Give me a break. I thought the brits had a reasonable understanding of how the courts in the US work. This moron committed a quite serious crime; it is not at all unreasonable that he should suffer significant consequences.
Here is a bit of writeup on the topic in the Washington Post:
McKinnon's lawyers alleged that an American official had told him he would be forced to serve a lengthy sentence in the United States if he fought against his extradition, something they say amounted to an unlawful threat.
The five Law Lords were unanimous in deciding McKinnon had failed to prove his case.
So the brits had their chance to decide if these claims of unfair treatment were credible or not and decided NOT. So WTF is all the whining about? At the absolute highest level this was decided internally in England - the signing of the original treaty PLUS an appeals process. I don't see how this could have been more fair.
We have had cities for 5000 years yet soooo many people are still incapable of civilized behavior, be it due to nitwittery or hooliganism. Clearly we need to give the process of natural selection an assist in this case and rid the population of such individuals through summary execution.
Some of the new crimes against civilization should be:
o Texting whilst driving o Driving under the influence of disabling drugs o Prank calls to emergency services o Sexual abuse of children o Invasion of privacy by a government official o Inability to find the roots of a quadratic
The thing that arstechnica is missing is that Duffy is a troll. He is representing amicus in the Bilski case, and is raising the possibility that the USPTO is adopting a position that will invalidate most business process / computer based patents as a FUD attack against any attempt to limit the scope of patentability in this field.
It's just like how a good generic brand will still sell less than a shitty name brand.
well, except that you have to convince me that the name brand is shitty. I think that it is more like the deal is that you have two overlapping distributions - in a lot of cases the results will be the same. At the margins though, that is at the tails of the distributions you will see the differences. The name brand will have a longer and thicker high end tail.
I'm not necessarily saying that the schools are better or anything like that, but rather that the high end talent is more likely to attend these schools. And that talent is very rare.
And that is why the guys from these schools get more interviews. It is more likely you will get the next Radia Perlman or Gordon Moore from a top university.
Actually your example of pour A into B is the type of thing that is easy to keep secret.
The traditional problem with process patents is that once you reveal the process it is damn hard to discover who is infringing since the finished good may not actually reveal how it was made. Many many proprietary processes are held as trade secrets rather than being patented for that very reason. Patents are not viewed as offering the inventor anything because they require revealing the invention with no hope of being able to enforce the patent.
Now business process patents (which I think is a real bad idea to allow) is often the reverse. You can't keep it secret which is why getting a patent is so useful. But you are exactly right in that since these types of processes cannot be kept secret the conventional concept of a patent as a contract to reveal an idea in exchange for a grant of being able to exclude others from practicing the art revealed is a very one sided deal in favor of the patent owner.
No process should be patented? That is somewhat ridiculous. Things like chemical process patents go back to the beginning of the concept of patents. In fact I believe US Patent No. 1 is a process patent.
That seems very unlikely to me. There have been plenty of other cases where patent validity criterea have changed, and none of them led to grandfathering.
The average desktop PC draws more like 100W, and the average US electrical rate is about.10 per kw hr. That is about $90 per year, not counting impact on your A/C bill which could easily double the cost. This pays for a Cisco firewall appliance in a couple of years.
Not to mention the fact that electricity prices are expected to rise rapidly over the next few years.
Bidding will continue until at least (some time) plus up to 24 hours (randomly set)
I've used auction sites that did a variety things to extend the auction time, including what you suggest as well as adding time past the last bid. They sound great when you have lost an auction to a sniper, but in reality they have much more severe drawbacks than Ebay's system. Ebay's fixed end time is by far the best online mechanism I have run into. Online auctions really are not the same as outcry auctions, and work much better if different rules are used.
Ebay has a LOT of problems but this is not one of them.
Ever notice how a bunch of stuff on ebay is $0.02 + $5.00 shipping?? Honestly that's got to be a scam
Yes it is a scam, against Ebay. EBay charges a percentage of the selling price not including shipping. Sellers try to keep their Ebay fees lower by inflating the shipping costs. It is strictly in violation of Ebay terms of service.
I'd strongly suggest going into the Ebay message boards and spending some time there before buying and selling on Ebay. You will understand the site much better, which will lead to a far better experience.
The problem with using a puter for a router is power consumption. While the initial cost might be 0, the long term cost is much higher than even a top shelf commercial router.
It isn't worth the time for a good programmer to pick up skills in what is essentially a lower paying profession doing graphical element production. It's like asking an MD if he can do carpentry on the side. I'm not saying the there is anything wrong with carpentry but the MD has a lot invested in his tool set, and learning carpentry isn't going to be a career move for him. He isn't going to ever be a great carpenter, and it will take time away from what he is good at, what pays better, and what he enjoys doing best.
