Yeah, this'll probably get marked Flamebait for asking such a provoking question.
I've got five shiny mod points at the moment, but rather than mod you, I'll take the time to point out that you don't have a "provoking question", you have a "groundless opinion". There's a difference. Thanks for playing.
Seriously, the courts, Congress, and President surrender our national sovereignty like this? Are you fucking kidding me? I'm sure as hell not voting for Bush, but of all the bad things he's done, he hasn't surrendered "our national sovereignty like this".
Maybe if France owned 9% of our economy... maybe if this involved oil... maybe if this involved actually going to war. What the hell are you talking about? This is a freaking WEBSITE that's selling junk on the INTARNET. Surrender our national sovereignty like this? You don't have a "provoking question", hell, you don't have "a clue".
And there ya go - I posted instead of modded. You're welcome.
An interesting aside is that this process is not necessarily against someone getting a patent, but rather strengthens the patent should it be issued. In theory, you're doing the applicant a favor.. in practice, your mileage may vary.
As for what the paperwork is supposed to look like, that's.. uh.. homework. Seriously, I don't know. Since a PGPub will have the examiner's name on it, it might be as simple as sending an envelope to the USPTO c/o the examiner with note stating the relavent application number.
I'll look this up tomorrow and try to post something useful. I scanned the uspto.gov website quickly and didn't see any links to relavent information, sorry.
I'm plagued by pop ups which don't exist in Firefox.
I'm plagued by Flash advertisements which are handily blocked by a simple Firefox plug-in.
I'm plagued by obnoxious animated.gif advertisements which are block with two clicks in Firefox.
I'm plagued with the stupid "alt+f-n-w-F6" if I want to do something as trivial and commonplace as look at something ELSE without losing what I'm looking at now. In Firefox, that's "ctrl+t-F6" and it does not create another obtrusive window to fight with.
When I'm searching a large web page for a specific piece of text, I have to hit "ctrl+f", fight with a modal window where I suffer through clicking on the text area, typing what I want to find, clicking Find, moving the stupid modal window so I can read what it found, clicking on Find Next (a few dozen times), and when I'm done, I have to click cancel. In Firefox, I hit "/" and type what I want to find. Genius.
Are you the only person that thinks IE is ok? I'm not trying to offer a baseless opinion here - I would use IE in a HEARTBEAT if it was a superior product. I have done my best to substantiate that NO, IE is NOT OK. Firefox is better. I won't even discuss the security or speed issues (both of which are won by IE in my opinion and experience) and stick to the features. IE is not even second best (Mozilla, Opera, Netscape). IE is a bad product which is beaten by its competitors.
First off, shouting me down is not the way to convey an opinion.
Sure it is - maybe not a good one according to your code of conduct, but it's perfectly legitimate. You can't let me drop out of school and then tell me how to behave!:)
Your law on negros and the city limit after dark was based on the assumption that negros were dangerous. Keeping that law on the books is a pretty poor statement about the state legislature by the way.
No, as a matter of fact, it's a statement that nobody has bothered to challenge the law. The law would be removed by one of two mechanisms - someone in a criminal trial challenging it or someone leading a campaign to introduce a bill to remove. Nobody cares enough about that dusty old law to do either.
Voting is supposed to be an intellectual activity. Drinking is not - think intelligence vs. wisdom.
That's fine, but here you have made a judgement about about drinking which you are enforcing on the public at large.
Neurotic misfit? Dropping out of school? Free will - these impact essentially yourself, so less rigorous standards (lesser ethics if you will).
And here you seem to support the ideals of libertarianism to some extent. Drinking and driving is a crime of itself - drinking by itself is something that "impacts essentially yourself", just as driving without a seat belt, dropping out of school, smoking cigarettes, shooting heroin, or hanging yourself. Some of those activities are illegal and some aren't. It would take a fool to suggest that any of them are "good for you".
You can take two stances on this - the government knows what is "good for you" and makes the law or the government believes that you know what is good for you and grants you free will.
In the former case, you have seat belt laws, social security witholding, mandatory public education, suicide is illegal, (and when government goes wacky) private ownership of business is evil (Soviets), associating with Jews is filthy (Nazis), being educated ruins society (Khmer Rouge), being gay is a sin (Christian right), being American is a sin (Islamic radicals), and so on. The alternative is closer to the libertarian stance that the individual knows what is right, and you can smoke cigarettes, buy lottery tickets, drive without a seatbelt, eat fast food every day, drop out of school, lie to your mother, commit adultery (a civil, but not criminal offense), sue people frivolously, hate people who are different than you, shoot heroin (not a crime by itself), be a crappy parent, watch Jerry Springer, and basically be a waste of a human.
But honestly, pick one of those philosophies and tell me that our code of laws is based on it.
Lying is personal - and something we do constantly. I am not arguing that it is ethical to lie - but only when it impacts others substantially is it codified into law. By the way, that one is also rooted in the 10 Commandments (ie religeon, ie. culture - they cannot be separated).
No no, not at all. Lying is only against the law in court, to the police, and for certain legal proceedings (such as job applications and taxes.) Think about it - You're perfectly free to lie to your boss every day once you've been hired. You'll lose your job, but you won't go to jail (unless the act of lying broke some other law - you won't go to jail for lying to your boss.) You can lie to your wife, to your church/mosque/synagogue, to your teachers, to your friends, to you pet goldfish - you won't go to jail unless you break some OTHER law by lying. Being truthful IS a commandment of the Old Testament but lying is NOT a commandment of our legal system. There is a tiny fraction of situations where you legally cannot lie, the rest of the time you are free to do as you please.
