To the best of my recollection, cutting the connection isn't what the law covers. It explicitly covers content stored on and distributed from servers under the control of the ISP.
If the ISP is just a conduit and has no control over the server, the the ISP is not liable anyway. In that case, since the ISP cannot remove the material, takedown notices aren't even an option.
Fructose is primarily metabolized by the liver. The increased levels of fructose in the liver result in massive changes for the worse in the way the body processes sweetners and leads to a much greater induction of insulin resistance.
That is, in an otherwise healthy population of adults, the increase in diabetes and obesity will be much greater with high fructose corn syrup than with the equivalent amount of regular sugar.
Ever since hearing Dr. Lustig give a talk on the subject, I've been trying to limit the amount of high fructose corn syrup I consume. But it seems like more and more products at the supermarket contain it. For example, the odds are overwhelming that your favorite salad dressings use high fructose corn syrups.
I'm under the belief that the takedown notice must be given to someone who has control over the situation. That is, it would inform an ISP that certain content on their system violates their copyrights. The ISP, in order to not be held liable for the infringement, would then remove the content.
The problem is that if the material is on a customer's own computer, the ISP has no authority to remove the content. The ISP has no control over the situation at all.
So for a college, even if it can be treated as an ISP, to be issued a take-down notice, the material would have to be stored on a college owned or controlled computer. If the computer in question is in a dorm room and is the private property of a student and is not under the control of the college, then the college cannot be held liable for the infringement.
I also don't believe that the college is under any legal obligation to tell the alleged copyright owner the identity of the alleged infringer without a court order. In fact, they may be under a legal obligation to provide that information only when ordered by the court to divulge it.
So that's how I understand the issue. Where am I wrong?
(I'm not a lawyer and I haven't read the article.)
After seeing the code written by a number of software developers with a wide variety of skill, I came to the conclusion that the best way to judge their "production quality" code is by their error handling.
If they don't handle errors, they are useless. They will never be good enough to keep them around and you will never be able to trust their code. Nothing else matters (unless their father is the owner of the company). Send them on their way.
If they handle only the most common one or two classes of errors, they are of very minimal skill. They may be able to handle quick hacks, but you can do better. Send them on their way.
The ones you want will check every possible error and do so efficiently. With that kind of attention to detail, these are the ones you want to keep. Since you sent the lesser skilled amateurs and hacks away, you should be able to save plenty of money by reducing the pay spent on amateurs on hacks, so give this small group a large raise and provide plenty of benefits. Keep them happy.
Some check nearly every error but may miss a few. These are worth keeping, but make sure their code is reviewed to make sure they didn't overlook something.
Writing software is very similar to proving a theorem. For all but the simplest, you break it into lemmas (functions)which you prove and then use in the main theorem.
More importently, you make sure that you cover every special case. Leave one case off and the program is not correct.
Very few non-mathemeticians are really good at this. Obviously, not all mathemeticians are great software developers, but at least they have a major head start over their non-mathematical brethren.
I haven't used Visual Studio in a long time since there are no BSD/Linux versions. I normally use either emacs or vi.
When I did use Visual Studio, there were portions of it I really liked and portions that I hated. But all in all, I thought it was pretty nice. The funny thing is that I liked some of the middle versions of Visual Studio better than the earlier versions or the later versions. I think that after a while they get most of what needs to be there and then start adding a lot of crap.
I'm not really fond of much in the way of using color to highlight different things. I find it too distracting. Just a slight graying of text in a very few items is all that is needed.
I've never tried Eclipse. I'll have to give it a try. Thanks.
I always figured that 80 columns was there because of the old punch cards. The main reason I still use 80 columns is that it fits well when printing the code on paper without line wrap.
What I'd really like to see are two things:
1) A text editor that would display logical sections of code such as functions or C++ classes as a single line. Click on the line of code or move the cursor over it and press a key and the section of code would expand to show the code. Click again inside the section of code and wind it up back into a single line.
