I'MMA LET YOU FINISH
The last thread was just getting going....
Gotta go!
This is so confusing.
Innovate!
And just look at this bag of cats.
Where is everybody? Maybe they don't like the topic.
Hmmmmmm. Mickey Mouse, any one?
Had Al Gore patented his invention of the Internets, he'd be the wealthiest man in the world.
Buscho should be in jail, not innovators.
Slippery creatures!
Bag o' cats...again.
You know, when you have a sentence like this:
Heavyweights like Nokia and Microsoft on one hand, and the grass-roots Foundation for a Free Information Infrastructure on the other, are making common cause against ...
you just know that whatever they're fighting must be wrong nine ways to Sunday.
Oh, hell. Here's a whole page of cats.
Cuteness can cure a lot of ills in the world. Maybe pictures of these cats should be shown to the mean people trying to put a stranglehold on innovation.
The lack of massive penalty possibilities in Europe does deter innovation because the large companies are incentivized to infringe.
san antone rose: your cats are lovely! It was worth trying to post the link 3 times!
Had Al Gore not sacrificed his time and energy in the service of the American people, he'd be bigger than Thomas Edison invention-wise.
Hi all:
OT, but this is worth passing on: Boston's mayor, Tom Menino, competent but widely derided as 'Mayor Mumbles' for his Churchillian rhetorical skills, speaking out loud and clear about religion and politics:
''What Jesus said, and what he showed with his life, was that the way to follow him was to take care of people," Menino said. ''He told us in the Gospel of Matthew -- the hungry, the naked, the homeless, the sick, and yes, the imprisoned."
He added: ''How much clearer could the Lord have made it?"
Good question, that.
http://www.boston.com/news/local...faith_politics/
Yes, but how many patents does God hold?
That law is patently ridiculous!
Errr, I got nothing.
.
IP is big because anything that comes out is instantly pirated and sold outside and inside the US for a lot less than the originator. Say, "Lion Witch and the Wardrobe", which stands to bring in billions - but about 50% of what it would if there weren't abounding pirated versions of everything from the t-shirt to the fake snow.
God might have used the work of a deity in another part of the multiverse, improved on it somewhat, and be still arguing before the All-M-brane Law Lords about whether He can patent it or it's subject to the prior use doctrine...
Hi.
Patent law makes me sleepy.
i don't really understand patent law, so i'm going to just read what all you smart people have to say about it.
and blogwhore,
Has anything of merit ever been invented by a Repukelican? I doubt it.
so is this tacit acknowledgement on the part of Microsoft that they stole everyone else's ideas like wordprocessing, spreadsheets, relational databases, browsers, etc. and by the grace of weak patents ran the innovators out of business with preditory practices?
.
Has anything of merit ever been invented by a Repukelican? I doubt it.
Lime Rickey | 12.10.05 - 9:52 am | #
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Electronic voting machines!
Hey ChiDyke.
Want some music?
I got a banging Deep Dish set and one from Sander Kleinenberg.
SNL has Alec Baldwin as host tonite. Even when the material is crap, Alec is always good on that show. A good leftist that Alec!
As an inventor, I welcome our new patent overlords.
As written, the law would stop all but the largest multi-nationals from doing practical research.
Should the law pass, I will need to learn a new skill.
Hey ChiDy: hawaya?
There is, of course, an extent to which procedure, stare decisis and like that eventually bend the law to serve those with the most energy, time and, most of all, money, with which to pursue their interests...
yowza -- those gop powers of seduction:
In the buttoned-up, fundamentally cautious capital, Cunningham stood out as a gossip columnist's dream. Two women quoted by the Copley News Service depicted Cunningham, a self-described family man, as offering them champagne after changing into pajama bottoms and a turtleneck sweater "to entertain them by the light of his favorite lava lamp."
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/1031.../site/newsweek/
Patent Xmas!!
The idea of God being "subject to the prior use doctrine" tickles me, and I'm experiencing comedy stall--too many possible jokes to consider--so I'll just say, "Thanks, ProfWombat."
A good grin starts my day nicely.
Electronic voting machines!
snotglass
Right. I forgot old Mr. Diebold, the man who destroyed democracy.
hbk- sure!
prof- avoiding real work, and also doing some blogging at my place. life is cold, but good.
i really do have opinions about patent law and IP rights, but they're so radical i'm almost afraid to post them...
Here's what years of Bushco have done to me: as soon as i saw the article, i immediately figured that the companies are fighting it in order to maximize their exploitation of the public, and they are whitewashing this with bullshit about "innovation", which is the word their PR team has selected as being the best one to make the public sympathize with their position.
the immediate conclusion, with no logic or understanding to guide it, was that if there were numerous corporations opposing this, then it is a moral imperitive to support it for all it's worth.
Thanks, Bushco. You have conditioned me like Pavlov's dog, me, who used to take pride in thought-out positions.