I don't think your edits materially changed the point I was making.
People are forgetting the threat that Saddam represented w.r.t. nuclear weapons in the light of the Bush administration screwups and lies in attempting to justify the 2nd gulf war. While people rightly point out that the second gulf war was a bad idea, the fact is that Iraq was frighteningly close prior to the first gulf war,
and despite the fact that Saddam was not actively importing nuclear materials at the time of the second gulf war there was evidence that he was trying to lay the groundwork for this. The British have yet to repudiate the Butler report conclusions regarding the Niger visit by an Iraqi minister.
The Bush administration is a pack of bumbling idiots, but that doesn't mean that Saddam wasn't an extremely dangerous person.
The other aspect of this that has gotten inadequate coverage is the involvement of American and European countries in supplying the means for the Iraqi nuclear program and the UN supression of this information. Given corporate behavior in this regard (i.e. treason in my opinion) it is very hard for me to feel secure with the concept that Saddam would not ever be able to restart his nuclear program.
It is much easier to learn a foreign language when you are younger. By the time you get to university the effort is probably not worth it from a career point of view, if you are an English speaker. English is the primary language used in technology fields world wide so you already know the language that almost all research is published in.
That being said, studying a foreign language is enjoyable from a personal enrichment point of view. I studied French in high school and hated it. But later in life I went to work for a French owned company that paid for French lessons - that high school stuff came back quickly, and it made the times I traveled to France on business a more enjoyable because I could interact more easily with the people and surroundings than if I had no understanding of the language. Because of that experience I now enjoy reading and watching French language books and movies.
Slashdot Mirror
"an agency"???
Give me a break. I thought the brits had a reasonable understanding of how the courts in the US work. This moron committed a quite serious crime; it is not at all unreasonable that he should suffer significant consequences.
Here is a bit of writeup on the topic in the Washington Post:
McKinnon's lawyers alleged that an American official had told him he would be forced to serve a lengthy sentence in the United States if he fought against his extradition, something they say amounted to an unlawful threat.
The five Law Lords were unanimous in deciding McKinnon had failed to prove his case.
So the brits had their chance to decide if these claims of unfair treatment were credible or not and decided NOT. So WTF is all the whining about? At the absolute highest level this was decided internally in England - the signing of the original treaty PLUS an appeals process. I don't see how this could have been more fair.
Or at least never allowed to work in a security capacity again.
Bullpuckey. The crimes were committed in the US, against US property.
If you don't like the extradition treaty, lobby your government to get it changed. Otherwise live up to your obligations.
We have had cities for 5000 years yet soooo many people are still incapable of civilized behavior, be it due to nitwittery or hooliganism. Clearly we need to give the process of natural selection an assist in this case and rid the population of such individuals through summary execution.
Some of the new crimes against civilization should be:
o Texting whilst driving
o Driving under the influence of disabling drugs
o Prank calls to emergency services
o Sexual abuse of children
o Invasion of privacy by a government official
o Inability to find the roots of a quadratic
etc.
That's probably the real reason Fermat never finished his last theorem.
We use things like precident instead of common sense
For better or worse that is our legal system. The roots go back almost 1000 years.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_law
The thing that arstechnica is missing is that Duffy is a troll. He is representing amicus in the Bilski case, and is raising the possibility that the USPTO is adopting a position that will invalidate most business process / computer based patents as a FUD attack against any attempt to limit the scope of patentability in this field.
It's just like how a good generic brand will still sell less than a shitty name brand.
well, except that you have to convince me that the name brand is shitty. I think that it is more like the deal is that you have two overlapping distributions - in a lot of cases the results will be the same. At the margins though, that is at the tails of the distributions you will see the differences. The name brand will have a longer and thicker high end tail.
I'm not necessarily saying that the schools are better or anything like that, but rather that the high end talent is more likely to attend these schools. And that talent is very rare.
And that is why the guys from these schools get more interviews. It is more likely you will get the next Radia Perlman or Gordon Moore from a top university.
What's the real difference between an Ivy League degree and a state school degree?
The Ivy League guys have a much easier time getting interviews.
Actually your example of pour A into B is the type of thing that is easy to keep secret.
The traditional problem with process patents is that once you reveal the process it is damn hard to discover who is infringing since the finished good may not actually reveal how it was made. Many many proprietary processes are held as trade secrets rather than being patented for that very reason. Patents are not viewed as offering the inventor anything because they require revealing the invention with no hope of being able to enforce the patent.
Now business process patents (which I think is a real bad idea to allow) is often the reverse. You can't keep it secret which is why getting a patent is so useful. But you are exactly right in that since these types of processes cannot be kept secret the conventional concept of a patent as a contract to reveal an idea in exchange for a grant of being able to exclude others from practicing the art revealed is a very one sided deal in favor of the patent owner.
