If it's trivial and someone else will quickly come up with the same solution, the patent should never have been granted in the first place.
Well, duh. That's what the patent law says - non-obvious to one with ordinary skill in the art is a requirement for patentability.
Since this sort of parallel instruction processing is relatively new to Intel's CPU family, it seems to me that maybe in fact this was a non-obvious invention!
Patents are all about ideas, as in methods, processes and apparatus.
There is a fine line between ideas and implementations. An idea in the sense of patent law is an abstract concept, say like a mathematical algorithm. The implementation of that idea is the use of that algorithm, say to compress images for storage and transmission (see.gif).
That is not to say that in most people's minds the use of LZW compression on images in computers isn't an idea - it is. But legal language the use of an idea to accomplish a concrete goal with some speciific instrumentaility, i.e. a computer is in fact an implementation, not the idea. It is that implementation, NOT the idea that is patentable.
Classic examples of patenting an idea rather than the expression abound in the drug field, where a patent can be obtained for treating disease X with drug Y that was initially developed for treating disease Z.
This is NOT an idea in the sense of the language of patent law. The process of use of this drug to treat the disease is an implementation of the idea. If somebody else comes up with a different drug, using the same idea of treating this disease, they can ALSO get a patent on the different implementation.
Total hooey, probably written by a Gen-X'er who failed history.
My Dad went through the Great Depression and WWII. These are cataclismic events uttery overshadowing minor economic ripples like the dotcom bomb. Yet when all was said and done, he found himself living well with a good retirement.
Gen-X set up for economic failure? Give me a break. How about the boomers who are late in their working life and are having their 401K's blasted by the current stock market? The boomers don't have 30 years of working life to recover from this like the Gen-X'ers do.
If so, why should we legislate what people have to do with their private property.
Because what you do with your private property often affects others. For example, there is a individual in D.C. shooting people. He is clearly using his private property (gun) in the manner he wants.Using your logic we shouldn't care that he is doing this.
Does this mean anyone with a web site has to be in compliance with this cat's text-to-speech converter?
There are a number of published standards (including HTML 4.01), that require use of alt tags on images. You won't even pass simple HTML validation without these tags.
If Southwest had bothered to even live up to that low level, I doubt that they would be getting sued.
First, Southwest Airlines is a private company. They can run their web site any way they see fit
Nope. Just because you own something doesn't give you untrammeled use. When you drive your car, you have numerous laws to comply with.
Boy, I am amazed at the paleolithic attitudes present on Slashdot. The ADA is the law of the land, and it's in place for a reason - so that companies and government make 'reasonable accomodation' to handicapped people. Among other things it protects people who might have a minor handicap from getting fired for trivial reasons - for example my wife has fallen arches and requires orthopedic footwear. Since she works in a position that requires contact with the general public, her employer has a rather strict dress code that would normally require that she wear certain types of dress shoes. The ADA protects her from getting fired because she can't wear these types of shoes on the job.
In the case of Southwest Airlines, their web site is a problem because of the use of images for links without alt tags. Is it REALLY such a big deal for Soutwest to put alt tags on these images???? Can you really imagine a software program that is going to be capable of translating an image into it's test equivalent???
Why wouldn't putting alt tags on images just be considered common courtesy???
Now I am just waiting for the HOW-TO on a Linux-run micro-satellite!
Amateur satellites are nothing new. Hams and AMSAT have been putting satellites up since the early 60's. Right now they have about 20 operational satellites in orbit. Linux based software is quite popular in the Ham community, and plays a big role in AMSAT operations. Satellite Software
The HOW-TO's:
Davidoff, Martin, The Satellite Experimenter's
Handbook Newington, CT: The American
Radio Relay League, 1984.
Jansson, Richard, Spacecraft Technology Trends
in the Amateur Satellite Service, Ogden, UT:
Proceedings of the 1st Annual USU Conference
on Small Satellites, 1987.
Most studies I've seen place 35mm film resolution at an effective 20-40 megapixels. This makes a $5000 digital camera somewhat less performant than a $500 film camera.
For $5000 I can get a good medium format camera which puts me in the 100 megapixel range.
But let's see YOU introduce a a system to replace one that's so hugely complex and used by over 1.3 billion people of the world who are more tradition-bound than most western cultures.
Korea introduced Hangul in the 15th Century. The result was a population with a near 100% literacy rate.
