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There is a quite a difference between a moralistic push (eg: condoms in school) vs. one that is economic that just happens to have environmental and some societal benefit. So lets not start that "If they do this, when does it end...." arguement.

For Profit-Charities have been a around a while, but most don't set them up because they lack some of the tax benefit that traditional "non-profit" charities offer. Plus they depend on grants and contributions of others for subsistance vs. a for profit charity can be run very much like a business, so long as its specific mission statement does not alter and has social benefit.

Another chunk of data to read: http://www.tgci.com/magazine/98winter/profit.asp

"For-Profit Charities

The recent Red Cross scandal is a reminder that charitable nonprofit organizations sometimes act poorly. Meanwhile, many for-profit commercial organizations try to do good--by helping poor coffee growers, or providing hurricane relief, or supporting schools. Yet the good-doing nonprofits enjoy tax benefits denied to the good-doing for-profits. Why should this be the case? It turns out that there is no reason for discriminating against commercial operations that provide charitable benefits. Indeed, the incentive structures of a profit-making business could be used to enhance the efficiency of charities. Hence the case for the "for-profit charity." Click here for the argument (an abstract of the paper is below).

Abstract:
Nonprofit firms may not distribute profits to owners but instead must retain them or reinvest them. Nonprofits that are "charitable organizations" under Section 501(c)(3) of the tax code may receive donations from individuals who are allowed to deduct their donations from their income for tax purposes. We argue that the law should not link tax benefits to corporate form in this way. There may be good arguments for recognizing the nonprofit form and good arguments for providing tax subsidies to charities or donors to charities, but there is no good argument for making those tax subsidies available only to charities that adopt the nonprofit form. Consequently, the "for-profit charity" may well be a desirable institution. Currently, no such entity exists, but the reason is surely discriminatory tax treatment; the charitable activities of many commercial firms suggest that in the absence of discriminatory tax treatment for-profit charities would flourish. Current tax benefits for charitable nonprofits should be extended to for-profit charities, and to the charitable activities of for-profit commercial firms."
From: http://uchicagolaw.typepad.com/faculty/misc_ideas/ index.html

And The Kitty.

Do you think it was legal during WWII to have people's mail they were receiving from a foreign country to be opened? This did happen. I would like to know what legal repercussion the president faced for doing this during WWII. It would seem that the NSA monitoring phone calls would fall under the same authority that mail was opened during WWII.

See the discussion at http://uchicagolaw.typepad.com/faculty/2006/01/bus hs_spy_progr.html

Remember the NSA is operating under the military. They are not trying to build a case against you. That is up to the FBI. It seems to me that is how they got away with the Echelon project during the 90's.

Further evidence of this is in the bill referenced in the story we are discussing. The bill makes little mention of the NSA. It mainly mentions the Attorney General (Justice Department) working with the President. I don't think it mentions the DoD at all. I am no lawyer, but the bill seems to be written in the context of the justice system and not the military. I do not think this is an accident.

So, as you know, graphics and physics grind on large homogenous floating point data structures in a very straight-line structured way. Then we have AI and gameplay code. Lots of exceptions, tunable parameters, indirections and often messy. We hate this code, it's a mess, but this is the code that makes the game DIFFERENT. Here is the terrifying realization about the next generation consoles: I'm about to break a ton of NDAs here, oh well, haha, I never signed them anyway.

Gameplay code will get slower and harder to write on the next generation of consoles. Modern CPUs use out-of-order execution, which is there to make crappy code run fast. This was really good for the industry when it happened, although it annoyed many assembly language wizards in Sweden. Xenon and Cell are both in-order chips. What does this mean? It's cheaper for them to do this. They can drop a lot of cores. One out-of-order core is about four times [did I catch that right? Alice] the size of an in-order core. What does this do to our code? It's great for grinding on floating point, but for anything else it totally sucks. Rumours from people actually working on these chips - straight-line runs 1/3 to 1/10th the performance at the same clock speed. This sucks.

