Just close the patent office. Getting a patent is just getting permission to litigate endlessly to hold on to your patent. The protection it affords only has meaning if the legal system makes it affordable to do so. But the reality is just the opposite. You are much better off releasing it under CC or some other open-source licence and then going into production yourself. Any other "competators" that rise up and utilize the same design are only expanding the market for you. Use trademark instead and market your product as "original". It takes effort to even get the patent, and then it will wind up in the hands of whoever has the biggest bank account to hold it with.

Dinosaurs are purple. Everyone knows that!

"The question of why aliens might 'want to come here' is probably fundamentally flawed because we are forming that question from our current (tiny) viewpoint. The word 'want' might not apply at all to someone 1000 times smarter than us." The question is flawed because it equates intelligence with technological progress. Tech level is not the same as intelligence. Second, the question assumes that we haven't been visited already and that we are not currently being visited now. There is plenty of evidence that we are in fact being visited. Third, it is assumed that we are "tiny" in our viewpoint when we may only be limited by our assumptions! The author presumes himself inferior and uninterested and then projects this as an axiom upon the rest of humanity. Give me a means to travel to another world right now and I will do it because I can! So, the author equates high intelligence with boredom and disinterest in "lesser" life and places? Stupid assumptions all.

What's wrong with enforcing the laws we have? How about the cost of enforcement and the notion of enforcement itself. First off, enforcement of law is unnessesary if the law itself is true and correct in it's application to society. Law is just law and proves it's own usefulness or relevance in the courts. Enforcement is just that, force applied. Second, is the problem of cost. An enforcement of a law that runs contrary to the situations of reality, (like copying being nessesary for the disemination of the content), is a never ending battle against the realities of information transfer. The digital reality is such that in order to effectivly restrict access to information and control it from source to consumer, the owner of the content must have full control of the medium of exchange, ie: the consumer's means and equipment. This is not possible in any way that is meaningful to the property rights of the consumer and the ISP's suppling the means. So, enforcent then falls to penalty after-the-fact, while the real system must allow the breaking of the "law" to be enforced. This is untennable in the long term. The answer isn't to re-create copyright, but to eliminate it.

If these are being sold as toys, then I really don't have a problem with the recall. Magnets of this strength are not toys, even for some adults I have known! swallowing them is serious business. They cause all kinds of trouble, PAINFUL trouble and must be removed surgically if there is more than just one. I have been pinched by my "toys" many times, and I know several other Big boys who have been "damaged" playing with Neos. These things are really bad news for little kids who don't know any better. Two or more swallowed don't just create a bowel obstruction, they can literally tie the bowel in a knot and they will NOT come out on their own. I can see selling them as scientific study aids, or scientific "toys" for those 13 and older, but I would not sell them in a toy store or the toy section of the store.

...You're infected!

Are the guards they hired on the list they published?

good point.

I don't know, but my guess is that Dell has a supply side contract problem. If they have been sourcing from hardware vendors, under contracts, that need firmware blobs to drive their chips, then Dell may have run into problems getting Android to run properly on the hardware Dell can build with....

A study of congressmen and women has determined that their brain cells are made from urine. Until this study it was assumed they had no brains or, if a brain existed, then it was made of feces. But the newest studies show that the brain cells of congress, and quite possibly all other government personnel worldwide are made from urine. Where the urine comes from is still a mystery, however it's effectiveness as brain material is still considered to be quite low. "We knew their heads had to be full of something besides feces." a scientist associated with the new study stated.

Quite true! In our case the politicos with the guns gave the central bank the monopoly on the money. They got us all by the shorties on the one hand and at gun point on the other.

Capitalism does not concentrate power. Power is the first use of force and the belief that first use of force is yours to use at will. That is power. Capitalism does not condone first use of force let alone concentrate it. Only a forced monopoly can do that. Statism concentrates power. Capitalism distributes wealth in one form, such as valuable goods and services in exchange for another form of wealth, money. There is no concentration of wealth unless the money is fake, in which case the concentration of wealth comes from a monopoly to create the fake money. That is the problem today, the central bank with a monopoly to create fake money given to them by the polititians who think they have a monopoly on the power to force people to accept it!

The moon is heavily populated. Go look for your self. www.mapaplanet.org and have a look. I found a station the size of Alemeda there over the weekend on the farside (53.77Long x -32.28lat), and most of the craters either have buildings in them or have been domed over with what looks like ice. They glow in the UV band from whatever their power/light sources are. This whole "We are the only ones in the neighborhood" crap is just that, CRAP! They are here, leaving us alone for the most part and living NICELY on the Moon!