If you go to France, almost every car you see is French. Years go, the Japanese were "car dumping" in Europe, putting thousands of cheap cars on the market and killing off the competition. France said "non" (actually, they said "for every Japanese car on French roads, we want a French car on Japanese roads"), and the EU (as was then) overruled them. France just made it so horrendously bureaucratic to get Japanese cars into France that it slowed down the effect of the dumping, and even now very few foreign marques have much hold in France (unlike the rest of Europe, where we have no real home-grown cars any more).
I strongly suspect that Monsanto will have to write applications in triplicate and deliver them to a branch of the government that's up a hill with a single road that for unexplained reasons gets covered in manure on a weekly basis. Go France!
The French have a very different legal system than the US (or even others in Europe), and have a very different attitude to using the legal system than those in the US (especially). They also have significant issues with "big US company coming over here and telling us what to do".
Monsanto is big, but France is also big, and it's quite possible it may end up being one big waste of Monsanto's time to operate there. We'll see...
Also, my work computer has something like $2000 of software on it (if I bought it all down at PC World). However, if I put a "free for personal use" copy of some little app on my machine (I dunno, Winzip or something, that maybe I needed once and never used since), that makes my whole machine "running pirated software".
My point is, from a moral standpoint, a computer like mine is basically law-abiding (and in fact is a benefit to "society"). It's about the equivalent of driving 2 miles an hour faster than the speed limit. It's not worth dealing with, other than maybe sticking an ad on the TV saying "speeding kills".
Ford create cars so utterly terrible that they earn the nickname "Fix Or Repair Daily". Enterprising mechanics offer the cars pre-serviced, fixing up most obvious problems and adding a few "pimp" features like spoilers and shiny wheel hubs, but use parts that are so hideously over-engineered that they weigh far more, which means crappy mileage and poorer handling.
Years later, Ford sees this problem, and comes in with their own $99 service, which does much of the same thing as the mechanics, but uses the original parts (now that they've refactored the manufacturing process, so they're much more reliable and yet weigh the same or less than they used to).
Of course, all the while, Toyota was looking at this, and just decided to put better parts in the car from the outset. However, their cars are no good for hicks and farmers because none of their vehicles is, or can substitute for a pickup truck.
Many years later, Ford would go on to criticise Toyota for not having a "clean up service" option, because it meant that Toyota customers "weren't being given choices". In a similar vein, Honda owners would criticise Toyota for not making cars that everyone can use and enjoy. They'd go on to criticise Ford for being the numpties they are and not getting their manufacturing right in the first place.
Wow, this analogy thing is hard. I need a lie down;-)
Oh they can already do it cheaper, but they need a revenue stream. They'll discount the $99 once they've got a bit of 3rd party sponsorship and the clean up turns into "clean up your machine an get the benefits of a 30 day Antivirus subscriptions for free!".
They could just talk to all of their OEMs and tell 'em that they can use an "MS Approved Windows install" logo if they remove the crapware. That'd be too hard though, so making customers pay twice is the best option.
...or, to avoid 'specialist' hardware (and thus bring it into the realm of a $10/month VM), would it be possible for the machine to boot up and wait for a key to be sent to it, which it would store only in RAM?
This idea suggests it might be possible for the FBI to nab a server and actually get nothing at all. If they had some way to breakpoint the system and read the RAM then presumably they'd get everything though (which the crytpo chip wouldn't be vulnerable to).
This method also means it would be possible to setup a cluster of servers in disparate locations, but have them keyed from machines in other locations. If they keys got delivered by email, then it could be considerably difficult to work out where the keys came from, and thus make it hard to 'cut off the head' and destroy the cluster.
Going further, I guess you could set up VPNs between remailers so that machine A receives an email, but actually sends it to machines B and C to have it decrypted. Machine B just sends the message right back, whereas C decrypts it and sends it back. Thus, you wouldn't know which machine had actually done the work, and thus which machine to subpoena. This method is a lot more complicated, and I'm sure needs a lot more thinking about (and would need one hell of an implementation not to have a backdoor in it).
