Whether you go through security or not is a moot point. The only reasonable cause for a ban like this is if you think the terrorists have a laptop bomb that can successfully get through security without being detected. Once you understand that, you begin to see how pointless the ban actually is if it's only enforced on inbound flights, which is what the OP was getting at.
... or you believe that foreign airport security is inadequate. And, while I'm generally anti-TSA and think we should rollback security procedures to 1990s levels as opposed to our current security theater, I readily admit that many foreign airports have seriously weak security.
I have an idea. Every patent that has been granted in the last 20 years that is not actively being used should be forced to go up for auction. I'm guessing a trillion or two would come flying out of tax havens...
Probably not. Most patents don't last anywhere near the full 20 years, because the USPTO (as well as foreign patent offices) charge "maintenance fees" or "annuity fees" that increase throughout the lifetime of the patent. Fail to pay those, and the patent goes abandoned. In the US, those fees go up to $7400. In Europe, it's $787.50 Euros... annually. Pay all the fees through the full 20 year term, and you're spending an additional $20-30k on the patent - so, for Apple, with their 56 patents, that's potentially $100-150k for just this set.
$100 - 150K? Are you fucking kidding me? For a company sitting on $200+ billion in cash reserves, even $150 million in patent fees is pocket change. Literally.
The financial argument is obviously an invalid one. If the current financial penalties were an effective deterrent, the business of patent hoarding wouldn't be a viable one.
It isn't. As I said, in the part you clipped out, the average patent lifespan is 12 years. Clearly, the current financial penalties effectively deter most patent owners from keeping patents longer. Literally, even, your gut feelings to the contrary notwithstanding.
I have an idea. Every patent that has been granted in the last 20 years that is not actively being used should be forced to go up for auction. I'm guessing a trillion or two would come flying out of tax havens...
Probably not. Most patents don't last anywhere near the full 20 years, because the USPTO (as well as foreign patent offices) charge "maintenance fees" or "annuity fees" that increase throughout the lifetime of the patent. Fail to pay those, and the patent goes abandoned. In the US, those fees go up to $7400. In Europe, it's $787.50 Euros... annually. Pay all the fees through the full 20 year term, and you're spending an additional $20-30k on the patent - so, for Apple, with their 56 patents, that's potentially $100-150k for just this set.
Instead, most companies prune their patents, and let the ones that have become obsolete go abandoned. In the US, most patents last around 12 years.
The basic idea (bezel-less phone) is pretty obvious. The mechanism (curved screen to slightly wrap around) is the easier of the obvious two ways to make it work.
Agreed, but that's not what the patent claims. Patents include a set of claims at the end that are the only part with any legal weight - not the figures, not the title, and certainly not what some Slashdot summary describes it as. Here, the patent claims include:
A display, comprising: a flexible display substrate having an active region and at least one bent edge portion, wherein the bent edge portion extends partially underneath the active region; active display structures on the flexible display substrate in the active region; and conductive traces on the flexible display substrate that extend from the active display structures in the active region onto the bent edge portion, wherein the flexible display substrate comprises a thinned region in the bent edge portion and wherein a thickness of the flexible display substrate in the thinned region is less than a thickness of the flexible display substrate in the active region.
So, it's not just claiming "bezel-less phone" or "curved screen to slightly wrap around", but a very specific implementation that appears to be different than what anyone was doing (though this application was filed in 2011, and the only bezel-less phone I can find from then was the concept-only Nokia N9 MeeGo).
Every summary of a patent invariably paraphrases it. After all, the patent is covering new technology, so to make things easier for people to understand, the writer paraphrases it in terms of already known technologies. Car? No, "horseless carriage". Aerospike engine? No, "nozzle-less rocket". Flexible display substrate with an active region and thinned region covering a bent edge portion of the substrate extending under the active region, with conductive traces extending into the bent edge portion? No, "bezel-less screen."
And of course, when you do that, you make it sound obvious: carriages are known, horses are known, surely it's trivial to simply remove one from the other. Or remove the nozzle from a rocket, or remove the bezel from a screen. But that's only obvious because you've explicitly removed every piece of the actual invention when you paraphrased it.
Is this a valid patent? I don't know, haven't looked for prior art other than a quick search on Google. But is it just claiming "bezel-less phone" or "curved screen"? Absolutely not.
The argument is a Zestimate is a type of appraisal. And appraisals have legal requirements that must be met.
Then it would be a Zappraisal.
But really, Zillow's site has this disclaimer when you click on the Zestimate: "A Zestimate® home valuation is Zillow's estimated market value. It is not an appraisal. Use it as a starting point to determine a home's value. "
Maybe while John Oliver was telling people to submit their comments to the FCC en masse, some group that didn't want the people's opinion to get through to the FCC simultaneously launched a DDoS attack on their site...it's possible.
Theoretically possible, but it's going to require a high degree of evidence, considering it's already adequately explained by the Slashdot Effect
No person [...] shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself
That's it. You cannot be compelled to be a witness against yourself. But you can be compelled to provide access to physical evidence, documentation (paper or electronic), biometric data or virtually anything else, even if you know full well that doing so will incriminate you.
A lot of people have theorized that passwords provide a loophole to this otherwise well-established case law, that because a password is information, that being required to give it is somehow being required to testify against yourself, that a password, an "information key" is different from a physical key because it's information. But that's a pretty weak argument. It's very hard to see how telling your password constitutes "being a witness". You're not providing any information about the crime, you're just handing over a key.
