As a lawyer (member Massachusetts bar & Federal District Court) I find it particularly outrageous that the chairman of the Senate Judicial Committee disregards basic Constitutional law.
One of the many problems with Congress passing a law to allow vigilantes to destroy people's computers is that it violates due process. You're supposed to have a hearing before a neutral magistrate of some sort (usually a judge) before the government allows you destroy someone's property.
Congress could no more pass a law allowing corporate vigilantes to destroy people's computers without going to court than they could pass a law allowing a company to take your land for its own use without a trial.
Of course Senator Hatch knows this perfectly well. What's revealing is the fact that these so called conservatives who claim to admire limited government are always eager to use the coersive power of government to help big business. Republicans and honorary Republicans like Senator Lieberman are against government when it comes to protecting us from corporations (say through environmental legislation or class action law) but are more than happy to expand the power of government to help companies violate our rights.
Either that or Senator Hatch is attempting to act senile in order that he can replace Strom Thurmond!.02 Steve
There is nothing more agravating than going to a site that looks interesting and having a giant flash splash page slow down my browser (or even crash it!)
PDF is even worse. There may be a few rare occasions where complex diagrams are better rendered in PDF than say GIF but they are few and far between. I hate it when I go to google, do a search, find a relevant document and... arghhh a PDF file opens and slows everything to a crawl. This happens with bus and train schedules. Does anyone remember what the table tag is for?! Even worse sometimes a PDF document will be used for a plain text document without any special fonts etc!!!
In short M$ should buy both Adobe and Macromedia because both of these company's products are perfect bloatware that go well with M$ Office. Maybe then the rest of us can go back to using HTML, XML, GIFs and JPEGs all generated by the likes of GIMP etc.
Once a document has been converted to PDF it is pretty much useless as a document. It can't be edited, it can't be imported into another format such as.SWD, it's difficult and slow to search etc. This is because it's been converted to what is basically a graphic format.
PDFs are a pain in the neck. They take forever to download.
I'm just thankful for google's "view as HTML" feature which allows those anoying PDFs to be viewed and searched more quickly and saved in a text format if need be.
For those rare occasions when I truly want a photograph of a document e.g. a letter with a signature or official seal stamped on it I find it much more useful to scan the document and save it as a gif.
Good point. I have OPERA for EPOC running on my Geofox handheld (rember them?!) and it looks and works great. Any slowness on the Geofox is due to the older cpu I reckon; not the OPERA code.
More importantly though, OPERA and EPOC could become very useful for next generation of cell/mobile phones because OPERA & EPOC lack bloating. Also EPOC was developed by the same people (Symbian) who developed Blue Tooth.
*(Symbian is sort of a PSION spin off that has been bought into by a number of mobile phone companies and others.) EPOC was first developed by PSION and now AFAIK Symbian handles the OS development while PSION is now split into several divisions and one of those divisions now concentrates on manufacturing the hardware for which EPOC was originally written.
Hey, isn't it interesting that PSION has voluntarily (for business reasons) done to itself exactlly what the DOJ wants to do to M$ plus some? I wonder if this means that splitting up M$ might not be such a bad thing for M$ anyway? Maybe the DOJ is more bark than bite?! Or am I just cynical?
You are so right!
In fact... Microsoft ought to have to pay people who have used its products. M$ ought to be required to compensate users for all their lost time and money due to crashes, inefficiency, interference with hardware and software standards etc.
You're also right, IMHO, about ActiveX. Not to mention DirectX. It appears to me that if M$ would just open its API so that DOS programmers could utilize protected mode then there would be no need for DirectX. AFAIK this would empower PC users to reclaim their PCs from Windows.
The Cnet article simply has its facts WRONG!!!
It states that only two of the original "rebel" browsers are still under development; Opera and Neoplanet.
In fact, Arachne is still being developed and upgraded for both DOS and LINUX. Have a look at their site: http://labs.arachne.cz/
And especially have a look at their page about the beta for LINUX http://labs.arachne.cz/index.shtml?clanekid=16.
It appears that they moved from alpha stage to beta just over a month ago. Their site states that the LINUX version is "still very incomplete" but it really looks like they're actively working on it.
You must be skilled at shorthand (grafitti). I prefer a keyboard! I HATE pen input for writing. I find it's like trying to write a business letter or memo with my mouse!
