I think it depends on arkowitz's goals. Nothing can stave off a lawsuit; the real goal is to skew the risk/reward and ROI toward you and away from your hypothetical foe.
Reading between the lines, arkowitz is creating a very useful platform that could be used in the future. A legal stake in the ground may be the cheapest and most efficient way to set the prior art bar high. As others have noted, a drop to sourceforge or an RFC would unambiguously set a public date for your invention.
US patent 5841980, assigned to Sony, appears to cover some of the high level concepts of CICP. If Sony decided to come after you, I don't think possession of a CICP patent would make a difference. That said, if you're not looking to make a lot of money on this, I doubt Sony would come after you.
YMMV, IANAL, etc. If you really care about this, an hour long consult with a patent attorney could give you peace of mind.
BillG's response might be "OK, I'm outsourcing half of Redmond to China, India, and Vietnam, and laying off 20000 in the US. Care to give me a different answer?" Even if it is an empty threat (despite the silliness in MS processes, there is a lot of tribal knowledge in Redmond that can't be easily duplicated), the congresscritters will stand up and take notice.
"there is nothing sinister in so arranging one's affairs as to keep taxes as low as possible".
People and companies respond to incentives -- it is really surprising that the bizarre tax structure in the US pushes companies to form subsidiaries? Apparently it is, to either clueless or grandstanding politicians.
... a Boeing 737-700, took off from Houston Intercontinental, flew over the Gulf Of Mexico, and returned to IAH (http://flightaware.com/live/flight/COA9990). A mostly overwater flight shows reasonable confidence in algae as a fuel.
Everyone knows the market is going to be way up in a few years because it is currently highly undervalued but because the vast majority of investing groups are buying and selling with short term gain in mind the market is bouncing around like a superball.
True, but this situation may not be an ideal time to go long. As the old saying goes, the market can be wrong far longer than you can stay solvent.
Caveat emptor, your mileage may vary, and no platypuses were harmed in the making of this posting.
I'd settle for half the time, skid pad training, real-world simulator sessions, and a visit to a real accident scene -- preferably, where you can smell the victims' blood and a good portion of the visitors puke because of it.
Spot on. Pilots are told by instructors that you "don't drop the airplane to fly the microphone". It is entirely proper to say "stand by" to a controller when you're busy with an aircraft control task.
If only driving instructors taught the same thing...
Curve fitting are easy; prediction is hard. Given the lack of prediction success of the climate models, true global economic models will probably have the same issues.
You might want to counterbalance RealClimate.org (the soapbox of Michael Mann and Gavin Schmidt) with ClimateAudit (http://www.climateaudit.org/), which gives a more even-handed view of the evidence.
Also, in 2004 Saint Gore started Generation Investment Management (http://www.generationim.com/about/), a VC fund focusing on climate change and sustainability. In other words, his income is directly related to his ability to continue to whip up hysteria.
You'll forgive me if I look with suspicion on someone who proclaims early and often that We're All Going To Die via climate change, yet drives around in a herd of SUVs, flys in a G5, and lives in a 10000 square foot mansion that consumes more electricity in one month that most houses use in one year.
Looks like Tivo was just copying somebody else's idea. - They can not claim it to be their own.
A herd of patent lawyers and a judge have ruled otherwise. Hint: a random engineer isn't usually qualified to make judgments like this.
Also of note: ReplayTV was released the same year as Tivo, and it too can pause or rewind live television via "independent record and playback". Once again, Tivo can not claim first implementation.
The standard (then) is "first to invent", not first to market. These issues have been hashed out in court; Tivo won.
As a shortseller of OSTK, I understand how you have every interest in portraying the company in a negative light.
A plain reading of my first sentence ("I've been happily short Overstock in the past,...") would lead the average reader to believe that I have been short previously, but am not now. So I have no interest in portraying the company in any light at all.
A CEO who spends time complaining about shorts isn't paying attention to his business. The best thing he could do to hurt the shorts would be to manage well and deliver a positive earnings surprise. Since Byrne isn't doing that, he probably can't deliver a blow-out quarter. His management skills are in question, and I have to wonder why his board of directors isn't demanding more productive behavior.
