The increased issuance rate is probably the result of PTO's money crunch. Unlike most agencies, which supplement funds appropriate by Congress with collected fees, PTO is expected to be entirely self-supporting. Application fees. Continuation fees. Maintenance fees. Service fees. Everything that PTO does has a dollar sign attached to it (here's the fee schedule). Sometimes they don't even get to keep is all. Congress raided PTO's surplus several times during the boom to prop up the General Treasury. When rainy days came, companies started filing for fewer patents and some - gasp - even let patents lapse rather than paying their maintenance fees. As a result, PTO was forced to cut benefits dramatically. For awhile, overtime was off the table. The agency stopped paying tuition for examiners attending night law programs. Retention bonuses went away. Bad time to be an examiner.
The issuance boost means more continuations, re-applications, etc. along the way to approval = more revenue immediately. More importantly, PTO's got to issue nearly five patents to receive as much by way of maintenance fees in 3-4 years as they WOULD have received from an 11 year old patent that's been allowed to lapse.
Issuance rate won't (and from PTO's perspective, can't) go down unless or until Congress changes PTO's funding model or the economy turns around. Even if the economy gets better, it's going to take a few years for revenues to start increasing as the patents from the current glut start bringing in large maintenance fees and the issuance rate can go down without forcing staff cuts.
It's pretty close to being done here too. The scheduling orders linked on groklaw (last full sched and amendment) have summary judgment oppositions in October, replies in November, and a jury trial starting in February for any surviving claims. If that schedule is kept, the case should be done no later than April. Depending on the outcome, IBM may be entitled to reasonable attorney's fees.
As for the SCO's claims being fraudulent, as asserted in another response to the parent, that's awfully hard to establish. They may ultimately be dismissed or ruled on summarily but so far as I know IBM hasn't asked for Rule 11 sanctions, which you would normally do in the face of patently frivolous or fraudulent claims and before any meaningful discovery.
I personally doubt that the final SCO/IBM decision will be a groundbreaking and haven't taken the time to read all of the filings because it looks, on its face, to be a relatively mundane suit. I'd like to think that SCO is estopped from making its claims in the first place because they operated a Linux business that distributed the purportedly infringed code under GPL, inducing reasonable businesses (e.g., IBM) to use/market the same code under the assumption that there would be no claim of infringement. The case may very well be decided in a way that creates no meaningful precedent and the court could avoid some of the issues of interest to the FOSS community by, for example, deciding based on IBM/SCO contract provisions w/o discussing the GPL or Linux.
Regardless of the outcome, the U.S. and European systems are so different that it's not terribly fair to compare the District of Utah case with the cases in Germany and elsewhere. We could fairly knock the U.S. courts if an action had been brought and already disposed of in the United Kingdom:-)
U.S. and European cases are apples and oranges. The American and British legal systems grew out of English common law and are heavily constrained by precedent, a principle known as stare decisis. Civil law systems - most are derived from or similar to the Napoleonic Code - recognize some precedential "super cases" but generally allow a judicial official to rule without regard to past decisions. This makes is possible to dispose of some matters more quickly, but you'll also see some things litigated over and over again that aren't repeated or end very quickly on a motion to dismiss (pursuant to a prior, precedential ruling) in the U.S. common law system.
Judges sometimes allow things to "drag on" in order to build a solid record for summary judgement (reducing the complexity and likelyhood of appeals) or establish a strong precedent for other courts in their district/circuit faced with similar issues in the future. A single thoughtful ruling in the U.S. can stand for decades and become a cornerstone of law. By way of example, a 1970 district court ruling (Georgia-Pacific Corp. v. U.S. Plywood Corp.) serves as the basis for royalty determinations in pretty much every patent case in America. The SCO/IBM litigation may be long, but could ultimatley produce a seminal opinion that influences contract and copyright cases for years to come, which couldn't happen in Europe.
H.R. 5252 is the House telecom bill, sponsored by Rep. Barton. It's been passed by the House and referred to the Senate Commerce Committee for consideration. The Senate Commerce Committee is marking up the Barton bill... sort of. It's common practice in Congress to take a bill from the other bodt, strike everything after the enacting clause, and insert new text. This is important because the House and Senate can only go to conference to resolve differences on a piece of legislation that both have passed.
