I had a moment of doubt when i had to remember which axis was vertically oriented when dealing with an x/y plot. I've been playing too many video games where x, y are compass axes, z is vertical.

The SCOTUS did no such thing. In People v. Diaz, the California Supreme Court held that warrantless searches of a cellphone was consistent with the protections of the U.S. Constitution and the CA State constitution. In other words, they interpreted a Police Procedure in light of State and Federal Constitutions. There was no statute involved.

In saying the SCOTUS 'let stand' that decision, this merely means that they chose not to grant certiorari. This is not affirming the decision, this is not striking down something similar, this is merely REFUSING to consider the question to begin with. There are numerous reasons the Court might do this: First, the issue involved a matter of State constitutional interpretation - a matter best left to individual states. This is because the California State Constitution recognizes more privacy protections than the U.S. Constitution. Second, the SCOTUS may be waiting for more opinions from other courts before they take on the issue. The search of cellphones is still relatively immature across the states and circuits. Third, alternately, the facts of Diaz may be unambiguous under federal protections, rendering intervention unnecessary.

OP is correct that Gov. Brown has this exactly backwards. A bill requiring heightened protections for cell phones does nothing to "overturn" the Cal. Sup. court's decision, as it does not change the way the court applies and interprets Constitutional protections. It instead, by legislative powers, creates a circumstance under which the State may provide more protections than the Constitution requires. This is explicitly and unambiguously allowed under the Tenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. A State may ALWAYS choose to provide more protections than the Constitution requires, it simply may not provide less.

I don't know how you did it, but you seem to have forgotten about this device called the iPod. Yeah, it brought PMPs to the mainstream. Apple sold a metric butt-load of them and made a mint in the process. Oh yeah, they also created an iTunes store, sold over 10,000,000,000 songs and other related media, and now sells more music than anyone else on the planet, including Walmart.

iOS and iPhone didn't save Apple, it catapulted them from ludicrously successful to can't-talk-I'm-having-too-many-orgasms-all-the-time successful.

It's not Carly Fiorina coming in and fucking up HP for a few years and leaving - Steve Jobs started the company, worked there ~10 years, left for a few, then came back and was CEO for 14 more. No other CEO on the planet is so closely associated with their company. As a pillar of the tech industry, his input drove the state of the art forward. It is a loss for the tech world when any big name leaves for good. By the way, this website is called Slashdot, and its a place for "News for Nerds," you know, people who generally care about technology.

Good thing that's not the standard for obviousness.

The standard is that the patent would have been obvious to try for one of ordinary skill in the art (here, the art is product design of some kind).

Even if you could prove your "one out of any 10 geeks" assertion, which you absolutely can't, it would be of no weight in determining obviousness.

You do realize that Apple reduced the price of the upgrade by 75% while moving to App Store distribution, right? I'm not crazy about distributing a new OS over the App Store, but keep in mind Apple could have *EASILY* charged $129 for Lion and people would have paid for it.

Also, pressing one DVD may cost pennies, but the screen printing costs several times that. Add in mastering costs, packaging, manufacturing, distribution, retail, suddenly you have half a dozen vertical chains to organize. That doesn't cost pennies.

The display capabilities, strain, and technology for consumer-grade LCDs still provides for a vastly inferior reading experience than ordinary quality print media. I can read paper faster, annotate faster, and save my eyes strain and effort, and save myself time by simply printing documents out. I read thousands of pages of documents for a grad school, and I will print out anything around 10,000 words, and anything I need for personal research because I'll be reading it 3-5x. I can't imagine why you'd think current LCD technology solves these issues.

The statute language is inclusive of any "communication," so you do not need to re-package as an image. Your post is sufficient under the text of the law.

He needs to describe with sufficient detail how one of ordinary skill in the art can practice godly powers.

But what is "one of ordinary skill", and what "art" is this? Is it the art of being godly? One must be practiced in the art to say that it is not enabled.

Personally I would have gone with non-patentable subject matter under Chakrabarty, since "godly powers" are by definition not "made by man."

His "impressive" intelligence is more than negated by his actions.

The drivel he spews on Fox News makes him a party-line hack, nothing more. The smartest guy in the room needs to lead by reason and logic, not repeat tired, inflammatory lies. When I saw a clip of him discussing the Citizens United case, I thought, "ok, your legal analysis is crap. I can excuse that because you are not a lawyer (despite being a legislator), but please stop repeating tired lies."

Anyrate, as smart as Newt may be, you'd be hard pressed to demonstrate that he's more intelligent than Obama. Ultimately, though, it doesn't matter. What matters is how good of a politician you are. George W, Regan, both idiots who were extremely successful at playing the political game.