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In related stories: Microsoft Windows Servers remain secure.

Other than the SELinux stuff, I can't think of much thats really come out of them.

How about a variety of encryption systems dating all the way back to post-WWII.

You are using a clipper chip for all your encryption right?

I know you probably meant that as a joke but the clipper chip was also invented by the NSA. Although it was controversial (allowing the government to listen to communication) the idea of key escrow did stay with us. Most of them use algorithms/techniques such as DES, El Gamal and Diffie-Hellman. This site goes into great detail concerning the different types of key escrow methods.

Based upon the early effective filing date of 1991, I would not bet on that obvious conclusion. Also, as RIM tried to show to a jury that they were obvious and failed I would not buy your argument.

I am sure RIM paid a lot of money for a legal team who probably scoured the earth to fid proff that it had been done before or was an obvious variant of something that had gone before and a jury did not buy it, the district court did not buy it and a court of appeals didn't buy it. see http://www.ll.georgetown.edu/federal/judicial/fed/ opinions/03opinions/03-1615.pdf

Have it been patented yet?

The sole issue in this appeal is the meaning of the following language in a patent claim: "heating the resulting batter-coated dough to a temperature in the range of about 400 F. to 850 F." The question is whether the dough itself is to be heated to that temperature (as the district court held), or whether the claim only specifies the temperature at which the dough is to be heated, i.e., the temperature of the oven (as the appellant contends). We agree with the district court that the claim means what it says (the dough is to be heated "to" the designated temperature range) and therefore affirm [the trial court's finding of non-infringement].

As most people know, dough heated to 850 degrees F. is no longer dough - it is charcoal. Not the most effective result for a process that is intended to result in the production of an edible substance.

BTW - the two law firms who tried this case are two of the top firms in the US. I am confident that the parties each spent hundreds of thousands of dollars arguing over a single word. And a very short word at that.

Shakespeare didn't write in Old English. For Old English, try reading Beowulf some time.

"Wherefore art thou," may have been the contemporary way of saying "Where are you?"

Or it may even have been the contemporary way of saying "Why are you?"

Does that head gear include a looping recording of Beethoven's 9th Symphony?

Hmm...let's compare: Clockwork Orange to Chinese Internet Addict Clicnic

Is it only me here seeing a more-than-slight resemblence between this and this?

Now, insects I study, and their natural histories are highly variable. Some are very isolated sexually although they have huge populations. I catch some flightless wasps that are less than a millimeter in size, and parasitize litter dwelling spider eggs. These guys obviously are not moving their genes beyond my little research site (surrounded by the Potomac and a highway), yet they are quite abundant regionally. Some insects may have the reproductive rate (many do not) necessary for Natural Selection to do its thing, but in many cases they are isolated populations of a rather small size, particularly in cases where reproductive forms are not abundant. Now of course pesticide resistance is a wonderful (well not 'wonderful') example of unnatural selection. Telling stories about the evolution of Prenolepis imparis's (a common US ant) ability to cope with near freezing temperatures is another thing, and this is why NS is such a beast, many of the adaptive traits we see could just be drift, and often they are ancestral traits that evolved under a completely different set of circumstances.

IANAL but after looking at the website it strikes me that on this scale the effort and pictures can almost be considered artistic.

Oddly enough, the first thing I thought of on viewing his site was that it is a modern take on the Andy Warhol Campbell's Soup Can.

...a devout Catholic is not allowed to have sex except if trying to have kids. No contraception, no masturbation even, nothing.

This is not true. IANACLA (Catholic Legal Authority), but I believe that the actual Catholic position is a lot more complex than this. For example, a devout Catholic who is sterile, either due to age or other natural circumstances is not committing a sin when having sex with a partner to whom they are legally (in the eyes of the Church) married.

Furthermore, what is commonly known as the "Rhythm Method", a form of contraception that has recently been shown to be very effective, is allowed to devout Catholics.

