Guess what -- that's already public information. Ever buy groceries? Then you've walked through a public place, and people can watch you. Even bad people. Ever met someone at a Starbucks? Had a lunch meeting at a restaurant? Ever gone to the movies with friends? If someone wants to find out who you're meeting and when, they don't need a warrant.
The solution, it seems, is that he proceeds from different assumptions and arrives at a different result. If time cannot change, by definition, then of course it must be constant. That's not what Einstein, Lorentz, and any number of other Really Smart Guys came up with, though. I'd still like to see his definition of 'time'.
I would also like to see his calculations on how a clock gets slowed down by energy conservation. 'Likely due to', 'huge number', and 'locally' don't really do it for me -- I want precise definitions and rigorous calculations before I'll throw out 100 years of science.
It's not computationally convenient to use C as a fundamental constant, it's unequivocally required by the theory. If you want to throw out relativity, that's another matter. As for directly measuring time, I'm doing it right now as I watch my clock on the wall. Unless you've got some other definition of 'measure' you'd like to share with me. No, I can't measure time by taking a yardstick to it, and no one is suggesting that I possibly could. That doesn't mean I can't measure it.
Time is no more an arbitrary abstraction than any other metric quantity. Have you ever seen a 'Volt'? Of course not, but that doesn't mean it's arbitrary or abstract. I've never seen a 'second', but I've experienced it, in the same way I've experienced a few kV of electricity. You are free to shun whatever assertions you like. I suppose we can agree to disagree.
it doesn't make sense to talk about one's velocity through time
All well and good, except that we've already proved in practice that time has a different rate of passage for different people. Quote: "For GPS satellites, General Relativity predicts that the atomic clocks at GPS orbital altitudes will tick faster by about 45,900 ns/day because they are in a weaker gravitational field than atomic clocks on Earth's surface. Special Relativity predicts that atomic clocks moving at GPS orbital speeds will tick slower by about 7,200 ns/day than stationary ground clocks."
The difference is about 38,000 ns/day. Since the speed of light is about one foot per ns, if relativity were wrong (because time passed at the same rate for everyone), GPS would accumulate an error of about 7 miles per day. Such an error would be blindingly obvious to everyone using the system, and wouldn't require any fancy equipment to measure.
I'm interested to hear Mr Savain give an alternate explanation for how GPS works.
Define 'truth'. Seriously. Do you mean scientific truth, absolute (Platonic) truth, religious truth, political truth? Your plan has a serious epistemological ambiguity. Who decides what is or is not the truth? In other words, who draws the circles on your diagram? Apparently, Wikipedia answers that question with 'the editors', but people differ on the truth. NPV doesn't help -- reasonable people can reasonably disagree.
I suppose your disclaimer idea might work, but it would have to be on almost every article that isn't hard science or lists of things, and even then you have the Creationism / ID people editing articles. Not to bash them; on the contrary, their 'truth' is just as valid as anyone else's, provided it doesn't hurt anyone.
approach to fighting spam. Your idea will not work. Here is why it won't work. (One or more of the following may apply to your particular idea, and it may have other flaws which used to vary from state to state before a bad federal law was passed.)
