This says that if something is obvious, the patent can be rejected even if there is no real prior art or previous "suggestion" or anything. Does a judge have the right to change the USPTOs rules on it's behalf?
Obvious is apparentlyu extremely relative. The "non-obviousness" rule has not been protecting us for some time now. For one thing the USPTO does not currently employ people skilled in the areas in which it is granting patents at all, and has not for decades now at least. For another, there are plenty of examples where not only someone who is skilled, but any ordinary schmuck, hell a complete moron, would see the change was obvious, yet the USPTO granted and upheld the patent and then the courts were willing to defend it.
It's funny that the blurb mentions colour because very recently a patent was granted on exactly that basis. A pharmaceutical company whose patent ran out was able to get a new patent on the same pill in a different colour and prevent generic versions from becoming available therefore. Even Bush thought that was obvious and stupid. Unfortunately his quest to eradicate such nonsense was about as effectual as his quest to eradicate soft money (it was really Mccain's quest anyhow, but it was subverted).
If the USPTO was better at preventing obviousness everything would be fine. But people seem to get away with patenting things that are already being done and punishing the original inventors or their benefactors, or else patenting obvious incremental changes to prevent upgrades to technology.
"The official language of the United States is English"
Wikipedia disagrees with you.
Even that Wikipedia link says that English is the de facto official language of the United States, mianly for the reasons below. It's the language listed in the CIA World factbook as well. Maybe I'm an insensitive ignorant American and don't know how other countries define their official language. But the same rules that define English as the official language here are those which define English and Hindi as the official languages of India, and would seem to work the same for other countries as well.
"All of our laws and signs are written in English and it remains the primary medium of instruction in our schools. Yet politicians want to get people riled up over the issue and try to pass laws declaring this and make speeches as though we might have to speak another language than English."
Well, frankly, I have a lot of sympathy with this. Why the hell shouldn't English be passed as the official language?
Because it's a smokescreen. Maybe things work differently in the UK's Parliament, but over here the names of bills and stated reasons for passing them bear little resemblance to the contents and effects (see USAPATRIOT ACT for instance, or the Clear Skies Initiative, or No Child Left Behind). There is no need to pass a law making English the official language because it already is and it would have no effect. However laws have been proposed which are claimed to do only this, which upon investigation actually have the effect of legislating racial discrimination, criminalizing translations, or abolishing the English as a Second Language programs I brought up before. That last is the most popular.
By the way what is the problem with there being translations? I mean sure it's funny when I buy something and the manual has every european language and a good handful of the asian ones in there, so that a one-page manual is like 500 pages, and I end up trying to puzzle out the French or something just to get going rather than trying to find the English bit. But still. I mean does it really hurt you that other people might get a chance to understand something because it's printed in their language? It's printed in yours, too you know.
Here you can often get things printed in Spanish or another language; that's true. Major forms and such, especially for benefits or immigration applications, are available in other languages, and so are menus. They're probably just as good translations as those stereo manuals (for instance, because I read slashdot, I happened to notice that some publications confuse "libre" and "gratis" a lot:D ) but at least it's there. And if a police officer arrests you here they have to read you your rights in your language. But that's so you understand. You do want them to understand what their society is asking of them don't you? Like the laws and such?
And people *can* conduct business in other languages here if they want. They can have signs in another language (like little athens or chinatown or little russia or whatever ethnic haunt you like) and they can have menus in other languages. But that's ok. Their culture is contributing to ours. Trust me. They understand the need to learn english, and will gladly speak it in order to do business with you. That;s what the whole world has been going through for over 400 years. That's the funny bit. Even in their own countries, people all over the world know they need to learn to speak English because historically English speakers don't like to learn other languages and for the last 400 years the money and power has been with them.
I think that it scares some people to see people who are different from them who speak another language they don't understand. And yes probably some times you would not be paranoid to think people are talking behind your back in their native tongue. But who cares? Let them hav
Mere existance of the P2P software is not proof of guilt. If the software is there, but no evidence of infringing files can be found, then the plaintif has a problem of explaining where the infringing information went.
They were able to determine the handle the person used, though. And I think it is safe to say that the RIAA had other evidence that someone with that handle from the defendant's ip address (and ultimately physical address) was uploading the files in question.
It's for some disease which we know you don't have but someone arbitrarily decided to put in place because it used to be bad.
Yes, asshole, it's called chlamydia, and if they don't put that goop in the baby's eyes it could go blind because of it. It's certainly not eradicated and the doctor certainly doesn't necessarily know for sure that there is no infection present.
As for the other injections the only reason you can afford to be so flippant about them is the fact we all have them and those diseases are not causing regular deadly epidemics -- specifically because we do have them. I think a little poke in the arm is a small price to pay to no longer have to worry about things like diptheria running rampant. Yes, they are legally mandated. Do you know why? Because people like you wouldn't do it otherwise, and the rest of us don't want to deal with piles of dead bodies because of your ignorance/laziness/stupidity/conspiracy theory.
However, claiming it was stolen by reporting it is stupid. Most deductibles for home theft won't even cover it. It's mostly just a waste of time to report something like that. It's not like anyone does anything. I did get a stolen bicycle back once. I was floored. But I registered the number, so it was traceable. Most of the time, I doubt there would be anything traceable from your computer, unless you got it from Dell (or similar).
No, *not* reporting it as stolen would be stupid. Law enforcement and the courts seem to take your reporting an item stolen as evidence that suggests that it may truly have been stolen. If anything it provides documentation of the time that it was stolen (among other things, since you have to give a statement in order to make a report). It also puts you on the hook for a pretty serious crime (filing a false police report) if you are lying, which increases the probability that you are not lying about the theft.
That's not to say that people don't lie or that the police always believe you. And if they nail you for it you've increased your crimes. But if you have already decided your plan is to claim the thing was stolen, you'd better report it because not doing so makes you seem like a liar.
As for the utility of making such reports when things really are stolen, it seems that you are right unless insurance is involved. The police don't seem to have time to track down criminals that don't run into them by accident, and they certainly don't sweat over recovering stolen property. As a result they rarely do, and even then there are plenty of reports where instead of returning the property the police just kept and used it themselves. Still, the possibility of the item being returned if you do not report it is 0% versus the 0.000001% you get if you report it, so....