And yes, you can separate religion from law. I cite the United States as a prime example. I'm free to lust after my neighbor's wife - hell, if she wants it, I can rock her world all night long and leave h
Dr. Jack Kevorkian is currently in jail for an act which was nothing except ethical yet illegal. Being from Michigan, I've seen far more than the national media coverage of the case. He did absolutely everything possible to document that what he was doing was, in the opinion of the people attempting suicide, entirely ethical (whether you or I agree with it seems moot) yet Kevorkian will be in prison for many years. He firmly believed that it is unethical to force ailing and elderly people to continue to live and suffer and is sitting in the State Penn for that belief.
I haven't taken any Philosophy courses, but your arguments don't ring true here.
Ok, let me point out that
I haven't taken any Philosophy courses
pretty much addresses the problem that
arguments don't ring true here.
I also contend that ALL law is ethics codified.
My hometown in Michigan has a law that no negroes are allowed within the city limits after dark. What ethic codifies that law? (It is obviously not enforced, by the way.)
Exactly what is the ethical basis for property zoning laws? What is the ethical basis for the right to vote at 18 years of age, but witholding the privilege to drink alcohol until 21 years of age? What is the ethical basis that makes it perfectly legal to turn yourself into a neurotic misfit? Why is it legal to drop out of school without any good reason?
Why is it legal to be racist? Legal to be sexist? Why is it legal to hate gay people for being gay? Why is it legal to hate in the first place? What is the ethical basis to permit lying except in (drumroll) situations where the function of society is at stake, such as in a courtroom or to the police?
There is a word for governments that codify ethics: fascist. The Nazis did it, the Soviets did it, the Chinese did it, Mussolini did it, the North Vietnamese are doing it, the Taliban did it, blah blah all day long. It's a bad idea to use your ethics as a basis for your laws - someone will invariably decide that your laws are bad. If your laws = your ethics, then that guy is saying that your ethics are bad and that's invariably going to start a cultural rift that could possibly tear down your entire society. (Notice that North Korea is the only remaining government in my list.) If your laws are distinct from your code of ethics, they are able to be freely discussed, changed, and modified without implicitly attacking a person's culture and/or ethnicity.
But once again, this is covered in basically any introductory Philosophy course, as well as the incredibly broad definitions of "ethics" that one would need to argue that seat belt laws grounded in ethical, not practical issues.
This is refuted in any Philosophy 101 course. Why is it illegal to drive without using your seatbelt? Is it wrong to not use your seatbelt? No, but it unfairly burdens the emergency response units in the community when some dumbass splatters his face on a tree because he didn't wear his seatbelt. Therefore, it is illegal to drive without using your seatbelt.
It is legal to lie to my mother but it is unethical. Why is this? Because laws do not and should not codify what is ethical. You cannot enforce morality. As the poster to which you respond accurately stated, laws reflect what is necessary to keep society from falling apart.
We can all lie to our mothers incessantly and have a functioning society, even though lying is unethical. If we all drove around without seatbelts, which certainly is not unethical, we would quickly send our emergency care services into chaos, therefore seat belt use is mandated by law.
Anyway, any Philosophy 101 course will give the very same argument, and it will very likely use the examples of lying to your mother and wearing a seatbelt.
I think the USPTO's problem is that they've adopted a default 'innocent until proven guilty' mantra
Think what you want - I know that the USPTO does what Congress and judges tell it to do. The fact is that the examiners consider all applications unpatentable until the applicant's lawyer argues strongly enough to convince the examiner, or in a very rare circumstance, the lawyer submits an application that isn't insane.
They need to turn their thinking around and adopt a default 'guilty until proven innocent' mantra
WTF would the USPTO's THINKING have to do with it? The Director of the USPTO isn't some wizard in a throne room declaring what is and is not patentable. The USPTO does what Congress and Judges say. Period. Regarding the 'guilty until proven innocent', I invite you to drop by any examiner's office and talk to him for 90 seconds. Applications ARE 'guilty until proven innocent'.
My point is that your post accurately describes what is CURRENTLY done at the patent office. I don't blame you for not knowing that because there are MANY myths about how the USPTO does its work. The lessons I'd like everyone to remember from this post are that 1) Congress and Judges decide what is or is not patentable, the examiners do their damndest to stick to that, and 2) Examiners assume all applications are invalid until the applicant's lawyer convinces the examiner that he (examiner) could not win the argument in front of a judge or appeal board, and 3) many times it comes to a judge or appeal board and the judge or appeal board tells the examiner to issue the patent whether or not the examiner KNOWS it isn't novel. The fact is that the examiner is NOT the final authority, and if the examiner is told to issue the patent because it's valid, well by God, the application is valid.
You could have a period where the public are allowed to submit objections to the patent.
This has been in place for several years. All patent applications are published in a pre-grant publication (PGPub) at most 18 months after they are submitted. This usually means that the application will be published but unexamined for 12-18 months, and usually published and not issued (or finally rejected) for about 24 months.
There is a section of 35 USC which specifically enables 3rd parties (you) to submit (without editorializing or commenting) pieces of art that you think are applicable. While I haven't poured over this patent, I would have -definitely- looked at UNIX/Linux in excruciating detail while prosecuting it.
Long story short - there is a system in place where you could have looked at this application while it was pending and submitted UNIX man pages or whatever. The fact is that nobody, nobody, nobody ever does this (except large corporations who pay people to do so against their competitors applications.)