The government DID step in. And instead of implementing some sort of system that would tend to balance the standards of living, they have created INCENTIVES for offshoring.

http://techpolicy.typepad.com/tpp/2004/03/tax_brea ks_for_.html
http://www.americanprogress.org/site/pp.asp?c=biJR J8OVF&b=32409

These were high up in Google, that's my only endorsement of these sources. It was a hot issue in 2004...

Here's one of my favorite posts on the subject. And darn good advice.

Why is it that if it's a communist state doing something it's bad and when it's not it's good.

Kerala has also banned Coke & Pepsi.

And they didn't ban other Indian drinks which had the same problems.

I did a quick overview of the main features (with screencaps) at Flickr's built-in geocoding - your photos on Yahoo Maps. In addition to geotags, it will take EXIF geocoded photos, but only if you set a preference and only for new photos uploaded after the pref is set.

I'd strongly recommend what I use, which is a Palm T|X with a 4GB SD card. The T|X itself has great features: 320x480 screen, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, stereo with standard headphone jack, solid battery life, 128 MB of NVRAM, in-box compatibility with not only popular PIMs but MS Office files in native format. Add to that a 4 GB SD card (available for about $65 or less after rebate at Newegg.com--I use the Transcend one), and you've got enough add-on storage (which supports hierarchical folders) to store a whole bunch of multimedia as well as documents. The PalmOS isn't the most sophisticated, but it makes up for that with speed, simplicity, stability, and thousands of apps. Mac compatibility comes through apps like MarkSpace's Missing Sync, and the Palm user community is tremendously supportive, including sites like PalmAddict (for which I'm a volunteer Associate Writer). Add a Bluetooth keyboard like the compact ThinkOutside model, and you've got a serious laptop replacement that will play well with campus wireless networks.

If you need any other info., feel free to e-mail me. {Prof. Jonathan}

I see a trend here...

Wierd Al
MC Lars
Cruisbox http://audiopium.typepad.com/thatpodcastsong/

Can anyone else out there imagine a Live Aid style gig to raise funds to pay lawyers to go up against the RIAA...

From marketing dude Seth Godin's Blog:

I'm afraid we come back to something that marketers have been struggling with for a really long time--the best way to succeed is to have a really great product.

Might I interest you in a free kitten?

Free Kittens!

KFG

You are both right. He's the visionary that started it. However, under his management it went downhill toward the end: a terrible unusable browser that crashed all the time and was garbaged up with useless non-browser features like email client, news, and other. The friendly browser turned into a beastly bowser even before AOL took it over. It the efforts of the Mozilla team to salvage the idea.

I will most likely buy a PS3, not because I'm some kind of "psycho Sony fanboy" or anything, but because the spec sheet pins it being a better overall system if/when(?) the games start rolling in for it.

The PS3's theoretical power is based on being able to maximize use of its parallel cores. In reality, nobody has shown how to come anywhere close to the PS3's theoretical power. Not a single game previewed looks even moderately superior to the 360's offerings. Unless somebody comes up with a killer game that can't be matched on the 360, the average consumer is going to balk at the $500/$600 asking price.

Personally, I own a 360 and I think the whole "next gen" thing is over-hyped and over-priced crap. The games aren't any more interesting. The graphics aren't *that* much better. The box is big, noisy, and has heat trouble. The high-resolution TV market is in a state of chaos.

The Wii, on the other hand, while not boasting cutting edge specs, is incredibly small, has an innovative controller, and a great price. I'm hoping Nintendo pulls the rug out from both Microsoft and Sony.

http://tedblog.typepad.com/tedblog/2006/08/jeff_ha n_on_ted.html

There you go :)
Don't forget to view the other TED talks!

IN HONOR OF THE SUBJECT MATERIAL, I HAVE CHOSEN TO USE THE CAPS LOCK FOR THE FIRST TIME IN MY LIFE FOR THIS POST.

On second thought, that's far too annoying.

