I think they're doing more than just sucking. "nsieatscocks.com", too. They also have whois on "nsieatscock.com", but I think my browser is caching the non-existant DNS data from the minute or so before it propagated.
The recording companies only own the copyrights to the recordings of the artists' work. I mean, I think. I suppose it really depends on how much the artist got screwed on the contract. If the performer is the songwriter, they can still play their own songs (maybe they have to join ASCAP?). They just can't lip-sync to their CDs without having to pay royalties back to the recording company that screwed them over in the first place.
The problem isn't the people who don't check bags. Its the people who don't follow the rules.
Under this new proposal, the agents will most certainly be even more restrictive about what is and is not allowed as carry-on, since each checked bag means more money. Under current rules, there's really no incentive for the airline to make you check a bag instead of carrying it.
If anything I'd expect this to improve the situation; anyone trying to exploit the system by carrying on too much stuff will be denied back at the ticket counter (where the money happens), before they even have a chance to slow down the security checks.
No need to block the letters. Just block all 4-letter words. That will keep stock symbols from appearing. As a bonus, it will neutralize most swear words, making email "safe" for children and christians.
And the best part: the solution doesn't sound like contrived RIAA propaganda. I mean, really. Who ever heard of mp3 files that infringe copyrights?
Amen to that! It boggles my mind to think that ringtones are a multi-billion dollar "industry". Preying on ignorance should not be the core business model of a service provider. I wish I could make my phone service decisions based on the merits of the various options, rather than just trying to pick the one that screws me over in the least obtrusive ways.
If San Francisco gets municipal wifi (heck, even if they don't, there's probably already enough free & open access points where I spend most of my time), I might be tempted to switch off the cellular on my windows mobile phone and just use Skype over wifi for free.
I think the idea was that if a company really, really, really wanted someone, the bidding on a H1-B might average $25k or go as high as $50k. That just means local talent gets a "head start" over imported talent. Under that situation, if Google has a choice between paying a $50K salary to a visiting worker or $70K to a local, the additional cost of acquiring the H1-B at auction could give the local the advantage.
I can't remember exactly how much the extra battery for my windows mobile phone was, but I think it was around $70 or $80, too. The new LiPo batteries aren't cheap. Its not just Apple.
I'm more curious how long before the battery will need replacement. I know the battery in my phone doesn't last nearly as long as it did 6 months ago. I can go maybe 6-8 hours on it now, whereas the very first charge lasted a few days. I wonder if the iPhone battery will degrade similarly.
Close. Its a case of Microsoft paying them to make a sound-bite. Maybe the payment is indirect (through ad clicks instead of a fat check), but the payment is the reason those quotes exist. Its blogger pay-o-la.
The bloggers didn't just happen to say "people ready" in the course of their normal blogging, and then Microsoft taking the quotes from context. Microsoft approached and asked them to write something about "people ready". Microsoft asked the journalists to write ad copy for them.
In the ads it looks the same as a quote lifted from an article, but its not. If not for the ad campaign, the "article" wouldn't exist. Microsoft isn't finding these quotes in the blogs, they're planting them.
Its bogus, but then that's what I expect from Microsoft.
Not to nitpick, but the BBC's definition of "platform agnostic" appears to mean "supported on Windows with claims of future Mac support." I've been bitten by that definition many times, purchasing something with promised Mac support that never actually appears. Until there is actually a downloadble client that can be run on a Mac, they're still a Windows-only solution, and all the hot air blowing out their asses^H^H^H^H^H mouths doesn't make them platform agnostic.
If they are, it just makes it that much harder for you to know what the memory card is actually doing on its wifi connection.
Maybe its sending spam when its done uploading all your pictures.... somewhere.
