Umm... Not to be picky, but this is/. after all. DoJ is part of the executive branch. They aren't Congress. They aren't the Judiciary. The head of DoJ is the Atty. General, who is appointed by the President and is part of the cabinet. As to the rest, http://news.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=630529&cid=24403583
The problem is that candidates' political leanings were used for career, not political, positions. The executive branch has basically two kinds of jobs: career positions that don't make policy and non-career jobs that do make policy. Policy-making jobs, generally, are (and I would argue, should be) held at the discretion of the administration in power. The people filling those jobs show up with the new president, and generally leave when he goes, if not sooner.
Thus, in DoJ, you have career attorneys that represent the IRS in litigation, prosecute violations of drug laws, and are involved with civil rights actions. They bring the cases, represent the government day-to-day, and generally keep things moving. For these jobs, you want the best lawyers you can find, and being an R or a D really doesn't matter. You also have people whose job it is to tell the US Attorneys what to emphasize as a matter of national policy and the USAs themselves who decide what to emphasize for their district. For example, you may think that voter fraud needs more agreesive investigation or prosecution. On the other hand, you may think that there is no big voter fraud problem, but civil rights laws (or drug laws, or gun laws, or whatever) need stricter enforcement. Pick your issue; with limited resourses, some stuff is going to get more attention, and others will get less. That is a policy matter, and should be in the hands of the administration in power.
On the other hand, the jobs that Goodling was hiring for were apparently not policy jobs; she was supposed to find the best lawyers to fill the career posts. According to what's come out, she didn't do that. Instead, she systematically discriminated against Ds in favor of Rs. Not good.
The government agency that you run decides to build a system. Should they hire the best developers, designers, architect available, or should your hiring managers systematically weed out those candidates whose politics disagree with yours -- even though that has nothing to do with the system you're building? What is the best use of the taxpayers' dollars?
It is no answer to complain that Clinton did the same thing. Maybe he did. Maybe he didn't. I don't know, and neither do you. But, we seem to know what happened here, and it does not comport with what we should expect from people in government hiring positions for career spots.
Properly configuring SMD interface disk drives. First, properly configure your SMD A-cables (daisly chain) and B-cables (radial). Don't forget to ground properly, or you'll never reliably support the blistering 3Mbit/sec. transfer rates.
Then set the DIP switches for the proper sector size, and insert (or remove) a jumper shunt to supress the "runt" sector. Ahhh, glory days.
For those a little bit younger, configuring and terminating parallel SCSI interfaces is also a lost art, or at least on the way out.
Then you've got your ESDI and IPI stuff. All gone.
Standing is just a way of making sure that the party bringing the claim is actually the party that has suffered the injury. Joe can't sue Bob for battery of Mike. Mike has standing, not Joe. Yeah, with class actions things work differently, but I don't want to get into Rule 23 tonight. And yes, he filed in an Illinois, not Federal, court, but it's the same general concept.
Your notion about the plaintiff needing a present injury, and not a potential future injury is a good one; however, the doctrine that deals with that issue is called ripeness. Think of it as "standing in a timeframe". Joe can't sue Bob for battery because Bob might beat him up. That claim is not ripe. Joe may have other tort claims against Bob that are ripe, but the battery claim is not. The plaintiff has to have actually suffered the injury (Yes, this is oversimplified. If you want more about weird corner cases, take a class in federal jurisdiction). If he only believes that he will suffer a future injury, his claim is not ripe, and the suit would be dismissed.
However, his claim isn't really that he might suffer some future injury. His claim is that he received a defective product. BS? Yeah, I think so, but that's his claim. If his product is defective today, then he has a ripe claim in that he did not receive what he was promised by Apple in his contract of sale. His alleged injuries are present ones. Therefore, he has standing, and his claim is ripe.
1. Why would defendant accept dismissal without prejudice? Does the evidence not clearly show that the facts alleged in the complaint are without merit? Why should plaintiff have the right to refile?
2. Again, why would defendant agree to accept a sharing of court costs? Are the costs so small that litigating further would not be worth it?
The same red light cameras that made the pols feel "tough on crime" and make money too, turn out to create a political crap-storm with the police union and miffed citizens. Yee haw!
