A minor point, but the right to a speedy trial refers to the amount of time someone can be held on an indictment before their trial starts. The prosecutor must be ready to start the trial within X number of days (with all sorts of arcane allowances and accounting methods), or the person walks. I'm not sure how it would apply to a corporation, but it is moot once the trial has started and also during appeals, since during an appeal the last ruling stands until the appeal is decided.
BTW, anyone have any educated guesses as to how close "125 pages" is to the 56,000 words that M$ wanted?
No, some (imaginary) people think their boss is an idiot because he can't tell the difference between a laptop and an Etch-A-Sketch. And it turns out there are lots of companies like this. Although it seems most of the idiots are in marketing and legal, now.
Maybe the employee is being elitist, as you suggest...but if part of the employee's job requires them to be intimately familiar with kernel code, maybe the boss should know something about it too, hmmm?
IANAL, but the police need probable cause to stop you or otherwise interfere. I believe a private business has the right to refuse to do business with people as long as it's not on the basis of race, gender, disability, national origin...I may not have the phrasing correct, but the point is, they can refuse to do business with individuals due to that individual's actions. So they can throw out rude and obnoxious customers, they can say "No shoes, no shirt, no service", and they can say that as a condition of doing business with them, they reserve the right to search any bags or clothing that might be used to shoplift. Note that the signs are usually posted where you can see them when you first come in, so that in walking in there you are entering into something akin to a shrink-wrap EULA (without as much fine print).
Note that you also have a right not to shop there. You can submit voluntarily to their request, or choose to go somewhere else. OTOH, you cannot legally decline to cooperate with a police officer's lawful request, so they are held to a higher standard of probable cause.
(Doesn't mean I would do business with a place that is very intrusive when it comes to searches...but if it keeps my costs down, I don't mind them checking my receipt or glancing in my bags because I don't steal, despite what BillDaCat and the NYTimes might think;) )
SECTION 1 This section describes the scope and function of the patent.
The patent is for a business method covering transactions between two parties through an electronic meduim with a third-party intermediary, thereby obviating the need for a physical presence or exchange.
SECTION 2 This section describes the parties involved and their roles.
This method involves a party of the first part (heretofore known as "CUSTOMER"), a party of the second part (heretofore known as "VENDOR"), and a third party that will serve as an intermediary and facilitator (heretofore known as "VISA").
SECTION 3 This section describes the method that is the subject of the patent.
The Buyer, wishing to enter into a transaction for goods or services known to be offered by the Seller, acquired a code from Visa that, although not linked to stocks, bonds, or other fungible or liquid assets, serves as a guarantee (or "account") that a transaction has been agreed upon and will be executed in accordance with the Buyer's agreement with Visa. The Buyer then can present this code to the Vendor, and Vendor can conduct a transaction based on the Buyer's electronic transmission of this account code or number indicating a willingness to enter into a transaction. The goods indicated by the Buyer when submitting the account code or number will be conveyed to the Buyer by the Seller by an agreed upon method of transportation, and the Seller will transmit the agreed upon details of the transaction to Visa. Visa will then bill the Buyer by standard methods.
(Better get this in before the Berman-Boucher bill comes to a vote!)
See the FCC document (in PDF) on Slamming. To sum it up, you are not responsible for any charges for being switched to the slammer or back to your preferred provider. You are only responsible for charges from the slammer if you used their service for more than 30 days, and even then, if they are charging more than the service you were switched from, they cannot collect more than your previous company would for the services you used.
At least you have that option. That's better than I expected, really.
And just out of curiosity, I looked at ReplayTV's privacy policy, and it said the opposite:
At your request, ReplayTV will tailor its service to your individual preferences. With your consent, we can combine your Personal Information with your Operating Information to create a personalized user profile. By allowing us to link together both sets of information, we can provide a service that best matches your personal interests and needs. You can elect to have this done by contacting ReplayTV at (800) 933-5899.
