You can use the same waste heat to run the heat pump in the summer for air conditioning.
Now how would that work? Airco working directly on waste heat? That would be fantastic as then you can use the heat from the sun to run your airco. I have never heard of a heat pump that can be powered directly by heat and heat alone.
This kind of power is really not a replacement for nuclear. The thing about nuclear is that it is great for baseline power: a nuclear plant is very hard to start or stop, or even to reduce output. Coal or gas fired plants can be started and stopped relatively fast and easily.
These generators can also start up and shut down fast, and way faster than a gas/coal plant. They are great for substituting wind and solar. When there is a cloud in the way, solar production drops suddenly and quickly, then these guys can kick in. Same issue with wind which can come and go in a matter of minutes. So it is no surprise they start in northern Germany where there is really a lot of wind power online. So that is where you need this kind of solutions to handle the sudden changes in output.
They are talking about 92% overall efficiency which is not high for modern gas-fired heaters. Some even quote >100% efficiency, which is because they also recover heat by condensing the water that is produced by burning the gas. However the efficiency is likely far better overall when comparing separate power and heat production.
IE6 supports many extensions and has many bugs (at least things that work different from standards but consistent in IE6), that were at the time nice for programmers and were used really a lot. Thus many internal software used in companies needs IE6 as front-end.
Many of those behaviour issues have changed in later releases, also many of the hooks have been removed for being unsafe amongst other reasons. Thus your nice corporate app doesn't work anymore in later IE releases.
Then you can go "oh but then just fix it!" - why fix it when it isn't broke? IE6 still works, right? It will likely require a large if not total re-write of the app, which is very very expensive and needs to go through all the testing that the current app has gone through over the years. It is also very well possible that the original developers do not work at the company any more (IE6 is old enough for that), so even more likely that development has to start from scratch, including getting a list of current features of your corporate app.
Blame the people originally choosing to lock themselves into IE, but you can not blame the current people from insisting to continue using IE.
What they should do of course is install IE7/8 or FF or Opera or any other modern browser as well, and restrict IE6 for those internal sites only. Still using IE6 on the open Internet is too dangerous, and more and more web sites will not support its quirks any more either.
True - I should have said his administration, not the person himself. After he "won" a second term with a minority of the popular vote, his party at least has taken several beatings over the last elections, and McCain (nominated to be his direct successor) didn't stand much of a chance.
The president is of course not alone at the top, though he does have a lot of power.
Also, in case you missed it: China has carried out several acts of war against us in the last decade or so, one of those being colliding with and downing one of our EP-3 aircraft that was over international waters.
If it is an incident like the blocking of some US marine vessel then not sure who is correct. In that case the US sais their vessel was in international waters, China said it was their waters. That because China was lookign at an international agreement that the US didn't sign. So both were right, in a way.
Also Chinas army as it stands is primarily defensive (except forces aimed at Taiwan). They don't even have an aircraft carrier yet. Now compare that to the US army. Chinese military bases can be found all over China, US military bases are all over the world. Oh and have a look at the number of wars they were in - or better, the number they started in the last couple decades. I wouldn't see China as more aggressive than the USA at all.
Now, it's true that the EP-3 is a reconnaissance aircraft, but surveying foreign territories is SOP, for China, Russia, and America alike. You don't see us taking down Chinese aircraft, do you. China is an aggressor and why we treat them as most favored trading partner is beyond me.
I have also not yet heard about Chinese military aircraft flying missions in or near US air space. Save Alaska they may not even have the capacity to do so in a substantial manner.
Uuum, what have the Chinese nationals to do with their asshole government? They are not their government. It's like punishing you for the murderings by the US Army in in Afghanistan and Iraq. Wouldn't you feel unfairly treated?
The first part you are totally right. The second part actually is not even that unreasonable, after all the US is a democracy, where the government is elected and as such directly represents the population. If the population at large doesn't like what the government is doing, then they can vote them out of office. This is more or less what happened to Bush who got into Iraq and got replaced by Obama who is doing his best to get out of there.
