It's utterly amazing that the patent system in the US is still this bad. Where is the reform we keep hearing about?
Waiting for that is sort of like looking at the U.S. as an ant farm. You can keep tapping against the side with your finger and get an immediate response, but everything just goes back to the way it was again.
If it gives you an idea what kind of idiots work for the USPTO, let me give you an example:
A company I know of applies for a copyright to a word (not common everyday word, but the name of a famous person from old times). There are hundreds upon HUNDREDS of other patents that were granted the copyright because each one of them fits into a different category. Let me repeat, it's a one-word name, and hundreds of copyrights WERE granted. The copyright that this particular company applied for was not only under a different category than all of the above, but it even had another acronym attached to the name, so it was TRULY unique.
USPTO denied it because they said (and I can't recall the phrasing exactly) already granted to someone else. There is no one else that applied for it!!!!!! *bang head*
So moral of the story is, you can have prior art all you want. You can LACK prior art all you want. The ones who make the decision at the USPTO are individuals, and the whole process doesn't have a voting system. It's just a "so-and-so decides that you are the first; you're clear to go."
The USPTO needs a damned voting panel system. Public voting would be the best, but hell, that ain't happening in this lifetime. At least an internal voting panel would be nice.
Looks like (3) and (4) fit just fine for the event. It shouldn't be used by the news because they will start everything they broadcast/publish at the "epic" mark. Wait, they already do.:)
I'm not. But I see all of you people spouting the "Remove loans and college will be more affordable!" bullshit like it's fact. It isn't.
Proof instead of you saying so would be helpful. Please elaborate. I believe what I read and experience. Hearing "you're dumb because you just don't know" didn't drive me when I was a young kid, and it doesn't now.
Second, read in my comment: "You can't take what I'm about to say literally, but close to it:"
Which is basically you saying you don't know at all what you're talking about.
Close. It's me saying "I'm uncertain of my correctness, but logic and emotion seem to put them together as true."
Finally, the rich coming to the schools aren't going to play fair. They're going to play "this is too expensive, and we'll stop coming here if these prices stay up."
No they won't. They'll keep paying those prices because they can, and because it helps to reinforce the idea that a degree from Harvard or Yale is "prestigious".
Depends on how big their savings account is (said university). If they get grants/donations from the rich, then that can hold them in the safe zone, but then it also applies a label to the college as "for the rich" - not good for PR. Won't happen immediately, but eventually it will bite them in the butt when the majority of the American populace determines that the percentiles of rich -vs- poor is not acceptable, effectively starting a "civil war" without the killing of Humans; killing of dignity will ensue.
Competition. Price. Do the math; social status renders the best results in certain ways based on certain mindsets, not simply monetary ones.
This statement doesn't answer anything at all relating to the question at hand.
That's correct. It was an emotional statement. I apologize for expressing my feelings in an unrelated way. It happens.
Meanwhile, American students are frantic to find a job as soon as they graduate, because the demands for repayment come 6 months after their graduation date and there's no letup. By the time many have repaid their loans, they feel too old or are too burdened with a family to drop things for a little while and pursue whatever interest they have.
...and we wonder why the stress level is so high in this country.
Disclaimer: For those who may have missed it, this was sarcasm.
Not everything responds to prices this way. Rolls Royce cars are at a price point where only the wealthy can afford them. They are not catering to the masses. Colleges *may* do the same, raise prices and go elite.
If they drop their prices, their income is down also.
Correct, but there's another step in the process...
1. Drop price. 2. Income down. 3. More students apply. 4. Accept more students. 5. Profit up.
...or just rely on the loan solution where the university is paid off immediately, but the possibly unemployed (non-paying) students are the ones who have to suffer. That's another option, and the one we're currently going with. That's probably Ron Paul's motivator. I honestly don't see the bad in this particular idea of his, but I'm not for most of his other ideas.
Because that's what happened with Medical Schools, right?
Why are you so confident that your way is what's going to happen? Is it not equally possible that most schools will actually INCREASE tuition, to make up for the lost students? Especially because now they know that the rich are the ones who are coming to the schools. They don't have to cater to the poor/middle class anymore.
First, if you want to play the who's smarter game, I'm not playing.