>but in case you need some small number cruncher, this thing could work.
I would like a small clamshell palmtop, with a mini-keyboard and a colour screen as a successor to my old HP 200lx. Not just for number crunching but also for drafting letters, taking notes and answering e-mail on the go.
This unit could also play MP3z with a DOS based (and maybe LINUX?) MP3 player, record voice memos, interface with cell phones and do moderate graphics work in GIMP. It would also be pretty cool to play Doom or Duke Nukem on it;-)
Doesn't anyone get it?! This device (the Tiqit) is (basically) not a finished product! It's for OEMs to buy and use in developing PDAs! If they can sell it for such a (relatively) low price now while it's being handcrafted imagine how low the price could go once it's mass produced with economies of scale!
The iPaq is a finished product, over-priced for what it is, runs crippled WinCE (flashing it to LINUX will likely produce a poor fit with unpredictable and unsupported results.) And with the iPaq you get NONE of the PORTS that a real computer should have (SVGA out, parallel printer out, SCSI, serial, USB etc.)
The iPaq and all the other Palm and WinCE units are trashy little calendar keepers unworthy of real OSes and useless for serious users who abhore the blue screen of death on the handheld PCs!
I saw this at PC Expo and had a chance to ask a few questions of one of the engineers/owners of the start up.
He said that the price would eventually come down. But more importantly he made it pretty clear (and this should be obvious anyway) that the unit is currently being marketed as a sort of sample/prototype to OEMs. I.e. it's not meant for consumers yet and the price reflects this!
Even so, considering that the Ipaq has been going for $1,000 on ebay this isn't such a bad deal -relatively speaking.
He also talked about his work with microfans and mini-liquid coolers (I forget the proper name for them - you know; the pipes that Toshiba is using in one of its laptops.) In short the elan 486 cpu is just the first step. Expect 586 grade cpus soon.
Now, IMHO, What's revolutionary about this unit is that it would make a great heart to a clamshell PDA. Using an efficient (non M$) OS like LINUX one could replace their PDA and laptop in one fell swoop. Upon arrival at the office or wherever one could then plug directly into a desktop monitor instead of having to sync files. All the documents on the microdrive or cf card would already be in Star Office or Word Perfect format; no more havng to deal with Palm grafitti etc or lose formatting during file conversion.
Finally, produced in volume, such a unit could be marketed at a very competitive price.
O.K. here's a technical question for anyone out there who can answer it: What kind of user volume can the Iridium system handle? The reason I ask is that Iridium was marketed on a high-end, low volume (i.e. expensive) sales model. It lost lots of money. But what if Iridium were relaunched on a high-volume low cost model? I.e. the services were provided at rates well below what current cell phone & ISP services cost and to a very large number of consumers. Obviously Motorola might not want to see this happen (assuming it's even possible) because Motorola makes parts for DSL and existing cell phone technology. I have heard rumours that such a high-volume marketing model is technically feasible but I don't know how to confirm this. Can anyone here help? Does anyone have an idea of where to find out what the Iridium system's maximum data handling capacity is? If indeed such a high volume, low profit margin, marketing model is possible it prove a viable alternative to trying to raise the $650 million through on-line advertising! -Steve Petrov www.legaltrademark.com domain-name law & news P.S. Some people have posted that Iridium's a bad idea because it doesn't work inside. But I would think that this could easily be taken care of by having an indoor local hub etc. connected to the outside dish. Infrared comes to mind but Symbian (the cellphone/handheld consortium founded by PSION)is also doing a lot with its "bluetooth" technology. Something like this could be used for wireless interfacing between iridium and all sorts of handheld devices.