I suppose the one exception is if you can argue that the password itself, not the data on the systems it unlocks, or the data that it decrypts, actually incriminates you. If your password is "I killed sarah and dumped her body behind my grandmas old barn", then you can probably plead the 5th. Maybe. The prosecutor could just offer to immunize you from any incrimination that arises from the password itself, or anything that might be inferred or discovered from it (like Sarah's body) other than what is contained in the data it unlocks.
In general, though, I don't think that being compelled to provide your password is inconsistent with either the letter or the spirit of the 5th amendment. I think it'll take some more rulings, and it will be appealed up to the Supreme Court, but I'm pretty sure that's how it's going to shake out.
I disagree: the reasoning underlying the 5th Amendment is not merely a question of whether the required information is incriminating or not - after all, fingerprints can certainly be incriminating. Instead, it's a question of how you compel someone to give up information. We can hold your hands and ink your fingertips and get your prints. We can sample your breath and blood. We can take pictures of you. But how do we get your password? Torture? Because "asking really really sweetly" probably won't do it.
And that's the rationale underlying the 5th Amendment: torture is the only method to physically compel someone to give up access to the contents of their mind, and (aside from the fact that torture generally doesn't work) we don't want the government torturing suspects because, regardless of your feelings on torture, they frequently guess wrong as to who's a suspect.
That applies whether the information in your mind is the location of Sarah's body, or your 1-2-3-4-5 password. It would be equally wrong for the government to torture you for access to either, even if the latter is not directly incriminating.
In addition to all of the other excellent answers, there's a stark difference of usability between the Mac UI and Windows UI, and it has to do with Fitts' Law of UI design. Basically, the time taken to complete a UI movement (e.g. selecting a menu item, clicking on an icon, etc.) is a function of the distance from the cursor to the target item, and the size of the target.
Contextual menus are potentially the fastest task, because they appear right under the cursor (small distance). And both Windows and Mac OS handle those okay.
But the second fastest tasks are the corners of the screen - they may be far from the cursor (particularly if the cursor is near one corner and going to the opposite diagonal), but the target size is infinite. Throw the mouse towards a corner and you'll eventually land there. Mac OS uses those corners, and has, ever since OS v.1. It's very easy to click on the Apple menu, for example.
Third fastest are the edges. They may be similarly far from the cursor as edges, but they're not quite infinite in size - go too far to the left or right, say, and you miss a menu at the top of the screen. But you can't possibly go too far up. Or click on something in the dock - left or right, you may miss, but you can't miss by going too far down. And this is something Windows has always screwed up. Taskbar Items have a bottom edge, so rather than being an infinite size downwards, they are only 15 pixels in height. Suddenly, rather than being one of the fastest items to click, they're one of the slowest - potentially far from the cursor, and with a tiny target.
Similarly, the menu bar... All Mac programs have their menus at the top of the screen, extending infinitely "up". They are the third fastest things to get to. Windows programs have their menus... in a tiny slice at the top of a window somewhere in the middle of the screen. And because they depend on the position of the window, not only are they small, and far from the cursor, they're in a different physical position for every window! You can't even use muscle memory to hit the menu!
So, that's part of the special appeal. The Mac UI is consistent and optimized for speed. The Windows UI is inconsistent and appears to be reverse-optimized, selecting the slowest possible design choices.
"These are things that are superhuman, and we think this will be in every industry, will probably replace 50% of human jobs, create a huge amount of wealth for mankind and wipe out poverty," Lee said.
Theoretically, this could indeed wipe out poverty, if, say, all of those replaced humans are automatically given the profit generated by their AI replacement (leaving them free to pursue separate businesses, leisure activities, etc.). If, however, the corporation that owns the AIs decided to keep the profits, poverty would be drastically increased.
Which do you think is more likely? Distribution of profits to unemployed people, or distribution of profits to wealthy C-level executives and investors?
Thank you for affirming as much of my argument as you did and, also, for the corrections in the second half of that post. That's some good information, of which I was not aware. Out of curiosity, what are your thoughts on shortening the term (of both, but primarily patents, as that's your focus)?
I think patents are probably about right as is. As you note, some industries develop faster than others... but if you start basing patent term off that, then do you create different term lengths for every industry? Like pharmaceuticals get 20 years, but software gets 3? Airplanes are 15, but cars are 5? Given the number of industries and the fine delineations we could make, you'd end up with more law than the tax code... 8-bit retro indie video games get 7 months; but 8-bit retro AAA video games get 9 months... two legged walking robots get 4 years and eight months, three legged wheeled robots get 3 years and 11 months, etc. Congress would spend all of its time passing new patent term laws. And what about the cross-over technologies? Software for developing pharmaceuticals? Biological computers? Simulated cars for video games?! And what about a revolutionary new technology, where the patent is the first in a whole new industry? Hundreds of years? Or none?
20 years seems like a pretty decent compromise, particularly with the maintenance fees. One thing that could help is additional maintenance windows... Right now, you pay your fees at 3.5 years from issue, 7.5 years, and 11.5 years (with the costs increasing each time). Many software patents are abandoned before hitting that 11.5 window. But what about 5.5, or 9.5? Or even annual fees, steadily increasing? That would help encourage shorter terms for patents that are obsoleted early.
As for copyright, there are multiple parts there (copyright is often compared to a bundle of rights, with exclusive rights to make copies, distribute works, perform the work publicly, make derivative works, etc.). I think piracy - direct copies, identical to the original - is less morally defensible than, say, sampling, which falls under the derivative work umbrella. Like, if you make and distribute a copy of someone's album because you're too cheap to pay or whatnot, that's just wrong. Heck, at best, it's plagiarism. But if you sample their bass line and make a new song over it, you've created something new, and the world of art is enriched due to your joint contribution.
