In case it wasn't obvious, that was the "life support" part. Regardless of how one feels about actively killing the fetus, I would support the right of the mother to remove it from the womb and leave it to its own devices—even given that it can't possibly survive on its own.

That's a separate issue—and you're committing the is/ought fallacy—but I'll address it anyway. The same rule applies. I would consider it morally and ethically wrong to actively kill an infant, though I obviously lack any standing to interfere should someone else choose to do so. However, I would support the right of the parents to withdraw their support and abandon the infant to its own devices. Put another way, the infant has the right to life, so no one else can take its life, but the parents have no obligation to provide it with whatever it needs in order to live. Neither, of course, can they stop others from doing so; taking the child to be raised voluntarily by others would be perfectly fine so long as you don't try to punish the parents for abandoning it.

No, only if provided with life-support for several months, plus intensive parental care for several years, will it most likely develop into a human. Left alone it will almost certainly die.

The "what if this happened to me" argument doesn't apply because the only people capable of asking that question are at the point where they really can survive and even prosper if they are simply left alone. In other words, it can't happen to them.

The right to life doesn't imply a right to life support.

Equal rights, yes, but not equal outcomes. Everyone has an equal right to speak. That doesn't mean anyone has the right to demand free access to someone else's platform, or to make others listen. Those are things you have to negotiate for on your own, and money is one perfectly legitimate way to do that.

Free speech is really just one aspect of the more fundamental principle of self-ownership, which includes not only the right to speak freely but also the right to dispose of your own property as you see fit. The focus on free speech, while important, is far too narrow. You should be able to legally donate your own money to the individuals and/or organizations of your choice even when it has nothing to do with freedom of speech.

The real problem here is that people are easily influenced on things which do not immediately impact them, and yet are encouraged to vote on such issues anyway. Instead, people should have an absolute veto in regards to exactly those issues which negatively impact their rights—where they have both legitimate standing and a direct stake in the outcome. In other words, Unanimous Consent. That way, people don't need to be experts on everything, just those things which concern them. It would mean that politicians would need to work much harder at gaining consensus from everyone affected, rather than mere numerical superiority within a select group of so-called "representatives" who are rarely personally impacted by the bills they pass.

If Fry's has the option of refusing to accept the Euro as repayment for a debt, then the Euro is not legal tender in that context. (For example, the Euro is not legal tender within the United States. It remains legal tender in the EU.)

Indeed, but this has nothing to do with legal tender status. A currency does not need to be legal tender to be valid (or legal to use in trade). Lacking legal tender status just means that it can be refused as a form of payment for a debt.

You're not auctioning off the parking space. Starting from the position that you are legally occupying the space, and can legally continue to do so until the meter runs out, all this app does is let you auction off the service of leaving the space at an arranged time (within the time purchased) for the convenience of another driver.

If the city wants to say that it's illegal to sit in your parked car, or otherwise occupy the space without some particular justification regardless of the time left on the meter, that's their prerogative. I would hope that such restrictions are presented clearly prior to paying the meter, since people would otherwise reasonably expect that when they pay for two hours of parking they can actually park for the full two hours, regardless of the reason. I would also hope that the rules are enforced universally rather than selectively. Waiting for a friend? Sorry, move along—can't have the parking spots tied up any longer than absolutely necessary.

Freedom consists not only in the majority being free to exercise self-rule rather than being dominated by a minority, but also that the rights of the various minorities are respected and not subject to the majority's whims. The goal should be voluntary consensus with the ability for dissenters to opt out, not mob rule.

If you voted for representatives knowing that they would make this illegal, then you did in fact help to make it happen. The same applies if you agree with the principle that everyone should be bound involuntarily by the outcome of majority rule, even if you happened to lose that particular vote. The rest of us are not to blame when the majority of the moment bands together to violate our rights on the flimsy authority of their greater numbers—rights we never forfeited by endorsing their system.

Good news! Programs are theorems. I direct your attention to the Curry–Howard correspondence. Every program corresponds to a mathematical proof, and vice-versa.

Described, yes. Software patents (and business method patents, etc.) are the ones which can be implemented wholly in algorithmic terms. You can describe a new manufacturing process with math, but you can't actually manufacture anything until you apply that math by rearranging matter and energy in the real world. It's the application that the patent covers, not the description. The device, not the blueprints.

