How can I legally convert a "dead-tree" library (1050 books) to eBooks? - <AUTHOR>

I have a largish dead-tree library/bookcase of about 1050 books (all catalogued digitally, with titles and ISBN numbers). I'm looking for a way to legally convert them to eBooks without incurring a totally unreasonably large cost, mainly because I will be travelling an awful lot over the next few years and I need many of them for reference. I live in Italy and bought most of them from Amazon.co.uk. For a while I was quite enthusiastic because Amazon.com offered a programme whereby eBook copies of purchased books could be had for little or nothing, but (as far as I know) this was never extended overseas. I'm left wondering whether there is a manner of doing this economically and legally, or whether I will be faced with having to abandon the idea, incur a massive expense to re-purchase eBook editions of everything, or go off the beaten track.<p>Assuming the denizens of HN to be a fairly literate lot, I assume at least somebody has faced this same problem before, and assuming the technical prowess of NH denizens, I assume at least somebody has made a reasonably proficient stab at solving this. <comment><USER2> They're your books, so you can scan them if you want. But you can't sell, donate or give away the physical book once you've scanned it; the scan is a copy/backup of the original for personal use, and if you get rid of the original, you have to delete the copies, too. You can only destroy the original.

There are bulk, destructive book scanners which will give you PDFs of your books. You don't get the books back, because they cut off the covers and the binding and feed them through a sheet-fed scanner. [http://1dollarscan.com/](http://1dollarscan.com/) is an example.

If you don't want to destroy the books, your only real option is to hire someone to scan them, or spend the time to scan them yourself.

Non-destructive book scanning machines can run thousands through tens of thousands of dollars, or you can build your own for about a thousand dollars. (USD)

I maintain the previous model of this at a hackerspace in Austin, TX: [http://www.diybookscanner.org/archivist/](http://www.diybookscanner.org/archivist/)

That model claims 1000 pages/hour for practiced operator. 1050 books * 350 pages each on average means you can scan them all in about a month and a half of eight-hour days. If you're paying someone $20/hour, that's about $7500, so for under $10,000, you can non-destructively scan your entire collection. ($10,000 is what you'd pay for a commercial scanner, without the labor to scan the books.)

I'd recommend looking for a hackerspace which already has one, and hiring someone to scan the books for you as you need them.

<comment><USER3> Is there any way to buy a kit for a nondestructive scanner?

1dollarscan is rumored to be watermarking/encoding the customer name in their scans. If you highly magnify the page image, there are a large number of small artifacts, which may explain the large file sizes, e.g. 150MB for a 400 page book.

Their service ($1 per 100 pages) is cost-effective, given that Staples will charge $2 to remove the spine from a book, without scanning. A spine cutter costs a few hundred dollars.

<comment><USER2> > Is there any way to buy a kit for a nondestructive scanner?

Yes, I linked to [http://www.diybookscanner.org/archivist/](http://www.diybookscanner.org/archivist/) in my original post. It has a "get a kit" link on the left. The forum post it links to cites a cost of $1200 for a full kit, which are available for pre- order.

The plans are also available at that same URL, and if you know someone with a 4'x8' CNC router, they should be able to help you put them together and cut them for about half that cost in time and materials. Then you'll just need to source the nuts and bolts and cameras and electronics yourself.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Scanning and image capture is only the start of the process of creating a usable ebook. Post-processing workflow is also labor-intensive.

[https://www.memoryoftheworld.org/wp- content/uploads/2014/12/...](https://www.memoryoftheworld.org/wp- content/uploads/2014/12/scanning_manual_v1.2.pdf)

[http://www.konradvoelkel.com/2013/03/scan-to- pdfa/](http://www.konradvoelkel.com/2013/03/scan-to-pdfa/)

[http://scantailor.org](http://scantailor.org)

</comment><comment><USER4> I think bumbledraven[0] has done this, although I think he is/was in the USA while doing it. He was pleased with the result, but it is a destructive process. Send your book, get back the e-book, you don't get the original back because it's destroyed.

[0] [https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=bumbledraven](https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=bumbledraven)

</comment><comment><USER5> If you have several terabytes of data the fastest channel is burning a hard disk and shipping FedEx overnight. Which makes it worth mentioning that $10.000 can buy a lot of parcel post. Come to think of it, it can buy a lot of shipped used books as well.

Depending on your travel plans and reference patterns a low tech approach may work.

Good luck.

</comment><comment><USER6> You might want to see how much of your collection is available in Library Genesis [1]. I am no authority on The Law but see no moral issue with collecting other people's scans of printed books that you own.

[1] [http://gen.lib.rus.ec/](http://gen.lib.rus.ec/)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Thanks to everybody who took the time to answer. I'll look into the various proposed solutions. Thanks.</comment>


How I got my Japanese permanent residency - <AUTHOR> https://www.dampfkraft.com/how-i-got-my-japanese-pr.html <comment><USER2> This was an interesting read. The equivalent story for Switzerland would not be so rosy, unfortunately. I wish we had a points based system here, they seem like a useful addition of fairness to the fundamentally unfair global migration situation.

<comment><USER3> How do points make it "fair"? I'd say points favour those who already have the privilege of an education.

<comment><USER4> Countries exist to benefit their citizens. There's nothing wrong with only letting the educated.

<comment><USER5> It's not clear that points systems like this really select for optimal benefit, though. They tend to be biased toward the qualifications that are already well represented in the country.

Looking at immigrants I've met, yes, qualifications count for something, but sheer hustle and ambition can play a role as well, and often those propagate into the next generation too.

In hiring decisions, I was told to try to select for potential, not qualifications. Points systems are the classical "select for qualifications" move.

<comment><USER6> Potential can be a part of the point system. You yourself made some sort of crude scale of potential when you were interviewing people. Nothing wrong with formalizing that.

<comment><USER5> I'm not sure how one would formalize it, even less so for the children of immigrants.

<comment><USER6> If you can't be formalize it is is unfair.

<comment><USER5> Yes, it's considerably harder to administrate such a system in an objective manner. A points system has the advantage of being objective. But that doesn't necessarily make it fair or a well chosen policy.

<comment><USER6> I'd say it's impossible to administrate such a system in an objective manner. If you could administer it in an objective manner then you can quantify and formalize it.

A point system doesn't mean the parameters are well chosen but by it's very definition it's more fair then an interview without any formal requirements.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Thanks for sharing this—I'd heard about the points system but I haven't seen any personal accounts of going through the process before, so it was illuminating to read one.

Unfortunately, there's no scheme to allow foreigners to stay as a resident if they work remotely for a company that doesn't have a presence in Japan, as I do. (I'd even be willing to pay taxes in Japan!)

Of course, such a provision is pretty rare, but it's still a bummer. I wonder if immigration policy might ever consider such situations—such a worker is basically injecting money into the Japanese economy for little cost on Japan's part. But perhaps there are downsides that I haven't considered.

