It could be treated as a defensive patent. Basically saying that the whole concept of patents stink, but as a necessary evil since they do exist we should try to get a bunch of patents anyway to make sure our competitors don't sue us into the ground with patent lawsuits of their own. It becomes a massive patent war where you can charge back with your own patents, or go after trolls because you not only have prior art but have prior patents that should have been cited by any subsequent patent claims.

Prior art is one thing, but a prior patent takes precedence like none other in federal court. For that matter, a prior patent is useful even if it has expired.

This is one of the aspects of the whole concept of a patent that to me invalidates why patents even have a right to exist. The purpose of a patent, according to the U.S. Constitution, is "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Art". I fail to see how the current system even attempts to secure that goal if engineers are basically prohibited from even hearing and talking about various patents.

SpaceX keep changing their mind, it seems, as to if they will continue to use the barge after they get FAA-AST clearance to land on the landing pad at KSC. It appears as though they want to keep the option available for either super heavy launches that push the fuel envelope, like what can happen with the GEO launch that just happened, or for trying to recover the Falcon Heavy central core (which will be quite far down range when it finally does stage separation).

For many launches though, they do plan on eventually going back to the original launch site if possible. On the other hand, there are two barges that SpaceX is using, with one on each coast at the moment (the west coast one being kept near Los Angeles when not recovering rockets from Vandenberg).

Those who support the patent system claim that their purpose is to disclose all of the information that somebody "skilled in the art" (aka somebody trained in that specific engineering field with credentials, degrees, or some other recognition of competence) can take the information disclosed in the patent and be able to duplicate the invention.

In former times, the USPTO actually required either a copy of the invention or a working model to demonstrate the concept. Thousands of these models can still be found floating around the USPTO building, including some funny perpetual motion machines that have been tried before. The working models at least forced the patent developer to show that the idea was physically possible.

I might even buy this argument, assuming that it was possible with the patent application and supporting documents to be able to treat the USPTO as a sort of archive of technological knowledge. Unfortunately, as you sort of point out, it doesn't do any of that, nor is there any way for an engineer to be able to dig through the stacks of patent applications of years past to try and come up with some interesting ideas for future products or even simply to figure out how something worked, like the Saturn F1 engine (or something comparable from 50+ years ago).

The current patent database is a waste of paper, time, and effort beyond a way for large companies to grind into the dust any small company that can't afford the patenting process. It is IMHO the single best thing to shut down small business development and kill job creation in general. I have to presume those are goals for politicians who support the patent process?

Assuming there isn't something that prevents the boot image from being replaced. See my other, more extensive, comment in this thread.

Or, you can just agree on implementation.

See, the thing about a real object oriented language is that you define your objects, and then they only work in one manner. This means that if you're working on a project, you create your requirements documentation, and then define your core objects to match that. And then everyone who touches that code is forced to do things the same way, or else redefine the objects (which is a no-no).

The "strict procedural language pretending to be object oriented" approach is what gives unreadable code, as you end up with everyone being allowed to do whatever they want, and there's no real object model in place to constrain that.

Don't be condescending. I'm not saying rebooting is a magic anything.

Whether or not this matters depends on the threat model and why the attacker is interested in patching the kernel. For example, one purpose would be to disable other kernel security features, such as SELinux, or dm-verity. Most SELinux rules are configured and the configuration can be altered by root, but some are compiled into the kernel and can only be modified by modifying the kernel. Altering the persistent kernel image may not be possible for a variety of reasons (read-only media, SecureBoot, etc.). In addition, in security-sensitive and mission-critical contexts an unexpected reboot may well be noticed.

I don't understand your assertion about SecureBoot. Are you referring to some known vulnerability of some particular secure boot system? Given a decent implementation of secure/verified boot, an attacker should not be able to convince the system to boot a modified kernel image, which means that run-time modification of the kernel is the only option if the attacker needs to bypass some kernel security enforcement.

In general, the security model of a high-security Linux system assumes that the kernel is more trustworthy than root. The ability for root to modify the running kernel invalidates this assumption, which most definitely is a security issue.

In the context of a system without mandatory access controls there may not be any reason to care, since once an attacker has obtained root there probably isn't any limit to what he can do.

