Patents are selectably enforceable. I can choose to never sue you for infringing. What laches is supposed to prevent is me waiting until you are very profitable before suing you. However, even if I choose to never sue you, I can still sue Joe once I find out he is infringing.

But therein lies the key. You have to say how you are going to do this with enough specificity that one of ordinary skill in the art could accomplish the same without undo experimentation. That is, you have to say how you plan to approximate pi (thus specifying the algorithm). Then the question becomes is your method of approximating pi unique and non-obvious? I think the problem is that the USPTO has gotten quite slack on non-obvious. It seems that the standard practice is just to wear them down. Get your rejection/final-rejection/appeal/final-rejection/appeal/oh-whatever-have-the-damn-patent-already-and-go-away rulings.

If the machine was tampered with, then you disregard the electronic count from that machine and do a hand count of the voter-verified paper ballots. You did print a voter verified paper ballot right?

Ntalk had this before we even knew to call it IM (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk_%28software%29).

You can compare it to say, childbirth in the US, which has a Maternal Death rate of 11 per 100,000 births. It's a safe museum.

It seems that several here are making the argument that because you only "use" the technology, its not infringement. From the U.S. Code.

Except as otherwise provided in this title, whoever without authority makes, uses, offers to sell, or sells any patented invention, within the United States or imports into the United States any patented invention during the term of the patent therefor, infringes the patent. [emphasis mine]

So yeah, use is infringement, and you need a license. I agree that the expectation is that the manufacturer has provided you with this license, but it seems in this case the manufacturers have cheaped out and only pony up for a non-commercial license, expecting the user to purchase a commercial license if one is needed.

They claimed copyright, and that reverse engineering the codes was a violation of the DMCA. They lost.

Good chance its the flyback transformer. In which case (if NTSC) it is 15,735 Hz.

... when the system is in equilibrium. (Cool, I remembered something from undergrad thermo. That's been years and years now.)

A pogo-stick is effectively a balanced 1-leg system. Marginally stable, but doable.

AT&T Universal Card. Citi owns it now, so I don't know if there are other equivalent Citi cards. I've had it for years now and the only thing I can't speak to on your list is the paying with electronic transfers. My wife pays the bill, but she is massive into online banking so I would suspect that you can.

The number of decibels reaching the ear depends on a number of factors. The RMS voltage of the signal, the efficiency of the drivers, the style of the headphones, etc. Is the EU planning to limit the amplifier to a particular gain? If so, will my pre-loudness war recordings suffer as I won't be able to apply enough gain to get them up to even 70 dB? Won't this incentivise the recording studios to make the loudness war even worse (it sounds "good" at maximum gain!) Or will they monitor the RMS voltage after the amplifier, and limit it to some value? In that case, consumers will likely choose low impedance, high sensitivity headphones to get higher volumes.

My point is that simply legislating MP3 players to produce no more than 85 dB is a rather odd request, as the MP3 player can't know what dB it's producing. I see what they are trying to accomplish, but I think it is futile and will probably result in worse players. I guess as long as they restrict it to the headphone amp and leave the line-out alone, one can always build/buy their own amplifier.

Oh, and I love the analogy of 120 dB = jet taking off. From how far away? I'm constantly within ear shot of jets taking off, and I would put it at 60 dB. Of course, that is probably on the order of 1 mile away. I would guess if you were standing on the runway directly below the jet as it was taking off it could even exceed 120 dB.