You are misinformed. McVeigh was only charged with 8 counts of murder even though he killed 168 people. He was charged with the murder of the 8 federal officers, this was sufficient when convicted to get him the death penalty.
Yes. That is absolutely correct.
In the case of multiple homicides especially prosecuters will hold back counts if they would not increase the penalty and leaving them out do not affect the case. For example, if a mother drowns her 5 children you first carge and try her for 2 counts of murder. If for some reason she is aquitted you can charge her with the other counts. There is no double jeopardy in this case.
Nope, you are absolutely wrong here. You must charge all of the crimes following out of a single act at the same time. You cannot bring two charges against a mother and then see if she is convicted on those two, and then file for the other three if she got off. McVeigh was slightly different because there were both state and federal claims against him. The eight murders he was first convicted of were brought in federal court. The federal DA couldn't charge him of the state law crimes of murder, so there is no due process violation, and the trials must be difurcated.
Check out Newegg for a pretty good selection of stuff. They don't have the best return policies, but they are a pretty good place. I also suggest looking at Anandtech for the motherboard/memory/video roundups which give the best prices for certain components. The places he references are usually higher quality than the lowball offerings given on Pricewatch.
Slightly Off-topic, but if you like 3-cushion, you should check out the website of the Carom Cafe. The site is all flash, but it is an amazing site showing recreations of masters shots and runs in 3 cushion.
But the threat of liability doesn't really exist if the patent holder doesn't have the resources to sue. If an average suit costs over $1 million, a little guy probably does not have the resources to make a credible threat to sue. Meanwhile, there are limits on damages in a patent infringement case.
Bzzzt....wrong again. You can find a patent firm who will accept the case on a contingency basis if you have a decent claim.
Damages are limited to profits for lost sales, plus a reasonable royalty on sales that the holder couldn't have made.
That is not necessarily true. There are quite a few ways to determine the monetary amount you should get for infringment. However, monetary rewards are almost never the killer part of an award. An injunction can kill a company. That is why companies never sue immediately when someone violates their patent. They make sure that the violator invests in the patented technology, and then they go for an injunction. Because the violator will have to (usually) spend a lot of money to reimplement around the injunction, the patent holder can extract a lot of money from the violator for a license to the patent.
Although it has never been mentioned much by the press, the Fed. Cir. decision in this case really killed foreign patent applications. This case is a typical example of what might cause problems. You have a company who has a patent in another country (in another language), and they send their foreign patent application over to the US to get filed. So they get someone to do a translation of their patent, and then just submit this translation to the patent office. However, this translation is not a valid patent, so the patent lawyer amends the patent to get it into shape. Most of the time, those amendments are not giving up art, which makes sense as to where you would want estoppel in doctrine of equiv., but they are just fixing wording and semantics. If you follow the "any reason related to patentability" regime, then the foreign filers would be killed, because they were changing it to fix the patentability of the application, but it was not a change to the claimed art covered.
The one job that they didn't mention, which is EXTREMELY hot right now, is pharmacy. The booming number of elderly and the decreasing number of pharmacists has made the field extremely hot. I have even heard advertisements on the radio for pharmacists to switch to a different drug store. New pharmacists make can make aroun 90K a year.
For all o fyou who are gettin X-Files withdrawal, I would suggest that you watch the best Sunday night show (and possible overall show) that is on now, Six Feet Under. It is a show that has a few things that are sorely lacking on most shows. 1) Plot. 2) Emotion. 3) Interesting (understatement) characters. I don't know if HBO is going to be doing reruns, as the final episode for the season is showing in two weeks. But I highly recommend watching this show if you can.
Actually, you are flamebaiting a bit. One main difference between linux and windows is that the development and testing for linux is done in the open. So you can install a development or a testing kernel if you would like. Linux just gives you more options. If a kernel is working fine for what you are doing, then don't upgrade unless there is a security issue.
Please tell me how it is any worse than using Windows?
