Look a little closer; it DOESN'T work the exact same way... they have an example of this at the MS site linked in the article. If you use the NOEXTERNALDATA attribute but still add a param which points to external data, the browser won't pass that data to the plugin. The preferred workaround seems to be using a linked-to JS doc to document.write the OBJECT tag to the page... doing that, you can build the tag the same way as before, and the extra network call to get the JS script avoids the patent.
As far as browser compatibility goes, look at the Macromedia page linked to from the Mozilla page on the subject (Mozilla link is above this post someplace). They've got a chart of browsers / platforms they've tested the workaround on, although I'm still wondering what "Linux / Solaris on Windows" means....
I'll be the second to mention HEAT, by Frontrange. It's got its drawbacks (stay from the Java client, iHEAT), but it seems to do what you're looking for. Caveat: I'm looking at it from the perspective of a developer who uses it as a client, not from the side of an admin.
And how long will it be before some search-engine-optimization villains start running privately-hacked nodes to bias the results towards their clients?
I thought that it was only patent infringement that could be ignored, and that copyrights and trademarks have to be actively defended or the owner risks losing them. IANAL of course, but that is my understanding.
Read a little further in the law (there's a link further down the page)... Section 103 adds:
SEC. 103. SPECIFIC EXCEPTIONS. <snip> (b) ADDITIONAL EXCEPTIONS.--The provisions of section 101 shall not apply to-- (1) court orders or notices, or official court documents (including briefs, pleadings, and other writings) required to be executed in connection with court proceedings;
Whether the claim filing process faqlls under this (and whether this applies to state proceedings as well as Federal) is a question of legal arcana that I can't answer, as (all together now!) IANAL.
The claim is not being transfered to lindows. It's the same as if you mandate someone (say a lawyer) to collect your winning lottery ticket, which you've signed. You haven't transferred your winnings, you've appointed someone to act on your behalf.
So you think it's a good idea to give power-of-attorney to Michael Robertson? I have a lot of trouble seeing myself ever doing that, in any way, shape or form, for any reason whatsoever.
If the reality is as the letter says it is -- and I'm not in California so I haven't cared enough to look -- then it seems to me that MS's concerns are completely reasonable.
Since when? The last I knew of, Borland's primary market was in-house developers writing backoffice Line of Business software (IOW, people writing programs that support whatever their company actually does, particularly when the company's business has nothing to do with software).
On the contrary, it's entirely obvious. Even if you know nothing about software, the fact that Netscape published an implementation in 95 should strongly suggest that someone over there had considered the idea in 94 or earlier.
Probably they did, but although the idea may have been common to two or more people (which in itself doesn't make it either obvious or non-obvious), the fact of the implementation in 1994 is what was patented. First one there wins.
And from a perspective of basic computer science, splitting a piece of software into separate modules (plugins) is a fundamental transformation you can apply at any time. It changes only the development and distribution methodologies, not the functionality of the product.
Except that we're not actually considering the splitting of a single piece of software into different pieces; we're discussing a browser (which up until then could display text with static images and limited formatting) exposing an API to external apps, embedding those apps within the display of a page, feeding the downloaded document to that app, and allowing that app to present an interface of its choosing to manipulate that document. If the implementation of such an idea was obvious in 1994, then why could Microsoft and its IP team not show sufficent relevant prior art to break the patent? MS, IBM and Apple barely had COM and OpenDoc working in that timeframe (ever use COM in Windows 3.11?)
Seeing the words "with a plugin" or "from the web" in any patent should should flag it as invalid by obviousness.
So it is now impossible to come up with an original idea to be used with HTTP?
-- See grandparent post for the remainder of my.sig.
I'm not sure that we can attribute this one to "laxness." Given the fact that software patents are legal in the US, a working interactive plugin architecture in the 1994 timeframe doesn't exactly strike me as "obvious." The first press release I can find for Netscape Navigator 2.0 -- which introduced plugins, or Live Objects, to their line -- is dated September 18, 1995. Remember those days when you went to a web page and nothing moved?
MD's for spots??? Why, in my day (about a decade before yours), we put all of our promos, program intros, etc. on carts, with an archival copy on 8" Ampex reel-to-reel, and we liked it!
You young whippersnappers probably don't even know how to cue up an LP....
I looked through the various SCO complaints at http://www.sco.com/ibmlawsuit/, and I noticed something particularly rich. If you look at the original SCO complaint, you'll notice that they twice refer to IBM as a Delaware corporation. They are not; IBM is a New York corporation (reference their latest 10-Q). They fixed it in the June amended complaint, but screwing up something as basic as the identity of your defendant is still hideously sloppy.
I believe that the "Smart card" evolution in Europe is more-or-less directly attributable to the expensive phone service there. In the US, a phone connection for the mag-stripe card reader (whether dial-up or leased line) is comparatively much cheaper than the high rates in Europe, so the built-in authorization the smart cards make available (which is the only effective difference between the two types of cards) isn't worth the added cost. In fact, outside of some universities and the Amex Blue card, the only smart cards I've seen in general circulation here in the US are for individual laundromats.
