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.

RTFS. Note the S, not the A. If you had read the SUMMARY, let alone the article, you would see that 850,000 were missing, 200,000 were found in the wallet, leaving 650,000 unaccounted for.

Two hours for a one-way commute? That doesn't sound like a very good life balance. I think if that was our teams that we'd end up doing a mixed online/f2f meeting as if some of the team were remote.

Yep, you can improve acoustics a little with soft furnishings and plants for instance. Bonus is a better environment.

Polycom isn't necessary. I work with two remote scrum teams who both try standing around a shared desktop in their rooms for their stand-ups via Lync. One of them has great audio, the other doesn't. Both are in large echoey rooms. The only difference in systems is their mic and room decoration.

The team in the room we can't hear clearly have resolved the issue by doing all meetings from their desks using headsets. They also now have long drawn out stand-ups. Hmmm, proves the point about standing up.

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.

They even make a portable USB unit if you want some thing that you can carry around instead of fixing in place in the meeting space: http://www.polycom.com/products-services/voice/desktop-solutions/pc-speakerphones/CommunicatorC100S.html

That is not even close to the right microphone.

They want to pick up multiple people wandering around a large room. That mic works best right in front of (measured in inches) the source of the sound.

The right answer is to just buy a polycom phone. Why try to buy a microphone and configure software (since you want a sensitive microphone that picks up everything, but then you will want noise cancellation that blocks out half of what the mic captures) when there is already a product that does this incredibly well for a pretty low price. You can get one for $50 or less on ebay.

We gave them extensions for a reason - to let people easily tell what kind of code it was.

Then we build verification code into software so that when a program needed X file, it would only load it if it had the right extension.

Then things got a lot more complicated. We started building verification code into the first bytes of the data and added icon to tell humans what it was.

So someone decided that 'hey, we don't need this older, more primitive system of file extensions, lets' deprecate it by defaulting to hide it."

But the problem is the extension system is STILL useful and always has been useful. People like it because it lets them type into a search what kind of file to look for.

On top of that, icons are not in any way related to the system that the computer uses - the first few bytes of a data file. More importantly, we have found OTHER, BETTER uses for icons than to signify what kind of data it is - specifically the concept of displaying a short bit of the data - a micro photo of the photo, or a micro photo of a still shot from a movie.

As such, that leaves us NO simple way for a human to tell what kind of file the photo is.

File extensions have multiple real purposes. The attempt to deprecate and eliminate it was a stupid idea and needs to end. We need to tell the difference between a jpeg and a tiff, an mpg and wav.

The file extension in the main way a human can easily do that. We need file extensions and anyone that doesn't think that is a fool

Actually, I am VERY fun - I just write far better scripts.

If I were going to write a zombie script it would be:

1) You know that incredibly stupid fantasy someone that is bitten but hides it because they think 'they are different'? That would be my main plot point - the heroes a group of four -eight people would actually BE bitten and infected but naturally immune to the disease

2) They would in fact be 'carriers' of the disease - like Typhoid Mary.

3) The government would be quarantining a large area and killing anyone infected - and TELLING people that on the radio.

4) So our small band of heroes would be forced to live inside the zombie quarantine zone.

5) Sequel: Eventually the zombies get all killed by the army and our group of Zombie Mary's are now on the run, hiding from the government, all the while leaving a trail of zombie victims pointing directly at them. They make it a small abandoned island and that is the happy ending.

In other words, your basic assumption is that people are morons.

But as I said earlier, people are NOT morons.

What you describe is the stuff of poorly written novels, not realism. People do NOT panic first and then act - accept in very specific circumstances.

In general, people only panic when a) they have never faced a situation before and b) no one has any idea what to do. But we know what to do against zombies, because we have seen the movies.

Still not a reasonable result. Disease does not coordinate the deaths. Elderly people die first. After the first couple of oldsters go zombie, and easily get destroyed by their nurses, word gets out and anyone near death gets handcuffed to a bed. When they can no longer speak, the healthy people kill them.

Humans outsmart the dumb zombies.

This exact same topic was covered in Frontline's special on North Korea over a year ago. Their point of contact was Jiro Ishimaru of Asiapress who was sneaker netting USBs over the border. They even took a video of people trying to watch on a tiny screen and having to shut everything down whenever they heard someone outside.

The documentary also touched on humanitarian issues as much as it could using a secret camera. Sad stuff. Great thing to watch. Occasionally you can catch it streaming on Netflix but it seems to not be available right now.

Never tried SmallTalk?

The basic problem was the mindset, technological capabilities, and trust.

If you give me your phone for 30 seconds, I can download software on it to let me track your location anytime I want to. Other people can download software to turn on the microphone and listen in without having the phone ring.

The only real difference between your cellphone and a spying device used to track you, listen to every word you say, is the software on it.

Just because all they CLAIMED to download was a 'free song' doesn't mean it really was a free song.

Doing the download indicates:

1. The ability to treat pwn your electronics at their convenience.

2. Weak morals, ethics and lack of respect for us such that they see nothing wrong with pwning our devices.

This is a matter of trust - and they proved they are not trustworthy.