I have to applaud the Saudi Arabian government for "seeing the writing on the wall" about the soon-coming phase-out of dinosaur-burning (fossil fuels) as the major source of energy for the world. They are investing very heavily in renewable energy technologies, as well as some other areas in an attempt to use their sovereign wealth to shift their economy – before the shit really hits the fan – to other potential GDP-producing sectors.
Yeah, they have sold a big portion of the oil – the burning of which has been clearly destructive to our own planet – but other countries wanted to buy this cheap source of concentrated, transportable energy. Recall that "Saudi Aramco" = "Saudi Arabian–American (oil) Company". The US has long since sold off its stake, but that is the genesis of the country.
All other issues (e.g., human rights) aside, Saudi Arabia's leaders are way ahead of the US and many other governments on planning for a post-carbon-energy world. That is long-term planning, and does deserve some respect.
Is the US going to mount an incursion into a sovereign nation to arrest Saudi nationals?
The US has already done this in a few sovereign nations.
Italy, I think. Some others. An arrest of someone on foreign soil, who has not been extradited, and without informing the sovereign nation's government (much less working with them) — How is that not an act of war?
Why is the text of the note I attach to a money transfer –intended for my uses only – not encrypted?
Why does Venmo think that they are the enforcers? Why are they reading customers' note-to-self?
The field could contain an invoice number, project number, case reference, and so on. Such information is privileged information of a business or person.
Would you want your money-transfer service snooping on you, and then selling details to competitors, so they can under-cut you on bids? Where are the controls on companies like Venmo to prevent them from doing whatever they want with the info?!? (e.g., private business info, or personal purchases)
I'm not disputing this, but how are you measuring the "size" of the breach? Productivity lost? Highest profile? The total number of individuals affected? Or is a breach bigger if slightly fewer people are affected but in a more substantial way? I can think of many ways that the Sony breach was bigger, or the Snowden leaks, or the recently disclosed Panama Papers (though not "American").
Number of people affected, each of which could have had the entirety of their medical records copied.
Last I heard, it was traced back to Chinese hackers, who wanted to find out how the US had such a great – *cough* – healthcare system.
If you're only getting a patent in 3-4 countries, the combined [PCT application + national applications] cost more, but if you're getting a patent in more, you save significant money. For example, if you're a big pharma company and want a patent in 100 of those countries, the PCT will save you ~$30-50k in just filing fees, and probably another $30-50k (or more) in attorney or paralegal time to do those filings.
Finally, now, someone says this.
Alas, it's too late for me to save that $60k. It's spilled milk.
FTA: former U.S. senator, MPAA chairman and CEO Chris Dodd said. "To paraphrase Mark Twain, the death of the movies has been greatly exaggerated," Dodd said. It begs the question whether or not piracy is truly killing the movie business -- the MPAA insists it is.
He actually spoke the truth – unintentionally.
To "beg the question" means to "use circular logic". As in, when you are accusing someone of making BS arguments that rely on their initial (wrong) assumption.
Who would have thought that the MPAA CEO would actually speak the truth about 'piracy'?
Err The DJ incident which i have read about, seems to have a different ending than that one i am familiar with. In fact it was cited in a journal once on how quickly we recover from such things and that there is no lasting damage. You have a cite for that?
Read it decades ago in the Guiness Book of World Records. Not the most reliable source, to say it politely.
Scientific Journals trump most everything else, especially once a result has been duplicated elsewhere.
What psychology journal was it in? Do you recall the citation? (I like to pick-clean my brain of errors when I find them.)
I'm on the other end of such letters, but am not a patent troll. Several people have copied a set of patents I invented and own. Recently, some other patents have appeared that copy mine without any improvement at all. Mine is a foundational one, meaning that no one can license and actually 'use' their patent without infringing on mine – improvement or not.
Here is how far they will go:
* Copy-past entire paragraphs from my Detailed Description, with a single change
* Put a prefix 'xxxxx-' or some other modifier before the critical noun of importance
* Change the critical noun to a rarely used synonym for the same thing
* Describe something vaguely related, but slip in a page describing exactly what I already have patented
* Write a bunch of patents describing mine, deliberately FAILING to cite anything of mine as related art or potential prior art
* Tell me that they "tried to make sure we patented around the prior art", having never cited my 'Relate Art' (which is actually prior art to their claims). Thanks for that admission, friend!
* Copy-paste my Claims verbatim, and use one of the same tricks as above
All of the above are strategies used to keep the overworked patent examiner from finding the prior art which is being 'stolen' from. Once allowed, it's a lot harder to nuke someone's patent, than it would have been while it was under examination.