If the proposed abolishment of caps lock keys is successful, I grow concerned about what myself and my predecessors will celebrate on INTERNATIONAL CAPS LOCK DAY which happens to be October 22. And don't tell me it's not a real holiday because that is one convincing website. It has a news flash with a picture of a potato, uses the word "bitches" and has a countdown for the days remaining to INTERNATIONAL CAPS LOCK DAY. And look at this other reputable site, Out House Rag that also backs INTERNATIONAL CAPS LOCK DAY. That's more than Adults Day in Japan has to say! Please, if I have to put up with one more Nevada Day (October 31) the least you can do is let me have my INTERNATIONAL CAPS LOCK DAY. Please don't remove your caps lock key because they're not evil!

You know, there's this horrible site that actually encourages you to remap your caps lock to a more suitable function ... but of course that would just be sacrilegious and a very dangerous process (don't try it at home!).

An old Italian man lived alone in the country. He wanted to dig his tomato garden, but it was very hard work as the ground was hard. His only son, Vincent, who used to help him, was in prison. The old man wrote a letter to his son and described his predicament.

Dear Vincent,

I am feeling pretty bad because it looks like I won't be able to plant my tomato garden this year. I'm just getting too old to be digging up a garden plot. If you were here my troubles would be over. I know you would dig the plot for me.

Love Dad

A few days later he received a letter from his son.

Dear Dad,

Not for nothing, but don't dig up that garden. That's where I buried the BODIES.

Love Vinnie

At 4 a.m., the next morning, FBI agents and local police arrived and dug up the entire area without finding any bodies. They apologized to the old man and left. That same day the old man received another letter from his son.

Dear Dad,

Go ahead and plant the tomatoes now. That's the best I could do under the circumstances.

Love Vinnie

The theory is that this new class of jet will be what is needed to enable relatively economical air taxi services that fly from point to point (and likely from smaller airports) rather than flowing your through the current hub-based carriers

This morning as I was reading the news about this, and this insightful blog post, I started wondering whether this sort of overreaction is just the thing to give the fledgling air taxi industry a kickstart.

An interesting tidbit, this was introduced in 2005 as well by Lamar Smith of Texas:

http://patentlaw.typepad.com/patent/2005/06/patent _reform_p.html

Not sure what the difference is between the two, because I'm still looking for the bill's number. It's almost as if people like to use the fluffy name and never really look at the bill - only reference it from other articles.

It has been proven (see The Great Mutual Fund Trap) that day trading is a way to lose. People always jump in too late and jump out too early and have their profits eaten up by fees (which they pay whether they win or lose). The guys in that book reported on an analysis done of Etrade and Ameritrade records. The numbers were very clear.

I wouldn't say this hypothesis has been proven. There are some daytraders who consistently make money over the long term. There aren't many, but it can be done. They also don't use Etrade or Ameritrade to execute trades. With those fees, I'm sure it is near impossible to make money daytrading.

Look - this is like the gambling game. They always emphasis the guy who won, and never the 100 who lost to make it possible. Gambling addicts live on their last big win, even if it happened 5 years ago and they sunk their life savings since trying to repeat it.

Sorry, this is not the only way to win by any stretch of the imagination. For the record, there is NO guarantee that the DOW will rise over the long term. Even if it does, there may be VERY long stretches where it trades sideways. In the long term, we're all dead. There are plenty of opportunities for the small investor to use an edge to excel in the markets.

but there are some funds that have outperformed the market over the long term due to brilliant managers

The important point here is that Mr Whitman and his ilk, with all their resources, and with
all their training and degrees and support cannot beat the DOW in the long term except in
a very rare case. So what chance do you have as a day trader. What chance to you have to even
pick a mutual fund - especially once you strip tax and fees out of your earnings.

Go with a broad index fund. This reduces exposure to a single sector and reduces fees to a minimum.

This is old. This was invented by Mary Poppins years ago.

http://clubdi.typepad.com/photos/uncategorized/mar ypcover.jpg

From the pic, you can tell that it was powered by linux.

You can always rely on slashdot if you want to see a few (well, more than a few) outstanding examples of HCGS sufferers.

Though it's really the people reading their work that are suffering. *sigh* :)

show something at 12 o'clock that is directly contradicted by the election result then yes, something funny IS going on.