With that in mind, I think that the term for a derivative work should be short - like 5 years. The original artist gets to do remixes, screenplays, etc. for that period, but if they don't, then it should be up for grabs - as source for further creative works. But pure copying? That term could stay as long as it is, frankly. Let the authors exploit their original work, but let others also improve upon it.
They are written vague on purpose, because to be specific, would allow others to build upon your patent, and patent their improvements, locking you into a stale old way of building said invention, never able to improve it.
This is precisely the type of abuse, by a handful of unscrupulous assholes (patent holders being, relative to the entirety of the population, a handful of people), which I propose we amend patent laws to prevent.
And, by amend, I truly mean "actually enforce the laws as written", since they already require some degree of specificity.
I am a patent lawyer, and I completely agree. My patents, of course, are clear and informative; but yes, there are many terrible ones out there. Frankly, it's partly unscrupulous assholes, but mostly incompetent and lazy assholes: to write a good patent application, you have to understand the invention... too many patent lawyers skip that step, take whatever the inventor sent them and slap some boilerplate "in some embodiments" language on it, and file it. Heck, you can still charge the same amount as a well-written patent, but can crank it out in an afternoon! What a world!
Fortunately, the courts and the patent office are finally pushing back on this. Most of the "abstract idea" rejections under Bilski and Alice Corp and other related 35 USC 101 cases are really about badly written patents that claim "A method for doing something awesome, comprising: applying rules, by an expert computer system, to do something awesome." What rules? How does it achieve that awesome result? Fark if anyone knows... the person drafting the patent sure as hell didn't. The cases that are being upheld are the ones that go into detail about what calculations are being performed, how the thing works, the low-level specifics of what it does, etc.
That said, patent law and courts and such are glacial. It'll be another decade and change before patents drafted and granted, say, 5 years ago, expire. And patent litigation with terrible patents will keep popping up over that time. But maybe by the 2030s, things'll start looking better. \_()_/
It's debatable whether the term should be shortened; many would argue it should be extended, as was done with copyright. Personally, I believe that patents and copyright were given the terms they were originally given based on how long it took to produce and circulate a work at the time that those respective laws were written; as both now take considerably less time, yes, I agree that the terms should be shortened.
Patent term has only ever been extended twice, and the second one wasn't a real extension (the change from 17-years-from-issue to 20-years-from-filing was based on an average 3 year prosecution queue, so the result is the same). Copyright has big money publishers on one side like Sony, Disney, Columbia, etc. wanting longer term and, what, pirates? The public? No money on the other side. So your bought-and-sold Congresscritter happily votes for term extensions.
But in patents, Apple, say, wants longer terms for their own patents, but shorter terms for Google and Microsoft's. And vice versa. So you get this pressure on both sides, with no real imbalance in money and lobbyists.
Incidentally, there's a safety valve in patent term already - patent owners have to pay maintenance fees that increase over the life of the patent, or it goes abandoned. Most patents in the tech sector are abandoned long before that 20 year term expires, because, after 10 years, say, they're obsolete. It's the pharmaceutical people who try to keep them alive until the very end, because of how long R&D and FDA approval takes. Increasing those maintenance fees would have the same effect of shortening patent term in fast moving industries while keeping it long where it's needed.
No potential college debt looming overhead that you could only dream of repaying if you don't make it. Which in turn means that more students are starting and our universities can (and do) eliminate brutally anyone who isn't among the best. Those degrees actually mean something.
Obviously, we have the opposite here. Regardless of the college debt, college enrollment rates are very high, but colleges don't eliminate terrible students, and bachelor's degrees mean little these days. Why do you think it's different in Europe? Is it because here, they'll keep milking tuition out of students for as long as they attend, while in Europe, budgets are fixed? And if so, do European universities really have fixed budgets that aren't based on enrollment?
Basically, why is there an incentive in Europe to eliminate students, and how can we duplicate that here?
The ONLY answer is to eliminate loan subsidies and force colleges to deliver an suitable education product at a price people can afford.
Make colleges liable for their students' loans if, say, 90% of the graduating class are not employed within their degree field within 3 years. That would force them to drastically cut admissions and start doing some economic forecasting.
It's because a few years ago the US patent system was changed from "first to invent" to "first to file" which mean if the university doesn't patent it, then when they publish their work, some other company can patent it and charge royalties.
That's completely, entirely, 100% untrue. The change from first to invent to first to file simply removed interference proceedings, which is where two inventors file applications for the exact same invention, and the USPTO held a mini-trial to determine which one actually invented it first. Those are now replaced with a simple "who filed first?" rule. Big change? No. There were on average 20 interference proceedings a year, out of half a million applications.
Never mind you're right, if they accused him of downloading then it's not criminal one way or the other. Only if they accused him of uploading could it be considered criminal, and it's your right to face your accuser.
That's not quite right. 17 USC 506 defines criminal copyright infringement, and it's not just uploading, but any infringement for the purposes of commercial advantage or private financial gain, or by reproduction of works with a total retail value of more than $1k in 180 days, or by distribution of those works or pre-publication distribution of a commercial work. So, for example, if you were downloading hundreds of movies in a six-month period, that could qualify.
But that's not alleged here.
If you took me to court saying I punched you, this would still apply since assault can be taken as a civil or criminal claim. Remember he's only going after the accusation here, it doesn't matter that it wasn't made by the cops.