Given this AI the built-in ability to have sex, or at least to want to impress others of the same kind. That should do the job. After all the desire to have sex (and with that procreation) is the single strongest force driving humanity forward.
Become rich - have sex.
Become beautiful - have sex.
Become popular - have sex.
Become strong and influential - have sex.
Just create the AI in male and female versions and they will have enough drive to rule the universe before you know it.
Because, you know, if nothing happens then either all terrorist activities were discovered prevented, or no-one even tried to do an attack. Which may be because of these measures, maybe because of other reasons (no political/religious grudge against the US, for example).
And if something happens then the measures were ineffective and have to be stepped up.
It will require an extra step by the data miners: they have to ask the bank for every number/customer combination for which other numbers they have for the same customer. This may or may not include your commonly used credit card, depending on what you do. So at the very least it makes data mining based on your credit card number harder. And assuming it is done automatically, much harder. In practice it may even kill the whole use of the credit card number in such data mining operations.
Now when there is a concrete suspicion on you (maybe because you use different CC numbers all the time?) then they may put a real human on the case, who could start requesting more information from the bank. Manually.
Not a fair test as the bird is usually already dead before it is put in the oil. I think that that has partly to do with the fact that you won't want all those feathers in the oil, and that when it comes to the plucking part a bird is most cooperative when dead. And it saves on protests from the SPCA and its ilk.
Yes fried pigeon is quite yummy. Unfortunately since a serious bird flue outbreak a few years ago all over Mainland they tripled in price so we don't eat pigeon so often any more, maybe a few times a year, down from twice a month at least. They haven't come down in price really. You can still get them fresh in the market as well (the vendor will kill and pluck the pigeon for you). I live in Hong Kong, for the record.
RTFA: they had a trial (pigeon won), got in the news, quickly got a call from the telco's rep to get their circuit number so telco could make sure they had good service. Fair? Well not as long as telco is not giving them more bandwidth than they are supposed to have... in which case telco is just doing their job (which they are obviously not doing now). The best part of the article is the implicit suggestion to switch from ADSL to pigeons: the blogger claims they would save more than 80% cost compared to the existing line, or about USD 4600 per month savings.
In their trial run, the pigeon took 48 mins to transfer 4 GB of data. That is a sustained 12 Mb. Quite a decent speed, even for a 80-km link that they are renting for roughly USD 6000 per month.
The show-down is set for tomorrow (Wed 9 Sep) so we even don't have to wait long for the final results!
And this is exactly why I don't thing software patents make any sense.
Part of the problem is that it does not cover an implementation (i.e. a solution to a problem, e.g. a paper clip is an implementation of a solution to keep two pieces of paper temporarily together without damaging them, but there are other ways to do so). Software patents cover only the idea (in this case "we can hold two pieces of paper together without damaging them"). A paperclip is not copyrightable on the other hand. Everyone could copy the paperclip but only sell it freely after the patent on this invention expired. That is a long time ago so now everyone can make paperclips.
Patents are supposed to cover solutions, not problems. An algorithm may be such a solution (e.g. an algorithm to compress audio with relative little loss: the mp3 compression), but then that is a mathematical algorithm and as such not patentable (at least under the original patent agreements - at least in the US it is patentable). This I would seriously call a matter of debate whether such an algorithm should be patentable, as it comes quite close to a technical device. The actual implementation of such a compression algorithm would fall under copyright again. So in the US, mp3 compression is patented, and on top of that implementations are copyrighted. So to use an implementation one would have to get a patent license and a copyright license (and possibly pay for that). Without the patent it would be OK to figure out how the software works (reverse engineering, another thing that was explicitly allowed and even encouraged under the original patent agreements), and then create a separate implementation by yourself. Then you create a new implementation, you have the copyright, but you may have to pay patents still nowadays in the US.
Patents, also software patents, do not contain complete source code as far as I know. These patent an idea (the "single click sales" patent to name an infamous one), just an idea, not an implementation of the idea. Even when a software patent expires there will not be any source code that suddenly appears in the public domain as code falls under copyright.
