2) Working very hard (e.g., via amicus filings in cases to which it is not a party) to get the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit to stop blatantly ignoring Supreme Court decisions (particularly, Bilski) limiting patentability under the existing patent laws, so that patents that are invalid -- under the standards set by the Supreme Court interpreting existing law -- don't keep getting upheld by the Federal Circuit.
I'm sorry. Have you read the Supreme Court's Bilski decision? Unfortunately, I had to. It didn't say anything useful about software patents. It hardly even said anything about method patents, which is what it was supposed to be about. It's amazing how nine very, very smart people couldn't agree on anything more useful than "If it's abstract (whatever that even means), it's not patentable subject matter." The patent office all but ignored Bilski and basically instructed examiners that it was business as usual. The Federal Circuit pays it lip service, because they have to, but we're basically back to "machine or transformation." And we still don't know if a general-purpose computer is enough to meet the "machine" prong. Complete waste of certiorari.
The GPL is just a temporary measure to give Free Software a chance to survive until copyright on software is abolished. Once that happens, people can try to make Free Software proprietary all they want without any legal problems.
Abolishing software copyrights would not preserve the "four freedoms." RMS wants a copyright law that favors his values. Which is fine. He's entitled to his opinion and so are you. But don't pretend that it's not still about control.
You're misunderstanding the basic premise. It doesn't matter what you subjectively believe is "more offensive" than something else. Copyright law gives the creator of a work significant control over how that work is used. In the case of the music industry, they want to use that control to make lots of money. In the case of RMS, he wants to use that control to make software more free. You're entitled to your opinion on which is the worthier cause, but both rely on the right of control granted by copyright law. RMS's rantings about the "four freedoms" that he thinks everybody should have doesn't change the fact. Enforcing the "four freedoms" would necessarily require a strong copyright law. He just wants to replace a copyright regime he doesn't like with one that he does like.
Statutory penalties don't care how many copies you made. They're based on the number of unique infringed works. You may not think it's fair, but that's the law, and that's why Psystar's liability is far lower than Ms. Thomas's.
I believe the key word is "without giving it back to the community." And in this case, it's exactly analogous. The "price" you pay for GPL software is your agreement to encumber your modifications with the GPL if you make any. When users fail to do that, the Free Software community quickly raises an angry mob, and generally wins. Yet without the copyright law they purportedly hate, they could not force changes to be dedicated back to the community. Let's be intellectually honest here.
My 48G still sits within arm's reach. And I'm a lawyer now, so I mostly just use it for simple arithmetic these days. Totally unbeatable. (Though every time I look at it, I curse Carly Fiorina.)
That's generally something like, "I went and researched patents online during the case." The foreman convincing people to vote his way based on his personal understanding of how patents work (which was wrong anyway) is not the kind of thing this is talking about. It's not impossible for this verdict to be tossed on those grounds, but it is very unlikely. That's not to say Samsung won't kick and scream about it. Their lawyers will make the exact case you're making. But they're probably going to lose.
Exactly. Samsung gambled on a horse. They lost. In hindsight, it was a bad decision. But if he was saying, "Based on my experience as a patentee, I know that patents are more than just 'look, they're TEH SAME!' so I convinced the jury to rule against Apple," we'd all be saying Apple had made a bad call.
Read the first couple pages of this and then tell me that this verdict is going to get overturned on appeal for jury misconduct.
It is very hard to toss out a jury verdict. (In Suits at common law, where the value in controversy shall exceed twenty dollars, the right of trial by jury shall be preserved, and no fact tried by a jury, shall be otherwise re-examined in any Court of the United States, than according to the rules of the common law) (Seventh Amendment).
This will get appealed to the Federal Circuit, and if Samsung wins, it will be on grounds other than the fact that the jury foreman had an axe to grind. I'm not aware of any issue in this case so juicy that the Supreme Court is likely to take it up.
Well, yeah, but j^2 is -1 so... yeah, the.sig makes perfect sense and I was thinking -1^2 instead of j^2 and I'll just go back to my motion for summary judgment after handing in my BSEE. (*HEAD WHACK*)
And shame about Compaq, being bought out by HP which should have stuck to making calculators and high-quality instrumentation, which is what Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard built the company on, literally out of their garage, and which is what they were always good at, until Carly Fiorina, the bride of Satan, spun them off into "Agilent," which is a stupid name even though they still make some great instruments..
Being in your home court doesn't automatically mean your favorable verdict is going to get overturned on appeal. Federal courts (theoretically) give juries great deference. There's a reason my Civil Procedure professor taught us "venue is everything."
And curved sides are just rounded corners for the straight parts!
What's really screwed up is that this is not the most nonsensical statement on Slashdot. It's probably not even the most nonsensical thing I've personally seen on Slashdot today.
By default, the Facebook news feed will only show you "important" updates (as decided by Facebook). And I'm not aware of any easy way to say "show me everything." You would have to go to each of your friends individually and tell it to show all of their updates. So Facebook is basically suffering from positive feedback. It will show you updates from people you interact with regularly, but you only interact with the people it shows you. This seemed like just poor engineering when it first came out. Now we see it was actually part of their nefarious plan all along.
Slashdot Mirror
2) Working very hard (e.g., via amicus filings in cases to which it is not a party) to get the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit to stop blatantly ignoring Supreme Court decisions (particularly, Bilski) limiting patentability under the existing patent laws, so that patents that are invalid -- under the standards set by the Supreme Court interpreting existing law -- don't keep getting upheld by the Federal Circuit.