Second, read in my comment: "You can't take what I'm about to say literally, but close to it:"
Third, I'm not confident. I create models of future events based on models of past events with similar or identical features / data points. In this case, the data points are not identical, they are similar.
Finally, the rich coming to the schools aren't going to play fair. They're going to play "this is too expensive, and we'll stop coming here if these prices stay up."
The U.S. is a competitive market. It's not single-lined thought that answers these questions.
Hope that answers your questions.
Competition. Price. Do the math; social status renders the best results in certain ways based on certain mindsets, not simply monetary ones.
The students end up with a mortgage on their lives.
So...
Massive debt. No Job. No Collateral No Bankruptcy protection. They can just about hound you till you drop.
Yeah sounds like a good deal to me. If i'm a University or, wait for it.. A banker.
No kidding. It's a screwed up educational system, anyhow.
Some people who have NO college education and EVEN dropped out of High School have the mental capability and reasoning, plus prior knowledge, plus out-of-the-box logic capabilities that make them run circles around the people who have even Masters degrees in a lot of fields.
So what's the problem from a moral standpoint if you tear that "equation" apart? Your key to success in modern life is tied more closely to "how much debt you owe for your ability to be placed in this position" rather than "how much you know" to be placed.
The other controller is "who you know", but that isn't on topic for this point.
Disclaimer: This is my opinion based on experience in life. This is not a statement that is to be treated as law. Mileage may vary. Not available in all areas. Etc, etc, etc.
The people who really achieve in the field they studies at University, but wouldn't have been able to go were it not for student loans.
The argument is that student loans are *why* universities are unaffordable. Besides which there are still plenty of scholarship programs available.
Agreed!
You can't take what I'm about to say literally, but close to it:
If you reduce the number of students that can "get in" because of their financial status, you're limiting the number of students the university gets. Some universities will thrive regardless, but a TON of other universities will have to lower their prices. Why? Because they aren't getting as many students as they used to. If they're not, their income is down.
Justin Kwong compares virtual items to a mug club at a bar where patrons purchase rights to a specific numbered mug but cannot remove the mug from the premises. He does note that if in game items are purchased there needs to be clear language stating: 'the transaction is a license, not a sale, and that traditional consumer protections afforded by sales of goods do not necessarily apply.'
Don't forget that neither you or another bar are allowed to put that number on a glass in a different establishment, even if you own the glass and/or the bar, because you're violating copyright and/or DRM by re-using that magic number.
I don't support them, but I sure as well don't support people who take it to their own hands to commit crimes like viruses and DDOS just because other people did wrong. They all should be taken to jail.
Whenever children, especially child pornography are involved, the spoken opinion of most of society is "yes."
Much of the bill is about people selling railroad tracks and parts thereof. Railroad tracks? Do you realize what it takes to lift and move a railroad rail? That's not something one homeless guy could do. It takes teams, cranes, and trucks.
Fake ID(s) are very helpful tools when thwarting this stupid system.
You are 100% correct, but it just points to the usual Human behavioral logic - "Tell me I can't do something, eh? Watch THIS!"
Loan the shop money (cash). They pay you back with items that are worth the value of the cash you loaned them. Your loan should have an interest rate that is equal to sales tax.
Money LA would have gotten in sales tax is now funneled via your tax payment at the end of the year to the IRS. What ya gonna do about that, LA?
It is a complete undermining of contract law and the very essence of the competitive market
Someone call the whaaaaambulance! Someone's butthurt because physics does not obey contract law and satellite signals don't obey geopolitical boundaries!
Yeah, no kidding. So many people, unfortunately, don't understand RF.
The problem always seems to arise from the receiver device being a magical piece of equipment that defines rights to crud that's broadcast. Unencrypted.
Nope. Neither would using the same 3 words of the text of a novel wouldn't break someone's copyright. So why would you expect it to?
But lists certainly are copyrightable, just as much as novels are. For example tide tables are just lists of tides of when high and low tides are predicted to appear at a certain place. Nothing but lists of times. In the UK, they are published by the admiralty, a government department. But if you want to use them yourself in a newspaper or an app say, you have to pay for a license. They most certainly are copyright. http://www.ukho.gov.uk/PRODUCTSANDSERVICES/SERVICES/Pages/TidalPrediction.aspx
You're right. Mine was intentionally a disproportionate analogy to make a statement.