Sure, if your concern is error, rather than malice. An attacker who gains root could use this to dynamically patch a backdoor into the running kernel. Rebooting the machine would potentially enable someone to notice.

As another poster noted, though, you can already dynamically patch the kernel for malicious purposes by loading a malicious module, assuming that hasn't been disabled. In contexts where security is crucial, I would disable both dynamic module loading and run-time patching.

The GP wasn't suggesting that excessive data was handed over, he said that an NSL could be used to demand installation of a backdoor. If I were a vendor, even one who really wanted to be cooperative, I'd balk at that, because the chances of something like a backdoor being discovered are too high. It would be actively sabotaging my customers, and not just to the NSA... a backdoor can't distinguish between users, it lets in anyone who figures it out. And, of course, if the existence of the backdoor were published it would do serious damage to my business.

Even companies who want to cooperate are going to be reluctant to do potentially business-destroying favors for the government. There would be a great deal of incentive to fall back on the law and refuse on the grounds that the law doesn't authorize such requests.

I'm skeptical that an Android device would survive running flat out for two years to crack a PIN. The heat and battery life issues I experienced when I tested it demonstrate clearly that mobile devices simply aren't designed to run full-speed 24x7.

Also, it should be pointed out that the attack I described is far from easy to carry out. Among other things, it requires dumping the contents of flash, which basically requires removing the flash chips from the mainboard without damaging it, then either putting the flash chips back or installing new flash, then the device must be unlocked, a custom, hostile OS flashed, and finally the attacker can start the multi-year process.

Note that the 630-day figure I cited is on average. It would take twice that long for a guaranteed break.

Finally, if you add one more character to your passcode (7-character alphanumeric), the crack time jumps from 630 days on average to 124 years.

I agree that Lollipop FDE still needs some improvement, but it's already quite good.

Spock in Amok Time is good Spock, just rageful and murderous. Evil Spock (with a goatee -- that's how you can tell he's evil) was from episode 33, "Mirror, Mirror."

Time shifting is typically something that the end-user does. Tivo, like Sony before it (The original time shifting lawsuit was against Sony for their Betamax), merely makes the machine. So long as there is at least a potential lawful use for the recording function of the machine, they can go on making them. The Supreme Court found that at least some time shifting would be fair, and that was enough.

Space shifting is another example, the original case was against Diamond for their Rio MP3 players, but Apple's iPod relied on it, as did basically everyone else.

No, the purpose of the use for time shifting, while not precisely commercial, is to simply use the work in the way that an ordinary user, who did not time shift, would use it. It's not strongly against fair use, but it certainly doesn't weigh for it in the way that an educational or transformative use would. At best it is a wash.

It does.

(Though the question of parodying a mark directly is different from parodying a work which happens to contain a mark. Parodying Star Wars, which includes X-Wings, and the Millennium Falcon, and Lightsabers, and so on is different from parodying the Star Wars logo all by itself)

Also, remember that trademarks are inferior to, and cannot be used as a substitute for, copyrights. And that trademarks themselves are subject to various limitations to allow for certain types of unauthorized use.

Peter Pan is in the public domain in the US. You can absolutely have Peter Pan promoting drug use ('fairy dust' can be the street name; a side effect might be paranoid hallucinations of ticking crocodiles, etc.), and publish it widely enough to detract from Disney's ability to keep Peter Pan a wholesome character that they can make tons of money off.

Go nuts.

But because people can ignore that -- In fact, I'm confident that there are bad porn versions of Peter Pan floating around -- it doesn't really detract from the original, or from the Disney movies, unless you allow it to. It's up to you, the audience member.

That's not quite right.

There's no special status for works which are parodies. Some parodies can be fair uses, but not all parodies are. And not all fair uses are parodies, though some fair uses are.

In any case, one factor in determining whether a use is fair or not is how much, and of that how substantial a part, of the original work is used. It's possible to have a fair use that uses all of a work, but also possible to have a use which uses very little of a work, but which is not fair.

While it all depends on the circumstances at hand, a good rule of thumb is to take only so much as you need. If you wanted to make a parody of Star Wars about how Luke waving the lightsaber around in Obi-Wan's house is dangerous, because Luke is a klutz, you could probably use some footage of that scene from the movie. You would have a harder time justifying using the entire movie, but only changing that one scene for the purposes of parody.