But if you took me to court, then I couldn't sue saying my civil rights were being denied, because we are going to court. The original claim by the AC is simply wrong, and likely his story never happened.
The graphics are stunning for 1990. I haven't seen such cutting edge 3D since VRML:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7CXdQWFMcRk
... is this a joke? The comments make it look legit, but the narrator's getting enthused about things that have been available since version one of the Rift. And when he walks through the wall at the end and sees that the backgrounds are all 2D planes, his comment is that he feels like he's in the Matrix... which came out in 1999? Not sure if it's Poe's Law or not, but if this does represent Microsoft's prototype, they should just close up shop.
Depends on the nature of the infringement. There are criminal codes that apply to it too.
If they were accusing him of criminal copyright infringement, they wouldn't send him a nastygram. They'd send the cops, probably with an Anton Pillar order to seize his computers to prevent destruction of evidence.
Good for you!! people need to stand up, our rights are slowly being eroded and we are rapidly turning into a "rental" society.
Take the AC's story with a grain of salt. A complaint under 42 USC 1983 for that would be laughed out of court, because (i) no, he hadn't been accused of a criminal act, but a civil infringement; and (ii) even if he had been, he hadn't been charged with anything yet, and therefore hadn't been denied his rights to confront his accuser or see evidence against him. It's like if I hired you to paint my house and claimed you did a lousy job and therefore owed me $500 off the price; and you sued me in Federal Court because "I've violated your civil rights, because you're entitled to confront your accuser." I've never stopped you from doing so, and in fact, the fact that you're suing me is an assertion of those civil rights.
Basically, it might sound reasonable to someone who's legal education comes from television, but in reality, it would be immediately dismissed and there would be no settlement. I think the AC is just making up a cool story, bro.
I guess that makes sense. Even with a 10% or 20% success rate, the patent trolls could conceivably still come out ahead, as long as the price of acquiring patents is less than the money they can make litigating with them. It doesn't matter that we don't hear about the cases the trolls lose, because as long as they are winning any cases at all, there is still a problem.
Pretty much. Look at it this way - this was originally a $550 million dollar decision, and they probably paid $2M to pursue it, so a net gain of $548M. A litigator can send out a "settle or we'll sue" nastygram for what, $5000? Even if they end up filing the complaint, and later withdrawing it, that's gonna be less than $20k. Heck, say they take them all through trial, never withdrawing a single case, and even spend the same amount (which is absolutely nuts, mind you, no one does that). They can lose 274 cases before they eat up their winnings from this one win.
And certainly not for something new that will either 1. easily get lost, 2. require recharging at some inconvenient time or 3. die a slow death as their rechargeable batteries wear out.
Although I agree with your overall sentiment, I should point out that you're describing Bluetooth headphones here, which require neither the USB-C jack nor the beloved 1/8" TRS jack. There are USB-C (as well as Lightning) based wired headphones that are not tiny earbuds that can easily get lost, and do not have rechargeable batteries - for example, JBL makes several.
None of that seems to explain though why the trolls win in this lower court so often? Especially in stupid cases like this where on appeals all the judges are looking at each other like "HOW did this possibly make it to us? no. just NO. Now go away."
If it all came down to "they have the time to deal with it and have the most experience", you'd expect better and more consistent judgements. Or are some of the defendants just doing stupid things? (I can't imagine Apple/IBM/MS sending incompetent lawyers to a patent trial)
Well, in this particular one, this is a changing area of law. The Alice Corp. decision only came out last year, and this trial started before that.
Additionally, there's a bit of a selection bias. Plaintiffs don't file million-dollar lawsuits on patents they know will lose, and they certainly don't proceed through trial and appeal on those patents. But even still, the average last year was less than 50%.
I'm curious to know why the east district of texas has gotten this notorious for being a patent troll's best friend? Not the statistics, we've seen the statistics. I want to know why it keeps happening?
My first kneejerk expectation is that money is somehow at work here...
Nope, it's easier than that:
(i) all patent law is federal, so all patent trials have to be in federal district court. That narrows things waaaay down.
(ii) venue is appropriate for a patent infringement suit any place in the US a product is offered for sale. Given internet sales, national broadcasting, etc., that's pretty much everywhere. It's also arguably central between East Coast and West Coast.
(iii) nothing happens in Eastern Texas. So there are no other, higher priority cases to get in the way. Like, if you brought a patent infringement suit in the Southern District of New York (i.e. New York City), good farking luck getting it heard. It's going to be bumped behind any federal criminal case, because those have a requirement of a speedy trial, and between financial crimes and interstate crimes, New York has a ton of criminal cases. Go to Eastern Texas, on the other hand, and they haven't had a federal murder case in years.
So, ED Texas gets a bunch of patent trials because they're fast, and as a result, they also have a lot of experience with patent trials. If it wasn't Texas, it would've been someplace else boring, like Wisconsin or Idaho or something.
And after that's sorted... is there anything the feds can do about this?
Yep. #2 above is considered less powerful these days. It's much easier to get a case transferred out of Texas now than it ever has been, and under the AIA, trolls can't sue Microsoft in Seattle and Joe Shmuck, ordinary citizen, in Miami, and argue that Texas is halfway between so it's most convenient for everyone. That used to be the standard, but now, joint defendants have to be engaged in business together, and that ended that loophole.
Slashdot Mirror
4. Your inability to spell "click-bait".
Maybe he was implying that Submitter posted the story for self-gratification?
