While I can appreciate how trolling companies exacerbate the situation, it seems to me like it's also a problem of trivial and obvious things being patented, less than people not being able to implement them.
I mean, Amazon can implement one-click. Apple can implement searching more than one source per query. The problem is that of course they can, and so can everyone else... because it's obvious, not innovation. Defensive or not, issuing patents for that kind of crap stifles real business and innovation.
I imagine it'd work more like airport Wi-Fi, where anyone can connect, but to get through the walled garden you have to pay for an hour, day or sub-up for a month.
Obviously I'll never have that kind of cash, but just a quick look shows some of those single items are like $750 ea, and I'm sure some are more. If 10% of the items are worth something like that, that's already $525,000 on the face of it. That puts the rest around $107 ea.
For someone that would have to spend years hunting down all that stuff in original factory wrap, and that has that kind of expendable money, maybe it's actually worth it.
Meh. Issue a stipend to employees to purchase the phone of their choice, assuming it's on the compatibility list and you sign the "we're going to control your phone", employee hardware agreement.
Voila... the company never bought non-epeat hardware.
That's reasonable. I'm less suspicious than most I guess, so I just operate on a general rule-of-life that works pretty well. It goes something like, "If it sounds like hyperbole or straight-up bullshit, it probably is. If it sounds rational and even-keeled... trust but verify."
I'd guess an 8" tablet would have to be $300. Argument for it over the Nexus and Fire is "larger screen" and "access to the best apps through itunes, blah blah blah".
iPod Touch starts at $200. iPad Mini starting at $300. iPad 2 starting at $400.
Plugs the hole, fields a device to stop any potential competitor's beachhead in tablets, and they still get the premium over the alternatives.
I'm not up on this (and it sounds like you are), but could this be the sort of thing where a setting could quickly adjust for recycled stock? Is the temperature of the extruder something you can usually adjust with a pot or some such?
I mean, assuming there are cases where slightly lesser print quality might still be acceptable, it does sound like a neat idea.
Fair, but I can see the utility in a finished device like this where everything is pretty simple. My first thought was of the tech labs we had as kids in middle school.
Also, can we please get a/. operating rule for video ads that says you can't immediately start with a annoying alarm clock going off? That little eye-opener damn near gave me a heart attack.
I don't know how they figure the financial harm, but I do hope it includes legal fees and some workable formula for intangible damages (beyond lost sales over the previous month).
Being nobody important, I can only shudder at the thought of a company like Apple having your widget spuriously pulled from market for even a month. I imagine the damages would exceed the number of units you sold in a prior month.
I'm not sure I could see that working out well for the hardware makers or the carriers. At least not in mobile phones.
If they all start going it alone they'll be releasing crap product, and they'll just drive more customers in Apple's welcome arms. The software development prowess of the makers and carriers is universally poor and I think they know it.
That means drastically decreased sales for the hw makers, and I'm pretty sure Apple already has the clout to bend the carriers over the table. Android has got to be everyone's only bargaining chip at the moment. So if that's true, Google needs to start busting skulls.
The manufacturers and carriers have been looking a gift horse in the mouth, trying to squeeze more dollars out of a system that already provides them with an entire, top-notch platform and ecosystem for free, and in the process they're ruining it for everyone.
Looks like the file date is 2000 and the issue date is in 2005. Am I looking in the wrong place?
The funny thing is, none of the actual heavy lifting in this patent appears to be theirs. It's all in the cited patents held by other companies. All they appear to have said here was, "we're patenting the idea of putting a textbox in Mac OS to do this stuff everyone else already invented and patented".
I'm a little amazed that such a thing can be considered a valid invention. It reads like, "Well John over here invented the car, but I'm going to patent the idea of painting it blue as if that's an invention".
But I'm not an attorney... I guess we'll see how it all shakes out.
Apparently the decision was based on, "Apple's claim to the patent to search multiple sources, which Apple says is the basis of Siri. [...] Judge Koh said 'Apple has articulated a plausible theory of irreparable harm [because] of long-term loss of market share and losses of downstream sales."