Surely China could manage the same sort of advance SOMETIME in the 5000 years it has been civilized. Clearly someone like Mao had the power.
came up with are gunpowder, clocks, noodles, nearly all of our domesticated livestock
Chinese civilization 5000 years ago was clearly more advanced than European civilization. Since then it has been essentially stagnant. In fact, the Chinese have been so stagnant that they are still using ideograms as a system of writing.
Not to mention the fact that in modern times Chinese researchers have walked off with genuine Nobel Prizes.
There has NEVER been a Chinese citizen who has won a Nobel Prize
There are only three people from "China" that have won Nobel Prizes. The Dalai Llama won a Nobel Peace Prize; he clearly rejects the notion that he is Chinese. Gao Xingjian, a French citizen won a Nobel Prize - Gao is a political refuge with Franch citizenship. Because of his activism the Chinese government refuses to officially acknowledge his award. Lee Yuan-tseh, winner of the 1986 Nobel Prize in chemistry, is Taiwanese born but recieved his PhD in the US, did his research in the US and was an American citizen when he was awarded his Nobel.
Here are the Nobel Prize numbers since 1951.
USA 171 Great Britain 40 Germany 30 Russia 10 France 9 Sweden 6 Canada 5 Denmark 5 Japan 5 Switzerland 4 China 0
without the contributions of einstein and other great german thinkers where the heck would the US be?
Lest we forget, Einstein and many other great thinkers had to come to the US to escape from tyrannical governments. The fact is that China has great potential, but their political system has and will prevent them from realizing that potential. Sure, they have a vast population and greatly talented citizens. But they also have a centrally planned economy and a poorly educated citizenry. The percentage of Chinese citizens that can read and write is less than the percentage of Americans that hold postgraduate degrees.
Like other centralized governments I expect that the Chinese will achieve some impressive accomplishments. After all, the Soviet Union was the first to put a man in orbit. But will their society achieve greatness? That is far more doubtful.
Ham radio hobbyists provide an important redundant channel that is extremely difficult to knock off the air. When the hurricanes and earthquakes are done, all a Ham needs is a car battery and a length of wire to make contacts all over the world. Here is an article on use of Ham radio during some problems on Mir:
http://www.hamradio-online.com/1997/jun/mircrisi s. html
And here is one on activities associated with Isadore that are in progress as I type this:
http://www.arrl.org/
There are currently about 680,000 licensed ham operators in the US.
This a large number to relegate to the past..
I bet those same geeks were the first pepple on the internet and the early online services like compuserve in the late 80s)
Hams were much more likely to run their own BBS than hang out on a service like Compuserve.
what stops an unscrupulous person from spamming it and making it unusable to everyone else
Te short answer is: The Laws of Physics.
It is possible to jam a few frequencies here and there, but to jam shortwave transmissions world-wide takes something with the power of a solar flare. That's a lot more than a few hundred megawatts.
During the cold war the Soviet Union + Warsaw Pact tried (and mostly failed) to jam transmissions like the Voice of America, Deutsche Welle, KOL Israel, Radio Tirana and the BBC to their own populations. Estimates were that they were spending about $1 billion per year, had 200 large scale jamming stations and were putting out about 1 terawatt of EMR.
And the quality of the results that Engineer In A Box (EIAB) will give you will be directly proportional to the skill of the Engineer using it.
Re:that doesn't mean they'll produce good games
on
Microsoft Buys Rare
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
1) Rare makes another Goldeneye. 2) Rare's new game makes MS $5 million 3) 10,000 people buy X-Boxes just to play this game. Conversely, these people DON'T buy PS2s and Gamecubes because those systems don't have this cool new game. 4) MS increases user base. 5) ??? 6) Profit!
Microsoft buys Rare for $375 mill. Microsoft sells $5 mill in games for 4 million in profit. They sell a bunch more consoles at some unkown loss per console.
Looks to me like Microsoft is still out $370 mill at least. Sure doesn't look like a profit to me.
Slashdot Mirror
If it's trivial and someone else will quickly come up with the same solution, the patent should never have been granted in the first place.
Well, duh. That's what the patent law says - non-obvious to one with ordinary skill in the art is a requirement for patentability.
Since this sort of parallel instruction processing is relatively new to Intel's CPU family, it seems to me that maybe in fact this was a non-obvious invention!
Patents are all about ideas, as in methods, processes and apparatus.
.gif).
There is a fine line between ideas and implementations. An idea in the sense of patent law is an abstract concept, say like a mathematical algorithm. The implementation of that idea is the use of that algorithm, say to compress images for storage and transmission (see
That is not to say that in most people's minds the use of LZW compression on images in computers isn't an idea - it is. But legal language the use of an idea to accomplish a concrete goal with some speciific instrumentaility, i.e. a computer is in fact an implementation, not the idea. It is that implementation, NOT the idea that is patentable.