<comment><USER8> You can try for a student visa for Japanese language school for two years. If you're willing to pay for a plane ticket to a nearby Asian country, you could probably renew it in perpetuity every three months. There are also other visas like entertainment or modelling that you could try to obtain for three months. You can even teach English part time and try to get a visa that way.

As you make friends and build up a network you're certain to find a way to make it work.

In practice, visas are easier for people from Western developed countries. The only major risk of overstaying a visa is getting a random stop from police and at worst you just get deported. It's really not as restrictive as it seems. I've met plenty of people who visited Japan on a whim and ended up staying for years.

<comment><USER9> No. Japan has cracked down on "visa runs". You can only stay in the country for a max of 6 months out of the year on a tourist visa.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I'm curious to know -- for people who seek residency in Japan, do they typically do it with the plan to stay forever? Or do they use it for the employment, etc, and have the longer term desire to go back to their original home country?

I ask because from all that I've read, foreigners take even generations to feel comfortable and accepted in Japan. What's the permanent residency a path towards, for most?

<comment><USER11> >>>I'm curious to know -- for people who seek residency in Japan, do they typically do it with the plan to stay forever?

I do. It's a "sweet spot" place to live. No threat of violence from law enforcement, significantly reduced threat of violence from the general population, extremely high standard of living, and the country is well- positioned as a base of operations for travel or business across most of Asia. Also, despite some high expenses compared to America, it's a great place to own a sports car if that is a major hobby (and it is for me). Many of the happiest people I know are Western expats in Japan who are small-business owners. It's important to disconnect from the "Japanese corporate wage slave" or "English teacher" life experiences. I'll never back to the US if I can avoid it.

<comment><USER10> Thanks for the reply! Did you bring family with you -- and if so, how do they like it?

Do you feel you've gotten to "neighbor acceptance" level of integration? Or do you seek to achieve that?

<comment><USER11> I didn't bring family with me, I'm building one here. Re: neighbor acceptance, it's hit or miss but mostly hit. In my last apartment, my next-door neighbor was an older guy who spoke no English but always wanted to shoot the shit about my project cars. I think he used to be a bosozoku (young Japanese biker gangs) back in the day. My Japanese is pretty poor but I can express myself on certain subjects, especially cars. There's a guy at one of my favorite junkyards who keeps inviting me to go drifting with him and I barely understand his Japanese; he has a very heavy local accent. There was also a young guy who worked at my local Family Mart convenience store who was a metalhead (he was wearing a band T-shirt one day), so we would occasionally talk about bands. Him: "Do you know....Fleshgod?" "Fleshgod Apocalypse? mochiron sa (Eng: of course!) I saw them live in Osaka!" "Ahh, sugoii (cool) ! They are....very good! I like." \m/ >_< \m/

You'll always be "the gaijin" but most people are friendly. I had some good experiences in Thailand as well, having just the right physical features to kinda blend in as long as I didn't open my mouth. But that's a longer story...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Here's how I got mine: got married to Japanese national. Worked and paid taxes for 8 years in a job that wasn't teaching English. Applied for and paid ¥8000. Waited half a year. Received the OK to pick up my new perm resident card _the week before_ my family packed up to move back to Australia...

Seriously one of the most simultaneously exciting and annoying pieces of mail I've ever received.

</comment><comment><USER13> I am planning to apply in 1.5 years on the 70-point system. I've had 70 points for the last half year, in January 2020 I will be at 65 points and in February 2021 I will be back at 70 points again.

I don't speak Japanese though, so there are a couple of things I'm curious about. For instance, it says "Either graduated from a Japanese university or completed a course of a Japanese graduate school" and I did a semester in a Japan university as an exchange student. But it was as an undergraduate, so I'm not sure if it counts. I'll be contacting the linked company in the article, thanks for the read!

</comment><comment><USER13> Note to self: remember to re-download the guidelines every once in a while. This has been in my mind for ~3 years and they have changed them (for the better mostly!) a couple of times. A clear example is that now you don't need to have the high skill visa for the given time, but you just need to have the points for the given period (and even that is a bit ambiguous, it says you need to have the points at the time of applying and 3 years before, but it doesn't say "for the duration of those 3 years")

</comment><comment><USER14> TIL Brown University has incredibly pretentious degree certificates. Are other American universities like that too?

<comment><USER15> I don't know of any others that are quite that bad, but most are pretty flowery. I'm still waiting to get the "rights and privileges" my university promised come with the degree.

<comment><USER16> Benefits based on having the degree in immigration point systems is a nice example of such a privilege. So is having that university's name on your resume, in cases like Brown where it's a famous name.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> A good friend actually used June Advisors Group mentioned in the article a couple of years ago. The firm (really a sole attorney) sounded very helpful and got his business set up with a residence card pretty easily. IIRC it took a couple of months end-to-end.

</comment><comment><USER18> > Graduation from a university separately specified by the Minister of Justice > in a public notice

Does anyone have a link to this list?

</comment><comment><USER19> Hmmm, when I investigated the HSFP in 2016, Immigration told me I had to get a job at a Japanese company, and THEN apply for said visa. You can't apply for the High Skill Visa, even if you have more than enough points to qualify (which I did), while you are job-hunting on a tourist visa, for example.

>>>What changed in 2017 was that if you could demonstrate that you had the points historically you could apply for a PR without ever having the HSFP visa. That's the process I used.

Yeah that's a big change.

</comment><comment><USER20> It should be noted that there are some _incredibly_ onerous and far reaching global tax and inheritance implications of taking on PR in Japan. Anyone doing so should fully research before making the jump. (I've been a Japan PR for 5 years after 15 years of artist and student visas.)

<comment><AUTHOR> I've seen people mention this before but it seems to be based on a misunderstanding - your tax obligations to Japan are not based on your visa status, but on the length of your residence. See this official government page, it doesn't mention visa status anywhere.

[https://www.jetro.go.jp/en/invest/setting_up/section3/page7....](https://www.jetro.go.jp/en/invest/setting_up/section3/page7.html)

It looks like in some documents the term "permanent resident" is used to refer to "residents of more than five years" or similar, but it's not a reference to visa status.

[https://www.japantimes.co.jp/community/2016/10/30/how- tos/lo...](https://www.japantimes.co.jp/community/2016/10/30/how-tos/long- term-foreign-japan-residents-must-declare-overseas-assets-taxed/)

Besides the terminology issue, I suspect that part of the confusion may be that the PR application does require proof you've been paying taxes, and Immigration can ask for further proof. In my own case my annual tax statements were enough.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Thanks for the article. With Japanese PR, I know you can leave and reenter on a special reentry visa. Are reentry visas easy to get? Would repeatedly getting (by doing a reentry visa-run to japan every 5 years) them while spending most of your time outside of japan result in losing your PR?

