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CMGI, Altavista Patent Indexing, Searching
Aggrazel
passes along
a FinancialTimes.com story
that would send chills down my spine if I weren't already jaded and bored by such patent nonsense. You mean suits at a
megacorp
are taking advantage of absurd U.S. intellectual property laws to stifle innovation, quash competition, and steal candy from hard-working programmers? I'm shocked, shocked!
Here's the InternetWorld interview:
"...virtually everyone out there who indexes the Web is in violation of at least several of those key patents. Q. Does that mean you'll pursue that? A. Yes, we will. Coming up in the first quarter of 2001."
Could someone please find out what patents CMGI owns?
And in related news, DeadSea notes that the search engine that powers the ODP
(dmoz.org)
has been
released,
under the
MPL.
It's rough around the edges; go thou and smooth it out. While you still can.
If the USPTO uses indexes to search for patents etc.
They should be the first to be sued.
134340: I am not a number. I am a free planet!
You read the book, take notes and keep track of what pages important things happen on. Then you use that information to allow readers of your book report to access that information faster than reading through the whole book. If the book were 100 000 000 000 pages long, it would be eerily similar. Maybe they'll go after high school English teachers next. yay!
The global economy is a great thing until you feel it locally.
I'm boycotting altavista over this one, not that I used it much anyway...
But it really felt like the whole Amazon.Com one click shopping thing to me all over again.
The only ones that win, are the laywers. Bah.
I have patented "a method of bringing about legal action, in the form of lawsuits or otherwise, for the enforcement of patent law and recouping damages due to patent infringement." You can't sue without violating my patent. I have also patented "A method of protecting the ideas and inventions of a person or corporation for a limited time so as to encourage them to make said idea or invention available ot the public." By having patents, you have violated my patent.
Though that was sarcasm, I wonder if (in this day and age) I could couch the patent in enough lnaguage to secure patents on patents and patent lawsuits.
Um, basically, we just suck.
Jamie McCarthy
Jamie McCarthy
jamie.mccarthy.vg
Better yet, start writing to AltaVista's advertisers and tell them you're boycotting them because they advertise with AltaVista. Explain why. Explain that everyone on Slashdot (with X page views per day, blah blah) knows that AltaVista is evil, and probably isn't too happy with their advertisers.
Watch AltaVista's advertising dry up. Laugh. Watch them stop with this patent nonsense.
Actually, I don't think AltaVista or CMGI even owns that technology...they license it from SysTran, which doesn't seem to be owned by CMGI... ;)
Maybe this is just a marketing ploy to gain media attention? I used to use AltaVista a lot, and it's still good for doing complex searches for obscure data, but it returns so many dead links and nonsensical results anymore that now I only use it if the other engines fail to find what I need...
DennyK
yahoo used to use altavista much the same way they use google now. In fact, around 4 or 5 years ago the title on their site was "Yahoo!, powered By AltaVista.
You can't just wait until everyone in the world is using your stuff and suddenly spring on them and claim they all owe you money.
They're doing the exact same thing Unisys did. But doesn't Unisys have a patent on "submarine" patents?
Like Tetris? Like drugs? Ever try combining them?
Will I retire or break 10K?
GOOGLE COME TO EUROPE
If any lawyer went to court with a patent like this the judje would probably ask him if he was kidding him.
I used my last 2 mod points to mod the plagiarist down and you up
since you don't put a valid email on slashdot this is the only way
I could contact you
after reading some of your past posts (to research your plagiarizm claim)
I see that you don't care for spammers
you might find my war on spam page interesting.
then again you might think I'm a jerk
oh well
http://Lenny.com
Hmmm... The best part of that History of Searchengines is this: "Digital Equipment Corporation's (DEC) AltaVista was a latecomer to the scene" It doesn't look like their patents have a leg to stand on, unless they somehow bought these patents from Webcrawler.
Someone has patented crustless peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.
As seen here on Jerry Pournelle's website (when he moves this week to his archives, this will be here, but that will not be for a week or so. (sorry, but the original story is available only via pay archives at Michigan Live, unless someone finds the original news service)
Last summer, the folks at Albie's Foods here started making crust-free peanut butter-and-jelly sandwiches for their customers. Just before Christmas, a executive with an Ohio food company ordered Albie's to bag 'em.
Robert V. Vickers wrote to Albie's explaining that his company, Menusaver Inc., holds the patent for crustless PBJ and plans to preserve its exclusive rights to the lunchtime staple. Now, Albie's has asked U.S. District Court in Bay City to resolve the legal jam.
Albie's, a food manufacturer and restaurant, is best known for its tasty pasties, with stores in Gaylord and Grayling. Company officials say they hope the federal sandwich case can be resolved in a jiffy.
In December 1999, the Orrville, Ohio,-based food company Menusaver obtained the patent for the "sealed crustless sandwich." The product is the invention of Len C. Kirtchman of Fergus Falls, Minn., and David Geske of Fargo, N.D., according to the patent on file with the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office.
"The sandwich includes a lower bread portion, an upper bread portion, an upper filling and a lower filling between the lower and upper bread portions, a center filling sealed between the upper and lower fillings and a crimped edge along an outer perimeter of the bread portions for sealing the fillings therebetween," states Patent No. 6,004,596.
Creamy or crunchy? Strawberry or grape? The patent doesn't get that specific. But:
"The upper and lower fillings are preferably comprised of peanut butter and the center filling is comprised of at least jelly," the patent declares. "The center filling is prevented from radiating outwardly and into and through the bread portions from the surrounding peanut butter."
