My understanding (almost all from Groklaw) is that if the accuser actually tries to impede the accused from fixing the problem, it counts against you, legally. Whether it goes so far as to invalidate your patents, or merely reduces damages owed, I don't remember. I think there is some legal aspect to how much you can collect in damages; you can't collect damages from before the announcement date, perhaps.
Presumably the "announcement" has to actually enumerate which patents are being infringed, how and who is doing it. A vague reference hardly counts. Since there is no way in which this provides any information to an infringer on how to even attempt to fix the problem.
While that may be true, it's also true (or alleged to be true) that Senator McCarthy held up a blank sheet of paper when he first claimed he had names of Communist conspirators/spies.
Furthermore, many of the people who were publicly humiliated and accused of being Communists were in fact nothing of the sort. Unfortunately, the problem with defamation is that once the slander/libel is out there, it's really hard to retract. Especially if the party making the outrageous claims is a respected Senator who gets to mobilize government resources to harass people. McCarthy's abuse of the system was his way to attack political opponents, not get rid of real Communist spies.
If he did actually accuse any actual communist spies it would be more along the lines of "even a blind squirrel sometimes finds a nut". Witch hunts tend to be almost entirely political. As with the current "war on terror" where some people are arrested with minimal evidence simply because of their ethnicity/religion, whereas people who's actions give much more cause for concern are ignored (even assisted) by authorities.
While it's quite probable that there are some real patent violations in the Linux kernel and in the source code of various GNU tools, that's about all you can say. Whether these infringed patents are even valid is another matter -- and you can certainly bet that FOSS authors are going to go after at least some of Microsoft's patent claims on the grounds that the patents are invalid. For each patent that gets invalidated, Microsoft's patent portfolio becomes just a little bit less valuable..
In some cases the OSS code might well be the "prior art" which invalidates the patent. There is also the possibility that any actual patent infringements are not those Microsoft is making a fuss about...
It is really implausible to tell someone they own you X amount of money and not tell them why. If they sent you a bill for say $500.00 would you expect them to also include the reason why you owned them the $500 or would you just pay them?
Only a fool would be likely to pay, assuming said fool actually (still) had the money to pay. Even if there was a reason given you'd want to check that it was actually valid...
Someone high up at Microsoft has vowed to "f*cking kill linux". After long thought they decide that now is the time and that the best way to proceed is through patent lawsuits.
However can they actually file a suit without specifically identifying the patents and alleged violations? Something they don't apperently wish to do.
This of course will anger the companies that have interest in linux and many of them hold their own patents which, by the nature of software patents, might or are infringed on by MS itself.
There's also a risk of Microsoft being accused of copyright violations.
the collapse of the tech industry from all the businesses going under due to the iron clad resolution that individual software procedures can be patented and not just whole programs.
You mean the collapse of the tech industry in the USA (and any other countries stupid enough to allow software patents).
In essence, MicroSoft might be aware that in this case, it would be the absolute ruler of a dead industry with corporate few players left to buy its software, and throngs of home users simply abandoning computers because Windows is too friggin expensive and it's (in that scenario) the only way to use a computer.
Or the US would get the majority of it's software from Canada and Mexico. With the Western US Canadian border being strengthened to keep Microsoft away from Canada.
Can I just say, they would have gotten what they deserved. You threaten somebody's life, even if you know it's not a real threat, then whatever that person does to defend themselves is justified.
In the same way that someone can be convicted of "armed robbery" even if they just say they have a gun...
Likewise, I'd like to see most of that money they're wasting on homeland security spent on highway improvements,
Quite a bit of that money appears to have ended up in various people's back pockets, without even any "security theater" to show for it.
like guard rails, particularly on exit ramps. Forty thousand people die on US highways every single year,
One of the factors involved in car "accidents" is risk perception. Make things appear safer and drivers are apt to take more risks. e.g. fit a car with better brakes and drivers are likely to brake later. Thus with guard rails you really want something fragile looking which can stop a small truck...