<comment><AUTHOR> You used to have to apply for a re-entry visa. Technically Japan distinguishes between "entry permission" and "status of residence", which few countries do and, given it's an island, doesn't really make any sense, but that's the reason for the policy. With the change to the Residence Card system in 2012 normal travel no longer requires applying for re-entry visas. Here's a notice from when it changed:

[http://www.immi-moj.go.jp/newimmiact_1/en/point_3-4.html](http://www.immi- moj.go.jp/newimmiact_1/en/point_3-4.html)

To add to what bojo said, when you apply for it at the airport these days you basically just fill out a tiny piece of paper and they say "OK, see you when you get back" if you're going away for less than a year. I don't go overseas much but if memory serves the process is basically the same for PR and non-PR visas.

I don't really know much about the implications of only coming back once every five years or so.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> For those interested in foreigners obtaining Japanese citizenship, check out the story of Debito Arudou. It's a whole higher level of difficulty. At some point I think only around 16 naturalizations were happening per year, of a country of 100 million.

<comment><USER23> There are over 10,000 naturalizations per year with a 99% approval rate.

Your figure sounds like one of those weird Japanese legends. And I haven't read Arudou's naturalization story, but he's well known for over-dramatizing everything and has an incredibly biased agenda so it's probably best not to take anything he says too seriously.

<comment><USER22> I believe it was in one of Arudou's own writings that I read the 16 per year figure, circa 2000 or so.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Good write up with plenty of detail, thanks for sharing.

The gap between highly skilled professional and regular worker seems to be a huge chasm. You can get PR in 1 year with enough points but you must wait 10 if you are a regular worker.

Also, to apply for PR on a regular work visa you must have a visa length longer than 1 year. This can effectively be used to block PR applications. I know someone who had been in Japan for 15 years who cannot apply for PR because of this rule. As the application is never even allowed to be made, these people do not show up in statistics about successful Vs rejected PR applications either

<comment><AUTHOR> If they have been in Japan for 15 years, keep getting 1-year visas, and want to stay in Japan long-term, they should speak to a lawyer. There are various criteria that decide how long a visa you get, and while they aren't explicit there are things you can do to make it much more likely you'll get a long visa.

At my first job I was a "contract employee", which was a much less stable position than I realized when I signed up, and I couldn't get more than a one- year visa either. Later I changed jobs and became a full employee and got a 5-year visa without issue.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> I wish my own country was so strict when granting visas and protecting our borders. Every week thousands of people cross are border illegally to stay, making my already poor and indepted country even poorer.

</comment><comment><USER26> Probably easiest thing to do would just be to coach and olympic team to victory and get a medal from the emperor.

edit: interestingly I get 70 points, so maybe I don't need a medal from the emperor.

</comment><comment><USER27> Does your Japanese permanent residency allow you to avoid paying American income tax, or are you still required to pay BOTH Japanese and American income taxes?

<comment><USER19> As long as you are a US citizen you are expected to pay Federal income tax, no matter where you are in the world, and no matter where you earned it. The US and Eritrea are the only 2 countries on the planet with this policy. I _think_ you can get your tax burden reduced if you can prove you've paid taxes to another jurisdiction, but don't quote me on that...

<comment><USER28> Actually, I think Japan also technically taxes worldwide income of non- resident nationals. And even permanent residents, regardless of where they reside.

Moreover, some countries like Finland require you to pay taxes on worldwide income for a number of years after you're no longer a resident of the country and only then granting you tax freedom from income sourced outside of the country. And there's no amount of income you can exclude like the USA's $108k or whatever the figure is currently.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Japan is honestly desperate for these types of PR candidates. I almost went for it but they have a large death and exit tax, if I'm not mistaken.

A friend did it and left afterward for Australia because he realized he didn't want to be middle-aged in Japan as a foreigner, and also regretted it in the end due to the tax liability.

</comment><comment><USER30> > That presented another problem - I had forgotten, but my degree was in > Latin. All documents submitted as part of an application have to be > translated into Japanese, and I don't speak Latin.

Wait, what?

I wouldn't expect such quirkiness from an American university, though being founded in 1764 kinda explains it.

(The translation, while correct, is also extremely literal and a bit outdated)

<comment><USER31> Here's a picture of the diploma if you're interested: [https://i.imgur.com/CYHm5sM.png](https://i.imgur.com/CYHm5sM.png)

<comment><USER30> Thanks, I had looked it up to check the latin (not that I'm an expert, far from it) but it certainly looks more "conversational" than the English translation

<comment><USER16> The university president at the time the author graduated (and and also at my own graduation few years earlier) was a classics professor who has good Latin ability, so she conducted most of the ceremony overall in Latin. Of course some bits of English were included, such as when honorary degree recipients or students selected to speak at the ceremony were doing their bits. Yes they provided translations and I think subtitles too.

The current university president is less proficient in Latin, so she does most of the ceremony in English, only using Latin for the few bits that the University rules require to be in Latin (including the moments when the degrees are formally conferred).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> there is no way you can do point-based immigration reform in USA, because it's not politically correct, not diversified, unhuman, etc.

Combined with all those looting these days I'm actually very interested in countries like Japan or Singapore via immigration, enough bullshit here indeed.

Learning Japanese is the largest challenge, I can do English in Singapore, maybe Australia.

And no to Europe, both Europe and USA are on their death road to socialism.

<comment><USER33> Japan is more socialist than US- stricter worker rights, universal healthcare, lots of government funded programs for young kids and their parents (they recently made daycare free upto certain age) and ever increasing taxes (the recent one was 2% hike in October last year).

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> What have you liked/disliked about working in Japan? Why did you pick Japan?

</comment><comment><USER35> Does anyone have experience with an investment-based path to residency there?

</comment><comment><USER36> This was an interesting read. Really appreciate the effort!

</comment><comment><USER37> > In 2011 I graduated with a Master's degree from Brown University and then > moved to Japan and got a job as a software engineer.

I'm curious why you would do this. In any other occupation, I could understand it. In many respects, Japan is a more advanced civilization than the United States. But as a SWE, there is nowhere else in the world that you can make a higher salary than the United States. Even if your long term ambition was to move to Japan, wouldn't you be better off becoming financially independent first and then moving?

<comment><USER38> Not everyone is optimizing for making money. I left a Silicon Valley FAANG for another country more than five years ago, even though I was making ~3x there compared to what I made in the new place. Even with the higher living costs, that's still a lot more money.

I regret nothing. I'm so much happier here than I ever was in the Bay Area, and I doing this early in my life allowed me to have a lot of fun and stories to tell. Why would I "waste" my precious 20s and early 30s being miserable and retire at 35? Who even wants to retire? I wouldn't even know what to do with that money? Buy a house and sit in the garden the whole day? :) Not the life I wanted.

This whole "make a lot of $$$ and be miserable in your 20s to optimize for the future" is such a common thing I see in SV and HN as part of the narratives that these VCs are pushing. I think you have it all backwards. You can make money any time. You can never back to your 20s and 30s where you don't have health problems, are full of energy, and have an easy time making friends.