OK, so we know what the problem is now, and I'm pretty confident I can fix the machine by running the setup of IE from a CD we had at the time.
(You know I'll say this for CompUSA: the job sucked, but damned if I wasn't a fucking good tech by the time I got out of there.
Uh, rewind.
I'm pretty confident I can fix the machine by running the setup of IE from a CD
but damned if I wasn't a fucking good tech by the time I got out of there.
Ok, just making sure I read that right.
Sorry the job sucked. I was in similar situations when I worked at a computer shop, except my manager spoke broken English as a second language and declared that his CD burner was broken - who knew they don't work if you put the CD in upside down?
I was in a situation very similar to yours, except the boss was harping on me, so I snapped and told him to shut his fucking face. He told me to go home, and I said, "No, you go in the back, write my last paycheck, and I won't be putting up with you tomorrow." And that's exactly what happened.
Somehow, I think my story was cooler. Also, I didn't boast about my IE installation prowess.
I had a friend go back to the store and ask about me a couple of weeks later, and my boss said that I called him "a fucking guy" and went crazy. I was pretty mad about that, because I sure as hell didn't call him something as stupid as "a fucking guy". Ah well.
I've also heard it said that contemplated solar sail designs will have roughly the same force of acceleration as dropping a piece of notebook paper from one inch here on Earth. That's nothing by itself, but you have free fuel and time to kill.
Alright, I'll admit that you are far more knowledgeable about this stuff than you first let on.
That is a much more common senario than the 374 claim PCT that you are suggesting.
True, but it's my understanding that a minority of patents pays for the majority of the operating costs. Keep in mind that while it's true that you can get an application through the office for $6000, you're not just paying for the examiner's time, but also the mail handlers, the file scanners, all the support staff, the utility bills, and rent for the office space. The $6000 applications are not the ones that pay the bills.
I'm not sure if you were refuting the specific fact that the USPTO is entirely fee funded or not, however that much is true. Just as with the tax system as a whole, there is a minority of patents that provide a majority of the money. While most cases will have in the neighborhood of 35 claims, it's nothing special for a case to have 100-200 claims, and 350ish is near the reasonable upper limit.
For the record I completely agree with that statement.
I'm glad we agree about that - you're quite right, Slashbots think they know what prior art is but they refuse to read the published definitions.
I'll even admit to you that with excess claim fees added in a patent can cost over $1,000, but it does not have to if you keep the number of claims under 3 for independents and 20 total. How you manage to get maintenance fees over $100,000 is a complete mystery to me though. Perhaps you can clear that up.
The fact is that just as the USPTO has a backlog of patents, so too do large corporations. IBM files thousands of applications per year, and when the USPTO sends them paperwork, the liklihood of IBM's lawyers writing a response in 3 months is very slim. For these thousands of applications, you can pretty much count on one extension to respond to the FAOM, an extensino to respond to the final action, some fees to amend after final, some fees to reopen the case, and so on.
As for the $100,000 cases, this would be for a family of patents typically assigned to a large corporation. The examining work for the whole family is almost identical but the fees must be paid multiple times for what is essentially the same invention though carefully claimed distinctly in each case. There are a lot of these in certain technologies.
In any event, it was with the flamethrowers and without.
At the most, $6,220.00 will be paid over the lifetime of a patent in maintenance fees.
Oh that's a fact, huh? Do you know what a PCT patent is or why there is an entire section of fees devoted to it? Are you aware that the USPTO is entirely fee-funded and spends not a single cent of tax-collected funds? How on earth could the USPTO pay the salaries that they pay (among the highest in government work) for $6,220 per application? It's really astounding that you would continue this argument in light of reality.
However examiners rarely deal with figuring out which fees the applicant is charged with (there is one exception where they do and that exception has nothing to do with the filing and maintenance fees), so I'm not sure how much weight that adds to any of your statements.
If I were you, I would do exactly as you have done and immediately steer this dialogue into areas such as fees and/or postage stamps, which very clearly have nothing to do with my first post. The fact remains that the USPTO executes the laws created by Congress and applies the court decisions as delivered by the appeals courts. The "bureacracy at the USPTO" is a statement that I consider grossly unsubstantiated - but you have demonstrated that you have mastered the USPTO.gov website, I'm impressed.
The problem with the patent system in the US lies fully with the patent attorneys and the court system. Examiners love to reject patents because then they never end up in the news. Slashdot is populated by dimwits who can update Internet Explorer but can't understand the basic procedures of the USPTO - none of which is my problem.
Good job with the fee schedule. Go see how much it would cost you to file 374 claims (16 independent) (this is very similar to the last patent I saw make Slashdot's front page) as a PCT application (meaning that it seeks international protection), pick half a dozen or so of the miscellaneous fees, pick at least three of the late filing fees, toss in all of the maintenance fees, and you'll have yourself a simple major technological corporation's expenses for a single patent.
Also, I think that when you came up with the ~$6000 number, perhaps you thought that extra claims are covered under the single fee stated on the schedule. In fact, they are paid for on a per claim basis. You're right that examiner's don't handle this, so I won't claim the amounts.
You have no idea what you are talking about. Filing a patent with the PTO will cost you either $385.00 or $770.00 depending if you a small entity or a large entity.
Only if you have 3 or fewer independent and 20 or fewer dependent claims, or you do not file an extension of time (extremely rare), you do not file an IDS (I'm sure you know what that is), or any of the other numerous fees the USPTO charges.
Please stop pulling numbers out of your ass and do some research on the subject before trying to sound like you know what you are talking about. Thanks.