Maybe instead of posting to Flickr, it actually sends your pictures to a server someone that the company selling the card (I didn't RTFA... sorry) controls, at which point they forward it to Flickr. It would definitely allow them to support many, many more photo sites in the future. Way more convenient than trying to perform a firmware upgrade on the wifi card on your memory card every time a new photo album site pops up with another new upload method. So I honestly wouldn't be surprised if that's how it works. Seriously. Imagine trying to debug why the magic wifi client inside your mother's camera isn't uploading pictures to her Flickr account when you have access to neither.
I wouldn't put one of those things anywhere near my stuff. Not without tcpdump running.
Would have been a good idea if either of those search engines existed at the time.;) When I put up my lamp page, Yahoo was still called "Dave and Jerry's Guide to the WWW".
I received the letter... well, technically "my" university (the one I had attended, and where I was working at the time) received the letter and it got to me on my last day there. I didn't have time to scan and post the document for proper humiliation. Instead I chose a simpler solution: remove the trademark from the page, thereby assuring that no one would ever associate my page with the company that owned the mark. Since I was leaving, the live feed was gone anyway.
Had they taken a more polite approach, I would have added the "TM" notices, and maybe even told people where to buy lava lamps.
I realize that the trademark-based C&D i received was unrelated to the DMCA. You're missing my point.
Sending me a C&D (in 1995, not 1996) because I mentioned their product on a personal web page was a dick move. It was from a lawyer, apparently with his head up his ass, trying to protect Haggerty Enterprises from receiving free advertising on the Internet. I didn't even realize "Lava Lamp" wasn't a generic term at the time.
(Lava Lamps are those... uh.. like 1960s rocket-shaped lamp with oil and wax inside.. when you turn it on, the lamp melts the wax. The wax and oil have similar densities... the hot wax bubbles up to the top, cools, then flows back down to get heated again... Hippies used to get high, then stare at them in wonder and say things like, "Far out, man!";)
On another web page, also pre-DMCA, I typed, word-for-word, the rules of croquet from a Sportcraft croquet manual. Did they sick their lawyers on me? No. Someone from the company called me and politely told me that I was violating their copyright. Then she asked me to give them attribution and put their logo on the page, so people knew where it came from. I complied. No problem. And Sportcraft didn't have to pay anyone $300/hour to get it done.
Maybe had I refused, legal action might be necessary to protect their trademark, but it wasn't. Had I willfully and knowingly compromised their trademark, sure, call out the lawyers, but I didn't. The intimidation tactic was uncalled for as a first contact.
A few years later the DMCA opened things up for whole new levels of intimidation, and the lawyers were eager to start making paper. Don't like something online, send a baseless takedown notice, and the "problem" was magically solved. How many of the highly publicised takedown notices were "mistakingly sent out by a junior staff member who didn't know the company policies on the subject"?
Incidentally, the lamp I had in front of the camera was in fact a Haggerty Enterprises Lava Lamp (TM), not some random abomination that I was misrepresenting as such. I considered it to be "my" Lava Lamp (TM Haggery Enterprises) because I bought it. At a store. With my money. It, the physical manifestation of that item, now located in the cabinet about 6 feet away from me, was my property after I purchased it.
I did have their trademark term on my page without attribution. Perhaps that was a mistake. Posting things on the internet was kind of a new thing for me 13 years ago. A Cease and Decist letter was kind of a dickish way to inform me.
Yeah... The problems is that the "lobbyists" who spread these "lies" have very "deep pockets". And our "corrupt" government officials will "do anything to make a buck".
Oh yeah. They also don't "pay" teachers "enough", so our "education" system becomes succeptible to these same "lobby groups" that sponsor programs to spread "propaganda" about how "scary" computers are.
Maybe computers are "hard" to "non-technical" people. I'm sure something you do is probably "hard" for me, too.
I'm pretty sure the "Internet is tubes" guy doesn't get it. Maybe he shouldn't be "writing" laws about things he doesn't know the first thing about. Maybe.
Maybe instead of being afraid of the things you don't understand and trying to legislate them away, you should try to learn something about them. Read a book. Or a magazine. Or wikipedia, once you get over the whole "I don't know who writes this stuff, but Mr. Brittanica used to date my sister" thing.