Actually, we're having a rather heated immigration debate in the UK too, at the moment. Actually, there's a stronger argument against it in the UK because this island is incredibly overpopulated already, whereas the US isn't. However, my main problem is the language barrier. I'm of the strong belief that it's a good thing for everyone in a country to speak one language; ideally, i'd have everyone in the world speaking one language. Immigrants coming in and speaking Spanish in the US sounds like a bad idea. The language barrier is, IMHO, the biggest barrier to human interaction and telling most Americans to learn Spanish is a really stupid way to solve the problem rather than vice versa.
I've spent the better part of my life in places with a heavy influx of hispanic immigrants, legal and otherwise. And I have never ever found a hispanic person who did not agree, as every other immigrant to the US agrees, that learning English and getting a good education is the key to success in the US. The immigrants themselves may not speak English and might have difficulty learning it, but they make damn sure their kids learn it because they don't want them to have to be labourers like they are.
No one is making Americans learn Spanish. There's no way they could; it seems that even with High Schools often requireing one or two foreign languages practically no one manages to learn and hold onto anything other than English. The official language of the United States is English and always will be. All of our laws and signs are written in English and it remains the primary medium of instruction in our schools. Yet politicians want to get people riled up over the issue and try to pass laws declaring this and make speeches as though we might have to speak another language than English. It's the same as the French politicians who try to scare their constituents into thinking that they might be made to speak Arabic as a new primary language just because there are so many (French-speaking, mind!) immigrants from places like Algeria.
And like another favorite topic of these same politicians, prayer in schools,* politicians are using this canard to try to outlaw speaking any other language. You see currently we have programs in public schools ostensibly designed to teach children English so that they can understand the rest of what is being taught. It's somewhat less than optimal and effective because they are taught everything else in English while attending classes on how to understand English, but it is what we have. There are people who want to do away with these programs, supposedly on the basis that only English should ever be spoken and tax dollars spent on teaching the subject are wasted, but the whole idea makes no logical sense unless your goal is to close what little door is open for the children of migrant workers to learn our language and become skilled workers.
It is annoying to me that people whose entire basis for law is supposed to be religion and morality are such damned liars and clearly hate their fellow man. And they claim Jesus is their leader and favorite philosopher. Clearly they were sleeping in class.. or else it was conducted in Aramaic.:P
*(where they claim praying is currently not allowed in school -- a lie because it is curently illegal to prevent people from praying -- in order to pass laws that force everyone to pray to their God in their way)
Insane. If they cannot "simply turn a doorknob" what else can they not do? What else to we need to do to give this very small percent of the population help? How much money are we wasting doing this? Couldn't we put this money to better use like, oh, fighting poverty?
If they are opening these doors it means they are going to work and/or shopping. We *are* fighting poverty by making it easier for people to contribute to society in those and other ways.
How often do people with mental handicaps who cannot open a door with a knob on it go out by themselves?
It depends on how much time they spend posting on slashdot.:P
>a voter walking into a polling station and presenting his/her ID
Is this ID issued to everyone, conveniently? And is it free? If there's a fee for it, then you've reinvented the poll tax. There is one US state which requires a paid-for ID in order to vote. GUESS what part of the country that state is in.
Every state I've voted in requires an id and no state I know of gives them out for free. Name one state where you can vote without an ID.
In some places (like Florida) not only do you have to have an ID but you have to have no outstanding traffic tickets and show proof of car insurance in order to vote. It's BS but that's what the current system seems to accept.
Poll taxes, literacy tests, and other forms of preventing people from voting are something you have to constantly battle, because no matter how often the courts rule these things illegal some asshole manages to get new legislation reinstating them in one form or another and occasionally some local judge agrees with them. It's highly annoying but being on the lookout for such people and uniting against them is the price that must be paid to maintain a viable Democracy.
Does that mean that your mission was to waste as much money as the congress let you ? That's what you get when you don't bother defining victory conditions before going to war - it drags on without any clear resolution.
Yes. That's how it works. We've done it before and we seem to be doing it again. But there is one other positive outcome.
Oh, did you win or lose ? Saddam was owerthrown but you're leaving because you ran out of money, so I can't tell... The Iraqi people certainly lost quite a few of its members, not to mention its infrastructure, but I guess that was never important to the US in the first place, as long as Bush got his war.
Some questions are never resolved. Ask someone who won the Vietnam War. I think in this case (at least if we do what the poster is suggesting) as well as that one the argument can be made that both sides lost, but you'll never get an answer that satisfies...
...
Does NATO serve any real purpose anymore, now that the Cold War is over ?
It serves the same purpose it always has. It pisses off the Russians.
Why ? Without your continued aid for the various dictatorial governments and terrorist organizations (you have heard of "School of America", have you ?), the area isn't a threat to anyone. Leave the muslims alone and let them build a democracy for themselves, don't forcefully keep them locked in Dark Ages just to get oil from them.
The Army School of the Americas no longer exists. The Army School of the Americas never existed. The Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation is a benevolent institution. We have always been at peace with Eurasia and at war with East Asia. Long live our Great Leader:D.
Now as for the muslims it's not fair to lump them all in one basket. But the only people who are forcing them to live in the Dark Ages are themselves. Some (like Al Qaeda/Muslim Brotherhood and friends) seem to like it that way. (That is rather their point, that the Dark Ages were the Good Old Days and God wants us to live that way again). Those who do not seem free enough to get out of that mode. For instance the US should be so lucky as to build something as advanced as Dubai's Internet City, where not only technological but social advancement outpaces us (there is a much higher ratio of female workers there than here).
Not to mention their leaders, who've watched your less than succesful attempts to capture Osama for the past five years.
It seems to serve some people's purpose to leave him around. Not that that means that our government isn't just too incompetent to catch him, but he's more valuable alive to the current administration (as a boogeyman) than he is to his own organization.
It can be called a double something (f.ex. double planemo). Probably it can also be called double dwarf planet. But i believe IAU cowardly wanted to avoid being the org forced to elect/reject planets - and thereby getting a political crossfire position.
Hank: (trying to pick a lock) Double dammit!
Dean: Hank, you said the double-d word!
Unless your looking for water, your not going to find much on Pluto. Pluto and the rest out there are made of mostly water, and not rock.
I think it's a safe bet we'll have to be looking for more clean water to pollute sometime in the near future. So it's good that we have a ring of ice out there, eh?
> How much would you like to bet that only 10% of the U.S. population will really care?
