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> The Commission on the Theft of American Intellectual Property > With U.S. companies suffering losses and American workers losing jobs

Jobs. Translation: this is a PR piece.

> The Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Defense, and law enforcement agencies should have the legal authority to use threat-based deterrence systems that operate at network speed against unauthorized intrusions into national security and critical infrastructure networks

Huh? This includes national security now? Are they deliberately blurring the lines between pirating and national security? Why I think so.

> Informed deliberations over whether corporations and individuals should be legally able to conduct threat-based deterrence operations against network intrusion, without doing undue harm to an attacker or to innocent third parties, ought to be undertaken.

They want to legalize Sony's rootkit, but they want to do it right. Rootkits in the wild cannot be tamed, don't even go there.

> if counterattacks against hackers were legal, there are many techniques that companies could employ that would cause severe damage to the capability of those conducting IP theft.

You do something that the system thinks is pirating and your computer blows up. What could go wrong.

> ...The Commission is not ready to endorse this recommendation because of the larger questions of collateral damage caused by computer attacks

Ahh I see, they're reasonable after all! IOW, they want to make their rootkit legalization idea sound sane.

> Recommend to Congress and the administration that U.S. funding to the World Health Organization (WHO) program budget in whole or in part be withheld

At this point I want to punch someone in the face.

I can't read anymore.

Someone mentioned that having one syscall that sends multiple udp messages is patented. That is ridiculous IMO. It meets the guideline you lay out: you can define the abstract process of calling a method of an API then that itself sends out UDP messages. However, it's blatantly obvious to all programmers. But probably not to lawyers. Pretty much all software is blatantly obvious and trivial to implement. Microsoft's patent on long filenames is another example. Software is trivial to implement. Want long filenames? A high school student can do it.

However, with chemistry, it is nontrivial. It is not a matter of writing code that a CPU runs instantaneously. You have to devise a method on paper, try it(sorry, a cpu won't mix chemicals), go back to the drawing board. Vs software, where it's trivial so millions of people have probably already coded what you thought was novel.

That happens often with software: I come up with an imaginative awesome new algorithm, only to learn, it has been done before. that's because I work in a line of work that is trivial. We're glorified code monkeys, and we don't deserve to be awarded patents by any means.

How about this revelation: people in cyprus can't use ATMs because they can't manage their money, and Chinese government-sponsored hackers are also targeting American businesses. I know, it's a lot to concentrate on.

But seriously, I like many others on this tech-centered news site where we pretty much run the entire internet collectively, have seen first hand Chinese-sponsored hackers. So you can't really pull the wool over our eyes so easily.

If you're gonna make a point, make a point, it's that simple.

Krugman should really do some research on what monopolists do, starting off with Standard Oil. The internet is a highly competitive environment.

http://www.c-span.org/Events/Law-and-Economics-Experts-Discu...

synposis: the antitrust case is at this point ridiculous.

As a formerly poor person who could only afford a G1 and not an iphone, allowing me to rise out of poverty, I'm not angry. The only angry people I know are Apple execs. Consumers are pretty happy about this. Which means the antitrust case is going nowhere.

The Microsoft case was different, Microsoft was found guilty for EOM shenanigans, and Bork, who authored modern antitrust law and thought microsoft was guilty, now thinks there is no antitrust case against Google.

When the FTC is done, they'll be a laughing stock.

If you want to really find a problem, you'll have to look at amazon who is not only selling at cost, they make no profit and have a high P/E since investors think they'll eliminate competition then raise prices.

> However, because the antitrust laws are ultimately intended to benefit consumers, and discounting results in at least short-term net benefit to consumers, the U.S. Supreme Court has set high hurdles to antitrust claims based on a predatory pricing theory.

So yeah, good luck MS et al. You'll have better luck in the socialist paradise known as the EU.

And that's how it should be, before Google, your only option for a smartphone was to pay one company way too much money. Customers directly benefit, and are more productive, so it's basically impossible in the US to prove antitrust against google.

As you can see, these European laws border on absurd.

It's a pretty tenuous claim on Apple's part.

These days, I am simply more mature, and I regret my past somewhat, but at least I am good at learning in general. If you don't regret your past, you aren't growing, everyone does. Now, after life has kicked me around, I know people well, I know how not to be a condescending jackass, and be pleasant, and get things done, and communicate to my manager honestly vs being passive aggressive etc. And I have that same inner drive to figure things out. I'm still the same person, I just don't bullshit around, I keep my mouth shut, impress people with my actions, then lo and behold, when they come to find out more info about me, I tell them, but before that, I remain an enigma. When I came to my group, some underestimated me, I didn't lash out like when I was younger, I just shut up and fixed their bugs.

I do think, as you allude to, certain people just have that knowing, they have it in them, but for whatever reason, maturity, bad manager, etc., they don't rise to the top. I think though, if you are mature, you will realize your manager is crappy right away and address that. Part of being a star performer, to me, is not just tech. ability, but non-technical ability.

The network effect kicks in at a certain critical point. If you created a really compelling social network and added the feature s.t. people could say, "import from facebook", choosing your facebook login/pw, then if enough people did this, critical mass would be reached. The network effect just states that this critical mass might take awhile to reach, but it's not impossible. Facebook disallowing you from exporting your data makes it so competing networks cannot reach that critical point quickly enough.

At my last job, I was given more and more work, and I made everything work without intervention, but I left due to low pay, now the old boss wants to hire me back as the old system seems to go down a lot, while his cheap labor source turns out to be more expensive than he first thought. There seems to be a belief that we can just whip up the high performers when we need them, but this just leads to burn out and turnover. just pay the high performers an ungodly amount and all will be well.