This way, the patent is recorded at the PTO, and becomes a readily visible part of the prior art. How many 'obviously done before' things have been reported on/. as patented? Any record of any of those being overturned? From what I've heard, it's tough to overturn a patent, once it's issued. Patenting this will make sure it doesn't happen in this particular case.
That said, I have no idea whatsoever what IBM's motives are in seeking this patent.
I didn't say Itanium wasn't capable. I have three objections to it.
1: For the sheer amount of money expended on it, I would have expected better. For billions of dollars and the better part of a decade of focused development, they should have been able to come up with something better than this.
2: Itanium is *the most proprietary* architecture on the planet, bar none. The IP is in a separate company, licensed to Intel and HP. This is to exclude it from any cross-license agreements Intel and HP may already have.
3: People have been saying for years that X86 is ugly, and we need to move away from it. If we really want to do so, Itanium isn't a particularly clean architecture to move to. Not only that, but the compilers were, and will likely continue to be, a sonofagun to write. Moreover, it's anticipated that in order to get further performance gains, they're going to dilute the 'architectural purity' of their EPIC (VLIW) to add OOO features. Perhaps necessary, but it's going to end up being another bastard architecture like the X86. Why move from ugly to ugly.
What's happened to X86 reminds me somewhat of "The Soul of a New Machine" (Tracy Kidder) where new versions clean the architecture as they extend it, and the old warts become minor, seldom-used features for backward compatiblity.
(reference forgotten) I've read that monopoly power can be exerted with market shares in the 70% range. Take a look at the desktop PC marketplace, for a moment. The profit margins are soooo thin that the 'loyalty rewards' from Intel (and Microsoft) can make the difference between profit and loss.
Because of the low profitability, the desktop PC marketplace is unusually sensitive to supplier monopolies, and permits such low 'monopoly share'.
In the desktop market, Intel wields monopoly power. Margins in the PC marketplace are so thin that the 'rewards' for Intel and Microsoft loyalty can make the difference between profit and loss. In other places, I've seen that monopoly power can be exerted with market shares down in the 70% range.
But you're right, in that Intel doesn't have monopoly share in other markets.
Actually, when a company becomes too focused on its own plans, things can unravel faster than you'd believe possible. They may be raking money in hand-over-fist, but they're spending it only slightly less fast. (The difference is, obviously, Profit!)
When a customer base shifts revenue can drop quickly, but expenses don't. Someone else mentioned IBM - it happens.
I don't expect Intel's difficulties to be as spectacular. Microsoft may be another story.
Intel has backed themselves into a bit of a corner, in the process of repeating history. With Itanium, they've proven that they're more concerned with their own strategies than they are with delivering solutions to their customers. But they've sunk so much money and image into Itanium that they can't back out, yet. No doubt there's someone inside the company, probably a wild duck, working on the right time to jump ship and how to spin it.
In the meantime, Intel has the one-two bait and switch with P4-Celeron and the true P4. If they didn't have a TON of money and market clout, they'd be in big doo-doo right about now. As it is, AMD is the one in big doo-doo, not because they have the lesser product, but because of Intel's clout.
Listen to any computer commercial, and they pretty much all have those 5 co-advertising tones at the end. That's monopoly power, that's market clout. (If I were in charge, the antitrust penalty would ratchet up every time those tones sounded.)
My second digital watch, bought in the late 70's, had LCD hands. No digits, only told the time, no AM/PM indicator, either. I was sorry when the segments started dying. (big growing black splotch)
Whether you're a Patriot or Terrorist depends on which side of the aisle you sit on. The same story came out in the Burlington Free Press (My submission of this story to/. will apparently be rejected as duplicate.) had an interesting line (not available online) where someone said, (paraphrased) "Only the Democrats have done something wrong here, by saying these bad things in memos and by storing them in an insecure computer.
Let's square that with yesterday's story about DOD electronic voting insecurities.
