...can they rule on what is and isn't "obvious" and what is and isn't "prior art"? These terms clearly don't have the same meaning in the world of business method patents that they do in patents for physical devices, let alone common language.
Maybe you should participate and make your voice heard?
How is that not exactly what I'm doing? Oh, you mean participate in the Tea Party itself. Why would I do that when I recognize it's hypocritical to its core already? Am I really supposed to bring a whole movement back to sanity all by myself, just by "making my voice heard" within it?
Their slogans are all about smaller government. They are actively fighting for smaller government.
So they say, but actions speak louder than words.
They are being resisted by the established Republican leadership, mainly because of their uncompromising call for smaller government.
They are being resisted by the Republican leadership only so much as necessary to keep the Republican party majority-old-guard, and courted by the Republican leadership as much as necessary to get the them to vote for mainline big-government pro-corporate-subsidy pro-military-industrial-complex pro-earmark Republicans when general election time comes around. I think the results of this last Congressional election show how much control the old Republican leadership still has.
If you feel the way you claim, just calling out the bullshitters should be enough to get them tarred and feathered by their own supporters.
The problem is that the bullshitters are the supporters. I'm talking about rank-and-file members of the movement who chant "smaller government, smaller government!" all day long yet go to the polls and vote for Bush or Reagan. The difference between them and me is that I, after chanting "civil liberties, civil liberties!" now actively criticize Obama for violating civil liberties, whereas every single Tea Party participant I've personally met still defends voting for G.W. Bush the second time and believes Reagan reduced the size of government.
Many tea party types I know are former Howard Dean (2004) and Barack Obama (2008) supporters. They didn't suddenly become conservative, they've been sick of the government, regardless of which party is in charge.
That's interesting. I know my sample size is limited, but all the active Tea Partiers I've met were Bush and Reagan voters who claim (against all evidence) that the war in Iraq was necessary to keep our country safe. All the Howard Deaniacs I know have rejected the Tea Party and were on the side of a stronger health care bill than was actually passed, not a weaker one; it seems weird for someone supporting Howard Dean to be "sick of government" when Dean himself was the single most vocal proponent of the public option and has been a very strong advocate of expanded environmental and labor regulation and repealing the Bush tax cuts. I'll take note of your experience, though, and incorporate it into my understanding of the Tea Party movement.
The proper channels would be the country that the company is located in. This is an end run as they do not like dealing with those foreign legal systems.
So if a foreign company sells counterfeit designer clothing in the US, we can't seize the counterfeit goods until the foreign legal system says to? That is absurd. The companies in question are committing the crimes on US soil by sending their data to US users, and making use of the domain name system to do this. There's absolutely no legal reason why the US government can't use their authority to prevent that, especially for domains ending in.com,.org, or.net whose registration is under US jurisdiction anyway.
You should have a problem with it. It's not WHAT they're seizing, it's HOW they're seizing. DHS has absolutely no place seizing any web property.
Even if the "web property" is being used in ongoing criminal activity and DHS has gone through the proper channels to get warrants for seizure?
If companies want to sue these sites, sue them in a court of law, and have them shut-down through the proper legal channels.
Large-scale commercial copyright infringement is both a civil and a criminal offense. These are the proper legal channels.
The way they went about this is just laying the groundwork for them to abuse the power in the future. Don't be so short-sighted about the whole situation.
You're probably right, but this is more a policy argument than a legal argument. Do I think we should restrict the rights of DHS to be much narrower than the law currently allows? Definitely. Has DHS broken the law in this case? Almost certainly not.
Let's be clear: we want the laws amended so this won't happen again. Claiming they haven't gone through proper legal channels when in fact the law was written to allow them to do this will get us nowhere.
I'm not from the Americas, but I thought the DHT only dealt with national security issues, terrorist threats, natural disasters, and other high priority issues that affected the country.
There you go... your publicly questioning the DHT has now gotten your name onto terrorist lists.
I publicly question the wisdom of remixing Roxette.
I'm not from the Americas, but I thought the DHT only dealt with national security issues, terrorist threats, natural disasters, and other high priority issues that affected the country.
The 5th Amendment says that "no person shall be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law". Due process means that one must be found guilty in a court of law by a jury of their peers.
When there's a criminal proceeding, items which are evidence in the proceeding have always been subject to seizure prior to trial. The 5th Amendment has never affected that. Also, items being used in an ongoing criminal act are subject to seizure. It's no different from the cops finding a robber in the act and seizing his gun, or catching a drug-runner and seizing the car with a secret compartment hollowed out in the seat that he was using to hide his cargo.