That's good advice for someone I know, and I think you know whom I'm talking about! Thanks.
I'm an examiner at the USPTO. Thanks for playing. Have a good weekend.
I have seen this "Manos: Hands of Fate" and it is truly an awful movie. There is no explanation given whatsoever to the background. There is no explanation provided for why one of the first evil characters has grotesquely disfigured legs. There is one part where the final print of the movie has three different takes in sequence. The woman walks to the door *snip* the woman walks to the door and gets closer *ship* the woman walks to the door *snip* the woman goes through the door PRAISE GOD LET THE MOVIE END.
With a group of friends, though, the movie is awesome to MST3K. Yes, I'm making a verb out of that.
The movie even has some very lengthy scenes of women in 1960s style underwear (meaning about eight times the amount of fabric used by Victoria's Secret) wrestling in the sand... and it's not that interesting. I really expected there to be some gratuitous nudity just to add some value to the flick, but, no. In fact, the movie is quite remarkable in that the script totally sucks, the camera work totally sucks, and they STILL managed to avoid any cliche that might have made the movie interesting. It's like the producer was completely inept, but he wasn't going to stoop to the levels of other tacky movies that were successful, popular, or better than awful.
If you can find this on DVD sometime, it's certainly worth ~$10, in my opinion, just for this hilariousness of its failure. The only real gripe is that the movie is so bad that it begins to rival homemade camcorder movies, and in that sense loses some of its legitimacy as the worst real movie of all time, but I think few people would have very strict rules for such a dubious award.
It's hard to blame them: they're funded by the patent claim fees, and how much research into a claim can you possibly do on a couple hundred bucks, especially in an industry you know nothing about?
I take it you're an examiner? By the way, I'm not really sure wtf you're talking about, since the vast majority of the funds come from the maintenance fees for patents that are in the neighborhood of 15 years old. Applying for a patent costs between $1000 and $5000 typically, some of the maintenance fees can go over $100,000.
So, yeah: USPTO's broken bureaucracy IS a problem. And you're flamebaiting.
I'd rather flamebait regarding a topic I know about than to just babble anonymously about something I heard about from a friend of a friend. Seriously, what interaction do you personally claim with the USPTO?
the other organizations' attempt at what can only be called cybersquatting, and the USPTO's bureaucracy, Google could well be denied the use of Gmail as a trademark."
The USPTO does not create the laws regarding how the legal protections are granted. The USPTO executes the laws that are created by Congress or adheres to the court decisions that are given in appeals cases.
I know, I know, everyone at Slashdot is "so smart" that they can't be bothered with things like "how it really happens" or "the truth", ha ha, but I felt like tossing that out there anyway. Hate the USPTO for making bad patent laws! Breathe through your mouth! Yay!
Then why did we go to Iraq? Every reason the Bush administration gave as a justification (WMDs, ties to Al-Quaeda, Iraqis wanted to be 'liberated') turned out to be false, so what does that leave?
Because GWBush did not like Saddam Hussein and there was a reasonable concern that Saddam Hussein would fund anti-American terrorism with his ample funds. GWB didn't have the balls to just say it, but that's what it fucking was.
And I think that's a legitimate reason to consider invading Iraq. I don't approve of how the plan was executed and I sure as shit don't approve of the situation at the moment, but I'm not going to say that I think we should have ultimately left Saddam Hussein in power. I'll leave that to the pinkos who are hell bent on making our world a cuddly perfect place.
And I'm not voting for Bush, and I don't like Bush, but it's painfully fucking obvious why we went to Iraq even if Bush doesn't have the balls to say it. Agree with it, disagree with it, I don't care; it's in the goddamned past at this point. Liberals need to get over themselves because they aren't NEARLY as clever as they think.
Vote for Kerry if it gets you hard; I'm voting for Kerry myself. What separates us is that I'm not running around with my hand in my pants acting like I'm some intellectual for realizing 18 months after the fact that Bush gave shitty reasons for war. You are not that clever for reiterating what every international media outlet has been shouting for 18 months.
I've been moderated to hell for saying this before, but it's so damned true. I can't shake the feeling the voting for the Democrats is voting for the losers. Even if they win, it still feels like I'm voting for the losers. I just hope McCain runs in 08.
If you stay with CS, no problem. But, you need to consider getting a master no matter what you do. While my generation excells with a Bachelors, yours will require a master or PhD to stay in the industry.
This was exactly my experience after graduating in 2002 with a BS in both Mathematics and Computer Science. Yes, I double majored and my transcript gives me a BS in both majors.
I couldn't even get a "No" back from 90% of the places to which I sent a resume. I got a "Yes" back from every school to which I applied for graduate school, though.
As look would have it, I found a nice career job at the end of my first year of grad school and left school in a heartbeat, but this was over 2 years after I graduated from undergrad. It's hard to payback those student loans while making $9 an hour.
Umm..I hate to break this to ya but Software Engineering is one hell of a lot more than learning to write code. You WILL need a good many of those CS skills (not so much the theory but the application of the theory).
I'm glad we agree, though I may have explained it poorly.
I did focus on the theory rather than the application of the theory and I would not recommend that to anyone. The mathematics courses you list certainly do not meet my criteria for "much math", in fact I'd consider Calc 2 the bare minimum for anyone in any science and discrete math the minimum for anyone in a remotely mathematical field.
