I mostly stopped wearing a watch because my phone does that now. I only need a watch in secure areas where phones (and smart watches) aren't allowed.

Pocket watches went out of style when miniaturized and rugged wristwatches became cost effective. Now pocket watches are "back" in the form of a small computer in a pouch - aka a smart phone. A wristwatch can't have enough of a display area to be useful as "the" mobile computer a person carries around. And there's no real reason someone would want to carry two. So except perhaps as a style thing, the wristwatch isn't coming back.

You'd have better luck with a fallout-style pip boy -- a band covering the forearm with a screen a good 8 inches long.

That's how the raw milk people do it. You buy a share of the cow and get milk from that cow.

As J. Scalia points out, the 'standard' the Court has chosen is unclear. Maybe that would be legal, maybe it wouldn't be. We'll never know until either 1) Congress amends the law to be clear about that; 2) Someone tries it and the Court reverses this opinion in a useful way; or 3) Someone tries it and the Court rules squarely on that in light of this opinion.

One thing is for sure: Only someone with lots of resources and a lot of daring will even attempt to find out by actually trying it.

Yes. Sorry about the fucked up apostrophes, quotation marks, etc. I just copied and pasted from the opinion without previewing the post, like everyone does. I can't believe it's 2014 and this sort of thing still isn't automatically handled properly.

This case boiled down to one major issue: Whether the allegedly infringing conduct in this case was engaged in by either Aereo, or by its users. Don't get hung up on the public performance v. private performance issue; it was really certain that if Aereo was liable, that the performance was public; if it were the users, it would be private.

J. Scalia's dissent does a good job of explaining the issue:

There are two types of liability for copyright infringement: direct and secondary. As its name suggests, the former applies when an actor personally engages in infringing conduct. Secondary liability, by contrast, is a means of holding defendants responsible for infringement by third parties, even when the defendants âoehave not themselves engaged in the infringing activity.â It applies when a defendant âoeintentionally induc[es] or encourag[es]â infringing acts by others or profits from such acts âoewhile declining to exer- cise a right to stop or limit [them].â

Most suits against equipment manufacturers and service providers involve secondary-liability claims. For example, when movie studios sued to block the sale of Sonyâ(TM)s Betamax videocassette recorder (VCR), they argued that Sony was liable because its customers were making unauthorized copies. Record labels and movie studios relied on a similar theory when they sued Grokster and StreamCast, two providers of peer-to-peer file-sharing software.

This suit, or rather the portion of it before us here, is fundamentally different. The Networks claim that Aereo directly infringes their public-performance right. Accordingly, the Networks must prove that Aereo âoeperform[s]â copyrighted works, Â106(4), when its subscribers log in, select a channel, and push the âoewatchâ button. That process undoubtedly results in a performance; the question is who does the performing. If Aereoâ(TM)s subscribers perform but Aereo does not, the claim necessarily fails.
The Networksâ(TM) claim is governed by a simple but profoundly important rule: A defendant may be held directly liable only if it has engaged in volitional conduct that violates the Act. ...

A comparison between copy shops and video-on-demand services illustrates the point. A copy shop rents out photocopiers on a per-use basis. One customer might copy his 10-year-oldâ(TM)s drawingsâ"a perfectly lawful thing to doâ" while another might duplicate a famous artistâ(TM)s copyrighted photographsâ"a use clearly prohibited by Â106(1). Either way, the customer chooses the content and activates the copying function; the photocopier does nothing except in response to the customerâ(TM)s commands. Because the shop plays no role in selecting the content, it cannot be held directly liable when a customer makes an infringing copy.

Video-on-demand services, like photocopiers, respond automatically to user input, but they differ in one crucial respect: They choose the content. When a user signs in to Netflix, for example, âoethousands of . . . movies [and] TV episodesâ carefully curated by Netflix are âoeavailable to watch instantly.â That selection and arrangement by the service provider constitutes a volitional act directed to specific copyrighted works and thus serves as a basis for direct liability.

The distinction between direct and secondary liability would collapse if there were not a clear rule for determining whether the defendant committed the infringing act. The volitional-conduct requirement supplies that rule; its purpose is not to excuse defendants from accountability, but to channel the claims against them into the correct analytical track. Thus, in the example given above, the fact that the copy shop does not choose the content simply means that its culpability will be assessed using secondary-liability rules rather than direct-liability rules.