Apparently, my reply "You're quite right, etc." to an anonymous comment correcting me yesterday (which now seems to be gone?!) is linked to my original, erroneous, bad, wrong, dumb post, instead of to the correct, anonymous, informed, and now missing post.
The phantom AC post made the point that resolving interferences (where there are two or more applications for the same claimed invention) is a distinct matter from whether prior art bars a patent. That statement is, as I believe you'll agree, correct.
As a general matter, under the current "first to invent" system, you are right.
But, the parent post mentioned a "first to file" system (as used in many other countries). Under "first to file" prior art doesn't matter. All that matters is who wins the race to the patent office.
The argument for "first to file" is that it is a simpler system, and thus has lower transaction costs. Further, "first to file" is a big incentive to file a patent ASAP, instead of waiting to perfect the invention (or hiding the invention as the case may be). The theory is that this introduces knowledge of innovations to the public faster.
OTOH, "first to file" would tend, I think, to encourage more filing of groundless or obvious applications, because an inventor would be afraid of getting scooped at the patent office. Further, such a system would tend to reward those who spend money on the aggressive prosecution of patents, at the expense of those who spend money on pursuing technical innovations.
I'm sorry to see Ray go. I knew Ray back in the mid to late 1990s when he was still very active as Chairman of a company for which I once worked. A couple of little things come to mind. I remember one time when he came in for a board meeting very excited. He just made the last mortgage payment on his house, which, to my information, was worth about $150K. Yet, this billionaire was thrilled. He also used to like making the execs take him to Sizzler (the old steak house chain), where he could get the senior citizen discount. This was not designed to make the Southern California sales suits happy, but he sure seemed to enjoy it.
It's a shame that, IMHO, certain people took advantage of him as his intellect started to slip, and no parent should have to outlive his own daughter. Still, he was a giant in his day, and he funded a lot of startups while never being personally greedy (at least that I saw).
You are mostly correct. Chapter 7 bankruptcy is generally a controlled liquidation of the entire company (Ch. 7 also applies to certain personal bankruptcy cases). Chapter 11 is the "reorganization" chapter, where in theory, firms divest themselves of underperforming businesses, restructure their debt and return lean and mean. However, there are Chapter 11 cases where all of the assets of the business are sold in bulk, which looks a lot like a liquidation.
Of course, this theory doesn't really reflect much of what goes on in the Bankruptcy Courts, but that is another discussion.
Something I've always wondered about - If patents are there to foster innovation by allowing the inventor to reap the rewards of his investment (of time, capital, whatever), then why do we have the same twenty-year term for areas as different as software and drugs? For the sake of argument, I'll believe that it takes a drug company twenty years post-filing to earn an economic reward for their research. Software, at least the software patents that I've had to deal with, has a vanishingly small development cost in comparison to drug costs, yet, the most trivial software patent still gets twenty-years of protection. Yeah, the big problem with SW patents seems to be the grant of patents that are obvious to a "person having ordinary skill in the art", but wouldn't a shorter term for SW patents make some sense, given their shorter development time and smaller development cost?
Yes, the system is way more broken than this, and yes, you'd have international patent law to deal with, but a two-four year term for software patents might be a manageable compropmise that mitigates some of the problems with stealth patents etc.
You don't know what you are talking about. A 33% fee is the kind of thing that you might see for a personal injury lawyer working on a contingency fee basis. It has nothing to do with:
(1) Sony's in-house lawyers, who are paid a salary, and won't handle this litigation anyhow
(2) Sony's law firm, outside lawyers that Sony will pay by the hour, or
(3) The TX AG's lawyers, who are paid a salary by the state.
This complaint will be settled in a few months, with Sony paying a fine to the State of Texas and promising to be good boys and girls in the future. Some kind of consent decree is possible concerning future DRM technology. The AG will have a nice press conference touting his win. The next technology comes out, and we'll fight another battle.
Sony's laywers get paid, the AG's lawyers might get taken out for drinks and a steak dinner. Nobody gets rich off of this one, but Greg Abbott increases his national profile for his political future.
Bottom line: The AG filed this because primarily because it is good politics. Secondarily, he probably believes that Sony needs a whack upside the head. Nobody gets 33% of anything.