It should automatically remove the comments from the display or insert them back in based on a user action.
It would be nice if it could adjust the line width to the width of the editing window and unwrap or wrap the lines in a nice and logical manner. In particular, when saving to a file, it would wrap the lines to 80 columns in a clear and logical manner.
2) A printer utility that would display certain elements of the code differently. The main thing I'd like is to see the comments appear a bit lighter, say 0xcccccc, than the code at 0xffffff in order to make it easier to zero in on the code.
It keeps mentioning "web services". I assume that refers explicitly to something like using existing http and related protocols to encode files and transmitting them over port 80.
The Web refers to the World Wide Web. It has nothing to do with other protocols such as SMTP, POP3, IMAP, NTP, NNTP, SSH, telnet, FTP, echo, finger, gopher, named,... .
So if you roll your own protocol to accomplish the same thing, I don't see that it would violate this patent, if it is even enforceable.
Take away the web services portion and much of this looks like enterprise wide backup software done back in the mid 1990's by companies such as IBM and Mission Critical Software. Of couse, they may have their own patents on the procedure. Maybe the use of "web services" is to distinguish Amazon's patent from theirs or from the literature on the subject.
You have to log into the web site to even find out the slightest bit about what they do.
Try it.
Click on "Zap2it Labs" and "FAQ about the Website". Result: "You must be logged in to access this feature. Please log in or register."
Click on any choice under "Using the Data". Result: "You must be logged in to access this feature. Please log in or register."
I'll be damned if I'm going to register at a web site to find out even the smallest detail about them. It smells like nothing more than an e-mail address harvester site.
As I interpreted the article, players were explicitly permitted to have more than one portfolio at a time. From the article:
The key was that CNBC put no limit on the number of portfolios a player could manage, and only the best-performing one would count.
If there is no limit, than it would be inaccurate to claim that it was against the rules or an exploitation of the rules to run 1600 separate portfolios.
I've given up on them because of the efforts they go to in order to keep consumers from watching their games on television.
Before, we had the package on Dish Network to watch the out of market games. But this year, MLB granted exclusive rights for the package to DirectTV. At the last minute, or after the last minute, they did allow some big cable conglomerate access as well.
But the Dish Network subscribers were left on their own. The choices are either to not watch the games or switch to DirectTV. I've chosen to not watch their games at all.
There is some package on Dish Network to get a large variety of regional sports networks. Many of those carry their local major league teams. But I no longer care enough to bother to get it. In any event, I'd be surprised if the major league baseball games on those channels weren't blacked out.
I think that what we need is a new non-MLB baseball league on tv. Until that happens, or they get some new management who cares about their fans, Major League Baseball can kiss my ass.
For the most part, I just look at refurbished off-lease IBM's.
If I was buying equipment for a company, I'd seriously look at the lower cost Sun machines. If I was going to buy a brand new computer, instead of build it, I'd probably choose Sun.
the patent system is designed to reward innovation, not just hard work.
In my experience, true innovation always requires hard work. A "brilliant idea" is just the start, not the end.
You could come up with an innovative idea that might be very, very hard to implement, and might take years, or decades, to actually implement.
Of course, if it took decades, the patent would be moot except, maybe, for historical purposes.
If it will take years or decades to build the invention based on what is in the patent, is the patent even "enabling"? Could you say that based on what is in the patent, a person of ordinary skill in the subject area could build the device?
If you can't build it based on what is in the patent, then the patent should never be granted.
You do not need to build the thing being patented. You can - but the patent application itself is a constructive reduction to practice and that is the way it should be. If an inventor can tell someone how to build a rocketship that can transport people to pluto in a weeks time but does not have the factory to make it - then by disclosing to the world the information so that someone with the means to produce the thing can make and practice the invention is valuable even though the inventor did not himself build the rocket ship.
I belive that at one time, a working model was required.
In any event, if it has not been built, it is not an invention, but a conjecture. In many cases, I suspect it is a kook who is gratifying his inward desires to be an "inventor" and not something of any consequence.