I don't really know about that. The thing is that so much new code in the OS and the various players (and even the hardware) is more concerned with DISABLING playing content rather than with ENABLING it, that so many more things have to come together just right to make it all work than ever before. I can see this complexity leading to a VERY fragile media playback environment, where all sorts of (sometimes bizzare and obscure) conditions can interact to prevent media from playing, even under totally legitimate conditions. While Joe Consumer may be a dumb sheep that doesn't care one whit about the finer ethical and moral issues surrounding restrictive DRM, he sure is going to get pissed when "Mission Impossible V: Beyond Any Reason" doesn't play on his shiny new PC.
Dude, we're already there. But geeks are the only ones who understand it and complain about the root cause. The majority are already conditioned to understand that their computers will usually not work (everyone hates Windows, but they're used to the shittyness) and tend to blame themselves anyhow for not being able to get it to work rather than demanding products that work better. And for some reaosn this situation seems to be getting worse. And it's not just computers. Cars, home appliances, clothes.. nothing lasts, everything is broken -- half the time out of the box -- and people just accept it. Even people who want quality tend to notice there are few choices in any market that will result in a decent quality product. But what can you expect when we all go for the lowest bidder anyway? yeah that works the same in private sector as for government.
And how long before people work out how to program 64bit malware?
Except this is not malware in any normal definition of the term. The media companies, who have been writing true malware in the form of self-installing rootkits that break your computer are trying to claim that tools that allow you access to the fair-use rights over their content that they have technically illegally restricted you from asserting using technological loopholes (with the justification that they are closing the technological loopholes that allow you to do illegal things with their content) are malware. These tools are not malware to the user, they just piss off the media companies.
I Love you virus, that reminds me back when it happened the guy in my department who opened and ran the I Love you got it from his wife, so we really can't blame him, but we have to wonder who his wife was opening love letters from.
Well, from him of course, since he got the virus....
Not after the next election there won't be. Illegal immigration is the number two annoyed topic that people will be voting on come november(the first is the stupid interventionist war). Globalists seeking to second world the US will be voted out, and those illegals will be *going home* as their employment dries up.
Wishful thinking. There is a reason your sort called themselves the "Know nothing" party seven or so iterations back.
Face it. Every attempt to eradicate or exile a given group within a population of humans has failed since the dawn of history*. And thank God because diversity is the greatest strength a population can have. It is one of the main reasons the United States has prospered. It gave us victory over our enemies (The Axis poorly utilized their resources when they refused to let women work and relegated swaths of their population to extermination or forced labour. We on the other hand allowed people of all stripes to work freely and were victorious).
The furor over immigration is just as useless as the other smokescreens thrown by our government to distract us from the fact they are not doing what they are supposed to be doing about the things they can actually work on. It's a canard that gets us all riled up, allows inflammatory discussions involving racism and such to take up time that should be spent discussing what we can do to make our nation better and win / end the war we seem to be fighting. Gay Marriage, Abortion, Obscenity, and Mexican immigrants are all wedge issues that they know will divide us, and which for the most part the government has no business dealing with (and really cannot).
When it comes to the specific issue of immigrants from mexico (because let's face it, for all their talk the Minutemen sure don't seem to care about patrolling the Canadian border which is the only border crossing Al Qaeda has been known to use), there have been migrant workers for centuries and the presence of "undocumented" workers is a simple reality. There's no sense in trying to send 7-25 million (depending on who you believe) people back who are currently working and contributing to our economy. The fact they are outside the system is simply further proof our system does not reflect reality in terms of our economic needs.
The whole system of registering immigrants and control based on quotas originated from provably racist legislation which has since been tweaked but retains its roots. Originally anyone who could come here was allowed to come here and could apply for citizenship after proving they'd lived here a couple of years. If you want control I say you may as well go to the simpler model that anyone who has a job in this country can come here and stay and apply for citizenship after a time; if we're going to keep quotas we're going to need to make them large enough to match the true rate of immigration into this country and speed up the process to match the digital age we live in and again the needs of society.
We need immigrants. They are our only hope of paying off the national debt and social security, and they are the only way we will currently retain the level of population we have. They inject new blood, new ideas, and enrich our cultural experience. The fact that the best people from every country and every field can choose to become Americans, and the fact they often do, makes us all that much stronger. Confucius said that if you treat your population properly people will flock to your country with their children on their backs. That's part of what he described as the ideal state and that is essentially what the United States, for all its faults, became. That's the America we should be protecting.
But again, getting people like me to argue with people like you about immigration is a distraction that keeps you and I from spending time focusing on the things we might agree on, like the fact we are involved in potentially endless conflicts
Your first link is incorrect. Just in case someone want's to find them, here are the singing mice.
Indeed. That was the very thing for which I was searching. Now with singing plague-infested fearless mice cheerfully marching forth we can welcome the new overlords with joy.
I never do this, but please mod parent up! It's Informative :D.
It looks like the trolls have taken over moderation *again*. Why is this moderated offtopic? TFA is about a quirky mathematical genius who solved an obscure math problem. I guess you don't need reading comprehension to moderate. Hint, moderators.. my post is about moderation so it is off topic. The parent post is about the East European math geniuses from the article... that *IS* the topic!
Well, AOL intentionally released this. I'm not sure what license they gave it. If it's not illegal, can AOL stop people from spreading it?
If AOL are to be believed, it's not quite as simple as all that. They claim some group within AOL released this info without going through proper channels. Now if that were true it would violate any corporation's policy, because releasing that kind of data usually requires much higher authority than a local department.
As far as the legality of the information, I would say there is a good argument that the release of this information violates privacy laws, and even if it does not, it was unauthorized release of confidential information held by a corporation which makes it just as illegal as the leaked code to Windows. I don't recall microsoft allowing people to get away with registering a domain called downloadthewhistlercodehere.com and then providing it there. Why can't AOL at least make a show of trying to stop people? Why aren't they punishing their employees for violating the policy? If I'd released anything like this kind of information from any corporation I have ever worked for I would be fired on the spot.
And why is it that no investigation is forthcoming into whether this constitutes a violation of privacy laws either by employees or AOL itself? If these laws, which were passed to prevent this sort of thing (mishandling of customer data held by a corporation) have no teeth what good are they?
"they're trying to use the same playbook they used against the soviets way back when."
