Those are the people you buy crystals from in the mall, right?
No, these are the people who have multiple doctorates in two or more fields, and are considered some of the "best" in their fields. Or to make it simple for you: They're the people who spend their lives understanding "how" a person becomes that person. Whether through social, biological, gender, or hundreds of other factors. But I'm sure that you also believe "the origins of species" is blasphemy, so really it's just your own ignorance and stupidity on display.
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.
i think there's an important distinction between selling a commodity and selling custom work. What if you're a website designer and get a request to code a website to extol the virtues of Jihad or White Supremacy? This isn't as easy as just sell your product or you're a racist.
I would agree, if the baker in question had been asked to prepare a cake with a message extolling the virtues of gay marriage. But no, it was going to be a generic cake, identical to one he'd make for any other couple. I mean, come on, it's a wedding cake - People of Walmart aside, have you ever seen a wedding cake with words on it?
The proper analogy would be if you're a computer retailer, and some guy comes in and says, "I'd like to buy one of your computers. That one over there, in fact," and you say, "sorry, can't sell it to you, because you're black. My religion says that black people shouldn't use electronics because technology is for whites only." Maybe they're custom computers - maybe you build them on the spot, with the RAM and GPU and drives the customer asks for. So it's "custom work". But if you refuse to sell it to someone because of their race or gender, that's illegal, even if they were going to take it home to set up their Jihadist web page.
And that means he's a terrible engineer, since he doesn't understand that "if X, then Y" doesn't also mean "Y, therefore X." That alone would be reason to fire him, because you sure as fark can't trust his code.
This is the part where you're wrong. He understood those hypothesis correctly, even evolutionary psychology professors...
Those are the people you buy crystals from in the mall, right?
His opinion being that google shouldn't recruit women because they might have on average less aptitude than men for some tasks.
The actual quote:
Note, Iâ(TM)m not saying that all men differ from all women in the following ways or that these
differences are âoejust.â Iâ(TM)m simply stating that the distribution of preferences and abilities of men
and women differ in part due to biological causes and that these differences may explain why
we donâ(TM)t see equal representation of women in tech and leadership. Many of these differences
are small and thereâ(TM)s significant overlap between men and women, so you canâ(TM)t say anything
about an individual given these population level distributions.
So yes, you can disagree, you can argue the science he used and the studies he cited are wrong, or that he misunderstood them, but trying to depict the memo as vile while not having read it is malicious.
Well, yeah, the strongest argument is that the memo shows that Damore is a terrible engineer who shouldn't be employed, because he doesn't understand the distinction between correlation and causation.
Specifically, Damore attempted to argue a hypothesis that gender differences in STEM are due to inherent biological factors, and therefore cannot be addressed by social engineering. He cited studies that showed that when adult, post-college men and women are surveyed, they self-report different levels of interest in STEM fields. Issues with those studies (e.g. limited populations, self-reporting, no controls, etc.) aside, they don't even begin to prove Damore's point regarding biological inherency. And that's the biggest issue with the manifesto - Damore clearly has no understanding of the difference between correlation and causation. Yes, there are fewer women in tech. Yes, on surveys of adults, they report different levels of interest in the field. But only someone really unclear on logic and science would say "this difference exists, therefore genetics."
And that means he's a terrible engineer, since he doesn't understand that "if X, then Y" doesn't also mean "Y, therefore X." That alone would be reason to fire him, because you sure as fark can't trust his code.
They also didn't refuse services or products. They offered the couple to purchase a pre-made cake, simply stating they would not do custom work that promoted beliefs outside their religious dogma.
That's not exactly true - they refused to sell them any cake that would be used in a wedding. There was no discussion of writing on the cake or a rainbow interior or hers and hers cake toppers - just that it was a wedding cake, and the bakers refused. They offered to sell any other "baked good".
A business owner, outside of a few essential things (like housing) should have the god damn right to choose to take on a client. It's a fucking bakery for Christ's sake, in western Oregon you'd have to *try* very hard to find a religious, conservative baker.
This was simply a case of someone who got butt-hurt over the business owner having the temerity to stand up for their beliefs, and decided to try to make an example out of the bakery. Essentially the outcome was that they lost their business, and have to pay around $100k in fines because they didn't want to bake a cake.
