Well, for some reason, there are improvements to that wheel thingy every year - the tire manufacturers keep inventing better tires, suspension gets improved, active dampening, etc, etc. You think we should have stuck with suspensionless carts with roughly circular wooden attachments? Surely, old = better....
What kind of luddite loser still watches commercials in this day and age?
Everyone, to be honest. It is not like advertising is TV only. The hype machine works through all communications channels available all the time, you'd be lying to yourself if you really think you escape it by just using a Tivo.
Not sure what the hardware's gotta do with it - you'll have the same problem with most modern cellphones or tablets, regardless whether the manufacturer goes for an open or closed system. My mum ain't gonna touch anything remotely resembling a computer anyway, and my dad's the guy who told me how to solder - so I am usually not called in for hardware maintenance anyway. Living 500 miles away helps, too, of course...
To be honest, in the latest Apple related stories, the Apple apologists have been the ones being carpet-bombed with troll mods lately. I agree, however, that the whole Apple thing seems to be the current method of choice for our esteemed slashdot overlords to gather site impressions by keeping the flamefest running. Well, at least it is not climate change this time. Where's that gasoline? Gotta fuel the flames! Burn, iBaby, Burn!!!
There is no reason why the both markets should not coexist. When it comes to my rig at home, I am definitely more of a hod-rodder myself. There I want total control, the freedom to tinker around. When it comes to my phone - not so much. I want the thing just to work without me caring about anything at all. Specific tools for specific purposes.
Patent language is not generally about obfuscation. You just don't understand it - it is a jargon, which you have to learn. A certain type of code, which indeed might look random to the average reader at times. The goal is to strike a balance between precision and broadness - to be as precise as necessary while being as broad as possible. With regard to being able to re-implement an invention from the patent, you gotta keep in mind that nowhere it is written that anyone has to understand it. The average man skilled in the art has to understand it and be able to gather enough information from it to re-implement the invention with a reasonable amount of experimentation. A patent document was never meant to be a step-by-step instruction, but rather a general outline to be filled with average expert knowledge.
I don't get it either. My smartphone has the computing power my desktop had 10 years ago, my current desktop holds my complete music and movie collection on harddisk with ample space to spare. Computational power and storage density is cheap like never before - and still some people want to push a mainframe/terminal - thin client - cloud - webapp - what ever you called it today - concept on us? Why? Gimme thick, fat local apps that log every fart I let go while working on a document in triplicate on my harddisk. My rig can handle it, beat your netbook at chess and convince it to vote for Ron Paul in the background without breaking a sweat. What's the point about all this? Distributed computing makes sense when I want to tackle REALLY hard numerical stuff, but for everyday apps?
Well, there are coders and software engineers, indeed completely different species, but sometimes hard to distinguish in the field without careful analysis. The problem you described exists also the other way around - way too many coders view themselves as "software engineers"...
As I see it, a "Leitsatz"-judgement indeed technically has to be followed by lower courts, but they still can actually rule to the contrary, opening up the way to higher instances until the issue reaches the BGH again. Certain judges on certain OLGs (state courts, roughly) seem to have it made a hobby ruling against the established guidelines from the BPatG (patent court) and sometimes BGH lately in patent matters. If you follow the guidelines issued by the BGH on software patents, their opinion seems to change quite rapidly from time to time.
The current situation is that the EPO tends to separate the claims of your application into technical and non-technical properties. The non-technical properties are viewed as "pre-inventive", as something like a design goal, and therefore can not contribute to the novelty or non-obviousness of the subject-matter. The examination is then done only regarding the technical properties. For example, if you apply for an algorithm with steps A-D, performed on a computer (steps A-D being some numeric calculation for example), the examiner will classify steps A-D as non-technical, so the only remaining technological aspect is the "computer" - instant rejection. Of course, in practice it is not always easy to separate technical and non-technical properties, so you can have nice, long discussions with your examiner on that topic...
As always - disclaimer: This is not legal advice, IANAL (yet), and if I was, I would not be yours. Do not rely on this post in any way.
To further clarify - there is actually no such thing as an "European Patent". However, you can apply for a patent at the EPO, which will be the only office researching and examining your application. If and when the EPO grants the "European Patent", national patents for every EPC member state you named in your application come into existence, without the national patent offices having a say in the matter. The so-called European patent actually exists as a bundle of national patents in all named member states.
This is why any serious test gives you probabilities and not yes/no answers. Of course any scientist is aware that most diseases are not linked to a single gene that acts as an on-off switch and that in most cases a cluster of multiple genes might influence the susceptibility for certain diseases, which, then is further modulated by environmental factors. You are perfectly right in that this has no place in the drugstore - even if it gives results in the form of possibilities, this will only instill unjustified panic in people who get told that they have an increased probability to come down with, say, colon cancer, but who have no idea what this actually means.
True. The engineering term for a GAU is "Auslegungsstörfall" - you gotta love German composita. It roughly translates to "design basis accident" - the biggest accident covered by you fail-safes. The "GAU" acronym is mostly misused these days.
