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Do Patents Stop Companies From Creating 'Perfect' Products?
Chris M writes "In a recent CNET article, the mobile phone editor writes about what he thinks would make a perfect phone. Unfortunately, as someone in the comments section points out, much of the technology that is used in this concept phone belongs to separate companies. 'I'm sorry to be the Devil's Advocate here, but most of those feautres are patented to separate companies. It would require almost all the major manufacturers [working together] to do this, which is highly unlikely.' Do you think patents are stopping companies from creating 'perfect' devices, or are there other factors at work?"
I did not RTFA (glanced at first page), but first off, I doubt there is a perfect phone that is perfect for everybody. Every product has tradeoffs, and certain product directions appeal to some people but not others, especially when they affect price. Sometimes it is just plane personal preference.
I think in certain respects patents spur competition and make every phone better. Each company tries to come up with something that their competitor hasn't thought of to help differentiate their product. They would be less likely to invest the time and effort to develop innovations if they knew their competitor would just immediately copy it. The really perfect phone would not be possible to begin with without all these previous innovations. One could argue that patents made the author's ideal phone possible, but it is more a business issue whether it ever comes to market.
During WWII, the British and Germans both independently and secretly discovered chaff as a radar countermeasure. Neither side used it in the beginning because they were more afraid of the enemy copying them and gaining a bigger advantage than they themselves would receive.
(I do think software patents need to be drastically reformed or completely done away with altogether)
No, managers and unreasonable deadlines prevent companies from creating "perfect products".
however
2)A bad idea is still a bad idea.
The simple truth is that interstellar distances will not fit into the human imagination
- Douglas Adams
Except that in the modern world, features frequently are patented. Or the method patented is so broad that it covers all possible implementations.
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
Once you get all these teams together and you get everyone to agree and sign off on something the patents are damn near expired and the advancement isn't worth anything from a patent rights aspect.
Dedicated Cthulhu Cultist since 4523 BC.
Patents are a big problem, when someone patents the equvalent of a hammer, and you're stuck without a really basic tool.
Other times, someone patents "the way it's done" and the result is, when you try and find another way to do it, you actually find a better way.
The problem is, you never know which one you're going to get when you're just starting. I definitely thing innovation can overcome most patents, but a lot of time that's a real pain in the ass, when all you want to build is a slightly better breadbox.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
Would be a piece of software on your computer that has every possible feature anyone could want for their cell phone.
Then you could drag and drop the desired features onto the phone that is plugged into your computer via USB.
That would be the perfect phone.
You can improve a patent and then get a different patent for it. So it seems to me that someone saying that it's patents holding this back only show their ignorance of the patent system.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
What it stops is lazy designers from trying to find alternative solutions. You know that whole standing on the shoulders of giants thing. Learning from others' disclosures. All that jazz!
At worst, in twenty years we'll get the perfect phone. I suppose I can wait that long for perfection...
Perfect Devices are bad for business because it leaves no room for failure, improvements, and other features which companies rely on. If your computer was always easily upgraded, and you never needed that new Video Card, what good would it be for the companies?
"Do you think patents are stopping companies from creating 'perfect' devices, or are there other factors at work?"
...twice, if you have to.
No -- Yes.
I say that because the patent system, good, bad or otherwise, has been around long enough that if there was genuine smothering of genius going on, it would have been a major topic long since, and because everyone has a different interpretation of 'perfect' devices. (left handed versus right - textured vs. smoothed...)
For those that need a concept to wrap their heads around, read the book 'The Difference Engine'
This guy's "perfect" phone sucks for me, why?
No QWERTY keyboard. I use my phone more often for email than actually using it as a phone. A QWERTY keyboard is a necessity - there is nothing more frustrating than trying to type an email on a standard phone keypad. Predictive typing software mostly sucks.
If a company could create the "perfect" phone, the financial rewards of such a device would make either patent licensing, or litigation acceptable costs.
The problem is, no one knows what the "perfect" phone should look like, or how it should operate. For every person that wants a QWERTY keyboard there are those that don't.
The whole argument reminds me of the "cancer cure" conspiracy theorists that say the cure for cancer is not available since it would hurt the profits of those companies that provide treatments. Baloney! The cure would be worth 10 times the entire treatment regimen of the patient.
The perfect phone doesn't exist because it can not be defined.
-ted
No, of course, it's only patents! If only it weren't for those pesky patents, we would achieve perfection and transcend the physical plane.
Obviously patents prevent people from making spiffy devices. you have to license the patents, and it's not hard to imagine patent licensing agreements that prohibit the inclusion of other (competing) technologies. It would actually go a long way towards explaining why more software-based mp3 players don't support ogg. It wouldn't cost much to include the support, especially since someone else has done almost all the work for you (and there are fp, int, and mixed implementations, even.)
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Great, show me an example?
Yes I am familiar with the patent system. Probably more familiar then 90% of the people who post on slashdot and rail against the patent system.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
I'd love to see phone GPS used for more... I think we're starting to get there with directions, but what about other GPS devices. OK, I really just care about golf courses. Why should I have to buy a SkyCaddie if my phone has an LCD and GPS built in? Just let me pay the annual fee and not have two devices.
To me, a layman, it does seam like basic tools have most of their "methods" and "apparatus" patented, so that startups have no hope of making anything more complex than a wheelbarrow without stepping at least one patent or another. Maybe it would be a good idea to farm recently outdated patents for business ideas. Anything made to those patents' specifications should be immune to newer patents, and a good way to invalidate copycat patents.
Always going forward, 'cause we can't find reverse.
I'm so bleeding smart that I don't know the basics about what I've just claimed to be so smart about.
Check out Amazon's "One Click" patent. Go ahead.
definitely written by someone with no knowledge of the product design cycle, nor has he ever done any marketing research.
I work too hard for my illusions just to throw them all away.
The intent of the patent system is to foster innovation by protecting new inventions.
New Inventions, not new concepts An invention is a specific implementation of a concept. If you can't specify how it's built, it's just a concept. (Or rather, that's the way it's supposed to work. Software patents are a slightly different kettle of fish, but the same rules should apply)
The protection garnered by a patent grant is one of an exclusive monopoly. You can prevent anyone else (within the patent office's jurisdiction) from stealing your invention, even if you would be infringing on other people's patents if you tried to make it yourself.
So, Mr. Lim could go ahead and apply for a patent on his ideal phone, and turn around and license it to LG or Samsung or Motorola or Nokia and let them negotiate with the individual patent holders. Meanwhile, the phone doesn't get built due to ongoing negotiations, but it stays patented, and if any manufactures are sufficiently interested to license the design, Mr. Lim collects royalties.
(IANAL - but I am a law student writing my senior paper on patents)
If there's a patent on an efficient method of doing something on a phone, then maybe you can't change the formula enough to get away with something functionally equivilant given the battery life decrease. Have you seen how generic patents are?
About 10 years ago I dimly remember reading in one of the Mac magazines -- Macworld or Macuser, I think -- their take on the perfect PDA/Phone. They had photos of a mockup, though I can't remember if it was real or photoshopery. I seem to remember that Frog Design was involved.
Does anyone else recall this? I'd like to read the article again -- I bet it would be pretty interesting.
- AJ
of the "perfect" device of any sort and it would require appropriate licensing (or wrongful patent lawsuits is some unfortunate cases) to develop. That is true.
It does allow the little guy to get credit where it is due though and it requires true innovation in the field and not plagiarism of an idea. I do agree that it is relatively ridiculous that 20 year patents are allowed in technological fields where the idea itself will be obsolete in 5, but a lot of the Slashdot community tends to overlook the good that is also done.
Well, back to rejecting software patent applications.
It's a phone, as in something you call with.
For email, you'd be wanting a portable computer with some form of wireless connectivity %-)
Company A patents technology X, but has no interest in making a product that has technology X plus feature Y. Company B would like to make a product with technology X and feature Y, but is stumped by the patent. Result: the world never gets an X+Y product.
This is not just theoretical. I work in a field knee deep in patents and I see this sort of nonsense all the time.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
A small, rectangular object capable of making and receiving voice communications, perhaps using some type of numerical input pad.
That said, I haven't seen anything like that for sale in years. You know, a simple, cellular phone?