Honestly I don't think the kids are the problem. I've seen plenty of kids who know how to use computers and ipods, and bit torrent, and tivos, and even write programs. Ask them how to do it.
Ask them if they feel like they're hurting someone when they listen to music.
People do get it. Its just like the "new math", but now its not just numbers on paper.
When the bottom fell out of the Internet Boom, and all those startups, which had beem generating constant stream of contracts, and privacy policies, and mergers, and all sorts of legal documents, all went under. Well not all of them, but enough of them. Probably half of the slashdot audience worked for at least one...
So all of a sudden, no one had new contracts. No one was buying out the new startups. No one really new what all those lawyers in the company's legal department really did. And all the people gettling layed off were particularly curious why their team was decimated (heh.. like the music industry), when there were so many lawyers sitting around doing nothing. So they had to justify themselves. And.. well... you know. The Constitution never explicitly granted the right to duplicate copyrighted materials on the Internet. Not explicitly (how could it have?). It didn't deny those rightseither, which technically is how it works for most things... but I digress. Where was I...
Right. So everyone putting anything online was surely violating someone's copyright or trademark, and later when people started putting programs online, they could violate patents! Woohoo! Paperwork galore! And lawyers LOOOOOVES them some paperwork!
I got a C&D way back in 1995. I had a web page with a live camera looking at a [CENSORED} Lamp that I had on my desk. And I mistakingly titled the page "Check out my Groovy [CENSORED] Lamp!" and had a flowery background and that lame sort of slang we think our parents used to say. After a while I got a cease and decist from... how should i say it... "Lava Lamp" is a trademark of Haggerty Enterprises. And I was apparently causing irreparable harm by having called my Lava Lamp (TM of Haggerty Enterprises) a Lava Lamp, and having pictures of it on the Internet. I was in a hurry, so I did a search/replace of "Lava" with "[CENSORED]" and left it at that.
So anyway, I guess the writing was on the wall, but I didn't see it yet. But that's what lawyers were doing on the internet before anyone was really even looking at it.
Move forward to 2000, and now there's millions of lawyers that need to make themselves useful in the quickest and easiest way possible. Hypothetically, I mean.
Can you really blame them, what with all the newfound name recognition?
But better: Its freaking working! Here I was thinking that nothing I do can change the system. Then we add a few numbers in our sigs, and what have you, and now Dvorak is spouting off stuff that actually makes sense for once!;)
"The music industry is decimated" (John D.). Hellaf'in yeah, it is! I don't buy CDs anymore. I don't "steal" music either. I boycott it. I started boycotting the RIAA labels and their artists when Napster (the real one) got taken down. And now, only 8 years later, the mainstream press is getting the message. Napster (the REAL one) wasn't hurting anyone, or hurting business models. When Napster was running, CDs were selling like never before. When Napster went down, CD sales started to drop. There is no data that says otherwise, and the RIAA's own reported stats show it.
Even digg.com is going to become a household word over this. And just yesterday, my dad would have sworn "digging" is something you do with a shovel.
When "exploit ignorance through rampant douchebaggery" stops being the primary business model operating in the US (and I do think its primarily here, in the US), I'll be much, much happier.
Its quite possible that Verizon's patent is very broadly stated, such that there is no way for Vonage to do VOIP and avoid infringement.
I don't know the facts in this case, but generally the claims of patents are made as far reaching as possible, so as to include not just the specific implementation of the invention, but any possible alternatives for accomplishing the same, or possibly even a very similar result.
Overly broad claims can be struck down without invalidating the entire patent, so perhaps Vonage can come up with a novel way to get around it, if it does hold.
I'm tired of IP laws being used for BS anti-competitive tactics. Technological progress should be making exponential leaps forward instead of being hampered by thugs holding ideas hostage.
A method or device for extracting a Patent Examiner's head from his or her ass before reviewing Patent Applications.
