Fool? Is his middle initial really R? If so, how is that "fooling" the system?
It may not be "fooling" the system, but it does point out a hole in the system big enough to fly a 777 through. Assuming that someone wants to repeat the 2001 attacks, and is prevented from doing so by the do-not-fly list, all they have to do is obtain ID with a minor variation on their actual name.
Made all the better when they discover that southern hemisphere monitors actually *are* different for exactly the same reason.
A bit off-topic, but can somebody elaborate a bit on this? I know monitors use coils to bend the electron beams in order to scan the beams accross the surface of the monitor, but I don't think this would be affected by the northern vs. southern hemisphere (anymore than turning your monitor to face south instead of north).
Of course, could always make a computer without hard-disks or optical drives.
Use compact flash to hold the os and core applications. CF cards can be connected to an ide port with a simple adapter, so you should be able to boot right off the CF card with any system. I imagine most of the silent PC market will be either purpose-built systems (streaming audio players, dvd/divx players, firewall/router/access-point, etc) or web/e-mail terminals. Both of these should easily fit in a 512MB to 1GB CF card. When a drive is needed, simply plug in a USB or Firewire hard-disk, optical drive or flash drive.
Cable systems are probably (not having worked in TV, I wouldn't know) primaries, based on their viewer numbers and the fact that it'd be easy to use them as a good distribution to a large geographic area with more regularity than a broadcast primary.
It doesn't make much sense for the cable system to be a primary given that no secondary stations can receive their signal. Most radio stations have a much longer range than the franchise of a typical cable system. Both of these factors make a cable operator useless from the standpoint of distributing messages to other broadcasters.
Sure, you can override that 50 kilowatt clear channel (as opposed to Clear Channel) AM station with a 5W transmitter if you can get 5 feet from the antenna. Where's the antenna?
Well, my local cable operator is located in a mixed residential commercial area. Right at the edge of their parking lot, they have a small tower with a number of antennas on it. Most appear to be television receiving antenna to pick up the local channels. There are a couple of dishes and antennas that appear to be for microwave frequencies as well. It is probably a good bet that their EAS receiver is nearby.
I don't mean to make it sound like any idiot with a walkie-talkie can inject a signal. However, with a little work and a little luck (such as discovering the location of the reciever and finding a secondary station that won't do a human check on the message before retransmitting it), it most probably is doable.
So, you know what you need to exploit this? Locally, you need to know which local station(s) is/are primary, and a transmitter big enough to override the monitored signal, or a group of transmitters big enough to override the monitored signal at each of the monitoring antennas.
It's quite a bit simpler than that. Let's assume I want to get a message out to a large (local) audience via EAS. In most areas, the cable TV system will broadcase EAS alerts on all channels (or at least sound an alert tone and advise viewers to switch to a particular channel, which then carries the alert message). This means that all I have to do is inject the message into the system of the local cable provider.
"Over-riding" the signal of whatever station they monitor is not that difficult. All you have to do is be physically close to their receiver and have a reasonable amount of power. I imagine that, at most, 5W-50W is all that would be needed in most cases. 5W is easily provided by a hand-held radio and 50W or more can be found in off-the-shelf mobile transceivers.
If you don't know what station the cable company monitors, or where the receiver is physically located, it might get a bit more difficult, but not much. In this case, simply try every station/location in order of likelyhood.
All this assumes, of course, that the cable provider uses an automated system. If their system involves a real-live human reading the message prior to broadcase, your message would have to be believable enough to pass a cursory sanity check.
Why would an insurance company post such an article?
Interesting point. Most home-owner's (and renter's) insurance policies, at least in the U.S., do not cover damage due to flooding. This makes sense, (even if it makes sense in a twisted way) since most places are either in an area that will definitly flood given a reasonable period of time, or will never flood, except for some disastor of cataclysmic proportions.
Anyway, I doubt there is any negative motive here on the part of the insurance companies. Benfield, however, is probably trying to show how smart they are in order to drum up some more consulting business.
You might save on cost, and it might be marginally lighter, but you won't save on power. The reason being that if you replace the steering wheel with a joystick, that's the ONLY thing you'll be changing.
You might only change the steering wheel to a joy-stick, but that would be a silly way to do it. Most likely, you would replace most of the steering system such that you probably end up with just an electric motor and the rack-and-pinion (or whatever mechanical system you use to actually turn the wheels). In the process, you remove the power steering pump, which saves power since the pump is no longer sucking power from the engine.
However, using a joystick as a control is a BAD idea, above any beyond the problems you mentioned. Most cars have steering ratios of 12:1 to 14:1. Meaning if the front wheels could turn 360 degrees you would have to turn the steering wheel 12-14 times. This gives you very good control for when you want to turn just a little bit, like on a highway that goes around a bend. Now imagine that with a joystick, and how easy it would be to push the stick a little too far and end up swerving out of control. At most you would only have to tilt the stick 35-40 degrees to go full turn in either direction.