I sometimes send them printouts of my patents by certified USPS mail. No letter except, "This might be of interest to you regarding xxxxxx technology, particularly your US Patent # 8,nnn,nnn." It's simply informing them, making anything in future where they (1) do not cite me, or (2) practice what I've patented (evidenced in the Figures of their future patents), or (3) that I will discover who they have licensed 'their' Utility patents to, meaning unpleasantness for their customers as most of mine are device patents (plus some methods) – then in future infringement lawsuits (or negotiations prior-to), I will be able to add "willful".
I had been taught that omitting any primary prior art that one was aware of in a patent application was sufficient to incur a penalty, or to nuke the patent application. That was wrong, I now know, but the friendly letter I send adds on willful to any infringement, but also tips them off that I am on to them. It also means that their clearly intentioned divisionals or CIPs must cite my patents, which the USPTO Examiner will then be able to find relevant prior art...
At the time of writing my own patent, I cited over a hundred documents in the field, to make my patents bulletproof. USPTO examiner's comment in the allowance letter was "the prior art is silent on the application of xxxxx..." That help to keep the trolls away.
The real bastards are the ones who copy-pasted entire paragraphs in their issued patents, but did not cite my patents or scientific articles. In any other context, this would be called plagiarism. The copy-cats merely put the prefix "xxxxx-" before the critical noun of the paragraph. They often insert a short, buried few paragraphs, saying, "Hey, it will probably work for things without that prefix of "xxxxx-", meaning they will or already do have divisionals under review. I have not contacted these jerks, because I think the willful aspect is demonstrable – a monkeys-at-typewriters argument should suffice.
Thanks to the AIA (America Invents Act), I can contact the USPTO examiner directly to nuke an application in process, as long as it's within a year of the application having been published. So, I do watch them, by general USPTO search and the Publ
FTA:... The alarming study also reveals that only one (University of Alabama) out of the 121 schools required three or more cybersecurity classes to graduate.
University of Alabama?
Wow, I did not know they even had a University, it being Alabama and all. Kudos to their CS Department.
But also, to every other CS Department in the US: U. Alabama is trouncing you in this arena. How does that feel?
Whether it's Assad's regime using chemical weapons on the Syrian people or ISIL committing all sorts of atrocities, there are no good guys in the fight. Both sides are Islamic,... blah blah... However, a Christian baker who refuses to bake a cake for an LGBT wedding gets widely criticized by the media and Christianity is labeled a religion of hate.
In Iraq 1 war the Iraqi army surrendered because they knew they would be treated decently,...
For the most part, yes. But I have talked intimately with "Iraq War I" vets in the past. None were pleasant people.
One bragged that, because they couldn't be bothered with all of the Geneva Conventions stuff: When groups of Iraqis in Kuwait, having abandoned their vehicles, dropped their weapons, approached slowly with hands-in-the-air, and white shirts as flags of surrender flying. . .
These surrenders were gunned down en-mass by the American tank battalions because the soldiers didn't want to deal with the paperwork of "prisoners of war."
You don't have to believe me — do a GIS on the topic – if you think you have the stomach for it. Some things cannot be un-seen.
'Torture' doesn't work because it results in false confessions and bad data. Anything to make it stop.
But there are many 'enhanced interrogation techniques' that do, most of which have been redefined as 'torture'. Keeping someone awake for 4 days and playing good cop/bad cop works 100% of the time. They actually think the good cop is their friend by then, someone with no sleep for 4 days has the mental capacity of a toddler.
If keeping someone awake for four days (which I have endured – voluntarily) by aggressive means, and playing psychological games with them all the while, does not amount to torture in your mind... I cringe at the horrors that you might deign to call "torture".
BTW, sleep-deprivation of five days or more has been proven to cause permanent brain and/or psychological dysfunctions. A DJ in the 1980's stayed awake for seven days as a publicity stunt — He suffered severe depressive episodes for the rest of his life as a result.
With respect to the current issue: CIA will not torture. But a contractor, or an agency of another government, will.
Precisely.
Brennan's quote, if parsed carefully, does not forbid, nor even mention, what any person "extraordinarily rendered" might suffer at the hands of the non-CIA operatives (Egyptians, whoever). It also does not state that they "will not watch", "will not help", nor "will intervene to stop any such..." From his own mouth:
FTA: "Absolutely, I would not agree to having any CIA officer carrying out waterboarding again," he said.