The very first thing the committee did at markup was strike everything and insert text derived from S. 2686, a bill introduced by Senators Stevens and Inouye (the chair and ranking on the committee, respectively) earlier this year. The text they're working from isn't identical to S. 2686, because the members and their various staffers negotiated changes after that bill was introduced, but it is much more closely relatved to the Senate bill than the House bill that they're supposedly amending.
So... Sununu has an amendment to the substitute that would strike the flag language. His amendment is NOT H.R. 5252.
Anyone crazy enough to want to listen to the Senators do their thing can hop onto the committe website and read Sen. Stevens' opening statement, or listen to the markup. It's a realplayer video stream captured from internal Senate TV, but is actually audio only (no cameras were in the room). The markup starts near the 23 minute mark. Opening statements from the various members last until an hour and 20 minutes in, at which point the markup starts in earnest.
You do realize that declaration of enemy combatant status has nothing whatsoever to do with the PATRIOT Act, right?
PATRIOT, however one may feel about it, concerns itself with observation and information gathering - pin registers, wiretaps, compulsion to disclose records, and so on.
It doesn't authorize the government to hold enemy combatants. In fact, the PATRIOT Act doesn't contain the word "enemy." It also doesn't contain the word "combatant." Don't believe me? Check for yourself.
I get a good 8 hours on a G3800 12'' iBook with a dimmed screen when I'm just running Eclipse. Running full bore w/ lots of compiles, iTunes, active airport, bright screen, etc. I get 4-4.5 hours.
Never use it for video, but it meets all my needs. Takes a real beating too. I've been dropping it, lugging it around in an unpadded bag, and generally mistreating it for a year without any trouble.
I think the submitter's premise is totally wrong -- people haven't turned to the internet for their reading material, they're outsourced their reading to India in order to free up more time for napping, loafing and general malaise.
Seriously though -- When's the last time a Slashdot poster read an article before posting? I certainly didn't;-)
So far as i know the intent is to find the shortest *known* ruler, not the absolue shortest. I'll go out on a limb and say that the difference is important:) The shortest known may not be the shortest... and it would be pretty easy to confirm if the new ruler is shorter than the existing shortest known... no in this context confirmation wouldn't be hard at all... Although this is unrelated... i fear the day when it is announced that 20% of the RC5-64 keyspace must be rechecked... Urgru
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The increased issuance rate is probably the result of PTO's money crunch. Unlike most agencies, which supplement funds appropriate by Congress with collected fees, PTO is expected to be entirely self-supporting. Application fees. Continuation fees. Maintenance fees. Service fees. Everything that PTO does has a dollar sign attached to it (here's the fee schedule). Sometimes they don't even get to keep is all. Congress raided PTO's surplus several times during the boom to prop up the General Treasury. When rainy days came, companies started filing for fewer patents and some - gasp - even let patents lapse rather than paying their maintenance fees. As a result, PTO was forced to cut benefits dramatically. For awhile, overtime was off the table. The agency stopped paying tuition for examiners attending night law programs. Retention bonuses went away. Bad time to be an examiner.
The issuance boost means more continuations, re-applications, etc. along the way to approval = more revenue immediately. More importantly, PTO's got to issue nearly five patents to receive as much by way of maintenance fees in 3-4 years as they WOULD have received from an 11 year old patent that's been allowed to lapse.
Issuance rate won't (and from PTO's perspective, can't) go down unless or until Congress changes PTO's funding model or the economy turns around. Even if the economy gets better, it's going to take a few years for revenues to start increasing as the patents from the current glut start bringing in large maintenance fees and the issuance rate can go down without forcing staff cuts.
It's pretty close to being done here too. The scheduling orders linked on groklaw (last full sched and amendment) have summary judgment oppositions in October, replies in November, and a jury trial starting in February for any surviving claims. If that schedule is kept, the case should be done no later than April. Depending on the outcome, IBM may be entitled to reasonable attorney's fees.
:-)
As for the SCO's claims being fraudulent, as asserted in another response to the parent, that's awfully hard to establish. They may ultimately be dismissed or ruled on summarily but so far as I know IBM hasn't asked for Rule 11 sanctions, which you would normally do in the face of patently frivolous or fraudulent claims and before any meaningful discovery.