-
i really do have opinions about patent law and IP rights, but they're so radical i'm almost afraid to post them...
chicago dyke
Go nuts.
It's the fuzz, scurry.
Gosh: a turtleneck, pajama bottoms and lava lamp. Who knew? No wonder I lost my virginity at 53...
OT: fuck FAUXNews for their blaring loudspeaker of lies and deceit:
What 'War on Christmas'?
THIS is what I call innovation
(from some tabloid in NYC)
PASS THE VODKA LEAVE it to the land of legal ganja to come up with this crafty beverage: bong vodka. New from Holland, the liquor comes in a bottle that looks exactly like a bong, the glass water pipe that stoners use to smoke weed. One marijuana expert who saw the novel vessel marveled at the quality of the glass piece — but noted it required a strategic hole near the base to be fully functional. Reps for the product assure us it's "extremely smooth, with a silky finish." And the bottle is reusable, too.
Can Vegas casinos sue Diebold over theft of intellectual property?
A blanking foot of snow through which I had to drive all day yesterday. Today it'll be in the high thirties, windless, sunny. The kids are beside themselves with thoughts of snowmen and sledding. Me, i'd just as soon enjoy it on a postcard or something, but a dad's gotta do what a dad's gotta do...
OT.
I took a look at the CNN Poll: "How do you define Victory in Iraq", and I was surprised to read that 3 out of 4 people who posted comments were against the war. I'm glad to see that opinions are turning and eyes are opening.
http://tinyurl.com/c9ruv
Thanks, jim posner, that was fun.
Gotta run out and tell the Salvation Army it's Angel Tree isn't sufficiently holy.
but a dad's gotta do what a dad's gotta do...
ProfWombat
good guy!
plum- on campus a while back there was an article in the student paper about turning cheap vodka into clear, smooth expensive tasting vodka.
basically, you take smirnoff or whatever cheap brand you prefer, and run it through a britta water filter pitcher a few times. it takes a while, but supposedly really improves the flavor.
" Has anything of merit ever been invented by a Repukelican?"
not meritorious, but repuklicans do hold the patents on hypocracy, greed, lying and deception, and corruption.
.
Sorry to be OT - but here is your assigned New Orleans reading for the morning
After her sister's e-mail, she arose from her bed at 3 a.m. and, weeping, wrote a response in the form of a letter to the editor of the Times-Picayune:
"The attention received in the early days of this tragedy was relentless…. But now, though thousands continue to suffer and drown in grief and despair, the cameras have turned elsewhere. We are left to suffer alone with fear and broken promises….
"I want the word to get out. We are not OK. We are desperate, depressed, anxious, angry. People are killing themselves. Relationships are deteriorating. The antidepressants are not working. No, we are not OK."
Read the whole thing.
http://www.latimes.com/news/nati...eadlines-
nation
chicago dyke: what a good trick! Britta Vodka!
but i rarely drink my vodka straight these days... i'm getting old, i need some sort of fruit juice mixed with it!
As an inventor, I welcome our new patent overlords.
As written, the law would stop all but the largest multi-nationals from doing practical research.
Should the law pass, I will need to learn a new skill.
shawk
Bingo.
Add to this the fact that any employee of a large corporation whose research is successful has probably already signed an agreement that all patent rights go to the corporation.
Stiff fines in certain circumstances, but criminal liability is a bit much.
plum- on campus a while back there was an article in the student paper about turning cheap vodka into clear, smooth expensive tasting vodka.
basically, you take smirnoff or whatever cheap brand you prefer, and run it through a britta water filter pitcher a few times. it takes a while, but supposedly really improves the flavor.
chicago dyke
A visit to the campus chromatography lab for some 95% reagent ethanol would be productive.
Last I looked, a 55 gallon drum was about $100.
Remember to dilute it and remember that it's a fire hazard until diluted.
you'll love this number:
STOCKHOLM (AFP) - A watchlist of possible terror suspects distributed by the US government to airlines for pre-flight checks is now 80,000 names long, a Swedish newspaper reported, citing European air industry sources.
The classified list, which carried just 16 names before the September 11, 2001 attacks in New York and Washington had grown to 1,000 by the end of 2001, to 40,000 a year later and now stands at 80,000, Svenska Dagbladet reported.
cursor reports that 30,000 on that list are "mistakes."
OT: fuck FAUXNews for their blaring loudspeaker of lies and deceit:
What 'War on Christmas'?
mogwai
My Freeper neighbor gave me a Christmas card that he got from the White House (I guess if your a donor to the GOP you got a Xmas card from George and Laura) and what to my wondering eyes did appear, not one mention of Christmas at all.
The official White House card with the Presidential seal on it says "Best wishes for a holiday season of hope and happiness 2005"
Someone needs to tell Gibson stat.
lb0313: NBC News did a good job all week reminding people of just that. Yesterday, they showed Katrina survivors living in tents beside their rotting houses trying to prepare for the holidays...tragic. The Third world in America...
man am i having close tag issues today or what...