This is the reason I bought a fully mechanical numeric keypad lock for my house. It requires no power. There are lots of electronic keypad door locks available which connect to mains power, have a backup battery and a key which bypasses the numeric pad if all else fails but why go that way when there is a much simpler solution?
I think like you, but do have a little FYI for you:
Mechanical numeric keypads are the easiest kind of lock to defeat. Very easy. There are tables you can find on the darknet (use ToR browser) with tables to get past one in 5-10 minutes.
Better is to use a high-end mechanical lock – one with two-piece tumblers with mushroom-heads, etc. Even locksmiths – with their special tools that are illegal for you to own – take a good long while to get those open. After 10 minutes of fruitless fiddling, they'll just get out a drill with a hardened tip.
Best, go the next step and buy a Medeco or (another brand) mechanical lock which have a Patent on their key blanks, meaning that no locksmith will duplicate your key without proof-of-ownership. Just have several extras cut when you install the locks – in case they ever jack the price up.
And yet, if you own something your claim of ownership never expires in a court, even after your death.
Close, but good point anyway.
If you have no will or spouse, then everything you own becomes the property of the State – even your carcass. Fortunately, the State doesn't really want that, so the family gets to hire a mortician to mangle it before applying some make-up and plopping you in a box with a silk pillow that they will then remove en-route to the hole, and re-sell it to someone else. Why do you think hearses have dark windows?
Back on-topic: You make a good point, in that IP – Patents and especially Copyrights – live on.
Slashdot Mirror
This is off-topic, but hear me out.
I have to applaud the Saudi Arabian government for "seeing the writing on the wall" about the soon-coming phase-out of dinosaur-burning (fossil fuels) as the major source of energy for the world. They are investing very heavily in renewable energy technologies, as well as some other areas in an attempt to use their sovereign wealth to shift their economy – before the shit really hits the fan – to other potential GDP-producing sectors.
Yeah, they have sold a big portion of the oil – the burning of which has been clearly destructive to our own planet – but other countries wanted to buy this cheap source of concentrated, transportable energy. Recall that "Saudi Aramco" = "Saudi Arabian–American (oil) Company". The US has long since sold off its stake, but that is the genesis of the country.
All other issues (e.g., human rights) aside, Saudi Arabia's leaders are way ahead of the US and many other governments on planning for a post-carbon-energy world. That is long-term planning, and does deserve some respect.
"The US ally Saudi Arabia"
I have never understood this term.
If there is need to preface every mention of "Saudi Arabia" with "our ally", then your BS alarm should go off.
How often do we hear: ..." ..." ..." ..."
"Today our ally Iceland
"Today our ally France
"Today our ally Germany
"Today our ally Spain
The answer is never
Is the US going to mount an incursion into a sovereign nation to arrest Saudi nationals?
The US has already done this in a few sovereign nations.
Italy, I think. Some others. An arrest of someone on foreign soil, who has not been extradited, and without informing the sovereign nation's government (much less working with them) — How is that not an act of war?
Why is the text of the note I attach to a money transfer –intended for my uses only – not encrypted?
Why does Venmo think that they are the enforcers? Why are they reading customers' note-to-self?
The field could contain an invoice number, project number, case reference, and so on. Such information is privileged information of a business or person.
Would you want your money-transfer service snooping on you, and then selling details to competitors, so they can under-cut you on bids? Where are the controls on companies like Venmo to prevent them from doing whatever they want with the info?!? (e.g., private business info, or personal purchases)
The largest data-breach in American history
I'm not disputing this, but how are you measuring the "size" of the breach? Productivity lost? Highest profile? The total number of individuals affected? Or is a breach bigger if slightly fewer people are affected but in a more substantial way? I can think of many ways that the Sony breach was bigger, or the Snowden leaks, or the recently disclosed Panama Papers (though not "American").
Number of people affected, each of which could have had the entirety of their medical records copied.
Last I heard, it was traced back to Chinese hackers, who wanted to find out how the US had such a great – *cough* – healthcare system.
FT-Summary: And we are supposed to trust them with healthcare?
The largest data-breach in American history was of Anthem(TM), a private health-insurance company.
Verizon sold all of its fiber (& customers) to Frontier. Two other states as well.
We have known this for a long time already.
Plus, butter is way tastier!
If you're only getting a patent in 3-4 countries, the combined [PCT application + national applications] cost more, but if you're getting a patent in more, you save significant money. For example, if you're a big pharma company and want a patent in 100 of those countries, the PCT will save you ~$30-50k in just filing fees, and probably another $30-50k (or more) in attorney or paralegal time to do those filings.