A sane, rational person would cowboy up, and find another bakery that would be happy to take your money. But nope, gotta make a court case out of it!
Fuck the plaintiffs. Seriously. Fuck Them.
Allow me to offer an analogy... Rather than a cake baker, say you owned a lunch counter. A lunch counter in a Woolworth's Department Store. And then one day, some uppity negroes come in and ask to eat lunch, despite your very clear "whites only" sign.
You're a private businessman, and you should have the god damn right to choose whom you serve, right? You should be able to restrict service only to your Aryan friends, and if they're butt-hurt about it, fuck them. Seriously. Fuck Them.
Would you agree with all that? It's the same situation, but lunch rather than a cake, and a battle 50 years ago instead of today. But you're on the side of discrimination, yes? I just want to be clear whether you're consistent or not.
How about going to a halal butcher with a pig and demand that they butcher it for you, religious beliefs be damned?
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.
If a competitor simply reverse engineers it and rewrites it, copying all of your ideas but not your specific variable names, then they are not infringing your copyright.
Yeah, in economics, that's what is known as "competition," and it's generally regarded as a good thing.
Not when it involves copying your ideas. See, economists would say that that creates a disincentive to do R&D... Or conversely, that it creates an incentive to lock everything up in trade secrets, with NDAs and restrictive contracts that prevent customers from using the products they buy in any way they want. And society generally regards that as a bad thing.
The fact that Zynga can rip off indie titles AND the fact that they have tons of patents should speak FOR elimination of software patents, not against it. The world is not perfect or fair, but software patents only make it less so. Indie developers can't afford patent projection, nor should they have to do so.
So because some indie developers can't afford patent protection, Zynga should get to walk roughshod over all developers? That makes no sense,
unless you're part of Zynga's management team.
And patents really aren't that expensive. About $25k over 3-4 years to get a patent, and what's the value of having a Zynga-proof monopoly, rather than merely being Dream Heights to their Tiny Tower?
And as an indie game developer myself, I believe there's a special place in hell for Zynga. What they do is beneath contempt, but is technically not illegal. And as much as I hate to say it, trying to prevent them from doing so goes down a slippery legal slope that I think would be devastating for the game industry. Could you imagine if the litigation nightmare if a company managed to "patent" the basic game mechanics of a simple first-person shooter? If no one could copy game ideas, Stardew Valley could not have taken inspiration from Harvest Moon.
Or they could come up with their own IP, or they could take a license for any elements they were reusing...
Yes, but that only protects you against pirates: copyright only applies when someone makes an exact copy of your code. If a competitor simply reverse engineers it and rewrites it, copying all of your ideas but not your specific variable names, then they are not infringing your copyright.
Copyright is great for music and movie companies*, because people want to see the Avengers movie or listen to Kanye's new album rather than the "Revengers" knock-off version or my new album - they want that specific work. But it's terrible for software, because no one says "gosh, this word processing suite may be identical to that word processing suite, but it doesn't have my favorite variable name." Heck, look at Zynga, ripping off every indie game developer they can find, and making millions at it. And, of course, note that Zynga actually has a ton of patents, since they know from personal experience that copyright is inadequate.
*not for anyone else, but that's besides the point
-The United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) is funded by fees -- and the agency gets more fees if it approves an application.
-Unlimited opportunities to refile rejected applications means sometimes granting a patent is the only way to get rid of a persistent applicant.
Point 2 is also misleading (or ignorant, hence their use of "refile rejected applications" rather than "pay a fee to continue examining the same application"). The rejected application isn't simply being refiled over and over - the applicant makes amendments, narrowing the claims. Like, maybe originally, it was a patent on "a car", and then they amend to "a car, comprising an electric engine," and then "a car, comprising an electric engine, a gas engine, a drivetrain, and a three-axis planetary gear wherein a first axis of the gear is driven by the electric engine, a second axis of the gear is driven by the gas engine, and a third axis of the gear is connected to the drivetrain," etc. Since the applicant has to pay those high fees every single time, the only person they're harming is themselves.
-Patent examiners are given less time to review patent applications as they gain seniority, leading to less thorough reviews.
This is the one point that's actually correct. There's some efficiency gained through experience, but that may mean going from 20 hours to examine an application to 15. Not 20 down to 5.