The term patent lawyer is thrown around loosly by alot of people (especially lawyers who should know better!) What is usually meant by the term "patent lawyer" is someone who is both a "patent agent" and a lawyer. (Kind of akin to someone who is both a lawyer and a CPA.) Being a patent agent means you can file patent applications. Someone who is a patent agent only and not a lawyer can not practice law. For example, a patent agent could not draft a contract to sell a patent for a client or to grant a license for a patent. Nor could a patent agent go to court to obtain an injunction against someone who is infringing against a patent: that requires a lawyer. A lawyer, however, who is not a patent agent,can generally do everything except file a patent application. I.e. a lawyer can try a patent case without being a patent agent so long as they understand enough of the underlying technology to do a competent job at trial. Whether you need someone who is both a patent agent and an attorney to do a competent job on a particular case will vary depending on the facts. There are several other posts in this thread which do a great job of sumarizing the requirements to sit for the "patent bar" (a bit of a misnomer as it doesn't require any legal education to sit for the patent bar!)See also the link at the bottom of this message for more info the patent "bar." The rules for sitting for the "bar" (the one for plain old lawyers) are different in every state. The vast majority of states (e.g. 40+) require a J.D. from an ABA approved law school. This means 3 years of full time study with high tuition. Also, one must have a bachlors degree in something in order to be admitted to an ABA law school. (This is an ABA requirement: a law school can not accept a student without a bachlors without loosing its ABA approval.) A few states (New York and Vermont are the ones I know of off hand) allow you to sit for the bar exam without a J.D. degree provided you first work as a clerk for a certain amount of time under the supervision of someone who is already a lawyer. (This is how most lawyers used to qualify in the U.S. prior to the 1950s when law schools sprung up everywhere and had the rules changed to protect their revenue stream;-) I believe that even in NY & VT one must still have at least a bachlor's degree in something to sit for the bar even though a JD is not required. Also, as a practical matter, it would be difficult to find a lawyer to provide the required office supervison for someone without any legal training. But I suppose that many a lawyer would be more than happy to do this for someone who has a bachlors in science or engineering and is a patent agent. i.e. you could make yourself quite useful by signing patent applications for the attorney while you accumulate the required number of hours under the lawyer's supervision;-) Finally, for more information on patent law and intellectual property law in general the law school where I earned my J.D. has some very good articles which come pretty close to being written in plain English http://www.fplc.edu/tfield/ipbasics.htm For information on trademark law stop by my site at http://www.legaltm.com/ HTH, Steve Petrov
Slashdot Mirror
As a lawyer (member Massachusetts bar & Federal District Court) I find it particularly outrageous that the chairman of the Senate Judicial Committee disregards basic Constitutional law.
.02
One of the many problems with Congress passing a law to allow vigilantes to destroy people's computers is that it violates due process. You're supposed to have a hearing before a neutral magistrate of some sort (usually a judge) before the government allows you destroy someone's property.
Congress could no more pass a law allowing corporate vigilantes to destroy people's computers without going to court than they could pass a law allowing a company to take your land for its own use without a trial.
Of course Senator Hatch knows this perfectly well. What's revealing is the fact that these so called conservatives who claim to admire limited government are always eager to use the coersive power of government to help big business. Republicans and honorary Republicans like Senator Lieberman are against government when it comes to protecting us from corporations (say through environmental legislation or class action law) but are more than happy to expand the power of government to help companies violate our rights.
Either that or Senator Hatch is attempting to act senile in order that he can replace Strom Thurmond!
Steve
There is nothing more agravating than going to a site that looks interesting and having a giant flash splash page slow down my browser (or even crash it!)
PDF is even worse. There may be a few rare occasions where complex diagrams are better rendered in PDF than say GIF but they are few and far between. I hate it when I go to google, do a search, find a relevant document and... arghhh a PDF file opens and slows everything to a crawl. This happens with bus and train schedules. Does anyone remember what the table tag is for?! Even worse sometimes a PDF document will be used for a plain text document without any special fonts etc!!!
In short M$ should buy both Adobe and Macromedia because both of these company's products are perfect bloatware that go well with M$ Office. Maybe then the rest of us can go back to using HTML, XML, GIFs and JPEGs all generated by the likes of GIMP etc.
Once a document has been converted to PDF it is pretty much useless as a document. It can't be edited, it can't be imported into another format such as .SWD, it's difficult and slow to search etc. This is because it's been converted to what is basically a graphic format.
PDFs are a pain in the neck. They take forever to download.
I'm just thankful for google's "view as HTML" feature which allows those anoying PDFs to be viewed and searched more quickly and saved in a text format if need be.
For those rare occasions when I truly want a photograph of a document e.g. a letter with a signature or official seal stamped on it I find it much more useful to scan the document and save it as a gif.