If we do not hear from you, then we will assume that you wish to keep your Operating Information anonymous.(emphasis mine)
Most privacy policies say "Check back here periodically", which is not very helpful. Some of these will still e-mail you (if you've given them an address) when there's a big policy change, but if you're really concerned, you could use MindIt to tell you when the Privacy Policy page has changed.
From what I've seen from looking into filing a patent (IANAL), the person filing is supposed to check for previous patents.
Personally, I hope that:
1) OpenTV sue the $#!+ out of Amazon.
2) Amazon has to pay fines/licensing fees up the wazoo.
3) OpenTV's patent is declared obvious or nullified by the Berman-Boucher bill passing.
BTW, slightly off-topic, but if you read the B-B bill, the $200 fee to challenge the obviousness or prior art of an idea can be waived "if such waiver is in the public interest".
i don't think ultimately comes down to morals. that partner's info is supposed to be hidden
I'm sorry, I must have missed the cloaking device. What makes you think this is "supposed to be hidden"? Or did you mean to say "they were probably hoping no one would find out about it"?
With all due respect, the keys-in-the-car analogy is particularly useless here. Cars have keys because they are only supposed to be driven by the people who paid for them, or those given access by the owner. The fact that the keys were there does not negate the fact that you need keys to start a car.
This is more like someone leaving printed material (better yet, a newspaper!) in a public place (park bench, on a seat on a bus/train), and then expecting no one to ever look at it (not TAKE or MOVE it, but even READ it) because they paid their 50 cents for it, not them.
Or like a company mailing you hardware unsolicited, therefore with no restrictions on it, and then saying you shouldn't use it except in the way they want you to because it's not really yours. Oh wait, that really happened.
If one day I can have my wife tested at 6 weeks and we can find out they child will have cerebral palsy or muscular distrophy, don't you guys think it's ok to "play god" and teminate it, so as not to force a path of full-time care/ early death in the family???
I think we'll have to mature as a society and learn to make these kinds of choices soon. I don't think we would be able to restrict parents from choosing for certain genetic tendencies, at least not for long. But while I'm not certain that all genetic selection is evil and must be stopped, your comment reminded me that based on your approach, Stephen Hawking would never have been born.
What strikes me as.. not so great is they were willing to take a gamble of 9 months to improve their odds of sucess from 50-85%, im not sure the odds of the condition worsening but it definately seemed a little risky..
That's if you can actually find an unrelated donor.
Approximately 80 percent of all patients identify at least one potential match on their preliminary search. Remember, however, that not all of the 80 percent of patients who identify an identical donor at the preliminary search will necessarily go on to the transplant stage. (
And the success rate of 85% with allogenic (unrelated) donors is probably that high because the recipients are given higher doses of immune-suppression drugs, which can have nasty side effects, even while they prevent rejection.
Yeah! First on his list will be to establish.recall and.sucks TLDs! No more racing to register VerizonSucks.com (owned by Verizon) or VerizonReallySucks.com (owned by 2600). Now you can register Verizon.sucks!
What makes you think you have a right to view that content for free?
Uh, gee, the fact that they have a link that doesn't require a password?
You know full well that link is not intended for you, or most likely anyone else reading this board.
Why don't you tell us who it is for? If this is only for certain people, why is it completely accessible to everyone on the Internet, with no statement about who can or can't use it?
I suppose now you're going to rant about how I'm stealing from all these web sites because I run a proxy server and block their ads and cookies? And sometimes I tape shows and skip over the commercials!
Actually, most of the examples given miss crucial points; either you have to use your credit card each time, or the "tab" you run up must be recorded and entered by the server. A couple of closer matches to Amazon's 1-click "patent" would be the transponders in Mobil SpeedPass and E-Z Pass (for paying tolls w/o stopping). You have something that lets you charge a credit card w/o having to present the card each time.
Admittedly, with SpeedPass this is not necessarily easier than using your card to pay at the pump, but it does take the credit card out of the loop. The E-Z Pass is a lot more like it. Drive through, and you're automatically charged.
To file a notice of prior art will cost you $200. You have to pay them to do thier job. To file an appeal not based on prior art will cost you $5,000 ouch.