Albie's co-owner Regan Quaal, contacted by The Times, said he would prefer to smooth out the controversy privately and not spread it around in the press.
United States Patent 6,004,596 Sealed crustless sandwich Abstract A sealed crustless sandwich for providing a convenient sandwich without an outer crust which can be stored for long periods of time without a central filling from leaking outwardly. The sandwich includes a lower bread portion, an upper bread portion, an upper filling and a lower filling between the lower and upper bread portions, a center filling sealed between the upper and lower fillings, and a crimped edge along an outer perimeter of the bread portions for sealing the fillings therebetween. The upper and lower fillings are preferably comprised of peanut butter and the center filling is comprised of at least jelly. The center filling is prevented from radiating outwardly into and through the bread portions from the surrounding peanut butter.
Inventors: Kretchman; Len C. (Fergus Falls, MN); Geske; David (Fargo, ND) Assignee: Menusaver, Inc. (Orrville, OH) Filed: December 8, 1997
U.S. Patent Documents 3083651 3690898 3767823 3769035 3862344 4382768 5853778
Other References "50 Great Sandwiches", Carole Handslip, pp. 81-84,86,95, 1994.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
i don't need to show you a company!! everyone knows the limitations of indexing search engines. people have been harping about it ever since Netscape 1.0 was out.
it is an OBVIOUS evolutionary step for search technology to take a step to distributed systems.
with the growth rate of the web proceeding like it is, do you expect that Inktomi (or anyone else like them) will be able to achieve anything beyond 20%???
Start here: http://www.peertal.com/ .
-- Betting on the survival of the media industry is a serious risk. I advise investing elsewhere.
At least we know that the inventor of the internet is currently unemployed, so he should be available as an expert witness to establish prior art.
What's a sig?
I just undid the moderation by posting that last comment to you
damn
that was probaly the most usefull moderation I ever did
now it's gone
maybe someone else with mod points will fix it
well I tried
http://Lenny.com
Could you tell me what I'll need to do to keep them from indexing my site?
The AltaVista spider identifies itself as Scooter, so HTTP_USER_AGENT will contain Scooter. If you're using Apache with mod_rewrite, something like the following should work:
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^Scooter
RewriteRule . / [F]
Which will return a Forbidden page for every request.
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/01/17/153425 4&mode=nested
The conclusions I reached were (1) their press releases had to be grossly overstating the breadth of their patents. Someone made an interesting point about patent abstracts -- the readable part up front -- vs claims, which actually determine what is protected by the patent. Abstracts can't be amended. Claims are mended all the time, like when the examiner points out that 19 out of 20 fail the tests of prior art and obviousness...
2. To have any validity at all to their wider claims they would not only have had to buy patent rights from the first search engines (maybe they did?), but also convince a court that you get a unique and non-obvious process simply by doing something on the internet that has long been done by hand, on single computers, and on other computer networks.
3. They probably have some valid claims on particular, narrowly construed, techniques. But considering the results I've had searching with Altavista, if they can keep others from copying their exact methods it's a good thing!
no, you could claim prior art, but _only_ if it was the _same_method_. geez people, they're not patenting the _act_ of indexing, they're patenting their method!
can't we create a "patent FAQ" and avoid this stupidity every time?
This is going to be fun. The best part is that Altavistat is not a "big bully" compared to the other search engine companies. They are all in the same "weight class" which means this patent is going to have to stand up in court on it's merits.
:).
:)
Those "merits include prior art in the form of Yahoo. One of the most likely targets
It will only get sillyer anyway. Right now a Jamaican politician has a patent on "Electronic Voting". So any country that uses computers to conduct an election will owe him money. To make that politically acceptable he set up a trust that won't give him any of the money personally but will support charitable causes. Apparently serious windfalls are expected
--= Isn't it surprising how badly I spell ?
Read any patent - you'll see the word "method" a lot. And the patent office is considering a "method using apparatus A" to be distinct from "method using apparatus B".
US5970497: Method for indexing duplicate records of information of a database
US6138113: Method for identifying near duplicate pages in a hyperlinked database
US6021409: Method for parsing, indexing and searching world-wide-web pages
US6128690: System for remote memory allocation in a computer having a verification table contains information identifying remote computers which are authorized to allocate memory in said computer
More can be found at Delphion's Intellectual Property Network.
--
If I had a buisness that was once a leader in it's field, and suddenly I was faced with the prospect of going out of buisness, I would be sorely tempted to beat people about the head with IP to keep from putting all my employees on the street.
However, it seems like there's lots of prior art. (See : A History of Search Engines) So this is probably just a corporate form of rigor mortis. Besides, doesn't everyone use Google these days?
Maybe the state's highest function is to grind out insoluble problems. (Zelazny, Hall of Mirrors)
He even looks like "SATAN"
Jeremiah
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
It will be interesting to see how they try to persue this. Will they go the route that BT is trying to do with their patent on hyperlinks, in this case, suing a small but important player, someone that they can probably match in legal fees so they have a test basis for further cases? In addition, suing a small player will be downplayed in the media, and thus few people would get a bad outlook on BT; if BT then won, they can take on bigger players, using their previous victory with the right media spin saying "Hey, just protecting our interests". Quite possible, but the question is which of the search engines out there would CMGI sue? If they tried to hit Yahoo or Google, they'd get a black eye really fast from the media world, so I suspect it will be something like HotBot or a minor search player.
