So 27 to "maybe even 30" is older now?? F me. I thought I'd have to hit up into the 40's to be called "older." Thanks. Since I'm 29, now I feel old... well "older."
I bet every single one of those laws has a ridiculous story behind it. For example, at some point someone stabbed themselves and when asked why, they said "to get so and so's pity." Not being able to prosecute or detan the poor bastard, they passed a law so people wouldn't do it again, thus smoothing out society. Laws are passed to fill holes in the law.
The statement I made was that laws were written to make life run smoother, not that all laws drafted are correct. Given that, let's continue.
Patriot Act.
Drafted to find and eliminate people that want to harm the US. Whether you believe the act itself goes to far, its intent is to reduce terror, erego, life is smoother
DMCA
See my other comments because I already addressed this.
Mickey Mouse Copyright Extension
Hrmm... no real argument here except that the law was already on the books, this just extended it. From the copyright holder's standpoint, it makes their life smoother because they don't have to police abuses of their work, though I admit it when someone's made a valid point, and here you have to an extent.
Software and Business-method patents
No change to the laws was needed for this. The statutes themselves did not change, only the judicial interpretation of them did. As they were drafted, they benefit society. And though the/. hivemind whole-heartedly rejects it, Software patents really aren't as bad as everyone thinks they are. There are some bad apples, but on the whole, people here have blown the situation way out of proportion.
DMCA, Section 1201 (c) `OTHER RIGHTS, ETC., NOT AFFECTED- (1) Nothing in this section shall affect rights, remedies, limitations, or defenses to copyright infringement, including fair use, under this title.
Actually, on its face, it is not written to destroy fair use. The DMCA is actually quite reasonable if you read it. It allows exemptions for reverse engineering as well as the traditional library and educational fair use exemptions. But it is applied and sued under well beyond the means intended. This is not a law drafted to cause conflict. It is a law drafted to protect the rights of copyright holders while retaining fair use. It is very abused, but the court is reigning it in (see the Lexmark case).
It is only criminal if you do it for financial gain. I hardly see "fair use" being selling whatever you copied.
And it was written by lawyers for big-business (duh).
I never said Congress didn't write laws for big business. I said Congress doesn't write laws for lawyers. Big difference.
Actually, many blue laws and prohibitionist laws were written to keep people "moral," thereby reducing any lacivious conduct, i.e., reducing conflict within the town or state. Why they are still on the books is another matter, but it is usually because lawmakers have their hands tied up with more important issues. Next?
First, the law has become so complex and convoluted that a layman has no chance of knowing his rights and obligations without the help of a lawyer.
Newsflash: Life is complicated. The law reflects an attempt to deal with life. Example: The law starts out simple: no vehicles in the park. What does it mean? No motorized vehicles? No bicycles? If the intent of the law was to protect people in the park, that means bicycles are banned because someone could easily injure someone else using a bicycle. If it is to preserve the grass, bicycles are probably fine, but cars are not. That's all well and good until Dean Kamen comes along and invents the segway. Well, what do we do with the law there. Life is complex and evolves. The law has to be the same. People that think the law can be boiled down to something simple like the ten commandments are naive.
Second, there are many laws which clearly do not exist to reduce the potential for conflict.
I'll let the first fly since you make a general statement about the law. This one though is bunk. Since you assert that there are "many laws" that "clearly do not exist" to reduce conflict, I invite you to name some. What laws exists to promote conflict or at the very least, let it remain status quo? As for the courts, well it's the court's job to interpret the laws. There are so,e things that should be left to the court to decide because there isn't an on-point ruling on it. Courts are part of the checks and balances. If they weren't there, Congress could pass any law it wanted.
I said "in theory" because I am not hopelessly naive and pro-law. But the system is not nearly as corrupt as/.'ers think it is. 99% of the people here get their law from/. which might as well refer to it as "MS-law" because people bash any law-related action on sight. gg, slashbot.
I find your ignorance horrible, depressing, and a clear example of not knowing a goddamn thing about the legal system.
