Here's what appears to be the relevant language from the statute (emphasis mine):
Whoever willfully photographs, videotapes or electronically surveils, with the intent to secretly conduct or hide such activity, the sexual or other intimate parts of a person under or around the person’s clothing to view or attempt to view the person’s sexual or other intimate parts when a reasonable person would believe that the person’s sexual or other intimate parts would not be visible to the public and without the person’s knowledge and consent, shall be punished by imprisonment in the house of correction for not more than 2 ½ years or by a fine of not more than $5,000, or by both fine and imprisonment.
So no, this doesn't appear to come even close to covering a hypothetical situation like the one you mentioned, where a topless 5-year-old just happens to be visible in a picture you're taking. You would have to have intended to do it on the sly, and what appears in the photograph would have to be something that a reasonable person thinks would not be visible.
In itself, bitcoins have no value. The only value comes from what other values people exchange bitcoins for. It's a parasite economy that depends on non-bitcoin money for backing.
What distinction do you think you're striking between BitCoin and "real money"? You can just as easily use your same construct to (correctly) say, "in itself, the U.S. dollar has no value. The only value comes from what other values people exchange U.S. dollars for." This is the very definition and role of currency.
And it's irrelevant. Can we forget it soon, like we've forgotten other ponzi/pyramid/tulip schemes? It's not worth mentioning - let fools and crooks shift real money around between themselves. The losers will deserve it, and while the winners don't, they're not worth losing sleep over.
I don't understand how you qualitatively distinguish the BitCoin bubble from, for example, a stock bubble, or even the price of a stock being moderately driven up higher than its fundamentals will bear. The same thing happens -- when the music stops, the last to buy gets left holding the bag, right? Do you consider yourself to "deserve it" when your 401(k) goes down because your fund manager didn't get out in time?
It's not as if he just applied for the patent and waited 43 years - he's been trying hard not to take NO for the answer.
Well, if this indeed the right application (and I have to wonder if it is given the fact that TFA claims the PTO wouldn't comment because the application hadn't been published), the PTO examiner did take about 17 years to respond to Hyatt's first appeal brief (1978-1995).
Then, after the examiner was reversed in the appeal, he took another 6 years to issue the next rejection (1996-2002).
THEN, after a few years of more typical back-and-forth prosecution, Hyatt filed another appeal brief in 2008. That's still pending, and for a while the PTO periodically mailed a letter essentially saying, "there's a relevant court case about to be decided, so we're suspending prosecution for 6 months." There's been no activity in the file since mid-2011, and given Hyatt's 2008 appeal brief, the ball is in the PTO's court.
Not necessarily saying Hyatt isn't trying for the mother of all troll patents, but at the same time I've never seen anything quite like the above on the PTO's part.
You're engaging in what I like to call "lily pad" arguments. When your first argument ("I'm tho thmart for paying off my 3.5% mortgage as fast as I can") gets called out for being silly, you immediately and shamelessly just jumped to the next silly story. You've changed it so many times, I wouldn't be surprised if you're just someone still living in your parents' basement with too much time on your hands and desperately looking for a way to convince someone--anyone--that you're the only one who really understands how the world works.
But nonetheless responding to your latest and greatest attempt to paint yourself out of a corner: if you're talking about taking out a brand-new second mortgage on your house if you get in a bind, then you're straight back to the scenario I specifically mentioned in my last post, aren't you? Good luck doing that with no income. Peace out.
As many, many others have already pointed out, you're betting with your "pay down the primary mortgage as fast as I can, and take out a HELOC for investment" strategy that today's interest rates--rates based on a federal funds rate of basically zero--are going to go down in the future. That pretty much speaks for itself.
But at risk of further feeding the troll, I'll add that you're not only counting on interest rates going down--you're counting on them going down far enough to cover the 75-150 basis point spread between a conventional mortgage today and a HELOC today. And if you haven't already taken out the HELOC, if you're truly in an emergency situation where you need money (i.e., you lost your income stream), you may find just the tiniest bit of resistance by lenders to you trying to take out additional debt at that point. If you HAVE already taken out the HELOC, that means you've deliberately set up a one-way valve in which you pay down debt at a lower rate and take it back out at a higher rate. More proof that you're the smartest guy in the room, I'm sure.
To each their own--free country and all--but I do worry a bit about the supposed "clients" you mentioned in your other reply.
It's a nice, poignant-sounding story you tell. Pity it lacks the benefit of factual support.