I was talking more about abstract algebra, number theory, probability (which is not statistics), linear algebra (which is interesting and easy but not terribly useful to most in CS), and algorithms or numerical analysis. These are all fascinating fields (in some geek's opinion) but in my experience, they are not going to help you secure a stable career. They might open some doors in some specialized fields, but those doors are opened for a lot of fresh-out-of-college people and they're probably going to hire someone with actual software engineering experience before hiring someone with course credits in mathematics. That's just my experience, though.
In retrospect, I wish I had spent less time learning about formal languages, NP-completeness, algorithm analysis, and mathematics topics I mentioned before and more time learning about software project management, using someone else's APIs, and the software development industry. The fact is that there are a few hard to get jobs that are truly specific to abstract computer science and mathematics but there are tons of jobs available for developing software.
It all worked out for me in the end, but I'm working only indirectly in the CS industry and I spent 2.5 very nervous years worrying about how I was going to eat and repay my loans while earning $9 an hour.
Slashdot Mirror
I've got five shiny mod points at the moment, but rather than mod you, I'll take the time to point out that you don't have a "provoking question", you have a "groundless opinion". There's a difference. Thanks for playing.
Seriously, the courts, Congress, and President surrender our national sovereignty like this? Are you fucking kidding me? I'm sure as hell not voting for Bush, but of all the bad things he's done, he hasn't surrendered "our national sovereignty like this".
Maybe if France owned 9% of our economy... maybe if this involved oil... maybe if this involved actually going to war. What the hell are you talking about? This is a freaking WEBSITE that's selling junk on the INTARNET. Surrender our national sovereignty like this? You don't have a "provoking question", hell, you don't have "a clue".
And there ya go - I posted instead of modded. You're welcome.
Submit art
An interesting aside is that this process is not necessarily against someone getting a patent, but rather strengthens the patent should it be issued. In theory, you're doing the applicant a favor.. in practice, your mileage may vary.
As for what the paperwork is supposed to look like, that's.. uh.. homework. Seriously, I don't know. Since a PGPub will have the examiner's name on it, it might be as simple as sending an envelope to the USPTO c/o the examiner with note stating the relavent application number.
I'll look this up tomorrow and try to post something useful. I scanned the uspto.gov website quickly and didn't see any links to relavent information, sorry.
I'm plagued by pop ups which don't exist in Firefox.
I'm plagued by Flash advertisements which are handily blocked by a simple Firefox plug-in.
I'm plagued by obnoxious animated .gif advertisements which are block with two clicks in Firefox.
I'm plagued with the stupid "alt+f-n-w-F6" if I want to do something as trivial and commonplace as look at something ELSE without losing what I'm looking at now. In Firefox, that's "ctrl+t-F6" and it does not create another obtrusive window to fight with.
When I'm searching a large web page for a specific piece of text, I have to hit "ctrl+f", fight with a modal window where I suffer through clicking on the text area, typing what I want to find, clicking Find, moving the stupid modal window so I can read what it found, clicking on Find Next (a few dozen times), and when I'm done, I have to click cancel. In Firefox, I hit "/" and type what I want to find. Genius.
Are you the only person that thinks IE is ok? I'm not trying to offer a baseless opinion here - I would use IE in a HEARTBEAT if it was a superior product. I have done my best to substantiate that NO, IE is NOT OK. Firefox is better. I won't even discuss the security or speed issues (both of which are won by IE in my opinion and experience) and stick to the features. IE is not even second best (Mozilla, Opera, Netscape). IE is a bad product which is beaten by its competitors.
Sure it is - maybe not a good one according to your code of conduct, but it's perfectly legitimate. You can't let me drop out of school and then tell me how to behave! :)
Your law on negros and the city limit after dark was based on the assumption that negros were dangerous. Keeping that law on the books is a pretty poor statement about the state legislature by the way.
No, as a matter of fact, it's a statement that nobody has bothered to challenge the law. The law would be removed by one of two mechanisms - someone in a criminal trial challenging it or someone leading a campaign to introduce a bill to remove. Nobody cares enough about that dusty old law to do either.
Voting is supposed to be an intellectual activity. Drinking is not - think intelligence vs. wisdom.
That's fine, but here you have made a judgement about about drinking which you are enforcing on the public at large.
Neurotic misfit? Dropping out of school? Free will - these impact essentially yourself, so less rigorous standards (lesser ethics if you will).
And here you seem to support the ideals of libertarianism to some extent. Drinking and driving is a crime of itself - drinking by itself is something that "impacts essentially yourself", just as driving without a seat belt, dropping out of school, smoking cigarettes, shooting heroin, or hanging yourself. Some of those activities are illegal and some aren't. It would take a fool to suggest that any of them are "good for you".
You can take two stances on this - the government knows what is "good for you" and makes the law or the government believes that you know what is good for you and grants you free will.
In the former case, you have seat belt laws, social security witholding, mandatory public education, suicide is illegal, (and when government goes wacky) private ownership of business is evil (Soviets), associating with Jews is filthy (Nazis), being educated ruins society (Khmer Rouge), being gay is a sin (Christian right), being American is a sin (Islamic radicals), and so on. The alternative is closer to the libertarian stance that the individual knows what is right, and you can smoke cigarettes, buy lottery tickets, drive without a seatbelt, eat fast food every day, drop out of school, lie to your mother, commit adultery (a civil, but not criminal offense), sue people frivolously, hate people who are different than you, shoot heroin (not a crime by itself), be a crappy parent, watch Jerry Springer, and basically be a waste of a human.
But honestly, pick one of those philosophies and tell me that our code of laws is based on it.
