Well, the point of copyright is to have works created and published which otherwise wouldn't've been, and to have them in the public domain as fully and quickly as possible. The goal is to promote the progress of science, that is, knowledge.

If the source code is granted copyright protection, it ought to be published so that people can learn from it, and so that when it enters the public domain (or prior, if an applicable exception to copyright applies) it can be modified by anyone who wants to modify it, just as any public domain work may be modified.

Just as patents and trade secrets cannot apply for the same invention, we should not allow trade secrets and copyrights to apply for the same work. If someone wants to keep a program secret, then fine, but why does it benefit the public to grant a copyright on a secret program?

As for piracy of the published source, that would still be illegal, just as pirating a published novel is illegal. Every sort of work under the sun has to deal with this except for software; why should software be treated differently?

I guess I do, technically.

First, copyright protects expressions of ideas, but not the underlying ideas themselves. E.g. anyone can make a game about a woman who hunts for treasure by raiding tombs and shooting endangered wildlife. But you can't just outright copy Tomb Raider's code, art assets, and so forth.

Second, the reason for granting copyrights isn't so that people can profit from their works, but so that the public profits from having more works created and published than otherwise would've been, and in the public domain as much as possible, as soon as possible. That copyrights may have economic value which can provide a profit for authors is a side effect, a means to an end. It's not the actual point, though.

I don't have an objection to copyright generally, however, provided that it produces a better outcome for the public than if we didn't have copyright.

And coincidentally, 15 years is the maximum duration that copyrights should last, according to the only proper study of economic incentives surrounding copyright of which I am aware.

We could use some more research on this, but it sounds okay to me.

If you can crack it apart, then you can just bury the graphite in the empty coal mines and oil wells, if there's no better use for it.

But this is so energy intensive that's it's not likely to happen anytime soon.

As for a limnic eruption, that just gets CO2 out of solution from water. It doesn't get it off the planet. Earth's gravity is too strong for that.

The oxygen in the CO2 is atmospheric oxygen, not fossil oxygen. I'd just as soon not get rid of it.

Assuming that you're talking about the $150,000 maximum on statutory damages for copyright infringement, no, you're wrong.

Statutory damages are calculated per work, not per infringement. The number of infringements might perhaps have some bearing on the amount of damages which is just, between the minimum and maximum. But there is only one award, no matter how many separate infringements of that work there are, at least in the same case.

The relevant statute is 17 USC 504(c)(1).

Well, the pressing need to leave 1885 immediately was caused by the threat of Buford Tannen killing one of them. But since he was arrested and in custody before the train was stolen, there was time to abort the train stealing plan and to come up with something else. And there's no other time pressure: after all, they've got a time machine. There is the usual problem of being in the past and perhaps changing something, but the effects on the future of putting together a small steam engine for the DeLorean are probably less than that of stealing the whole train.

No, only the time circuits and the flux capacitor needed over a GW of electricity in order to function. The car's actual engine was an ordinary internal combustion engine that output a little less than 100 KW.

(Come to think of it, stealing a steam train seems unnecessarily complicated and history-altering. Surely it would've been easier for Doc Brown to put together an electrically heated steam engine to get the DeLorean moving. Oh well, sensible ideas rarely make for exciting movies.)

Well, the particular method they're using involves breaking the law in a way that deprives local government of revenues and where they seem to be getting away with it, even though ordinary people never would.

Plus, what's wrong with providing better public transportation, which reduces even more traffic and is more environmentally friendly? (Buses are really not that great compared with electrified rail) Let Google help finance improvements and expansions of the subway system. It'll benefit their workers too, but not just their workers, which I think is part of the issue.

Well, my understanding is that there's a fairly steep ticket for vehicles that park or stand in bus stops. The number I saw was something like $250. In that case, given that there's plenty of evidence that the bus drivers broke the law, the city should pursue that money which they're apparently just leaving on the table. $250 per stop per bus per day for however long these buses have been in service could be quite a lot! And why should the bus companies be allowed to get away with breaking the law just because they did so a lot and if left alone would continue doing so in the future? That doesn't make much sense.