To be fair, examiners surely have some specialized knowledge that I lack, just as I have knowledge in the field of software that they, chronically, seem to lack. Software patents are debatable, but there's no doubt that tech companies with deep pockets are totally scamming the PTO with crap like this.
If Vonage goes under trying to defend themselves against a patent that will ultimately be overturned, there is no justice.
That is what disturbs me most about this patent dispute: I cannot find information about the patents involved. All the news is quick to report that vonage is "infringing a patent", but they don't give any details at all. Its ludicrous.
I'm glad to see some better research from some of the commenters here, but the news reporters aren't doing their jobs.
I never took touch typing, and I've never had wrist problems or rsi or carpal tunnel or any problems, really. I sort of developed my own typing style (if you can call it that), evolving from hunting and pecking.
I can pretty much type without looking (I don't call that touch typing), but I mostly use my index and middle fingers, the ring fingers gets some use, and the pinkies rarely. I still start on the "home row", for reference (especially in the dark... find those little bumps on F and J, then good to go), but I don't stay there. On some keyboards I'll press the control key (in the lower corner, not in the classic caps-lock location) using the edge of my palm right below the pinky, so there's no need to stretch a finger that far. I type fast enough for me, and faster than plenty of people I know (certainly not as fast as some), with no injuries.
I've thought about switching to DVORAK, but the thing that always stops me is using someone else's keyboard, which will still be old-style QWERTY. Do people who have made the switch have trouble using QWERTY keboards in the wild?
Slashdot Mirror
I think they're doing more than just sucking. "nsieatscocks.com", too. They also have whois on "nsieatscock.com", but I think my browser is caching the non-existant DNS data from the minute or so before it propagated.
This is so fun. What else does NSI do???
The recording companies only own the copyrights to the recordings of the artists' work. I mean, I think. I suppose it really depends on how much the artist got screwed on the contract. If the performer is the songwriter, they can still play their own songs (maybe they have to join ASCAP?). They just can't lip-sync to their CDs without having to pay royalties back to the recording company that screwed them over in the first place.
Use your toe to press the eject button. Just be gentle.
Then squat down to insert the disk instead of bending over. Its better for your back.
xyzzy
Mr T vs Chuck Norris... that sounds better than Alien vs Predator!
Yeah. Remote soldering. From 30,000 feet. Soldering your ass to a hole in the ground. The hole they burn into the ground while "soldering" your ass.
Oh, right. PEACEFUL applications... Maybe as someone previously suggested, popping corn. Remotely. From 30,000 feet... popping corn straight up your...
Oh yeah, right. Peaceful applications. I can't think of any.
The problem isn't the people who don't check bags. Its the people who don't follow the rules.
Under this new proposal, the agents will most certainly be even more restrictive about what is and is not allowed as carry-on, since each checked bag means more money. Under current rules, there's really no incentive for the airline to make you check a bag instead of carrying it.
If anything I'd expect this to improve the situation; anyone trying to exploit the system by carrying on too much stuff will be denied back at the ticket counter (where the money happens), before they even have a chance to slow down the security checks.
No need to block the letters. Just block all 4-letter words. That will keep stock symbols from appearing. As a bonus, it will neutralize most swear words, making email "safe" for children and christians.
And the best part: the solution doesn't sound like contrived RIAA propaganda. I mean, really. Who ever heard of mp3 files that infringe copyrights?
Amen to that! It boggles my mind to think that ringtones are a multi-billion dollar "industry". Preying on ignorance should not be the core business model of a service provider. I wish I could make my phone service decisions based on the merits of the various options, rather than just trying to pick the one that screws me over in the least obtrusive ways.
If San Francisco gets municipal wifi (heck, even if they don't, there's probably already enough free & open access points where I spend most of my time), I might be tempted to switch off the cellular on my windows mobile phone and just use Skype over wifi for free.