Our patent system, as broken as it is, doesn't incumber products nearly as much as incompetent companies and mindless consumers.
**AA: a bunch of mindless jerks who'll be the first against the wall when the revolution comes
ummm well, TFA is describing a perfect "Phone" not a phone with bult-in PDA or phone with emailing functionality etc.
SGH-X820 Except of course that the "perfect" phone is 10mm thick and the samsung 6.9mm ;)
gzip is an example of something that could be better if it weren't for patents. It is intentionally made less efficient and slower (by using less efficient algorithms) due to patents on better compression algorithms.
However, if gzip could use these algorithms, would it be *perfect*?
This is not a big problem - for a big company. A Big company could easily license the IP from their competitors to build the 'perfect' phone.
Of course, that elimenates all the little guys from competing because they can't afford to license the technology.
On the other hand, companies prefer to purposefully 'differentiate' their products so the customer is presented with a choice - which the company is banking on. You will probably never see the 'perfect' phone, as a result. It is the nature of the beast.
Lodragan Draoidh
The more you explain it, the more I don't understand it. - Mark Twain
I got an easier one: it's not a flip phone.
Sure, it may be a pithy and innane requirement, but I don't like those flat phone styles in the slightest.
not the idea itself.
The main issue I have with the patent system is that it is not functioning to protect the process of implementation. One cannot patent the idea of a "water tight connector" for example, but one could patent the process / design for creating one. This would then protect the patent holder for a *period of time.* Once that period of time is over, its wide open for cheap knock offs.
Based on both concepts above (the idea can't be patented; the process will eventually be available) I don't think patents are stopping the perfect anything. I think it is more likely that your version of a perfect something is drastically different than my version.
Don't waste time... procrastinate now!
CDMA.
Try building a phone that works with the CDMA cellular network, and doesn't violate Qualcomm's patent. It's not going to happen. They've patented too much stuff that's too fundamental to making an interoperable device.
If you piss them off, or if they decide for some reason not to license their patent(s) to you (e.g., you want to make a multi-network phone and their other customers -- the telcos -- don't like the idea), you're S.O.L. as far as most of the U.S. cellphone market is concerned.
Video compression is the same way. Try to build an MPEG-4 encoder that doesn't violate the MPEGLA's patents; it's not going to happen. Sure, you could build some completely unrelated video encoder, but that's of extremely limited utility in a world where standards matter.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
Of course patents and companies prevent the perfect product. This can be said about anything. As long as there is economy, profit, governments, and corporations a synergy of technology and science will never be made.
A perfect anything is idealistic at best.
Actually, this is extremely simple. How many OGG files are there on the average Joe's computer? Zero. How many web sites sell downloadable music files in OGG format? A few, probably. How many popular software products do anything at all with OGG format files? Zero, I believe.
So we have a pretty unpopular format with a niche following.
Now we have the decision between a 64K chip and a 128K chip in a given device. Or some similar trade-off on ROM space and maybe RAM space. Is it worth the expense of moving to the 128K chip to support OGG? Nobody is going to be able to sell that one.
Is there a device with enough ROM space available to fit OGG in at the supposed near-zero cost the parent claims? Maybe. But there isn't any real interest. Certainly not on a feature-to-feature comparison chart. They are going to use that ROM space to add features that count to the Average Joe, not the niche OGG market.
I just submitted the exact same thing (in a much more drawn out rambling kind of way).
Don't waste time... procrastinate now!
Can anyone explain what the advantage of dual batteries is? TFA describes this "feature", but not what the benefits are.
LS
There is a fine line between being a cultivated citizen and being someone else's crop. - A. J. Patrick Liszkie
Add the ability to use this theoretical phone on ANY network, forcing Verizon, ATT, Sprint/Nextel, etc. into a world where if I get screwed by a vendor, I take my phone with me to another network, and it still works....just like radio does if it can reach the appropriate EM spectrum. (Checked the per-unit cost of an FM radio or walkie talkie lately?)
Suddenly the phone becomes a commodity, not a gatekeeper -- the proverbial razor handle -- so the various telcos have to be more competitive and the hand set developers that were previously beholden to produce phones for specific networks and technologies now have to compete and have the incentive to cross license their technologies to the nth degree -- like has already happened in the commoditization of hardware in the Win/DOS/Linux worlds.
But as long as there is a tie between which phones work on which networks, and extended service contracts are allowed and the norm, I just don't see things changing, meaning that patent wars are an inevitable but viable part of a company's strategies.
...Open Source isn't the only answer -- but it's almost always a better value than the alternatives...
...not even if you think you're mixing the best features from each.
...it wouldn't be perfection.
If only you could combine a Big Mac and a Hershey bar...
If only you could combine Fred Astaire and Rudolf Nuruyev...
If only Gary Trudeau could draw like Albert Dürer...
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
This wouldn't be that silly sheet of metal which was sold as some space-age metal which would thaw your meat quicker, would it? I believe *that* was identified as being basically fraudulent claims since it relies on nothing more than a well known property of metals to conduct heat, and used nothing more than a piece of common aluminum..
I seriously doubt there's a faster way to thaw your meat (without partially cooking it, or altering it) than to immerse it into cold water. Good luck on patenting that one.
Cheers
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Many industry segments managed to sort this out some time ago. Cross licensing means that companies can use each others patents for a reasonable fee. Any microchip will have technology developed by dozens of companies. It's not perfect - companies are still suing each other left and right, but generally they try to get compensation rather than block their opponents.
Many already mentioned that the idea of a perfect phone even without being held back by patents is close to near impossible. Too many people with different likes and dislikes. So back to the original question, I do think patents are holding back development of great devices. The patent process is so skewed and broken that creating a great device will be both difficult and expensive. How can one person patent just an idea with no real work to even support how possible it is. How can a person patent two handle and patent it for people who doesn't know how to jumprope. Some ideas are basic common sense but patents are allowed to be created. One-Click purchase, again one of those common sense patent that should go away. In that sense a lot of "common" idea that are patented does hinder and prevent development of good/great products.
Consumer devices aren't designed in a vacuum. There has to be a place to sell them. If someone came up with the idea for a really wonderful music player 10 years ago and it took 10 years to have the device produced in all its perfection, it would be a flop. iPod owns the market. So we have had a succession of modestly successful devices that weren't perfect but made it to market.
Software is often the same thing. You sell a distributor on a product and they want it for Christmas. Come October, you are going to ship a product. Period. Miss the window and you have a failure. It doesn't matter how great or perfect the product would have been - you missed the window and the time for it has past.
You have to be able to put up with a level of defect in a product and deliver it in a reasonable period of time. If you can't deliver it, it isn't going to sell because it isn't on the shelf. Doesn't matter how perfect it might have been. Are fewer defects better? Yes, but not at the expense of the marketing plan.
Flip phones are so TOS. How about a pin we can wear on our shirts?
We should try to seperate patents from their application. Too often the patent holders want to be the only people creating the product. Well patents & IP generally is a protection afforded by the state so the state can set some limits. Why not have it so that every year there is an anonomyous open market bidding for usage of every patent that allows multiple people to buy in at highest price ? (and to stop the holder firm bidding a gidzillion dollars attach a profit tax of say 5% to it).
I think what should be done is a fixed-percent "patent tax". All devices pay a fixed percent of sales, say 10%, to a quasi-government organization that distributes the royalties to the various patent holders. Disputes over patent applicability are to be taken up between patent holders, NOT patent users. That way you can make whatever the heck you want and let the patent holders fight out any disputes instead.
Table-ized A.I.
Your comment has reminded me of a long-standing question that's been floating around in my head for a while and I've never seen an answer to.
Why is it that you don't see generic knockoffs of expensive razor blades? Is it that the razor blade companies change the form factors fast enough that patents protect the properly-fitting blades until they're irrelevant? Is it that razor blades actually are expensive enough to produce that generics can't make money? Is there something else I'm missing?
Reality has a conservative bias: it conserves mass, energy, momentum...
But if you have to add the feature in a non-optimal way in order to get around patents, the product is no longer perfect.
The tech can be licensed, or worked around. A friend used to work at a mfg plant where the managers would bring a rival's product and ask him "can you make these?" He'd say sure. Once mentioned a patent notice on the gizmo he was charged with reproducing and said something to the manager, who replied "that's what we have lawyers for." The lawyers will get a notice from the rivals, then tell the techs what needed to be changed to be legal. Often getting around a patent was as easy as substituting brass for copper!
