You sure you didn't get zapped by an incoming call on the phone line? You're certainly more likely to anyway... No matter what they say, ISA was hot-swappable.:)
If you can afford the stamps and the filing fee and you're willing to take the time and cozy up to your legalese dictionary and go back and forth with edits at the examiner's whim
Those whims are few and far between... You can hold your full time job and go through the process. The patent process is very slow, and there can be months between each corespondence.
Since any administrative review process will natrually be unnavigable by any person with a normal, full time job, the only real way to protest under the new 6 month administrative review period is to hire a patent lawyer.
Considering all the wisecracks around here about how the USPTO will grant a patent on just about anything, I'm surprised I find myself having to say this, but: You can easily get a patent without an intellectual property lawyer. There are books about how to do it ranging from lawschool texts to "for Dummies" level material. If you can afford the stamps and the filing fee and you're willing to take the time and cozy up to your legalese dictionary and go back and forth with edits at the examiner's whim, you can obtain a patent.
The only thing an IP lawyer can do that you can't is reference off the top of their head what patent case law exists that means you should word your patent one way and not the other for maximum protection.
the world's #1 greenhouse gas polluter continues to belch out 25% of the world's CO2
And continues to produce 27% of the GWP with it... Looks like we're making good use of that consumption.
And Brazil! Brazil has 62% of the US's population, and 5% of the CO2 emissions.
Interestingly Brazil has approximately 5% of the US's economic output level.
It would seem that economic strength is directly tied ot energy consumption. It's a wonder that people who are held acountable for the US economy don't want anything to do with a treaty that would force a reduction in economic output, isn't it? And that's even before you take into account that the treaty doesn't take the growing economies that are the biggest threat to US economic dominance to the same standards. Maybe if the treaty allowed for the reduced energy output from fossil fuels to be replaced with the only known feasable source (nuclear) it would be a good idea, but it doesn't, and it isn't.
Perhaps throwing yourself on your own sword is fashionable in Europe these days, but I'll pass, thanks.
People like this guy have been ranting in slashdot comments for weeks about how there wasn't going to be a no-hard-drive version at launch. After all the rest of os have been flamed, modded down, and accused of being Sony fanboys for rationally suggesting otherwise. Why aren't there any posts rubbing this in?
That's not a very good comparison for two reasons.
First, fresh meat is unlikely to contain food-bourne illnesses if handled properly; after all the animal was alive and not dying of salmonilla not too long ago.
Second, most food-bourne illnesses that you get from raw food are non-lethal unless you are unhealthy for other reasons.
If i were to eat meat, i'd prefer it to be free-range. It can only be healthier.
Why do you make that assumption? You have no idea what a 'free-range' cow is eating, or what diseases it had. If anything I would say it could only be less helthy. You have the knid of mentality that drives the demand for 'organic' products, even while in many cases it's impossible to know what 'organic' means; worse, even when we do know what 'organic' means we have no good idea of what is in any particular batch of 'natural' fertilizers or feeds and have little understanding of how the complex chemical mixtures in such things interact with our body when compared to the chemically simple 'artificial' fertilizers.
Whenever I heaar people talk about this stuff I always remember a section from Neal Stephenson's book 'Zodiac.' The (environmentalist/chemist) main character's drug of choice is nitrous inhaled out of a plastic garbage bag. His reasoning is that he doesn't want to put drugs in his body that he can't draw a molecular model of. (It's been a few years since I read it - It's explained much better in the book). Anyway, it seems like a good philosophy to me. A lot of things that are 'organic' scare the crap out of me.
Too many restaurants refuse to cook meat anything under "medium"
In many places, laws prevent resturants from serving previously frozen beef without cooking it to at least medium, because it is common for the meat to become contaminated during the thawing process.
This is good for you because it means you know you're getting fresh meat when you order your steak "black and blue." Imagine eating your raw hamburger after it had been sitting out thawing for a half hour on a disgusting restaurant countertop. Gross.
