I agree that should not happen. Most states have long minimum sentences for this sort of crime. That does not mean what this guy got was wrong.
Also, murderers have gotten about that much time (see my other example, about the guy who beat someone to death over a hockey game).
Legally, that was not a case of murder.
OJ Simpson got away with nothing.
OJ Simpson was found innocent in a court of law by a jury. You might disagree with the verdict, but the fact of the matter is that you can't punish someone under those circumstances and have anything resembling a legal system.
Regarding the current lawsuit, the article clearly says that no harm was actually done to the satellite companies. His device was never released, thus there's no justification for ANY sentence against him, nor any punitive damages.
I am sorry but you are wrong here. If I run a drug lab or grow weed in my back yard I certainly can go to jail regardless of whether or not I actually get the stuff to market. The guy was involved in a conspiracy to manufacture and sell a clearly illegal device, and pleaded guilty to the crime.
OK, let's forget about the $500/month payment and just focus on the FIVE YEARS in prison for a crime he never actually committed.
If he never actually commited a crime, why did he plead guilty, heh? If I am on a street corner trying to sell something illegal, and the cops catch me, it doesn't matter if I actually sold anything - it's the offer to sell that is illegal.
No to mention that this guy is a repeat offender, having been convicted of satellite piracy in the past.
Child molesters have gotten away with less time than 5 years.
Possible but very unlikely. Most states have a minimum penalty for child molestation at 40-40 years.
McDonald's only had to pay several million dollars to that woman who got 3rd degree burns on her private area because they made the coffee scalding hot so as to save money on coffee-beans.
The final amount on the McDonald's case was less than $1 million. Nobody has ever shown that the temperature was set high to save money on beans.
http://www.lectlaw.com/files/cur78.htm
This guy having to pay money to these crooks for something that he didn't even do is absurd.
How are these guys crooks? Satellite broadcasting is a perfectly legitimate business.
If he didn't do it, why did he plead guilty? Nor is he ever going to pay anything like $180 million. If he lives to age 88 he will pay $360,000.
I don't know where people are getting this baloney, the fact is that per capita income, purchasing power, etc. in the US is significantly better than anywhere else on earth.
Intellectual Controls is even WORSE than Intellectual Property; it implies that you can control what people think.
I agree that intellectual property is a bad term, but not for your reasons. It lumps together trademarks, patents, copyrights and trade secrets when in reality these areas of law have very little in common, and are often confused by people who really want to argue against one or the other making their arguments weak or flat out invalid. Patents themselves are such a broad area that you really need to restrict discussions about patents to particular types of patents, ie. composition, process, design, plant, etc.
The best solution is not the replace IP with something else, but rather recognize that these areas do not share anything in common and refrain from trying to lump them together.
But the difference is that we get most of what we pay back.
It's even better not paying in the first place - then you get ALL of it because it never leaves your hands. The other aspect of this is that you get to spend it how you want, rather than having the government decide how it is going to be spent.
Re:And in Europe ...
on
Working Hard?
·
· Score: 4, Informative
But here you get medical insurance and education for your kids when you're unemployed.
I'm not going to flame you, just point out the fact that you are utterly wrong; published statistics show that the average US worker outproduces the average Japanese worker by about $7/hr according to studies like the KILM. In fact the only two countries in the world that have a higher per hour productivity than the US are France and Belgium, and by relatively small margins. It is quite striking that the US is at the top in both hours worked and in per hour productivity, and is currently enjoying extremely rapid productivity growth.
In fact some economicists are blaming the current US slow job market on the very strong productivity gains over the past few years.
There's antimony arsenic aluminum selenium, And hydrogen and oxygen and nitrogen and rhenium, And nickel neodymium neptunium germanium, And iron americium ruthenium uranium. Europium zirconium lutetium vanadium, And lanthanum and osmium and astatine and radium, And gold protactinium and indium and gallium, And iodine and thorium and thulium and thallium. There's yttrium ytterbium actinium rubidium, And boron gadolinium niobium iridium, There's strontium and silicon and silver and samarium, And bismuth bromine lithium beryllium and barium.
There's holmium and helium and hafnium and erbium, And phosphorus and francium and fluorine and and terbium, And manganese and mercury, molybdenum magnesium, Dysprosium and scandium and cerium and cesium. And lead praseodymium and platinum plutonium Palladium promethium potassium polonium, And tantalum technetium titanium tellurium, And cadmium and calcium and chromium and curium.
There's sulfur, californium and fermium, berkelium, And also mendelevium einsteinium nobelium, And argon krypton neon radon xenon zinc and rhodium, And chlorine carbon cobalt copper tungsten tin and sodium.