Finally, now, someone says this.
Alas, it's too late for me to save that $60k. It's spilled milk.
FTA: former U.S. senator, MPAA chairman and CEO Chris Dodd said. "To paraphrase Mark Twain, the death of the movies has been greatly exaggerated," Dodd said. It begs the question whether or not piracy is truly killing the movie business -- the MPAA insists it is.
He actually spoke the truth – unintentionally.
To "beg the question" means to "use circular logic". As in, when you are accusing someone of making BS arguments that rely on their initial (wrong) assumption.
Who would have thought that the MPAA CEO would actually speak the truth about 'piracy'?
Err The DJ incident which i have read about, seems to have a different ending than that one i am familiar with. In fact it was cited in a journal once on how quickly we recover from such things and that there is no lasting damage. You have a cite for that?
Read it decades ago in the Guiness Book of World Records. Not the most reliable source, to say it politely.
Scientific Journals trump most everything else, especially once a result has been duplicated elsewhere.
What psychology journal was it in? Do you recall the citation? (I like to pick-clean my brain of errors when I find them.)
Very informative post.
I'm on the other end of such letters, but am not a patent troll. Several people have copied a set of patents I invented and own. Recently, some other patents have appeared that copy mine without any improvement at all. Mine is a foundational one, meaning that no one can license and actually 'use' their patent without infringing on mine – improvement or not.
Here is how far they will go:
* Copy-past entire paragraphs from my Detailed Description, with a single change
* Put a prefix 'xxxxx-' or some other modifier before the critical noun of importance
* Change the critical noun to a rarely used synonym for the same thing
* Describe something vaguely related, but slip in a page describing exactly what I already have patented
* Write a bunch of patents describing mine, deliberately FAILING to cite anything of mine as related art or potential prior art
* Tell me that they "tried to make sure we patented around the prior art", having never cited my 'Relate Art' (which is actually prior art to their claims). Thanks for that admission, friend!
* Copy-paste my Claims verbatim, and use one of the same tricks as above
All of the above are strategies used to keep the overworked patent examiner from finding the prior art which is being 'stolen' from. Once allowed, it's a lot harder to nuke someone's patent, than it would have been while it was under examination.
I sometimes send them printouts of my patents by certified USPS mail. No letter except, "This might be of interest to you regarding xxxxxx technology, particularly your US Patent # 8,nnn,nnn." It's simply informing them, making anything in future where they (1) do not cite me, or (2) practice what I've patented (evidenced in the Figures of their future patents), or (3) that I will discover who they have licensed 'their' Utility patents to, meaning unpleasantness for their customers as most of mine are device patents (plus some methods) – then in future infringement lawsuits (or negotiations prior-to), I will be able to add "willful".
I had been taught that omitting any primary prior art that one was aware of in a patent application was sufficient to incur a penalty, or to nuke the patent application. That was wrong, I now know, but the friendly letter I send adds on willful to any infringement, but also tips them off that I am on to them. It also means that their clearly intentioned divisionals or CIPs must cite my patents, which the USPTO Examiner will then be able to find relevant prior art...
At the time of writing my own patent, I cited over a hundred documents in the field, to make my patents bulletproof. USPTO examiner's comment in the allowance letter was "the prior art is silent on the application of xxxxx ..." That help to keep the trolls away.
The real bastards are the ones who copy-pasted entire paragraphs in their issued patents, but did not cite my patents or scientific articles. In any other context, this would be called plagiarism. The copy-cats merely put the prefix "xxxxx-" before the critical noun of the paragraph. They often insert a short, buried few paragraphs, saying, "Hey, it will probably work for things without that prefix of "xxxxx-", meaning they will or already do have divisionals under review. I have not contacted these jerks, because I think the willful aspect is demonstrable – a monkeys-at-typewriters argument should suffice.
Thanks to the AIA (America Invents Act), I can contact the USPTO examiner directly to nuke an application in process, as long as it's within a year of the application having been published. So, I do watch them, by general USPTO search and the Publ
FTA: ... The alarming study also reveals that only one (University of Alabama) out of the 121 schools required three or more cybersecurity classes to graduate.
University of Alabama?
Wow, I did not know they even had a University, it being Alabama and all. Kudos to their CS Department.
But also, to every other CS Department in the US: U. Alabama is trouncing you in this arena. How does that feel?
So if evidence points to the public wifi at the local McDonalds, does the police go do a raid there as well?
No. But if it is at a Dunkin Donuts, then yes, they will raid it. . . just after they finish their FREE serving of coffee and donuts.
