I stole this from an Ars post, but this is going to be appealed and the State will loose. It's already been seen by the Supreme Court in 1985, specifically Wallace v. Jaffree : "The individual's freedom to choose his own creed is the counterpart of his right to refrain from accepting the creed established by the majority. Moreover, the individual freedom of conscience protected by the First Amendment embraces the right to select any religious faith or none at all. "
No, the judge in this case is right - the Supreme Court's opinion in Wallace was regarding the Establishment Clause, and the prohibition on the government from elevating one religion over others (or, indeed, over 'no religion'). Pastafarianism as a satire is an argument under the establishment clause: if the state wishes to put up a ten commandments display or a nativity scene, then they must put up religious displays offered by any other religious group, regardless of how "silly" they find them.
However, Wallace had nothing to do with the free exercise clause - and indeed, Pastafarianism doesn't implicate the free exercise clause because, let's be honest, no one actually believes in it. The free exercise clause is intended to protect freedom of conscience, when someone is directed by a law to do one thing and directed by their religion to do another: if your religion says you must not kill or you will face eternal punishment, and the government wants to draft you for war or you will face jail, you are in a moral dilemma where you're forced to choose between physical punishment or spiritual punishment, with no way out. But there is no dilemma for Pastafarians - the prisoner here does not face a moral dilemma and has no fear of spiritual punishment... not that Pastafarianism even has such punishment as part of its dogma. Accordingly, without an attack of conscience, there is freedom of conscience to protect.
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.
If Brennen refuses an order from a Republican president, however repugnant, he's out the door. There will be any number of qualified sadists that would be happy to torture people, in the name of freedom, for the US government.
Probably true, but the order itself is illegal, so the President would need to have a defense against that, because Congress and the Attorney General are going to want an answer.
The order was illegal back in the 2000s, too, but Congress and the AG had no problem then.
/sigh/ Discrimination with a noble intent is still... discrimination. Would love to know out a ride sharing service exclusively for white bros who want a safe space for off color jokes would be received.
Easy solution - require a monthly membership fee of a few dollars. You can even reduce the per-ride rate as a result. But once it's a private club, discrimination is legal - as the white bros who run the country clubs well know.
Such a library necessarily contains every work that has ever been (or will ever be) written.
The problem with such a library (and the problem with All Prior Art) is that of search. Finding prior art that disrupts a patent that you need to make "go away") is just as impossible as finding the cure for cancer in the Library of Babel,
So the important question is whether you can go to a court of law and say "My opponent's patent is provably invalidated because it's already explained in the Library of Babel"? If that's a valid legal argument - then perhaps this is of use. But I strongly suspect it's a complete waste of time.
I believe you're right. In patent law, there's a doctrine that says that prior art is only useable for what it teaches. For example, H.G. Wells' "Time Machine" is valid prior art for the concept of time machines, such that you couldn't get a patent that claimed "1. A system comprising: a time machine," but if you went one step farther and included a claim directed to your temporal disruption modulator, Wells' story wouldn't be applicable against that.
Here's an example of the output of this database:
A faucet includes a spout, a handle, and a capacitive sensor operably coupled to at least one of the spout and the handle. The systems, methods, and programs may extract a language pattern from the stored text sample and may create an authorized profile based on the language pattern. The second part is put on standby and storing parameters of the action are stored in the chip card.
That's a nice string of phrases, but they teach nothing. You couldn't even use that to invalidate a patent on a faucet that extracts language patterns from a stored text sample and stores it in a chip card, because it has no teaching of how to build such a thing. Or even what that really means.
At best, you could use those sentences individually to invalidate a first patent that claimed "a faucet including a spout, handle, and capacitive sensor operably coupled to at least at least one of the spout and the handle" and a second patent that claimed "extract[ing] a language pattern from the stored text sample and may create an authorized profile based on the language pattern and a third that claimed "putting [something] on standby and storing parameters of the action in the chip card."
But there's a problem with that, too. From the database's description:
The system works by pulling text from the entire database of US issued and published (un-approved) patents and creating prior art from the patent language.
In other words, each of those sentences already appear in issued or published patent applications, and are already prior art. In fact, if you wanted to really invalidate any of those, you'd pull up the corresponding patent they used to create the prior art database, and it would include that sentence plus a whole bunch of additional details.
So, not only does this not actually create any new prior art, it's less useful than the original data they're pulling from.
Disclaimer: I am a patent attorney. Feel free to accuse me of bias and say that my background invalidates my opinion, but that doesn't mean it's legally or logically incorrect or that federal circuit judges - many of whom are patent attorneys - will not come to the same conclusion.