Priorities are as ass-backwards as our other laws; drug laws, for instance. The most deadly and addictive drug known to man, tobacco, is legal, while Marijuana, which has no lethal dose and has been recently shown to PREVENT cancer is a felony.
There are plenty of legal drugs which are highly dangerous. e.g. those with a very narrow "theraputic index". A lot of the time dangers from illegal drugs actually come from being supplied by criminals and of unknown purity. As shown with alcohol prohibition is a completly ineffective policy.
Of course, since pot makes you lazy, industry is dead set against it!
Probably also that there is no big industry promoting Marijuana.
I attended only one year in a US high school and it was appalling: everyone, including the teachers only talked and cared about sports, other extracurricular activities, prom, and other pointless shit like that. I was there as sophomore and I ended up tutoring seniors in math and physics and I wasn't even that good in my country (Russia).
Just as well you didn't end up tutoring them in English (or Spanish) that would have been even more daft...
For fuck's sake, those are teachers. Not some oddball nutjobs, or science wizards in their ivory tower, who have no connection with the emotional makeup of kids. Those are the people we send our kids to, every single day, to learn things.
Maybe these people should no longer be teachers. Even after they have served their prison sentences for terrorism.
The point of drills is not to educate on what to do when you're scared, the point is to educate on what to do in this specific situation. Take fire drills, for example: are students tricked into thinking their school is burning down? No, of course not. The point of the drill is to inculcate the directions that all students must follow in order to avoid chaos.
Actually fire drills can be carried out using smoke machines and pyrotechnics,
Seeing this story makes me think of Aqua Teen Hunger Force LED-pranksters and the Boston Police. The ATHF-pranksters are being held to task because of the over-reation of the Boston authorities.
They probably shouldn't even be called "pranksters", given that their intent was advertising.
But now we have an ACTUAL case of terrorism. In this case, these teachers *actually* terrorized these students. There motivation matters not.
N.B. Terrorism does not require any actual weapons.
These teachers should be drawn and quartered for their ACTUAL act of abuse of these children.
Or at least treated according to whatever the law says with respect to terrorist suspects. Isn't 69 witnesses enough for an arrest? The one who apparently acted out the part of the "gunman" should consider him or her self lucky there were no armed adults about.
The war on drugs is a miserable failure. So please find another parable
A "war on spam" might actually work better than "war on drugs" simply because there are liklely to be far fewer people who wants spam than want various drugs.
the whole enviroment that these people thrive in is made possible by MS Windows and its' horrible security. why don't we start screaming about fixing the root cause of the problem ?
Thing is that there are plenty of people who appear to think that Microsoft's bluring the line between user & administrator or having a "monoculture" environment is a good thing.
It's much like trying to take someone's drivers license away. Even if they have been charged multiple times with drunk driving, they are able to get their license back, because it's something they "need".
IIRC it is also possible, in the US, for people to lose their license for reasons unrelated to driving...
In some situations a car is needed, but if you continually show that you aren't going to be responsible, then you really think you have the need for a car.
Even in the US there are plenty of places where a need for someone to have their own car is hard to demonstrate. One way in which this analogy fails is that no-one has to pass even the most basic of tests before connecting a computer to the Internet.
And that's exactly where the kink comes in. In the case of FOSS, *anybody* can make it and distribute it, even for sale. The day you round up your source code and recompile it and distribute it as a new distro, what's really the legal difference between you and Red Hat or Ubuntu?
The majority of these people (both real and corporate) are in places where Microsoft's patents don't apply in the first place. Even in places where software patents might be valid the article dosn't actually list the patents in question.
The problem is that if they are wrong, they can be in more trouble then they are now. I would suggest creating a fake company in some arena outside the US's reach and then pumping donations to this company for this explicit reason.
You'd best first take out a patent on doing that. So that Microsoft couldn't use the same technique.
For me, the creepiest part of Scientology is the 'fair game' policy - that if you're a critic of Scientology, a 'suppressive person', the group gives its members carte blanche to attack you.
Plenty of political and religious groups do this kind of thing. Though the language might vary somewhat.
It's not like it's the first time religion has been used to swindle the masses -- hell televangelists have been doing that for YEARS.
