It really was a pretty hideous dress.

quite the opposite of gay

you've been getting so much poon, you simply have no choice but to resort to implementing an additional level of quality control just to trim down (pun FULLY intended) the field of prospective horizontal bop partners

Jesus Derris did that turn out like it looks like it would?

Crumpets. I just bought some. I used to enjoy them when I was a kid and forgot about them. Melted butter and preserves or honey on a toasted crumpet.

Am I missing a better way to eat these things?

Also, is there a better english muffin than Bay's. I haven't had one yet.

clotted cream

Not so sure i could find that here, but we got some dat dulce de leche

Yup.

Oh yeah. That's him literally falling to his death.

capn was hoping he could bounce off that big white tent and land unharmed.

Standards?

From the pictures I thought that was the stunt until I read the article. Some people just don't know what dumb is. Why didn't he have some kind of tiny parachute on?

Pretty sure at a couple hundred feet it wouldn't have much mattered.

Dude I'm totally a badass daredevil

Oh wait, no I'm not

But doods, he kept it real, and lived on the edge. Until he didn't.

Careful, there. Statements like this are what got Roger Ebert in Bam Margera's doghouse.

imadaredevilnowimnot.blogspot.com

Is that a pager in his crotch?

His balls have their own social life

This is some rhetoric right here. Whether you're a firm believer in the patent system is beside the point. Does it work, and if so, what is your evidence? As for the founding fathers, who gives a shit? They also withheld fundamental rights from black people and women, so their capacity to be wrong is well documented. And Jefferson, an inventor, considered patents monopolies (which they fucking are). The only question is whether the patent system works.

Software patents are systemically fucked for several reasons:
1. patent law in the courts is captured by patent-hoarding industries via the Federal Circuit, a specialist court stocked with judges who are the very patent attorneys who used to (and whose friends still do) depend for their livelihood on the granting of patents and a broad scope of patentable subject matter;
2. the patent office is overrun with applications and can't adequately review them because there's not enough time and the examiners' access to prior art is limited by office practice and their own inexperience;
3. patents (particularly software patents) are written by patent lawyers for patent lawyers, and not only do not serve their supposed purpose (to describe the "invention" such that others in the field can replicate it) but also dazzle nonspecialist judges into thinking, for example, that software is anything other than math.

The software industry is replete with patents on useless, obvious inventions (see the Lodsys patent on buying shit within an app) that may cost a lot (~$10,000) to get, but cost a damn sight more to defend against (particularly when wielded by a troll who is impervious to the defendant's own patents) which is why they're never invalidated and continue to fester and hinder innovation and generally just fucking cost everyone a whole lot of money without doing a damn bit of good in society.

In short, +1 Yail

I have been reading The AV Club reviews of The Real World Season 1 - which are awesome and highly recommended for laughing at one's former self and how much you may have lurved this show.

But all the commenters talk about which cast members they liked the most from the entire arc of the show, when it hit me.

Radcliffe was Dominic:


and billyg was Aaron:

oh, man...julie was SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO FUH

1. I think a pretty low percentage of CAFC historically have been patent attorneys, so this argument is meritless. And even if ALL of them are/were patent attorneys, there are attorneys on both sides of the coin (prosecuting vs. defending) so I don't see your point at all. Or do you not want judges who were patent attorneys, who would then be "dazzled" by the patent language? You can't have it both ways, but you're trying to.
2. This is true and I can't argue with it. If our government would pump more money into the PTO, we'd be getting better patents overall. But that doesn't mean every patent is useless and should not have been granted (see below).
3. There certainly is "patent-ese" used, but if a judge can't understand what a longitudinal axis is or what a flange is, or a series of steps for a computer, then he/she shouldn't have wasted the time with all of the political bullshit to get on the bench. Both sides have attorneys to explain the invention/lack of invention and the claim terms, so where's the problem? If a jury can understand inventions and claim scope by the end of a trial, I don't understand why a judge is incapable over the course of a patent infringement suit.

I won't argue with you that there are useless patents and many that should not have been granted, but nearly 8,000,000 patents have been granted and you name one example. I've seen crap patents, but I've seen many more patents that have merit (whether or not they may be ultimately invalid due to one of a number of reasons).

You think we'd be better off today without a patent system? I don't buy it for a second. There are problems in the system, sure, which I mentioned, but I do believe innovation is furthered by patents. I've seen it . . . A LOT.

And to say that patents are never invalidated is just plain ignorant. I was willing to give your opinion some respect until I read that.