Congress makes laws, not "lawyers." Though a large percentage of Congressmen/women are/were lawyers, they don't make laws to make lawyers money. They make laws to, in theory, make life function more smoothly. Imagine this scenario: You go into a store to buy some mouthwash. You see a bottle of Scope and a bottle of Scope. Which do you choose? You don't know you say? You can't tell the difference you say? Well that's because in your world there are no laws that protect trademarks and thus any yahoo can throw bleach into a bottle, put "Scope" on it, and everyday schmoes end up gargling with Clorox. In my world, a trademark tells me that the bottle that says Scope is the same stuff I bought yesterday from a reputable company. Laws serve a purpose. You may question them from time to time, but I guarantee they were created by people smarter than you and likely with more forethought.
I promised myself I would cease posting on slashdot for law-related things. I had held out for so long, too. But this misinformation is too egregious...
The UCC only applies to transactions conducted between a business and another business, not a business and an individual.
Dead wrong. The UCC applies, in part i.e., Article 2, to commercial transactions. Some provisions are specifically targeted to merchant-to-merchant transactions, e.g., Section 2-201(2), but typically the provisions apply to party-to-party transactions, where the UCC defines parties as: a person that has engaged in a transaction or made an agreement subject to [the Uniform Commercial Code]. From Sec 1-201.
As for your statement regarding $500, this is also horribly wrong. You are thinking of the statute of frauds, which requires a transaction for an amount or value over $500 to be committed to writing (see 2-201 above). It is designed to prevent fraud when people are contracting for things of large value (whereas transactions with smaller values may be enforced if there is only an oral contract).
Please, google is your friend. The knowledge of law on slashdot is bad enough without comments like that mucking it up more. I'd be less harsh if you had spent the time to do a little research before hitting reply.
I'm surprised you're still here. I have 2 more years of evening classes and I can't stand this place. Slashdotters have no clue about patents at all. Every single patent story you see 23 posts pasting in the abstract and bitching about how obvious it is and 74 claims of someone scratching their keister and asking "isn't that prior art?" like p/a is some magical barrier that can't be overcome. I got into law because of the discussions here. I hate this place because I actually know something now. I can't even read the patent stories anymore. Way too much weeping and gnashing of teeth and not a lot of thought and contemplation.
The Abstract is useless! Copy the claims!!!! If one, just one slashbot took the time to read the claims they would realize this is a patent on order consolidation. New and non-obviousness may be debated, but at least discuss the right material. Jesus F'ing Christ!
1. A method in a computing system for processing item orders, comprising:
receiving a plurality of orders, each order having a destination and one or more items;
organizing the received orders into order groups, the orders of each order group all having the same destination;
for each order group:
determining an availability time for each item of each order of the order group indicating how far in the future the item will become available for shipment;
if all of the items of all of the orders of the order group have an availability time of zero, combining all of the orders of the order group into a single composite order for shipment;
if fewer than all of the items of all of the orders of the order group have an availability time of zero:
combining all of the items of all of the orders of the order group having an availability time of zero into a first composite order for shipment, and
combining all of the items of all of the orders of the order group having an nonzero availability time into a second composite order for shipment.
How did he mistakenly spell "leet" when he said it? Did he say "dude this is so L-E-T-E" and you, shaking your head in dismay at his ignorance of proper leet-speak, transcribed it as is? You know, adding [sic] so we knew it wasn't your misspelling?
Clearly, you don't have a tivo or you're just trolling. I'll assume the former.
A VCR lets you keep the tapes, you can't take any content off a TiVo. Once you run out of room, you have to delete the show. And you can't record and skip commercials. With a VCR you can pause during commercials.
A) you absolutely can skip commercials with tivo, and I'll bet you head-to-head I can skip my commercials faster and more acurrately. B) you can transfer files off your tivo to your computer/portable media device C) you can burn them to a DVD if you so choose D) your friend could give you said DVD as easily as a tape if he didn't think you were such a know-it-all dick.