As the owner of a couple of dozen patents and a designer by trade, all I can say is that this is insanity. It will bring innovation to a screaching halt. There is hardly ever a design that doesn't build in some way on prior work. That is how the system is supposed to function.
Criminalizing patent infringement will clog the couts and expose a dirty little secret of the technical world: Namely that the patent examining system worldwide is neither accurate or effective when it comes to issuing patents. I spend a lot of time reviewing IP when I start a product design and am astounded more often that I want to be by the stuff that is clearly prior art that the PTO (and European nation equivalents) lets through as patentable. Elevating their bumbling to the level that people can be dragged off to the slammer over it is truely frightening. No sane designer would risk his/her freedom over it.
What this will do, in all probability, is make the big patent-mills (in the US they are IBM, GE, Etc.) even more powerful at stifling innovation than they already are. It will also have a dramatic effect on how US products are sold in Europe. The EC already plays a lot of regulation games with imports by requiring CE marking on all imports. CE is a series of requirement that all products imported to the EC have to pass in the name of "product safety and performance". What they really are is a bald-faced protectionist barrier.
The European patent system is a disaster right now with all of the EC nations trying to reconcile their patent systems. It is both not finished and a big mess. Adding this to the top of it will be a nightmare.
Coffee and ratcakes.
Tim Finnegan 12.10.05 - 9:28 am
From the thread below.
I am not sure what is meant by "ratcakes." But...what does rat taste like? Would there by any downside to eating rat? Would they need to be tested for poisons they might have ingested? Somehow?
Any of our glorious cooks have any good recipes for rat? How many rats per servin?
If nothing else, NYC and most urban areas do have a sizable rat population, which might provide protein for the poor, as all the percentage of their income goes to heat and shelter.
What is the recommended rats per servinf?
Remember, teach a man to catch a rat and you feed him (or her) for life. Help them to stand up so the rich can sit down to count their untaxed wealth! So much better than welfare, foodstamps, food kitchens, and soup lines.
Sounds like a program BushCo and the House Reptilian could love.
basically, you take smirnoff or whatever cheap brand you prefer, and run it through a britta water filter pitcher a few times. it takes a while, but supposedly really improves the flavor.
chicago dyke
...this is all Grey Goose does...nothing special but the mega-filtration - that is all it takes to make smooth 'expensive' vodka
Sounds like a program BushCo and the House Reptilian could love.
jawbone
A Modest Proposal indeed.
I completely disagree. The pattern has been for a small company to develop an innovation, just to have a large and powerful corporation purchase the innovation or just issue a public announcement that they were just about to release the same exact techology.
Patent suits are lengthy and expensive things to pursue in the united states, in the end the little guy will lose. Knowing all this, most, if not all small businesses will sell thier idea to the large corporation who may just be purchasing it to squelch the threat to it's existing technology base.
Look up the term "vapor ware" and you will find examples of this phenominom. NO wonder microsoft is fighting this one. They would be absolutely no where without the patent infringements, techonology buyout, and vaporware announcements.
Maybe it has always been the practice in the tech industry to "build on another's work", more accurately stated as patent infringment. It is about time that that ceased. Since our governmental system is so controlled by the large money interests, it appears europe is the only place that will take the matter seriously.
Fenian--the fundoids got pretty upset over the Bush Christmas card, actually.
question for the group: how do you feel about people, like drives and cooks and whatnot, who really need the money and are taking the very well paying halliburton jobs in iraq?
i'm of two or more minds on this one.
Whaty yowza said
(Mornin' Moonbats!)
The proposed legislation would seem to give way too mauch authority to the bureaucrats deciding whether a patent is worth granting (useless petty minded people -- like Einstein) -- seriously -- big bucks could be used to influence the people who grant (or withhold) patents -- doesn't seem right
Chicago D--I think if you're hungry enough, you'll do anything. I think there are also individuals looking to take advantage of the system as it exists. So, like you, I'm of 2 minds.
I suspect most individuals fall into the former category, not the latter.
fy- please see a mental health care provider soon. you really need help.
There's recent history to suggest that the European parliament doesn't like software patents. Whether the big corporations who work to stifle innovation through vague patents will try to bypass the parliament and go for directives from the commission remains to be seen.
But there's a well-established campaign to stop them getting through the door.
PlumP
Good on them - I've been on the road too much for regular news - and too many power outages when home...
But until you all shout me out of here, I've made a vow to remind folks about this at least once a day.
Make noise to congress, please. Make noise everywhere
ChiDy (Hi!) --
The same way I feel about poor people who take jobs at WalMart -- it is macroeconomically wrong, but you have to survive, support your family, etc.
The lousy system that forces such choices on people is to blame (IMHO)
ChiDyke links on the way.
Also do you know Daniel Mnookin?
Fenian--the fundoids got pretty upset over the Bush Christmas card, actually.
