What does this have to do with the fact that Apple copied my idea of smartwatch vibration messaging and filed patents on it even though I have proof at this URL right here on slashdot that I came up with it first. http://ask.slashdot.org/commen...

Question is, how do we win round 2 .. which is coming soon. Works start falling out of copyright in 2019, Disney will and other corps will move to protect their monopolies. How can we stop that? Public action stopped things like SOPA.

The term "intellectual property" is I believe a misnomer. There is first of all no innate right to intellectual property. The right to own a copyright is no different than the right to drive on the roads, you have to be given the right by the government on the basis of meeting certain requirements. This is very different from a fundamental or innate right. You have an innate right to free speech, it is not something the government gives you ..it's something you are born with. For example, if you own a physical object, you have the innate right not to have that object taken from you. But the US founding fathers saw that a person had no such innate right when it comes to inventions and art. Ideas are not your property once you describe them. That is why the constitution says that such monopolies on ideas should be granted by Congress *ONLY* IF IT SPURS THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE USEFUL ARTS. It is very different from freedom of speech, which you have regardless of the effect on society, a person has no such innate right to monopolize their own inventions and art.

According to the constitution Congress has the right .. "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries."

According to that text, it's clear the current Supreme Court is shirking its responsibility by allowing excessive copyright and patent terms. Excessive copyright terms don't meet the fundamental constitutional requirement of advancing the useful arts and sciences. Disney made a lot of money by taking advantage of the expired copyrights of traditional stories such as sleeping beauty, beauty and the beast etc. I mean even The Lion King is a retelling of Hamlet by William Shakespeare. Did Disney compensate Shakespeare for stealing his story??? If Shakespeare's estate still owned the copyright of Hamlet, Disney would not have been able to make Hamlet. This is clearly proof that the useful arts and sciences are being hindered by excessive copyright terms. The first US copyright laws had only a few years in length .. and that was in a time where it was much harder to market one's work throughout the country and make enough money in a short time.

The way I see it, id Software's new owners are evil because they even tried to frivolously sue John Carmack, who invented all their games and technology.

In addition to recording, it should stream to the cloud in real time.

Probably not, if the pictures of Pluto returned back by the New Horizons mission are still fresh on people's minds.

NASA should wait until July/August 2015 before proposing a new launch system. That's around the same time the New Horizons space probe NASA launched back in 2008 will be reaching Pluto. I believe, hopefully, that the pictures from Pluto will capture the imagination of the public and, by proxy, Congress. That way NASA can propose a totally Giga launch system and get it approved.

Frankly SLS is lame. We're going to be stuck with whatever launch system for a few decades -- possibly longer given politics, so we better get it right. We need to be looking to build something that can scale to sustainable colony establishment class stuff.

The peephole example is not good. It's a violation of privacy to look through a peephole into a hotel room (the lens arrangement won't allow you to see much anyway even if you could focus). My point is that I should be legally allowed to record everything that I am legally allowed to view or hear.

I am 100% in favor of privacy, but there are places you shouldn't expect privacy. For example if you have your lights on and the windows open you can't expect the right to privacy from the street. If you want to get it on with your partner in your backyard without cover, that does entail a privacy risk. You don't have the right to the airspace of all angles to your home. I mean with adequate zoom you could be filmed or watched from an airplane or satellite too. The way I see it, if I have the right to be someplace, I also have the right to record what I see.

I guess you need your eyes checked, because I can easily tell the difference between a 1080p tablet versus higher resolution tablets because the pixels are visible even at standard viewing distance.

Anyway, looking at Intel's published die area cost, it adds probably a few pennies to the cost of the CPU to add a 4K decoder. Also, the 4K decoder algorithm didn't have to get developed, it was designed years ago. Once the algorithm is designed most of the process shrink work is done automagically in software. It also has virtually no effect on power consumption to include it, the inclusion of 4K costs very very little per cpu so I am not sure what you are complaining about.

All you luddites do is complain when new technology comes out.

Nobody that resorts to such a cowardly and fear driven act as torture is a badass. A badass wouldn't be so scared of the consequences of not torturing someone that they would be willing to give up their humanity. Only fear, paranoia, and revenge can drive someone to torture another.

Dropbox has Condoleeza Rice on its board of directors. If anyone remembers, she was Secretary of State and also the president's National Security Advisor during the Bush administration. She basically allowed torture, and is responsible for Guantanamo. She had no problem with torturing people without even doing a basic check to see if the person being tortured was guilty of the crime he was being tortured for. And you want to talk about spying? She was part of the administration that developed the PATRIOT Act. The justification being "it's ok to spy on foreigners" .. Oh and we can DECLARE you a foreigner without any due process by making you prove your Americanness. She was cool with torturing foreigners without giving them any sort of due process, so why would you assume that she wont torture citizens if she was scared into doing so? We already know she doesn't think people need privacy.

Everytime the LHC makes the news ... I think congratulations to the EU and then I think about the Superconducting Super Collider being built in Texas which was cancelled in 1993. We should have had these breakthroughs come out 15 years ago. In the United States. Thanks Congress for slowing down the pace of physics. Much appreciated .. NOT.

Wow, the FBI is so awesome, they can predict exactly what a criminal is gonna do in advance. How about they actually solve a murder, rape, or kidnapping once in a while? 35% of murders don't get solved .. maybe when they get that number down to like 5% I'll start believing the feds when they say it's gonna rain tomorrow. Meanwhile anything to reduce the 30,000 highway deaths per year will be appreciated. If automated cars are illegal, only the federales will have automated cars with a dummy driver.

LOL +Insightful +Funny if I had the mod points