My number 1 gripe about the current Republican party. They're too unified, and too efficient. We're a pluralistic nation with many interests, and our government should reflect that. Most of the time, that means they should be quibbling and arguing and getting NOTHING done. Then the rest of us can be about our business without excessive interference. That's my idea of "less government."
The current Republican party pursues its vision as if it's the only on that counts. Moreover, there's little-to-no debate within the Republican party - it's as if they've got their marching orders from the Secret Government (Who pulls the strings of the Republican Campaign Finance Committee?) and are being dutiful soldiers.
I'd be just as annoyed if the Democrats were in the same position doing the same things.
As for the Supreme Court, only 3 justices are of any interest at all. Fortunately the other 6 balance each other out so true thought and deliberation can come through.
You don't even have to go back very far to find the privilege escalation problems in the kernel, itself. That affected *every* distribution. Even given that, I believe we would be safer with a Linux monoculture than we are currently with essentially a Windows monoculture.
But I'd rather see no monoculture at all, and I believe that would be safer, yet.
To some extent, the RFCs form an 'Internet monoculture' and spam is a result. But it's a necessary monoculture in order to interoperate. IMHO, we need to undertake another round of RFC work to figure out the correct balance between trust and anonymity before something gets imposed on us.
Even a Linux monoculture is still a monoculture, and still dangerous. Maybe we'd better hope BSD really isn't dying, like the troll says it is.
I'd like to play with IPV6 on my home lan, too
on
The State of IPv6
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· Score: 1
At the moment, I've got a garden variety Netgear firewall/router, obviously IPV4, and the rest of my LAN is behind that. Nor do I have any open ports, though I plan to.
By the time I open ports, I plan to have a dual-homed secondary firewall/server on Linux behind the Netgear, with my home lan on the far side. I'm starting to play with Gentoo, and find that it brings up interfaces in both IPV4 and IPV6, which may well be what I want, because I've got some Windows boxen on my lan too, and need the back compatability.
I'd think in terms of running IPV4 and IPV6 internally, use the firewall/server to bridge to IPV4 to my ISP, and occasionally get on the 6bone, or something like that. The main reason for the Netgear is so I don't have to be as paranoid about updates as if I were directly connected. Connecting to the 6bone puts me right back there, so I only want to do it when I know I'm ready.
Truthfully, IPV4 does just fine for me, even with NAT, especially considering my ISP's AUP. It would be fun to get some IPV6 learning, though.
Don't mean to deny that or denigrate Kodak. I was merely saying that having a few fundamental patents is only a short-term source of income. Having a full R&D program back of those fundamental patents is good business.
You're right. Molecular-scale is overstating the size of film grains.
But there was something else I was trying to get across, I just didn't state it well. We have drawn the pixels of the digital sensor. I haven't actually done any CCD work, myself, but I'll wager that it has to be at least 4f^2 (4 features, a line and a space in each direction) and may well be bigger. For comparison, a DRAM cell (something I DO know something about) is usually at least 8f^2, though there are some smaller experimental cells.
By contrast, the grains in the emulsion are done in a chemical step. Nobody sat down at a CAD tube and drew a grain shape that was later photoreduced and fabricated. Grain shape and size is dictated by chemical (and mechanical?) processes. In that respect, it's closer to the realm of molecules than to that of assembled structures.
There's an old adage, "Anyone can build a bridge what won't fall down. It takes an engineer to build a bridge that -just barely- won't fall down."
In other words, it's easy to build a grossly overdesigned bridge. A well designed bridge can have an adequate safety margin and use fewer materials. Because strength is not always an obvious thing, then engineer may well know the -best- place to put that extra strength. The simple bridge may be stronger, but lack the needed strength in some non-obvious place.
Likewise photography.
Film has always had molecular-scale resolution - kind of an innate property of film, itself. That aspect is over-engineered. Far more often photos come out poorly because of poor exposure or focus. The weak spot isn't the capability of the film, it's behind the camera. Or for that matter, the overage film that after exposure sits in the camera or on a shelf for another year before getting processed.
