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fatdog789on JK Rowling Attacks Scribd For Pirated Content

cough

Actually, distribution and COPY (i.e., reproduction) rights are at the heart of copyright law.

She has every right to control distribution of her works.

Do not confuse the copyrightability of ideas with the copyrightability of an expression. BTW, every court that has seen this sort of case has ruled that a fictional fact or character is considered an expression, not an idea. IDEA = boy goes to a school for child wizards EXPRESSION = harry potter (a specific example of the idea)

fatdog789on Google is Evil, Worse than PayPal: Don't use Google Checkout for your business

Check the case again: this case is only mandatory precedent for ADMIRALTY cases. While strongly persuasive precedent, b/c it is SCOTUS, it has not been followed in the state courts.

fatdog789on Google is Evil, Worse than PayPal: Don't use Google Checkout for your business

As I posted elsewhere, that's just wrong.

FORUM SELECTION CLAUSES ARE NOT BINDING ABSENT A SIGNED WRITTEN CONTRACT. EVEN WITH A CONTRACT, ALMOST NO COURT IN THE US WILL HONOR A FORUM SELECTION CLAUSE BETWEEN A CONSUMER AND A CORPORATION.

Think about it: if forum selection clauses did have legal effect (between consumers and corporations), you wouldn't be able to sue most companies unless you were willing to go to Delaware (where roughly 90% of naitonal US corps are headquartered). The reason we have lawsuits everywhere is precisely b/c you can file anywhere, even despite a forum selection clause.

ONLY BUSINESSES NEED TO WORRY ABOUT FORUM SELECTION CLAUSES.

Choice of law clauses are different.

fatdog789on Google is Evil, Worse than PayPal: Don't use Google Checkout for your business

That's so wrong that it hurts.

There is no legal obligation to file in the Defendant's court. US law allows a lawsuit to be filed in (1) the plaintiff's home court, (2) the defendant's home court, or (3) the home court of the jurisdiction where the events giving rise to the lawsuit took place.

Forum selection clauses ARE NOT BINDING UNLESS SIGNED IN WRITING. Most courts will not honor forum selection clauses between consumers and corporations due to the unfair bargaining power in the relationship. The other primary justification is that the corporation can afford to travel to a city where they willingly do business (i.e., provide goods or services.)

CHOICE OF LAW CLAUSES ARE BINDING. That simply means that the the court hearing the case may have to apply the law of a different state.

TALK TO A LAWYER. Don't trust random comments on an online technology discussion board, especially where those comments claim that you don't have legal rights.

fatdog789on Google is Evil, Worse than PayPal: Don't use Google Checkout for your business

That's so wrong that it hurts.

CHOICE OF LAW CLAUSES ARE BINDING. That simply means that the the court hearing the case may have to apply the law of a different state.

fatdog789on Why not reduce retirement age to 40 but require people to work much harder?

1) Even lawyers and doctors don't make enough money to retire by 40.

2) Lawyers and doctors frequently work 80-100 hours a week. The amount of productive output is not 2x as much as the 40 hour week; due to fatigue and stress, the productive output only averages out to about 150% more work...in other words, a 25% loss in productivity as compared to just working 2 40 hour weeks.

3) The stress of working 80-100 hour work weeks kills the body good. Literally. It easily ages the body 2-3 years for every year on that sort of schedule. That's why all our presidents have gray hair when they retire.

4) The pyramid scheme: younger generations would have to work even longer to pay for the retirement costs of the retired. People live an average of 25-35 years (depending on sex and race) after 40. So you've made the already unsustainable equation (which sets the retirement date for federal benefits so that only 1/2 of all adults are expected to live past the eligibility date) even worse.

5) France. Enough said.

fatdog789on Mono 2.2 may overtake .NET in some critical categories

Depending on the distro, it may be as easy as "yum mono" or "apt-get mono".

fatdog789on Ask HN: Is anyone doing Blackberry app development?

On a business device, usually paid for by the company?

Many companies don't allow their Crackberries to be used for personal crap; iFart and other novelty apps definitely fall into that category.

fatdog789on 7 Countries Where Graduate School Is a Fraction of US Costs

Having met graduates of these "esteemed" graduate schools, I think that their degrees are exactly worth the tuition they paid. Which is to say, that I would trust the average community college graduate more than some from Ecoles.

America may suck balls at the pre-12 level, but college and up, even our community colleges kick the world's ass.

fatdog789on Ask HN: Why is there no "execution" rule for patents?

Expense. What if the invention is very expensive to make but the inventor is a high school dropout living above his parent's garage? This one requirement now completely invalidates his rights to the invention he created; this means less incentive for people to invent. It also applies against companies as well, b/c now they have to invest resources in researching an invention and in developing the production line to crank it out if it works.

Timeline. You require them to build the product before it can be patented, which means a massive incentive before they even know if they'll get any protection.

REDUNDANT. Patent law already has a "reduction to practice" requirement. This requirement usually requires the inventor to build a working copy (and this is the most common way that the RTP requirement is met) or to provide detailed enough instructions that any person in the same art could build a working copy of the invention.

fatdog789on Ask HN: Why is there no "execution" rule for patents?

The problem isn't the USPTO, it's the patent applicants themselves who do not disclose the prior art in their own applications. The USPTO is supposed to conduct its own prior art search, but the volume of applications, coupled with funding which decreases every year, results in a very minimal search for direct prior art.

Patents can and often are invalidated for the patentee's failure to include prior art; in fact, it is the leading cause of patent invalidation.

The problem is that the USPTO doesn't have the number of employees it needs to examine each patent, as fully as would be necessary to stop "obvious" patents from getting through, within a time frame for allowing meaningful inventions to hit the market in a timely fashion.

fatdog789on The First True Scientist - al-Hassan Ibn al-Haytham born 965 A.D.

B/C it didn't actually happen that way. The "Dark Ages" is a myth perpetuated in elementary school to children. The "Dark Ages" referred to the 100-200 year period immediately after the fall of Rome, during which Western Europe was thrown in relative chaos. After that however, Europe was fairly vibrant, and new inventions were churned out over the next several centuries (mostly military, agricultural, and metal working technologies). Italy never lost its luster as a center for science and research; even after Rome's fall, the climate, location, and trade made it attractive to inventors, architects, and artists--the Vatican did not fall. For example, the earliest patent systems, (yes, plural) predated the reintroduction of Classical texts into Europe. Many European scientists and mathematicians independently came up with ideas similar to the Ancient Greek dudes, but don't get popular credit for this because they weren't first.

fatdog789on Silverlight Update Aims for Greater Adoption Through Developers

For a long while, it was installed on OEM computers like Dell and HP, so users didn't need to install it.

It still is installed by default on most consumer-line Dell models.

fatdog789on Silverlight Update Aims for Greater Adoption Through Developers

The Olympics.Streaming, high-quality, LIVE video feed. The low bandwidth quality SL content easily beat the high-bandwidth quality of Flash streams on sites like Hulu and Amazon VOD.

And that was just the beta.