No, the next step is this, from the folks who brought you TIA, the Policy Analysis Market... and the Internet. (If it's down, try the Google cache instead.
Novell has bought WordPerfect at the moment it was really perfect (even and especially comparing to MS Word) and killed it.
I have to differ on that one... they bought WP just after the 6.0 / 6.0a debacle (WPWin 6.0 was so buggy they had to issue a full update -- 6.0a -- almost immediately afterwards), when it had become obvious that WP was finding it nearly impossible to adapt to the Win16 world from DOS. The first Novell release with the ugly tomato-soup stripe I remember was 6.1.
OTOH, at least Novell kept the Unix (X/Motif) WordPerfect line around... it took Corel to kill that.
Someone else mentioned "Series Manager". On my terminal, if you pull up the Recorded Programs list ("List" button on the remote), there is a choice to hit the B button for a Preferences menu. This offers the "Schedule a new Manual Recording" option. There may be different software versions around as well.
Oh, and someone else complained about being unpaid beta testers for TW / SA. Well, isn't that what "early adopter" essentially means these days?
I've had one of the TW boxes since the beginning of this year (Southern Maine is one of TW's favorite test markets), and you can do a standard "record channel x on schedule y" (where "y" is a particular date, every <particular day of week>, every weekday, etc.), independent of the program guide Check the manual for the "Scheduled Recording" option; it's in some unexpected place on-screen. I'm not sure if the odd placement is the fault of TW or Scientific Atlanta, but my hunch is the manufacturer.
Oh, BTW, according to SciAtl at the DVP product page, the HDTV-capable DVR cable box will be available to cable operators in October-November. Can they get any more tech in one box?
I took a look at the first page of that history... is the Wesley Clark mentioned in the 1967 entry as having been at the Ann Arbor meeting the now recently-retired Gen. Wesley Clark?
Is that the same tic-tac-toe computer (which had a display c. 4 ft. square) that was in the Museum of Science computer exhibit back in the 70s (where the Big Dig exhibit is now)? If it is, THAT probably qualifies as "the first computer I ever used."
Slashdot Mirror
Look a little closer; it DOESN'T work the exact same way... they have an example of this at the MS site linked in the article. If you use the NOEXTERNALDATA attribute but still add a param which points to external data, the browser won't pass that data to the plugin. The preferred workaround seems to be using a linked-to JS doc to document.write the OBJECT tag to the page... doing that, you can build the tag the same way as before, and the extra network call to get the JS script avoids the patent.
As far as browser compatibility goes, look at the Macromedia page linked to from the Mozilla page on the subject (Mozilla link is above this post someplace). They've got a chart of browsers / platforms they've tested the workaround on, although I'm still wondering what "Linux / Solaris on Windows" means....
I'll be the second to mention HEAT, by Frontrange. It's got its drawbacks (stay from the Java client, iHEAT), but it seems to do what you're looking for. Caveat: I'm looking at it from the perspective of a developer who uses it as a client, not from the side of an admin.
And how long will it be before some search-engine-optimization villains start running privately-hacked nodes to bias the results towards their clients?
.sig: be the majority of voters.
Remainder of my
Cowboy up!
I thought that it was only patent infringement that could be ignored, and that copyrights and trademarks have to be actively defended or the owner risks losing them. IANAL of course, but that is my understanding.
.sig: be the majority of voters.
Remainder of my
No, no Portland in New Hampshire; try Maine or Oregon instead.
.sig: be the majority of voters.
Remainder of my
Whether the claim filing process faqlls under this (and whether this applies to state proceedings as well as Federal) is a question of legal arcana that I can't answer, as (all together now!) IANAL.
Remainder of my
So you think it's a good idea to give power-of-attorney to Michael Robertson? I have a lot of trouble seeing myself ever doing that, in any way, shape or form, for any reason whatsoever.
Remainder of my
If the reality is as the letter says it is -- and I'm not in California so I haven't cared enough to look -- then it seems to me that MS's concerns are completely reasonable.
.sig: be the majority of voters.
Remainder of my
You use my local airport for a desktop???
Remainder of my
SHAMU THE OPEN-SOURCE ORCA!
.sig: be the majority of voters.
(Shamu is undoubtedly a trademark of Anheuser-Busch, which had nothing to do with this comment).
Remainder of my
Since when? The last I knew of, Borland's primary market was in-house developers writing backoffice Line of Business software (IOW, people writing programs that support whatever their company actually does, particularly when the company's business has nothing to do with software).
.sig: be the majority of voters.
Remainder of my
On the contrary, it's entirely obvious. Even if you know nothing about software, the fact that Netscape published an implementation in 95 should strongly suggest that someone over there had considered the idea in 94 or earlier.
.sig.
Probably they did, but although the idea may have been common to two or more people (which in itself doesn't make it either obvious or non-obvious), the fact of the implementation in 1994 is what was patented. First one there wins.