As to the "perfect phone," I'm almost as unimpressed by his "perfect" phone as I am with C|NET and its two paragraphs per ad-laden page web site. I'm perfectly happy with my Razr (I'd be happier if I could save MP3s on it). Submitters, be warned: if you submit a shitty site like C|NET and I'm drinking from the firehose, I'll vote you down!
-mcgrew
How about a phone that morphs like the Terminator from T2? Has a keyboard when you need it and turns into a non-descript piece of metal when you don't.
Just because it's not possible now doesn't mean it's impossible.
Help! I'm a slashdot refugee.
I miss the perfect phone, the base Bell System model. Something fundamental has been lost: The experience of hanging up. You could hang up a Bell System phone as violently or as delicately as you liked. It was indestructible. There were few things more satisfying that slamming the phone down on the hook, pounding the receiver against your desk or hurling it at the wall.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
True, but that's still a problem with ultraportables. Below a certain size, keyboards start to become unusable. Voice recognition is slow, as is handwriting recognition. One answer I can think of is the use of laser projection to project keyboards on any random flat surface, that also scans to allow typing. These do exist, they sell them at thinkgeek.
You know, just because something is patented doesn't mean you aren't allowed to use it. If you can't work around a patent, you can always license it. Most patent-owners will not impose ridiculous terms since it means the patent won't generate money. So you can probably license the technology and use it to create your so-called "perfect" invention.
Patents would become meaningless in your system.
Do you have any references to back up your claim?
Patrick Doyle
I mod down every jackass who puts his moderation policy in his sig. Oh, wait a sec....
errm... microwaves?
Intron: the portion of DNA which expresses nothing useful.
The flip out keyboard on the Nokia E70 works pretty well for me. So does the built in wifi and sip client -- When I'm at home the phone is a handset on my asterisk phone system. Calls made out go out over the landline (T-Mobile reception at my house sucks.) When I'm not at home calls go out over cellular. That has the added benefit that my phone system "knows" when I'm not home since there are no extensions to ring when I'm not there. I'm not sure even the iPhone will be capable of that little trick. It seems to have all the hardware to make it happen but I'd be surprised if AT&T would stand for that.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
How about a fuzzy-logic temperature controller and circulation system for the water bath? Off to the patent office...
I don't think you can have a "perfect phone" that doesn't have a keyboard at least as good as the Sidekick.
A "perfect phone" should take into account that text messaging and IMing are at least as important if not more so than actual audio calls.
Randy.Flood@RHCE2B.COM
All of that sounds great for lawyers, corporations, and patent holders, but it sounds horrible for consumers. I thought the purpose of patents was to foster innovation for the benefit of the society - if so many great inventions get trapped inside patent hell, exactly how does that benefit anyone?
Sounds more to me like a bunch of individual monopolies each trying to force their competitors either out of business or to their knees, resulting in a slew of competing products that do nothing but frustrate consumers due to their lack of interoperability.
How many picture card formats do we have now? 15 major ones? Is that REALLY necessary? There's something to be said for innovation and competition, sure, but there's a reason we invent standards.
We are the fire that lights our world.. and we are the fire that consumes it.
if you require patent X to make the "perfect" product, it would be worth licensing that patent. It's the same thing with any product, if it's worth the licensing fee, then it will come to pass. If not, then it probably would not be that "perfect" of a product after all, or else the business forecasts for sales would capture that value and require that patent purchase/license. Henry Ford licensed the freaking engine from some guy for the original Ford cars... a patent on the internal combustion engine causes issues... he basically waited until the patent expired and then could slash prices, but the car was so popular it really didn't matter.
stuff |
Do you think patents are stopping companies from creating 'perfect' devices, or are there other factors at work?
Of course there are. Companies are (if they are any good) motived to make the most money with the least effort. The 80-20 Rule speaks directly to this motivation. The "perfect" product is almost in direct opposition to it.
"They would be less likely to invest the time and effort to develop innovations if they knew their competitor would just immediately copy it." I think could eaily be rewritten to
"They would be less likely to invest the time and effort to develop innovations when they could just copy them from their competitors."
Companies are lazy and risk adverse.
Think Deeply.
bzzzzt
Microwaves will absolutely start cooking your food. If you wanted to end up with thawed, raw meat, which wasn't altered any more than the freezing process had already done, a microwave would NOT meet that criterion.
Cheers
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
I stopped reading as soon as I saw Motorola and usability in one sentence. Simple things like pressing 'call' and redirecting anywhere but to your addressbook is simply annoying.
javascript, camera's, dildo's, games, outlook, powerpoint etc. I don't care about. I need a phone. Long batterylife, ease of use.
A standardized battery and simple usb connection without a crappy Nokia app or bluetooth behemoth, those are high on my wishlist.
Ownership can limit what knowledge or technologies you put into a potential product, so of course it is limiting. While not all of us may agree on the "perfect" product, we all agree that "more perfect" products exist, which is why we pick one (Linux) over another (-1 Troll).
Mandatory licensing, although it sounds fascist, could be a good idea. If you own a technology that others can use, you could be forced to license it at a fair market rate so as not to restrict innovation. Innovation benefits everyone in society after all, or at least that's what I keep telling my psychologist.
technical writing / development
Do you think patents are stopping companies from creating 'perfect' devices
Yes...thread over.
Must be nice to live in the pie-in-the-sky world of perfection, where nothing stands in your way. Liberalism is a mental disorder.
Yeah, the keyboards do suck on small devices. I've tried loads of things - Palm III, Zodiac II, HTC Pocket PC (the iPaq style device) but honestly nothing beats task-specific devices.
It's really only battery life and charging capabilities which let mobile tech down now..
I have a question about this so-called "perfect phone" Does it cure cancer? AIDS? End world hunger? Effectively put an end to all wars? Provide a sustainable power source? (There must be someway to harness the raw power of teenage girl gab...) If not, then it is clearly not a "perfect" phone. For me, the "perfect phone" will have all of these, and probably some I'm forgetting right now.
"Now I'm seriously serious!" - Serious Sam
The idea is to have an edge over your competitors... How exactly could that be possible if it didn't prevent companies from releasing "perfect products"?
Internet: Serious Business
Ideally. However, it seems like various US courts since the 80s or so have severely weakened the obviousness and enablement portions of the patent-granting procedures. Without enablement, for example, you are basically patenting features. Have a look at all the business method patents being granted and tell me that those are patenting specific implementations, rather than concepts. Things are even worse with patent lawyers being trained to write the patents so as to abuse the system by being as vague as possible.
I would love to create a new "self-checkout" system like the ones that I see at Kroger and Publix. I think the ones out there right now suck. The only reason that I don't is that I know it would be a patent nightmare, and I doubt any of the patents are for stuff that is "inobvious". But I don't have time or money to fight it in court for years.
We have to admit at some point that patents very very rarely actually perform the intended use, which is to spur innovation. Instead, companies are using goofy patents on obvious stuff to stifle competition, particularly from smaller upstarts. It's like opposite day. But it never ends.
Do you have ESP?
According to an episode of Good Eats I saw (Season 3, "What's up, Duck?") it was demonstrated that a slow trickle of cold water was the fasted method of thawing something frozen.
*** Where are we going? And what's with this handbasket?
get licenses and build the darn thing. the lawyers will be able to find out the terms and refer them to the business side guys. they will add up what the licenses cost and see if the product can make any money. if not, it won't happen.
if it can, then they'll have the engineers do further development and probably also try to whittle the licensing fees down some.
if it gets ugly... well, you know the Stages Of Rejection. a project can die at any stage for any sensible or nonsensical reason.
it gets better if your guys have a few patents or patents pending on this device. then you can ratchet the fees down a bit by cross-licensing your patents to the other guys.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
Humans stop companies from creating perfect products pure and simple. And plus no matter how good a product is there is always going to be someone who bitches about it, because if there's one thing I've learned on /. it's that people love to bitch.
Squawk, squawk! Hello! Squawk! I submitted the same thing! Squawk! Hello! Squawk!
