an interesing thing to compare however is BMW's SMG (sequental manual gearshift) which has the same drivetrain loss as their manual version (since there is no torque converter) which shares some similairities with an F1 gearbox.
The odd thing is, in a recent european car issue, they tested the SMG in its various sport modes and the manual still beat it, despite the SMG launche modes and being able to shift faster than any human possibly could.
The only reason I can think of this happening is that their drivers have much more familiarity with a manual than an SMG system. Everyone who has an SMG raves about it. I however and buying a manual M3 this weekend, mostly because i like a clutch pedal.
ACtually owning DVDs is something tv Ads say all the time, with no tiny white text at the bottom of the screen.
"Own it now on dvd!"
Seems odd when they advertise like that, and then try to tell you what you can do with it after you "own it". Then again, they never say what "it" is. "It" could be the physical media or the movie, but it seems that they imply it is the movie.
However "License it now, on DVD!" just sounds strange and I doubt the average person would understand it.
You may not be a gun owner yourself, but wouldn't you prefer your children as well as their friends, learn how to behave responsibly if they find a gun? I believe that was the point of the campaign, not teaching children that guns are "cool" or "good." Those are things which young children (under the age of 10) really can't decide.
For those who don't know, Lupan the third is a show that has been on forever with movies(one by miyazaki) tv shows etc. Its actually based on a french book. Its about a thief with a good heart and him escaping from the cops (esp Inspector Zenagato or something like that).
As my college roomate put it, Lupan is like a crazy inspector gadget that scores.
Checkout the piechart towards the bottom. In the 2001 federal budget, the US spent 19% on health care, 23% on social security, 6% on various entitlements (Vetern's benefits etc) 11% on interest and only 16% on defense.
Granted that 23% for social security can't be used for other means, but the US spends far more on benefits than they do on the military.
Additonally, 342 billion was spent on health care versus 279billion on the military in 2001.
here are some other siteshttp://www.federalbudget.com/ http://www.kow aldesign.com/budget/ http://www.infoplease.com/ip a/A0873746.html
actually most of the taxes americans pay goto pay for entitlements (social security, medicare/aid) and financing our debt payments. Social security (direct payments to the elderly) may fail in the long run since the ratio of retiree's to workers is falling. Additionally, the rate of return is quite low on social security funds (about 2%). What it does do, is force people to save, who otherwise can't or wouldn't. It does hurt those who can afford to save, or can invest wisely.
the u.ss's spending on the military is what has made the US a world power, both militaraly and economically. It does provide a lot of research jobs here.
Our tax rates here are less than europe. We don't have VAT either, something which politicians here try to bring over, but always fails when it comes to a vote.
The US tax burden on citizens has increased as well, infact i remember seeing a graph in time a few years back which projected that by 2020, the average american would be paying 8%0 of their income. While i doubt this will happen, it is true that americans are paying more in sales/income etc than they ever did before.
Re:America will never put up with 8 HP
on
239 MPG Car
·
· Score: 1
diesel engines have a ton of torque. Even the lowly 90hp tdi that vw sells here delivers around 150ft/lbs of torque at about 1800 rpm.
The pd 150hp engines they have in europe have 250+ft/lbs in a passenger car. People drive torque, not HP. One of the reasons the diesels aren't rated higher for torque is that the redline is generally pretty low (under 5krpm in a tdi).
Is this really a bad thing. Considering that the astronauts on board spend 85% of the time doing station upkeep. The science value of the mission is questionable. If NASA got the proper funding to go with the original plan of 7 astronauts, I could see the value of maintaining the station as valuable science could be preformed.
Shut it down for now, until more money gets passed to make the ISS valuable. Perhaps NASA should redirect more of its money from the ISS to new propulsion technologies (nuclear etc) to reduce lift costs (yes I know you probably wouldnt want to do a launch from the ground to LEO with nuclear rockets, but perhaps other avenues could be approached).
unfortunatly, people seem to explain away what I said, by "its a kids fantasy movie!" Thats not really an excuse, thatbecause it is for children there is no reason not ignore pacing elements of a movie!
