Actually the intent is not to "benefit the Authors and Inventors" but to "promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts".

This type of thing is what I have always supported. Make the first N years free and automatic, and allow people to pay multiple years at a time to keep the book-keeping easier, if the first paid year was $1 and it doubled for each subsequent year, after 20 years the bill is a bit over a million while the first 10 years were only about a thousand bucks. If the "free" period was 7 or 10 years, people would have time enough to decide if it was valuable enough to protect for longer, and the vast majority of stuff would quickly fall into the public domain without hurting people who actually have produced something of extended monetary value. Mickey Mouse type products would generate considerable tax revenue, and a whole lot of stuff would quickly fall into the public domain.

The more you know....

Your example of being "notorious for manipulating stats" by clasifying people "near" the age of majority as children seems pretty disingenuous. Are these people younger than the age of majority or older? If they are in fact younger than that age and only "eligible to be prosecuted as adults", why would it be "manipulating stats" to clasify them as children? If they are older than the age of majority, and thus presumably not even eligible to be prosucuted as children, why wouldn't you state that?

It is interesting that statistics can be difficult to compare when dealing with things like crime or death stats. It is also interesting how easy it is to dismiss uncomfortable conclusions. I wouldn't say we are being "mocked" by other countries and I doubt very much that anyone is "refusing" to count things - they just do their statistics different (despite our feelings of importance, most countries are too busy worrying about their own troubles to spend much energy over ours). In any case, any careful look at the state of afairs does reveal that we certainly have room for improvement. Our full term mortality rate is higher than it should be.

http://www.livescience.com/479...

"...the U.S. infant mortality rate for babies born at 37 weeks or later (considered "full term") was actually the highest among the 12 countries, and about twice the rates in Denmark, Finland, Norway, Sweden and Switzerland."

I suspect that you probably misunderstand the feelings of foreigners when thinking about the USA. While you might not care that "the overwhelming majority of our gun deaths either have a criminal or a suicidal person on the receiving end of the bullet", it is at least possible that those foreigners are appalled that we seem to think that it is acceptable that criminals and suicidal people are being killed. It can be seen to speak to the value that our society places on human lives. The USA is exeptional in many ways. Unfortunately not all of those ways are things we shold be proud of.

Not completely correct. There is also Eritrea, in the Horn of Africa if you couldn't recall where it was.

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

Any policy that is only also shared by a single other country has got to be a well thought out one, no?

Not a problem. The US and Eritrea are pretty much the only countries in the world that taxes non-resident citizens. Usually I would question any policy only followed by a single other country, but in this situation I can see why a country might like to have such a policy.

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

Giving up your US Citizenship might help your unborn children's tax situation, but might not help yours:

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

"U.S. citizens who renounce their citizenship are subject under certain circumstances to an expatriation tax, which is meant to extract from the expatriate taxes that would have been paid had they remained a citizen: all property of a covered expatriate is deemed sold for its fair market value on the day before the expatriation date, which usually results in a capital gain, which is taxable income."

This was pretty funny: "Earlier this week, North Gulf Air based out of Atlanta GA announced they will now be charging passengers for not only the weight of their bags but for their personal body weight as well. For a base fare of $29.00 passengers will be allowed to travel anywhere in the United States with a total of 90lbs, but after that it will cost customers $2.50 per additional pound. "

http://www.cbc.ca/radio/thisis...

Note that "This is That" is a satire radio program - the podcast it pretty good.

The original poster should probably just do this - log into the account (maybe by resetting the password) and then reset the email address to something else - maybe you can find out from the web interface the name and address and phone number of the person who screwed things up - call them and tell them their new password. If the system requires some validation to reset the email address, use an address at https://mailinator.com/ or another similar place.

You are right that I would probably feel insulted, but if I responded to their letter saying "we are not in the same business, there is no infringement, I don't need a license" that in itself would probably satisfy their need to defend their trademark. If their response was, "sorry, it looks like there is infringement, you really need a license" I might actually consult a lawyer.

The offer could be more of a cross-liscencing deal with no money needing to change hands.

Remember, this is under the assumption that there really is some actual need to defend the trademark. If some company actually spent money on a stamp and a polite request to make sure the "Juvenile Base for Egregious Dumb Asses" was not confused with "j-beda", I might be open to a disclaimer on my website.A rude demand with threats from random bed manufacturer who wants me to just turn it over without question, not so much.

I think that is not completely true. A simple exchange of letters and perhaps an explicit licence for a nominal sum ($1 for example) or a memorandum of agreement that the potential infringer will not enter into the domain that the trademark coveres would probably be sufficient to defend the trademark. And significantly less expensive.

This type of behaviour is stupid if they are merely trying to defend their trademark.

It looks like a fax seldom has much more legal protection than other electronic communications. See for example: http://www.adamsdrafting.com/f...

A scanned seignature would generally still stand up as binding. It looks like an "e-signature" is actually MORE binding than a faxed one:

"Fax signatures are probably the primary way contracts are signed today, and broadly speaking, basic contract law recognizes a large variety of signature types where a mark or sign is made with an intent to subscribe to the terms of an agreement. Thus the question posed is the right one—not are fax signatures and pdf signature pages valid to indicate assent to the term of a contract—they generally are—but are they enforceable. More specifically, the question is whether they satisfy the Statute of Frauds, which provides that in order to be enforceable, certain types of agreements must be evidenced by a writing signed by the party to be charged.

Over the years, courts have concluded that telegrams, telexes, telecopies, facsimiles, and e-mails are writings satisfying the Statute of Frauds. But to eliminate any uncertainty, a majority of states have gone further and explicitly adopted legislation allowing the introduction of fax signatures into evidence for disputes involving routine business transactions. However, not all have taken this extra step. The federal government and the UETA have actually gone further in the case of electronic signatures, deeming most electronic signatures meeting their provisions equivalent to written signatures."

I don't think that a fax of an ink signature has any more "magic legal sauce" than a printed scan of the same ink signature - neither of them is the orignal signature. The fact that some people treat the fax diferent than the printed scan is purely one of mindset.

Often I have been in situations where someone wanted a fax of the document (so they could start work) but needed the orignial mailed or couriered to them "for legal purposes". In cases like that, the scan/email type of thing would be functionally identical.

I don't understand that last sentence. It is like my brain can make no sense of it at all.

Those might be useful stats. What would constitute a "BS parole violation"? I do not doubt that parole restrictions can be strict, but aren't they better than the alternative of being in jail?

Maybe that should be "We don't know, and we are not particularly interested in finding out" - there are lots of examples of things that are more effective at rehabilitation both within and without the USA borders. We just do not have great enough interest in implementing any of them, and there are enough individuals and groups with incentives to keep the system as-is that it is challenging to build any such interest.