( ) Spammers can easily use it to harvest email addresses (x) Mailing lists and other legitimate email uses would be affected (x) No one will be able to find the guy or collect the money ( ) It is defenseless against brute force attacks ( ) It will stop spam for two weeks and then we'll be stuck with it (x) Users of email will not put up with it ( ) Microsoft will not put up with it ( ) The police will not put up with it ( ) Requires too much cooperation from spammers ( ) Requires immediate total cooperation from everybody at once (x) Many email users cannot afford to lose business or alienate potential employers ( ) Spammers don't care about invalid addresses in their lists ( ) Anyone could anonymously destroy anyone else's career or business
Specifically, your plan fails to account for
( ) Laws expressly prohibiting it ( ) Lack of centrally controlling authority for email (x) Open relays in foreign countries ( ) Ease of searching tiny alphanumeric address space of all email addresses ( ) Asshats (x) Jurisdictional problems (x) Unpopularity of weird new taxes ( ) Public reluctance to accept weird new forms of money ( ) Huge existing software investment in SMTP ( ) Susceptibility of protocols other than SMTP to attack ( ) Willingness of users to install OS patches received by email ( ) Armies of worm riddled broadband-connected Windows boxes ( ) Eternal arms race involved in all filtering approaches (x) Extreme profitability of spam ( ) Joe jobs and/or identity theft ( ) Technically illiterate politicians ( ) Extreme stupidity on the part of people who do business with spammers ( ) Dishonesty on the part of spammers themselves ( ) Bandwidth costs that are unaffected by client filtering ( ) Outlook
and the following philosophical objections may also apply:
(x) Ideas similar to yours are easy to come up with, yet none have ever been shown practical ( ) Any scheme based on opt-out is unacceptable ( ) SMTP headers should not be the subject of legislation ( ) Blacklists suck ( ) Whitelists suck ( ) We should be able to talk about Viagra without being censored ( ) Countermeasures should not involve wire fraud or credit card fraud ( ) Countermeasures should not involve sabotage of public networks ( ) Countermeasures must work if phased in gradually (x) Sending email should be free ( ) Why should we have to trust you and your servers? ( ) Incompatiblity with open source or open source licenses ( ) Feel-good measures do nothing to solve the problem ( ) Temporary/one-time email addresses are cumbersome ( ) I don't want the government reading my email ( ) Killing them that way is not slow and painful enough
Furthermore, this is what I think about you:
(x) Sorry dude, but I don't think it would work. ( ) This is a stupid idea, and you're a stupid person for suggesting it. ( ) Nice try, assh0le! I'm going to find out where you live and burn your house down!
You've hit precisely on the problem: the idea/expression dichotomy. Software is functional and task-driven, and there are only so many fundamentally different ways of expressing, in a given language, a function to accomplish a specific task. Functional protections for "processes" belong to the patent system. Artistic works, in general, don't set out to be functional, so copyright captures their expressive qualities ("fixed in any tangible medium of expression").
From this point of view, software is a sort of bastard hybrid, having both functional and expressive qualities. Which is why you can get both patent and copyright protection for it. I see the GPL as an attempt by RMS to 'do the right thing' with respect to software copyright. I don't see the applicability to other forms of expression.
The issue is not as straightforward as you might think. First, one common bar to receiving a patent is prior art, which is generally covered in 35 U.S.C. 102. The big hammer for prior art made by someone else is 102(b), which says that you can't get a patent if your invention was "in public use" or "on sale" in the US more than a year prior to the filing date of your application. The "on sale" part is fairly easy to understand, but has a few quirks that I won't go into now. The "public use bar", as it's called, is what we're talking about here.
There is a famous Supreme Court case that says experimental use of an invention, even in the public, isn't a "public use". Such use is not a public use, within the meaning of the statute, so long as the inventor is engaged, in good faith, in testing its operation. City of Elizabeth v. American Nicholson Pavement Co., 97 U.S. 126, 134-35 (1877). This is the "experimental use defense" to the public use bar. You may think to yourself, that's all well and good, researchers are performing experiments, that must be experimental use, right?
Not so fast. Read the Federal Circuit's take on experimental use, Madey v. Duke University, 307 F.3d 1351 (Fed. Cir. 2002). The court ruled that use does not qualify for the experimental use defense when it is undertaken in the "guise of scientific inquiry" but has "definite, cognizable, and not insubstantial commercial purposes." 307 F.3d at 1362. Here's their reasoning:
For example, major research universities, such as Duke, often sanction and fund research projects with arguably no commercial application whatsoever. However, these projects unmistakably further the institution's legitimate business objectives, including educating and enlightening students and faculty participating in these projects. These projects also serve, for example, to increase the status of the institution and lure lucrative research grants, students and faculty. Id.
Regardless of whether a particular institution or entity is engaged in an endeavor for commercial gain, so long as the act is in furtherance of the alleged infringer's legitimate business and is not solely for amusement, to satisfy idle curiosity, or for strictly philosophical inquiry, the act does not qualify for the very narrow and strictly limited experimental use defense. Moreover, the profit or non-profit status of the user is not determinative. Id.
To sum up: even though a university may be conducting research with no perceived commercial benefit, there are indirect benefits. If the exception for research were broadened, schools would receive a windfall. So would anyone else claiming "I'm not quite done with my invention yet, but isn't it pretty." (Think "Google whatever -- still in beta!") There's an argument to be made that this is OK, but that's a matter of opinion and public policy.
