I think he's talking about stuff like RedHat Advanced Server. See, this has been a pro-Windows argument that floated around Usenet for years. And it's very easy to knock down:
The price of commercial Linux is that "high" is because 1) the Linux distro actually includes applications and services that Windows does not, and 2) it includes support, unlike Microsoft's licensing.
Next time you're buying a $2000 SQL server license, ask them if you can get 1) a CD, 2) a manual, and 3) ask how many hours of phone support are included. Of course, the answers will be "no", "no", and "zero".
Dunno how your firewall works, but mine needs an actual IP address before any rules can be applied. How about an interface captive/release flag, e.g. the interface remains captive until the rules are loaded (only speaks to DHCP broadcasts), then it is released, allowing traffic through whatever ports the rules allow.
Does this code contain the infamous "backdoor" account ever present on certain Cisco devices? It should would be worth a criminal's time to get a hold of that. Think of all the other information he could steal once he knew that.
Don't know about illegal (I don't live in the UK), but unethical? Sure. But hey, If eBay isn't going to provide tools that their customers can use to tell friend from foe (as opposed to middlemen that get big fees in exchange for trusted status), things will degenerate into Internet-vigilante justice.
Right, so if Jeff is liable for tax fraud, the scammer is also, since he came right out and asked the seller to falsify the declarations on the forms in order to cheat the gov't out of tax revenue.
Obviously inspired by Hollywood. So what if they decide to use the frequency that the Secret Service uses to communicate? I guess we better block that too. What if they broadcast a codeword on a talk radio show, and a bomb-laden terrorist is listening on a portable AM radio. Better block that band too. So, to cover all the possible frequencies, it'd have to be one heck of a powerful broadband jammer. I guess that's going to interfere with adjacent police and rescue frequencies because of intermod.
Look folks, Al Qaeda didn't use cellphone-triggered remote bombs, tunnels under schools, IRC, or even orbiting brain-lasers, or whatever stupid possibility has been dreamed of by the Department of Paranoia. They used box-cutters. I'm fairly certain that whatever choice they make next is going to be a surprise. It's not going to be something that the US Gov't expects, so let's stop trying to list the millions of possible ways and monitor the thousands of possible targets.
I really wish the hype and paranoia would stop. I used to listen to ("conservative") radio host Monica Crowley, until one night she bleated like a sheep stuck in a fence for an hour about how "we should do everything possible" in regard to airport security. I mean, come on Monica, that's something a 7th grader would say. There's a balance between cost and safety, and nobody in her right mind would suggest spending an unlimited amount of public funds just to make sure we can catch someone who has a box-cutter, because there's a one in a billion chance he might want to also fly an airliner into a building.
Likewise we have El Rushbo, trumpeting that the fact we haven't had an Al Qaeda attack on US soil for one and a half years is proof positive that Bush's strategy is working. As much as I'd like to believe that, the fact is that it costs Al Qaeda money and takes lots of time to plan an act on US soil. The second WTC attack happened almost 8 years after the first. The attacks aren't likely going to stop as long as we're involved in the Mid-East (as long as we back Israel and pull the strings for the Saudi monarchy).
So once again, it's not a choice with absolutes. Either we continue our current policy and some of us get killed every ten years or so, or we trade some other lives for our own, and watch the slaughter of the Jews, the Kurds, or some other religious minority that is sufficiently westernized to perhaps believe in freedom, interest on money, rights for women, or perhaps not stoning people to death for breaking society's rules. Or, we pick something inbetween, and successive presidents jump to either side of the fence (like the case now). One thing I can be sure of is that some US citizens are going to have a shot at stopping the next attack, just like the last one. So maybe this time we won't behave like subservient little hoplophobic sheep, and someone will fight back with deadly force to spare the lives of others.
BTW, Blender 3D uses translucent windows, so add that to the prior art list, should anyone attempt to enforce a patent on that visual design (not a concept, therefore not patentable IMHO).
It's not a patent on translucent windows, it's a patent for using graduated levels of translucency instead of active/inactive window coloring schemes. From what I've read, it appears that the longer you go without performing actions in the window, the more translucent it becomes, to the point where you can "click through" it and input into whatever object is underneath.
This particular interface feature would be incredibly annoying and confusing to people with less than perfect eyesight, so I hope that Apple defends its patent and that it never appears outside of Apple's software.
