The dude in your link suggests that you can keep one or two open spaces by setting the right price for parking - set the price high enough to deter some people from parking there.

So, you're suggesting charging more for spots near the entrance to buildings? And requiring people who need handicapped spots, because they're handicapped, to pay for it?

I do feel ashamed that the first I heard of this natural disaster / tragedy is from a news story about the price of hard drives. Thanks for drawing attention to the important part of this story.

If steak is the only, or cheapest, food source, then you *do* have a moral right to the steak.* You just don't have the resources to afford it.

Face it - markets may be efficient in terms of short-term allocation of money value, but they are blind to morality. If you accept market outcomes as always being the "best" outcome, then you're ignoring moral values. It's up to you to decide if moral values are important to you.

*assuming that human life is morally superior to money. Everyone else who is hungry also has a moral right to the steak. The greatest moral right presumably goes to whoever is hungriest / most in need of nutrition to survive.

...So you're achieving synergistic use of multiplatform solutions?

Wow. Excellent point.

That's an excellent point, and I'd mod up if I had points.

Facebook can sublicense your info to a third party ("you grant us a non-exclusive, transferable, sub-licensable, royalty-free, worldwide license to use any IP content that you post on or in connection with Facebook"), but that sub sublicense necessarily terminates when facebook's does - when/if you remove the info ("This IP License ends when you delete your IP content or your account..."), though there may be a loophole if you've "shared" the info with others ("...unless your content has been shared with others, and they have not deleted it"). What does "shared with others" mean? I dunno, but I imagine it means posting on a friends wall, or something of that sort.

"that one year exemption will only apply to win it's signed."

What does that mean?

"it will severally hamper in attempt I make to get investor in on my inventions"

What does this mean?

"that could, quite literally, take my idea and patent it and I have NO RECOURSE"

If they take your idea and try to patent it, you can sue them. When someone files a patent app, that person has to swear under oath that he/she invented the invention. If you can show that you invented it, and they stole your idea, then they're in deep shit. Their patent app is invalid, and you can file your own if you wish/if you have the money/investors.

So, you do have a recourse.

Plus, before you show a patentable idea to anyone, you need to get them to sign an NDA. This is standard practice.

Are you really going to appeal to authority *and* object to blind faith in the same post?

"I disagree with how this video game simulates reality" is not the same thing as "this video game is violent"

Likewise, that your choices in a video game may lead to some virtual deaths is not the same thing as violent.

Patent applications are rejected all the time. The problem is that the "inventor" (I.e., whatever company is backing the patent application) can revise the application, so as to avoid whatever got it rejected previously. Applications go through a lot of rejections - sometimes a dozen or more - before finally being approved. I've heard the statistic that 9 out of 10 applications are eventually approved... But it takes years and a lot of "rejections" to get there.

And, by the way, this means that patent examiners spend a lot of time reviewing applications. The process involves a lot of back and forth between the examiner and the inventor. I'm not going to vouch for their competency in the field, but it's unfair to say that examiners don't spend the time to understand the product, or don't know enough about it before approving the patent.

Prior art doesn't have to be on the market - it has to be available to the public in some way, whether via the market, or published somewhere, or patented already (not necessarily in the US), etc. Open source software, if it's available online, is published... Or at least available to the public. So, it would be prior art, if it is indeed prior to the supposed invention.

Right. A state government can hold copyrights; even the federal government can hold copyrights. For the Feds, it's a question of whether a government employee authored the work. The fed gov can buy or license copyrights just fine; but it can't copyright works that it authored. State governments are not so bound.

Clear the copyright first. You're not likely to get sued, but a publisher will likely refuse to publish anything for which the rights haven't been cleared.

Read the statute like this:

Prior art is an invention that
-was patented
-described in a printed publication
-in public use
-on sale
or
-otherwise available to the public.

The courts have determined that offering an invention for sale - regardless of whether it's openly on sale to consumers or only sold in private contracts - constitutes prior art, because otherwise, an inventor could sell the invention privately for a long time, and only patent it (and get the full patent term) when the inventor fears that someone else is close to patenting the same thing.

In other words, construing "on sale" to mean only "public sales" would allow an inventor to benefit from patent law for longer than the patent term. You have a choice - you can protect your invention by patent law, or you can protect it by trade secret law. Not both.

Compare the new law, posted in GP, with the current law:

Other than the first paragraph, about publishing before patenting, GP's post is insightful. You should stick with correcting/clarifying posts you disagree with, not slamming them.