"Pinky, you've left the lens cap of your mind on again." - P&TB
"I can see my house from here!" - ST:
this is the crux of it
The patent is entitled, ``Method of Reading and Writing Files on Nonerasable Storage Media,'' and describes a method of achieving ``apparent erasability.'' This enables features such as ``packet writing'' of small files, ``drive-letter access,'' the ability to drag-and-drop files, and the capability to randomly erase separate files encoded on nonerasable or rewriteable DVD and CD-R optical disks used in laser recording/retrieval systems.
HP cd writers have had a context menu and task tray app to do this for years.
Just one more reason that I live in New Zealand
----
Drink Coffee - Do Stupid Things Faster And With More Energy!
-------
Drink Coffee - Do Stupid Things Faster And With More Energy!
The front page link doesn't work for me unless I paste it into a browser window URL field manually. They must have some weird REFERER checking. Anyway, if it's any easier to copy it from here, this is the destination URL:
http://news.ft.com/ft/gx.cgi/ftc?pagename=View&c=A rticle&cid=FT3QCDYDDIC
What do you mean they cut the power? How can they cut the power, man? They're animals!
You don't "pay copyrights" for patents. In fact, patents have nothing to do with copyrights, not in the US and not in Britain.
If the Financial Times "legal correspondent" can't keep the difference between patents and copyrights straight, how accurate can the rest of the reporting be?
Any HOWTO available for this?
It could be used for spammers too.
The message on the other side of this sig is false.
>It's rough around the edges;
>go thou and smooth it out. While you still can.
I would write it from scratch than going through their source code. The whole concept is just a simple program afterall.
In a capitalitst society it's expected that anyone in business will pull as much underhanded and down right shitty stunts as possible to win. Business is war and war is ugly. I don't blame Amazon or Altavista or this despair asshole for trying. I can think less of them personally but I must stand up for their right to be stupid as hell.... it's the American way.
The problem is the patent office. If the American tax payers could force the patent office to foot the bill for all the legal fees resulting from a trivial or down right stupid patent, then Amazon and Altavista would never have gotten these silly patents issued in the first place and everyone would be much happier.
Laws were made to be challenged to the extreme, let's pass a better better law and stop all this sutpidity.
Wasn't Lycos around way before Altavista anyway? I remember back in the time off Trumpet Winsock seeing Lycos's page say 400,000 pages indexed! and being amazed. I don't remember Altavista being a twinkle in anyone's eye back then. If they were then why didn't they have altavista.com from the git-go? My $.02
G
Think I'm nuts? Got one word for ya - Rambus. Course it didn't work out quite like they hoped. THey patented all the JEDIC SDRAM stuff then tried to extort the SDRAM companies. Even boasted about it to stock analysts, how patent royalties would become a large portion of their future income (since RDRAM was sucking so bad given the price and marginal benefit) THey got a couple Japanese companies to cave, but now a few have stood up and called Rambus on it - now Rambus will spend millions trying to extort millions fromteh manufacturers. They'll lose (since the rules of JEDIC required that they not patent stuff that was developed there) and so will we since the millions spent on these BS lawsuits will raise the prices for the consumer. As usual, the only winners will be the freaking lawyers.
Top Most Bizarre/Disturbing Error Messages
I just sent them an email, I'll paste it... I just heard about CMGI plannig to enforce it's patent on searching. You've got to be kidding me. I know your horrid business models and IPO dry-up are leading you down a gloomy path, but how can you justify this? It's a basic property of the internet. Do the people who invented email or 'the web' try to enforce this kind of thing? No. Not because they are stupid, they are obviously more intelligent than the people at your firm since they can profit without doing such things, but because they know it's just plain wrong. My firm was planning on purchasing your AltaVista Search Engine 3.0 but that's definitely not happening now, we'll go license alltheweb.com's engine. Have fun with those ever-meaningless stock options now IT-toy! Regards! k Pointed yet not offensive. It'll have an impact.
...you should use google. Heh that search is just too funny for words.
Mr. Whetherell tells us so himself: He warned the company would defend its patent rights "if necessary . . . to the letter of the law.", which tells us that questions of ethical behavior or technological innovation presumably don't matter as long as there is still a legal loophole to be pursued.
The greed that has surrounded the whole VC industry over the last few years has caused people to lose fortunes, stalled important research by drawing away good people, discouraged long-term investment in research by stable companies, and made it nearly impossible to share and build on each other's research results, both in computer science and in biotechnology.
What can you do about it? There are some ideas that probably do need to get funded in a VC environment, and there are some far-out ideas that probably are well suited to that kind of funding. But for the most part, it's probably better not to do business with VCs, not to solicit funding from them, and not to work for startups. Not much good can come of companies that are fueled mostly by greed and irrational expectations. If you have a good idea, you can almost certainly find many other ways of financing it and building a business around it.
Thanks for admitting the duplicate story at least. (at Altavista's Planned Patent Lawsuits by CmdrTaco on Wed January 17, 11:34 AM CDT ). Why does this seem to happen so often? Editor overload (not enough cooks), duplication of efforts (too many cooks), interface problems with viewing the submissions queue (it was a only a week-old story), or what?
#include "disclaim.h"
"All the best people in life seem to like LINUX." - Steve Wozniak
#include "disclaim.h"
"All the best people in life seem to like LINUX." - Steve Wozniak
You make very good points. CMGI is required to make money in every (legal) way it can. What we must do, then (in addition to making every attempt to reform the patent system) is to show CMGI that they will NOT maximize profits by persuing this course of action. That is, their losses due to boycotts, legal costs, and general bad PR will greatly exceed their gains from attempting to enforce this patent. The only reasonable way to convince them to stop is by convincing them it's not worth their while.