Regarding the SEC, they have block *any* short selling (naked or otherwise) of financial stocks (http://www.sec.gov/news/press/2008/2008-211.htm). IMHO, this is utterly loony, and a continuation of the "blame the shorts" game that started in the Crash of '29. It was convenient to have a political boogey man to divert attention from the real issues then, and it is very convenient now.
You're zero for two. Perhaps you should quit while you're ahead.
I've been happily short Overstock in the past, and apparently Mr Cuban has been too. CEOs who are whining about the evil shorts rather than minding the business of their company should be fired.
As the old saying goes, "Those who know aren't talking. Those who are talking don't know."
If doc_doofus knows and is talking, he's standing by to spend some time making little rocks out of big rocks at Leavenworth. I'd take his assessment with a huge grain of salt.
Perhaps Duopoly is a better word. In the States, a result of government policy restricts most people to two choices for non-dialup internet -- the local phone company and the local cable company.
So, while the good Doctor has one more choice for an internet provider, the choice, both in terms of avoiding idiot management and better options, was severely limited by a brain-dead government choice.
last 40 years -- embarassing
on
NASA Turns 50
·
· Score: 1
After getting to the moon in record time, NASA is now relegated to clawing its way to Low Earth Orbit. The can-do spirit has been replaced by CYA middle managers and numerous white papers which lead to nothing.
Truly embarassing. If that's the best NASA can do, it's time to close down the manned space program and let the private sector handle it.
That's your summary, but it's obvious you didn't bother to understand the article.
Oh, I did read and comprehend it, but I don't share the same naive view of modeling that New Scientist and (presumably) you have. A simple read of my post would have given you that information.
Going to some of your points: You: need falsifiable hypothesis From my link:
The validity of models can be tested against climate history. If they can predict the past (which the best models are pretty good at) they are probably on the right track for predicting the future - and indeed have successfully done so.
I can create a perfect climate "model" that exactly matches the past with a weighted sum of cosines -- the Fourier transform of global temperature data. I think we'd all agree that this model would have no predictive value. The only way to prove that a model is correct is to see it make valid predictions going forward. Matching the past, while necessary for a good model, is not sufficient, and is not convincing in the slightest.
But hey, if you think that modeling is really as simple as curve fitting the past, I invite you to trade stocks with a price model created in the same manner as your favorite climate model. When the markets drive your trading account to zero and hand you your head, you might understand the difficulty of prediction.
short summary of TFA: there's uncertainty in models, so they add error bars. There is major uncertainty in how to model clouds (some argue that the sign of the effect isn't known). Models are used to predict financial markets, so that's OK.
As a professional modeler working on another complex system (financial time series prediction), it is my view that the climate modelers are taking some serious shortcuts. In my industry, one wouldn't dream of committing real money to a model until it had made correct predictions of the target market going forward, without post-hoc tweaks. Constantly tweaking model constants is an indicator of curve fitting. And curve fitting is not prediction.
When a frozen climate model can correctly predict global temperature (objectively defined beforehand), week by week, for a significant time (say, five years), then it can be said that the climate modelers understand climate. Until then, curve-fitted models coupled with a rousing round of "trust us" doesn't make for a falsifiable hypothesis. And without a falsifiable hypothesis, the climate folks aren't doing science. Indeed, Gavin Schmidt at realclimate.org asserts that nothing in the next few years can falsify the models (http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2008/01/uncertainty-noise-and-the-art-of-model-data-comparison/) (!!!)
It blows my mind that unvalidated climate models are used as the rationale for multi-trillion dollar/euro investments.
You must be new around here - this is Slashdot, where completely baseless opinions are preferred. Patents and Microsoft are inherently evil, of course, and facts are not allowed to get in the way of a good diatribe. You shouln't even RTFA.
Slashdot Mirror
After such wonderful service, I'd love to strangle Comcast.
Oh, you meant network traffic? That's very different. Never mind.
I think it depends on arkowitz's goals. Nothing can stave off a lawsuit; the real goal is to skew the risk/reward and ROI toward you and away from your hypothetical foe.
Reading between the lines, arkowitz is creating a very useful platform that could be used in the future. A legal stake in the ground may be the cheapest and most efficient way to set the prior art bar high. As others have noted, a drop to sourceforge or an RFC would unambiguously set a public date for your invention.
