No - what needs to be increased (in some cases dramatically) are the patent *maintenance* fees. At present, the patent office has 3 fee schedules, depending on the size of the patent-holding entitiy, but the *highest* of the three only costs the patent holder about $13,000 over the life of the patent. Not even pocket change for a major corporation.

Substantially higher fees would tend to reduce the current tendency of companies to maintain large numbers of "trivial" patents (think "pinch to zoom" as an example). Also forcing "Non-practicing entities" into the highest fee schedule would make it much more expensive for trolls to maintain a large portfolio of trivial or dubious patents.

But then you lose half the nutritional value!

Not all that significant. Remember that the Earth's equator is inclined about 23 degrees relative to the plane of the ecliptic. Because of this tilt, combined with the distance the satelleite is from the Earth, a solar power satellite will experience *no* eclipses from the Earth for about two thirds of the year, and some period of eclipse during the remaining third. But even at the worst point in the cycle, the eclipse period is only about 70 minutes per day.

Net result is that a good old geosynchronous orbit is good enough for a solar power satellite (and greatly reduces the headaches of keeping the power beam targeted at the receiver).

Why? Given the cost of 30 minutes of prime time, it'd probably be cheaper to just buy a few senators, and then have them tell the spooks to back off...

There was no precedent to be set here. Basically, the appeal was Alcatel trying to get its favorite patent un-invalidated, and the the judges looked at the case and are basically telling Alcatel "There's nothing wrong with the lower court's decisions - it stays invalidated. Now go away and quit bothering us".

But one of the things that the law defines as patentable is a novel "configuration of matter". A truly original gene would easily qualify under this condition. While the gene is only useful because it is software for a biological system, if it represents a novel configuration of matter to encode that software, then it should be patentable.

I'm less sure when the case involves taking genes found in nature, and splicing them onto other plants (such as the "Roundup Ready" gene). In this case, while there is unquestionably a lot of work involved in the splicing, I'm not at all sure that the resulting configuration of matter would be truly novel enough to warrant a patent.

Not entirely true. You aren't factoring in the negotiating power that those insurance companies have with the contractors providing the service. While you may pay $500 for a given repair, the insurance company may, through a negotiated discount, be only paying $300. So there exists a range where both you *and* the insurance company benefit from the deal.

The *contractor* for the work may be one who is losing out, though not necessarily - if the contract allows the contractor to fill 75% of his available time with paying work instead of 50%, the lower rate may still result in a net gain for him.

I beg to differ - the drugs currently on the market can stop the progression cold in many cases, not just slow it down. But the extent of permanent vision loss depends on how early the disease is detected and treatment started - wait too long, and scar tissue forms on the retina, which *is* irreversible.

But these are "treatments", not "cures" - once diagnosed with such a disease, you will be a "customer for life" of some retina specialist. And the only drug that is actually FDA approved for this condition (Lucentis) sells for about $2000 per dose. Fortunately, there is a closely related drug (Avastin) that is quite effective as well, and while it's not actually approved for AMD (it was developed and approved to treat colon cancer), most retina specialists have no problem using it "off label" for AMD patients.

Because the receiver ain't quite as "passive" as you think. Google for "local oscillator" for an example.

Digital systems tend to generate noise on predictable frequencies as well - if a device has a chip that's clocked at a given frequency, then somewhere in that device is an oscillator used to generate that clock (though it may or may not be working at that particular frequency).

The only truly passive receiver is one that is completely shielded to prevent it from radiating any of this noise. But you *have* to have a gap in the shielding in order for the incoming signal to be received. So building an undetectable receiver is not quite as easy as you might think.

No - he'll just commit suicide. By shooting himself in the back of the head. Twice.

Not only no, but Hell No!

If you create *any* sort of differentiation, then it will be exploited so that the big corporations' work gets the max protection, and stuff by little guys gets the minimum, regardless of any artistic merit or monetary value. It won't start out that way, of course, but over time corporations *will* find a way to corrupt the system for their benefit.

Copyright would be just fine if the term was limited to something sane. After all, it exists for the sole purpose of encouraging the creation of new works. Rudyard Kipling won't be releasing any new works (unless he comes back as a zombie, that is), so there is no reason whatsoever to have any protection on his original works.

The sole determinant for whether a work should be in copyright is whether it will benefit the original creator for it to remain in copyright. Not a corporation that bought the rights. Not the creator's children (or grandchildren, or great-great-great-grandchildren). Just the original creator.

Perhaps not, but try explaining how doing so "promotes the Progress of Science and useful Arts". Do you really think that the creator of something that has actually expired out of copyright into the public domain is going to start creating new works if his (very) old stuff is returned to copyright? In reality, even before the most recent extension of copyright terms it was more than likely that the original creator was long dead before the copyright expired.

Unfortunately, what will happen is that if this point is even brought up, the Supreme Court will simply rule that this is a type of commercial regulation, and hence allowed under the all-powerful Commerce Clause.

But why use the Autopen. US Law allows all kinds of documents to be signed via a digital signature, which doesn't require the signer to be in any particular place. And this type of signature has already been used to sign a bill into law - Bill Clinton signed the Electronic Signatures in Global and National Commerce Act using a digital signature.

So why didn't President Obama follow this precedent, signing via digital signature?

The President should be required to digitally sign the text of the bill, and then, if someone wanted a dead-tree signed version, the Autopen could be used, after the text of the digital version and the paper version had been compared to insure they are the same.

I know this whole question is just a bunch of legal hair-splitting. And I would be quite happy if this technicality got that abomination of a law thrown out. I'm not holding my breath on it, though, as certain elements of our government have become quite fond of the powers that were granted to them via the Patriot Act, and won't give them up without a fight.

I believe the accepted journalistic standard is "President Obama" on the first mention in an article, but "Mr. Obama" in the rest of the article. But there's no hard-and-fast rule - just "Mr. Obama" is itself an indicator of respect (at least more so than just referring to him as "Obama").

Also consider that this is the United States - disrespecting our elected officials is part of that whole "freedom of speech" concept...

While there may have been general starvation as a result of Stalin's failed policies, there were special policies put in place that applied *only* to areas where Ukrainians were dominant. Such as the law that if a collective farm failed to meet its quota, agents of the government would move in and seize 15 times that farm's quota, leaving that farm with no food at all.

Exact numbers are hard to come by, but the best estimates are that around 8 million people died in that famine, about 5 million of whom just happened to be ethnic Ukrainians. So others *were* dying. Just not as many.