... making it much more difficult for investigators to go undercover as buyers and find the victims.
As if the undercovers couldn't adapt their tactics based on changing criminal behavior.
It's a lot tougher when the advertisements go underground to invite-only sites.
Wouldn't it have been much smarter to quietly make a deal with Backpage to forward this info to the FBI as soon as they get it?
First, you have the issue of a private company providing data to the feds without a warrant. That's the common/. meme when a company hands data to the government voluntarily.
There's nothing illegal about that, and it happens every day. Transmit some child porn through your Gmail account. You'll shortly receive a knock on your door from the feds. Google scans all attachments and compares their hashes to a set of hashes provided by the Center for Missing and Exploited Children, and forwards any matches to the FBI.
Second, when the criminals determine that Backpage is sending every ad with the word "fresh" in it to the feds, they'll choose a different code word and you'll be back at the poor undercovers not being able to figure out that the code word has changed.
Again, the issue is not which keyword they use, but whether it's a site that's easily accessible to the investigators or is one that requires complex and tenuous infiltration. Think of the difference between sharing files on, say, Usenet vs. sharing files on invite-only bulletin boards or torrent trackers.
But some lawmakers and anti-sex trafficking advocates think the law has gotten in the way of efforts to go after online trafficking suspects like Backpage.com.
Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), a co-author of SESTA with Portman and a former prosecutor, called Section 230 "outdated and obsolete" during Wednesday's press conference.
They were talking about this on NPR this afternoon - apparently, sex traffickers were posting classified ads on Backpage.com with keywords like "lolita" and "fresh" to indicate underage girls - and the Senator wants to be able to go after Backpage...
... so that it no longer posts these ads...
... making it much more difficult for investigators to go undercover as buyers and find the victims.
Wouldn't it have been much smarter to quietly make a deal with Backpage to forward this info to the FBI as soon as they get it?
Audio engineers and neuroscientists have been saying this since the story first came out: it's not a sonic weapon. It's not some "unknown type of sonic weapon" or a "sonic weapon that utilizes unknown physics" or "leaves scientists baffled by new sonic weapon." It's almost certainly a microwave transmission, probably to energize a passive listening device like The Thing:
It's highly directional and so only affects one person in a room, without anyone else noticing anything. Moving their heads from one position causes the symptoms to go away. That can fit with both ultrasonic intermodulation and microwaves, but none of the other symptoms can: remember, intermodulation products are lower amplitude than the modulating signals. So to create these allegedly loud noises, unless you're talking about such high power that the transmitting devices are the size of shipping containers and they're in the same room, they're not going be the result of acoustic coupling. So "directionality" and "some victims hear ringing" is really the only thing that supports the 'sonic weapon' theory.
But no, the auditory hallucinations are instead almost certainly a result of tissue heating in the temporal lobe, which is why they also experience effects like dizziness and nausea, tingling sensations, headaches, memory problems, and brain swelling. The effects have been compared to concussions and CTE, which would easily look like tissue heating. That's really easy to accomplish with a microwave, and can be done from outside in a van or from a nearby building.
The first 21 claims are based on a claim of the device having two display separated by a hinge.
What in the claims distinguishes this invention from Nintendo DS?
Here's claim 1:
1. Electronic equipment, comprising:
first and second housings that rotate relative to each other about a hinge axis;
a first display in the first housing that emits light; and
a second display in the second housing that emits light,
wherein the first display has a first linear polarizer and a wave plate, wherein the second display has a second linear polarizer, wherein the light emitted from the first display passes through the first linear polarizer then the wave plate before being emitted, and wherein the wave plate adjusts how the light emitted from the first display is polarized to suppress reflections of the light emitted from the first display off of the second display when the angle between the first and second housings is non-zero.
I'd venture to guess that everything after that first 'wherein' distinguishes this from the DS.
Have you noticed the resurgent interest in mechanical keyboards recently? I see this (at least partly) as a reaction against the aesthetic that Steve Jobs pushed so hard, and which so many companies then copied. Jobs never saw a device (including a keyboard) that was thin enough or flat enough to please him. It's not natural, though, for human beings to poke at flat surfaces. We're adapted to manipulating objects in three dimensions.
That's a bit hyperbolic - thin keyboards are thin, but certainly not flat. And while YMMV, I personally find them easier and faster to use, due to the very short key travel distance. My fingers can fly over the keys, barely grazing them, hardly needing to push at all to type; on a "regular" keyboard, I have to lift my fingers pretty high after pressing each key to clear the surrounding ones.
Court rulings aren't the sort of blah-blah you posted. You weren't mis-remembering anything other than whatever blather your friends spew about the subject. Not the same thing as having looked it up, and then decided to talk about it. Maybe in the future you could preface these types of wild guesses with something like, "Some guy at the bar told me..." instead of just saying it cold as if it is knowledge you have.