<comment><USER39> > Why would I "waste" my precious 20s and early 30s being miserable and retire > at 35? Who even wants to retire?

A few months ago I read a comment from somebody on a documentary about people optimizing for retirement in their 30s and it stuck with me:

"Live like a caveman until you are 35, then retire and live like a caveman until you die."

<comment><USER38> Another illusion is that these are absolute numbers. They're relative. When you're young, $100k is a lot of money. Enough to be happy and worry-free. Once you have that, you need $1M in cash to be happy and retire. Once you have $1M but realize everyone around you is making $1M/year to retire at $10M you suddenly need $10M. This will repeat itself, and you'll never have enough. You'll just become more miserable realizing how much more everyone else has. Yeah, platitudes. We all know this, right? Turns out, this cycle is totally unconscious and incredibly hard to break once you're in it and surrounded by such people. Get away while you can.

At least for me, this was one of the reasons why working at FAANG where everyone is striving for $$$ made me miserable. It gave me such a warped view of the world.

<comment><USER40> The common term for this is lifestyle inflation. As you make more money your "needs" keep increasing. It's incredibly challenging to reserve this trend but very easy to follow it.

<comment><USER41> I think the best way to prevent this is, whenever you get a raise, open a new bank account and have the difference direct deposited into it. That way, the main bank account that you work with regularly, always sees the same amount deposited.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> Don't forget you're still a second-class citizen as a foreigner: [https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2020/05/19/national/social...](https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2020/05/19/national/social- issues/japan-foreign-residents-stranded-abroad-coronavirus/)

<comment><USER43> I can understand that people are personally upset when they are affected by travel restrictions, but this whole outrage about "foreigners are second class citizens" (often even: "this shows Japans racism") is just just silly.

1- The restrictions are not about race, but about which countries have mismanaged the pandemic. People from Taiwan and some other south east asian countries are allowed to enter. (Ironically, exactly those people are / have been much more commonly the target of Japanese racism).

2- They most likely would prefer to also ban Japanese citizens (whatever race) from returning from hot-spots like Florida or Brazil. They just can't because of legal reasons. Citizenship gives you certain rights.

3- You can call PR and other visas "second class citizenship" if you want, but the fact is: you're just not a citizen. You also can't vote. You also can't become prime minister. You're not a citizen and don't have the rights of a citizen. That's the same in every country, including yours. Why didn't people with PR complain about being "second class citizens" for years about those other rights?

<comment><USER44> I think that many of those with PR would rather be (first-class) citizens; it's not always just a personal choice to not be one.

I think it's pretty clear that if you plan your life in a secondary country, and they allow you to via permanent residency, you would not want them to lock you out at a whim.</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: HTMLComponent – Component-Based UIs Using Only ES6 and Custom Elements - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/felipeccastro/html-component/ <comment><USER2> It'd be nice to not have a set() method, but instead use property accessors. That way data-binding frameworks like set properties will just work.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, that would make a slightly better syntax. However, using the .set() method has an advantage of letting you pass all attributes in a single hash, and re-rendering only once at the end. It's a trade off, I think.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Nice, looks a lot like Riot.js

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! The single file component format is becoming increasingly popular (for good reason), being used on Riot, Vue, Polymer and probably others. The main difference, however, is in HTMLComponent the goal is to use native functionalities as much as possible, so any code you write is based on web standards, not framework specific. Also, unlike most frameworks (including Riot), there is no support for data binding, and direct DOM manipulation is the expected usage.</comment></comment>


Paypal.com down - <AUTHOR> http://twitter.com/#!/search/paypal <comment><USER2> Anonymous planned this with much discussion and arguing in IRC. Some wanted to attack secure.authorize.net, others paypal. I don't know how Anon works, power-structure-wise, but somehow the Ops chose paypal and it's done. This group is insane. They argue a lot, but they have the power to take down pretty much anybody on the web. I think the paypal attack is limited (officially) to 30 minutes, but since Anon is somewhat of a disorganized group it might last much longer.

<comment><USER3> > I don't know how Anon works, power-structure-wise,

It doesn't, really. People decide who to follow. Think of it more like a flashmob than an organization. Some people just start talking loud, and as long as they're reasonable, people follow. If they're not, nobody pays attention.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Though the website may be down, purchases aren't being affected. I just bought something using paypal 2mins ago.

Cousin comments indicate that it may be http vs https, which is at least confirmed in my browser: <https://paypal.com> loads while <http://paypal.com> doesn't (and with the www included in both)

EDIT: Perhaps this wasn't worthy of an upvote, but I'm having trouble finding inflammatory/offtopic/bad logic to give it a downvote. I'd welcome some discussion, though

</comment><comment><USER5> I've gotta say that I'm mostly sitting this one out as far my personal time and/or emotional investment, but gotta r-e-s-p-e-c-t for any group that can get it together enough to ddos visa, mc, and paypal in one day. :)

</comment><comment><USER6> http is down but https is still up, so payments still work.

<https://www.paypal.com>

<comment><USER7> It's even lamer.

<http://www.paypal.com> redirects over to https. It's only <http://paypal.com> that's not coming up.

<comment><USER8> Why didn't they go after the actual payment processing access points? That seems like the better target.

<comment><USER9> Probably because they don't have the capacity. Think about the traffic the actual payment processing sites get from ordinary use.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> PayPal was functioning for me about an hour ago. I was doing some ancillary stuff (generating postage) and it worked ok.

</comment><comment><USER11> this is what I love about the internet. The fact that is not centralised and disruptions happen on all sides of the camp. Hopefully it will remain this way though seeing more mutual respect would be nice also. A consequence of us getting along better. :)</comment>


Google Chairman Eric Schmidt Invests in SkyTran - <AUTHOR> http://allindiaroundup.com/news/google-chairman-eric-schmidt-invests-in-ankur-bhatnagars-skytran/ <comment><USER2> Self-driving electric cars are going to transform our existing road network into one giant PRT system, without having to build expensive proprietary track.

Given that Google are leading investors in self-driving technology, I really wonder what Eric Schmidt sees in SkyTran!

<comment><USER3> So true. Why build dedicated infrastructure when electric cars and bikes are so much cheaper and flexible?

<comment><USER4> Roads are freaking expencive to build and maintain. These pods look a lot more useful than self driving cars or subways and likely cost less than highways.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> PRT is a great technology. I think it's a step in the right direction, away from cars and buses. When I first learned about the volume of people it can transport I was surprised.

There is work being done at North Carolina State University by some great minds to make this technology a reality. (I have no affiliation with this effort, I'm just aware of it)

[http://ecoprt.com](http://ecoprt.com)

Cities, business with parking decks or lots, universities, and lots of other things can benefit from this. It doesn't have to be a large scale effort right away.

Check out the simulations the EcoPRT guys have done: [http://ecoprt.com/simulations/](http://ecoprt.com/simulations/)

I'm excited to see more people thinking about this problem!

