The fear is that they would cross the border (for use in planning, coordinating or perpetrating terrorist acts), like previous Hamas drones had in the past, not that they would be used in the Gaza strip. When a terrorist organization is purchasing those things, they are generally used to commit war crimes, not to document them.
I never claimed to be an expert etc. If I'm an expert, it's only in the technical matters covered within the patents. I merely claimed that nothing in the USPTO objections I received was ever relevant to the patents' substance, and that that caused the patents applications and hence the granted patents to be overly broad.
Sure, litigation may limit those patents to the actual inventions within, or may even uncover some prior art, but the fact that litigation would be required for that means the system is broken, you don't need to be an expert for that.
I must disagree about the 'picking of fights', I pay for the thing to be examined, I invariably recieve a useless weak reply that is easily refuted, hence system is broken.
Yes, I'm entitled to the broadest patent protection I can secure, but would expect some actual examination by the USPTO.
If you understand the USPTO mentality, there's no patent that you can't get through, they are simply that inept.
I was once in an R&D position, after a having a few patents under my sleeve, I was able to pass just about anything without the help of a lawyer, true, they reject everything outright, but they simply don't understand what they reject, and are used to being corrected, after a few rounds of bogus rejections, some meaningless concessions on your part, and making them feel stupid enough (refuting their bogus rejections), they'll accept anything. I don't think I ever got a USPTO comment or rejection that was relevant to the invention in question.
Knowing that, the temptation to broaden the patent is huge, because you want to leave room for said meaningless concessions, and because employer's greed does play a part once they find out what they can get away with.
It's a good thing patent litigation is so expensive, because even the few patents I personally wrote for my employer could be used to wreck havoc on a lot of companies if they were actually used.
Yes, maybe they should be recognized, but should they be granted a twenty year technology on an almost trivial idea?
The question isn't about giving credit who invented it, it's whether the public interest is better served by the current 20 year monopoly system for trivial things.
The patent covers "compound filters, paragraph hashing, and Bayes rules"
RTFP (Read The Fine Patent) - It only cover these when used together (with some other restrictions such as excluding paragraphs). It is very broad, but not as much as is depicted in the/. article.
What bugs me, is that movie goers excpect a bit of privacy in the theater (as many couples can attest). Unless big 'we are watching you and we can see you in the dark' posters are posted in front of the theatre, I would think this should be regarded as invasion to that privacy.
This system defends against balistic missiles. The only countries that have missiles capable of reaching US soil are Russia and China. Both of these nations are friendly towards the US currently. This is an example of the military preparing to fight the last war.
No, it's not, it defends against short range rockets.
Even if a terrorist group gets ahold of a nuclear bomb, it would be easier and cheaper to sneak it into the US than to develope and build ICBMs.
In fact terrorist groups have these rockets, that's why previous tests were against katyusha rockets, used by the Hizbulla.
And even then, this system can only shoot down missiles as they are launched by flying over the enemy's territory. This means that the government has spent billions on a gimmicky star wars program that only works if we invade another country's airspace, a.k.a. an act of war. IIRC, it's primarily a ground based system, to be used from the privacy of your own country. There is an airbourne version, which can be used after hostilities have begun. Or in peace-keeping missions, when an invasion isn't relevant.
Good point, but there is the minor incovinience called collateral damage. That's the problem when the enemy hide behind civilians. When Israel faces this problem return fire will probably have to be into a city block, refugee camp, or a school (the later being an all time terrorist favourite).
A good example is the Kana incident. Where return fire hit dozens of refugees in addition to the actual terrorists.
No, the car analogy is wrong. At least in the jusrisdictions I'm familiar with, as long as you commited a crime (virus writing/distributing) deliberatly, you commited all side effects of said crime. A more accurate analogy would be an accidental death caused by arson. At least in my jurisdiction, virus writing/distributing is a crime by itself.
If they didn't have an admin. Managment would still be potentially liable (negligence of not having a competent admin), and civil liability would not be diminished.
IANAL, but:
Limited liability exists only when the software was voluntarily and knowingly installed (e.g. after reading a EULA and clicking OK). So you can expect full liabilty (both criminal and civil). In many jurisdications, if a virus directly caused a death they could be charged with murder.
The admin is guilty of negligence, again both criminal (only in the case of gross negligence, which could be failing to patch a critical system), and civil (although as an employee, this usually only means losing his/her job), the employer will probably be liable to (probably civil cases only though).
Here's the spooky quantum-mechanical part - the same interference effect happens even if the projector is designed to only emit one photon at a time, then wait until it has hit the wall (or the board) before sending another. You will still get the bands of dark and light.
Even better, try it with electrons, works best with a florescent surface. Electrons are usually regarded as particles rather than waves, but exhibit the same interference pattern. The probability of each electron to hit each point being equivalent to the brightness.