Last time I checked, "copyprivilege" infringement required a civil suit by the person who held the privilege to begin with? Were these domain holders sued? Were they found guilty (liable) by a court of law?
There are both civil and criminal statutes for copyright infringement. Criminal sanctions basically apply to large-scale commercial infringement operations. I'm guessing if DHS is involved then the operators of the sites are now awaiting criminal prosecution.
Is the US government out of control and operating outside the bounds of the Constitution?
Out of control? Maybe. Operating outside the bounds of the Constitution? Definitely not. As I said before, the 5th Amendment doesn't protect property directly used in the commission of a crime, and large-scale commercial infringement is a criminal matter. Also, the Copyright Clause of the US Constitution doesn't say anywhere that enforcement has to be through civil suit brought by the copyright owner. It merely says that Congress can award the exclusive rights in order to advance "Progress in Science and Useful Arts" and that these rights can only be given "for limited Times". Come to think of it, they are outside the bounds of the Constitution on that point: copyright duration has now become basically unlimited. But that's a different story for a different thread.
It didn't matter, but it might in the future. The Tea Party is the last hope for a government that actually stays in its Constitutional box. I don't care what you think about particular people involved with it, just get out there and support less government.
Bullshit. I know quite a few Tea Partiers and they will take away every last right I have as soon as they get the chance. These are people who only make a stink when the party they don't like is in power, doing the EXACT SAME THINGS that the party they do like was doing before. How many Tea Partiers do you know who said anything at all about the Bush admin's declaration that Americans only have freedom of speech within "Free Speech Zones"? It's not about liking or disliking the people involved in it, it's about recognizing that the Tea Party Movement ITSELF is a movement of hypocrisy and cynicism that claims to be about less government but really works towards more government by the proper group of mostly old white men (with the occasional token minority or female) who put large corporations first and everyday citizens second. If you participate in the Tea Party believing otherwise, you're a sucker and a patsy.
My sig is not nearly as deceptive as the things O'Reilly says on his show every weeknight. The man has made a personal crusade out of shredding the Constitution so why shouldn't we hold him to account when he slips up by admitting it?
I'm also fully aware of the "context" for O'Reilly's statement and think that it actually bolsters my point. His guest was making a very good point that we should follow the Constitution in how we try terrorists. O'Reilly would have none of it; he thinks we should have trials the way Bill O'Reilly wants, Constitution be damned. That's all clear if you watch the clip.
Now, assuming that it does not satisfy you as an explanation, you could indicate that you are going to pursue legal action (the I in IBM stands for International) but you are willing to settle and sign away your rights for some relatively nominal fee.
What rights does he have to sign away? He didn't patent anything. He just published prior art under an open source license. So everybody already has the right to use this technology for free. IBM acquired a useless patent.
At least, that's as far as I understand patent law. Maybe someone will correct me if I'm wrong.
You're right on the nose, except for one thing: if IBM can somehow convince a court the patent is not invalid (probably relying on the court's ignorance) then they've acquired an ability to sue people for using tech they already had the right to use.
It's the headline. If it were "Acer's New 10" Andriod Tablet Proves to be a better alternative to the overpriced Apple iPad" then, you'd see a lot more comments.
Also, if they had found a way to work in the word "tits".
Looks like a nice device, but the screen is too shiny. I wouldn't be able to see anything on it. Still holding out for my Adam (or Lattice, whichever becomes non-vaporware first).
The company gets to choose the policies for securing its own data, you get to choose if you bring your personal device to the party or not.
Sure, but my whole point was that this should be clearly communicated, and often is not. Given that these "policies for securing its own data" go way beyond what is obviously necessary for securing the company's data in a way that is potentially intrusive, the choice to bring a personal device "to the party" should be made in full knowledge of the capabilities the company is being given, and the company is in the best position to provide this knowledge to its employees.
Yeah except for the fact that it offers nothing that the average user of Facebook wants or cares about.
Doesn't matter. If it offers things that enough fringe users want or care about, it can build up a user base, and the bigger its user base, the larger the fringe of users who care grows. The biggest thing the average user cares about with Facebook is how many other people are connected (i.e. the fact that they can basically find anyone they know on there) and the more people bleed from the fringes off FB and into Diaspora, the closer it gets to having this property, and hence drawing average users.
Given that, I'd say it's pretty safe to say that they probably launched with a pretty coherent business plan in place. You don't grow from launch to 52 million in revenue accidentally.
Wait, you don't? Shit, I've been doing it all wrong!
