In hindsight, everything looks trivial. That's why you need to find actual prior art that invalidates the claims. And in particular, mimicking something in the real world may still be patentable, if the patent goes to the method of how it's mimicked. For example, we're trained from birth to recognize faces, but would you say that a facial recognition technology for a computer would never be patentable, because it just mimics that real-world ability? No - it depends on what's actually in the claims, and whether they go to how that simulation is implemented, rather than just the general idea of "recognizing faces" or "unlocking something".

That's what the controversy is over? "Here's a list of 50 games, and oh yeah, this is one of them"? Geez. Are you going to start demanding long form birth certificates from everyone now?

Well, when you're done clutching your pearls, we'll get you a glass of water so you can calm down. I mean, the way you were carrying on, I thought there was a review, not a "here's 50 new Greenlighted games".

Ah, yes, would that be the games journalist who never wrote a review, or even a single word, about Depression Quest? The journalist who wrote an article about a reality show, months before Depression Quest was even created, and hasn't published anything since?

Not sure why. Most people on Slashdot should realize that screenshot of a web browser showing a page that says "12 seconds ago" doesn't necessarily mean that the corresponding message was created 12 seconds before the screenshot, but just that the page was refreshed 12 seconds after the message... and then the page could have sat, displayed from local RAM, for minutes or hours before a screenshot was taken.

That - this suit didn't really have anything to do with patents, there was no claim construction or Markman hearing, there weren't prior art searches, invalidity contentions, expert reports, etc. It was just a straightforward breach of contract.

This was a breach of contract suit over a settlement between Google and Beneficial, under which Beneficial wasn't supposed to bring infringement suits against Google customers. They did, hence the breach. The settlement included a provision under which a prevailing party could get attorney's fees after a breach, and this was just the judge awarding those fees.

That's not to say that there aren't people winning money from patent trolls - there are, in other cases, and the lower standard for awarding fees to the defendant is a result of the Supreme Court's decision in Octane Fitness last April. But this isn't one of those - this is more like Google suing the guy who paints the fences at the Googleplex for doing a shitty job, and then getting attorney's fees under their existing contract.

Now go on and tell us about how the fringe on the flag means that the country is really a corporation.

Did you not even bother reading the summary, much less the article? "NHTSA believes that V2V capability will not develop absent regulation, because there would not be any immediate safety benefits for consumers who are early adopters of V2V"
Under your proposal, why would any consumer pay extra for a car that "implement[s] this safety feature", considering it doesn't work unless everyone else around has one too?

Anti-government nuttery aside, this actually is one of the areas were regulation and required use make sense.

Frankly, I'm a little less concerned with the "problem" of cops letting off people who do commit minor infractions, than the problem of cops falsifying evidence or destroying exculpatory evidence, beating or torturing suspects, and lying on police reports in order to arrest people who haven't committed any crime. You getting out of a speeding ticket for going 60 in a 55 is less important than Joe Innocent getting arrested for walking in the wrong part of town while black, having a gun with defaced serial numbers planted on him, and suddenly facing 10 year felony charge with an "option" to plead guilty and only get a year (and a felony record).

Phishing to obtain email credentials and then presenting yourself as the legitimate user, or offering access to free media to suck in greedy people. Social engineering - not the same thing as hacking the bricking/remote wipe protocol.

Slight modification to the GP post, then:

From the post you're replying to:

Add to that that hotels have mandatory annual inspections, with a fire inspector who walks through and checks all of the alarms and extinguishers. You don't do that in your apartment, I'm sure, and yet it's something a hotel tenant relies on.

If the authorities want to stop you from calling, they can already tell the providers to block your IMEI. They can also track you as you move between towers, listen in to your phone calls if they want, and read your SMS messages. But seriously, the providers can already "brick" your phone - otherwise, how do you think they shut off service when you stop paying your bills? How do you think they know to charge you for your long distance calls? And similarly, the police/NSA/CIA/FBI/whomever already has all of those abilities, simply by telling the phone company to give them whatever they want.

Enabling a kill switch is not really creating a new kill switch... It's simply giving you, the purchaser, the right to tell the phone company to block the IMEI using the same tools that law enforcement does now. It literally costs them nothing to allow, since it already exists, but, as noted in the Summary, will result in a huge drop in the number of re-purchased phones after theft/breakage... phones that are frequently re-purchased at full price, due to the multi-year contract lock-ins. This is all about money, not freedom.

Or, they could throw each box into temporary quarantine in a vacuum chamber (or one filled with an inert gas) for 10 minutes "to be safe against the unintentional transportation of undesirable bacteria". How long can Assange hold his breath?

That's like saying the police can't search you without a warrant, because it's a fourth amendment violation. Sure they can, they just can't use anything they find against you in court. For example, if they search you and find a crack pipe and destroy it but never charge you with possession, you're going to have a really tough time alleging a violation of your civil rights without first admitting that you were carrying.

Similarly, the host country can open the diplomatic bag, find the drugs/weapons/person, and destroy them... leaving the sending country in the unenviable position of either letting it go, or claiming that their rights were violated regarding a diplomatic bag that itself violated the Convention. It's like those Russian tanks that Ukraine destroyed - sure, it was an act of war to blow them up... but it was an act of war for them to be in the Ukraine in the first place, so Russia sure isn't going to be the one to complain.