Doesn't matter unless the prior art existed before the patent was filed (in April 1997). Was Deja News around back then? (The patent is on (in plain English) "session IDs or user IDs in the URL," and Deja News uses session IDs.)
Seriously though, the patent shows a specific example
All patents do. It's called a "preferred embodiment." All the legal force of a patent resides in the claims. Here's the first claim of the patent in question:
A document delivery system for delivering one or more documents between a sender and at least one recipient, said system comprising:
a server that temporarily stores said documents, wherein said server generates a URL for each intended recipient of said documents, the URL unique to each recipient, and sends each of the URLs to each respective intended recipient; and
a database which is associated with said server and which records log data describing which recipients accessed said documents;
wherein said server sends the log data to the sender of said documents.
Translation: If your web database uses a session_id in the GET URL, you infringe. Even Google DejaNews infringes.
All your hallucinogen are belong to us.
I even found an old password protection cgi two YEARS ago that did that
An invention has to be new and non-obvious when the patent is filed, not when it's granted. Most patents take three years to be bribed through the USPTO. Was this standard practice in 1998?
What the hell platform are you writing code on that doesn't have a debugger???
In some environments, the only debugger you have is printf() or the equivalent. How do you run GDB on an embedded system such as a cellphone or a game console? How do you debug a fullscreen application (game, media player, etc.) if you can't see GDB's window?
The record companies are asking for $100,000 per copyright violation.
No, $100K per work violated, the maximum statutory damages under US law. There are likely less than 3 million unique RIAA songs available through Napster.
Plus, there's now an mp3 encoder (LAME) that is open-source, meaning that anyone can compile it and use it; gone are the days of paying Fraunhofer IIS royalties for "their intellectual property".
Fraunhofer Group still owns patents in the United States and other countries on the process of "Overlapped cosine transform plus Fourier transform encoding, followed by psychoacoustic quantization and entropy coding" which is a necessary and irreplaceable part of MP3 encoding. This is why Ogg Vorbis doesn't use a Fourier transform but instead a finer cosine transform.
ps it would help if you told us what the goal was. asking us for a recommendation on which hammer is best without telling us any details is useless. especialy if what you really need is a wrench
What about a web-based front-end to an email system, a user-written encyclopedia, etc.? What about a web-based personal home page creation tool (think GeoCities)?
If you've used MAME or NESTicle recently, I'm sure you realize how incredibly crappy and juvenile games like Metroid and Zelda really were.
So you see a lot of graphical problems in games played through NESticle. The problem isn't in the games; it's in the emulator. NESticle is not one of the best NES emulators; it was written to an early draft of the NES documentation and contains several detectable flaws. One of these flaws can be exploited in merely four instructions of 6502 asm code:
nestc_detect:
lda $2002;ppu status register
bpl nestc_detect;spin until VBL
lda $2002;reading the status register is SUPPOSED to clear the VBL bit
bmi running_on_nesticle;but it doesn't on NESticle
NESticle also has inaccuracies with respect to Sprite 0 hit detection (causing scroll timing to be off) and mixing of VRAM writes, VRAM reads, and scroll commands. Examples of better emulators include LoopyNES, NESten, nester, RockNES, BioNES, and FCE Ultra.
rm `find / -name "nesticle.exe"` All your hallucinogen are belong to us.
I once witnessed an Win update (don't remember which) doing the update by removing the old files (known to be old Win versions) and copying in the new files. The (formerly) used (and removed) Microsoft driver was NOT among the ones listed with the new Win. Oops.
That's what happened to me. I had to reinstall my video drivers from the disk. But the point remains that you have the option not to check the box.
What if the "BuzzWordWare(tm)" company decides that this or that driver is outdated (as has happened to some of the Win9x drivers)? Then all of a sudden the whole system will stop working - no chance of keeping on using the old driver. You have subscribed, so you have to update or stop using, remember?
Windows Update does not currently work like that; driver upgrades are voluntary. (Do NOT get the NeoMagic video driver update; it'll remove all ability to use DirectDraw.) More to the point, drivers are tied to the hardware (video card, sound card, CD burner), and you don't license hardware; you buy it.
If,say, Adobe produced a pay-per-usage based Photoshop, theres a good chance they could cut piracy way down, as people like me who only occasionally need that powerful of a graphics program wouldn't need to be intimidated by the $600 up-front price.
Remember, if you don't need Photoshop's prepress capabilities (and bloat), you can always run GIMP on your GNU/Linux, BSD, Darwin, or UNIX box or WinGIMP on your winbox. It's a nice tool for web graphics (more powerful than Paint Shop Pro), and it's both free and Free.
(Yes, I did mention Darwin. Read the comment before replying.) All your hallucinogen are belong to us.
