Unfortunately, their incentives are diametrically opposed to common sense. There is literally no downside for a USPTO examiner to rubber-stamp everything on his or her desk. They get to go home early to beat the traffic, while productive society is left to deal with the legal fallout. The net effect is to devalue legitimate IP while rewarding the trolls.

THIS IS WHY WE CAN'T HAVE NICE THINGS

It's because of this and copyright abuse that I think, sometimes, that we should just chuck it all and rely on trade secrets and a free-for-all on copyright. These jerks are not just poisoning the well, they're throwing dead goats in it.

--
BMO

That is why there are two areas of study micro-economics and macro-economics. On the micro-scale, it usually is better to fire 10% of your staff. After all the people who are working hard and doing good work usually know it. If you give them a 10% pay cut they will be butt hurt about it, they won't work as hard, or do as good a work. You will most likely see a greater than 10% loss in productivity.

On the other hand hand if you fire 10% of workforce, those that "survive" will feel threatened and if anything the need to continually show how valuable they are. You probably see less than a 10% decrease in productivity, over the short term; inside the limited scope of your organization.

Now on the macro scale all the other firms out there do essentially the same thing. When hiring starts up again its done at the new wage level the market has valued the skill at. So the prevailing wage ends up just at the value supply and demand expect. Economics works you just have to be careful not to zoom in to much when applying maco-principles or zoom out to much when you try and use micro-principles.

How is it Apples fault your body contains a deposit of metallic pigments where there should be none?

Seems more like a defect in the wearer to me.

I consider myself a true Libertarian but I still support neutrality at least until such time this organizations are stripped of their rights-way across MY property and local, state, and federal governments surrender the right to use eminent domain to facilitate anything that will have private ownership.

Lift the restrictions on me from demanding a rent on pain of eviction from the cable co to use my property to host their wire, then they can use their wire however they like, once I am being fair compensated for the use of what is mine. Until then I think the I should have some say via representative government what they can do with.

Empower individual land owners, when the cable co wants to over charge and under deliver, I'll just respond that's fine raise your rates all you like, double dip if you want to I don't care, I'll just raise your rent. Sure dig up your wire and run around my property but my neighbors will probably do the same things to you so, just pay up. The problem will be fixed in a hurry. Mutual cooperation will ensure fairness.

True, but if you had a working exploit that was no patch to fix, and you knew that your target was about to go off support and loose the ability to submit issues and expect a fast fix turnaround, would you:

A) Go for it the moment you have a working sploit grab all you can.

B) Wait a little while before you take the big risk of using it widely and trying to ex-filtrate the loot to avoid discovery. Then after the support is up and you know the response will be hampered make your move. You know either it will likely take longer for your infiltration to be stopped or the victim will have to accept some self inflicted harm like off-lining production systems until they can find a fix (Which in the case of a government might mean a drone strike, but that is another issue).

The difference is that creationists deny science because of their faith. These guys deny science because of greed.

There really isn't any difference when your faith consists of greed.

"Mammon, n. The god of the world's leading religion. His chief temple is in the city of New York"

-- Ambrose Bierce "The Devil's Dictionary"

--
BMO

Bzzt. WRONG!

A whole lot of "green energy" isn't clean energy. Hydro electric for example has huge ecological consequences, if your efforts are directed at lowering CO2 and methane emissions because your incorrectly believe the greatest environmental threat is climate change you could do lots of harm, for no reason.

Even if climate change is real emissions might be the wrong thing to try and control. Forests remove carbon from the atmosphere, but they do a lot of other potentially climate impacting things as well like wick water up from the ground and release it as vapor. Maybe the world needs more woods, and clearing space for another turbine is exactly the wrong thing to do.

In the end the only real answer in terms of global sustainability is likely fewer people. An area where the Church isn't exactly on the right side of as far as the prevailing views go.

I was a member of the Techshop maker-space here before it folded. The thing that did them in was a lack of casual accessibility, as well as an overambitious start, I think. The way they structured it was to charge large fees for "training" classes to clear you on the use of the various pieces of equipment, after which you were free to use them so long as you were a current member. But it would take several classes and hundreds of dollars to get even a small project off the ground, simply because of the way they mapped out the different class certifications. They were a business so it's expected, and the need for proper safety training is undeniable. But it meant that it took a serious investment before you could accomplish much, and those dedicated enough to do so would generally rather spend the money on their own tools. And on top of that they opened their doors with everything from CNC mills and 3D printers to automotive decal printers to SMB circuit board ovens to metal casting; in other words far more expensive equipment than their user-base actually needed or used.