First off, your link that was supposedly one of the "hundreds of lawsuits" by Monsanto--one that "went to the supreme court"--is a case that was filed against Monsanto, not by Monsanto. I understand this is Slashdot and it's considered a sign of immense weakness to RTFA, but I would think you might at least glance at the one you yourself provide in support of your argument.
Now, giving you the benefit of the doubt and assuming that what you really meant to provide with your link was "proof" of your "protection money racket" theory (i.e., that the poor lil' farmers [who somehow scraped together enough money to pay lawyers to appeal this all the way through to the Supreme Court, without a single one of them even having been sued by Monsanto] were suing because they were afraid of being sued for "pollen drift" or whatever excuse was raised by the first wave of farmers who got busted for saving seed from year to year), that doesn't work either. Why? To answer that question, let's tiptoe beyond your activist journalist's rendition of reality and consider what the Federal Circuit Court of Appeals actually said in its opinion:
Because Monsanto has made binding assurances that it will not "take legal action against growers whose crops might inadvertently contain traces of Monsanto biotech genes (because, for example, some transgenic seed or pollen blew onto the grower's land)," Defs.' Mem. of Law in Supp. of Mot. to Dismiss at 5, Organic Seed Growers & Trade Ass'n v. Monsanto Co., 851 F.Supp.2d 544 (S.D.N.Y.2012) (No. 11-CV-2163), ECF No. 20, and appellants have not alleged any circumstances placing them beyond the scope of those assurances, we agree that there is no justiciable case or controversy.
So, the farmers' attempt at a preemptive strike got thrown out because (1) Monsanto hadn't sued a single one of them, (2) Monsanto made a legally binding commitment that it would not do so if indeed farmers just experienced cross-contamination and weren't just using that as an excuse to cut costs by saving seeds, and (3) not a single one of the farmers could say with a straight face that their hypothetical circumstances were outside the scope of Monsanto's legally binding commitment.
Now that we've worked through your distraction, could you be so kind as to get back to my original question: Why, if Monsanto's patented seeds do not provide an operational advantage to the farmers over older, non-patented seeds, is there such a market for the patented seeds?
I guess your strategy might make sense if you don't think you can make your money work harder than an average of 3.5% over the next 20-30 years, and you have enough of an emergency reserve that you don't care about liquidity.
I don't give a rats ass about whether GMOs are healthy or not. I want them labeled because I don't want a dime of my money to go to Monsanto. I want Monsanto to die because of their patent policy, exploitation of the third world and general willingness to endanger our ability to feed ourselves.
Fuck anyone who frames the labeling of GMOs as a health issue, be they for or against. It's an informed consumer issue, nothing more.
I must have missed the expose of Monsanto holding rocket launchers to all these poor farmer's heads, forcing them to use its seeds.
Seriously, though. If farmers could do just as well planting older, non-patented seed, they wouldn't use Monsanto's, n'est ce pas? Why the vitriol over what by definition must be a win-win situation?
I believe that Google's interest coincides with the "consumer's" interest. Anything to kill patent trolls sounds good to me. . . .
Sadly, this is the same short-term "something must be done to keep us all safe" mindset that got us the Patriot Act and other similar founts of long-term regret.
As to Google's interest coinciding with yours, you're only looking at half the picture. Google asserts its own patents against others. Thus, at the end of the day, Google (like many large corporations) is most likely in favor of legislation that will preserve its ability to do so, while reducing the little guys' ability to asserts their patents against Google (and, to some degree, reducing the little guys' ability to get patents in the first place). Including little guys like you and me.
I'm aware, however, that the best of laws have those pesky unintended consequences.
Well said. Yet another reason to take a deep breath and understand how difficult it really is to legislate principled distinctions between a patent troll and a garage inventor, and to make sure we don't neuter the latter in our zeal to "just do something" about the former.
Is the above true, and if so don't the victims deserve to know, not be used as an example?
We'll never know if it's true based on the above -- a little birdie told Kevin Drum that "[t]here's something fishy going on here." Really?
You would hope that people around here would be particularly sensitive to the folly of apples-to-oranges comparisons. The devil is truly in the details with respect to comparing two different health insurance policies, given that there are so many variables that people just don't think about, e.g.:
Deductible
Out-of-pocket max
Actual age (The author bases his haughty conclusion on his assumption that "Deborah looks to be around 45" -- really?)
Smoking status
Provider network
This is one of the most diabolical ways these exchange plans are able to offer superficially lower rates, and right now it's difficult to impossible to really understand which doctors actually will accept any of these plans.
