The US Patent Office get its funding from patent applications fees.
So the question is: WHAT THE #UcK DID YOU EXPECT!
There's a lot of people bashing the USPTO, but I can't think of a way to manage them any better given the resources they do have. Its like blaming teachers for schools falling apart. Patent review is not exactly a prestigious job, so it requires at least average pay for its workers. The filing fee is, what now, about $350? That's about a days worth of work for a patent examiner, maybe a bit less once you include benefits. So unless I'm wrong, assuming the patent office is fully staffed with no waste, a patent examiner has to read a usually massive document from start to finish, review if the material is actually able to be patented, review past patents to see if any conflict, and make a judgment whether to approve or not. Denials need to make sense and stand up in court. All in a field the patent examiner likely has little to no experience in.
The office isn't screwed up, the system we use to evaluate patents is.
Wikileaks threatens to release private financial information, Slashdot applauses. Anon uses DOS attacks, and releases the personal details of people who downloaded adult material, Slashdot applauds. Bill Gates releases mosquitos in a room of wealthy people, in order to bring attention to one of the biggest health issues on earth, Slashdot decries it. There's nothing quite like group think for encouraging hypocrisy.
Why be accurate when you can generalize incorrectly to get a point across, eh? I hope you aren't in a research field.
No the best would present with a list of said recipes as a search engine has no way to evaluate good.
That used to be what people believed about web pages before PageRank. Ranking recipes should be quite a bit easier, since that path is already well worn.
Kind of like counting cards for single deck blackjack. It's illegal to be too smart.
Counting cards isn't actually illegal, at least anywhere I'm aware of. The casinos can ban you from coming back for it, or for any reason they like. I haven't heard of anyone being denied their winnings from counting cards, but I wouldn't be surprised if it does happen sometimes.
You are wrong on most of your arguments. Take the xray scanners at the airports. They "randomly" send people to get xrayed, doing them no good, yet, 95%+ just go along with it. They don't care how they work. They don't care how much damage those devices are causing or could be causing. They don't care that their risk of dying from the scanner is higher than from a terrorist blowing up the plane (based on government's own numbers!). They don't care....
So I say, do not overestimate people.
Or they just don't want to fight every single battle that comes along. Same reasons I don't picket a store that allows people with 11 items in the 10-or-fewer line.
No, I'm pretty sure that's exactly all there is to it. All packets are equal, and all ISPs are common carriers.
Traffic that should be given high priority includes VOIP, video conferencing, infrastructure interfaces (hospitals, fire stations, security companies, etc.), and anything else that requires a nearly live transmission (OnLive, for example).
Anything the network can ID as an attack, such as DDOS's, should be decreased in priority or dropped.
Could we actually get an article with some details, rather than an editorial about what the policy MIGHT contain?
Commenters here and at Huffington Post are seriously suggesting we have a second American Revolution because you didn't get everything you wanted on a Net Neturality policy change?
Jesus, get some perspective! I hope most of you realize that this is the first time Net Neturality is being tried in the US. At all. Anyone spending more than 5 minutes looking into Net Neutrality realize its a complex issue that can't be solved with "Don't discriminate." There are unintended consequences for any action they take.
You do realize that policies can be changed at a later date, right? They aren't written in stone. These policies make more sense than the alternative of doing nothing, and they make more sense than being heavy handed and creating more problems then they solve. If problems crop up, they can be dealt with.
Why do you think people will pay anything if they don't have to?
59,174 people (and counting) have so far paid a total of $419,914.75 (and growing), even though they didn't have to.
Maybe we aren't all pirates after all.
I heard a figure once during my local Public Radio pledge drive that there's a 6-1 ratio of people that regularly listen and don't contribute to those that do.
Of course, it doesn't really answer the question of if people were required to pay to listen, would that increase revenue or decrease it?
What purpose is served in releasing the fact that Hilary Clinton worries about the mental health of other world leaders? How does that aid in our international relations?