Slashdot Mirror
Umm... Not to be picky, but this is /. after all. DoJ is part of the executive branch. They aren't Congress. They aren't the Judiciary. The head of DoJ is the Atty. General, who is appointed by the President and is part of the cabinet. As to the rest, http://news.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=630529&cid=24403583
The problem is that candidates' political leanings were used for career, not political, positions. The executive branch has basically two kinds of jobs: career positions that don't make policy and non-career jobs that do make policy. Policy-making jobs, generally, are (and I would argue, should be) held at the discretion of the administration in power. The people filling those jobs show up with the new president, and generally leave when he goes, if not sooner.
Thus, in DoJ, you have career attorneys that represent the IRS in litigation, prosecute violations of drug laws, and are involved with civil rights actions. They bring the cases, represent the government day-to-day, and generally keep things moving. For these jobs, you want the best lawyers you can find, and being an R or a D really doesn't matter. You also have people whose job it is to tell the US Attorneys what to emphasize as a matter of national policy and the USAs themselves who decide what to emphasize for their district. For example, you may think that voter fraud needs more agreesive investigation or prosecution. On the other hand, you may think that there is no big voter fraud problem, but civil rights laws (or drug laws, or gun laws, or whatever) need stricter enforcement. Pick your issue; with limited resourses, some stuff is going to get more attention, and others will get less. That is a policy matter, and should be in the hands of the administration in power.
On the other hand, the jobs that Goodling was hiring for were apparently not policy jobs; she was supposed to find the best lawyers to fill the career posts. According to what's come out, she didn't do that. Instead, she systematically discriminated against Ds in favor of Rs. Not good.
The government agency that you run decides to build a system. Should they hire the best developers, designers, architect available, or should your hiring managers systematically weed out those candidates whose politics disagree with yours -- even though that has nothing to do with the system you're building? What is the best use of the taxpayers' dollars?
It is no answer to complain that Clinton did the same thing. Maybe he did. Maybe he didn't. I don't know, and neither do you. But, we seem to know what happened here, and it does not comport with what we should expect from people in government hiring positions for career spots.
Properly configuring SMD interface disk drives. First, properly configure your SMD A-cables (daisly chain) and B-cables (radial). Don't forget to ground properly, or you'll never reliably support the blistering 3Mbit/sec. transfer rates. Then set the DIP switches for the proper sector size, and insert (or remove) a jumper shunt to supress the "runt" sector. Ahhh, glory days.
For those a little bit younger, configuring and terminating parallel SCSI interfaces is also a lost art, or at least on the way out.
Then you've got your ESDI and IPI stuff. All gone.
Standing is just a way of making sure that the party bringing the claim is actually the party that has suffered the injury. Joe can't sue Bob for battery of Mike. Mike has standing, not Joe. Yeah, with class actions things work differently, but I don't want to get into Rule 23 tonight. And yes, he filed in an Illinois, not Federal, court, but it's the same general concept.
Your notion about the plaintiff needing a present injury, and not a potential future injury is a good one; however, the doctrine that deals with that issue is called ripeness. Think of it as "standing in a timeframe". Joe can't sue Bob for battery because Bob might beat him up. That claim is not ripe. Joe may have other tort claims against Bob that are ripe, but the battery claim is not. The plaintiff has to have actually suffered the injury (Yes, this is oversimplified. If you want more about weird corner cases, take a class in federal jurisdiction). If he only believes that he will suffer a future injury, his claim is not ripe, and the suit would be dismissed.
However, his claim isn't really that he might suffer some future injury. His claim is that he received a defective product. BS? Yeah, I think so, but that's his claim. If his product is defective today, then he has a ripe claim in that he did not receive what he was promised by Apple in his contract of sale. His alleged injuries are present ones. Therefore, he has standing, and his claim is ripe.
In fact, it stinks! Ba-dum-dum
1. Why would defendant accept dismissal without prejudice? Does the evidence not clearly show that the facts alleged in the complaint are without merit? Why should plaintiff have the right to refile?
2. Again, why would defendant agree to accept a sharing of court costs? Are the costs so small that litigating further would not be worth it?