My memory may not be perfect since I was young back then, but I don't recall the US invading the Soviet Union.
It may be comprehension or memory that are at fault here, but in this case "they" refers to Al-Qaeda and the "tactics used against the Soviet Union" are those used during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan to effect a withdrawal.
To be fair, there isn't a whole lot AOL can do about the data that's already been released. In fact, nothing. That genie's out of the bottle, and while it is totally their fault for allowing someone to make such an enormously foolish and potentially dangerous decision, they have stated that they are taking steps so that it won't happen again. Believe me, with so many people looking for an excuse to further bash AOL, they won't dare let this kind of thing continue.
It's hard to believe that they won't let this kind of thing happen again. This is only one in a long series of similar gaffes for them, and just like every other time they are doing nothing at all about it. They are just pulling a Rumsfeld by saying that they take responsibility and are "taking steps," but they haven't said what steps, and no heads rolled for what is clearly a breach of basic security and corporate protocols and probably the law. It's not enough to say "there's nothing we can do" and then claim to be "taking steps." They should actually *do* something. At the very least some heads should roll here, some processes should get changed, and some assurances should be given as to what has been done and what guarantee these changes have of preventing the same thing happen in future.
The data is out there, what exactly could they do?
Erase it from peoples hard drives, remove it from all the pipes that its in, drug everyone who has seen it?
The fact they have this data is one thing, releasing it to the public is another.
When it is data that they *care* about, corporations seem able to do plenty. If it's their source code, the code to decss, TimeWarnerAol's labels' mp3 files, the latest incriminating memos/emails... they are positively rabid about protecting it. Cease and desist orders fall like rain, sites get shut down, people get sued for millions and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. But if it's their customers' data, like these searches, their email addresses, their credit card numbers, etc. They just shrug and say "Oh well. What canya do?"
It's typical, frustrating, and complete bullshit. If the privacy laws were enforced and these corporations were punished for such egregious mishandling of our data maybe then they might think they can do something. But unless it directly affects them, they just are not going to care and will continue to take no precautions.
"what's to stop a hypothetical Microsoft from "patching" windows so as not to accept any non-preformatted drives?"
It depends on the approach Microsoft takes with the patch. What is the text of the error message that such a modified version of Windows might give if the user inserts an unformatted block storage medium? All versions of Mac OS Finder and Windows Explorer to date have offered to format any media that do not carry a recognizable file system.
Text? Error message? Why would they need that? Instead they could just quietly patch the driver for flash media in Windows and suddenly unformatted devices mysteriously "just won't work" just as they now "just work." There's no message when these things mount; they either mount or they don't, and windows does not have a command to try to force mount a removable drive or query devices like Linux does. People will naturally blame the manufacturer of the camera that didn't pay the royalty and almost no one would ever find out what was really going on.
Of course this is all moot. If microsoft's patent is valid, anything capable of reading or writing fat filesystems, including Linux, Freedos, and all these camera devices, is in violation of their patent by their very ability to do so.
Vim is a godless bastardization of the One True Editor. Even worse it pretends to be vi, but it is not vi. Most people that like it only like it because of some of the defaults they see when they use vim on linux, which actually only take advantage of features which are available in the real vi. Meanwhile vim flagrantly acts differently to the original vi in subtle insidious ways that you will only find when it is too late.
That is correct - from the perspective of the left. In the point of view of the right:
Left = Big Government
Right = Individual
So, from a conservative viewpoint, Consumer Reports takes the side of Big Government instead of individuals.
Which way you see it, then, largely depends on your political position. It's definitely not universally agreed.
So to bring synthesis to the two,
Left=Government/"Society" should take care of the population
Right=You're on your own. Take care of yourself (As O'Reilly advised the victims of hurricanes recently).
I'd say there's room for both. For instance the self-reliance frequently ascribed to right-wingers is, I think, a good idea as an individual philosophy. The more self-reliant you are, the more you will be able to cope with problems created by sorry leaders. Why depend on politicians to solve problems when they are usually only good at creating them? (Interestingly this self-reliant attitude seems not to be shared by right-wing business owners, who claim to need as many subsidies, breaks, and government breaks as they possibly can get [ like help getting cheaper labour, breaking strikes, and allowing them to break financial and environmental laws with impunity ].) But it's a horrible philosophy for society and government, because basically means abdicating responsibility. Government is only there to take care of citizens. We agree to pay taxes and obey laws in return for the services the government provides in helping society along (by enforcing laws, providing for the general welfare, etc etc as per the Constitution).
It's crass to expect everyone to be able to afford a retirement plan and an SUV so they can escape hurricanes and have savings to pay for the replacement of their loss. Is it a good idea to have those things? Is it stupid not to if you can? Sure! But it is wrong to assume everyone is going to have that. I tend to have most of teh emergency equipment a person would need and extra food and water in my house. But if you can't afford that, you can't. And it's wrong to shift the blame from government officials who hoarded relief supplies for themselves and failed to stock shelters at all, who did not use vehicles they controlled to help with evacuations, to the poor homeless guy and say "Well you should have used your credit card to rent an SUV like I did, chump. Sucks to be you."
And as for retirement. Why is the blame for lack of retirement savings in America solely on the shoulders of the individuals who need to retire? Yes, we are notoriously bad at saving. Yes, it is everyone's responsibility to try to save for their retirement. But why do the executives who overtly stole from 401k plans (to say nothing of the ones that just regularly tank because they are a thinly veiled attempt to recapture agwes rather than a real retirement plan) get off scott free? Why aren't they responsible? Even government entities are frequently guilty of mismanaging the retirement funds of their employees. But if the retirement fund is ruined/spent/whatever the company that does it never has to return the loss. Why is it that conservatives want to paint the employees who dutifuly saved from every paycheck into this retirement fund as irresponsible and the companies that screw up the fund are never held responsible? Why are they so keen to turn the current Social Security system into a 401k plan when so many of those are doing so badly? If the problem is really too many on the rolls, why don't they want to change the system so that it only pays out based on need (so that "wealthy" people, by some agreed-pon definition, who had the wherewithal, presumably, to save for a decent retirement, don't get social security so that more of the "poor" can)? Republican millionaires have no problem recieving tax breaks for businesses,
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This says that if something is obvious, the patent can be rejected even if there is no real prior art or previous "suggestion" or anything. Does a judge have the right to change the USPTOs rules on it's behalf?