US patent 5841980, assigned to Sony, appears to cover some of the high level concepts of CICP. If Sony decided to come after you, I don't think possession of a CICP patent would make a difference. That said, if you're not looking to make a lot of money on this, I doubt Sony would come after you.
YMMV, IANAL, etc. If you really care about this, an hour long consult with a patent attorney could give you peace of mind.
Good skill to you and your partner!
BillG's response might be "OK, I'm outsourcing half of Redmond to China, India, and Vietnam, and laying off 20000 in the US. Care to give me a different answer?" Even if it is an empty threat (despite the silliness in MS processes, there is a lot of tribal knowledge in Redmond that can't be easily duplicated), the congresscritters will stand up and take notice.
"there is nothing sinister in so arranging one's affairs as to keep taxes as low as possible".
People and companies respond to incentives -- it is really surprising that the bizarre tax structure in the US pushes companies to form subsidiaries? Apparently it is, to either clueless or grandstanding politicians.
... a Boeing 737-700, took off from Houston Intercontinental, flew over the Gulf Of Mexico, and returned to IAH (http://flightaware.com/live/flight/COA9990). A mostly overwater flight shows reasonable confidence in algae as a fuel.
... use the gps antenna as a hat rack.
"gee, officer, really, I haven't driven this vehicle in a month".
NAS Reviews can be found at http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/content/blogcategory/50/75/
Everyone knows the market is going to be way up in a few years because it is currently highly undervalued but because the vast majority of investing groups are buying and selling with short term gain in mind the market is bouncing around like a superball.
True, but this situation may not be an ideal time to go long. As the old saying goes, the market can be wrong far longer than you can stay solvent.
Caveat emptor, your mileage may vary, and no platypuses were harmed in the making of this posting.
I'd settle for half the time, skid pad training, real-world simulator sessions, and a visit to a real accident scene -- preferably, where you can smell the victims' blood and a good portion of the visitors puke because of it.
OK, so I'm dreaming.
Spot on. Pilots are told by instructors that you "don't drop the airplane to fly the microphone". It is entirely proper to say "stand by" to a controller when you're busy with an aircraft control task.
If only driving instructors taught the same thing ...
Of course, the climate models have failed to correctly predict global temperate going forward. In particular, James Hansen's most famous prediction has failed miserably -- see http://climate-skeptic.typepad.com/photos/uncategorized/2008/09/25/hansen_forecast_1988.jpg , which calls into question Hansen's and Saint Gore's doomsday predictions.
Curve fitting are easy; prediction is hard. Given the lack of prediction success of the climate models, true global economic models will probably have the same issues.
You might want to counterbalance RealClimate.org (the soapbox of Michael Mann and Gavin Schmidt) with ClimateAudit (http://www.climateaudit.org/), which gives a more even-handed view of the evidence.
Also, in 2004 Saint Gore started Generation Investment Management (http://www.generationim.com/about/), a VC fund focusing on climate change and sustainability. In other words, his income is directly related to his ability to continue to whip up hysteria.
You'll forgive me if I look with suspicion on someone who proclaims early and often that We're All Going To Die via climate change, yet drives around in a herd of SUVs, flys in a G5, and lives in a 10000 square foot mansion that consumes more electricity in one month that most houses use in one year.
Looks like Tivo was just copying somebody else's idea.
- They can not claim it to be their own.
A herd of patent lawyers and a judge have ruled otherwise. Hint: a random engineer isn't usually qualified to make judgments like this.
Also of note: ReplayTV was released the same year as Tivo, and it too can pause or rewind live television via "independent record and playback". Once again, Tivo can not claim first implementation.
The standard (then) is "first to invent", not first to market. These issues have been hashed out in court; Tivo won.
As a shortseller of OSTK, I understand how you have every interest in portraying the company in a negative light.
A plain reading of my first sentence ("I've been happily short Overstock in the past, ...") would lead the average reader to believe that I have been short previously, but am not now. So I have no interest in portraying the company in any light at all.
A CEO who spends time complaining about shorts isn't paying attention to his business. The best thing he could do to hurt the shorts would be to manage well and deliver a positive earnings surprise. Since Byrne isn't doing that, he probably can't deliver a blow-out quarter. His management skills are in question, and I have to wonder why his board of directors isn't demanding more productive behavior.