Lying is personal - and something we do constantly. I am not arguing that it is ethical to lie - but only when it impacts others substantially is it codified into law. By the way, that one is also rooted in the 10 Commandments (ie religeon, ie. culture - they cannot be separated).
No no, not at all. Lying is only against the law in court, to the police, and for certain legal proceedings (such as job applications and taxes.) Think about it - You're perfectly free to lie to your boss every day once you've been hired. You'll lose your job, but you won't go to jail (unless the act of lying broke some other law - you won't go to jail for lying to your boss.) You can lie to your wife, to your church/mosque/synagogue, to your teachers, to your friends, to you pet goldfish - you won't go to jail unless you break some OTHER law by lying. Being truthful IS a commandment of the Old Testament but lying is NOT a commandment of our legal system. There is a tiny fraction of situations where you legally cannot lie, the rest of the time you are free to do as you please.
And yes, you can separate religion from law. I cite the United States as a prime example. I'm free to lust after my neighbor's wife - hell, if she wants it, I can rock her world all night long and leave h
Dr. Jack Kevorkian is currently in jail for an act which was nothing except ethical yet illegal. Being from Michigan, I've seen far more than the national media coverage of the case. He did absolutely everything possible to document that what he was doing was, in the opinion of the people attempting suicide, entirely ethical (whether you or I agree with it seems moot) yet Kevorkian will be in prison for many years. He firmly believed that it is unethical to force ailing and elderly people to continue to live and suffer and is sitting in the State Penn for that belief.
The laws are codified ethics indeed...
Ok, let me point out that
I haven't taken any Philosophy courses
pretty much addresses the problem that
arguments don't ring true here.
I also contend that ALL law is ethics codified.
My hometown in Michigan has a law that no negroes are allowed within the city limits after dark. What ethic codifies that law? (It is obviously not enforced, by the way.)
Exactly what is the ethical basis for property zoning laws? What is the ethical basis for the right to vote at 18 years of age, but witholding the privilege to drink alcohol until 21 years of age? What is the ethical basis that makes it perfectly legal to turn yourself into a neurotic misfit? Why is it legal to drop out of school without any good reason?
Why is it legal to be racist? Legal to be sexist? Why is it legal to hate gay people for being gay? Why is it legal to hate in the first place? What is the ethical basis to permit lying except in (drumroll) situations where the function of society is at stake, such as in a courtroom or to the police?
There is a word for governments that codify ethics: fascist. The Nazis did it, the Soviets did it, the Chinese did it, Mussolini did it, the North Vietnamese are doing it, the Taliban did it, blah blah all day long. It's a bad idea to use your ethics as a basis for your laws - someone will invariably decide that your laws are bad. If your laws = your ethics, then that guy is saying that your ethics are bad and that's invariably going to start a cultural rift that could possibly tear down your entire society. (Notice that North Korea is the only remaining government in my list.) If your laws are distinct from your code of ethics, they are able to be freely discussed, changed, and modified without implicitly attacking a person's culture and/or ethnicity.
But once again, this is covered in basically any introductory Philosophy course, as well as the incredibly broad definitions of "ethics" that one would need to argue that seat belt laws grounded in ethical, not practical issues.
This is refuted in any Philosophy 101 course. Why is it illegal to drive without using your seatbelt? Is it wrong to not use your seatbelt? No, but it unfairly burdens the emergency response units in the community when some dumbass splatters his face on a tree because he didn't wear his seatbelt. Therefore, it is illegal to drive without using your seatbelt.
It is legal to lie to my mother but it is unethical. Why is this? Because laws do not and should not codify what is ethical. You cannot enforce morality. As the poster to which you respond accurately stated, laws reflect what is necessary to keep society from falling apart.
We can all lie to our mothers incessantly and have a functioning society, even though lying is unethical. If we all drove around without seatbelts, which certainly is not unethical, we would quickly send our emergency care services into chaos, therefore seat belt use is mandated by law.
Anyway, any Philosophy 101 course will give the very same argument, and it will very likely use the examples of lying to your mother and wearing a seatbelt.
Think what you want - I know that the USPTO does what Congress and judges tell it to do. The fact is that the examiners consider all applications unpatentable until the applicant's lawyer argues strongly enough to convince the examiner, or in a very rare circumstance, the lawyer submits an application that isn't insane.
They need to turn their thinking around and adopt a default 'guilty until proven innocent' mantra
WTF would the USPTO's THINKING have to do with it? The Director of the USPTO isn't some wizard in a throne room declaring what is and is not patentable. The USPTO does what Congress and Judges say. Period. Regarding the 'guilty until proven innocent', I invite you to drop by any examiner's office and talk to him for 90 seconds. Applications ARE 'guilty until proven innocent'.
My point is that your post accurately describes what is CURRENTLY done at the patent office. I don't blame you for not knowing that because there are MANY myths about how the USPTO does its work. The lessons I'd like everyone to remember from this post are that 1) Congress and Judges decide what is or is not patentable, the examiners do their damndest to stick to that, and 2) Examiners assume all applications are invalid until the applicant's lawyer convinces the examiner that he (examiner) could not win the argument in front of a judge or appeal board, and 3) many times it comes to a judge or appeal board and the judge or appeal board tells the examiner to issue the patent whether or not the examiner KNOWS it isn't novel. The fact is that the examiner is NOT the final authority, and if the examiner is told to issue the patent because it's valid, well by God, the application is valid.
This has been in place for several years. All patent applications are published in a pre-grant publication (PGPub) at most 18 months after they are submitted. This usually means that the application will be published but unexamined for 12-18 months, and usually published and not issued (or finally rejected) for about 24 months.