Either that or it is all a marketing lie because you only need to file a patent in one country due to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/..., so that "A patent application filed under the PCT is called an international application, or PCT application". So straight up marketing dick bags, trotting out some PR=B$ double speak because the majority are kicking up about the hyper inflated prices of drugs with 10,000% profit margins, pay or die.
You should have kept reading, rather than rushing into your rant. From the same wiki page:
A PCT application does not itself result in the grant of a patent, since there is no such thing as an "international patent", and the grant of patent is a prerogative of each national or regional authority.[5] In other words, a PCT application, which establishes a filing date in all contracting states, must be followed up with the step of entering into national or regional phases to proceed towards grant of one or more patents. The PCT procedure essentially leads to a standard national or regional patent application, which may be granted or rejected according to applicable law, in each jurisdiction in which a patent is desired.
Basically, what happens is, rather than going to each country individually and filing a patent application, you file a single PCT application. WIPO does a preliminary search, and transmits a copy of the application and search to every country's national patent office (e.g. the USPTO, the Chinese patent office (SIPO), the Korean patent office, the Mozambique patent office, etc., etc.). You then go to each country that you want to continue patenting in and pay them a fee to enter "national stage" processing. So, for example, you go to the USPTO and say "I want you to examine my PCT application that WIPO sent you" and you pay them search and examination fees, and they do their own additional search. Same in Europe, same in Canada, same in Korea, same in Japan, etc., etc. Every country you want to get a patent in, you need to pay separately.
So what's the point of the PCT application? There are 148 countries that are members of the PCT. Each of them give a couple hundred dollars' discount for entry of a PCT application. 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.
Last fall Apple staff attempted to retrieve the photos from their cloud-storage service, but the iPhone hadn't been synced before the 13-year-old's death.
They can give you access to the cloud storage account, and all synced data. They can't decrypt the phone.
You make a good point. However, the Supreme Court doesn't make the law. When SCOTUS makes a decision, not based on a new law passed by legislature, they are decreeing what the correct interpretation of the (old) law is. In other words, they ARE saying that any decisions to the contrary were wrong. There just wasn't a clear way to KNOW they were wrong until SCOTUS said so.
From a purely philosophical standpoint, you are absolutely correct... However, from a more pragmatic standpoint, if you read the Alice Corp Supreme Court decision, you'll see that Thomas was pulling this whole "I can't define an abstract idea, but I know it when I see it" theory out of his ass and it has no relationship to what the legislature passed (35 USC 101 includes no mentions of "abstract ideas", and Thomas' opinion was mostly based on novelty under 35 USC 102).
I agree that uploading is distribution. The problem is proving exactly how many people the song was distributed to. If you were at a street corner selling DVDs, the police might be able to raid your operation and determine how many CDs you sold, but how do you do this for P2P? Obviously, there's at least one distribution offense (sending the file to the RIAA or related agency who "caught" you and added you to the list to sue), but how many others? Do you sue for distributing to 100? 1,000? 1.000,000? How do you determine just how many "lost sales" (as much as I hate that term) a share is worth?
The statutory damages are a reasonable balance there - the jury can decide whether to award at the low end or high end based on the facts, and the defendant can provide mitigating facts, too. For example, if you have a log showing that you only seeded a file to a dozen people, you can show that and argue that you should be liable for the minimum. If you don't have that log, then the jury can assume there's a reason you don't and find you liable for more.
Copyright lengths should be reduced to 14 years with a one-time, paid 14 year renewal. If something isn't making you enough money after 14 years to warrant paying for renewal, you let it go. And after 28 years, you should be able to milk everything out of it that you could so you release it to the public domain and make something new.
While it's not a bad idea, I've got a counter-proposal. Copyright is really a bundle of different rights, including the right to make copies, the right to distribute a work, and the right to make derivative works. Making copies of an original work or distributing it seems to be significantly less defensible than making a derivative work. For example, even though it's been more than 14 years, making dozens of copies of the movie Die Hard and/or distributing them to others is directly using another's creative work, without adding anything. However, making a derivative work, such as a Die Hard musical or a Roshomon-style "Die Hard from Gruber's perspective" movie, requires creativity and makes something new that didn't exist before.
Similarly, copying and distributing Steamboat Willie doesn't add anything, but making a new Steamboat Willie adventure does. Or copying and distributing an album, compared to remixing it or sampling it for use in an otherwise new work.
Accordingly, I'd submit that copyright term should be split, with a very short exclusive term for creation of derivative works: if a book author wants to remake it as a screenplay, or a band wants to remix their album into a dance version, let them have, say, five years. If they don't, let others take a turn with their creativity. But keep the longer term for exact copying and distribution of the original, since infringing that doesn't add anything new to the art.