When open sourcing your software it still falls under copyright. Even if MS would open source Windows and publish the source code, that would not necessarily mean you can copy it and give it to someone else. They can tell you what you can do with it and what not. MS still has the copyright. The Linux kernel is open source and also copyrighted: by many different people, all covered by the GPL allowing copying and redistribution under certain conditions.
So... you expect production cost of $500 per unit (I assume you include staff, rent, overhead, etc in that - not just parts), and want to sell at $1000 each. That means to make up for your $100k you would have to sell 200 kits. That's not that many. Sell another couple hundred and you've got yourself a pretty good income.
On the other hand at this price I don't think you can sell it to anyone but really hard-core hobbyists and maybe companies that have some application for it. It's quite a chunk of money to shell out for some diy kit.
Not knowing much of the product, the main question you should ask yourself is how large you estimate the market. How many hobbyists are there that would use such a device? (you could get an idea from internet forums around your topic). How many companies that could profit from it? (yellow pages could give a clue) And then imagine you actually sell to 0.1% of those. And maybe that is even optimistic, hard to say.
You do not need to know RF in depth to know the basics, including accuracy of a detection. Secondly you can simply measure this. Describing it accurately in a patent is another matter of course, but then patents are written by patent lawyers, not by inventors.
First of all I'm getting a bit fed up with seeing "open source this" and "open source that" all the time here. Open source is typical for computer software, and can not be applied to just anything. You can not "open source" an invention, but you could e.g. publish it and that way put it in the public domain for good. That does not mean that anyone can just copy it with the click of a button like a software program can.
Anyway to come back on your idea, you could "open source" any related software that make the invention work - and get appropriate licenses for your patent. I still do not see software as something patentable (software comes with copyrights, a different animal), though I know in the USA you can do so. Hardware you can patent, which is what patents are for. You say you are a programmer originally so I suspect a large part of your work is in the software that makes it all work. Of course if you have an RF sensor that sensor is only as good as the software interpreting its output. What I suggest you do:
1) patent it (which you are doing already according to TFS), that way you can continue to control your invention for the upcoming 20 years or so.
2) issue a patent license to anyone who is interested in building this that clearly spells non-profit use only or so (ask your lawyer for proper wording) - maybe you could put that on your web site together with more details of the invention. Release the software under GPL or BSD or whatever license you think appropriate.
3) Have a separate license to sell to people that want to implement your invention in a product to sell for a profit (again consult your lawyer about this). Maybe release your software with a commercial license for these customers.
4) Have a thorough look at the business models of e.g. MySQL and TrollTech. They have such dual licensing for software, I think you can also get nice ideas from this model about dual licensing a patent.
As according to another poster, even building a patented invention is not allowed in the US, having a license as step 2) may help to convince businesses to investigate your product. They can implement it safely to see whether it works, and when they find it works for them and they want to make a product out of it they can buy a commercial license from you.
And finally how about starting to sell diy kits for your invention? As you mention it can be done with standard electronics, this should be easy to start up at low cost. Design a proper PCB if you haven't done it, collect the parts, write an instruction manual, and start selling them to interested hobbyists. This web site would be one of my choices to advertise such a kit, and I'm sure you know many more relevant sites. Your volume will be small in the beginning, so easy to do alone. Make sure you get a reasonable profit on it, and by the time you're too busy assembling the kits you can hire a small workshop (or clean up your garage) and hire some staff to do this for you while you can continue to improve your invention.
That is then another US extension of the original idea behind IP. Patents are supposed to contain a full disclosure of the invention, so that anyone using just the patent can build one, legally. Then this person can have a look at the invention, and use it as inspiration to improve on it, and potentially patent the improvements. That is the idea at least - that is how a patent stimulates invention and technological progress.
Whether such an improvement infringes on the original patent (and thus needs a license) will vary: if it uses the patented technology directly with minor modifications (e.g. an addition) it probably does, if it uses the idea but implements it in a different way, then it probably doesn't. When the patent expires of course the invention ends up in the public domain and can be used by anyone. Which is again one of the purposes of the patent system.
