No IP issues - IP was developed solely by the Australian Government by its agency, Centrelink, and will be openly and freely licensed
This is a breath of fresh air given the extent to which some other Australian Government and pseudo-government agencies will actively push to overextend their IP claims. Still, these guys primarily exist to hand out money, while most of the others are expected to be profitable "public" services.
A similar situation exists with the compendium of facts on aerodromes, routes and navigation aids (AIP and ERSA) published by Airservices Australia. They aggregate information provided by third parties (who are obliged to supply by law and regulation) and then claim copyright. It's this claim that probably triggered the removal of the exceptionally useful, US Government supported (and therefore probably public domain) DAFIF database (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DAFIF).
Your system only provides a certain patent rejection if someone else submits exactly the same solution inside the time limit...something I think exceptionally unlikely. The rest of the time it provides what we have now.
In the case of MP3 versus Vorbis both offer valid solutions to the stated problem of "A Way to Compress Sound Files With Unnoticeable Loss". So, a valid solution is being submitted inside your time limit but you are making a value judgement that it is "sufficiently different" from MP3 and allowing that patent.
If, on the other hand, you rejected the MP3 patent because Vorbis submission was not "sufficiently different" you have another problem. The PTO now has to record the submitted alternate solutions and ensure that they are never granted a patent at the expense of the first applicant.
Either way we're in the same grey areas and the land of litigation.
GP is probably referring to Exmouth (21 55'39.86"S, 114 7'33.70"E), which is about 1128 km from Perth (31 57'19.44"S, 115 51'30.92"E) on a bearing approx 350 deg. A short walk from a very nice part of the Indian ocean:)
It wasn't meant to be a yotta work. They were simply trying to zetta exa-mple to those that express tera at the thought of such giga-ntic numbers. Of course, they might have just done it for giga-ls.
(If bad puns gave you bad karma then I'm going straight to pungatory.)
Nine is attempting to use the fringes of copyright law to protect an effective monopoly position on guide information held by HWW (http://www.hww.com.au/. Founded as Horan Wall & Walker in 1974 and acquired by ninemsn Pty Ltd in 2006, HWW Pty Limited has more than 30 years of experience as a creator, aggregator and publisher of quality content.)
HWW absolutely refuses to licence guide data to anyone proposing to use the data in a non-media controlled PVR, and imposes the same conditions on users of their data (i.e. WWW guides). Should the High Court rule in favour of Nine then it effectively denies a guide to all unless it also orders that HWW licence the data for a reasonable fee.
The NZ Herald is quoting the Courier Mail (a Brisbane Australia paper) quoting an unnamed "ATSB spokesman". Oh please! The level of technical filtering ability displayed by the Courier Mail barely registers, even in their tech section.
I'll defer to professional investigators who, not surprisingly, have officially said nothing about electronic devices on-board. I'm sure they'll ask as a matter of routine about transmitters, phones etc. and get a series of vague hand-wavey answers. You can be _very_ sure they'll be looking harder for a concrete elevator system failure and/or control system glitch, or atmospheric condition. Heck, they might even use "evidence".
Do you really think the average games outlet aggregates reasons for returns (in the limited places they will actually accept a return) and passes them upstream? I would not bet on it.
I have the pleasure (misfortune) to work for the Australian subsidiary of a large US company. Our current approach when travelling across the puddle is that your primary laptop stays in Australia and a "blank" is issued for the trip. Many of our work machines routinely (legally) contain trade secrets and information subject to US ITAR on encrypted volumes. We have no doubt that, legal or not, this would raise US border security questions and is simply not worth carrying.
Our trans-Pacific link is very busy with the very same data... I wonder why?
The trademark claim is basically that consumers will be confused into thinking this had something to do with Hasbro.
I strongly suspect that while Average Joe will instantly recognise that letter tile game is not typically called Scrabulous, he could not tell you who claims that word tile game and is, therefore, exceptionally unlikely to associate Scrabulous with Hasbro, Parker Bros,. or Krusty the Clown.
Australia. Debateably not a third-world backwater.
(Almost) All residential DSL/Cable data services in Australia have a cap. If you are daft enough to use the defacto monopoly provider's retail services then you get a small cap, high price, and both in- and outbound data count. Until recently, their cap was 1 or 3 GB with a ridiculous per MB charge for excess...they still sell grandma and grandpa (read sucker) accounts with 200 or 400 megabyte limits. I think haemorrhaging customers to the competition, and being forced to play nice by the ACCC, is starting to change their ways.