Also know as the "send us money so we can keep telling you to send us money" brigade. Also IIRC the "Praise the Lord Network" was nicknamed the "Pass the Loot Network", including by some insiders.
Is anything they do really that much worse than Islamic Fundamentalism or the Evangelical Christians here in the USA? I can't really think of a good argument that the Scientologists are any worse. And they're mostly harmless, which is more than you can say for those other guys.
You missed out the Zionists, even though they can't decide if they are religious or not half the time, they are a rather nasty bunch with connections to a fair few "religious nutcases".
Of course, I recognize that religion in general is superstitious claptrap that can be detrimental to humanity at large. I also recognize the average human's need to explain the world around him and comfort him when he loses loved ones or confronts death. Therefore my regime would outlaw all organized religion except for a mandatory state-run one which involves Smurfs.
You'd need to ammend the US Consitiution to do that. Better might be to actually follow it and enforce separation between church and state, e.g. any member of government making an declaration of faith whilst "at work" being considered to have resigned.
I had to chuckle at this. As if the main theft is from people stealing a CD from a store! This "solution" ignores the fact that most of the "theft" is from mass production of fake CD's.
It also may not help much with shoplifting either. It's potentially less effective than having a tag which sets off an alarm if someone trys to leave carrying it. The only people who can easily get around it are people working in the shop. With this proposed kind of system it is totally useless if the thief (or someone who gets stolen goods from a theif) can lay their hands on an "activator".
Have you ever tried messing with 419 scammers or phishing sites? It's quite fun. Try checking out 419eater.com or whatsthebloodypoint.com if you want to see for yourselves (didn't check those URLs before pressing submit, but that'll get you there).
A pity real law enforcement appears uninterested in doing this kind of thing.
So, in order to avoid being REQUIRED to have a National ID, you have to go to the extra effort of maintaining (how much effort is that?) a few extra forms.
It may actually be less work for the vast majority of people. Since a super ID would require covering every possible purpose to which it could be put. As opposed to only the documents an individual actually needs.
There are alert bracelets and Medi Alerts people can get identifying allergies or other medical conditions for healthcare personel.
Which have the security advantage of being specific to that task. i.e. you can't use a list of people's medical conditions to pretend to open a bank account in their name. The problem with "do everything" IDs is that they tend to be overloaded with all sorts of things and highly valuable to ID fraudsters.
I am from Buffalo, NY, which is right at the border with Canada, so this affects me as I go across the border somewhat frequently. Starting next year you "may" be required to have a passport to drive into the US from Canada. Currently, a driver's license is sufficient but they put you under much more scrutiny and it takes longer to get through the border check than it used to.
A passport is the standard document for crossing an international border. Using anything else is likely to complicate the border crossing. Whilst it's reasonable that a US issued driver's license would allow you to drive on Canadian roads it's not so sensible for it to allow you to get into Canada in the first place. Would it be any use if you entered Canada on a ship or aircraft?
Since I have a passport anyway I have just been using that since they started tightening the border after 2001, but those traveling with me who don't have passports have had no trouble, even a friend whose primary id recently was a resident alien green card.
How do you wind up with a "green card" without having a passport? Your friend must have had one to enter the US in the first place...
On a related note, while they have certainly tightened it a bit, the level of security is really not much different than before 2001. It is lax enough that I'm sure plenty of illegal things get through. I know for certain that I could smuggle things across if I were so inclined.
IIRC there are parts of the US/Canadian border which actually run through the middle of buildings.
"To me, copyrights and patents are blatently contrary to the 1st amendment of the US Constitution"
Article 1, Section 8 of the United States Constitution
To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;
An ammendment supercedes any previous text which appears to conflict with it. That is the meaning of the term. If US Copyright laws are in conflict with the first ammendment then A1S8 isn't relevent. The only part of the US Consitiution which can overrule the first ammendment is a later ammendment.
