“If I retired from the Army as a brain surgeon, wouldn’t it be OK for me to go into private practice and make money doing brain surgery?” he asked. “I’m a cyber guy. Can’t I go to work and do cyber stuff?”
The “brain surgery” analogy is not even close to be analogous. This is more like he was the administrator of an army hospital who has now retired and says, despite never having personally done a brain surgery, he’s now invented a miraculous new way to do brain surgeries so powerful people have only dreamed of them before. Naturally, most people should be skeptical of such claims.
Category: Human stupidity
Union Street Guest House in Hudson Burns Own Reputation To The Ground By Trying To Charge Customers $500 For Bad Reviews
If you stay here to attend a wedding and leave us a negative review on any internet site you agree to a $500. fine for each negative review.
If you have booked the Inn for a wedding or other type of event anywhere in the region and given us a deposit of any kind for guests to stay at USGH there will be a $500 fine that will be deducted from your deposit for every negative review of USGH placed on any internet site by anyone in your party and/or attending your wedding or event (this is due to the fact that your guests may not understand what we offer and we expect you to explain that to them).
UK Woman Denied Passport Because Her Name Might Infringe On Disney’s Copyright
Her namesake may be able to travel across galaxies in Star Wars, but Laura Matthews from Southend – whose middle name is Skywalker – isn’t even able to get on a budget airline to the Med.
The 29-year-old added the middle name by deed poll in 2008, “for a bit of a laugh”, and recently tried to renew her passport, complete with her new name and the signature L. Skywalker. Her application was refused, with the Home Office telling her it “will not recognise a change to a name which is subject to copyright or trademark”.
EFF’s Stupid Patent of the Month
U.S. Patent No. 8,762,173, titled “Method and Apparatus for Indirect Medical Consultation.” This patent issued on June 24, 2014, and dates back to an application filed in November 2007. And what was the novel, nonobvious, deserving-of-patent-protection invention? Here is claim 1 in a nutshell (the full claim is at the end of this post, for those interested)1:
a. take a telephone call from patient
b. record patient info in a patient file
c. send patient information to a doctor, ask the doctor if she wants to talk to the patient
d. call the patient back and transfer the call to the doctor
e. record the call
f. add the recorded call to the patient file and send to doctor
g. do steps a. – f. with a computer.This is a stupid patent. This is a patent on a doctor’s computer-secretary, or put another way, intermediated communications with a computer. In fact, we don’t see much difference between this patent and the patent invalidated by the Supreme Court in Alice Corp. v. CLS Bank, which claimed the abstract idea of intermediated settlement with a computer.
Given that this patent seems like it should not have been allowed because of its abstract idea, we looked at the file history (the publicly available record of what happened at the patent office). What we found was that the original claim 1 (which was similar but not identical to the claim that eventually was patented) had not claimed a computer. The examiner correctly issued a rejection, saying the claim was abstract and thus wasn’t something that could be patented. In response, the applicant added element (g) (“providing a computer, the computer performing steps “a” through “f””). And the rejection went away.
Where Not to Write the Password for Your Fancy Data-Mining Software
How about on a whiteboard that you’re planning to stand in front of while being interviewed by CNN?
DOJ Says ‘Not Our Fault’ That Police Actually Believed FBI Report Calling Juggalos Gang Members
Justice Department attorney Amy Powell said the group and its fans have no standing to sue. She said the government is not responsible for how police agencies use information in the 2011 national gang report. Powell said a “subjective chill” as alleged by plaintiffs was not enough to be in court.
“There is no general right of protection to a social association,” she said, referring to First Amendment violations argued by Insane Clown Posse and its fans.
It’s an interesting theory to put forth, that the FBI, essentially the king of domestic police agencies, has no culpability for local police using its report, which included the demonizing of music fans. In other words, the FBI can simply label any group it likes a gang organization without recourse. Local police will, of course, simply point back to the report when questioned about their activities, and now we have a recursive loop of non-responsibility. I’m pretty sure that’s some kind of government agency golden egg.
Supreme Court Uses The Bizarre ‘Looks Like A Cable Duck’ Test To Outlaw Aereo
The majority decision, written by Stephen Breyer, really just keeps going back to the fact that Aereo looks just like what those cable companies used to do… and therefore, given that Congress changed the law to outlaw that, Congress must have meant that Aereo should be illegal as well. The majority seems to view things as a black box, ignoring everything in the box. It just says “well, to end users and to networks, this is identical to the old cable systems.” As for the very careful steps that Aereo took to comply with the law? The majority just brushes that off as meaningless.
This is what happens when technically illiterate people are set to rule over technical matters.
German Newspapers want to get paid to receive traffic from Google
Hans-Joachim Fuhrmann, a spokesman for the German Newspaper Publishers Association, said the Web sites of all German newspapers and magazines together made 100 million euros, or $143 million, in ad revenue, while Google generated 1.2 billion euros from search advertising in Germany.
“Google says it brings us traffic, but the problem is that Google earns billions, and we earn nothing,” Mr. Fuhrmann said.
Techdirt further notes:
As Danny Sullivan writes about this latest lawsuit, the true hypocrisy is apparent in the fact that the German newspapers, supposedly so upset about Google listing them without paying, have not only done nothing to remove themselves from Google’s index (as can be easily done), but have actually made use of Google’s tools to enhance their appearance within Google.
As Sullivan notes, these newspapers aren’t being “swept up into Google’s results against their wills,” but rather appear to be “actively trying to gain more placement and visibility in them.” And that’s why this move for a cut of the revenue is so ridiculous and cynical. Basically, they’re getting an incredibly valuable service from Google for free and are now demanding to get paid for it as well.
DC Court Confirms That Government Agents Can Abuse US Citizens’ Rights With Impunity If They Leave The Country
In other words, if a foreign citizen in a foreign country violates US law, he needs to be punished, however, if US officials violates US law in a foreign country, everything is just fine?
City Of London Police Claim That ‘The Tor’ Is 90% Of The Internet, And Is A Risk To Society
“Whether it’s Bitnet, The Tor – which is 90% of the Internet – peer-to-peer sharing, or the streaming capability worldwide. At what point does civil society say that as well as the benefits that brings, this enables huge risk and threat to our society that we need to take action against?”