Be clear on this: The telecommunications industry sees the entire Internet as we know it as a "niche market" because there is stuff going on from which they are not making money
Which bit of each of us paying an ISP for every bit we transfer doing stuff "from which they are not making money" is not making ISPs money?
Which ISP paying a Telco for every bit of data they put through backhaul because their customers are doing stuff "from which they are not making money" is not making Telcos money?
The real issue here is not that that Telcos are not making money from the Internet, that's happening hand-over-fist, it is that Telcos and big media (any large company) have no concept of "adequate profit": All profit is good, more profit is better, and monopoly rules.
Curiously though, they'll only ship this cable within the US because either:
Only US residents are stupid enough to part with this amount of cash for common or garden variety twisted pair (which I seriously doubt), or
The cable needs to be specially counter-wound for use in the southern or eastern hemispheres. Even a casual inspection shows that the electrons need to be up-down corrected for the south, and self-censored for the Chinese market.
If my Billion box is anything to go by then this is right on the money. Too many connections on a flat out BitTorrent session and *boom* the ADSL bridge hangs. No warning, no logged errors, no response except to the serial interface, no recourse except to power-off and throttle BT.
It has to be numbers out of a hat because if they based it off the movie production company's book profit (per copy) they'd quickly determine that there was no loss. This a 'feature' of Holloywood accounting that (*) The Walt Disney Company, Sony Pictures, Paramount Pictures Viacom, 20th Century Fox (News Corporation), Universal Studios (NBC Universal), Warner Bros. (Time Warner) don't wish to 'exploit'.
(*) I won't llow the responsible parties to hide behind their front company
"Special attorneys" is an abhorent solution. Justice must be seen to be done and must be seen to be impartial. Secret courts and attorneys are the antithesis of this ideal.
Whether you believe it or not, it does happen, and it does jeopardise life.
Recent examples
Military pilots I have worked with have also reported use of lasers to discourage inspection of suspect vessels at sea. This legislation won't do much for this though.
Slashdot Mirror
This is a breath of fresh air given the extent to which some other Australian Government and pseudo-government agencies will actively push to overextend their IP claims. Still, these guys primarily exist to hand out money, while most of the others are expected to be profitable "public" services.
Just adopt:
while (true) {
and all will be well
I'm just glad this message didn't come from Anonymous... then we'd have all had something to be worried about
Yes... at least in the fantasy world of George W Bush... Iraq was the "nucular" boogey man of the middle east. Remember?
A similar situation exists with the compendium of facts on aerodromes, routes and navigation aids (AIP and ERSA) published by Airservices Australia. They aggregate information provided by third parties (who are obliged to supply by law and regulation) and then claim copyright. It's this claim that probably triggered the removal of the exceptionally useful, US Government supported (and therefore probably public domain) DAFIF database (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DAFIF).
Your system only provides a certain patent rejection if someone else submits exactly the same solution inside the time limit...something I think exceptionally unlikely. The rest of the time it provides what we have now.
In the case of MP3 versus Vorbis both offer valid solutions to the stated problem of "A Way to Compress Sound Files With Unnoticeable Loss". So, a valid solution is being submitted inside your time limit but you are making a value judgement that it is "sufficiently different" from MP3 and allowing that patent.
If, on the other hand, you rejected the MP3 patent because Vorbis submission was not "sufficiently different" you have another problem. The PTO now has to record the submitted alternate solutions and ensure that they are never granted a patent at the expense of the first applicant.
Either way we're in the same grey areas and the land of litigation.
GP is probably referring to Exmouth (21 55'39.86"S, 114 7'33.70"E), which is about 1128 km from Perth (31 57'19.44"S, 115 51'30.92"E) on a bearing approx 350 deg. A short walk from a very nice part of the Indian ocean :)
It wasn't meant to be a yotta work. They were simply trying to zetta exa-mple to those that express tera at the thought of such giga-ntic numbers. Of course, they might have just done it for giga-ls.
(If bad puns gave you bad karma then I'm going straight to pungatory.)
Nine is attempting to use the fringes of copyright law to protect an effective monopoly position on guide information held by HWW (http://www.hww.com.au/. Founded as Horan Wall & Walker in 1974 and acquired by ninemsn Pty Ltd in 2006, HWW Pty Limited has more than 30 years of experience as a creator, aggregator and publisher of quality content.)