On the penalties front, the penalties were set in the days when casual copyright infringement was hardly ever prosecuted. People made and shared mix tapes recorded off the radio, but weren't sued for it. People who made multiple copies of CDs and sold them on the street corners, though, would find themselves in court facing huge fines. I'd argue that we should keep "commercial copyright infringement" fines where they are and cap "non-commercial/home infringement" at 10x the cost of buying the item infringed on. So if you uploaded 1,000 songs, you would face a fine of $0.99*10*1,000, or $9,900. High enough to act as a deterrent but not so high as to bankrupt you immediately. (Right now, uploading 1,000 songs would mean a fine of $750,000 to $150,000,000.)
And here, I disagree with your calculation because of those different rights to copy and distribute noted above. Making a mix tape creates individual copies, and so a fine that's related to the cost of buying those copies makes sense. But distributing copies to others or sharing a song online is distribution, and the distribution rights cost much, much more than a single copy. It's not like Apple pays Taylor Swift $0.99 for a copy of her latest song that they then resell to millions on the iTunes Store - they're paying many tens of thousands, with royalties and likely a fixed minimum amount. Similarly, when Michael Jackson bought a bunch of the Beatles' catalog back in the 1980s, he wasn't just going to the record store and buying individual albums - he was buying the distribution rights, at somewhere around $50k per song.
So, if you only ever download a song and never upload it - leaching - then you'd have an argument that you were just making a single copy and those fines should be proportional to purchasing a copy. But if you upload the song to others, you're distributing it, and the fine should be proportional to a distribution right - somewhere in that $750 to $30k* range.
*I specify $30k as opposed to the "up to $150k for willful infringement" in the statute, because I think the RIAA and the courts have been using the wrong definition for "willful". It should be interpreted similarly to how it a
>> Google said its car's safety driver thought the bus would yield.
So Google is teaching their cars to drive like normal Californians: expect that the other guy will yield.
It's a good point... Living in Boston, I've learned to never expect buses or taxis to yield. It's like they drive with their eyes closed half the time.
Seriously. When an idea is so clearly developed that they've made movies involving the use of it, how can a corporation even think of patenting it? This is ridiculous.
In determining the validity of a patent, a reference qualifies as prior art "for everything it teaches". So, for example, Johnny Mnemonic qualifies for the concept of manipulating virtual objects with your hands in free space, and you couldn't get a patent claim that said "A method of manipulating virtual objects, comprising translating positions of a user's hands into a virtual environment." But JM doesn't teach how to do it, and if your patent claim goes more into the specific details, then you can get a patent on those details.
For a similar example, H.G. Wells' story is prior art for the concept of a machine that travels through time. But you can't build one using it, can you? If someone figures out how to make a working time machine, shouldn't they be able to get a patent on their implementation?
I'm not even sure that there are grounds for patenting particular implementations of the glove. The idea of building a glove with electronics to measure e.g. finger bend and pressure is out there in the public domain -- there are dozens of ways to implement it and NONE of them should be patentable, not unless they contain a truly unique invention that is patentable in its own right for e.g. measuring the bend. But I'm not seeing much of that.
That's the key. "A motion controller" is no more patentable than "a time machine", but "a motion controller, comprising a glove, and [patentable innovation]" is.
Additionally, in this case, it's just a patent application, not a patent, and there are many reasons to believe that the claims will be significantly narrower if and when this patent gets issued, some years from now.
And it is completely, absolutely, 100% unnecessary.
o Plug in not-yet configured device.
o Shortly thereafter, it accepts DHCP configuration. Now it has an IP.
o Then it vomits out a tiny UDP (broadcast) packet every 60 seconds or so that says "I'm a WackyWidget and my IP is Yad.daY.yad.daY"
o You start app, it listens for the UDP packet, when it hears it, it begins comm via TCP at the IP identified in the UDP broadcast. UDP broadcasts then cease until, or unless, the TCP (and possibly the DHCP) connection is dropped, in which case, begin again at whatever step is needed.
That's it. That's ALL of it. You need nothing more for an IP camera, a smart power plug, a smart lightbulb, an aquarium controller, the garage door opener, etc., etc., ad infinitum.
If you THEN want to expose WackyWidget to the WAN, you could enable that separately.
If you were out of your damned mind.
If you haven't yet figured out that "the cloud" is nothing but a way to take/get things from you -- money, data, ownership of media, etc. -- then you really need to look at all this harder.
That's a really long and condescending way to say "I don't understand how subnets work". While it may work fine on your household network, this camera is designed to be accessed over the public internet. Most people don't need to check security cameras that are in the same room as them.
Just because something says P2P doesn't mean it "connects to a vast peer-to-peer network". These particular cameras are made to work with a smartphone or tablet app: the camera connects to the company's servers to tell them its IP address; your tablet connects to the server to find out the IP address of your camera; and then your tablet and the camera establish a peer-to-peer connection, so that none of the video travels via the company's servers.