Right. They should work hard at this for years without making any sort of living to put a roof over their heads, feed their families, or care for themselves in their old age. What a wonderful way to reward the people in our society who do great things. Why didn't we think of that sooner?
My biggest hope is that my company doesn't enforce their "all your copyright are belong to us" policy.
In the past when I've worked for companies with overly broad copyright assignment clauses in their contract boilerplate, I've had them reword it to allow me to maintain copyrights on code that could be considered general purpose. The wording generally goes something like "... with the exception of code that implements functionality basic to the day to day tasks of software development," but sometimes is " retains the copyrights on pre-existing code brought to the company with him, and on modifications and enhancements to such code." I've never had anybody say no when I've asked in the past. Typically the terms are written by lawyer-folk who try to get as much as they can when writing contracts with the expectation of negotiations later.
Either way, it can't hurt to ask. Worst case scenario, they say no. Same goes for when you're discussing salary.
The short answer is, yes, the patent is invalid and will probably be over turned. [...] Thus they are hobbling Apple for a bit and presumably generating a bit of fear, uncertainty and doubt as to iPod.
More likely, Apple will pull some patent they've been hanging onto that some newish version of Windows violates. Both sides will realize that both patents will probably be overturned at great expense, and a cross licensing agreement will make this all go away. This will happen without the average iPod user ever even hearing about it, much less having it influence their purchasing decision.
Allard's comments about potentially shipping an Xbox 360 sans HD are for the future [...]
That leaves two possibilities: Either some games won't work on an Xbox 360 with no hard drive, or all games will have their potential functionality reduced to work without the hard drive.
If you ask me, both of those options suck. I'm pretty sure the one they'll pick is the first option, since there are some things you just can't do without gobs of rewritable storage, and Xbox users have gotten used to those game features already. On the other hand, having compatability issues has been the death of many consoles... You've got to wonder if they are shooting themselves in the foot with this.
Re:Effecitve filtering will end spam
on
Ending Spam
·
· Score: 1
If we successfully filter out 99% of the spam, wouldn't the spammers just have to send out 100 times more spam to make up the difference?
If only that were the case... Really, they'd just have to figure out what is special about the 1% that gets through and make all the spam look like that.
Spam filtering is like DRM. Somebody wants to bypass it badly enough that they will.
Have you ever used Debian or a Debian based distribution? Config files - hell, any type of file - locations are standardized even if it means modifying the source of an app to change the default locations. Package versioning is standardized. Package renames are well handled. You can easily upgrade from version to version and still understand (for the most part) how the OS works and is laid out. Best of all, you can generally expect that your upgrade will actually work because of the well maintained package repository which keeps dependencies in line.
I can wear out the keyboard that comes with any recent (last two years) Dell in under three months. It will still work, but the keys will get bound up unless you're carefull to push directly downward (which is almost impossible on the spacebar).
There are membrane keyboards that fit the bill, but they are typically as expensive as a Model M, or harder to find. Older Dell keyboards from before the "QuietKey" are OK. My favorite membrane keyboard is the Digital RT101, which I am using right now. I've been using it for 10 years and it feels like new still. Unfortunatly, it doesn't have windows keys, and I do like having the extra modifiers. Emacs is much friendlier with a real Meta key.
For some reason all the keyboards I like are noisy. I guess it sucks to be the guy who has to work in the next cube over from me.
They learned their lesson after the NES fiasco. The trouble is that you're pretty hard pressed to get a controller interface patent these days. Even a patent clerk is going to know that's been done before. Plus there isn't really time left to get a patent if they didn't apply years ago... People would have cleaned house with the third party peripherals between now and when it finally got issued, and good luck suing some chinese controller manufacturer for damages.
The DMCA is a copyright law. You can't copyright a protocol or an interface because it's an invention not a creative work. Microsoft would have to patent the interface to have a case. The Lexmark ruling confirms this. If Microsoft did patent the interface they wouldn't have to bother with the technical lockout.