The same red light cameras that made the pols feel "tough on crime" and make money too, turn out to create a political crap-storm with the police union and miffed citizens. Yee haw!
You're right. I'm wrong. You're smart. I'm dumb. You know. I don't. I forgot. You remembered.
That's why I tried to apologize for this yesterday http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=219410&cid=17Apparently, my reply "You're quite right, etc." to an anonymous comment correcting me yesterday (which now seems to be gone?!) is linked to my original, erroneous, bad, wrong, dumb post, instead of to the correct, anonymous, informed, and now missing post.
The phantom AC post made the point that resolving interferences (where there are two or more applications for the same claimed invention) is a distinct matter from whether prior art bars a patent. That statement is, as I believe you'll agree, correct.
Sorry AGAIN for the goof.
You are quite right. Post in haste, repent at leisure...
As a general matter, under the current "first to invent" system, you are right. But, the parent post mentioned a "first to file" system (as used in many other countries). Under "first to file" prior art doesn't matter. All that matters is who wins the race to the patent office.
The argument for "first to file" is that it is a simpler system, and thus has lower transaction costs. Further, "first to file" is a big incentive to file a patent ASAP, instead of waiting to perfect the invention (or hiding the invention as the case may be). The theory is that this introduces knowledge of innovations to the public faster.
OTOH, "first to file" would tend, I think, to encourage more filing of groundless or obvious applications, because an inventor would be afraid of getting scooped at the patent office. Further, such a system would tend to reward those who spend money on the aggressive prosecution of patents, at the expense of those who spend money on pursuing technical innovations.
For more, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_to_file_and_fiIt's a shame that, IMHO, certain people took advantage of him as his intellect started to slip, and no parent should have to outlive his own daughter. Still, he was a giant in his day, and he funded a lot of startups while never being personally greedy (at least that I saw).
I am glad to have known him.
You are mostly correct. Chapter 7 bankruptcy is generally a controlled liquidation of the entire company (Ch. 7 also applies to certain personal bankruptcy cases). Chapter 11 is the "reorganization" chapter, where in theory, firms divest themselves of underperforming businesses, restructure their debt and return lean and mean. However, there are Chapter 11 cases where all of the assets of the business are sold in bulk, which looks a lot like a liquidation.
Of course, this theory doesn't really reflect much of what goes on in the Bankruptcy Courts, but that is another discussion.
Something I've always wondered about - If patents are there to foster innovation by allowing the inventor to reap the rewards of his investment (of time, capital, whatever), then why do we have the same twenty-year term for areas as different as software and drugs? For the sake of argument, I'll believe that it takes a drug company twenty years post-filing to earn an economic reward for their research. Software, at least the software patents that I've had to deal with, has a vanishingly small development cost in comparison to drug costs, yet, the most trivial software patent still gets twenty-years of protection.
Yeah, the big problem with SW patents seems to be the grant of patents that are obvious to a "person having ordinary skill in the art", but wouldn't a shorter term for SW patents make some sense, given their shorter development time and smaller development cost? Yes, the system is way more broken than this, and yes, you'd have international patent law to deal with, but a two-four year term for software patents might be a manageable compropmise that mitigates some of the problems with stealth patents etc.
You don't know what you are talking about. A 33% fee is the kind of thing that you might see for a personal injury lawyer working on a contingency fee basis. It has nothing to do with: (1) Sony's in-house lawyers, who are paid a salary, and won't handle this litigation anyhow (2) Sony's law firm, outside lawyers that Sony will pay by the hour, or (3) The TX AG's lawyers, who are paid a salary by the state. This complaint will be settled in a few months, with Sony paying a fine to the State of Texas and promising to be good boys and girls in the future. Some kind of consent decree is possible concerning future DRM technology. The AG will have a nice press conference touting his win. The next technology comes out, and we'll fight another battle. Sony's laywers get paid, the AG's lawyers might get taken out for drinks and a steak dinner. Nobody gets rich off of this one, but Greg Abbott increases his national profile for his political future. Bottom line: The AG filed this because primarily because it is good politics. Secondarily, he probably believes that Sony needs a whack upside the head. Nobody gets 33% of anything.