My "argument" about anything under the sun ... is not "bullshit." it is the law. Quote:

"The repetitive use of the expansive term "any" in 101 shows Congress's intent not to place any restrictions on the subject matter for which a patent may be obtained beyond those specifically recited in 101. Indeed, the Supreme Court has acknowledged that Congress intended 101 to extend to "anything under the sun that is made by man." Diamond v. Chakrabarty, 447 U.S. 303, 309 (1980); see also Diamond v. Diehr, 450 U.S. 175, 182 (1981). Thus, it is improper to read limitations into 101 on the subject matter that may be patented where the legislative history indicates that Congress clearly did not intend such limitations. See Chakrabarty, 447 U.S. at 308 ("We have also cautioned that courts 'should not read into the patent laws limitations and conditions which the legislature has not expressed.'" (citations omitted)).

State Street Bank & Trust Co., v. Signature Financial Group, Inc.

We're looking at this from a US perspective, not a global Many Foriegn countries don't have the telecommunications infrastructure that we have here in the US such as the http://www.cs.georgetown.edu/~denning/cosc450/pape rs/acker.htmlSoviet Union, former http://www.american.edu/carmel/BS2787A/infrast.htm #IndustryCzech Republic

I don't believe that addresses my point. For example, the link you gave is the USPTO opinion of a judgement that I've put to you is fault. For example you quoted "A claim is anticipated only if each and every element..." I refer you to this discussion of that judgement:

http://www.ll.georgetown.edu/Federal/judicial/fed/ opinions/99opinions/99-1066.html

"This court requires that a party seeking to invalidate a patent under 102 show that the allegedly invalidating prior art contains "each and every element of [the] claimed invention.""

Notice that the court requires THAT THE PARTY SEEKING TO INVALIDATE A PATENT required to show this higher level.

This judgement is guidance on how to set the bar for an invalidating party (setting a very high bar), not to the patent officer making the original judgement. If you accept that the patent officer is the person positioned to make the initial subjective judgement, the court is setting a high bar for changing that judgement. Further it says:

"The law imposes this high burden because Unocal's patent, like any issued patent, enjoys a presumption of validity"

Here, the PRESUMPTION OF VALIDITY presupposes the patent officer made his subjective decision correctly! The court is saying that by default the patent officer's opinion prevails, not that he isn't entitled to an opinion.

The second quote you gave backs my point not yours. He doesn't specify HOW he says "PATENT EXAMINERS CARRY THE RESPONSIBILITY".
i.e. he firmly gives the patent officer the judgement not the courts!

Probably this is just a trick by a Merrill Lynch publicist, who found a way to get free publicity. Or, maybe it is a way to distract people from some fraud involving the Taiwanese firm and Merrill Lynch.

Otherwise the story just doesn't make sense. To believe the story, Fubon cuts loss to NT$50 mil. in NT$8 bil. mistake, as it was written, you have to believe that the Taiwan firm hires inexperienced people, gives them little training, and does not review their large trades.

Do you really believe that a low-level employee spent a quarter billion dollars because of a keystroke error? In any case, the people who should know don't believe the story. Shares of "Fubon Securities' parent firm Fubon Financial Holding rose by 0.47%".

According to the U.S. government's SEC department, corruption of the media is not the only corruption from Merrill Lynch: SEC Charges Merrill Lynch, Four Merrill Lynch Executives with Aiding and Abetting Enron Accounting Fraud.

The U.S. government's Justice Department says, Three Top Former Merrill Lynch Executives Charged With Conspiracy, Obstruction Of Justice, Perjury In Enron Investigation.

There is general agreement that there has been no serious change in the U.S. government and big corporations like Merrill Lynch and Citibank. Apparently the only change is that they will be more careful in the future when they engage in deceptive practices. For an example of what has been written about this, see Iraq Could Produce Another Enron, by Nomi Prins. Ms. Prins wrote an excellent book about corporate and government corruption in the U.S., Other People's Money. At Powell's: Other People's Money.

Apparently most of what is written about the financial markets is fradulent in some way. Generally it fits into the category of "What we want you to think so that we can make more money". Employees and investors in the U.S. have lost billions of dollars due to fraud in the last few years.

The corruption is extremely widespread. Here are short reviews of 35 books and 3 movies about conflict of interest in the U.S. government: Unprecedented Corruption: A guide to conflict of interest in the U.S. government. (To those who think there is little or no corruption: If you can't give any example of a book or article you have read that supports your view, please consider not commenting this time.)