<comment><USER6> I always feel like the hindrance to new public transportation systems is never the technology or the price. A lot of existing public transportation systems are superior to cars, like metros, aerial tramways, even buses. The biggest problem public transportation faces is the lack of adoption. And in my opinion this is because people never felt and never will feel comfortable about transportation if they have to abolish the basic "horse and carriage" metaphor. A moped is just like a small horse, more powerful and less heavy on maintenance - but otherwise the metaphor holds - same with a car. A train however violates the basic "horse and carriage" metaphor - you can't put a train inside your garage (stable) over night and it won't be just waiting for you once you leave your house. skyTran has the same problem - and I really believe if we want such technology to be adopted we don't need to improve so much the technology as we need to change its perception in the eyes of the people.

<comment><USER7> A public transit system crosses the threshold from 100% useless to extremely useful at the instant that it's good enough to not drive.

Conservatives rig the game in most cities so that a small, infrequent, unreliable bus system is built. Then they can say, "Look, no one uses public transit here! This is a waste of money." And they're _right_ , because it is a waste of money until you commit to a _massive_ all-at-once expenditure in the hundreds of millions to billions. Which they won't ever let you do.

Government wants to half-ass things (excuse me, "pilot" them) but public transit doesn't work when it's half-assed.

<comment><USER6> I agree. Public transport has to be treated like a network. A network's usefulness increases with the number of connections it can make. A half-assed public transport system will never convince people and if it's done right it's usually very very expensive. Switzerland has excellent public transport, but only because much of it is run by a national, government funded enterprise (SBB) and is considered a matter of national cohesion (hence splurging so much money is accepted by the public).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'd love for technologies like this to become a reality, but it seems unlikely this specific implementation will be able to carry any substantial volume of travelers.

<comment><USER9> Same here, I saw their presentation video here [https://vimeo.com/98497797](https://vimeo.com/98497797) and I'm left wondering, their capsules are roughly the same size of a car, so how does that save any space at all?

<comment><USER10> The distance between the units in a transportation system such as railroads, freeways or this Skytran is called "headway". Headway is mainly determined by breaking time. They say the capsules can break to 0 in just 16 meters so theoretically you could have one capsule per 20 meters or so (although I doubt that would be safe or feel comfortable). That's 20 meters for 2 passengers, which means that you need 1 km track for 100 passengers. If the Skytran really goes 250 km/h you could move something like 250*100 = 25,000 persons per hour per rail if the capsules are full, or 12,500 if they are half full. That could easily compete with cars, trains, metro systems, buses etc.

But if the headway is really 100 meters, then we are down to 20 persons per km, and if the Skytran really "only" goes 150 km/h then we are transporting some 3,000 persons per hour if the capsules are full or some 1,500 if they are half full which is much less than a typical metro.

If we go by one capsule per 20 meters, we would use up to 12,500 capsules per hour meaning that we would have to launch another capsule with one or two passengers from side tracks onto the main track every .29 seconds in peak hour. And they would not be launched on the track from the same end station and unloaded on the same end station but from many different stations on the track. That's a job for a programmer to figure out how that's done safely but I don't see it happening.

And quite frankly, if you do have the backing of NASA and rich investors and this whole thing is so cheap and fast to build as they claim, why don't they just build a full scale version in some town somewhere? I see only animations and prototypes.

<comment><USER11> > why don't they just build a full scale version in some town somewhere? I see > only animations and prototypes

They're building a demo 500m track in Tel Aviv. We'll see if it works as expected.

<comment><USER12> The Tel Aviv track was supposed to be done by the end of this year. Maybe Schmidt got inside info that triggered this move?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I wonder why they don't mention shipping goods. If I want to send a 5 pound box to an address in the city I live with (5 miles), with UPS it is $12.86 . If there was a way to ship with this system, that might be cut way down.

Of course, self driving vehicles will also compete in this space. I wonder who is going to invent the hybrid system? for short distances it is an autonomous car, and then for long distances it climbs onto a rail system like this (a mini version of today's shipping containers on rail).

</comment><comment><USER14> I saw a talk about this at Yuri's night at Moffet Field in 2008 or 2009. I was really excited about it. My former university in Paderborn, Germany was also working on a similar system, RailCsb, that allowed the pods to form convoys and that way save space and improve aerodynamics. All really exciting. However, much time passed and neither project seems to be anywhere near actual deployment. I think on-demand public transportation is long overdue and the technology seems totally feasible. However, society seems to be too risk averse and the bureaucracy seems to kill any project like this. We can't even build a proper high speed train in the US!

</comment><comment><USER11> This reminded me a lot of a website a friend shared on Facebook, and that looks to me a lot like a scam: [http://skywayinvestgroup.com/en/](http://skywayinvestgroup.com/en/)

Anybody, has anybody first-hand info about this?

</comment><comment><USER15> It's more a Shelbyville idea.

</comment><comment><USER16> Google needs a transportation link between their new domed Googleplex and their private airport at Moffett Field. I was expecting a private Hyperloop, but this is more practical for a short run.

</comment><comment><USER17> I wonder how much of this is PR-driven. Is Eric Schmidt spending his evenings and weekends searching for investments like this? Or do Google's PR people come to him saying: "You should invest in this. It will be good PR for Google."

(I have no problem with this project. I wish it success.)</comment>


Supreme Court Could Be Headed to a Major Unraveling of Public School Funding - <AUTHOR> https://www.npr.org/2020/01/23/798668729/supreme-court-could-be-headed-to-a-major-unraveling-of-public-school-funding <comment><USER2> I'm not sure I understand this. There's a pretty clear non-establishment clause in the constitution, for starters.

After this, my thoughts may be off - I'm not a religious person at all.

Second, wouldn't religious people be wary of government religion? Shouldn't a religious person be afraid that the "religion" that results from government funding be inferior to the organic, god(s)-inspired real thing?

Third, shouldn't we as a society avoid funding specific religions, to avoid making some fraction of the populace angry that we're funding "the wrong religion"? It's my understanding that each religion claims to be the one true faith, and all others are either bad, or even inspired by evil. Government funding seems guaranteed to raise hackles of whatever religions don't get money, which will be some of them, right?</comment>


Politicians want "loser pays" rule for patent trolls - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/02/pissed-off-politicians-want-loser-pays-rule-for-patent-trolls/ <comment><USER2> " _The bill would allow patent defendants to file a motion seeking to have a judge rule that the patent owner is a certain type of 'non-practicing entity'—although the bill doesn't use that term. If the motion is successful, the lawsuit can still proceed, but if the patent-holding company loses, it will be on the hook for legal costs._ "

The bill is essentially a judicial shortcut to make patent litigation riskier for non-practicing entities, precisely, non subsection (d) entities. Unfortunately, there is little judicial consensus (to the best of my limited knowledge) on what this means. ARM produces nothing tangible - it licenses designs. That makes ARM look like a non-practicing entity. Yet few would brand it as a patent troll.