Indeed - never been around on IRC much. As with most good ideas, the probability that someone else came up with it earlier was high...:) Thanks for the info, anyway - more factoids for my library of more-or-less relevant net history.
I spent enough time in academia that the border between throwing around some speculation and residing firmly in bizarro world has become a wee bit blurred to me...;)
I am not exactly in favour of the "nuke it!! NOW!!" idea, but your scenario is pretty much unlikely. An underground nuclear explosion would shatter the bedrock in a radius of a couple of 100 meters, perhaps. The distance between the oil-carrying strata and the surface is much higher, though. Given that we know the geology of the oil field pretty well, ripping open the reservoir with a nuke is not really a concern. For a successful closing of the leaking borehole, you would have to drill quite deep to place the nuke, though, so we can as well just do the proven and clean relief bore thing.
Well, in this special context, you would drill a couple of thousand feet deep and explode the nuke deep down in the rock, thereby collapsing the well. The radionuclides would be contained and the original hole shut down. It might be workable, and somewhat clean, but to be sure, we would have to put the nuke deep down - so with not much more time investment, the relief well could be completed as well, which is certainly more clean. We are not talking about dropping a nuke on the sea floor here, that surely won't work. Conventional explosives wouldn't work in a bore hole, because you could not get enough of them down at the necessary depth to shatter the bedrock in a sufficiently large volume. So, from a purely academic standpoint, we could have a "clean nuclear explosion" there. Well, from an academic standpoint that might very well be considered already part of the Bizarro Universe...
You gotta take into account that the Pravda started as party propaganda organ, broke apart after the Iron Curtain fell, and has seen several reincarnations, mostly as National-Inquirer style bottom feeding tabloid since then. So, suggestions taken out of Pravda are supposed to be straight from the Bizarro Universe. Heck, they regularily report on alien abductions, Yetis and stuff like it.
Which illustrates the main problem with the current American debate: the use of "socialism" (and sometimes "facism") as a synonym for "stuff I do not agree with".
I guess we can agree mostly here - we just seem to be separated by some definitions. I guess you can put those economic models on a circle, rather than a linear scale, with corrupt capitalism meeting corrupt communism in the same point.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, for some reason, there are improvements to that wheel thingy every year - the tire manufacturers keep inventing better tires, suspension gets improved, active dampening, etc, etc. You think we should have stuck with suspensionless carts with roughly circular wooden attachments? Surely, old = better....
What kind of luddite loser still watches commercials in this day and age?
Everyone, to be honest. It is not like advertising is TV only. The hype machine works through all communications channels available all the time, you'd be lying to yourself if you really think you escape it by just using a Tivo.
Not sure what the hardware's gotta do with it - you'll have the same problem with most modern cellphones or tablets, regardless whether the manufacturer goes for an open or closed system. My mum ain't gonna touch anything remotely resembling a computer anyway, and my dad's the guy who told me how to solder - so I am usually not called in for hardware maintenance anyway. Living 500 miles away helps, too, of course...
To be honest, in the latest Apple related stories, the Apple apologists have been the ones being carpet-bombed with troll mods lately. I agree, however, that the whole Apple thing seems to be the current method of choice for our esteemed slashdot overlords to gather site impressions by keeping the flamefest running. Well, at least it is not climate change this time. Where's that gasoline? Gotta fuel the flames! Burn, iBaby, Burn!!!
There is no reason why the both markets should not coexist. When it comes to my rig at home, I am definitely more of a hod-rodder myself. There I want total control, the freedom to tinker around. When it comes to my phone - not so much. I want the thing just to work without me caring about anything at all. Specific tools for specific purposes.
Patent language is not generally about obfuscation. You just don't understand it - it is a jargon, which you have to learn. A certain type of code, which indeed might look random to the average reader at times. The goal is to strike a balance between precision and broadness - to be as precise as necessary while being as broad as possible. With regard to being able to re-implement an invention from the patent, you gotta keep in mind that nowhere it is written that anyone has to understand it. The average man skilled in the art has to understand it and be able to gather enough information from it to re-implement the invention with a reasonable amount of experimentation. A patent document was never meant to be a step-by-step instruction, but rather a general outline to be filled with average expert knowledge.
I don't get it either. My smartphone has the computing power my desktop had 10 years ago, my current desktop holds my complete music and movie collection on harddisk with ample space to spare. Computational power and storage density is cheap like never before - and still some people want to push a mainframe/terminal - thin client - cloud - webapp - what ever you called it today - concept on us? Why? Gimme thick, fat local apps that log every fart I let go while working on a document in triplicate on my harddisk. My rig can handle it, beat your netbook at chess and convince it to vote for Ron Paul in the background without breaking a sweat. What's the point about all this? Distributed computing makes sense when I want to tackle REALLY hard numerical stuff, but for everyday apps?
