Refunds still imply someone to administer them. Thus you still have the overhead of a bureaucracy.
True, but the calculations needed under a consumption tax + prebate plan are much simpler than those needed under the spaghetti code that is the current tax system.
Refunds still imply that the government gets to hold your money, interest free, before giving it back to you.
That's a nice thing about the Fair Tax implementation- each household gets a prebate check at the beginning of each month... so we actually get an interest free loan from the government:)
Refunds still imply an arbitrariness to how much the gov't is going to give back.
There will always be an "arbitrariness" in a tax system, at least under a consumption tax, it is much more transparent than the mess of tax brackets and exemptions we currently have (and can be pegged to economic surveys about the minimum spending needed for a household of a give size to subsist).
Why not simply not tax this amount in the first place? As a bonus, we can do this in a principled (non-arbitrary) manner. Exempt food/clothes/medicine (the things most necessary to provide for our guaranteed right to life) from tax, and the things that "the poor" most need, and spend most of their money on, are more affordable. One simple universal rule based on principles of liberty, no bureaucracy needed, no waiting to get your own money back and you get to use it in the meantime.
Are you arguing for not taxing any food, clothing, or medicine at all for anyone? I wonder how much the sales tax on the remaining items would have to be adjusted to keep it revenue-neutral. Probably not much. Sounds interesting, and it would do away with the residual bureaucracy in the prebate system.
It is important to note, though, that this is the first time a filibuster has been used to prevent a vote for a judge that has enough votes to be affirmed if the vote were allowed to take place.
Of course, I think it's just luck of the draw that it happened to be the Democrats instead of the Republicans that used the filibuster this way first.
But this is the first time a filibuster has been used by either side to block a vote for a judicial appointment when the nominee has had enough votes to be affirmed if the vote would be allowed to take place. This aspect is unprecedented.
Oh, and I doubt the Supreme Court would get involved in the legality of internal Senate rules- the Supreme Court is typicaly averse to interfering with the internal workings of the other branches of the government. The filibuster option results from procedural rules made by the Senate, and do not result from the Constitution or any legistlature, therefore the Supreme Court does not have any basis for review.
Aside from whether or not it was based on an earlier short story (actually, I have a copy of the book around here somewhere, might as well dig it up....)
Ah, here we go:
According to the introduction (written by Clarke), "The Sentinel" contained the basic idea for 2001, but "the two bear the same relationship as an acorn and an oak tree". While the bulk of the novel was written before starting on the movie, he was finishing the final, final version while work on the movie was going on and there was some sharing of ideas both ways.
In fact, the movie appeared several months before the book:)
According to this, not much revenue has been lost in the past few years (and it's at roughly twice what it was ten years ago (I wonder how closely this correlates to the GDP)).
But as to the rest of your statement, why yes, that is exactly what that's like. No argument from me on that one.
With Bush's multiple rounds of slashing taxes, that means we have LESS to spend. We've got record budget deficits and we have to cut spending correspondingly. Period.
Of course spending is up over $100 billion for the same period, but we do indeed have MORE to spend, even if it isn't enough to cover the increase in outlays.
In this case, you need to notice that this patent claims the priority of a provisional application, filed Apr. 6, 2000. (A provisional applicaiton is a "place-holder" application that lets the inventor establish an earlier filing date, and then gives them a year to come in with an actual patent appplication, all with extra fees for this convenience, of course:)
As has been pointed out elsewhere, to be 100% sure that your prior art is "prior", it needs to be more than a year before that date (otherwise there is the possibility for the inventor to "swear back" their invention to before your prior art).
As has also been pointed out, the BeOS task bar sounds like a great piece of prior art, maybe not exactly close enough for a 102 rejection on all the claims, but certainly good enough to make a strong 103 rejection.
[102 rejection - invented by someone else; 103 rejection - obvious given existing art]
I (belatedly) posted about the same limitation, but until I read the opinion, I would assume that they ruled that this particular law does not compel a suspect to produce "papers", leaving open the question as to whether or not a law specifically worded to have that requirement would be valid.
Also, I'd be curious as to whether both the specific law and the opinion use the term "suspect" throughout, which would imply some (though minimal, to be sure) reason for suspicion by the officer in order for the law to apply.
Either way, kind of an icky ruling, it's just a question of how icky...
Actually, all you have to give is your name. The majority specifically said that this does not mean that you have to present any kind of official identification. At least according to their interpretation of the Nevada law in question:
In upholding his conviction and the mandatory identity-disclosure law, the majority justices also said the law only requires that a suspect disclose his or her name, rather than requiring production of a driver's license or other document.
From what I've read, many of the attackers use one of the tactics used in Somalia- use a woman or a child as a shield. As it stands now, in that situation the soldiers being attacked has two options- let himself get fired upon or return fire with the high likelihood of hitting the human shield.
