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Submission + - White House announces reforms targeting patent trolls

Submitted by andy1307
andy1307 writes: According to Politico and The Wall Street Journal, the White House on Tuesday plans to announce a set of executive actions President Barack Obama will take that are aimed at reining in certain patent-holding firms, known as "patent trolls" to their detractors, amid concerns that the firms are abusing the patent system and disrupting competition. The plan includes five executive actions and seven legislative recommendations. They include requiring patent holders and applicants to disclose who really owns and controls the patent, changing how fees are awarded to the prevailing parties in patent litigation and protecting consumers with better protections against being sued for patent infringement.

Comment Developer? (Score 4, Insightful) 220

by andy1307 (#43643869) Attached to: A Case For a Software Testing Undergrad Major

Imagine the power of being able to hire a recent college graduate who has been taught how to develop system diagrams, build complex SQL, run log analysis, set up a cloud test environment, and write automation scripts.

If I can do all this, why would I want to remain a tester? Why wouldn't I get into development?

Comment BS summary and title (Score 1) 121

by andy1307 (#43481619) Attached to: Businesses Moving From Amazon's Cloud To Build Their Own
From TFA

It’s impossible to know whether a significant number of businesses are deserting AWS and public clouds in favor of private. My guess is there’s some movement as businesses get more experience in the cloud but certainly not enough to dent the potential of the public cloud. Still, the murmurs are an indication that AWS competitors are starting to get more aggressive.

That's exactly the kind of hard data nerds use to arrive at conclusions...

Comment Re:My problem with offsite/cloud storage. (Score 2) 180

by andy1307 (#43311365) Attached to: The Twighlight of Small In-House Data Centers

3) The ability of government agencies to scan my data for whatever they feel like arbitrarily and possibly without due process.

How does an in-house data center protect you from that? If they're not following due process for a hosting provider, what makes you think they'll do the same for your in-house data center. People need to calm the fuck down and stop acting like they live in north korea/china.
Google

Google Pledges Not To Sue Any Open Source Projects Using Their Patents 153

Posted by Unknown Lamer from the now-and-forever dept.
sfcrazy writes "Google has announced the Open Patent Non-Assertion (OPN) Pledge. In the pledge Google says that they will not sue any user, distributor, or developer of Open Source software on specified patents, unless first attacked. Under this pledge, Google is starting off with 10 patents relating to MapReduce, a computing model for processing large data sets first developed at Google. Google says that over time they intend to expand the set of Google's patents covered by the pledge to other technologies." This is in addition to the Open Invention Network, and their general work toward reforming the patent system. The patents covered in the OPN will be free to use in Free/Open Source software for the life of the patent, even if Google should transfer ownership to another party. Read the text of the pledge. It appears that interaction with non-copyleft licenses (MIT/BSD/Apache) is a bit weird: if you create a non-free fork it appears you are no longer covered under the pledge.

Comment Re:Why go to work for Facebook post-IPO? (Score 1) 241

by andy1307 (#42376399) Attached to: The Trials and Tribulations of a Would-Be Facebook Employee
If you had joined google a few months after the IPO, you'd be a rich man. If FB can monetize their user base, they can make a lot of money. Make more money, stock price goes up. It all depends on your perspective. If you think FB has jumped the shark,you probably don't expect the stock price to go up.
The Military

Israel's Iron Dome Missile Defense Shield Actually Works 861

Posted by Unknown Lamer from the reagan-strikes-back dept.
Hugh Pickens writes "Sarah Tory reports that the debut of Israel's Iron Dome missile defense shield has added a new element to the conflict between Israel and Palestinians in the Gaza strip, one that military officials are calling a 'game-changer.' Israeli officials are claiming that the shield is destroying 90 percent of missiles and rockets it aims at that have been fired into southern Israel by Hamas. This level of success is unprecedented compared with older missile defense systems such as the American-made Patriot model used during the 1991 Gulf War. The missile-defense system can detect rocket launches and then determine the projectiles' flight paths and only intercepts rocket or artillery shells if they are headed for populated areas or sensitive targets; the others it allows to land. It takes a lot of raw computing power to rapidly build a ballistic profile of a fast-incoming projectile, make a series of quick decisions concerning potential lethality, and launch a countermeasure capable of intercepting said projectile in-flight. One reason Iron Dome is showing a much more robust capability than the Patriot system did is simply that its battle control hardware and software are several generations more advanced than those early interceptor systems. 'Israeli officials point out that Iron Dome saves money despite the fact that the interceptors cost up to $100,000 each,' writes Tory. 'The cost of rebuilding a neighborhood destroyed by a rocket attack — not to mention people wounded and lives lost — would be far greater than the cost of the interceptor.' Most important, the system buys Israel time, allowing it to plan out an appropriate response without the political pressure that would be generated by hundreds of potential deaths."

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