If it was simply an attempt to patent translucent windows, it would be easy to knock down. Some games use translucent pop-ups in their interfaces via D3D / OpenGL.
What's a "quicktime"? I have a movie player than handles nearly every digital format known to man. Why can't I just download it and watch it? I don't have a "registry" or a "quicktime", just a damn good video player.
Are we reading the same book? It definitely preaches about being good, help the sick and your fellow man, etc. The only part you need faith in is the Resurrection.
I've got news for ya, you can do the same thing on your local network with a regular lan card. You can also make a much less expensive jammer with an old microwave, or better yet, you can make a broad band (not cable internet) jammer with a file, some wires and a battery. It's being broadcast on public airspace, denial of service is trivially accomplished.
Methinks the submitter doesn't speak with educators and politicians all that often. It's simply absurd to suggest that your typical educator or politician blindly believes that computers are the solution to America's education woes.
No, but most don't even fully understand the potenial of the technology themselves, or even have the ability to utilitize it efficiently for administrative tasks. That doesn't put them in the best position to judge.
There is also the question of ideas coming down from administration, and also the requirements placed on funds by other institutions that offer grants. Since this is very close to home, I'm going to try very hard to avoid rambling on, but offer some of my observations:
State and local governments originally based goals on the ratio of students to computers. Infrastructure, training, maintenance cost (including license fees), were separate items funded at later times.
Our state government is currently putting on the pressure to integrate technology proficiency into all curricula. Sorry, that just takes away time to teach the basics. A computer is a frivolous accessory in most subjects, especially in a school system like mine, where budget constraints force us to focus on general studies.
If there isn't enough work that can only be done on the computer to occupy students during their time in front of the computer, it is hurting more than it's helping. The computer is a distraction. You might as well put game consoles in every classroom.
The funding-directly-to-student approach is just plain stupid. Every penny spent inside a district directly or indirectly effects students. Dumping truckloads of cash into personal PDAs or laptops for students isn't the answer. Administrative software, use of computers for analyzing student scores, or web-based services to keep parents informed are all things a student will never touch, but still have tremendous consequence for the him/her.
A higher percentage (compared to administrative use) of equipment ends up broken in the hands of students. For a small school system like my employer's, it's extremely painful financially.
Educational software is terrible on the whole. Most of it is outdated, never updated, or not multi-user, as well as buggy. Unless it's a vocational ed setting, where the job absolutely requires the use of specific applications on computers, the software isn't helping students learn.
Computers with the most popular operating system on earth are expensive to maintain, particularly in a public-access-terminal environment where the users have nothing to do but tinker 75% of the time.
Most of the teachers just don't understand the technology. I don't mean this in a bad way. Their profession revolves around child development and learning, not computer science.
I'm not so sure I agree with the book's author in regard to networks. Having student home directories with file permissions makes student work portable, and also protects it from sabotage and plagiarism.
I wholeheartedly disagree that there are no clear answers. If mounds of computer equipment is added to classrooms, and the student scores aren't improving or are going down, it wasn't money well spent.
Like another poster said, you should be able to determine something from the timestamps on the files.
If the data's missing, or even more recently accessed than when he last had the machine, he could also go after the Justice Department for destroying evidence.
I don't see how time has anything to do with it. If he had a browser hijack, or a virus that installs malware, about all the dates would tell the court is how long the machine was compromised. The detection of any one of those "downloader backdoor" viruses or any type of adult-oriented malware programs should seriously cast in doubt any claims made by the prosecution.
On the other hand, since this never went to court, there isn't any "public" record of what was discovered. I don't know how we would know the full story here at all. I just see a lot of speculation. Considering how harshly dealt his punishment was, I'd venture to guess that it involved minors, and he may have be collecting and trading illegal material. But again, I'm only speculating.
I'm not cheering about this. I feel sorry for these people. Everyone at SCO is a pawn. But these pawns aren't being well compensated like some of the other pawns. It's really sad. The layoffs should have started form the top down, but who fires the board of directors?
Because the "suchlike" is simply filesystem compatibility, similar to what NFS provides between different 'nix platforms.
Not to mention the fact that Samba is the only file/printer server software for Linux. I'm sorry, NFS is way to primitive to count; there is no comparison with Samba.
