The Isrieli pilots (best in the world) have done precisely that.
The target was an AA site nestled between two mountains. You go over it, it shoots you. So instead, the pilots came up the mountain in a steep climb, turned themselves over into an inside loop, and released the bomb upside down. The plane pulled out from under the bomb, and the pilot kept himself close enough to duck back down under the ridgeline without getting shot.
Of course these days, they'd just use standoff weaponry to do the same thing.
Closer, but not very. Unisys actually invented LZW and it was being used in GIFs. This patent covers a useless algorithm that the company is trying to claim covers JPEG. It does not.
I have a combined ten patents issued and in process in this specific field, so I believe I can call myself an expert in this matter.
The claims in this patent cover digital streams which tend to come in tuples, possibly with appended data. Something like this:
(1,4) (1,3), (1,6), (4,6), (3,6), (9,6)
It specifically claims the separation of these tuples into separate run-length encoded streams. In my example above, it might be:
(3x1, 4, 3, 9)
(4, 3, 4x6)... where the 4x6 is a run length encoding.
There are some further claims about coding signs and amplitude, and some table lookup mechanism to support the above.
The trouble is (for the patent holders), this is in NO WAY how JPEG works.
JPEG divides a video stream into blocks (8x8 and 16x16) of pixels, and runs them through a descrete cosine transform. Basically, this turns the representation of the picture into level and percentages of vertical and horizontal waveforms of various frequencies. It then quantizes these values (reducing their size and precision), and orders them from low frequency to high frequency. Then it subjects the whole thing to a run-length algorithm optimized to eliminate zeros (which high quant values tend to do). JPEG is a lossy algorithm that takes advantage of the fact that our eyes don't pick out errors in high frequency components as well as we do low frequency.
About the only claim this patent that's similar to JPEG is the Run Length Encoding. But that is covered by prior art that goes back forever.
In my extended career, I've seen so many bugs I've seriously given thought to writing a book about them. Most of the worst ones have to do with hardware. Here are some of my favorites:
Random Static Variables
In some primitive embedded OSes, there is no initialization of globals and statics to zero. This can cause havok when you're trying to port programs.
Registers that refuse to latch
"I'm sorry, but sometimes when you write the hardware register, the value doesn't take if the hardware is sufficiently doing something else - we're not going to turn the board, can you fix it?"
Leads to code like this:
do *reg = newValue;
while ( *reg != newValue );
Interrupts that don't
'Nuff said.
Hardware interrupts sometimes need more processing than CPU can deliver before the next interrupt comes along.
This one is a beaut. Wierd things happen in your system, and you have no clue where to look.
"Did I mention, in order to perform this HW feature you have to turn off memory refresh?"
There is only one solution to this - murder the HW designer.
Maybe next time I'll talk about the top dozen software bugs.
What if your online bank rejected non-WindowsDRM compliant Operating Systems?
I'd change banks. More imporantly, most non-techies who run older Windows operating systems that don't have this "WindowsDRM" built in would do the same thing. The online bank, having done some marketing due diligance beforehand, would know this and not even attempt such a silly restriction.
What a lot of people don't realize is that even without Open Source, Microsoft is presently loosing one of its greatest assets - the implicit channel from PC turnover. At one time, they could just foist any old technology into the market by including it as part of the latest OS, and counting on the high rate of PC turnover to cause its widespread adoption. Now, due to the fact that hardware is not obsolete the second you bought it, people just don't upgrade like they used to.
Twenty years from now, online banks and other net vendors will likely still have a significant percentage of end users who have twenty-year-old machines. Even if they had absolutely no qualms about placing their entire business at the mercy of Microsoft (which has built a track record of competing with their "customers"), there is no incentive for them to cut out such a significant portion of their customer base.
If you want to derail a train, it isn't as easy as moving the train track. Train rails are mildly electrified so that a break in the rail will signal an alarm telling the trains in the area to stop. The signals sent down the rails can also tell if something metalic is on the tracks (completing an electric circut).
The censored article doesn't tell you how to derail trains. It tells you how to make the trains stop by falsely triggering these alarms (among other things).