Classic examples of patenting an idea rather than the expression abound in the drug field, where a patent can be obtained for treating disease X with drug Y that was initially developed for treating disease Z.
This is NOT an idea in the sense of the language of patent law. The process of use of this drug to treat the disease is an implementation of the idea. If somebody else comes up with a different drug, using the same idea of treating this disease, they can ALSO get a patent on the different implementation.
the fact that they both produced wrangled sprockets is irrelevant.
Not if you can get the courts to say the doctrine of equivalents covers the other sprocket wrangler too.
Or, of course you might hold a patent on wrangled sprockets.
Total hooey, probably written by a Gen-X'er who failed history.
My Dad went through the Great Depression and WWII. These are cataclismic events uttery overshadowing minor economic ripples like the dotcom bomb. Yet when all was said and done, he found himself living well with a good retirement.
Gen-X set up for economic failure? Give me a break. How about the boomers who are late in their working life and are having their 401K's blasted by the current stock market? The boomers don't have 30 years of working life to recover from this like the Gen-X'ers do.
South West Airlines website is not an accessibility nightmare.
Look at the top navigation. Notice that it is comprised of images without alt tags.
How do you expect a text reader to deal with that sort of nonsense?
If so, why should we legislate what people have to do with their private property.
Because what you do with your private property often affects others. For example, there is a individual in D.C. shooting people. He is clearly using his private property (gun) in the manner he wants.Using your logic we shouldn't care that he is doing this.
Does this mean anyone with a web site has to be in compliance with this cat's text-to-speech converter?
There are a number of published standards (including HTML 4.01), that require use of alt tags on images. You won't even pass simple HTML validation without these tags.
If Southwest had bothered to even live up to that low level, I doubt that they would be getting sued.
First, Southwest Airlines is a private company. They can run their web site any way they see fit
Nope. Just because you own something doesn't give you untrammeled use. When you drive your car, you have numerous laws to comply with.
Boy, I am amazed at the paleolithic attitudes present on Slashdot. The ADA is the law of the land, and it's in place for a reason - so that companies and government make 'reasonable accomodation' to handicapped people. Among other things it protects people who might have a minor handicap from getting fired for trivial reasons - for example my wife has fallen arches and requires orthopedic footwear. Since she works in a position that requires contact with the general public, her employer has a rather strict dress code that would normally require that she wear certain types of dress shoes. The ADA protects her from getting fired because she can't wear these types of shoes on the job.
In the case of Southwest Airlines, their web site is a problem because of the use of images for links without alt tags. Is it REALLY such a big deal for Soutwest to put alt tags on these images???? Can you really imagine a software program that is going to be capable of translating an image into it's test equivalent???
Why wouldn't putting alt tags on images just be considered common courtesy???
Now I am just waiting for the HOW-TO on a Linux-run micro-satellite!
:
Amateur satellites are nothing new. Hams and AMSAT have been putting satellites up since the early 60's. Right now they have about 20 operational satellites in orbit. Linux based software is quite popular in the Ham community, and plays a big role in AMSAT operations. Satellite Software
The HOW-TO's
Davidoff, Martin, The Satellite Experimenter's
Handbook Newington, CT: The American
Radio Relay League, 1984.
Jansson, Richard, Spacecraft Technology Trends
in the Amateur Satellite Service, Ogden, UT:
Proceedings of the 1st Annual USU Conference
on Small Satellites, 1987.
I want to know is why subversion doesn't use subversion for their source control..
They do.
Most studies I've seen place 35mm film resolution at an effective 20-40 megapixels. This makes a $5000 digital camera somewhat less performant than a $500 film camera.
For $5000 I can get a good medium format camera which puts me in the 100 megapixel range.
Thawte IS Verisign - bought out a couple of years ago.
But let's see YOU introduce a a system to replace one that's so hugely complex and used by over 1.3 billion people of the world who are more tradition-bound than most western cultures.
Korea introduced Hangul in the 15th Century. The result was a population with a near 100% literacy rate.
Surely China could manage the same sort of advance SOMETIME in the 5000 years it has been civilized. Clearly someone like Mao had the power.
came up with are gunpowder, clocks, noodles, nearly all of our domesticated livestock
Chinese civilization 5000 years ago was clearly more advanced than European civilization. Since then it has been essentially stagnant. In fact, the Chinese have been so stagnant that they are still using ideograms as a system of writing.