Visit me on #weirdness on the Galaxynet.
Ha. I just clicked over here to read this thread and thought it was funny that the banner at the top of the page was for Altavista Search Engine 3.0.
That's all. Thank you.
MacNN mentioned this patent being granted to some company nobody has heard of that supposedly covers using OS-level software to write CDs and DVDs...in other words, some of the very things Apple introduced a couple of weeks ago. D'oh!
--
I use Macs for work, Linux for education, and Windows for cardplaying.
What a bad move. One of the basic tools of the geek, the search engine, AltaVista is trying to f with. I wouldn't be surprised if one of the great coders that reads this site goes and downloads (http://solutions.altavista.com/downloads/download s.html) the AltaVista Search Engine 3.0 trial for Linux, cracks it, and posts a link to the code back here, or submits it to the bots in #cracks on EFNet.). Perhaps in reply to this very comment! That would be a shame because everyone in #iso on EFNet knows how against piracy I am!
nt
How can something like this be patented? I mean, it's essentially a _slight_ variation on how any simple _handwritten_ list works.
You make a list. You check it. Twice.
Shit, Santa's got prior art on this.
-k.
Altavista figures it owns some useful technology and wants to assert it across the world. Fine. Glorious. Let them try.
But before we start marching, let's just remember that what they say they own isn't the same as what they own. Until you see the patent asserted, and consider deeply its claims, you simply don't know how bad (or how silly) all this is. Particularly in the case of web portals, where there are fierce competitors, I wouldn't be too troubled -- these guys can (and will) take care of themselves. They have portfolios too, BTW, and will be quite content to assert those as counterclaims.
The turn of the millenium has had a few sea changes for patent owners, not terribly well-covered in the media. In late December, the Federal Circuit's opinion in Festo virtually turned upside-down the strength of patents where any claim was amended, directly or indirectly. Virtually every existing patent, but particularly every existing software patent, has involved some substantial prosecution history changes. This change in the scope of the so-called "Doctrine of Equivalents" will dramatically impact upon the already narrow scope given to patent claims by the Federal Courts.
Moreover, don't forget that the more nuts the claim, the more likely it is invalid. The less nuts the claim, the less likely it has been infringed. Its a difficult process to drive the patent truck through that tunnel between enforceability and validity, and in so doing, you will discover that the patent system is fairly effectively self-healing.
The combination of Festo and these other factors suggests to me that it isn't time to take up arms. Let's wait and see what patents they wish to assert, and against whom.
My guess, no one anywhere is filing any patent claims that aren't slam-dunks in the first quarter 2001, we're all waiting to see if the Supreme Court takes up Festo again.
This man should be smacked away from anything having to do with business and should be kept from fucking over any more companies.
His latest escapade? Investing $13 million (I think that was the sum) in JustBalls.com. Why in the hell would anyone invest in a company that sells Balls over the internet?
David, thank you for screwing over one of the best companies I've worked for. Appreciate it.
Dacels Jewelers can't be trusted.
The recent stockholders meeting was a little tense, however, with little old ladies ready to wring Dave Wetherell's neck!
This patent enforcement crusade could end up being kind of a Pyrrhic victory for AltaVista. Sure, they probably have to try to enforce the patents to keep them, so maybe they don't really mean to be jerks about it--maybe it's just one of those things they think they have to do. But regardless of the motivation, this could cause a lot of ill will in a lot of places. Especially if it ends up affecting the software corporations use to index their internal systems.
And in the best of all possible worlds, perhaps the Patent Office will start considering the idea of "prior art" a little more seriously after this...
I'm beginning to thing that we need to thin out the herd a bit, starting with the vulture capitalists and trial lawyers.
Marxism is the opiate of dumbasses
But the news about ODPsearch being open-sourced is new. You can skip over the rest of the story. Ignore it. Just read the part about ODP. Ahhhhhhhh, that's nice.
Jamie McCarthy
Jamie McCarthy
jamie.mccarthy.vg
Then the patents becomes part of the assets of the company and can be sold. Happens all the time.
Problem is scenerio when you start banning adds:
Okay we don't like altavista, no adds from altavista allowed on banner now.
Hmmm and intel have been pretty dodgy lately, no adds from them either.
And you know I never liked black people and I think too many banner adds have them...
Lets just not go down the road, if the people read this story and all dislike altavista now they'll make it their own choice to ignore the add.
It's turtles all the way down.
I know that he's a troll, but there are many others, including those moderators that gave him karma points, that believe the posting he stole was his own.
Oh, I really like your anti-spam page. Keep up the good fight!
I do, and I thank you!
If you index a distributed set of databases-what the Internet is-and even...
It's going to be interesting to see if the court will uphold patenting "-what the Internet is-"
By "What the Internet is", he refers to "a distributed set of databases", not indexing it, which is what the patent is about
This patent is really a masterpiece of shit, but your argument (even if leading to a somewhat reasonable conclusion) is flawed
Here's some things you could implement by chaging you apache configuration or by including a bit of code in you CGIs/PHP stuff:
1) Block/Redirect by referer. That way, if you've already been indexed, you can redirect Altavista users to a page explaining Altavista's infamies and directing them to a more ethical search engine. Additionally, if you have legal firepower, you could let Altavista know that you know they're indexing your site and that you charge to let you site be indexed.
2) Please see the children of this comment for suggestions about robots.txt and blocking/redirecting by User Agent (Altavista's is called Scooter).
I think there is a Webmaster's guild somewhere. Also, perhaps the w3c could weigh in.
--
Tweet, tweet.