That broad brush stroke of terrorism may be your definition, but it isn't the generally accepted one. Terrorism is a word that - like rape - has such a strong effect on people that debaters try to expropriate it for use on things other than its original meaning.
But even by your overly broad definition, the BSA is not "terrorist". People may be annoyed, inconvenienced, or forced to inappropriately pay money to the BSA, but they are not "in terror" of them any more than tax cheaters are "in terror" of the IRS. The very fact that
Sorry. Wrong. Patents are useful because of the threat of liability. Large companies with more money are more at risk from Patent infringement cases, not less.
Typically patent cases that actually go to court are those in which a real question exists as to whether another invention infringes or not. In cases where the issue is clear cut, you get a settlement pretty quickly (or no product in the first case).
No. The real dirty secret of Patents is that most of them are little more than advertisements. Get our new Patented Mixedup egg beater! Never mind that the invention isn't any better than what already exists on the market. Look! It's Patented!
The unelected thing.... man that ticks me off, the "Full Recount" in Florida that gore argued would have had him win... well, it was done after the fact. guess who won? (if your too stupid to figure it out, it was Bush)
Actually, you're wrong twice (I'm not going to call you stupid - this is pretty detailed stuff). First, Gore didn't ask for a "full recount". Gore only asked for a recount in four Democratic leaning precincts. If only these had been recounted, Bush would still have won....
However... if all votes in the state of Florida were recounted in every county, both Democratic and Republican leaning, including the overvotes (ballots in which the candidate's name is both checked and written in) Gore clearly won. By thousands. It's not even close.
(The reason is that Democratic voters tend to be new, and make ballot mistakes. Overvoting is a typical one.)
The media focused on the fact that Gore's selected strategy would have failed to land him the Presidency. But the majority of Florida ballots with discernable intent were clearly marked for Gore.
While technically correct that MS "could loose the final case", I think it's highly unlikely, as you can see from this excerpt of the original order:
...Microsoft has only raised serious questions about the merits of its case...(and) has failed to make a sufficient showing of likelihood of success on the merits.
Given this, we are just biding time for the fat lady to make her stage entrance.
Why should we treat SPAM differently than the rest of email?
Good question - easy answer. Spam is fraud.
Spammers routinely "spoof" their messages, packets, and other information in their attempts to foist the costs of their advertisements onto other people. This is electronic fraud, plain and simple.
I'd have no problem at all with Spam if each message they sent was clearly marked as an unsolicited advertisement. That way I could tell my ISP whether I wanted it or not. But clearly they're not going to do that because most people do not care to accept such ads.
To prevent AI from developing and overthrowing the world, thus seizing Network Associates Inc.'s Internet, I must speak on behalf of all the people of the world.
What do you mean prevent?
Judging by the way they own me in Counterstrike, they already do.
You're right of course, but HardEncrypt is still useless, because one time pads are - for all practical applications - useless.
That's because, as soon as you publish the encrypted version of your file, your "one-time-pad" decryption key must be kept physically secure. And if you have to do that, you might as well have just kept the unencrypted version of your file physically secure in the first place.
This company is advertising a "have your cake and eat it too" approach, where an algorithm conveniently creates an "unbreakable" one time pad. It's nonsense. But so is the idea of using one-time-pads for security in any real sense.
You're ignoring the fact that there are legal uses for guns as well. Target shooting (featured in both the Summer and Winter Olympic games), Skeets, not to mention hunting.
Let's face facts. Both Kazaa and Small-Cheap-Saturday-night-specials do not themselves commit illegal acts. But they both are marketed to their intended audience as a means to commit illegal acts.
Gun manufacturers have put ads of gagsta-dressed men touting the concealability of their weapons (wink, wink, nudge, nudge). Kazaa does similar things - although I think we all can agree that distributing a music program isn't quite the same thing as murder.
So while I do agree that Guns/Kazaa aren't covered by existing laws, that doesn't mean they shouldn't be regulated in the future. I'd prefer a happy middle-ground where neither the RIAA nor the copyright thieves get all of what they want.
I saw Amalie. Funny film. It definately deserved an "R" though.
That part where she goes onto the rooftops to imagine all the orgasms going on in Paris "right this instant" - immediately followed by shots of fifteen different lovers all going "oohhhhhh" - isn't quite the think I'd bring my 11-year old to see.
