No, by refusing to hear the case, the United States Supreme Court is declining to set a nationwide precedent. Which, as the GP poster pointed out, means that this precedent applies ONLY in the 2nd Circuit. If the Supreme Court had agreed to hear this case, they would have set some kind of precedent (for example, saying the 2nd Circuit is correct). As it is, the 2nd Circuit is correct only within the 2nd Circuit. If you're in Louisiana, don't get too excited until the 5th Circuit rules the same way.
>> [In the 2nd Circuit] if someone owns a physical copy of software, then they are allowed to modify the code as part of their regular use, no matter what other agreements are in place.
This was a Second Circuit decision, which means this is only good law in the Second Circuit. If the Supreme Court had heard the case and affirmed the Second Circuit's decision, then that would have been the Law of the Land. If you're in any other circuit, you rely on this decision at your own peril
My brother is a Marine, and quite frankly, I'm offended that this loser would use the imagery of one of their proudest moments. He's blatantly trying to trade on the strong patriotitic feelings that image stirs, and the attempted imagery would be laughable if it weren't so perverse. At Iwo Jima, the probabilities were stacked against the Marines (often the case with Marines) but they took the island by the strength of their tenacity. There's a reason their enemies gave them the nickname "Devil Dogs." If this moron is trying to equate himself to them (and despite the location, I think that's exactly what he's doing), saying he'll tenaciously fight until he secures what he believes to be his rights, it's one of the sickest things I've seen in my life. If he truly wanted to suggest his location, he could have used several buildings more instantly identifiable with Washington, D.C. without defecating on the memory of Mt. Suribachi.
Second, yes this moron is a lawyer, but he's a patent lawyer, which means he has a technical degree. He got it from MIT (and yes, I still think he's a moron). I'm in law school, and I am quite comfortable in vi. I use vi to write my case briefs in LaTeX. If he doesn't know how to use vi himself, he ought to be smart enough to hire someone who does. There's no reason to have a bad webpage.
they publish applications to stop people from applying for things over and over again.
Minor nit to pick, they publish applications to comply with the Patent Cooperation Treaty. We used to be one of the few jurisdictions that didn't publish patents. Then we signed the treaty and agreed that any patents that were to get international patent protection would not be published. If you don't want international protection, you can still keep your patent secret until the day it issues. They really don't care that much if you apply for a patent on something that somebody else previously applied for. Just more fees for them.
As for Amazon, I agree that if software patents weren't a bad idea all around, that would be a good example of what should be patentable. The fact that it appears obvious in retrospect does not mean it is section 103 obvious, and proof of section 102 prior art needs to be more than just, "I'm pretty sure I saw that before." But software patents are a bad idea in the first instance. At best, they maybe should have been able to get a design patent on their one-click site.
1. A method of making oneself irresistably attractive to the opposit sex comprising
a. Inventing technologies with multiple beneficial uses to society.
b. Proliferating said technologies.
c. Utilizing said technologies in a single manner that potentially undercuts existing profit models for monied business lobbies.
d. Inducing said lobbies to petition government to make such technologies illegal.
e. Cotinuing to investigate, develop, maintain, utilize and otherwise possess said technologies.
f. Publishing to members of the opposite sex said possession of said technologies.
g. [obligatory] ???
h. [obligatory] Profit!
Remember! If technology is outlawed, only outlaws will have technology.
And that would make all of the geeks rogue outlaw bad-boy types, which would make them suddenly very appealing to women, so maybe this isn't such a bad idea after all.
I think it's appropriate. After all, there's a reason that he has a quarter of a billion dollars to donate to Malaria research. On the one hand, he's contributed a lot of money to worthwhile causes. Can't complain about that. On the other hand, he obtained that money by using unethical and often illegal business tactics aimed at undermining innovations and absolutely controlling markets. I can and do have a problem with that. The icon in this case just means that Bill Gates is no more a one-dimensional seraph than he is a one-dimensional arch demon. I think the image of a Borg dispersing much-needed aid to the ailing is absolutely appropriate.
black, female before a 1964 audience... a receptionist, sure
And probably more importantly, she was the communications bridge officer. Maybe she was a glorified receptionist, but she was Lieutenant Uhura. Plus she kissed the white Captain. That was all quite radical for the time.
Man, it happens every time. There always has to be some killjoy who comes along spouting "reason" and "thiking" and raining all over the parade. The proper response here is to jump to some result-oriented conclusions and indulge in some good old-fashioned reactionary government bashing. Next you're going to start blaspheming and say there might even be a legitimate security-related reason for keeping those patents secret. I mean, what are you, some paid Bush administration shill? Next time, please try to post a little before you think.