All this said, I have no idea what I'm talking about. For some reason I've always enjoyed the mental challenge of working out how to overcome these sorts of problems though.
Under the FSA rules... If you're a trader, and your trader pal from another company says "BP are about to lay off a million staff, get selling!", then you're immediately barred from trading BP stock because you're in a position of trust, your pal is a credible source and the information could be true, and could affect the market. You're not allowed to tell your boss (even) why you're not allowed to trade BP - you literally can't tell anyone (except your Compliance people).
On the other hand, if a 16 year old calls up a trader and says the exact same thing, the trader is under no obligation to stop trading BP. He'd do well to alert his Compliance people, but they'd just say "don't worry about it, carry on". Why? because the 16 year old is not a credible source.
So I wonder... if a 16 year old writes a computer program to pick stocks from a list of companies that have paid him money, does that make him a credible source? Further, could that kid disclaim himself by saying something like "this is not financial advice"? If the kid asked for money for the information does that make him credible? I don't know... it would be nice to know.
Whilst I agree these kids have clearly done something underhanded, it's not immediately clear on what grounds they'd be prosecuted for it (just plain old fraud by deception seems enough). Of course, if they go to the US, then they'll probably get successfully prosecuted for failing to wear top hats whilst in Congress or some such.
Right - and let's say the golden patent for any and all types of chatroom did indeed get sold off. Good for AOL - MS will go ahead and do all the litigation (and will get the license payments), but AOL continues to use chatrooms because it's already licensed with MS. Some of AOL's competition goes away (or finds it more difficult to do business), and AOL collects a billion dollars. (MS does quite nicely out of this too, but it has to spend more money to make more money).
Sounds to me like a smart move. If AOL can ever really get going on their distributed news editor plan, then they might actually do what no one else seems to be able to do - turn around a declining Internet business. I'll be honest, I doubt they'll do it, but I'm sure a billion dollars will keep them around for a few more years yet.
Once upon a long time ago, I had a virtual host on a shared web hosting server. I FTP'ed my stuff onto the box, and then realised I could get/etc/passwd, which had encrypted passwords in it (shadow wasn't especially prevalent back then). I ran the file through crack and pulled a dozen passwords out. I sent the cracked file to the admins (back then they were so small the admins actually got emails to support@ rather than it going to a call tracker and call centre). I got an email back explaining what the problems were with fixing the issue, but they were working on it, etc etc.We sort of got to chatting, and helped each other out a bit.
From that point onwards, I always got the very best service from them, any time I asked. Of course, my time was up when they got bought by FacelessCompany and all the admins I had got to know had left and the call trackers and call centres moved in.
So anyway, my point is - these guys suck, and you should probably leave. However, if you stay, it could end up being good for you. Sadly though, it's more likely they're already FacelessCompany and so you won't get any extra love for showing them some forgiveness, in which case you should definitely leave, and tell as many other people you can to do the same.
I have to have a 'double-take' when I see patent warz over some backend function that isn't in a product. I mean, how does anyone know how anyone's "relevance engine" works, or even that they have one?
Now, if someone was buying or selling said "relevance engine", then I could see the problem - even just selling the software design could be understandable. However, making something that does roughly the same thing as someone else - whilst completely isolated from them - doesn't seem like it's worthy of protection. Indeed, has FB not patented it in the first place, then Yahoo would have even less information about how to create such a thing. So in some sense, the patent is entrapment (although if they hadn't filed the patent, and Yahoo had somehow pulled a relevance engine out of the ether and started selling it, then FB would have no case against them - which is contrary to what I started with).
So anyway, paradoxes aside, I too am annoyed like the rest of you;-)
I've always wondered if we couldn't just build up a network of "trusted VPNs". That is, let's say I'm running a mail server and I want to send an email to a Yahoo mail account. I set up a private VPN to Yahoo, send my message, and then tear down the VPN (or leave it open for a period of time, I guess). Then, when I want to talk to someone I don't know, I can either setup an untrusted VPN, or else send in the clear, or else pause and wait for me to exchange keys with the remote and do it securely.