This is what happens when you ask ordinary citizens to help find terrorists, but give them no further information. Why would the underground tunnel system even be a security issue? The 9/11 terrorists hid in plain sight, with fake IDs, and lived among us. Why would they even bother trying to hide in old tunnel system? That seems to me like it would attract more attention that just living an apparently normal life in a rent somewhere.
Interesting, I see a lot of posts detailing collusion between RAM chip makers. Do our anti-trust laws apply to companies overseas? If so, how come we haven't gone after DeBeers or Saudi Arabia's monarchy yet? Both of those represent the heads of the worst, most abusive cartels imaginable.
Who'd you sell it to? Dude will be busted. Someone walks up to you in an alley and say "wassup cuz you wanna buy a ds3 innernet?" it raises eyebrows.
Are you kidding me? That DS3 card is probably worth more than its weight in cocaine. I would buy it in a heartbeat. Think of the new crime underworld that will be created when these guys figure it out. Think of how tiny and valuable these electronic items are. I could probably pay the bills for a year off a sandwich bag of Opterons.
I say: Be on the lookout for pawn shops with really fast Internet connections.
It's very unlikely that someone will find a way to beat public key and AES encryption.
Won't have to. Bypassing works just fine since the devices can't be physically secured.
But, this hardware technology aims to eliminate those weak points. They will keep the data encrypted everywhere in software, only decrypting it in the chip that does the output.
Two problems with this scenario. First of all, these chips are going to have to be produced in mass quantity. Heaven forbid they make a mistake, or there turns out to be a vulnerability. This is also the most expensive option. For this reason, I seriously doubt that particular method will fly with manufacturers. It also could turn out to be a consumer disaster, like DiVX discs, so they'd be left holding the ball, with millions of these worthless chips stockpiled. No, I'd say the first approach is going to be a computing device that'll be more general in nature, probably with firmware that can be updated, and a separate chip for video processing and amplification. Second, since these devices are going to be everywhere, many manufacturers are going to have their hands on the specs. That information will make its way out in the open.
These utterly obvious patents, like "donations on the web" should be removed, though.
That's the problem I have with it. I can't think of a way to legally define a patent at "utterly obvious". But there are indeed examples a-plenty where people or companies that aren't even "inventors" arrive at the same conclusion. Is there a way to prove that subsequent inventors haven't directly copied an idea from an existing patent-holder? Is that even possible? Maybe, but the system doesn't take this into account the same way it recognizes prior art.
Why doesn't the system include checks for "Obvious Conclusion"? Do you think the website designer for Red Cross dug through the Patent Office's publications to come up with ideas for the website? No, I seriously doubt it. Why? Because using a website to facilitate money transactions is an obvious use of the technology. That whole class of patents should be made invalid. I don't see what the conceptual difference is between using a bank's website to move money between or out of your accounts, purchasing something for your own use, or donating to your charity of choice.
I don't think abolishing patents is the answer, and that will probably do more harm than good in the long run. But this is something that needs fixing. The USPTO is going to have to look long and hard at certain types of patents, because basically what they're facilitating are legal booby traps: Take an existing, popular concept and tack on some new qualifier. At some point, it's guaranteed that someone will come along and stumble onto the concept. In effect, because the patented ideas are just "obvious_concept+1", the Patent Office is allowing "obvious_concept" to be patented, and re-patented, and re-patented. It's bad for all parties involved, since each new party which is allowed to re-patent the same concept is devalue-ing everyone else's related patents, existing patent holders are allowed to do something that is only going to cause them legal trouble later on, the cost of doing business rises sharply for businesses that just stumbled onto the obvious concept, and there is a great cost to the taxpayers as this all plays out in court (in both dollar amounts and productive work in the court system).
At some point (if it hasn't happened already), folks are going to realize that there's money to be made from purposely adding a flourish to an obvious concept that is certain to be copied, because they *know* that it'll get them a free ride in court, or at least get them a settlement. Even if they get money from 1 out of 5 cases (assuming the victim has deep pockets), it'll be profitable to defraud the system. With this potential for abuse in mind, I protest that further patents based on online shopping or online money transactions are invalid. There should be no patentable material there; Not if you click once instead of twice, not if the recipient is a charity, not if the transaction is linked to some other action, not if you buy widgets instead of sprockets, not if you do your transaction on a Sunday in your underwear.
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Clarification: The price I quoted was Academic pricing, per CPU, unlimited connections.
