And now, unless you follow the deviation of restricting yourself to just one partner, you go to prison in most countries.
Really? I haven't looked at the laws about this in European countries, but in the United States, it isn't a criminal offense to have sex with someone other than your spouse. It may cause issues when it comes to divorce proceedings, but that's strictly a civil contract matter.
That might not be a great example; Facebook seems to be particularly terrible at targeting advertising. The best 0-for that I've seen included advertisements for meeting Christian singles (I'm not Christian, and Facebook knows it), meeting "bad" girls (I guess Facebook doesn't have any specific reason that I'm not interested in "bad" girls, but I have no idea what they do know that would lead them to that idea), and an online MBA program.
Indeed. I was looking through my HS yearbook from ~1998, the girls seem different from today. Girls now talk as if they were mentally retarded- "OMG," "like totally," etc. It wasn't as bad back in the 90s. Seems like the average female IQ is dropping. Just look at the average girls Facebook feed- nothing but brain dead attention whores.
You must have gone to an upper-class high school or something. Most of the people in my high school class were like that. And the boys didn't seem to be any brighter overall than the girls.
There is a legal principle called laches. Which basically says: If you don't defend your rights in a timely manner, you lose them.
For patents, it isn't quite that simple. If you become aware of someone infringing your patent, and you delay notifying them (or filing a lawsuit) for the purpose of letting damages accumulate, you may lose damages for the time between becoming aware and notifying. You don't lose the right to file a lawsuit, you don't lose the right to seek an injunction or future royalties, and you don't lose all past damages.
I'm not a patent lawyer to know if in the rest of the description they have narrowed it in some way
Here's a key thing to remember, which most people posting on Slashdot fail to do: the important bit is the claims. For example, Claim 1 does not mention USB, SD cards, or any other specific connector, so it isn't limited to specific connectors.
That paragraph from the specification isn't necessarily binding, though. What matters is the claims. In the version of the claims you can see now, though, Claim 1 doesn't say anything about the type of connector, while Claim 2 specifies that it's USB and a memory card. In theory, Claim 1 could be rejected by the USPTO and Claim 2 could be allowed, which then would restrict it to that specific combination. I doubt that will happen, but it's theoretically possible.
The patent, if granted, secures only the schematics/diagrams mentioned in it.
That is incorrect. The patent, if granted, secures whatever is described in the claims. If a claim does not include any mention of the specific type of joint connector, then that specific type is not required to infringe or anticipate the patent. Whatever is described in the figures of the patent is not necessarily part of the claims.
For example, the oldest (and until fairly recently, only) way of handling database queries in PHP pretty much asks for you to be vulnerable to SQL injection attacks, because there's no parameterization so all you can do is awkwardly run a hodgepodge of escaping functions and hope they work. By contrast, Perl, Java, Python, and C# all provide support for parameterizing queries in their standard approaches to handling database queries about 10 years before PHP did. That's the kind of thing that gives PHP its bad reputation.
Depends on your definition of "fairly recently." PDO was available as an extension for PHP 5.0 (2004) and was included in the standard installation for PHP 5.1 (2005). There hasn't been any excuse not to be using it for at least 5 years.
Never attribute to malice that which can be explained by stupidity.
Well, with that logic, Oracle never does anything evil.
The expression is actually "that which can be adequately explained by stupidly." There are many evils that could only be explained by once-in-a-million-years stupidity, which probably wouldn't be an adequate explanation.
Even though it's rather poorly worded, the GP post may not be completely stupid. The point is that there isn't necessarily a single person at the median value. For example, if you have values [1,1,1,2,2,2,3,3,3], then fewer than half of the elements are less than the median value, and fewer than half are greater than the median value.
The underlying assumption is that it's possible for two people to have exactly the same intelligence. Whether or not that assumption is true, I honestly have no idea.
Even though you were going for the funny, you bring up an important point. Most states already have laws covering theft of services. The problem isn't about how this can be illegal, but the fact that it's already illegal, so the DMCA and CFAA shouldn't come into it at all.
2. Translate to local time(user log-in with TZ prefs, or default to GMT)
I've highlighted the problem that you forgot about. Stupid users will still complain that the clock isn't accurate because they won't be able to figure out how to set their preferred timezone.
I always suspected the hats were to cover bald spots, is there a formal reason for them other than tradition?
There's nothing in the Torah about head coverings, so it is a tradition and not really biblical Jewish law. One source is that Christians had the practice of always removing their hats when they went inside. Just to be different, the Jewish tradition of always keeping your head covered was started.
I also wondered why they didn't just boil water, whether it was ignorance or just a preference for beer instead of water
Try drinking room-temperature water, which is pretty much the coldest it will get after boiling (in climates that most humans lived in a few thousand years ago). Different regions of the world came up with different ways of making warm water taste good. The two most popular were beer and tea.
Slashdot Mirror
That sound you just heard was not HD 189733 flying past you.
And now, unless you follow the deviation of restricting yourself to just one partner, you go to prison in most countries.
Really? I haven't looked at the laws about this in European countries, but in the United States, it isn't a criminal offense to have sex with someone other than your spouse. It may cause issues when it comes to divorce proceedings, but that's strictly a civil contract matter.
But we can't program a computer to translate a language we don't know.
Of course we can. It's called a Universal Translator. Haven't you ever seen the documentary, "Star Trek"?
Hey, Metroid Prime was very good.
(MP2, not so much, they really fucked up the pacing.)
I still think Echoes was good, though I agree that it was probably the weakest of the three. I thought Corruption was great, too.
That might not be a great example; Facebook seems to be particularly terrible at targeting advertising. The best 0-for that I've seen included advertisements for meeting Christian singles (I'm not Christian, and Facebook knows it), meeting "bad" girls (I guess Facebook doesn't have any specific reason that I'm not interested in "bad" girls, but I have no idea what they do know that would lead them to that idea), and an online MBA program.