Sallyh,Grandmere Poissonniere
Really. Haven't been up on the latest on the War on Christmas. Work last week was very busy. I guess it proves again that Fundies will never be happy about anything.
the very well paying halliburton jobs in iraq?
cd - it is called no draft - all the army needed was a draft and they could do all that shit with grunts...but instead they go all PC and ignore a need for a draft and simply spend BILLIONS more to pay a contractor than if the army did it itself - "see war is great - we have no draft [we are going into debt up to our ears - but so what - that is the american way!]"
Bon matin Sallyh! I've haven't been here a lot lately, taking care of my sick dad.
So what are you baking this saturday morning: bread? Brioche? Muffins? Or your legendary pies?
question for the group: how do you feel about people, like drives and cooks and whatnot, who really need the money and are taking the very well paying halliburton jobs in iraq?
I'm against it. There's a shortage of good cooks and drivers in America. The drivers we import from abroad are terrible, have names I cannot pronounce, and speak in accents I cannot understand. The cooks we import use too much spice and make things other than what can be found in a Hungry Man dinner.
We need our AMERICAN cooks and drivers to stay HERE.
.
i love the smell of sarcasm in the morning
back on topic - my company sells a product which another israeli company patented the vague 'terminology or concept' that our software does...guess what our attorneys ruled that because of the vagueness of their patent it is essentially toilet paper in the legal world and thus we pay no royalties, but the israeli company is allowed to keep saying they have a patent [software patents]
Plum P--this morning, it's your choice of pumpkin loaf or cranberry orange loaf 
How is your da?
your Honor, you are a very funny corpse.
hbk- yup. he's cool. thanks for the link!
well, if your opinions are so radical!, then i am too afraid to even read them.
by the way, i had to deal with your city, thursday nite, in that snowstorm!
not fun.
how do you feel about people, like drives and cooks and whatnot, who really need the money and are taking the very well paying halliburton jobs in iraq?
I've spoken to people who've taken jobs with other contractors. I also come from a background where people lost their jobs in local petrochemical industry and went to work in the Middle East, tax-free.
So I understand the motivation. In April '03, I sat on a plane next to someone who'd done his time in the Army Rangers, served in the 1991
Gulf War, and was going back to do private security. He was frank about it: work three months in hostile conditions, and you can look after yourself for the rest of the year.
My take on it is that if you take the money, you take the risk. But it's also worth remembering that, above all, Halliburton is a subcontractor, and makes its money from negotiating the supply contracts and taking a cut from subbing. Of course, it also helps that it's bought up a lot of the firms to which it subcontracts out. Firms which then subcontract again, taking another cut.
Halliburton's LOGCAP deal goes back to the Clinton days. Of course, now we have Halliburton's former CEO running the country.
mogw- i guess that's what bothers me about patents. some countries will ignore them, some countries will write ridiculous and/or overly protected laws, and pirating of IP will continue.
i don't know what the answer is, but it seems to me that unless and until you have a global concensus on patents, a lot of the legislation is moot.
On patents: it's interesting how history pans out here. In the 19th century, the US was famous for refusing to honour foreign intellectual property rights. Dickens did his speaking tours in the US to offset the fact that his books were being pirated wholesale. Plenty of foreign inventions were 'Americanised' via patents. (Thomes Edison was basically a pirate.)
That kind of free-for-all reflected the motivations of an economy playing catch-up, a bit like China in recent years. Of course, once the US decided it had a lock on technological innovation, it brought down the shutters.
As written, the law would stop all but the largest multi-nationals from doing practical research.
I'm not entirely sure of this. I think it's a stupid law, but one effect it should have is to empower small inventors. Failing startups (I've known a few) sometimes find themselves in a position where their patent portfolio is worth more than their projected product revenues (which may well be close to zero). In that case, "freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose", they shut down their product line, and they change their business plan to one of searching for infringers, unencumbered by any potential claims against their own products. Letting them bring criminal charges, that would make life interesting.
cranberry orange loaf: please Sallyh!
my dad is not well, hopefully it will end soon. He's been suffering so much all year. But nobody expected him to live through another xmas. I'm actually going to his place to make him his xmas tree. See you all later, and thanks for caring.
Freep this poll in my local rag.
Should the United States join the Kyoto Protocol?
http://www.delawareonline.com/ap...com/ap...s.dll/
frontpage
There are only 63 votes so far, so Eschatonians can have a major impact.
Thanks!
Eschatonians got "yes" over 65% by contributing brought about 110 "Yes" votes.
Cooks and drivers and other servants?
Cynicus' Law # 7 : in a service economy, the job you get is as a servant.
The current "plunder America" economy is a big win-win for the rich. Get rich people together, and what to they all talk about and bitch about? Servants - how overpaid they are, how lazy, how they don't do well enough, they speak funny, etc.
Collapse the American economy with job export and upper-class tax cuts and you get a depression.