Expand that list of three out to 100 or so. Give each line item a description, and order the list by number. Copyrightable? Yes. Stupid for someone, IMHO, to use copyright protection on a list that doesn't actually DEFINE the product; it's simply a list of data for reference. However, it is copyrightable, you're right.
Effectively, depends on who was first, but two companies should theoretically be able to sue for copyright infringement if both programs use "return code 0 being success, 255 being forced exit, 127 being device access error, and 128 being incomplete data.... etc...." if this type of logic stands.
I tried to factor in subtle humor to make the statement, "This is yet another case of copyright use to try and gain fame, IMHO." The data isn't tidal information or climatological data, it's a list of return codes.
Specifically, the article alleges that they used (part of) a list of results from the manual of a private system when they developed a competing application. The case seems flimsy, they're going to have to prove that the list should be considered "a work" as opposed to just data. Data isn't protected unless it has some merit of it's own. Lists are generally not protected.
No kidding.
So if I decide to make an oven that has a ventilation system in it, and in my manual, I mention that it has three buttons that say "On", "Off", and "Restart". That's breaking someone's copyright because they, in the past, decided to make an oven at some point in the past, with a manual that mentioned the ventilation system had "On", "Off", and "Restart" buttons?
Their response should be "Oh, sorry.. Let us change our error codes from '1-128' to '1000-2000' with random gaps in the numbering, and change the wording of the errors. Our bad."
Slashdot Mirror
It's utterly amazing that the patent system in the US is still this bad. Where is the reform we keep hearing about?
Waiting for that is sort of like looking at the U.S. as an ant farm. You can keep tapping against the side with your finger and get an immediate response, but everything just goes back to the way it was again.
If it gives you an idea what kind of idiots work for the USPTO, let me give you an example:
A company I know of applies for a copyright to a word (not common everyday word, but the name of a famous person from old times). There are hundreds upon HUNDREDS of other patents that were granted the copyright because each one of them fits into a different category. Let me repeat, it's a one-word name, and hundreds of copyrights WERE granted. The copyright that this particular company applied for was not only under a different category than all of the above, but it even had another acronym attached to the name, so it was TRULY unique.
USPTO denied it because they said (and I can't recall the phrasing exactly) already granted to someone else. There is no one else that applied for it!!!!!! *bang head*
So moral of the story is, you can have prior art all you want. You can LACK prior art all you want. The ones who make the decision at the USPTO are individuals, and the whole process doesn't have a voting system. It's just a "so-and-so decides that you are the first; you're clear to go."
The USPTO needs a damned voting panel system. Public voting would be the best, but hell, that ain't happening in this lifetime. At least an internal voting panel would be nice.
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/epic
Looks like (3) and (4) fit just fine for the event. It shouldn't be used by the news because they will start everything they broadcast/publish at the "epic" mark. Wait, they already do. :)
Or maybe they do as I said earlier....
Ah, crap. You're right. The only thing that they (universities) can gain from is "the rich" contributing to the universities that are the elites.
Looks like the Federal Student Loan program is a counterbalance to the "rich are smart, non-rich can't prove it" system.
Sick, sick.
I'm not. But I see all of you people spouting the "Remove loans and college will be more affordable!" bullshit like it's fact. It isn't.
Proof instead of you saying so would be helpful. Please elaborate. I believe what I read and experience. Hearing "you're dumb because you just don't know" didn't drive me when I was a young kid, and it doesn't now.
Second, read in my comment: "You can't take what I'm about to say literally, but close to it:"
Which is basically you saying you don't know at all what you're talking about.
Close. It's me saying "I'm uncertain of my correctness, but logic and emotion seem to put them together as true."
Finally, the rich coming to the schools aren't going to play fair. They're going to play "this is too expensive, and we'll stop coming here if these prices stay up."
No they won't. They'll keep paying those prices because they can, and because it helps to reinforce the idea that a degree from Harvard or Yale is "prestigious".