Whether it's Assad's regime using chemical weapons on the Syrian people or ISIL committing all sorts of atrocities, there are no good guys in the fight. Both sides are Islamic, ... blah blah ... However, a Christian baker who refuses to bake a cake for an LGBT wedding gets widely criticized by the media and Christianity is labeled a religion of hate.
Do you pick many cherries?
Maybe their counts are up, but it's hard to tell. It's easy to catch a tiger by the toe, but cheetahs are really fast.
EENIE MEENIE MINEY MOE!
I always choose to let him go.
Pantera? Really?
There are way better metal bands.
Look around. Upgrade your taste in music, dude.
A cashless world is Stalin's wet dream.
In Iraq 1 war the Iraqi army surrendered because they knew they would be treated decently, ...
For the most part, yes. But I have talked intimately with "Iraq War I" vets in the past. None were pleasant people.
One bragged that, because they couldn't be bothered with all of the Geneva Conventions stuff: When groups of Iraqis in Kuwait, having abandoned their vehicles, dropped their weapons, approached slowly with hands-in-the-air, and white shirts as flags of surrender flying. . .
These surrenders were gunned down en-mass by the American tank battalions because the soldiers didn't want to deal with the paperwork of "prisoners of war."
You don't have to believe me — do a GIS on the topic – if you think you have the stomach for it. Some things cannot be un-seen.
'Torture' doesn't work because it results in false confessions and bad data. Anything to make it stop.
But there are many 'enhanced interrogation techniques' that do, most of which have been redefined as 'torture'. Keeping someone awake for 4 days and playing good cop/bad cop works 100% of the time. They actually think the good cop is their friend by then, someone with no sleep for 4 days has the mental capacity of a toddler.
If keeping someone awake for four days (which I have endured – voluntarily) by aggressive means, and playing psychological games with them all the while, does not amount to torture in your mind... I cringe at the horrors that you might deign to call "torture".
BTW, sleep-deprivation of five days or more has been proven to cause permanent brain and/or psychological dysfunctions. A DJ in the 1980's stayed awake for seven days as a publicity stunt — He suffered severe depressive episodes for the rest of his life as a result.
With respect to the current issue: CIA will not torture. But a contractor, or an agency of another government, will.
Precisely.
Brennan's quote, if parsed carefully, does not forbid, nor even mention, what any person "extraordinarily rendered" might suffer at the hands of the non-CIA operatives (Egyptians, whoever). It also does not state that they "will not watch", "will not help", nor "will intervene to stop any such..." From his own mouth:
FTA: "Absolutely, I would not agree to having any CIA officer carrying out waterboarding again," he said.
Yeah. Does that include "throwing off" the current POTUS for his multitude of ...
I don't care if the POTUS tosses-off or not, frankly.
This is the reason I bought a fully mechanical numeric keypad lock for my house. It requires no power. There are lots of electronic keypad door locks available which connect to mains power, have a backup battery and a key which bypasses the numeric pad if all else fails but why go that way when there is a much simpler solution?
I think like you, but do have a little FYI for you:
Mechanical numeric keypads are the easiest kind of lock to defeat. Very easy. There are tables you can find on the darknet (use ToR browser) with tables to get past one in 5-10 minutes.
Better is to use a high-end mechanical lock – one with two-piece tumblers with mushroom-heads, etc. Even locksmiths – with their special tools that are illegal for you to own – take a good long while to get those open. After 10 minutes of fruitless fiddling, they'll just get out a drill with a hardened tip.
Best, go the next step and buy a Medeco or (another brand) mechanical lock which have a Patent on their key blanks, meaning that no locksmith will duplicate your key without proof-of-ownership. Just have several extras cut when you install the locks – in case they ever jack the price up.
(Yes, you in the back taking notes on a Palm Pilot, you are an outlier.)
In 1991, there was a guy in the back who took all of his class notes on a laptop. Now there was an outlier.
His major was "Engineering Management", the fall-back for Engineering students who can't handle EE, MechE, CivilE, or any others.
And yet, if you own something your claim of ownership never expires in a court, even after your death.
Close, but good point anyway.
If you have no will or spouse, then everything you own becomes the property of the State – even your carcass. Fortunately, the State doesn't really want that, so the family gets to hire a mortician to mangle it before applying some make-up and plopping you in a box with a silk pillow that they will then remove en-route to the hole, and re-sell it to someone else. Why do you think hearses have dark windows?
Back on-topic: You make a good point, in that IP – Patents and especially Copyrights – live on.