I think he's talking about stuff like RedHat Advanced Server. See, this has been a pro-Windows argument that floated around Usenet for years. And it's very easy to knock down:
The price of commercial Linux is that "high" is because 1) the Linux distro actually includes applications and services that Windows does not, and 2) it includes support, unlike Microsoft's licensing.
Next time you're buying a $2000 SQL server license, ask them if you can get 1) a CD, 2) a manual, and 3) ask how many hours of phone support are included. Of course, the answers will be "no", "no", and "zero".
Absolutely. They're more like the foaming-mouthed radicals of the wrong.
Dunno how your firewall works, but mine needs an actual IP address before any rules can be applied. How about an interface captive/release flag, e.g. the interface remains captive until the rules are loaded (only speaks to DHCP broadcasts), then it is released, allowing traffic through whatever ports the rules allow.
Does this code contain the infamous "backdoor" account ever present on certain Cisco devices? It should would be worth a criminal's time to get a hold of that. Think of all the other information he could steal once he knew that.
Don't know about illegal (I don't live in the UK), but unethical? Sure. But hey, If eBay isn't going to provide tools that their customers can use to tell friend from foe (as opposed to middlemen that get big fees in exchange for trusted status), things will degenerate into Internet-vigilante justice.
Right, so if Jeff is liable for tax fraud, the scammer is also, since he came right out and asked the seller to falsify the declarations on the forms in order to cheat the gov't out of tax revenue.
Obviously inspired by Hollywood. So what if they decide to use the frequency that the Secret Service uses to communicate? I guess we better block that too. What if they broadcast a codeword on a talk radio show, and a bomb-laden terrorist is listening on a portable AM radio. Better block that band too. So, to cover all the possible frequencies, it'd have to be one heck of a powerful broadband jammer. I guess that's going to interfere with adjacent police and rescue frequencies because of intermod.
Look folks, Al Qaeda didn't use cellphone-triggered remote bombs, tunnels under schools, IRC, or even orbiting brain-lasers, or whatever stupid possibility has been dreamed of by the Department of Paranoia. They used box-cutters. I'm fairly certain that whatever choice they make next is going to be a surprise. It's not going to be something that the US Gov't expects, so let's stop trying to list the millions of possible ways and monitor the thousands of possible targets.
I really wish the hype and paranoia would stop. I used to listen to ("conservative") radio host Monica Crowley, until one night she bleated like a sheep stuck in a fence for an hour about how "we should do everything possible" in regard to airport security. I mean, come on Monica, that's something a 7th grader would say. There's a balance between cost and safety, and nobody in her right mind would suggest spending an unlimited amount of public funds just to make sure we can catch someone who has a box-cutter, because there's a one in a billion chance he might want to also fly an airliner into a building.
Likewise we have El Rushbo, trumpeting that the fact we haven't had an Al Qaeda attack on US soil for one and a half years is proof positive that Bush's strategy is working. As much as I'd like to believe that, the fact is that it costs Al Qaeda money and takes lots of time to plan an act on US soil. The second WTC attack happened almost 8 years after the first. The attacks aren't likely going to stop as long as we're involved in the Mid-East (as long as we back Israel and pull the strings for the Saudi monarchy).
So once again, it's not a choice with absolutes. Either we continue our current policy and some of us get killed every ten years or so, or we trade some other lives for our own, and watch the slaughter of the Jews, the Kurds, or some other religious minority that is sufficiently westernized to perhaps believe in freedom, interest on money, rights for women, or perhaps not stoning people to death for breaking society's rules. Or, we pick something inbetween, and successive presidents jump to either side of the fence (like the case now). One thing I can be sure of is that some US citizens are going to have a shot at stopping the next attack, just like the last one. So maybe this time we won't behave like subservient little hoplophobic sheep, and someone will fight back with deadly force to spare the lives of others.
BTW, Blender 3D uses translucent windows, so add that to the prior art list, should anyone attempt to enforce a patent on that visual design (not a concept, therefore not patentable IMHO).
It's not a patent on translucent windows, it's a patent for using graduated levels of translucency instead of active/inactive window coloring schemes. From what I've read, it appears that the longer you go without performing actions in the window, the more translucent it becomes, to the point where you can "click through" it and input into whatever object is underneath.
This particular interface feature would be incredibly annoying and confusing to people with less than perfect eyesight, so I hope that Apple defends its patent and that it never appears outside of Apple's software.