Obvious is apparentlyu extremely relative. The "non-obviousness" rule has not been protecting us for some time now. For one thing the USPTO does not currently employ people skilled in the areas in which it is granting patents at all, and has not for decades now at least. For another, there are plenty of examples where not only someone who is skilled, but any ordinary schmuck, hell a complete moron, would see the change was obvious, yet the USPTO granted and upheld the patent and then the courts were willing to defend it.
It's funny that the blurb mentions colour because very recently a patent was granted on exactly that basis. A pharmaceutical company whose patent ran out was able to get a new patent on the same pill in a different colour and prevent generic versions from becoming available therefore. Even Bush thought that was obvious and stupid. Unfortunately his quest to eradicate such nonsense was about as effectual as his quest to eradicate soft money (it was really Mccain's quest anyhow, but it was subverted).
If the USPTO was better at preventing obviousness everything would be fine. But people seem to get away with patenting things that are already being done and punishing the original inventors or their benefactors, or else patenting obvious incremental changes to prevent upgrades to technology.
"The official language of the United States is English"
Wikipedia disagrees with you.
Even that Wikipedia link says that English is the de facto official language of the United States, mianly for the reasons below. It's the language listed in the CIA World factbook as well. Maybe I'm an insensitive ignorant American and don't know how other countries define their official language. But the same rules that define English as the official language here are those which define English and Hindi as the official languages of India, and would seem to work the same for other countries as well.
"All of our laws and signs are written in English and it remains the primary medium of instruction in our schools. Yet politicians want to get people riled up over the issue and try to pass laws declaring this and make speeches as though we might have to speak another language than English."
Well, frankly, I have a lot of sympathy with this. Why the hell shouldn't English be passed as the official language?
Because it's a smokescreen. Maybe things work differently in the UK's Parliament, but over here the names of bills and stated reasons for passing them bear little resemblance to the contents and effects (see USAPATRIOT ACT for instance, or the Clear Skies Initiative, or No Child Left Behind). There is no need to pass a law making English the official language because it already is and it would have no effect. However laws have been proposed which are claimed to do only this, which upon investigation actually have the effect of legislating racial discrimination, criminalizing translations, or abolishing the English as a Second Language programs I brought up before. That last is the most popular.
By the way what is the problem with there being translations? I mean sure it's funny when I buy something and the manual has every european language and a good handful of the asian ones in there, so that a one-page manual is like 500 pages, and I end up trying to puzzle out the French or something just to get going rather than trying to find the English bit. But still. I mean does it really hurt you that other people might get a chance to understand something because it's printed in their language? It's printed in yours, too you know.
Here you can often get things printed in Spanish or another language; that's true. Major forms and such, especially for benefits or immigration applications, are available in other languages, and so are menus. They're probably just as good translations as those stereo manuals (for instance, because I read slashdot, I happened to notice that some publications confuse "libre" and "gratis" a lot :D ) but at least it's there. And if a police officer arrests you here they have to read you your rights in your language. But that's so you understand. You do want them to understand what their society is asking of them don't you? Like the laws and such?
And people *can* conduct business in other languages here if they want. They can have signs in another language (like little athens or chinatown or little russia or whatever ethnic haunt you like) and they can have menus in other languages. But that's ok. Their culture is contributing to ours. Trust me. They understand the need to learn english, and will gladly speak it in order to do business with you. That;s what the whole world has been going through for over 400 years. That's the funny bit. Even in their own countries, people all over the world know they need to learn to speak English because historically English speakers don't like to learn other languages and for the last 400 years the money and power has been with them.
I think that it scares some people to see people who are different from them who speak another language they don't understand. And yes probably some times you would not be paranoid to think people are talking behind your back in their native tongue. But who cares? Let them hav
Mere existance of the P2P software is not proof of guilt. If the software is there, but no evidence of infringing files can be found, then the plaintif has a problem of explaining where the infringing information went.
They were able to determine the handle the person used, though. And I think it is safe to say that the RIAA had other evidence that someone with that handle from the defendant's ip address (and ultimately physical address) was uploading the files in question.
It's for some disease which we know you don't have but someone arbitrarily decided to put in place because it used to be bad.
Yes, asshole, it's called chlamydia, and if they don't put that goop in the baby's eyes it could go blind because of it. It's certainly not eradicated and the doctor certainly doesn't necessarily know for sure that there is no infection present.
As for the other injections the only reason you can afford to be so flippant about them is the fact we all have them and those diseases are not causing regular deadly epidemics -- specifically because we do have them. I think a little poke in the arm is a small price to pay to no longer have to worry about things like diptheria running rampant. Yes, they are legally mandated. Do you know why? Because people like you wouldn't do it otherwise, and the rest of us don't want to deal with piles of dead bodies because of your ignorance/laziness/stupidity/conspiracy theory.
However, claiming it was stolen by reporting it is stupid. Most deductibles for home theft won't even cover it. It's mostly just a waste of time to report something like that. It's not like anyone does anything. I did get a stolen bicycle back once. I was floored. But I registered the number, so it was traceable. Most of the time, I doubt there would be anything traceable from your computer, unless you got it from Dell (or similar).
No, *not* reporting it as stolen would be stupid. Law enforcement and the courts seem to take your reporting an item stolen as evidence that suggests that it may truly have been stolen. If anything it provides documentation of the time that it was stolen (among other things, since you have to give a statement in order to make a report). It also puts you on the hook for a pretty serious crime (filing a false police report) if you are lying, which increases the probability that you are not lying about the theft.
That's not to say that people don't lie or that the police always believe you. And if they nail you for it you've increased your crimes. But if you have already decided your plan is to claim the thing was stolen, you'd better report it because not doing so makes you seem like a liar.
As for the utility of making such reports when things really are stolen, it seems that you are right unless insurance is involved. The police don't seem to have time to track down criminals that don't run into them by accident, and they certainly don't sweat over recovering stolen property. As a result they rarely do, and even then there are plenty of reports where instead of returning the property the police just kept and used it themselves. Still, the possibility of the item being returned if you do not report it is 0% versus the 0.000001% you get if you report it, so....