Perhaps a Black Alert to tell the public when unarmed black men are endangered by the police?
Wouldn't it be more efficient to have a Black Non-Alert for when unarmed black men aren't endangered by the police? Then you'd only have to send it out once, maybe twice a year.
... some new form of public communication system in which people could publish text of any length! It would be accessible over the web, and for an analogy that Slashdotters will understand, it would be similar to an event log or other extended data file. Why, we could call it a "web-log" or "blog" for short!
Alternately, we could just start refusing to read any multi-tweet Tweets, or perhaps begin delivering personalized cockpunches to their authors.
Soon we will not be able to determine real from fake. Nothing can be proven real. We will have to suspect everything.
'bout time. It was about 20 years ago that ABC did the first live replacement of video, during the Thanksgiving Day Parade in Times Square - they dynamically swapped out real billboards with their own advertising. Now, it's done routinely for sporting events.
Don't fucking let someone take pictures or video of you naked and/or having sex!!!!
Sheesh....when did something like common sense about not letting someone take pics of you in compromising situations go out the fucking door?
Yes, I suppose that's a reasonable solution, if you never want to receive sexy pictures or video from a significant other. As most people would like to receive such, then blaming the victim and discouraging the practice would seem to be counter to most folk's interests. But not yours, I guess.
We've had physical slide locks for... a very long time. (slide to unlock)
and candles that burn down, or water containers that fill up to measure progress (progress bars)
I don't think anything whose entire patent is "X that already exists, but on a computer" should be valid.
That's all true, but irrelevant. The patent isn't actually "physical slide lock, plus a progress bar, on a computer." If that's what it claimed, you'd be right, it would be clearly obvious. But it's not. That's just how people paraphrase the patent - and paraphrasing, by definition, is describing something in known, simpler terms. If I paraphrased a self-driving electric car as a "horseless carriage that runs on stored energy, and like a horse, can get itself home when its rider is asleep," that doesn't mean that, as of 1850, self-driving electric cars were obvious. I've explicitly ignored everything about them that's new or complicated in order to describe it in the simplest way possible.
Instead, you have to look at the actual language of the patent claims. Here's claim 1:
1. A method of unlocking a hand-held electronic device, the device including a touch-sensitive display, the method comprising: detecting a contact with the touch-sensitive display at a first predefined location corresponding to an unlock image; continuously moving the unlock image on the touch-sensitive display in accordance with movement of the contact while continuous contact with the touch screen is maintained, wherein the unlock image is a graphical, interactive user-interface object with which a user interacts in order to unlock the device; and unlocking the hand-held electronic device if the moving the unlock image on the touch-sensitive display results in movement of the unlock image from the first predefined location to a predefined unlock region on the touch-sensitive display.
Those are the pieces you have to show exist in the prior art in order to prove that the patent was obvious. Not door latches and progress bars.
Anything that is obvious and can be replicated by someone skilled in the art is not valid. The rules say this, but they are ignored the by morons who run the system and gain prestige/profit while hurting actual innovation.
It is a system of the lawyers, by the lawyers, for the lawyers; and it is working as designed.
That's not what the rule says, though. The AC grandparent is confusing two different things, and even has one of them backwards. Yes, anything that's obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art is invalid. But a patent is invalid if it can't be replicated by someone skilled in the art. Specifically, to be valid under 35 USC 112, a patent must contain a clear description that is "sufficient to enable one of ordinary skill in the art to make and use the claimed invention." In other words, the patented invention has to be able to be replicated to be valid.
And that something can be replicated isn't proof that it's obvious. The actual rules are crafted to avoid hindsight, because everything looks obvious in hindsight. And given that the patent has to describe how to make and use the invention per the above, simply reading the patent opens you up to finding it obvious in hindsight. So instead, to show that the patent is obvious, the patent office has to show that each and every element in the claims can be found in one or more prior art references, and that it wouldn't require undue experimentation to combine them for one of skill in the art. Like, peanut butter exists, jelly exists, they're easy to combine on bread, so therefore peanut butter and jelly sandwiches are obvious.
Now, I haven't looked into this patent or what's in the prior art, so I can't say whether it's obvious or not. It sure seems like a simple idea, but if it was obvious, why wasn't Samsung using it before Apple? And why did they copy it afterwards? It must have been commercially valuable for them to copy it, since they wouldn't have done so otherwise; and if it was commercially valuable and obvious, they would have done it earlier, since hey, free money. So maybe it wasn't obvious until Apple did it.
