Blackmoor Vituperative

At yesterday’s show at the Raceway, two people from New York came into the show. They went to several vendors and at least one private seller, trying to buy a gun. They were turned away each time.

One private seller went to the show manager and asked if it was legal to sell to them. When he was told no, he returned to the people and said no way. After the man had been turned down by Dark Sun, the woman tried to buy a gun from them.

By that time the police had been notified…

(from See, Bloomberg… no gunshow loophole, Old Virginia News)

As others have pointed out before, the same laws apply at gun shows as apply everywhere else. There is no “gun show loophole”. It’s a myth.

I am watching You Kill Me with Ben Kingsley and Luke Wilson. This is pretty funny. I kind of wish we had a family business. It might give us a sense of belonging, of being a part of something. I am glad that it’s not the Polish mob, though.

I view this as good news:

New Zealand’s parliament is preparing to vote on a major patent reform bill that will tighten the country’s standards of patentability. One of the most significant changes in the proposed bill is a specific patentability exclusion for software. If the bill receives parliamentary approval in its current form, it will broadly eliminate conventional software patents in New Zealand.

(from New Zealand patent reform bill says no to software patents, Ars Technica)

You may also find this interesting:

Are Software Patents Evil?

This week, 50,000 new lawsuits have been filed against downloaders. It’s only going to get worse.”

“The history of copyright and intellectual property rights goes back to the 1700s. The free distribution of copyright works has never been impeded like it is today.”

“Surveillance methods being used are in the same league as those used by the NSA, CIA, MI5, MI6 and China. A real and genuine underground of revolt is brewing.

(from What’s inside your home is yours, except computer files, ZDNet)

I received a letter from the Henrico County police department today. I applied for a position as an Animal Control Officer, and the next step is to successfully complete a “physical agility” test. In order to qualify for that, I had to go to a doctor and have them check me over for a “statement of physical fitness”. I passed! Chubby and old I may be, but at least I am not about to drop over dead.

The next step is the “physical agility” test in April:

• Climb a six foot barrier
• Complete a one-quarter mile run/walk
• Jump a four foot culvert
• Dry-fire a police pistol
• Drag or carry a “human simulator” (a 155 pound weight)

The first four activities must be completed in three and a half minutes, while the human simulator drag has to be completed in under one minute.

I am pretty excited about this.

The SCO Group was dealt a serious, potentially fatal blow today in its courtroom battle against Linux. The jury in the trial between SCO and Novell has issued a verdict affirming that Novell is the rightful owner of the UNIX SVRX copyrights. This verdict will make it difficult for SCO to continue pursuing its baseless assault on the open source operating system.

(from SCO loses again: jury says Novell owns UNIX SVRX copyrights, Ars Technica)

Mwahahahahaha.

In a huge ruling, U.S. District Judge Robert Sweet has said that gene patents are invalid. As you may recall, last May, the ACLU was the first to finally challenge whether or not genes could be patented. There was a lot of back and forth over the case, with many saying that a ruling against gene patents would throw a wrench into the business plans of many companies, because so many biotech/medical companies have been relying on the idea that gene patents must be valid for so long. But just because many companies relied on a mistaken understanding of patent law, doesn’t mean that it should be allowed to continue. The judge made the point clear when it came to gene patents, saying that they:

“are directed to a law of nature and were therefore improperly granted.”

The case was brought against Myriad Genetics, who will surely appeal, so this is nowhere close to over. But it involved a test for breast cancer, that Myriad basically had a monopoly over — and the claim was that this not only made it more difficult for women to get tested, but it also greatly discouraged other research in the field. In part, this was because the patents that Myriad held were incredibly broad.

Patents, of course, are not supposed to be granted on things found in in nature — and it’s hard to argue against the idea that genes are found in nature. Supporters of gene patents often claim that they’re not really gene patents, but a patent on identifying the gene, which is a nice semantic game that the judge clearly saw through. This is a huge step forward for encouraging more real research into genetic testing, rather than locking up important information.

(from Judge: Gene Patents Are Invalid, TechDirt)

YES!

Patent system supporters regularly point (slightly misleadingly) to the claim that the patent system gives patent holders the right to exclude others from using their inventions. And, thus, most lawsuits we see around patents revolve around cases involving a company manufacturing a product that includes a patented invention. But what about a lawsuit for a company that deliberately chose not to license or use a patented technology, because it was too expensive?

Welcome to today’s world.

(from Tool maker loses lawsuit for not violating another company’s patents, TechDirt)

“Without patents, nobody would invent anything ever!”
“Without copyrights, nobody would create anything ever!”
“Without trademarks, nobody would name anything ever!”

“IP” stands for “imaginary privilege”.

At a press conference yesterday, researchers announced the completely unexpected: a Siberian cave has yielded evidence of an entirely unknown human relative that appears to have shared Asia with both modern humans and Neanderthals less than 50,000 years ago. The find comes courtesy of a single bone from individual’s hand. Lest you think that paleontologists are overinterpreting a tiny fragment, it wasn’t the shape of the bone that indicates the presence of a new species—it was the DNA that it contained.

(from Neither Neanderthal nor sapiens: new human relative IDed, Ars Technica)

Shooting fish in a barrel stops being easy when the fish can shoot back.