Bull! Have you considered that the voters who show up before noon on election day might not be a random sample of the totality of all persons who will vote that day? It's a well-documented fact (Google it, yo... but here's an anecdote) that election polls ALWAYS skew left during the beginning of the day.

And even by the end of the day, the VNS still wasn't properly accounting for "refuse to speak"s -- people who were randomly selected but didn't want to talk to the poll person. Those have been shown to be more likely to be conservatives.

Stop begging the question. Just because the polls and results didn't match up doesn't mean you've proven your hypothesis.

Reminds me of those signs you see on the backs of trucks that say "Not Responsible for Objects Coming Off the Road". They are not necessarily true. They are (occasionally) liable. They just make the claim that they are not to bluff people who get their windshields banged up.

BTW, I really do hope that these poor people do get the help they need.

"Don't be surprised if the police department is forced to apologize. "

If I were arrested and jailed unjustly, I would want a lot more than an apology.
Especially since the case is all about citizen attempting to report police abuse.

At a minimum .. dismissal of the police detective in question, official reprimands for the other officers who co-operated conspiracy to cover the detective's misdeeds, and compensation for the victims.

The Nasuha police department offered up a Plea Bargain, but the victim wisely refused..

"After Gannon turned down that deal, a police prosecutor, attorney Kathleen Brown, dropped all charges against Gannon on Wednesday, but said his case will be sent to the Hillsborough County Attorney’s office for further prosecution. "

“It’s going to be presented to a grand jury,” Brown said.

That would be a very dumb move.. on Ms. Browns part..

Hopefully, the presiding judge would set her straight. That police activities in public (with other witnesses present) are not covered..
I.E. Police officers acting in concert have no right to privacy. Each is sworn to tell the whole truth and testifiy agains't each other if need be.

I would petition the court to allow a special appearance before the grand jury. And ask them to consider charging the detective and all associated police officers with conspiracy to commit (trespass, unlawful entry, unlawful detention, B&E, and theft property more than $500) under color of law(authority). All transgressions become federal felonies.

"Thus, “under ‘color’ of law” means “under ‘pretense’ of law,” and “[a]cts of officers who undertake to perform their official duties are included whether they hew to the line of their authority or overstep it.”

From first link..

"Gannon had set up cameras outside his home, a four-unit apartment building, to record video and audio in response to threats from a former tenant and incidents of vandalism, his wife said. A sticker on the outside of the building warns of the recording system."

"Karlis and other officers went to Gannon’s home repeatedly last month while looking for the Gannon’s 15-year-old son, who was implicated in a late-night mugging downtown. "

Second strike.. note the word "repeatedly".. I.E. The detective was well aware of the security cameras, BEFORE they entered the property. That is called implied consent..

Whose thinking ISN'T limited by what they know?

Everyone has limitations, but one of the beauties of the human mind is metacognition. The phenomenon of having expert knowledge prevent one from reinterpreting contrary data is referred to as "confirmation bias" which I recently read about in a blog post by Bob Sutton. Sutton is a fairly renowned consultant.

In the above post, he refers to a phrase that should be familiar to many geeks, which is "strong opinions, weakly held." This is a very good approach to the study of science. Know what you know with near certainty, but the second you come across contrary evidence be ready to let everything go.

Really, it's just the idea that no one, really, knows anything. All knowledge is contingent and what little we think we know is probably wrong somewhere.

Code doesn't have genitalia. As long as it works who gives a rat's ass whether code was written by a man or a woman or even by Hugo the Incredible Coding Marmoset?

BSG is great but without B5 there would be no new BSG. B5 provide there is life for Sci-Fi other than trek and it can be better.

Actually, I am not saying nothing, but JMS's and Bryce Zabel's idea for new Trek series sounds strangly familiar, down to examples.... (mind you this was done in 2004)

-Em

http://russelldavies.typepad.com/planning/images/s ecret_nuclear_bunker-thumb.jpg

Nuff said :)

Like Richard Tomlinson? He's been hounded by MI6 lackeys despite moving to France, and recently had a bunch of equipment taken by police investigating a somewhat-dodgy allegation.