Re:How did they cause these injuries?
on
Slacker or Sick
·
· Score: 3, Funny
I don't understand what your point has to do with the issue at hand.
You implied about three posts up that the Constitution guranatees the Gitmo detainees' due process rights. I disagree with you. Like I said, that doesn't mean they don't have rights, just that whatever rights they have aren't guaranteed by the Constitution. If you know of a Supreme Court decision that says otherwise, point it out to me and I'll concede the whole discussion.
When people labeled as "terrorists" are denied due process, every person's rights are lessened.
The fundamental difference is that they are not citizens or "part of the national community." They are POWs. I could see that argument in the Padilla case -- his case certainly implicates the Constitution. But how we treat these guys will not affect how the police can treat you if you get arrested. Cases like Miranda, Gideon and Massiah affect that.
Now, that's not to say how we're treating these guys is right. I honestly don't know. But as far as I'm aware, everybody being held in Gitmo was captured in the course of hostilities. The one I'm aware of that was an American citizen was afforded his day in court and duly convicted.
Of course, I must hate freedom because I disagree with the administration, so take this with a grain of salt
Fortunately, the Constitution does protect your right to openly disagree with the administration, because that means it protects mine too. That's exactly what I'm talking about. We should probably have more debate on this issue as a matter of policy. It seems to get ignored a lot. What do we collectively believe is the right thing to do? If you don't like the decision we come to, keep speaking up. The Constitution absolutely protects your right to argue on behalf of the Gitmo guys' rights.
The Constitution does not grant rights. The Constitution prevents the United States Government from infringing on rights.
The Constitution provides a framework for Government. Part of the concession made to assure its ratification was an agreement to add several amendments that guaranteed the Federal government couldn't infringe some rights considered to be fundamental. The exclusion (or non-inclusion, if you prefer) of those rights from the Constitution does not mean that those rights don't exist, but it does mean that they are not guaranteed by the Constitution. Everything else was left to successive generations -- they could define policies according to what they considered important (for example, how do we treat enemy POWs), but they could never enroach on those things guaranteed by the Constitution unless they amended it (for example, due process for prisoners who are citizens). To say that the Gitmo detainees' rights are not guaranteed by the Constitution is not to say that they have no rights, or that the subject of their rights is not a worthwhile discussion. But it is to say that it is not a discussion of Constitutional magnitude.
I think one of the reasons we have so many charges of "judicial activism" is that everybody wants to frame his pet issue as a Constitutional question, so the Supreme Court has quite literally added a lot of language to the Constitution that doesn't exist in its four corners. If we were willing to debate issues on their own merits and then accept the policies that stem from those debates, we could have preserved the Constitution in a much purer form and allowed the elected representatives of the people and states to make policy decisions that reflect the peoples' values within the actual Constitutional bounds. Which is what the Framers intended.
My opinion was that the Administration does not believe they are bound by the Geneva convention because these guys aren't sponsored by any State. I didn't opine on the propriety of that position. Technicality or not, that seems to be the position.
I'm not going to take sides in the debate over the Gitmo detainees, but it is far from settled what protections and privileges they enjoy. You may want to look at United States v. Verdugo-Urquidez at 494 U.S. 259. If you don't want to read the whole case, there's a very brief summary here. In general, the protections of the Constitution apply to citizens or aliens within the territorial jurisdiction of the United States who are "part of the national community." These guys are battlefield detainees being held as prisoners of war. They are not in the territory of the United States voluntarily (as was the case in Verdugo). I'm not sure our Constitutional jurisprudence guarantees them much of anything (I'm not saying that's right or wrong, just that it is). Also, these combatants are not sponsored by any state, so (in the Administration's analysis) they're not even subject to the Geneva convention. I'm not a constitutional scholar (so anyone who is can feel free to correct me), but I'm not aware of any precedent that grants enemy combatant POWs any of the rights and privileges of citizens.
I think the help file format is compiled RTF. Or at least it used to be. I remember having to write a help file and edit the RTF to insert the right tags, but that was ~2000-ish.
Every patent application is rejected the first time. It's pretty much standard procedure at the PTO. If your first office action on the merits isn't a rejection, you did something wrong and you're going to end up with a useless patent.
right now is that there are about 4 or 5 Justices who like to obey their consciences regardless of what the Constitution says.
Just to help out those who aren't terribly informed on court politics, those five justices are as follows:
If you are a Republican: Breyer, Ginsburg, Souter, Stevens and Kennedy.
If you are a Democrat: Roberts (formerly Rhenquist), Thomas, Scalia, sometimes O'Connor and Kennedy. Both sides hate Kennedy. Since Miers is a Bush appointee she is by definition an activist to Democrats and will not get the benefit of O'Connor's "sometimes."