The secondary consequence here is that plans are paying, e.g., 70% not of out-of-network providers' actual fees, but what your insurance company deems to be the "usual and customary fee" for that service. That sounds great until you receive a bill from the out-of-network provider for your 30% of the usual/customary fee, plus the remainder of the difference between that fee and the provider's actual fee. As an added bonus, this "balance billing" does not count toward your plan's out-of-pocket max.
Not a single one of those variables is analyzed in your linked article, or the article it links to. Their superficial analysis (along with every single other piece like this I've seen) is akin to saying, "that greedy car dealer was trying to sell you a 'full-sized sedan' for $X, but look--over here you can get a 'full-sized sedan' for $X/2!!!"
Sorry, but this is just plain wrong (and sadly reflective of the level of journalistic integrity I've grown to expect from Kevin Drum).
Read for yourself the actual regulations, published in mid-2010, for grandfathering of existing plans. Less than 35 pages of single-spaced small print, so not too hard of a slog as these things go. A few recommended highlights:
Table 1 on page 34542, listing several ways in which "grandfathered" plans still must conform to the ACA (e.g., no lifetime limits on benefits; no canceling the plan when someone submits bills for a pre-existing condition that they "forgot" to fill in on their application; perhaps most importantly, must refund "excess" premiums in years where payouts were less than [generally 80]% of premiums) -- in short, the ACA materially alters the actuarial assumptions under which the "grandfathered" policies were issued
Subsection F on pages 34543-45 (and corresponding summary in subsection 3 on page 34547), explaining in detail the extremely limited ways in which an insurer can respond to the above intrusion on the actuarial assumptions of the plan (e.g., can't materially increase copays; group plans can't materially increase cost-shares of premiums)
Page 34549, explaining that the above hypersensitive triggers for a plan to lose grandfathered status are necessary to prevent adverse selection in grandfathered plans--i.e., lower-premium, healthier-population plans staying grandfathered, and higher-premium, sicker-population plans converting, and that they realize in setting the above constraints, most plans will not succeed in staying grandfathered for long
Table 3 on page 34553 (summarizing several prior pages), showing that, in 2010, HHS's mid-range estimate was that the above changes and restrictions would cause a cumulative total of 51% of all grandfathered group health plans to lose grandfathered status by 2013
Subsection F immediately below Table 3, discussing HHS's estimate that the above changes and restrictions would cause 40-67% of grandfathered individual plans per year to lose grandfathered status
In short, it seems clear from HHS's own pen that the concept of "grandfathered" plans under the ACA is (1) highly Orwellian; and (2) was deliberately set up for failure. It's disappointing that the latest distracting meme is blaming the insurance companies for doing what, as shown above in black and white, HHS fully intended to force them to do from the beginning.
Every single one of these proposed bills sounds great as long as you start by thinking about [insert outrageous patent troll story here] and think about how the provisions of the bill would have [made that situation better | kept it from happening].
As the saying goes, "hard cases make bad law."
Picture yourself as a stereotypical garage inventor. You had an amazing idea. You get a patent. You don't have the money to commercialize the idea.
Unintended consequence #1: You try to find a partner to commercialize it. BigCo looks at your idea, flirts with you a bit, then turns you down. Next year, something suspiciously like your idea (but not 100% identical to it) floods the market. Now nobody will talk to you about partnerships because there's no real market opportunity left. You want to sue BigCo for a royalty, but you now can't find anyone to take your case because of the fee-shifting provisions. Even a slam-dunk case has a 15-20% chance of going the other way, and this isn't a slam-dunk case. BigCo's legal fees are likely to run in the $3-5MM range, and they're likely to make sure you understand how much they're spending just to make it more likely that you'll settle or go away. Feeling lucky?
Unintended consequence #2: You need money. You have a patent for a great idea, but now you can't easily monetize it. You can't readily enforce it for the reasons stated above. Companies are less likely to license it [for as much] given the reduced odds of litigation. You can't sell it [for as much], because the fee-shifting calculus has significantly impaired the potential value a buyer might experience.
Now, if your world-view is that patents are evil and should be eradicated, you may be OK with all this. But be honest about what's really happening as a result of legislation like this. Patents aren't really being eradicated -- they're being consolidated. The CCIA wants this passed? Of course they do. They're already well-positioned for patents to become a rich man's game.