Personal grip: I wish long distance carriers would tell you the price/minute of a call before the call is connected rather than not know the cost until it shows up on the bill.
They do. AT&T was the first, with 15c/min One Rate. Then there was an explosion of 10-10 services (10-10-321 16c/min but 50% off all calls over 10 minutes; 10-10-220 99c first 20 min 7c each addl). Then Sprint countered with A Dime Anytime. You can always look up current rates on a telco's web site.
Why pay a monthly fee when I only have to wait for some cracking group to post a fix that skips over the code that ensures my subscription is still active?
Not if the clip art, spell-check, grammar-check, thesaurus, etc. features run server-side, and the program authenticates to the server with a name and password. And if name and password are shared like serialz, the app server can easily bankick known pirated licenses.
6. Make it relatively easy to transfer licenses between computers. Once that old P3 reaches the end of its life in 4-5 years, you should be able to submit a web form, register the other computer as "killed"
You said it. If BIOS (the ROM boot code) moves to a subscription licensing model (silly but a possibility), a computer without a BIOS license really will be "killed."
Clearly, a company needs to own all of the source code behind their product. They can't worry about a disgruntled ex-employee suddenly demanding that they pay royalties for 'his code' or any other things that might pop up.
If 'his code' is licensed under X11, BSD, or Lesser GPL terms, such a license is irrevocable, and the "submarine" tactic you're proposing is not possible.
How? What if the only field in which you are trained relies on a standard encumbered by patents, and your competitors refuse to license? What if the only field in which you are trained requires an eight-figure investment just to get started? Would you go back to school for four more years (at a cost of USD $100,000+) just to get a job?
Slashdot Mirror
And what, exactly, do they do that's better than some combination of PGP, a good VPN, and good firewalls?
Most residential DSL and cable contracts prohibit using VPNs on their network because VPNs are bandwidth hogs.
All your hallucinogen are belong to us.
*cough* prior art *cough*
Doesn't matter unless the prior art existed before the patent was filed (in April 1997). Was Deja News around back then? (The patent is on (in plain English) "session IDs or user IDs in the URL," and Deja News uses session IDs.)
Good news: CueCat infringes.
All your hallucinogen are belong to us.
Seriously though, the patent shows a specific example
All patents do. It's called a "preferred embodiment." All the legal force of a patent resides in the claims. Here's the first claim of the patent in question:
Translation: If your web database uses a session_id in the GET URL, you infringe. Even Google DejaNews infringes.All your hallucinogen are belong to us.
I even found an old password protection cgi two YEARS ago that did that
An invention has to be new and non-obvious when the patent is filed, not when it's granted. Most patents take three years to be bribed through the USPTO. Was this standard practice in 1998?
All your hallucinogen are belong to us.
I want an embedded system. Literally. Embedded into my HEAD!
Something similar has been discussed already on Everything.
All your hallucinogen are belong to us.
What the hell platform are you writing code on that doesn't have a debugger???
In some environments, the only debugger you have is printf() or the equivalent. How do you run GDB on an embedded system such as a cellphone or a game console? How do you debug a fullscreen application (game, media player, etc.) if you can't see GDB's window?
All your hallucinogen are belong to us.
Unisys
Quit. Your. Job. Now.
All your hallucinogen are belong to us.
Semiconductor mask works are protected under Title 17 of the U.S. code, the same title that contains copyright law and the DMCA. They are protected for between ten and eleven years after registration or first demonstration (e.g. at a trade show).
Patents, as usual, last for 20 years after filing.
All your hallucinogen are belong to us.
The record companies are asking for $100,000 per copyright violation.
No, $100K per work violated, the maximum statutory damages under US law. There are likely less than 3 million unique RIAA songs available through Napster.
All your hallucinogen are belong to us.
Plus, there's now an mp3 encoder (LAME) that is open-source, meaning that anyone can compile it and use it; gone are the days of paying Fraunhofer IIS royalties for "their intellectual property".
Fraunhofer Group still owns patents in the United States and other countries on the process of "Overlapped cosine transform plus Fourier transform encoding, followed by psychoacoustic quantization and entropy coding" which is a necessary and irreplaceable part of MP3 encoding. This is why Ogg Vorbis doesn't use a Fourier transform but instead a finer cosine transform.
All your hallucinogen are belong to us.
I wonder what Metallica will say about their wanting 'control of distribution' argument now...
They'd apparently be in the $50 mil going to independent artists (the ones who own their own music).
All your hallucinogen are belong to us.
ps it would help if you told us what the goal was. asking us for a recommendation on which hammer is best without telling us any details is useless. especialy if what you really need is a wrench
What about a web-based front-end to an email system, a user-written encyclopedia, etc.? What about a web-based personal home page creation tool (think GeoCities)?
All your hallucinogen are belong to us.
