You missed the much more obvious one:

1-June-2008 - For X
4-June-2008 - Gives speech on floor of Senate extolling the virtues of X over some heavy-handed big government program Y
1-June-2011 - President Obama comes out for X
2-June-2011 - Against X
4-June-2011 - Gives speech blasting X as a plan to steal money from unborn Christian U.S. Marines and give it to Union-backed Atheist Socialist Muslim Homosexuals

They're not a bank!

If this went through, I'd be hard pressed to see how they could keep up that facade.

The Amazon one-click purchase patent is a prime example.

I see what you did there.

That sounds better, but you're missing the big picture. No source code.

When I buy a book, I can extend the work quite easily after it is in the public domain. I read the book, come up with my own ideas, and write a new one.

When I buy Windows XP, I can...disassemble the code and look at it. Have fun trying to extend it or fix any bugs. And that's assuming a shorter copyright term. The copyright on MS-DOS 1.0 expires in 2102. At that point we'll be able to copy the binary here and there, assuming any binaries can be found. The source will probably have been long gone and no hardware that it supports will likely be around either.

What a nice deal for Microsoft! They get a government monopoly on the exploitation of their works and all they have to do is give you an opaque version of the work that won't be useful for anyone when the copyright term finally expires.

We need at least source in escrow with the Library of Congress. When the copyright term runs out, the source is published. I'd rather require source publishing for any copyright, but I don't think that's going to fly.

Same here...only I was atrociously bad. I'd get Ds and Fs on the programming assignments and As on all the written exams.

I understood the material...I just couldn't translate it into code for whatever reason. That's why I changed after 2 years to Math and got my degree there. Modern Algebra was a hell of a lot easier than Operating Systems, that's for sure.

Close. There are several different hairs to split here:

If you write a program that implements the patent, you have simply transformed an English description of the patent into an [insert programming language of choice here] description of the patent. That, in and of itself, is not illegal any more than translating the patent to Spanish, French, or Esperanto would be.

If you compile the program (assuming you used a language that isn't interpreted) and distribute it, you've not done any more than you have in the previous example. In this case you're just translating the code into assembly language. However at this point, you'll usually get sued for infringing on the patient even though, as the OP states, the patient is only valid when the algorithm is carried out using a generic programmable computer.

If the OP is correct, you would only be infringing at the point that the program is loaded into memory and executed by the processor. If that's the case, the onus would have to be on the plaintiff to prove that at some point I ran that particular algorithm.

I use the Linux kernel. It might be such that the code that implements the patented algorithm has never actually executed on my system. If that is true, I haven't infringed in any way. I'm sure there are binaries on my hard drive that I've never used. If any of them implements a patented algorithm, I haven't infringed.

I get two bills by mail and I can check the status of them online (they just won't stop sending me paper bills).

They usually don't get opened and just thrown in the garbage. Is that a great idea? No. I should probably shred them, but I'm lazy and too cheap to buy a shredder.

Wow, it must be nice to be so optimistic. I'm only 27, and I fully expect life will continue to get worse until the day I die.

Cheers to you, sir.

Buy up all the infrastructure under eminent domain and have the ISPs compete based on services. Done.

Yes we are. And you're also completely wrong.

The Confederacy was so little about slavery and so much about states' rights that the Confederate Constitution required states to accept slavery as a property right. States' rights indeed.

Seeing that those who disagreed, disagreed because they wanted to keep people as property...I'm thinking we did a solid on that one.

That's nuts. I hope its worth it. No trains or anything can take you? No ride sharing?

I live exactly 2.6 miles from the office and I think of getting a closer apartment. The 5 minute drive into work is almost too much...then again I can see a grocery store and a gas station from the house. The farthest place I need to go on a semi-regular basis is the credit union and that's about 4 miles away.

He works in Zimbabwe.

Well...that's kind of what happens. The Hyde Amendment is put in just about every appropriations bill, but Republicans still demand each individual law have anti-abortion language in it.

I wouldn't be surprised if the next appropriations bill for highway funding has some anti-abortion language in it.

It's all a racket to get votes. If you really believe that life begins at conception (which is a rational view to have), then you have to believe that any abortion is murder and the abortion provider along with his staff and the mother should all be arrested for 1st degree murder and conspiracy to commit 1st degree murder. Abortions performed to save the mother's life should still go to court so that the mother can plead self defense. You can't just take the mother or doctor's word for it. They might be secret libruls who like to kill babies.

You won't get but 10% of the country to believe that, but that's what you have to believe to be consistent.

One is almost immediately drawn to wonder if this "hack" could be considered a circumvention mechanism under the DMCA. I wonder if NYT will start sending takedown notices...