Dishnetwork is offering a deal right now for 80 bucks for the dish 500 and reciever only. You have to sign up for a year of international programming though.
Want to know the funny thing? NHK's feed is free to air to the rest of the world via c-band sattelite. Actually according to charts (you can find them on NHK's web page) it shows that you can recieve NHK via c-band, but requires one of those 6 foot dishes.
I'd like to get TVJapan myself, since my speaking ability has degraded since my time in college there, but my house is surrounded by high trees so I don't have line of sight.
Asides from CN's toonami offerings, they really don't carry any action oriented cartoons (besides samurai jack or justice league/batman).
There are plenty of action oriented cartoons out there from the 70's-today, i'm just curious why they don't show any of them during prime time, but instead show endless repeats of their home brewed comedic cartoons. I would believe that showing old episodes of x-men, transformers, gi joe or he-man would be cheaper than producing new cartoons.
Additionally showing some action toons (or even the simpsons) would be a nice change from a mostly comedic primetime lineup.
no , i wasn't trying to be confrontational, i actualy work in patents, its just that there are a ton of ill informed people here.
i won't comment on software patents other than the fact that inventors have used the courts to force software patents on the US. Its not like the PTO said, hey we need more money, lets do software patents.
As you said there are patents on basic tools, but there are a ton of patents just for hammers alone. There are a lot of varations on the same idea, there is not reason why you can't patent a different implementation of the same idea, especially if you write the claim properly.
I'd love to write an explanation for slashdot on how the patenting process works(and show that the PTO isn't a rubber stamp operation).
I don't doubt that there are abuses of the patent system (for example submarine patents), its just that people are reading many patents far to broadly, since the patent in part is determined by the disclosure as well as the rejections which the examiner issued (they come up in court as evidence).
my point is simple. You can't use hindsight reasoning for why things are ovbious.
I'm not argueing that there isn't prior art that doesn't get around the patent, it is likely that the claim language makes it difficult to get around.
I mean really, how many different mouse trap designs are there. They way the US patent classification system is organized, you have hundreds of patents listed for each class/subclass combination for example class 348 is television and there are hundreds of patents in there, there just isn't one TV patent which covers every tv element every made.
Look at the parent applications, it has priority back to 1988, which is prior to the people selling chocololate over the internet and prior to a lot of other art.
The patent process is far more involved than people here seem to think it is. If people would actually read the claims and look at the priority information, they would realize that things aren't as ovbious as they think it is. Doing so is hindsight. If a patent has priority back to 1988, you have to use the art available to you in 1988, not 1996!
there are general divisions for chemical, electrical, mechianical, biotech and business methods. from there, there are breakdowns into specific technologies, such as sporting equipment, telephones, tyres etc, nearly every catergory of invention.
At least BS is requried, for some techonolgies, more is required for education/job experience.
the people who work at the PTO probably know far more than you do about a specific technology. The problem is you have to read how the claims are written. The claims define the actual invention. If the law firm does a good search prior to filing a patent, they can word the claims so that the examiner can't find it. Likewise after a non-final rejection, the attorney can ammend the claims to not read on the art the examiner cited.
"Imagine if people start claiming necessary carpentry skills like 'the process of putting a a variety of small steel spikes in a piece of wood' - that'll cover hammering, screwing, etc. Or 'method of subdividing wood into smaller pieces.' - sawing."
The article poster only quoted the preamble, not the actual invention, so the slashdot article is misleading. Likewise the passage from the above poster is inaccurate. That is called the preamble and is not the actual invention. The actual invention portion of the claim would likely read something like this:
1) A method if inserting small steel spikes in a piece of wood, wherein said wood is composed of pine. ETC with more and more detail AFTER the preamble portion
I'm pretty tired of slashdot people, who are entirely uneducated in the patent process, critizing a process which they don't even fully understand.
that bathtub patent you referenced is a DESIGN patent. There are design patents for almost everything (you can find video game console designs etc). Design patents ONLY HAVE DRAWINGs.
