Fine. I take my $3 app (my cut: $2), and list it as "MSRP: $9.95". Amazon sells it for $3. I get $2.

All this does is encourage unreasonably high MSRP values. Maybe that's what amazon wants... that way they can list everything at 60-70% "discount" off of a fictional MSRP all the time.

Is there a reason you can't put a router with NAT behind the mifi?

Just what we need. Everybody deliberately voting for the biggest idiot on the other side instead of the best candidate on their side. That will definitely lead to a new era of intelligence in government policy.

Or you just make everybody so afraid of the terrists that they won't leave their homes^H^H^H^H^Hbunkers. Then there won't be anybody to drive the trucks.

With regard to the patents, he has nothing to negotiate. However, if he wrote the code, and released it under the GPL, he could definitely claim that their software which uses the technology is a violation of the terms of the GPL license. This claim might be legitimate (if they copied) or completely not legitimate (if they didn't re-use any of the code, and merely developed new software with similar capabilities and features).

In reality, OP is going nowhere with this. The USPTO is unlikely to invalidate the patent because somebody presents them with prior art that they already considered. Even if the USPTO was wrong, they aren't going to reconsider. Even if this was new prior art that nobody had previously known about... the USPTO is extremely unlikely to reconsider the patent grant. If it has been granted already, then, as they say, "prosecution on the merits is closed." Oh, sure, if IBM sues somebody, the prior art might be helpful. Claim 1 might or might not hold up unmodified in court, depending. Were it to require modification, then IBM could potentially lose a suit. IBM is unlikely to pursue the matter at this stage anyway, and they probably don't even realize that they have this particular patent.

I'm not going to read the entire document to make sure that I understand precisely all of IBM's definitions of terms, so I can't give an informed opinion on the validity. Without doing enough reading to be informed ('cause hey, this is the internet after all, I'm supposed to be wrong or at least uninformed), the whole thing probably turns on the feature of not having to re-link or even re-load the application to set the heap checking feature on and off.

Remember, you're only infringing a claim if you are infringing the entire claim. This patent isn't on "heap checking" or even "run-time detection of invalid heap access", or anything of the sort. If you aren't infringing the entirety of claim 1, the entirety of claim 12, or the entirety of claim 16 (the 3 independent claims), then you aren't infringing this patent. Similarly, if the HeapCheck software didn't do everything listed in those claims, then the differences between HeapCheck and those claims is the part that is (supposedly) novel and non-obvious.

(standard disclaimers apply; I'm no lawyer, this isn't legal advice, I'm just an engineer that happens to work the IP/patent process for my department)

I know, but guns scare people.

Everybody knows that a guy with a big ass gun is guaranteed to go on a killing spree. Just go watch any movie that has a guy with a big ass gun in it.

However, with sufficiently poor credit, it becomes impossible to even open a checking account.

OK, fine. Nobody raises prices. Instantly all products sell out, since everybody has enough money to buy everything they need, everything they want, and everything that they feel like buying because its just lying there. Only there isn't enough stuff in the whole world to fill everybody's needs, wants, and whims. So people start fighting over the last few items. Someone offers to pay double, then someone offers to pay double that, etc.

Because there needs to be some inherent balance between the availability of money and the availability of things to buy with it.

If suddenly there were zillions of dollars lying about, candy bars sold for only $1 apiece would sell out everywhere, and there'd be a huge shortage of candy bars until someone had the bright idea to charge more for them -- enough more that they could handle the demand.

I wonder if this has to do with how long people have used various browsers. People are probably less likely to default at the beginning of a loan than they are several years in, and all of the browsers listed except IE and FireFox have had somewhat recent large increases in use, thus increasing the percentage of Chrome and Safari users, in particular, that are in the first 12 months of their loans -- and thus less likely to have already defaulted.

Or it could be something else entirely, but that seems plausible to me.

A Plan for the Improvement of English Spelling

For example, in Year 1 that useless letter c would be dropped to be replased either by k or s, and likewise x would no longer be part of the alphabet. The only kase in which c would be retained would be the ch formation, which will be dealt with later.

Year 2 might reform w spelling, so that which and one would take the same konsonant, wile Year 3 might well abolish y replasing it with i and Iear 4 might fiks the g/j anomali wonse and for all.

Jenerally, then, the improvement would kontinue iear bai iear with Iear 5 doing awai with useless double konsonants, and Iears 6-12 or so modifaiing vowlz and the rimeining voist and unvoist konsonants.

Bai Iear 15 or sou, it wud fainali bi posibl tu meik ius ov thi ridandant letez c, y and x — bai now jast a memori in the maindz ov ould doderez — tu riplais ch, sh, and th rispektivli.

Fainali, xen, aafte sam 20 iers ov orxogrefkl riform, wi wud hev a lojikl, kohirnt speling in ius xrewawt xe Ingliy-spiking werld.

Mark Twain

You know, there is actually a good reason to somewhat restrain expressiveness in programming languages.

I love writing in a nice dynamic language too, because it inevitably means less typing, more doing.

BUT, when I have to read someone else's code, the fact that the types of things have to be explicitly spelled out helps SO much.

This is actually something I've seen as C# evolves. The new 'var' keyword was really originally intended to be used in specific situations where spelling out the full type is tedious and the type is relatively unimportant. Same reason for the new 'auto' in C++. You don't really want to type HashMap.Iterator iter at the beginning of a for loop... it's fairly obvious what you intended, and that's a hideous typename.

But now that the keyword is there, it gets used for everything, and it becomes rather non-obvious when reading someone else's code what all of the types are. It becomes mandatory to have an IDE that will give you type info when you mouseover something, and you have to mouseover everything... because the types are all gone.

It does save keystrokes, and makes it easier to type, but I really prefer having all of the typenames explicitly listed when I need to read something.

Unless you are planning on putting a bunch of BEL chars in your code?

thing is, I have a { key and a } key, but not a [RED] key, nor a [BLUE] key. Which means either memorizing IDE-specific keyboard shortcuts (and then relearning when i have to use a new tool), or lots of clicky-clicky with the mouse, which takes longer and does more damage over time.

Stand Back! I'm going to try SCIENCE! ...

so if you're standing within about 14 feet of the baseline, I might run you down. Seriously. Stand back!