Sunday, October 17, 2004

Software Patents Gone Mad. Software patent infringements are increasingly becoming the subject of litigation. For those not in the programming field, software patents are issued for what I would call programming techniques or methods. An analogy would be if a carpenter patented "the use... [Mises Economics Blog: Austrian Economics and Libertarian Political Theory] Software patents waste money throughout the industry--for example, the most important role of Configuration Management in a large software company is to keep track of old source code so that the legal department can use it to defend against lawsuits involving bogus software patents. 5:37:35 PM    comment () This is the start of the end of the Karzai government.  "Removing warlords is one of my promises," he (Karzai) said in an interview yesterday.  "Nobody should have a private militia in Afghanistan any more, period. The only entities in this country that should have weapons are the army and police."  "The fight against drugs will be top of my agenda," Karzai said. "That means fighting drugs everywhere -- inside and outside the government. We must get rid of this."   The elections were only possible as long as the opium flowed and the warlord run paramilitaries that profited by it were left alone.  Only the Taliban were left outside the process.  He is now about to radically widen the opposition, to his undoing, by trying to centralize control of the country in the hands of the state.  He is learn how semi-loyalist paramilitaries can back-fire. [John Robb's Weblog] Most likely this is the work of the Feds who hold Karzai's strings. 2:24:54 PM    comment () NY Times Magazine, quoting a senior White House official, in 2002: "We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality." [Scripting News] A must-read article. Towards the end the author writes: Bush grew into one of history's most forceful leaders, his admirers will attest, by replacing hesitation and reasonable doubt with faith and clarity. Many more will surely tap this high-voltage connection of fervent faith and bold action. In politics, the saying goes, anything that works must be repeated until it is replaced by something better. The horizon seems clear of competitors. Bush isn't the first person to lead a major country this way. There were others seventy years ago--and they went down in flames, taking much of the world with them. 2:21:31 PM    comment () With Friends Like This ‰¥Ï. On Wednesday, the National Rifle Association shed its alleged neutrality and endorsed President George W. Bush for re-election despite his exceptionally poor record on gun rights issues. Few, least of all Libertarian presidential candidate Michael Badnarik, expressed surprise. "No, I'm not a big surprised," said Badnarik on Sunday as he was ... [Blognarik] I'm not surprised--the NRA doesn't do a very good job of pretending to be nonpartisan. I've taken to calling them the "National Republican Association." 1:08:25 PM    comment () The Brownshirting of America. Bush's supporters demand lockstep consensus that Bush is right. They regard truthful reports that Saddam Hussein had no weapons of mass destruction and was not involved in the Sept. 11 attack on the U.S. -- truths now firmly established by the Bush administration's own reports -- as treasonous America-bashing. [...] Bush's conservative supporters want no debate. They want no facts, no analysis. They want to denounce and demonize the enemies that the Hannitys, Limbaughs, and Savages of talk radio assure them are everywhere at work destroying their great and noble country. I remember when conservatives favored restraint in foreign policy and wished to limit government power in order to protect civil liberties. Today's young conservatives are Jacobins determined to use government power to impose their will at home and abroad. Where did such "conservatives" come from? [Antiwar.com] 11:33:14 AM    comment () The problem with all this technology that makes it easy to write is that you're forced to admit that you don't actually have anything to say. 11:15:12 AM    comment ()

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