Remember that the "rating" system is voluntary for the parents. You can bring in your kid if you think they can handle it.
For all the typical Democrat bashing in the Fox "news" article, it doesn't mention a single Republican who is actually against this POS bill. In fact, the only one who is actually against it is another Democrat.
The author states the Republicans have an "opportunity" here because they're fed up with
Democrats occasionally failing to live up to their "for the little guy" rhetoric. He thinks the public prefers Republicans who are quite forthright about selling laws to the highest corporate bidder.
It's kind of like saying people weren't mad at Clinton for cheating on his wife - they were mad at him for not divorcing her afterwards - like all the holier-than-thou Republican politicians do to their first-wives.
In my darker moments I wonder if he's right. But we'll see come election time.
I'm sure I'll get marked as Flamebait - this going against the Slashdot communities consensus and all - but this really shows how much the objections to Carnivore are a straw man.
If the U.S. intelligence and law enforcement communities can't even keep up with publically available information posted on the web, how the hell are they going to find time to snoop through people's encrypted porn? (Or whatever the hell else they actually bother to encrypt.)
Face it, it takes a hell of a lot to get an FBI agent to bother a judge about your private files.
Or, as Dennis Miller put it: "The biggest conspiracy is that there is no conspiracy. Nobody is out to get you. Nobody gives a shit whether you live or die. There, feel better now?"
Now, keep your hand raised if you believe that your company could offer the same software that you helped to create as a free, open-source download and still keep you employed.
My hand is still raised. Of course I work for a hardware company. While we do sell software, I'm pretty sure our company would gladly trade all the money we make off it for a permanent 10% increase in our hardware sales.
The problem with your analysis though is that Mundie isn't arguing for commercial software - he's arguing against free software.
There is a world of difference between these two positions that no finessing can ignore.
Slashdot Mirror
The Isrieli pilots (best in the world) have done precisely that.
The target was an AA site nestled between two mountains. You go over it, it shoots you. So instead, the pilots came up the mountain in a steep climb, turned themselves over into an inside loop, and released the bomb upside down. The plane pulled out from under the bomb, and the pilot kept himself close enough to duck back down under the ridgeline without getting shot.
Of course these days, they'd just use standoff weaponry to do the same thing.
Closer, but not very. Unisys actually invented LZW and it was being used in GIFs. This patent covers a useless algorithm that the company is trying to claim covers JPEG. It does not.
This is a nusance lawsuit. It has no merit.
I have a combined ten patents issued and in process in this specific field, so I believe I can call myself an expert in this matter.
... where the 4x6 is a run length encoding.
The claims in this patent cover digital streams which tend to come in tuples, possibly with appended data. Something like this:
(1,4) (1,3), (1,6), (4,6), (3,6), (9,6)
It specifically claims the separation of these tuples into separate run-length encoded streams.
In my example above, it might be:
(3x1, 4, 3, 9)
(4, 3, 4x6)
There are some further claims about coding signs and amplitude, and some table lookup mechanism to support the above.
The trouble is (for the patent holders), this is in NO WAY how JPEG works.
JPEG divides a video stream into blocks (8x8 and 16x16) of pixels, and runs them through a descrete cosine transform. Basically, this turns the representation of the picture into level and percentages of vertical and horizontal waveforms of various frequencies. It then quantizes these values (reducing their size and precision), and orders them from low frequency to high frequency. Then it subjects the whole thing to a run-length algorithm optimized to eliminate zeros (which high quant values tend to do). JPEG is a lossy algorithm that takes advantage of the fact that our eyes don't pick out errors in high frequency components as well as we do low frequency.
About the only claim this patent that's similar to JPEG is the Run Length Encoding. But that is covered by prior art that goes back forever.
I see no problem with cable companies preventing people from turning their computers into WAN routers.
Face facts people, if the cable co's allow this, wireless wardriving will become the spammers tool of choice.
Everybody here knows what a pain in the ass open relays are, why get upset when the cable co's do the right thing for unsecure WAPs?
Random Static Variables
In some primitive embedded OSes, there is no initialization of globals and statics to zero. This can cause havok when you're trying to port programs.