That's it - the two peers are your camera and your mobile device, not some fast torrent network or something.
Now, sure, this could've been documented better, but Krebs should also know better than to jump to hyperbole based on two letters and a number in a configuration screen.
Number 4 involves a student government cutting funding to a student paper. Free speech has never required that others provide you with free money to support your publication.
Before we discovered exoplanets, our models didn't predict hot Jupiters circling in extremely close orbits around their stars. So we modified them to include information we now know. Yes, if we start finding small planets at reasonable distances from stars, we will include that data. Or, maybe we won't find any.
The reason why Apple can be forced to unlock the iPhone in question is because current iPhone security still depends wholly on trusting Apple's firmware. They are not being asked to create a backdoor - they are being asked to exercise a backdoor that they already have. They already have the keys to the kingdom.
Only partly. You're right that Apple has the cert and can send updates, but as far as I know (from two iPads and two iPhones), the user must unlock the device and accept the software update/firmware install. I don't know of any way to do the install without unlocking the phone, and I can't imagine Apple built that technology in, because that's the biggest, most obvious security hole ever (plus, their legal department would insist on an opportunity to make the user periodically hit 'agree' on a ToS screen). Do you have a source that says otherwise - i.e. that Apple can do firmware installs on locked devices?
This is all distraction, as operating system configuration and patching is not a "backdoor'.
Plus, you still need to unlock the device and accept the installation. I know, because my iPad has been bugging me about an update for the past month, and I never remember to give it the okay at some point when I'm not using it.
For everything in this package and the technology involved, I'm blown away by this price point. My original guess was that the HTC Vive was going to cost $1000 at launch. The lighthouses are a particularly complicated and likely expensive piece of hardware. From what I could gather from releases, they are using similar Laser mapping technology as can be seen on the Google Car. Because of this I was suspecting each lighthouse to cost at least $100-150 each.
Nope, even easier. Simulation here. They basically just do synchronized sweeps every couple milliseconds, and when the headset sees a pulse, it can figure out when during the sweep it received the pulse and therefore where along the axis it is. Sweep along the other axis, and you get your position. Two lighthouses so you can turn around, and you're set.
... which is the question I have. All of the dev kit and test versions we've seen show the Vive as being wired. Is the consumer version still going to be wired, and if so, are you going to end up tripping over the cable or ripping your computer off the desk? All of the reviews I've read about CES demos and such had a dedicated "cable management guy" following the reviewer around and making sure he didn't trip. I don't have one of those... is the Vive still going to be right for me?
I think you're mostly right, though... The Oculus controllers do seem a bit better, although the Vive controllers don't seem bad. The ability to move around with the Vive may be less important, with most people playing games while sitting down. However, dat front facing camera tho...
You're mixing up capability with likelihood. Total risk is the product of the two. The U.S. has had nuclear-capable ICBMs for over 50 years now, but has never used them. So while it has had the capability for a long time, the proven likelihood that it'll use them is very low, even when it's been provoked. The reason people (not just the U.S.) is concerned about North Korea's capability is because its leadership is extremely erratic and unpredictable, so the likelihood it would actually use ICBMs is a lot higher than existing nuclear powers'.
On the contrary, NK has had nuclear weapons for quite a while and has never used them beyond testing. As with any mutual-assured destruction weapon, showing a capability for something does not indicate anything about willingness to use them at any time except a doomsday scenario.
Depending on the success of this test, and certainly prior to this point, NK only had MAD capability against its immediate neighbors, China, South Korea, and Japan. The only deterrents they had against US invasion were indirect, through threats on US allies. A working ICBM gives them a better ability to deter the type of regime change we pulled in Iraq.
The charge has never been rape. That's just the way it has been reported in the media. The "crime" he is charged with in Sweden has no equivalent in the UK or US and the woman was pressured into making it by the police once they figured out who the complaint was against. She only wanted a STD test done.
You keep saying this, and people keep pointing out that penetrating a sleeping woman without her consent, after she's told you "no", is rape in not just Sweden, but both the UK, and the US (not that the latter is relevant). At some point will you admit that fact?
Ok, I keep hearing "rape" being brought up but, the charge is not quite what it seems. The women in question did not go to the police with charges of sexual assault. One of them discovered that the condom came off, during consensual sex, and after she was unable to locate him, went to the police to locate him for the purpose of taking a STD test.
That'd be the sexual assault charge. The rape charge is from the other situation where he penetrated a woman while she was sleeping, knowing she did not consent, having been explicitly told "no" before she went to sleep. That's the one that the UK courts said "yes, that's rape, even under British law."