The problem is twofold. First that they probably can't get get a patent on a controller interface. It's an understatement to say that's been done before, and if they're trying to keep costs down they're going to use something that's close to off the shelf. The second is that if they did try to patent it they probably wouldn't get the patent issued until well after the end of the usable lifespan of the Xbox 360. (If the current generation is any indication that'll be 2008 sometime... But even if it's 2010, they'd be pushing their luck trying to get a patent issued in any decent period of time before that.)
The Seal of Approval was because the courts ruled that it was legal for third parties to make compatable NES cartridges for the original NES even though the third party cartridges circumvented the protections against such a thing. Afterwards Nintendo fought back with marketing claiming anything witout the seal was inferior. Really it just meant that the developer had paid the fees.
What he's saying is that the protections will be broken and MS will have wasted their effort.
Is Microsoft shooting itself in the foot by making traditional 'approved product' licensing mandatory for 3rd-party developers? Or will companies line up by the dozens to tithe to King Bill?
More likely... Manufacturers will circumvent the protections and make compatible items anyway like with the original NES. There's even prior case law from the original NES days, and even the Lexmark case that will help them get away with it.
Even when you're being a cynic about it, the trick is to pick something that will sell. Otherwise you wasted your legal fees and application fees on something nobody will ever use.
If it's something interesting to do in a portable fashion, I'll bet you somebody already did what you suggest and you can't be quick enough.
I have a Mini DV camera with a broken tape drive that I bought on eBay to use as a webcam. It captures video to the hard drive in my laptop over the 1394 port with any of your favorite Windows video editing tools in the same way you would copy the contents of a tape to the hard drive. That way you can use any laptop computer as a high capacity video recording device. I use Windows movie maker just because it's what came with my laptop. The controls leave a little to be desired though.
Slashdot Mirror
You sure you didn't get zapped by an incoming call on the phone line? You're certainly more likely to anyway... No matter what they say, ISA was hot-swappable. :)
Replying to myself, but what the hell...
If you can afford the stamps and the filing fee and you're willing to take the time and cozy up to your legalese dictionary and go back and forth with edits at the examiner's whim
Those whims are few and far between... You can hold your full time job and go through the process. The patent process is very slow, and there can be months between each corespondence.
Since any administrative review process will natrually be unnavigable by any person with a normal, full time job, the only real way to protest under the new 6 month administrative review period is to hire a patent lawyer.
Considering all the wisecracks around here about how the USPTO will grant a patent on just about anything, I'm surprised I find myself having to say this, but: You can easily get a patent without an intellectual property lawyer. There are books about how to do it ranging from lawschool texts to "for Dummies" level material. If you can afford the stamps and the filing fee and you're willing to take the time and cozy up to your legalese dictionary and go back and forth with edits at the examiner's whim, you can obtain a patent.
The only thing an IP lawyer can do that you can't is reference off the top of their head what patent case law exists that means you should word your patent one way and not the other for maximum protection.
the world's #1 greenhouse gas polluter continues to belch out 25% of the world's CO2
And continues to produce 27% of the GWP with it... Looks like we're making good use of that consumption.
And Brazil! Brazil has 62% of the US's population, and 5% of the CO2 emissions.
Interestingly Brazil has approximately 5% of the US's economic output level.
It would seem that economic strength is directly tied ot energy consumption. It's a wonder that people who are held acountable for the US economy don't want anything to do with a treaty that would force a reduction in economic output, isn't it? And that's even before you take into account that the treaty doesn't take the growing economies that are the biggest threat to US economic dominance to the same standards. Maybe if the treaty allowed for the reduced energy output from fossil fuels to be replaced with the only known feasable source (nuclear) it would be a good idea, but it doesn't, and it isn't.
Perhaps throwing yourself on your own sword is fashionable in Europe these days, but I'll pass, thanks.
Most of the above, by the way, wasn't aimed at the parent but to the doomsayers elsewhere in this discussion.
Guess those guys turned out to be right after all, huh?
People like this guy have been ranting in slashdot comments for weeks about how there wasn't going to be a no-hard-drive version at launch. After all the rest of os have been flamed, modded down, and accused of being Sony fanboys for rationally suggesting otherwise. Why aren't there any posts rubbing this in?