FWIW,
Steve
Good point. I have OPERA for EPOC running on my Geofox handheld (rember them?!) and it looks and works great. Any slowness on the Geofox is due to the older cpu I reckon; not the OPERA code. More importantly though, OPERA and EPOC could become very useful for next generation of cell/mobile phones because OPERA & EPOC lack bloating. Also EPOC was developed by the same people (Symbian) who developed Blue Tooth. *(Symbian is sort of a PSION spin off that has been bought into by a number of mobile phone companies and others.) EPOC was first developed by PSION and now AFAIK Symbian handles the OS development while PSION is now split into several divisions and one of those divisions now concentrates on manufacturing the hardware for which EPOC was originally written. Hey, isn't it interesting that PSION has voluntarily (for business reasons) done to itself exactlly what the DOJ wants to do to M$ plus some? I wonder if this means that splitting up M$ might not be such a bad thing for M$ anyway? Maybe the DOJ is more bark than bite?! Or am I just cynical?
You are so right! In fact... Microsoft ought to have to pay people who have used its products. M$ ought to be required to compensate users for all their lost time and money due to crashes, inefficiency, interference with hardware and software standards etc. You're also right, IMHO, about ActiveX. Not to mention DirectX. It appears to me that if M$ would just open its API so that DOS programmers could utilize protected mode then there would be no need for DirectX. AFAIK this would empower PC users to reclaim their PCs from Windows.
The Cnet article simply has its facts WRONG!!! It states that only two of the original "rebel" browsers are still under development; Opera and Neoplanet. In fact, Arachne is still being developed and upgraded for both DOS and LINUX. Have a look at their site: http://labs.arachne.cz/ And especially have a look at their page about the beta for LINUX http://labs.arachne.cz/index.shtml?clanekid=16. It appears that they moved from alpha stage to beta just over a month ago. Their site states that the LINUX version is "still very incomplete" but it really looks like they're actively working on it.
>Is too expensive
;-)
It is cheap for a handcrafted OEM prototype.
>and still needs an external power.
No it doesn't; it uses small camcorder batteries.
>
>I still prefer my palm,
You must be skilled at shorthand (grafitti). I prefer a keyboard! I HATE pen input for writing. I find it's like trying to write a business letter or memo with my mouse!
>but in case you need some small number cruncher, this thing could work.
I would like a small clamshell palmtop, with a mini-keyboard and a colour screen as a successor to my old HP 200lx. Not just for number crunching but also for drafting letters, taking notes and answering e-mail on the go.
This unit could also play MP3z with a DOS based (and maybe LINUX?) MP3 player, record voice memos, interface with cell phones and do moderate graphics work in GIMP. It would also be pretty cool to play Doom or Duke Nukem on it
>Why can't somebody throw something like this in a >handheld?
;-) Such a device with all the ports would be a laptop killer!
Because it might cut into sales in the lucrative notebook market
Doesn't anyone get it?! This device (the Tiqit) is (basically) not a finished product! It's for OEMs to buy and use in developing PDAs! If they can sell it for such a (relatively) low price now while it's being handcrafted imagine how low the price could go once it's mass produced with economies of scale! The iPaq is a finished product, over-priced for what it is, runs crippled WinCE (flashing it to LINUX will likely produce a poor fit with unpredictable and unsupported results.) And with the iPaq you get NONE of the PORTS that a real computer should have (SVGA out, parallel printer out, SCSI, serial, USB etc.) The iPaq and all the other Palm and WinCE units are trashy little calendar keepers unworthy of real OSes and useless for serious users who abhore the blue screen of death on the handheld PCs!
I saw this at PC Expo and had a chance to ask a few questions of one of the engineers/owners of the start up. He said that the price would eventually come down. But more importantly he made it pretty clear (and this should be obvious anyway) that the unit is currently being marketed as a sort of sample/prototype to OEMs. I.e. it's not meant for consumers yet and the price reflects this! Even so, considering that the Ipaq has been going for $1,000 on ebay this isn't such a bad deal -relatively speaking. He also talked about his work with microfans and mini-liquid coolers (I forget the proper name for them - you know; the pipes that Toshiba is using in one of its laptops.) In short the elan 486 cpu is just the first step. Expect 586 grade cpus soon. Now, IMHO, What's revolutionary about this unit is that it would make a great heart to a clamshell PDA. Using an efficient (non M$) OS like LINUX one could replace their PDA and laptop in one fell swoop. Upon arrival at the office or wherever one could then plug directly into a desktop monitor instead of having to sync files. All the documents on the microdrive or cf card would already be in Star Office or Word Perfect format; no more havng to deal with Palm grafitti etc or lose formatting during file conversion. Finally, produced in volume, such a unit could be marketed at a very competitive price.