Originally I wondered if one could setup a home router to do such things with a group of friends. I run some websites on my broadband connection, and a few friends do the same. When I communicate with them, we could be doing it over a VPN (mesh?). Okay, so when I communicate with other people it goes back out in the clear, but at least for people I know it doesn't.
I'm starting to wonder if such a thing could be possible with a Raspberry Pi, or a Beaglebone or something + SSH + some wrappers. I suspect though that all that encryption would be too much of a workload for little machines like these, and that I'd need something more beefy for the job. I'm also pretty sure the uptake would be so pathetically small as to be pointless.
If only someone could invent a sort of double tape drive. That is, it saves the data with one head, and then reads it off again with the other, and the host gets access to both streams of data. That way you'd get instant verification that the tape got written correctly. Of course, it doesn't detect data loss due to poor tape storage, but it would be a start.
For me personally, I just use a Netgear ReadyNas duo as an rsync server and backup to that. But then I don't have much data to look after.
"What if the US or UK (or any other country for that matter) issued digital cash?"
UK - never gonna happen US - double extra never gonna happen
Here in the UK we do have completely legal, local currencies (like the Brixton Pound - which happens to have a 'pay by text' electronic side to it). For all intents and purposes, the B£ is untraceable - the notes are still numbered, but the value of any transaction is likely to be small, and no one pays any attention to them (heck, I'm sure a lot of the retailers don't even put B£ transactions through the till). But this is all the B£ will ever be - small and local. If it ever gets big, it'll get taxed and tracked just like the regular sterling pound. FWIW, I'm told that Germany has a few regional currencies, although I'm not sure if they're "official" or off the books.
Electronic currency is already available in the form of Visa/Mastercard/Amex etc. Anonymous electronic currency hasn't been invented yet (excepting barter), and if it ever is, the government is very unlikely to endorse it (even though it'll be a handy way of slipping your local MP some money to do you a favour in Parliament). More likely is that it'll operate like Bitcoin does now - that is, unbacked, but viable for "convenient barter".
As for the US - the paranoid levels of control the government likes to exert there pretty much write-off any likelihood of any competing currencies ever getting government approval, even in the "blind eye" sense. If something like Bitcoin gets genuinely popular in the US, it'll become illegal, or else it'll become tracked and centralised just like the dollar. Don't get me wrong, other countries will do the same too - but the US will do it with guns blazing, wheras others won't.
"If you've got a hack to submit, simply paste it into the "hacks_list" table on our MySQL server. Please refrain from changing the content of our home page though."
As I understand it, mobility isn't quite so prevalent in China - it's something to do with your health benefits only being applicable in the city where you were born. As such, the commuting distances matter quite a lot. Cities are growing, so having a bit of a jaunt "in the country" is getting pretty tough to do for the day. It seems to me that lots and lots of high speed trains are just what China needs.
Here in the UK, if we could have a high speed train to replace every low speed train we have, we'd do it right away. The thing is, we have legacy to take care of, which makes things very challenging. However, a few years ago, when Brighton got it's "high speed" link to London, it became a suburb as well as the seaside town it already was. That's great for London, and great for Brighton too. China's on the right track (pardon the pun), and if the rest of us could do the same, we'd be better for it.
...or how about you get 5 years by default. When you can show the Patent office an actual, working, implementation you get an extra 15 years. Of course, that doesn't mandate you actually go ahead and sell/use your invention, but it does mean you at least had to spend the time trying to make it. For everyone who's genuinely trying to invent something and make it, well, they've got 5 years to perfect it, and then another 15 to make money off it - all stuff they were going to do anyway. For all the leeches, well, they've got the cost of that initial build/manufacture to deal with. The more significant the "invention" the greater that cost - if they choose not to bother, then they get 5 years and then it expires.