Utility patents have drawings and a specification.
cd prices are high due to the number of middlemen. in japan its faily common to have 2-4 middlemen.
also copying is rather prevleant. you can goto cd rental stores and rent a cd for as few as 3hours for 100-200 yen. there was one right outside the college i used to attend.
movie tickets are exspensive there, up to 2000 yen. on the upside, you can buy beer in some of the theatres.
so what you are saying is that it is ok for someone else to come along, take the ideas of your creative friends, pass them off as their own/manufacture a product based off of them thus jepordizing their jobs?
i think you mean, that hiring 2000 more examiners won't address the issues you are concerned with.
hiring additional examiners would reduce pendancy, and eventually allow examiners more time per case which would lead to better searches/quality.
For a fair number of examiners, english is not their first language, this doesn't mean that their technical arguements are bad, it just means that understanding their rejections may be difficult.
The number one and two issues which the NON SLASHDOT community is concerned with is application pendancy and quality. This is true of both congress and the applicants themselves.
People who are applying for patents want protection for business methods, biotechnology and software. What slashdot really needs is an interview with a recent examiner, a PTO spokeman or the PTO union so that the slashdot community can better understand the patent process.
Slashdot Mirror
an interesing thing to compare however is BMW's SMG (sequental manual gearshift) which has the same drivetrain loss as their manual version (since there is no torque converter) which shares some similairities with an F1 gearbox.
The odd thing is, in a recent european car issue, they tested the SMG in its various sport modes and the manual still beat it, despite the SMG launche modes and being able to shift faster than any human possibly could.
The only reason I can think of this happening is that their drivers have much more familiarity with a manual than an SMG system. Everyone who has an SMG raves about it. I however and buying a manual M3 this weekend, mostly because i like a clutch pedal.
ACtually owning DVDs is something tv Ads say all the time, with no tiny white text at the bottom of the screen.
"Own it now on dvd!"
Seems odd when they advertise like that, and then try to tell you what you can do with it after you "own it". Then again, they never say what "it" is. "It" could be the physical media or the movie, but it seems that they imply it is the movie.
However "License it now, on DVD!" just sounds strange and I doubt the average person would understand it.
You may not be a gun owner yourself, but wouldn't you prefer your children as well as their friends, learn how to behave responsibly if they find a gun? I believe that was the point of the campaign, not teaching children that guns are "cool" or "good." Those are things which young children (under the age of 10) really can't decide.
For those who don't know, Lupan the third is a show that has been on forever with movies(one by miyazaki) tv shows etc. Its actually based on a french book. Its about a thief with a good heart and him escaping from the cops (esp Inspector Zenagato or something like that).
As my college roomate put it, Lupan is like a crazy inspector gadget that scores.
http://w3.access.gpo.gov/usbudget/fy2001/guide02.h tml
w aldesign.com/budget/p a/A0873746.html
Checkout the piechart towards the bottom. In the 2001 federal budget, the US spent 19% on health care, 23% on social security, 6% on various entitlements (Vetern's benefits etc) 11% on interest and only 16% on defense.
Granted that 23% for social security can't be used for other means, but the US spends far more on benefits than they do on the military.
Additonally, 342 billion was spent on health care versus 279billion on the military in 2001.
here are some other siteshttp://www.federalbudget.com/
http://www.ko
http://www.infoplease.com/i
or you can read the federal budget at www.cbo.gov
actually most of the taxes americans pay goto pay for entitlements (social security, medicare/aid) and financing our debt payments. Social security (direct payments to the elderly) may fail in the long run since the ratio of retiree's to workers is falling. Additionally, the rate of return is quite low on social security funds (about 2%). What it does do, is force people to save, who otherwise can't or wouldn't. It does hurt those who can afford to save, or can invest wisely.
the u.ss's spending on the military is what has made the US a world power, both militaraly and economically. It does provide a lot of research jobs here.
