A quick check at https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.bklynlibrary.org%2F shows that yes, all 4 of those books are available. Librarians aren't your ideological enemies. I hope your local library does as well with Heather has Two Mommies.
Good for MIT. It's a shame they didn't figure this out in time to avoid helping the FBI kill Aaron Swartz for downloading papers.
>Do you believe rehabilitation is impossible or do you want revenge?
I don't believe that someone who commits mass murder can be rehabilitated, no. It isn't about revenge; it's about public safety.
Someone once pointed out that hoping a rapist gets raped in prison isn't a victory for his victim(s), because it somehow gives him what he had coming to him, but it's actually a victory for rape and violence. I wish I could remember who said that, because they are right. The score doesn't go Rapist: 1 World: 1. It goes Rape: 2.
What this man did is unspeakable, and he absolutely deserves to spend the rest of his life in prison. If he needs to be kept away from other prisoners as a safety issue, there are ways to do that without keeping him in solitary confinement, which has been shown conclusively to be profoundly cruel and harmful.
Putting him in solitary confinement, as a punitive measure, is not a victory for the good people in the world. It's a victory for inhumane treatment of human beings. This ruling is, in my opinion, very good and very strong for human rights, *precisely* because it was brought by such a despicable and horrible person. It affirms that all of us have basic human rights, even the absolute worst of us on this planet.
This is precisely why I lost all interest in Oculus the instant I heard that it had been acquired by Facebook.
Consider Trello. It's not strictly an issue tracker, but it's very good for this sort of thing and already popular outside of software circles.
The Geneva Conventions only apply when a state of war exists between a nation that has signed them and one or more sovereign countries. This is one of the reasons that modern politicians like to describe acts of bombing or invading somebody else's country as a "police action", "insurgency suppression operation", "humanitarian aid mission", or whatever other made-up name they can come up to avoid having to apply a bunch of inconvenient rules about wars that they agreed to abide by.
You cannot copyright a single binary number, but you can copyright a specific sequence of them, e.g. computer software, a movie on DVD, digital representations of text, digital photos, etc.
I wonder if the same also applied to CDs back before services like iTunes? Was it actually the bands (and not the production companies) forcing their other 7 or 8 tracks of self-indulgent crap on us as their price for letting us hear their one good song?
I don't know how things work today, but when I was a session musician from the late 1970s until the mid 1980s, standard artist contracts obliged them to produce around 50 minutes of new recorded material each year. This doesn't sound like much, but up and coming artists had heavy touring and promotional schedules, so they often had difficulty finding enough time to write, arrange, and record 50 minutes of music (which could take several months just to record). That's why so many acts had a brilliant debut album followed by a disappointing one: the first album had the best stuff they'd writtten up to then, recorded by people who had an advance on royalties, and could spend all their time arranging and recording; while the subsequent one was put together while they were touring and promoting the first one, so it had a couple of strong tracks that couldn't fit onto the first album, plus some other stuff that both the artists and record company reckoned was mediocre, but would have to do because there was no oppotunity to write anything better.
Cheap vat-produced meat will reduce the demand for farm-produced meat, but there will still be a significant number of people who are willing to pay extra for the real thing, just like they do now with items that have "organic" labels on them. That together with large list of industrial, medical, and consumer products which come from livestock will ensure that they will continue to be economically viable for the forseeable future.
Some orcas like eating other mammals, but the vast majority eat fish, and will ignore anything that isn't a fish. Mammal hunting orca are equally prey-specific (i.e. they ignore fish), and given the fact that there are no notable physiological differences between the groups, it is likely that prey preferences together with effective hunting strategies are learned at an early age, and become ingrained.
And while it is true to say that most (but not all) sharks will eat fish, there are several species that actively hunt other sorts of prey, e.g. the great white's known propensity for seals and sealions; the tiger-shark's love of sea turtles; and the grey/bull/whaler (same shark, different names) which seems to be an equal opportunity hunter that can move freely between fresh and salt water, and is responsible for the majority of shark attacks on humans.
Android right now is the most dominant OS for both Tablet and Smartphone, Markets that Microsoft(and Apple) have been in for forever (Androids first device was in 2008).
Correct, if of course one's definiton of "forever" is a year, because the iPhone was launched in 2007.
Going back further to the dark ages, how much real innovation occurred when everyone was forced (by law, if not practical necessity) into being vassals under feudalism that subordinated everyone and everything to landed nobility and the Church? Yes, we had people like Kepler, Newton, and Galileo... and their contemporary influence was almost nonexistent. Their discoveries were talked about privately, behind closed doors, and most of their effort was spent trying to avoid getting crushed by those who cared mainly about preserving the status quo.
The dark ages was a time of significant innovation, e.g. the wheeled, adjustable pough; water mills; the horse collar; draw plates for making wire; the blast furnace; pointed and ribbed arches; the flying buttress; etc., etc., etc.
Kepler, Newton and Galileo did not live during the dark ages. All were well known during their lives, but only Galileo got into trouble over his publications, and it was the way his book was written rather than its scientific content that got him imprisoned (it featured a dialogue between a thinly veiled version of himself as the wise know-it-all, who expounds at length to an idiot who is obviously based on the pope, thereby humiliating and annoying a man who had been his friend since childhood). Kepler's problems in later life were due to his connection with Calvinists, not his scientific work, and Newton, contrary to being crushed, did quite well for himself.
Common people didn't know about their works because they were published in Latin, so the few commoners who were literate were unable to read them.
For every Newton you can cite, there were thousands of minstrels who didn't share their songs and blacksmiths, bakers, cobblers, stone masons, swordsmiths, etc. who didn't share their secrets. You used to have to be initiated into a guild to learn any of those things.
Most craft knowledge was lost through illiteracy, not guild protectionism. Few European countries in the Middle Ages had literacy rates in excess of 3%, so the chances of craft practices being written about were remote, because those who were literate had no notable interest in them. And while it is true that some guilds became powerful, they only existed on a local level, and their power came from letters of marque or letters patent from rulers that gave them a monopoly on the practice of a trade in a particular town or city. Not being a member of the correct guild within a jurisdiction meant that it was against the law to do whatever it was that the guild controlled, so the members of the guild grew rich because there was no competition for their services.
It is not obvious because turning ideas into viable economic products is an aspect of the totality of innovation, not the entirety of it. So stenvar's question was completely correct, because while it is true that patents affect some types of innovation, they do not affect all of them, so they are not a regulation of innovation.
How many hardware guys does it take to change a light bulb? "Well the diagnostics say it's fine buddy, so it's a software problem."