On the surface of it, it sounds awfully stupid to me. If I'm remembering correctly, "searching multiple sources" by voice query existed in Android devices first, no?
I was looking at starting a Delaware business the other day to get around the Amazon Affiliate garbage (since IL sucks). It looked like registering an LLC in the state is about $90 but you have to have an in-state agent.
There are businesses that exist just to be your in state agent... I think they were another $100 or so per year.
Beyond that, you're just an out of state employee of a Delware business, and pay yourself as such. Talk to a lawyer before you go doing any of this, but it sounds like that's how so many US businesses are based in Delaware.
I agree on the very different levels in quality of experience (that goes triple for us AT&T customers), and I don't think there's anything wrong with the Nexus part.
I just think they should swap the cryptic letter or number on their devices for something descriptive. I mean, this is an android friendly, relatively device savvy geek site, and the first handful of posts all got the devices mixed up. It ain't gunna be much better than that for the rest of the world.
Let's just hope they don't call Project Glass the Nexus C, for "See".;)
Yeah, though it's hard to bug anyone about getting them mixed up. Nexus S, Nexus Q, Nexus 7... uhg. What would've been so wrong with: Nexus Phone, Nexus TV, Nexus Tablet? Then just call later generations, "second generation", etc.
Someone over at Google needs to hire away a marketing genius from Apple and give them the reigns on public facing decisions like that.
It seems to me the problem is a safe, small, retina projector. If you want to project something properly, anywhere in your field of view, it seems like it's exactly what you need.
This company makes something like the kind of technology you need for that but is currently putting it in cellphones and the nicer picoprojectors you see... http://www.microvision.com/technology/index.html
All the processing power, sensors (multi-axis accel's, cameras, etc), are entirely doable.. demonstrated by all the augmented reality apps that do this stuff on your cellphone already. Now we just need the displays that don't suck.;)
I guess Brother also developed this and didn't turn it into a product. I suspect that's what Google is looking to take mainstream with Project Glass... though I haven't see the things in person. Looking through a little bit of glass just doesn't accomplish what they're pimping so far.
As bad as I want one of these, I can't help but think about how badly we need a low cost, community developed version of this to function as a totally open, arduino-esque option.
Everything about these things coming to market as a popular, locked-down device creeps me out. Maybe it's too many years of scifi, but if history tells us anything, it's that we need a technological escape route at all times.
So uh, where can we source the display technology for these things? Because the rest seems entirely doable.
Just those, Breaking Bad and Walking Dead. You'll notice three of the four are on AMC and the fourth is behind the paywall of HBO. There's an argument for a la carte, if I ever saw one.
I used to enjoy some of the silly sci-fi shows (the stargates, Eureka, etc), but those are all dead and gone now. They've been replaced with ghost hunting, homoerotic wrestling drama and the same pointless UFO shows they've been rehashing for twenty years.
As far back as 1870, he says, John Jeremiah published an article in Nature that referred to the same wording from the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. Jeremiah proposed then that it might have been an early description of the Northern Lights2.
"Another possible explanation could be an ice-crystal display," adds Olson, noting that the red "crucifix" could have been formed by sunset light illuminating high-altitude ice particles in both vertical and horizontal bands of light.
But, it could also have been a previously unrecognized supernova. Plenty of supernovae now known to astronomers "are simply missing" in the historical record, says Gyuk. "The sky is a large place and the historical record is not very good."
Slashdot Mirror
[...] not some bloody FOR and NEXT loop.
Yes, this.
While I can appreciate how trolling companies exacerbate the situation, it seems to me like it's also a problem of trivial and obvious things being patented, less than people not being able to implement them.
I mean, Amazon can implement one-click. Apple can implement searching more than one source per query. The problem is that of course they can, and so can everyone else... because it's obvious, not innovation. Defensive or not, issuing patents for that kind of crap stifles real business and innovation.
I imagine it'd work more like airport Wi-Fi, where anyone can connect, but to get through the walled garden you have to pay for an hour, day or sub-up for a month.