You looked up something as obscure and irrelevant as "As-Easy-As," but you didn't bother to look up Apple vs Microsoft to find out if the guy at the bar was even correct before repeating it. The court didn't say MS already had a license, the court said mainly, "Apple cannot get patent-like protection for the idea of a graphical user interface, or the idea of a desktop metaphor [under copyright law]..."
In the United States contingency is almost exclusively for personal injury cases. It is not something you can just plan for and assume you'll have access to. That is idiotic.
Well, as a patent attorney at a large law firm, I can tell you you're absolutely incorrect. Frankly, I have no idea where you got this idea. Not only do most firms have contingent fee arrangements, there are also investors who will invest specifically for the purpose of funding a lawsuit.
Where did you get this misconception, and why are you so adamant that the alternative possibility is "idiotic"?
I was agreeing with you up to this point. They probably have a ceasefire with their competitor over patents and just use jointly use them to keep out the riffraff.
Only assholes get patents. They can be a huge PR mistake, and they’re a fool’s errand: even if you get one ($20,000+ later), you can’t afford to use it against any adversary big enough to matter.
... A great design or feature can give you a competitive advantage for a little while, but it’s always temporary. Compete on marketing, quality, and what you can do next, not the assumption that nobody can copy what you made.
A mere $20k marketing budget is not going to buy you much of a competitive advantage, and certainly not against "any adversary big enough to matter". Their $200k marketing budget (if not $2M or more) is going to crush you. The only defense you have against them is patents.
"But if you try to sue them, they'll bury you in legal fees!"
Yes and no... First, those big cases are the ones firms will take on contingency - look at Microsoft v. i4i and their $450M judgement. Law firms will happily defer fees for a bite at those. So even if they try to bury you, they're not really burying you, but your lawyers who are willing to take on that risk.
Second, you don't have to be involved at all: if you have a giant adversary, then odds are you probably have two giant adversaries. So if one steals your idea, then approach the other with an offer to assign the patent to them (with a royalty-free grantback license to you). They'll go after your competitor for you, you get a chunk of capital (and possibly royalties) that you wouldn't have had otherwise, and you can still practice your invention. At worst, you end up competing with one giant adversary rather than two or more.
Mr. Arment should probably stick to developing apps, rather than offering legal advice.
I would like to say "ignore them at your peril," but the reality is more like "ignore them at the perial of the rest of humanity." I am pretty sure that they will put in some sort of special code so that the robots never fight back against a Boston Dynamics employee.
The best part of the Three Laws of Robotics is that they instantly reveal anyone who hasn't actually read Asimov's stories on the Three Laws of Robotics. Specifically, you.
Reality? I'm a patent attorney. The way you described it is not how it works. It's not how any of this works. I don't care if you're pro- or anti-patent, but you should have the basic facts right.
In the past any inventor who could produce documentation proving they invented something could gain priority over one filed by some who learned of the invention and had their legal team rush out a patent.
... provided they also filed for a patent application, as "secret" invention has never been protected, even under first-to-invent. And now, under first-to-file, an inventor who can produce documentation proving that they invented something can still gain priority over an earlier application by someone who learned of the invention from them and had their legal team rush out a patent. It's called a derivation proceeding.
Under "first to file" open science is basically dead, as any group collaborating openly online is at perpetual risk of having their work patented by anyone who learns of it and files before they can.
Under "first to invent", open science was similarly dead, because no company worth their salt would let inventors collaborate openly online about new inventions without having filed at least a provisional application, since they would lose their ability to file in most overseas jurisdictions.
Or, conversely, open science is just as alive as ever, if you want to collaborate and not obtain patents. Obviously, the changes to the patent system don't affect unpatented inventions given to the public domain.
This has massively stifled online collaboration
I'm sure you have a citation?
as important inventions made in private now result in the inventor taking out a loan and going dark for 5-7 years while they wait for the USPTO to get around to their application.
Not at all - the inventor files a provisional application, at a whopping $140 for a small entity or as low as $70 for a micro entity, and then can freely discuss their invention openly.
Furthermore, even if they wait and file the full non-provisional application, they don't have to wait for "5-7 years" for the Office to get around to the application - heck, it's going to be published in 18 months anyway. But their priority is secured, and they can start discussing it immediately.
Also, forgive me for making an assumption, but this is Slashdot, so... are you primarily discussing software and computer patents? Or pharma? Because the former would be obsolete in 5-7 years, and no one files an application and then sits on their thumbs for that long without doing anything. Pharma, with its various clinical trial requirements, has a much longer term... but even then, they're doing public trials, so it wouldn't make any sense to "stay dark" for 5-7 years.
It has also emboldened corporations to accelerate preexisting efforts to file as many patents as possible on anything promising.
That does not seem to be supported by the numbers. If it was true, we would expect to see more files post-AIA than pre-. But we don't. In fact, the numbers have been pretty steady relative to the economy as a whole.
The commons, like most public resources, are being privatized, and patents are a major drag on nearly every aspect of innovation.