In a depression, those still wealthy have a big increase in purchasing power, are able to buy up assets (stocks, factories, land, etc) at pennies on the dollar -and they have a huge pool of desperate poor to become their gardeners and upstairs maids. And desperate servants will toothbrush the bathroom floor until it meats Mrs. War-Bucks' standards.
Who says the rich aren't clever?
-
hey sallyh: the cranberry orange loaf, if a piece could be spared for a marsupial...
ahem, 'protective.' dan, sorry to hear about your drive. a friend of mine spent two hours on LSD, and said he passed a broke-down car every other block or so. i think that was wed night.
on topic: i guess i don't believe in the idea that ideas should be patented. i don't think genes should be either. i'm not sure how i feel about software, but i don't believe microsoft ever has my interests in mind. unless there are uniform standards around the globe, i think IP authors will continue to get screwed in most countries. one 'solution' i can think of: allow individuals, but never corporations, to hold patents.
Cynicus--this is yet another example of how the Bush Regime regards us as 'the help.' Bush seems pathologically unaware that the voters hired him--and we can fire him, too.
aw plum p: my heart's with you.
SallyH--pumpkin loaf also sounds fantastic. Walnuts? Dense and moist? or somewhat lighter?
Mmmmmm, good.
Prof Wombat--but of course! Marsupials are always entitled to extra slices as well!
How are you and all the Wombats?
I hold a patent (which was fun to get) but never again.
My company holds it, and when I move on I won't legally be able to employ my own idea in anything new I design. Which is insane. From now on I keep my ideas to myself (which itself is probably illegal if you read the fine print of my employment contract - they own all ideas I have while they employ me).
Working for a large corporation is like living in a fiefdom, outside of many significant constitutional protections.
.
Right. Companies own the brains of their employees and all of their intellectual property. And they argue about criminalizing patent infringement stifling innovation? Innovation is being cut off at its origin in the individual. Engineers don't want to invent because their companies take their intellectual property, and slap them across the face as they do it.
An uncle of mine did the work underlying the patent for Kodacolor film as a chemist working for Eastman Kodak. They treated him very well--they made billions off him, and he was a great guy. Once he drove us by the house of one of the inventors of Kodachrome, who did the work on his own and owned the patent, llicensing it to Kodak. It was munificient...
Let me correct myself--Bush wasn't actually hired by the voters, but the appearance is that he was.
how do you feel about people, like drives and cooks and whatnot, who really need the money and are taking the very well paying halliburton jobs in iraq?
short answer: m e r c e n a r i e s...
ManOnBlog -
"Corporations are like a fiefdom" - i'm not so sure that's just an exaggeration. To me they look an awful lot like the big owners of the latifundia in the dimming days of the Roman Empire - where their wealth was literally incalculable, they ran the government to suit themselves, and individuals had to sell themselves into the patron's "protection" to have a hope of not being screwed by the legal system, not to mention taxes, or the ability to eat.
We are entering the New Feudalism. Are you a Microsofter, or a Coca-Cola Man? Who holds your vassalage? Who's man are you?
-
sallyh:
well, thanks. Snowplay on the agenda today for the 8 and 9 year old Wombettes. The 14 year old is going, much to her flabbergastation (if that isn't a word it should be), to the high school's Holly Ball tonight to eat Chinese food and be with her friends. I invited her to revisit the excruciating, accurate dance scene from Harry Potter 4 this afternoon. She declined. Me, I'd get on my turtleneck and pajama pants, and look for a lava lamp...
I invented the blow-up lawn Santa and snowman, but the crafty Chinese stole them in broad daylight.
even the drivers and cooks, woody? the ones in MS and LA who are looking at a really bleak domestic economic future, and have families to feed? that seems harsh, even as i understand what you're saying about mercs, the real kind.
We are entering the New Feudalism. Are you a Microsofter, or a Coca-Cola Man? Who holds your vassalage? Who's man are you?
-
Cynicus- 10:40 am
personally, i am a free lance...
You criminalize IP infringements and let me tell you, it ain't gonna be people working at the big companies who go to jail.
How are big companies going to respond? They'll beef up their legal staff. They'll put more money into producing patents, most of which will be (as they are now) garbage.
How will little companies and individual investors respond? Well, a lot of them don't have the money to spend on lawyers. Many of them will go do something else or go work for the big companies, who can afford to protect them.
Frankly, I don't see how anyone could think this would benefit the little guy--or anybody but the lawyers.
We are entering the New Feudalism. Are you a Microsofter, or a Coca-Cola Man? Who holds your vassalage? Who's man are you?
in my folks hometown, pop ~4400, there was a proposal to fund new police cars...by allowing wal-mart and john deere etc. to buy ad space on the vehicles.
"this arrest brought to you by Mobil/Exxon!"
hey wgg: you know, in 56 years it never occurred to me that 'freelance' had its origins thus. Thanks...
Actually KBR would rather have workers from places like Sierra Leone so they can pay them $120 a month and claiming that if these workers had stayed in their own countries they'd only be gettin $100.
chicago dyke:
"allow individuals, but never corporations, to hold patents."