These are the only ones of which the news has come to Harvard, And there may be many others but they haven't been discar-vard.
I wonder if Apple isn't shooting itself in the foot to a great extent here - to me a large part of the attractiveness of these machines is architectural - 64 bit, PCI-X, fast Firewire, etc.
Isn't using SPEC as the basis of comparison likely to be missing other performance differences between architectures? Don't these benchmarks generally sit in L2 cache?
Who else has a machine with AGP, PCI-X and a pair of 64 bit CPUs?
What I'd like to see as a basis of comparison is video manipulation tasks. These days that is the most time consuming thing I have to do, and it would seem to me that this architecture should excel at this sort of work.
i be lookin' for a patent on this here drawin' of a (insert big word of device that is waaay above our time and will most likely be invented in the future)"
It seems to me that Nimrod is the inventor if he has a drawing, regardless of whether or not he has a prototype. I mean, you can't expect any guy on the street to be able to build a communications satellite, can you? (Look up the case of Arthur C. Clarke's patent on Comm satellites).
Honestly now, how can we go about allowing people to patent methods of causing chemical reactions?
Are you joking? Much of what passes for modern technology is based on coming up with new methods of causing chemical reactions. Ever hear of the word catalyst? Do you know what the economic value of all the products made using catalysts is world wide? (Hint: Think trillions/year).
I thought patents were suppose to protect the developer/artist by ensuring that they get credit (i.e., recognition) for their original works or discoveries but not to ensure ongoing "profit streams".
I would suggest you should do some reading, starting with the US Constitution and perhaps the Cambridge Guide to The Material World.
If you read the descriptions, both patents can be applied to the act of lighting a fire with a match. Prior art, anyone?
Descriptions have NOTHING to do with what the patent covers. If you want to figure that out, you have to look at the claims.
IE.
What is claimed is:
1. A method for effecting a select high temperature reaction comprising:
a) generating high temperature plasma radiation,
b) directing said high temperature plasma radiation through a reaction zone,
c) continuously flowing particles of matter to said reaction zone,
d) transferring sufficient heat energy from the high temperature plasma in said reaction zone to said particles of said matter passing into said reaction zone to effect a high temperature reaction with respect to the matter of said particles and to cause the formation of a plurality of select products of reaction, and
e) continuously separating said select products of reaction form each other after flowing same downstream of said reaction zone.
and:
What is claimed is:
1. Chemical reaction apparatus comprising in combination:
(a) first means for forming a first stream of first matter and flowing said first matter in a given direction along a selected path,
(b) second means for generating a beam of collimated coherent radiation,
(c) third means for directing said collimated radiation beam along a path to cause it to intersect said stream of matter and to transfer sufficient energy of said beam to a quantity of said matter so as to effect a chemical change in said matter,
(d) fourth means for controlling the conveyance of said first matter after it has undergone a reaction as a result of the transfer of energy thereto from said radiation beam to carry the products of reaction to a select location.
---------------
In other words, given the priority dates for these inventions, there is not a lot of likelihood that you are going to find prior art.
Some people claimed that it would be advantageous to prohibit a person filing a patent, if they never would or could implement the invention of their own accord.
That would be stupid. We have many legitimate companies that do R&D (and have no interest in manufacturing) for hire and then license out the patent rights. This would put them out of business. Not to speak of what that would do to universities etc. that want to exercise patent rights.
Well, I think it would be tough to build a dual 3 GHz Xeon for significantly less than $3K, however if you drop back a bit in CPU speed, say to 2.66GHz, it isn't too hard to build a machine for $2K or so.
Slashdot Mirror
I really hope a lawyer will pick this up and appeal it.
Yeah, right. The guy pled guilty. How are you going to appeal that?
Child molesters have gotten away with 5 years.
I agree that should not happen. Most states have long minimum sentences for this sort of crime. That does not mean what this guy got was wrong.
Also, murderers have gotten about that much time (see my other example, about the guy who beat someone to death over a hockey game).
Legally, that was not a case of murder.
OJ Simpson got away with nothing.
OJ Simpson was found innocent in a court of law by a jury. You might disagree with the verdict, but the fact of the matter is that you can't punish someone under those circumstances and have anything resembling a legal system.
Regarding the current lawsuit, the article clearly says that no harm was actually done to the satellite companies. His device was never released, thus there's no justification for ANY sentence against him, nor any punitive damages.