Enterprise software is so complex that there must be thousands of source files with hundreds of thousands of lines of code. How does a code review catch anything? If a company has a backdoor, why on earth would they provide it in a source review? Just remove the backdoor, submit the files, and pass. Source review seems like a waste of time, how do they, or did they ensure the source they were reviewing is the source that's in the application? Perhaps they did the review, compiled, packaged, then copied to memory for installation?
I think at a minimum, the best practices for any source code review include compiling and packaging, and at least calculating a hash of the executable and comparing it to a hash of the distributed product executable.
I agree, you shouldn't immediately trust distributed software just because they open sourced it, but rather, the point is that you can roll your own and/or compare it to the distributed version to make sure they're the same.
And "colorful grid of icons"? Really? Hasn't ANYONE at the patent office used a computer or phone for the last zillion years? Every PalmOS phone, which proceeded the iPhone had such a screen. Even generic flip phones of the time had such colorful grids of icons for programs and launchers.
The design patent doesn't cover any colorful grid of icons, but a specific one. In their showings to the jury, Apple provided examples of several "colorful grid[s] of icons" that would not infringe the patent.
but there's this free application called VLC for the mac that'll play all kinds of video formats
And you have just managed to reiterate the point of TFS. Macs used to just work. Now you need ${SOFTWARE} combined with ${DONGLE} and a ${WEIRD_GESTURE) thrown in for good measure to do ${BASIC_STUFF}.
A computer without software is an expensive paperweight. I mean, really, how did you think GP was playing the full screen video in the first place?
Slashdot Mirror
Those are the people you buy crystals from in the mall, right?
No, these are the people who have multiple doctorates in two or more fields, and are considered some of the "best" in their fields. Or to make it simple for you: They're the people who spend their lives understanding "how" a person becomes that person. Whether through social, biological, gender, or hundreds of other factors. But I'm sure that you also believe "the origins of species" is blasphemy, so really it's just your own ignorance and stupidity on display.
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.
i think there's an important distinction between selling a commodity and selling custom work. What if you're a website designer and get a request to code a website to extol the virtues of Jihad or White Supremacy? This isn't as easy as just sell your product or you're a racist.
I would agree, if the baker in question had been asked to prepare a cake with a message extolling the virtues of gay marriage. But no, it was going to be a generic cake, identical to one he'd make for any other couple. I mean, come on, it's a wedding cake - People of Walmart aside, have you ever seen a wedding cake with words on it?
The proper analogy would be if you're a computer retailer, and some guy comes in and says, "I'd like to buy one of your computers. That one over there, in fact," and you say, "sorry, can't sell it to you, because you're black. My religion says that black people shouldn't use electronics because technology is for whites only." Maybe they're custom computers - maybe you build them on the spot, with the RAM and GPU and drives the customer asks for. So it's "custom work". But if you refuse to sell it to someone because of their race or gender, that's illegal, even if they were going to take it home to set up their Jihadist web page.
And that means he's a terrible engineer, since he doesn't understand that "if X, then Y" doesn't also mean "Y, therefore X." That alone would be reason to fire him, because you sure as fark can't trust his code.
This is the part where you're wrong. He understood those hypothesis correctly, even evolutionary psychology professors...
Those are the people you buy crystals from in the mall, right?
Evopsych. How sweet.
Reading the memo will only make you dumber,
If you read it, you wouldn't pretend things like :
His opinion being that google shouldn't recruit women because they might have on average less aptitude than men for some tasks.
The actual quote :
Note, Iâ(TM)m not saying that all men differ from all women in the following ways or that these differences are âoejust.â Iâ(TM)m simply stating that the distribution of preferences and abilities of men and women differ in part due to biological causes and that these differences may explain why we donâ(TM)t see equal representation of women in tech and leadership. Many of these differences are small and thereâ(TM)s significant overlap between men and women, so you canâ(TM)t say anything about an individual given these population level distributions.
So yes, you can disagree, you can argue the science he used and the studies he cited are wrong, or that he misunderstood them, but trying to depict the memo as vile while not having read it is malicious.