Amen!
.
even the drivers and cooks, woody? the ones in MS and LA who are looking at a really bleak domestic economic future, and have families to feed?
they're facilitating--ennabling--war crimes...
they were never invited there by the indigenes, were they?
no...they're there so that a soldier can go about the business of killing.
what part of facilitating murder for pay is not a crime???
this is for A, if you're out there:
By LAURA MECKLER
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
December 9, 2005; Page B1
New Mexico, long rumored to be a favored landing spot for UFOs and aliens, now wants to use taxpayer money to build a launching pad for space tourists.
The state plans to spend some $200 million to build a "spaceport" in the desert, envisioning a day when regular people board commercial spaceships and take flight. A private venture called Virgin Galactic, which hopes to offer commercial space flight as soon as 2008, plans to base its operations at the new facility.
The deal brings together two ambitious public figures: Virgin Atlantic founder Richard Branson, known for his U.K.-based airline and his publicity stunts, and New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, the former diplomat and congressman often mentioned as a Democratic presidential candidate. The two plan to make the announcement next Wednesday in Santa Fe, N.M.
"We see a whole new space industry, and we are at the ground floor of that industry," said Rick Homans, chairman of the recently formed New Mexico Spaceport Authority and the secretary for economic development.
I invented the blow-up lawn Santa and snowman,
I'll be over with tar and feathers in ten minutes.
mogwai,
I'm outta country so i have trouble figuring out if's really that bad or are they making it up as they go along.
Perhasps if the Democrats get the upperhand in the mid-terms, maybe we can get a Constitutional Amendment to change Freedom of Religion to Freedom from Religion.
regards
.
Gee, WGG, i'm a free lance too. But the free lances of the Renaissance had to hire on (even if it was job-to-job) with the 'condottieri' of the Italian city-states in order to eat.
History note: the Italian Renaissance saw the extensive use of mercenaries, called 'condottieri', in their internecine wars.
The literal meaning of 'condottieri"?
CONTRACTORS.
And you thought Dubbyah slept through all those college history classes!
-
I have seen very little coverage of the recently kidnapped people on the broadcast news or even cable.
Has there been some sort of agreement with BushCo to limit coverage in order to prevent the kidnappers from getting publicity? Or just to take some of the heat off BushCo? Don't want to limit the bounce in the polls, afterall.
I mean, they were even back to covering The Missing White Woman in Aruba story, but nothing, really, about the two American missing white men. Just heard yesterday there are some other aid workers also kidnapped in Iraq, one a French woman and the other I forgot. They wouldn't have been mentioned in US media at all if there weren't the two American male victims.
Wow.
Or, is this being downplayed because of what the group of four was doing in Iraq? Read the article below.
http://www.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/me...main/
index.html
Brothers: Hostages were gathering evidence of abuse in Iraq
Saturday, December 10, 2005; Posted: 3:17 a.m. EST (08:17 GMT)
James Loney and his colleagues have been gathering evidence of detainee abuse, his brothers say.
With a Saturday execution deadline looming, the brothers of a Canadian man held hostage in Iraq made another plea to his abductors, saying Friday that their brother was in Iraq to gather information on alleged human rights abuses.
James Loney, 41, and three other Christian Peacemaker Teams aid workers -- Canadian Harmeet Sooden, 32, Briton Norman Kember, 74, and American Tom Fox, 54 -- were kidnapped in Iraq on November 26.
A group calling itself the Swords of Justice Brigades threatened to execute the men on Thursday unless all Iraqi prisoners were released. (snip)
The four men have been gathering evidence about people being treated poorly while "detained by occupation forces," Edward Loney said.
"Actually KBR would rather have workers from places like Sierra Leone so they can pay them $120 a month..."
Guess what...
That $120 a month is paid in full at the end of the contract, so a 24 month contract yields a gross of $2880. Then deductions for transportation to and from the country, job site, meals, room, shuttle service...there ain't much left over.
Seen that when I was working on oil exploration crew in Saudia in the early 80's.
regards
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tee hee, i have an ironic off topic question: does anyone know where i can go for free images so that i can start blogging with pictures? one that doesn't bog you down with lots of ads or registration bs, but has lots of pics of lots of stuff.
Pravda claims: "Mr. Lieberman, who remains immensely popular in his home state, is aware of the hornet's nest he has stirred."
Immensely popular? Really?
This is what I hate about Pravda; the blanket statements without anything to back them up.
I don't believe Lieberman is immensely popular in Connecticut. Bush's Iraq is immensely unpopular everywhere, but in a handful of evangelical, red, southern states.
Has anyone seen polling data that shows Lieberman is immensely populat back home?
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Prof Wombat--you don't need the leisure suit to embarrass the Wombette. Simply show up. If she's 14, your mere presence should be sufficient.
