> Russia was never a threat to Europe
Really !?
Germany and Czechoslovakia might disagree just for starters. I mean, Russia sure had their reasons to be nervous, but "never a threat" is a bizarre statement.
If the only way to monetise the invention is to sell it to a patent troll then it does not deserve any money.
The only way a patent troll makes money is if someone willing to actually make the thing has the same (usually pretty obvious) idea so the original 'invention' offered zero value to society.
Said as someone with a few patents ( http://www.patentmaps.com/inventor/Jocelyn_M_Earl_1.html )
> I don't think that I dare hope for a setup that cute, though.
What do you think the entire DEA is for ?
We've been through this a few times. Once upon a time portable stereos were cool, they made them as small as possible. Then people realised the really tiny ones sounded like shit so they got bigger, and bigger until 'portable' needed quotes.
Being quite anti-mobile I'm quite keen on this new trend as quite a few people who use them run out of battery so often they end up giving up and getting over their mobile phone habit so you can engage them in conversation again. It's progress.
oh, that's assuming shitty resolution of around 340p
oh, my bad.. make that 30.. its only 6000 minutes per minute.. could be a lot worse
Thanks for that, fascinating. Also, wtf are we going to do when david attenborough retires ? I can't stand watching nature documentaries narrated by anyone else. We'll need need some software to talk in his voice at the very least.
> The second can be accomplished by stopping the massive institutionalized subsidies for childbearing and child rearing.
Sure, people would never have children if it wasn't for the tax breaks, its not like wanting to reproduce is innate.
Good job, never let historical fact mess with your ideology.
The last sentence is a particular peach. Sometimes things are not entirely about money, is that a concept you can grasp? It's hard to compete with that, but I'll try:
The Taj Mahal was a failure measured in terms of return on investment.
The Mona Lisa is pretty pathetic when measured in terms of luminosity per square inch, he should have painted it white.
Faberge eggs are pretty useless as crash helmets for chickens.
Thing is, 3D Systems (specifically the companies founder, Chuck Hull), invented stereolithography and they have tons of patents in this area (I'm named as inventor on 22 of them.. I used to work for 3D Systems). So, if Formlabs can get out of this one as it's close to expiration date, there's more pain in the pipeline.
Nicely put, TOA is beyond stupid.
When engineers make a new airline/bridge/circuit, they model the entire thing on a computer first. The CAD model is an unambiguous model of the plane. Important subsystems in it are modelled and analysed independently and in conjunction with the components around it.
So, if writing software was similar, we would first model the software on a computer. Oh, er, wait a moment. In an important sense, software is a design. The only unambiguous design is the actual software [otherwise we could make the design the programming language]. So, one could have a notion of starting with a fuzzy design and gradually making it clearer, but you can still end up with a bad design.
When someone designs a bad aircraft, the design is modelled, flaws are found and the design is improved. Nobody builds the thing until they feel pretty sure the design is right. However, software is often bad for the same reason that an initial design of anything else is bad. If it was equivalent to an airplane, windows 95 for instance, once designed, would never have been built. However, once the design for a piece of software is complete, one has created the software. All the development money has been spent, so the makers will try to get what they can for it. It's *all* design.
yes weebl, we know
You ain't seen nothing yet. There's a short story about where all this is going.. http://marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm.. two models of the future in there, but I only find one plausible.
> A disturbingly large number of people who identify themselves as Muslims go around blowing up buildings, hijacking refineries, chopping off heads, raping Western reporters to celebrate "democracy", and generally doing their damnedest to make the rest of the world hate them. The rest of the world has no obligation to give a shit about why we shouldn't consider the left hand as bad as the right; The burden rests on "the good ones" to get their own house in order.
That's a fucking retarded viewpoint, dealing with the assholes of this world is down to all of us. I lean atheist, does that mean its up to me to keep the actions of other atheists in check? If Jeffrey Dalmer or some other atheist lunatic does something sick is it up to me and other atheists to cure their behaviour ? Also, your viewpoint on the statistics of which groups go around doing wrong is almost entirely dependent on where you live. If you lived in the middle east you would hear no end of talk about how evil christians and jews are killing innocent muslims all over the place. Instead you live in the US where you hear about Muslims being dicks. It's not that what either group is hearing is false, its just that this is all they hear. However, if you *did* look at the numbers of westerners killed by muslims versus muslims killed by westerners in last 20 years, it comes to around 10,000 westerners versus, um.. well, over a million, but who's counting.
Function reject.