Well, yeah, the strongest argument is that the memo shows that Damore is a terrible engineer who shouldn't be employed, because he doesn't understand the distinction between correlation and causation.
Specifically, Damore attempted to argue a hypothesis that gender differences in STEM are due to inherent biological factors, and therefore cannot be addressed by social engineering. He cited studies that showed that when adult, post-college men and women are surveyed, they self-report different levels of interest in STEM fields. Issues with those studies (e.g. limited populations, self-reporting, no controls, etc.) aside, they don't even begin to prove Damore's point regarding biological inherency. And that's the biggest issue with the manifesto - Damore clearly has no understanding of the difference between correlation and causation. Yes, there are fewer women in tech. Yes, on surveys of adults, they report different levels of interest in the field. But only someone really unclear on logic and science would say "this difference exists, therefore genetics."
And that means he's a terrible engineer, since he doesn't understand that "if X, then Y" doesn't also mean "Y, therefore X." That alone would be reason to fire him, because you sure as fark can't trust his code.
They also didn't refuse services or products. They offered the couple to purchase a pre-made cake, simply stating they would not do custom work that promoted beliefs outside their religious dogma.
That's not exactly true - they refused to sell them any cake that would be used in a wedding. There was no discussion of writing on the cake or a rainbow interior or hers and hers cake toppers - just that it was a wedding cake, and the bakers refused. They offered to sell any other "baked good".
As an Oregonian, that case really pissed me off.
A business owner, outside of a few essential things (like housing) should have the god damn right to choose to take on a client. It's a fucking bakery for Christ's sake, in western Oregon you'd have to *try* very hard to find a religious, conservative baker.
This was simply a case of someone who got butt-hurt over the business owner having the temerity to stand up for their beliefs, and decided to try to make an example out of the bakery. Essentially the outcome was that they lost their business, and have to pay around $100k in fines because they didn't want to bake a cake.
A sane, rational person would cowboy up, and find another bakery that would be happy to take your money. But nope, gotta make a court case out of it!
Fuck the plaintiffs. Seriously. Fuck Them.
Allow me to offer an analogy... Rather than a cake baker, say you owned a lunch counter. A lunch counter in a Woolworth's Department Store. And then one day, some uppity negroes come in and ask to eat lunch, despite your very clear "whites only" sign.
You're a private businessman, and you should have the god damn right to choose whom you serve, right? You should be able to restrict service only to your Aryan friends, and if they're butt-hurt about it, fuck them. Seriously. Fuck Them.
Would you agree with all that? It's the same situation, but lunch rather than a cake, and a battle 50 years ago instead of today. But you're on the side of discrimination, yes? I just want to be clear whether you're consistent or not.
How about going to a halal butcher with a pig and demand that they butcher it for you, religious beliefs be damned?
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.
Yeah, in economics, that's what is known as "competition," and it's generally regarded as a good thing.
Not when it involves copying your ideas. See, economists would say that that creates a disincentive to do R&D... Or conversely, that it creates an incentive to lock everything up in trade secrets, with NDAs and restrictive contracts that prevent customers from using the products they buy in any way they want. And society generally regards that as a bad thing.
The fact that Zynga can rip off indie titles AND the fact that they have tons of patents should speak FOR elimination of software patents, not against it. The world is not perfect or fair, but software patents only make it less so. Indie developers can't afford patent projection, nor should they have to do so.
So because some indie developers can't afford patent protection, Zynga should get to walk roughshod over all developers? That makes no sense, unless you're part of Zynga's management team.
And patents really aren't that expensive. About $25k over 3-4 years to get a patent, and what's the value of having a Zynga-proof monopoly, rather than merely being Dream Heights to their Tiny Tower?
And as an indie game developer myself, I believe there's a special place in hell for Zynga. What they do is beneath contempt, but is technically not illegal. And as much as I hate to say it, trying to prevent them from doing so goes down a slippery legal slope that I think would be devastating for the game industry. Could you imagine if the litigation nightmare if a company managed to "patent" the basic game mechanics of a simple first-person shooter? If no one could copy game ideas, Stardew Valley could not have taken inspiration from Harvest Moon.
Or they could come up with their own IP, or they could take a license for any elements they were reusing...
Software can be copyrighted...