Which taken together provide long term cost savings, mostly because you are investing in your own resources.
Not that I disagree at all (or want to), but a citation or two on this would be good to have around if anyone has 'em.
Obviously I'll never have that kind of cash, but just a quick look shows some of those single items are like $750 ea, and I'm sure some are more. If 10% of the items are worth something like that, that's already $525,000 on the face of it. That puts the rest around $107 ea.
For someone that would have to spend years hunting down all that stuff in original factory wrap, and that has that kind of expendable money, maybe it's actually worth it.
Hard to say... I'll never be that person.
Meh. Issue a stipend to employees to purchase the phone of their choice, assuming it's on the compatibility list and you sign the "we're going to control your phone", employee hardware agreement.
Voila... the company never bought non-epeat hardware.
That's reasonable. I'm less suspicious than most I guess, so I just operate on a general rule-of-life that works pretty well. It goes something like, "If it sounds like hyperbole or straight-up bullshit, it probably is. If it sounds rational and even-keeled... trust but verify."
I guess that's two rules. ;)
I think a white ball of fire and smoke seems a bit boring. And judging from the youtube videos, it was.
There's craft in doing a good show that's exciting enough, but also long enough to be impressive.
You're right though, some try to spread too few fireworks over too long a show by choreographing it all really thin.
I'd guess an 8" tablet would have to be $300. Argument for it over the Nexus and Fire is "larger screen" and "access to the best apps through itunes, blah blah blah".
iPod Touch starts at $200.
iPad Mini starting at $300.
iPad 2 starting at $400.
Plugs the hole, fields a device to stop any potential competitor's beachhead in tablets, and they still get the premium over the alternatives.
Meh, this whole thread is a train wreck already. On to the next, I guess.
The makers of Pinterest would like to subscribe as well, I suspect. I'd guess this little button foreshadows their demise.
How much must it suck to have your exciting new project blown to bits by Facebook? :(
I'm not up on this (and it sounds like you are), but could this be the sort of thing where a setting could quickly adjust for recycled stock? Is the temperature of the extruder something you can usually adjust with a pot or some such?
I mean, assuming there are cases where slightly lesser print quality might still be acceptable, it does sound like a neat idea.
Fair, but I can see the utility in a finished device like this where everything is pretty simple. My first thought was of the tech labs we had as kids in middle school.
Also, can we please get a /. operating rule for video ads that says you can't immediately start with a annoying alarm clock going off? That little eye-opener damn near gave me a heart attack.
I don't know how they figure the financial harm, but I do hope it includes legal fees and some workable formula for intangible damages (beyond lost sales over the previous month).
Being nobody important, I can only shudder at the thought of a company like Apple having your widget spuriously pulled from market for even a month. I imagine the damages would exceed the number of units you sold in a prior month.
Figures, I'd read this earlier so I skipped the /. summary (where the bond is mentioned) for the comments. My mistake!
The upside is that Apple had to post $90 million, payable in some part to Samsung (as I understand it), in case the injunction turned out to be bogus.
I'm not sure I could see that working out well for the hardware makers or the carriers. At least not in mobile phones.
If they all start going it alone they'll be releasing crap product, and they'll just drive more customers in Apple's welcome arms. The software development prowess of the makers and carriers is universally poor and I think they know it.
That means drastically decreased sales for the hw makers, and I'm pretty sure Apple already has the clout to bend the carriers over the table. Android has got to be everyone's only bargaining chip at the moment. So if that's true, Google needs to start busting skulls.
The manufacturers and carriers have been looking a gift horse in the mouth, trying to squeeze more dollars out of a system that already provides them with an entire, top-notch platform and ecosystem for free, and in the process they're ruining it for everyone.
Looks like the file date is 2000 and the issue date is in 2005. Am I looking in the wrong place?
The funny thing is, none of the actual heavy lifting in this patent appears to be theirs. It's all in the cited patents held by other companies. All they appear to have said here was, "we're patenting the idea of putting a textbox in Mac OS to do this stuff everyone else already invented and patented".