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My understanding (almost all from Groklaw) is that if the accuser actually tries to impede the accused from fixing the problem, it counts against you, legally. Whether it goes so far as to invalidate your patents, or merely reduces damages owed, I don't remember. I think there is some legal aspect to how much you can collect in damages; you can't collect damages from before the announcement date, perhaps.
Presumably the "announcement" has to actually enumerate which patents are being infringed, how and who is doing it. A vague reference hardly counts. Since there is no way in which this provides any information to an infringer on how to even attempt to fix the problem.
While that may be true, it's also true (or alleged to be true) that Senator McCarthy held up a blank sheet of paper when he first claimed he had names of Communist conspirators/spies.
Furthermore, many of the people who were publicly humiliated and accused of being Communists were in fact nothing of the sort. Unfortunately, the problem with defamation is that once the slander/libel is out there, it's really hard to retract. Especially if the party making the outrageous claims is a respected Senator who gets to mobilize government resources to harass people. McCarthy's abuse of the system was his way to attack political opponents, not get rid of real Communist spies.
If he did actually accuse any actual communist spies it would be more along the lines of "even a blind squirrel sometimes finds a nut". Witch hunts tend to be almost entirely political. As with the current "war on terror" where some people are arrested with minimal evidence simply because of their ethnicity/religion, whereas people who's actions give much more cause for concern are ignored (even assisted) by authorities.
While it's quite probable that there are some real patent violations in the Linux kernel and in the source code of various GNU tools, that's about all you can say. Whether these infringed patents are even valid is another matter -- and you can certainly bet that FOSS authors are going to go after at least some of Microsoft's patent claims on the grounds that the patents are invalid. For each patent that gets invalidated, Microsoft's patent portfolio becomes just a little bit less valuable..
In some cases the OSS code might well be the "prior art" which invalidates the patent. There is also the possibility that any actual patent infringements are not those Microsoft is making a fuss about...
It is really implausible to tell someone they own you X amount of money and not tell them why. If they sent you a bill for say $500.00 would you expect them to also include the reason why you owned them the $500 or would you just pay them?
Only a fool would be likely to pay, assuming said fool actually (still) had the money to pay. Even if there was a reason given you'd want to check that it was actually valid...
Someone high up at Microsoft has vowed to "f*cking kill linux". After long thought they decide that now is the time and that the best way to proceed is through patent lawsuits.
However can they actually file a suit without specifically identifying the patents and alleged violations? Something they don't apperently wish to do.
This of course will anger the companies that have interest in linux and many of them hold their own patents which, by the nature of software patents, might or are infringed on by MS itself.
There's also a risk of Microsoft being accused of copyright violations.
the collapse of the tech industry from all the businesses going under due to the iron clad resolution that individual software procedures can be patented and not just whole programs.
You mean the collapse of the tech industry in the USA (and any other countries stupid enough to allow software patents).
In essence, MicroSoft might be aware that in this case, it would be the absolute ruler of a dead industry with corporate few players left to buy its software, and throngs of home users simply abandoning computers because Windows is too friggin expensive and it's (in that scenario) the only way to use a computer.
Or the US would get the majority of it's software from Canada and Mexico. With the Western US Canadian border being strengthened to keep Microsoft away from Canada.
Can I just say, they would have gotten what they deserved. You threaten somebody's life, even if you know it's not a real threat, then whatever that person does to defend themselves is justified.
In the same way that someone can be convicted of "armed robbery" even if they just say they have a gun...
Likewise, I'd like to see most of that money they're wasting on homeland security spent on highway improvements,
Quite a bit of that money appears to have ended up in various people's back pockets, without even any "security theater" to show for it.
like guard rails, particularly on exit ramps. Forty thousand people die on US highways every single year,
One of the factors involved in car "accidents" is risk perception. Make things appear safer and drivers are apt to take more risks. e.g. fit a car with better brakes and drivers are likely to brake later. Thus with guard rails you really want something fragile looking which can stop a small truck...
Priorities are as ass-backwards as our other laws; drug laws, for instance. The most deadly and addictive drug known to man, tobacco, is legal, while Marijuana, which has no lethal dose and has been recently shown to PREVENT cancer is a felony.
