While it would seem he might be wrong about the H2O2 this news clipping from 1986 mentions some divers

"3 Dove into Pool The three men in wet suits dove into a pool, probing with underwater searchlights for two small valves that would allow the pool to drain, Tass said. It quoted one of the men, Alexei Ananenko, as telling Soviet journalists: "When the searchlight beam fell on a pipe, we were joyous: The pipe led to the valves. We heard the rush of water out of the tank. And in a few more minutes we were being embraced by the guys.""

So the story is not that far fetched. No mention of what happned to the divers after though

- http://articles.latimes.com/1986-05-17/news/mn-5669_1_chernobyl-toll

Interesting, do you know how they grow it in other countries? The US has very strict laws regarding the THC level in hemp imports. Since the US is the largest imorter of hemp I assume someone knows how to grow it without cross pollination.

some links to backup what I posted. http://www.naihc.org/hemp_information/content/hemp.mj.html http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hemp

From everything I have read it is not the same plant. Same species of plant different strains. You cant get high from the industrial version, it has a much lower THC (5-10% vs .01%) level and has some other stuff in it that gives you a headache.

If it is the same plant please post links showing this. I have read up on the subject for awhile and every website/reference I read says they are a different plant though from the same species of plants. The industrial strain is sativa L. while the one you smoke is sativa C. The kind grown for smoking has much higher THC levels while the industrial version has as low as .01% and some other stuff that not only kills any high but gives you a headache. The industrial kind also is far far better for producing stuff as it has a better fiber quality. Again if you can find some documentation saying you can get high from the industrial strain of hemp please post it.

I assume your joking but just in case. Hemp and Marijuana are not the same plant. They come from the same species of plant but you cant smoke hemp to get high. It only contains minute amounts of the psychoactive drug, not enough for any physical or psychological effects. The US was a huge producer of hemp before it was outlawed. It can be used to make clothes/paper/plastic/ and just about anything else you can think of. It is still illegal in the US to grow "industrial" hemp because people and the government are to fucking stupid and scream "think of the children" every time even though it is not a drug.

I don't get it

Actually he was referring to Spaceballs. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xvmZ9SPcTzU

No, his definition of tow is exactly correct. I am in school in a small town with 0 free parking. They don't use "flat bedding" to tow around here. They use normal tow trucks with dollies they put under the front wheels while the back end is towed off the ground and it works perfectly fine. The author of TFA must mean rope/chain and another car because any normal tow truck company knows how to get around locked wheels by using the dollies that fit under the wheels (basically wheels under the wheels) without bringing a flat bed.

One of the original reasons to have a patent system was to help ensure the spread of knowledge and know-how. By providing limited time legal protection to patent holders, they had an incentive to put their ideas out in the public domain. Once the patent expires the entire world is free to copy the design etc. In contrast if someone keeps their product/idea as a trade secret instead ( WD-40 and coke for example) no one gains the ability to make your product unless they can figure out how you did it.

That concept seems to work just fine until we get into software. I have not read the patent but I have a feeling that you could not recreate whatever Google did just from reading it. From the write up it sounds like a common sense concept. Basically they get legal protection but don't really have to show how they do it. My hope is that Google is being defensive with this and ensuring that no one else gets the patent and then licenses the tech for free and the betterment of mankind (which they could do). I'm not a huge Google fanboi and they confuse me some times by doing one thing that seems very progressive and then turning around and taking a hard business view on something else.

In general I like the concept of patents and IP but the implementation is so bad that we might just be better off without it. At the least, if you apply for a patent on a device the patent should be a manual on how to make it from scratch by someone with the required skills. That way once your patent expires the knowledge is truly free for anyone to pickup and expand/make cheaper/whatever the fuck they wanna do with it. I think that would be more in line with the original idea of why we have patents.

Except that the Wii supports starndard micro SD cards. The N64 not supporting standard memory was kind of a given considering how old it is. On the wii I can pop my SD card out and put in in another wii with no problem. I can put it in my computer and backup my saves if i want. /. does not hate sony because its cool to hate sony, its because we have been fucked over so many times and sony is about to fuck us over again. For a divice that is suppost to function as a phone/media/game system not having standard memory support is just plain fucking retarded.