Again, this doesn't seem to be supported by the statistics. It is an opinion, and perhaps a popular one among people on Slashdot who haven't got any patents, but it's one based in prejudice and blind faith, rather than evidence. So, I guess if anti-patentism is your religion, then there's really nothing I could say to change your mind.
With our fun new "first to file" patent system, not only can corporations beat almost any inventor to locking up an idea, we've nearly completely killed open science! And while many historians consider "first to file" to be a big part of the growth of American innovation and business in the previous centuries, we needed to reprioritize to help usher in our glorious new Gilded Age. Remember children, the government is just taking care of the most important citizens! So rejoice in your serfdom, and pick up that can...
This should be marked misleading, not interesting. The change from first-to-invent to first-to-file was minor: it did away with opposition proceedings, where two inventors file for applications on the same invention and the patent office has a mini-trial to determine which one actually invented it first. They cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, and out of a half million patent applications a year, there were on average twenty oppositions. Not twenty thousand. Twenty.
And it has nothing to do with corporations vs. inventors. Even in the first-to-invent days, most inventors worked for corporations, so it was still corporations filing on applications.
In short, none of what you said has any basis in reality, except for your wiki link. So, good job there.
They didn't invent this tech yet they're patenting the shit out of it.
The people that work at the USPTO need to be shot.
They're not patenting the block chain generally, they're patenting specific implementations, improvements, etc. It's like if someone told you that GM, Tesla, and Toyota all got issued patents last year, and you responded that Mr. Benz invented the car back in 1879 so the people involved needed to be shot. There have been lots of patentable improvements to cars since then. As long as the patents are targeted to those improvements, it's fine.
Hi lawyer has said multiple times that he'd be willing to face these charges if both countries would guarantee that Assange would not be extradited to the US (something they claim they have no intention of doing) and both countries have flat refused to make this guarantee, leading to the belief that that is exactly what they plan to do.
... or leading to the belief that low level prosecutors lack the ability to make a guarantee regarding extradition. Which they do.
And the moment he hits US soil, he'll be Gitmod, whether it's in Guantanamo or a US prison. Everyone involved knows it and so much money and many man hours spent on this shows that there is no other likely reasoning for this. Remember, officially this is over a non-consensual act during consensual sex
A non-consensual sexual act is sexual assault, and you appear to be admitting he did that.
As for "during consensual sex", that may apply to the incident in which he slipped the condom off, but it doesn't apply to the sleeping woman he raped. Unconscious people cannot consent.
... that the girls went to the police to track him down, soley to get an STD test. The police, upon finding the importance of the individual accused, pressured the girls into pressing charges, which they have since withdrawn
Neither charges were withdrawn by the girls involved. The sexual assault charges have expired, because Assange was a fugitive for long enough that the statute of limitation tolled. The rape charges are still pending.
... and sent out an interpol alert reserved for the world's most dangerous and most wanted. Sound like your standard everyday secondary rape case, yes? (/sarcasm)
Yes, actually. You admit he committed sexual assault, he's also a rapist and bail jumper. Pursuing him via an INTERPOL alert - which are not only reserved for the most dangerous and most wanted, but any fugitive fleeing internationally - is entirely expected.
As pointed out a few years ago in the news a diplomatic package is not allowed to be opened without suspicion but it is not free from scanning. If they thermally image the package, sniff him out or otherwise they would have grounds for inspection.
To say nothing of putting it through an Xray machine VERY SLOWLY.
There's also the "without suspicion" part. If Ecuador sends a diplomatic package that is suspiciously Assange-sized with suspicious air holes and a suspicious "Fragile, do not break Assange" label, the UK can still stop it and open it. They'd be risking a diplomatic incident if they're wrong, but if they're right, then Ecuador has caused the incident, and could see their diplomats get kicked out of the country or other penalties.
Publishing disproportionately negative reviews if you don't pay them is definitely extortion and possibly also defamation.
Not defamation for the reasons I explained in the post you responded to.
It could qualify as extortion, but that's also questionable. Extortion, under Federal law (18 USC 875(c)) requires a threat to injure the reputation of the addressee. However, Yelp isn't writing the negative reviews - customers are. Arguably, the business' own actions have damaged their reputation: i.e. if the business only had glowing reviews, then Yelp would have no negative reviews to publish.
If anything, Yelp is not threatening to damage the reputation of the business, but offering, for a fee, to help salvage the reputation of the business by publishing positive reviews. This is the opposite of "extortion" - it's "image management".
Simply put, it's not nearly as clear cut as you think.
Censoring positive reviews while showing negative reviews is plain extortion when you act as an honest authority. Possibly even defamation, since they're manipulating the facts.
Unfortunately, no. They're not lying, but rather staying silent regarding good things. For example, this post doesn't say anything about your personal qualities - does that make it defamatory, because I didn't say that you love puppies or once saved a nun from a fire? No... Like me, Yelp is under no obligation to say good stuff about merchants, as long as they're not actually lying.
Now, this should reduce their credibility and people should stop using them, but calling it defamation is probably a step too far.