Having losing plaintiffs pay is good. But it still leaves the defendant bearing the risk of adverse judgment. Even the non-practicing entity shortcut means hiring a lawyer. Perhaps, for patent suits, the plaintiff should have to, as part of filing the suit, dislose whether they or their beneficial owners' related entities have a history of filing patent suits deemed frivolous.

<comment><USER3> One could argue that ARM's "practice" is producing designs. They are heavily involved in the creation and implementation of their patents, making them different from any troll that licenses "patents" they bought rather than "designs" they created.

<comment><USER2> So patents are only valid if held by their originator? That would make the IP non-transferable. In ARM's case, it would mean a takeover would invalidate its value.

<comment><USER4> This is a problem that needs to be addressed carefully in my opinion.

Right now, it's a perfectly valid decision for an inventive/creative person(or team or company) to choose to spend their time inventing new things instead of commercialising "finished ideas", since the laws are (and have been for decades) written to allow an inventor to sell their patents.

If you're the world's best battery chemist, I'd rather you spent this year looking for an even better battery, rather than needing to be involved in making and selling last years "best battery" to earn any money from it. I don't want the top cancer researchers "wasting time" being personally involved in making drugs at commercial scale and doing deals with Walgreens, I want them doing cancer research - and having a patent/legal system that allows them to earn a living doing so (with the understanding that they've got a choice to license or sell their patents, and whether they get to share in the spectacular riches that some big-pharma company will make if they've just saved millions of lives will depend on how they chose to structure that transaction).

Somehow, we need to allow inventors to continue to be "NPEs", while stopping the obvious "patent troll" techniques of buying up uncommercialised patents with the only intent being to use them to litigate.

(And note, by "inventors" I'm including "companies set up to do inventing, either as their sole business or perhaps with a few staff or division who 'invent' as part of their regular work". I know of companies like <http://www.novogen.com> and <http://www.mesoblast.com> who are pretty much teams of biotech researchers intending to work out how to cure cancer, then sell the knowledge to other companies to commercialise it. I also know people at <http://www.ecoult.com> who didn't invent the technology they're commercialising, but have licensed the patents from the government research organisation that did invent/patent them.)

<comment><USER5> Nothing in this bill prevents a inventor to sell his finished invention once to whoever want to commercialize it to a product. Nothing. He doesn't even need a patent to do this.

Say that the best battery chemist invents a way to make current lithium-ion battery packs 25% better. In a bidding war, the price would easy reach hundred of millions, because the practical effects of having better batteries are economic interesting for companies being restricted by ineffective batteries.

Regarding cancer research, I find it quite wrong that state funded research is being patented. Most serious medical research is being paid for NiH with the use of tax money. Society has already paid for all the step regarding the research and it due to get what it paid for. Research which has no bases on NiH funded research theories, and has no relation with any public funds what so ever is an exceptional case, and there is a lot of companies out there that produce derivative works from NiH produced research and gets a patent for it. derivative works that has been created from tax money should not allow someone to get a 20 years state enforced monopoly on it.

<comment><USER6> _Most serious medical research is being paid for NiH with the use of tax money._

This is simply not true. The NIH pays for basic research into NMEs (New Molecular Entities). The gap between an NME and a drug (i.e., a molecular entity, approved manufacturing methods, approved usage, identified side effects, monitoring) is huge.

<comment><USER5> The gap is then derivative work. They basically take the core research done by NiH for free and refine it and demand in return a 20 years monopoly from the state. The biggest single actor in medical research is by a large factor NiH, paid through tax money.

Drug companies are the only market where this is happening. Why should they get this free research if we want the market to handle the research of medical innovation? You don't see the state doing the basic research of mobile phones and then giving it away to Samsung or apple. They can't just take some already taxed funded research and "refine", getting themselves a 20 years monopoly for the effort on the expensive of the public.

And what is the benefit for the public? They give their money away with tax money and get zero back in return? It is taxed paid research, and then the state gives out a additional 20 years enforced monopoly to the first one who do the last step and refine it. Maybe a bit ism'ish, but is this the core idea of capitalism; having the state pay for the core part of the medical industry without getting anything in return?

<comment><USER6> _You don't see the state doing the basic research of mobile phones and then giving it away to Samsung or apple._

The state (mainly the military) did basic research in signal processing and electromagnetism. Apple and Samsung turned that basic research into consumer devices you can buy at the store.

 _They give their money away with tax money and get zero back in return?_

If private entities didn't turn molecular entities into drugs, then yes, the public would get nothing for their money.

The fact is you can't buy arbitrary chemicals in the pharmacy, and very likely you believe it should be illegal to do so (do you favor abolishing the FDA and all drug regulation?). Pfizer needs to turn drug ideas (what the NIH generates) into actual drugs, just as Samsung needs to turn coding schemes and relativistic corrections into actual consumer devices.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Why should "loser pays" be limited to patent trolls?

I understand that they're the least sympathetic players is a patent system, but a bogus patent lawsuit is a bogus patent lawsuit. I would even argue that, in many cases, a company trying throw sand in the gears of their competitors by using patents that never should have been granted is _worse_ than a patent troll. At the end of the day, a patent troll just wants to extract money (and typically is happy to extract it from all players equally). A company suing its competitors, by contrast, is trying to upset the competitive balance in some market which can easily have more far-reaching implications.

One counterargument I've heard is that we don't need "loser pays" for practicing entities because they can be countersued with your own portfolio, so you can eventually negotiate a truce based on MAD. To me, this misses the point. MAD is a workaround for some bugs in the patent system, not an end in itself. If there's a better way to discourage trumped-up patent lawsuits, we should use it too (or even instead, depending). And MAD has significant weaknesses (doesn't protect small players vs big players, favors incumbents, etc.) that a broad "loser pays" could help.

</comment><comment><USER8> This is really easy for patent trolls to get around - patent trolls (NPEs) are typically shell companies that have no assets that can be seized (aside from the patent itself).

<comment><USER9> Won't that mean that if they lose a case, they shut down?

<comment><USER10> It means the troll's shell company, whose only asset is the now-useless patent, is shut down. The parent company isn't touched, nor the thousands of other subsidiaries owned by said parent company.

<comment><USER11> Deliberately underfunding an LLC is not something that is going to be looked upon kindly, particularly if it's purpose is exactly to get around the law.

Any judge worth his salt would either sanction the hell out of the lawyers involved, or let you go after the parents.

<comment><USER12> That's the rub - what is underfunding? Should you have to plan to lose lawsuits?

<comment><USER11> Yes, you should have to plan what your exposure is when you lose lawsuits. Normal businesses already do, and warn about it in SEC filings.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Very bizarre to focus on the symptom and not the cause. Legislators appear to acknowledge the USPTO gives out patents to patent trolls and yet wants to focus on curbing their enforcement not their registration. Perhaps this is a necessary step, because so many patent trolls currently exist, but why don't the legislators focus instead on cutting the head off the snake and prohibit patent trolls from successfully registering a patent in the first place.