Yes, but that only protects you against pirates: copyright only applies when someone makes an exact copy of your code. If a competitor simply reverse engineers it and rewrites it, copying all of your ideas but not your specific variable names, then they are not infringing your copyright.
Copyright is great for music and movie companies*, because people want to see the Avengers movie or listen to Kanye's new album rather than the "Revengers" knock-off version or my new album - they want that specific work. But it's terrible for software, because no one says "gosh, this word processing suite may be identical to that word processing suite, but it doesn't have my favorite variable name." Heck, look at Zynga, ripping off every indie game developer they can find, and making millions at it. And, of course, note that Zynga actually has a ton of patents, since they know from personal experience that copyright is inadequate.
*not for anyone else, but that's besides the point
-The United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) is funded by fees -- and the agency gets more fees if it approves an application.
-Unlimited opportunities to refile rejected applications means sometimes granting a patent is the only way to get rid of a persistent applicant.
Contrary to point #1, and as shown in point #2, the agency gets more fees if they reject an application and allow applicants to refile the rejected applications - really, not so much "refiling", but filing a "request for continued examination" and a fee. Specifically, the issue fee paid when a patent application is granted is currently $960. But if an application is rejected and "refiled", then the request for continued examination fee is $1200 for the first RCE and $1700 for each one after that. Plus the agency will still get the issue fee, if the application is eventually granted.
Point 2 is also misleading (or ignorant, hence their use of "refile rejected applications" rather than "pay a fee to continue examining the same application"). The rejected application isn't simply being refiled over and over - the applicant makes amendments, narrowing the claims. Like, maybe originally, it was a patent on "a car", and then they amend to "a car, comprising an electric engine," and then "a car, comprising an electric engine, a gas engine, a drivetrain, and a three-axis planetary gear wherein a first axis of the gear is driven by the electric engine, a second axis of the gear is driven by the gas engine, and a third axis of the gear is connected to the drivetrain," etc. Since the applicant has to pay those high fees every single time, the only person they're harming is themselves.
-Patent examiners are given less time to review patent applications as they gain seniority, leading to less thorough reviews.
This is the one point that's actually correct. There's some efficiency gained through experience, but that may mean going from 20 hours to examine an application to 15. Not 20 down to 5.
... that Alphabet spells the end for him?
We are between GenX and Millenial... both born in 1980. Make whatever assumption you want. It will not change the reality.
Aside: we've been termed "Oregon Trailers".
Perhaps a Black Alert to tell the public when unarmed black men are endangered by the police?
Wouldn't it be more efficient to have a Black Non-Alert for when unarmed black men aren't endangered by the police? Then you'd only have to send it out once, maybe twice a year.
Alternately, we could just start refusing to read any multi-tweet Tweets, or perhaps begin delivering personalized cockpunches to their authors.
Soon we will not be able to determine real from fake. Nothing can be proven real. We will have to suspect everything.
'bout time. It was about 20 years ago that ABC did the first live replacement of video, during the Thanksgiving Day Parade in Times Square - they dynamically swapped out real billboards with their own advertising. Now, it's done routinely for sporting events.
Facing Rising Unemployment, Young People Return to Subsistence Living
That's a pretty big assumption there! I get along fine without sending nudy pics to my wife, and vice versa.
The rest of us appreciate them, though, so pass on our thanks.
I have a QUICK solution to all this, works 100%.
Don't fucking let someone take pictures or video of you naked and/or having sex!!!!
Sheesh....when did something like common sense about not letting someone take pics of you in compromising situations go out the fucking door?
Yes, I suppose that's a reasonable solution, if you never want to receive sexy pictures or video from a significant other. As most people would like to receive such, then blaming the victim and discouraging the practice would seem to be counter to most folk's interests. But not yours, I guess.
We've had physical slide locks for... a very long time. (slide to unlock)
and candles that burn down, or water containers that fill up to measure progress (progress bars)
I don't think anything whose entire patent is "X that already exists, but on a computer" should be valid.
That's all true, but irrelevant. The patent isn't actually "physical slide lock, plus a progress bar, on a computer." If that's what it claimed, you'd be right, it would be clearly obvious. But it's not. That's just how people paraphrase the patent - and paraphrasing, by definition, is describing something in known, simpler terms. If I paraphrased a self-driving electric car as a "horseless carriage that runs on stored energy, and like a horse, can get itself home when its rider is asleep," that doesn't mean that, as of 1850, self-driving electric cars were obvious. I've explicitly ignored everything about them that's new or complicated in order to describe it in the simplest way possible.