What's the best way for a covert group to get maximum embarrassing exposure? Oh yes, try to hush it up. When justified [1], it works. When not, it can backfire spectacularly, as MI6 (the UK's sorta-equivalent to the CIA) is learning (or not), yet again through Richard Tomlinson - http://richardtomlinson.typepad.com/

[1] Cos sometimes it really is, this sort of debacle notwithstanding.

Pretty interesting read about this at the dilbertblog.

Scott mentions that he'd be telling the truth about possible attacks and that might get people in fear. But in the long run the people will understand the probability of such attacks.

http://thefraserdomain.typepad.com/energy/2006/07/ altair_batterie.html

Instead of Slashdot "word vomiting" about what some other blog said about what David Jaffe said, why not just read what David Jaffe said? He does have some good things to say -- particularly that he doesn't think that single-player adventure games are dead, a bad medium, a bad idea, or anything like that -- he just doesn't want to work on them anymore.

Think about it -- you finish tweaking Tetris, Pong, Street Fighter, etc, you can still enjoy playing them, but by the time you finish Zelda, God of War, or Final Fantasy, not so much, because you already know every surprise, plot twist, minigame, everything the game throws at you is something you've already seen so many times. I imagine it's a bit like writing a book -- after you're finished writing it, you probably can't read it through once, that's what you need editors for -- after all, how many books do you read through more than once or twice? After you finish writing one, you've read through and written and rewritten most of it so many times that you can't stand it.

This isn't always true, and certainly not for everyone. I write differently, for instance -- when I finish writing a story, I certainly can read it again, because I only write once, straight through, only ever editing a sentence or two back from where I am. I almost never do second drafts.

But I can understand why he would be getting sick of doing that, and why it would lead him to say those things. After all, at least part of it is what we've all been thinking. On some level, most of the games we're playing are really still subject to the same complaints people have about Street Fighter -- sure, it has plot, but the plot and gameplay are completely separate. If you're lucky, you get a cinematic after defeating a particular opponent. But this is true of so many games it's not funny -- Halo (and Halo 2), GTA, Doom 3, Quake 4, Final Fantasy, Beyond Good & Evil... Very few games tell any story with the game world and the gameplay. Most just cut to cinematics -- or worse, text or voice (Doom 3's PDAs).

Every now and then, we get games that tell a significant part of the story in the gameplay and environment -- and even then, much of it is the environment. Examples would be Zelda, Half-Life (and Half-Life 2), Quake 4. Yeah, Quake 4 is both, because it does cut to cinematic in a lot of places I wish it wouldn't, but the cinematics, voiceovers (radio), text, and gameplay are woven together so well that it mostly feels like a story is being told, but you don't have to pull too far out of the gameplay and game world to tell it. And I don't mean the gimmicks like still being barely in control on the Strogg operating table. I guess being a long game helps...

And of course, there are also the games with little or no story, or where the stories you live are so much more interesting. Natural Selection, Counter-Strike, UT2004, and the few MMOs that have completely unobtrusive stories, but play well enough to justify it. Nexus TK is an example -- the only reason it's got such a great story is that it's built up over seven or eight years. MMOs are also interesting in that if they do actually advance the story (most seem too afraid to), it's like real life in that it impacts everyone differently; everyone has their own story to tell.

But then, MMOs often get accused of having little or no story, or of simply providing the forum and letting their players do everything themselves. You don't play World of Warcraft because it's a good game, you play it because that's where your friends are, that's where your guild is...

Kind of like MySpace, actually...

All blogs should be like the Dilbert Blog, aka the personal blog of Scott Adams. It has everything that a blog needs, as outlined by a poster above. But I mostly like it because its damn funny, and offers a somewhat detached and alternative outlook on life.

Well, they changed the number of burns to CD. That is removing a function you could do (the 8th copy, or whatever).

you can now burn a playlist containing purchased music up to seven times (down from ten). And the old workaround of simply changing the playlist slightly does not work.