Ummm... perhaps you are one of those folks who incorrectly believes that microwaves "cook food from the inside out" or some such nonsense. Microwaves heat molecules, period, and don't penetrate very far through food. If you want to thaw food, turn it off before it starts to cook. Mine calculates the time for this fairly accurately based on the weight.
Intron: the portion of DNA which expresses nothing useful.
I've been looking at deploying a similar setup here except with the Televantage PBX software instead of Asterisk. Is that a feature of the phone or a feature of your PBX or some combination of both?
patents protect revenue.
They're using their grammar skills there.
Two batteries? 5 megapixel camera? oled + ClearVision display? After reading through the 'perfect phone' I started wondering how much cash the perfect customer has.
Of course I'll also repeat what many other people have said. There is no perfect phone - especially once you take price into account. For instance, if all you do is make calls and you have poor eyesight, the F3 is great, the N95 terrible and over priced. Although if you want GPS, play movies, wifi etc, the F3 won't suite at all.
There are a few different markets in the phone segment, a perfect phone has to cater for them individually.
Budget buyers, Technophiles, music lovers, business users, rugged use, and some I probably didn't think of in the few seconds I devoted to the task.
Sometimes there is some overlap. But the variety of markets is why each manufacturer makes multiple phones.
Now my perfect phone would be a clamshell, ClearVision/e-ink outside display, hi-res lcd inside display, microSD card, bluetooth. I'm biased on the software so I'll skip describing that.
Oh there are some other things that are interesting...
Why two batteries? Why not one bigger one. I know so that you can not run down the main battery by listening to music but that is just silly.
One big battery would have more capacity than two smaller batteries and would allow the user to trade media time for talk time. If you want to be cute then just turn off the media system if you have less than two hours of talk time.
A five mega pixel camera is also cute but it only points one way. You can not use this phone as a video phone like some because you can not swivel the camera towards you.
So it is perfect for him phone.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
But his conclusions are entirely wrong. Patents give you the right to keep others from using your invention, but they don't give you the right to use it. Thus, when you take someone else's patent and improve it, you can patent the improvement, but you still can't make the device without the permission of the original patent holder. Likewise, the original patent holder can't make use of your improvement without your permission.
You are reading a copy of my copyrighted post.
Communication is now essentially instantaneous. Bob in New York patents a better belt buckle in 1850, Jim in San Francisco designs something similar. It'll be a minumum of a few months before someone who's seen one happens to see the other and he almost certainly won't care about whether it is or isn't patented and Bob isn't going to go to the expense of sending his lawyer across country for several months to find out. Even if there is a clash, the markets are so separate, it's not worth pursuing getting both sides in a single courtroom.
The pace of invention has continued to dramatically increase. Modern machinery turned up with the industrial revolution. Electricity only became a common power source in the last century. Computers are 60 or so years old. Home computers are less than 30 years old and only common in the last 15. The internet has only really spread in the last 10. And, right now, 3D prototyping tools are becoming available for the first time. Combine those increases in the power of tools for realizing ideas with the increase in population and you're comparing a patent system designed for one level of patenting with one that's being asked to handle exponentially more.
What can be patented has changed. The criteria of "That a reasonable person couldn't come up with on their own" sure as hell doesn't apply to One Click shopping (Wow, really, people would prefer less hassle? Rocket science!) nor does it apply to, Creative's "I have a large collection of music, I'd like to divide it up somehow, perhaps some kind of a folder analogy." which Apple got sued over for daring to copy from the desktop where it was common to MP3 players where somehow Creative were the only people who could ever think of it. Add in being able to patent everything from genes to ways of doing business and you've got a system that is in no way representative of the past.
In the scheme of things, 25 years isn't that long to wait. In a world where computing of 10 years ago is utterly different to the computing of today, a 25 year patent means "a means for using a casette player to store data" would just be coming out of patent protection. So, yes, in terms of digital technology and gene research where 25 years is the entire lifetime of the field, it absolutely stifles things and makes a great case for those mediums to have a 10, or ideally 5 year patent term limit - enough to benefit from your invention, not enough to stifle the whole industry for as long as it's been around again.
I've not read the article, because I thought it might be to frustrating to read about something I can't have. But here's my opinion on the logic of patents.
Innovation is an expensive process. If one company were to try an incorporate all the most innovative features into let's say a phone, it would be hella unaffordable as well. Case in point: the iPhone, though they certainly skimmed on features as well to save costs.
Patents mean that companies can recuperate costs of development, and they also lose their validity after a number of years. As this happens, economies of scale kick in and eventually these innovative features become affordable and can be integrated into e.g. a phone in 2035. Naturally someone will respond that by that time, the feature will be useless, but maybe it won't, I don't know. I see a technology like the pinch in the iPhone, as something that may always be useful on a tiny screen (assuming we won't have phones implanted into our skulls, or similar).
Anyway, this is just an opinion. I'm not arguing that all patents are right, but I do believe that there is some sense to having a patenting-system.
I really don't think there's any such thing as a "Perfect Device".
There is 'state of the art at the time it was built', but not "Perfect".
Even if you think a 1980s bag phone is "Perfect"... 20 years later, we can put out the same power (or more) in a much smaller and/or lighter formfactor, with significantly longer standby and talk time.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
It's probably true that small companies would be hampered in creating a 'perfect product' (whatever that is) by fear of stepping on patents. In the cell phone industry the big players ALL have patents and they do cross licensing -- they trade with eachother so they can use the patented solution without having to pay. So a big company that has a few important patents of its own, and is in good standing with the other big players, could probably make just about whatever phone they want to. At least that is my understandning after working in the industry for the last year.
patience is a virtue
You mentioned FUD. A big problem is patent FUD. What matters is what people think. Chilling effects. Many people think patents might be violated even when not. Or they feel they're not in violation but don't want to get in long expensive court battles even if victory is certain. Or they know they will be in violation of patents that should never have been granted, and calculate that trying to get them invalidated isn't worth the expense or that going ahead and hoping they aren't sued is too risky. These problems are made worse by the government's attitude of "when in doubt, grant the patents and let the courts sort 'em out." The patent office rakes in more fees, the lawyers get richer, the justice system hires more people to handle the load, and the rest of us foot the bill for this very expensive system.
As for examples, how about Apple's "Look and Feel" patents on the MacIntosh GUI? Microsoft was not allowed to use a trashcan icon. When they opted for a "recycle bin" they were nonetheless challenged again by Apple, weren't they? How about the hundreds of patents on the hundreds of tiny variations on arithmetic coding? While LZW and the GIF image format weren't too hard to work around, arithmetic coding was another matter. Only takes one of those hundreds of patent holders deciding to sue to make arithmetic coding not worth the trouble, not when Huffman is almost as good. The result is, no one will touch arithmetic coding even though the basic algorithm is free of patent protection. Instead, everyone uses Huffman coding. The primary difference between the long vanished "bzip" and "bzip2" is in bzip2, bzip's arithmetic coding was replaced with Huffman. People would not even use bzip because of that.
Note that we're talking about the users who by rights should have nothing to fear from whatever alleged patent violations authors may have committed. Instead, the possibility that a court might pull the plug, as nearly happened to the Blackberry, is enough to scare off users. Then there's the stunt SCO pulled, trying to shake down Linux users for $699 each in licensing fees, lest they convince a court that they aren't blowing a bunch of smoke and do manage to get an insanely draconian and unenforceable injunction ordering everyone to stop using Linux. That anyone actually paid SCO is sad. That patent trolls might have such leverage is ridiculous. Dell customers don't have to worry should Dell be found in violation of some patent. Dell's PCs won't suddenly stop working. But somehow Linux users do have to worry, with MS claiming Linux is in violation? WTF?
Intellectual Property is a monopolistic, selfish, and defective concept. It is "tyranny over the mind of man"
This immediately reminded me of how a patent disabled the ability to use Excel worksheets as if they were database tables. An update disabled it; it probably disguised itself as a security update, I'm not sure, but bottom line is, it installed itself and there was no way to undo it. Of course, I've switched to OpenOffice since then, so in a sense it's all in the past now, but at times like this I still feel like gutting the bastard who filed that patent.
Look at the biggest seller of recent history - the Motorola Razr. Great job of miniaturization and clean physical design. But the software - what a joke. The menu structure is user hostile and many of the "features" are less than usable.