The thing to keep in mind that this is a zero-sum game. For everyone that would gain by grandfathering there would be a loser.
No process should be patented? That is somewhat ridiculous. Things like chemical process patents go back to the beginning of the concept of patents. In fact I believe US Patent No. 1 is a process patent.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:FirstUSpatent.jpg
That seems very unlikely to me. There have been plenty of other cases where patent validity criterea have changed, and none of them led to grandfathering.
These are about 100 lumen bulbs. You would need about 15 of them to add up the output of a typical 60W incandescent.
Looks like you are still at $100.
Even finding a CF bulb with that low an output would be difficult. A typical 1300 lumen CF bulb goes for less than $2 these days.
Which of course reduce efficiency.
To me light quality is the big knock against CF and LED. Both have some issues when compared with incandescent.
The average desktop PC draws more like 100W, and the average US electrical rate is about .10 per kw hr. That is about $90 per year, not counting impact on your A/C bill which could easily double the cost. This pays for a Cisco firewall appliance in a couple of years.
Not to mention the fact that electricity prices are expected to rise rapidly over the next few years.
Bidding will continue until at least (some time) plus up to 24 hours (randomly set)
I've used auction sites that did a variety things to extend the auction time, including what you suggest as well as adding time past the last bid. They sound great when you have lost an auction to a sniper, but in reality they have much more severe drawbacks than Ebay's system. Ebay's fixed end time is by far the best online mechanism I have run into. Online auctions really are not the same as outcry auctions, and work much better if different rules are used.
Ebay has a LOT of problems but this is not one of them.
Ever notice how a bunch of stuff on ebay is $0.02 + $5.00 shipping?? Honestly that's got to be a scam
Yes it is a scam, against Ebay. EBay charges a percentage of the selling price not including shipping. Sellers try to keep their Ebay fees lower by inflating the shipping costs. It is strictly in violation of Ebay terms of service.
I'd strongly suggest going into the Ebay message boards and spending some time there before buying and selling on Ebay. You will understand the site much better, which will lead to a far better experience.
Transportation costs are going through the roof, making offshore manufacturing more expensive. Look for 'onshoring' to become the next fad.
The problem with using a puter for a router is power consumption. While the initial cost might be 0, the long term cost is much higher than even a top shelf commercial router.
I've had a PIX 501 for 4+ years. They only time it went out is when the wife hit the power strip it is plugged into with a vacuum cleaner.
It isn't worth the time for a good programmer to pick up skills in what is essentially a lower paying profession doing graphical element production. It's like asking an MD if he can do carpentry on the side. I'm not saying the there is anything wrong with carpentry but the MD has a lot invested in his tool set, and learning carpentry isn't going to be a career move for him. He isn't going to ever be a great carpenter, and it will take time away from what he is good at, what pays better, and what he enjoys doing best.
I don't think your edits materially changed the point I was making.
People are forgetting the threat that Saddam represented w.r.t. nuclear weapons in the light of the Bush administration screwups and lies in attempting to justify the 2nd gulf war. While people rightly point out that the second gulf war was a bad idea, the fact is that Iraq was frighteningly close prior to the first gulf war,
http://www.fas.org/nuke/guide/iraq/nuke/program.htm
and despite the fact that Saddam was not actively importing nuclear materials at the time of the second gulf war there was evidence that he was trying to lay the groundwork for this. The British have yet to repudiate the Butler report conclusions regarding the Niger visit by an Iraqi minister.
The Bush administration is a pack of bumbling idiots, but that doesn't mean that Saddam wasn't an extremely dangerous person.
The other aspect of this that has gotten inadequate coverage is the involvement of American and European countries in supplying the means for the Iraqi nuclear program and the UN supression of this information. Given corporate behavior in this regard (i.e. treason in my opinion) it is very hard for me to feel secure with the concept that Saddam would not ever be able to restart his nuclear program.
It is much easier to learn a foreign language when you are younger. By the time you get to university the effort is probably not worth it from a career point of view, if you are an English speaker. English is the primary language used in technology fields world wide so you already know the language that almost all research is published in.
That being said, studying a foreign language is enjoyable from a personal enrichment point of view. I studied French in high school and hated it. But later in life I went to work for a French owned company that paid for French lessons - that high school stuff came back quickly, and it made the times I traveled to France on business a more enjoyable because I could interact more easily with the people and surroundings than if I had no understanding of the language. Because of that experience I now enjoy reading and watching French language books and movies.
Why do people always feel the need to stress that yellowcake could be made into weapons, no matter how far from being a weapon it presently is?
The answer to this is that yellowcake was being accumulated by a madman who would have made it into a weapon given enough time.