Regarding the SEC, they have block *any* short selling (naked or otherwise) of financial stocks (http://www.sec.gov/news/press/2008/2008-211.htm). IMHO, this is utterly loony, and a continuation of the "blame the shorts" game that started in the Crash of '29. It was convenient to have a political boogey man to divert attention from the real issues then, and it is very convenient now.
You're zero for two. Perhaps you should quit while you're ahead.
I've been happily short Overstock in the past, and apparently Mr Cuban has been too. CEOs who are whining about the evil shorts rather than minding the business of their company should be fired.
From http://blogmaverick.com/2005/04/16/the-naked-shorts-get-some-clothes/2/:
And remember, rule of thumb #1 If the CEO of a company that you own [OSTK] about short sellers hurting the price of the stock. Sell the stock. Fast.
And give serious consideration to shorting the stock.
As the old saying goes, "Those who know aren't talking. Those who are talking don't know."
If doc_doofus knows and is talking, he's standing by to spend some time making little rocks out of big rocks at Leavenworth. I'd take his assessment with a huge grain of salt.
Yes indeed -- and recall the old toast "To wives and sweethearts; may they never meet."
Perhaps Duopoly is a better word. In the States, a result of government policy restricts most people to two choices for non-dialup internet -- the local phone company and the local cable company.
So, while the good Doctor has one more choice for an internet provider, the choice, both in terms of avoiding idiot management and better options, was severely limited by a brain-dead government choice.
After getting to the moon in record time, NASA is now relegated to clawing its way to Low Earth Orbit. The can-do spirit has been replaced by CYA middle managers and numerous white papers which lead to nothing.
Truly embarassing. If that's the best NASA can do, it's time to close down the manned space program and let the private sector handle it.
Modification to an old joke: "please don't tell my mom/wife I'm a pilot/geek. She thinks I'm a piano player in a house of ill repute".
... and another 100 rants from RMS.
That's your summary, but it's obvious you didn't bother to understand the article.
Oh, I did read and comprehend it, but I don't share the same naive view of modeling that New Scientist and (presumably) you have. A simple read of my post would have given you that information.
Going to some of your points:
You: need falsifiable hypothesis
From my link:
The validity of models can be tested against climate history. If they can predict the past (which the best models are pretty good at) they are probably on the right track for predicting the future - and indeed have successfully done so.
I can create a perfect climate "model" that exactly matches the past with a weighted sum of cosines -- the Fourier transform of global temperature data. I think we'd all agree that this model would have no predictive value. The only way to prove that a model is correct is to see it make valid predictions going forward. Matching the past, while necessary for a good model, is not sufficient, and is not convincing in the slightest.
But hey, if you think that modeling is really as simple as curve fitting the past, I invite you to trade stocks with a price model created in the same manner as your favorite climate model. When the markets drive your trading account to zero and hand you your head, you might understand the difficulty of prediction.
short summary of TFA: there's uncertainty in models, so they add error bars. There is major uncertainty in how to model clouds (some argue that the sign of the effect isn't known). Models are used to predict financial markets, so that's OK.
As a professional modeler working on another complex system (financial time series prediction), it is my view that the climate modelers are taking some serious shortcuts. In my industry, one wouldn't dream of committing real money to a model until it had made correct predictions of the target market going forward, without post-hoc tweaks. Constantly tweaking model constants is an indicator of curve fitting. And curve fitting is not prediction.
When a frozen climate model can correctly predict global temperature (objectively defined beforehand), week by week, for a significant time (say, five years), then it can be said that the climate modelers understand climate. Until then, curve-fitted models coupled with a rousing round of "trust us" doesn't make for a falsifiable hypothesis. And without a falsifiable hypothesis, the climate folks aren't doing science. Indeed, Gavin Schmidt at realclimate.org asserts that nothing in the next few years can falsify the models (http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2008/01/uncertainty-noise-and-the-art-of-model-data-comparison/) (!!!)
It blows my mind that unvalidated climate models are used as the rationale for multi-trillion dollar/euro investments.
You must be new around here - this is Slashdot, where completely baseless opinions are preferred. Patents and Microsoft are inherently evil, of course, and facts are not allowed to get in the way of a good diatribe. You shouln't even RTFA.
Flame away, anti-patent and MS fanbots.