There is a section of 35 USC which specifically enables 3rd parties (you) to submit (without editorializing or commenting) pieces of art that you think are applicable. While I haven't poured over this patent, I would have -definitely- looked at UNIX/Linux in excruciating detail while prosecuting it.
Long story short - there is a system in place where you could have looked at this application while it was pending and submitted UNIX man pages or whatever. The fact is that nobody, nobody, nobody ever does this (except large corporations who pay people to do so against their competitors applications.)
(You know I'll say this for CompUSA: the job sucked, but damned if I wasn't a fucking good tech by the time I got out of there.
Uh, rewind.
I'm pretty confident I can fix the machine by running the setup of IE from a CD
but damned if I wasn't a fucking good tech by the time I got out of there.
Ok, just making sure I read that right.
Sorry the job sucked. I was in similar situations when I worked at a computer shop, except my manager spoke broken English as a second language and declared that his CD burner was broken - who knew they don't work if you put the CD in upside down?
I was in a situation very similar to yours, except the boss was harping on me, so I snapped and told him to shut his fucking face. He told me to go home, and I said, "No, you go in the back, write my last paycheck, and I won't be putting up with you tomorrow." And that's exactly what happened.
Somehow, I think my story was cooler. Also, I didn't boast about my IE installation prowess.
I had a friend go back to the store and ask about me a couple of weeks later, and my boss said that I called him "a fucking guy" and went crazy. I was pretty mad about that, because I sure as hell didn't call him something as stupid as "a fucking guy". Ah well.
And this was a dumb question. Next story, please.
I've also heard it said that contemplated solar sail designs will have roughly the same force of acceleration as dropping a piece of notebook paper from one inch here on Earth. That's nothing by itself, but you have free fuel and time to kill.
That is a much more common senario than the 374 claim PCT that you are suggesting.
True, but it's my understanding that a minority of patents pays for the majority of the operating costs. Keep in mind that while it's true that you can get an application through the office for $6000, you're not just paying for the examiner's time, but also the mail handlers, the file scanners, all the support staff, the utility bills, and rent for the office space. The $6000 applications are not the ones that pay the bills.
I'm not sure if you were refuting the specific fact that the USPTO is entirely fee funded or not, however that much is true. Just as with the tax system as a whole, there is a minority of patents that provide a majority of the money. While most cases will have in the neighborhood of 35 claims, it's nothing special for a case to have 100-200 claims, and 350ish is near the reasonable upper limit.
For the record I completely agree with that statement.
I'm glad we agree about that - you're quite right, Slashbots think they know what prior art is but they refuse to read the published definitions. I'll even admit to you that with excess claim fees added in a patent can cost over $1,000, but it does not have to if you keep the number of claims under 3 for independents and 20 total. How you manage to get maintenance fees over $100,000 is a complete mystery to me though. Perhaps you can clear that up.
The fact is that just as the USPTO has a backlog of patents, so too do large corporations. IBM files thousands of applications per year, and when the USPTO sends them paperwork, the liklihood of IBM's lawyers writing a response in 3 months is very slim. For these thousands of applications, you can pretty much count on one extension to respond to the FAOM, an extensino to respond to the final action, some fees to amend after final, some fees to reopen the case, and so on.
As for the $100,000 cases, this would be for a family of patents typically assigned to a large corporation. The examining work for the whole family is almost identical but the fees must be paid multiple times for what is essentially the same invention though carefully claimed distinctly in each case. There are a lot of these in certain technologies.
In any event, it was with the flamethrowers and without.
Oh that's a fact, huh? Do you know what a PCT patent is or why there is an entire section of fees devoted to it? Are you aware that the USPTO is entirely fee-funded and spends not a single cent of tax-collected funds? How on earth could the USPTO pay the salaries that they pay (among the highest in government work) for $6,220 per application? It's really astounding that you would continue this argument in light of reality.
However examiners rarely deal with figuring out which fees the applicant is charged with (there is one exception where they do and that exception has nothing to do with the filing and maintenance fees), so I'm not sure how much weight that adds to any of your statements.
If I were you, I would do exactly as you have done and immediately steer this dialogue into areas such as fees and/or postage stamps, which very clearly have nothing to do with my first post. The fact remains that the USPTO executes the laws created by Congress and applies the court decisions as delivered by the appeals courts. The "bureacracy at the USPTO" is a statement that I consider grossly unsubstantiated - but you have demonstrated that you have mastered the USPTO.gov website, I'm impressed.
The problem with the patent system in the US lies fully with the patent attorneys and the court system. Examiners love to reject patents because then they never end up in the news. Slashdot is populated by dimwits who can update Internet Explorer but can't understand the basic procedures of the USPTO - none of which is my problem.
Good job with the fee schedule. Go see how much it would cost you to file 374 claims (16 independent) (this is very similar to the last patent I saw make Slashdot's front page) as a PCT application (meaning that it seeks international protection), pick half a dozen or so of the miscellaneous fees, pick at least three of the late filing fees, toss in all of the maintenance fees, and you'll have yourself a simple major technological corporation's expenses for a single patent.
Also, I think that when you came up with the ~$6000 number, perhaps you thought that extra claims are covered under the single fee stated on the schedule. In fact, they are paid for on a per claim basis. You're right that examiner's don't handle this, so I won't claim the amounts.
Anyway, have a good weekend.
