sporkologist

The only possible such system is one where each individual can set his own privacy level. This does not seem practicable.

Would it be ok for the NSA to put cameras in everyone's home if the schematics were freely available?

Looks like they scale easily in parallel from what I read.

Here's a book on it: https://www.springer.com/engineering/circuits+%26+systems/bo...

> Migen (Milkymist Generator)

a Python toolbox for building complex digital hardware

> When a loved one dies, that breaks you down, melts the ice block of arrogant I-know-what's-up thinking.

If you think the solution to that way of thinking is for someone to die, that's like thinking the only way to learn about the dangers of a hot stove is to burn your hand on it.

As mentioned further up these comments, IMEI's can be forged, and phones produced "off-hours" in the factories often have IMEI's consisting of all 0's or all 1's. I gleaned this much just from reading this thread.

I'm guessing, in the 4th amendment sense.

> The only goal that matters right now is the end of FPTP and the two party system.

Alas, there is so much money, power, and political infrastructure in maintaining the status quo. Changing this structure will not be popular and will quickly be relegated to "wacko" status, and minimized in the mainstream press..... which has a vested interest in maintaining the current system.

Now to motivate the big money guys to help out a bit. Surely some of them are displeased with PRISM and all that?

In the 60's, many protestors were directly threatened by being drafted to go to Vietnam... so their motivations were much more vivid and literally life-threatening. What's going on today is arguably more threatening to our financial system and world ecology, but as you said, we're in general pretty comfortable and not as motivated as back then.

If our government threatened to limit sales of alcohol (as in Turkey), among other extremely conservative laws, that would probably create a big reaction and protesting.

> If the tea partiers can do it

They were backed by the billionaire Koch Brothers. We'd have to get Bill Gates or someone like that to pull off something similar.

I propose something called "The 4th Amendment Party" which directly addresses privacy issues, in the US anyway. An international Pirate Party could be used for hopefully countering the negative effects of multinational corporations.

> it would be easy enough to defeat with prior art references

Yes in theory. In practice, it all depends on how much the parties want to lawyer up, and not settle out of court.

Patents, and their abstracts, are written in very particular language, that was originally meant for mechanical devices and configurations. It's law + engineering, basically.

> Prior art

I remember the good ole days, when that phrase had meaning.

> I don't think they'll use it.

It all depends on how zealous their lawyers are. Or if they sell it to patent trolls, if they are in their normally litigious mood. They don't usually get to court, just the mere threat of litigation is usually motivation for the defendant to settle out of court for a tidy sum.

The 4th Amendment is dead. Long Live the 4th Amendment!

It's a start.

Having seen quite a few design patents, and copyrighted designs, I'm not even sure where the line is between the two. Utility patents are the traditional patents in question (software and functional objects). I don't think you can get a design patent for software.

I'm all for utility patents, if the patent examining system is changed to get more help or advice from experts in the field, to more quickly find previous pertinent patents that could expedite invalidation of infringing applications, or decide if it's too broad.

This of course violates the purpose of patenting in the first place, to create and market something not obvious to those currently working in the field. The fact that the patent system is that broken is pretty chilling.

Just want to make a distinction within "patents or IP". Patents are at issue here, not copyrights or trademarks. Having said that, there are certain things I do trust the patent system for (mechanical things) and things I don't (software). This speaks to the patent examiners' lack of familiarity with the state of the art in logic and programming.

So many ideas that are discussed in forums like that are already patented. 95% of the time, the product never made it to market, 4% of the time the product did make it to market but wasn't successful. I've done patent searches for friends with "new ideas" and it turns out someone patented it 40 years ago.

full disclosure: I have a patent, that ended up in the 4% category. On to other things...

The worst offender I could think of: U.S. Patent 4,197,590, the XOR Cursor patent.

http://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/classes/6.805/articles/int-p...

"So the secret to getting yourself to do something is not to convince yourself you have to do it, but to convince yourself that it’s fun. And if it isn’t, then you need to make it fun."

This one woke me up.

Having lived in KC for 10 years, I never noticed an accent at the time. But then after living in the Northeast for a while, the KC accent seemed to have a very distinct Southern drawl. Not as much as e.g. Texas, but there nonetheless.

This happened to me in Rhode Island. I'm very used to Boston, New York (Manhattan, Brooklyn, Long Island), and various New Jersey accents, but the Rhode Island accent really had me mystified. I just learned about the Maine accent recently (the stereotypical Steven King accent).

Can you distinguish a Southern (Alabama) accent from a Minnesota accent? To me those sound as far apart as Standard American and British. (I'm American w/ Standard American accent.)

Please try to ignore the footballers and celebrities who make obviously more money than they ought to. They are definitely outliers (combination of genetics, support system, and good coaching). Just be the best you can be at your chosen niche. That's what I'm trying to do.

fyi: "the company are happy" is proper usage of British English.

"It ain't bragging if you can back it up." - Jaco Pastorius

Yes you need enough intelligence to assess a situation and know if you can handle it or not.

This story really touched me. It got me to look at what I'm doing (manufacturing, maybe something 30 people in the world are doing) in a new light. Thank you!!

Thanks.