If you are conservative, your non-activist Hero is Scalia, who believes that constitutions and statutes should be interpreted according to the words written in light of their meaning at the time they were written.
If you are a liberal, your non-activist Hero is Ginsburg because that tight bun is just so dang SEXY!!!
I understand that in the union, the Federal government can overrule a state's authority.
Only in cases that deal wih the Constitution, laws or treaties of the United States. As of yet, there is no federal law that says that the all documents within the United States must be in Word format. Even if Congress tried to pass one (which would be silly), the current Supreme Court would probably strike it down for lack of Subject Matter Jurisdiction (the Rhenquist Court was pretty good about telling Congress to stop using the Commerce Clause to wipe its collective butt -- I imagine Roberts will be similar). Yes, even today, the Federal government has limited jurisdiction in the United States.
By the way, what will happen when the Federal government sends documents to Massachusetts in word format? Would the state send them back?
If it wants to. The states have a fair degree of autonomy, and most of them love telling the Federal Government where they can stick it when they get the chance.
More often, it comes back to bite you a few years down the line. That's why document "retention" policies (which read, in brief, SHRED IT AS FAST AS IS LEGALLY POSSIBLE, UNLESS WE ALREADY KNOW IT'S INCRIMINATIONG, IN WHICH CASE, SHRED IT NOW AND HOPE WE'RE NEVER ASKED FOR IT IN DISCOVERY) are so important to big businesses.
I wouldn't quibble too much about a few meters of accuracy on a 300kT warhead. If you can hit a football field, it doesn't matter much which endzone you're in (of course, the other half of the vehicles fall outside the CEP, but that's by definition). The real idea was not to have the best technology everywhere. It was redundancy. Notice that with the PK deactivated, our sole land-based "strategic deterrent" is the even older Minuteman III. The SERV program is now working on retrofitting the W-87s from the deactivated PKs onto single MMIII delivery vehicles, so what we're really doing is converting 50 PKs into 500 MM-IIIs with the same warhead. And there are ongoing upgrade programs for the MM-III and plenty of speculation on the MM-IV (or some other successor). Unfortunately, I think the day that we no longer require nuclear weapons will be the day that somebody invents something even worse.
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No, by refusing to hear the case, the United States Supreme Court is declining to set a nationwide precedent. Which, as the GP poster pointed out, means that this precedent applies ONLY in the 2nd Circuit. If the Supreme Court had agreed to hear this case, they would have set some kind of precedent (for example, saying the 2nd Circuit is correct). As it is, the 2nd Circuit is correct only within the 2nd Circuit. If you're in Louisiana, don't get too excited until the 5th Circuit rules the same way.
This wasn't a Supreme Court decision. All the Supreme Court did was decide NOT to decide this case.
This was a Second Circuit decision, which means this is only good law in the Second Circuit. If the Supreme Court had heard the case and affirmed the Second Circuit's decision, then that would have been the Law of the Land. If you're in any other circuit, you rely on this decision at your own peril
Second, yes this moron is a lawyer, but he's a patent lawyer, which means he has a technical degree. He got it from MIT (and yes, I still think he's a moron). I'm in law school, and I am quite comfortable in vi. I use vi to write my case briefs in LaTeX. If he doesn't know how to use vi himself, he ought to be smart enough to hire someone who does. There's no reason to have a bad webpage.
As for Amazon, I agree that if software patents weren't a bad idea all around, that would be a good example of what should be patentable. The fact that it appears obvious in retrospect does not mean it is section 103 obvious, and proof of section 102 prior art needs to be more than just, "I'm pretty sure I saw that before." But software patents are a bad idea in the first instance. At best, they maybe should have been able to get a design patent on their one-click site.
And that would make all of the geeks rogue outlaw bad-boy types, which would make them suddenly very appealing to women, so maybe this isn't such a bad idea after all.
I think it's appropriate. After all, there's a reason that he has a quarter of a billion dollars to donate to Malaria research. On the one hand, he's contributed a lot of money to worthwhile causes. Can't complain about that. On the other hand, he obtained that money by using unethical and often illegal business tactics aimed at undermining innovations and absolutely controlling markets. I can and do have a problem with that. The icon in this case just means that Bill Gates is no more a one-dimensional seraph than he is a one-dimensional arch demon. I think the image of a Borg dispersing much-needed aid to the ailing is absolutely appropriate.
Man, it happens every time. There always has to be some killjoy who comes along spouting "reason" and "thiking" and raining all over the parade. The proper response here is to jump to some result-oriented conclusions and indulge in some good old-fashioned reactionary government bashing. Next you're going to start blaspheming and say there might even be a legitimate security-related reason for keeping those patents secret. I mean, what are you, some paid Bush administration shill? Next time, please try to post a little before you think.