KJV is modern english. This is old english.

So someone's finally doing something with Dorothy Denning's Geo-Encryption and location based authentication ideas from a couple of years ago.

Wake me when Woz has an original, interesting idea...

So someone's finally doing something with Dorothy Denning's Geo-Encryption and location based authentication ideas from a couple of years ago.

Wake me when Woz has an original, interesting idea...

So someone's finally doing something with Dorothy Denning's Geo-Encryption and location based authentication ideas from a couple of years ago.

Wake me when Woz has an original, interesting idea...

In a sense, the Federal appellate court officially began to allow "business method" patents because it was having such a hard time trying to distinguish those methods which were worthy of patenting (such as new methods of making a chemical, new methods of making an electrical circuit...) and those methods that probably should not be patented (new methods which are merely mathematical algorithms).

It may help to read the actual cases. They are readable and have only a modest amount of legal mumbo-jumbo. The cases were State Street http://www.ll.georgetown.edu/federal/judicial/fed/ opinions/97opinions/97-1327.html/ and AT&T v. Excel http://www.ll.georgetown.edu/federal/judicial/fed/ opinions/98opinions/98-1338.html/ .

As more and more cases tried to distinguish why certain methods are as a "technical" matter worty of patenting, the courts found more and more of these distinctions too adhoc and artificial.

In a sense, the Federal appellate court officially began to allow "business method" patents because it was having such a hard time trying to distinguish those methods which were worthy of patenting (such as new methods of making a chemical, new methods of making an electrical circuit...) and those methods that probably should not be patented (new methods which are merely mathematical algorithms).

It may help to read the actual cases. They are readable and have only a modest amount of legal mumbo-jumbo. The cases were State Street http://www.ll.georgetown.edu/federal/judicial/fed/ opinions/97opinions/97-1327.html/ and AT&T v. Excel http://www.ll.georgetown.edu/federal/judicial/fed/ opinions/98opinions/98-1338.html/ .

As more and more cases tried to distinguish why certain methods are as a "technical" matter worty of patenting, the courts found more and more of these distinctions too adhoc and artificial.

I had to negotiate dealing with MS Word tracked changes and inline comments created by my thesis advisor while wanting to keep my Mac as a Microsoft-free zone. Ended up trying AppleWorks [not quite an office package as an OfficeSpace package... why hasn't this dog died yet?], TextEdit, TeX (no patience for that critter), AbiWord, ThinkFree Office (slower than your average Republican president) until I learned there was an X11 port of OpenOffice for Mac OS X.

Have to say that it tackled the job superbly for what was about as complicated as a document gets--a book-length work. Tracked changes worked almost seamlessly, even when these changes were made in MS Word versions of the docs. Export and import to/from MS word caused no noticeable difficulties, not even when dealing with paragraph formats, TOCs, styles, graphics, tables, charts and the like.

In all, I was very impressed with its robustness and more than pleased by the price.

My only beefs:
- one somewhat minor problem dealing with section formatting and heading numbering when you use a master document with subsection documents--well known apparently in the OO.o discussion forums
- no native support in EndNote for the OO.o format--made dealing with citations and bibliography a bit tricky (had to save from that format to RTF to run through doc scan to export as RTF and then re-format citations in OO.o document to make us of Bibliography). Then again, that's an issue not with OO.o per-se but with the folks who make EndNote having their heads up their Microsofted tuchases.
- occasional crashiness/quirkiness when dealing with tracked changes--sometimes the UI would jump forward many pages and bail out when trying to return. I found that there were mouse and keyboard sequences I should just avoid when navigating that UI.

All around though, the final product turned out very well from a pure text formatting perspective. Contentwise? you be the judge.

This is not a radical notion.

"Trickle-down Economics" is pure myth. There is no such thing. It's a nice idea and, like a lot of get-rich-quick schemes, is based on a few grains of truth.

This is Blasphemy! Reagan is turning over in his huge expensive tomb! Trickle-down Economics works .... Republicans Rule!