The problem is that permitting inventions that have not been built encourage submarine patents. The applicant attempts to patent something that has not been built with the intention of drawing out the process so that he can add claims in the future to cover other people's work.
The result is that permitting inventions that have not been built accomplish nothing in the best cases and may seriously hamper innovation in the worst cases.
Another problem is determining whether or not the patent is really "enabling". Whenever there is a question about whether or not it is "enabling", why not hire a person "skilled in the art" who has no ties to the applicant to build the invention from the patent application. Of course, the costs involved would be paid by the applicant?
Besides determing whether or not the patent was "enabling", it would also cut back on inventions that have never been built. As we all know, or should know, making something completely new work properly can be very difficult. If an inventor can patent something without actually building it, how do you know that the patent is really "enabling"? Because the inventor said so? Make the inventor/applicant put up or shut up.
No patent should ever be granted for something that has not been built.
4) If I buy your house without knowing that you own it should I be able to live in it too? I promise I wont sell it to someone else but you can - Ill just keep living there - sorry for the impact it will have on the value of your house.
A far more appropriate analogy would be to you buuilding a house in California and me building pretty much the same identical house in Florida with neither of us having any idea what the other was up to.
Change the way patents are granted and prosecuted.
1) Make the bar of being granted a patent much higher. The applicant should have to demonstrate significant effort to make the invention. It should take far more effort to invent something than to patent the results.
2) For each patent, give adequate notice to the public to give them a chance to protest the patent. Hold as many hearings as necessary before the patent is granted.
3) Require a demonstration of the patent if there is any doubt over whether or not the applicant has ever actually built one.
4) Make patents non-exclusive. Any inventor should be able to use, sell, and market his own inventions, even if someone invented the same thing first. If he went to substantial effort to invent the item with no knowledge of products containing the same invention or of the patent, either permit him his own patent or add him to the previously existing patent. Reserve licensing of the patent to other parties for the first inventor only.
5) Before a patent lawsuit may be initiated, require the patentee to notify the infringer and give him adequate notice of his patents and ample opportunity to stop using the invention. Enable the infringer the ability to request a hearing over the question of whether or not the patent was rightfully granted.
6) Permit the patent owner to recover damages only from willing infringers. That would be someone who either knew about the patent before using it or who continued to use it more than a year after being given notice of his infringement.
7) Base the damages awarded on the greater value of the invention to the patent owner and to the infringer. That is, if the patent owner and the infringer is only making minor use of the patent internally, than the patent is not worth much and damages would be minimal. If one of them is actively selling devices for which the patent is a major portion of the device, then the value of the patent would be greater.
8) Require the patentee to actually use the patent in order to recover damages.
As I understand it, pharmaceutical companies test an enormous number of compounds for some kind of therapeutic action in hopes of finding one that works without significant side effects.
If anything, pharmaceutical patents demonstrate an enormous amount of effort -- far more than nearly all software patents.
I think patents should only be granted for inventions that took very substantial amounts of work to invent and are very nonobvious. If someone comes up with the same invention on their own, then it must not have been so nonobvious.
Very few software patents would be patentable under such a rule.
My pet conjecture is that they are in the process of setting themselves up to switch to something completely different for their next OS.
I don't believe it will be Linux. It is more likely they will fork their own copy of one of the BSD's, probably FreeBSD, and then port all their own proprietary stuff on top of that.
In other words, once again, Apple will show them the way.
(a) Except as otherwise provided in this title, whoever without authority makes, uses, offers to sell, or sells any patented invention, within the United States, or imports into the United States any patented invention during the term of the patent therefor, infringes the patent.
Note the word "uses". That means that if you use a device that is in violation of a patent, you could be found liable for that use.
The patent owner can go after the manufacturer of a device infringing his patent, those selling or offering the device for sale, and the end users.