If it was simply an attempt to patent translucent windows, it would be easy to knock down. Some games use translucent pop-ups in their interfaces via D3D / OpenGL.
What's a "quicktime"? I have a movie player than handles nearly every digital format known to man. Why can't I just download it and watch it? I don't have a "registry" or a "quicktime", just a damn good video player.
Faith, and only faith gets the job done.
Are we reading the same book? It definitely preaches about being good, help the sick and your fellow man, etc. The only part you need faith in is the Resurrection.
I've got news for ya, you can do the same thing on your local network with a regular lan card. You can also make a much less expensive jammer with an old microwave, or better yet, you can make a broad band (not cable internet) jammer with a file, some wires and a battery. It's being broadcast on public airspace, denial of service is trivially accomplished.
Okay, so what would be the take if he downloaded a trojan posing as the latest Open Office?
They both feel that computer skills are the number one thing they need to teach to make sure that students are successful
I love it when I hear this one. I'll bite: Define "computer skills".
No, but most don't even fully understand the potenial of the technology themselves, or even have the ability to utilitize it efficiently for administrative tasks. That doesn't put them in the best position to judge.
There is also the question of ideas coming down from administration, and also the requirements placed on funds by other institutions that offer grants. Since this is very close to home, I'm going to try very hard to avoid rambling on, but offer some of my observations:
State and local governments originally based goals on the ratio of students to computers. Infrastructure, training, maintenance cost (including license fees), were separate items funded at later times.
Our state government is currently putting on the pressure to integrate technology proficiency into all curricula. Sorry, that just takes away time to teach the basics. A computer is a frivolous accessory in most subjects, especially in a school system like mine, where budget constraints force us to focus on general studies.
If there isn't enough work that can only be done on the computer to occupy students during their time in front of the computer, it is hurting more than it's helping. The computer is a distraction. You might as well put game consoles in every classroom.
The funding-directly-to-student approach is just plain stupid. Every penny spent inside a district directly or indirectly effects students. Dumping truckloads of cash into personal PDAs or laptops for students isn't the answer. Administrative software, use of computers for analyzing student scores, or web-based services to keep parents informed are all things a student will never touch, but still have tremendous consequence for the him/her.
A higher percentage (compared to administrative use) of equipment ends up broken in the hands of students. For a small school system like my employer's, it's extremely painful financially.
Educational software is terrible on the whole. Most of it is outdated, never updated, or not multi-user, as well as buggy. Unless it's a vocational ed setting, where the job absolutely requires the use of specific applications on computers, the software isn't helping students learn.
Computers with the most popular operating system on earth are expensive to maintain, particularly in a public-access-terminal environment where the users have nothing to do but tinker 75% of the time.
Most of the teachers just don't understand the technology. I don't mean this in a bad way. Their profession revolves around child development and learning, not computer science.
I'm not so sure I agree with the book's author in regard to networks. Having student home directories with file permissions makes student work portable, and also protects it from sabotage and plagiarism.
I wholeheartedly disagree that there are no clear answers. If mounds of computer equipment is added to classrooms, and the student scores aren't improving or are going down, it wasn't money well spent.
Like another poster said, you should be able to determine something from the timestamps on the files.
If the data's missing, or even more recently accessed than when he last had the machine, he could also go after the Justice Department for destroying evidence.
I don't see how time has anything to do with it. If he had a browser hijack, or a virus that installs malware, about all the dates would tell the court is how long the machine was compromised. The detection of any one of those "downloader backdoor" viruses or any type of adult-oriented malware programs should seriously cast in doubt any claims made by the prosecution.
On the other hand, since this never went to court, there isn't any "public" record of what was discovered. I don't know how we would know the full story here at all. I just see a lot of speculation. Considering how harshly dealt his punishment was, I'd venture to guess that it involved minors, and he may have be collecting and trading illegal material. But again, I'm only speculating.
I'm not cheering about this. I feel sorry for these people. Everyone at SCO is a pawn. But these pawns aren't being well compensated like some of the other pawns. It's really sad. The layoffs should have started form the top down, but who fires the board of directors?
Because the "suchlike" is simply filesystem compatibility, similar to what NFS provides between different 'nix platforms.
Not to mention the fact that Samba is the only file/printer server software for Linux. I'm sorry, NFS is way to primitive to count; there is no comparison with Samba.
