If you didn't commit any crimes then you won't mind if the police search your house, right? Since you don't cheat on your taxes then you won't mind if the IRS conducts an audit of the last 5 years of bank activity, right? Since you only made a bunch of generic yet strangely geeky purchases on your credit card, you won't mind if we share that information with advertisers, right?

What could possibly go wrong?

Firstly, the exception to due process during a traffic stop is based on the argument of a necessary expediency--that is, by the time the officer could obtain a warrant for the search, the car and/or illegal items will have been removed. The records of the calls and texts are stored permanently at the wireless carrier, so expediency doesn't apply (though the court seems to think otherwise about this at least in some cases).

Furthermore, the due process standards of a warrantless search are identical to those of a warranted search. In particular, the scope of a search is limited to its basis in probable cause. For example if an officer suspects a stolen cow in the back of a truck this does not provide a basis to search the glove box, or a locked suitcase found in the back, etc, although such searches can and often do uncover additional evidence in plain sight that form the basis to extend the search to new areas and containers. The same is true for a warranted search, again if searching for a cow in the back yard this does not provide basis to search a cabinet under the sink (or whatever).

In order to search a phone without a warrant the officer would need to have probable cause, i.e., evidence that suggests a possible link between the phone and the crime, for example if a witness testified that the suspect was seen using the phone during the act. Mere suspicion is not probable cause.

A patent is only valid within its jurisdiction, generally a particular nation state (except for the EU which is a block). For example, a patent granted by the USPTO has no jurisdiction in China nor the EU, etc, although it is possible to get an injunction to prevent the import of infringing products. The patent cooperation treaty provides the same priority date in all member nations with 30 months to file the complete application, but the application still must be filed and prosecuted in every jurisdiction (a rather expensive endeavor).

Shippers won't stop using tracking systems, not losing things and keeping the operation efficient is their life-blood.

However Google could practice this invention by building a master package tracking system that spanned multiple shipping vendors, this could be integrated for example into the google apps platform and/or an android app. Integrated services are essentially the life-blood of google (actually, adwords, but the integration is what drives users to their service).

In some organizations there are people who literally spend all day tracking packages on FedEx, FedEx has an app just for doing that built on Adobe AIR. However I for one find the FedEx software design to be atrocious.

So yeah, probably not worthless after all...

The patent claims a "delivery estimate and notification system" that is calculated by a third party (a "broker system"), since FedEx/UPS is the shipper, not the broker of the sale, their current and pre-existing tracking systems are not in conflict with the invention.

Moreover the patent claims that the utility of the invention is in that estimates provided by the shipper are typically inaccurate, forcing the receiver to wait for "days" at home, meanwhile playing hooky from work and school as to not miss the delivery, and therefore an this ancillary calculation of estimated delivery arrival time, carried out on the broker's computer system, is needed to provide a better estimate of delivery time, in other words its a hack to fix a broken system. Now, maybe that was the case back in 2007 when this was filed but in all my dealings with FedEx and UPS in the past couple of years their estimates of the day and time of delivery are extremely accurate even for long shipments several days out. One can also subscribe to get notifications of shipment status directly from the shipper, which sidesteps this patent entirely which only covers those notifications coming from a broker.

Based on this my conclusion is that this patent is useless and simply irrelevant.

The patent has a priority date of May 11, 1998.

The US Supreme Court has decided that corporations, which are effectively anonymous, have the same right to free speech as individuals. Not only that but through a corporate shield, wealthy anonymous individuals can spend millions of dollars to spread the message and effectively bribe public officials through campaign contributions. We can't seriously argue against anonymity of free speech until that decision is repealed.

This is the same line of reasoning that the police use when they try to convince you to let them search your person or property without probable cause. All regimes are potentially repressive and one does not need to be an "activist" to legitimately seek to minimize exposure.

The claims of a patent do not have to be 100% novel, if that were the case it would be impossible to patent anything because nothing can be created in a vacuum. The standard is that at least one additional limitation must be provided that is novel, the rest can be taken directly from prior art. Additionally the novel material must be non-obvious and useful. Generally this is called an "improvement" claim.

Examples: Flat head screw => Phillips head screw. Light bulb => Frosted light bulb. Hammer => Ergonomic hammer. Method with some inefficiency implemented in old code from 1990 => Modified method with improved efficiency (note that the actual code, e.g. programming language, is irrelevant, the underlying method is the subject of patentability)

However what is often misunderstood is that a patent on an improvement does not give the inventor the right to actually practice the invention, they must first obtain right to practice the original patent. For example to make a frosted light bulb, I first must license the patent on the light bulb, or wait for it to expire.

There can be a later patent that contains an improvement on on the first. It is derivative work but contains some novel aspect. If that improvement is used in an implementation then it is in violation of the later patent subject to the later priority date. Usually one can find these derivative works by searching the USPTO for citations to the first patent.

Is reporting it to the BSA necessary or even adequate? They are a private entity, not the police.

Also the mere presence at the scene of a crime may not be sufficient for accessory, that would be considered accidental and not encouraging of the crime or its repetition through inaction.

If this wasn't the case it would impossible to legally operate a computer repair business without filing a police report on every customer with an unauthorized copy of something on their hard disk.

IANAL but I would call to question if the guy was actually in a position of liability simply by virtue of having discovered the software.

In acoustics measurement and audio engineering the criteria are completely objective, and the only thing that really matters is linearity. Unfortunately these are generally the very expensive systems because essentially nothing about loudspeakers is actually linear, in particular a loudspeaker voice coil is only approximately linear for small excursions where the magnetic field lines are approximately linear.

Sound quality on the other hand is highly subjective and people generally prefer a moderate amount of dynamic range compression which improves intelligebility in a noisy environment, and some harmonic distortion is also nearly universally preferred since it makes it sound more "rich" from the spectral smearing.

Historically the quality of amplification electronics in audio gear has gone up significantly over the last few decades, and at the same time the price of those components has gone way way down thanks to class-D amps that synthesize a time-varying voltage using high-speed digital switching. However, the quality of the actual loudspeakers has gone down dramatically, mainly because of the strong consumer preference for sound systems that are exceedingly small and/or integrated into television sets. Back in the '70s a loudspeaker was accepted as part of the furniture landscape, but no longer, and this is a huge disaster for sound quality as there is simply no way to make a full range system without a large surface area that enables the low-impedance coupling of the driver with the air. At the absolute smallest a full-range speaker cone should be at least 4 inches in a cabinet with about 6 inches depth... which certainly won't fit in my macbook... :(

With 38 km^2 of glass, its a window washer's wet dream...!

I'll bet if they polled people they would also say they hate email, probably even more than facebook. Email sucks--its impersonal and most people don't have the level of skill to use it effectively (i.e. reading, writing and typing), but they do anyways and doing so inflict their ignorance on the world.

Email sucks, so does facebook. Google sucks too, the web is full of useless spam and so are their search results. In fact computers basically just suck in general and have a huge potential for improvement at the human-interface level. G+ already sucks too, but marginally less so than the alternatives which is still enough that people will be jumping ship like rats as soon as they open the floodgates.

Somebody should let Rupert Murdoch know, he likes to buy imploding social networks.