I haven't seen a digital camera without at least automatic exposure (which can itself be fooled) and many/most have autofocus, as well. (which can also be fooled)
Still, in the hands of a novice, I suspect a digital camera is more likely to take good pictures than a film camera. The film/CCD isn't the determining factor.
That says nothing at all of what a professional can do in either form factor. (Other than that I'd say that a professional can do better - in either form factor.)
I really didn't mind JCL. Once you got used to it, it gave you very good control and ability to nail things down. It gave much more of a 'ready, aim, shoot' mentality to batch jobs, and by comparison sometimes shell scripts seem more like 'ready, shoot, aim.'
Actually, the Linux types inside IBM (not the suits at the top making this noise) are very well in tune with the Linux community, and how things work. For a prime example, take a look at the turn EVMS took in the past year.
I can see I need a bulk response here. You get it, for everyone.
My point wasn't to be taken too literally. I was trying to say that most (but not all) of us will never drive over 100MPH. Most (but not all) of us have no need for a speedometer that goes to 120 or 160 MPH, but we all have them. That's not to say that our speedometers shouldn't have some margin above the top US speed limit of 75MPH, to debunk the Apollo analogy, a little. We need some margin, just not 100% margin. (It may be that Montana is back to 'reasonable and proper' for speed limit, but I'm not sure. Last time I was there, Utah and Colorado were 75MPH.)
But we'd all feel 'cheated' if our speedometers capped off at 85 or 90 MPH. We wouldn't like Detroit saying "You don't need that capablity." For that matter, most of the capabilities of BMWs or Porsches, or for that matter, SUVs and Hummers are wasted on our roads and highways. But people want them, and buy them, and spend WAY more money than needed for 'basic transportation' on them.
The same is true of CPUs. Most (but not all) of us don't need 64-bits on the desktop. Most (but not all) of us don't need a fraction of the 32-bit capability that we've got.
But we're all buying bigger, better, faster - anyway. Needed or not, 64-bit CPUs will sell. Once they have risen to the consciousness of Mr/Ms BMW/Porsche/Hummer, and once those people can make the *frightening* choice to buy non-Intel (Unless Yamhill is marketed in time) CPUs, they'll believe they NEED a 64-bit CPU.
On most of the roads in the nation, the speed limit is either 55MPH or 65MPH. Some places out West on the Interstates, it's 75MPH. Even a 100MPH speedometer is WAY overdesigned, well past short-term bursts for passing, accident avoidance, and the like.
So why do we have speedometers that go up so high, and why can many cars actually go that fast? After all, it's illegal, and we don't NEED that speed, or speedometer.
Perhaps we really do - about as much as a 64-bit processor.
To watch tech salaries rise, you don't have to raise the standard of living of the whole country. You just have to raise the expectations of those people capable of fitting into the tech sector, as well as their economic neighborhoods.
This will lead to terrible unrest in India, as poor people flock to Banglador (and the like) in search of jobs. Not tech jobs, since they're not qualified, but Starbucks jobs, servant jobs, etc. There was an article in the past few weeks about people being beaten who tried to move into an area to apply for a railroad job.
Maybe you can move to India, but you can't work there. They're not eagerly handing out H1Bs, or any sort of equivalent. The old, "Then move to India, where the jobs are," argument has been raised numerous times, and finally someone (presumably knowledgable) posted this little tidbit.
From what I can tell, these emerging 3rd world countries want these jobs to improve their countries, not to enable American expats to exploit their lower cost of living. (I suspect they're happy to let you spend your dollars there, just not earn them.)
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Actually, there is.
/. as patented? Any record of any of those being overturned? From what I've heard, it's tough to overturn a patent, once it's issued. Patenting this will make sure it doesn't happen in this particular case.