The first issue is that the U.S. Constitution doesn't require an inventor to practice a patent. It rather guarantees that inventors have the exclusive right to their discoveries for a limited period of time (right now, 20 years from the date of the initial application). That means, like it or not, I can sit on my patent for its entire lifespan and prevent ANYONE from practicing it. Now, in the real world I have no incentive to do that (unless I'm just a cantankerous jerk) -- most people respond well to money, and many patents are licensed sans litigation by (just as any other property transaction) a willing buyer and willing seller reaching an agreement on a reasonable price. But in any event, to require the inventor to practice the patent might require amending the Constitution.
Once your new law is in place, it's easy to imagine it having unintended consequences and being difficult to enforce. Here's a classic scenario: I patent an idea. I don't have money to commercialize it myself, so I start shopping it. I meet with BigCorp, they have a team of engineers take a look at my idea and ultimately say, "no thanks." I continue talking to potential business partners. Nine months later, BigCorp floods the market with a product that incorporates my invention. Now what? Do my actions constitute "actively marketing the protected technology" under the new law such that I can sue BigCorp? If so, we've just created a new line-drawing exercise for judges -- what kind and quantity of activities satisfy "actively marketing" such that I can sue? NPEs will find that line and exploit it (e.g., why isn't calling businesses and trying to get them to take a license to my patent "actively marketing the protected technology"?) If not, I can't sue under this law, and have no hope of getting anyone else interested in partnering with me so I CAN sue, now that BigCorp has taken all the oxygen out of the market.
Just a cautionary note that the corporate form is a strong firewall, but it's not impermeable. Courts can, and sometimes do, "pierce the corporate veil" of sham entities and hold the owner(s) responsible for the entities' actions. Under-capitalization (actually in your hypothetical, no capitalization) of the entity is one of the factors they look at.*
* This isn't legal advice; consult an attorney about your own particular situation; etc. etc.
I'm sure it all seems so "very easy" when you just look at the world through your own particular set of glasses. In the real world, there are plenty of meritless patents held and litigated by NPEs that aren't software or business method. Next?
Sure, talk to a politician. Show them "the real damage of the current patent system." What, exactly, would you then ask the politician to do? Contrary to popular belief, you can't write laws in the form, "patent rights shall be stripped from anyone who a critical mass of Slashdot posters declares to be a patent troll... ARRRR."
So: how would YOU fix this problem? Be specific. Keep in mind that, whatever solution you propose, you really need to preserve rights for the garage inventor that patents an invention but doesn't have the personal capital to actually produce it. Like it or not, there's a very thin line between those people and the "non-practicing entities" that abuse the system.
Re: Speaking of "thinking out it"
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eBay The Vote
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· Score: 2, Insightful
Wow. Where to start?
First, you clearly can't make up your mind about whether a marginal tax rate is or is not equal to an average tax rate. You suggest the OP is foolish for saying that he's paying 33% of his income in taxes, but then you attempt to invalidate the Fair Tax by suggesting that the wealthy are going to pay less of an AVERAGE tax rate than they are right now. You're conflating the current income tax's MARGINAL rates with the Fair Tax's FLAT RATE.
Next, you gloss over the fact that the Fair Tax's rate applies to dollars SPENT, not dollars EARNED. [I'll give you three guesses as to which is the larger base, given the current scheme of deductions/evasions.] Finally, you ignore the fact that many wealthy people pay capital gains tax rates [10-15%] on significant portions of their incomes rather than ordinary income rates, further reducing their AVERAGE tax rates.
Your rhetoric seems little more than a typical attempt to stir up class warfare through straw men and deliberate falsehoods. Either that, or you truly don't get it. In either event, you might want to cut back your rants a bit until you better understand the subject.
Am I the only noticing that 1% of the top earners own 40% of the wealth (as in one of the 5-rated comments) and 1% of the top tax payers pay only 30% of all taxes is kind of strange and suspicious?
It only seems strange and suspicious if you can't distinguish the several varieties of apples and oranges you just combined in your sentence:
1. The 1% / 40% statistic refers to global wealth
2. The 1% / 30% statistic refers to United States taxpayers
3. United States taxpayers pay taxes on income, not wealth
Does that mean that 1% of the richest are not quite the same as 1% of the top tax payers? What happened to the progressive tax system?
The US tax system remains heavily progressive. If you were actually to read the linked study, you would see that the top 1% of US wage earners earn only 15% of total wages, but pay 30% of total income taxes. That seems fairly progressive to me.
