"To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries."

So that's how the constitution reads...I was asking one of the younger attorneys at the firm about the "limited time" if the application of the Sonny Bono copyright schmutz didn't make copyright, in effect, unlimited.

His response, verbatim...and I am not shitting you:

"Unlimited is a limit."

The law is whatever they want it to be folks.

I really don't understand why folks are making a big stink about Siri and this other whoozitwhatsits. I imagine IBM hasn't made a smartphone app for Watson because it would need a huge computer/serverfarm/planet to run it for millions of users yet.

Watson is the real deal. Siri, to me, seems like a search engine and nothing more. It's not answering questions...it's just giving normal people the ability to use Google like I use google...i.e. knowing the modifiers and using them.

I don't know the exact figures, and I'm sure that it could be spun as lies, damned lies and statistics, but the entire movie industry takes in something like $60 billion a year. That's about one year at Intel alone. Maybe combine another half a company somewhere to get some more digits added up right. The music and video game industry...oh wait, we can not mention the video game industry because they figured out the piracy issue and aren't hammering laws down our legislators throats.

Lets be generous then...lets say annual revenue of RIAA/MPAA members is $100 billion...hell, lets say it's $200 billion (it's nowhere close to 200bil, but lets just say).

$200 BILLION IS NOTHING. Why the hell are we letting these asshats try to control the internet? General motors has $135 billion annual revenue (wikipedia). Shall we let them just waltz into googles offices and start making demands about how they run their company? They're also just middlemen(mpaa/riaa)...they produce NOTHING. They add NO VALUE. They're a bunch of thieves trying to hold onto a failing business model.

I say make them compete in the real world or get out.

Whoever apple employee made that comment about the 8,000 workers...shame on you. How is that NOT slavery? And you're fucking proud of it?!?!?

Second off...you can do the same thing in less time by reprogramming a machine.

Insightful? Please. If you think that the cops are *not* going to use this technology for fishing expeditions you're fooling yourself.

Allow me to introduce you to a little concept we in the real world call "economic incentive".

Is it mildly entertaining that the world can get away with racist colloquialisms (i just wanted to say that word) against the Irish? I'm, what...half-Irish-ish...totally not offended by that comment...I even chuckled. Just think it's weird that one could say this without catching hell about the Irish but not, say, about Mexicans.

AFP - Flash: MCP Records sues all citizens everywhere for not buying Justin Bieber albums.

Meh. I think we know who had the last laugh there.

Yeah...cuz I'm gonna take my smartest employees and put them in HR...

The brainteasers are there to see if someone is smart. Could the employee escape from a paper bag if necessary? I'd say these puzzles are important for finding creative problem solving and would be just as useful if not more useful in a manufacturing/fabrication/maker type of job.

Think of that American drilling team that drilled the hole to free the Chilean miners. That engineer's rig wasn't meant to do what he did with it. Can't aim it? He aimed it with a hack. Hole's plugged? Fixed it with a hack? Don't have a 28" drill head for this rig? Let's hack one together in a week. If that guy with the big brain didn't pick up the phone and say "hey"...those 33 guys would probably have been entombed for half a year if not forever.

Dude did it in one month with a toolbox full of hacks. Fucking brilliant.

If I'm not mistaken...and I think this came from the PBS/Frontline eppy about it...wasn't the Mubarak regime's decision to cut the internet the last straw in their revolution? That is...when the cut the internet...things really blew up. Pissed the ppl off big time.

You folks obviously don't get it, so by all means, keep on keepin' on.

I did the dumb phone thing for quite a while a couple of years back. I'm not a huge phone talker and i'd use a couple hundred minutes a month. I bought a tracphone for $20 and loaded minutes on it at the rate of about $20-30 a month. If I lost the phone...who cares?

But when I got my current phone...Verizon/Incredible...can't go back. $120 a month easy...I'm getting murdered on that...my biggest single monthly expense. I'll still pay. I'm a sucker, but it just keeps doing way cool shit. This morning I used google navigate to get to a service call at a client i'd never visited. When I pulled into their parking lot, I look down at my phone and there's a picture of g street view of exactly what I'm looking at out the windshield of my car. It was kinda surreal. And worth every penny.