If nothing else, it would curb a lot of the "teleport by imginatron" type of patents which are basically fantasy and a waste of everyone's time. It still allows for business process patents, although they'd be quite hard to demonstrate if they're genuinely just a process (something like 1-click is pretty easy to demo though). So crappy software and business process patents are still possible, if that's your bag.
The fun will start when they figure out who tweeted, and who retweeted. The original disseminaters can probably quote another source, and so on. So it'll ultimately fall to one 'celeb' (or newspaper) that "can't remember" where they heard it. Then the court case will play out.
Of course, if law enforcement could be bothered, they could probably work out the people at the top of the tree without asking Twitter anything at all (just by looking at dates of posts etc).
Ultimately, this will be a typical shit show, with blame being flung about at all manner of innocent people, which I for one am looking forward to immensely!
Depends on your legal juristiction. Here in the UK, one-sided contracts can actually be invalidated - even if you agreed, signed and got photographed holding the contract doing a thumbs up sign. It doesn't matter how much you consented, if it's a legally unenforceable contract, then it's unenforceable.
That said, I doubt someone's going to the High Court because their username got changed. By the time you're motivated enough for that, you'll have got your own domain (although if the registrar takes it from you, then you might go to court)
These sorts of photoshoots are frequently given away for free. Basically, the photshoot is £50, and each print is some huge amount of money. They "give away" the shoot for free, then get you to buy a few prints.
Why this doesn't have a "nothingtoseehere" tag, I don't know.
And that user experience will stop this being useful for anyone except the geeks. Once you click the "allow" button with the "always do this from now on" tick box checked, then your app leaks data for ever. You may legitimately want super-whizzo-local-knowledge-app to know your location when you use the app, but not so much when it's hidden away in the background (or otherwise not immediately in use).
This is a good step forward, but I doubt it'll solve the problem entirely.
Slashdot Mirror
If you go to France, almost every car you see is French. Years go, the Japanese were "car dumping" in Europe, putting thousands of cheap cars on the market and killing off the competition. France said "non" (actually, they said "for every Japanese car on French roads, we want a French car on Japanese roads"), and the EU (as was then) overruled them. France just made it so horrendously bureaucratic to get Japanese cars into France that it slowed down the effect of the dumping, and even now very few foreign marques have much hold in France (unlike the rest of Europe, where we have no real home-grown cars any more).
I strongly suspect that Monsanto will have to write applications in triplicate and deliver them to a branch of the government that's up a hill with a single road that for unexplained reasons gets covered in manure on a weekly basis. Go France!
The French have a very different legal system than the US (or even others in Europe), and have a very different attitude to using the legal system than those in the US (especially). They also have significant issues with "big US company coming over here and telling us what to do".
Monsanto is big, but France is also big, and it's quite possible it may end up being one big waste of Monsanto's time to operate there. We'll see...
Good god, that's a corny joke.
Also, my work computer has something like $2000 of software on it (if I bought it all down at PC World). However, if I put a "free for personal use" copy of some little app on my machine (I dunno, Winzip or something, that maybe I needed once and never used since), that makes my whole machine "running pirated software".
My point is, from a moral standpoint, a computer like mine is basically law-abiding (and in fact is a benefit to "society"). It's about the equivalent of driving 2 miles an hour faster than the speed limit. It's not worth dealing with, other than maybe sticking an ad on the TV saying "speeding kills".
Trouble is... morals don't apply here.
How about...
Ford create cars so utterly terrible that they earn the nickname "Fix Or Repair Daily". Enterprising mechanics offer the cars pre-serviced, fixing up most obvious problems and adding a few "pimp" features like spoilers and shiny wheel hubs, but use parts that are so hideously over-engineered that they weigh far more, which means crappy mileage and poorer handling.
Years later, Ford sees this problem, and comes in with their own $99 service, which does much of the same thing as the mechanics, but uses the original parts (now that they've refactored the manufacturing process, so they're much more reliable and yet weigh the same or less than they used to).