When I type, I do things automatically with little brain-realization of what I am typing. When I write, it is a much more deliberate exercise and I learn a substantial amount more because it takes more mental effort. As a student, writing is a much better way for me to take notes outside of class. Add in that I could scan my books in and annotate them and it is a much better system than a generic laptop. If it is a convertable, then it would be the best of both worlds.
gg preview button. "They only have rights to that specifc design, or against someone making a device with that specific design," is what I meant to say.
It's a DESIGN patent, not a utility patent. They only have ruights to someone using that design specifically. Design patents are very easy to, pardon the pun, design around. You just have to make some ornamental change. IANADesign Patent Lawyer, so I don't know the legal standard for getting around a design patent, but from what I understand, they are more used in the clothing, accessory, and toy markets to prevent counterfeitting where looks are as improtant as function.
I love ACs. So spineless that they won't even use a login. Good show.
In retort, I wasn't trying to be "socially acceptable," I was trying to avoid wasting $10 and 2 hours of my life. My friends did not "tell me what to do." They said "it's terrible," the reviews said "it's terrible," and after watching the crapfest that was Matrix Reloaded, I said "it's probably terrible."
But really, thank you for weighing in with your worthless opinion. You really showed me. No really, you did. You showed me like I showed Hollywood. I mean seriously. Thank you. I've reformed. I'm going to change my life now. Your comment was so insightful, it was like looking into the eyes of God and seeing His soul, while at the same time, achieving Enlightenment while at the same time enjoying the feeling of squeezing out a 2-pound turd. Really, you should take that on the road. I mean, there are people in America that *gasp* think differently than you and you should let them know how wrong they are. It would be a service to mankind. I bet you could get Nike to sponsor you. Like, "Just tell it" or something. It would sort of be like Forrrest Gump running around America. Eveyone would just follow you to hear what you have to say, you know because it's so insightful. I mean, Dr. Phil has nothing on you. You should take his show. And Oprah's too. You wouldn't need to give out cars, because you could give out comments and you would be like "you get a useless comment and you get a useless comment and you get a useless comment" and everyone would be jumping up and down crying because OMFG they never had a useless comment given to them and their families all knew how badly the people needed useless comments. And then you could go on the Daily Show and tell John Stewart some useless comments and he'd say "You're a dick." But then you could go go to the White House and advise President Bush in foreign policy because, really, what could your comments hurt at this point? And President Bush would, seriously, think you were a genius. Then Maddox would be pissed because you stole his thunder for being the biggest dick in America and he'd write up some scathing article about you. Steve Jobs, so impressed wioth your witticisms would come out with the ACPod which just plays useless crap all day long and everyone would buy by the millions (the 6GB and 30GB models). And Bill Gate would rename Longhorn to AC because he could only hope that the next release of Windows would be as userfriendly and beneficial to the human race as you have been. It would be "teh pwn." Thanks.
a) it's a joke, lighten up. b) The EP1 did well because "OMFG a new star wars movie *drool*" I know, I was one of them. EP2 did well because "Holy crap the first one sucked. But hey, at least this one can't be as bad. I hear there's less Jar-Jar and they got this kid from Australia who's supposed to be pretty good." I know, I was one of them.
It was said in good fun. I'm sure you think Joe vs. the Volcano, which I unabashedly admit to thinking is great, is a terrible movie and not worth the disc it's printed on. But hey, we're all different and that's what makes poking fun at each other fun.
Not exactly responsive: I saw both Matrix movies in the theater (Reloaded at Grauman's), but because of the reviews, and what friends said, I, to this day, have not seen Revolutions. I'd rather just pretend that the Matrix was a one-shot movie and try to forget that I saw the sequel.
Slashdot Mirror
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Patriot Act.
Drafted to find and eliminate people that want to harm the US. Whether you believe the act itself goes to far, its intent is to reduce terror, erego, life is smoother
DMCA
See my other comments because I already addressed this.
Mickey Mouse Copyright Extension
Hrmm... no real argument here except that the law was already on the books, this just extended it. From the copyright holder's standpoint, it makes their life smoother because they don't have to police abuses of their work, though I admit it when someone's made a valid point, and here you have to an extent.