I thought that was sharks' work.
Now, that's not to say how we're treating these guys is right. I honestly don't know. But as far as I'm aware, everybody being held in Gitmo was captured in the course of hostilities. The one I'm aware of that was an American citizen was afforded his day in court and duly convicted.
Fortunately, the Constitution does protect your right to openly disagree with the administration, because that means it protects mine too. That's exactly what I'm talking about. We should probably have more debate on this issue as a matter of policy. It seems to get ignored a lot. What do we collectively believe is the right thing to do? If you don't like the decision we come to, keep speaking up. The Constitution absolutely protects your right to argue on behalf of the Gitmo guys' rights.I think one of the reasons we have so many charges of "judicial activism" is that everybody wants to frame his pet issue as a Constitutional question, so the Supreme Court has quite literally added a lot of language to the Constitution that doesn't exist in its four corners. If we were willing to debate issues on their own merits and then accept the policies that stem from those debates, we could have preserved the Constitution in a much purer form and allowed the elected representatives of the people and states to make policy decisions that reflect the peoples' values within the actual Constitutional bounds. Which is what the Framers intended.
My opinion was that the Administration does not believe they are bound by the Geneva convention because these guys aren't sponsored by any State. I didn't opine on the propriety of that position. Technicality or not, that seems to be the position.
I'm not going to take sides in the debate over the Gitmo detainees, but it is far from settled what protections and privileges they enjoy. You may want to look at United States v. Verdugo-Urquidez at 494 U.S. 259. If you don't want to read the whole case, there's a very brief summary here. In general, the protections of the Constitution apply to citizens or aliens within the territorial jurisdiction of the United States who are "part of the national community." These guys are battlefield detainees being held as prisoners of war. They are not in the territory of the United States voluntarily (as was the case in Verdugo). I'm not sure our Constitutional jurisprudence guarantees them much of anything (I'm not saying that's right or wrong, just that it is). Also, these combatants are not sponsored by any state, so (in the Administration's analysis) they're not even subject to the Geneva convention. I'm not a constitutional scholar (so anyone who is can feel free to correct me), but I'm not aware of any precedent that grants enemy combatant POWs any of the rights and privileges of citizens.
I think the help file format is compiled RTF. Or at least it used to be. I remember having to write a help file and edit the RTF to insert the right tags, but that was ~2000-ish.
Every patent application is rejected the first time. It's pretty much standard procedure at the PTO. If your first office action on the merits isn't a rejection, you did something wrong and you're going to end up with a useless patent.
If you are a Republican: Breyer, Ginsburg, Souter, Stevens and Kennedy.
If you are a Democrat: Roberts (formerly Rhenquist), Thomas, Scalia, sometimes O'Connor and Kennedy. Both sides hate Kennedy. Since Miers is a Bush appointee she is by definition an activist to Democrats and will not get the benefit of O'Connor's "sometimes."
If you are conservative, your non-activist Hero is Scalia, who believes that constitutions and statutes should be interpreted according to the words written in light of their meaning at the time they were written.
If you are a liberal, your non-activist Hero is Ginsburg because that tight bun is just so dang SEXY!!!
More often, it comes back to bite you a few years down the line. That's why document "retention" policies (which read, in brief, SHRED IT AS FAST AS IS LEGALLY POSSIBLE, UNLESS WE ALREADY KNOW IT'S INCRIMINATIONG, IN WHICH CASE, SHRED IT NOW AND HOPE WE'RE NEVER ASKED FOR IT IN DISCOVERY) are so important to big businesses.
Flamebait??? I'm confused.
So I'm guessing you're posting this from your handy BeOS box
I wouldn't quibble too much about a few meters of accuracy on a 300kT warhead. If you can hit a football field, it doesn't matter much which endzone you're in (of course, the other half of the vehicles fall outside the CEP, but that's by definition). The real idea was not to have the best technology everywhere. It was redundancy. Notice that with the PK deactivated, our sole land-based "strategic deterrent" is the even older Minuteman III. The SERV program is now working on retrofitting the W-87s from the deactivated PKs onto single MMIII delivery vehicles, so what we're really doing is converting 50 PKs into 500 MM-IIIs with the same warhead. And there are ongoing upgrade programs for the MM-III and plenty of speculation on the MM-IV (or some other successor). Unfortunately, I think the day that we no longer require nuclear weapons will be the day that somebody invents something even worse.
True to what type? The more extensive real story is in his autobiography, which I've read (have you?). So it was Sweden, not the Netherlands.