You do care because that money represents how much tech industry employers are willing to overpay you (using the money left over after they overpay C suite and management) to attract talent from going to other companies.

Without those billionaires throwing money at tech, hiring and salaries at all levels dry up.

Be honest: for the amount of work most white collar tech employees do, they are overpaid. Billionaires make that happen.

So its more like "I don't care what happens to overpaid tech workers' which is a fine opinion to have.

That speculative pyramid scheme VC money is also what keeps your tech heavy portfolio growing without bounds.

So "i don't care to tech heavy portfolios" that's fine too.

17 more years? I can't wait to see people in their 70's through 90's adventuring through the universe. Are stargates handicap-accessible?

Seriously though dude this is actually interesting science news vastly more important than some cheesy show.

"The notion that there is a shortage of physicians is preposterous - the residency programs will continue to be filled every single year."

How on earth are those two things contradictory? The problem is there are too few residencies for how many physicians we need.

The launch pads are not in outer space.

Seems kind of premature, the knuckleheads that are trying to do orbital datacenters have about as much chance of developing a feasible, economic orbital data center as I do in being crowned Miss America.

do programming languages count?

"The very point of intellectual property laws is that they protect only against certain specific kinds of appropriation....All creators draw in part on the work of those who came before, referring to it, building on it, poking fun at it; we call this creativity, not piracy.... Intellectual property rights aren't free; They're imposed at the expense of future creators and of the public at large.... This is why intellectual property law is full of careful balances between what's set aside for the owners and what's left in the public domain for the rest of us....It may seem unfair that much of the fruit of a creator's labor may be used by others without compensation. But this is not some unforeseen byproduct of our intellectual property system; it is the system's very essence. Intellectual property law assures authors the right to their original expression, but encourages others to build freely on the ideas that underlie it. This result is neither unfair nor unfortunate: It is the means by which intellectual property law advances the progress of science and art...."

- [Vanna] White v. Samsung Electronics America, Inc., 989 F.2d 1512 (9th Cir. 1993) (Kozinski, J., dissenting from denial of rehearing).

Children? Really? You accused me of being a bot. It would be childish of me to accuse you of being an ESA shill.

Creators are under no obligation to seek statutory monopoly protection from the state either.

It is *literally* part of the patent bargain, and implicit in the idea that copyright terms are limited.

I'm finding fewer and fewer of your posts to be factual at this point.

Why constrain this to games? Why not software as a whole? The entire internet (and technology as a whole) depends largely on open source code, unencumbered protocols, and standardized, royalty free document formats.

Would the internet exist if only IPX and NetBIOS were viable?

A monopoly is literally the antithesis of a free market. A statutory monopoly doubly so.

What is the marginal cost of reproduction of information?

But it's ok for creators to loot the public domain and selectively make them part of their statutory monopoly? Are you arguing some sort of practical position, or a morality argument?

Why not fight a statutory monopoly regime that seems intent on indefinitely extending monopolies far past "limited"?

What do you think folks are doing? What do you think *this* effort is, if not "fighting"?

And what power do any of us have to "fight"?

If there are no copies allowed before the copyright expires, and the original is no longer accessible?