Search engine technology was well established before these patents where filed. I remember using Lycos in '95 or '96.
I don't remember the first time I used a search engine, but I suspect it was in the autumn of 1993.
IIRC, the search engine I used, was either the WWW Worm or WebCrawler (most likely the former at first, see below), and AltaVista came a while later as a "revolutionizing" new thing from DEC, partially to promote their Alpha 21164 processors (launched in 1995).
Search Engine Watch seems to agree with some of what I remember; AltaVista opening in December 1995 and WebCrawler in April 1994.
That's about where you get when it comes to prior art; the WWW wasn't much before 1993, and DEC most certainly wasn't the first player in the open. Proving prior art to most of the claims should be relatively easy, unless the patents are so specific that they only cover the things that AltaVista did and nobody else had done before (I don't quite see how that happened, the clue about AltaVista was that it was fast).
DEC weren't the first - you obviously don't remember far back if you can't remember that there were a great many efforts before AltaVista. The main thing AV offered when it was new was that it was bigger and faster than the older engines.
Archie (for those of you who weren't working on the Internet before 1995 :-) was a distributed data gathering and indexing system for anonymous FTP sites. Having taking a cursory read through CMGI's press releases & patents, I can tell you that most of that stuff followed the prior art of myself and the rest of the Archie team, from Archie versions 1 through 3.
If you want any background on this, feel free to contact me.
Alan Emtage (aemtage@mediapolis.com)
I think that's exactly how Unisys got the patent on LZW (the compression used in gifs).
Which will expire sometime this fall. Terrific!
(Now it's just another 17 year wait until all of this new crap is done with.)
Remember "Bring 'em on"? *sigh
In cases like these boycotting just makes it worse. They're already hurting so they're trying to find new revenue streams. Cut off their legitimate revenue even more and they will only get more desperate and tenacious over their precious patents which might be worth something if enough people who can make money lisence them. They aren't going to just quietly fade into the night for lack of your ad money but will go kicking and screaming, destroying and litigating as much as they can in the process.
I cannot face going through the turgid legal ramblings again to find the links again BUT the simple fact is that the international treaties on patents specifically do not extend the recognition for "methods et al" which would not be patentable in the other nation... So international treaties say the search engines go non-US. Now any particular country could choose to extend their system and recognise the unpatentable patents so you just gotta make sure you don't move there.
Never underestimate the dark side of the Source
LOL, same thing happened to me! I took a Screen Shot of it too... lol!
-- Kleptotherapy: Helping those who help themselves.
Didn't we read about this before?
Shouldn't this one be sued first? www.firstgov.gov
let's see... a group of lawyers backed by a chitload of venture capital with unlimited billable hours ahead of them as they chase down all their nice little infringements... In addition, anyone who has thought about patenting their internet idea but didn't because they couldn't bear the thought of paying a lawyer $10k to patent such an obvious application better get their checkbook out. Shakespeare was right.
I wonder if the patent process has been patented yet?
Patent Santa then! Stick it to them before they stick it to you.
LabRatty
Has anyone checked out if there is a patent on using signatures on discussion boards?
Oh, look!
2001-01-18 15:53:37 Altavista wields search engine patents (articles,news) (rejected)
Oh well... :-)
Okay, fella, we get the point.
Quis metamoderunt ipses metamoderatores?
I find it ironic that the banner at the top of the page that this story was on was a banner for the AltaVista Search Engine.
I thought Al Gore invented the Internet.
I don't know why I'm replying to such an obvious troll, but such a stupid idea is currently unpatentable in the UK (and the rest of the EU I believe), both because its moronic and because you can't patent software here at the moment. The UK patent office was recently consulting about opening this sort of patent up. More details, including the address to send to can be found here (the consulting period may well be over now)
Special Relativity: The person in the other queue thinks yours is moving faster.
I urge all moderators to moderate quincyq down. He is nothing but a thieving plagiarist who takes credit for the research, thoughts, and writings of others.
A good friend of mine is a patent lawyer. The other day, I was talking with him about all these 'dumb patents.' Here's what he told me:
A patent inofitself does not mean much until it is challenged and it stands up in court. THEN it becomes very valuable. Any judge will see that this is all bullshit, and the dumb patents will stop..
Who, exactly, is being wronged in this ethical travesty? Since banner ad contracts generally get worked out before stories get written, would you prefer that Slashdot not write stories that piss off their advertisers? Or should Slashdot refuse to run the ad, letting CMGi keep the money to be spent on placing it in a better-targeted location?
When all's said and done, it's CMGi who winds up getting the bad end of the deal, because they paid for poor ad placement.
Wrong. They will automatically win against any company that has less money than they do. This isn't pessimism, this is theory based on observation...
End of lesson. You may press the button.
Yea, and he said unto the Anonymous Cowards: ...go thou and smooth it out...
"Perl 6 will give you the big knob." -Larry Wall
my userid is lower than jamie's, so i think i deserve to be an editor now.
------------
a funny comment: 1 karma
an insightful comment: 1 karma
a good old-fashioned flame: priceless
this sig limit is too small to put anything good h
...of my patent application involving
Consider youselves warned.
--
CUR ALLOC 20195.....5804M
obviously,
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/01/17/153
I'm already boycotting the Alta Vista search engine because it s*x...
