Sunday I reentered America at LAX and US Immigration "entry stamped" my US Passport.

"Simon Elliott" wrote in message
...
PTRAVEL writes
This patent should be easy to fight as being unoriginal and obvious.

I'd love to see that happen. The problem is, there's no way to fight the
patent until Microsoft either sues, or credibly threatens to sue, someone
using FAT for CF cards. I can't imagine that there are many CF card
manufacturers around with much of an appetite to take on Microsoft. In
the
past, I've defended clients who were sued by Microsoft. It was, ugly,
ugly,
ugly litigation, more like fighting a war with a small but very
well-armed
country, than defending a law suit.

Thanks for your comments. It's very interesting to get some information
on this from someone who has actually been involved in an action with
Microsoft.

In the past, Microsoft have published this along with the FAT16
specification:

"(a) Provided that you comply with all terms and conditions of this
Agreement and subject to the limitations in Sections 1(c) - (f) below,
Microsoft grants to you the following non-exclusive,
worldwide, royalty-free, non-transferable, non-sublicenseable license
under any copyrights owned or licensable by Microsoft without payment
of consideration to unaffiliated third parties, to reproduce the
Specification solely for the purposes of creating portions of products
which comply with the Specification in unmodified form."

Are they allowed now to just change their minds on this?

Licenses are terminable, and the one you've quoted isn't perpetual. There
may be equitable defenses, such as estoppel, to an attempt to enforce the
patent, but I don't know enough about either the patent, the license
circumstances, or this particular aspect of patent law to provide anything
other than a shoot-from-the-hip opinion. That opinion is, as a matter of
law, they can probably do it. Whether it makes business sense is another
question altogether.


--
Simon Elliott
http://www.ctsn.co.uk/

On Fri, 05 Dec 2003 04:47:53 +0100, Jesper Lauridsen wrote:

On Wed, 3 Dec 2003 15:39:02 -0800, "PTRAVEL" wrote:


Do you think I'm making this up?

I have no opinion on that. But you claim was that in "Europe" hotels recorded
your passport information and forwarded it to the police. If the police was
involved, the recording would happen _every_ time. We have seen in this thread
that it doesn't.

They certainly do not do it in the UK. They didn't do it in Barcelona, or
Paris recently when we were in those 2 cities.

Doug

In article ,
"Sjoerd" wrote:

"DALing" daling43[delete]-at-hotmail.com schreef in bericht
...
the comment was aimed more at the fact the very few countries actually
check
on the way OUT except by air 9and even then I'm not sure that they are
checking for EXIT as opposed to ENTRANCE into the arrival country

Almost all countries check on exit. (no difference between air, sea or
land). Exceptions are UK, US, and Canada. And of course they don't check
within the Schengen zone.

Some of the countries where I was checked when leaving the country (so by
immigration officers of the country I was leaving) via land a Uruguay,
Argentina, Czech Republic, Poland, Hungary, Italy, Netherlands, Germany,
Thailand, Laos, Malaysia, Singapore, Hong Kong, Macau.

Even so, the degree of checking varies. The last time I (non-E.U.
national) entered and left France (April/May 2002) and Germany (May
2001) from/for the U.S. directly into and out of CDG & FRA respectively,
the immigration officers just had a cursory look at my passport - no
stamps in or out (France was sticky about this earlier). Leaving
Austria (VIE) just received a stamp. Hong Kong, Thailand and Argentina
do more much rigorous checks - they actualy look for your incoming stamp.

Brazil doesn't seem to bother if you come and go via land (at least at
Iguasu).

In article ,
(Miguel Cruz) wrote:

@X. wrote:
So Sunday I returned from Asia through LAX. Despite the holiday weekend I
got through Customs and Immigration very quickly. The funny part was the
immigration agent put an entry stamp in my US Passport. They have never
done this in the past and it seemed a little odd to me. Is this some sort
of new policy?

They've been doing this as long as I can remember. However it's not at all
predictable; seems to depend on the airport and individual inspector.