Whether you go through security or not is a moot point. The only reasonable cause for a ban like this is if you think the terrorists have a laptop bomb that can successfully get through security without being detected. Once you understand that, you begin to see how pointless the ban actually is if it's only enforced on inbound flights, which is what the OP was getting at.
... or you believe that foreign airport security is inadequate. And, while I'm generally anti-TSA and think we should rollback security procedures to 1990s levels as opposed to our current security theater, I readily admit that many foreign airports have seriously weak security.
I have an idea. Every patent that has been granted in the last 20 years that is not actively being used should be forced to go up for auction. I'm guessing a trillion or two would come flying out of tax havens...
Probably not. Most patents don't last anywhere near the full 20 years, because the USPTO (as well as foreign patent offices) charge "maintenance fees" or "annuity fees" that increase throughout the lifetime of the patent. Fail to pay those, and the patent goes abandoned. In the US, those fees go up to $7400. In Europe, it's $787.50 Euros... annually. Pay all the fees through the full 20 year term, and you're spending an additional $20-30k on the patent - so, for Apple, with their 56 patents, that's potentially $100-150k for just this set.
$100 - 150K? Are you fucking kidding me? For a company sitting on $200+ billion in cash reserves, even $150 million in patent fees is pocket change. Literally.
The financial argument is obviously an invalid one. If the current financial penalties were an effective deterrent, the business of patent hoarding wouldn't be a viable one.
It isn't. As I said, in the part you clipped out, the average patent lifespan is 12 years. Clearly, the current financial penalties effectively deter most patent owners from keeping patents longer. Literally, even, your gut feelings to the contrary notwithstanding.
I have an idea. Every patent that has been granted in the last 20 years that is not actively being used should be forced to go up for auction. I'm guessing a trillion or two would come flying out of tax havens...
Probably not. Most patents don't last anywhere near the full 20 years, because the USPTO (as well as foreign patent offices) charge "maintenance fees" or "annuity fees" that increase throughout the lifetime of the patent. Fail to pay those, and the patent goes abandoned. In the US, those fees go up to $7400. In Europe, it's $787.50 Euros... annually. Pay all the fees through the full 20 year term, and you're spending an additional $20-30k on the patent - so, for Apple, with their 56 patents, that's potentially $100-150k for just this set.
Instead, most companies prune their patents, and let the ones that have become obsolete go abandoned. In the US, most patents last around 12 years.
The basic idea (bezel-less phone) is pretty obvious. The mechanism (curved screen to slightly wrap around) is the easier of the obvious two ways to make it work.
Agreed, but that's not what the patent claims. Patents include a set of claims at the end that are the only part with any legal weight - not the figures, not the title, and certainly not what some Slashdot summary describes it as. Here, the patent claims include:
A display, comprising:
a flexible display substrate having an active region and at least one bent edge portion, wherein the bent edge portion extends partially underneath the active region;
active display structures on the flexible display substrate in the active region; and
conductive traces on the flexible display substrate that extend from the active display structures in the active region onto the bent edge portion, wherein the flexible display substrate comprises a thinned region in the bent edge portion and wherein a thickness of the flexible display substrate in the thinned region is less than a thickness of the flexible display substrate in the active region.
So, it's not just claiming "bezel-less phone" or "curved screen to slightly wrap around", but a very specific implementation that appears to be different than what anyone was doing (though this application was filed in 2011, and the only bezel-less phone I can find from then was the concept-only Nokia N9 MeeGo).
Every summary of a patent invariably paraphrases it. After all, the patent is covering new technology, so to make things easier for people to understand, the writer paraphrases it in terms of already known technologies. Car? No, "horseless carriage". Aerospike engine? No, "nozzle-less rocket". Flexible display substrate with an active region and thinned region covering a bent edge portion of the substrate extending under the active region, with conductive traces extending into the bent edge portion? No, "bezel-less screen."
And of course, when you do that, you make it sound obvious: carriages are known, horses are known, surely it's trivial to simply remove one from the other. Or remove the nozzle from a rocket, or remove the bezel from a screen. But that's only obvious because you've explicitly removed every piece of the actual invention when you paraphrased it.
Is this a valid patent? I don't know, haven't looked for prior art other than a quick search on Google. But is it just claiming "bezel-less phone" or "curved screen"? Absolutely not.
The argument is a Zestimate is a type of appraisal. And appraisals have legal requirements that must be met.
Then it would be a Zappraisal.
But really, Zillow's site has this disclaimer when you click on the Zestimate: "A Zestimate® home valuation is Zillow's estimated market value. It is not an appraisal. Use it as a starting point to determine a home's value. "
Maybe while John Oliver was telling people to submit their comments to the FCC en masse, some group that didn't want the people's opinion to get through to the FCC simultaneously launched a DDoS attack on their site...it's possible.
Theoretically possible, but it's going to require a high degree of evidence, considering it's already adequately explained by the Slashdot Effect
What the 5th amendment says is:
That's it. You cannot be compelled to be a witness against yourself. But you can be compelled to provide access to physical evidence, documentation (paper or electronic), biometric data or virtually anything else, even if you know full well that doing so will incriminate you.
A lot of people have theorized that passwords provide a loophole to this otherwise well-established case law, that because a password is information, that being required to give it is somehow being required to testify against yourself, that a password, an "information key" is different from a physical key because it's information. But that's a pretty weak argument. It's very hard to see how telling your password constitutes "being a witness". You're not providing any information about the crime, you're just handing over a key.