As I understand it, they couldn't generally collect from everyone involved because that would be double or triple dipping. For example, if the manufacturer settles, then that makes the patent owner whole and absolves the others.
Slashdot Mirror
To the best of my recollection, cutting the connection isn't what the law covers. It explicitly covers content stored on and distributed from servers under the control of the ISP.
If the ISP is just a conduit and has no control over the server, the the ISP is not liable anyway. In that case, since the ISP cannot remove the material, takedown notices aren't even an option.
I agree completely with you on that. I would love to see it made illegal to add to any food.
I keep hoping that with the high corn prices, the food producers will switch back to sugar.
We are all being used as lab rats to test the safety of food additives. Like lab rats, many will end up dying needlessly as a result.
There's much more to it than that.
Fructose is primarily metabolized by the liver. The increased levels of fructose in the liver result in massive changes for the worse in the way the body processes sweetners and leads to a much greater induction of insulin resistance.
That is, in an otherwise healthy population of adults, the increase in diabetes and obesity will be much greater with high fructose corn syrup than with the equivalent amount of regular sugar.
Ever since hearing Dr. Lustig give a talk on the subject, I've been trying to limit the amount of high fructose corn syrup I consume. But it seems like more and more products at the supermarket contain it. For example, the odds are overwhelming that your favorite salad dressings use high fructose corn syrups.
I'm under the belief that the takedown notice must be given to someone who has control over the situation. That is, it would inform an ISP that certain content on their system violates their copyrights. The ISP, in order to not be held liable for the infringement, would then remove the content.
The problem is that if the material is on a customer's own computer, the ISP has no authority to remove the content. The ISP has no control over the situation at all.
So for a college, even if it can be treated as an ISP, to be issued a take-down notice, the material would have to be stored on a college owned or controlled computer. If the computer in question is in a dorm room and is the private property of a student and is not under the control of the college, then the college cannot be held liable for the infringement.
I also don't believe that the college is under any legal obligation to tell the alleged copyright owner the identity of the alleged infringer without a court order. In fact, they may be under a legal obligation to provide that information only when ordered by the court to divulge it.
So that's how I understand the issue. Where am I wrong?
(I'm not a lawyer and I haven't read the article.)
After seeing the code written by a number of software developers with a wide variety of skill, I came to the conclusion that the best way to judge their "production quality" code is by their error handling.
If they don't handle errors, they are useless. They will never be good enough to keep them around and you will never be able to trust their code. Nothing else matters (unless their father is the owner of the company). Send them on their way.
If they handle only the most common one or two classes of errors, they are of very minimal skill. They may be able to handle quick hacks, but you can do better. Send them on their way.
The ones you want will check every possible error and do so efficiently. With that kind of attention to detail, these are the ones you want to keep. Since you sent the lesser skilled amateurs and hacks away, you should be able to save plenty of money by reducing the pay spent on amateurs on hacks, so give this small group a large raise and provide plenty of benefits. Keep them happy.
Some check nearly every error but may miss a few. These are worth keeping, but make sure their code is reviewed to make sure they didn't overlook something.
Writing software is very similar to proving a theorem. For all but the simplest, you break it into lemmas (functions)which you prove and then use in the main theorem.
More importently, you make sure that you cover every special case. Leave one case off and the program is not correct.
Very few non-mathemeticians are really good at this. Obviously, not all mathemeticians are great software developers, but at least they have a major head start over their non-mathematical brethren.
But where is Dolly Parton on the list?
I haven't used Visual Studio in a long time since there are no BSD/Linux versions. I normally use either emacs or vi.
When I did use Visual Studio, there were portions of it I really liked and portions that I hated. But all in all, I thought it was pretty nice. The funny thing is that I liked some of the middle versions of Visual Studio better than the earlier versions or the later versions. I think that after a while they get most of what needs to be there and then start adding a lot of crap.
I'm not really fond of much in the way of using color to highlight different things. I find it too distracting. Just a slight graying of text in a very few items is all that is needed.