Perhaps of mild interest, I noticed that the wording on the stamp has
changed recently - before, it said "US Immigration" but now it reads
"Customs and Border Protection".

The guys in Canada myust be getting theirs late. My entries in late
Nov. and early Dec. still have "U.S. Immigration"

Not the Karl Orff wrote:
(Miguel Cruz) wrote:
Perhaps of mild interest, I noticed that the wording on the stamp has
changed recently - before, it said "US Immigration" but now it reads
"Customs and Border Protection".

The guys in Canada myust be getting theirs late. My entries in late
Nov. and early Dec. still have "U.S. Immigration"

Ah, this was in Dulles, pretty close to the source. I'll try again in
Houston in a couple weeks.

miguel
--
See the world from your web browser: http://travel.u.nu/

Miguel Cruz wrote:

Not the Karl Orff wrote:
(Miguel Cruz) wrote:
Perhaps of mild interest, I noticed that the wording on the stamp has
changed recently - before, it said "US Immigration" but now it reads
"Customs and Border Protection".

The guys in Canada myust be getting theirs late. My entries in late
Nov. and early Dec. still have "U.S. Immigration"

Ah, this was in Dulles, pretty close to the source. I'll try again in
Houston in a couple weeks.

Newark has the new stamps.

Thailand wants to collect IF you are "overstaying" is why they check (money,
not altruism)

"Not the Karl Orff" wrote in message
...
In article ,
"Sjoerd" wrote:

"DALing" daling43[delete]-at-hotmail.com schreef in bericht
...
the comment was aimed more at the fact the very few countries actually
check
on the way OUT except by air 9and even then I'm not sure that they are
checking for EXIT as opposed to ENTRANCE into the arrival country

Almost all countries check on exit. (no difference between air, sea or
land). Exceptions are UK, US, and Canada. And of course they don't check
within the Schengen zone.

Some of the countries where I was checked when leaving the country (so
by
immigration officers of the country I was leaving) via land a
Uruguay,
Argentina, Czech Republic, Poland, Hungary, Italy, Netherlands, Germany,
Thailand, Laos, Malaysia, Singapore, Hong Kong, Macau.

Even so, the degree of checking varies. The last time I (non-E.U.
national) entered and left France (April/May 2002) and Germany (May
2001) from/for the U.S. directly into and out of CDG & FRA respectively,
the immigration officers just had a cursory look at my passport - no
stamps in or out (France was sticky about this earlier). Leaving
Austria (VIE) just received a stamp. Hong Kong, Thailand and Argentina
do more much rigorous checks - they actualy look for your incoming stamp.

Brazil doesn't seem to bother if you come and go via land (at least at
Iguasu).

"Sjoerd" wrote in message
...
In most of these countries, they do that to make sure that you will pay
your
bill. None of this information is forwarded to the Police Station, as you
falsely claim. (except in Italy)

I notice many hotels do things differently when it comes to billing in
Europe.

Here in the USA, it's standard to provide a credit card upon check-in and
the hotel will obtain an authorization for the estimated amount of the stay
(nightly rate + taxes + extra for phone, room service, etc). This way you
can things such as the express check-out and the hotel is guaranteed their
payment, more or less. If you want to check out in person, you can do that
and keep the bill on the same credit card used at check in, or use another
method of payment such as cash, traveler's cheque, or another credit
card/debit card.

In many places overseas (i.e. Europe), they will often just write down your
credit card #, make an imprint, or even make a swipe but not get any type of
authorization on the credit card. When you check-out, they'll just run the
credit card once as a "sale" for the entire amount and off you go. Other
than having a passport #, what is there to protect the hotel if someone
provides a "bad" credit card (i.e. closed account, over credit limit, etc)
at check-in and then skips out. Even with the passport #, what can the
hotel do to make good on the debt? I suspect problems don't happen often,
but I could see where someone might skip out -- or even someone (an
American) doing it accidently assuming the card was authorized at check-in
and the room more or less paid for.

I've had hotels in Europe do this (including big chain, 5 star hotels) in
many European countries from Spain to the UK.

Steve