Yes, but if 10% of all/. users (or 30% of all U.S./. users) contribute $1 for every:cue;cat# they have on loan from DC, that would be an impressive "patent challenge" fund.
This is like the bus driver in the first example being required to take down name, addresses, and phone numbers when you get on the bus, then storing where you got off and when in a notebook.
Actually, it's automated and does not allow for human bias, so it's more like having security cameras on public buses. (Which they do, in many areas. In the Washington, D.C. area, buses even have signs that say that they are "subject to surveillance".)
I don't like the idea of ISPs logging traffic, but I do like the idea of security cameras in buses, convenience stores, etc. I have yet to hear one story of abuse of a security videotape.
Is this consistent? I don't know. I guess I feel that the public knows enough to raise a stink if the Men in the Black Vans start collecting security tapes in one neighborhood; meanwhile, it would be very easy for certain No Such Agencies to demand logs, and even supress the fact that they did so (re: ApolloMedia).
My point is that automated logging or surveilance by itself does not restrict freedom. Only the abuse of the information gathered (or, admittedly, fear of such misuse) can restrict individual liberty.
1. Receiving 'something for nothing' in the mail in order to encourage you to buy a product or perform a service (such as getting a dollar bill attached to a survey they would like you to take). The law says that I am under no obligation to perform the service, and I am welcome to the dollar.
Right, you're under no obligation to pay for or return goods you did not order, even if the sender offers to pay return postage, claims you ordered it, sends you nasty (but vague) letters, etc. So don't worry about that "you don't own this thing we sent you unsolicited" crap. IANAL, but the Federal Trade Commision said:
If you receive supplies or bills for services you didn't order, don't pay, and don't return the unordered merchandise. You may treat unordered merchandise as a gift. By law, it's illegal for a seller to send you bills or dunning notices for unordered merchandise, or ask you to return it -- even if the seller offers to pay for shipping (*).
I gotta get me one of these things, just to take apart and play with...
The Prez couldn't force the court to stop trying it, he can force the Justice Dept. to stop prosecuting it. The Justice Dept. lawyers represent the Federal Gov't when it comes to prosecuting cases or bringing indictments or whatever. IANAL, so I'm not sure they could withdraw now, and there's no reason they should, but the Prez has a say in the actions of the Justice Dept., not the courts. That's why the INDEPENDENT asshole^H^H^H^H prosecutor both operated and was appointed from outside the Justice Dept.
OK, I'm disgusted with the IOC, and I've had it in for NBC's sports coverage since the Atlanta games. (Don't get me started on their baseball coverage!)
That said, the more I think about it the more I like the idea of a broadband "menu" of the games, where you can choose a sport and call up the entire event. There could be alternate angles and audio tracks for different commentary (or none at all). In events that are not head-to head, like gymnastics or diving, you could skip to the next athelete's "chapter" if someone was already eliminated from contention, or you just wanted to see certain atheletes. (Yes, I'm thinking of a DVD's choices, but I'm trying not to turn this into an analogy.)
I would pay to have these kinds of alternatives to NBC's vomitus of commentary with small, partially digested chunks of actual sporting events floating in it. The flexibility would even allow for paying to see just one sport, a 3-sport package, unlimited use...
I know NBC and the IOC would HATE to let us decide what we can and cannot see, but the more discussion there is about alternative media, the more people will realize that there should be other choices.
If your brother is standing next to you, does this violate the license? Or does the RIAA now provide wireless headphones receiving encrypted music? In that case, meybe they should partner with MiracleEar. Better yet, apply the same technology to filter out people who are not licensed to speak to you.
Oooh, I like that one. In fact, I've got my filter list ready and waiting...
Do you think there can be a "top-level domain" allowed with that type of filter? For example, all people who thought that Andrew Dice Clay was funny?
The Smoking Gun obtains public documents like celebrity arrest records, autopsy reports, etc. and puts them up on the Web. They have posted a copy of Andy Kaufman's death certificate here.
Does anyone know if those challenging a patent can use "expert witnesses" (obviously, IANAL) to demonstrate or testify to prior art? Many/.ers would probably qualify. Any thoughts as to the usefulness of explaining these things?
