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.

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BMO

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"

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BMO

>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.

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BMO

Probably very good.

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

--
BMO

Go ahead and find a news article of radical Christians killing thousands of innocent people every month in Africa with gasoline, matches, and machetes

They do.

Or have you completely fucking ignored what's been going on in Uganda?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Engineered by guess who? "Christians" in the US.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

People like you disgust me.

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BMO

I love how you have to go back 1600 years to find an example of Christians being assholes

No, all I have to do to find examples of Christians being assholes is to open the fucking newspaper and read current events.

The Christian Taliban, aka the Dominionists, Reconstructionists, "Christian Warriors", "Joel's Army" et alia, surely do exist. And they are frightening.

Read this take-down of Joel's Army: http://www.discernment-ministr...

The greatest weapon against religious fanaticism is education

Fixed, but only to a point. Many of the most loudest "kill all the fags" and "America is a Christian Nation" dolts that have a following have college educations. Fred Phelps was a lawyer and so is the rest of his family.

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BMO

They replace the ad space with a message like this: "You're running Adblock. Please consider whitelisting us so we can pay for this website. Thank you."

Fark does this. I wish more sites did. Fark also has subscriptions for the private side (TotalFark 5 bux/mo). Value added selling works when there is actual value added.

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BMO

I suspect the vendor response will be more along the lines of, "We've detected Ad Block on your computer. You will be unable to view content on this site while this is active."

Some already do this.

My response is always "fuck you, I'll go elsewhere then."

And the "elsewhere" where they don't do that is typically better.

I also run the EFF's Privacy Badger.

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BMO

I just stood up on my chair.
*golf clap*
Well done, Sir.

--
BMO

/ANYTHING/ can be drilled.

Even diamond.

Maybe not conventionally with a high-speed-steel drill bit, but yes, holes are drilled even in diamonds every day.

http://www.gemgate.com/origina...

If something is conductive, it can be wire-EDM drilled no matter how hard it is. If not, it can be lasered or waterjet cut. There is more to drilling than the twist drill in your Makita cordless drill.

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BMO

I vote for steady state

It doesn't matter what you vote for or what you believe. The data says you're wrong.

To head off this inevitable statement: "But this debate proves that we don't really know anything!"

No, no it doesn't. Read this before you go any further:

http://chem.tufts.edu/answersi...

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BMO

YOU can't be taken seriously because most of us out here know what $1TRILLION could have done for infrastructure and education. But no, we've got flag-waving racist imbeciles like you who want to piss it all away on odious shit, like killing brown people, and politicians who will pander to them and suck the cocks of the military industrial complex.

What you don't get is that you've been pick-pocketed to kill people.

Just shut the fuck up.

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BMO

>Reason

You need to dump the salt so you can make room in the truck to haul away the horse shit.

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BMO

I went to Sperry's twitter page.

The amount of Libertarian derp is stunning.

Didn't bother with the other author.

Title II is in effect because the ISPs decided to not play nice with their customers. If everyone liked Comcast, for example, instead of calling it the absolute worst company in customer service, we would never be here.

The days of the mom-and-pop ISP with direct personal service and "organic growth" of the Internet has been over for more than a decade. And what has taken their places are large customer-fucking entities with abysmal customer service and that absolutely refuse to upgrade infrastructure but instead put caps on use to deal with the demand. And for that they demand ever higher payment. This is after we threw billions at them to install last-mile fiber that they never installed, but instead handed out to the shareholders.

In the People's Libertarian Paradise of Concord, NH, we have exactly *two* "broadband" providers, both of which suck massively, one of which doesn't even offer broadband as currently defined (=>25Mbps). Comcast and Fairpoint (unfairpoint, fairly bad point, etc)

That's why we are here. This is "why we can't have nice things."

Screw both of these guys and Reason magazine too. If not outright corporate shills, they are at least useful idiots.

Quislings come in all forms.

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BMO

Follow-up...

My exit is in ten miles... I'll just close my eyes for a bit... And then 200 miles later...

IKR!?

>going to new job
>see road sign "welcome to new hampshire"

I was supposed to be in Uxbridge MA.

From Rhode Island.

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BMO