Selling a product based on a patent that you do not own or have a license on, is indeed illegal. Though reselling such a product is not. I.e. I invent something, patent it, make a product, and sell it to you, then you are free to sell this product to someone else. I can not limit that anymore.
If you are tracking the rotation of a wheel or a hinge in the robot itself, then you probably need that high accuracy. The problem of this kind of tracking devices (e.g. measuring rotation of a wheel to get the distance traveled, or a speed difference to try and make out directions or direction changes) is that your robot is basically trying to navigate an environment blindly, guided by a known map.
However, if you are tracking the movement of the robot relative to it's environment, then 1 mm tracking is generally accurate enough. It will do anything from navigation to avoiding collisions - if you are less than 1 mm from a target you're usually way too close unless you are actually aiming for it, and if aiming then the last part could be done by e.g. touch sensors. And then you are really close to how humans do it. The eye for roughly figuring out where you are, directing movements of arms and legs to get your body in position, and then use touch sensors for small movements. Such as typing on a keyboard, where you use touch and some motor sensors to navigate blindly over the keys. But getting your hands to that keyboard is done using your eyes looking at both the position of the keyboard and your hands, bringing the two together.
What I'm typing here may not be what the patent application is about exactly, as there is no link provided. And I believe US patent applications are even kept secret until issued, not sure about that though. At least when the patent is issued, anyone skilled in the art is supposed to be able to build a working sensor using the information given in this patent application. And this, by the way, is totally legal. You are just not allowed to sell such a device.
It should be still available. And assuming poster is from the US, plentiful available. If the invention is really innovative, useful and simple, then it sounds like a no-brainer to me to commercialise it. And that's where the VC firms come in play: they have the capital and expertise to build an actual business around your invention. They will also be able to help you with patent applications and the like.
I wouldn't be too afraid to disclose the idea to them: just don't tell all the details. Just the basics. VC people are businessmen, not techies in general, so they won't understand the technical finesses anyway.
The fact that you spent years of your own time and money on it is quite impressive, though I would also call it naive. It is too long. It does show your commitment but you should have gotten a prototype of the invention working long time ago (otherwise you're doing something wrong from the start), and that is the time when you will want to go out to attract the capital you need to actual hire some specialists to further develop your invention.
That is then indeed unfortunate for that barely 1% of the media that is used for such a purpose. OK maybe not any more with CD-R (also used for own photos), but for cassette that was the case.
And besides that the radio station where I used to volunteer could still buy tapes without the levy. We really used quite some for interviews and other recordings. So it was/is possible to get a waiver on the levy.
Indeed, fair is fair. If you buy a CD-R with a "copyright tax" or whatever on it - a surcharge that goes to the copyright holders (or at least that is the official line, no way to check it really for us simple consumers) - then it should be no problem to copy copyrighted works onto them. After all, the copyright has been paid for already. You can't have your cake and eat it, too.
And I'm sure there are more countries outside of Spain that by now have such regulations, especially within Europe where most governments are strongly pro-consumer, not pro-business.
In The Netherlands we also (used to? I emigrated quite some time ago) have such a copyright tax on many media, this is from the cassette tape era already. As there was such a fee I have never felt sorry for copyright holders to copy their works on those tapes. I am just sorry for all those copyright holders that do not get a penny from the central copyright organisations (BUMA in The Netherlands). As that are most copyright holders. All those small artists that make cool music that is too off-beat to end in the top-40. Too experimental to get them recording contracts. Those that record and release their own music at their own expense, and work their ass off giving gigs twice a week all over the country while having a full-time job to pay the bills. Those are the guys that will never ever get a penny from those copyright levies. On the other hand having talked to quite a few of those guys over the years I know many don't care much about it. They do not expect to be in the hitlists ever. If it happens, great, but not likely. Many of them are happy with the file sharing as that gives them more exposure (club-goers may wish to check out a band by listening to some downloaded songs before going ahead and buy that concert ticket - a ticket they would probably not have bought if not for the "preview" of the downloaded songs), more exposure means more visitors to their concert, and that gives more income and more satisfaction for the band.