And I agree with previous posts, that the patent should be for a unique process describing how to do something, not for a result. Prior art aside, if someone else can come up with a new and better way of doing the same thing that Amazon does, why should Amazon be rewarded and the consumer punished because they came up with an inferior process earlier than anyone else?
"To the average person, it's just going to be another full moon," said Bob Bonadurer, director of the Minneapolis Planetarium.
That is from an excellent debunking and explanation of this e-mail, which can be found here, at the Urban Legends Reference Pages, an excellent source of well-researched debunking. (I was a couple of days shy of being the first one to debunk the violent kangaroo myth.)
Apparently, the last time the moon was at perigee during the full moon was...last month. It just wasn't the solstice.
Like I said, whoop. Dee. Doo. (I'll have to at least take a look anyway...I actually set my alarm to get up in the middle of the night to watch the Leonid meteor shower, which turned out to be a total bust.)
Slashdot Mirror
A minor point, but the right to a speedy trial refers to the amount of time someone can be held on an indictment before their trial starts. The prosecutor must be ready to start the trial within X number of days (with all sorts of arcane allowances and accounting methods), or the person walks. I'm not sure how it would apply to a corporation, but it is moot once the trial has started and also during appeals, since during an appeal the last ruling stands until the appeal is decided.
BTW, anyone have any educated guesses as to how close "125 pages" is to the 56,000 words that M$ wanted?
No, some (imaginary) people think their boss is an idiot because he can't tell the difference between a laptop and an Etch-A-Sketch. And it turns out there are lots of companies like this. Although it seems most of the idiots are in marketing and legal, now.
Maybe the employee is being elitist, as you suggest...but if part of the employee's job requires them to be intimately familiar with kernel code, maybe the boss should know something about it too, hmmm?
IANAL, but the police need probable cause to stop you or otherwise interfere. I believe a private business has the right to refuse to do business with people as long as it's not on the basis of race, gender, disability, national origin...I may not have the phrasing correct, but the point is, they can refuse to do business with individuals due to that individual's actions. So they can throw out rude and obnoxious customers, they can say "No shoes, no shirt, no service", and they can say that as a condition of doing business with them, they reserve the right to search any bags or clothing that might be used to shoplift. Note that the signs are usually posted where you can see them when you first come in, so that in walking in there you are entering into something akin to a shrink-wrap EULA (without as much fine print).
Note that you also have a right not to shop there. You can submit voluntarily to their request, or choose to go somewhere else. OTOH, you cannot legally decline to cooperate with a police officer's lawful request, so they are held to a higher standard of probable cause.
(Doesn't mean I would do business with a place that is very intrusive when it comes to searches...but if it keeps my costs down, I don't mind them checking my receipt or glancing in my bags because I don't steal, despite what BillDaCat and the NYTimes might think ;) )
SECTION 1
This section describes the scope and function of the patent.
The patent is for a business method covering transactions between two parties through an electronic meduim with a third-party intermediary, thereby obviating the need for a physical presence or exchange.
SECTION 2
This section describes the parties involved and their roles.
This method involves a party of the first part (heretofore known as "CUSTOMER"), a party of the second part (heretofore known as "VENDOR"), and a third party that will serve as an intermediary and facilitator (heretofore known as "VISA").
SECTION 3
This section describes the method that is the subject of the patent.
The Buyer, wishing to enter into a transaction for goods or services known to be offered by the Seller, acquired a code from Visa that, although not linked to stocks, bonds, or other fungible or liquid assets, serves as a guarantee (or "account") that a transaction has been agreed upon and will be executed in accordance with the Buyer's agreement with Visa. The Buyer then can present this code to the Vendor, and Vendor can conduct a transaction based on the Buyer's electronic transmission of this account code or number indicating a willingness to enter into a transaction. The goods indicated by the Buyer when submitting the account code or number will be conveyed to the Buyer by the Seller by an agreed upon method of transportation, and the Seller will transmit the agreed upon details of the transaction to Visa. Visa will then bill the Buyer by standard methods.