I think the idea was that if a company really, really, really wanted someone, the bidding on a H1-B might average $25k or go as high as $50k. That just means local talent gets a "head start" over imported talent. Under that situation, if Google has a choice between paying a $50K salary to a visiting worker or $70K to a local, the additional cost of acquiring the H1-B at auction could give the local the advantage.
I can't remember exactly how much the extra battery for my windows mobile phone was, but I think it was around $70 or $80, too. The new LiPo batteries aren't cheap. Its not just Apple.
I'm more curious how long before the battery will need replacement. I know the battery in my phone doesn't last nearly as long as it did 6 months ago. I can go maybe 6-8 hours on it now, whereas the very first charge lasted a few days. I wonder if the iPhone battery will degrade similarly.
Close. Its a case of Microsoft paying them to make a sound-bite. Maybe the payment is indirect (through ad clicks instead of a fat check), but the payment is the reason those quotes exist. Its blogger pay-o-la.
The bloggers didn't just happen to say "people ready" in the course of their normal blogging, and then Microsoft taking the quotes from context. Microsoft approached and asked them to write something about "people ready". Microsoft asked the journalists to write ad copy for them.
In the ads it looks the same as a quote lifted from an article, but its not. If not for the ad campaign, the "article" wouldn't exist. Microsoft isn't finding these quotes in the blogs, they're planting them.
Its bogus, but then that's what I expect from Microsoft.
Not to nitpick, but the BBC's definition of "platform agnostic" appears to mean "supported on Windows with claims of future Mac support." I've been bitten by that definition many times, purchasing something with promised Mac support that never actually appears. Until there is actually a downloadble client that can be run on a Mac, they're still a Windows-only solution, and all the hot air blowing out their asses^H^H^H^H^H mouths doesn't make them platform agnostic.
If they are, it just makes it that much harder for you to know what the memory card is actually doing on its wifi connection.
Maybe its sending spam when its done uploading all your pictures.... somewhere.
Maybe instead of posting to Flickr, it actually sends your pictures to a server someone that the company selling the card (I didn't RTFA... sorry) controls, at which point they forward it to Flickr. It would definitely allow them to support many, many more photo sites in the future. Way more convenient than trying to perform a firmware upgrade on the wifi card on your memory card every time a new photo album site pops up with another new upload method. So I honestly wouldn't be surprised if that's how it works. Seriously. Imagine trying to debug why the magic wifi client inside your mother's camera isn't uploading pictures to her Flickr account when you have access to neither.
I wouldn't put one of those things anywhere near my stuff. Not without tcpdump running.
Security isn't always about key size.
Would have been a good idea if either of those search engines existed at the time. ;) When I put up my lamp page, Yahoo was still called "Dave and Jerry's Guide to the WWW".
I received the letter... well, technically "my" university (the one I had attended, and where I was working at the time) received the letter and it got to me on my last day there. I didn't have time to scan and post the document for proper humiliation. Instead I chose a simpler solution: remove the trademark from the page, thereby assuring that no one would ever associate my page with the company that owned the mark. Since I was leaving, the live feed was gone anyway.
Had they taken a more polite approach, I would have added the "TM" notices, and maybe even told people where to buy lava lamps.
I realize that the trademark-based C&D i received was unrelated to the DMCA. You're missing my point.
;)
Sending me a C&D (in 1995, not 1996) because I mentioned their product on a personal web page was a dick move. It was from a lawyer, apparently with his head up his ass, trying to protect Haggerty Enterprises from receiving free advertising on the Internet. I didn't even realize "Lava Lamp" wasn't a generic term at the time.
(Lava Lamps are those... uh.. like 1960s rocket-shaped lamp with oil and wax inside.. when you turn it on, the lamp melts the wax. The wax and oil have similar densities... the hot wax bubbles up to the top, cools, then flows back down to get heated again... Hippies used to get high, then stare at them in wonder and say things like, "Far out, man!"