Indeed. I was looking through my HS yearbook from ~1998, the girls seem different from today. Girls now talk as if they were mentally retarded- "OMG," "like totally," etc. It wasn't as bad back in the 90s. Seems like the average female IQ is dropping. Just look at the average girls Facebook feed- nothing but brain dead attention whores.
You must have gone to an upper-class high school or something. Most of the people in my high school class were like that. And the boys didn't seem to be any brighter overall than the girls.
There is a legal principle called laches. Which basically says: If you don't defend your rights in a timely manner, you lose them.
For patents, it isn't quite that simple. If you become aware of someone infringing your patent, and you delay notifying them (or filing a lawsuit) for the purpose of letting damages accumulate, you may lose damages for the time between becoming aware and notifying. You don't lose the right to file a lawsuit, you don't lose the right to seek an injunction or future royalties, and you don't lose all past damages.
In the time of the founding fathers, there were no such things as corporations.
Exactly. Corporations are entirely an invention of modern American society.
Oh, wait
Note: This should not be taken as an argument for or against corporations or regulation. This is only meant as a statement of fact.
I'm not a patent lawyer to know if in the rest of the description they have narrowed it in some way
Here's a key thing to remember, which most people posting on Slashdot fail to do: the important bit is the claims. For example, Claim 1 does not mention USB, SD cards, or any other specific connector, so it isn't limited to specific connectors.
why is it that you were incapable of actually reading TFA and discovering that the patent is very narrowly for a combined USB/SD port
Or perhaps some people are capable of reading the claims, which is the important part a patent, and seeing that Claim 1 has no such limitation.
That paragraph from the specification isn't necessarily binding, though. What matters is the claims. In the version of the claims you can see now, though, Claim 1 doesn't say anything about the type of connector, while Claim 2 specifies that it's USB and a memory card. In theory, Claim 1 could be rejected by the USPTO and Claim 2 could be allowed, which then would restrict it to that specific combination. I doubt that will happen, but it's theoretically possible.
The patent, if granted, secures only the schematics/diagrams mentioned in it.
That is incorrect. The patent, if granted, secures whatever is described in the claims. If a claim does not include any mention of the specific type of joint connector, then that specific type is not required to infringe or anticipate the patent. Whatever is described in the figures of the patent is not necessarily part of the claims.
For example, the oldest (and until fairly recently, only) way of handling database queries in PHP pretty much asks for you to be vulnerable to SQL injection attacks, because there's no parameterization so all you can do is awkwardly run a hodgepodge of escaping functions and hope they work. By contrast, Perl, Java, Python, and C# all provide support for parameterizing queries in their standard approaches to handling database queries about 10 years before PHP did. That's the kind of thing that gives PHP its bad reputation.
Depends on your definition of "fairly recently." PDO was available as an extension for PHP 5.0 (2004) and was included in the standard installation for PHP 5.1 (2005). There hasn't been any excuse not to be using it for at least 5 years.
Never attribute to malice that which can be explained by stupidity.
Well, with that logic, Oracle never does anything evil.
The expression is actually "that which can be adequately explained by stupidly." There are many evils that could only be explained by once-in-a-million-years stupidity, which probably wouldn't be an adequate explanation.
THat's a 70K price to pay for the intense satisfaction that comes from helping scientists engage in science. Worth it IMO.
$70K goes a long way towards paying the mortgage or your kid's college tuition.
Not sure what institutions accept "intense satisfaction" as a form of payment.
I don't know about MIT, but a lot of universities give pretty good discounts to children of employees and faculty members.
Even though it's rather poorly worded, the GP post may not be completely stupid. The point is that there isn't necessarily a single person at the median value. For example, if you have values [1,1,1,2,2,2,3,3,3], then fewer than half of the elements are less than the median value, and fewer than half are greater than the median value.
The underlying assumption is that it's possible for two people to have exactly the same intelligence. Whether or not that assumption is true, I honestly have no idea.
That being said the backslash would be bigger then the removal of a feature that the majority of the users wouldnt care about.
I guess that would be a pretty big backslash. And I didn't even know Sony was switching to Windows.
Even though you were going for the funny, you bring up an important point. Most states already have laws covering theft of services. The problem isn't about how this can be illegal, but the fact that it's already illegal, so the DMCA and CFAA shouldn't come into it at all.
9/10, would read again.
2. Translate to local time(user log-in with TZ prefs, or default to GMT)
I've highlighted the problem that you forgot about. Stupid users will still complain that the clock isn't accurate because they won't be able to figure out how to set their preferred timezone.
Remember that there are two words in that phrase. If it isn't plausible, it isn't going to help you deny anything.
Ruby is a programming language. The "Rails" part of Ruby on Rails is a framework. It's roughly equivalent to the difference between C# and .NET.
I always suspected the hats were to cover bald spots, is there a formal reason for them other than tradition?
There's nothing in the Torah about head coverings, so it is a tradition and not really biblical Jewish law. One source is that Christians had the practice of always removing their hats when they went inside. Just to be different, the Jewish tradition of always keeping your head covered was started.
I also wondered why they didn't just boil water, whether it was ignorance or just a preference for beer instead of water
Try drinking room-temperature water, which is pretty much the coldest it will get after boiling (in climates that most humans lived in a few thousand years ago). Different regions of the world came up with different ways of making warm water taste good. The two most popular were beer and tea.
The goal isn't money, it's using the rights granted by patent protection as a club to control others.
Does the MPEG-LA believe that they have some kind of divine mandate to control what videos people are allowed to watch?
I would guess that whatever control they're seeking is simply a means to an end, and the end is simply money.