This way, the patent is recorded at the PTO, and becomes a readily visible part of the prior art. How many 'obviously done before' things have been reported on
That said, I have no idea whatsoever what IBM's motives are in seeking this patent.
I didn't say Itanium wasn't capable. I have three objections to it.
1: For the sheer amount of money expended on it, I would have expected better. For billions of dollars and the better part of a decade of focused development, they should have been able to come up with something better than this.
2: Itanium is *the most proprietary* architecture on the planet, bar none. The IP is in a separate company, licensed to Intel and HP. This is to exclude it from any cross-license agreements Intel and HP may already have.
3: People have been saying for years that X86 is ugly, and we need to move away from it. If we really want to do so, Itanium isn't a particularly clean architecture to move to. Not only that, but the compilers were, and will likely continue to be, a sonofagun to write. Moreover, it's anticipated that in order to get further performance gains, they're going to dilute the 'architectural purity' of their EPIC (VLIW) to add OOO features. Perhaps necessary, but it's going to end up being another bastard architecture like the X86. Why move from ugly to ugly.
What's happened to X86 reminds me somewhat of "The Soul of a New Machine" (Tracy Kidder) where new versions clean the architecture as they extend it, and the old warts become minor, seldom-used features for backward compatiblity.
(reference forgotten)
I've read that monopoly power can be exerted with market shares in the 70% range. Take a look at the desktop PC marketplace, for a moment. The profit margins are soooo thin that the 'loyalty rewards' from Intel (and Microsoft) can make the difference between profit and loss.
Because of the low profitability, the desktop PC marketplace is unusually sensitive to supplier monopolies, and permits such low 'monopoly share'.
In the desktop market, Intel wields monopoly power. Margins in the PC marketplace are so thin that the 'rewards' for Intel and Microsoft loyalty can make the difference between profit and loss. In other places, I've seen that monopoly power can be exerted with market shares down in the 70% range.
But you're right, in that Intel doesn't have monopoly share in other markets.
Actually, when a company becomes too focused on its own plans, things can unravel faster than you'd believe possible. They may be raking money in hand-over-fist, but they're spending it only slightly less fast. (The difference is, obviously, Profit!)
When a customer base shifts revenue can drop quickly, but expenses don't. Someone else mentioned IBM - it happens.
I don't expect Intel's difficulties to be as spectacular. Microsoft may be another story.
I agree with you 100%.
I just hope AMD (and others) survive, too.
Intel has backed themselves into a bit of a corner, in the process of repeating history. With Itanium, they've proven that they're more concerned with their own strategies than they are with delivering solutions to their customers. But they've sunk so much money and image into Itanium that they can't back out, yet. No doubt there's someone inside the company, probably a wild duck, working on the right time to jump ship and how to spin it.
In the meantime, Intel has the one-two bait and switch with P4-Celeron and the true P4. If they didn't have a TON of money and market clout, they'd be in big doo-doo right about now. As it is, AMD is the one in big doo-doo, not because they have the lesser product, but because of Intel's clout.
Listen to any computer commercial, and they pretty much all have those 5 co-advertising tones at the end. That's monopoly power, that's market clout. (If I were in charge, the antitrust penalty would ratchet up every time those tones sounded.)
Maybe Intel blew it, but they'll survive.
My second digital watch, bought in the late 70's, had LCD hands. No digits, only told the time, no AM/PM indicator, either. I was sorry when the segments started dying. (big growing black splotch)
If you're a dedicated moderate you're screwed, too.
I'll agree that the Republican effectiveness is admirable. Kind of like admiring an master swordsman as he disembowels you.
On the other side of the aisle, it becomes Patriotism instead of Treason.
Whether you're a Patriot or Terrorist depends on which side of the aisle you sit on. The same story came out in the Burlington Free Press (My submission of this story to /. will apparently be rejected as duplicate.) had an interesting line (not available online) where someone said, (paraphrased) "Only the Democrats have done something wrong here, by saying these bad things in memos and by storing them in an insecure computer.