There are plenty of legal drugs which are highly dangerous. e.g. those with a very narrow "theraputic index". A lot of the time dangers from illegal drugs actually come from being supplied by criminals and of unknown purity. As shown with alcohol prohibition is a completly ineffective policy.
Of course, since pot makes you lazy, industry is dead set against it!
Probably also that there is no big industry promoting Marijuana.
I attended only one year in a US high school and it was appalling: everyone, including the teachers only talked and cared about sports, other extracurricular activities, prom, and other pointless shit like that. I was there as sophomore and I ended up tutoring seniors in math and physics and I wasn't even that good in my country (Russia).
Just as well you didn't end up tutoring them in English (or Spanish) that would have been even more daft...
For fuck's sake, those are teachers. Not some oddball nutjobs, or science wizards in their ivory tower, who have no connection with the emotional makeup of kids. Those are the people we send our kids to, every single day, to learn things.
Maybe these people should no longer be teachers. Even after they have served their prison sentences for terrorism.
The point of drills is not to educate on what to do when you're scared, the point is to educate on what to do in this specific situation. Take fire drills, for example: are students tricked into thinking their school is burning down? No, of course not. The point of the drill is to inculcate the directions that all students must follow in order to avoid chaos.
Actually fire drills can be carried out using smoke machines and pyrotechnics,
otherwise it seems like professional suicide
Pretending to be a gunman could wind up an actual suicide.
Seeing this story makes me think of Aqua Teen Hunger Force LED-pranksters and the Boston Police. The ATHF-pranksters are being held to task because of the over-reation of the Boston authorities.
They probably shouldn't even be called "pranksters", given that their intent was advertising.
But now we have an ACTUAL case of terrorism. In this case, these teachers *actually* terrorized these students. There motivation matters not.
N.B. Terrorism does not require any actual weapons.
These teachers should be drawn and quartered for their ACTUAL act of abuse of these children.
Or at least treated according to whatever the law says with respect to terrorist suspects. Isn't 69 witnesses enough for an arrest? The one who apparently acted out the part of the "gunman" should consider him or her self lucky there were no armed adults about.
The war on drugs is a miserable failure. So please find another parable
A "war on spam" might actually work better than "war on drugs" simply because there are liklely to be far fewer people who wants spam than want various drugs.
the whole enviroment that these people thrive in is made possible by MS Windows and its' horrible security. why don't we start screaming about fixing the root cause of the problem ?
Thing is that there are plenty of people who appear to think that Microsoft's bluring the line between user & administrator or having a "monoculture" environment is a good thing.
It's much like trying to take someone's drivers license away. Even if they have been charged multiple times with drunk driving, they are able to get their license back, because it's something they "need".
IIRC it is also possible, in the US, for people to lose their license for reasons unrelated to driving...
In some situations a car is needed, but if you continually show that you aren't going to be responsible, then you really think you have the need for a car.
Even in the US there are plenty of places where a need for someone to have their own car is hard to demonstrate.
One way in which this analogy fails is that no-one has to pass even the most basic of tests before connecting a computer to the Internet.
And that's exactly where the kink comes in. In the case of FOSS, *anybody* can make it and distribute it, even for sale. The day you round up your source code and recompile it and distribute it as a new distro, what's really the legal difference between you and Red Hat or Ubuntu?
The majority of these people (both real and corporate) are in places where Microsoft's patents don't apply in the first place.
Even in places where software patents might be valid the article dosn't actually list the patents in question.
The problem is that if they are wrong, they can be in more trouble then they are now. I would suggest creating a fake company in some arena outside the US's reach and then pumping donations to this company for this explicit reason.
You'd best first take out a patent on doing that. So that Microsoft couldn't use the same technique.
For me, the creepiest part of Scientology is the 'fair game' policy - that if you're a critic of Scientology, a 'suppressive person', the group gives its members carte blanche to attack you.
Plenty of political and religious groups do this kind of thing. Though the language might vary somewhat.
It's not like it's the first time religion has been used to swindle the masses -- hell televangelists have been doing that for YEARS.