Please tell me how the Digital Millineum Copyright Act is going to cause him problems when all he is doing is (questionably) vioalting their trademark. There are absolutely no copyright violations on his site that I could see. I think it just denegrates your own position to complain about the DMCA when it was never claimed to apply, and it obviously doesn't apply. Go whine somewhere else.
The problem is that the government has to waste several hours tracking down the judge to get the warrant signed.
This addition allows the government to get the permission of the owner of the computer to listen in on what someone is saying. I do not doubt that the FBI would be able to get the warrant. But why should they? If someone breaks into your house, and you see them snooping around, do you want the FBI to have to get a warrant to go into your house? Or should they just get your permission?
I think that way to many people have no idea how law enforcement actually works most of the time, and they just get blinded by the few times that stupid people in the govt. do stupid things.
I agree that law enforcement should have limits on what they can do, but I don't think that they should have artificial barriers put in place that prevent them from doing their job, while only protecting non-existant rights.
I know that it is against the grain here at Slashdot, but how many people here have actually read the provisions in the USA PATRIOT act? After hearing everyone on here complain and complain about it, I was sure that it was going to be a crock when I actually started analyzing it. Personally, I like almost all of the changes that the Act introduced, and I have been amazed at the clarity that the bill has.
For example: The computer tresspass statute. This statute says that law enforcement doesn't have to get a warrant to eavesdrop on a computer tresspasser if they have the permission of the owner of the computer (very generalized). Think about what the problem was here. Somebody calls the FBI and says that a hacker had broken into their computer. The FBI could not watch what the hacker did on the computer, even with the permission of the owner of the computer, because it was assumed that it violated the privacy of the hacker. Come on. You have to admit that is pretty silly. Do you want the FBI to have to take several hours to draft and get a warrant signed in a situation such as that?
Next, much of the changes in how email is handled was changed so that the laws are the same with email as it is with telephone. It is pretty easy for the FBI to find out who you are emailing. But it takes quite a bit more work for them to actually read your email. This is congruant to the ability of the FBI to get a Pen tap/trace on a telephone to find out who you are calling, compared to requiring a warrant to actually listen in on your calls.
It is amazing to note people's perception of the DoJ. The FBI and the US Attorneys are not some huge govt. agency listening in on everyones phone calls and reading everyones email. They are an overworked, underpaid agency doing its best to combat crime within a wierd, confusing legal system. Of course they overstep their bounds sometimes, but the amount of good work that they do with the miniscule resources and respect they have is amazing.
The fact that such a waste of the taxpayers' money was able to go through the system indicates just how easy it is to do.
This is not a waste of taxpayers money. The USPTO funds itself on the fees people pay to file and maintain patents. The USPTO made money by allowing the patent. This patent doesn't hurt the public in any way, and it is obviously a joke.
PsPrEditor writes: "Yahoo announced that Slashdot Released an API last Monday. "The service, launched Monday, is called SlashPI. It will allow users to remove duplicate stories that have been plaguing/. for the past year. ""
A step towards helping this would be if the courts took an example from (e.g.) English courts, where it's much more usual for the loser to pay both sides' legal costs.
After starting off with a good explanation of why people settle, you offer a solution which just makes it worse. If the loser has to pay the other's attorney's fees, then people will settle even sooner because the amount of money they could lose is significantly higher. Example: lets say that example company R sues other company I for patent infringement. R sues I for $10 million dollars. I knows that the patent is silly. If they fight the patent, they will have to spend $2 million for lawyers (as will their opponents). Now if I wins, they will lose nothing, but if they lose the case, they will have to pay $14 million ($10mil judgement + 2 mil. lawyers + 2 mil. other lawyers). This sort of distribution of costs makes it harder for companies to know how much a lawsuit will cost, and most companies being risk adverse, they will settle to avoid the lawsuit.
Simple enough answer: you didn't implement the idea, you don't get damages. You can stop people from using your idea, and you can negotiate to license or sell it, but what you can't do is negotiate using the threat of an insanely huge lawsuit.