Sack all the guys at the patent office and use it as a kindergarden....perhaps patents will have some sense then ;-)
Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)
The front page that came up when I opened Netscape (/. is my start page) had this story on it, the banner was to download a eval copy of, yes you guessed it, the Altavista search engine. Jamie maybe you (or Rob, or Hemos) could explain to us why you seem to be willing to sell ad space to evil corps? Do you or Andover really have no control over it. Now if you look at my history you will see that I love and defend you guys and I'm hoping this is a oversight that will be fixed. I'm asking a honest question please give me a fair answer. At the moment I think it is ironic and you all will fix it. Pleae prove me right.
Cypherpunks: Civil Liberty Through Complex Mathematics. Those who live by the sword die by the arrow.
Could you give some examples of companies that are making such amazing technologies that even Google would have no chance?It just sounds like hopeful thinking if you don't show anything.
That's just silly. If CMGI honestly thought people were stealing, taking credit for and profiting from technologies they owned, they would have started fighting it right away! I mean, if you realy were suffering damages of some sort, why would you wait years before even saying anything about it?
To me this sounds like they told someone in the legal department. "Here's a stack of unused and otherwise worthless patents, see if you can find someone to sue.".
You can't just wait until everyone in the world is using your stuff and suddenly spring on them and claim they all owe you money.
-Andy
``Does your search engine move as fast as your business? Click here to download a FREE trial version. AltaVista search engine 3.0''.
How ironic.
I wonder, can still use grep or do I have to pay some asshole who lives off the backs of others?
Calling CMGI a megacorp is like calling Slashdot an example of professional journalism.
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"I'm the King of the Trolls!"
That's enough to build some talking points:
And you know the entertaining part? If the "indexing patent" turns out to be effective in court, search engines are liable to move web sites to offshore locations (Seahaven? :-)) where the offending patents do not apply.
If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate.
I should know, I posted it. Slashdot scooped everyone with the story last Thursday as far as I can tell.
What the hell has Financial Times been reading if they can't cover the story in a timely fashion, and why should we have to read it again. It's a great story but come on!
...can I patent the word 'search'? I'll be a zillionaire within two days: I'll ask every search engine to pay me a cent for each page requested by any user which carries the word 'search'.
How come I haven't thought about that before?
-- There are two kind of sysadmins: Paranoids and Losers. (adapted from D. Bach)
Is the FTP search system 'archie' prior art to this type of technology? I'm sure I remember using it before the Web took off (around 1991?)
Pity you had to post about it and wipe of the moderation!
Drag n' Drop DVD Recommendations
So, do you feel bad about it, or are you flattered that somebody will actually hunt down your posts to gain karma?
Let me get this straight. You're complaining because you have a possibility to charge money from them? Just click on the ad. The evil corp will pay and a Linux site gets the money.
It's going to be interesting to see if the court will uphold patenting "-what the Internet is-", when it was developed with public tax dollars.
Actually, Wetherell is saying the internet is a distributed set of databases, which I personally don't agree with myself.
-- iCEBaLM
Does that mean they'll sue patent search engines for infringing their patents?
"Hot lesbian witches! It's fucking genius!"
My family owns and operates an ISP, and I'd love to ban traffic from *.altavista.com...
If I had permission on the company web server. The only problem is, one of our revenue sources is selling webspace, and I doubt our customers would appreciate being excluded from one of the largest search engines out there...
What's this Submit thingy do?
"Homo sum: humani nil a me alienum puto"
(I am a man: nothing human is alien to me)
My only political goal is to see to it that no political party achieves its goals.
I hope that all of the moderators see fit to moderate quincyq down. He is a low-life plagiarist who takes credit for the research, thoughts, and writings of others.
Soon, and very soon, the Internet will render itself useless, when traffic exceeds its capacity and or speed requirements abandon it. At this point CMGI and all the other patent grubbers will realize their technicalities will render their patents useless. You see all of their patents will be for the "Internet," and won't apply to any new technologies. Technically speaking, that is.
----------------------
Still, I would like to watch this pursued, because:
-
If they sue for patent infringement and get shot down, it will be a victory for the Internet. However, the notion of "Intellectual Property" not being absolutely ownable is going cast a cloud of uncertainty over many IP and internet related businesses. Ultimately, this could cause a downturn in the economy.
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If they sue and win, we can all look forward to "owning" the "Next Big Thing". As coders, our salaries are directly related to the fact that someone can "own" an idea. We merely need to organize our efforts, patent the blatantly obvious, and bilk Corporate America - then we will see a change in patent law.
Either way, we can exploit this to our advantage.The society for a thought-free internet welcomes you.
http://goatse.cx
Thank you,
Aunt Mable... awww yeah!
-- Eat your greens or I'll hit you!
-- Eat your greens or I'll hit you!
Google.org changed its domain name one before, to google.com. Why can't it officially redirect traffic to google.co.uk? Are european companies bound to respect silly US patents?
Jamie (or Rob or Hemos) could you please answer this question . Thanks you
Cypherpunks: Civil Liberty Through Complex Mathematics. Those who live by the sword die by the arrow.
Hunh.
I feel like it wasn't that long ago that AltaVista was altavista.digital.com, and was the coolest thing out there. I mean really. Some guys at DEC put together the first search engine on a bunch of Alphas, and I remember being amazed as the web grew, and the number of hits it took increased, it didn't really get any slower.
Then DEC shat the bed, amd Altavista got sold to CMGI. And I Google happened, and suddenly I could not only get a bunch of hits, but a bunch of *relevent* hits.
This sucks whole thing sucks, because those guys at DEC did do it first, and at the time it was way cool. Now I have to hate AltaVista because:
I'm in the process of starting a website devoted towards libertarianism, including things such as the near abolition of the patent system. Could you tell me what I'll need to do to keep them from indexing my site?