Registers that refuse to latch
"I'm sorry, but sometimes when you write the hardware register, the value doesn't take if the hardware is sufficiently doing something else - we're not going to turn the board, can you fix it?"
Leads to code like this:
do *reg = newValue;
while ( *reg != newValue );
Interrupts that don't
'Nuff said.
Hardware interrupts sometimes need more processing than CPU can deliver before the next interrupt comes along.
This one is a beaut. Wierd things happen in your system, and you have no clue where to look.
"Did I mention, in order to perform this HW feature you have to turn off memory refresh?"
There is only one solution to this - murder the HW designer.
Maybe next time I'll talk about the top dozen software bugs.
I'd change banks. More imporantly, most non-techies who run older Windows operating systems that don't have this "WindowsDRM" built in would do the same thing. The online bank, having done some marketing due diligance beforehand, would know this and not even attempt such a silly restriction.
What a lot of people don't realize is that even without Open Source, Microsoft is presently loosing one of its greatest assets - the implicit channel from PC turnover. At one time, they could just foist any old technology into the market by including it as part of the latest OS, and counting on the high rate of PC turnover to cause its widespread adoption. Now, due to the fact that hardware is not obsolete the second you bought it, people just don't upgrade like they used to.
Twenty years from now, online banks and other net vendors will likely still have a significant percentage of end users who have twenty-year-old machines. Even if they had absolutely no qualms about placing their entire business at the mercy of Microsoft (which has built a track record of competing with their "customers"), there is no incentive for them to cut out such a significant portion of their customer base.
If you want to derail a train, it isn't as easy as moving the train track. Train rails are mildly electrified so that a break in the rail will signal an alarm telling the trains in the area to stop. The signals sent down the rails can also tell if something metalic is on the tracks (completing an electric circut).
The censored article doesn't tell you how to derail trains. It tells you how to make the trains stop by falsely triggering these alarms (among other things).
That broad brush stroke of terrorism may be your definition, but it isn't the generally accepted one. Terrorism is a word that - like rape - has such a strong effect on people that debaters try to expropriate it for use on things other than its original meaning.
But even by your overly broad definition, the BSA is not "terrorist". People may be annoyed, inconvenienced, or forced to inappropriately pay money to the BSA, but they are not "in terror" of them any more than tax cheaters are "in terror" of the IRS. The very fact that
Sorry. Wrong. Patents are useful because of the threat of liability. Large companies with more money are more at risk from Patent infringement cases, not less.
Typically patent cases that actually go to court are those in which a real question exists as to whether another invention infringes or not. In cases where the issue is clear cut, you get a settlement pretty quickly (or no product in the first case).
No. The real dirty secret of Patents is that most of them are little more than advertisements. Get our new Patented Mixedup egg beater! Never mind that the invention isn't any better than what already exists on the market. Look! It's Patented!
Actually, you're wrong twice (I'm not going to call you stupid - this is pretty detailed stuff). First, Gore didn't ask for a "full recount". Gore only asked for a recount in four Democratic leaning precincts. If only these had been recounted, Bush would still have won....
However... if all votes in the state of Florida were recounted in every county, both Democratic and Republican leaning, including the overvotes (ballots in which the candidate's name is both checked and written in) Gore clearly won. By thousands. It's not even close.
(The reason is that Democratic voters tend to be new, and make ballot mistakes. Overvoting is a typical one.)
The media focused on the fact that Gore's selected strategy would have failed to land him the Presidency. But the majority of Florida ballots with discernable intent were clearly marked for Gore.
Actually, I took another look at my post and noticed I said "Microsoft" when I meant Lindows.
My bad.
...can be found via a basic google search. (It's not like there aren't any other companies who want your business, Jon.)
They are:
Regular Accounts (only)
1-800-890-6353
DSL
1-888-829-8499
Web Hosting & Business
1-888-237-0148
My "karma's" wedged at 50, so no I'm not whoring.
While technically correct that MS "could loose the final case", I think it's highly unlikely, as you can see from this excerpt of the original order:
Given this, we are just biding time for the fat lady to make her stage entrance.
Are they going to tax "sharing"?
Seems like a poweful disincentive to actually obey copyright law to me (but what do I know?)