I'm a little amazed that such a thing can be considered a valid invention. It reads like, "Well John over here invented the car, but I'm going to patent the idea of painting it blue as if that's an invention".
But I'm not an attorney... I guess we'll see how it all shakes out.
Apparently the decision was based on, "Apple's claim to the patent to search multiple sources, which Apple says is the basis of Siri. [...] Judge Koh said 'Apple has articulated a plausible theory of irreparable harm [because] of long-term loss of market share and losses of downstream sales."
On the surface of it, it sounds awfully stupid to me. If I'm remembering correctly, "searching multiple sources" by voice query existed in Android devices first, no?
http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2012/06/breaking-judge-grants-apple-an-injunction-against-the-galaxy-nexus/
I was looking at starting a Delaware business the other day to get around the Amazon Affiliate garbage (since IL sucks). It looked like registering an LLC in the state is about $90 but you have to have an in-state agent.
There are businesses that exist just to be your in state agent... I think they were another $100 or so per year.
Beyond that, you're just an out of state employee of a Delware business, and pay yourself as such. Talk to a lawyer before you go doing any of this, but it sounds like that's how so many US businesses are based in Delaware.
I agree on the very different levels in quality of experience (that goes triple for us AT&T customers), and I don't think there's anything wrong with the Nexus part.
I just think they should swap the cryptic letter or number on their devices for something descriptive. I mean, this is an android friendly, relatively device savvy geek site, and the first handful of posts all got the devices mixed up. It ain't gunna be much better than that for the rest of the world.
Let's just hope they don't call Project Glass the Nexus C, for "See". ;)
Yeah, though it's hard to bug anyone about getting them mixed up. Nexus S, Nexus Q, Nexus 7... uhg. What would've been so wrong with: Nexus Phone, Nexus TV, Nexus Tablet? Then just call later generations, "second generation", etc.
Someone over at Google needs to hire away a marketing genius from Apple and give them the reigns on public facing decisions like that.
It seems to me the problem is a safe, small, retina projector. If you want to project something properly, anywhere in your field of view, it seems like it's exactly what you need.
This company makes something like the kind of technology you need for that but is currently putting it in cellphones and the nicer picoprojectors you see... http://www.microvision.com/technology/index.html
All the processing power, sensors (multi-axis accel's, cameras, etc), are entirely doable.. demonstrated by all the augmented reality apps that do this stuff on your cellphone already. Now we just need the displays that don't suck. ;)
I guess Brother also developed this and didn't turn it into a product. I suspect that's what Google is looking to take mainstream with Project Glass... though I haven't see the things in person. Looking through a little bit of glass just doesn't accomplish what they're pimping so far.
As bad as I want one of these, I can't help but think about how badly we need a low cost, community developed version of this to function as a totally open, arduino-esque option.
Everything about these things coming to market as a popular, locked-down device creeps me out. Maybe it's too many years of scifi, but if history tells us anything, it's that we need a technological escape route at all times.
So uh, where can we source the display technology for these things? Because the rest seems entirely doable.
Just those, Breaking Bad and Walking Dead. You'll notice three of the four are on AMC and the fourth is behind the paywall of HBO. There's an argument for a la carte, if I ever saw one.
I used to enjoy some of the silly sci-fi shows (the stargates, Eureka, etc), but those are all dead and gone now. They've been replaced with ghost hunting, homoerotic wrestling drama and the same pointless UFO shows they've been rehashing for twenty years.
From the article...
As far back as 1870, he says, John Jeremiah published an article in Nature that referred to the same wording from the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. Jeremiah proposed then that it might have been an early description of the Northern Lights2.
"Another possible explanation could be an ice-crystal display," adds Olson, noting that the red "crucifix" could have been formed by sunset light illuminating high-altitude ice particles in both vertical and horizontal bands of light.
But, it could also have been a previously unrecognized supernova. Plenty of supernovae now known to astronomers "are simply missing" in the historical record, says Gyuk. "The sky is a large place and the historical record is not very good."