At the end of the day, there are two things to strive for, and they wont be easy.

The first is variety of tools and workspaces. It needs to be a place where people come to tinker and to get some idea out of their heads and into reality. So it needs to offer access to whatever it is that the actual local users are wanting to use. If they want metalworking, get a welder and a few milling machines. If they want woodworking, get some drill presses and chop saws. But dont invest it the cutting edge of everything up front. I recommend some kind of request system, so it can organically grow in the directions the users want. If they see the space is responsive to what they feel they are lacking, it will also go a long way to keeping them coming back, even if they dont have every little thing at first. This will be a balancing game between responsive acquisition and responsible budgeting. Fundraising drives can help, just like a high school that needs a new scoreboard, etc.

The second is casual Accessibility. Dont make them spend a hundred bucks and take a class that won't be held again for two weeks, just so they can drill a single hole. This is another balancing act between responsible safety and easy access, and the first solution is staff.

It also really helps to have a large scrap pile for free (or free-ish) materials.

I am not sure it works in this case. In the story the king operates under the assumption neither party wishes to see the child destroyed (children were valuable laborers after all), but perhaps one party cares deeply enough for the child their desire for its well being trumps their selfish desire to possess it or wish to spite other party by denying possession.

In these cases we very likely have one party who wishes to see the embryo destroyed. It does not make sense to turn something over to someone who has a stated intent to destroy it, only to prevent a court from doing so.

If a majority decision can't be reached than the status-quo basically gets maintained, the things sits frozen.

Just like if you die intestate and have two children and no spouse. Lets say you owned your house strait out for the sake of simplicity. Essentially both kids will have to reach an agreement on how to to dispose the property.

If they can't it will be pretty easy for either heir to ask the court require the thing simply be maintained, taxes paid etc out of the estates other funds, while a judge decides how to parcel out the estate fairly and what should be done. Same thing would probably happen here.

More interesting questions exist though. Lets say you and wife have some embryo's frozen as part of some assisted fertility process. It does not work, but their are left overs. You later get divorced, presently childless. She decides to try again and the implantation is successful. Can she come back for child support? Are you a dead beat dad if you want nothing to do with it?

There is middle road between overly heavy handed punishments that are handed out somewhat arbitrarily and rolling over completely and failing to protect the integrity of your degree. Like I stated if the professor had been smart he would have documented the worst cheating and retained the evidence, and pursued whatever due process the schools honor system specifies. I am sure if he had he would have found support. The cheaters would have rightly gotten the F's for course or possibly an even more severe action against them like expulsion. The other students would get the message the rules are not a big joke and are violated at their peril.

>stealing technology
>china is "guilty" of this "crime"

The entire Industrial Revolution in the States was because people stole "intellectual property" from England. Samuel Slater, and the rest of the gang up and down the Blackstone River got all their tech from England.

And it's hailed as an achievement here in the US.

Somehow it's bad when someone else does it.

>Calling the F35 good technology

No, no it is not. It is a boat anchor. A very very expensive boat anchor. It's the exact same thing that happened with the F111 at the demands of Robert McNamara but /worse/. A jack-of-all-trades-master-of-none-but-with-vtol and maintenance nightmares.

--
BMO

They can shoot around corners, just like they can have a fully automatic belt feed large caliber gun. Good luck getting one of those for yourself unless its an antique.

If you think this technology is going to be something you or I get head over to the gun show and buy, you can put down your keys, it'll never happen.

So we can be shot around corners but we won't be shooting around them now or ever.

Yes well the Vice President of the university certainly did not fail his management course!

He recognizes that most University students today are someones precious little snowflake. That someone might stop sending checks, students may transfer and worse the best prospective students might choose other institutions where there is not a perception their on-time graduation plans might be derailed by capricious professor.

I am sorry unless you have hard evidence of a major and specific conspiracy that everyone of your students participated in you CANT fail an entire class. The reality is there was probably a few students who are innocent or whose infractions don't justify an automatic failing grade, so its punishing the innocent. The optics of that just are not appropriate for an academic institution.

If the professor was at all smart, he would have identified the worst offenders built a solid case for them and crucified them before an expulsion board to send a message to the rest of the students, and any one taking his class in the coming semesters, that he isn't to be 'fucked with'. He probably would have gotten support for the university and the public for doing so rather than tossed under the bus. Like it or not politics and perceptions matter, you'd think a business professor would know that.

Probably very good.

We don't make anything here anymore. And we have forgotten how.

--
BMO