Who is "our"? The USA? I think the people living in the countries with potentially unstable leaders would absolutely want to know if high-level world leaders think their local president/general/despot is nutters. They probably are not getting that information from the local propaganda/media.
That's just one of 1000's of items that were released that are not crimes, are not important for the American people to know, and still undermine our government's ability to operate on the world stage.
You're making the same mistake alot of people are that I've talked to about this. Wikileaks is not American. They operate on a worldwide scale. There are plenty of people worldwide who do want to know what is going on in the US and other governments.
Releasing those kinds of documents doesn't serve a greater good. It doesnt expose any wrong-doings. It doesn't help create stability, ensure -anyone's- safety, or promote any kind of cooperation between nations. It was released to embarrass the US government and garner sensationlistic attention from a little weasle.
Which documents are you referring to? Again, I've heard this complaint alot, but no one can point to which documents should not have been released. Even if some documents are mundane garbage, the whole philosophy of Wikileaks is that they do not make these sort of judgments as to what to release and what not to release. If someone leaks data to them, they release it in way that will get the most publicity. That's the deal, and that's why informants leak this data, because they can be sure whatever is sent to Wikileaks will get out.
Not to mention that this guy released the names of confidential informants in the middle east. In doing so he signed the death warrants of those people. What greater purpose was served by releasing their names? What good will come of that? What crime did they commit? What evil are they responsible for? Where are your indignant tears for them and their families who will almost assuredly be slaughtered?
Who are these people? What names? Again, these claims are commonly made without sourcing who specifically is being talked about. As to what crimes they committed, I can't speak to that without knowing who they are. As far as general policy, Wikileaks has on numerous occasions contacted the US government to try and get help with removing actually sensitive data, such as names and locations. The US government knew that Wikileaks was going to release these documents, and decided not to point out which names were sensitive. Why aren't you blaming them?
In addition to conditions above, curfew from 10am-2pm and 10pm-2am according to the BBC. What a coincidence these are the hours that cover the prime-time news slots.
That part isn't really a concern, since he doesn't have to be in studio to do a live interview. And of course, a taped interview can be recorded anytime.
More seriously, there's a whole genre of humour about bad stuff happening to someone else. E.g., the so called Gallows Humour or Black Comedy.
Fair enough, and gallows humor can be pretty funny, but there's just something about prison rape jokes that really bother me. I think its because there are many people that genuinely believe prison rape is a justified form of punishment, and making jokes about it makes it sound like its just something to be endured, rather than actively prevented.
Agreed. Though this particular asshole deserves the full stretch.
Pun intended.
I'm disappointed this was modded funny. Rape in any form isn't funny, its a nightmare.
A society allowing it to go on in prisons and then making jokes about it is all kinds of screwed up.
Totally agreed. Try applying those low standards to any other product.
Any other product category, you'd consider the product to be broken and return it.
I would be fine with it, if the T.V. I did buy was greatly superior in every way (except stability) to almost all other T.V.s available.
The problem for me isn't buggy games, but crap games in general. If a game is full of bugs, and I still have a better time with it than 90% of every other game out there, what does that say about the quality of the average video game? Or at least what a dumb-ass I am for buying crap games.
I would rather harp on repeatedly poor design decisions, which can't and won't be patched out, rather than bugs that will, given time.
The only they could do was keep it from getting even worse with the stimulus money.
That's absolute bullshit. They could have closed the bankrupt TBTF institutions and prosecuted every single responsible individual under RICO, releasing non-violent pot heads to make room in the prisons for all the white collar thugs.
Instead the rest of the economy is being bled dry to prop them up and cover for their theft.
I've heard this a few times now, and I'm curious what you think would have happened if the US decided to shut down, or allow to fail, some of the largest banks in the world.
Do you honestly believe everything would have turned up roses, or are you just venting? We have examples both in the US and worldwide of what happens when a government allows it's major banks to fail, and its not pretty.
Without life, Biology itself would be impossible.