(Better get this in before the Berman-Boucher bill comes to a vote!)
See the FCC document (in PDF) on Slamming. To sum it up, you are not responsible for any charges for being switched to the slammer or back to your preferred provider. You are only responsible for charges from the slammer if you used their service for more than 30 days, and even then, if they are charging more than the service you were switched from, they cannot collect more than your previous company would for the services you used.
At least you have that option. That's better than I expected, really.
And just out of curiosity, I looked at ReplayTV's privacy policy, and it said the opposite:
Most privacy policies say "Check back here periodically", which is not very helpful. Some of these will still e-mail you (if you've given them an address) when there's a big policy change, but if you're really concerned, you could use MindIt to tell you when the Privacy Policy page has changed.
From what I've seen from looking into filing a patent (IANAL), the person filing is supposed to check for previous patents.
Personally, I hope that:
1) OpenTV sue the $#!+ out of Amazon.
2) Amazon has to pay fines/licensing fees up the wazoo.
3) OpenTV's patent is declared obvious or nullified by the Berman-Boucher bill passing.
BTW, slightly off-topic, but if you read the B-B bill, the $200 fee to challenge the obviousness or prior art of an idea can be waived "if such waiver is in the public interest".
They will also be charging us more based on how much we enjoyed the music.
Wait, that would actually be good, since we wouldn't have to pay for the 8 or so songs that suck on so many albums.
Never mind. The RIAA wouldn't do that even if they could.
I'm sorry, I must have missed the cloaking device. What makes you think this is "supposed to be hidden"? Or did you mean to say "they were probably hoping no one would find out about it"?
With all due respect, the keys-in-the-car analogy is particularly useless here. Cars have keys because they are only supposed to be driven by the people who paid for them, or those given access by the owner. The fact that the keys were there does not negate the fact that you need keys to start a car.
This is more like someone leaving printed material (better yet, a newspaper!) in a public place (park bench, on a seat on a bus/train), and then expecting no one to ever look at it (not TAKE or MOVE it, but even READ it) because they paid their 50 cents for it, not them.
Or like a company mailing you hardware unsolicited, therefore with no restrictions on it, and then saying you shouldn't use it except in the way they want you to because it's not really yours. Oh wait, that really happened.
I think we'll have to mature as a society and learn to make these kinds of choices soon. I don't think we would be able to restrict parents from choosing for certain genetic tendencies, at least not for long. But while I'm not certain that all genetic selection is evil and must be stopped, your comment reminded me that based on your approach, Stephen Hawking would never have been born.
That's if you can actually find an unrelated donor.
And the success rate of 85% with allogenic (unrelated) donors is probably that high because the recipients are given higher doses of immune-suppression drugs, which can have nasty side effects, even while they prevent rejection.
Yeah! First on his list will be to establish .recall and .sucks TLDs! No more racing to register VerizonSucks.com (owned by Verizon) or VerizonReallySucks.com (owned by 2600). Now you can register Verizon.sucks!
Uh, gee, the fact that they have a link that doesn't require a password?
You know full well that link is not intended for you, or most likely anyone else reading this board.
Why don't you tell us who it is for? If this is only for certain people, why is it completely accessible to everyone on the Internet, with no statement about who can or can't use it?
I suppose now you're going to rant about how I'm stealing from all these web sites because I run a proxy server and block their ads and cookies? And sometimes I tape shows and skip over the commercials!
OK, lock me up. I've seen the error of my ways.
Actually, most of the examples given miss crucial points; either you have to use your credit card each time, or the "tab" you run up must be recorded and entered by the server. A couple of closer matches to Amazon's 1-click "patent" would be the transponders in Mobil SpeedPass and E-Z Pass (for paying tolls w/o stopping). You have something that lets you charge a credit card w/o having to present the card each time.
Admittedly, with SpeedPass this is not necessarily easier than using your card to pay at the pump, but it does take the credit card out of the loop. The E-Z Pass is a lot more like it. Drive through, and you're automatically charged.
Yes, but if 10% of all /. users (or 30% of all U.S. /. users) contribute $1 for every :cue;cat# they have on loan from DC, that would be an impressive "patent challenge" fund.