Hah! We told you so!
That's not a very good comparison for two reasons.
First, fresh meat is unlikely to contain food-bourne illnesses if handled properly; after all the animal was alive and not dying of salmonilla not too long ago.
Second, most food-bourne illnesses that you get from raw food are non-lethal unless you are unhealthy for other reasons.
If i were to eat meat, i'd prefer it to be free-range. It can only be healthier.
Why do you make that assumption? You have no idea what a 'free-range' cow is eating, or what diseases it had. If anything I would say it could only be less helthy. You have the knid of mentality that drives the demand for 'organic' products, even while in many cases it's impossible to know what 'organic' means; worse, even when we do know what 'organic' means we have no good idea of what is in any particular batch of 'natural' fertilizers or feeds and have little understanding of how the complex chemical mixtures in such things interact with our body when compared to the chemically simple 'artificial' fertilizers.
Whenever I heaar people talk about this stuff I always remember a section from Neal Stephenson's book 'Zodiac.' The (environmentalist/chemist) main character's drug of choice is nitrous inhaled out of a plastic garbage bag. His reasoning is that he doesn't want to put drugs in his body that he can't draw a molecular model of. (It's been a few years since I read it - It's explained much better in the book). Anyway, it seems like a good philosophy to me. A lot of things that are 'organic' scare the crap out of me.
Too many restaurants refuse to cook meat anything under "medium"
In many places, laws prevent resturants from serving previously frozen beef without cooking it to at least medium, because it is common for the meat to become contaminated during the thawing process.
This is good for you because it means you know you're getting fresh meat when you order your steak "black and blue." Imagine eating your raw hamburger after it had been sitting out thawing for a half hour on a disgusting restaurant countertop. Gross.
Right. They should work hard at this for years without making any sort of living to put a roof over their heads, feed their families, or care for themselves in their old age. What a wonderful way to reward the people in our society who do great things. Why didn't we think of that sooner?
My biggest hope is that my company doesn't enforce their "all your copyright are belong to us" policy.
In the past when I've worked for companies with overly broad copyright assignment clauses in their contract boilerplate, I've had them reword it to allow me to maintain copyrights on code that could be considered general purpose. The wording generally goes something like "... with the exception of code that implements functionality basic to the day to day tasks of software development," but sometimes is " retains the copyrights on pre-existing code brought to the company with him, and on modifications and enhancements to such code." I've never had anybody say no when I've asked in the past. Typically the terms are written by lawyer-folk who try to get as much as they can when writing contracts with the expectation of negotiations later.
Either way, it can't hurt to ask. Worst case scenario, they say no. Same goes for when you're discussing salary.
The short answer is, yes, the patent is invalid and will probably be over turned. [...] Thus they are hobbling Apple for a bit and presumably generating a bit of fear, uncertainty and doubt as to iPod.
More likely, Apple will pull some patent they've been hanging onto that some newish version of Windows violates. Both sides will realize that both patents will probably be overturned at great expense, and a cross licensing agreement will make this all go away. This will happen without the average iPod user ever even hearing about it, much less having it influence their purchasing decision.
Allard's comments about potentially shipping an Xbox 360 sans HD are for the future [...]
That leaves two possibilities: Either some games won't work on an Xbox 360 with no hard drive, or all games will have their potential functionality reduced to work without the hard drive.
If you ask me, both of those options suck. I'm pretty sure the one they'll pick is the first option, since there are some things you just can't do without gobs of rewritable storage, and Xbox users have gotten used to those game features already. On the other hand, having compatability issues has been the death of many consoles... You've got to wonder if they are shooting themselves in the foot with this.
If we successfully filter out 99% of the spam, wouldn't the spammers just have to send out 100 times more spam to make up the difference?
If only that were the case... Really, they'd just have to figure out what is special about the 1% that gets through and make all the spam look like that.
Spam filtering is like DRM. Somebody wants to bypass it badly enough that they will.
Woah... Calm down for a second...