For example, Trademark law requires that a application indicate the date of first use in commerce, and the one exception is filing under "intent to use". I know there are a lot of arguments against a similar provision for patents, but why not make this distinction in Patent applications, because if a patent is actually used in commerce, then you basically insure the holder is not just a troll.

</comment><comment><USER14> This is called the English Rule (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_rule>), and is adopted in nearly every Western democracy (besides, of course, the US).

<comment><USER15> How do you stop me from making LLC's or s-corps with almost no assets over and over again to sue? Most patent trolls have next to nothing in assets.

If people aren't in threat of losing their savings or their home then they aren't going to care about such rules.

<comment><USER16> The bill proposes that once the plaintiff is declared an NPE they must post a bond to cover the defendant's legal costs.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> One of the real problems in this whole situation has been defining NPE's. Law scholars seem to be unable to come to anything close to a consensus on how to define one (legally) without causing a lot of collateral damage. So now congress wants circuit court judges to be on the hook for labeling every plaintiff? Sounds like a good way to make sure a little venue shopping will solve all the plaintiff's problems. It's not like NPE's don't already have a history of that /s

</comment><comment><USER16> The most important part of this bill isn't that it forces losing plaintiffs to pay legal costs, it's that it forces plaintiff's classified as an NPE by the judge to post a bond to cover the defendant's possible legal costs.

This will vastly increase the cost of operation for NPEs.

<comment><USER18> I missed that part - if this is accurate - then I agree that this could have an impact.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> It should be for everyone asserting patent infringement allegations, not just "trolls". That way, they would at least think twice about using trivial patents against others, knowing that if they lose the trial, they have to pay the winner's expenses.

It would also encourage some companies to take companies who are asking them to pay "patent fees" to Court if they think the patents are not good enough, and they could win.

<comment><USER20> I don't think definition of "trolls" is a sensible way to handle the problem either, but I think the idea is that if you don't restrict it to trolls, then Google can wantonly infringe on a patent owned by Joe Littleguy. Joe couldn't possibly risk suing Google when he might be responsible for the millions in legal defense that Google could rack up in a heartbeat.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> If "patent trolls" are formed as shell companies (located in the eastern district of texas) that have no assets other than the patent and enough to sue (i.e. corporation whose shareholders form it by merely contributing the patent and a nominal amount of funds), then this bill is useless unless it also permits piercing of the corporate veil (or equivalent for other limited liability entities such as LLC) such that the shareholders or directors are also liable for the attorney's fees of the defendant. Otherwise, why would a patent troll place assets other than enough to litigate in their shell companies?

<comment><USER21> That was my thought - i couldn't see why this would make things better (you don't remove trolls, but people who we don't want to consider trolls would now run the risk of simply being outspent and then bankrupted -> which could "hilariously" result in them selling the IP to an actual troll...).

I think the fix would be to stop allowing overly broad patents (eg. actually say how what you're doing what you're claiming, instead of saying "i have an idea" and not saying how to do it)

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> What struck me from the article:

>For example, successful copyright plaintiffs usually win attorneys' fees if they have a registered copyright.

That means that the MAFIAA gets their legal fees back if they sue the 9-yr old down the street and win?

IMO that's pretty messed up.

<comment><USER23> I believe the article said defendants are exempt from paying legal fees to the other side. The rule would be "plantiffs's pay when they lose."

</comment></comment><comment><USER24>
      The plaintiff is an inventor or original assignee.
      The plaintiff is actually using the patent.
      The plaintiff is a university or "technology transfer organization"

Last one shouldn't be there. It's redundant with the first in 99% of the cases that matter and sets up an obvious method for the trolls to rebrand themselves as universities or "technology transfer organizations" for the sole purpose of evading the law.

Also, forget the "loser pays" system. Just make establishing one of the first two a prerequisite for having standing to sue for patent infringement.

<comment><USER25> s/university/accredited university, and strip out the technology transfer organization bit (though again, that leaves ARM in a weird spot)

Somehow I doubt that patent trolls will develop curriculums and bring in students for the sheer purpose of bilking inventors.

<comment><USER24> ARM falls clearly into the first category. They hire engineers who develop chips and are the original assignee of the patents.

>Somehow I doubt that patent trolls will develop curriculums and bring in students for the sheer purpose of bilking inventors.

Maybe. I could see how they might partner pretty quickly with the likes of the University of Phoenix however.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> It's great that the trolls would have to pay for losing the lawsuit, but the basic problem remains - the company being sued can't afford to be the losing party, leading it to pony up outrageous settlement/royalty fees.

Even for junk patents, certain well known jurisdictions (read: Marshall, TX) award the trolls in these cases 80%+ success rates at trial. The trolls would only be on the hook for the remaining 20%, in addition to having collected all the settlements and royalties for cases which never made it to trial.

In view of the above I don't see this changing much of anything.

</comment><comment><USER27> I would go a step further and ask the plaintiff to subsidies the defense and only get reimbursed if they win. In many cases (including one I was involved in) the defendant doesn't have enough cash to hire a proper defense and is forced into settling. This will put all the burden/risk on the plaintiff and therefore limit the abuse against small start-ups that typically don't have access to a lot of cash.

</comment><comment><USER28> Maybe I am naive, but can't we do even more to make patent trolling impossible?

Like forbidding their transfer to such non-practicing (or any) entities to begin with? Or maybe not having patents and finding a new way to encourage development in medicine - which afaik is the only area where patents have a measurable benefit.

(to make clear i mean /benefit to society/ not money)

</comment><comment><USER29> I really hope this works like they intend. For some reason I see patent trolls figuring a way around it though.

<comment><USER30> IANAL and I don't know nearly enough about it, but one potential problem with "loser pays" is that you could be found guilty of some relatively minor infraction and then get slammed with legal bills that are far in excess of the original damages.

<comment><USER31> This is addressed in the article. Losing defendants don't have to pay. Meaning that if you sue someone and win, you still have to pay your own legal bills.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Almost there. All we need now is a personal penalty for the _lawyer_ who knowingly brings the frivolous case and I'd bet that it would tip the balance just enough so that trolling mostly disappears.

<comment><USER33> You mean like Rule 11(b)(2) and 11(c)?

<http://www.law.cornell.edu/rules/frcp/rule_11>

<comment><USER32> I wonder how effective it would be if every trolling victim filed this motion for sanctions automatically. Of course, that assumes going to court in the first place, which brings us back to the original problem, I guess. Could this be used along with the judge's ruling that the troll is this type of NPE?

As in: You're a troll, pay the defendant, oh and your lawyer pays too?

<comment><USER24> >I wonder how effective it would be if every trolling victim filed this motion for sanctions automatically.

What makes you think they don't already? The problem with patent trolls isn't that what they're doing is illegal, it's that what they're doing is legal.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Don't patent trolls already create LLCs or other corporate firewalls so that if they are countersued, they don't have assets?