That's a horrible system, especially the cycling part, because the password usually get stored in a database in all the web sites (forget about encrypted here). This means any operator in any web site, can get into many of your accounts, especially now that they know your system.
www.songs.co.il (hebrew site) offers a similar service for mainstream israeli music, and is operated by a major Israeli record label (NMC), is offering music marginally cheaper than iTunes and the like, in a vanilla MP3 format (with WMA previews). Plus, new albums are released online (usually hours but sometimes days) before the disk is released, and there are options for per track or whole disk purchase.
IANAE, but RTFA, they will have to follow these rules anyway because of the large number of option/stock holders (probably mostly employees), in this case, not going public is unfair to these option/stock holders, because it will enable them to cash in or diversify their portfolio.
Plus, being public means they can always issue stock if they need to raise money (e.g. for buying microsoft), they can buy back stock too.
Being public gives the company valuation, strong valuation carry some serious negotiation power with it, even if they will not want to dilute ownership they can use stock as collateral for loans or basis for issuing bonds.
I learned to type on typewriters too, the problem isn't with numbers, it's easy writing least significant digit first, it's with mixed text (which most typewriters could never handle due to lack of 'font support' anyway), where you would have to type the last letter first. I agree, most word processors do a pretty lousy job, and I would love to have the option of manual control, but there is simply no flow to interrupt if you have to write whole sentences backwords.
Oh, and it's almost never a wizard you can kill anyway.
I'm glad you concede the argument of inter-racial marriages.
Residency is an immigration issue, these laws try to deal with a problem caused by marriages which were intended as a way to gain residency, they only affect residency for PA residents (which bars the question of race anyway, as most Jordanians, and almost all arab-israelis are Palastinians, according to the PLO and are not affected). The US USCIS too is regulating marriage of convenience (Did you ever see the movie Green Card?;-)). These laws target residents of the PA only because that's where the problem is, you don't see many americans coming here for convenience, do you?
And anyway, Israeli immigration authorties (and the newly formed immigration police) are recently cracking down on all kinds of illegitimate immigration and work by illegal aliens, just like the US does. This is triggered by unemployment, not racisim.
About the fence, nobody like it, it's inconvinient, expensive, and not fair. I'll be the first to agree to that, and I can't wait to see it go down, right after the terrorism stops. And damn it, it's not a wall! The only parts where a wall exists are where there is a significant risk of civilians being shot at from the other side (where palastinian and israeli communities or major roads are nearby), they are a very small percentage of the total length.
bans on inter-racial marriages - did you even read your link? The only kind of marriage that is banned is civil marriage between two jews. And after the last elections, the new goverment's agreements include law changes designed to prevent any situation in which two consenting adults can not be wed (unless relatives). The only limitation on palastinians is in immigration laws, preventing the marriage from giving automatic residency, because of a trend of fictive marriages.
Work permits too are an immigration issue, you don't consider the limitations on H1B visas racist, do you?
Anyway, that was only a prototype, and the only one, where is the logic in selling that ?
Slashdot Mirror
The fear is that they would cross the border (for use in planning, coordinating or perpetrating terrorist acts), like previous Hamas drones had in the past, not that they would be used in the Gaza strip. When a terrorist organization is purchasing those things, they are generally used to commit war crimes, not to document them.
Sure, litigation may limit those patents to the actual inventions within, or may even uncover some prior art, but the fact that litigation would be required for that means the system is broken, you don't need to be an expert for that.
I must disagree about the 'picking of fights', I pay for the thing to be examined, I invariably recieve a useless weak reply that is easily refuted, hence system is broken.
Yes, I'm entitled to the broadest patent protection I can secure, but would expect some actual examination by the USPTO.
If you understand the USPTO mentality, there's no patent that you can't get through, they are simply that inept. I was once in an R&D position, after a having a few patents under my sleeve, I was able to pass just about anything without the help of a lawyer, true, they reject everything outright, but they simply don't understand what they reject, and are used to being corrected, after a few rounds of bogus rejections, some meaningless concessions on your part, and making them feel stupid enough (refuting their bogus rejections), they'll accept anything. I don't think I ever got a USPTO comment or rejection that was relevant to the invention in question. Knowing that, the temptation to broaden the patent is huge, because you want to leave room for said meaningless concessions, and because employer's greed does play a part once they find out what they can get away with. It's a good thing patent litigation is so expensive, because even the few patents I personally wrote for my employer could be used to wreck havoc on a lot of companies if they were actually used.
Yes, maybe they should be recognized, but should they be granted a twenty year technology on an almost trivial idea?
The question isn't about giving credit who invented it, it's whether the public interest is better served by the current 20 year monopoly system for trivial things.
RTFP (Read The Fine Patent) - It only cover these when used together (with some other restrictions such as excluding paragraphs). It is very broad, but not as much as is depicted in the /. article.