Depends on how big their savings account is (said university). If they get grants/donations from the rich, then that can hold them in the safe zone, but then it also applies a label to the college as "for the rich" - not good for PR. Won't happen immediately, but eventually it will bite them in the butt when the majority of the American populace determines that the percentiles of rich -vs- poor is not acceptable, effectively starting a "civil war" without the killing of Humans; killing of dignity will ensue.
Competition. Price. Do the math; social status renders the best results in certain ways based on certain mindsets, not simply monetary ones.
This statement doesn't answer anything at all relating to the question at hand.
That's correct. It was an emotional statement. I apologize for expressing my feelings in an unrelated way. It happens.
It's a non-linear dynamic system. Of course it's going to be chaotic.
Chaotic. + or - 1%.
Meanwhile, American students are frantic to find a job as soon as they graduate, because the demands for repayment come 6 months after their graduation date and there's no letup. By the time many have repaid their loans, they feel too old or are too burdened with a family to drop things for a little while and pursue whatever interest they have.
...and we wonder why the stress level is so high in this country.
Disclaimer: For those who may have missed it, this was sarcasm.
Not everything responds to prices this way. Rolls Royce cars are at a price point where only the wealthy can afford them.
They are not catering to the masses. Colleges *may* do the same, raise prices and go elite.
I agree with you 100%. A lot already have.
If they drop their prices, their income is down also.
Correct, but there's another step in the process...
1. Drop price.
2. Income down.
3. More students apply.
4. Accept more students.
5. Profit up.
Because that's what happened with Medical Schools, right?
Why are you so confident that your way is what's going to happen? Is it not equally possible that most schools will actually INCREASE tuition, to make up for the lost students? Especially because now they know that the rich are the ones who are coming to the schools. They don't have to cater to the poor/middle class anymore.
First, if you want to play the who's smarter game, I'm not playing.
Second, read in my comment: "You can't take what I'm about to say literally, but close to it:"
Third, I'm not confident. I create models of future events based on models of past events with similar or identical features / data points. In this case, the data points are not identical, they are similar.
Finally, the rich coming to the schools aren't going to play fair. They're going to play "this is too expensive, and we'll stop coming here if these prices stay up."
The U.S. is a competitive market. It's not single-lined thought that answers these questions.
Hope that answers your questions.
Competition. Price. Do the math; social status renders the best results in certain ways based on certain mindsets, not simply monetary ones.
The students end up with a mortgage on their lives.
So...
Massive debt.
No Job.
No Collateral
No Bankruptcy protection. They can just about hound you till you drop.
Yeah sounds like a good deal to me. If i'm a University or, wait for it.. A banker.
No kidding. It's a screwed up educational system, anyhow.
Some people who have NO college education and EVEN dropped out of High School have the mental capability and reasoning, plus prior knowledge, plus out-of-the-box logic capabilities that make them run circles around the people who have even Masters degrees in a lot of fields.
So what's the problem from a moral standpoint if you tear that "equation" apart? Your key to success in modern life is tied more closely to "how much debt you owe for your ability to be placed in this position" rather than "how much you know" to be placed.
The other controller is "who you know", but that isn't on topic for this point.
Disclaimer: This is my opinion based on experience in life. This is not a statement that is to be treated as law. Mileage may vary. Not available in all areas. Etc, etc, etc.
The people who really achieve in the field they studies at University, but wouldn't have been able to go were it not for student loans.
The argument is that student loans are *why* universities are unaffordable. Besides which there are still plenty of scholarship programs available.
Agreed!
You can't take what I'm about to say literally, but close to it:
If you reduce the number of students that can "get in" because of their financial status, you're limiting the number of students the university gets. Some universities will thrive regardless, but a TON of other universities will have to lower their prices. Why? Because they aren't getting as many students as they used to. If they're not, their income is down.
You can do the rest of the math in your head.
Justin Kwong compares virtual items to a mug club at a bar where patrons purchase rights to a specific numbered mug but cannot remove the mug from the premises. He does note that if in game items are purchased there needs to be clear language stating: 'the transaction is a license, not a sale, and that traditional consumer protections afforded by sales of goods do not necessarily apply.'