The 'exclusive right' serves a purpose, and one can easily argue that as soon as patents no longer serve that purpose, the provision you quoted no longer applies.
I agree entirely. The question is going to be, who decides that patents don't further the art? As long as a reasonable person could see it, or until a constitutional amendment, the clause will retain full force. I'm not advocating this position, I'm simply being practical.
I am well aware that some of the founding fathers thought patents were a public embarrassment. My personal hero, Thomas Jefferson, was among them. He knew that there is no natural right to control ideas. He said as much in his letter to Isaac McPherson, right after the famous candle speech. I also know that when interpreting a legal document, while it is important to take into account the circumstances of its creation, it is just as important, if not moreso, to look at the actual words used. The literal words of the constitution convey an absolute property right, with no wiggle room. Compromise or no, that's what it says. Again, I'm not advocating this position, I'm simply stating a fact. When I have to deal with patents in the US, regardless of my personal views on the efficacy of the patent system writ large, this is the law I have to obey.
How can someone have a patent on something like "wireless e-mail"?
Because:
A patent may not be obtained . . . if the differences between the subject matter sought to be patented and the prior art are such that the subject matter as a whole would have been obvious at the time the invention was made to a person having ordinary skill in the art to which said subject matter pertains. 35 U.S.C. 103(a) (emphasis added).
Wireless + email sounds obvious, but don't forget hindsight bias: what seems obvious now had to be figured out by someone who didn't already know about it. For hundreds of years, people didn't know about the number zero, or thought it was nonsense. Moving email to a wireless format has problems not encountered in wired communiations, such as reduced bandwidth. There are different optimizations to be made, etc. etc.
If NTP sat on this submarine patent just waiting for people to start using their technology without sending out cease and desist orders then their patent should be invalidated.
First off, patents don't get invalidated simply because they're submariners. Second, to quote directly from TFA:
By 2001, [RIM] was in a headlong rush to make its BlackBerry a must-have accessory for the executive on the go, even giving away thousands free, including to members of the U.S. Congress.
More than a year earlier, Mr. Campana and Mr. Stout had sent what amounted to a form letter, warning several companies -- RIM among them -- that they were infringing on wireless e-mail patents.
Please don't make claims that are directly counter to what the article says, unless you have some proof that the article is wrong.
Personally I feel companies that buy and sell patents as if they're some kind of property are a disgrace to everything the patent and trademark system was founded to uphold.
That's your opinion, which is fine. To provide some perspective, it's not what the Founding Fathers thought. They explicitly granted a property right in patents and copyrights, in no less of an authority than the Constitution of the United States. To quote:
"The Congress shall have power . . . [t]o promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries . . .." U.S. Const. Art. I sec. 8 (emphasis added).
If you don't like it, petition your Senators and Representative for a constitutional amendment, but I wouldn't hold my breath.
Don't be a patent judge. That's a lot of what they do, interpret ('construe') patent claims by looking at what their words mean. For example, read Part II(B) of Phillips v. AWH, 415 F.3d 1303 (Fed. Cir. 2005).
You don't have a constitutional right to travel to Asia, only within the area that the constitution governs (the United States and its protectorates). Any other country could unilaterally decide to not accept US passports. Flights between countries are governed by international law, which I don't know that much about. I do know, however, that the US can prevent flights to Cuba, and vice versa. But that isn't a right to travel domestically issue.
As for not getting on a plane without carry-ons, as I said before, that's an issue of money. Let me pose you this hypothetical: suppose all airlines unanimously decided (or were required by law) to put all bags below, regardless of size or weight. They could, however, give you reading materials once you got on board, headsets for in-flight music, airphones to make calls, and back-of-the-seat video games (all existing technologies). Would you still refuse to fly? Think hard before answering.
what particular modes of travel are constitutionally protected?
None, AFAIK, but that's not the point. You don't have the ability (yet) to ride a rocket ship, or a teleporter, or other device from NY to LA. You still have the ability to go from NY to LA. The point is that travel itself isn't prevented. As long as the government doesn't say "You live in New York? Then you can't go to California", there's no problem.