Now we get to you and your 200. Your mistake above was that we start with you at the beginning of your purchase cycle. You know about my game, you have 200 to spend... and you decide that my game is not worth spending it on to you. However, you still want to play it. (Since it's the "zero" that does strange things to lots of equation, let's say it's "worth a penny" that you dig up off the floor of your car.) You're now essentially walking up to me with the following theoretical conversation: "Hi. I want to play your game. How much?" "Hi. My price is $20." "Hmm. Nah, I don't want to pay that." "Okay. Have a nice day." "No, I'm going to play it anyway. I copied my friend's CD." "So when do I get my $20?" "I dunno, I don't care. I'll tell a couple buddies, maybe they will buy a copy. I'm going to go play now, bye."

The problem with that argument is that if I was never going to buy it its still not a lost sale (you were not getting my 20 regardless). The strength if that argument is that maybe if I did not have the option of downloading I would buy it. This is where I think the way digital goods are sold could change to make buying something i wanted more likely. As many people have pointed out (and something I know iv done) they download something to try it first. The problem with that is once you have it downloaded its easy to say "well ill buy the next one because I have something else I can spend that money on right now". I think part of the cause for this is because you cannot return software (games especially). If I buy a board game and it does not live up to my expectations I can return it. If I buy a shitty game (DNF is a prime example) i'm stuck with it. Most games don't release demos anymore and even if they do they only show the parts that are decent.

Gabe Newell pointed out recently that price does not make a huge difference for pirates and its more that its harder to buy stuff then it is to download it. While I don't agree with that completely it does have a lot of truth to it. There is a lot of risk related to buying a game, it might suck and im still going to be stuck with a shitty product that was not what was advertised. If you make a shitty physical product and everyone who buys it returns it your going out of business any make no money. If you make a shitty game and advertise the shit out of it your going to make money (you might not make another game but you will already have the cash you got from that first shitty game), and something is wrong with that system.

You must know nothing about business. Software development is a sunk cost. Your never going to get that money back. By your logic once the cost of development is covered the software should be free right?

You must be retarded or something. Every time I make a point you reply with "well if I stole this physical good then..." and that argument is completely different then anything related to software and digital goods. I'm going to say this one more time even though it will most likely do no good because you seem to not be able to even process basic information well enough to even understand the argument. Say I have enough money to buy food, I spend it on food. I have no money left over. I cant buy your product even if I wanted to. Your not going to get money from me regardless if I want to pay it or not. Because the software is digital I download it. It COSTS NOTHING to you and you would never get money from me ever because I don't have that money to give. You still have your item and now I have one and the only cost copying it was for me to pay power and storage. You lost no money because I downloaded the software and you would never get any money from me doing so. Your going to develop the software regardless if I download it or not because any good business man knows their target market and if I don't have the ability to pay i'm not in that target market ( if you develop software for people who cant pay your not going to make any money in the first place). Your not banking on selling the software to me because you know I cant pay. You have lost nothing and I have gained something. If you cant understand this example then I hope you and people like you die off fast so the rest of us can work for a better world without people like you fucking it up and slowing down progress.

You really are dense. As about a million people have pointed out, a physical product has NOTHING in common with a digital product.

If for the customers who do pay for their use, and denies them of a lower cost

What lower cost? Software does not lower in cost as more people pay for it, that would make to much sense?

Make no illusions. CompanyA is not in business, producing games, to make you happy. They are in business, producing games, to make a profit, and feed their family. Now that you are an adult, working, getting paid, surely you can understand that. You couldn't possibly feed your family, if your customers ( or your companies customers ) had the means to just take the benefits of all your efforts without compensating you for them.

You say you comprehend but you really don't. Let me try to explain it again. I have 200 to spend on games. I buy all the games I can for 200. I have no more money to spend on games so I pirate a game. I copied bits, they cost the game company 0 and I could not buy the game because I had 0 money. Now I have a game that I enjoy and it cost the company nothing. Ill say it again because you seem to not understand this part. People spend all they can on entertainment, the extra they get from pirating things is NOT A LOST SALE. They had no ability to buy that product because they already spend all they could on entertainment. Your comparing a limited resource to a unlimited resource and that does not work.