To give auto makers a free Get-Out-Of-Jail card because they have the hubris to think they can build something that really drives better than a human is madness. Let them try but they must pay for failure so they are properly diligent as to issues that may arise.
I don't know how difficult is the task to build a computer driven nationwide transportation system that has a lesser average level of accident/fatalities/whatever-the-metric than does the current human driver population.
Nor, at this point in our world's collective perceptions, does it really matter.
A human driver involved in a wreck that results in [multiple] fatality barely raises an eyebrow in the news these days. A computer-driven car that tweaks someone's ingrown toenail due to a glitch? The system will be shut down that very day.
Think about what you said in the context of indiviual events of failure rather than average levels of failure, and the logical conclusion of your position becomes clear. Expectations of automated systems that greatly exceed those of human-directed systems will severely, if not permanantly, preclude any sort of serious implementation effort, and by extension the development/refinement of safety measures. Mr Chicken, meet Mr. Egg.
Slashdot Mirror
Wow, really? That was a polite way of asking someone to justify what is on its face an irrational theory. Sorry you missed the subtlety.
Here's what appears to be the relevant language from the statute (emphasis mine):
Whoever willfully photographs, videotapes or electronically surveils, with the intent to secretly conduct or hide such activity, the sexual or other intimate parts of a person under or around the person’s clothing to view or attempt to view the person’s sexual or other intimate parts when a reasonable person would believe that the person’s sexual or other intimate parts would not be visible to the public and without the person’s knowledge and consent, shall be punished by imprisonment in the house of correction for not more than 2 ½ years or by a fine of not more than $5,000, or by both fine and imprisonment.
So no, this doesn't appear to come even close to covering a hypothetical situation like the one you mentioned, where a topless 5-year-old just happens to be visible in a picture you're taking. You would have to have intended to do it on the sly, and what appears in the photograph would have to be something that a reasonable person thinks would not be visible.
In itself, bitcoins have no value. The only value comes from what other values people exchange bitcoins for. It's a parasite economy that depends on non-bitcoin money for backing.
What distinction do you think you're striking between BitCoin and "real money"? You can just as easily use your same construct to (correctly) say, "in itself, the U.S. dollar has no value. The only value comes from what other values people exchange U.S. dollars for." This is the very definition and role of currency.
And it's irrelevant. Can we forget it soon, like we've forgotten other ponzi/pyramid/tulip schemes? It's not worth mentioning - let fools and crooks shift real money around between themselves. The losers will deserve it, and while the winners don't, they're not worth losing sleep over.
I don't understand how you qualitatively distinguish the BitCoin bubble from, for example, a stock bubble, or even the price of a stock being moderately driven up higher than its fundamentals will bear. The same thing happens -- when the music stops, the last to buy gets left holding the bag, right? Do you consider yourself to "deserve it" when your 401(k) goes down because your fund manager didn't get out in time?
It's not as if he just applied for the patent and waited 43 years - he's been trying hard not to take NO for the answer.
Well, if this indeed the right application (and I have to wonder if it is given the fact that TFA claims the PTO wouldn't comment because the application hadn't been published), the PTO examiner did take about 17 years to respond to Hyatt's first appeal brief (1978-1995).
Then, after the examiner was reversed in the appeal, he took another 6 years to issue the next rejection (1996-2002).
THEN, after a few years of more typical back-and-forth prosecution, Hyatt filed another appeal brief in 2008. That's still pending, and for a while the PTO periodically mailed a letter essentially saying, "there's a relevant court case about to be decided, so we're suspending prosecution for 6 months." There's been no activity in the file since mid-2011, and given Hyatt's 2008 appeal brief, the ball is in the PTO's court.
Not necessarily saying Hyatt isn't trying for the mother of all troll patents, but at the same time I've never seen anything quite like the above on the PTO's part.
You're engaging in what I like to call "lily pad" arguments. When your first argument ("I'm tho thmart for paying off my 3.5% mortgage as fast as I can") gets called out for being silly, you immediately and shamelessly just jumped to the next silly story. You've changed it so many times, I wouldn't be surprised if you're just someone still living in your parents' basement with too much time on your hands and desperately looking for a way to convince someone--anyone--that you're the only one who really understands how the world works.
But nonetheless responding to your latest and greatest attempt to paint yourself out of a corner: if you're talking about taking out a brand-new second mortgage on your house if you get in a bind, then you're straight back to the scenario I specifically mentioned in my last post, aren't you? Good luck doing that with no income. Peace out.