HWW absolutely refuses to licence guide data to anyone proposing to use the data in a non-media controlled PVR, and imposes the same conditions on users of their data (i.e. WWW guides). Should the High Court rule in favour of Nine then it effectively denies a guide to all unless it also orders that HWW licence the data for a reasonable fee.
The NZ Herald is quoting the Courier Mail (a Brisbane Australia paper) quoting an unnamed "ATSB spokesman". Oh please! The level of technical filtering ability displayed by the Courier Mail barely registers, even in their tech section.
I'll defer to professional investigators who, not surprisingly, have officially said nothing about electronic devices on-board. I'm sure they'll ask as a matter of routine about transmitters, phones etc. and get a series of vague hand-wavey answers. You can be _very_ sure they'll be looking harder for a concrete elevator system failure and/or control system glitch, or atmospheric condition. Heck, they might even use "evidence".
http://www.atsb.gov.au/newsroom/2008/release/2008_40b.aspx
Do you really think the average games outlet aggregates reasons for returns (in the limited places they will actually accept a return) and passes them upstream? I would not bet on it.
Anyone running a sweepstake on the date that someone else patents this and files the first patent troll lawsuit?
They hired an marketing expert so they could work those things out...
It's just that the machine wouldn't stay up long enough to run through the test script when when they plugged in the iPod.
I have the pleasure (misfortune) to work for the Australian subsidiary of a large US company. Our current approach when travelling across the puddle is that your primary laptop stays in Australia and a "blank" is issued for the trip. Many of our work machines routinely (legally) contain trade secrets and information subject to US ITAR on encrypted volumes. We have no doubt that, legal or not, this would raise US border security questions and is simply not worth carrying. Our trans-Pacific link is very busy with the very same data... I wonder why?
If software is math then there truly is some pretty f*cked up math in circulation ;^)
I strongly suspect that while Average Joe will instantly recognise that letter tile game is not typically called Scrabulous, he could not tell you who claims that word tile game and is, therefore, exceptionally unlikely to associate Scrabulous with Hasbro, Parker Bros,. or Krusty the Clown.
Australia. Debateably not a third-world backwater.
(Almost) All residential DSL/Cable data services in Australia have a cap. If you are daft enough to use the defacto monopoly provider's retail services then you get a small cap, high price, and both in- and outbound data count. Until recently, their cap was 1 or 3 GB with a ridiculous per MB charge for excess...they still sell grandma and grandpa (read sucker) accounts with 200 or 400 megabyte limits. I think haemorrhaging customers to the competition, and being forced to play nice by the ACCC, is starting to change their ways.
Bigpond's offerings
Most everyone else counts only inbound traffic.
Which bit of each of us paying an ISP for every bit we transfer doing stuff "from which they are not making money" is not making ISPs money?
Which ISP paying a Telco for every bit of data they put through backhaul because their customers are doing stuff "from which they are not making money" is not making Telcos money?
The real issue here is not that that Telcos are not making money from the Internet, that's happening hand-over-fist, it is that Telcos and big media (any large company) have no concept of "adequate profit": All profit is good, more profit is better, and monopoly rules.
Curiously though, they'll only ship this cable within the US because either:
If my Billion box is anything to go by then this is right on the money. Too many connections on a flat out BitTorrent session and *boom* the ADSL bridge hangs. No warning, no logged errors, no response except to the serial interface, no recourse except to power-off and throttle BT.
Latency! That ain't latency:
Figures courtesy of tracepath. The packets have paddled across the Pacific.
Anyone acting to prohibit the recording of crimes against viewing humanity like 'American Gladiator' is a true humanitarian in my eyes ;-)
It has to be numbers out of a hat because if they based it off the movie production company's book profit (per copy) they'd quickly determine that there was no loss. This a 'feature' of Holloywood accounting that (*) The Walt Disney Company, Sony Pictures, Paramount Pictures Viacom, 20th Century Fox (News Corporation), Universal Studios (NBC Universal), Warner Bros. (Time Warner) don't wish to 'exploit'.
(*) I won't llow the responsible parties to hide behind their front company
"Special attorneys" is an abhorent solution. Justice must be seen to be done and must be seen to be impartial. Secret courts and attorneys are the antithesis of this ideal.
Whether you believe it or not, it does happen, and it does jeopardise life. Recent examples
Military pilots I have worked with have also reported use of lasers to discourage inspection of suspect vessels at sea. This legislation won't do much for this though.