Here's an example: the phone can be operated by voice command - push a button, speak the command and the phone does it. Sounds good, but the implementation is spotty at best. So you have a phone where you can say "camera" and have it launch the camera software - but there's no voice command to take a picture or to exit the camera software. Who thought that was a good idea?
If you work your way through the menus to actually take a picture, you'll find that the picture quality is - let's be generous and call it "awful". Almost usable in direct sunlight; don't even bother indoors. Megapixels don't matter when the lens is no good.
Anyway, Motorola has been implementing their menu driven cell phones in the same half baked way for many, many years. People keep complaining, but what really matters to Motorola is that they keep buying the phones. Good enough rules the day...
Will the IPhone shake things up and inspire the other manufacturers to new levels of quality? One can only hope.
I just hope someone makes a phone using the Mobile-ITX motherboard VIA recently announced - and keeps it open to development.
http://techreport.com/onearticle.x/12623
Modern microwave ovens do a pretty good job of cycling the power on and off during a defrost cycle to allow equilibration of heat from the melted spots to the frozen spots (and thus melting them). But don't try to defrost at full power (which some people probably do..;).
Shouldn't you be doing something useful?
You've got an interesting point. It does seem to benefit the corporate entities more because, well, they use the system.
The point the author was making was that the existence of patents on the components of his "dream phone" would prevent it from ever being built, and arguing tangentially against patents in the process. Patents might hinder the building of the device, not because of patent issues, but because of licensing issues.
The patent system is a trade-off. The patent holder gets exclusive rights to his device in exchange for full and complete specs being made part of the public record. After the patent expire (20 years), the public has a full and unencumbered invention. The kicker is the intervening 20 years while the patent holder sues everybody else for infringing on his patent - which frequently shouldn't have been granted in the first place.
The memory card issue is moot - should we all be PCMCIA flash cards because it was the mandated standard? I prefer a freer market. There are memory card standards which any manufacturer is free to use, and the consumer can select which card he wants in which product. CF? we got it. SD? Check. Mini-SD? yep, and an adaptor. Micro-SD? Yep, and an adaptor. XD? Can do! We've even got an adaptor!
All that aside, how is a slew of competing products bad for the consumer? If they're not sharp enough to understand interoperability of memory cards, well, they'll learn. It's better than being able to choose any camera you like, so long as it's a Fuji Finepix.
Side note- I recently got a CF-to-IDE44 adaptor so I could replace the hard drive in an old laptop with a CF card - then my brother got an SD-to-CF adapter so he could SD cards in his camera, then we realized that we could put a MicroSD card in a Micro-to-Mini SD adapter, in a MiniSD-to-SD adapter, in a SD-to-CF adapter, in a CF-to-IDE44 adapter, in an external 2.5" hdd usb enclosure. It was pretty wacky.
The core technology in cell phones is usually shared among the manufacturers through cross-licensing agreements. Basically, these say "if you let me use your patents, I'll let you use mine," then the company with fewer pays a big chunk of change to the party with more.
It's a weird system -- basically, the two companies spend a ton of money trying to get ahead of each other so they'll be the one receiving the money, not vice-versa. In the end, neither company gets very much, but small companies without a large patent portfolio are kept out.
I think this was one of the main points of Richard Stallman when he wrote the GPL. That copyrights and closed licensing prevent innovation. I know that the problem with hardware is quite different but I think the same rationale applies.
The Wise adapts himself to the world. The Fool adapts the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the Fool.
Magnetic Resonance Imaging for health care is a great example of cross-licensing.
None of the major manufacturers (GE, Siemens, Phillips, Toshiba, Hitachi) would have
viable products in today's market without extensively cross-licensing each other's IP.
--Gene
Mission: To provide products that consume time and energy as entertainingly as permitted by the laws of thermodynamics.
Yes.
Bjarke Roune
perfect = good enough for me
Do you consider "able to play or record mp3's" a "feature"? There certainly are patent-holders that claim you can't encode or decode an mp3 without their permission....
But isn't this what the patent system is designed to do, to slow down adoption and reuse?
When I was a kid, we only had one Darth.
Big companies don't usually patent something to prevent others from doing it, but rather so that they can license the technology and make money off of it. So if there are ten technologies you want to put into a phone, and ten companies control the patents to those technologies, you simply have to license that technology. That's the way capitalism works. The phone might be crazy expensive because of those licenses, but that's a different issue. The phone can get built.
Not at all, I understand how a microwave works. Thanks for assuming I'm an idiot and that you can discount my argument so easily though.
Microwaves excite molecules, and when they collide with one another, and generate heat. And, 'heating' molecules leads to partial cooking of the food. You really can't avoid some spots getting overheated while others are untouched. The fact that they don't penetrate very far means that the outside is going to be subjected to more microwaves, and therefore, will cook a little more than the rest of the meat.
You can't really 'know' that some parts aren't being partially cooked. Once you excite the molecules, some parts of your food will invariably get cooked a little bit. You don't have really good control over which parts get more energy into them, short of a decent average.
Like I said, if you want to thaw food without any partial cooking taking place, soak it in cold water, or (has been pointed out), keep it under circulating/running cold water. If any of the meat gets warmed to much anything beyond room terperature, 'cooking' is going to happen.
Your microwave may do a decent job of not totally buggering some cuts of meat, but it is NOT doing it in such a way as to be devoid of any small amount of incidental cooking. Good luck thawing a turkey in a microwave and not really overcooking parts of it.
Cheers
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
You don't have to go out over a landline either, at least not with Asterisk. You could do least cost routing with several different channels if that's your preference. For a while there I had my system set up to do DUNDI lookup and route that way first, then try an enum lookup for a pure data call with no other intervening sources. Then it'd check to see if the number was local and dial over the free landline if it was. If all that failed its default was to try my voip provider which was also "free" but had a soft cap at 1500 minutes a month. Then I realized that I never actually TALK to anyone and got rid of a lot of that stuff. Heh heh heh.
If you're looking at doing a production system the E70 may or may not be stable enough to replace a hard-wired handset. Battery life is pretty reasonable but I do forget to recharge it every so often. It also didn't like to cooperate with my old Linksys router and was always disconnecting. That problem appears to have gone away with a firmware update for the phone and replacing the Linksys with a Cisco (That's also an impressive, if expensive piece of hardware.) I also found that having it audodetect which network to dial out over tended to be a bit flaky and so I have it prompt me to make an internet or voice call now. The E70 is also a pricey solution -- mine ran me a bit over $500. I got it unlocked from an importer -- I don't believe you can buy them in America yet although they are apparently FCC approved.
Overall it's a pretty slick setup but there are still some awkward bits that need some polishing. If Apple's iPhone offers similar functionality it might have that polish, but I'm not going to go for it at least until I can get those questions answered. I'd be perfectly happy continuing to use this E70 until it dies (And so far it's shown no indications that it intends to.)
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
If _I_ "make the device without the permission of the original patent holder" then it's fine.
/ 5609/1018?siteid=sci&ijkey=kOiAnw9uhtbsM&keytype=r ef
Why? It's non-commercial "R&D" use. I (personally) can use the disclosure to create a device for "R&D" as long as it's not used commercially (which might include giving it away as that could cause commercial harm to the patent rights owner or licensee).
This stands in most jurisdictions but the US non-commercial use allowed is very limited and R&D by businesses (which includes Universities in US patent law) is not allowed unless licensed by the patent holder.
There's also the issue of territorial rights. I'm sure you can find somewhere in the world in which even WO patents aren't recognised (ie outside EPO, OAPI, ARIPO, US, etc.).
IANAPA
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/summary/299
As with all instances of pedantry I'm sure there is an error (at least) in this post!
Reading the whole thing opens up whole new notions of "what is patentable". Of course, how many people are going to want to do all 81 (3^4) combinations. But it does raise another question. If I had a system involving two things in two ways at two levels twice, would it be covered? How about 2*3*3*3?
I was looking at implementing something similar with the Palm Treo 700wx which has wifi. My PBX supports SIP and there is a soft-phone client for Windows Mobile so it's a question of stitching it all-together. The location awareness is the part that gets me but I guess that is a question of call routing. If the station is registered on the network route through SIP, if not, then route cellular. Doesn't seem like it would require anything special on the phone necessarily.