The big issue that's going unspoken is, 'where do you draw the line'. The line is at the point where the government effectively prevents you from travelling. If you can't go by plane, you can still go by train (to big cities, anyway). If you can't go by train, you can go by car. If you can't go by car, you probably can't go at all (horses and walking aren't allowed on highways, and it's not reasonable for you to hike through the outback). That's where the violation probably lives, although hopefully we never get to see that scenario litigated in court.
The easiest way to put this in perspective is to remember that only 150 years ago, getting to California from New York was damned difficult, but people weren't complaining about the government preventing their right to travel. They knew that with enough effort (covered wagons) and incentive (piles of gold), they could get there. The issue today is that the amount of effort has dropped dramatically, and so have the incentives. People have just gotten lazy and unmotivated. So why is taking away cars probably the line, when they didn't exist 150 years ago? Because society's view of reasonableness has changed (it's no longer reasonable to require you to hike through the outback). At least, that's my take.
You are, of course, correct. The government could impose ID checks on just about any of those. They don't, because generally speaking, it's more expensive to enforce, and you don't get the security benefit. And as long as you can travel, you're not in constitutional waters. Granted, Hawaii might be tough by boat, but Alaska is doable on land.
Personally, I think carding on airplanes is stupid. It doesn't accomplish anything, other than to correctly identify honest people who are no threat, and incorrectly identify dishonest people who want to cause trouble. If you want safe airplanes, the solution is simple: no carry-on luggage. Only baby bottles, pill bottles, and the rare oxygen tank. Books, newspapers, and pencil/paper provided on board. Make everyone turn out their pockets, and x-ray for hidden weapons. With that kind of security, you're pretty much 99.9999% safe. Maybe one in a million will get through. If you want 100% security, make everyone strip naked. Of course, that ain't gonna happen, but the no carry-on rule comes pretty close.
The reason they don't do it now is obvious: money. People wouldn't fly if they had to go through baggage check for quick flights. Which, to me, is whining over such a small price to pay for that kind of security. People would board and deplane much faster if they didn't have to rummage through the overhead bins, and there would be more interior space on the planes. And the kicker is, there are no intrusive searches or seizures. No 'papers please' problems.
The right to travel involves a number of constitutional issues:
The 1st Amendment
Physical travel and the First Amendment are inextricably intertwined. If you can't travel, then how can you exercise your right to Assemble? You can't Associate either, because you won't be able to get anywhere. Your right to Free Speech is also affected. You can say what you want, just not at that conference you wanted to attend but couldn't because you weren't allowed to get on a plane.
This is mostly right. Travel and assembly are related. Travel and free association are related. The last argument, however, is totally specious. No one told Gilmore he couldn't go to Maryland, they only said he couldn't do it (1) by airplane (2) without showing ID. This is not unreasonable given the current so-called state of war, and in any event it's certainly not unconstitutional. Denial of a particular mode of travel is not the same as denial of travel. This is substantially what TFA said.
The 4th Amendment
Refusing a government "request" for ID triggers a severe penalty, such as loss of free movement. And lest we forget, having to show your ID is a search without a warrant.
This one is trickier. The Fourth Amendment only applies to government actors. I can decide to not let you into my birthday party until you show me ID. That's fine, and it's not unconstitutional, because I'm not the government. The first answer to Gilmore's statement is that airlines are private companies, hence not government actors. However, there's an agency argument to be made, that the airlines are acting on behalf of the government, when they comply with federal regulations. Assuming the airlines are government actors, the Fourth Amendment applies only to unreasonable searches and seizures. Reasonability of the search itself turns on whether there is a socially reasonable, legitimate, or justifiable expectation of privacy. Read United States v. Knotts. Does society at large think it unreasonable, illegitimate, or unjustifiable to have to show ID to board airplanes? The very fact that Gilmore's case is news seems to indicate the answer is 'no'.
In this court case, the core issue of our right to travel has been obscured by other side issues, secret law being the most outrageous of them.
The core issue that the right to travel isn't at stake here has been obscured by rhetoric. Travel by airplane isn't a right, it's a convenience, and the constitution doesn't deal in conveniences.
Secret Law
There is no published statute or regulation requiring traveler identification. The airlines and the federal government insist that federal law requires passengers to show identification, yet can point to no published source of that requirement.