Actually, it's automated and does not allow for human bias, so it's more like having security cameras on public buses. (Which they do, in many areas. In the Washington, D.C. area, buses even have signs that say that they are "subject to surveillance".)
I don't like the idea of ISPs logging traffic, but I do like the idea of security cameras in buses, convenience stores, etc. I have yet to hear one story of abuse of a security videotape.
Is this consistent? I don't know. I guess I feel that the public knows enough to raise a stink if the Men in the Black Vans start collecting security tapes in one neighborhood; meanwhile, it would be very easy for certain No Such Agencies to demand logs, and even supress the fact that they did so (re: ApolloMedia).
My point is that automated logging or surveilance by itself does not restrict freedom. Only the abuse of the information gathered (or, admittedly, fear of such misuse) can restrict individual liberty.
They can be used as small red flashlights.
There are instructions on how to do just that (batteries and all) here.
Right, you're under no obligation to pay for or return goods you did not order, even if the sender offers to pay return postage, claims you ordered it, sends you nasty (but vague) letters, etc. So don't worry about that "you don't own this thing we sent you unsolicited" crap. IANAL, but the Federal Trade Commision said:
I gotta get me one of these things, just to take apart and play with...
The Prez couldn't force the court to stop trying it, he can force the Justice Dept. to stop prosecuting it. The Justice Dept. lawyers represent the Federal Gov't when it comes to prosecuting cases or bringing indictments or whatever. IANAL, so I'm not sure they could withdraw now, and there's no reason they should, but the Prez has a say in the actions of the Justice Dept., not the courts. That's why the INDEPENDENT asshole^H^H^H^H prosecutor both operated and was appointed from outside the Justice Dept.
OK, I'm disgusted with the IOC, and I've had it in for NBC's sports coverage since the Atlanta games. (Don't get me started on their baseball coverage!)
That said, the more I think about it the more I like the idea of a broadband "menu" of the games, where you can choose a sport and call up the entire event. There could be alternate angles and audio tracks for different commentary (or none at all). In events that are not head-to head, like gymnastics or diving, you could skip to the next athelete's "chapter" if someone was already eliminated from contention, or you just wanted to see certain atheletes. (Yes, I'm thinking of a DVD's choices, but I'm trying not to turn this into an analogy.)
I would pay to have these kinds of alternatives to NBC's vomitus of commentary with small, partially digested chunks of actual sporting events floating in it. The flexibility would even allow for paying to see just one sport, a 3-sport package, unlimited use...
I know NBC and the IOC would HATE to let us decide what we can and cannot see, but the more discussion there is about alternative media, the more people will realize that there should be other choices.
Oooh, I like that one. In fact, I've got my filter list ready and waiting...
Do you think there can be a "top-level domain" allowed with that type of filter? For example, all people who thought that Andrew Dice Clay was funny?
The Smoking Gun obtains public documents like celebrity arrest records, autopsy reports, etc. and puts them up on the Web. They have posted a copy of Andy Kaufman's death certificate here.
Does anyone know if those challenging a patent can use "expert witnesses" (obviously, IANAL) to demonstrate or testify to prior art? Many /.ers would probably qualify. Any thoughts as to the usefulness of explaining these things?
And I agree with previous posts, that the patent should be for a unique process describing how to do something, not for a result. Prior art aside, if someone else can come up with a new and better way of doing the same thing that Amazon does, why should Amazon be rewarded and the consumer punished because they came up with an inferior process earlier than anyone else?
That is from an excellent debunking and explanation of this e-mail, which can be found here, at the Urban Legends Reference Pages, an excellent source of well-researched debunking. (I was a couple of days shy of being the first one to debunk the violent kangaroo myth.)
Apparently, the last time the moon was at perigee during the full moon was...last month. It just wasn't the solstice.
Like I said, whoop. Dee. Doo. (I'll have to at least take a look anyway...I actually set my alarm to get up in the middle of the night to watch the Leonid meteor shower, which turned out to be a total bust.)