There's a small wrinkle in the cake case that makes the "lunch counter" example not 100% comparable, in my mind.
The cake shop offered to sell any off-the-shelf (standard) cake. They only refused to make a customized gay cake, as they claimed that a customized cake is an artistic expression and covered under the first amendment.
Well, yes, and no. From the oral arguments, they also claim that an uncustomized cake would violate his rights:
JUSTICE GINSBURG: Well, suppose we
exclude that and say let's make the assumption
that he -- if he makes custom-made cakes for
others, he must make it for this pair, but he
doesn't have to write anything for anybody. He
doesn't have to write a message that he
disagrees with.
MS. WAGGONER: Well, this Court has
recognized in Hurley as well as in other
decisions that artistic expression doesn't need
to include words and symbols to express a
message or to be protected speech.
He was willing to sell them cupcakes or cookies, but would not supply even a blank or generic wedding cake, identical to any other wedding cake he makes for straight couples.
Is that really different from a lunch counter refusing to allow certain condiments, substitutions, or other off-menu items? Gay cakes apparently weren't on the menu at that cake shop. Should all cake bakers be required to offer gluten-free cakes too?
I've yet to see something that makes a cake a "gay" cake or a "straight" cake. Here is the gallery of wedding cakes from the baker in question. Can you point to any feature in those cakes that make them "straight" cakes?
Halal butchers don't butcher pigs at all, for anyone. Cake bakers do bake cakes. The couple here didn't go to a cake baker and ask for a roast rack of lamb - they asked for a cake, selected out of a catalog of cakes that the baker provides. This would be the same as going to a halal butcher, pointing to something on the menu, and saying "I'll take number 3." And, in such a situation, if the butcher said, "my religious beliefs don't let me serve you number 3- hold on one second. Mr. Smith, your number 3 is ready! Sorry about that- I was saying that my religious beliefs don't let me serve a number 3 to you specifically," you'd probably be more than a little upset, and justifiably so.
So how far do you take that? Can the baker refuse to put a giant phallus on the cake? Can the baker refuse to put a KKK clan member on the cake? Who decides what the baker can and cannot refuse to put on a cake?
Go back to the comment you're replying to, quoted again here for convenience. Does the baker put giant phalluses on cakes for straight couples? Does the baker put KKK clan members on those cakes? If so, then the baker can't refuse to include those for others.
Who decides what the baker can and cannot refuse to put on a cake? The baker. But he doesn't get to decide who can purchase or not purchase that cake, based on their gender, race, religion, etc.
Reading up on the case, I am confused as to the arguments here. The baker did not refuse to give them a cake! The baker merely refused to put two women getting married on the cake since they considered that offensive.
I believe you're reading something entirely different. This case involved two men. They probably didn't want two women on it.
And no, the baker refused to make them any wedding cake. He said they could buy cupcakes or cookies.
Reading some articles on this, they don't seem to mention the cake at all, they just focus on who the baker refused to make the cake for. Maybe that's what the bakery did wrong here.
Yes, that's exactly it. The key is not the 'what' part, but the 'who' part. If the baker is willing to make a cake for one couple, then he has to make identical cakes for any couple. He doesn't have to make wildly different cakes, just like the Jewish deli doesn't have to serve bacon, but he can't say "I'll serve you, but not you."
That seems fair. Unless I'm reading the oral arguments though, it's not quite off the shelf:
MS. WAGGONER: Justice Sotomayor,
that's not how he responded to the couple. The
couple came in and they requested a custom cake
for their wedding. At that point, they brought
in a folder with all kinds of designs they
wanted to discuss and ended up purchasing a
rainbow-layered cake or -- or received a free
rainbow-layered cake, which certainly is
expression.
The order below requires Mr. Phillips
also to include words and symbols on his cakes.
It's that broad. So if, for example,
Mr. Phillips had used a Bible verse on a cake
in the past, he would be compelled to use that
Bible verse in a different context.
Well, that's a bit misleading... They ended up getting a free rainbow cake from another baker, who donated it because of the controversy. There's no suggestion that they were looking for a rainbow cake originally. You don't turn down free rainbow cake, because, y'know, free cake.
No, that'd be a work of science. Evolutionary psychologists look at modern behaviors, and then conclude, without any actual evidence or testing, that they must be that way because of what some pre-historical person did. It's ironic that you reference Darwin, when you're really relying on Lamarck.
Funny, that is the work of science. Guess you're doing a good job of showing your selection bias in action.
... You're arguing for Lamarckian evolution, to support evolutionary psychology.
Well, okay, then. I can see we're going to get nowhere. I guess we'll meet again in the next space thread, when you're arguing that the Earth is flat. HAND.
This is flatly INCORRECT , he wouldn't sell a CUSTOM cake. It's in the supreme court brief. They weren't even trying to order catalog of cakes,they wanted a complete custom cake. It was a 20 second interaction or less.
And here is Masterpiece's catalog of wedding cakes. Can you please point out any feature in those cakes that could possibly distinguish between a gay wedding and a straight wedding?