So which is Aereo: the copy shop or the video-on-demand service? In truth, it is neither. Rather, it is akin to a copy shop that provides its patrons with a library card. Aereo offers access to an automated system consisting of routers, servers, transcoders, and dime-sized antennae. Like a photocopier or VCR, that system lies dormant until a subscriber activates it. When a subscriber selects a pro- gram, Aereoâ(TM)s system picks up the relevant broadcast signal, translates its audio and video components into digital data, stores the data in a user-specific file, and transmits that fileâ(TM)s contents to the subscriber via the Internetâ"at which point the subscriberâ(TM)s laptop, tablet, or other device displays the broadcast just as an ordinary television would. ...

The only question is whether those performances are the product of Aereoâ(TM)s volitional conduct.

They are not. Unlike video-on-demand services, Aereo does not provide a prearranged assortment of movies and television shows. Rather, it assigns each subscriber an antenna thatâ"like a library cardâ"can be used to obtain whatever broadcasts are freely available. Some of those broadcasts are copyrighted; others are in the public do- main. The key point is that subscribers call all the shots: Aereoâ(TM)s automated system does not relay any program, copyrighted or not, until a subscriber selects the program and tells Aereo to relay it. Aereoâ(TM)s operation of that system is a volitional act and a but-for cause of the resulting performances, but, as in the case of the copy shop, that degree of involvement is not enough for direct liability.

In sum, Aereo does not âoeperformâ for the sole and simple reason that it does not make the choice of content. And because Aereo does not perform, it cannot be held directly liable for infringing the Networksâ(TM) public-performance right.

However, that's not the decision that the Court reached. Instead, J. Scalia describes the Court's opinion as:

The Courtâ(TM)s conclusion that Aereo performs boils down to the following syllogism: (1) Congress amended the Act to overrule our decisions holding that cable systems do not perform when they retransmit over-the-air broadcasts;4 (2) Aereo looks a lot like a cable system; therefore (3) Aereo performs. ...

Making matters worse, the Court provides no criteria for determining when its cable-TV-lookalike rule applies. Must a defendant offer access to live television to qualify? If similarity to cable-television service is the measure, then the answer must be yes. But consider the implications of that answer: Aereo would be free to do exactly what it is doing right now so long as it built mandatory time shifting into its âoewatchâ function. Aereo would not be providing live television if it made subscribers wait to tune in until after a showâ(TM)s live broadcast ended. A subscriber could watch the 7 p.m. airing of a 1-hour program any time after 8 p.m. Assuming the Court does not intend to adopt such a do-nothing rule (though it very well may), there must be some other means of identifying who is and is not subject to its guilt-by-resemblance regime.

Two other criteria come to mind. One would cover any automated service that captures and stores live television broadcasts at a userâ(TM)s direction. That canâ(TM)t be right, since it is exactly what remote storage digital video recorders (RSâ"DVRs) do, and the Court insists that its âoelimited holdingâ does not decide the fate of those devices. The other potential benchmark is the one offered by the Gov- ernment: The cable-TV-lookalike rule embraces any entity that âoeoperates an integrated system, substantially dependent on physical equipment that is used in common by [its] subscribers.â The Court sensibly avoids that approach because it would sweep in Internet service providers and a host of other entities that quite obviously do not perform.
That leaves as the criterion of cable-TV-resemblance nothing but thâ(TM)olâ(TM) totality-of-the-circumstances test (which is not a test at all but merely assertion of an intent to perform test-free, ad hoc, case-by-case evaluation). It will take years, perhaps decades, to determine which automated systems now in existence are governed by the traditional volitional-conduct test and which get the Aereo treatment. (And automated systems now in contemplation will have to take their chances.)

The Court's opinion states that it doesn't have an effect beyond Aereo and Aereo-like services:

Aereo and many of its supporting amici argue that to apply the Transmit Clause to Aereoâ(TM)s conduct will impose copyright liability on other technologies, including new technologies, that Congress could not possibly have wanted to reach. We agree that Congress, while intending the Transmit Clause to apply broadly to cable companies and their equivalents, did not intend to discourage or to control the emergence or use of different kinds of technologies. But we do not believe that our limited holding today will have that effect.

For one thing, the history of cable broadcast transmis- sions that led to the enactment of the Transmit Clause informs our conclusion that Aereo âoeperform[s],â but it does not determine whether different kinds of providers in different contexts also âoeperform.â For another, an entity only transmits a performance when it communicates contemporaneously perceptible images and sounds of a work. ...

And we have not considered whether the public performance right is infringed when the user of a service pays primarily for something other than the transmission of copyrighted works, such as the remote storage of content.