As many, many others have already pointed out, you're betting with your "pay down the primary mortgage as fast as I can, and take out a HELOC for investment" strategy that today's interest rates--rates based on a federal funds rate of basically zero--are going to go down in the future. That pretty much speaks for itself.
But at risk of further feeding the troll, I'll add that you're not only counting on interest rates going down--you're counting on them going down far enough to cover the 75-150 basis point spread between a conventional mortgage today and a HELOC today. And if you haven't already taken out the HELOC, if you're truly in an emergency situation where you need money (i.e., you lost your income stream), you may find just the tiniest bit of resistance by lenders to you trying to take out additional debt at that point. If you HAVE already taken out the HELOC, that means you've deliberately set up a one-way valve in which you pay down debt at a lower rate and take it back out at a higher rate. More proof that you're the smartest guy in the room, I'm sure.
To each their own--free country and all--but I do worry a bit about the supposed "clients" you mentioned in your other reply.
It's a nice, poignant-sounding story you tell. Pity it lacks the benefit of factual support.
First off, your link that was supposedly one of the "hundreds of lawsuits" by Monsanto--one that "went to the supreme court"--is a case that was filed against Monsanto, not by Monsanto. I understand this is Slashdot and it's considered a sign of immense weakness to RTFA, but I would think you might at least glance at the one you yourself provide in support of your argument.
Now, giving you the benefit of the doubt and assuming that what you really meant to provide with your link was "proof" of your "protection money racket" theory (i.e., that the poor lil' farmers [who somehow scraped together enough money to pay lawyers to appeal this all the way through to the Supreme Court, without a single one of them even having been sued by Monsanto] were suing because they were afraid of being sued for "pollen drift" or whatever excuse was raised by the first wave of farmers who got busted for saving seed from year to year), that doesn't work either. Why? To answer that question, let's tiptoe beyond your activist journalist's rendition of reality and consider what the Federal Circuit Court of Appeals actually said in its opinion:
Because Monsanto has made binding assurances that it will not "take legal action against growers whose crops might inadvertently contain traces of Monsanto biotech genes (because, for example, some transgenic seed or pollen blew onto the grower's land)," Defs.' Mem. of Law in Supp. of Mot. to Dismiss at 5, Organic Seed Growers & Trade Ass'n v. Monsanto Co., 851 F.Supp.2d 544 (S.D.N.Y.2012) (No. 11-CV-2163), ECF No. 20, and appellants have not alleged any circumstances placing them beyond the scope of those assurances , we agree that there is no justiciable case or controversy.
So, the farmers' attempt at a preemptive strike got thrown out because (1) Monsanto hadn't sued a single one of them, (2) Monsanto made a legally binding commitment that it would not do so if indeed farmers just experienced cross-contamination and weren't just using that as an excuse to cut costs by saving seeds, and (3) not a single one of the farmers could say with a straight face that their hypothetical circumstances were outside the scope of Monsanto's legally binding commitment.
Now that we've worked through your distraction, could you be so kind as to get back to my original question: Why, if Monsanto's patented seeds do not provide an operational advantage to the farmers over older, non-patented seeds, is there such a market for the patented seeds?
I guess your strategy might make sense if you don't think you can make your money work harder than an average of 3.5% over the next 20-30 years, and you have enough of an emergency reserve that you don't care about liquidity.
I don't give a rats ass about whether GMOs are healthy or not. I want them labeled because I don't want a dime of my money to go to Monsanto. I want Monsanto to die because of their patent policy, exploitation of the third world and general willingness to endanger our ability to feed ourselves.
Fuck anyone who frames the labeling of GMOs as a health issue, be they for or against. It's an informed consumer issue, nothing more.
I must have missed the expose of Monsanto holding rocket launchers to all these poor farmer's heads, forcing them to use its seeds.
Seriously, though. If farmers could do just as well planting older, non-patented seed, they wouldn't use Monsanto's, n'est ce pas? Why the vitriol over what by definition must be a win-win situation?
Your "quick history lesson" appears to uncritically regurgitate a meme that, so far as I can tell, has no support.
Rockstar bought the Nortel patent portfolio. CPTN Holdings bought the Novell patent portfolio. Google was invited to join CPTN, not Rockstar.
Confirmed by Google here.
People appear to be conflating two different consortiums that purchased two different patent portfolios.