Actually, we're having a rather heated immigration debate in the UK too, at the moment. Actually, there's a stronger argument against it in the UK because this island is incredibly overpopulated already, whereas the US isn't. However, my main problem is the language barrier. I'm of the strong belief that it's a good thing for everyone in a country to speak one language; ideally, i'd have everyone in the world speaking one language. Immigrants coming in and speaking Spanish in the US sounds like a bad idea. The language barrier is, IMHO, the biggest barrier to human interaction and telling most Americans to learn Spanish is a really stupid way to solve the problem rather than vice versa.
I've spent the better part of my life in places with a heavy influx of hispanic immigrants, legal and otherwise. And I have never ever found a hispanic person who did not agree, as every other immigrant to the US agrees, that learning English and getting a good education is the key to success in the US. The immigrants themselves may not speak English and might have difficulty learning it, but they make damn sure their kids learn it because they don't want them to have to be labourers like they are.
No one is making Americans learn Spanish. There's no way they could; it seems that even with High Schools often requireing one or two foreign languages practically no one manages to learn and hold onto anything other than English. The official language of the United States is English and always will be. All of our laws and signs are written in English and it remains the primary medium of instruction in our schools. Yet politicians want to get people riled up over the issue and try to pass laws declaring this and make speeches as though we might have to speak another language than English. It's the same as the French politicians who try to scare their constituents into thinking that they might be made to speak Arabic as a new primary language just because there are so many (French-speaking, mind!) immigrants from places like Algeria.
And like another favorite topic of these same politicians, prayer in schools,* politicians are using this canard to try to outlaw speaking any other language. You see currently we have programs in public schools ostensibly designed to teach children English so that they can understand the rest of what is being taught. It's somewhat less than optimal and effective because they are taught everything else in English while attending classes on how to understand English, but it is what we have. There are people who want to do away with these programs, supposedly on the basis that only English should ever be spoken and tax dollars spent on teaching the subject are wasted, but the whole idea makes no logical sense unless your goal is to close what little door is open for the children of migrant workers to learn our language and become skilled workers.
It is annoying to me that people whose entire basis for law is supposed to be religion and morality are such damned liars and clearly hate their fellow man. And they claim Jesus is their leader and favorite philosopher. Clearly they were sleeping in class.. or else it was conducted in Aramaic. :P
*(where they claim praying is currently not allowed in school -- a lie because it is curently illegal to prevent people from praying -- in order to pass laws that force everyone to pray to their God in their way)
Insane. If they cannot "simply turn a doorknob" what else can they not do? What else to we need to do to give this very small percent of the population help? How much money are we wasting doing this? Couldn't we put this money to better use like, oh, fighting poverty?
If they are opening these doors it means they are going to work and/or shopping. We *are* fighting poverty by making it easier for people to contribute to society in those and other ways.
How often do people with mental handicaps who cannot open a door with a knob on it go out by themselves?
It depends on how much time they spend posting on slashdot. :P
>a voter walking into a polling station and presenting his/her ID
Is this ID issued to everyone, conveniently? And is it free? If there's a fee for it, then you've reinvented the poll tax. There is one US state which requires a paid-for ID in order to vote. GUESS what part of the country that state is in.
Every state I've voted in requires an id and no state I know of gives them out for free. Name one state where you can vote without an ID.
In some places (like Florida) not only do you have to have an ID but you have to have no outstanding traffic tickets and show proof of car insurance in order to vote. It's BS but that's what the current system seems to accept.
Poll taxes, literacy tests, and other forms of preventing people from voting are something you have to constantly battle, because no matter how often the courts rule these things illegal some asshole manages to get new legislation reinstating them in one form or another and occasionally some local judge agrees with them. It's highly annoying but being on the lookout for such people and uniting against them is the price that must be paid to maintain a viable Democracy.
Does that mean that your mission was to waste as much money as the congress let you ? That's what you get when you don't bother defining victory conditions before going to war - it drags on without any clear resolution.
Yes. That's how it works. We've done it before and we seem to be doing it again. But there is one other positive outcome.
Oh, did you win or lose ? Saddam was owerthrown but you're leaving because you ran out of money, so I can't tell... The Iraqi people certainly lost quite a few of its members, not to mention its infrastructure, but I guess that was never important to the US in the first place, as long as Bush got his war.
Some questions are never resolved. Ask someone who won the Vietnam War. I think in this case (at least if we do what the poster is suggesting) as well as that one the argument can be made that both sides lost, but you'll never get an answer that satisfies...
Does NATO serve any real purpose anymore, now that the Cold War is over ?
It serves the same purpose it always has. It pisses off the Russians.
Why ? Without your continued aid for the various dictatorial governments and terrorist organizations (you have heard of "School of America", have you ?), the area isn't a threat to anyone. Leave the muslims alone and let them build a democracy for themselves, don't forcefully keep them locked in Dark Ages just to get oil from them.
The Army School of the Americas no longer exists. The Army School of the Americas never existed. The Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation is a benevolent institution. We have always been at peace with Eurasia and at war with East Asia. Long live our Great Leader :D.
Now as for the muslims it's not fair to lump them all in one basket. But the only people who are forcing them to live in the Dark Ages are themselves. Some (like Al Qaeda/Muslim Brotherhood and friends) seem to like it that way. (That is rather their point, that the Dark Ages were the Good Old Days and God wants us to live that way again). Those who do not seem free enough to get out of that mode. For instance the US should be so lucky as to build something as advanced as Dubai's Internet City, where not only technological but social advancement outpaces us (there is a much higher ratio of female workers there than here).
Not to mention their leaders, who've watched your less than succesful attempts to capture Osama for the past five years.
It seems to serve some people's purpose to leave him around. Not that that means that our government isn't just too incompetent to catch him, but he's more valuable alive to the current administration (as a boogeyman) than he is to his own organization.
It can be called a double something (f.ex. double planemo). Probably it can also be called double dwarf planet. But i believe IAU cowardly wanted to avoid being the org forced to elect/reject planets - and thereby getting a political crossfire position.
Hank: (trying to pick a lock) Double dammit!
Dean: Hank, you said the double-d word!
Unless your looking for water, your not going to find much on Pluto. Pluto and the rest out there are made of mostly water, and not rock.
I think it's a safe bet we'll have to be looking for more clean water to pollute sometime in the near future. So it's good that we have a ring of ice out there, eh?
> How much would you like to bet that only 10% of the U.S. population will really care?
