If so, why aren't iOS devices a target for this?
And Macs are known for being high-priced toys for rich yuppies with more disposable income than sense, hence the $10k gold iWatch, right? Aren't those exactly the sort of people you want to scam, rather than Joe Schmoe with his 10 year old Stinkpad and $20 in his checking account?

As per the XKCD comic, the solution is a social one, not a technical one. Spam callers spoof their numbers, which is why they're so difficult to block, but caller ID spoofing is explicitly allowed by the phone companies, who let the spammers specify a "calling from" number to be included in the caller ID data. However, the phone company knows exactly where the real call is coming from and who is making it - that's how they bill the company for the 20,000 phone calls they make every month.

And why does the phone company do this? Because the spammers pay them decent money, and most people don't realize that the phone company's involved, so they get mad at the spammers and not AT&T or Verizon.

So, the solution is to send a burly man with a wrench to the CEO's office and ask him politely to stop letting companies specify different caller ID numbers, if he would like his kneecaps to remain intact.

If you can show that they did, they won't.

As to why it makes sense - the rest of the world uses a first to file system, only the US was different. This harmonizes patent law and makes it more predictable for businesses, which is a good thing. And finally, despite hundreds of posters on Slashdot telling you how big a change this was and how it guts patent law, the switch from first to invent to first to file affects about 20 patent applications per year, out of half a million filed - there were, on average, only 20 interference proceedings each year, which is where there's a dispute on who invented something first. They were horribly expensive (upwards of $30-50k) and time consuming, and they occurred only after you filed your application and went through full examination... so someone could be already out $25k getting an allowable patent and then be hit with another $50k trying to show they invented it before someone else. Instead, now you can just point to the filing date and save money.

Not at all - there's a process called accelerated examination, which, for a substantial fee, pushes your application to the top of the queue. People in fast moving technologies like software tend to go for that, while people in slow moving technologies like pharmaceuticals tend to prefer waiting YEARS, since they're in FDA trials and can't actually sell any product. By allowing a fast track and slow track, everyone benefits.

Because that would make MIT, Cornell, Johns Hopkins, CalTech, etc. very, very sad and gut their research departments.

Do you have a citation for any of your claims? Because I've got a half dozen patent applications on my desk under obviousness rejections, and I'd love to be able to push them aside because the PTO didn't actually issue them.

I'm not. Patent term has only ever been extended once, to comply with an international treaty (the Paris Convention on Intellectual Property), and even then, it was a negligible change (20 years from filing, given an average 3 year delay from filing to issuance vs. 17 years from issuance). Compare that to copyright getting extended every time someone blinks.

There's a simple reason for this. The people pushing for longer copyright terms are the publishers who want to commercially exploit their property for as long as possible, and they've got tons of money; the people pushing for shorter copyright terms are... the public. And we have no lobbying money. So, it's an easy guess as to which one wins.

But patent is different - Apple wants their patents to last a long time, but they want Microsoft's to last a short term, and vice versa. Unlike copyright, where you don't really get Sony Pictures wanting to make a Paramount screenplay without paying royalties, you actually do have tons of large companies wanting to use each other's patents. No one wants longer terms, because all of their competitors have patents they want to use. So, there's no pile of lobbying money pushing on just one side of that equation, and patent terms don't get extended.

Disclaimer: I am a patent attorney. But the above should make sense regardless of your opinion of my work.

And while those pictures are taken with consent, there was never any consent to distribution by the third party or anyone else.

Frankly, what I'd love to see is some of these people start registering their copyright and going after the third parties and the revenge porn operators for statutory damages. Let's see some of those multimillion dollar judgements that the RIAA/MPAA gets, based on the unlawful distribution. I think juries will have a much easier time smacking some porn king with damages than someone who shares a few albums or movies.

Inside of kids, it's too dark to use one.

In related news, iPod Touch sales are apparently nonexistent.

It's already covered. When you file a continuation-in-part, the only claims that get the benefit of the earlier priority date are ones that were fully described in the initial application. Anything that wasn't described there doesn't get that priority date, and you only get the later date. So, for example, if I file a patent application that describes a peanut butter and jelly sandwich on 1/1/2000, I can later file a continuation in part application on 1/1/2010 (provided the original is still pending) that adds using cinnamon raisin toast as the bread. If that later application has a patent claim of:

That would get a priority date of 1/1/2000 for searching for prior art. If I have a second claim of:

That would only get a priority date of 1/1/2010.

So, it's even better than your suggestion - you don't even get a single day to hone your patent application. Anything new you add gets a later date.

In what way? That claim can't be interpreted to cover, for example, mouse traps. So it's not quite as generalized as you say.

It's both. 17 USC 506 defines criminal copyright infringement:

The usual differentiation between criminal and civil infringement is 1A, for the purpose of commercial advantage of private financial gain. I think in this case, it had to do with the fact that MegaUpload made significant amounts of money through advertising associated with the pages on which they were sharing works under copyright.

Dick: 4+4 = 7. Good attempt, and you set up the problem correctly. B-.
Jane: 4+4 = 7. See, this is why girls aren't good at math. You should probably focus on something girls are good at, like making sandwiches. F.

Aw, Billy, you thought 2+2=3. Well, good effort, half credit.
Sally, you dumb slut, 2+2 does not equal 3. See, this is why you're never going to get any farther in life than a stripper pole.

And I'm getting very sick of the anti-SJW "I refuse to read the article, but will expound about how awful SJWs are because of my truthy gut feelings" bullshiat. You didn't read the article. The post you're responding to pointed out the difference in grading, and if you had read the article, you'd realize that GP was referring to:

Now, because you're clearly the slow kid who needs to have everything spoon fed to them, let me repeat: the students took the same test twice, and it was graded by different teachers. If the teachers did not know the gender of the student, the girls scored better. If the teachers did know the gender of the student, the boys scored better. These are farking math tests - there's a right answer and an infinite number of wrong answers. There's no reason that someone should score better or worse based solely on whether their name is Dick or Jane, unless the teachers are consciously or unconsciously discriminating.

So, now do you understand how your comment, "did anyone ever stop to think that boys are better, and more interested, in some thing than girls" is not just irrelevant, but totally wrong? The only thing you've shown is that you are worse than everyone who actually bothered to read the article.

Yep. There is actually room for this in the case law, too - use of another as an "instrument" in committing murder. Painting a target on someone and shoving them in front of the cops certainly counts.