Slashdot Mirror
As if the undercovers couldn't adapt their tactics based on changing criminal behavior.
It's a lot tougher when the advertisements go underground to invite-only sites.
Wouldn't it have been much smarter to quietly make a deal with Backpage to forward this info to the FBI as soon as they get it?
First, you have the issue of a private company providing data to the feds without a warrant. That's the common /. meme when a company hands data to the government voluntarily.
There's nothing illegal about that, and it happens every day. Transmit some child porn through your Gmail account. You'll shortly receive a knock on your door from the feds. Google scans all attachments and compares their hashes to a set of hashes provided by the Center for Missing and Exploited Children, and forwards any matches to the FBI.
Second, when the criminals determine that Backpage is sending every ad with the word "fresh" in it to the feds, they'll choose a different code word and you'll be back at the poor undercovers not being able to figure out that the code word has changed.
Again, the issue is not which keyword they use, but whether it's a site that's easily accessible to the investigators or is one that requires complex and tenuous infiltration. Think of the difference between sharing files on, say, Usenet vs. sharing files on invite-only bulletin boards or torrent trackers.
But some lawmakers and anti-sex trafficking advocates think the law has gotten in the way of efforts to go after online trafficking suspects like Backpage.com.
Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), a co-author of SESTA with Portman and a former prosecutor, called Section 230 "outdated and obsolete" during Wednesday's press conference.
They were talking about this on NPR this afternoon - apparently, sex traffickers were posting classified ads on Backpage.com with keywords like "lolita" and "fresh" to indicate underage girls - and the Senator wants to be able to go after Backpage...
Wouldn't it have been much smarter to quietly make a deal with Backpage to forward this info to the FBI as soon as they get it?
Audio engineers and neuroscientists have been saying this since the story first came out: it's not a sonic weapon. It's not some "unknown type of sonic weapon" or a "sonic weapon that utilizes unknown physics" or "leaves scientists baffled by new sonic weapon." It's almost certainly a microwave transmission, probably to energize a passive listening device like The Thing:
It's highly directional and so only affects one person in a room, without anyone else noticing anything. Moving their heads from one position causes the symptoms to go away. That can fit with both ultrasonic intermodulation and microwaves, but none of the other symptoms can: remember, intermodulation products are lower amplitude than the modulating signals. So to create these allegedly loud noises, unless you're talking about such high power that the transmitting devices are the size of shipping containers and they're in the same room, they're not going be the result of acoustic coupling. So "directionality" and "some victims hear ringing" is really the only thing that supports the 'sonic weapon' theory.
But no, the auditory hallucinations are instead almost certainly a result of tissue heating in the temporal lobe, which is why they also experience effects like dizziness and nausea, tingling sensations, headaches, memory problems, and brain swelling. The effects have been compared to concussions and CTE, which would easily look like tissue heating. That's really easy to accomplish with a microwave, and can be done from outside in a van or from a nearby building.
The first 21 claims are based on a claim of the device having two display separated by a hinge.
What in the claims distinguishes this invention from Nintendo DS?
Here's claim 1:
1. Electronic equipment, comprising:
first and second housings that rotate relative to each other about a hinge axis;
a first display in the first housing that emits light; and
a second display in the second housing that emits light,
wherein the first display has a first linear polarizer and a wave plate, wherein the second display has a second linear polarizer, wherein the light emitted from the first display passes through the first linear polarizer then the wave plate before being emitted, and wherein the wave plate adjusts how the light emitted from the first display is polarized to suppress reflections of the light emitted from the first display off of the second display when the angle between the first and second housings is non-zero.
I'd venture to guess that everything after that first 'wherein' distinguishes this from the DS.
Have you noticed the resurgent interest in mechanical keyboards recently? I see this (at least partly) as a reaction against the aesthetic that Steve Jobs pushed so hard, and which so many companies then copied. Jobs never saw a device (including a keyboard) that was thin enough or flat enough to please him. It's not natural, though, for human beings to poke at flat surfaces. We're adapted to manipulating objects in three dimensions.
That's a bit hyperbolic - thin keyboards are thin, but certainly not flat. And while YMMV, I personally find them easier and faster to use, due to the very short key travel distance. My fingers can fly over the keys, barely grazing them, hardly needing to push at all to type; on a "regular" keyboard, I have to lift my fingers pretty high after pressing each key to clear the surrounding ones.
No, that's not even true.
Court rulings aren't the sort of blah-blah you posted. You weren't mis-remembering anything other than whatever blather your friends spew about the subject. Not the same thing as having looked it up, and then decided to talk about it. Maybe in the future you could preface these types of wild guesses with something like, "Some guy at the bar told me..." instead of just saying it cold as if it is knowledge you have.
You looked up something as obscure and irrelevant as "As-Easy-As," but you didn't bother to look up Apple vs Microsoft to find out if the guy at the bar was even correct before repeating it. The court didn't say MS already had a license, the court said mainly, "Apple cannot get patent-like protection for the idea of a graphical user interface, or the idea of a desktop metaphor [under copyright law]..."