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I stole this from an Ars post, but this is going to be appealed and the State will loose. It's already been seen by the Supreme Court in 1985, specifically Wallace v. Jaffree : "The individual's freedom to choose his own creed is the counterpart of his right to refrain from accepting the creed established by the majority. Moreover, the individual freedom of conscience protected by the First Amendment embraces the right to select any religious faith or none at all. "
No, the judge in this case is right - the Supreme Court's opinion in Wallace was regarding the Establishment Clause, and the prohibition on the government from elevating one religion over others (or, indeed, over 'no religion'). Pastafarianism as a satire is an argument under the establishment clause: if the state wishes to put up a ten commandments display or a nativity scene, then they must put up religious displays offered by any other religious group, regardless of how "silly" they find them.
However, Wallace had nothing to do with the free exercise clause - and indeed, Pastafarianism doesn't implicate the free exercise clause because, let's be honest, no one actually believes in it. The free exercise clause is intended to protect freedom of conscience, when someone is directed by a law to do one thing and directed by their religion to do another: if your religion says you must not kill or you will face eternal punishment, and the government wants to draft you for war or you will face jail, you are in a moral dilemma where you're forced to choose between physical punishment or spiritual punishment, with no way out. But there is no dilemma for Pastafarians - the prisoner here does not face a moral dilemma and has no fear of spiritual punishment... not that Pastafarianism even has such punishment as part of its dogma. Accordingly, without an attack of conscience, there is freedom of conscience to protect.
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.
Gah... Sorry? :/
If Brennen refuses an order from a Republican president, however repugnant, he's out the door. There will be any number of qualified sadists that would be happy to torture people, in the name of freedom, for the US government.
Probably true, but the order itself is illegal, so the President would need to have a defense against that, because Congress and the Attorney General are going to want an answer.
The order was illegal back in the 2000s, too, but Congress and the AG had no problem then.
/sigh/ Discrimination with a noble intent is still... discrimination. Would love to know out a ride sharing service exclusively for white bros who want a safe space for off color jokes would be received.
Easy solution - require a monthly membership fee of a few dollars. You can even reduce the per-ride rate as a result. But once it's a private club, discrimination is legal - as the white bros who run the country clubs well know.
This is essentially no more than the concept of a library containing books with every possible letter combination:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Such a library necessarily contains every work that has ever been (or will ever be) written.
The problem with such a library (and the problem with All Prior Art) is that of search. Finding prior art that disrupts a patent that you need to make "go away") is just as impossible as finding the cure for cancer in the Library of Babel,
So the important question is whether you can go to a court of law and say "My opponent's patent is provably invalidated because it's already explained in the Library of Babel"? If that's a valid legal argument - then perhaps this is of use. But I strongly suspect it's a complete waste of time.
I believe you're right. In patent law, there's a doctrine that says that prior art is only useable for what it teaches. For example, H.G. Wells' "Time Machine" is valid prior art for the concept of time machines, such that you couldn't get a patent that claimed "1. A system comprising: a time machine," but if you went one step farther and included a claim directed to your temporal disruption modulator, Wells' story wouldn't be applicable against that.
Here's an example of the output of this database:
A faucet includes a spout, a handle, and a capacitive sensor operably coupled to at least one of the spout and the handle. The systems, methods, and programs may extract a language pattern from the stored text sample and may create an authorized profile based on the language pattern. The second part is put on standby and storing parameters of the action are stored in the chip card.
That's a nice string of phrases, but they teach nothing. You couldn't even use that to invalidate a patent on a faucet that extracts language patterns from a stored text sample and stores it in a chip card, because it has no teaching of how to build such a thing. Or even what that really means.
At best, you could use those sentences individually to invalidate a first patent that claimed "a faucet including a spout, handle, and capacitive sensor operably coupled to at least at least one of the spout and the handle" and a second patent that claimed "extract[ing] a language pattern from the stored text sample and may create an authorized profile based on the language pattern and a third that claimed "putting [something] on standby and storing parameters of the action in the chip card."
But there's a problem with that, too. From the database's description:
The system works by pulling text from the entire database of US issued and published (un-approved) patents and creating prior art from the patent language.
In other words, each of those sentences already appear in issued or published patent applications, and are already prior art. In fact, if you wanted to really invalidate any of those, you'd pull up the corresponding patent they used to create the prior art database, and it would include that sentence plus a whole bunch of additional details.
So, not only does this not actually create any new prior art, it's less useful than the original data they're pulling from.
Disclaimer: I am a patent attorney. Feel free to accuse me of bias and say that my background invalidates my opinion, but that doesn't mean it's legally or logically incorrect or that federal circuit judges - many of whom are patent attorneys - will not come to the same conclusion.
Either that or it is all a marketing lie because you only need to file a patent in one country due to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/..., so that "A patent application filed under the PCT is called an international application, or PCT application". So straight up marketing dick bags, trotting out some PR=B$ double speak because the majority are kicking up about the hyper inflated prices of drugs with 10,000% profit margins, pay or die.