And if they decided to use private stops in a legal manner, well, that's fine. In fact, that's what they should've been doing from the start. And if the local government needs private bus related revenue, it can always tax private bus stops.

Of course, the best solution would be for the companies to not use private buses, and to instead contribute toward improved public mass transit. There are five BART lines that could be extended to cover the South Bay from both sides, probably with a big junction at San Jose. Muni Metro could be expanded to cover more of San Francisco, with attention paid to transfers to and from BART, and the VTA light rail can be dramatically expanded, also with an eye toward BART transfers.

And a better, simplified, unified ticketing system would help too -- assuming they don't all just get merged into one big new transit authority, which might be a sensible idea.

Plus this gets even more cars off the road than private buses do, has the advantage of being fairer, since everyone can ride, and would provide local jobs for constructing and maintaining the system. It'll cost more, but a lot of the companies for whom the bus services are being run have loads of cash and would benefit from it; they can afford to contribute a fair amount and to support the increased government spending and taxes for the rest.

Yes. But many years later, I got an SE/30 and maxed out the RAM, just to have finally done it. Fortunately it didn't cost too much on eBay.

Well, IIRC, the only reason that A/UX even existed was because the US government had a requirement of POSIX compatibility for all computer purchases, even if the actual people and departments who wanted to buy the machines and use them had no intention of ever taking advantage of that.

The Monkey was something they used for debugging. You can read about it here: http://www.folklore.org/StoryV...

Not really. If that were the case, then the tax would differ between two jobs of differing hardness but equal pay. But it doesn't. Likewise, if we double or halve the amount of work done at a job, and thus the hardness of the job, but don't change the amount of pay, the taxes remain constant while the hardness varies.

What you're really identifying is that if someone's work hours are doubled or halved, this typically comes hand in hand with a doubling or halving of their pay, which is the actual factor that affects their taxes.

The IRS doesn't care if you pour asphalt or sit at your desk.

No, they're widespread opinions. Laws usually come about because people think they're good ideas; why would legislators work to enact laws that everyone except for me was opposed to?

People who inherit wealth didn't work for it, and didn't earn it. Some heirs might be in a desperate way, and it isn't bad to help them get on their feet. Others might inherit items of significant sentimental value but which aren't fabulously valuable and that's not so bad either.

But there is no gain to society for a select few to become particularly wealthy in an undeserving manner, such as by inheritance. In fact, it's dangerous, because wealth tends to provide power, and now you've got people who have no rightful claim to great wealth also possessing great power and likely using it for ill. Certainly that's the usual way things go, and we should adopt rules for the usual case, and not for rare exceptions.

And it's not odd to see wealthy people perfectly in favor of estate taxes. Here's something from Andrew Carnegie's book:

As for progressive income taxes, ability to pay is the best way to go. It works. People are okay with it.

An absolute flat tax is pointless unless the amount you need to raise is very very low: taxing everyone, say, $100/year will result in some people easily being able to afford it, others barely able to afford it, and quite a few simply unable to afford it. Saying that it's fair that each person should pay the same quantity doesn't help them get it in order to pay it. You will wind up with a lot of people not paying their taxes, requiring either piling unjust punishment on top of their existing poverty, probably at the expense of the state, thus requiring even more taxes to proceed, or a de facto progressive taxation system in which people who are unable to pay are allowed to slide.

A proportional flat tax similarly fails. Below a certain amount of income, people simply cannot afford to pay, even if the tax were merely 1%. Unable to get blood from a stone, you must again either punish poor people for being poor, which is the sort of thing that justifies having your head cut off by an angry mob with a guillotine, or you wind up adopting a progressive taxation scheme and merely being a hypocrite who is saddled with a stupid tax system.

Some flat tax proposals suggest including various measures to avoid this, e.g. only kicking in above a certain level of income. This means that they're not actually flat taxes, they're progressive taxes which have two brackets, and are thus simply poorly designed. An ideal progressive tax, OTOH, would probably just be a mathematical function, with the tax rates varying smoothly as income varied, but for the sake of simplicity, we tend to have a number of brackets.

As a closing word of advice, you may do well to google things quickly on your own, rather than demanding answers to cover for your own ignorance or as a crappy rhetorical device.