If you've used MAME or NESTicle recently, I'm sure you realize how incredibly crappy and juvenile games like Metroid and Zelda really were.
So you see a lot of graphical problems in games played through NESticle. The problem isn't in the games; it's in the emulator. NESticle is not one of the best NES emulators; it was written to an early draft of the NES documentation and contains several detectable flaws. One of these flaws can be exploited in merely four instructions of 6502 asm code:
NESticle also has inaccuracies with respect to Sprite 0 hit detection (causing scroll timing to be off) and mixing of VRAM writes, VRAM reads, and scroll commands. Examples of better emulators include LoopyNES, NESten, nester, RockNES, BioNES, and FCE Ultra.
rm `find / -name "nesticle.exe"`All your hallucinogen are belong to us.
I once witnessed an Win update (don't remember which) doing the update by removing the old files (known to be old Win versions) and copying in the new files. The (formerly) used (and removed) Microsoft driver was NOT among the ones listed with the new Win. Oops.
That's what happened to me. I had to reinstall my video drivers from the disk. But the point remains that you have the option not to check the box.
All your hallucinogen are belong to us.
What if the "BuzzWordWare(tm)" company decides that this or that driver is outdated (as has happened to some of the Win9x drivers)? Then all of a sudden the whole system will stop working - no chance of keeping on using the old driver. You have subscribed, so you have to update or stop using, remember?
Windows Update does not currently work like that; driver upgrades are voluntary. (Do NOT get the NeoMagic video driver update; it'll remove all ability to use DirectDraw.) More to the point, drivers are tied to the hardware (video card, sound card, CD burner), and you don't license hardware; you buy it.
All your hallucinogen are belong to us.
If,say, Adobe produced a pay-per-usage based Photoshop, theres a good chance they could cut piracy way down, as people like me who only occasionally need that powerful of a graphics program wouldn't need to be intimidated by the $600 up-front price.
Remember, if you don't need Photoshop's prepress capabilities (and bloat), you can always run GIMP on your GNU/Linux, BSD, Darwin, or UNIX box or WinGIMP on your winbox. It's a nice tool for web graphics (more powerful than Paint Shop Pro), and it's both free and Free.
(Yes, I did mention Darwin. Read the comment before replying.)All your hallucinogen are belong to us.
Personal grip: I wish long distance carriers would tell you the price/minute of a call before the call is connected rather than not know the cost until it shows up on the bill.
They do. AT&T was the first, with 15c/min One Rate. Then there was an explosion of 10-10 services (10-10-321 16c/min but 50% off all calls over 10 minutes; 10-10-220 99c first 20 min 7c each addl). Then Sprint countered with A Dime Anytime. You can always look up current rates on a telco's web site.
All your hallucinogen are belong to us.
Why pay a monthly fee when I only have to wait for some cracking group to post a fix that skips over the code that ensures my subscription is still active?
Not if the clip art, spell-check, grammar-check, thesaurus, etc. features run server-side, and the program authenticates to the server with a name and password. And if name and password are shared like serialz, the app server can easily bankick known pirated licenses.
All your hallucinogen are belong to us.
6. Make it relatively easy to transfer licenses between computers. Once that old P3 reaches the end of its life in 4-5 years, you should be able to submit a web form, register the other computer as "killed"
You said it. If BIOS (the ROM boot code) moves to a subscription licensing model (silly but a possibility), a computer without a BIOS license really will be "killed."
All your hallucinogen are belong to us.
Anyway, as long as this [subscription] pricing doesn't move to games, I'm not too worried about it.
It already has. It's a good thing you don't play EverQuest.
All your hallucinogen are belong to us.
Clearly, a company needs to own all of the source code behind their product. They can't worry about a disgruntled ex-employee suddenly demanding that they pay royalties for 'his code' or any other things that might pop up.
If 'his code' is licensed under X11, BSD, or Lesser GPL terms, such a license is irrevocable, and the "submarine" tactic you're proposing is not possible.
All your hallucinogen are belong to us.
All Your Invention Are Belong To Us
All your hallucinogen are belong to us.
You can start your own company
How? What if the only field in which you are trained relies on a standard encumbered by patents, and your competitors refuse to license? What if the only field in which you are trained requires an eight-figure investment just to get started? Would you go back to school for four more years (at a cost of USD $100,000+) just to get a job?
All your hallucinogen are belong to us.
Xoom, geo...
Content?
You seem to forget that even PinEight.com (home of the mighty TOD) is hosted on Freeservers.
All your hallucinogen are belong to us.
Since I have a lousy 26400-28800 modem
56K modems are cheap now, even non-winmodems. Check pricewatch.com.
I only want INFORMATION. I don't need pictures.
Try appreciating Corbis.com or Artchive.com (or Goatse.cx ;> ) with images turned off. The images are the content.
All your hallucinogen are belong to us.