You should have kept reading, rather than rushing into your rant. From the same wiki page:
A PCT application does not itself result in the grant of a patent, since there is no such thing as an "international patent", and the grant of patent is a prerogative of each national or regional authority.[5] In other words, a PCT application, which establishes a filing date in all contracting states, must be followed up with the step of entering into national or regional phases to proceed towards grant of one or more patents. The PCT procedure essentially leads to a standard national or regional patent application, which may be granted or rejected according to applicable law, in each jurisdiction in which a patent is desired.
Basically, what happens is, rather than going to each country individually and filing a patent application, you file a single PCT application. WIPO does a preliminary search, and transmits a copy of the application and search to every country's national patent office (e.g. the USPTO, the Chinese patent office (SIPO), the Korean patent office, the Mozambique patent office, etc., etc.). You then go to each country that you want to continue patenting in and pay them a fee to enter "national stage" processing. So, for example, you go to the USPTO and say "I want you to examine my PCT application that WIPO sent you" and you pay them search and examination fees, and they do their own additional search. Same in Europe, same in Canada, same in Korea, same in Japan, etc., etc. Every country you want to get a patent in, you need to pay separately.
So what's the point of the PCT application? There are 148 countries that are members of the PCT. Each of them give a couple hundred dollars' discount for entry of a PCT application. 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.
Last fall Apple staff attempted to retrieve the photos from their cloud-storage service, but the iPhone hadn't been synced before the 13-year-old's death.
They can give you access to the cloud storage account, and all synced data. They can't decrypt the phone.
You make a good point. However, the Supreme Court doesn't make the law. When SCOTUS makes a decision, not based on a new law passed by legislature, they are decreeing what the correct interpretation of the (old) law is. In other words, they ARE saying that any decisions to the contrary were wrong. There just wasn't a clear way to KNOW they were wrong until SCOTUS said so.
From a purely philosophical standpoint, you are absolutely correct... However, from a more pragmatic standpoint, if you read the Alice Corp Supreme Court decision, you'll see that Thomas was pulling this whole "I can't define an abstract idea, but I know it when I see it" theory out of his ass and it has no relationship to what the legislature passed (35 USC 101 includes no mentions of "abstract ideas", and Thomas' opinion was mostly based on novelty under 35 USC 102).
I agree that uploading is distribution. The problem is proving exactly how many people the song was distributed to. If you were at a street corner selling DVDs, the police might be able to raid your operation and determine how many CDs you sold, but how do you do this for P2P? Obviously, there's at least one distribution offense (sending the file to the RIAA or related agency who "caught" you and added you to the list to sue), but how many others? Do you sue for distributing to 100? 1,000? 1.000,000? How do you determine just how many "lost sales" (as much as I hate that term) a share is worth?
The statutory damages are a reasonable balance there - the jury can decide whether to award at the low end or high end based on the facts, and the defendant can provide mitigating facts, too. For example, if you have a log showing that you only seeded a file to a dozen people, you can show that and argue that you should be liable for the minimum. If you don't have that log, then the jury can assume there's a reason you don't and find you liable for more.
Copyright lengths should be reduced to 14 years with a one-time, paid 14 year renewal. If something isn't making you enough money after 14 years to warrant paying for renewal, you let it go. And after 28 years, you should be able to milk everything out of it that you could so you release it to the public domain and make something new.
While it's not a bad idea, I've got a counter-proposal. Copyright is really a bundle of different rights, including the right to make copies, the right to distribute a work, and the right to make derivative works. Making copies of an original work or distributing it seems to be significantly less defensible than making a derivative work. For example, even though it's been more than 14 years, making dozens of copies of the movie Die Hard and/or distributing them to others is directly using another's creative work, without adding anything. However, making a derivative work, such as a Die Hard musical or a Roshomon-style "Die Hard from Gruber's perspective" movie, requires creativity and makes something new that didn't exist before.
Similarly, copying and distributing Steamboat Willie doesn't add anything, but making a new Steamboat Willie adventure does. Or copying and distributing an album, compared to remixing it or sampling it for use in an otherwise new work.
Accordingly, I'd submit that copyright term should be split, with a very short exclusive term for creation of derivative works: if a book author wants to remake it as a screenplay, or a band wants to remix their album into a dance version, let them have, say, five years. If they don't, let others take a turn with their creativity. But keep the longer term for exact copying and distribution of the original, since infringing that doesn't add anything new to the art.