At any rate, this should serve as a nice lesson to the terrorists: Don't file a FOIA, just go an investigate it yourself. :roll:
This is what happens when you ask ordinary citizens to help find terrorists, but give them no further information. Why would the underground tunnel system even be a security issue? The 9/11 terrorists hid in plain sight, with fake IDs, and lived among us. Why would they even bother trying to hide in old tunnel system? That seems to me like it would attract more attention that just living an apparently normal life in a rent somewhere.
Interesting, I see a lot of posts detailing collusion between RAM chip makers. Do our anti-trust laws apply to companies overseas? If so, how come we haven't gone after DeBeers or Saudi Arabia's monarchy yet? Both of those represent the heads of the worst, most abusive cartels imaginable.
Who'd you sell it to? Dude will be busted. Someone walks up to you in an alley and say "wassup cuz you wanna buy a ds3 innernet?" it raises eyebrows.
Are you kidding me? That DS3 card is probably worth more than its weight in cocaine. I would buy it in a heartbeat. Think of the new crime underworld that will be created when these guys figure it out. Think of how tiny and valuable these electronic items are. I could probably pay the bills for a year off a sandwich bag of Opterons.
I say: Be on the lookout for pawn shops with really fast Internet connections.
It's very unlikely that someone will find a way to beat public key and AES encryption.
Won't have to. Bypassing works just fine since the devices can't be physically secured.
But, this hardware technology aims to eliminate those weak points. They will keep the data encrypted everywhere in software, only decrypting it in the chip that does the output.
Two problems with this scenario. First of all, these chips are going to have to be produced in mass quantity. Heaven forbid they make a mistake, or there turns out to be a vulnerability. This is also the most expensive option. For this reason, I seriously doubt that particular method will fly with manufacturers. It also could turn out to be a consumer disaster, like DiVX discs, so they'd be left holding the ball, with millions of these worthless chips stockpiled. No, I'd say the first approach is going to be a computing device that'll be more general in nature, probably with firmware that can be updated, and a separate chip for video processing and amplification. Second, since these devices are going to be everywhere, many manufacturers are going to have their hands on the specs. That information will make its way out in the open.
These utterly obvious patents, like "donations on the web" should be removed, though.
That's the problem I have with it. I can't think of a way to legally define a patent at "utterly obvious". But there are indeed examples a-plenty where people or companies that aren't even "inventors" arrive at the same conclusion. Is there a way to prove that subsequent inventors haven't directly copied an idea from an existing patent-holder? Is that even possible? Maybe, but the system doesn't take this into account the same way it recognizes prior art.
Why doesn't the system include checks for "Obvious Conclusion"? Do you think the website designer for Red Cross dug through the Patent Office's publications to come up with ideas for the website? No, I seriously doubt it. Why? Because using a website to facilitate money transactions is an obvious use of the technology. That whole class of patents should be made invalid. I don't see what the conceptual difference is between using a bank's website to move money between or out of your accounts, purchasing something for your own use, or donating to your charity of choice.
I don't think abolishing patents is the answer, and that will probably do more harm than good in the long run. But this is something that needs fixing. The USPTO is going to have to look long and hard at certain types of patents, because basically what they're facilitating are legal booby traps: Take an existing, popular concept and tack on some new qualifier. At some point, it's guaranteed that someone will come along and stumble onto the concept. In effect, because the patented ideas are just "obvious_concept+1", the Patent Office is allowing "obvious_concept" to be patented, and re-patented, and re-patented. It's bad for all parties involved, since each new party which is allowed to re-patent the same concept is devalue-ing everyone else's related patents, existing patent holders are allowed to do something that is only going to cause them legal trouble later on, the cost of doing business rises sharply for businesses that just stumbled onto the obvious concept, and there is a great cost to the taxpayers as this all plays out in court (in both dollar amounts and productive work in the court system).
At some point (if it hasn't happened already), folks are going to realize that there's money to be made from purposely adding a flourish to an obvious concept that is certain to be copied, because they *know* that it'll get them a free ride in court, or at least get them a settlement. Even if they get money from 1 out of 5 cases (assuming the victim has deep pockets), it'll be profitable to defraud the system. With this potential for abuse in mind, I protest that further patents based on online shopping or online money transactions are invalid. There should be no patentable material there; Not if you click once instead of twice, not if the recipient is a charity, not if the transaction is linked to some other action, not if you buy widgets instead of sprockets, not if you do your transaction on a Sunday in your underwear.