They should just read The Case for Copyright Reform by Christian EngstrÃm (Member of the European Parliament for the Pirate Party) & Rick Falkvinge (founder of the original Pirate Party), and implement it. You can, of course, download the book for free on that website. I highly recommend reading it.
Thanks for the recommendation. You deserve to be modded up for that.
My bet is it's just for show; run this campaign, make it difficult for people to write in and disregard most of those who do. Then, you have a nice 'apparently Americans don't care about/are against copyright reform.'
Ya think?
We haven't had a good laugh in weeks!
Right then, send in your arguments, so they can all be shot down more effectively, and precisely, by the likes of the copyright lobby and other big money interests with crack legal teams. Big money owns, and runs govt., including the chit-chat at the water cooler.
Unfortunately, I have to agree with you.
Even this 'call for comments' by the government (a) comes from an agency that doesn't administer copyright law, and (b) has no return address for the actual 'comments'.
Fortunately, we have Slashdot, though. The government can come here and see what people think.
RE: Audit
Dear Zlives,
You appear to have recently posted a comment with an explicit and/or implied criticism of the King^H^H^H^H President and/or his ministers^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H executive agencies. On an unrelated note, we are writing to inform you that, as a courtesy, we will be auditing you in the near future. Please prepare for this audit by gathering all tax records since the dawn of time, including supporting documentation, and a generous supply of ointment for lacerations and bruises. We sincerely apologize for any minor inconveniences that may be caused by this totally random audit that is not remotely motivated by your exercise of free speech, and for any inappropriate glee, delight, satisfaction, or excitation our agents may display during the beatings^H^H^H^H^H^H^H proceedings.
Sincerely,
The Internal Revenue Service.
we have a bad process. so your solution is to fork another process.
what we need is a new bashrc. using the old broken one and forking new instances will never fix our hung process.
Our
The NSA has worked out fusion?! Excellent, at least then some of the dollars spent might have a useful offshoot... if only we could get them to declassify it.
The DoD worked out fusion quite nicely about 65 years ago. The energy yields of the reactors are truly impressive---their best experimental reactor had an output of something like 60 petajoules from negligible input power. (The Soviets built an even bigger reactor with close to 200 PJ). It's the containment facility that's been giving us problems since then. Work out that little detail, and you're sitting on a gold mine.
Look, matey, had you bothered to read the parent, and bothered to look up the two patents cited, you would have noted, that the USPTO fails miserably at following its own directives. Both patents clearly disclose a very old and very wrong assumption; that by rotating a magnet in an electric filed and switching the polarity, this magnet starts to spin from the rotated magnet field.
Like I said, I'm not judging whether they're scientifically sound. I'm just saying that they claim that the energy supply is exhaustable, so they're not perpetual motion machines. (And no, I didn't read them carefully. I just glanced over them and saw that they were claiming to mine energy stored in permanent magnets.) The USPTO will not necessarily reject your claim merely because it's pseudo-science (see MPEP 2107.01(II); "Incredible Utility"). It just needs to not be a flagrant violation of all known laws of physics (a FTL ship would probably fall in this same category).
I can only ask: how would one refute this application?
Why would you refute this application? Do you want to build one of these? Actually, if you do, you're probably okay, because it looks like they never paid the maintenance fee, so this one is dead.
Ah, that makes sense. We can patent algorithms, business models, and now summer blockbuster ideas!
You joke, but this clown is actually trying to do it. (If you want to see the stunning storyline that is so brilliant it deserves a patent, look at the claim listed here.)
The +5, Funny was well-deserved. But lest anybody get too worked up, those actually claim to work on exhaustable energy stored in permanent magnets (I'm not a material scientist, so I don't know if that's a real thing, but they don't pretend to be perpetual motion). In fact, the USPTO has specific regulations for rejecting perpetual motion machines. If you want to get a patent on one, you have to submit a working model. I am very grateful for this regulation, because it has been a handy way to show folks the door a couple of times. "I'm sorry. I can't file this for you. It's a perpetual motion machine. The USPTO will only grant it after you have a working model. So please come back after you've got that prototype built." (They will argue with you for hours about why it will work if you let them.)
On the other hand, I did successfully craft the argument that got this gem issued. It's not perpetual motion, but it does involve some rather "non-traditional" scientific theories.
The rule on staying alive as a program manager is to give 'em a number or give 'em a date, but never give 'em both at once.