What bugs me, is that movie goers excpect a bit of privacy in the theater (as many couples can attest). Unless big 'we are watching you and we can see you in the dark' posters are posted in front of the theatre, I would think this should be regarded as invasion to that privacy.
No, it's not, it defends against short range rockets.
Even if a terrorist group gets ahold of a nuclear bomb, it would be easier and cheaper to sneak it into the US than to develope and build ICBMs.
In fact terrorist groups have these rockets, that's why previous tests were against katyusha rockets, used by the Hizbulla.
And even then, this system can only shoot down missiles as they are launched by flying over the enemy's territory. This means that the government has spent billions on a gimmicky star wars program that only works if we invade another country's airspace, a.k.a. an act of war.
IIRC, it's primarily a ground based system, to be used from the privacy of your own country. There is an airbourne version, which can be used after hostilities have begun. Or in peace-keeping missions, when an invasion isn't relevant.
A good example is the Kana incident. Where return fire hit dozens of refugees in addition to the actual terrorists.
This systems makes the descision much easier.
This laser can destroy a missile in mid air, it won't blind you, but rather kill you.
Because the state is less likely to bankrupt than those companies.
First Worm with a EULA?
W32.Friendgreet.worm
If they didn't have an admin. Managment would still be potentially liable (negligence of not having a competent admin), and civil liability would not be diminished.
Limited liability exists only when the software was voluntarily and knowingly installed (e.g. after reading a EULA and clicking OK). So you can expect full liabilty (both criminal and civil). In many jurisdications, if a virus directly caused a death they could be charged with murder.
The admin is guilty of negligence, again both criminal (only in the case of gross negligence, which could be failing to patch a critical system), and civil (although as an employee, this usually only means losing his/her job), the employer will probably be liable to (probably civil cases only though).
Even better, try it with electrons, works best with a florescent surface. Electrons are usually regarded as particles rather than waves, but exhibit the same interference pattern. The probability of each electron to hit each point being equivalent to the brightness.
1) buy M$ stock /. comment suggesting others do the same
2) post a
3) profit
That's a horrible system, especially the cycling part, because the password usually get stored in a database in all the web sites (forget about encrypted here). This means any operator in any web site, can get into many of your accounts, especially now that they know your system.
That's the non-obvious requirement. It just needs to be enforced.
Just a small correction, they are not palestinians (although some of their accomplices were), they are Israeli arabs.
I understood the parent post as generalizing a bit more than that.
In Israel, they do - look at www.songs.co.il, by NMC, a major israeli brand.
www.songs.co.il (hebrew site) offers a similar service for mainstream israeli music, and is operated by a major Israeli record label (NMC), is offering music marginally cheaper than iTunes and the like, in a vanilla MP3 format (with WMA previews). Plus, new albums are released online (usually hours but sometimes days) before the disk is released, and there are options for per track or whole disk purchase.
Plus, being public means they can always issue stock if they need to raise money (e.g. for buying microsoft), they can buy back stock too.
Being public gives the company valuation, strong valuation carry some serious negotiation power with it, even if they will not want to dilute ownership they can use stock as collateral for loans or basis for issuing bonds.
Oh, and it's almost never a wizard you can kill anyway.
Residency is an immigration issue, these laws try to deal with a problem caused by marriages which were intended as a way to gain residency, they only affect residency for PA residents (which bars the question of race anyway, as most Jordanians, and almost all arab-israelis are Palastinians, according to the PLO and are not affected). The US USCIS too is regulating marriage of convenience (Did you ever see the movie Green Card? ;-)). These laws target residents of the PA only because that's where the problem is, you don't see many americans coming here for convenience, do you?
And anyway, Israeli immigration authorties (and the newly formed immigration police) are recently cracking down on all kinds of illegitimate immigration and work by illegal aliens, just like the US does. This is triggered by unemployment, not racisim.
About the fence, nobody like it, it's inconvinient, expensive, and not fair. I'll be the first to agree to that, and I can't wait to see it go down, right after the terrorism stops. And damn it, it's not a wall! The only parts where a wall exists are where there is a significant risk of civilians being shot at from the other side (where palastinian and israeli communities or major roads are nearby), they are a very small percentage of the total length.
bans on inter-racial marriages - did you even read your link? The only kind of marriage that is banned is civil marriage between two jews. And after the last elections, the new goverment's agreements include law changes designed to prevent any situation in which two consenting adults can not be wed (unless relatives). The only limitation on palastinians is in immigration laws, preventing the marriage from giving automatic residency, because of a trend of fictive marriages.
Work permits too are an immigration issue, you don't consider the limitations on H1B visas racist, do you?
Anyway, that was only a prototype, and the only one, where is the logic in selling that ?