Of course, all the while, Toyota was looking at this, and just decided to put better parts in the car from the outset. However, their cars are no good for hicks and farmers because none of their vehicles is, or can substitute for a pickup truck.
Many years later, Ford would go on to criticise Toyota for not having a "clean up service" option, because it meant that Toyota customers "weren't being given choices". In a similar vein, Honda owners would criticise Toyota for not making cars that everyone can use and enjoy. They'd go on to criticise Ford for being the numpties they are and not getting their manufacturing right in the first place.
Wow, this analogy thing is hard. I need a lie down ;-)
Oh they can already do it cheaper, but they need a revenue stream. They'll discount the $99 once they've got a bit of 3rd party sponsorship and the clean up turns into "clean up your machine an get the benefits of a 30 day Antivirus subscriptions for free!".
They could just talk to all of their OEMs and tell 'em that they can use an "MS Approved Windows install" logo if they remove the crapware. That'd be too hard though, so making customers pay twice is the best option.
...or, to avoid 'specialist' hardware (and thus bring it into the realm of a $10/month VM), would it be possible for the machine to boot up and wait for a key to be sent to it, which it would store only in RAM?
This idea suggests it might be possible for the FBI to nab a server and actually get nothing at all. If they had some way to breakpoint the system and read the RAM then presumably they'd get everything though (which the crytpo chip wouldn't be vulnerable to).
This method also means it would be possible to setup a cluster of servers in disparate locations, but have them keyed from machines in other locations. If they keys got delivered by email, then it could be considerably difficult to work out where the keys came from, and thus make it hard to 'cut off the head' and destroy the cluster.
Going further, I guess you could set up VPNs between remailers so that machine A receives an email, but actually sends it to machines B and C to have it decrypted. Machine B just sends the message right back, whereas C decrypts it and sends it back. Thus, you wouldn't know which machine had actually done the work, and thus which machine to subpoena. This method is a lot more complicated, and I'm sure needs a lot more thinking about (and would need one hell of an implementation not to have a backdoor in it).
All this said, I have no idea what I'm talking about. For some reason I've always enjoyed the mental challenge of working out how to overcome these sorts of problems though.
Hmm... I wonder...
Under the FSA rules... If you're a trader, and your trader pal from another company says "BP are about to lay off a million staff, get selling!", then you're immediately barred from trading BP stock because you're in a position of trust, your pal is a credible source and the information could be true, and could affect the market. You're not allowed to tell your boss (even) why you're not allowed to trade BP - you literally can't tell anyone (except your Compliance people).
On the other hand, if a 16 year old calls up a trader and says the exact same thing, the trader is under no obligation to stop trading BP. He'd do well to alert his Compliance people, but they'd just say "don't worry about it, carry on". Why? because the 16 year old is not a credible source.
So I wonder... if a 16 year old writes a computer program to pick stocks from a list of companies that have paid him money, does that make him a credible source? Further, could that kid disclaim himself by saying something like "this is not financial advice"? If the kid asked for money for the information does that make him credible? I don't know... it would be nice to know.
Whilst I agree these kids have clearly done something underhanded, it's not immediately clear on what grounds they'd be prosecuted for it (just plain old fraud by deception seems enough). Of course, if they go to the US, then they'll probably get successfully prosecuted for failing to wear top hats whilst in Congress or some such.
Right - and let's say the golden patent for any and all types of chatroom did indeed get sold off. Good for AOL - MS will go ahead and do all the litigation (and will get the license payments), but AOL continues to use chatrooms because it's already licensed with MS. Some of AOL's competition goes away (or finds it more difficult to do business), and AOL collects a billion dollars. (MS does quite nicely out of this too, but it has to spend more money to make more money).
Sounds to me like a smart move. If AOL can ever really get going on their distributed news editor plan, then they might actually do what no one else seems to be able to do - turn around a declining Internet business. I'll be honest, I doubt they'll do it, but I'm sure a billion dollars will keep them around for a few more years yet.
I do agree with you, but...