I personally doubt that the final SCO/IBM decision will be a groundbreaking and haven't taken the time to read all of the filings because it looks, on its face, to be a relatively mundane suit. I'd like to think that SCO is estopped from making its claims in the first place because they operated a Linux business that distributed the purportedly infringed code under GPL, inducing reasonable businesses (e.g., IBM) to use/market the same code under the assumption that there would be no claim of infringement. The case may very well be decided in a way that creates no meaningful precedent and the court could avoid some of the issues of interest to the FOSS community by, for example, deciding based on IBM/SCO contract provisions w/o discussing the GPL or Linux.
Regardless of the outcome, the U.S. and European systems are so different that it's not terribly fair to compare the District of Utah case with the cases in Germany and elsewhere. We could fairly knock the U.S. courts if an action had been brought and already disposed of in the United Kingdom
U.S. and European cases are apples and oranges. The American and British legal systems grew out of English common law and are heavily constrained by precedent, a principle known as stare decisis . Civil law systems - most are derived from or similar to the Napoleonic Code - recognize some precedential "super cases" but generally allow a judicial official to rule without regard to past decisions. This makes is possible to dispose of some matters more quickly, but you'll also see some things litigated over and over again that aren't repeated or end very quickly on a motion to dismiss (pursuant to a prior, precedential ruling) in the U.S. common law system.
Judges sometimes allow things to "drag on" in order to build a solid record for summary judgement (reducing the complexity and likelyhood of appeals) or establish a strong precedent for other courts in their district/circuit faced with similar issues in the future. A single thoughtful ruling in the U.S. can stand for decades and become a cornerstone of law. By way of example, a 1970 district court ruling (Georgia-Pacific Corp. v. U.S. Plywood Corp.) serves as the basis for royalty determinations in pretty much every patent case in America. The SCO/IBM litigation may be long, but could ultimatley produce a seminal opinion that influences contract and copyright cases for years to come, which couldn't happen in Europe.
H.R. 5252 is the House telecom bill, sponsored by Rep. Barton. It's been passed by the House and referred to the Senate Commerce Committee for consideration. The Senate Commerce Committee is marking up the Barton bill ... sort of. It's common practice in Congress to take a bill from the other bodt, strike everything after the enacting clause, and insert new text. This is important because the House and Senate can only go to conference to resolve differences on a piece of legislation that both have passed.
... Sununu has an amendment to the substitute that would strike the flag language. His amendment is NOT H.R. 5252.
The very first thing the committee did at markup was strike everything and insert text derived from S. 2686, a bill introduced by Senators Stevens and Inouye (the chair and ranking on the committee, respectively) earlier this year. The text they're working from isn't identical to S. 2686, because the members and their various staffers negotiated changes after that bill was introduced, but it is much more closely relatved to the Senate bill than the House bill that they're supposedly amending.
So
Anyone crazy enough to want to listen to the Senators do their thing can hop onto the committe website and read Sen. Stevens' opening statement, or listen to the markup. It's a realplayer video stream captured from internal Senate TV, but is actually audio only (no cameras were in the room). The markup starts near the 23 minute mark. Opening statements from the various members last until an hour and 20 minutes in, at which point the markup starts in earnest.
You do realize that declaration of enemy combatant status has nothing whatsoever to do with the PATRIOT Act, right?
PATRIOT, however one may feel about it, concerns itself with observation and information gathering - pin registers, wiretaps, compulsion to disclose records, and so on.
It doesn't authorize the government to hold enemy combatants. In fact, the PATRIOT Act doesn't contain the word "enemy." It also doesn't contain the word "combatant." Don't believe me? Check for yourself.
I get a good 8 hours on a G3800 12'' iBook with a dimmed screen when I'm just running Eclipse. Running full bore w/ lots of compiles, iTunes, active airport, bright screen, etc. I get 4-4.5 hours.
Never use it for video, but it meets all my needs. Takes a real beating too. I've been dropping it, lugging it around in an unpadded bag, and generally mistreating it for a year without any trouble.
I think the submitter's premise is totally wrong -- people haven't turned to the internet for their reading material, they're outsourced their reading to India in order to free up more time for napping, loafing and general malaise.
;-)
Seriously though -- When's the last time a Slashdot poster read an article before posting? I certainly didn't
So far as i know the intent is to find the shortest *known* ruler, not the absolue shortest. I'll go out on a limb and say that the difference is important :) The shortest known may not be the shortest... and it would be pretty easy to confirm if the new ruler is shorter than the existing shortest known... no in this context confirmation wouldn't be hard at all... Although this is unrelated... i fear the day when it is announced that 20% of the RC5-64 keyspace must be rechecked... Urgru