Let's square that with yesterday's story about DOD electronic voting insecurities.
My number 1 gripe about the current Republican party. They're too unified, and too efficient. We're a pluralistic nation with many interests, and our government should reflect that. Most of the time, that means they should be quibbling and arguing and getting NOTHING done. Then the rest of us can be about our business without excessive interference. That's my idea of "less government."
The current Republican party pursues its vision as if it's the only on that counts. Moreover, there's little-to-no debate within the Republican party - it's as if they've got their marching orders from the Secret Government (Who pulls the strings of the Republican Campaign Finance Committee?) and are being dutiful soldiers.
I'd be just as annoyed if the Democrats were in the same position doing the same things.
As for the Supreme Court, only 3 justices are of any interest at all. Fortunately the other 6 balance each other out so true thought and deliberation can come through.
I still differ with you.
You don't even have to go back very far to find the privilege escalation problems in the kernel, itself. That affected *every* distribution. Even given that, I believe we would be safer with a Linux monoculture than we are currently with essentially a Windows monoculture.
But I'd rather see no monoculture at all, and I believe that would be safer, yet.
To some extent, the RFCs form an 'Internet monoculture' and spam is a result. But it's a necessary monoculture in order to interoperate. IMHO, we need to undertake another round of RFC work to figure out the correct balance between trust and anonymity before something gets imposed on us.
Even a Linux monoculture is still a monoculture, and still dangerous. Maybe we'd better hope BSD really isn't dying, like the troll says it is.
At the moment, I've got a garden variety Netgear firewall/router, obviously IPV4, and the rest of my LAN is behind that. Nor do I have any open ports, though I plan to.
By the time I open ports, I plan to have a dual-homed secondary firewall/server on Linux behind the Netgear, with my home lan on the far side. I'm starting to play with Gentoo, and find that it brings up interfaces in both IPV4 and IPV6, which may well be what I want, because I've got some Windows boxen on my lan too, and need the back compatability.
I'd think in terms of running IPV4 and IPV6 internally, use the firewall/server to bridge to IPV4 to my ISP, and occasionally get on the 6bone, or something like that. The main reason for the Netgear is so I don't have to be as paranoid about updates as if I were directly connected. Connecting to the 6bone puts me right back there, so I only want to do it when I know I'm ready.
Truthfully, IPV4 does just fine for me, even with NAT, especially considering my ISP's AUP. It would be fun to get some IPV6 learning, though.
Don't mean to deny that or denigrate Kodak. I was merely saying that having a few fundamental patents is only a short-term source of income. Having a full R&D program back of those fundamental patents is good business.
You're right. Molecular-scale is overstating the size of film grains.
But there was something else I was trying to get across, I just didn't state it well. We have drawn the pixels of the digital sensor. I haven't actually done any CCD work, myself, but I'll wager that it has to be at least 4f^2 (4 features, a line and a space in each direction) and may well be bigger. For comparison, a DRAM cell (something I DO know something about) is usually at least 8f^2, though there are some smaller experimental cells.
By contrast, the grains in the emulsion are done in a chemical step. Nobody sat down at a CAD tube and drew a grain shape that was later photoreduced and fabricated. Grain shape and size is dictated by chemical (and mechanical?) processes. In that respect, it's closer to the realm of molecules than to that of assembled structures.
There's an old adage, "Anyone can build a bridge what won't fall down. It takes an engineer to build a bridge that -just barely- won't fall down."
In other words, it's easy to build a grossly overdesigned bridge. A well designed bridge can have an adequate safety margin and use fewer materials. Because strength is not always an obvious thing, then engineer may well know the -best- place to put that extra strength. The simple bridge may be stronger, but lack the needed strength in some non-obvious place.
Likewise photography.