Only if you have 3 or fewer independent and 20 or fewer dependent claims, or you do not file an extension of time (extremely rare), you do not file an IDS (I'm sure you know what that is), or any of the other numerous fees the USPTO charges.
Please stop pulling numbers out of your ass and do some research on the subject before trying to sound like you know what you are talking about. Thanks.
That's good advice for someone I know, and I think you know whom I'm talking about! Thanks.
I'm an examiner at the USPTO. Thanks for playing. Have a good weekend.
With a group of friends, though, the movie is awesome to MST3K. Yes, I'm making a verb out of that.
The movie even has some very lengthy scenes of women in 1960s style underwear (meaning about eight times the amount of fabric used by Victoria's Secret) wrestling in the sand... and it's not that interesting. I really expected there to be some gratuitous nudity just to add some value to the flick, but, no. In fact, the movie is quite remarkable in that the script totally sucks, the camera work totally sucks, and they STILL managed to avoid any cliche that might have made the movie interesting. It's like the producer was completely inept, but he wasn't going to stoop to the levels of other tacky movies that were successful, popular, or better than awful.
If you can find this on DVD sometime, it's certainly worth ~$10, in my opinion, just for this hilariousness of its failure. The only real gripe is that the movie is so bad that it begins to rival homemade camcorder movies, and in that sense loses some of its legitimacy as the worst real movie of all time, but I think few people would have very strict rules for such a dubious award.
I take it you're an examiner? By the way, I'm not really sure wtf you're talking about, since the vast majority of the funds come from the maintenance fees for patents that are in the neighborhood of 15 years old. Applying for a patent costs between $1000 and $5000 typically, some of the maintenance fees can go over $100,000.
So, yeah: USPTO's broken bureaucracy IS a problem. And you're flamebaiting.
I'd rather flamebait regarding a topic I know about than to just babble anonymously about something I heard about from a friend of a friend. Seriously, what interaction do you personally claim with the USPTO?
Just goes to show that you can think you're smart when reality demonstrates something quite different.
The USPTO does not create the laws regarding how the legal protections are granted. The USPTO executes the laws that are created by Congress or adheres to the court decisions that are given in appeals cases.
I know, I know, everyone at Slashdot is "so smart" that they can't be bothered with things like "how it really happens" or "the truth", ha ha, but I felt like tossing that out there anyway. Hate the USPTO for making bad patent laws! Breathe through your mouth! Yay!
Because GWBush did not like Saddam Hussein and there was a reasonable concern that Saddam Hussein would fund anti-American terrorism with his ample funds. GWB didn't have the balls to just say it, but that's what it fucking was.
And I think that's a legitimate reason to consider invading Iraq. I don't approve of how the plan was executed and I sure as shit don't approve of the situation at the moment, but I'm not going to say that I think we should have ultimately left Saddam Hussein in power. I'll leave that to the pinkos who are hell bent on making our world a cuddly perfect place.
And I'm not voting for Bush, and I don't like Bush, but it's painfully fucking obvious why we went to Iraq even if Bush doesn't have the balls to say it. Agree with it, disagree with it, I don't care; it's in the goddamned past at this point. Liberals need to get over themselves because they aren't NEARLY as clever as they think.
Vote for Kerry if it gets you hard; I'm voting for Kerry myself. What separates us is that I'm not running around with my hand in my pants acting like I'm some intellectual for realizing 18 months after the fact that Bush gave shitty reasons for war. You are not that clever for reiterating what every international media outlet has been shouting for 18 months.
I've been moderated to hell for saying this before, but it's so damned true. I can't shake the feeling the voting for the Democrats is voting for the losers. Even if they win, it still feels like I'm voting for the losers. I just hope McCain runs in 08.
Hehe, looks like I type with a Canadian accent?
This was exactly my experience after graduating in 2002 with a BS in both Mathematics and Computer Science. Yes, I double majored and my transcript gives me a BS in both majors.
I couldn't even get a "No" back from 90% of the places to which I sent a resume. I got a "Yes" back from every school to which I applied for graduate school, though.
As look would have it, I found a nice career job at the end of my first year of grad school and left school in a heartbeat, but this was over 2 years after I graduated from undergrad. It's hard to payback those student loans while making $9 an hour.
I strongly second this. I have a post a little further down the page about my thoughts regarding a 4 year degree in CS.
I'm glad we agree, though I may have explained it poorly.
I did focus on the theory rather than the application of the theory and I would not recommend that to anyone. The mathematics courses you list certainly do not meet my criteria for "much math", in fact I'd consider Calc 2 the bare minimum for anyone in any science and discrete math the minimum for anyone in a remotely mathematical field.
I was talking more about abstract algebra, number theory, probability (which is not statistics), linear algebra (which is interesting and easy but not terribly useful to most in CS), and algorithms or numerical analysis. These are all fascinating fields (in some geek's opinion) but in my experience, they are not going to help you secure a stable career. They might open some doors in some specialized fields, but those doors are opened for a lot of fresh-out-of-college people and they're probably going to hire someone with actual software engineering experience before hiring someone with course credits in mathematics. That's just my experience, though.
In retrospect, I wish I had spent less time learning about formal languages, NP-completeness, algorithm analysis, and mathematics topics I mentioned before and more time learning about software project management, using someone else's APIs, and the software development industry. The fact is that there are a few hard to get jobs that are truly specific to abstract computer science and mathematics but there are tons of jobs available for developing software.
It all worked out for me in the end, but I'm working only indirectly in the CS industry and I spent 2.5 very nervous years worrying about how I was going to eat and repay my loans while earning $9 an hour.