This is right on the money. Secret law is the purview of tyrants and dictators. If the federal government wants to regulate the airline industry by passing a law requiring ID checks, it is entirely within their power to do so.
IMHO: Judges are smart, and they can see through rhetoric. This isn't an issue of freedom to travel, it's an issue of secret regulations and star chambers. The Bush administration will be remembered for two things: the so-called 'war on terror', and the vast and secret power grabs by the executive branch in order to fight that war. Maybe if Gilmore had focused his primary attack on the secret law angle, he might have had better success. Instead, he treated it as a "side issue".
'Packet radio' is not among the NTP patent's 89 claims. The patent, No. 5,436,960, claims an email system using packet radio, among many other things.
For a better understanding of prior art in patents, please read Part II of the Patent Act, United States Code Title 35. The big thing to remember is that for the purposes of prior art, the invention is treated on a claim-by-claim basis. See 35 USC 111(a), and 35 USC 112, para. 2. Prior art can invalidate a patent because the invention isn't new (35 USC 102), or because the invention may be new, but is obvious "to a person having ordinary skill in the art" (35 USC 103).
Before everyone starts badmouthing the patent system and saying how patent lawyers suck (too late), I betcha 98% of software applications have mistakes in them.
From the attention-to-detail department, indeed. That's all it takes to fix the problem, right?
since this isn't a hostile takeover, clearly the folks in charge at Pixar, Steve Jobs included, believe that this will be as good for Pixar as it will be for Disney
Never attribute to good intentions that which can be adequately explained by a shitload of zeroes. If you have actual, concrete evidence of his good intent, please share.
It would be bad enough spying on Americans if we really were in a state of emergency. I thought the Alert Level was supposed to be at Red before all of our constitutional rights were violated... I guess our Imperious Leader jumped the gun a little bit.
It would also be somewhat easy for Bell South to not throttle bandwidth on what Google is typically used for (searches) while throttling Google's other features that Bell South might want to compete with.
Slashdot Mirror
Guess what -- that's already public information. Ever buy groceries? Then you've walked through a public place, and people can watch you. Even bad people. Ever met someone at a Starbucks? Had a lunch meeting at a restaurant? Ever gone to the movies with friends? If someone wants to find out who you're meeting and when, they don't need a warrant.
The solution, it seems, is that he proceeds from different assumptions and arrives at a different result. If time cannot change, by definition, then of course it must be constant. That's not what Einstein, Lorentz, and any number of other Really Smart Guys came up with, though. I'd still like to see his definition of 'time'.
I would also like to see his calculations on how a clock gets slowed down by energy conservation. 'Likely due to', 'huge number', and 'locally' don't really do it for me -- I want precise definitions and rigorous calculations before I'll throw out 100 years of science.
Time is no more an arbitrary abstraction than any other metric quantity. Have you ever seen a 'Volt'? Of course not, but that doesn't mean it's arbitrary or abstract. I've never seen a 'second', but I've experienced it, in the same way I've experienced a few kV of electricity. You are free to shun whatever assertions you like. I suppose we can agree to disagree.
Maybe they already are visiting us, and neither you nor I have yet got the memo?
All well and good, except that we've already proved in practice that time has a different rate of passage for different people. Quote: "For GPS satellites, General Relativity predicts that the atomic clocks at GPS orbital altitudes will tick faster by about 45,900 ns/day because they are in a weaker gravitational field than atomic clocks on Earth's surface. Special Relativity predicts that atomic clocks moving at GPS orbital speeds will tick slower by about 7,200 ns/day than stationary ground clocks."
The difference is about 38,000 ns/day. Since the speed of light is about one foot per ns, if relativity were wrong (because time passed at the same rate for everyone), GPS would accumulate an error of about 7 miles per day. Such an error would be blindingly obvious to everyone using the system, and wouldn't require any fancy equipment to measure.
I'm interested to hear Mr Savain give an alternate explanation for how GPS works.
I suppose your disclaimer idea might work, but it would have to be on almost every article that isn't hard science or lists of things, and even then you have the Creationism / ID people editing articles. Not to bash them; on the contrary, their 'truth' is just as valid as anyone else's, provided it doesn't hurt anyone.