I wasn't sure if there was something special about the E70 that allowed that type of capability over any phone with wifi and API support. Might be a programming project, our phone system is super easy to integrate with.
This is a well known phenomenon, referred to as the Tragedy of the Anticommons. Yochai Benkler describes how multiple patent holders delayed the development of radio until the U.S. government intervened:
The location awareness is a feature of me going out of range of wifi. Asterisk notices that the phone's sip client is no longer connected to the wifi and so it fails (There are no other extensions to ring unless I have a soft phone connected.) That causes a call to go straight to voice mail when I'm not home. If you have two phone lines (Or a phone line and voip) you could also have asterisk re-route calls to your house to your cellular number when you're away. Your PBX software can probably do that too.
Rerouting to cellular is problematic unless you want your cellular voice mail box to be your main voice mail box. The iPhone voice mail looks significantly less crapulous than most voice mail systems so if it has all the other features that my E70 has (Notably the SIP connectivity) that might be a win over my current setup.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
If I come up with a different way to play them, then I don't have a [problem, do I?
However, I think software and business method patents are outside the scope and intent of patents.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
is planned obsolesence, pure and simple. By the time the technology has been milked through as many "upgrades" and "improvements" as possible, an entirely different and obviously superior technology takes its place on the planned obsolescence ladder.
You'll never see perfect, because then you won't want to buy the Next Best Thing like a good little consumerizing sheeple.
"I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid." -- Bishop 341-B
"When they opted for a "recycle bin" they were nonetheless challenged again by Apple, weren't they? "
And that explains why MS can't use the trashcan icon...oh, wait. That actually proves MY point, thanks.
"The primary difference between the long vanished "bzip" and "bzip2" is in bzip2, bzip's arithmetic coding was replaced with Huffman. People would not even use bzip because of that."
So they found away to accomplish the same thing, and the patent holder could do nothing?
Thanks again for proving my point.
"Note that we're talking about the users who by rights should have nothing to fear from whatever alleged patent violations authors may have committed. "
And a case where the user was successfully sued for this?
A user is not responsible, and to try and hold them responsible would be laughable. Now, a company may try to make people think they are responsible. That's not really the patent systems issue, is it?
"The patent office rakes in more fees,"
The patent office is zero cost/no profit.
People need to wizen up and not make assumption about what is patentable, patent violation, and the difference between an attorney opinion and reality.
The fact that people don't do that is not the fault of the USPTO.
Should software patents not be allow? certainly.
Should business methods not be allow? certainly.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
I might have to try something like this for my own purposes as I can have a custom routing list for my extension here at work. The soft-phones for Windows Mobile give you the same options. The E70 seems like a nice little phone though. Inbound calls would be pretty easy though and I don't think it would really take too special of a phone to accomplish it. I could set my current office phone to out of office where it will automatically go to my cell but that requires manual intervention. Ultimately I'd want to do this for the execs so that type of solution wouldn't work for them. An automatic version would though since they all have Treos. Wireless ActiveSync is very nice.
I believe Chris Rock said it best:
Why the hell would drug companies want to find a cure for AIDS? There's no money for a cure. The real money's in the treatment!
For an interesting essay on the topic, read Boldrin & Levine: Against Intellectual Monopoly. Actually, just read the first couple of pages, describing the effects of James Watt's patent had on the development of steam engines in the late 1700s. It seems that his rabid enforcement of his patent pretty much blocked all further progress in the technology until his patent ran out in 1800. He didn't even profit from it himself until after his patent ran out, when he switched from patent enforcement to steam-engine manufacturing. And his own development was blocked by others' patents on other parts of the mechanism.
;-)
There's plenty of historical evidence that things like patents and copyrights are primarily a barrier to progress, unless the government steps in a second time and decrees some sort of mandatory licensing. (But this doesn't have much effect on the doctrinaire arguments that we read here so often.
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
One fairly common event is that companies want standards committees to write "standards" that include their patented invention. Sometimes that's done blindly, but many standards committees have policies that say they'll only adopt a standard if the patent-holder will license the technology free, or under "reasonable and non-discriminatory" terms, i.e. cheap and available to everybody.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
I'd be interested to hear how it works for you and what hardware and software setup you use to do it. A bit over a year ago when I was trying to set this up it was extremely difficult to find a phone with all the features I was looking for -- Wifi, a sip client that I could connect to a provider of my choice and a reasonable keyboard for typing messages and notes. I looked at a lot of different hardware before settling on the E70 and wouldn't you know it, no one in the USA was selling one! I found an importer on the Internet but it was a lot more of a bother than most people would put up with. I guess smart phones are more popular now and I haven't checked the state of the market lately, but I'll have to look around again next time I want to upgrade.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
"able to play or record digital audio" is the feature, mp3 is an implementation of this feature. there are high quality unencumbered portable digital audio formats.
Phone other phones at a decent rate.
Send SMS.
Address book.
If I want a MP3 player, I'll buy one. If I want a camera, I'll buy one. If I want a PDA, I'll buy one.
My perfect phone was created sometime in the late 90s.. just need to try and find one!
Ok, I admit it. I read the article.
He talks about the dual screen, which is a neat idea and not one I had thought of before. However, he also talks about the small size of the phone, and gives example dimensions in the sketch which seem to show a screen of about 5.3 cm by 5.3 cm. The highest resolution OLED has ever achieved is 200dpi which would result in a resolution of 418x418, and it's more likely that the screen will be the much more common and standard 72dpi with a whopping resolution of 150x150. How exactly is a UI designer supposed to fit the ability to "navigate full-sized pages in desktop mode using an overview window and open tabs to navigate to other pages" in such a small number of pixels?
I love the ideas that are going into this phone, but the engineering reality is that small screens suck for large applications like web browsing. Everyone wants a full QUERTY keyboard, but no one wants a big phone. Everyone wants a giant screen with a ridiculous resolution, but they want it to fit in their pocket, and they don't want any moving parts.
The best compromise might be a pair of Bluetooth eyeglasses that project a virtual screen in front of the user, with the controls on the phone, that can be used for tasks that are more demanding of real estate, like web browsing, reading ebooks, editing documents, viewing pictures, or reading/sending email. A microphone and speaker could even be integrated so the glasses could be used for phone calls as well. With two virtual screens, 3D effects would be possible, and when combined with GPS and accelerometers, could even overlay a HUD on top of the real world. Imagine navigating on the sidewalks of NYC with arrows overlaid in front of your eyes, giving you directions, or walking around a cocktail party letting your facial recognition software (or even Bluetooth identities in other peoples' cell phones) apply a name from your contact list floating above a person's head, MMORPG-style.
The era of squinting at a 150x150 screen to read your email may be coming to a middle.
For security, the MD5 hash of this message and sig is 09f911029d74e35bd84156c5635688c0.
I have the same requirement: a keyboard!
My phone sucks for typing SMS, and I am looking for a QWERTY phone. I am considering the Blackberry 8700 (no WiFi is the major drawback), and the HTC Wizard (aka Cingular 8125, running Windows CE is a drawback).
Both have good keyboards for SMS and email.
2bits.com, Inc: Drupal, WordPress, and LAMP performance tuning.
If they don't make it without a camera, I don't want it. A camera is an absolute deal-breaker for me, because if it has one, I can't use it at work. If people can't reach me at work on the thing, what good is it? Weekends, and that's it. Otherwise I'd just use my landline when I'm home in the evening.
That's the way patents are supposed to work. I think the author finally figured that out, then started complaining about this "insightful, newly realized side effect" of patents. THEY WERE DESIGNED TO DO THIS. Patents are concessions, made by the people (via their representative government), to stimulate invention. They provide a bounty (the temporary monopoly), in full knowledge of the fact that the people have decided and thusly legislated (via their representative government) that monopolies are bad for society.
The author should be complaining that this bounty (the patent system) is perverse because its effects are intended; not arguing that its effects are "unintended", perverse or otherwise.
The obvious conclusion is to not allow patenting of anything necessary to follow an industry standard. Tell someone applying for a patent that they can either patent it, or make it an industry standard, but not both. If it becomes an ITU, ISO, IEEE or other professional body standard, all patents necessary to implement that standard become invalid. Coincidentally, this would nix most software patents as well.