Rockstar bought the Nortel patent portfolio. CPTN Holdings bought the Novell patent portfolio. Google was invited to join CPTN, not Rockstar.
Confirmed by Google here.
Sadly, this is the same short-term "something must be done to keep us all safe" mindset that got us the Patriot Act and other similar founts of long-term regret.
As to Google's interest coinciding with yours, you're only looking at half the picture. Google asserts its own patents against others. Thus, at the end of the day, Google (like many large corporations) is most likely in favor of legislation that will preserve its ability to do so, while reducing the little guys' ability to asserts their patents against Google (and, to some degree, reducing the little guys' ability to get patents in the first place). Including little guys like you and me.
Well said. Yet another reason to take a deep breath and understand how difficult it really is to legislate principled distinctions between a patent troll and a garage inventor, and to make sure we don't neuter the latter in our zeal to "just do something" about the former.
Is the above true, and if so don't the victims deserve to know, not be used as an example?
We'll never know if it's true based on the above -- a little birdie told Kevin Drum that "[t]here's something fishy going on here." Really?
You would hope that people around here would be particularly sensitive to the folly of apples-to-oranges comparisons. The devil is truly in the details with respect to comparing two different health insurance policies, given that there are so many variables that people just don't think about, e.g.:
Not a single one of those variables is analyzed in your linked article, or the article it links to. Their superficial analysis (along with every single other piece like this I've seen) is akin to saying, "that greedy car dealer was trying to sell you a 'full-sized sedan' for $X, but look--over here you can get a 'full-sized sedan' for $X/2!!!"
Read for yourself the actual regulations, published in mid-2010, for grandfathering of existing plans. Less than 35 pages of single-spaced small print, so not too hard of a slog as these things go. A few recommended highlights:
In short, it seems clear from HHS's own pen that the concept of "grandfathered" plans under the ACA is (1) highly Orwellian; and (2) was deliberately set up for failure. It's disappointing that the latest distracting meme is blaming the insurance companies for doing what, as shown above in black and white, HHS fully intended to force them to do from the beginning.
Every single one of these proposed bills sounds great as long as you start by thinking about [insert outrageous patent troll story here] and think about how the provisions of the bill would have [made that situation better | kept it from happening].
As the saying goes, "hard cases make bad law."
Picture yourself as a stereotypical garage inventor. You had an amazing idea. You get a patent. You don't have the money to commercialize the idea.
Unintended consequence #1: You try to find a partner to commercialize it. BigCo looks at your idea, flirts with you a bit, then turns you down. Next year, something suspiciously like your idea (but not 100% identical to it) floods the market. Now nobody will talk to you about partnerships because there's no real market opportunity left. You want to sue BigCo for a royalty, but you now can't find anyone to take your case because of the fee-shifting provisions. Even a slam-dunk case has a 15-20% chance of going the other way, and this isn't a slam-dunk case. BigCo's legal fees are likely to run in the $3-5MM range, and they're likely to make sure you understand how much they're spending just to make it more likely that you'll settle or go away. Feeling lucky?
Unintended consequence #2: You need money. You have a patent for a great idea, but now you can't easily monetize it. You can't readily enforce it for the reasons stated above. Companies are less likely to license it [for as much] given the reduced odds of litigation. You can't sell it [for as much], because the fee-shifting calculus has significantly impaired the potential value a buyer might experience.
Now, if your world-view is that patents are evil and should be eradicated, you may be OK with all this. But be honest about what's really happening as a result of legislation like this. Patents aren't really being eradicated -- they're being consolidated. The CCIA wants this passed? Of course they do. They're already well-positioned for patents to become a rich man's game.
Will it help slow down . . . deforestation?
Quite the opposite, but not for the reasons you're thinking. I suspect we'll find that decreasing the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere will tend to retard plant growth in general.
The first issue is that the U.S. Constitution doesn't require an inventor to practice a patent. It rather guarantees that inventors have the exclusive right to their discoveries for a limited period of time (right now, 20 years from the date of the initial application). That means, like it or not, I can sit on my patent for its entire lifespan and prevent ANYONE from practicing it. Now, in the real world I have no incentive to do that (unless I'm just a cantankerous jerk) -- most people respond well to money, and many patents are licensed sans litigation by (just as any other property transaction) a willing buyer and willing seller reaching an agreement on a reasonable price. But in any event, to require the inventor to practice the patent might require amending the Constitution.