Also know as the "send us money so we can keep telling you to send us money" brigade. Also IIRC the "Praise the Lord Network" was nicknamed the "Pass the Loot Network", including by some insiders.
Is anything they do really that much worse than Islamic Fundamentalism or the Evangelical Christians here in the USA? I can't really think of a good argument that the Scientologists are any worse. And they're mostly harmless, which is more than you can say for those other guys.
You missed out the Zionists, even though they can't decide if they are religious or not half the time, they are a rather nasty bunch with connections to a fair few "religious nutcases".
Of course, I recognize that religion in general is superstitious claptrap that can be detrimental to humanity at large. I also recognize the average human's need to explain the world around him and comfort him when he loses loved ones or confronts death. Therefore my regime would outlaw all organized religion except for a mandatory state-run one which involves Smurfs.
You'd need to ammend the US Consitiution to do that. Better might be to actually follow it and enforce separation between church and state, e.g. any member of government making an declaration of faith whilst "at work" being considered to have resigned.
I had to chuckle at this. As if the main theft is from people stealing a CD from a store! This "solution" ignores the fact that most of the "theft" is from mass production of fake CD's.
It also may not help much with shoplifting either. It's potentially less effective than having a tag which sets off an alarm if someone trys to leave carrying it. The only people who can easily get around it are people working in the shop.
With this proposed kind of system it is totally useless if the thief (or someone who gets stolen goods from a theif) can lay their hands on an "activator".
Have you ever tried messing with 419 scammers or phishing sites? It's quite fun. Try checking out 419eater.com or whatsthebloodypoint.com if you want to see for yourselves (didn't check those URLs before pressing submit, but that'll get you there).
A pity real law enforcement appears uninterested in doing this kind of thing.
So, in order to avoid being REQUIRED to have a National ID, you have to go to the extra effort of maintaining (how much effort is that?) a few extra forms.
It may actually be less work for the vast majority of people. Since a super ID would require covering every possible purpose to which it could be put. As opposed to only the documents an individual actually needs.
There are alert bracelets and Medi Alerts people can get identifying allergies or other medical conditions for healthcare personel.
Which have the security advantage of being specific to that task. i.e. you can't use a list of people's medical conditions to pretend to open a bank account in their name. The problem with "do everything" IDs is that they tend to be overloaded with all sorts of things and highly valuable to ID fraudsters.
2005 was 2 years ago, and she's 27 now, that makes her 25 in the photo...how is this underage drinking again?
It's also impossible to tell what liquid (if any) might have been in the cup. Even if it were transparent that wouldn't have helped much....
I am from Buffalo, NY, which is right at the border with Canada, so this affects me as I go across the border somewhat frequently. Starting next year you "may" be required to have a passport to drive into the US from Canada. Currently, a driver's license is sufficient but they put you under much more scrutiny and it takes longer to get through the border check than it used to.
A passport is the standard document for crossing an international border. Using anything else is likely to complicate the border crossing. Whilst it's reasonable that a US issued driver's license would allow you to drive on Canadian roads it's not so sensible for it to allow you to get into Canada in the first place. Would it be any use if you entered Canada on a ship or aircraft?
Since I have a passport anyway I have just been using that since they started tightening the border after 2001, but those traveling with me who don't have passports have had no trouble, even a friend whose primary id recently was a resident alien green card.
How do you wind up with a "green card" without having a passport? Your friend must have had one to enter the US in the first place...
On a related note, while they have certainly tightened it a bit, the level of security is really not much different than before 2001. It is lax enough that I'm sure plenty of illegal things get through. I know for certain that I could smuggle things across if I were so inclined.
IIRC there are parts of the US/Canadian border which actually run through the middle of buildings.
"To me, copyrights and patents are blatently contrary to the 1st amendment of the US Constitution"
Article 1, Section 8 of the United States Constitution To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;
An ammendment supercedes any previous text which appears to conflict with it. That is the meaning of the term. If US Copyright laws are in conflict with the first ammendment then A1S8 isn't relevent. The only part of the US Consitiution which can overrule the first ammendment is a later ammendment.