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The BBC recently published an interview with the jury foreman of the US Apple vs. Samsung trial on how they treated prior art. Here's a bit of what he said:

Prior art was considered. But the stipulation under the law is for the prior art to be sufficient to negate or invalidate Apple's patents in this case, it had to be sufficiently similar or, more importantly, it had to be interchangeable.
And in example after example, when we put it to the test... the hardware was different, the software was an entirely different methodology, and the more modern software could not be loaded onto the older example and be run without error. And vice versa of that was also true.
... when we looked at the source code - I was able to read source code - I showed the jurors that the two methods in software were not the same, nor could they be interchangeable because the hardware that was involved between the old processor and the new processor - you couldn't load the new software methodology in the old system and expect that it was going to work. And the converse of that was true.

He seems to have some strange ideas in which changing the processor architecture (or something similar) would mean that prior art wouldn't count. Perhaps Samsung needed to simply insert calls to random Android subsystems into its code even if weren't necessary to the operation of the program. Such would be silly and inefficient, but it seems to be the sort of thing that's required to make a legal product in this day and age. See, example, Ars Technica's piece Why Johnny can't stream: How video copyright went insane in which to be legal it seems as though a company wishing to stream free over-the-air broadcast TV to subscribers needs to have an individual antenna and encoding process per client rather than sharing most of this.

The New York Times had the following to say in an article:

... the decision could also create a “minefield” for product designers, in which they are constantly second-guessing whether functions will step on someone else’s patents. Mr. Flora is concerned, for example, that Apple’s patent on the pinch-to-zoom function covers a gesture that now is so common that touch screen products without it would be like cars with square or triangular steering wheels. “It’s very much like a circular steering wheel,” he said."

One big issue there is that, although Apple holds a patent on this sort of thing, Mitsubishi already had demo units showing pinch-to-zoom and bounce-back effects in 2001, before Apple's earliest iPhone prototypes.

Also noteworthy is the fact that Samsung wasn't allowed to show certain evidence against Apple in the US trial. I mentioned before that Apple was being legally required to run ads in the UK saying that Samsung hadn't infringed it's patents, and most other courts seem to be leaning the same way. To quote a letter Samsung released to it's employees shortly after the verdict:

The NDCA verdict starkly contrasts decisions made by courts in a number of other countries, such as the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Germany, and Korea, which have previously ruled that we did not copy Apple's designs. These courts also recognized our arguments concerning our standards patents.

Take a look at the patents Samsung was convicted of breaking in the US court's decision and ask yourself how many of these are really worth worth protecting.

Look who parks their cash at Bain

"Democrats convened in Charlotte, NC, will double down on their claim that Bain Capital is really the Bain crime family. They will accuse Republican nominee Mitt Romney and Bain’s other “greedy” co-founders of stealing their winnings, evading taxes and lighting cigars with $100 bills on their yachts. But Bain’s private-equity executives have enriched dozens of organizations and millions of individuals in the Democratic base — including some who scream most loudly for President Obama’s re-election." More at NewsBusters.

University Vindicates Mark Regnerus

I mentioned not being a fan of Regnerus's research, but also that I considered those charging him with academic misconduct to be hypocrites. In any case it seems that the investigation is over with and Regnerus has now been cleared of academic misconduct.

Saving a Little More Energy With Exit Signs

"... those ubiquitous red or green illuminated signs that direct our escape from a building should the need arise? They can’t use very much energy, can they? Each one uses relatively little electricity, but they are on all the time. And we have a lot of them in our schools, factories, and office buildings. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency estimates that there are more than 100 million exit signs in use today in the U.S., consuming 30–35 billion kilowatt-hours (kWh) of electricity annually. That’s the output of five or six 1,000 MW power plants, and it costs us $2-3 billion per year. Individual buildings may have thousands of exit signs in operation."

Lies the Debunkers Told Me: How Bad History Books Win Us Over

"Earlier this month, George Mason University's History News Network asked readers to vote for the least credible history book in print. The top pick was David Barton's right-wing reimagining of our third president, Jefferson's Lies: Exposing the Myths You've Always Believed about Thomas Jefferson. But just nine votes behind was the late Howard Zinn's left-wing epic, A People's History of the United States. Bad history, it turns out, transcends political divides. If these books seem an unlikely pair, they also have a good deal in common..."

When religions made conflicting truth claims they are in a sense inherently at odds, but that doesn't mean that those of different faiths can't get along well, with some perhaps finding it easier to interact with those espousing another faith rather than with those who are supposedly neutral on such matters. I was reminded of that again by a New York Times article this weekend titled Muslims From Abroad Are Thriving in Catholic Colleges:

The flow of students from the Muslim world into American colleges and universities has grown sharply in recent years ... No definitive figures are available, but interviews with students and administrators at several Catholic institutions indicate an even faster rate of growth there ... At those schools, Muslim students, from the United States or abroad, say they prefer a place where talk of religious beliefs and adherence to a religious code are accepted and even encouraged, socially and academically. Correctly or not, many of them say they believe that they are more accepted than they would be at secular schools.

This piece reminded me of a lawsuit filed a while back alleging that Muslim students were being discriminated against by the presence of religious symbols at Washington DC's Catholic University of America. As The American Muslim notes in its overview of news coverage regarding the lawsuit, the lawsuit was based on no complaints from Muslim students and also opposed by some of the higher-profile Muslim organizations like CAIR as well as, seemingly, Muslim students on the campus itself. To quote again the New York Times piece:

“I like the fact that there’s faith, even if it’s not my faith, and I feel my faith is respected,” said Maha Haroon, a pre-med undergraduate at Creighton University in Omaha, who was born in Pakistan and grew up in the United States. “I don’t have to leave my faith at home when I come to school.”

I can see this making Muslim students feel more receptive to such environments than secular ones. It remind's me of a book that I've got queued up somewhere on my reading list - Hunter Baker's The End of Secularism. That book's argument (from its Amazon description):

[S]ecularism fails as an instrument designed to create superior social harmony and political rationality to that which is available with theistic alternatives. Baker also demonstrates that secularism is far from the best or only way to enjoy modernity's fruits of religious liberty, free speech, and democracy. The End of Secularism declares the demise of secularism as a useful social construct and upholds the value of a public square that welcomes all comers, religious and otherwise, into the discussion. ... the marketplace of ideas depends on open and honest discussion rather than on religious content or the lack thereof.

Seattle’s Best to Start Serving a Bacon Coffee, Because This is America

I do like coffee and bacon, but that would be a very strange combo.

Why shouldn't three people get married?

The consequences of redefining marriage: "As three Brazilians are legally joined as a 'thruple' it starts to look illiberal to insist that marriage must be between two people."

Oklahoma police captain sues department over mosque assignment

In this officer's words: "This event is compelling me to go to a venue where a group of individuals is prepared to discuss their (Islamic) faith ... And in my faith, I have a duty to proselytize my faith to people (who) don't subscribe to my faith. I can't do that in uniform. And so therein lies the conflict or moral dilemma I face." As the story later mentions "Fields has said that if it were merely a police matter to which he was called, requiring him to enter a mosque, he would have no problem doing his duty as an officer."

Lesbian who alleged Nebraska hate crime charged with lying about attack

From the Lincoln police department: "A great deal of time and resources were spent investigating Charlie Rogers’ claims in hopes of identifying and arresting the three suspects in this case. As the investigation progressed and additional interviews were completed, the department received results from forensic analysts and experts making it apparent that the physical evidence conflicted with Charlie Rogers’ version of events." Is faking a 'hate crime' worthy of itself being classified as a 'hate crime'?