Readers of my site probably have a fairly good understanding of my heightened emotions surrounding intellectual property issues. I’ve posted previously about my feeling regarding the US’s poorly developed patent system.
Its well recognized in technical circles that the US’s patent system is need of reform. With the recent lawsuits surrounding RIM, the makers of the Blackberry device and NTP, a patent-holding company in Virginia, and the $612.5 million settlement paid out by RIM it’s clear there are problems with the US patent system. At the same time RIM was paying NTP the $612.5 million, the USPTO (Patent and Trade Office) had ruled that NTP’s patent were invalid.
Well, finally, a pretty powerful organization has published a special report recommending some rather strong changes to the US’s rather strict patent system.
In this Council Special Report, Keith E. Maskus offers a fair, thoughtful, and at times counterintuitive account of this issue. He recognizes the importance of patent protection for innovation but also warns against blind adherence to the mantra that more protection will necessarily produce more innovation.
It’s important to note that this report focuses not only on domestic intellectual property issues, but also the methods that the US has implemented to force its own philosophies of intellectual property on other countries through organization like the WTO.
You can download full copy of the report here (PDF).
A recent study conducted at Woodened Hospital in Aberdeen, Scotland concluded:
A 135-degree body-thigh sitting posture was demonstrated to be the best biomechanical sitting position, as opposed to a 90-degree posture, which most people consider normal,” said Waseem Amir Bashir, M.B.Ch.B., F.R.C.R., author and clinical fellow in the Department of Radiology and Diagnostic Imaging at the University of Alberta Hospital, Canada. “Sitting in a sound anatomic position is essential, since the strain put on the spine and its associated ligaments over time can lead to pain, deformity and chronic illness.
The full article can be found here.
Why can’t people make websites that work in all browsers? Please, can someone tell me why it’s so much trouble to make sure that your site works in browsers other than Internet Explorer?
Here are a few photos from My Morning Jacket last night, the rest can be found here or here.
This is probably one of the best concert photos I’ve ever taken, I was too excited to sleep last night when I saw how it turned out!
For anyone interested, I’ve been compiling an Amazon Wish List:
And here’s a link to Dana’s:
Hi all, happy Thanksgiving. I hope everyone was able to celebrate it with friends and family and having a good time.
Here are a few photos from the Cat Power show last night, the rest can be seen over at Flickr:
And here is a scan of the setlist:
Tonight, I am attending Cat Power at the 9:30 Club. NPR.org will be streaming the concert beginning live around 7:00 pm Eastern.
Be sure to take a second and check out some recent photos of Stewart and Wallace.
Some samples:
Today, the Nintendo Wii was released. Fortunately for us, the Wii was not as coveted as the Playstation 3 which was released on Friday, November 17. We decided to go to the Target that we usually run errands at, because there are 2 Best Buys within a few miles, so we figured that we would have better odds there than elsewhere without competing stores. We were right.
We awoke at about 6:30 this morning and headed for Target. There was all ready a line and we had noticed that several people had camped overnight. However, last weekend, I had talked to one of the employees and they said that they were getting 80 units. After a rough count, it looked like we were in the clear. In fact, we ended up getting ticket number 59 at about 7:30 am when they began handing out the tickets. That was a relief!
It was a very calm ordeal; I have to hand it to Target and the people in line. Everyone was very respectful, and Target handled things very well. They even forgot to charge us for our console! As we were walking out, I thought, wait, that bill seemed a lot less than it should have been. And after looking at the receipt, I discovered the absence of the console charge. So, I went back and told them, I couldn’t walk out without paying for it!
Here are a few photos, with all of them viewable over at my Flickr page:
It’s been a fun day of playing games, but I’ve taken a break now to rest my eyes 
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