Apple reserves the right to change the terms and conditions of sale at the iTunes Music Store at any time. Customers are encouraged to review the Sales Policies on a periodic basis for modifications.

http://www.davidjaffe.typepad.com/

Why someone would put up a news post with a link to a news post about a blog post is beyond me - unless they just wanted to drive traffic to 1up ;^)

Will you still be allowed to travel with just the written portion of the passport. Hell, just go around burning up other peoples passports and the riots will soon begin in the security line....

The 2003 article Is the Portal Dead? discusses Gartner's announcement that "the portal is dead, long live the portal." And more recently, Portals are Dead reiterates that. But of course, there's plenty more about the death of the portal.

Any of the old-timers here remember the Bone Fone from the 1980s?

A walkman the way it shoulda been - with good quality sound, under a pound! My father had one, and I loved it when I was a wee lad. (Alas, I could never remember to turn it off when done, so I wasn't allowed to use it much)

Because consoles are poor gaming platforms compared to the PC. They're cheap because they just don't have the same abilities. Static hardware means that at release IF the console is designed by current PC standards your first few games might be on par graphically. Next year, you're releasing crappy graphics if you don't clean it up for the PC. Even oblivion when compared side by side was shown to be better on the PC already and it was just released.

Processors aren't good in the consoles. I've linked to this numerous times and I'll continue to link to it: http://crystaltips.typepad.com/wonderland/2005/03/ burn_the_house_.html read what Chris Hecker says about the processors in the xbox360 and the P3. In order processing is not good for AI. Games released for both PC and Console that aren't cleaned up will have dumbed down AI.

Control schemes suck on the console. They're planning on releasing Battle for Middle Earth 2 and EA thinks they've figured out a magic control scheme for consoles to use in an RTS game. First words "complicated". The developers didn't even clean oblivion up enough to allow PC users to map keys. Interfaces are dumbed down to work for console users.

Then money, the publisher does not want to pay a developer to spend 2 or 3 months extra cleaning up a PC game so that it actaully plays and looks good on the system.

Consoles are the lowest common denominator and when you build for the lowest common denominator you very rarely are building quality.

burn the songs to CD as many times as [YOU] wish

Citation here

Due to his untimely demise, an important point is that he was never given the opportunity to exhaust his appeals options (which would have begun after his sentencing in September), and thus, the conviction will be abated. The unfortunate thing is that he died prior to the conclusion of this process, and it's terrible that his estate probably won't suffer monetary consequences--at least from criminal proceedings--because of this, but I'd rather live in a country where that's the case than the alternative, in which there is no appeals process.

Dear Senator/Representitive blah blah,
I'm pro-small business, pro-innovation, and pro-low taxes. Software patents are bad for all those stances.

Large companies which previously were all for broader and broader patents are beginning to realize the error of their earlier ways. As is seen in this case currently before the supreme court.

http://patentlaw.typepad.com/KSR%20MicrosoftCisco_ Amicus.pdf

Lawsuits which are now starting against OpenSource software developers and users will be a terrible drag on innovation and consequently our economy. Half the internet (or more) is power by such software, and that includes government networks. A high cost will be bore by the tax payer if OpenSource software is made illegal by software patents, and the government has to replace thousands of networks running on free software with commercial solutions. Not to mention the transitions costs.

I am not an OpenSource software developer, but by my business relies on software from companies such as RedHat, IBM, and MySQL which do. If they cannot deliver their OpenSource software, my business will not survive.

Software patents are stifling innovation and consequently our economy. Please take action to roll back or completely eliminate software patents.

Further information about software patents can be found here:
http://technocrat.net/d/2006/6/30/5032

This BT-WB deal is about re-branding the "bittorrent" experience into the commercial context. It confuses the open protocol with the commercial company. This is the normal commercial appropriation of sub-cultures/technologies; it happens over and over again but if BT-WB leave the protocols open it's not necessarily a bad thing. For example the commercial appropriation of Linux has not hurt its freely associative non-coercive creative qualities because they have been protected by free software copyright i.e the GPL. Likewise there are many open source and free bittorrent protocol clients which are used in much larger numbers than the commercial Bittorrent Company bittorent client. So it will be difficult to propose a system that substantially limits people's freedoms, in the context of large pool of free (as in freedom) software.