And from a perspective of basic computer science, splitting a piece of software into separate modules (plugins) is a fundamental transformation you can apply at any time. It changes only the development and distribution methodologies, not the functionality of the product.
Except that we're not actually considering the splitting of a single piece of software into different pieces; we're discussing a browser (which up until then could display text with static images and limited formatting) exposing an API to external apps, embedding those apps within the display of a page, feeding the downloaded document to that app, and allowing that app to present an interface of its choosing to manipulate that document. If the implementation of such an idea was obvious in 1994, then why could Microsoft and its IP team not show sufficent relevant prior art to break the patent? MS, IBM and Apple barely had COM and OpenDoc working in that timeframe (ever use COM in Windows 3.11?)
Seeing the words "with a plugin" or "from the web" in any patent should should flag it as invalid by obviousness.
So it is now impossible to come up with an original idea to be used with HTTP?
--
See grandparent post for the remainder of my
I'm not sure that we can attribute this one to "laxness." Given the fact that software patents are legal in the US, a working interactive plugin architecture in the 1994 timeframe doesn't exactly strike me as "obvious." The first press release I can find for Netscape Navigator 2.0 -- which introduced plugins, or Live Objects, to their line -- is dated September 18, 1995. Remember those days when you went to a web page and nothing moved?
.sig: be the majority of voters.
Remainder of my
MD's for spots??? Why, in my day (about a decade before yours), we put all of our promos, program intros, etc. on carts, with an archival copy on 8" Ampex reel-to-reel, and we liked it!
.sig: be the majority of voters.
You young whippersnappers probably don't even know how to cue up an LP....
Remainder of my
I looked through the various SCO complaints at http://www.sco.com/ibmlawsuit/, and I noticed something particularly rich. If you look at the original SCO complaint, you'll notice that they twice refer to IBM as a Delaware corporation. They are not; IBM is a New York corporation (reference their latest 10-Q). They fixed it in the June amended complaint, but screwing up something as basic as the identity of your defendant is still hideously sloppy.
.sig: be the majority of voters.
Remainder of my
I believe that the "Smart card" evolution in Europe is more-or-less directly attributable to the expensive phone service there. In the US, a phone connection for the mag-stripe card reader (whether dial-up or leased line) is comparatively much cheaper than the high rates in Europe, so the built-in authorization the smart cards make available (which is the only effective difference between the two types of cards) isn't worth the added cost. In fact, outside of some universities and the Amex Blue card, the only smart cards I've seen in general circulation here in the US are for individual laundromats.
.sig: be the majority of voters.
Remainder of my
No, the next step is this, from the folks who brought you TIA, the Policy Analysis Market... and the Internet. (If it's down, try the Google cache instead.
.sig: be the majority of voters.
Remainder of my
vi or emacs?
.sig: be the majority of voters.
Remainder of my
s/Orlando Hernandez/Ramiro Mendoza/ in the original post.
.sig: be the majority of voters.
This is what the world needs: Slash-O-Matic Baseball!!!! (apologies to Strat-O-Matic.
Remainder of my
I have to differ on that one... they bought WP just after the 6.0 / 6.0a debacle (WPWin 6.0 was so buggy they had to issue a full update -- 6.0a -- almost immediately afterwards), when it had become obvious that WP was finding it nearly impossible to adapt to the Win16 world from DOS. The first Novell release with the ugly tomato-soup stripe I remember was 6.1.
OTOH, at least Novell kept the Unix (X/Motif) WordPerfect line around... it took Corel to kill that.
Remainder of my
Someone else mentioned "Series Manager". On my terminal, if you pull up the Recorded Programs list ("List" button on the remote), there is a choice to hit the B button for a Preferences menu. This offers the "Schedule a new Manual Recording" option. There may be different software versions around as well.
.sig: be the majority of voters.
Oh, and someone else complained about being unpaid beta testers for TW / SA. Well, isn't that what "early adopter" essentially means these days?
Remainder of my
I've had one of the TW boxes since the beginning of this year (Southern Maine is one of TW's favorite test markets), and you can do a standard "record channel x on schedule y" (where "y" is a particular date, every <particular day of week>, every weekday, etc.), independent of the program guide Check the manual for the "Scheduled Recording" option; it's in some unexpected place on-screen. I'm not sure if the odd placement is the fault of TW or Scientific Atlanta, but my hunch is the manufacturer.
Oh, BTW, according to SciAtl at the DVP product page, the HDTV-capable DVR cable box will be available to cable operators in October-November. Can they get any more tech in one box?
I took a look at the first page of that history... is the Wesley Clark mentioned in the 1967 entry as having been at the Ann Arbor meeting the now recently-retired Gen. Wesley Clark?
Is that the same tic-tac-toe computer (which had a display c. 4 ft. square) that was in the Museum of Science computer exhibit back in the 70s (where the Big Dig exhibit is now)? If it is, THAT probably qualifies as "the first computer I ever used."
.sig: be the majority of voters.
Remainder of my