Our tax rates here are less than europe. We don't have VAT either, something which politicians here try to bring over, but always fails when it comes to a vote.
The US tax burden on citizens has increased as well, infact i remember seeing a graph in time a few years back which projected that by 2020, the average american would be paying 8%0 of their income. While i doubt this will happen, it is true that americans are paying more in sales/income etc than they ever did before.
diesel engines have a ton of torque. Even the lowly 90hp tdi that vw sells here delivers around 150ft/lbs of torque at about 1800 rpm.
The pd 150hp engines they have in europe have 250+ft/lbs in a passenger car. People drive torque, not HP. One of the reasons the diesels aren't rated higher for torque is that the redline is generally pretty low (under 5krpm in a tdi).
Is this really a bad thing. Considering that the astronauts on board spend 85% of the time doing station upkeep. The science value of the mission is questionable. If NASA got the proper funding to go with the original plan of 7 astronauts, I could see the value of maintaining the station as valuable science could be preformed.
Shut it down for now, until more money gets passed to make the ISS valuable. Perhaps NASA should redirect more of its money from the ISS to new propulsion technologies (nuclear etc) to reduce lift costs (yes I know you probably wouldnt want to do a launch from the ground to LEO with nuclear rockets, but perhaps other avenues could be approached).
here: http://www.zilch321.org/article.php?story=20021115 090551692
unfortunatly, people seem to explain away what I said, by "its a kids fantasy movie!" Thats not really an excuse, thatbecause it is for children there is no reason not ignore pacing elements of a movie!
Dishnetwork is offering a deal right now for 80 bucks for the dish 500 and reciever only. You have to sign up for a year of international programming though.
Want to know the funny thing? NHK's feed is free to air to the rest of the world via c-band sattelite. Actually according to charts (you can find them on NHK's web page) it shows that you can recieve NHK via c-band, but requires one of those 6 foot dishes.
I'd like to get TVJapan myself, since my speaking ability has degraded since my time in college there, but my house is surrounded by high trees so I don't have line of sight.
Asides from CN's toonami offerings, they really don't carry any action oriented cartoons (besides samurai jack or justice league/batman).
There are plenty of action oriented cartoons out there from the 70's-today, i'm just curious why they don't show any of them during prime time, but instead show endless repeats of their home brewed comedic cartoons. I would believe that showing old episodes of x-men, transformers, gi joe or he-man would be cheaper than producing new cartoons.
Additionally showing some action toons (or even the simpsons) would be a nice change from a mostly comedic primetime lineup.
That is the problem in itself. It is VERY exspensive to preform patent litigation in the courts, especaily for small companys/private inventors.
I really don't know a solution to this since it really is the little guy fighting the big guy.
the actual invention is everything AFTER the preamble, that is essentially everything after the first comma.
no , i wasn't trying to be confrontational, i actualy work in patents, its just that there are a ton of ill informed people here.
i won't comment on software patents other than the fact that inventors have used the courts to force software patents on the US. Its not like the PTO said, hey we need more money, lets do software patents.
As you said there are patents on basic tools, but there are a ton of patents just for hammers alone. There are a lot of varations on the same idea, there is not reason why you can't patent a different implementation of the same idea, especially if you write the claim properly.
I'd love to write an explanation for slashdot on how the patenting process works(and show that the PTO isn't a rubber stamp operation).
I don't doubt that there are abuses of the patent system (for example submarine patents), its just that people are reading many patents far to broadly, since the patent in part is determined by the disclosure as well as the rejections which the examiner issued (they come up in court as evidence).
correct. Unfortunatly, a lot of posters seem to believe that the scope of the claims are infinetly wide which is not really the case.