On another web page, also pre-DMCA, I typed, word-for-word, the rules of croquet from a Sportcraft croquet manual. Did they sick their lawyers on me? No. Someone from the company called me and politely told me that I was violating their copyright. Then she asked me to give them attribution and put their logo on the page, so people knew where it came from. I complied. No problem. And Sportcraft didn't have to pay anyone $300/hour to get it done.
Maybe had I refused, legal action might be necessary to protect their trademark, but it wasn't. Had I willfully and knowingly compromised their trademark, sure, call out the lawyers, but I didn't. The intimidation tactic was uncalled for as a first contact.
A few years later the DMCA opened things up for whole new levels of intimidation, and the lawyers were eager to start making paper. Don't like something online, send a baseless takedown notice, and the "problem" was magically solved. How many of the highly publicised takedown notices were "mistakingly sent out by a junior staff member who didn't know the company policies on the subject"?
Same bullshit, different law.
Incidentally, the lamp I had in front of the camera was in fact a Haggerty Enterprises Lava Lamp (TM), not some random abomination that I was misrepresenting as such. I considered it to be "my" Lava Lamp (TM Haggery Enterprises) because I bought it. At a store. With my money. It, the physical manifestation of that item, now located in the cabinet about 6 feet away from me, was my property after I purchased it.
I did have their trademark term on my page without attribution. Perhaps that was a mistake. Posting things on the internet was kind of a new thing for me 13 years ago. A Cease and Decist letter was kind of a dickish way to inform me.
Yeah... The problems is that the "lobbyists" who spread these "lies" have very "deep pockets". And our "corrupt" government officials will "do anything to make a buck".
Oh yeah. They also don't "pay" teachers "enough", so our "education" system becomes succeptible to these same "lobby groups" that sponsor programs to spread "propaganda" about how "scary" computers are.
Maybe computers are "hard" to "non-technical" people. I'm sure something you do is probably "hard" for me, too.
I'm pretty sure the "Internet is tubes" guy doesn't get it. Maybe he shouldn't be "writing" laws about things he doesn't know the first thing about. Maybe.
Maybe instead of being afraid of the things you don't understand and trying to legislate them away, you should try to learn something about them. Read a book. Or a magazine. Or wikipedia, once you get over the whole "I don't know who writes this stuff, but Mr. Brittanica used to date my sister" thing.
Honestly I don't think the kids are the problem. I've seen plenty of kids who know how to use computers and ipods, and bit torrent, and tivos, and even write programs. Ask them how to do it.
Ask them if they feel like they're hurting someone when they listen to music.
People do get it. Its just like the "new math", but now its not just numbers on paper.
As for the lawyers, they were just being lawyers.
... how should i say it... "Lava Lamp" is a trademark of Haggerty Enterprises. And I was apparently causing irreparable harm by having called my Lava Lamp (TM of Haggerty Enterprises) a Lava Lamp, and having pictures of it on the Internet. I was in a hurry, so I did a search/replace of "Lava" with "[CENSORED]" and left it at that.
When the bottom fell out of the Internet Boom, and all those startups, which had beem generating constant stream of contracts, and privacy policies, and mergers, and all sorts of legal documents, all went under. Well not all of them, but enough of them. Probably half of the slashdot audience worked for at least one...
So all of a sudden, no one had new contracts. No one was buying out the new startups. No one really new what all those lawyers in the company's legal department really did. And all the people gettling layed off were particularly curious why their team was decimated (heh.. like the music industry), when there were so many lawyers sitting around doing nothing. So they had to justify themselves. And.. well... you know. The Constitution never explicitly granted the right to duplicate copyrighted materials on the Internet. Not explicitly (how could it have?). It didn't deny those rightseither, which technically is how it works for most things... but I digress. Where was I...
Right. So everyone putting anything online was surely violating someone's copyright or trademark, and later when people started putting programs online, they could violate patents! Woohoo! Paperwork galore! And lawyers LOOOOOVES them some paperwork!