I suppose the one exception is if you can argue that the password itself, not the data on the systems it unlocks, or the data that it decrypts, actually incriminates you. If your password is "I killed sarah and dumped her body behind my grandmas old barn", then you can probably plead the 5th. Maybe. The prosecutor could just offer to immunize you from any incrimination that arises from the password itself, or anything that might be inferred or discovered from it (like Sarah's body) other than what is contained in the data it unlocks.
In general, though, I don't think that being compelled to provide your password is inconsistent with either the letter or the spirit of the 5th amendment. I think it'll take some more rulings, and it will be appealed up to the Supreme Court, but I'm pretty sure that's how it's going to shake out.
I disagree: the reasoning underlying the 5th Amendment is not merely a question of whether the required information is incriminating or not - after all, fingerprints can certainly be incriminating. Instead, it's a question of how you compel someone to give up information. We can hold your hands and ink your fingertips and get your prints. We can sample your breath and blood. We can take pictures of you. But how do we get your password? Torture? Because "asking really really sweetly" probably won't do it.
And that's the rationale underlying the 5th Amendment: torture is the only method to physically compel someone to give up access to the contents of their mind, and (aside from the fact that torture generally doesn't work) we don't want the government torturing suspects because, regardless of your feelings on torture, they frequently guess wrong as to who's a suspect.
That applies whether the information in your mind is the location of Sarah's body, or your 1-2-3-4-5 password. It would be equally wrong for the government to torture you for access to either, even if the latter is not directly incriminating.
Contextual menus are potentially the fastest task, because they appear right under the cursor (small distance). And both Windows and Mac OS handle those okay.
But the second fastest tasks are the corners of the screen - they may be far from the cursor (particularly if the cursor is near one corner and going to the opposite diagonal), but the target size is infinite. Throw the mouse towards a corner and you'll eventually land there. Mac OS uses those corners, and has, ever since OS v.1. It's very easy to click on the Apple menu, for example.
Third fastest are the edges. They may be similarly far from the cursor as edges, but they're not quite infinite in size - go too far to the left or right, say, and you miss a menu at the top of the screen. But you can't possibly go too far up. Or click on something in the dock - left or right, you may miss, but you can't miss by going too far down. And this is something Windows has always screwed up. Taskbar Items have a bottom edge, so rather than being an infinite size downwards, they are only 15 pixels in height. Suddenly, rather than being one of the fastest items to click, they're one of the slowest - potentially far from the cursor, and with a tiny target.
Similarly, the menu bar... All Mac programs have their menus at the top of the screen, extending infinitely "up". They are the third fastest things to get to. Windows programs have their menus... in a tiny slice at the top of a window somewhere in the middle of the screen. And because they depend on the position of the window, not only are they small, and far from the cursor, they're in a different physical position for every window! You can't even use muscle memory to hit the menu!
So, that's part of the special appeal. The Mac UI is consistent and optimized for speed. The Windows UI is inconsistent and appears to be reverse-optimized, selecting the slowest possible design choices.
"These are things that are superhuman, and we think this will be in every industry, will probably replace 50% of human jobs, create a huge amount of wealth for mankind and wipe out poverty," Lee said.
Theoretically, this could indeed wipe out poverty, if, say, all of those replaced humans are automatically given the profit generated by their AI replacement (leaving them free to pursue separate businesses, leisure activities, etc.). If, however, the corporation that owns the AIs decided to keep the profits, poverty would be drastically increased.
Which do you think is more likely? Distribution of profits to unemployed people, or distribution of profits to wealthy C-level executives and investors?
Or, "forget" to pay the fees, and, "oops, that evidence of police wrongdoing was automatically deleted. Oh, well."
-5 for ignorent bullshit. Kindly pul your head out of your ass.
Cop-like typing detected.
and then pay yearly subscription fees for storage & analysis to the end of time.
Or, "forget" to pay the fees, and, "oops, that evidence of police wrongdoing was automatically deleted. Oh, well."
Thank you for affirming as much of my argument as you did and, also, for the corrections in the second half of that post. That's some good information, of which I was not aware. Out of curiosity, what are your thoughts on shortening the term (of both, but primarily patents, as that's your focus)?
I think patents are probably about right as is. As you note, some industries develop faster than others... but if you start basing patent term off that, then do you create different term lengths for every industry? Like pharmaceuticals get 20 years, but software gets 3? Airplanes are 15, but cars are 5? Given the number of industries and the fine delineations we could make, you'd end up with more law than the tax code... 8-bit retro indie video games get 7 months; but 8-bit retro AAA video games get 9 months... two legged walking robots get 4 years and eight months, three legged wheeled robots get 3 years and 11 months, etc. Congress would spend all of its time passing new patent term laws. And what about the cross-over technologies? Software for developing pharmaceuticals? Biological computers? Simulated cars for video games?! And what about a revolutionary new technology, where the patent is the first in a whole new industry? Hundreds of years? Or none?
20 years seems like a pretty decent compromise, particularly with the maintenance fees. One thing that could help is additional maintenance windows... Right now, you pay your fees at 3.5 years from issue, 7.5 years, and 11.5 years (with the costs increasing each time). Many software patents are abandoned before hitting that 11.5 window. But what about 5.5, or 9.5? Or even annual fees, steadily increasing? That would help encourage shorter terms for patents that are obsoleted early.