This is sarcasm btw, I agree with soloport and offer my own rant:

Nothing like a rich movie star coming up with a way to give the poor people money through the rich people. hmmmm.... I blame previous generations for not seeing the idiocy behind this one. I was a kid during Reagan, so I am not to blame!

When I was working at Genuity and watching all the smaller companies bomb out, I knew it was only a matter of time until we experienced lay-offs. Sure enough Genuity axed 15% of the employees in early 2001, more and more of my friends at Genuity lost their jobs in the next couple years. Apparently Genuity was an expense that Verizon could no longer afford, as in 2003 Genuity was sold off to Level 3 communications.

It was 2001 NOT 2000 that was the start of all the employment issues....I had plenty of job offers in 2000. Very few in 2001....I know this because I went back to school in 2001. That is a whole other topic...and I'll rant about universities and useless faculty on another day.

So let's recap....
2000: the Economy was still strong enough to support a tier 1 ISP and the companies that used it's services.
2001: We welcome a new president into office, wall street issues a report that we will enter a recession.

Shortly after "sell sell sell", hmmm you'd think that 1929 would have taught us a lesson. Apparently we as americans are too stupid, blind and lazy to pay attention to what is important. Forget trying to get the average citizen to give a damn about history, which was one of my favorite subject and I KNOW many students hated it!

Sorry for the rant, go back to your "reality" series and keep up with the group!

Time to get more serious than that: see some EU countries who bore the consequences.
http://www.cosc.georgetown.edu/~denning/crypto/App endix.html#Lotus/
An example:
Before the US crypto export regulations were finally disolved the export version of Lotus Notes used to include a key escrow / backdoor feature called differential cryptography. The idea was that they got permission to export 64 bit crypto if 24 of those bits were encrypted for the NSA's public key. The NSA would then only have the small matter of brute-forcing the remaining 40 bits to get the plaintext, and everyone else would get a not-that-great 64 bit key space (which probably already back then NSA would have had the compute power to brute force also, only at higher cost).

So who would prefer a BlackBox over a fishbowl?

So I think that I'm well-positioned to state that awful software patents are bad for everyone - including the patentee.

Eolas is only the latest example in this stream of patents that should never have been filed, let alone examined and issued. Microsoft's double-click patent, Amazon's 1-Click patent, Yahoo's patent for an Internet search engine - these are not only completely unenforceable, but serve as albatrosses to the patentees attempting to assert them.

I blame these patents on four factors:

• USPTO: Horrific ineptitude in examining even the most obviously (in the conventional sense) non-novel inventions.
• Patentees: A fundamental misunderstanding of the purpose of acquiring a patent, and the ramifications (legal, business, and PR) of asserting it against competitors.
• Patent prosecutors: A lack of technical skill in software (far too many software patents are prosecuted by EEs who view software as just another circuit* - with poor results), and/or a reprehensible willingness to prosecute such patents. (Indeed, one wonders how filing a patent on "double-clicking application buttons" complies with the patent attorney's ethical obligation of candor before the USPTO.)
• The simple fact that the field of software patents, in reality, is only six years old - the landmark court ruling that compelled the USPTO to issue software patents en masse issued in 1998. The USPTO has not had the time or resources to adjust, e.g., to hire an army of examiners skilled in the software arts and to build up a technical reference library.

While these patents are a collective debacle for the USPTO, the premise that software should constitute patentable subject matter is generally well-settled among the legal community (though, of course, the /. community has its own views.) I present the textbook example of an elegant, useful software invention worthy of patent protection: RSA - the public-key system that permits relatively effortless secured communication via one-way encryption.

There is a silver lining to this story. If you go back 30-40 years, you will see a host of complaints about these new-fangled patents on biotechnology - many claims that allowing inventors to patent novel organisms, gene sequences, proteins, and research techniques posed a horrific threat to biotech research and product development. These claims assumed the same basis as many of today's complaints against software patents: examiners were hopelessly lacking in technical skill in these areas; the subject matter qualitatively differed from conventionally patentable fields of art; a 17-year monopoly (pre-1995) represented a calamity to rapidly-evolving technology and typically-cooperative research. History has shown that those fears were hugely outweighed by the overall benefits of biotech patents - as evidenced by a thousand, wonderfully effective therapies and drugs (many of which, like prozak, are now expired, transferring the technology to the public domain.) Biotechnology and medicine are experiencing a huge upsurge in the pace of technical development - thanks in large measure to the willingness of corporations to invest in (potentially patentable) biotech R&D.