Let's find out:
-----
Your post advocates a
( ) technical ( ) legislative (x) market-based ( ) vigilante
approach to fighting spam. Your idea will not work. Here is why it won't work. (One or more of the following may apply to your particular idea, and it may have other flaws which used to vary from state to state before a bad federal law was passed.)
( ) Spammers can easily use it to harvest email addresses
(x) Mailing lists and other legitimate email uses would be affected
(x) No one will be able to find the guy or collect the money
( ) It is defenseless against brute force attacks
( ) It will stop spam for two weeks and then we'll be stuck with it
(x) Users of email will not put up with it
( ) Microsoft will not put up with it
( ) The police will not put up with it
( ) Requires too much cooperation from spammers
( ) Requires immediate total cooperation from everybody at once
(x) Many email users cannot afford to lose business or alienate potential employers
( ) Spammers don't care about invalid addresses in their lists
( ) Anyone could anonymously destroy anyone else's career or business
Specifically, your plan fails to account for
( ) Laws expressly prohibiting it
( ) Lack of centrally controlling authority for email
(x) Open relays in foreign countries
( ) Ease of searching tiny alphanumeric address space of all email addresses
( ) Asshats
(x) Jurisdictional problems
(x) Unpopularity of weird new taxes
( ) Public reluctance to accept weird new forms of money
( ) Huge existing software investment in SMTP
( ) Susceptibility of protocols other than SMTP to attack
( ) Willingness of users to install OS patches received by email
( ) Armies of worm riddled broadband-connected Windows boxes
( ) Eternal arms race involved in all filtering approaches
(x) Extreme profitability of spam
( ) Joe jobs and/or identity theft
( ) Technically illiterate politicians
( ) Extreme stupidity on the part of people who do business with spammers
( ) Dishonesty on the part of spammers themselves
( ) Bandwidth costs that are unaffected by client filtering
( ) Outlook
and the following philosophical objections may also apply:
(x) Ideas similar to yours are easy to come up with, yet none have ever
been shown practical
( ) Any scheme based on opt-out is unacceptable
( ) SMTP headers should not be the subject of legislation
( ) Blacklists suck
( ) Whitelists suck
( ) We should be able to talk about Viagra without being censored
( ) Countermeasures should not involve wire fraud or credit card fraud
( ) Countermeasures should not involve sabotage of public networks
( ) Countermeasures must work if phased in gradually
(x) Sending email should be free
( ) Why should we have to trust you and your servers?
( ) Incompatiblity with open source or open source licenses
( ) Feel-good measures do nothing to solve the problem
( ) Temporary/one-time email addresses are cumbersome
( ) I don't want the government reading my email
( ) Killing them that way is not slow and painful enough
Furthermore, this is what I think about you:
(x) Sorry dude, but I don't think it would work.
( ) This is a stupid idea, and you're a stupid person for suggesting it.
( ) Nice try, assh0le! I'm going to find out where you live and burn your
house down!
From this point of view, software is a sort of bastard hybrid, having both functional and expressive qualities. Which is why you can get both patent and copyright protection for it. I see the GPL as an attempt by RMS to 'do the right thing' with respect to software copyright. I don't see the applicability to other forms of expression.
Two words: professional courtesy.
The issue is not as straightforward as you might think. First, one common bar to receiving a patent is prior art, which is generally covered in 35 U.S.C. 102. The big hammer for prior art made by someone else is 102(b), which says that you can't get a patent if your invention was "in public use" or "on sale" in the US more than a year prior to the filing date of your application. The "on sale" part is fairly easy to understand, but has a few quirks that I won't go into now. The "public use bar", as it's called, is what we're talking about here.
There is a famous Supreme Court case that says experimental use of an invention, even in the public, isn't a "public use". Such use is not a public use, within the meaning of the statute, so long as the inventor is engaged, in good faith, in testing its operation. City of Elizabeth v. American Nicholson Pavement Co., 97 U.S. 126, 134-35 (1877). This is the "experimental use defense" to the public use bar. You may think to yourself, that's all well and good, researchers are performing experiments, that must be experimental use, right?