On the penalties front, the penalties were set in the days when casual copyright infringement was hardly ever prosecuted. People made and shared mix tapes recorded off the radio, but weren't sued for it. People who made multiple copies of CDs and sold them on the street corners, though, would find themselves in court facing huge fines. I'd argue that we should keep "commercial copyright infringement" fines where they are and cap "non-commercial/home infringement" at 10x the cost of buying the item infringed on. So if you uploaded 1,000 songs, you would face a fine of $0.99*10*1,000, or $9,900. High enough to act as a deterrent but not so high as to bankrupt you immediately. (Right now, uploading 1,000 songs would mean a fine of $750,000 to $150,000,000.)
And here, I disagree with your calculation because of those different rights to copy and distribute noted above. Making a mix tape creates individual copies, and so a fine that's related to the cost of buying those copies makes sense. But distributing copies to others or sharing a song online is distribution, and the distribution rights cost much, much more than a single copy. It's not like Apple pays Taylor Swift $0.99 for a copy of her latest song that they then resell to millions on the iTunes Store - they're paying many tens of thousands, with royalties and likely a fixed minimum amount. Similarly, when Michael Jackson bought a bunch of the Beatles' catalog back in the 1980s, he wasn't just going to the record store and buying individual albums - he was buying the distribution rights, at somewhere around $50k per song.
So, if you only ever download a song and never upload it - leaching - then you'd have an argument that you were just making a single copy and those fines should be proportional to purchasing a copy. But if you upload the song to others, you're distributing it, and the fine should be proportional to a distribution right - somewhere in that $750 to $30k* range.
*I specify $30k as opposed to the "up to $150k for willful infringement" in the statute, because I think the RIAA and the courts have been using the wrong definition for "willful". It should be interpreted similarly to how it a
>> Google said its car's safety driver thought the bus would yield.
So Google is teaching their cars to drive like normal Californians: expect that the other guy will yield.
It's a good point... Living in Boston, I've learned to never expect buses or taxis to yield. It's like they drive with their eyes closed half the time.
Seriously. When an idea is so clearly developed that they've made movies involving the use of it, how can a corporation even think of patenting it? This is ridiculous.
In determining the validity of a patent, a reference qualifies as prior art "for everything it teaches". So, for example, Johnny Mnemonic qualifies for the concept of manipulating virtual objects with your hands in free space, and you couldn't get a patent claim that said "A method of manipulating virtual objects, comprising translating positions of a user's hands into a virtual environment." But JM doesn't teach how to do it, and if your patent claim goes more into the specific details, then you can get a patent on those details.
For a similar example, H.G. Wells' story is prior art for the concept of a machine that travels through time. But you can't build one using it, can you? If someone figures out how to make a working time machine, shouldn't they be able to get a patent on their implementation?
I'm not even sure that there are grounds for patenting particular implementations of the glove. The idea of building a glove with electronics to measure e.g. finger bend and pressure is out there in the public domain -- there are dozens of ways to implement it and NONE of them should be patentable, not unless they contain a truly unique invention that is patentable in its own right for e.g. measuring the bend. But I'm not seeing much of that.
That's the key. "A motion controller" is no more patentable than "a time machine", but "a motion controller, comprising a glove, and [patentable innovation]" is.
Additionally, in this case, it's just a patent application, not a patent, and there are many reasons to believe that the claims will be significantly narrower if and when this patent gets issued, some years from now.
And it is completely, absolutely, 100% unnecessary.
o Plug in not-yet configured device.
o Shortly thereafter, it accepts DHCP configuration. Now it has an IP.
o Then it vomits out a tiny UDP (broadcast) packet every 60 seconds or so that says "I'm a WackyWidget and my IP is Yad.daY.yad.daY"
o You start app, it listens for the UDP packet, when it hears it, it begins comm via TCP at the IP identified in the UDP broadcast. UDP broadcasts then cease until, or unless, the TCP (and possibly the DHCP) connection is dropped, in which case, begin again at whatever step is needed.
That's it. That's ALL of it. You need nothing more for an IP camera, a smart power plug, a smart lightbulb, an aquarium controller, the garage door opener, etc., etc., ad infinitum.
If you THEN want to expose WackyWidget to the WAN, you could enable that separately.
If you were out of your damned mind.
If you haven't yet figured out that "the cloud" is nothing but a way to take/get things from you -- money, data, ownership of media, etc. -- then you really need to look at all this harder.
That's a really long and condescending way to say "I don't understand how subnets work". While it may work fine on your household network, this camera is designed to be accessed over the public internet. Most people don't need to check security cameras that are in the same room as them.
That's it - the two peers are your camera and your mobile device, not some fast torrent network or something.
Now, sure, this could've been documented better, but Krebs should also know better than to jump to hyperbole based on two letters and a number in a configuration screen.
So let's be clear: pretty much all of these situations are completely unacceptable, and most disturbingly they show a tendency for much of these sorts of problems to occur on the left, what essentially amounts to the "illiberal left" http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/01/liberals-and-the-illiberal-left/384988/.