I've never tried Eclipse. I'll have to give it a try. Thanks.
I always figured that 80 columns was there because of the old punch cards. The main reason I still use 80 columns is that it fits well when printing the code on paper without line wrap.
What I'd really like to see are two things:
1) A text editor that would display logical sections of code such as functions or C++ classes as a single line. Click on the line of code or move the cursor over it and press a key and the section of code would expand to show the code. Click again inside the section of code and wind it up back into a single line.
It should automatically remove the comments from the display or insert them back in based on a user action.
It would be nice if it could adjust the line width to the width of the editing window and unwrap or wrap the lines in a nice and logical manner. In particular, when saving to a file, it would wrap the lines to 80 columns in a clear and logical manner.
2) A printer utility that would display certain elements of the code differently. The main thing I'd like is to see the comments appear a bit lighter, say 0xcccccc, than the code at 0xffffff in order to make it easier to zero in on the code.
It keeps mentioning "web services". I assume that refers explicitly to something like using existing http and related protocols to encode files and transmitting them over port 80.
... .
The Web refers to the World Wide Web. It has nothing to do with other protocols such as SMTP, POP3, IMAP, NTP, NNTP, SSH, telnet, FTP, echo, finger, gopher, named,
So if you roll your own protocol to accomplish the same thing, I don't see that it would violate this patent, if it is even enforceable.
Take away the web services portion and much of this looks like enterprise wide backup software done back in the mid 1990's by companies such as IBM and Mission Critical Software. Of couse, they may have their own patents on the procedure. Maybe the use of "web services" is to distinguish Amazon's patent from theirs or from the literature on the subject.
You have to log into the web site to even find out the slightest bit about what they do.
Try it.
Click on "Zap2it Labs" and "FAQ about the Website". Result: "You must be logged in to access this feature. Please log in or register."
Click on any choice under "Using the Data". Result: "You must be logged in to access this feature. Please log in or register."
I'll be damned if I'm going to register at a web site to find out even the smallest detail about them. It smells like nothing more than an e-mail address harvester site.
As I interpreted the article, players were explicitly permitted to have more than one portfolio at a time. From the article:
If there is no limit, than it would be inaccurate to claim that it was against the rules or an exploitation of the rules to run 1600 separate portfolios.
Major League Baseball can kiss my ass.
I've given up on them because of the efforts they go to in order to keep consumers from watching their games on television.
Before, we had the package on Dish Network to watch the out of market games. But this year, MLB granted exclusive rights for the package to DirectTV. At the last minute, or after the last minute, they did allow some big cable conglomerate access as well.
But the Dish Network subscribers were left on their own. The choices are either to not watch the games or switch to DirectTV. I've chosen to not watch their games at all.
There is some package on Dish Network to get a large variety of regional sports networks. Many of those carry their local major league teams. But I no longer care enough to bother to get it. In any event, I'd be surprised if the major league baseball games on those channels weren't blacked out.
I think that what we need is a new non-MLB baseball league on tv. Until that happens, or they get some new management who cares about their fans, Major League Baseball can kiss my ass.
I'll take Ron Paul over any other candidate.
In fact, the only potential major party candidate I would vote for is Ron Paul.
I've been tempted to filter out all my incoming e-mail that is not PGP or GPG encrypted. Or, at least, signed by the sender's PGP or GPG key.
That would cut it down enough to be easily manageable.
I'm afraid that the few people I do want to hear from would think that I'm not worth the effort.
For the most part, I just look at refurbished off-lease IBM's.
If I was buying equipment for a company, I'd seriously look at the lower cost Sun machines. If I was going to buy a brand new computer, instead of build it, I'd probably choose Sun.
In my experience, true innovation always requires hard work. A "brilliant idea" is just the start, not the end.
Of course, if it took decades, the patent would be moot except, maybe, for historical purposes.
If it will take years or decades to build the invention based on what is in the patent, is the patent even "enabling"? Could you say that based on what is in the patent, a person of ordinary skill in the subject area could build the device?