Film has always had molecular-scale resolution - kind of an innate property of film, itself. That aspect is over-engineered. Far more often photos come out poorly because of poor exposure or focus. The weak spot isn't the capability of the film, it's behind the camera. Or for that matter, the overage film that after exposure sits in the camera or on a shelf for another year before getting processed.
I haven't seen a digital camera without at least automatic exposure (which can itself be fooled) and many/most have autofocus, as well. (which can also be fooled)
Still, in the hands of a novice, I suspect a digital camera is more likely to take good pictures than a film camera. The film/CCD isn't the determining factor.
That says nothing at all of what a professional can do in either form factor. (Other than that I'd say that a professional can do better - in either form factor.)
How old are the patents?
Do they have an active R&D program generating more patents?
Yes, barely. Yes, a fair amount.
I really didn't mind JCL. Once you got used to it, it gave you very good control and ability to nail things down. It gave much more of a 'ready, aim, shoot' mentality to batch jobs, and by comparison sometimes shell scripts seem more like 'ready, shoot, aim.'
Actually, the Linux types inside IBM (not the suits at the top making this noise) are very well in tune with the Linux community, and how things work. For a prime example, take a look at the turn EVMS took in the past year.
I can see I need a bulk response here. You get it, for everyone.
My point wasn't to be taken too literally. I was trying to say that most (but not all) of us will never drive over 100MPH. Most (but not all) of us have no need for a speedometer that goes to 120 or 160 MPH, but we all have them. That's not to say that our speedometers shouldn't have some margin above the top US speed limit of 75MPH, to debunk the Apollo analogy, a little. We need some margin, just not 100% margin. (It may be that Montana is back to 'reasonable and proper' for speed limit, but I'm not sure. Last time I was there, Utah and Colorado were 75MPH.)
But we'd all feel 'cheated' if our speedometers capped off at 85 or 90 MPH. We wouldn't like Detroit saying "You don't need that capablity." For that matter, most of the capabilities of BMWs or Porsches, or for that matter, SUVs and Hummers are wasted on our roads and highways. But people want them, and buy them, and spend WAY more money than needed for 'basic transportation' on them.
The same is true of CPUs. Most (but not all) of us don't need 64-bits on the desktop. Most (but not all) of us don't need a fraction of the 32-bit capability that we've got.
But we're all buying bigger, better, faster - anyway. Needed or not, 64-bit CPUs will sell. Once they have risen to the consciousness of Mr/Ms BMW/Porsche/Hummer, and once those people can make the *frightening* choice to buy non-Intel (Unless Yamhill is marketed in time) CPUs, they'll believe they NEED a 64-bit CPU.
On most of the roads in the nation, the speed limit is either 55MPH or 65MPH. Some places out West on the Interstates, it's 75MPH. Even a 100MPH speedometer is WAY overdesigned, well past short-term bursts for passing, accident avoidance, and the like.
So why do we have speedometers that go up so high, and why can many cars actually go that fast? After all, it's illegal, and we don't NEED that speed, or speedometer.
Perhaps we really do - about as much as a 64-bit processor.
To watch tech salaries rise, you don't have to raise the standard of living of the whole country. You just have to raise the expectations of those people capable of fitting into the tech sector, as well as their economic neighborhoods.
This will lead to terrible unrest in India, as poor people flock to Banglador (and the like) in search of jobs. Not tech jobs, since they're not qualified, but Starbucks jobs, servant jobs, etc. There was an article in the past few weeks about people being beaten who tried to move into an area to apply for a railroad job.
This came up a while back.
Maybe you can move to India, but you can't work there. They're not eagerly handing out H1Bs, or any sort of equivalent. The old, "Then move to India, where the jobs are," argument has been raised numerous times, and finally someone (presumably knowledgable) posted this little tidbit.
From what I can tell, these emerging 3rd world countries want these jobs to improve their countries, not to enable American expats to exploit their lower cost of living. (I suspect they're happy to let you spend your dollars there, just not earn them.)
Makes you wonder/hope that Doom3 will recapture some of that, with better graphics.