As for copyright, there are multiple parts there (copyright is often compared to a bundle of rights, with exclusive rights to make copies, distribute works, perform the work publicly, make derivative works, etc.). I think piracy - direct copies, identical to the original - is less morally defensible than, say, sampling, which falls under the derivative work umbrella. Like, if you make and distribute a copy of someone's album because you're too cheap to pay or whatnot, that's just wrong. Heck, at best, it's plagiarism. But if you sample their bass line and make a new song over it, you've created something new, and the world of art is enriched due to your joint contribution.
With that in mind, I think that the term for a derivative work should be short - like 5 years. The original artist gets to do remixes, screenplays, etc. for that period, but if they don't, then it should be up for grabs - as source for further creative works. But pure copying? That term could stay as long as it is, frankly. Let the authors exploit their original work, but let others also improve upon it.
They are written vague on purpose, because to be specific, would allow others to build upon your patent, and patent their improvements, locking you into a stale old way of building said invention, never able to improve it.
This is precisely the type of abuse, by a handful of unscrupulous assholes (patent holders being, relative to the entirety of the population, a handful of people), which I propose we amend patent laws to prevent.
And, by amend, I truly mean "actually enforce the laws as written", since they already require some degree of specificity.
I am a patent lawyer, and I completely agree. My patents, of course, are clear and informative; but yes, there are many terrible ones out there. Frankly, it's partly unscrupulous assholes, but mostly incompetent and lazy assholes: to write a good patent application, you have to understand the invention... too many patent lawyers skip that step, take whatever the inventor sent them and slap some boilerplate "in some embodiments" language on it, and file it. Heck, you can still charge the same amount as a well-written patent, but can crank it out in an afternoon! What a world!
Fortunately, the courts and the patent office are finally pushing back on this. Most of the "abstract idea" rejections under Bilski and Alice Corp and other related 35 USC 101 cases are really about badly written patents that claim "A method for doing something awesome, comprising: applying rules, by an expert computer system, to do something awesome." What rules? How does it achieve that awesome result? Fark if anyone knows... the person drafting the patent sure as hell didn't. The cases that are being upheld are the ones that go into detail about what calculations are being performed, how the thing works, the low-level specifics of what it does, etc.
That said, patent law and courts and such are glacial. It'll be another decade and change before patents drafted and granted, say, 5 years ago, expire. And patent litigation with terrible patents will keep popping up over that time. But maybe by the 2030s, things'll start looking better. \_()_/
It's debatable whether the term should be shortened; many would argue it should be extended, as was done with copyright. Personally, I believe that patents and copyright were given the terms they were originally given based on how long it took to produce and circulate a work at the time that those respective laws were written; as both now take considerably less time, yes, I agree that the terms should be shortened.
Patent term has only ever been extended twice, and the second one wasn't a real extension (the change from 17-years-from-issue to 20-years-from-filing was based on an average 3 year prosecution queue, so the result is the same). Copyright has big money publishers on one side like Sony, Disney, Columbia, etc. wanting longer term and, what, pirates? The public? No money on the other side. So your bought-and-sold Congresscritter happily votes for term extensions.
But in patents, Apple, say, wants longer terms for their own patents, but shorter terms for Google and Microsoft's. And vice versa. So you get this pressure on both sides, with no real imbalance in money and lobbyists.
Incidentally, there's a safety valve in patent term already - patent owners have to pay maintenance fees that increase over the life of the patent, or it goes abandoned. Most patents in the tech sector are abandoned long before that 20 year term expires, because, after 10 years, say, they're obsolete. It's the pharmaceutical people who try to keep them alive until the very end, because of how long R&D and FDA approval takes. Increasing those maintenance fees would have the same effect of shortening patent term in fast moving industries while keeping it long where it's needed.
No potential college debt looming overhead that you could only dream of repaying if you don't make it. Which in turn means that more students are starting and our universities can (and do) eliminate brutally anyone who isn't among the best. Those degrees actually mean something.
Obviously, we have the opposite here. Regardless of the college debt, college enrollment rates are very high, but colleges don't eliminate terrible students, and bachelor's degrees mean little these days. Why do you think it's different in Europe? Is it because here, they'll keep milking tuition out of students for as long as they attend, while in Europe, budgets are fixed? And if so, do European universities really have fixed budgets that aren't based on enrollment?
Basically, why is there an incentive in Europe to eliminate students, and how can we duplicate that here?
The ONLY answer is to eliminate loan subsidies and force colleges to deliver an suitable education product at a price people can afford.
Make colleges liable for their students' loans if, say, 90% of the graduating class are not employed within their degree field within 3 years. That would force them to drastically cut admissions and start doing some economic forecasting.
It's because a few years ago the US patent system was changed from "first to invent" to "first to file" which mean if the university doesn't patent it, then when they publish their work, some other company can patent it and charge royalties.
That's completely, entirely, 100% untrue. The change from first to invent to first to file simply removed interference proceedings, which is where two inventors file applications for the exact same invention, and the USPTO held a mini-trial to determine which one actually invented it first. Those are now replaced with a simple "who filed first?" rule. Big change? No. There were on average 20 interference proceedings a year, out of half a million applications.
Never mind you're right, if they accused him of downloading then it's not criminal one way or the other. Only if they accused him of uploading could it be considered criminal, and it's your right to face your accuser.
That's not quite right. 17 USC 506 defines criminal copyright infringement, and it's not just uploading, but any infringement for the purposes of commercial advantage or private financial gain, or by reproduction of works with a total retail value of more than $1k in 180 days, or by distribution of those works or pre-publication distribution of a commercial work. So, for example, if you were downloading hundreds of movies in a six-month period, that could qualify.
But that's not alleged here.
