the pharmaceutical companies day and night searching for the cure? Well, I follow the news, so I am sure I will hear if they actually cure cancer.
If you steal your own wallet back from a pickpocket, you're not going to jail.
As you know, when it comes to intellectual property rights, common logic rarely applies. Stranger things have happened.
1) new (ish)
I hope they are newer than the Quantum ESP5000 SSD that has been attached to my Sparc 10 for the past fifteen years.
Except that his message is to throw more money at schools as if that will fix the problem.
I actually read the linked article and it would seem that the mayor's suggestion is in fact to throw more money but not at schools in general but at the most gifted students. Unlike the current populist approach to education, this simple idea recognizes the fact that most children have no talent, will not complete college education, and, despite what their parents may hope for, will never amount to anything in a any way remarkable. If there is a limited amount of money to be spent on education, one should spend it on students that can take full advantage of extra tutoring. This would not address America's retarded education system, but at least it will allow the country to keep its head above water in science and technology without relying quite as much on the imported brains.
God help those who do not help themselves. -- Wilson Mizner