I am sorry but you are wrong here. If I run a drug lab or grow weed in my back yard I certainly can go to jail regardless of whether or not I actually get the stuff to market. The guy was involved in a conspiracy to manufacture and sell a clearly illegal device, and pleaded guilty to the crime.
Not when they cop a plea to "child endangerment" or somesuch to avoid trial.
I don't think you will find many such cases.
Honestly, their quarterly profits are ~$1.4 billion dollars. I just don't see it...
Profits are very different from revenues. The satellite industry revenues are about $25 billion per year.
OK, let's forget about the $500/month payment and just focus on the FIVE YEARS in prison for a crime he never actually committed.
If he never actually commited a crime, why did he plead guilty, heh? If I am on a street corner trying to sell something illegal, and the cops catch me, it doesn't matter if I actually sold anything - it's the offer to sell that is illegal.
No to mention that this guy is a repeat offender, having been convicted of satellite piracy in the past.
Child molesters have gotten away with less time than 5 years.
Possible but very unlikely. Most states have a minimum penalty for child molestation at 40-40 years.
McDonald's only had to pay several million dollars to that woman who got 3rd degree burns on her private area because they made the coffee scalding hot so as to save money on coffee-beans.
The final amount on the McDonald's case was less than $1 million. Nobody has ever shown that the temperature was set high to save money on beans.
http://www.lectlaw.com/files/cur78.htm
This guy having to pay money to these crooks for something that he didn't even do is absurd.
How are these guys crooks? Satellite broadcasting is a perfectly legitimate business.
If he didn't do it, why did he plead guilty? Nor is he ever going to pay anything like $180 million. If he lives to age 88 he will pay $360,000.
We're working harder and getting less.
I don't know where people are getting this baloney, the fact is that per capita income, purchasing power, etc. in the US is significantly better than anywhere else on earth.
Here are the numbers:
http://www.demographia.com/db-ppp60+.htm
Correct me if I'm wrong, but here in NJ sales tax is 6%, and is cumulative.
You are completely wrong. The tax is paid only by the end user.
Intellectual Controls is even WORSE than Intellectual Property; it implies that you can control what people think.
I agree that intellectual property is a bad term, but not for your reasons. It lumps together trademarks, patents, copyrights and trade secrets when in reality these areas of law have very little in common, and are often confused by people who really want to argue against one or the other making their arguments weak or flat out invalid. Patents themselves are such a broad area that you really need to restrict discussions about patents to particular types of patents, ie. composition, process, design, plant, etc.
The best solution is not the replace IP with something else, but rather recognize that these areas do not share anything in common and refrain from trying to lump them together.
But the difference is that we get most of what we pay back.
It's even better not paying in the first place - then you get ALL of it because it never leaves your hands. The other aspect of this is that you get to spend it how you want, rather than having the government decide how it is going to be spent.
But here you get medical insurance and education for your kids when you're unemployed.
An a 17% VAT, higher personal income taxes, etc.
I know I'm going to get flamed big time for this
I'm not going to flame you, just point out the fact that you are utterly wrong; published statistics show that the average US worker outproduces the average Japanese worker by about $7/hr according to studies like the KILM. In fact the only two countries in the world that have a higher per hour productivity than the US are France and Belgium, and by relatively small margins. It is quite striking that the US is at the top in both hours worked and in per hour productivity, and is currently enjoying extremely rapid productivity growth.
In fact some economicists are blaming the current US slow job market on the very strong productivity gains over the past few years.
Not every parody. Tom Lehrer did it right:
There's antimony arsenic aluminum selenium,
And hydrogen and oxygen and nitrogen and rhenium,
And nickel neodymium neptunium germanium,
And iron americium ruthenium uranium.
Europium zirconium lutetium vanadium,
And lanthanum and osmium and astatine and radium,
And gold protactinium and indium and gallium,
And iodine and thorium and thulium and thallium.
There's yttrium ytterbium actinium rubidium,
And boron gadolinium niobium iridium,
There's strontium and silicon and silver and samarium,
And bismuth bromine lithium beryllium and barium.
There's holmium and helium and hafnium and erbium,
And phosphorus and francium and fluorine and and terbium,
And manganese and mercury, molybdenum magnesium,
Dysprosium and scandium and cerium and cesium.
And lead praseodymium and platinum plutonium
Palladium promethium potassium polonium,
And tantalum technetium titanium tellurium,
And cadmium and calcium and chromium and curium.
There's sulfur, californium and fermium, berkelium,
And also mendelevium einsteinium nobelium,
And argon krypton neon radon xenon zinc and rhodium,
And chlorine carbon cobalt copper tungsten tin and sodium.