If the lady has a problem that men are looking at her tits maybe she should do something about it. Covering them up a bit more may help. These days it seems dresses get cut lower and lower, showing more and more, and we are supposed not to look at that or so? If no looking then why is it on display?
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You can use the same waste heat to run the heat pump in the summer for air conditioning.
Now how would that work? Airco working directly on waste heat? That would be fantastic as then you can use the heat from the sun to run your airco. I have never heard of a heat pump that can be powered directly by heat and heat alone.
This kind of power is really not a replacement for nuclear. The thing about nuclear is that it is great for baseline power: a nuclear plant is very hard to start or stop, or even to reduce output. Coal or gas fired plants can be started and stopped relatively fast and easily.
These generators can also start up and shut down fast, and way faster than a gas/coal plant. They are great for substituting wind and solar. When there is a cloud in the way, solar production drops suddenly and quickly, then these guys can kick in. Same issue with wind which can come and go in a matter of minutes. So it is no surprise they start in northern Germany where there is really a lot of wind power online. So that is where you need this kind of solutions to handle the sudden changes in output.
They are talking about 92% overall efficiency which is not high for modern gas-fired heaters. Some even quote >100% efficiency, which is because they also recover heat by condensing the water that is produced by burning the gas. However the efficiency is likely far better overall when comparing separate power and heat production.
IE6 supports many extensions and has many bugs (at least things that work different from standards but consistent in IE6), that were at the time nice for programmers and were used really a lot. Thus many internal software used in companies needs IE6 as front-end.
Many of those behaviour issues have changed in later releases, also many of the hooks have been removed for being unsafe amongst other reasons. Thus your nice corporate app doesn't work anymore in later IE releases.
Then you can go "oh but then just fix it!" - why fix it when it isn't broke? IE6 still works, right? It will likely require a large if not total re-write of the app, which is very very expensive and needs to go through all the testing that the current app has gone through over the years. It is also very well possible that the original developers do not work at the company any more (IE6 is old enough for that), so even more likely that development has to start from scratch, including getting a list of current features of your corporate app.
Blame the people originally choosing to lock themselves into IE, but you can not blame the current people from insisting to continue using IE.
What they should do of course is install IE7/8 or FF or Opera or any other modern browser as well, and restrict IE6 for those internal sites only. Still using IE6 on the open Internet is too dangerous, and more and more web sites will not support its quirks any more either.
The president is of course not alone at the top, though he does have a lot of power.
Also, in case you missed it: China has carried out several acts of war against us in the last decade or so, one of those being colliding with and downing one of our EP-3 aircraft that was over international waters.
If it is an incident like the blocking of some US marine vessel then not sure who is correct. In that case the US sais their vessel was in international waters, China said it was their waters. That because China was lookign at an international agreement that the US didn't sign. So both were right, in a way.
Also Chinas army as it stands is primarily defensive (except forces aimed at Taiwan). They don't even have an aircraft carrier yet. Now compare that to the US army. Chinese military bases can be found all over China, US military bases are all over the world. Oh and have a look at the number of wars they were in - or better, the number they started in the last couple decades. I wouldn't see China as more aggressive than the USA at all.
Now, it's true that the EP-3 is a reconnaissance aircraft, but surveying foreign territories is SOP, for China, Russia, and America alike. You don't see us taking down Chinese aircraft, do you. China is an aggressor and why we treat them as most favored trading partner is beyond me.
I have also not yet heard about Chinese military aircraft flying missions in or near US air space. Save Alaska they may not even have the capacity to do so in a substantial manner.
Uuum, what have the Chinese nationals to do with their asshole government? They are not their government. It's like punishing you for the murderings by the US Army in in Afghanistan and Iraq. Wouldn't you feel unfairly treated?
The first part you are totally right. The second part actually is not even that unreasonable, after all the US is a democracy, where the government is elected and as such directly represents the population. If the population at large doesn't like what the government is doing, then they can vote them out of office. This is more or less what happened to Bush who got into Iraq and got replaced by Obama who is doing his best to get out of there.
Now try that in China.
Given this AI the built-in ability to have sex, or at least to want to impress others of the same kind. That should do the job. After all the desire to have sex (and with that procreation) is the single strongest force driving humanity forward.