I don't really know about that. The thing is that so much new code in the OS and the various players (and even the hardware) is more concerned with DISABLING playing content rather than with ENABLING it, that so many more things have to come together just right to make it all work than ever before. I can see this complexity leading to a VERY fragile media playback environment, where all sorts of (sometimes bizzare and obscure) conditions can interact to prevent media from playing, even under totally legitimate conditions. While Joe Consumer may be a dumb sheep that doesn't care one whit about the finer ethical and moral issues surrounding restrictive DRM, he sure is going to get pissed when "Mission Impossible V: Beyond Any Reason" doesn't play on his shiny new PC.
Dude, we're already there. But geeks are the only ones who understand it and complain about the root cause. The majority are already conditioned to understand that their computers will usually not work (everyone hates Windows, but they're used to the shittyness) and tend to blame themselves anyhow for not being able to get it to work rather than demanding products that work better. And for some reaosn this situation seems to be getting worse. And it's not just computers. Cars, home appliances, clothes .. nothing lasts, everything is broken -- half the time out of the box -- and people just accept it. Even people who want quality tend to notice there are few choices in any market that will result in a decent quality product. But what can you expect when we all go for the lowest bidder anyway? yeah that works the same in private sector as for government.
And how long before people work out how to program 64bit malware?
Except this is not malware in any normal definition of the term. The media companies, who have been writing true malware in the form of self-installing rootkits that break your computer are trying to claim that tools that allow you access to the fair-use rights over their content that they have technically illegally restricted you from asserting using technological loopholes (with the justification that they are closing the technological loopholes that allow you to do illegal things with their content) are malware. These tools are not malware to the user, they just piss off the media companies.
"They won't believe that someone would intentially criple their computer"
Until they find some software that will play HD on their old computer... then it will be clear that the problem isn't technical in nature.
How does using a technical solution to solve this problem prove to the user that the problem is "not technical in nature?"
I Love you virus, that reminds me back when it happened the guy in my department who opened and ran the I Love you got it from his wife, so we really can't blame him, but we have to wonder who his wife was opening love letters from.
Well, from him of course, since he got the virus....
Not after the next election there won't be. Illegal immigration is the number two annoyed topic that people will be voting on come november(the first is the stupid interventionist war). Globalists seeking to second world the US will be voted out, and those illegals will be *going home* as their employment dries up.
Wishful thinking. There is a reason your sort called themselves the "Know nothing" party seven or so iterations back.
Face it. Every attempt to eradicate or exile a given group within a population of humans has failed since the dawn of history*. And thank God because diversity is the greatest strength a population can have. It is one of the main reasons the United States has prospered. It gave us victory over our enemies (The Axis poorly utilized their resources when they refused to let women work and relegated swaths of their population to extermination or forced labour. We on the other hand allowed people of all stripes to work freely and were victorious).
The furor over immigration is just as useless as the other smokescreens thrown by our government to distract us from the fact they are not doing what they are supposed to be doing about the things they can actually work on. It's a canard that gets us all riled up, allows inflammatory discussions involving racism and such to take up time that should be spent discussing what we can do to make our nation better and win / end the war we seem to be fighting. Gay Marriage, Abortion, Obscenity, and Mexican immigrants are all wedge issues that they know will divide us, and which for the most part the government has no business dealing with (and really cannot).
When it comes to the specific issue of immigrants from mexico (because let's face it, for all their talk the Minutemen sure don't seem to care about patrolling the Canadian border which is the only border crossing Al Qaeda has been known to use), there have been migrant workers for centuries and the presence of "undocumented" workers is a simple reality. There's no sense in trying to send 7-25 million (depending on who you believe) people back who are currently working and contributing to our economy. The fact they are outside the system is simply further proof our system does not reflect reality in terms of our economic needs.
The whole system of registering immigrants and control based on quotas originated from provably racist legislation which has since been tweaked but retains its roots. Originally anyone who could come here was allowed to come here and could apply for citizenship after proving they'd lived here a couple of years. If you want control I say you may as well go to the simpler model that anyone who has a job in this country can come here and stay and apply for citizenship after a time; if we're going to keep quotas we're going to need to make them large enough to match the true rate of immigration into this country and speed up the process to match the digital age we live in and again the needs of society.
We need immigrants. They are our only hope of paying off the national debt and social security, and they are the only way we will currently retain the level of population we have. They inject new blood, new ideas, and enrich our cultural experience. The fact that the best people from every country and every field can choose to become Americans, and the fact they often do, makes us all that much stronger. Confucius said that if you treat your population properly people will flock to your country with their children on their backs. That's part of what he described as the ideal state and that is essentially what the United States, for all its faults, became. That's the America we should be protecting.
But again, getting people like me to argue with people like you about immigration is a distraction that keeps you and I from spending time focusing on the things we might agree on, like the fact we are involved in potentially endless conflicts
Your first link is incorrect. Just in case someone want's to find them, here are the singing mice.
Indeed. That was the very thing for which I was searching. Now with singing plague-infested fearless mice cheerfully marching forth we can welcome the new overlords with joy.
I never do this, but please mod parent up! It's Informative :D.
It looks like the trolls have taken over moderation *again*. Why is this moderated offtopic? TFA is about a quirky mathematical genius who solved an obscure math problem. I guess you don't need reading comprehension to moderate. Hint, moderators.. my post is about moderation so it is off topic. The parent post is about the East European math geniuses from the article ... that *IS* the topic!
Well, AOL intentionally released this. I'm not sure what license they gave it. If it's not illegal, can AOL stop people from spreading it?
If AOL are to be believed, it's not quite as simple as all that. They claim some group within AOL released this info without going through proper channels. Now if that were true it would violate any corporation's policy, because releasing that kind of data usually requires much higher authority than a local department.
As far as the legality of the information, I would say there is a good argument that the release of this information violates privacy laws, and even if it does not, it was unauthorized release of confidential information held by a corporation which makes it just as illegal as the leaked code to Windows. I don't recall microsoft allowing people to get away with registering a domain called downloadthewhistlercodehere.com and then providing it there. Why can't AOL at least make a show of trying to stop people? Why aren't they punishing their employees for violating the policy? If I'd released anything like this kind of information from any corporation I have ever worked for I would be fired on the spot.
And why is it that no investigation is forthcoming into whether this constitutes a violation of privacy laws either by employees or AOL itself? If these laws, which were passed to prevent this sort of thing (mishandling of customer data held by a corporation) have no teeth what good are they?