Cynicus:
"Corporations are like a fiefdom" - i'm not so sure that's just an exaggeration. To me they look an awful lot like the big owners of the latifundia in the dimming days of the Roman Empire."
I completely agree with you Cynicus. Look at the civil rights you give up when you enter the company property: they can read your mail; monitor your phone, email, and web browsing habits; search your desk / locker / lab; make you take drug tests; I'm not sure where this will end, but I'm seriously not happy with the current arragement.
I've told Ms. ManOnBlog that the first drug test they ask me to take (and, barring some screw-up in the test itself, I would certainly pass) will be the day I quit.
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Tar and feathering would be too good for most of that inflatable crap.
Cynicus | Homepage | 12.10.05 - 10:53 am
didja ever read Conan Doyle's "The White Company"? a 'free' company of knights and archers, freebooters fighting 'for' England, but mainly for the fight and for the booty...incredibly romanticized, but an excelllent read...
Dartanyon: Joe did win his last two elections with roughly 2/3 the vote... dunno about recent times.
sheet
Yeah, Doyle's White Company - and his historical romances in general - was what Doyle considered his "serious", "good" writing. He hated Holmes and all those short stories in the Strand magazine.
And he will remain immortal for the hackwork for cash he so despised - perhaps rather like real mercenary soldiers.........
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This is unbelievably stupid. I invent things as part of my work. I already hate dealing with patent law issues, and 90% of the time the company with the most lawyers wins anyway, regardless of how absolutely new my claims are. To know that they could send me to jail instead of just ripping me off is totally insane. If they pass this, I will look to hire as many bright Europeans fleeing the stupidity as I can afford, and I will stop filing in Europe.
You cannot patent an owl.
Dartanyon - I work in Stamford CT and I have friends and relatives in Fairfield County CT. Nobody in Ct seems to be a huge Lieberman fan. I've been asking around lately to see what people think. Lieberman has a good voting record on issues like the environment and social concerns. (Similar to Hillary.) He must be doing OK for the millionnaires because he keeps getting re-elected. I can't figure it out.
Today's Terror Alert Color: Brazen Raisin.
Bush: drf
Perhaps a distinction needs to be made between basic process patents and minor improvements to existing ideas.
If you develop something like a light bulb that uses a new way to make light, then you have a useful and worthwhile patent. This is Hard. You should make money on this idea. A lot of money.
If you invent a slightly different way to screw in this new light bulb, then you are just rearranging the furniture slightly. Most patents are like this.
They are fairly easy and they contribute virtually nothing.
By clogging up the patent process with criminal penalties for infringing existing ideas - even ideas that you have never heard of, the potential big ideas won't get funded.
An uncle of mine did the work underlying the patent for Kodacolor film as a chemist working for Eastman Kodak. They treated him very well--they made billions off him, and he was a great guy. Once he drove us by the house of one of the inventors of Kodachrome, who did the work on his own and owned the patent, llicensing it to Kodak. It was munificient...
And your uncle made a pittance.
The way to invent and patent is on your own nickel, working in your own emply. If you invent something on the corportation's time, OR if you invent anything related or not to their work while in their employ, they own it.
One thing I noticed about that article. Everythng they talk about rgarding innovation relates to consumer items.
This is unbelievably stupid. I invent things as part of my work. I already hate dealing with patent law issues, and 90% of the time the company with the most lawyers wins anyway, regardless of how absolutely new my claims are.
My husband invents as part of his work, as well. We learned our lesson the first time he got ripped by the corporation.
The tragedy of all of this is that technical innovation is a huge force in spinning the economy. There's already hesitation on the part of many engineers ( at least that my husband and I know) to create intellectual property.
This kind of thinking is ****-*** stupid and will bring things to a more grinding halt than they already are.
****-***?
Frankly, I don't see how anyone could think this would benefit the little guy--or anybody but the lawyers.
I don't know if it helps the lawyers so much. AIUI, this law now puts the plaintiff side of patent infringement claims in the hands of the government prosecutorial apparatus, whereas in the past it was all on the plaintiff to bring action against alleged infringers using their own lawyers. So all the private lawyers who used to work for the plaintiffs would now be SOL.
I can see how this would allow smaller companies to be less vulnerable to getting their IP claims just trampled on by giant ones, since they would no longer have to pay beaucuop bucks to bring a claim. However, it would also allow big companies to intimidate anybody small by forcing them to mount very expensive defenses in order to avoid being put in jail.
The whole thing seems pretty absurd -- I mean, if two companies have competing patent positions that they both regard as legitimate, and they fight it out in court, does the side that is determined not to have primacy just get clapped in irons and hauled off to jail when the verdict is handed down? Cos' if the plaintiff is determined in that trial not to have primacy, then they're the criminal infringers, right?
It seems to me that the real solution is to put both sides of the adjudication of patent infringment claims in the hands of the government. A panel of judges hears fairly brief statements from both sides and then decides whether to take the case. If it is taken, then the judges do the rest, without the long and costly process of a jury trial. The result is an injunction, not a criminal conviction. If the loser continues to infringe in the same manner then there is a criminl trial.