But, as J. Scalia points out:

The Court vows that its ruling will not affect cloud-storage providers and cable- television systems, but it cannot deliver on that promise given the imprecision of its result-driven rule.

http://www.vgcats.com/comics/?...

Why don't you tell us what you really think.

Seriously though, this is how patents work. Law isn't math and it pays math no more heed than it pays any other point of view. If you learn nothing else today, understand that from a legal perspective math is just another point of view.

If you ask a mathematician, all the universe is math. Folks who practice law have a different point of view. Unsurprisingly, the legal point of view prevails in court.

Because a "data compression algorithm" is more than a mathematical equation. Indeed, outside the material scope of a computer it has no existence, except perhaps as a thought problem.

The idea of mechanically separating grain is not patentable but a machine which actually does so is. And that patent will cover any machine which works substantially the same way, which is to say follows the same process or algorithm. Do you follow the difference?

What SCOTUS said yesterday was that merely adding a computer to something already practiced in the public domain does not remove it from the public domain. It is not patentable. Not new. That should come as a big "duh" moment for anyone who thought otherwise. But the invention of something that didn't exist in a non-computer form and for which a computer is an essential component, well that is patentable. And the patent will cover any computer or other device running it.

CS is "hard". It is like learning a science, language or math. Yes you can get a crash course in it like learning a language from an audio book, but the skilled people usually have had years of exposure and (Self) instruction. You won't leave learning mathematics to the last year of high school as preparation for a Degree in the subject.

I would argue the mental challenges and understanding to "get" programming is just as large as calculus.
My experience of UK school and degree level programming courses is that since programming wasn't a core course throughout school (age 5+) it was only the self taught computer programming enthusiasts ("nerds") who stood a chance of scoring highly on high school or degree level programming courses. This became very evident at (Physics Degree) level where I participated as a student and later as a TA on the computational physics compulsory core courses. You had people with little/no previous experience who struggled to grasp the concept of variables, arrays, IF statement, and FOR loops and the other extreme with people who could complement the course work in 50% of the allotted time and were using operator overloads and pointers with free abandon.

Solutions: Teach computer programming as a core course throughout school. Just like English (writing) use it as a "tool" in every subject, such as MATH, Science. Bring back home computers with BASIC (or any other language) as the turn on prompt to stimulate curiosity and accessibility form an early age (bundle a quick basic with windows would be a great start).

Prima donnas? You misunderstand the nature of 9's. It's not about status, it's about waste. If you waste their time with repetitive work they could eliminate with automation, they resent it. Give them the responsibility AND the authority. Demand that the work be done, but don't set capricious requirements on the how. You'll rarely be disappointed.

As for documentation, 9's document for other 9's and other 9's have little trouble following the work. A 7 can't always follow a 9's thinking well enough to change the code, even when you luck out with a particularly good communicator.

If you follow your approach, you'll have high turnover with any 9's you manage to hire. You don't offer them anyone to learn from and you force them to dumb down every good idea they have. That's why google only hires 9's -- they can't afford not to.

Doesn't matter so much any more. ~99% of active (in use) android devices run v2.3 or above and so get the latest version of Google play services, updated every few weeks (not once a year). Google seems to be pointing developers to target the play services API's in place of newer OS level API's.

Open source did destroy Sun. But not with criticism. Sun failed to recognize the threat from Linux until well after Linux's performance and reliability had achieved parity with Solaris.

That Java ran very poorly on Solaris also did not help.

The match between Sun and Oracle still strikes me as bizarre. Oracle software favoring Sun workstations can only hurt Oracle. And the only synergy between the two is that a lot of Oracle software can run on Sun equipment.

IBM would have been a much better match. Owning Sun's IP would have allowed IBM to incorporate the best remaining pieces of Solaris into Linux, cementing IBM as THE vendor for large-scale Linux equipment. And Java would have put IBM back on the general computing map without the risk inherent to the PC hardware business they sold off.

A 7 can configure backup software so that a 4 can change the tapes. A 9 can automate the backup process so that there are no tapes to change. And when I go to restore a file from the 9's backup it'll have actually worked. The 7's backups will be more iffy, especially if the 4 neglected to change the tapes.

I'd rather hire the 9. Then I don't need the 4 or the 7. And since the 9 is paid less than the sum of the 4 and 7's salaries, I save money to boot.

As am I. And I well understand the benefits that diverse perspectives resulting from diverse backgrounds brings to a team. But when I have a chance to hire a 9, I hire the 9. I only hire the 7 when I can't afford to wait for a 9 to become available. I'd rather pay the 9 to automate the 7's work down to nothing than pay the 7 to do the repetitive work he can handle.