Not that this story needs more anecdotal posts, but I was walking around in the Czech Republic wandering around small towns. My wife and I decided to check where we were on our GPS-enabled Nokia N810. Lo and behold, we were on a marked "road" that was no more than a wide footpath through trees. We weren't certain that an ancient cart would fit down the path.
While I'm sure that Gigapixel images are great for pixel-peeping, they don't seem all that useful given the available real-estate on a standard computer monitor (around 1680 x 1050 these days). I'm not sure what great advantage the extra pixels do over a well-constructed JPEG or TIFF for viewing the artwork as a whole -- as it was intended to be viewed.
Not to mention that most computers would drag to a halt moving around an image that large.
Projects which accept federal grant money should require their products [patents, papers, etc.] to be placed in the public domain.
I'm not particularly happy with private companies patenting stem cell research, but if they're patenting actual functioning procedures, then I might rescind my objections.
"When I came to ACT to try to do it with stem cells I couldn't because the rights to use embryonic stem cells for diabetes had been exclusively licensed to Geron," he said."
I hope that this is a poorly worded quote. "Using stem cells to cure diabetes" doesn't sound patentable to me. Perhaps they patented using the most logical path to curing diabetes? If it was so logical, how did it meet the patentability criteria? If it was so vague, how again?
Lanza said his company has spent around 100 million dollars of investor funds on its research, and has had to play the game of securing intellectual property (IP) rights in order to compete.
"I am coming from a company where we have blocking IP as well," Lanza said. "In order for us to get money we have to file patents to protect our rights otherwise we get prohibited from even pursuing our own technology.
That's not how it's supposed to work. Of course, it might be cheaper to patent than defend against infringement claims, but that's also not how it should work.
Are we hitting the point where patents are being held defensively here also? I hope that at the very least, cross-licensing will become common enough to not prevent research. Additional expenses will be passed onto consumers and move research overseas, which can hardly be good for the US.
There will always be ideologues who value results over process. I would much rather improve the process so it's less inviting to game.
For instance, nonpartisan blanket primaries and instant runoff elections .
ASCIIpOrtal is a 2D platformer that has a portal gun. It shares many of the same elements as the original game, plus a few others.
Here, have a demo:
http://www.offworld.com/2009/07/day-made-mind-blown-its-portal.html
HIPAA only covers medical practitioners, insurance companies, and the like.
http://www.privacyrights.org/fs/fs8a-hipaa.htm#3
A little lower indicates that school nurses visits explicitly don't count.
According to the Supreme Court, FERPA doesn't allow individuals to sue.
http://www.privacyrights.org/fs/fs29-education.htm
If A = B and B = C, then A = C, except where void or prohibited by law. -- Roy Santoro