I posit that the software arts will experience a similar upsurge in innovation in short order, directly related to the allowance of software patents. The boondoggles that make for provocative /. headlines are the regrettable consequence of an unplanned transition, which time will remedy. These awful patents will expire - and, indeed, will serve as documented prior art for future corps of examiners to assert against future idiot patentees. It will simply take time to gear up the system.

- David Stein

*

According to Georgetown University that I found regarding retention of records in Maryland:

"8. Has any public records legislation/administrative regulation been proposed calling for "permanent public access" to electronic public records? _x__ Yes ___ No a. If "Yes," cite to and briefly discuss the legislation/proposed regulation; what was the outcome? Arguably, Maryland has such a provision in MD. REGS. CODE tit 14.18.04. Certain electronic records may be considered "permanent electronic records" in they have "sufficient historical, administrative, legal, fiscal, or other archival value to warrant preservation by the Archives beyond the time that the record is needed by the agency that created it." MD. REGS. CODE tit 14.18.04.03(B)(15). Nevertheless, many electronic records will not rise to the level of importance that will ensure permanence."

The hard part is determining what is important to save and what is not. In general, 7 years is the standard retention time. In our litigious world, keeping anything to prove your case until the statute of limitations runs out is a wise move. Losing emails you don't want your g/f to see is technically called an "oops, I accidently hit delete"

For those interested, I did pull up the information on Adtranz ABB Daimler-Benz Transportation, N.A., Inc. v. National Labor Relations Board, and the employer won.

War has always been about turning the enemy from a human to a monster. For a quick example from WWI, look at these posters:
1 2
These posters depict Germans as horrible and inhuman, and thusly, killable. In times, people on both sides have bridged the gap, but the horrible nature of war is to turn the enemy into something monstrous: Krauts, Japs, Jews, terrorists, Capitalist Pigdogs, etc.

War has always been about turning the enemy from a human to a monster. For a quick example from WWI, look at these posters:
1 2
These posters depict Germans as horrible and inhuman, and thusly, killable. In times, people on both sides have bridged the gap, but the horrible nature of war is to turn the enemy into something monstrous: Krauts, Japs, Jews, terrorists, Capitalist Pigdogs, etc.

Why do people think that the command line is *not* "user friendly"? Do we write books by pointing and clicking at icons, avatars, and pictures? Except under amazing cirumcstances (Steven Hawking, the blind, etc) would you hire an author that did? Then why a system administrator?

Simply put, not all machines that need to be used are going to be used solely by the system administrator. The simplest example being your common system user. While a command line is indeed user friendly if you already know how to use it, it can be daunting and intimidating if you're more familiar with graphical environments. If the argument that "the commandline can do everything and is still user friendly" actually held true, then I would say that graphical interfaces would likely have never been invented, nor grown to such popularity.

Back to the original question posed by the article though, there have been many research articles in the past few years that have all come to the same conclusion that adding security features will generally detriment useability.

Some security aspects are in fact invisible to users, but if you are trying to secure all potential transactions that your common user initiates then it adds steps upon steps of procedure and policy that the user has to go through in order to complete the transaction. Following that line of thought, there comes a point where adding too many security features actually renders a system unusable.

Dorothy Denning has spoken many times of when she was working on a secure database project (complete with fully polyinstantiated tables and user authentication) for a government contract and the project ended up as a failure because of its lack of useability and general expense.

There is also a trend that the more useable a product is, the more popular it becomes, the more it becomes used, and the bigger a target for attacks in general. As is, Linux is hardly "secure", nor is OS X for that matter. When they become the dominant workstation platform of the world then I daresay that much of the security hype of said OS's will prove largely exaggerated. Just because Windows is the favorite for attacks also does not mean that it is any less secure than the other OS's. Quite frankly, they've hardly been put to the test to make a fair comparison to begin with.

Based upon those two reasons, I'd say that the hypothesis that Usability degrades Security (and vice-versa) stands as a reasonable argument.