Having a stun gun would give the soldier a much more attractive third option. Even if the human shield gets hit too, no permanent damage.
Unfortunately, all of those steps were encompassed in one claim, and claims cannot be broken apart like that. It really is a bit frustrating/silly, but if you have just one non-obvious innovation, you can pile a bunch of obvious variations on top of it and the whole thing will still be patentable.
I myself am unsure as to exactly how "inventive" this invention is... but it's much harder to prove something is obvious in the context of granting/rejecting a patent. Common sense doesn't necessarily apply, it has to be done by applying specific legal rules.
I haven't had a chance to read too many court cases involving patent litigation, but I would hope that judges would use their freer hand (as they get to "interpret" the law, whereas the USPTO has to enforce it as it is spelled out) to nullify blatantly bad patents.
Of course, to get even a ludicrous patent before a judge takes a certain ammount of resources that limits access to this form of redress.
> Not immediately obvious to an expert in the field
Actually, the standard used is "one of ordinary skill in the art".
And it looks like the patent is specific to recording events (in this case, sound events) to a file that's parsed into tracks on the fly, and then writing these tracks to media using several media recorders at the same time. So simply recording a live concert to a CD isn't covered by this patent.
All three examples you give are good prior art. (and might have been enough to prevent this patent from being issued as is, especially #1), but I just realized something- the initial application for the MS patent was filed Jan. 5, 1999.
That would antedate #1 (unless Apple could show that they had this feature developed if not released before MS had developed their feature).
I don't know about #2 & #3 though and unfortunately, those two don't map nearly as well as #1.
Still, you've made a much better argument against this patent then most. At least if this patent goes to the courts there'll be some ammunition against it.
I might be missing something, but what does that swing interface have to do with launching applications as described in the patent?
Both may have something to do with timing how long a button's been held down, but what's being done with that info and the context in which it occurs is completely different.
If you take the time to actually read what's claimed in this patent (on/.? yeah right...) this isn't as broad a patent as a lot of readers seem to think it is.
Basically, they've patented the following (all being done on a "limited resource computing device"):
Time how long an application launch button has been held down before it's released. If it's less than some threshold, launch the application associated with that button normally; if it's greater, then launch the application and automatically restore it to it's last known state.
Not ingenious, and of doubtful usefulness in my opinion, but certainly not as bad as patenting the very general "having the action of a button determined by how long the button was pressed" where that action could be anything.
Actually, this is likely to change in 2005- the proposed budget for next year would end fee diversion for the first time since 1990. There's a press release here
.
Of cousre, this is just a proposal and still needs the approval of Congress, and according to this
article, the FY 1998 budget proposal also did away with fee diversion but apparently didn't passed.
Slashdot Mirror
True, but the calculations needed under a consumption tax + prebate plan are much simpler than those needed under the spaghetti code that is the current tax system.
That's a nice thing about the Fair Tax implementation- each household gets a prebate check at the beginning of each month... so we actually get an interest free loan from the government
There will always be an "arbitrariness" in a tax system, at least under a consumption tax, it is much more transparent than the mess of tax brackets and exemptions we currently have (and can be pegged to economic surveys about the minimum spending needed for a household of a give size to subsist).
Are you arguing for not taxing any food, clothing, or medicine at all for anyone? I wonder how much the sales tax on the remaining items would have to be adjusted to keep it revenue-neutral. Probably not much. Sounds interesting, and it would do away with the residual bureaucracy in the prebate system.
It is important to note, though, that this is the first time a filibuster has been used to prevent a vote for a judge that has enough votes to be affirmed if the vote were allowed to take place.
Of course, I think it's just luck of the draw that it happened to be the Democrats instead of the Republicans that used the filibuster this way first.
But this is the first time a filibuster has been used by either side to block a vote for a judicial appointment when the nominee has had enough votes to be affirmed if the vote would be allowed to take place. This aspect is unprecedented.
Oh, and I doubt the Supreme Court would get involved in the legality of internal Senate rules- the Supreme Court is typicaly averse to interfering with the internal workings of the other branches of the government. The filibuster option results from procedural rules made by the Senate, and do not result from the Constitution or any legistlature, therefore the Supreme Court does not have any basis for review.
And even if the documents are retypings, they went to the trouble of faking the signature on it, which by itself is pretty damn untrustworthy.
Aside from whether or not it was based on an earlier short story (actually, I have a copy of the book around here somewhere, might as well dig it up....)
:)
Ah, here we go:
According to the introduction (written by Clarke), "The Sentinel" contained the basic idea for 2001, but "the two bear the same relationship as an acorn and an oak tree". While the bulk of the novel was written before starting on the movie, he was finishing the final, final version while work on the movie was going on and there was some sharing of ideas both ways.