Software and Business-method patents
No change to the laws was needed for this. The statutes themselves did not change, only the judicial interpretation of them did. As they were drafted, they benefit society. And though the /. hivemind whole-heartedly rejects it, Software patents really aren't as bad as everyone thinks they are. There are some bad apples, but on the whole, people here have blown the situation way out of proportion.
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Actually, on its face, it is not written to destroy fair use. The DMCA is actually quite reasonable if you read it. It allows exemptions for reverse engineering as well as the traditional library and educational fair use exemptions. But it is applied and sued under well beyond the means intended. This is not a law drafted to cause conflict. It is a law drafted to protect the rights of copyright holders while retaining fair use. It is very abused, but the court is reigning it in (see the Lexmark case).
It is only criminal if you do it for financial gain. I hardly see "fair use" being selling whatever you copied.
And it was written by lawyers for big-business (duh).
I never said Congress didn't write laws for big business. I said Congress doesn't write laws for lawyers. Big difference.
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Newsflash: Life is complicated. The law reflects an attempt to deal with life. Example: The law starts out simple: no vehicles in the park. What does it mean? No motorized vehicles? No bicycles? If the intent of the law was to protect people in the park, that means bicycles are banned because someone could easily injure someone else using a bicycle. If it is to preserve the grass, bicycles are probably fine, but cars are not. That's all well and good until Dean Kamen comes along and invents the segway. Well, what do we do with the law there. Life is complex and evolves. The law has to be the same. People that think the law can be boiled down to something simple like the ten commandments are naive.
Second, there are many laws which clearly do not exist to reduce the potential for conflict.
I'll let the first fly since you make a general statement about the law. This one though is bunk. Since you assert that there are "many laws" that "clearly do not exist" to reduce conflict, I invite you to name some. What laws exists to promote conflict or at the very least, let it remain status quo? As for the courts, well it's the court's job to interpret the laws. There are so,e things that should be left to the court to decide because there isn't an on-point ruling on it. Courts are part of the checks and balances. If they weren't there, Congress could pass any law it wanted.
I said "in theory" because I am not hopelessly naive and pro-law. But the system is not nearly as corrupt as /.'ers think it is. 99% of the people here get their law from /. which might as well refer to it as "MS-law" because people bash any law-related action on sight. gg, slashbot.
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Congress makes laws, not "lawyers." Though a large percentage of Congressmen/women are/were lawyers, they don't make laws to make lawyers money. They make laws to, in theory, make life function more smoothly. Imagine this scenario: You go into a store to buy some mouthwash. You see a bottle of Scope and a bottle of Scope. Which do you choose? You don't know you say? You can't tell the difference you say? Well that's because in your world there are no laws that protect trademarks and thus any yahoo can throw bleach into a bottle, put "Scope" on it, and everyday schmoes end up gargling with Clorox. In my world, a trademark tells me that the bottle that says Scope is the same stuff I bought yesterday from a reputable company. Laws serve a purpose. You may question them from time to time, but I guarantee they were created by people smarter than you and likely with more forethought.
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The UCC only applies to transactions conducted between a business and another business, not a business and an individual.
Dead wrong. The UCC applies, in part i.e., Article 2, to commercial transactions. Some provisions are specifically targeted to merchant-to-merchant transactions, e.g., Section 2-201(2), but typically the provisions apply to party-to-party transactions, where the UCC defines parties as: a person that has engaged in a transaction or made an agreement subject to [the Uniform Commercial Code]. From Sec 1-201.
As for your statement regarding $500, this is also horribly wrong. You are thinking of the statute of frauds, which requires a transaction for an amount or value over $500 to be committed to writing (see 2-201 above). It is designed to prevent fraud when people are contracting for things of large value (whereas transactions with smaller values may be enforced if there is only an oral contract).
Please, google is your friend. The knowledge of law on slashdot is bad enough without comments like that mucking it up more. I'd be less harsh if you had spent the time to do a little research before hitting reply.