"they're trying to use the same playbook they used against the soviets way back when."
My memory may not be perfect since I was young back then, but I don't recall the US invading the Soviet Union.
It may be comprehension or memory that are at fault here, but in this case "they" refers to Al-Qaeda and the "tactics used against the Soviet Union" are those used during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan to effect a withdrawal.
To be fair, there isn't a whole lot AOL can do about the data that's already been released. In fact, nothing. That genie's out of the bottle, and while it is totally their fault for allowing someone to make such an enormously foolish and potentially dangerous decision, they have stated that they are taking steps so that it won't happen again. Believe me, with so many people looking for an excuse to further bash AOL, they won't dare let this kind of thing continue.
It's hard to believe that they won't let this kind of thing happen again. This is only one in a long series of similar gaffes for them, and just like every other time they are doing nothing at all about it. They are just pulling a Rumsfeld by saying that they take responsibility and are "taking steps," but they haven't said what steps, and no heads rolled for what is clearly a breach of basic security and corporate protocols and probably the law. It's not enough to say "there's nothing we can do" and then claim to be "taking steps." They should actually *do* something. At the very least some heads should roll here, some processes should get changed, and some assurances should be given as to what has been done and what guarantee these changes have of preventing the same thing happen in future.
The data is out there, what exactly could they do? Erase it from peoples hard drives, remove it from all the pipes that its in, drug everyone who has seen it?
The fact they have this data is one thing, releasing it to the public is another.
When it is data that they *care* about, corporations seem able to do plenty. If it's their source code, the code to decss, TimeWarnerAol's labels' mp3 files, the latest incriminating memos/emails ... they are positively rabid about protecting it. Cease and desist orders fall like rain, sites get shut down, people get sued for millions and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. But if it's their customers' data, like these searches, their email addresses, their credit card numbers, etc. They just shrug and say "Oh well. What canya do?"
It's typical, frustrating, and complete bullshit. If the privacy laws were enforced and these corporations were punished for such egregious mishandling of our data maybe then they might think they can do something. But unless it directly affects them, they just are not going to care and will continue to take no precautions.
"what's to stop a hypothetical Microsoft from "patching" windows so as not to accept any non-preformatted drives?"
It depends on the approach Microsoft takes with the patch. What is the text of the error message that such a modified version of Windows might give if the user inserts an unformatted block storage medium? All versions of Mac OS Finder and Windows Explorer to date have offered to format any media that do not carry a recognizable file system.
Text? Error message? Why would they need that? Instead they could just quietly patch the driver for flash media in Windows and suddenly unformatted devices mysteriously "just won't work" just as they now "just work." There's no message when these things mount; they either mount or they don't, and windows does not have a command to try to force mount a removable drive or query devices like Linux does. People will naturally blame the manufacturer of the camera that didn't pay the royalty and almost no one would ever find out what was really going on.
Of course this is all moot. If microsoft's patent is valid, anything capable of reading or writing fat filesystems, including Linux, Freedos, and all these camera devices, is in violation of their patent by their very ability to do so.
vi is the best.
vi isn't so great - vim is the best.
Vim is a godless bastardization of the One True Editor. Even worse it pretends to be vi, but it is not vi. Most people that like it only like it because of some of the defaults they see when they use vim on linux, which actually only take advantage of features which are available in the real vi. Meanwhile vim flagrantly acts differently to the original vi in subtle insidious ways that you will only find when it is too late.
"Right = Big Business
Left = Consumer."
That is correct - from the perspective of the left. In the point of view of the right:
Left = Big Government
Right = Individual
So, from a conservative viewpoint, Consumer Reports takes the side of Big Government instead of individuals.
Which way you see it, then, largely depends on your political position. It's definitely not universally agreed.
So to bring synthesis to the two,
Left=Government/"Society" should take care of the population
Right=You're on your own. Take care of yourself (As O'Reilly advised the victims of hurricanes recently).
I'd say there's room for both. For instance the self-reliance frequently ascribed to right-wingers is, I think, a good idea as an individual philosophy. The more self-reliant you are, the more you will be able to cope with problems created by sorry leaders. Why depend on politicians to solve problems when they are usually only good at creating them? (Interestingly this self-reliant attitude seems not to be shared by right-wing business owners, who claim to need as many subsidies, breaks, and government breaks as they possibly can get [ like help getting cheaper labour, breaking strikes, and allowing them to break financial and environmental laws with impunity ] .) But it's a horrible philosophy for society and government, because basically means abdicating responsibility. Government is only there to take care of citizens. We agree to pay taxes and obey laws in return for the services the government provides in helping society along (by enforcing laws, providing for the general welfare, etc etc as per the Constitution).
It's crass to expect everyone to be able to afford a retirement plan and an SUV so they can escape hurricanes and have savings to pay for the replacement of their loss. Is it a good idea to have those things? Is it stupid not to if you can? Sure! But it is wrong to assume everyone is going to have that. I tend to have most of teh emergency equipment a person would need and extra food and water in my house. But if you can't afford that, you can't. And it's wrong to shift the blame from government officials who hoarded relief supplies for themselves and failed to stock shelters at all, who did not use vehicles they controlled to help with evacuations, to the poor homeless guy and say "Well you should have used your credit card to rent an SUV like I did, chump. Sucks to be you."
And as for retirement. Why is the blame for lack of retirement savings in America solely on the shoulders of the individuals who need to retire? Yes, we are notoriously bad at saving. Yes, it is everyone's responsibility to try to save for their retirement. But why do the executives who overtly stole from 401k plans (to say nothing of the ones that just regularly tank because they are a thinly veiled attempt to recapture agwes rather than a real retirement plan) get off scott free? Why aren't they responsible? Even government entities are frequently guilty of mismanaging the retirement funds of their employees. But if the retirement fund is ruined/spent/whatever the company that does it never has to return the loss. Why is it that conservatives want to paint the employees who dutifuly saved from every paycheck into this retirement fund as irresponsible and the companies that screw up the fund are never held responsible? Why are they so keen to turn the current Social Security system into a 401k plan when so many of those are doing so badly? If the problem is really too many on the rolls, why don't they want to change the system so that it only pays out based on need (so that "wealthy" people, by some agreed-pon definition, who had the wherewithal, presumably, to save for a decent retirement, don't get social security so that more of the "poor" can)? Republican millionaires have no problem recieving tax breaks for businesses,