Not so fast. Read the Federal Circuit's take on experimental use, Madey v. Duke University, 307 F.3d 1351 (Fed. Cir. 2002). The court ruled that use does not qualify for the experimental use defense when it is undertaken in the "guise of scientific inquiry" but has "definite, cognizable, and not insubstantial commercial purposes." 307 F.3d at 1362. Here's their reasoning:
Regardless of whether a particular institution or entity is engaged in an endeavor for commercial gain, so long as the act is in furtherance of the alleged infringer's legitimate business and is not solely for amusement, to satisfy idle curiosity, or for strictly philosophical inquiry, the act does not qualify for the very narrow and strictly limited experimental use defense. Moreover, the profit or non-profit status of the user is not determinative. Id.To sum up: even though a university may be conducting research with no perceived commercial benefit, there are indirect benefits. If the exception for research were broadened, schools would receive a windfall. So would anyone else claiming "I'm not quite done with my invention yet, but isn't it pretty." (Think "Google whatever -- still in beta!") There's an argument to be made that this is OK, but that's a matter of opinion and public policy.
I agree entirely. The question is going to be, who decides that patents don't further the art? As long as a reasonable person could see it, or until a constitutional amendment, the clause will retain full force. I'm not advocating this position, I'm simply being practical.
I am well aware that some of the founding fathers thought patents were a public embarrassment. My personal hero, Thomas Jefferson, was among them. He knew that there is no natural right to control ideas. He said as much in his letter to Isaac McPherson, right after the famous candle speech. I also know that when interpreting a legal document, while it is important to take into account the circumstances of its creation, it is just as important, if not moreso, to look at the actual words used. The literal words of the constitution convey an absolute property right, with no wiggle room. Compromise or no, that's what it says. Again, I'm not advocating this position, I'm simply stating a fact. When I have to deal with patents in the US, regardless of my personal views on the efficacy of the patent system writ large, this is the law I have to obey.
It's almost impossible to stop a dedicated assassin who is willing to trade his life for yours.
Because:
Wireless + email sounds obvious, but don't forget hindsight bias: what seems obvious now had to be figured out by someone who didn't already know about it. For hundreds of years, people didn't know about the number zero, or thought it was nonsense. Moving email to a wireless format has problems not encountered in wired communiations, such as reduced bandwidth. There are different optimizations to be made, etc. etc.If NTP sat on this submarine patent just waiting for people to start using their technology without sending out cease and desist orders then their patent should be invalidated.
First off, patents don't get invalidated simply because they're submariners. Second, to quote directly from TFA:
Please don't make claims that are directly counter to what the article says, unless you have some proof that the article is wrong.Personally I feel companies that buy and sell patents as if they're some kind of property are a disgrace to everything the patent and trademark system was founded to uphold.
That's your opinion, which is fine. To provide some perspective, it's not what the Founding Fathers thought. They explicitly granted a property right in patents and copyrights, in no less of an authority than the Constitution of the United States. To quote:
If you don't like it, petition your Senators and Representative for a constitutional amendment, but I wouldn't hold my breath.Don't be a patent judge. That's a lot of what they do, interpret ('construe') patent claims by looking at what their words mean. For example, read Part II(B) of Phillips v. AWH, 415 F.3d 1303 (Fed. Cir. 2005).
Close runners-up would have to be "Smash the Taco: Signal 11's Revenge", and the sequel, "Attack of the GNAA".
As for not getting on a plane without carry-ons, as I said before, that's an issue of money. Let me pose you this hypothetical: suppose all airlines unanimously decided (or were required by law) to put all bags below, regardless of size or weight. They could, however, give you reading materials once you got on board, headsets for in-flight music, airphones to make calls, and back-of-the-seat video games (all existing technologies). Would you still refuse to fly? Think hard before answering.
None, AFAIK, but that's not the point. You don't have the ability (yet) to ride a rocket ship, or a teleporter, or other device from NY to LA. You still have the ability to go from NY to LA. The point is that travel itself isn't prevented. As long as the government doesn't say "You live in New York? Then you can't go to California", there's no problem.
The big issue that's going unspoken is, 'where do you draw the line'. The line is at the point where the government effectively prevents you from travelling. If you can't go by plane, you can still go by train (to big cities, anyway). If you can't go by train, you can go by car. If you can't go by car, you probably can't go at all (horses and walking aren't allowed on highways, and it's not reasonable for you to hike through the outback). That's where the violation probably lives, although hopefully we never get to see that scenario litigated in court.