As an open protocol BT is great! BT is freely associative, participants can use it to mediate their own content distribution. So we have groups like the EZLN being their own distributors of content linking to a torrent right off of their indymedia blog. BT and other free non-discriminatory video hosting services (youtube, google video) are substantially less coercive than the systems which currently mediated the distribution of films today. So we should watch them carfully and promote their creative potential. They are a key enablers in the transition into participatory culture.

-----
a Chomsky quote re-interpreted as advocacy for free software:

"If its correct, as I believe it is, that a fundamental element of human nature is the need for creative work or creative inquiry for free-creation without the arbitrary limiting effects of coercive institutions then of course it will follow that a decent society should maximize the possibilities for this fundamental human characteristic to be realized."

Whether the Federal Circuit has erred in holding that a claimed invention cannot be held "obvious", and thus unpatentable under 35 U.S.C. 103(a), in the absence of some proven "'teaching, suggestion, or motivation' that would have led a person of ordinary skill in the art to combine the relevant prior art teachings in the manner claimed."

As I posted above, courts often look to such suggestions when deciding nonobviousness. The question here is whether the statute requires them to find a suggestion to combine. KSR is arguing that the Federal Circuit says you are required, while the Supreme Court (and seven other circuit courts) say you aren't. For what it's worth, the Supreme Court agreed to hear the case.

: I have to completely disagree with the "DVD is an endangered species" noise mentioned for NetFlix. While I'm not a NetFlix subscriber physical media like DVD is certainly nowhere near its endlife. I just don't know what people think is going to replace the physical aspect of DVD media in the near future.

What is really slick was how this guy just milked several geniuses for idea, and he won't have to pay them for it. The whole "meeting" where he's asking top notch people in their field to come up with improvements on state of the art - this was his way of getting all the ideas to patent, and he doesn't have to reward any of it back to the people who came up with the ideas since they probably, (and stupidly) gave it up to him by coming to his "innovation conference"."

From TFA:

The goal wasn't just incremental advances but multibillion-dollar lightning bolts that could change the world and, not incidentally, make all of the participants rich.

Presumably, "all of the participants" include the people who came up with the ideas. I'm sure they were compensated for their time in one way or another and I'm also sure that every one of them knew what the purpose of the conference was. If they agreed to come and give ideas, that is their business.

So, this guy, by patenting ideas, no matter how bogus they may be, will gain a lot of ability to stop anyone and everyone from practicing anything he comes up with. In effect - he'll be rich without every actually producing any working product - just patenting all sorts of new potential ideas that may or may not come to be."

Typically when you file a patent you also have to provide an embodiment of the best way to implement the thing being patented. This is one reason why recently a patent for a "warp drive" was rejected by the USPTO - no workable implementation was provided ( http://patentlaw.typepad.com/patent/2006/02/pto_re quests_mo.html ). It is thus not sufficient to just toss out cool ideas and get patents on them. You have to provide some documentation on how to actually build the thing.

Even if let's say he does allow the person who was in the room who came up with the idea - I guarentee that the patent will be assigned to his corporation since he "reimbursed" that "inventor" for their time with payment - i.e. whatever he paid them to come to his innovation conference."

This is typical. As an engineer, every company I have ever worked for has had me sign an intellectual property agreement as part of the condition of employement - that every idea I come up with belongs to my employer. Though my name is listed on the patents I have, they belong to my employers. I voluntarily agreed to this so that I could get the job. I'm sure all participants invited to the conference were made aware of what the purpose of the conference was, and the participants either volunteered or were or will be compensated in some way.

Steve

I blogged about this yesterday (http://lizawashere.typepad.com/liza_was_here/2006 /06/net_neutrality_.html), but in a nutshell, when a group of incredibly smart people like Tim Berners-Lee, Vint Cerf, Gigi Sohn, Larry Lessig, Danny Wietzner, Susan Crawford, and others all agree...

AND they are joined by groups as diverse as Consumers Union, Gun Owners of America, Feminist Majority Foundation, the Christian Coalition, and MoveOn.org...

AND they're opposed by traditional telcos and cable companies...

Who do you think is right?