O.K. here's a technical question for anyone out there who can answer it: What kind of user volume can the Iridium system handle? The reason I ask is that Iridium was marketed on a high-end, low volume (i.e. expensive) sales model. It lost lots of money. But what if Iridium were relaunched on a high-volume low cost model? I.e. the services were provided at rates well below what current cell phone & ISP services cost and to a very large number of consumers. Obviously Motorola might not want to see this happen (assuming it's even possible) because Motorola makes parts for DSL and existing cell phone technology. I have heard rumours that such a high-volume marketing model is technically feasible but I don't know how to confirm this. Can anyone here help? Does anyone have an idea of where to find out what the Iridium system's maximum data handling capacity is? If indeed such a high volume, low profit margin, marketing model is possible it prove a viable alternative to trying to raise the $650 million through on-line advertising! -Steve Petrov www.legaltrademark.com domain-name law & news P.S. Some people have posted that Iridium's a bad idea because it doesn't work inside. But I would think that this could easily be taken care of by having an indoor local hub etc. connected to the outside dish. Infrared comes to mind but Symbian (the cellphone/handheld consortium founded by PSION)is also doing a lot with its "bluetooth" technology. Something like this could be used for wireless interfacing between iridium and all sorts of handheld devices.
The term patent lawyer is thrown around loosly by alot of people (especially lawyers who should know better!) What is usually meant by the term "patent lawyer" is someone who is both a "patent agent" and a lawyer. (Kind of akin to someone who is both a lawyer and a CPA.) Being a patent agent means you can file patent applications. Someone who is a patent agent only and not a lawyer can not practice law. For example, a patent agent could not draft a contract to sell a patent for a client or to grant a license for a patent. Nor could a patent agent go to court to obtain an injunction against someone who is infringing against a patent: that requires a lawyer. A lawyer, however, who is not a patent agent,can generally do everything except file a patent application. I.e. a lawyer can try a patent case without being a patent agent so long as they understand enough of the underlying technology to do a competent job at trial. Whether you need someone who is both a patent agent and an attorney to do a competent job on a particular case will vary depending on the facts. There are several other posts in this thread which do a great job of sumarizing the requirements to sit for the "patent bar" (a bit of a misnomer as it doesn't require any legal education to sit for the patent bar!)See also the link at the bottom of this message for more info the patent "bar." The rules for sitting for the "bar" (the one for plain old lawyers) are different in every state. The vast majority of states (e.g. 40+) require a J.D. from an ABA approved law school. This means 3 years of full time study with high tuition. Also, one must have a bachlors degree in something in order to be admitted to an ABA law school. (This is an ABA requirement: a law school can not accept a student without a bachlors without loosing its ABA approval.) A few states (New York and Vermont are the ones I know of off hand) allow you to sit for the bar exam without a J.D. degree provided you first work as a clerk for a certain amount of time under the supervision of someone who is already a lawyer. (This is how most lawyers used to qualify in the U.S. prior to the 1950s when law schools sprung up everywhere and had the rules changed to protect their revenue stream ;-) I believe that even in NY & VT one must still have at least a bachlor's degree in something to sit for the bar even though a JD is not required. Also, as a practical matter, it would be difficult to find a lawyer to provide the required office supervison for someone without any legal training. But I suppose that many a lawyer would be more than happy to do this for someone who has a bachlors in science or engineering and is a patent agent. i.e. you could make yourself quite useful by signing patent applications for the attorney while you accumulate the required number of hours under the lawyer's supervision ;-) Finally, for more information on patent law and intellectual property law in general the law school where I earned my J.D. has some very good articles which come pretty close to being written in plain English http://www.fplc.edu/tfield/ipbasics.htm For information on trademark law stop by my site at http://www.legaltm.com/ HTH, Steve Petrov