The easiest way to put this in perspective is to remember that only 150 years ago, getting to California from New York was damned difficult, but people weren't complaining about the government preventing their right to travel. They knew that with enough effort (covered wagons) and incentive (piles of gold), they could get there. The issue today is that the amount of effort has dropped dramatically, and so have the incentives. People have just gotten lazy and unmotivated. So why is taking away cars probably the line, when they didn't exist 150 years ago? Because society's view of reasonableness has changed (it's no longer reasonable to require you to hike through the outback). At least, that's my take.
Personally, I think carding on airplanes is stupid. It doesn't accomplish anything, other than to correctly identify honest people who are no threat, and incorrectly identify dishonest people who want to cause trouble. If you want safe airplanes, the solution is simple: no carry-on luggage. Only baby bottles, pill bottles, and the rare oxygen tank. Books, newspapers, and pencil/paper provided on board. Make everyone turn out their pockets, and x-ray for hidden weapons. With that kind of security, you're pretty much 99.9999% safe. Maybe one in a million will get through. If you want 100% security, make everyone strip naked. Of course, that ain't gonna happen, but the no carry-on rule comes pretty close.
The reason they don't do it now is obvious: money. People wouldn't fly if they had to go through baggage check for quick flights. Which, to me, is whining over such a small price to pay for that kind of security. People would board and deplane much faster if they didn't have to rummage through the overhead bins, and there would be more interior space on the planes. And the kicker is, there are no intrusive searches or seizures. No 'papers please' problems.
From the Gilmore website:
This is mostly right. Travel and assembly are related. Travel and free association are related. The last argument, however, is totally specious. No one told Gilmore he couldn't go to Maryland, they only said he couldn't do it (1) by airplane (2) without showing ID. This is not unreasonable given the current so-called state of war, and in any event it's certainly not unconstitutional. Denial of a particular mode of travel is not the same as denial of travel. This is substantially what TFA said. This one is trickier. The Fourth Amendment only applies to government actors. I can decide to not let you into my birthday party until you show me ID. That's fine, and it's not unconstitutional, because I'm not the government. The first answer to Gilmore's statement is that airlines are private companies, hence not government actors. However, there's an agency argument to be made, that the airlines are acting on behalf of the government, when they comply with federal regulations. Assuming the airlines are government actors, the Fourth Amendment applies only to unreasonable searches and seizures. Reasonability of the search itself turns on whether there is a socially reasonable, legitimate, or justifiable expectation of privacy. Read United States v. Knotts . Does society at large think it unreasonable, illegitimate, or unjustifiable to have to show ID to board airplanes? The very fact that Gilmore's case is news seems to indicate the answer is 'no'. The core issue that the right to travel isn't at stake here has been obscured by rhetoric. Travel by airplane isn't a right, it's a convenience, and the constitution doesn't deal in conveniences. This is right on the money. Secret law is the purview of tyrants and dictators. If the federal government wants to regulate the airline industry by passing a law requiring ID checks, it is entirely within their power to do so.IMHO: Judges are smart, and they can see through rhetoric. This isn't an issue of freedom to travel, it's an issue of secret regulations and star chambers. The Bush administration will be remembered for two things: the so-called 'war on terror', and the vast and secret power grabs by the executive branch in order to fight that war. Maybe if Gilmore had focused his primary attack on the secret law angle, he might have had better success. Instead, he treated it as a "side issue".
For a better understanding of prior art in patents, please read Part II of the Patent Act, United States Code Title 35. The big thing to remember is that for the purposes of prior art, the invention is treated on a claim-by-claim basis. See 35 USC 111(a), and 35 USC 112, para. 2. Prior art can invalidate a patent because the invention isn't new (35 USC 102), or because the invention may be new, but is obvious "to a person having ordinary skill in the art" (35 USC 103).
From the attention-to-detail department, indeed. That's all it takes to fix the problem, right?
Never attribute to good intentions that which can be adequately explained by a shitload of zeroes. If you have actual, concrete evidence of his good intent, please share.
It would be bad enough spying on Americans if we really were in a state of emergency. I thought the Alert Level was supposed to be at Red before all of our constitutional rights were violated... I guess our Imperious Leader jumped the gun a little bit.
You might want to read this.
which are they going to develop first, their Army or their Police Robots?