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Submission + - Patent Issued Covering Phone Notifications of Delivery Time and Invoice Quantity (eff.org)

eldavojohn writes: The staggering ingenuity of the US Patent system has again been showcased by the EFF's analysis of recent patents. This week's patent and follow up patent cover the futuristic innovative idea that when you order something, you can update your order and add additional amounts to your order while it's being processed. But wait, it gets even more innovative! You may one day be able to even to notify when you would like it delivered — ON YOUR PHONE. I know, you're busy wiping all that brain matter off your screen as your head seems to have exploded. Well, it turns out that inventor and patent holder Scott Horstemeyer (aka Eclipse IP, LLC of Delray Beach, FL) found no shortage of targets to go after with his new patents. It appears Tiger Fitness (and every other online retailer) was sending notices to customers about shipments. Did I mention Professional waste-of-space Horstemeyer is a lawyer too? But not just a regular lawyer, a "SUPER lawyer" from the same firm that patented social networking in 2007, sued Uber for using location finding technologies in 2013 and sued Overstock.com as well as a small time shoe seller for using shipping notifications in 2014.

Comment Re:Attempting with existing title was a mistake (Score 4, Funny) 239

If that was the case you would not have given them 25% and taken 75% for you and the game makers.

You know, I always hate how my grunt work for companies makes them 4 times the money they pay you. It's just greedy theft. We should start a movement where the means of production are owned by the workers rather than investors and management!

Comment Non Sequitor (Score 5, Insightful) 334

I'm not disappointed at all. Drones are so much better than actually invading Pakistan, and reduces the number of kids that get killed in war.

I never got the hate for drones in the first place. Why would you want to launch a ground invasion instead, which means MORE kids getting killed?

Sure, if you want to kill someone, you're right. I think the argument against drones is that if you push a button and someone dies on the other side of the Earth and you didn't have to go to war to do that ... well, fast forward two years and you're just sitting there hitting that button all day long. "The quarter solution" or whatever you want to call it is still resulting in deaths and, as we can see here, we're not 100% sure whose deaths that button is causing. Even if we study the targets really really hard.

And since Pakistan refuses to own their Al Queda problem, we have to take care of it for them.

No, no we don't. You might say "Al Queda hit us now we must hunt them to the ends of the Earth" but it doesn't mean that diplomacy and sovereignty just get flushed down the toilet. Those country borders will still persist despite all your shiny new self-appointed world police officer badges. Let me see if I can explain this to you: If David Koresh had set off bombs in a Beijing subway and then drones lit up Waco like the fourth of July and most of the deaths were Branch Davidians, how would you personally feel about that? Likewise, if Al Queda is our problem and we do that, we start to get more problems. Now, that said, it's completely true that Pakistan's leadership has privately condoned these strikes while publicly lambasting the US but that's a whole different problem.

Also, we must always assume that war = killing kids. The fact that people think kids shouldn't be killed in war basically gives people more of an incentive to go to war in the first place. When Bush invaded Iraq, the public should have asked "OK, how many kids are we expected to kill?" Because all war means killing kids. There has never been a war without killing kids.

The worst people are the ones that romanticize war, by saying war is clean and happy and everyone shakes hands at the end. War is the worst, most horrible thing, and we need to make sure people understand that, or they'll continue to promote war.

Yep, think of the children -- that's why we should use drone strikes, right? Look, war means death. Death doesn't discriminate and neither does war. If you're hung up on it being okay to take a life the second that male turns 18, you're pretty much morally helpless anyway. War is bad. Drone strikes are bad. There's enough bad in there for them both to be bad. This isn't some false dichotomy where it's one or the other. It's only one or the other if you're hellbent on killing people.

News flash: you can argue against drone strikes and also be opposed to war at the same time. It does not logically follow that since you're against drone strikes, you're pro war and pro killing children. That's the most unsound and absurd flow of logic I've seen in quite some time.

Comment No, This Is Important for People to See (Score 5, Insightful) 256

Wait. A person who made dubious claims that had no scientific backing to them was actually lying? What next? Water is wet?!!

I think pretty much everyone but the nutjob, true believers in psuedo-science knew all along that this woman was lying.