<comment><USER16> Yes. But this bill requires NPEs to put a bond to cover the defendant's legal fees in case they lose.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> Reading about this patent trolling just makes me angry :(

</comment><comment><USER36> Pays what? They will create a few LLCs for each case with next to zero assets. If they lose the case the patents are almost by definition worthless, so they get nothing.

However, think of trying to legitimately sue Microsoft, or Apple or Google for using your patent. You have their bills to worry about too and they can out- lawyer almost everyone. This is no doubt loved by the largest corps, it does nothing to stop trolls but makes it much harder for a real person /entity to sue them (with tens of billions in the bank)

Edit: Imagine the first day in court, months after the other side's billing has started: you see 16 lawyers on the [Google's, MS, Apple's] side and have a heart attack! 16X$400 an hour (on the low side) X 5 hours = $32,000 for half a day, just to show up in court.

<comment><USER37> >>Pays what? They will create a few LLCs for each case with next to zero assets. If they lose the case the patents are almost by definition worthless, so they get nothing.

Sounds like fraud to me. I'm sure this loop hole could get closed.

<comment><USER12> It's neither fraud nor a loop hole. Suppose you are a patent troll and you set up a business to extract value from a particular patent. You start out with $100k and buy a patent for $50k. You use the other $50k to sue someone and lose. You now owe them, say $30k. (I made up the numbers, but they don't really matter - the point is that liabilities are greater than assets at the end).

Where is that $30k going to come from? It doesn't exist. If you think that this is a case where you should breach the limited liability provided by incorporating, you're opening a pretty huge can of worms - it's pretty much the basis of our economy.

It's a lot more complex than "you can't do that".

<comment><USER11> There is a huge difference between setting up a business to say, mow lawns, and setting up a business to file lawsuits.

Especially when the possible costs are basically known (you have no customers except yourself, and you control your own costs), you are deliberately underfunding. Maybe that's not even so bad. Doing so specifically to avoid the intent of an act of congress, is, well, a bad idea.

Courts make factual distinctions between cases all the time when deciding whether to pierce the corporate veil, and i can't see why they wouldn't do so here.

Note that limited liability corporations are fairly new. The world got along just fine when shareholders were responsible for the actions of companies. It made the shareholders more careful in investing.

<comment><USER12> How is setting up a separate corporation for each patent different from setting upa separate corporation for each, say, office building? How much money is necessary to keep a corporation set up for these purposes from being underfunded? Do we really want to set that precident? Do we really want to require money to access the legal system? Keep in mind the business model is not to sue other companies. The business model is to create license revenue from the patent. Lawsuits are merely a way to settle disputes.

<comment><USER11> Yes, we really want to set that precedent. We _already_ require money to access the legal system in certain cases.

You act as if this is a slippery slope where if we differentiate here we've given up the ball game. If that's what you think, well, that ball game was given up long ago. We already have different pleading requirements for different types of lawsuits, etc. This is all done to serve various end policy goals. The business model you give is not the end goal of patents. It's not clear why supporting it should be a policy goal, and as of right now, it isn't. The end goal is to encourage innovation as well as R&D, _not_ to create license revenue. These are separate things.

<comment><USER12> The way patents encourage innovation is by protecting the profits of the holder. You can't have one without the other.

This scheme seems to be solving the wrong problem (The right problem is to answer the question "What is patentable?").

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> Unfortunately, this is doing to stack up the deck against individual small inventors.

This guy would've had to start a car company in order not to be liable for millions in legal fees if he lost?

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Kearns>

Somehow I think the big companies will exploit this, and start violating NDAs and real patents willy nilly, since the bar has been raised for them.

But the patent trolls are doing enough damage too, I am not sure if it's worth hurting a few real deserving inventors.

<comment><USER39> "The bill would allow patent defendants to file a motion seeking to have a judge rule that the patent owner is a certain type of "non-practicing entity"—although the bill doesn't use that term. If the motion is successful, the lawsuit can still proceed, but if the patent-holding company loses, it will be on the hook for legal costs."

a) I doubt your example of Robert Keans, who is actually an inventor and not a patent troll would be found to be the latter by most judges.

b) If the motion is successful, you can still pull out and save the costs. You did lose, but you didn't go broke trying.

So It's probably not quite as dramatic for the little guy, as you suggest.</comment></comment>


Red Hat to Acquire Inktank, Provider of Ceph - <AUTHOR> http://www.redhat.com/about/news/press-archive/2014/4/red-hat-to-acquire-inktank-provider-of-ceph

<comment><USER2> Was in the same lab as Sage in grad school, and shared an advisor (Scott Brandt). He is super hard working, and definitely deserves this. Ceph was over 10 years of his life.

Fun fact - Sage was also the founder of webring, and simultaneously one of the dream host founders.

<comment><USER3> > Sage was also the founder of webring, and simultaneously one of the dream > host founders.

This is no coincidence. Ceph comes out of technology developed at Dreamhost.

<comment><USER4> Ceph is through and through Sage's work, it wouldn't exist without him.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I really didn't see it coming, but now that it happened I'm kind of glad.

RH is one of the few corps who still has credibility and good karma. CEPH will be in good hands.

</comment><comment><USER6> I would love to hear people's opinion's on what this means for ceph going forward? Will it change anything?

It's telling for me that as the project starts becoming 'hot' RedHat step in. I totally get why it's a great strategic purchase in the context of winning cloud adoption / share / love.

<comment><USER7> The press release de-emphasized CephFS, and bumped XFS while ignoring Ceph's BTRFS mode (where snapshotting is available).

<comment><USER8> CephFS (which is a distributed file system) is orthogonal to XFS or BTRFS which are local file systems. Since Gluster is providing a file system solution at this point, that may be the reason for the de-emphasis. However, Gluster is not a parallel file system, and Ceph is much better suited to fill that role. So I suspect CephFS will continue to be developed, if anything to compete against Lustre, PanFS, GPFS, etc..

<comment><USER9> Why do you say that GlusterFS is not a parallel file system? Certainly it is by the common definition of "file system that spreads data across multiple storage nodes."

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I would really appreciate if somebody can clear this up for me:

Can one mount Ceph on multiple nodes? (I'm referring to the CephFS part).

I've worked with OCFS2 (which allows you to do exactly this) and liked it very much, but would've loved a clustered backing storage. Which is what Ceph provides.

<comment><USER5> Theoretically yes, but do note CephFS is not considered "production ready" AFAIK.

GlusterFS is much more focused on the filesystem bit, so why not give that a try, too?

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I think this is a clear play at driving some of the key components in the OpenStack world, with GlusterFS (subject of an earlier Red Hat acquisition) and Ceph being the two main distributed storage choices.

</comment><comment><USER11> i somehow ended up at inktank's vegas launch party (i was pulled onto a bus while very drunk) and they were a really really nice group of people.</comment>