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Then you just write it in fancy sounding bullshit, and pass it off as a unique invention -- and the morons at the patent office, whose only real criteria is if the checks clear, will rubber stamp it and suddenly you have a patent.

To a great degree this is actually true. The patent officers don't care about the checks that much, though. It just creates a lot of work for them when they reject a patent claim and the lawyers of the people applying for the patent, i.e. prosecuting (that's the technical term) it prove them wrong and get their rejections overturned. It also shows badly on the record of the patent officer if their rejections tend to not hold up. The lawyers usually have more resources and motivation to make the patent pass through. So, the patent clerks tend to take the path of least resistance, i.e. approving the patents after doing their due diligence. Patent officers have a pre defined set of databases(including scientific journals, previous patents, etc) that they look through for prior art, and they don't look outside of that set (for example on Google) to find out if an idea is original. There is a fair amount of screening that goes into granting a patent for sure, and they don't just stamp anything. But they will stamp anything as long as their asses are covered. And they are really tiny asses that don't need a whole lot of cover.

Now when you bring up a case in court to invalidate somebody else's patent, that's when your lawyers will do all the google searches and thorough research to show that the invention was publicly known before the patent was granted. This research would go in front of a judge who will most likely rule in favor of whoever hired the bigger guns.

The problem with ideas in software (as opposed to, say, chemistry) is that they are generated far too quickly and anonymously to be included in formal databases and journals, even though they may be publicly known. I'll give you a rough example. Around the year 1998, you could use a plugin in Winamp called Geiss that showed trippy visualizations of music. Before that plugin (correct me if I'm wrong), music visualization was mostly just fancy waveforms. Apple lifted this idea wholesale and made it part of iTunes in 2001. Sony patented this idea in 2009. Poor Mr. Geiss got diddly squat for his invention, even though millions or even billions have probably used it till date, and his idea got patented more than a decade after conception. Such is the state of affairs: big tech companies go out and patent ideas that they learn from the general public. If the idea's implementation takes off, the patent provides them security, and if it doesn't, it's a bargaining chip to gouge money from anyone that tries to use the idea.

Regarding the patenting of ideas versus inventions, in theory you can only patent inventions, but the definition of what constitutes an invention is very lax, especially for software, and you don't have to go and show a working proof of concept to a patent officer. If the patent application describes the software in enough detail so as to allow an average programmer to develop it based on just the description, it's good enough to qualify. In other words, you can pretty much patent a piece of software at the requirements and architecture stage.

Google destruction of federal records and read the legal links.

Within 1 or 2 links you'll find this little statue governing federal records management:

(b) Whoever, having the custody of any such record, proceeding, map, book, document, paper, or other thing, willfully and unlawfully conceals, removes, mutilates, obliterates, falsifies, or destroys the same, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than three years, or both; and shall forfeit his office and be disqualified from holding any office under the United States.

There is little question she "willfully and unlawfully conceal"d documents (all work emails from the SoS are considered Federal Documents) and more and more is coming to light that she also possibly met at least a few of the other conditions.

Will she ever be charged and convicted, my guess is probably not under the current admin, but there isn't much questions that it is a legal possibility that a conviction could be used to bar her from running for President.

After shooting the code, please post a video like that man from NC did after shooting his daugther's laptop

There not a shortage of tech jobs right now, particularly in engineering, but also in other hard sciences.

Maybe if "we" got out of the mindset of wanting to pay third world wages, people would move to these kinds of fields?

It is funny, in my opinion, the ones to the greatest extent setting wages ( trying to keep them low ) seem to be the ones lamenting the fact that people don't want those jobs, and all the while praising the market for all the magic it can do ( and it can ).

I thought tech jobs were paying well in the US? The lowest wage I could earn in the US is at least two times as much as I earn in Argentina working as a software developer, even when most things cost twice as much as in the US (1000 ARS are 224 USD)

I don't see how USD50 000 is a third word wage.

First link in google: How to run the eeepc.iso inside VirtualBox

Oh, you'll love Argentina then, where you, as a citizen, have to fund the state propaganda channel and pay the license to broadcast futbol (soccer) for everyone in a country with huge margins of poverty.

She's getting re-elected soon. The displayed propaganda during half-time is working wonders and that's only one of a huge number of demagogic tactics.

protecting against the same threats that they've faced for the last 10 years. SQL injection, phishing, malicious attachments, social engineering.

10 years? Those attacks have existed for as long as those technologies have existed.

See

• SQL injection
• phishing

(Google won't go further than the '90s, but you get my drift.)

protecting against the same threats that they've faced for the last 10 years. SQL injection, phishing, malicious attachments, social engineering.

10 years? Those attacks have existed for as long as those technologies have existed.

See

• SQL injection
• phishing

(Google won't go further than the '90s, but you get my drift.)

I, for one, want my planes landed to a quarter of a nanometer

this article is already on the top of google for the seach litigious bastards jonesday.com...

and it should be...

litigious bastards, yeah, i'm referring to jonesday.com

Isn't this like the throat mikes used by panzer crews in the second world war?
I don't see why 50 year old tech should cost more than a few dollars. (Yes, sure they might be better than a WW2 tank mike, but USD 200 is preposterous).

... something like this could happen? ;)

That's just the tip of the iceberg, it seems.

http://www.google.com.ar/search?q=%22Dude,+I'm+goi ng+to+put+this+CD+on+the+Internet+right+away.%22&h l=es&lr=&safe=off&filter=0

heh.

http://www.google.com.ar/search?hl=es&q=%22+which+ by+all+standards+should+be+a+lot+slower%22&btnG=B% C3%BAsqueda+en+Google&meta=

Play teh Excel version of the classic ;)

http://www.google.com.ar/url?sa=U&start=1&q=http:/ /www.geocities.jp/nchikada/pac/&e=9707