Instead, you have to look at the actual language of the patent claims. Here's claim 1:
1. A method of unlocking a hand-held electronic device, the device including a touch-sensitive display, the method comprising:
detecting a contact with the touch-sensitive display at a first predefined location corresponding to an unlock image;
continuously moving the unlock image on the touch-sensitive display in accordance with movement of the contact while continuous contact with the touch screen is maintained, wherein the unlock image is a graphical, interactive user-interface object with which a user interacts in order to unlock the device; and
unlocking the hand-held electronic device if the moving the unlock image on the touch-sensitive display results in movement of the unlock image from the first predefined location to a predefined unlock region on the touch-sensitive display.
Those are the pieces you have to show exist in the prior art in order to prove that the patent was obvious. Not door latches and progress bars.
Anything that is obvious and can be replicated by someone skilled in the art is not valid. The rules say this, but they are ignored the by morons who run the system and gain prestige/profit while hurting actual innovation.
It is a system of the lawyers, by the lawyers, for the lawyers; and it is working as designed.
That's not what the rule says, though. The AC grandparent is confusing two different things, and even has one of them backwards. Yes, anything that's obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art is invalid. But a patent is invalid if it can't be replicated by someone skilled in the art. Specifically, to be valid under 35 USC 112, a patent must contain a clear description that is "sufficient to enable one of ordinary skill in the art to make and use the claimed invention." In other words, the patented invention has to be able to be replicated to be valid.
And that something can be replicated isn't proof that it's obvious. The actual rules are crafted to avoid hindsight, because everything looks obvious in hindsight. And given that the patent has to describe how to make and use the invention per the above, simply reading the patent opens you up to finding it obvious in hindsight. So instead, to show that the patent is obvious, the patent office has to show that each and every element in the claims can be found in one or more prior art references, and that it wouldn't require undue experimentation to combine them for one of skill in the art. Like, peanut butter exists, jelly exists, they're easy to combine on bread, so therefore peanut butter and jelly sandwiches are obvious.
Now, I haven't looked into this patent or what's in the prior art, so I can't say whether it's obvious or not. It sure seems like a simple idea, but if it was obvious, why wasn't Samsung using it before Apple? And why did they copy it afterwards? It must have been commercially valuable for them to copy it, since they wouldn't have done so otherwise; and if it was commercially valuable and obvious, they would have done it earlier, since hey, free money. So maybe it wasn't obvious until Apple did it.
Enterprise software is so complex that there must be thousands of source files with hundreds of thousands of lines of code. How does a code review catch anything? If a company has a backdoor, why on earth would they provide it in a source review? Just remove the backdoor, submit the files, and pass. Source review seems like a waste of time, how do they, or did they ensure the source they were reviewing is the source that's in the application? Perhaps they did the review, compiled, packaged, then copied to memory for installation?
I think at a minimum, the best practices for any source code review include compiling and packaging, and at least calculating a hash of the executable and comparing it to a hash of the distributed product executable.
I agree, you shouldn't immediately trust distributed software just because they open sourced it, but rather, the point is that you can roll your own and/or compare it to the distributed version to make sure they're the same.
(my scared face)
And "colorful grid of icons"? Really? Hasn't ANYONE at the patent office used a computer or phone for the last zillion years? Every PalmOS phone, which proceeded the iPhone had such a screen. Even generic flip phones of the time had such colorful grids of icons for programs and launchers.
The design patent doesn't cover any colorful grid of icons, but a specific one. In their showings to the jury, Apple provided examples of several "colorful grid[s] of icons" that would not infringe the patent.
but there's this free application called VLC for the mac that'll play all kinds of video formats
And you have just managed to reiterate the point of TFS. Macs used to just work. Now you need ${SOFTWARE} combined with ${DONGLE} and a ${WEIRD_GESTURE) thrown in for good measure to do ${BASIC_STUFF}.
A computer without software is an expensive paperweight. I mean, really, how did you think GP was playing the full screen video in the first place?
"... and have cleared ourselves of any wrongdoing."