Ideas can be copied. It is allowed.
Abstract ideas can be copied. Specific implementations cannot - as the Federal Circuit noted recently, upholding an Apple GUI patent as directed to patent eligible subject matter.
In the United States contingency is almost exclusively for personal injury cases. It is not something you can just plan for and assume you'll have access to. That is idiotic.
Well, as a patent attorney at a large law firm, I can tell you you're absolutely incorrect. Frankly, I have no idea where you got this idea. Not only do most firms have contingent fee arrangements, there are also investors who will invest specifically for the purpose of funding a lawsuit.
Where did you get this misconception, and why are you so adamant that the alternative possibility is "idiotic"?
I was agreeing with you up to this point. They probably have a ceasefire with their competitor over patents and just use jointly use them to keep out the riffraff.
Like Apple and Samsung? ;)
Only assholes get patents. They can be a huge PR mistake, and they’re a fool’s errand: even if you get one ($20,000+ later), you can’t afford to use it against any adversary big enough to matter.
A mere $20k marketing budget is not going to buy you much of a competitive advantage, and certainly not against "any adversary big enough to matter". Their $200k marketing budget (if not $2M or more) is going to crush you. The only defense you have against them is patents.
"But if you try to sue them, they'll bury you in legal fees!"
Yes and no... First, those big cases are the ones firms will take on contingency - look at Microsoft v. i4i and their $450M judgement. Law firms will happily defer fees for a bite at those. So even if they try to bury you, they're not really burying you, but your lawyers who are willing to take on that risk.
Second, you don't have to be involved at all: if you have a giant adversary, then odds are you probably have two giant adversaries. So if one steals your idea, then approach the other with an offer to assign the patent to them (with a royalty-free grantback license to you). They'll go after your competitor for you, you get a chunk of capital (and possibly royalties) that you wouldn't have had otherwise, and you can still practice your invention. At worst, you end up competing with one giant adversary rather than two or more.
Mr. Arment should probably stick to developing apps, rather than offering legal advice.
Musk steps down from an AI Safety Group just one day after launching the beginnings of a satellite network... a veritable "Sky-Net" if you will...
But teaching robots to fight back against humans may might end up harming us.
This is precisely why we have the Three Laws of Robotics.
I would like to say "ignore them at your peril," but the reality is more like "ignore them at the perial of the rest of humanity." I am pretty sure that they will put in some sort of special code so that the robots never fight back against a Boston Dynamics employee.
The best part of the Three Laws of Robotics is that they instantly reveal anyone who hasn't actually read Asimov's stories on the Three Laws of Robotics. Specifically, you.
I mean, that guy sucks.
So, who are you trolling for ?
Reality? I'm a patent attorney. The way you described it is not how it works. It's not how any of this works. I don't care if you're pro- or anti-patent, but you should have the basic facts right.
In the past any inventor who could produce documentation proving they invented something could gain priority over one filed by some who learned of the invention and had their legal team rush out a patent.
... provided they also filed for a patent application, as "secret" invention has never been protected, even under first-to-invent. And now, under first-to-file, an inventor who can produce documentation proving that they invented something can still gain priority over an earlier application by someone who learned of the invention from them and had their legal team rush out a patent. It's called a derivation proceeding.
Under "first to file" open science is basically dead, as any group collaborating openly online is at perpetual risk of having their work patented by anyone who learns of it and files before they can.
Under "first to invent", open science was similarly dead, because no company worth their salt would let inventors collaborate openly online about new inventions without having filed at least a provisional application, since they would lose their ability to file in most overseas jurisdictions.
Or, conversely, open science is just as alive as ever, if you want to collaborate and not obtain patents. Obviously, the changes to the patent system don't affect unpatented inventions given to the public domain.
This has massively stifled online collaboration
I'm sure you have a citation?
as important inventions made in private now result in the inventor taking out a loan and going dark for 5-7 years while they wait for the USPTO to get around to their application.
Not at all - the inventor files a provisional application, at a whopping $140 for a small entity or as low as $70 for a micro entity, and then can freely discuss their invention openly.
Furthermore, even if they wait and file the full non-provisional application, they don't have to wait for "5-7 years" for the Office to get around to the application - heck, it's going to be published in 18 months anyway. But their priority is secured, and they can start discussing it immediately.
Also, forgive me for making an assumption, but this is Slashdot, so... are you primarily discussing software and computer patents? Or pharma? Because the former would be obsolete in 5-7 years, and no one files an application and then sits on their thumbs for that long without doing anything. Pharma, with its various clinical trial requirements, has a much longer term... but even then, they're doing public trials, so it wouldn't make any sense to "stay dark" for 5-7 years.
It has also emboldened corporations to accelerate preexisting efforts to file as many patents as possible on anything promising.
That does not seem to be supported by the numbers. If it was true, we would expect to see more files post-AIA than pre-. But we don't. In fact, the numbers have been pretty steady relative to the economy as a whole.
