Springs in general only bend a tiny bit on any particular part that is why they are so reliable. If you take a spring and bend it at one point say with two needle nose pliers. It will not spring back, but you will have a bent spring.

Sure some artist can make it. But that is because they have additional business skills other then their art skills. A great artist who cannot operate like a business will not succeed on their art alone, they will need help from some others in order to do such.

The classical artist were commissioned from nobility, or the church. Today you will need an agent or be diverse enough to deal with the bullshit to get your stuff sold.

The issue with music. Some music just cannot tour well (not all musians are attractive, dance, or have an appealing personality), and so they should make their money from selling recordings.

In general human intelligence tries to turn back natural entropy. And we are getting better at it.
I expect given time and we don't kill ourselves out of some silly social/political disagreements we cold in time find ways to "repair" the universe.

I wouldn't be surprised if Groklaw would have been specifically targeted later had it not gone under.

That woudln't be putting it into the public domain. Only the actual destruction of the copyright can do that.

This is merely a binding covenant not to sue.

Promissory estoppel will quickly come into play if you try to backtrack. But you still own the coyright.

The idea is that the kernel api is not meant for public usage, but only for other kernel code. Furthermore, they claim that anything that close to the kernel is interoperating so tightly with it that it's effectively a derived work.

The java api, otoh, was designed for public use.

If that's true when what will SCOTUS think about someone defying its earlier ruling?

And why wasn't that decision cited by Google?

Sorry, but stare decisis!

If you fuck up, you eat it, even if you were right.

Our economy is being held hostage by IP.

So yeah, we kinda depend on it in the same way as a liquor store depends on protection from the mafia not to get robbed.

If Microsoft has its way with Secure Boot, it will be 100 percent.

If you have a good policy. The money doesn't run out. Because it isn't spending money but investing it.

Say this project cost $10,000,000 a year, and it allows say 10,000 families to use these services that allows them to get jobs, or make an additional $10,000 a year additional funding. Then their taxes would go back to pay for the project, these people otherwise wouldn't be making the additional money, their income tax wouldn't be paying for such a service, as well they will need additional services such as food stamps and Medicare.

Policy that help people gain wealth, in general pay for themselves, even if not everyone can benefit from it, but a small portion can actually pay for such services. Thus not run out of money.

Like how the Russian are spying on us? That isn't new either.

Also being if we can live longer, that means we wouldn't be in as much of a rush to reproduce. There is a 20 year 20-40 where it is the most healthiest time to reproduce (for females) past that age there are complications. So there is pressure to get hooked up by those ages. If we can live biologically younger for longer. There isn't as much of a rush. So we can wait until we are in a stable life style, before having children, as well being that is less risky that the child would die, the urge to have multiple would be less.

Also eternal youth, isn't eternal life. We are exposed by random stuff that can kill us daily. Young people still get Cancer, they still get into accidents, They get ill. The longer you live, the higher chance that something will end up killing you.

Also if there is too much strain on resources, we will just end up fighting and killing each other off.

I don't think the SAT is really that useful of a test. However colleges seem to use them for entrance criteria, as a number is easier to evaluate than judging a person on the whole.
But if they are willing to cheat on the SAT test to get in, I don't think colleges really want people of such questionable moral caliber to enter the school.

My experience with Chinese students, this isn't too surprising, they are far more willing to cheat, than take the consequences of getting a low grade. That is why when they show statistics showing where China is succeeding, I really question it, because their culture seems to want to win, with the actual objectives of the grading as not important. A Sr.Year computer science major the student was the curve breaker on the tests. Went to me asking how in C++ can he use decimal numbers (the answer was using the float data type, which we learned about on day 3 in the freshman class, and had used such a data type all threw the program. Made me realize, this student was either cheating technically (threw nefarious methods), or cheating himself (Only test prep, once the test is done, it brand dumps out of the system). Because in anything practical he was useless.

I have seen some research if we had an Even number of ranks. It prevents people from getting lazy and giving straight average. Either it will be above average or below it.

If you are competing to be #1 there are two strategies.
Make sure you perform better than the rest.
Make sure the rest performs worse than you do.

If your goal is to be #1, the easier strategy will be the one taken.

If say the US is more focus on just advancing then being #1 then our efforts will be to build up other countries, and at the same time we will grow much further.