Have you ever used Debian or a Debian based distribution? Config files - hell, any type of file - locations are standardized even if it means modifying the source of an app to change the default locations. Package versioning is standardized. Package renames are well handled. You can easily upgrade from version to version and still understand (for the most part) how the OS works and is laid out. Best of all, you can generally expect that your upgrade will actually work because of the well maintained package repository which keeps dependencies in line.
You want standards? Here's some reading for you. It may just turn you into a Debian user: http://www.debian.org/doc/debian-policy/
For me, neither; it's the durability.
I can wear out the keyboard that comes with any recent (last two years) Dell in under three months. It will still work, but the keys will get bound up unless you're carefull to push directly downward (which is almost impossible on the spacebar).
There are membrane keyboards that fit the bill, but they are typically as expensive as a Model M, or harder to find. Older Dell keyboards from before the "QuietKey" are OK. My favorite membrane keyboard is the Digital RT101, which I am using right now. I've been using it for 10 years and it feels like new still. Unfortunatly, it doesn't have windows keys, and I do like having the extra modifiers. Emacs is much friendlier with a real Meta key.
For some reason all the keyboards I like are noisy. I guess it sucks to be the guy who has to work in the next cube over from me.
That's what they used to be for. Now they protect us against nipples.
They learned their lesson after the NES fiasco. The trouble is that you're pretty hard pressed to get a controller interface patent these days. Even a patent clerk is going to know that's been done before. Plus there isn't really time left to get a patent if they didn't apply years ago... People would have cleaned house with the third party peripherals between now and when it finally got issued, and good luck suing some chinese controller manufacturer for damages.
The DMCA is a copyright law. You can't copyright a protocol or an interface because it's an invention not a creative work. Microsoft would have to patent the interface to have a case. The Lexmark ruling confirms this. If Microsoft did patent the interface they wouldn't have to bother with the technical lockout.
The problem is twofold. First that they probably can't get get a patent on a controller interface. It's an understatement to say that's been done before, and if they're trying to keep costs down they're going to use something that's close to off the shelf. The second is that if they did try to patent it they probably wouldn't get the patent issued until well after the end of the usable lifespan of the Xbox 360. (If the current generation is any indication that'll be 2008 sometime... But even if it's 2010, they'd be pushing their luck trying to get a patent issued in any decent period of time before that.)
I think you missed the point here,
The Seal of Approval was because the courts ruled that it was legal for third parties to make compatable NES cartridges for the original NES even though the third party cartridges circumvented the protections against such a thing. Afterwards Nintendo fought back with marketing claiming anything witout the seal was inferior. Really it just meant that the developer had paid the fees.
What he's saying is that the protections will be broken and MS will have wasted their effort.
Is Microsoft shooting itself in the foot by making traditional 'approved product' licensing mandatory for 3rd-party developers? Or will companies line up by the dozens to tithe to King Bill?
More likely... Manufacturers will circumvent the protections and make compatible items anyway like with the original NES. There's even prior case law from the original NES days, and even the Lexmark case that will help them get away with it.
BTW, the "...." in your particular plan is "file a law suit."
Patent a cd-burner on a cell-phone, quick!
Even when you're being a cynic about it, the trick is to pick something that will sell. Otherwise you wasted your legal fees and application fees on something nobody will ever use.
If it's something interesting to do in a portable fashion, I'll bet you somebody already did what you suggest and you can't be quick enough.
Wow.
Just, wow.
Take a slashdot article.
Add some slashdot readers who don't read the article.
Add some games.slashdot.org Xbox fanboyism.
Watch people make idiots of themselves as they dismiss information taken straight from an official Sony press release as speculation by PS2 fanboys.
The parent to this comment is hands down the most blatently stupid comment I've read here in a long time.
I have a Mini DV camera with a broken tape drive that I bought on eBay to use as a webcam. It captures video to the hard drive in my laptop over the 1394 port with any of your favorite Windows video editing tools in the same way you would copy the contents of a tape to the hard drive. That way you can use any laptop computer as a high capacity video recording device. I use Windows movie maker just because it's what came with my laptop. The controls leave a little to be desired though.