Number 4 involves a student government cutting funding to a student paper. Free speech has never required that others provide you with free money to support your publication.
So let's be clear: pretty much all of these situations are completely unacceptable, and most disturbingly they show a tendency for much of these sorts of problems to occur on the left, what essentially amounts to the "illiberal left" http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/01/liberals-and-the-illiberal-left/384988/.
Are they, though? I haven't checked them all, but their number 2 spot regarding Northwestern University and Professor Laura Kipnis actually involves allegations of defamation and retaliation by the professor against a sexual assault victim. Free speech has never included a right to publish libel.
Far more horrifying and worrisome for the future were the number of cases where the students themselves moved to stamp down on opposing views.
And they shouldn't be allowed to do that? Sounds like Subby wants those students censored, in the name of "free speech".
Before we discovered exoplanets, our models didn't predict hot Jupiters circling in extremely close orbits around their stars. So we modified them to include information we now know. Yes, if we start finding small planets at reasonable distances from stars, we will include that data. Or, maybe we won't find any.
I guarantee you can find at least one.
The reason why Apple can be forced to unlock the iPhone in question is because current iPhone security still depends wholly on trusting Apple's firmware. They are not being asked to create a backdoor - they are being asked to exercise a backdoor that they already have. They already have the keys to the kingdom.
Only partly. You're right that Apple has the cert and can send updates, but as far as I know (from two iPads and two iPhones), the user must unlock the device and accept the software update/firmware install. I don't know of any way to do the install without unlocking the phone, and I can't imagine Apple built that technology in, because that's the biggest, most obvious security hole ever (plus, their legal department would insist on an opportunity to make the user periodically hit 'agree' on a ToS screen). Do you have a source that says otherwise - i.e. that Apple can do firmware installs on locked devices?
This is all distraction, as operating system configuration and patching is not a "backdoor'.
Plus, you still need to unlock the device and accept the installation. I know, because my iPad has been bugging me about an update for the past month, and I never remember to give it the okay at some point when I'm not using it.
For everything in this package and the technology involved, I'm blown away by this price point. My original guess was that the HTC Vive was going to cost $1000 at launch. The lighthouses are a particularly complicated and likely expensive piece of hardware. From what I could gather from releases, they are using similar Laser mapping technology as can be seen on the Google Car. Because of this I was suspecting each lighthouse to cost at least $100-150 each.
Nope, even easier. Simulation here. They basically just do synchronized sweeps every couple milliseconds, and when the headset sees a pulse, it can figure out when during the sweep it received the pulse and therefore where along the axis it is. Sweep along the other axis, and you get your position. Two lighthouses so you can turn around, and you're set.
I think you're mostly right, though... The Oculus controllers do seem a bit better, although the Vive controllers don't seem bad. The ability to move around with the Vive may be less important, with most people playing games while sitting down. However, dat front facing camera tho...
You're mixing up capability with likelihood. Total risk is the product of the two. The U.S. has had nuclear-capable ICBMs for over 50 years now, but has never used them. So while it has had the capability for a long time, the proven likelihood that it'll use them is very low, even when it's been provoked. The reason people (not just the U.S.) is concerned about North Korea's capability is because its leadership is extremely erratic and unpredictable, so the likelihood it would actually use ICBMs is a lot higher than existing nuclear powers'.
On the contrary, NK has had nuclear weapons for quite a while and has never used them beyond testing. As with any mutual-assured destruction weapon, showing a capability for something does not indicate anything about willingness to use them at any time except a doomsday scenario.
Depending on the success of this test, and certainly prior to this point, NK only had MAD capability against its immediate neighbors, China, South Korea, and Japan. The only deterrents they had against US invasion were indirect, through threats on US allies. A working ICBM gives them a better ability to deter the type of regime change we pulled in Iraq.
"Okay. Sending request as a text to your mother."
The charge has never been rape. That's just the way it has been reported in the media. The "crime" he is charged with in Sweden has no equivalent in the UK or US and the woman was pressured into making it by the police once they figured out who the complaint was against. She only wanted a STD test done.
You keep saying this, and people keep pointing out that penetrating a sleeping woman without her consent, after she's told you "no", is rape in not just Sweden, but both the UK, and the US (not that the latter is relevant). At some point will you admit that fact?
Ok, I keep hearing "rape" being brought up but, the charge is not quite what it seems. The women in question did not go to the police with charges of sexual assault. One of them discovered that the condom came off, during consensual sex, and after she was unable to locate him, went to the police to locate him for the purpose of taking a STD test.
That'd be the sexual assault charge. The rape charge is from the other situation where he penetrated a woman while she was sleeping, knowing she did not consent, having been explicitly told "no" before she went to sleep. That's the one that the UK courts said "yes, that's rape, even under British law."