If you can't build it based on what is in the patent, then the patent should never be granted.
I belive that at one time, a working model was required.
In any event, if it has not been built, it is not an invention, but a conjecture. In many cases, I suspect it is a kook who is gratifying his inward desires to be an "inventor" and not something of any consequence.
The problem is that permitting inventions that have not been built encourage submarine patents. The applicant attempts to patent something that has not been built with the intention of drawing out the process so that he can add claims in the future to cover other people's work.
The result is that permitting inventions that have not been built accomplish nothing in the best cases and may seriously hamper innovation in the worst cases.
Another problem is determining whether or not the patent is really "enabling". Whenever there is a question about whether or not it is "enabling", why not hire a person "skilled in the art" who has no ties to the applicant to build the invention from the patent application. Of course, the costs involved would be paid by the applicant?
Besides determing whether or not the patent was "enabling", it would also cut back on inventions that have never been built. As we all know, or should know, making something completely new work properly can be very difficult. If an inventor can patent something without actually building it, how do you know that the patent is really "enabling"? Because the inventor said so? Make the inventor/applicant put up or shut up.
No patent should ever be granted for something that has not been built.
A far more appropriate analogy would be to you buuilding a house in California and me building pretty much the same identical house in Florida with neither of us having any idea what the other was up to.
Change the way patents are granted and prosecuted.
1) Make the bar of being granted a patent much higher. The applicant should have to demonstrate significant effort to make the invention. It should take far more effort to invent something than to patent the results.
2) For each patent, give adequate notice to the public to give them a chance to protest the patent. Hold as many hearings as necessary before the patent is granted.
3) Require a demonstration of the patent if there is any doubt over whether or not the applicant has ever actually built one.
4) Make patents non-exclusive. Any inventor should be able to use, sell, and market his own inventions, even if someone invented the same thing first. If he went to substantial effort to invent the item with no knowledge of products containing the same invention or of the patent, either permit him his own patent or add him to the previously existing patent. Reserve licensing of the patent to other parties for the first inventor only.
5) Before a patent lawsuit may be initiated, require the patentee to notify the infringer and give him adequate notice of his patents and ample opportunity to stop using the invention. Enable the infringer the ability to request a hearing over the question of whether or not the patent was rightfully granted.
6) Permit the patent owner to recover damages only from willing infringers. That would be someone who either knew about the patent before using it or who continued to use it more than a year after being given notice of his infringement.
7) Base the damages awarded on the greater value of the invention to the patent owner and to the infringer. That is, if the patent owner and the infringer is only making minor use of the patent internally, than the patent is not worth much and damages would be minimal. If one of them is actively selling devices for which the patent is a major portion of the device, then the value of the patent would be greater.
8) Require the patentee to actually use the patent in order to recover damages.
As I understand it, pharmaceutical companies test an enormous number of compounds for some kind of therapeutic action in hopes of finding one that works without significant side effects.
If anything, pharmaceutical patents demonstrate an enormous amount of effort -- far more than nearly all software patents.
If you use something incorporating the patent, you are using the patent.
I think patents should only be granted for inventions that took very substantial amounts of work to invent and are very nonobvious. If someone comes up with the same invention on their own, then it must not have been so nonobvious.
Very few software patents would be patentable under such a rule.
My pet conjecture is that they are in the process of setting themselves up to switch to something completely different for their next OS.
I don't believe it will be Linux. It is more likely they will fork their own copy of one of the BSD's, probably FreeBSD, and then port all their own proprietary stuff on top of that.
In other words, once again, Apple will show them the way.
Note the word "uses". That means that if you use a device that is in violation of a patent, you could be found liable for that use.
The patent owner can go after the manufacturer of a device infringing his patent, those selling or offering the device for sale, and the end users.
As I understand it, they couldn't generally collect from everyone involved because that would be double or triple dipping. For example, if the manufacturer settles, then that makes the patent owner whole and absolves the others.