These are the only ones of which the news has come to Harvard,
And there may be many others but they haven't been discar-vard.
You do realize that your patent will be expired 110 years before the satellite is built, don't you?
I wonder if Apple isn't shooting itself in the foot to a great extent here - to me a large part of the attractiveness of these machines is architectural - 64 bit, PCI-X, fast Firewire, etc.
Isn't using SPEC as the basis of comparison likely to be missing other performance differences between architectures? Don't these benchmarks generally sit in L2 cache?
Who else has a machine with AGP, PCI-X and a pair of 64 bit CPUs?
What I'd like to see as a basis of comparison is video manipulation tasks. These days that is the most time consuming thing I have to do, and it would seem to me that this architecture should excel at this sort of work.
i be lookin' for a patent on this here drawin' of a (insert big word of device that is waaay above our time and will most likely be invented in the future)"
It seems to me that Nimrod is the inventor if he has a drawing, regardless of whether or not he has a prototype. I mean, you can't expect any guy on the street to be able to build a communications satellite, can you? (Look up the case of Arthur C. Clarke's patent on Comm satellites).
Honestly now, how can we go about allowing people to patent methods of causing chemical reactions?
Are you joking? Much of what passes for modern technology is based on coming up with new methods of causing chemical reactions. Ever hear of the word catalyst? Do you know what the economic value of all the products made using catalysts is world wide? (Hint: Think trillions/year).
I thought patents were suppose to protect the developer/artist by ensuring that they get credit (i.e., recognition) for their original works or discoveries but not to ensure ongoing "profit streams".
I would suggest you should do some reading, starting with the US Constitution and perhaps the Cambridge Guide to The Material World.
If you read the descriptions, both patents can be applied to the act of lighting a fire with a match. Prior art, anyone?
:
Descriptions have NOTHING to do with what the patent covers. If you want to figure that out, you have to look at the claims.
IE.
What is claimed is:
1. A method for effecting a select high temperature reaction comprising:
a) generating high temperature plasma radiation,
b) directing said high temperature plasma radiation through a reaction zone,
c) continuously flowing particles of matter to said reaction zone,
d) transferring sufficient heat energy from the high temperature plasma in said reaction zone to said particles of said matter passing into said reaction zone to effect a high temperature reaction with respect to the matter of said particles and to cause the formation of a plurality of select products of reaction, and
e) continuously separating said select products of reaction form each other after flowing same downstream of said reaction zone.
and
What is claimed is:
1. Chemical reaction apparatus comprising in combination:
(a) first means for forming a first stream of first matter and flowing said first matter in a given direction along a selected path,
(b) second means for generating a beam of collimated coherent radiation,
(c) third means for directing said collimated radiation beam along a path to cause it to intersect said stream of matter and to transfer sufficient energy of said beam to a quantity of said matter so as to effect a chemical change in said matter,
(d) fourth means for controlling the conveyance of said first matter after it has undergone a reaction as a result of the transfer of energy thereto from said radiation beam to carry the products of reaction to a select location.
---------------
In other words, given the priority dates for these inventions, there is not a lot of likelihood that you are going to find prior art.
Some people claimed that it would be advantageous to prohibit a person filing a patent, if they never would or could implement the invention of their own accord.
That would be stupid. We have many legitimate companies that do R&D (and have no interest in manufacturing) for hire and then license out the patent rights. This would put them out of business. Not to speak of what that would do to universities etc. that want to exercise patent rights.
Yeah, how about *gasp* not letting people patent things unless they have *gasp* a complete prototype of what they WANT patented.
That was the law until about 1880 or so when the PTO got tired of all those little models hanging around.
It's been tried and was a dumb idea.
Anyone who cares about SPEC results (like scientific computing) is going to use the best compiler available.
Along those lines do we know that gcc is the best G5 compiler? Certainly Motorola had better compilers than gcc for the G3 and G4.
Intel should be penalized because they have better compilers?
Suppose you are like me and run Linux on your Intel boxes. What results are you going to get? The gcc results, that's what.
but strangely only to a SINGLE-CPU P4 machine?
Gee why could that be?
BECAUSE you can't have anything BUT a single P4 machine. There are no dual P4's - the chip just doesn't support multiprocessing.
Well, I think it would be tough to build a dual 3 GHz Xeon for significantly less than $3K, however if you drop back a bit in CPU speed, say to 2.66GHz, it isn't too hard to build a machine for $2K or so.
Whene I register for stuff online, I often use email addresses like sales@127.0.0.1