Once upon a long time ago, I had a virtual host on a shared web hosting server. I FTP'ed my stuff onto the box, and then realised I could get /etc/passwd, which had encrypted passwords in it (shadow wasn't especially prevalent back then). I ran the file through crack and pulled a dozen passwords out. I sent the cracked file to the admins (back then they were so small the admins actually got emails to support@ rather than it going to a call tracker and call centre). I got an email back explaining what the problems were with fixing the issue, but they were working on it, etc etc.We sort of got to chatting, and helped each other out a bit.
From that point onwards, I always got the very best service from them, any time I asked. Of course, my time was up when they got bought by FacelessCompany and all the admins I had got to know had left and the call trackers and call centres moved in.
So anyway, my point is - these guys suck, and you should probably leave. However, if you stay, it could end up being good for you. Sadly though, it's more likely they're already FacelessCompany and so you won't get any extra love for showing them some forgiveness, in which case you should definitely leave, and tell as many other people you can to do the same.
I have to have a 'double-take' when I see patent warz over some backend function that isn't in a product. I mean, how does anyone know how anyone's "relevance engine" works, or even that they have one?
Now, if someone was buying or selling said "relevance engine", then I could see the problem - even just selling the software design could be understandable. However, making something that does roughly the same thing as someone else - whilst completely isolated from them - doesn't seem like it's worthy of protection. Indeed, has FB not patented it in the first place, then Yahoo would have even less information about how to create such a thing. So in some sense, the patent is entrapment (although if they hadn't filed the patent, and Yahoo had somehow pulled a relevance engine out of the ether and started selling it, then FB would have no case against them - which is contrary to what I started with).
So anyway, paradoxes aside, I too am annoyed like the rest of you ;-)
I've always wondered if we couldn't just build up a network of "trusted VPNs". That is, let's say I'm running a mail server and I want to send an email to a Yahoo mail account. I set up a private VPN to Yahoo, send my message, and then tear down the VPN (or leave it open for a period of time, I guess). Then, when I want to talk to someone I don't know, I can either setup an untrusted VPN, or else send in the clear, or else pause and wait for me to exchange keys with the remote and do it securely.
Originally I wondered if one could setup a home router to do such things with a group of friends. I run some websites on my broadband connection, and a few friends do the same. When I communicate with them, we could be doing it over a VPN (mesh?). Okay, so when I communicate with other people it goes back out in the clear, but at least for people I know it doesn't.
I'm starting to wonder if such a thing could be possible with a Raspberry Pi, or a Beaglebone or something + SSH + some wrappers. I suspect though that all that encryption would be too much of a workload for little machines like these, and that I'd need something more beefy for the job. I'm also pretty sure the uptake would be so pathetically small as to be pointless.
If only someone could invent a sort of double tape drive. That is, it saves the data with one head, and then reads it off again with the other, and the host gets access to both streams of data. That way you'd get instant verification that the tape got written correctly. Of course, it doesn't detect data loss due to poor tape storage, but it would be a start.
For me personally, I just use a Netgear ReadyNas duo as an rsync server and backup to that. But then I don't have much data to look after.
And it's happening to Apple right now. They won't be the worlds biggest company for long unless they come up with something really new soon.
I encode my memories with ROT13.
"What if the US or UK (or any other country for that matter) issued digital cash?"
UK - never gonna happen
US - double extra never gonna happen
Here in the UK we do have completely legal, local currencies (like the Brixton Pound - which happens to have a 'pay by text' electronic side to it). For all intents and purposes, the B£ is untraceable - the notes are still numbered, but the value of any transaction is likely to be small, and no one pays any attention to them (heck, I'm sure a lot of the retailers don't even put B£ transactions through the till). But this is all the B£ will ever be - small and local. If it ever gets big, it'll get taxed and tracked just like the regular sterling pound. FWIW, I'm told that Germany has a few regional currencies, although I'm not sure if they're "official" or off the books.