Facebook will remain popular as long as it provides a means to cheat on your wife, booty-calling girls with whom you used to have great sex, 20 years ago.
Ummm...I think if you succeed in cheating on your wife using Facebook, it's because your wife lives in a cave...not because of FB's useful properties...
Making flawed analogies does not help your argument.
It's not really an analogy. I'm comparing mass murderer to mass murderer. You didn't contest my previous usage of the term mass murder. If your beef with my post was that you don't really think they're mass murderers, you should have said so. Instead, you flat-out told me that I'm an idiot for saying mass murderers don't have moral standing to criticize human rights abuses. If that's what you believe, it's not a "flawed analogy" to extend that to Stalin; it's a direct application of your own standard.
If you want to claim that everyone who ever voted for a war you disagreed with doesn't have the moral authority to criticize human rights abuse, by all means, go ahead.
I never wanted to claim any such thing. It has nothing to do with whether I disagree with the war personally, and everything to do with the prosecution of the war meeting the definition of "mass murder", this manner of prosecution being known to be the probable result of the vote to go to war, and the pretext for going to war being demonstrably false even at the time the vote was made. If you have a valid dispute of any of these points, you're welcome to make it. Instead, all you've done is tell me that if we consider violating human rights to impinge someone's credibility on human rights, then, hell, we could question anybody's credibility on human rights! This is absurd, I pointed out this absurdity in my previous post, and somehow you reached the conclusion that my act of directly following your logic was a "flawed analogy".
Don't expect human rights abuse to stop though.
Don't expect them to stop when the main people criticizing them are also committing them, either.
If reading work email while not at work is part of your job, it's on them to provide you with the tools necessary.
In theory, yes. In practice, there are probably a thousand job candidates in line behind you who will do what they're told regardless of whether it's the company's responsibility or theirs.
Slashdot Mirror
...can they rule on what is and isn't "obvious" and what is and isn't "prior art"? These terms clearly don't have the same meaning in the world of business method patents that they do in patents for physical devices, let alone common language.
Maybe you should participate and make your voice heard?
How is that not exactly what I'm doing? Oh, you mean participate in the Tea Party itself. Why would I do that when I recognize it's hypocritical to its core already? Am I really supposed to bring a whole movement back to sanity all by myself, just by "making my voice heard" within it?
Their slogans are all about smaller government. They are actively fighting for smaller government.
So they say, but actions speak louder than words.
They are being resisted by the established Republican leadership, mainly because of their uncompromising call for smaller government.
They are being resisted by the Republican leadership only so much as necessary to keep the Republican party majority-old-guard, and courted by the Republican leadership as much as necessary to get the them to vote for mainline big-government pro-corporate-subsidy pro-military-industrial-complex pro-earmark Republicans when general election time comes around. I think the results of this last Congressional election show how much control the old Republican leadership still has.
If you feel the way you claim, just calling out the bullshitters should be enough to get them tarred and feathered by their own supporters.
The problem is that the bullshitters are the supporters. I'm talking about rank-and-file members of the movement who chant "smaller government, smaller government!" all day long yet go to the polls and vote for Bush or Reagan. The difference between them and me is that I, after chanting "civil liberties, civil liberties!" now actively criticize Obama for violating civil liberties, whereas every single Tea Party participant I've personally met still defends voting for G.W. Bush the second time and believes Reagan reduced the size of government.
Many tea party types I know are former Howard Dean (2004) and Barack Obama (2008) supporters. They didn't suddenly become conservative, they've been sick of the government, regardless of which party is in charge.
That's interesting. I know my sample size is limited, but all the active Tea Partiers I've met were Bush and Reagan voters who claim (against all evidence) that the war in Iraq was necessary to keep our country safe. All the Howard Deaniacs I know have rejected the Tea Party and were on the side of a stronger health care bill than was actually passed, not a weaker one; it seems weird for someone supporting Howard Dean to be "sick of government" when Dean himself was the single most vocal proponent of the public option and has been a very strong advocate of expanded environmental and labor regulation and repealing the Bush tax cuts. I'll take note of your experience, though, and incorporate it into my understanding of the Tea Party movement.
The proper channels would be the country that the company is located in. This is an end run as they do not like dealing with those foreign legal systems.
So if a foreign company sells counterfeit designer clothing in the US, we can't seize the counterfeit goods until the foreign legal system says to? That is absurd. The companies in question are committing the crimes on US soil by sending their data to US users, and making use of the domain name system to do this. There's absolutely no legal reason why the US government can't use their authority to prevent that, especially for domains ending in .com, .org, or .net whose registration is under US jurisdiction anyway.
