Comment People Are Confident (Score 1) 228
In being able to drink the ocean long before freshwater supplies dry up.
It is time for the workers, lead by their Leninist vanguard party, to smash the rule of the bourgeois parasites and establish a dictatorship of the proletariat, opening the road to socialism.
Yes, let's replace those who have skill and initiative with those who are unwilling or unable to make their own way in the world. I've always found it quite ironic that the "proletariat" has such disdain for the capitalists upon whom they depend to make their living.
You would have been a Loyalist in 1775 with your backwards ideas, like the Lord deserves to be Lord and they're so much better than the peons. I mean gimme a break. If all your cherished capitalists dropped dead right now the proletariat would produce ten times as many to replace them, and with improved results. The disdain comes from recognizing the current crop of capitalists are enemies of democracy.
In Europe taxes are spent largely on public works, public health, and public services, so taxes are not a net loss for citizens but contribute directly to their welfare and to the smooth running of society for the man in the street.
The difference in the US isn't so much in the rate of taxation, but what is done with your tax dollars. They're not spent for the social good to any large degree, but fund the huge military complex and benefit the rich more than the poor. (Here the rich pay much more tax than anyone else.)
The US "misery" problem to which you refer is much more deeply rooted than could be solved by changing the rate of taxation. It can't. Your society is structured to create misery.
My favorite: Private citizen wants to develop some land they don't own, but they can't afford to buy. Government steps in and gives them tax dollars. Land gets purchased and developed, property values go up, everyone connected to the deal gets their kick-backs, and Joe Public gets a decaying city.
Not a bad idea... really!
Most folks don't actually do 9-5 five-days-a-week of productive work every week these days... but reducing their workweek to 4-days is somehow not popular (especially if corp has to pay the same amount anyway, or alternatively employees taking a 20% pay cut).
Adding (paid, federal) holidays (like, a LOT of holidays) may have the same impact. Imagine an extra holiday every month giving everyone an extra 3-day weekend every month. From the cultural perspective, I can imagine that being an amazingly great thing. Call it "moon day" or whatever, invent some hallmark theme for it, etc.
Sounds like you have a case of class-tunnel vision. Most people actually do work 9-5 five days a week and are working during all 40 hours. Most of these people get paid much less than you do to dick around and 'work' for 40 hours a week. Kind of shameful on the surface.
Should Bastille day be a national holiday?
In countries that contain the Bastille, yes. Does the first new moon of the year fail to occur in some nation?
In America the first new moon of the year is the first new moon of the year and January 1st is New Years Day. In China the first new moon of the year is Lunar New Year. I don't think we can explain this any more clearly.
Yo dawg, I heard you wanted some violence with your violence, so I sent you a prophet! Believe whatever you want in private, but the sooner we start considering overt belief in a sky-friend as nothing short of a disease, the better. Religion would count as no fewer than half a dozen major diagnostic categories from the DSM (v4, anyway - who the fark knows what else they screwed up in v5), except that it explicitly exempts religious delusions. So no, you all don't actually get a pass any more. You chat with god? Take your olanzapine like a good little psychotic! There we go. Don't we all feel less like blowing up buildings and raping Western reporters now? Hmm, I wonder if we could get it added to their water... / And if you consider this trolling... Well, suffice it to say I wish I meant this as a sad attempt at trolling. Not so funny that we really live in this fucked up world.
No kidding, right? The frightening thing is we already did this before World War II. We were pretty on board with the Nazi's anti-religious sentiment, coz y'know we identified religion with violence and war. We forced people to enter asylums and we even gave out involuntary vasectomies to ensure they could not reproduce again, Personally, I'm disgusted by the proponents of this. I would prescribe 'pla' some of his own anti-psychotics, since it sounds like he's suffering from delusions.
There are a lot of blackhatters doing this, or used to do this, some Google updates can ruin your income. Check out autoblogging. No need for Pay-Per-Download of malicious addons, you can do just fine with other acceptable PPC or CPA
Mix in some SEO and this is not uncommon.
Exactly.
Its pretty amazing when you read all the claims, and imagine dragging and dropping a dozen eggs onto the manifest of a truck that will just happen to be near your house at 7pm every second Wednesday. And then being able to put that delivery on vacation hold, or add a one time order of 12 pork chops for the big barbecue you are planning next Saturday. And the delivery will take place within the time period you specify so the neighbors dog doesn't run off with your chops while you are at work.
Amazon has to know where the trucks will be at future points in time. Provide you with a way to put products on that truck, set them to be periodic or one time, Adjust your orders, add, subtract, reduce, or hold. All from your computer, and (hopefully) from your smartphone.
Its way more ambitious than the Milkman, and I'm not aware of anything that comes close.
People have to stop the knee-jerk reaction to headlines.
The logistical problems Amazon has chosen to deal with aren't covered by the patent.
I'm not arguing that it's a defensible patent, but it's also not patenting what the summary or TFA claims. Here's the #1 core claim of the patent:
1. A computer-implemented method for providing recurring delivery of products, the method comprising performing instructions under the control of a computer system for: receiving at the computer system a designation of a delivery slot and a recurring delivery list comprising one or more list items, each of the one or more list items identifying a product, a quantity to deliver, and a frequency of delivery; periodically generating, by the computer system, an order having a date and time for delivery based on a next occurrence of the delivery slot, the order being generated in advance of the date and time for delivery such that the order has a period of time of pendency prior to the delivery; creating, by the computer system, one or more order items for the order based on a last delivery date and the frequency of delivery of each list item in the recurring delivery list; receiving at the computer system a change made to a first list item of the recurring delivery list during the period of time of pendency of the order; in response to receiving the change, determining, by the computer system, whether the order includes an order item corresponding to the first list item; in response to determining that the order includes an order item corresponding to the first list item, modifying, by the computer system, the order item corresponding to the first list item based on the change made to the first list item of the recurring delivery list; and providing, by the computer system, the order to an order fulfillment system capable of causing the one or more order items to be delivered substantially on the date and time for delivery.
In other words, it's a particular implementation of a subscription system that has to include every element in the above list in order to infringe. It would be easy to work around this in implementing a subscription system. It's also not generally how milkmen used to operate. It's also PROBABLY covered by prior art, but whenever I hear "X just patented Y that's stupid LOLOL!" I have to go to the claims, and I usually see that, no, only a particular implementation/method for accomplishing Y is covered.
You should actually read the list. It covers a computer-controlled system for accepting order lists, and generating the orders before the delivery date so if the customer changes their order or whatever, you don't fuck it completely up. I mean, you can go ahead and 'workaround' checking to see if the customer cancelled, or 'workaround' checking to see that the order is sent out *before* the date the customer wanted it... Those are terrible workarounds though.
Literally. I can have my milkman bring groceries, batteries, pretty much anything a Sam's Club or CostCo would have, periodic or one-time. USPTO is fuckin' uuuuuuup.
Next they'll be patenting sending "thank you" e-mails, letters, or saying "thank you" after a customer purchase.
Technological innovation in the mobile space has been swept aside by marketting innovation.
Precisely. The focus is on the label applied to the technology, rather than on the capabilities of the technology itself.
"Experience has proved that some people indeed know everything." -- Russell Baker