Mostly I agree with this. What happens if you were working on implementing an idea, but someone else comes out and uses your patent, and they destroy your market. Ie. you have a patent on a widget. Joe Bob reads your patent and starts selling the widgets, and everyone who wants a widget has already bought one. Now you sue Joe Bob, and he can't sell them any more. What are you going to do with your $30 million dollar widget factory?
For those of you who don't know much about patent litigation (ie almost all of/.), this hearing had NOTHING to do with the validity of the patent. In all patent suits these days, there is a preliminary hearing called a Markman hearing where the judge determines what the scope is of the claims(the important part) of the patent. If the judge decides them to be overly broad, it can hurt the patentee because it will make them easier to invalidate with prior art. As of this point, the judge (and/or jury) have not looked at the prior art at all.
Hmmm...IANALY, but what this means is that Sourceforge.net will follow the law. It means that if someone posts copyrighted material without authorization, they will take down that material (as required by law of a common carrier).
All that would do is make it so that the only people who can run for office are those who have enough wealth to not work for a couple of years. This would increase the power of the rich in the government by making them the only ones who can become politicians.
Or you could try not trolling and read the actual article. The author
talks about whether or not this could be done in OpenBSD as well because
of its good kernel level firewall utilities.
Your spelling mistake actually is much closer to the truth than what you really intended. Other people are whining, not winning. I hate to tell you, but I don't know anyone who uses eudora anymore. Pretty much everyone uses some flavor of Outlook (or possibly Netscape Messenger).
Corporations use either Outlook, Lotus Notes, or Groupwise(bleh). Most companies are moving
away from the latter and moving towards the former.
Actually, you can't be tried on the same case twice in civil law
either. However, the difference between civil law and criminal law
is that in civil law, the plaintiff can be anyone, while in criminal law,
only the government can bring the case.
Slashdot Mirror
You are misinformed. McVeigh was only charged with 8 counts of murder even though he killed 168 people. He was charged with the murder of the 8 federal officers, this was sufficient when convicted to get him the death penalty.
Yes. That is absolutely correct.
In the case of multiple homicides especially prosecuters will hold back counts if they would not increase the penalty and leaving them out do not affect the case. For example, if a mother drowns her 5 children you first carge and try her for 2 counts of murder. If for some reason she is aquitted you can charge her with the other counts. There is no double jeopardy in this case.
Nope, you are absolutely wrong here. You must charge all of the crimes following out of a single act at the same time. You cannot bring two charges against a mother and then see if she is convicted on those two, and then file for the other three if she got off. McVeigh was slightly different because there were both state and federal claims against him. The eight murders he was first convicted of were brought in federal court. The federal DA couldn't charge him of the state law crimes of murder, so there is no due process violation, and the trials must be difurcated.
Check out Newegg for a pretty good selection of stuff. They don't have the best return policies, but they are a pretty good place. I also suggest looking at Anandtech for the motherboard/memory/video roundups which give the best prices for certain components. The places he references are usually higher quality than the lowball offerings given on Pricewatch.
Slightly Off-topic, but if you like 3-cushion, you should check out the website of the Carom Cafe. The site is all flash, but it is an amazing site showing recreations of masters shots and runs in 3 cushion.
Patents, no matter what else is wrong with them, have the good grace to expire 20 years after being issued.
Actually, it is 20 years after they were filed. It used to be 17 years after issuance, but no more.
But the threat of liability doesn't really exist if the patent holder doesn't have the resources to sue. If an average suit costs over $1 million, a little guy probably does not have the resources to make a credible threat to sue. Meanwhile, there are limits on damages in a patent infringement case.
Bzzzt....wrong again. You can find a patent firm who will accept the case on a contingency basis if you have a decent claim.
Damages are limited to profits for lost sales, plus a reasonable royalty on sales that the holder couldn't have made.
That is not necessarily true. There are quite a few ways to determine the monetary amount you should get for infringment. However, monetary rewards are almost never the killer part of an award. An injunction can kill a company. That is why companies never sue immediately when someone violates their patent. They make sure that the violator invests in the patented technology, and then they go for an injunction. Because the violator will have to (usually) spend a lot of money to reimplement around the injunction, the patent holder can extract a lot of money from the violator for a license to the patent.