You should have a problem with it. It's not WHAT they're seizing, it's HOW they're seizing. DHS has absolutely no place seizing any web property.
Even if the "web property" is being used in ongoing criminal activity and DHS has gone through the proper channels to get warrants for seizure?
If companies want to sue these sites, sue them in a court of law, and have them shut-down through the proper legal channels.
Large-scale commercial copyright infringement is both a civil and a criminal offense. These are the proper legal channels.
The way they went about this is just laying the groundwork for them to abuse the power in the future. Don't be so short-sighted about the whole situation.
You're probably right, but this is more a policy argument than a legal argument. Do I think we should restrict the rights of DHS to be much narrower than the law currently allows? Definitely. Has DHS broken the law in this case? Almost certainly not.
Let's be clear: we want the laws amended so this won't happen again. Claiming they haven't gone through proper legal channels when in fact the law was written to allow them to do this will get us nowhere.
I'm not from the Americas, but I thought the DHT only dealt with national security issues, terrorist threats, natural disasters, and other high priority issues that affected the country.
There you go... your publicly questioning the DHT has now gotten your name onto terrorist lists.
I publicly question the wisdom of remixing Roxette.
I'm not from the Americas, but I thought the DHT only dealt with national security issues, terrorist threats, natural disasters, and other high priority issues that affected the country.
The Americas? DHT is from Belgium and seems to deal primarily with remixing '80s ballads with hoppin' trance beats.
The 5th Amendment says that "no person shall be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law". Due process means that one must be found guilty in a court of law by a jury of their peers.
When there's a criminal proceeding, items which are evidence in the proceeding have always been subject to seizure prior to trial. The 5th Amendment has never affected that. Also, items being used in an ongoing criminal act are subject to seizure. It's no different from the cops finding a robber in the act and seizing his gun, or catching a drug-runner and seizing the car with a secret compartment hollowed out in the seat that he was using to hide his cargo.
Last time I checked, "copyprivilege" infringement required a civil suit by the person who held the privilege to begin with? Were these domain holders sued? Were they found guilty (liable) by a court of law?
There are both civil and criminal statutes for copyright infringement. Criminal sanctions basically apply to large-scale commercial infringement operations. I'm guessing if DHS is involved then the operators of the sites are now awaiting criminal prosecution.
Is the US government out of control and operating outside the bounds of the Constitution?
Out of control? Maybe. Operating outside the bounds of the Constitution? Definitely not. As I said before, the 5th Amendment doesn't protect property directly used in the commission of a crime, and large-scale commercial infringement is a criminal matter. Also, the Copyright Clause of the US Constitution doesn't say anywhere that enforcement has to be through civil suit brought by the copyright owner. It merely says that Congress can award the exclusive rights in order to advance "Progress in Science and Useful Arts" and that these rights can only be given "for limited Times". Come to think of it, they are outside the bounds of the Constitution on that point: copyright duration has now become basically unlimited. But that's a different story for a different thread.
It didn't matter, but it might in the future. The Tea Party is the last hope for a government that actually stays in its Constitutional box. I don't care what you think about particular people involved with it, just get out there and support less government.
Bullshit. I know quite a few Tea Partiers and they will take away every last right I have as soon as they get the chance. These are people who only make a stink when the party they don't like is in power, doing the EXACT SAME THINGS that the party they do like was doing before. How many Tea Partiers do you know who said anything at all about the Bush admin's declaration that Americans only have freedom of speech within "Free Speech Zones"? It's not about liking or disliking the people involved in it, it's about recognizing that the Tea Party Movement ITSELF is a movement of hypocrisy and cynicism that claims to be about less government but really works towards more government by the proper group of mostly old white men (with the occasional token minority or female) who put large corporations first and everyday citizens second. If you participate in the Tea Party believing otherwise, you're a sucker and a patsy.
Yeah, because the Bush admin neeeeeever did anything creepy online.
What happened to innocent until proven quilty?
They ran out of squares to sew together, so they decided to just presume quilt.
My sig is not nearly as deceptive as the things O'Reilly says on his show every weeknight. The man has made a personal crusade out of shredding the Constitution so why shouldn't we hold him to account when he slips up by admitting it?
I'm also fully aware of the "context" for O'Reilly's statement and think that it actually bolsters my point. His guest was making a very good point that we should follow the Constitution in how we try terrorists. O'Reilly would have none of it; he thinks we should have trials the way Bill O'Reilly wants, Constitution be damned. That's all clear if you watch the clip.