So you're saying everyone knew she was lying about her charity donations as well? Or was it only the charities that knew that? From the article:

The 26-year-old's popular recipe app, which costs $3.79, has been downloaded 300,000 times and is being developed as one of the first apps for the soon-to-be-released Apple Watch. Her debut cook book The Whole Pantry, published by Penguin in Australia last year, will soon hit shelves in the United States and Britain.

So you're saying the 300,000 downloads are by people that knew they were downloading the app architected by a liar? And they were paying $3.79 to Apple and this liar for a recipe app that contain recipes that someone lied about helping her cure cancer? And you're saying that everyone at Apple that featured her app on the Apple Watch knew they were showing a snake oil app on their brand new shiny device? And that the people at Penguin did all their fact checking on any additional information this cookbook might contain about Belle Gibson's alleged cancer survival? And that everybody involved in these events know society's been parading around a fucking liar and rewarding her with cash money while she basically capitalizes on a horrendous disease that afflicts millions of people worldwide ... that she never had?

No, this is not the same as "water is wet" and it needs to be shown that holistic medicine is temporarily propped up on a bed of anecdotal lies ... anybody who accepts it as the sole cure for their ailment is putting their health in the hands of such charlatans and quacks.

Comment Oh Look, a Car Analogy for Last Week's Story! (Score 1) 649

Why don't the automakers just seek refuge under the DMCA from all those evil automobile hackers? Clearly, figuring out how your car works is a direct attack on the very hard work and property of those automakers.

Time to pass a bill state by state. I'm the sure the invisible hand of the free market will line all the right politicians' pockets to rush those through. Hopefully someday we won't be able to own our cars and we can go back to the Ma Bell days when every phone was rented.

Comment Re:Should be micro kernel (Score 1) 209

That's cheating.

And inside, a modern x86 processor is actually a giant hardware emulation of x86 instructions with a RISC/VLIW core... You call it cheating, and I call it optimizing.

They second you try a cool trick like migrating a thread to another machine...

But this would happen with a macrokernel as well... you can't just magically make networking overhead disappear...

Comment Re:Google updates (Score 1) 179

They can force manufacturers to use unlocked bootloaders if they want the official Google version.

But hardly anyone is running the stock Android anyways. They've all expended on the code, and made it different. Almost no one actually uses the "official Google version" at all...

There's no reason whatsoever why Google can't make the same thing a requirement

But they can't because it's open source software. No one could make all of the Linux Distros use the same official kernel... it's not possible, because it's open source, and you can make it yourself.

and would prefer shipping a version of Android with no Google services

But this is already the case. Amazon and Barnes and Noble do not sell Android devices with Google services on them.

I don't get why people have such a difficult time understanding that Google can't wrangle these cats, because it doesn't have an Iron Fist on the source code...

Comment Re:Should be micro kernel (Score 0) 209

I've never seen a true microkernel that has the performance of a monolithic kernel.

I've never seen a RISC processor that can match the performance of the best CISC processors. You know, nevermind the fact that tons of money has been poured into CISC processors making them faster and faster.

Sometimes, it's just a matter of where the attention has been placed.

Comment Re:Even worse. (Score 1) 289

Snowden released all of his information to journalists before he left the country.

The President finds that the unrestricted immigrant and nonimmigrant entry into the United States of aliens determined to meet one or more of the criteria in section 1(a) of this order

Snowden is both a resident and a citizen of the US. Yes, we revoked his passport, but we cannot revoke his citizenship without his consent. As a citizen, he cannot be blocked entry into the country. He can be detained indefinitely the second he enters the country, but we can't stop him from returning.

hy block people that contribute or materially represent "certain persons"? Is this to prevent Snowden...

For the last time, THIS EO DOESN'T APPLY TO SNOWDEN. *mumbles mumbles mumbles*

Comment Re:Clickbait-ish Headline (Score 1) 121

If a NAS is doing uPNP on purpose or is acting as a router, then the NAS manufacturer has an obligation to provide appropriate guidance to their users.

INDEED! If they screw that up, it's bad, and they should be the ones holding the responsibility if it accidentally exposes data that they don't want exposed through uPnP... no one else is able to properly infer the right thing to do.

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