Although it has never been mentioned much by the press, the Fed. Cir. decision in this case really killed foreign patent applications. This case is a typical example of what might cause problems. You have a company who has a patent in another country (in another language), and they send their foreign patent application over to the US to get filed. So they get someone to do a translation of their patent, and then just submit this translation to the patent office. However, this translation is not a valid patent, so the patent lawyer amends the patent to get it into shape. Most of the time, those amendments are not giving up art, which makes sense as to where you would want estoppel in doctrine of equiv., but they are just fixing wording and semantics. If you follow the "any reason related to patentability" regime, then the foreign filers would be killed, because they were changing it to fix the patentability of the application, but it was not a change to the claimed art covered.
Because they are US patents being enforced on products sold in the US?
The one job that they didn't mention, which is EXTREMELY hot right now, is pharmacy. The booming number of elderly and the decreasing number of pharmacists has made the field extremely hot. I have even heard advertisements on the radio for pharmacists to switch to a different drug store. New pharmacists make can make aroun 90K a year.
For all o fyou who are gettin X-Files withdrawal, I would suggest that you watch the best Sunday night show (and possible overall show) that is on now, Six Feet Under. It is a show that has a few things that are sorely lacking on most shows. 1) Plot. 2) Emotion. 3) Interesting (understatement) characters. I don't know if HBO is going to be doing reruns, as the final episode for the season is showing in two weeks. But I highly recommend watching this show if you can.
Actually, you are flamebaiting a bit. One main difference between linux and windows is that the development and testing for linux is done in the open. So you can install a development or a testing kernel if you would like. Linux just gives you more options. If a kernel is working fine for what you are doing, then don't upgrade unless there is a security issue.
Please tell me how it is any worse than using Windows?
Please tell me how the Digital Millineum Copyright Act is going to cause him problems when all he is doing is (questionably) vioalting their trademark. There are absolutely no copyright violations on his site that I could see. I think it just denegrates your own position to complain about the DMCA when it was never claimed to apply, and it obviously doesn't apply. Go whine somewhere else.
The problem is that the government has to waste several hours tracking down the judge to get the warrant signed.
This addition allows the government to get the permission of the owner of the computer to listen in on what someone is saying. I do not doubt that the FBI would be able to get the warrant. But why should they? If someone breaks into your house, and you see them snooping around, do you want the FBI to have to get a warrant to go into your house? Or should they just get your permission?
I think that way to many people have no idea how law enforcement actually works most of the time, and they just get blinded by the few times that stupid people in the govt. do stupid things.
I agree that law enforcement should have limits on what they can do, but I don't think that they should have artificial barriers put in place that prevent them from doing their job, while only protecting non-existant rights.
I know that it is against the grain here at Slashdot, but how many people here have actually read the provisions in the USA PATRIOT act? After hearing everyone on here complain and complain about it, I was sure that it was going to be a crock when I actually started analyzing it. Personally, I like almost all of the changes that the Act introduced, and I have been amazed at the clarity that the bill has.
For example:
The computer tresspass statute. This statute says that law enforcement doesn't have to get a warrant to eavesdrop on a computer tresspasser if they have the permission of the owner of the computer (very generalized). Think about what the problem was here. Somebody calls the FBI and says that a hacker had broken into their computer. The FBI could not watch what the hacker did on the computer, even with the permission of the owner of the computer, because it was assumed that it violated the privacy of the hacker. Come on. You have to admit that is pretty silly. Do you want the FBI to have to take several hours to draft and get a warrant signed in a situation such as that?
Next, much of the changes in how email is handled was changed so that the laws are the same with email as it is with telephone. It is pretty easy for the FBI to find out who you are emailing. But it takes quite a bit more work for them to actually read your email. This is congruant to the ability of the FBI to get a Pen tap/trace on a telephone to find out who you are calling, compared to requiring a warrant to actually listen in on your calls.