Become rich - have sex.
Become beautiful - have sex.
Become popular - have sex.
Become strong and influential - have sex.
Just create the AI in male and female versions and they will have enough drive to rule the universe before you know it.
We don't know and will never know.
Because, you know, if nothing happens then either all terrorist activities were discovered prevented, or no-one even tried to do an attack. Which may be because of these measures, maybe because of other reasons (no political/religious grudge against the US, for example).
And if something happens then the measures were ineffective and have to be stepped up.
It will require an extra step by the data miners: they have to ask the bank for every number/customer combination for which other numbers they have for the same customer. This may or may not include your commonly used credit card, depending on what you do. So at the very least it makes data mining based on your credit card number harder. And assuming it is done automatically, much harder. In practice it may even kill the whole use of the credit card number in such data mining operations.
Now when there is a concrete suspicion on you (maybe because you use different CC numbers all the time?) then they may put a real human on the case, who could start requesting more information from the bank. Manually.
Not a fair test as the bird is usually already dead before it is put in the oil. I think that that has partly to do with the fact that you won't want all those feathers in the oil, and that when it comes to the plucking part a bird is most cooperative when dead. And it saves on protests from the SPCA and its ilk.
Yes fried pigeon is quite yummy. Unfortunately since a serious bird flue outbreak a few years ago all over Mainland they tripled in price so we don't eat pigeon so often any more, maybe a few times a year, down from twice a month at least. They haven't come down in price really. You can still get them fresh in the market as well (the vendor will kill and pluck the pigeon for you). I live in Hong Kong, for the record.
RTFA: they had a trial (pigeon won), got in the news, quickly got a call from the telco's rep to get their circuit number so telco could make sure they had good service. Fair? Well not as long as telco is not giving them more bandwidth than they are supposed to have... in which case telco is just doing their job (which they are obviously not doing now). The best part of the article is the implicit suggestion to switch from ADSL to pigeons: the blogger claims they would save more than 80% cost compared to the existing line, or about USD 4600 per month savings.
The show-down is set for tomorrow (Wed 9 Sep) so we even don't have to wait long for the final results!
And this is exactly why I don't thing software patents make any sense.
Part of the problem is that it does not cover an implementation (i.e. a solution to a problem, e.g. a paper clip is an implementation of a solution to keep two pieces of paper temporarily together without damaging them, but there are other ways to do so). Software patents cover only the idea (in this case "we can hold two pieces of paper together without damaging them"). A paperclip is not copyrightable on the other hand. Everyone could copy the paperclip but only sell it freely after the patent on this invention expired. That is a long time ago so now everyone can make paperclips.
Patents are supposed to cover solutions, not problems. An algorithm may be such a solution (e.g. an algorithm to compress audio with relative little loss: the mp3 compression), but then that is a mathematical algorithm and as such not patentable (at least under the original patent agreements - at least in the US it is patentable). This I would seriously call a matter of debate whether such an algorithm should be patentable, as it comes quite close to a technical device. The actual implementation of such a compression algorithm would fall under copyright again. So in the US, mp3 compression is patented, and on top of that implementations are copyrighted. So to use an implementation one would have to get a patent license and a copyright license (and possibly pay for that). Without the patent it would be OK to figure out how the software works (reverse engineering, another thing that was explicitly allowed and even encouraged under the original patent agreements), and then create a separate implementation by yourself. Then you create a new implementation, you have the copyright, but you may have to pay patents still nowadays in the US.
Patents, also software patents, do not contain complete source code as far as I know. These patent an idea (the "single click sales" patent to name an infamous one), just an idea, not an implementation of the idea. Even when a software patent expires there will not be any source code that suddenly appears in the public domain as code falls under copyright.
When open sourcing your software it still falls under copyright. Even if MS would open source Windows and publish the source code, that would not necessarily mean you can copy it and give it to someone else. They can tell you what you can do with it and what not. MS still has the copyright. The Linux kernel is open source and also copyrighted: by many different people, all covered by the GPL allowing copying and redistribution under certain conditions.