I got a C&D way back in 1995. I had a web page with a live camera looking at a [CENSORED} Lamp that I had on my desk. And I mistakingly titled the page "Check out my Groovy [CENSORED] Lamp!" and had a flowery background and that lame sort of slang we think our parents used to say. After a while I got a cease and decist from
So anyway, I guess the writing was on the wall, but I didn't see it yet. But that's what lawyers were doing on the internet before anyone was really even looking at it.
Move forward to 2000, and now there's millions of lawyers that need to make themselves useful in the quickest and easiest way possible. Hypothetically, I mean.
I hope that covers my ass...
Can you really blame them, what with all the newfound name recognition?
;)
But better: Its freaking working! Here I was thinking that nothing I do can change the system. Then we add a few numbers in our sigs, and what have you, and now Dvorak is spouting off stuff that actually makes sense for once!
"The music industry is decimated" (John D.). Hellaf'in yeah, it is! I don't buy CDs anymore. I don't "steal" music either. I boycott it. I started boycotting the RIAA labels and their artists when Napster (the real one) got taken down. And now, only 8 years later, the mainstream press is getting the message. Napster (the REAL one) wasn't hurting anyone, or hurting business models. When Napster was running, CDs were selling like never before. When Napster went down, CD sales started to drop. There is no data that says otherwise, and the RIAA's own reported stats show it.
Even digg.com is going to become a household word over this. And just yesterday, my dad would have sworn "digging" is something you do with a shovel.
When "exploit ignorance through rampant douchebaggery" stops being the primary business model operating in the US (and I do think its primarily here, in the US), I'll be much, much happier.
Its quite possible that Verizon's patent is very broadly stated, such that there is no way for Vonage to do VOIP and avoid infringement.
I don't know the facts in this case, but generally the claims of patents are made as far reaching as possible, so as to include not just the specific implementation of the invention, but any possible alternatives for accomplishing the same, or possibly even a very similar result.
Overly broad claims can be struck down without invalidating the entire patent, so perhaps Vonage can come up with a novel way to get around it, if it does hold.
I'm tired of IP laws being used for BS anti-competitive tactics. Technological progress should be making exponential leaps forward instead of being hampered by thugs holding ideas hostage.
I think "annex" might be more appropriate than invade.
Maybe we can work a deal where we'll throw out Texas and Florida, then make Canada and Quebec our 49th and 50th states.
I have an invention:
A method or device for extracting a Patent Examiner's head from his or her ass before reviewing Patent Applications.
To be fair, examiners surely have some specialized knowledge that I lack, just as I have knowledge in the field of software that they, chronically, seem to lack. Software patents are debatable, but there's no doubt that tech companies with deep pockets are totally scamming the PTO with crap like this.
If Vonage goes under trying to defend themselves against a patent that will ultimately be overturned, there is no justice.
That is what disturbs me most about this patent dispute: I cannot find information about the patents involved. All the news is quick to report that vonage is "infringing a patent", but they don't give any details at all. Its ludicrous.
I'm glad to see some better research from some of the commenters here, but the news reporters aren't doing their jobs.
I never took touch typing, and I've never had wrist problems or rsi or carpal tunnel or any problems, really. I sort of developed my own typing style (if you can call it that), evolving from hunting and pecking.
I can pretty much type without looking (I don't call that touch typing), but I mostly use my index and middle fingers, the ring fingers gets some use, and the pinkies rarely. I still start on the "home row", for reference (especially in the dark... find those little bumps on F and J, then good to go), but I don't stay there. On some keyboards I'll press the control key (in the lower corner, not in the classic caps-lock location) using the edge of my palm right below the pinky, so there's no need to stretch a finger that far. I type fast enough for me, and faster than plenty of people I know (certainly not as fast as some), with no injuries.
I've thought about switching to DVORAK, but the thing that always stops me is using someone else's keyboard, which will still be old-style QWERTY. Do people who have made the switch have trouble using QWERTY keboards in the wild?