The commons, like most public resources, are being privatized, and patents are a major drag on nearly every aspect of innovation.
Again, this doesn't seem to be supported by the statistics. It is an opinion, and perhaps a popular one among people on Slashdot who haven't got any patents, but it's one based in prejudice and blind faith, rather than evidence. So, I guess if anti-patentism is your religion, then there's really nothing I could say to change your mind.
With our fun new "first to file" patent system, not only can corporations beat almost any inventor to locking up an idea, we've nearly completely killed open science! And while many historians consider "first to file" to be a big part of the growth of American innovation and business in the previous centuries, we needed to reprioritize to help usher in our glorious new Gilded Age. Remember children, the government is just taking care of the most important citizens! So rejoice in your serfdom, and pick up that can...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
This should be marked misleading, not interesting. The change from first-to-invent to first-to-file was minor: it did away with opposition proceedings, where two inventors file for applications on the same invention and the patent office has a mini-trial to determine which one actually invented it first. They cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, and out of a half million patent applications a year, there were on average twenty oppositions. Not twenty thousand. Twenty.
And it has nothing to do with corporations vs. inventors. Even in the first-to-invent days, most inventors worked for corporations, so it was still corporations filing on applications.
In short, none of what you said has any basis in reality, except for your wiki link. So, good job there.
They didn't invent this tech yet they're patenting the shit out of it.
The people that work at the USPTO need to be shot.
They're not patenting the block chain generally, they're patenting specific implementations, improvements, etc. It's like if someone told you that GM, Tesla, and Toyota all got issued patents last year, and you responded that Mr. Benz invented the car back in 1879 so the people involved needed to be shot. There have been lots of patentable improvements to cars since then. As long as the patents are targeted to those improvements, it's fine.
Hi lawyer has said multiple times that he'd be willing to face these charges if both countries would guarantee that Assange would not be extradited to the US (something they claim they have no intention of doing) and both countries have flat refused to make this guarantee, leading to the belief that that is exactly what they plan to do.
... or leading to the belief that low level prosecutors lack the ability to make a guarantee regarding extradition. Which they do.
And the moment he hits US soil, he'll be Gitmod, whether it's in Guantanamo or a US prison. Everyone involved knows it and so much money and many man hours spent on this shows that there is no other likely reasoning for this. Remember, officially this is over a non-consensual act during consensual sex
A non-consensual sexual act is sexual assault, and you appear to be admitting he did that.
As for "during consensual sex", that may apply to the incident in which he slipped the condom off, but it doesn't apply to the sleeping woman he raped. Unconscious people cannot consent.
... that the girls went to the police to track him down, soley to get an STD test. The police, upon finding the importance of the individual accused, pressured the girls into pressing charges, which they have since withdrawn
Neither charges were withdrawn by the girls involved. The sexual assault charges have expired, because Assange was a fugitive for long enough that the statute of limitation tolled. The rape charges are still pending.
... and sent out an interpol alert reserved for the world's most dangerous and most wanted. Sound like your standard everyday secondary rape case, yes? (/sarcasm)
Yes, actually. You admit he committed sexual assault, he's also a rapist and bail jumper. Pursuing him via an INTERPOL alert - which are not only reserved for the most dangerous and most wanted, but any fugitive fleeing internationally - is entirely expected.
As pointed out a few years ago in the news a diplomatic package is not allowed to be opened without suspicion but it is not free from scanning. If they thermally image the package, sniff him out or otherwise they would have grounds for inspection.
To say nothing of putting it through an Xray machine VERY SLOWLY.
There's also the "without suspicion" part. If Ecuador sends a diplomatic package that is suspiciously Assange-sized with suspicious air holes and a suspicious "Fragile, do not break Assange" label, the UK can still stop it and open it. They'd be risking a diplomatic incident if they're wrong, but if they're right, then Ecuador has caused the incident, and could see their diplomats get kicked out of the country or other penalties.
Publishing disproportionately negative reviews if you don't pay them is definitely extortion and possibly also defamation.
Not defamation for the reasons I explained in the post you responded to.
It could qualify as extortion, but that's also questionable. Extortion, under Federal law (18 USC 875(c)) requires a threat to injure the reputation of the addressee. However, Yelp isn't writing the negative reviews - customers are. Arguably, the business' own actions have damaged their reputation: i.e. if the business only had glowing reviews, then Yelp would have no negative reviews to publish.
If anything, Yelp is not threatening to damage the reputation of the business, but offering, for a fee, to help salvage the reputation of the business by publishing positive reviews. This is the opposite of "extortion" - it's "image management".
Simply put, it's not nearly as clear cut as you think.
Censoring positive reviews while showing negative reviews is plain extortion when you act as an honest authority. Possibly even defamation, since they're manipulating the facts.
Unfortunately, no. They're not lying, but rather staying silent regarding good things. For example, this post doesn't say anything about your personal qualities - does that make it defamatory, because I didn't say that you love puppies or once saved a nun from a fire? No... Like me, Yelp is under no obligation to say good stuff about merchants, as long as they're not actually lying.