This ruling simply states what should be obvious, that adding "on a computer" to an abstract concept does not magically transform it into a patent-eligible invention. The patent is still really about the abstract concept, despite the "on a computer" gimmick, and thus remains ineligible.

There should never have been any question regarding the patentability of taking someone else's invention (a computer) and using it for the purpose it was designed for (speeding up the evaluation of algorithms), regardless of the specific algorithm in question. That would be like patenting the use of an off-the-shelf pocket calculator to evaluate 2 + 2. If you can't patent the algorithm on its own—and you shouldn't be able to, since it's pure math—then it makes no sense to be able to patent it "on a computer".

No, it proves that someone or something exists which responded to your call (assuming you're not just hallucinating). Proving that this entity is actually "God" and not some imposter would be another matter entirely. For one thing, you'd first need to rigorously define what it means to be "God". Worst, by most standards of "godhood" it is trivial to postulate an entity well short of "God", yet still clever and powerful enough fake the results and/or manipulate our conclusions. Even if we did come to some consensus on what it means to be "God" and by some miracle managed to devise a definitive test, we could never trust the outcome.

You should only need root to install the Xposed framework for XPrivacy as a system app, not to use it. So if this is really a concern for you, just uninstall your root app after installing XPrivacy, and then you won't have to worry about it granting root access to some random app without your consent.

The canonical example of "abusive patent litigation" would be the case where someone else with the same problem came up with the same solution independent of your efforts, and you sued them simply because you happened to register your solution with the patent office first. This covers in particular all the cases of "submarine patents" where someone anticipates a problem and patents all sorts of half-baked variations on possible solutions without actually putting in any of the effort to make them work, and then waits for someone else to do the actual innovation and bring a product to market before suing for infringement.

Independent invention should be an affirmative defense against claims of patent infringement. Put simply, if you developed a solution yourself, you shouldn't need anyone else's permission to use it. Naturally, the problem is proving that the solutions were really independent, since—unlike copyrights, for the most part—patents cover a very broad domain and two machines or manufacturing processes based on the same work need not show an obvious resemblance. A better solution would be to eliminate patents entirely. They don't really work to encourage innovation, they can't be implemented without violating people's natural rights, and they distort the entire economy for the sake of a mere incentive program.

I'm sorry, were you going for +1, Funny or -1, Naive? What you stated is indeed the standard line in support of patents, but unfortunately for that argument there is little evidence to suggest that patents actually foster innovation. There is, on the other hand, plenty of evidence to support the opposite position, that patents, like pretty much every other monopoly imposed by law, have a tendency to impede natural innovation and raise barriers to entry. Innovation occurred before patents, and would continue to occur if we eliminated all patents tomorrow. Perhaps not exactly the same kind or to the same extent, but rather the kinds and extent of innovation which make sense given supply and demand in the absence of artificial subsidies—the kind where innovators profit by enriching society rather than wasting resources in pursuit of monopoly rent-seeking.

It would be if that were how Glass actually worked. Fortunately, the optics create a virtual image focused "at infinity", so the strain would be minimal. It's similar to looking at the reflection of a distant object in a nearby window—your focus is on the reflection, which appears far away, not on the surface of the window.

You are missing the point. Without a credible promise of confidentiality, they won't tell anyone. That means that they still won't be prosecuted. The criminals aren't the ones who need these agreements upheld; we are. Refusing the honor confidentiality agreements would just mean that the rest of us are left guessing about what actually happened, rather than (eventually) having access to first-hand accounts.

Overruling confidentiality for the sake of prosecution is a trick that works perhaps once or twice. After that people stop trusting such agreements, and the information is simply lost for good. It's a very limited short-term gain for law enforcement, at the expense of a permanent loss of knowledge about our past. That's a poor trade no matter how you look at it.

No, you're supposed to recognize that if these subpoenas are upheld then no one can trust a library's promise of confidentiality in exchange for disclosure, meaning that this sort of information is more likely to be permanently lost in the future rather than placed into a sealed archive to be revealed at a later date.

The point isn't to shield wrongdoers, it's to ensure that history is preserved for future generations. If those involved can't trust that the information will remain sealed as agreed, then they won't reveal it to anyone—including law enforcement. It's better to have the information preserved, even if law enforcement can't immediately benefit from it.