Yet another piece of thouroughly debunked right wing bullshit, as you can see in this Snopes (Anti-)Urban Legend Article
There's just got to be some way to bitch-slap people who mod trolls like this up. Single meta-mods just don't cut it.
Absolutely!
But then, so is Unix. NT is going to absolutely destroy it.
Why should we treat SPAM differently than the rest of email?
Good question - easy answer. Spam is fraud. Spammers routinely "spoof" their messages, packets, and other information in their attempts to foist the costs of their advertisements onto other people. This is electronic fraud, plain and simple.
I'd have no problem at all with Spam if each message they sent was clearly marked as an unsolicited advertisement. That way I could tell my ISP whether I wanted it or not. But clearly they're not going to do that because most people do not care to accept such ads.
What do you mean prevent?
Judging by the way they own me in Counterstrike, they already do.
You're right of course, but HardEncrypt is still useless, because one time pads are - for all practical applications - useless.
That's because, as soon as you publish the encrypted version of your file, your "one-time-pad" decryption key must be kept physically secure. And if you have to do that, you might as well have just kept the unencrypted version of your file physically secure in the first place.
This company is advertising a "have your cake and eat it too" approach, where an algorithm conveniently creates an "unbreakable" one time pad. It's nonsense. But so is the idea of using one-time-pads for security in any real sense.
You're ignoring the fact that there are legal uses for guns as well. Target shooting (featured in both the Summer and Winter Olympic games), Skeets, not to mention hunting.
Let's face facts. Both Kazaa and Small-Cheap-Saturday-night-specials do not themselves commit illegal acts. But they both are marketed to their intended audience as a means to commit illegal acts.
Gun manufacturers have put ads of gagsta-dressed men touting the concealability of their weapons (wink, wink, nudge, nudge). Kazaa does similar things - although I think we all can agree that distributing a music program isn't quite the same thing as murder.
So while I do agree that Guns/Kazaa aren't covered by existing laws, that doesn't mean they shouldn't be regulated in the future. I'd prefer a happy middle-ground where neither the RIAA nor the copyright thieves get all of what they want.
I saw Amalie. Funny film. It definately deserved an "R" though.
That part where she goes onto the rooftops to imagine all the orgasms going on in Paris "right this instant" - immediately followed by shots of fifteen different lovers all going "oohhhhhh" - isn't quite the think I'd bring my 11-year old to see.
Remember that the "rating" system is voluntary for the parents. You can bring in your kid if you think they can handle it.
Completely!
A data service is one that gave enough campaign donations to the Bush campaign. A telecommunications service is one that didn't. ;-)
For all the typical Democrat bashing in the Fox "news" article, it doesn't mention a single Republican who is actually against this POS bill. In fact, the only one who is actually against it is another Democrat.
The author states the Republicans have an "opportunity" here because they're fed up with Democrats occasionally failing to live up to their "for the little guy" rhetoric. He thinks the public prefers Republicans who are quite forthright about selling laws to the highest corporate bidder.
It's kind of like saying people weren't mad at Clinton for cheating on his wife - they were mad at him for not divorcing her afterwards - like all the holier-than-thou Republican politicians do to their first-wives.
In my darker moments I wonder if he's right. But we'll see come election time.
I'm sure I'll get marked as Flamebait - this going against the Slashdot communities consensus and all - but this really shows how much the objections to Carnivore are a straw man.
If the U.S. intelligence and law enforcement communities can't even keep up with publically available information posted on the web, how the hell are they going to find time to snoop through people's encrypted porn? (Or whatever the hell else they actually bother to encrypt.)
Face it, it takes a hell of a lot to get an FBI agent to bother a judge about your private files.
Or, as Dennis Miller put it: "The biggest conspiracy is that there is no conspiracy. Nobody is out to get you. Nobody gives a shit whether you live or die. There, feel better now?"
My hand is still raised. Of course I work for a hardware company. While we do sell software, I'm pretty sure our company would gladly trade all the money we make off it for a permanent 10% increase in our hardware sales.
The problem with your analysis though is that Mundie isn't arguing for commercial software - he's arguing against free software.
There is a world of difference between these two positions that no finessing can ignore.