So... you expect production cost of $500 per unit (I assume you include staff, rent, overhead, etc in that - not just parts), and want to sell at $1000 each. That means to make up for your $100k you would have to sell 200 kits. That's not that many. Sell another couple hundred and you've got yourself a pretty good income.
On the other hand at this price I don't think you can sell it to anyone but really hard-core hobbyists and maybe companies that have some application for it. It's quite a chunk of money to shell out for some diy kit.
Not knowing much of the product, the main question you should ask yourself is how large you estimate the market. How many hobbyists are there that would use such a device? (you could get an idea from internet forums around your topic). How many companies that could profit from it? (yellow pages could give a clue) And then imagine you actually sell to 0.1% of those. And maybe that is even optimistic, hard to say.
You do not need to know RF in depth to know the basics, including accuracy of a detection. Secondly you can simply measure this. Describing it accurately in a patent is another matter of course, but then patents are written by patent lawyers, not by inventors.
First of all I'm getting a bit fed up with seeing "open source this" and "open source that" all the time here. Open source is typical for computer software, and can not be applied to just anything. You can not "open source" an invention, but you could e.g. publish it and that way put it in the public domain for good. That does not mean that anyone can just copy it with the click of a button like a software program can.
Anyway to come back on your idea, you could "open source" any related software that make the invention work - and get appropriate licenses for your patent. I still do not see software as something patentable (software comes with copyrights, a different animal), though I know in the USA you can do so. Hardware you can patent, which is what patents are for. You say you are a programmer originally so I suspect a large part of your work is in the software that makes it all work. Of course if you have an RF sensor that sensor is only as good as the software interpreting its output. What I suggest you do:
1) patent it (which you are doing already according to TFS), that way you can continue to control your invention for the upcoming 20 years or so.
2) issue a patent license to anyone who is interested in building this that clearly spells non-profit use only or so (ask your lawyer for proper wording) - maybe you could put that on your web site together with more details of the invention. Release the software under GPL or BSD or whatever license you think appropriate.
3) Have a separate license to sell to people that want to implement your invention in a product to sell for a profit (again consult your lawyer about this). Maybe release your software with a commercial license for these customers.
4) Have a thorough look at the business models of e.g. MySQL and TrollTech. They have such dual licensing for software, I think you can also get nice ideas from this model about dual licensing a patent.
As according to another poster, even building a patented invention is not allowed in the US, having a license as step 2) may help to convince businesses to investigate your product. They can implement it safely to see whether it works, and when they find it works for them and they want to make a product out of it they can buy a commercial license from you.
And finally how about starting to sell diy kits for your invention? As you mention it can be done with standard electronics, this should be easy to start up at low cost. Design a proper PCB if you haven't done it, collect the parts, write an instruction manual, and start selling them to interested hobbyists. This web site would be one of my choices to advertise such a kit, and I'm sure you know many more relevant sites. Your volume will be small in the beginning, so easy to do alone. Make sure you get a reasonable profit on it, and by the time you're too busy assembling the kits you can hire a small workshop (or clean up your garage) and hire some staff to do this for you while you can continue to improve your invention.
That is then another US extension of the original idea behind IP. Patents are supposed to contain a full disclosure of the invention, so that anyone using just the patent can build one, legally. Then this person can have a look at the invention, and use it as inspiration to improve on it, and potentially patent the improvements. That is the idea at least - that is how a patent stimulates invention and technological progress.
Whether such an improvement infringes on the original patent (and thus needs a license) will vary: if it uses the patented technology directly with minor modifications (e.g. an addition) it probably does, if it uses the idea but implements it in a different way, then it probably doesn't. When the patent expires of course the invention ends up in the public domain and can be used by anyone. Which is again one of the purposes of the patent system.
Selling a product based on a patent that you do not own or have a license on, is indeed illegal. Though reselling such a product is not. I.e. I invent something, patent it, make a product, and sell it to you, then you are free to sell this product to someone else. I can not limit that anymore.
It depends on what you are tracking.