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ummm yeah, that's what a method patent is. [rolling eyes]
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1. A method in a computing system for processing item orders, comprising:
receiving a plurality of orders, each order having a destination and one or more items;
organizing the received orders into order groups, the orders of each order group all having the same destination;
for each order group:
determining an availability time for each item of each order of the order group indicating how far in the future the item will become available for shipment;
if all of the items of all of the orders of the order group have an availability time of zero, combining all of the orders of the order group into a single composite order for shipment;
if fewer than all of the items of all of the orders of the order group have an availability time of zero:
combining all of the items of all of the orders of the order group having an availability time of zero into a first composite order for shipment, and
combining all of the items of all of the orders of the order group having an nonzero availability time into a second composite order for shipment.
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And yet it is still completely retarded. YOU HAVE NO RIGHT TO BE ENTERTAINED. Show some self-restraint and say "I'm not going buy OR steal it."
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A VCR lets you keep the tapes, you can't take any content off a TiVo. Once you run out of room, you have to delete the show. And you can't record and skip commercials. With a VCR you can pause during commercials.
A) you absolutely can skip commercials with tivo, and I'll bet you head-to-head I can skip my commercials faster and more acurrately. B) you can transfer files off your tivo to your computer/portable media device C) you can burn them to a DVD if you so choose D) your friend could give you said DVD as easily as a tape if he didn't think you were such a know-it-all dick.
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In retort, I wasn't trying to be "socially acceptable," I was trying to avoid wasting $10 and 2 hours of my life. My friends did not "tell me what to do." They said "it's terrible," the reviews said "it's terrible," and after watching the crapfest that was Matrix Reloaded, I said "it's probably terrible."
But really, thank you for weighing in with your worthless opinion. You really showed me. No really, you did. You showed me like I showed Hollywood. I mean seriously. Thank you. I've reformed. I'm going to change my life now. Your comment was so insightful, it was like looking into the eyes of God and seeing His soul, while at the same time, achieving Enlightenment while at the same time enjoying the feeling of squeezing out a 2-pound turd. Really, you should take that on the road. I mean, there are people in America that *gasp* think differently than you and you should let them know how wrong they are. It would be a service to mankind. I bet you could get Nike to sponsor you. Like, "Just tell it" or something. It would sort of be like Forrrest Gump running around America. Eveyone would just follow you to hear what you have to say, you know because it's so insightful. I mean, Dr. Phil has nothing on you. You should take his show. And Oprah's too. You wouldn't need to give out cars, because you could give out comments and you would be like "you get a useless comment and you get a useless comment and you get a useless comment" and everyone would be jumping up and down crying because OMFG they never had a useless comment given to them and their families all knew how badly the people needed useless comments. And then you could go on the Daily Show and tell John Stewart some useless comments and he'd say "You're a dick." But then you could go go to the White House and advise President Bush in foreign policy because, really, what could your comments hurt at this point? And President Bush would, seriously, think you were a genius. Then Maddox would be pissed because you stole his thunder for being the biggest dick in America and he'd write up some scathing article about you. Steve Jobs, so impressed wioth your witticisms would come out with the ACPod which just plays useless crap all day long and everyone would buy by the millions (the 6GB and 30GB models). And Bill Gate would rename Longhorn to AC because he could only hope that the next release of Windows would be as userfriendly and beneficial to the human race as you have been. It would be "teh pwn." Thanks.
-truth
b) The EP1 did well because "OMFG a new star wars movie *drool*" I know, I was one of them. EP2 did well because "Holy crap the first one sucked. But hey, at least this one can't be as bad. I hear there's less Jar-Jar and they got this kid from Australia who's supposed to be pretty good." I know, I was one of them.
It was said in good fun. I'm sure you think Joe vs. the Volcano, which I unabashedly admit to thinking is great, is a terrible movie and not worth the disc it's printed on. But hey, we're all different and that's what makes poking fun at each other fun.
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I am always amazed at how well blind people can utilize the visually-oriented web. Welcome to /., my sight-challeneged friend!
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