But if they start winning lawsuits it won't matter if you boycott them since they will be getting royalties from Google, Lycos, etc.
What's a boycott is if it's not a threat?
I didn't pay for my operating system either
This is a really popular question, I seem to get it every time I post a story that is in any way negative about a company that has ever advertised on Slashdot.
I really have no control over it. Let me explain this to you. Our editorial and writing staff are not influenced by, nor do we influence, our staff that buys banner ads. There is a total disconnect there. They can sell ads to whoever they want, I have -- let me say this again because apparently it's such an awe-inspiringly difficult concept that few people are able to comprehend it -- I have no control over whose ads appear on a story I post.
Brace for reality: most places consider this a good thing. You know, like, not having the ad for Famous Ray's Website appear on the page facing the flattering review of Famous Ray's Website?
Like, not having the marketing department staffers come sit down in my cubicle and say "we'd like you to review Famous Ray's Website, and we think they're really good, you'll probably agree with us, we hope."
I don't know those staffers. I don't want to know those staffers. They have never done that and it doesn't come up because we don't talk to each other.
While it is a little annoying to me that some companies whose policies I disagree with *cough* DoubleClick continue to put banner ads on our webpages, I will not try to influence ad sales, because then ad sales will come try to influence me. They leave me alone; I leave them alone.
Don't like it? Tough. Think that this is an "oversight" or that this makes Slashdot or myself somehow corrupt or stupid or evil? Please go away.
(Sorry. I'm in a bad mood. I just posted a story duplicate -- except for the dmoz.org search tool, that's cool and it's new, go download it and mess with it.)
Jamie McCarthy
Jamie McCarthy
jamie.mccarthy.vg
I wouldn't even pretend to argue that I don't think this sort of patent is completely stupid, unwarranted, bad, dangerous, etc. However, I think if you're going after CMGI, and other companies who work within the law to do these kinds of things, you'll be fighting a losing battle.
CMGI, as a public company, is required to make money. As much of it as they possibly can. They're even liable if they don't do what they need to do to make money. You can't blame them for trying to do whatever they can, within the law, to make that money. These patents, sadly, are well within the law as it stands, and you can't expect them to listen when you say "Please, Mr. Big Company, give up gigantic profits and abandon your shareholders in order to stick to my principles and be nice!" They're not going to listen, and your boycott isn't going to make much a difference with all the visitors a site like AltaVista gets. And, like it or not, most visitors to Altavista probably don't give a crap about any sort of patents.
The battle to be fought here is not against companies who work within the law. The battle to be fought is with the USPTO, to get them to stop being morons. Reform of the USPTO, and reasonable judges who throw out moronic, obvious patents with prior art, is what's necessary here, not pleading some big company to do the "noble thing" and give up on a chance to make money. They don't do it because they're evil and enjoy stepping on the little guy and exerting power over the world. They do it because they need to make money, and they'll do whatever they need to do to make it. That's how they pay their employees and keep their shareholders happy.
Submitted before I was done. Here is my whole comment:
Hunh.
I feel like it wasn't that long ago that AltaVista was altavista.digital.com, and was the coolest thing out there. I mean really. Some guys at DEC put together the first search engine on a bunch of Alphas, and I remember being amazed as the web grew, and the number of hits it took increased, it didn't really get any slower.
Then DEC shat the bed, and Altavista got sold to CMGI. And I Google happened, and suddenly I could not only get a bunch of hits, but a bunch of *relevent* hits.
This sucks whole thing sucks, because those guys at DEC did do it first, and at the time it was way cool. Now I have to hate AltaVista because:
a) AltaVista sucks compared to, say Google.
b) Their new corperate overlords know this so they are trying to milk some overbroad patents for some cash.
I don't want to hate them. But I do.
spreer
Now another patent I will give 'no credance'. I don't know about everyone else, but my 'no credance' file is getting mighty full.
Alas, poor clippy, I loath him so.
That explains what happens when you search Google for "dumb motherfucker". Still puts a smile on my face though
Trust The Computer, The Computer is your friend.
quick! go and set up mirrors of yet another piece of code that could be baned! while were at why dont we jsut search the whole web and mirror everything, or would that too be in violation of their patents?
This is all just noise from them anyway, they may be able to bully a few companies into paying royalties but if they go to trial they will probably lose. At least if these are the patents they're talking about, because they where all filed in 1998. Search engine technology was well established before these patents where filed. I remember using Lycos in '95 or '96. Even AltaVista was around before '98. So finding prior art should not be a problem.
If you think that maintaining a database the size of Altavista's is "basically just the same thing as a long handwritten list", then 1) it is very difficult to see how you could believe that anything at all might ever be patented and 2) you are in for a world of pain if you ever have to deal with one.
-- the most controversial site on the Web
well of course, you're connected at the same speed the slashdot server is obviously on!
Rader
Alltheweb. That's a new one to me - never heard of it. I guess I'll try it for a while.
Maybe the state's highest function is to grind out insoluble problems. (Zelazny, Hall of Mirrors)
and we've been doing automated indexing and cataloging since the 1950's. We've been doing it manually for hundreds of years. I can't wait to see the American Library Association get involved with this one...
I think that's exactly how Unisys got the patent on LZW (the compression used in gifs).
-----
Free P2P Backup, Windows & Linux
Or, if you're really vicious (and are willing to waste some bandwidth) you could redirect their spider into a dynamically generated infinite web trap. Basically, you always send their spider a dynamically generated page that has a whole bunch of links to other "pages" on your site, plus random keywords and metatags. The system I saw used a series of nested virtual directories to prevent accidental duplication, so that directory /a would have files a.html, b.html, ..., and all of the links in a.html would be to /a/a/*.html, etc. The spider can keep following the links forever because they're dynamically generated, so it gets trapped in an infinite search of your site. Any user who follows one of the links from the site, though, would be directed to a page explaining how evil Alta-Vista is.