Electronic currency is already available in the form of Visa/Mastercard/Amex etc. Anonymous electronic currency hasn't been invented yet (excepting barter), and if it ever is, the government is very unlikely to endorse it (even though it'll be a handy way of slipping your local MP some money to do you a favour in Parliament). More likely is that it'll operate like Bitcoin does now - that is, unbacked, but viable for "convenient barter".
As for the US - the paranoid levels of control the government likes to exert there pretty much write-off any likelihood of any competing currencies ever getting government approval, even in the "blind eye" sense. If something like Bitcoin gets genuinely popular in the US, it'll become illegal, or else it'll become tracked and centralised just like the dollar. Don't get me wrong, other countries will do the same too - but the US will do it with guns blazing, wheras others won't.
Can the laser scanner work out that I've pretty much got three legs? ;-)
"If you've got a hack to submit, simply paste it into the "hacks_list" table on our MySQL server. Please refrain from changing the content of our home page though."
As I understand it, mobility isn't quite so prevalent in China - it's something to do with your health benefits only being applicable in the city where you were born. As such, the commuting distances matter quite a lot. Cities are growing, so having a bit of a jaunt "in the country" is getting pretty tough to do for the day. It seems to me that lots and lots of high speed trains are just what China needs.
Here in the UK, if we could have a high speed train to replace every low speed train we have, we'd do it right away. The thing is, we have legacy to take care of, which makes things very challenging. However, a few years ago, when Brighton got it's "high speed" link to London, it became a suburb as well as the seaside town it already was. That's great for London, and great for Brighton too. China's on the right track (pardon the pun), and if the rest of us could do the same, we'd be better for it.
...or how about you get 5 years by default. When you can show the Patent office an actual, working, implementation you get an extra 15 years. Of course, that doesn't mandate you actually go ahead and sell/use your invention, but it does mean you at least had to spend the time trying to make it. For everyone who's genuinely trying to invent something and make it, well, they've got 5 years to perfect it, and then another 15 to make money off it - all stuff they were going to do anyway. For all the leeches, well, they've got the cost of that initial build/manufacture to deal with. The more significant the "invention" the greater that cost - if they choose not to bother, then they get 5 years and then it expires.
If nothing else, it would curb a lot of the "teleport by imginatron" type of patents which are basically fantasy and a waste of everyone's time. It still allows for business process patents, although they'd be quite hard to demonstrate if they're genuinely just a process (something like 1-click is pretty easy to demo though). So crappy software and business process patents are still possible, if that's your bag.
Did you compare your gold solution with wifi spray? http://j-walk.com/other/wifispray/
The fun will start when they figure out who tweeted, and who retweeted. The original disseminaters can probably quote another source, and so on. So it'll ultimately fall to one 'celeb' (or newspaper) that "can't remember" where they heard it. Then the court case will play out.
Of course, if law enforcement could be bothered, they could probably work out the people at the top of the tree without asking Twitter anything at all (just by looking at dates of posts etc).
Ultimately, this will be a typical shit show, with blame being flung about at all manner of innocent people, which I for one am looking forward to immensely!
Depends on your legal juristiction. Here in the UK, one-sided contracts can actually be invalidated - even if you agreed, signed and got photographed holding the contract doing a thumbs up sign. It doesn't matter how much you consented, if it's a legally unenforceable contract, then it's unenforceable.
That said, I doubt someone's going to the High Court because their username got changed. By the time you're motivated enough for that, you'll have got your own domain (although if the registrar takes it from you, then you might go to court)
These sorts of photoshoots are frequently given away for free. Basically, the photshoot is £50, and each print is some huge amount of money. They "give away" the shoot for free, then get you to buy a few prints.
Why this doesn't have a "nothingtoseehere" tag, I don't know.
And that user experience will stop this being useful for anyone except the geeks. Once you click the "allow" button with the "always do this from now on" tick box checked, then your app leaks data for ever. You may legitimately want super-whizzo-local-knowledge-app to know your location when you use the app, but not so much when it's hidden away in the background (or otherwise not immediately in use).
This is a good step forward, but I doubt it'll solve the problem entirely.