We used Vertical's Televantage product utilizing Intel dialogic boards probably the same as your Asterisk setup. The only trick seems to be the SIP phone software but Windows Mobile based phones are extraordinarily easy to develop for. I'm definitely going to have to look into it to see if the software already exists. It will also depend on provider because of the one feature I hate about Windows Mobile, the provider can require the application be signed to be installed so that you have to go through your carrier to get the software.
Cingular seems to be more friendly about this but Verizon is terrible. Of course with Cingular now you have to deal with ATT and that's rough too. Seems a shame all the phones that actually work seem to be outside the U.S.
I don't like the size of the Treos but they do get the job done. Windows Mobile 6 phones will be a lot easier to work with in regards to SIP integration so it may be a case of stay tuned.
We're an Exchange shop so ActiveSync is really a big deal. Right now front end box only has port 80 and 443 open. I've never felt comfortable going to pop3 but since I already have an SSL certificate maybe I could change that. Then I could use any type of phone and that would be nice. Smart phones have indeed come a long way. I'd say in the last year they actually became useful.
Yes, that's true. The big players also have no real incentive to innovate, as they are already big players. Innovation in technology is almost universally caused by an disruptive influence---a new company moving into the market that releases a product that utterly obliterates the competition.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
A phone with a QWERTY keyboard is a far cry from "perfect", or even "good enough". It needs to have a Dvorak keyboard to be good enough for me.
It's not really about a bunch of phone manufacturers and patent holders wanting to build the perfect phone. Rather, it's about consumers actually wanting such a phone. If there was sufficient demand - or indication of it - from consumers, I'm sure some enterprising manufacturer (say HTC) would go out, license every single mobile technology and put it together in a product. I think it has something to do with humans being reasonably satisfied with close-to-perfection instead of perfection itself. But what do I know, I still have a Nokia phone that has a monochrome LCD!
I'd just about given up on saying the same thing about patents. People always treat me like I'm stupid about IP. .....that's okay. I take comfort in the fact that my Slashdot comment verification image (the one that keeps robots from posting) is "pansies!"
The problem with software patents is that most of them are awarded to fundamental building blocks or concepts, not to finished products, as they should be.
To illustrate this, consider art or literature.
Imagine where would fantacy authors be if somebody had patented Dwarves as a character type. This is much like patenting "One-Click" A patent on something so fundamental and obvious.
Where would horror novels be if there was a patent on dark stormy nights?
Where would art be if there was a patent on still-life or portraits' "look and feel"?
Or the "look and feel" of a whodunnit novel?
Consider what would happen to art if some artist patented a particular shade of blue.
It was his creation, so why should he not patent it? Others would need his permission to use it.
Major problem. What if somebody else, stumbled accross the same shade independantly?
Likewise, patenting an algorithm should not be permitted. It is quite plausable that others could come up with the same solution to a problem, completely independantly.
It is a building block, like a particular colour is to a painting.
Likewise, no author can patent a phrase. Any other author can use the same phrase. It is only the finished product that is copywritable.
In the same way, a finished software product, like a novel or a great masterpiece of art, is copywritable.
Note, this is different from a patent.
If somebody created the exact same thing, and tries to pass it off as the same thing, that's forgery, and copywrite infringement.
However, if any Joe copies a great Picasso, and signs it Joe, and makes it clear it is not a Picasso, it's not forgery or an infringement of copywrite.
We have many authors writing books about similar concepts, and many artists doing still-lifes and portraits.
In the same way we have many authors and artists using the same phrases in their books, and shades of colours in their paintings. None of these are seen as patent infringement.
Why should the shades and phrases of a software product be patentable?
Why also is a broad software concept patentable?
Copywrite the finished product, and dump the algorithm and "look and feel" patents and the world will be a better place for it.
But then again, show me a large corporation, lawyer or accountant that wants to make the world a better place.
If they kept making the good ol' phones, no one would have any reason to buy a new phone (other than the occasional washing machine incident).
Manufacturers make new versions of new products to resell customers on something they already have. The only way you can usually convince someone to re-buy your product is to provide an "improved" model.
As consumers we are very much used to the idea of the "upgrade." From computers and cars to televisions and video game systems, we can't seem to be able to just buy one and stick to it. It's not our fault though, the industry set it up that way.
If electronics manufacturer made a product that would last 50 years, have a modular extension system that guaranteed compatibility with all upcoming products for that timespan, and could be done at a marketable price (see: not cheap), they would have a big boom of business, then die. There would be no reason for people to purchase products from them anymore, and they would go out of business.
It's not just bad for the manufacturer either. It's terrible for the consumer as well. If said 50-year product's manufacturer wasn't around to produce modules that would extend its compatibility, then who is going to make the modules? Third parties could probably fill the gap, but there would be no guarantee that their modules would live up to the quality that the original manufacturer intended.
And there's the fact that those third parties probably contributed to the demise of the companies anyway. It's what happened to printer manufacturers... HP hasn't made a good InkJet in 5 years. They stopped bothering when people started buying ink from other companies.
Photoshop is covered by a nice pile of patents. Everytime you start up, you see the list of patents. Gimp on the other hand, tries hard to compete, without violating any of the patents. There are many features that are not included in Gimp because they are covered by patents. An example of a recent feature that was added to Gimp was the GIF support. I am pretty sure that Gimp would do a lot better competing against Photoshop if it were allowed to use all of the patented ideas.
I couldn't agree more. The perfect phone depends on personal needs and that's a complicated thing to accomplish... get all the personal needs together.
In fact, for me the cellphone as it is right now, doesn't have the right approach. You have a phone with a bluetooth headset. The future phone (at least in my dreams) will be a headset in your ear and you'll have your input devices (keyboards, small key pads) and output devices (screens, your sun glasses) connected to any wireless technology (yes, not necessarily bluetooth).
So if someone thinks that the phone should be thin so it will fit on your pocket, I think it shouldn't go in your pocket. And the versatility of exchangeable input/output devices can fit more people than just this guy's dream (i.e. your qwerty keyboard).
You patent something.
Another guy then patents every damn possible use of your patented invention.
You're screwed. You can't use your own invention without working out some deal with the parisite.
Innovators usually want to forge ahead because they like innovating, damn the torpedoes.
The non-innovators who stand to financially benefit from the innovation need time to figure out who's going to get what out of it.
So they found away to accomplish the same thing, and the patent holder could do nothing?
Thanks again for proving my point.
Approximately the same thing. Huffman encoding can be described as a special case of arithmetic encoding. However, unless you're in very special circumstances, arithmetic encoding gives better compression. Maybe not enormously better compression, but still better.
It's the "same thing" if you mean "it compresses data". It's a very different thing if you start paying attention to how much it compresses data. Consider how many megabytes may have been wasted through inferior algorithms, and consider how much that costs.
Switching to arithmetic encoding would be a very simple change that would have compression benefits across all sorts of fields. If the patents went away, we could do that. The only "workaround" is to use a less efficient algorithm.
Breaking Into the Industry - A development log about starting a game studio.
Qwerty is all you need? You make it too easy. My perfect phone would:
The look for quick ROI ruins beautiful software architectures. Companies must now
use a lot of consulting to keep up to date with current trends and not waste their own
development effort...
Together Everyone Achieves More!
When I read the topic, it was exactly what I thought government should do - step in to give it a push forward. Well, not exactly force cross-licensing, but to cover royalties for a very useful or obstacle patent for everyone who needs it for further progress, if it is essentially important for everybody: i.e. patents that are needed to make environment-friendly mass produced products. I mean, there is similar reason behind that as it is behind spending for national defense or fundamental scientific research: common money for common good. Oh, another thing is: holding a patent without using it or licensing it to others who use it, should greatly shorten the protection period to prevent "anti-patents" (when you patent something for the sole purpose of forbidding anyone from making it).
> The patent system is a trade-off. The patent holder gets exclusive rights to his device in exchange for full and complete specs being made part of the public record.
The economics of the patent system for the patent holder are as follows:
The benefit is a monopoly on what is written on the patent.
The cost is giving away information on how to build what is written on the patent.
The best patent for a patent holder is one that maximizes the benefit and minimizes the cost. That is, a patent that's completely useless to others and grants the patent holder a monopoly on everything.