You just have to look hard enough. Don't look during dinner, though.

Except the "I could care less" thing is THE EXACT OPPOSITE of "begging the question."

"I could care less" doesn't make sense in the context most people use it. We use it only because it's sort of become an idiom. "I could care less, but it would be very hard," to quote another replier.

"Begging the question," however, DOES make sense in the context people use it. "Begs the question" means that what you just said begs us to ask another question. "Raise the question" just isn't emotional enough. Beg is so much more passionate.

Yes, it means two meanings are overlapping, and that's undesirable. But it's not forbidden. And since "circular logic" is so much more intuitive than "begging the question" for the older meaning of the phrase, the new meaning of "beg the question" will eventually take over.

Language evolves.

People who read slashdot know what a desktop pager is. If not, they can learn. It's the standard name.

On a more fundamental - or fundamentalist - level, we have two conflicting world views.

Hmm. I'm not so sure that they need to be in conflict.

bin-laden wants fundamentalist islamic states everywhere. The West wants pluralistic, open societies.

Okay, then I'll ask, why does the West want
"pluralistic, open societies"? Why not let the citizens of a given country determine what they want? If fundamentalist Islamic states really aren't that great, wouldn't it be better to let the people in a given country realize that, by simply working on making one's *own* non-fundamentalist country an example of a really great place to live, rather than trying to force other people to a particular world view? I mean, even if you're right, people tend to heavily resist being *made* to do something. One of the reasons that people dislike the US so heavily is because the US has its fingers in the politics of so many other countries where it really doesn't have a lot of justification being.

The original justification the US used that I can think of for global justification is in the anti-communism issue. Regardless of whether the US made a good decision, there was still *some* reason -- there was a significant mindset that for communism to work, a fully global revolution was required. As a result, the US worried that communist nations would try to produce US-based communist uprisings in the short term (note that we were in the same position, afraid of meddling, that other countries are now). With the claimed justification (rightly or not) of self-defense, the US started working hard to block the advance of communism and ensure that communist regimes failed.

However, there is no such justification for preventing Islamic fundamentalist states from existing. Said fundamentalist states do not have a particular reason for trying to cause a revolution in the United States (unless they are being threatened by the United States). Why does Al Quaeda have issues with the United States and Iraq? Iraq because the nation is heavily Islamic, but the regime forces a heavily secular government, and the United States (because of a lot of reasons, and I'm sure there are some that I'm unaware of, but a major one that the US tends to pursue opposing fundamentalist Islamic states, that there is a perception that the US does not respect Islamic values). Consider this report, or this. Given that these sorts of efforts, based on history, seem much likely to produce a long-term solution than invading countries, why are we putting so vastly much less effort into non-combat solutions?

That doesn't mean that "I'll be nice to you" policies always result in another person being nice back -- but it requires a fair amount of *something* to produce global networks of people who are willing to give their lives to hurt you.

The university I work for has a Gigabit connection to the internet through Cogent Communications. $10,000 a month. They had some initial problems with the connection, but it has been rock solid ever since that first month. Here's a link to our Network Status page.

A few links on those interested in seeing Beowulf in old English:

Article

Beowulf

The article has some information about the work and its history, as well as some lines(with translation) so that you can get an idea for the work itself.

Braver souls can take the second link to see the full work in Old English(minus wynn). The section with the dragon, from line 2200 up to at least the damaged section at 2230, should be be of interest to Tolkein fans.

Those who'd like some help figuring that out can go to this article on Old English. It features some history on the language, as well as some instruction on pronunciation and grammar.


*honk*

This page shows the &thorn symbol. For those of you interested, it kinda looks like a 'p'.

Yes indeed - glad somebody knows the difference. While you can make out Middle English (especially when spoken) Old English is barely intelligible

Old English, Middle English and Modern English are terms used by modern scholars to segment a continuum of language change which begins sometime after the 5th-century Germanic settlements in Britain. 'Old English' (or 'Anglo-Saxon', as it is sometimes called) is generally taken to cover the period c600-1100 AD. The earliest surviving text is the Northumbrian version of Caedmon's Hymn, in Cambridge University Library MS Kk.5.16 (c737). Inscriptions also offer evidence for Early Old English: for example, minting of coins began in the early 7th century (Mitchell and Reeds 1996), and early post-invasion runic inscriptions are found on objects such as cremation urns, sword pommels, and brooches (Page 1987).