Well, there are coders and software engineers, indeed completely different species, but sometimes hard to distinguish in the field without careful analysis. The problem you described exists also the other way around - way too many coders view themselves as "software engineers"...
As I see it, a "Leitsatz"-judgement indeed technically has to be followed by lower courts, but they still can actually rule to the contrary, opening up the way to higher instances until the issue reaches the BGH again. Certain judges on certain OLGs (state courts, roughly) seem to have it made a hobby ruling against the established guidelines from the BPatG (patent court) and sometimes BGH lately in patent matters. If you follow the guidelines issued by the BGH on software patents, their opinion seems to change quite rapidly from time to time.
The current situation is that the EPO tends to separate the claims of your application into technical and non-technical properties. The non-technical properties are viewed as "pre-inventive", as something like a design goal, and therefore can not contribute to the novelty or non-obviousness of the subject-matter. The examination is then done only regarding the technical properties. For example, if you apply for an algorithm with steps A-D, performed on a computer (steps A-D being some numeric calculation for example), the examiner will classify steps A-D as non-technical, so the only remaining technological aspect is the "computer" - instant rejection. Of course, in practice it is not always easy to separate technical and non-technical properties, so you can have nice, long discussions with your examiner on that topic...
As always - disclaimer: This is not legal advice, IANAL (yet), and if I was, I would not be yours. Do not rely on this post in any way.
To further clarify - there is actually no such thing as an "European Patent". However, you can apply for a patent at the EPO, which will be the only office researching and examining your application. If and when the EPO grants the "European Patent", national patents for every EPC member state you named in your application come into existence, without the national patent offices having a say in the matter. The so-called European patent actually exists as a bundle of national patents in all named member states.
You absolutely got it - we need more stoicism. Living your life in a constant attempt to micromanage risks kills your spirit.
This is why any serious test gives you probabilities and not yes/no answers. Of course any scientist is aware that most diseases are not linked to a single gene that acts as an on-off switch and that in most cases a cluster of multiple genes might influence the susceptibility for certain diseases, which, then is further modulated by environmental factors. You are perfectly right in that this has no place in the drugstore - even if it gives results in the form of possibilities, this will only instill unjustified panic in people who get told that they have an increased probability to come down with, say, colon cancer, but who have no idea what this actually means.
True. The engineering term for a GAU is "Auslegungsstörfall" - you gotta love German composita. It roughly translates to "design basis accident" - the biggest accident covered by you fail-safes. The "GAU" acronym is mostly misused these days.
Indeed - never been around on IRC much. As with most good ideas, the probability that someone else came up with it earlier was high... :) Thanks for the info, anyway - more factoids for my library of more-or-less relevant net history.
I vote for "undernet" - a system of hidden tunnels under the surface of the internet...
Run for the hills! The Vogons are upon us! Run!
No. Lawers do not perform vasectomys.
True. Why bothering with vasectomies when they can just sue your balls off?
I spent enough time in academia that the border between throwing around some speculation and residing firmly in bizarro world has become a wee bit blurred to me... ;)
I am not exactly in favour of the "nuke it!! NOW!!" idea, but your scenario is pretty much unlikely. An underground nuclear explosion would shatter the bedrock in a radius of a couple of 100 meters, perhaps. The distance between the oil-carrying strata and the surface is much higher, though. Given that we know the geology of the oil field pretty well, ripping open the reservoir with a nuke is not really a concern. For a successful closing of the leaking borehole, you would have to drill quite deep to place the nuke, though, so we can as well just do the proven and clean relief bore thing.
Well, in this special context, you would drill a couple of thousand feet deep and explode the nuke deep down in the rock, thereby collapsing the well. The radionuclides would be contained and the original hole shut down. It might be workable, and somewhat clean, but to be sure, we would have to put the nuke deep down - so with not much more time investment, the relief well could be completed as well, which is certainly more clean. We are not talking about dropping a nuke on the sea floor here, that surely won't work. Conventional explosives wouldn't work in a bore hole, because you could not get enough of them down at the necessary depth to shatter the bedrock in a sufficiently large volume. So, from a purely academic standpoint, we could have a "clean nuclear explosion" there. Well, from an academic standpoint that might very well be considered already part of the Bizarro Universe...
You gotta take into account that the Pravda started as party propaganda organ, broke apart after the Iron Curtain fell, and has seen several reincarnations, mostly as National-Inquirer style bottom feeding tabloid since then. So, suggestions taken out of Pravda are supposed to be straight from the Bizarro Universe. Heck, they regularily report on alien abductions, Yetis and stuff like it.
Enjoyed... yes, in a somewhat numinous way. The UDF photo is the closest thing to a Total Perspective Vortex I have seen so far.
Which illustrates the main problem with the current American debate: the use of "socialism" (and sometimes "facism") as a synonym for "stuff I do not agree with".
I guess we can agree mostly here - we just seem to be separated by some definitions. I guess you can put those economic models on a circle, rather than a linear scale, with corrupt capitalism meeting corrupt communism in the same point.