To avoid this situation, the patent office has patent investigators. A good patent investigator only grants patents that provide all the information necessary to duplicate the patented device and grants a monopoly only novel and non-obvious devices -- i.e. maximizes the cost to the patent holder and minimizes their benefit. The worse a patent investigator, the better deal they give to the patentees, at the expense of everyone else.
There is a limited amount of good patent investigators in any population. A patent investigator can handle a fixed amount of patents in a given time. Once the demand for patents exceeds the amount of patents the good patent investigators can handle, the overflow will be handled by worse patent investigators. Patent applicants benefit from having their patents investigated by bad patent investigators. Patent applicants gain from flooding the patent system.
Patents can't work.
You might want to look into whatever linphone's using. I think it's just called "libsip". I looked at it a while back and it was pretty easy to write for. You could probably take linphone or some other sip client directly. For linphone I think you'd need a GTK port which isn't too hard. That would at least give you a starting point if there's nothing better out there.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Even old-style phones had patent issues. To make a phone you had to have a good speaker, and a good microphone. The Bell system used a moving coil microphone. They couldn't use the carbon microphone, which was more compact and did not require amplification (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_microphone) because it had been patented separately by Edison and Berliner. Edison wanted to have his own telephone, but his own speaker (involving chalk soaked in electrolyte, and an electric motor) was so outlandish that it never went commercial.
Somehow, they must have got over the deadlock, as carbon microphones were standard when I was young. You may still see people banging the handset to stop crackling - this could re-pack the carbon granules in the microphone, but doesn't do anything these days.
Thanks, I'll check it out
It is possible (but not probable) to produce this phone despite the issues with most of the features being copyrighted and/or patented by various companies. One would simply produce the phone with detailed documentation on how much money is saved/earned by using the proprietary technology. When the IP holders complain simply settle out of court for the amount you have recorded on the books. The problem occurs when the IP holders want more than the value of their technology and get tied up in litigation that runs up the expenses. In a perfect world this is how the system would work.
t o_Stainless_Steel
In the customer's view such a company would look favorable for producing a superior product. Much like Wilkinson Sword did when it began selling stainless steel razorblades despite Gillette's patent on them.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Safety_razor#Switch_
This is why I look askance at the whole patent system - and why I suspect that we would, as a society, be better off without them.
Truthfully, most of the coming technologies have been developed under hacker-style gift economies, then patents and copyrights commercialize them. Best example is movies. Once made they cost pennies to reproduce. Soon CGI will have progressed to digital actors, and digital sets. The day is not far off when one person could create a whole movie in their Copious Spare Time. If that person believes in FOSS, then the movie will cost nothing, it is "gifted" to the economy and in return consumers provide respect (or "whuffie" in Doctorow terms). Where do the costs come in? Licensing the source material, the music, the digital actors images, and so on and so forth. Eventually free music, source material, and digital actors will create a FOSS movie community, and MPAA will go crying to the government because nobody wants to pay them for their crap.
Each such development pushes us toward a global gift economy, which is vigorously fought by entrenched business interests that sense the time has come for their elimination or replacement. This resistance is the one fault in capitalism: it creates forces that perpetuate it, and prevents (or tries to) any successor economic system. But I look at what is happening with FOSS, and I add it to cars designed in college courses, self-reproducing 3-d printers and fabricators to produce those free plans, and then toss in vertical farming (which produces both food and energy (despite the need to power the lighting system) and I see the eventual conversion of the world to a new paradigm. You would live by downloading free plans from the web and would build them with your 3d fabrication system. You would eat food grown in a spare room, you would have your own water use cycle - really the only thing left to produce that cannot be done for free is raw materials.
Anyway, this day cannot come soon enough for me.
In reality, it is the corporate greed that IS HALTING the natural evolution of perfect products, and this is very-true, and not only for the evolution of phones and computers plus robots and well beyond the IT industry into the IIT industry (Intelligent Information Technologies); as the limitations of ascii and English itself, had STOP the CREATION of better or even perfect IT products, more then half a century after the creation of The Modern Computer, which also, is a direct result of major corporate investments and efforts with fears of being surpassed by the new advancements they do not own or can not develop or takeover. Like in my invention of USCIIIIII CODE to go beyond the limitations of ASCII, as the industry has been employing ascii to profit from the international consumers and corporate plus governments' markets, and this is why they still do and will continue to resist the needed change, indicated by the binary code basic logic which runs these new machines and as my computers had indicated with the proof I had in 1983 already - so for the IT industry to deliver the Computers and Robots we have been expecting for over 60 years to evolve and to serve us in the same natural ways we communicate with each-other and Globally, not by keyboards but by our personal voiceprints in wireless natural logic of the human-mind, linking it to the wizened electronic-brain, in a telemetry consisting of our universal way of verbal and written/documented communications and doing so in the thousands and not only few natural languages. The phone, is an honest machine as well as the computer, it will connect us to the proper person in the proper location, if we dial and connect with the proper number - and the phone lets us talk, sing and now also share videos and surf the web, send emails and do banking, plus a the list of capabilities which is still growing. But, have you noticed computers can not yet listen properly, can not talk properly, can not understand; and while I claim my invention will grant them the capabilities of singing and thinking plus praying, that may sound like a dream or a lie, while I have facts and truth plus demonstrations, and while I have almost 20 websites with bits of information and samples of my Universal Standard Code Intensively Interactive International Intelligent Information Interchange CODE, Bill Gates rather Ignore my proposal and keep ignorance by re-developing the same software to be sold in its new look and make last years good versions, out-of-date and absolute. So what is slowing the blessed progress? IT IS The Directors and Owners of established leaders who choose to be ignoring progress they can only envy and while continuing to profit by stopping the natural process of creating 'Perfect' Products, we can have now! - and like the phone, such old invention, which only now is free to be going beyond the corporate-resistance to let merging technologies reach the consumers' world. More simply put - and we all know why - as the usual argument is "IT was not invented here" and "WE do not own IT" and it is "Good Luck" to the inventor and investor who do deliver the new Brain-Child and the more 'Perfect' Product to the waiting world! I know, as I am the inventor of the EchoLogical Machine.
inventor@prepatent.org
Patents are not the problem with respect to companies not being able to create "perfect" devices. I know that a lot of companies complain that they are not able to innovate because there are so many patents, but a patent has never stopped innovation. In fact, companies engage in cross-licensing patents all the time. If you have technology that I want and need, and I have technology that you want and need, then we simply agree to a trade. This happens all the time. The only time this doesn't happen freely is in markets that are not mature. In makets that are not mature there are companies how are trying to monopolize the industry. Eventually everyone figures out there is more money to be made in cross-licensing rather than in suing others. The reason that patents do not inhibit innovation is because if a company refuses to deal their technology then other interested companies have to figure out inventive ways to accomplish the same task in order to get what they want. In this work-around effort technology will move forward, sometimes at a very quick rate. This advance in technology is exactly what the patent system is intended to bring about. An argument could be made that technology advances fastest when there are powerful companies that refuse to deal and try and monopolize. This is one phenonmenon that could explain how small start-up companies are so frequently able to compete with industry giants. Start-up companies do not face nearly the trouble that the media portrays. With solid technology and IP rights they will eventually compete, or they will be bought out. Not a bad days work!
"Note that we're talking about the users who by rights should have nothing to fear from whatever alleged patent violations authors may have committed. "
And a case where the user was successfully sued for this?
Alright, I think you're being deliberately obtuse, but I'll bite. Of course users aren't in danger of being sued. What they are in danger of is becoming victims of collateral damage. All that need happen is the vendor gets sued and shut down. A phone is no good without service. Look what almost happened to RIM. All of RIM's customers were nearly screwed, their Blackberries nearly turned into expensive paperweights, their expensive service plans made worthless and possibly not even refundable, over something that had nothing to do with them. More recently, Verizon and the justice system nearly killed off Vonage with a lawsuit over a few patents. For a few days, the court had Vonage under orders not to sign up any new customers, and was considering shutting down Vonage entirely! Whatever Vonage's faults, Vonage's customers did nothing to deserve losing the service they'd paid for, or being left in doubt while the court made up its mind. Whenever sheep start straying from the fold, a weapon that neither Verizon nor anyone else should have is a scorched earth campaign against those greener pastures.
Intellectual Property is a monopolistic, selfish, and defective concept. It is "tyranny over the mind of man"