Now, assuming that it does not satisfy you as an explanation, you could indicate that you are going to pursue legal action (the I in IBM stands for International) but you are willing to settle and sign away your rights for some relatively nominal fee.
What rights does he have to sign away? He didn't patent anything. He just published prior art under an open source license. So everybody already has the right to use this technology for free. IBM acquired a useless patent.
At least, that's as far as I understand patent law. Maybe someone will correct me if I'm wrong.
You're right on the nose, except for one thing: if IBM can somehow convince a court the patent is not invalid (probably relying on the court's ignorance) then they've acquired an ability to sue people for using tech they already had the right to use.
It's the headline. If it were "Acer's New 10" Andriod Tablet Proves to be a better alternative to the overpriced Apple iPad" then, you'd see a lot more comments.
Also, if they had found a way to work in the word "tits".
Looks like a nice device, but the screen is too shiny. I wouldn't be able to see anything on it. Still holding out for my Adam (or Lattice, whichever becomes non-vaporware first).
...first post??? Is this an alternate universe?
Modded off-topic? Bizarre. Grammar jokes are the heart and soul of Slashdot.
No, posters that think they're being clever while confusing grammar with semantics are the heart and soul of Slashdot.
If you mess up grammar, meaning becomes confused.
Sure, but OP didn't mess up grammar. He anthropomorphized his penis. His grammar was perfectly fine.
The company gets to choose the policies for securing its own data, you get to choose if you bring your personal device to the party or not.
Sure, but my whole point was that this should be clearly communicated, and often is not. Given that these "policies for securing its own data" go way beyond what is obviously necessary for securing the company's data in a way that is potentially intrusive, the choice to bring a personal device "to the party" should be made in full knowledge of the capabilities the company is being given, and the company is in the best position to provide this knowledge to its employees.
Diaspora got discovered because there was a Times article about vaporware.
It's not vaporware if they come up with the product. They've come up with the product.
Yeah except for the fact that it offers nothing that the average user of Facebook wants or cares about.
Doesn't matter. If it offers things that enough fringe users want or care about, it can build up a user base, and the bigger its user base, the larger the fringe of users who care grows. The biggest thing the average user cares about with Facebook is how many other people are connected (i.e. the fact that they can basically find anyone they know on there) and the more people bleed from the fringes off FB and into Diaspora, the closer it gets to having this property, and hence drawing average users.
Given that, I'd say it's pretty safe to say that they probably launched with a pretty coherent business plan in place. You don't grow from launch to 52 million in revenue accidentally.
Wait, you don't? Shit, I've been doing it all wrong!
Facebook will remain popular as long as it provides a means to cheat on your wife, booty-calling girls with whom you used to have great sex, 20 years ago.
Ummm...I think if you succeed in cheating on your wife using Facebook, it's because your wife lives in a cave...not because of FB's useful properties...
Life's too short to put up with that kind of bullshit, imo.
I'll agree with that.
Making flawed analogies does not help your argument.
It's not really an analogy. I'm comparing mass murderer to mass murderer. You didn't contest my previous usage of the term mass murder. If your beef with my post was that you don't really think they're mass murderers, you should have said so. Instead, you flat-out told me that I'm an idiot for saying mass murderers don't have moral standing to criticize human rights abuses. If that's what you believe, it's not a "flawed analogy" to extend that to Stalin; it's a direct application of your own standard.
If you want to claim that everyone who ever voted for a war you disagreed with doesn't have the moral authority to criticize human rights abuse, by all means, go ahead.
I never wanted to claim any such thing. It has nothing to do with whether I disagree with the war personally, and everything to do with the prosecution of the war meeting the definition of "mass murder", this manner of prosecution being known to be the probable result of the vote to go to war, and the pretext for going to war being demonstrably false even at the time the vote was made. If you have a valid dispute of any of these points, you're welcome to make it. Instead, all you've done is tell me that if we consider violating human rights to impinge someone's credibility on human rights, then, hell, we could question anybody's credibility on human rights! This is absurd, I pointed out this absurdity in my previous post, and somehow you reached the conclusion that my act of directly following your logic was a "flawed analogy".
Don't expect human rights abuse to stop though.
Don't expect them to stop when the main people criticizing them are also committing them, either.
If reading work email while not at work is part of your job, it's on them to provide you with the tools necessary.
In theory, yes. In practice, there are probably a thousand job candidates in line behind you who will do what they're told regardless of whether it's the company's responsibility or theirs.