If you took me to court saying I punched you, this would still apply since assault can be taken as a civil or criminal claim. Remember he's only going after the accusation here, it doesn't matter that it wasn't made by the cops.
But if you took me to court, then I couldn't sue saying my civil rights were being denied, because we are going to court. The original claim by the AC is simply wrong, and likely his story never happened.
The graphics are stunning for 1990. I haven't seen such cutting edge 3D since VRML:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7CXdQWFMcRk
... is this a joke? The comments make it look legit, but the narrator's getting enthused about things that have been available since version one of the Rift. And when he walks through the wall at the end and sees that the backgrounds are all 2D planes, his comment is that he feels like he's in the Matrix... which came out in 1999? Not sure if it's Poe's Law or not, but if this does represent Microsoft's prototype, they should just close up shop.
Copyright infringement is civil.
Depends on the nature of the infringement. There are criminal codes that apply to it too.
If they were accusing him of criminal copyright infringement, they wouldn't send him a nastygram. They'd send the cops, probably with an Anton Pillar order to seize his computers to prevent destruction of evidence.
Oh.. for the lack of mod points.
Good for you!! people need to stand up, our rights are slowly being eroded and we are rapidly turning into a "rental" society.
Take the AC's story with a grain of salt. A complaint under 42 USC 1983 for that would be laughed out of court, because (i) no, he hadn't been accused of a criminal act, but a civil infringement; and (ii) even if he had been, he hadn't been charged with anything yet, and therefore hadn't been denied his rights to confront his accuser or see evidence against him. It's like if I hired you to paint my house and claimed you did a lousy job and therefore owed me $500 off the price; and you sued me in Federal Court because "I've violated your civil rights, because you're entitled to confront your accuser." I've never stopped you from doing so, and in fact, the fact that you're suing me is an assertion of those civil rights.
Basically, it might sound reasonable to someone who's legal education comes from television, but in reality, it would be immediately dismissed and there would be no settlement. I think the AC is just making up a cool story, bro.
I guess that makes sense. Even with a 10% or 20% success rate, the patent trolls could conceivably still come out ahead, as long as the price of acquiring patents is less than the money they can make litigating with them. It doesn't matter that we don't hear about the cases the trolls lose, because as long as they are winning any cases at all, there is still a problem.
Pretty much. Look at it this way - this was originally a $550 million dollar decision, and they probably paid $2M to pursue it, so a net gain of $548M. A litigator can send out a "settle or we'll sue" nastygram for what, $5000? Even if they end up filing the complaint, and later withdrawing it, that's gonna be less than $20k. Heck, say they take them all through trial, never withdrawing a single case, and even spend the same amount (which is absolutely nuts, mind you, no one does that). They can lose 274 cases before they eat up their winnings from this one win.
And certainly not for something new that will either 1. easily get lost, 2. require recharging at some inconvenient time or 3. die a slow death as their rechargeable batteries wear out.
Although I agree with your overall sentiment, I should point out that you're describing Bluetooth headphones here, which require neither the USB-C jack nor the beloved 1/8" TRS jack. There are USB-C (as well as Lightning) based wired headphones that are not tiny earbuds that can easily get lost, and do not have rechargeable batteries - for example, JBL makes several.
None of that seems to explain though why the trolls win in this lower court so often? Especially in stupid cases like this where on appeals all the judges are looking at each other like "HOW did this possibly make it to us? no. just NO. Now go away."
If it all came down to "they have the time to deal with it and have the most experience", you'd expect better and more consistent judgements. Or are some of the defendants just doing stupid things? (I can't imagine Apple/IBM/MS sending incompetent lawyers to a patent trial)
Well, in this particular one, this is a changing area of law. The Alice Corp. decision only came out last year, and this trial started before that.
Additionally, there's a bit of a selection bias. Plaintiffs don't file million-dollar lawsuits on patents they know will lose, and they certainly don't proceed through trial and appeal on those patents. But even still, the average last year was less than 50%.
I'm curious to know why the east district of texas has gotten this notorious for being a patent troll's best friend? Not the statistics, we've seen the statistics. I want to know why it keeps happening?
My first kneejerk expectation is that money is somehow at work here...
Nope, it's easier than that:
(i) all patent law is federal, so all patent trials have to be in federal district court. That narrows things waaaay down.
(ii) venue is appropriate for a patent infringement suit any place in the US a product is offered for sale. Given internet sales, national broadcasting, etc., that's pretty much everywhere. It's also arguably central between East Coast and West Coast.
(iii) nothing happens in Eastern Texas. So there are no other, higher priority cases to get in the way. Like, if you brought a patent infringement suit in the Southern District of New York (i.e. New York City), good farking luck getting it heard. It's going to be bumped behind any federal criminal case, because those have a requirement of a speedy trial, and between financial crimes and interstate crimes, New York has a ton of criminal cases. Go to Eastern Texas, on the other hand, and they haven't had a federal murder case in years. So, ED Texas gets a bunch of patent trials because they're fast, and as a result, they also have a lot of experience with patent trials. If it wasn't Texas, it would've been someplace else boring, like Wisconsin or Idaho or something.
And after that's sorted... is there anything the feds can do about this?
Yep. #2 above is considered less powerful these days. It's much easier to get a case transferred out of Texas now than it ever has been, and under the AIA, trolls can't sue Microsoft in Seattle and Joe Shmuck, ordinary citizen, in Miami, and argue that Texas is halfway between so it's most convenient for everyone. That used to be the standard, but now, joint defendants have to be engaged in business together, and that ended that loophole.