Now, this should reduce their credibility and people should stop using them, but calling it defamation is probably a step too far.
again 50 youtube videos showing muslim bakers refusing to decorate gay wedding cakes ..its only bad when a white conservative does it
Nope, those are bad, too.
Pro-tip: it's usually best to find out if the other person is being hypocritical before you accuse them of hypocrisy. Otherwise, it's just projection.
There's a small wrinkle in the cake case that makes the "lunch counter" example not 100% comparable, in my mind.
The cake shop offered to sell any off-the-shelf (standard) cake. They only refused to make a customized gay cake, as they claimed that a customized cake is an artistic expression and covered under the first amendment.
Well, yes, and no. From the oral arguments, they also claim that an uncustomized cake would violate his rights:
JUSTICE GINSBURG: Well, suppose we exclude that and say let's make the assumption that he -- if he makes custom-made cakes for others, he must make it for this pair, but he doesn't have to write anything for anybody. He doesn't have to write a message that he disagrees with.
MS. WAGGONER: Well, this Court has recognized in Hurley as well as in other decisions that artistic expression doesn't need to include words and symbols to express a message or to be protected speech.
He was willing to sell them cupcakes or cookies, but would not supply even a blank or generic wedding cake, identical to any other wedding cake he makes for straight couples.
Is that really different from a lunch counter refusing to allow certain condiments, substitutions, or other off-menu items? Gay cakes apparently weren't on the menu at that cake shop. Should all cake bakers be required to offer gluten-free cakes too?
I've yet to see something that makes a cake a "gay" cake or a "straight" cake. Here is the gallery of wedding cakes from the baker in question. Can you point to any feature in those cakes that make them "straight" cakes?
Halal butchers don't butcher pigs at all, for anyone. Cake bakers do bake cakes. The couple here didn't go to a cake baker and ask for a roast rack of lamb - they asked for a cake, selected out of a catalog of cakes that the baker provides. This would be the same as going to a halal butcher, pointing to something on the menu, and saying "I'll take number 3." And, in such a situation, if the butcher said, "my religious beliefs don't let me serve you number 3- hold on one second. Mr. Smith, your number 3 is ready! Sorry about that- I was saying that my religious beliefs don't let me serve a number 3 to you specifically," you'd probably be more than a little upset, and justifiably so.
So how far do you take that? Can the baker refuse to put a giant phallus on the cake? Can the baker refuse to put a KKK clan member on the cake? Who decides what the baker can and cannot refuse to put on a cake?
Go back to the comment you're replying to, quoted again here for convenience. Does the baker put giant phalluses on cakes for straight couples? Does the baker put KKK clan members on those cakes? If so, then the baker can't refuse to include those for others.
Who decides what the baker can and cannot refuse to put on a cake? The baker. But he doesn't get to decide who can purchase or not purchase that cake, based on their gender, race, religion, etc.
Reading up on the case, I am confused as to the arguments here. The baker did not refuse to give them a cake! The baker merely refused to put two women getting married on the cake since they considered that offensive.
I believe you're reading something entirely different. This case involved two men. They probably didn't want two women on it.
And no, the baker refused to make them any wedding cake. He said they could buy cupcakes or cookies.
Reading some articles on this, they don't seem to mention the cake at all, they just focus on who the baker refused to make the cake for. Maybe that's what the bakery did wrong here.
Yes, that's exactly it. The key is not the 'what' part, but the 'who' part. If the baker is willing to make a cake for one couple, then he has to make identical cakes for any couple. He doesn't have to make wildly different cakes, just like the Jewish deli doesn't have to serve bacon, but he can't say "I'll serve you, but not you."
That seems fair. Unless I'm reading the oral arguments though, it's not quite off the shelf:
https://www.supremecourt.gov/o...
Well, that's a bit misleading... They ended up getting a free rainbow cake from another baker, who donated it because of the controversy. There's no suggestion that they were looking for a rainbow cake originally. You don't turn down free rainbow cake, because, y'know, free cake.
No, that'd be a work of science. Evolutionary psychologists look at modern behaviors, and then conclude, without any actual evidence or testing, that they must be that way because of what some pre-historical person did. It's ironic that you reference Darwin, when you're really relying on Lamarck.
Funny, that is the work of science. Guess you're doing a good job of showing your selection bias in action.
... You're arguing for Lamarckian evolution, to support evolutionary psychology.
Well, okay, then. I can see we're going to get nowhere. I guess we'll meet again in the next space thread, when you're arguing that the Earth is flat. HAND.
This is flatly INCORRECT , he wouldn't sell a CUSTOM cake. It's in the supreme court brief. They weren't even trying to order catalog of cakes,they wanted a complete custom cake. It was a 20 second interaction or less.
And here is Masterpiece's catalog of wedding cakes. Can you please point out any feature in those cakes that could possibly distinguish between a gay wedding and a straight wedding?