You wouldn't happen to be related to Mahe, would you?

Is Velauthapillai a common name in SL?

"fæder, u e on heofonum eardast,
geweorðad wuldres dreame. Sy inum weorcum halgad
noma nia bearnum; u eart nergend wera.
Cyme in rice wide, ond in rædfæst willa
aræred under rodores hrofe, eac on on rumre foldan.
Syle us to dæge domfæstne blæd,
hlaf userne, helpend wera,
one singalan, soðfæst meotod.
Ne læt usic costunga cnyssan to swiðe,
ac u us freodom gief, folca waldend,
from yfla gewham, a to widan feore."

In Spain, there is a governmental organization which codifes the Castillian spanish, and thus its dictionary is the authority on Castillian spanish. Any word not present in it, isn't Castillian spanish. Period. Of course, South American spanish (not to mention Cuban spanish) has no such singular authority.

This institution, which is not governmental, is the Real Academia de la Lengua Española [Royal Academy of the Spanish Lenguage] (founded in 1713), and in fact it coordinates its activities (including the dictionary) with the other 21 Academies of the Spanish Language around the world, including the Academia Cubana de la Lengua [Cuban Academy of the Language], through the Asociación de Academias de la Lengua Española [Association of Academies of the Spanish Language], founded in 1951. (There's even a North-american one.)

So there is a singular "authority" for the Spanish Language, although the mission of the RAE is not to dictate what Spanish is, but to reflect its evolution while dampening the passing fads and trying to influence the word choices to keep them true to the language essence. It works more as a reference than as an authority, since a word not being in the dictionary doesn't mean that it's not Spanish, but that it hasn't proved to be stable yet. If the word sticks then it's added to the dictionary corpus, which includes the American and Philippine contributions.

Finally, you mention Cuban Spanish as if it was particularly different from the norm (which is coordinated as said above), but in fact it's quite close. In my experience, the Argentinian variant, which is heavily influenced by Italian, differs more.
Sure people use informal speaking every day, as in Spain, but we all share a common reference point on what our language is.

Parent is same as post #6281763. Parent gets 5 rating while 6281763 gets zero.

Must be that /. rating system that was designed by experts in game theory, etc.

In any event the case is here

Here is the relevant text:
Lemelson argues that the passage of the 1952 Patent Act, specifically 35 U.S.C. ÂÂ 120 and 121, entitling continuation and divisional applications respectively to the filing dates of their parents, foreclosed the application of laches. Section 120 provides that if âoe[a]n application for patent for an invention disclosed in the manner provided by the first paragraph of section 112 of this title in an application previously filed in the United States . . . by the same inventor shall have the same effect, as to such invention, as though filed on the date of the prior application . . .â 35 U.S.C. Â 120 (1994). Section 121 provides that âoea divisional application which complies with the requirements of section 120 of this title [ ] shall be entitled to the benefit of the filing date of the original application.â Id. Â 121. These sections provide the backbone for the modern continuation and division practice.

Lemelson asserts that by passing these two sections, especially allowing the continuation practice, Congress abrogated the defense of prosecution laches. But the legislative history and commentary from the authors of the 1952 Act suggest no such intent. Prior to 1952, continuation practice was governed by common law rather than statute. âoeSection 120 appeared in the statutes for the first time in the Patent Act of 1952. Prior to 1952, continuing application practice was a creature of patent office practice and case law, and  120 merely codified the procedural rights of an applicant with respect to this practice. . . . The legislative history of Section 120 does not indicate any Congressional intent to alter the Supreme Courtâ(TM)s interpretation of continuing application practice.â Transco Prods. Inc. v. Performance Contracting, Inc., 38 F.3d 551, 556-57, 32 USPQ2d 1077, 1081 (Fed. Cir. 1994). This practice was in existence when the Supreme Court decided Webster and Crown Cork; thus the defense of prosecution laches and the continuation practice coexisted. See Thomas G. Eshweiler, Ford v. Lemelson and Continuing Application Laches Revisited, 79 J. Pat. & Trademark Off. Socâ(TM)y 457 (1997).

