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Authored by: Anonymous on Sunday, March 24 2013 @ 01:37 PM EDT |
CISPA is a bill before Congress that will radically increase the ease with which
the government and police can spy on people without any particular suspicion. It
is being rammed through by people like Rep. Mike Rogers (R-MI), who received a
small fortune in funding from the companies that stand to get rich building the
surveillance tech CISPA will make possible.
What's more, Rogers admits it,
and even tweets about it! Nicko Margolies from the Sunlight Foundation writes,
Congr
essman boasts on Twitter about the money he got to support CISPA, then thinks
better of it [ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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Authored by: SilverWave on Sunday, March 24 2013 @ 01:48 PM EDT |
Post: "Good Google", Who
Will Defend The Open Web?
In
a recent discussion on Hacker News, user andyl made the
following
comment:
“Before Google+ came along, Google had many great products
and
embraced the OpenWeb. Now Google has abandoned Open
Standards like RSS and
CalDAV, and I think Google is more
interested in building their own walled
garden.”
My first thought was: “Bingo, you nailed it.”
My
second, third and subsequent thoughts were something like
this:
This
is a *very* unfortunate development, as Google were
uniquely positioned to be
great defenders of the Open Web,
and - for quite some time - seemed to *be*
defenders of the
Open Web. Now, one has to ask: Who will defend the Open Web,
post “Good Google?” --- RMS: The 4 Freedoms
0 run the program for any purpose
1 study the source code and change it
2 make copies and distribute them
3 publish modified versions
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Authored by: macliam on Sunday, March 24 2013 @ 02:55 PM EDT |
Over the past few days, I have been working on a document concerning the
statutory conditions for patentability under Section 101, in the light of the
Supreme Courts opinions in Funk Bros, Benson, Flook, Diehr, Bilski and Mayo. It
has growed like Topsy.
Once I have posted this, and waited the necessary
60 seconds, I plan to attach the current draft as a comment to this one. The
document is already long!
The current section headings are as
follows.
The Nature of Abstract Ideas
Abstract Ideas in
Mathematics
Mathematical Ideas, Algorithms and
Discoveries
Preemption
Routine Applications of Laws
of Nature and Abstract Ideas
Patentability of Computer-Assisted
Inventions
Machines and Manufactures
The first section
delves into philosophy, specifically the writings of the empiricist philosophers
Locke, Berkeley and Hume. I am not a philosopher, and I am not well-acquainted
with their works. My purpose in putting this section together is to refute the
notion that “nobody can explain what an abstract idea is”. If
philosophers cannot agree on what abstract ideas are in themselves, or whether
or not they actually exist, nevertheless I suggest that they do agree on the
subject-matter of their disagreements. Thus their writings should provide
evidence as to what could or could not be considered an abstract idea that has a
chance of standing up in a court of law.
I then discuss ideas in
mathematics, and in particular ideas within mathematics that are specifically
called abstract.
I then turn to legal argument, attempting to survey the
law. I have aimed for the style of a legal brief, but I have never written such
documents before. I think I have worked out how to construct case citations,
but, given that this is my first attempt at anything like a legal brief, do not
rely on them! The discussion centres on preemption, and on obvious applications
of laws of nature, natural phenomena and abstract ideas.
I return to
abstract ideas in the sense of Locke in my final short section.
There is
more that I planned to write, and maybe will write, but I am getting exhausted,
and therefore plan to attach here a document that might be a draft for a section
of some future document.
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Authored by: Anonymous on Sunday, March 24 2013 @ 03:26 PM EDT |
"SPCD is a cascading (multi-phase) protocol design. In the canonical
two-phase version, you start with a larger-than-usual group of placebo subjects
relative to non-placebo subjects. In phase one, you run the trial as usual, but
at the end, placebo non-responders are randomized into a second phase of the
study (which, like the first phase, uses a placebo control arm and a study arm).
SPCD differs from the usual "placebo run-in" design in that it doesn't actually
eliminate placebo responders from the overall study."
"What's
even more repugnant, however, is that Fava's group didn't stop with a mere paper
in Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics. They went on to apply for, and obtain, U.S.
patents on SPCD (on behalf of The General Hospital Corporation of Boston). The
relevant U.S. patent numbers are 7,647,235; 7,840,419; 7,983,936; 8,145,504;
8,145,505, and 8,219,41, the most recent of which was granted July 2012. You can
look them up on Google Patents." link[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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