In fact, the movie appeared several months before the book
According to this, not much revenue has been lost in the past few years (and it's at roughly twice what it was ten years ago (I wonder how closely this correlates to the GDP)).
But as to the rest of your statement, why yes, that is exactly what that's like. No argument from me on that one.
See my post below
Apparently from Oct - Jun, federal revenue is up over $47 billion over the same period last year. (But spending has increased by over $100 billion).
I had heard that the deficit was decreasing due to increased revenue but the page I linked below was the only hard data I could find for 2003/2004.
To-date this fiscal year, revenue is up over $47 billion compared to last year: http://www.fms.treas.gov/mts/mts0604.txt
Of course spending is up over $100 billion for the same period, but we do indeed have MORE to spend, even if it isn't enough to cover the increase in outlays.
If you want to get pedantic about it :) ...
:)
In this case, you need to notice that this patent claims the priority of a provisional application, filed Apr. 6, 2000. (A provisional applicaiton is a "place-holder" application that lets the inventor establish an earlier filing date, and then gives them a year to come in with an actual patent appplication, all with extra fees for this convenience, of course
As has been pointed out elsewhere, to be 100% sure that your prior art is "prior", it needs to be more than a year before that date (otherwise there is the possibility for the inventor to "swear back" their invention to before your prior art).
As has also been pointed out, the BeOS task bar sounds like a great piece of prior art, maybe not exactly close enough for a 102 rejection on all the claims, but certainly good enough to make a strong 103 rejection.
[102 rejection - invented by someone else; 103 rejection - obvious given existing art]
I (belatedly) posted about the same limitation, but until I read the opinion, I would assume that they ruled that this particular law does not compel a suspect to produce "papers", leaving open the question as to whether or not a law specifically worded to have that requirement would be valid.
Also, I'd be curious as to whether both the specific law and the opinion use the term "suspect" throughout, which would imply some (though minimal, to be sure) reason for suspicion by the officer in order for the law to apply.
Either way, kind of an icky ruling, it's just a question of how icky...
From what I've read, many of the attackers use one of the tactics used in Somalia- use a woman or a child as a shield. As it stands now, in that situation the soldiers being attacked has two options- let himself get fired upon or return fire with the high likelihood of hitting the human shield.
Having a stun gun would give the soldier a much more attractive third option. Even if the human shield gets hit too, no permanent damage.
Actually, this is a continuation of application 09/226,031, filed Jan. 5, 1999, so that's the date to beat.
:)
And finding an example of simple double-clicking won't help.
See this thread from the last time this article was posted
Unfortunately, all of those steps were encompassed in one claim, and claims cannot be broken apart like that. It really is a bit frustrating/silly, but if you have just one non-obvious innovation, you can pile a bunch of obvious variations on top of it and the whole thing will still be patentable.
I myself am unsure as to exactly how "inventive" this invention is... but it's much harder to prove something is obvious in the context of granting/rejecting a patent. Common sense doesn't necessarily apply, it has to be done by applying specific legal rules.
I haven't had a chance to read too many court cases involving patent litigation, but I would hope that judges would use their freer hand (as they get to "interpret" the law, whereas the USPTO has to enforce it as it is spelled out) to nullify blatantly bad patents.
Of course, to get even a ludicrous patent before a judge takes a certain ammount of resources that limits access to this form of redress.
> Not immediately obvious to an expert in the field
Actually, the standard used is "one of ordinary skill in the art".
And it looks like the patent is specific to recording events (in this case, sound events) to a file that's parsed into tracks on the fly, and then writing these tracks to media using several media recorders at the same time. So simply recording a live concert to a CD isn't covered by this patent.
All three examples you give are good prior art. (and might have been enough to prevent this patent from being issued as is, especially #1), but I just realized something- the initial application for the MS patent was filed Jan. 5, 1999.
That would antedate #1 (unless Apple could show that they had this feature developed if not released before MS had developed their feature).
I don't know about #2 & #3 though and unfortunately, those two don't map nearly as well as #1.
Still, you've made a much better argument against this patent then most. At least if this patent goes to the courts there'll be some ammunition against it.
I might be missing something, but what does that swing interface have to do with launching applications as described in the patent?
Both may have something to do with timing how long a button's been held down, but what's being done with that info and the context in which it occurs is completely different.
If you take the time to actually read what's claimed in this patent (on /.? yeah right...) this isn't as broad a patent as a lot of readers seem to think it is.
Basically, they've patented the following (all being done on a "limited resource computing device"):
Not ingenious, and of doubtful usefulness in my opinion, but certainly not as bad as patenting the very general "having the action of a button determined by how long the button was pressed" where that action could be anything.
Of cousre, this is just a proposal and still needs the approval of Congress, and according to this article, the FY 1998 budget proposal also did away with fee diversion but apparently didn't passed.
Plug in some numbers and find out :)
copper