There is nothing in the legislative history to suggest that Congress did not intend to carry forward the defense of prosecution laches as well. To the contrary, a careful reading of the history and commentary on the 1952 Act shows an intent to maintain the defense. Shortly after the passage of the Act, P.J. Federico, one of its original drafters, gave a series of lectures across the country to educate patent groups about the new Act. The lectures were transcribed, edited, and published. P.J. Federico, Commentary on the New Patent Act, 75 J. Pat. & Trademark Off. Soc'y 161 (1993) (reprinted from 35 U.S.C.A. 1954 ed.). Prior to publication, Federico âoesubmitted drafts of the commentary to [Henry] Ashton and the Drafting Committee for suggestions . . .â Paulik v. Rizkalla, 760 F.2d 1270, 1277 (Fed. Cir. 1985) (en banc) (Rich, J., concurring). The Drafting Committee consisted of Judge Giles S. Rich, late of this court, and Paul Rose. See Giles S. Rich, Congressional Intent â" Or, Who Wrote the Patent Act of 1952, in Patent Procurement and Exploitation (BNA 1963), reprinted in Nonobviousness â" The Ultimate Condition of Patentability (John F. Witherspoon ed., 1980). Federicoâ(TM)s commentary is an invaluable insight into the intentions of the drafters of the Act.

The defenses available to an accusation of infringement were incorporated into section 282 of the then new Act.

Her name is Laurie Garrett she works for Newsday, she's a well known journalist/writer.

Lemelson technique no bueno no mas.

Federal circuit ruled against on equitable doctrine of laches

We also have it now a no-no to exercise application delays via the doctrine of prosecution history laches

Lemelson technique no bueno no mas.

Federal circuit ruled against on equitable doctrine of laches

We also have it now a no-no to exercise application delays via the doctrine of prosecution history laches

This guy is now well know for going to conferences, learning about new technology, then doing some rush 'research' and filing tons of patents with his 'partner,' Sharp. Then, they go out and try to get 'licensing fees' from other companies.

Take a look at United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit or Semiconductor Energy Laboratory LABORATORY CO., LTD. v. SAMSUNG ELECTRONICS CO., LTD.,

This guy is a leach that does no real research. I just can't respect him.

1. The federal cicuit has been more keen lately on invalidating internet or business method patents due to obviousness problems.

It could be argued that it would be obvious to extend palladium's capabilities to include software registration enforcment.

2. Microsoft is not above patent law on legitimate patents:

Since 1998, Microsoft has been named a defendant in at least 35 patent-infringement cases, compared with seven suits in the prior 22 years. Twenty-one are currently active. - wsj 10/3/02

FYI, the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit that rendered the Bowers decision is the national court of second-to-last resort in intellectual property cases. The Supreme Court is the only higher appellate authority, and it is extremely unlikely that the Supreme Court would grant a hearing on this case.

This article here comments on a legal case where a shrink-wrap license may be binding.

The Bowers case is scary, indeed, but it hardly breaks ground on the proposition quoted above. The Federal Circuit Opinion relies on a longstanding string of case law (including the 1996 7th Circuit opinion in the ProCD case) finding a shrink-wrap agreement to be enforceable. While the enforceability of shrink-wraps will likely be heavily fact-dependent (and possibly jurisdiction-dependent), there has been enough guidance for years for a well-advised publisher to have little doubt that purchase and use of her software will be governed by the shrink-wrap. In other words, "Shrink wraps done right are enforceable. Duh."

The scary result in Bowers is not the enforceability of the shrink-wrap agreement, but the enforceability of a particular provision (the no-reverse-engineering provision), and a holding that the Copyright law that permits reverse engineering DOES NOT PREEMPT a state contract claim. This is actually quite a huge(ly bad) result, and it is hard to distinguish the analysis of the Federal Circuit case from a hypothetical book with the "no fair use" shrink-wrap provision.

This isn't a question of offer and acceptance -- its a question of federal law being circumvented by an activist court.