It is amazing to note people's perception of the DoJ. The FBI and the US Attorneys are not some huge govt. agency listening in on everyones phone calls and reading everyones email. They are an overworked, underpaid agency doing its best to combat crime within a wierd, confusing legal system. Of course they overstep their bounds sometimes, but the amount of good work that they do with the miniscule resources and respect they have is amazing.
I for one say good job!
The fact that such a waste of the taxpayers' money was able to go through the system indicates just how easy it is to do.
This is not a waste of taxpayers money. The USPTO funds itself on the fees people pay to file and maintain patents. The USPTO made money by allowing the patent. This patent doesn't hurt the public in any way, and it is obviously a joke.
GET A SENSE OF HUMOR!
PsPrEditor writes: "Yahoo announced that Slashdot Released an API last Monday. "The service, launched Monday, is called SlashPI. It will allow users to remove duplicate stories that have been plaguing /. for the past year. ""
How about for violating AOL's patents on moderating online forums: 6336133.
Gotta love it.
A step towards helping this would be if the courts took an example from (e.g.) English courts, where it's much more usual for the loser to pay both sides' legal costs.
After starting off with a good explanation of why people settle, you offer a solution which just makes it worse. If the loser has to pay the other's attorney's fees, then people will settle even sooner because the amount of money they could lose is significantly higher. Example: lets say that example company R sues other company I for patent infringement. R sues I for $10 million dollars. I knows that the patent is silly. If they fight the patent, they will have to spend $2 million for lawyers (as will their opponents). Now if I wins, they will lose nothing, but if they lose the case, they will have to pay $14 million ($10mil judgement + 2 mil. lawyers + 2 mil. other lawyers). This sort of distribution of costs makes it harder for companies to know how much a lawsuit will cost, and most companies being risk adverse, they will settle to avoid the lawsuit. Simple enough answer: you didn't implement the idea, you don't get damages. You can stop people from using your idea, and you can negotiate to license or sell it, but what you can't do is negotiate using the threat of an insanely huge lawsuit.
Mostly I agree with this. What happens if you were working on implementing an idea, but someone else comes out and uses your patent, and they destroy your market. Ie. you have a patent on a widget. Joe Bob reads your patent and starts selling the widgets, and everyone who wants a widget has already bought one. Now you sue Joe Bob, and he can't sell them any more. What are you going to do with your $30 million dollar widget factory?
For those of you who don't know much about patent litigation (ie almost all of /.), this hearing had NOTHING to do with the validity of the patent. In all patent suits these days, there is a preliminary hearing called a Markman hearing where the judge determines what the scope is of the claims(the important part) of the patent. If the judge decides them to be overly broad, it can hurt the patentee because it will make them easier to invalidate with prior art. As of this point, the judge (and/or jury) have not looked at the prior art at all.
Hmmm...IANALY, but what this means is that Sourceforge.net will follow the law. It means that if someone posts copyrighted material without authorization, they will take down that material (as required by law of a common carrier).
All that would do is make it so that the only people who can run for office are those who have enough wealth to not work for a couple of years. This would increase the power of the rich in the government by making them the only ones who can become politicians.
Or you could try not trolling and read the actual article. The author
talks about whether or not this could be done in OpenBSD as well because
of its good kernel level firewall utilities.
Res Judicata only attaches if there was a decision on the merits of the case.
Here, there obviously wasn't.
Please mod this up. This is exactly right.
Your spelling mistake actually is much closer to the truth than what you really intended. Other people are whining, not winning. I hate to tell you, but I don't know anyone who uses eudora anymore. Pretty much everyone uses some flavor of Outlook (or possibly Netscape Messenger).
Corporations use either Outlook, Lotus Notes, or Groupwise(bleh). Most companies are moving
away from the latter and moving towards the former.
Actually, you can't be tried on the same case twice in civil law
either. However, the difference between civil law and criminal law
is that in civil law, the plaintiff can be anyone, while in criminal law,
only the government can bring the case.
Who is bringing the suit does matter.