Not to mention the fact that in modern times Chinese researchers have walked off with genuine Nobel Prizes.
There has NEVER been a Chinese citizen who has won a Nobel Prize
There are only three people from "China" that have won Nobel Prizes. The Dalai Llama won a Nobel Peace Prize; he clearly rejects the notion that he is Chinese. Gao Xingjian, a French citizen won a Nobel Prize - Gao is a political refuge with Franch citizenship. Because of his activism the Chinese government refuses to officially acknowledge his award. Lee Yuan-tseh, winner of the 1986 Nobel Prize in chemistry, is Taiwanese born but recieved his PhD in the US, did his research in the US and was an American citizen when he was awarded his Nobel.
Here are the Nobel Prize numbers since 1951.
USA 171
Great Britain 40
Germany 30
Russia 10
France 9
Sweden 6
Canada 5
Denmark 5
Japan 5
Switzerland 4
China 0
Asian countries have no originality?
What has been disappointing is the poor state of basic research in Asian countries.
without the contributions of einstein and other great german thinkers where the heck would the US be?
Lest we forget, Einstein and many other great thinkers had to come to the US to escape from tyrannical governments. The fact is that China has great potential, but their political system has and will prevent them from realizing that potential. Sure, they have a vast population and greatly talented citizens. But they also have a centrally planned economy and a poorly educated citizenry. The percentage of Chinese citizens that can read and write is less than the percentage of Americans that hold postgraduate degrees.
Like other centralized governments I expect that the Chinese will achieve some impressive accomplishments. After all, the Soviet Union was the first to put a man in orbit. But will their society achieve greatness? That is far more doubtful.
Today's internet has some very vulnerable points, namely the clients.
That is the upside of technologies like DRM. Hardening the clients with DRM and use of DHT would make the internet a lot more robust.
ham radio buffs are a thing of the past
i s. html
Ham radio hobbyists provide an important redundant channel that is extremely difficult to knock off the air. When the hurricanes and earthquakes are done, all a Ham needs is a car battery and a length of wire to make contacts all over the world. Here is an article on use of Ham radio during some problems on Mir:
http://www.hamradio-online.com/1997/jun/mircris
And here is one on activities associated with Isadore that are in progress as I type this:
http://www.arrl.org/
There are currently about 680,000 licensed ham operators in the US.
This a large number to relegate to the past..
I bet those same geeks were the first pepple on the internet and the early online services like compuserve in the late 80s)
Hams were much more likely to run their own BBS than hang out on a service like Compuserve.
what stops an unscrupulous person from spamming it and making it unusable to everyone else
Te short answer is: The Laws of Physics.
It is possible to jam a few frequencies here and there, but to jam shortwave transmissions world-wide takes something with the power of a solar flare. That's a lot more than a few hundred megawatts.
During the cold war the Soviet Union + Warsaw Pact tried (and mostly failed) to jam transmissions like the Voice of America, Deutsche Welle, KOL Israel, Radio Tirana and the BBC to their own populations. Estimates were that they were spending about $1 billion per year, had 200 large scale jamming stations and were putting out about 1 terawatt of EMR.
What bands are locked out due to ECPA and similar laws abroad?
None I imagine. This is a shortwave reciever, after all.
What DRM is included in the hardware and/or software?
Digital Radio Mondial (DRM) is a software option.
You really should read the article for further details.
These visions come from eatng funny mushrooms.
And the quality of the results that Engineer In A Box (EIAB) will give you will be directly proportional to the skill of the Engineer using it.
1) Rare makes another Goldeneye.
2) Rare's new game makes MS $5 million
3) 10,000 people buy X-Boxes just to play this game. Conversely, these people DON'T buy PS2s and Gamecubes because those systems don't have this cool new game.
4) MS increases user base.
5) ???
6) Profit!
Microsoft buys Rare for $375 mill. Microsoft sells $5 mill in games for 4 million in profit. They sell a bunch more consoles at some unkown loss per console.
Looks to me like Microsoft is still out $370 mill at least. Sure doesn't look like a profit to me.
I serve notice that I have copyrighted the following:
Blank sheet of paper and an expression of abstract art depicting whiteness.
Anyone making, copying or distributing a blank sheet of paper owes me bigtime.
Cool, a single point of attack will let me own a whole server farm!
okay, so there's a Federal mandate to broadcast HDTV signals in a few years.
/. fashion is wrong. The mandate is to digital transmission, which is a rather different thing.
NOT. The article, in typical