Sure it is. You would expect someone referencing the song to know who sings/wrote it. In this case, they did not. There is a difference between what one would expect and what actually happened. That IS dramatic/situational irony.

You not knowing that is also situationally ironic, because when complaining about whether or not something is ironic, you should know the various accepted definitions of irony and have a grasp of what situations can fulfill those definitions. In this case, you did not, which led to another difference between what one would expect (your competence) and reality (the complete lack thereof).

Laches only applies (according to the US supreme court) in cases where there is no other statutory limit, unlike copyright. Until the US supreme court changes that precedent, laches does NOT apply to copyright.

Citation or you're wrong.

http://www.templetons.com/brad/copymyths.html (see #5)

I wouldn't go so far as to say that materials that actually do get destroyed in their use haven't the ability to become scarce, but Helium by it's very nature is non-reactive, meaning that when we 'lose' helium, we're merely displacing it, meaning it can be recovered. Once we start fusing it, I will admit it may become a scarce resource, but the world as of right now has (through human usage) exactly as many (or at least, humans have used a statistically immeasurable amount of) Helium atoms as it ever has, which cannot be said for, say, molecules of oil, which have been transformed from a long hydrocarbon chain into several other forms, notably carbon mon- and dioxide, water, and various forms economically useful (I'm looking at you, plastic!).

Anyways, I haven't read Julian Simon's theories in their entirety, but I can tell you right now he's a moron. Energy is certainly not infinite - there is an upper limit of the amount of energy that could be absorbed by a 100% efficient solar cell with the exact cross section of the earth over 5 billion years in this orbit. Infinity is factually greater than that amount.

The world isn't running out of helium, the US government's reserves are running out of helium. It may seem like a minor distinction (after all, America is the world, so it follows that the US government's strategic reserves are the entire supply of the entire world), but in reality, there is plenty of Helium available... if we have enough of a need to start separating it again. This also explains why, as prices of helium have gone up, so have the number of factories producing it.

There've been numerous measurements of this planet before. It was chosen because it's relatively well-studied for an exoplanet, so it was good to test the precision and accuracy of the sensors.

How does that apply to lifetime warranties? Not that it would apply here, I'm just curious.

Slashdot: the only place where people can complain that the social sciences aren't mathematically rigorous enough, only to follow up by countering a survey of all games with anecdotal evidence of the games *you've* played.

Also, do you *really* think we should count Tauren as being representative of Native Americans when they're half-ton 8 foot tall monsters?

It's user error if you're having the issue with VLC. Try moving the controller window to the other monitor.

Not exactly analogous. It's not like Apple is asking them to outlaw selling iPhones. It's more like Apple Guns, Inc. saying 'We sell an awesome gun, but if the people we sold our product to are allowed to use third-party bullets, PEOPLE could get SHOT!'

Why do you assume the game has to be public domain at the end? Couldn't you just assume it is shared property of a corporation-like entity comprised of those that funded the game? After all, there's always the sequel, and why not share some of the profits from selling the game with those that funded its creation?

I know you weren't being serious, but in all honesty, *some* of them probably should. There's obviously a lot of money available to the creators of Wii games, and *someone* is going to be making it. EVEN IF Wii's attach rate is half that of the other two (it's actually almost the same), it has about 2x the installed base. EVEN IF we cripple Wii's attach rate, there's (almost) the same amount of money in Wii development as development for both the other two. Someone's going to be earning that money, and frankly, it seems to me that developers not catering to Wii seem to be closing or posting large losses in a growing game industry. Maybe if there were fewer of them catering to the PS3 (and 360), and more catering to the Wii, there would be more money both for the ones on PS3/360 and for those moving to the Wii.

I read through the robinson method, and here's what I see: Loss of anonymity of votes. Therefore, it fails. Period. You may dismiss out of hand the potential for knowing someone who writes in a vote, but that is a loss of anonymity. It allows detection of voting patterns that may or may not directly identify a voter; how many people would vote (coin) (coin) (writein) (coin) (writein) (writein). Not to mention non-votes; am I required to vote for every race? And if I'm not required to vote for every race/proposition, then you get to see that I didn't vote because you see that I didn't put in a coin.

That's not even getting into the ease of purposefully adding errors to the counting process that could easily completely invalidate a vote count. Let's say a poll worker has the skills to shave 1/10th (or whatever the tolerance of the scale is) of the weight off of half the tokens, and add 1/10th the weight to the other half. Then, they systematically choose to give (say) black people the shaved tokens, and white people the unshaved tokens. All of a sudden, white people get a greater vote share equal to 2xW, where W is the tolerance of the scale.

Basically, stop being a whiny emokid and realize that every idea you have is not IPU's gift to mankind. You, sir, are indeed fallible.

Seriously? Your argument boils down to:

Talk about a sophistic argument. You base your entire qualification for success on something that is semantically impossible?

Well, it's good for your argument, even if it fails at the tiniest iota of rational thought...

Of course, the counter argument is that by selling DRM'd copies, you are limiting yourself to those who not only have a device that is capable of using the DRM, but also don't mind only using it on $X devices or logging onto a server first or whatever, whereas by releasing it DRM-free you just make people give you money and provide them a service.

It's entirely reasonable that more people will buy a copy of a book that they'd be able to, I dunno, email to a laptop to read on vacation without carrying around an e-book reader, or send it to work, or any number of other legitimate uses for a book that are generally disallowed by DRM.