I'm sorry. Have you read the Supreme Court's Bilski decision? Unfortunately, I had to. It didn't say anything useful about software patents. It hardly even said anything about method patents, which is what it was supposed to be about. It's amazing how nine very, very smart people couldn't agree on anything more useful than "If it's abstract (whatever that even means), it's not patentable subject matter." The patent office all but ignored Bilski and basically instructed examiners that it was business as usual. The Federal Circuit pays it lip service, because they have to, but we're basically back to "machine or transformation." And we still don't know if a general-purpose computer is enough to meet the "machine" prong. Complete waste of certiorari.
I remember there was a flight simulator program that had to have the Turbo button off. If you turned it on, your plane went crazy.
Except patents only last 20 years. So no, they wouldn't.
The GPL is just a temporary measure to give Free Software a chance to survive until copyright on software is abolished. Once that happens, people can try to make Free Software proprietary all they want without any legal problems.
Abolishing software copyrights would not preserve the "four freedoms." RMS wants a copyright law that favors his values. Which is fine. He's entitled to his opinion and so are you. But don't pretend that it's not still about control.
You're misunderstanding the basic premise. It doesn't matter what you subjectively believe is "more offensive" than something else. Copyright law gives the creator of a work significant control over how that work is used. In the case of the music industry, they want to use that control to make lots of money. In the case of RMS, he wants to use that control to make software more free. You're entitled to your opinion on which is the worthier cause, but both rely on the right of control granted by copyright law. RMS's rantings about the "four freedoms" that he thinks everybody should have doesn't change the fact. Enforcing the "four freedoms" would necessarily require a strong copyright law. He just wants to replace a copyright regime he doesn't like with one that he does like.
Or go to law school after having a few years experience in the tech field.
It's a very expensive option, though.
Statutory penalties don't care how many copies you made. They're based on the number of unique infringed works. You may not think it's fair, but that's the law, and that's why Psystar's liability is far lower than Ms. Thomas's.
I believe the key word is "without giving it back to the community." And in this case, it's exactly analogous. The "price" you pay for GPL software is your agreement to encumber your modifications with the GPL if you make any. When users fail to do that, the Free Software community quickly raises an angry mob, and generally wins. Yet without the copyright law they purportedly hate, they could not force changes to be dedicated back to the community. Let's be intellectually honest here.
My 48G still sits within arm's reach. And I'm a lawyer now, so I mostly just use it for simple arithmetic these days. Totally unbeatable. (Though every time I look at it, I curse Carly Fiorina.)
Actually, judging by the huge Tundra factory here in San Antonio, I'd say that the best way to buy American is to buy Toyota.
Discovery in a big case typically far exceeds the cost of the actual trial.
That's generally something like, "I went and researched patents online during the case." The foreman convincing people to vote his way based on his personal understanding of how patents work (which was wrong anyway) is not the kind of thing this is talking about. It's not impossible for this verdict to be tossed on those grounds, but it is very unlikely. That's not to say Samsung won't kick and scream about it. Their lawyers will make the exact case you're making. But they're probably going to lose.
Exactly. Samsung gambled on a horse. They lost. In hindsight, it was a bad decision. But if he was saying, "Based on my experience as a patentee, I know that patents are more than just 'look, they're TEH SAME!' so I convinced the jury to rule against Apple," we'd all be saying Apple had made a bad call.
Putting a patent holder on this jury is just suspect from the get go.
And yet Samsung chose to strike somebody else and leave him there. It's not as if this jury happened completely by accident.
Read the first couple pages of this and then tell me that this verdict is going to get overturned on appeal for jury misconduct.
It is very hard to toss out a jury verdict. (In Suits at common law, where the value in controversy shall exceed twenty dollars, the right of trial by jury shall be preserved, and no fact tried by a jury, shall be otherwise re-examined in any Court of the United States, than according to the rules of the common law) (Seventh Amendment).
This will get appealed to the Federal Circuit, and if Samsung wins, it will be on grounds other than the fact that the jury foreman had an axe to grind. I'm not aware of any issue in this case so juicy that the Supreme Court is likely to take it up.
Well, yeah, but j^2 is -1 so ... yeah, the .sig makes perfect sense and I was thinking -1^2 instead of j^2 and I'll just go back to my motion for summary judgment after handing in my BSEE. (*HEAD WHACK*)
Two of my imaginary friends reproduced once ... with negative results.
I'm confused. Wouldn't the result be positive?
Yes... I think the hundreds of thousands of thick clients on the iPad agree with you!
I'm pretty sure that "thick clients" in this context is supposed to refer to the architecture, not the end users.
And shame about Compaq, being bought out by HP which should have stuck to making calculators and high-quality instrumentation, which is what Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard built the company on, literally out of their garage, and which is what they were always good at, until Carly Fiorina, the bride of Satan, spun them off into "Agilent," which is a stupid name even though they still make some great instruments..
FTFY and all that.
Being in your home court doesn't automatically mean your favorable verdict is going to get overturned on appeal. Federal courts (theoretically) give juries great deference. There's a reason my Civil Procedure professor taught us "venue is everything."
And curved sides are just rounded corners for the straight parts!
What's really screwed up is that this is not the most nonsensical statement on Slashdot. It's probably not even the most nonsensical thing I've personally seen on Slashdot today.
No, that was King Franklin I.
I give you: The Dictionary!
but since it's just him and his wife, jumping out to Las Vegas or Sacramento (where his parents live) isn't tough to do.
Man, you have some hard core friends. I'm curious how the plane gets down, though.
By default, the Facebook news feed will only show you "important" updates (as decided by Facebook). And I'm not aware of any easy way to say "show me everything." You would have to go to each of your friends individually and tell it to show all of their updates. So Facebook is basically suffering from positive feedback. It will show you updates from people you interact with regularly, but you only interact with the people it shows you. This seemed like just poor engineering when it first came out. Now we see it was actually part of their nefarious plan all along.