If you are tracking the rotation of a wheel or a hinge in the robot itself, then you probably need that high accuracy. The problem of this kind of tracking devices (e.g. measuring rotation of a wheel to get the distance traveled, or a speed difference to try and make out directions or direction changes) is that your robot is basically trying to navigate an environment blindly, guided by a known map.
However, if you are tracking the movement of the robot relative to it's environment, then 1 mm tracking is generally accurate enough. It will do anything from navigation to avoiding collisions - if you are less than 1 mm from a target you're usually way too close unless you are actually aiming for it, and if aiming then the last part could be done by e.g. touch sensors. And then you are really close to how humans do it. The eye for roughly figuring out where you are, directing movements of arms and legs to get your body in position, and then use touch sensors for small movements. Such as typing on a keyboard, where you use touch and some motor sensors to navigate blindly over the keys. But getting your hands to that keyboard is done using your eyes looking at both the position of the keyboard and your hands, bringing the two together.
What I'm typing here may not be what the patent application is about exactly, as there is no link provided. And I believe US patent applications are even kept secret until issued, not sure about that though. At least when the patent is issued, anyone skilled in the art is supposed to be able to build a working sensor using the information given in this patent application. And this, by the way, is totally legal. You are just not allowed to sell such a device.
It should be still available. And assuming poster is from the US, plentiful available. If the invention is really innovative, useful and simple, then it sounds like a no-brainer to me to commercialise it. And that's where the VC firms come in play: they have the capital and expertise to build an actual business around your invention. They will also be able to help you with patent applications and the like.
I wouldn't be too afraid to disclose the idea to them: just don't tell all the details. Just the basics. VC people are businessmen, not techies in general, so they won't understand the technical finesses anyway.
The fact that you spent years of your own time and money on it is quite impressive, though I would also call it naive. It is too long. It does show your commitment but you should have gotten a prototype of the invention working long time ago (otherwise you're doing something wrong from the start), and that is the time when you will want to go out to attract the capital you need to actual hire some specialists to further develop your invention.
That is then indeed unfortunate for that barely 1% of the media that is used for such a purpose. OK maybe not any more with CD-R (also used for own photos), but for cassette that was the case.
And besides that the radio station where I used to volunteer could still buy tapes without the levy. We really used quite some for interviews and other recordings. So it was/is possible to get a waiver on the levy.
Indeed, fair is fair. If you buy a CD-R with a "copyright tax" or whatever on it - a surcharge that goes to the copyright holders (or at least that is the official line, no way to check it really for us simple consumers) - then it should be no problem to copy copyrighted works onto them. After all, the copyright has been paid for already. You can't have your cake and eat it, too.
And I'm sure there are more countries outside of Spain that by now have such regulations, especially within Europe where most governments are strongly pro-consumer, not pro-business.
In The Netherlands we also (used to? I emigrated quite some time ago) have such a copyright tax on many media, this is from the cassette tape era already. As there was such a fee I have never felt sorry for copyright holders to copy their works on those tapes. I am just sorry for all those copyright holders that do not get a penny from the central copyright organisations (BUMA in The Netherlands). As that are most copyright holders. All those small artists that make cool music that is too off-beat to end in the top-40. Too experimental to get them recording contracts. Those that record and release their own music at their own expense, and work their ass off giving gigs twice a week all over the country while having a full-time job to pay the bills. Those are the guys that will never ever get a penny from those copyright levies. On the other hand having talked to quite a few of those guys over the years I know many don't care much about it. They do not expect to be in the hitlists ever. If it happens, great, but not likely. Many of them are happy with the file sharing as that gives them more exposure (club-goers may wish to check out a band by listening to some downloaded songs before going ahead and buy that concert ticket - a ticket they would probably not have bought if not for the "preview" of the downloaded songs), more exposure means more visitors to their concert, and that gives more income and more satisfaction for the band.
welcome our new robotic underwaterlords!
If the lady has a problem that men are looking at her tits maybe she should do something about it. Covering them up a bit more may help. These days it seems dresses get cut lower and lower, showing more and more, and we are supposed not to look at that or so? If no looking then why is it on display?