Or something like that, anyway. Any time I try to think of a really fair system that allows small-time innovators to play in the world of high-tech, I get a headache....
ChiDY:
We are currently looking for drivers to help us rob a train. You should understand that we will be heavily armed and will be shooting anyone who resists our mission. I know there may be some here among you that have lost their jobs and have family to feed and house, so this is a good opportunity for you, as yo can tell. Pay will be given on a percentage of the take from the mission, and will be paid out at the end of your tour of duty. Please apply to the address below:
Office of Employment
Haliburton Corporation
C/o Blair House
Washington, DC.
"An Equal Opportunity Employer"
- Don't Ask, Don't Tell.
Occ Post:
They didn't pay him millions a year, but they paid him, and treated him, very well. His job was never in doubt, his company never a candidate for sale, closure, downsizing and like that while he worked there. He retired on an excellent pension and his wife and children never lacked for anything. Only in comparison to the yearly take of the owner of the other patent was it a pittance.
Me, I'd actually have preferred my uncle's station in life to the other fella's. I don't know if if would have been available even to him in today's business environment.
As a person who owns a small company in the business of product design and innovation, this is a catastrophic mistake from the EU. First, simple queries to understand whether an idea is truly innovative cost as much as $15,000. In the course of making a consumer product, you might need to think about state of the art search for as many as 10-15 components. Imagine if you had to bake in $150-250k to the investigative phase of a new product. Ugh.
The way to invent and patent is on your own nickel, working in your own emply. If you invent something on the corportation's time, OR if you invent anything related or not to their work while in their employ, they own it.
Occasional Poster,
Yep. This is one of the reasons I am on my own, although my previous employer was pretty generous with profit sharing compared to the norm.
z adura,
I think you're missing the point. You can cost the $150k into the products you sell, and presumably everyone else has to do the same, so the customer pays. Annoying, and maybe disruptive to small margin products but no big deal overall. OTOH, if there is a remote chance of going to jail, and companies trying to send each others' innovators to jail, then who the hell wants to "risk" innovation? The only engineers and scientists left innovating will be those too stupid to not go into some other field instead.
One of my biggest beefs with Clinton was his formation of GATT which protected IP way too strongly. Made it nearly impossible for imporverished countries to obtain affordable anti AIDS medications, and profoundly inhibited 3rd world countries from competatively entering the world economy. Helped keep everyone in their place.
I am a patent attorney and this idea is terrible for many reasons. First, the patenting process is incredibly inexact. Depending on the level of skill of the patent examiner, it is very possible to get overly broad claims that really shouldn't be allowed into a patent. Most importantly, there is absolutely no way to ensure that you are not infringing some patent before you start selling a product. You can do a diligent search of existing patents and still not find a claim that your product might arguably infringe.
The disadvantage that small inventors have with protecting their patent rights is the cost of litigation to enforce their rights. Patent infringement suits are very expensive and very, very few lawyers like to take these as contingency fee cases. Thus, the little guy gets shut out of the process if he can't pay the attorney fees.
Of course it helps the laywers--just not necessarily the same set of laywers it helps now. See, if the government (any government, EU or US) starts prosecuting patent infringers, then a lawyer is going to be defending the infringers.
Furthermore, inventors and corporations will put more money into patent research before they develop something in order to try to avoid infringement problems later. Law firms will make a bundle of off this.
Maybe it has always been the practice in the tech industry to "build on another's work", more accurately stated as patent infringment.
So what you're really saying is that you don't know the difference between building on previous work, and infringement.
Everyone, of course, builds on another's work, standing on the shoulders of giants. I'd guess, as an informed layman after a semester's worth of patent law, that's where good lawyering, more than unambiguous criteria for judgement, comes in. There's something unsatisfactory in that admission.
The most high-tech army on earth can't control the insurgents....
and the governments of the world are supposed to police copyright infringements? Good luck.
When was Microsoft last innovative? Indeed, Microsoft often thrived on applying pressure to small, poor companies who claimed Microsoft was infringing their intellectual property rights.
Microsoft is not so innovative in the tech sense, it's more innovative in the marketing sense.
Uh, no, a patent does NOT give you the right to use your invention. It gives you the right to exclude others from using your invention. Your invention may actually be dominated by other patents.
"First, the patenting process is incredibly inexact. Depending on the level of skill of the patent examiner, it is very possible to get overly broad claims that really shouldn't be allowed into a patent."
Exactly right, but it's even worse. Because the system is full of holes, it's easily abused by white-collar crooks gaming the system and extorting royalties. The system places the burden of proof on the accused - so the patent terrorist merely needs to claim you are violating - even if their patent is obviously bogus - to force you to negotiate because you cannot afford to fight.
Also, patent law makes no distinction between a manufacturer and end-user. In other words, all Blackberry users can be sued individually, instead of the manufacturer.
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