Once your new law is in place, it's easy to imagine it having unintended consequences and being difficult to enforce. Here's a classic scenario: I patent an idea. I don't have money to commercialize it myself, so I start shopping it. I meet with BigCorp, they have a team of engineers take a look at my idea and ultimately say, "no thanks." I continue talking to potential business partners. Nine months later, BigCorp floods the market with a product that incorporates my invention. Now what? Do my actions constitute "actively marketing the protected technology" under the new law such that I can sue BigCorp? If so, we've just created a new line-drawing exercise for judges -- what kind and quantity of activities satisfy "actively marketing" such that I can sue? NPEs will find that line and exploit it (e.g., why isn't calling businesses and trying to get them to take a license to my patent "actively marketing the protected technology"?) If not, I can't sue under this law, and have no hope of getting anyone else interested in partnering with me so I CAN sue, now that BigCorp has taken all the oxygen out of the market.
Just a cautionary note that the corporate form is a strong firewall, but it's not impermeable. Courts can, and sometimes do, "pierce the corporate veil" of sham entities and hold the owner(s) responsible for the entities' actions. Under-capitalization (actually in your hypothetical, no capitalization) of the entity is one of the factors they look at.*
* This isn't legal advice; consult an attorney about your own particular situation; etc. etc.
It's very easy to identify really.
I'm sure it all seems so "very easy" when you just look at the world through your own particular set of glasses. In the real world, there are plenty of meritless patents held and litigated by NPEs that aren't software or business method. Next?
Sure, talk to a politician. Show them "the real damage of the current patent system." What, exactly, would you then ask the politician to do? Contrary to popular belief, you can't write laws in the form, "patent rights shall be stripped from anyone who a critical mass of Slashdot posters declares to be a patent troll... ARRRR."
So: how would YOU fix this problem? Be specific. Keep in mind that, whatever solution you propose, you really need to preserve rights for the garage inventor that patents an invention but doesn't have the personal capital to actually produce it. Like it or not, there's a very thin line between those people and the "non-practicing entities" that abuse the system.
Wow. Where to start?
First, you clearly can't make up your mind about whether a marginal tax rate is or is not equal to an average tax rate. You suggest the OP is foolish for saying that he's paying 33% of his income in taxes, but then you attempt to invalidate the Fair Tax by suggesting that the wealthy are going to pay less of an AVERAGE tax rate than they are right now. You're conflating the current income tax's MARGINAL rates with the Fair Tax's FLAT RATE.
Next, you gloss over the fact that the Fair Tax's rate applies to dollars SPENT, not dollars EARNED. [I'll give you three guesses as to which is the larger base, given the current scheme of deductions/evasions.] Finally, you ignore the fact that many wealthy people pay capital gains tax rates [10-15%] on significant portions of their incomes rather than ordinary income rates, further reducing their AVERAGE tax rates.
Your rhetoric seems little more than a typical attempt to stir up class warfare through straw men and deliberate falsehoods. Either that, or you truly don't get it. In either event, you might want to cut back your rants a bit until you better understand the subject.
It only seems strange and suspicious if you can't distinguish the several varieties of apples and oranges you just combined in your sentence:
1. The 1% / 40% statistic refers to global wealth
2. The 1% / 30% statistic refers to United States taxpayers
3. United States taxpayers pay taxes on income, not wealth
The US tax system remains heavily progressive. If you were actually to read the linked study, you would see that the top 1% of US wage earners earn only 15% of total wages, but pay 30% of total income taxes. That seems fairly progressive to me.
I don't know how difficult is the task to build a computer driven nationwide transportation system that has a lesser average level of accident/fatalities/whatever-the-metric than does the current human driver population.
Nor, at this point in our world's collective perceptions, does it really matter.
A human driver involved in a wreck that results in [multiple] fatality barely raises an eyebrow in the news these days. A computer-driven car that tweaks someone's ingrown toenail due to a glitch? The system will be shut down that very day.
Think about what you said in the context of indiviual events of failure rather than average levels of failure, and the logical conclusion of your position becomes clear. Expectations of automated systems that greatly exceed those of human-directed systems will severely, if not permanantly, preclude any sort of serious implementation effort, and by extension the development/refinement of safety measures. Mr Chicken, meet Mr. Egg.
Coffee doesn't neutralize B-vitamins.
Caffeine does.
Big difference, particularly for Mountain-Dew-saturated nerds who read this article.
Why, sure 'nuff... I'm now a happy "customer." Sometimes it just doesn't pay to be as skeptical as I usually am... :-)
Thanks for the tip!