Don't forget that neither you or another bar are allowed to put that number on a glass in a different establishment, even if you own the glass and/or the bar, because you're violating copyright and/or DRM by re-using that magic number.
/snark
So vigilance actions are ok now?
I don't support them, but I sure as well don't support people who take it to their own hands to commit crimes like viruses and DDOS just because other people did wrong. They all should be taken to jail.
Whenever children, especially child pornography are involved, the spoken opinion of most of society is "yes."
It's because they were under their allotted budget, so, they had to spend more tax dollars in order to get the same budget next quarter.
You didn't think this was actually about making people more safe, did you?
Um, excuse me, but the term is "FEEL more safe."
*knock* *knock* Hello... McFly! *knock* Anyone home? *knock *knock* Think, McFly! Think!
Small edit. And AMEN. :)
...where PI is set to 3.0?
Depends on who you ask. *banjo starts twangin'*
but doesn't Darwinism usually take care of the people who try to steal live power lines?
Is that before or after I short it out upline? :} Guess I'm not Darwin prey today. :)
Sorry, I couldn't resist
Much of the bill is about people selling railroad tracks and parts thereof. Railroad tracks? Do you realize what it takes to lift and move a railroad rail? That's not something one homeless guy could do. It takes teams, cranes, and trucks.
Fake ID(s) are very helpful tools when thwarting this stupid system.
You are 100% correct, but it just points to the usual Human behavioral logic - "Tell me I can't do something, eh? Watch THIS!"
Loan the shop money (cash). They pay you back with items that are worth the value of the cash you loaned them. Your loan should have an interest rate that is equal to sales tax.
Money LA would have gotten in sales tax is now funneled via your tax payment at the end of the year to the IRS. What ya gonna do about that, LA?
The comments in TFA say everything that needs to be said.
It is a complete undermining of contract law and the very essence of the competitive market
Someone call the whaaaaambulance! Someone's butthurt because physics does not obey contract law and satellite signals don't obey geopolitical boundaries!
Yeah, no kidding. So many people, unfortunately, don't understand RF.
The problem always seems to arise from the receiver device being a magical piece of equipment that defines rights to crud that's broadcast. Unencrypted.
Nope. Neither would using the same 3 words of the text of a novel wouldn't break someone's copyright. So why would you expect it to?
But lists certainly are copyrightable, just as much as novels are. For example tide tables are just lists of tides of when high and low tides are predicted to appear at a certain place. Nothing but lists of times. In the UK, they are published by the admiralty, a government department. But if you want to use them yourself in a newspaper or an app say, you have to pay for a license. They most certainly are copyright.
http://www.ukho.gov.uk/PRODUCTSANDSERVICES/SERVICES/Pages/TidalPrediction.aspx
You're right. Mine was intentionally a disproportionate analogy to make a statement.
Expand that list of three out to 100 or so. Give each line item a description, and order the list by number. Copyrightable? Yes. Stupid for someone, IMHO, to use copyright protection on a list that doesn't actually DEFINE the product; it's simply a list of data for reference. However, it is copyrightable, you're right.
Effectively, depends on who was first, but two companies should theoretically be able to sue for copyright infringement if both programs use "return code 0 being success, 255 being forced exit, 127 being device access error, and 128 being incomplete data.... etc...." if this type of logic stands.
I tried to factor in subtle humor to make the statement, "This is yet another case of copyright use to try and gain fame, IMHO." The data isn't tidal information or climatological data, it's a list of return codes.
Specifically, the article alleges that they used (part of) a list of results from the manual of a private system when they developed a competing application. The case seems flimsy, they're going to have to prove that the list should be considered "a work" as opposed to just data. Data isn't protected unless it has some merit of it's own. Lists are generally not protected.
No kidding.
So if I decide to make an oven that has a ventilation system in it, and in my manual, I mention that it has three buttons that say "On", "Off", and "Restart". That's breaking someone's copyright because they, in the past, decided to make an oven at some point in the past, with a manual that mentioned the ventilation system had "On", "Off", and "Restart" buttons?
Their response should be "Oh, sorry.. Let us change our error codes from '1-128' to '1000-2000' with random gaps in the numbering, and change the wording of the errors. Our bad."
When was the last time God ran for election?
Every second of every day. ::snort::