Perhaps a post directing people to portions of the MPEP would be useful in educating slashdot posters?
my point is simple. You can't use hindsight reasoning for why things are ovbious.
I'm not argueing that there isn't prior art that doesn't get around the patent, it is likely that the claim language makes it difficult to get around.
I mean really, how many different mouse trap designs are there. They way the US patent classification system is organized, you have hundreds of patents listed for each class/subclass combination for example class 348 is television and there are hundreds of patents in there, there just isn't one TV patent which covers every tv element every made.
the patent has an effective filing date of 1988!
Look at the parent applications, it has priority back to 1988, which is prior to the people selling chocololate over the internet and prior to a lot of other art.
The patent process is far more involved than people here seem to think it is. If people would actually read the claims and look at the priority information, they would realize that things aren't as ovbious as they think it is. Doing so is hindsight. If a patent has priority back to 1988, you have to use the art available to you in 1988, not 1996!
there are general divisions for chemical, electrical, mechianical, biotech and business methods. from there, there are breakdowns into specific technologies, such as sporting equipment, telephones, tyres etc, nearly every catergory of invention.
At least BS is requried, for some techonolgies, more is required for education/job experience.
the people who work at the PTO probably know far more than you do about a specific technology. The problem is you have to read how the claims are written. The claims define the actual invention. If the law firm does a good search prior to filing a patent, they can word the claims so that the examiner can't find it. Likewise after a non-final rejection, the attorney can ammend the claims to not read on the art the examiner cited.
"Imagine if people start claiming necessary carpentry skills like 'the process of putting a a variety of small steel spikes in a piece of wood' - that'll cover hammering, screwing, etc. Or 'method of subdividing wood into smaller pieces.' - sawing."
The article poster only quoted the preamble, not the actual invention, so the slashdot article is misleading. Likewise the passage from the above poster is inaccurate. That is called the preamble and is not the actual invention. The actual invention portion of the claim would likely read something like this:
1) A method if inserting small steel spikes in a piece of wood, wherein said wood is composed of pine. ETC with more and more detail AFTER the preamble portion
I'm pretty tired of slashdot people, who are entirely uneducated in the patent process, critizing a process which they don't even fully understand.
that bathtub patent you referenced is a DESIGN patent. There are design patents for almost everything (you can find video game console designs etc). Design patents ONLY HAVE DRAWINGs.
Utility patents have drawings and a specification.
there is a big difference
cd prices are high due to the number of middlemen. in japan its faily common to have 2-4 middlemen.
also copying is rather prevleant. you can goto cd rental stores and rent a cd for as few as 3hours for 100-200 yen. there was one right outside the college i used to attend.
movie tickets are exspensive there, up to 2000 yen. on the upside, you can buy beer in some of the theatres.
same deal here
UUNET has a big center out in ashburn va, maybe there are problems there too
so what you are saying is that it is ok for someone else to come along, take the ideas of your creative friends, pass them off as their own/manufacture a product based off of them thus jepordizing their jobs?
patents have protection for twenty years from the date of filing. What you are saying was true until several years ago.
As a result, it is in the applicants best interest to file and have a patent granted as soon as possible since their protection runs out.
i think you mean, that hiring 2000 more examiners won't address the issues you are concerned with.
hiring additional examiners would reduce pendancy, and eventually allow examiners more time per case which would lead to better searches/quality.
For a fair number of examiners, english is not their first language, this doesn't mean that their technical arguements are bad, it just means that understanding their rejections may be difficult.
The number one and two issues which the NON SLASHDOT community is concerned with is application pendancy and quality. This is true of both congress and the applicants themselves.
People who are applying for patents want protection for business methods, biotechnology and software. What slashdot really needs is an interview with a recent examiner, a PTO spokeman or the PTO union so that the slashdot community can better understand the patent process.
http://www.gigalaw.com/articles/2000-all/kirsch-20 00-01-all.html
lists the court decisions which made things the way they are today.