There's no point in questioning authority if you aren't going to listen to the answers.
Either that, or the company execs should be forced to listen to Microsoft PR for a month, continuously.
Whichever is worse.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
No. Due to Google's rating of sites by counting links, it is excellent at finding out what most everybody already knows. I'm an engineer. Usually I need just the opposite.
br> Google also has the disconcerting habit of giving first rank to a site which does not have any of the words you asked for, because other sites that did have those words pointed to it. Alta Vista will also do this, I presume for other reasons. I generally use alltheweb, which assumes that what you asked for is what you actually want!
Why just settle for boycotting Alta-Vista... Why can't we block them from indexing our websites.
Is there a webmaster organization with enough members to confront Alta Vista and tell them that if they persist in this action that we will charge them for every webpage that they index?
sig:
sig:
See the "..for smart people" banners Wired runs here? Look elsewhere guys.
This patent would appear to fall under the reverse doctrine of equivalents. Altavista's patent is EXTREMELY broad, and unless Mr. Renquiest is feeling particularly vindictive these days, there is no way he and his peers will find this patent enforceable. The doctrine above, which comes from Graver Tank & Manufacturing Company vs. Linde Air Products Co (1950), states that where a patented device is so far changed in principle from a patented article that it performs the same or a similar function in a substantially different way, but nonetheless falls withihn the literal words of the claim', there is no infringement. Sounds like Google's PageRank to me.
Read up on robots.txt.
It's a file you can put in your web root that (well behaved) spiders look for.
You can use it to tell spiders not to index your whole site, or certain parts of it.
Normally good for keeping bots out of places they shouldn't be, but it can be used to ban bots.
Or, you could just drop any traffic coming from *.altavista.com...
--K
You are in need of a history lesson. Originally, the predominent PC compression format was the ARC format created by System Enhancement Associates (SEA). Phil Katz (PKWare) released PKARC, which created and manipulated ARC files. He was sued by SEA and, in a settlement, was allowed to release one last version with the ARC format which was called PKPAK. After that, PKWare had to develop its own format for future versions. This lawsuit turned out to be a horrible mistake on SEA's part. PKware placed their new ZIP format in the public domain, and BBS (Bulletin Board System) sysops and users touched off a massive boycott of the ARC format, killing it (and System Enhancement Associates) off.
You don't feel so smug anymore, do you?
they go bankrupt first?
sulli
RTFJ.
What a scumball!
I would like to redirect requests to my site from Altavista to say... yahoo.com instead... How do I do that?
Eric Aitala
www.f1m.com
If you really want to boycott - refuse to buy any more VAXes... :-)
I find it incredibly ironic that Slashdot advertises for Altavista Search Engine 3.0, then posts this article with jamie's 'commentary'.
These idiots try to sound idealistic & self rightous, but are just out slinging the 'popular anti-pop' crap.
They're Laughing all the way to the bank.
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"I'm the King of the Trolls!"
From the US Patent and Trademark Office web patent database, there are only two patents listed where the AltaVista Company is the assignee.
However, there are a large number in which Digital Equipment is the assignee and that refer to "search engine". If I'm not mistaken, DEC developed AltaVista, Compaq bought DEC and then sold off AltaVista. I suppose the original assignee may have re-assigned the rights as part of a sale, so who knows how many of these are owned by CMGI.
This algorithm is based on the chinese fortune cookie amusement generation algorithm:
;)
1) Read fortune
2) Add the phrase "in bed" the end of the fortune.
Web patent generation algorithm:
1) Read previous patent
2) Add the phrase "on the web"
3) Mask in legalese
4) Apply for shiny new patent
(Note: This method is patent pending....
Incredible.
:-( and planned to sue 7,000,000 people for trademark infringement.
The unadulterated greed of so many corporate behemoths is so absurd that it even can't even be parodied.
I saw an article yesterday at The Register about how Despair.com had registered a trademark on the frown emoticon-
As absurd as the joke is, it pales compared to what is actually being legitimately discussed by CMGI.
Of course, CMGI has little alternative, given their dire stock situation. Have you seen their stock chart recently? If it were a ski slope, it'd be a triple black diamond.
User-agent: scooter
Disallow: /
in your robots.txt file should do the trick. A Google search on "Robot Exclusion Protocol" will give more information on this.
And to think, I used my moderation for this.
I had a feeling you were going to say that.
Planning to be moderated ± 1: Bad Pun.
there is no way they'll be able to prosecute anyone. its like trying to patent the 'for' loop. jeez http://www.webskeleton.com
Another one of those. Pity you can't sue the companies applying for such patents for fraud. Ah well. Anyway, did you guys miss this story or did I just miss the /. posting of it?
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
All of the indexed search engines on the internet are now scared because they are about to become extinct. CMGI is just now taking action on this patent stuff because they realize that the patent will not be worth a dime once distributed search technologies are uncovered.
Trust me, there are a whole bunch of companies right now that are developing search technologies that will cause Excite, Lycos, AltaVista, Yahoo, Hotbot, Google, etc. to go the way of the dinosaur. Sooner than you think.
If I were AltaVista, I would be suing everyones ass off while i still have a chance.
*shrug*
-- Betting on the survival of the media industry is a serious risk. I advise investing elsewhere.