This assumes that in your steer-by-joystick system, the relationship between the position of the joystick and the position of the wheels is linear and constant. Most likely, a steer-by-wire system would be neither. At highways speeds, for example, you should never need to turn the wheels very far. Therefor, the steering ratio can increase with increasing speed.
This idea is akin to changing the steering wheel in a car to a joystick; possible, but why change something that is a functional standard?
In the case of the steering-wheel-to-joystick change, there are advantages in the area's of cost, weight, and amount of power required. You could save in all three areas by going to a joystick + steer-by-wire.
The reason why that doesn't happen is not that there is no cry for improvement, simply that drivers are used to the current interface and are unlikely to accept change even if there were large advantages. This is actually one of the major problems with automotive *-by-wire systems: You have to make the electronic system look, act, and feel exactly like the mechanical system, even if it means negating some advantages.
I suspect that keyboards are the same way: No matter what the improvement, computer users are so used to the QWERTY arangement that no other layout will ever achieve a significant portion of the market no matter what the advantages.
200 projects sounds extremely low, unless they mean 200 projects per business which is extremely high. How do they define a project?
I'm an electrical engineer at a relativly small company that designs and manufacturers auto parts. We are not a "software company", but we write a suprising amount of software, for example:
Microcontroller/microprocessor code used in some of our higher-end products
Ladder-Logic style (for simple tests) or LabView software for product validation test stands, end-of-line test stands, portable test systems, etc. for each product. While much of the code can be reused from product to product, there are usually enough differences that software written for previous similar products can't be used as is. (As well as customers who specifiy different, incompatible, test procedures for every project).
Software to automate the process of analyzing the masses of data produced by the previous item.
Various web-based systems for things like project management, purchasing, hours-tracking, etc.
I imagine that this is pretty typical for most companies. While there may only be one or two big projects, there are likely to be numerous small software projects being worked on throughout the company.
Well, ok I must admit that Bin Laden and all those evil musli are ALSO guided by (another) God, but.. well, it's not the same thing at all, is it?
Actually, I'm pretty sure that Judaism, Christianity, and Islam all follow the same god. They simply have differing beliefs as to which individuals in the past had true insight into God.
2 - The convinience of being able to sign up for random websites with a different address on the fly is great. For example, signing up on ebay to buy something and using the address "fromebay@mydomain.com" means you KNOW that only one person in the world has your email address so you know who to blame if spam starts coming in, and it is also a piece of cake to automatically filter those ebay emails straight to an ebay inbox, for example.
If the service allows you to set up an alias file, its even easier. Whenever I need to enter an e-mail address into a web-form, I simply add an alias, typically the website name. If I start getting spam to address, I remove it from the alias file.
I'd like to see you play defense in bowling. Or golf. I'll bring the camera, you bring the ambulance
I think golf would be much more interesting with defensemen. Take a bunch of players and place them at various position around the hole, with a requirement that no two defensemen can be within a 20ft radius of each other or the hole. Give each defenseman a long pole with a large net-like apparatus at one end and a hockey-stick-like blade at the other end. Let them take a swat at any ball that comes within their reach.
First, let me say that I may have been bit unclear in my original post, I was not defending submarine patents, but trying to counter the previous poster's claim that patents should expire automatically if not used immediately.
In both your cases it really should be "Too bad".
Case 1: So someone invents the super-sonic aircraft, and needs to steer it. So they figure out a mechanism to steer it, only to get sued for infringing on a patent.
Well, the purpose of the patent system is to that the inventor of the super-sonic plane would not have to spend lots of time and effort figuring out how to control the aircraft. Instead, he can look through the patent record to find out what others have already done. After all, that is the purpose of a patent: To encourage inventors to publish their inventions rather than to keep them secret. This all does assume that the patent was on a worthy invention to begin with (seems to be less and less true now), and that the inventor of the control system hasn't pulled any stunts to delay issuance of the patent. If either is the case, I recommend tarring-and-feathering in addition to revoking the patent.
Case 2: Again, tough for you. You patended a device, there's no market for it due to the manufacture price. By the time you can produce it cheaply, your patent expires. Oh well, should have kept quiet about it until production was feasible, but now people can make better widgets, or you can make a better widget and patent *that*.
I agree 100%. What the original poster suggested. was that the patent term still last 20 years, but the patent be invalidated if I do not find a use for my invention within a few years. If the natrural term of the patent expires before I find my invention useful, too bad for me.
The patent system isn't supposed to mean your patent is good until you can make money off it. It's for making money off it for a fixed period of time so you can recoup your costs and make a tidy profit. This encourages you to make new things, which you can then patent, and charge people more for since there isn't anyone else making said invention.
On this we agree.
I also think that you should have to *use* the damn patent for something or lose it.
On this we disagree. An inventor should have the right to prevent anyone from using her invention, if she so chooses, just as a writer has the right to prevent completely publication of their book. Lets look at a current issue: Human cloning. Let's say an inventor comes up with a way to clone a human. Let's also assume that the inventors work is worth of a patent. The inventor, however, does not feel that humanity has taken appropriate steps to prevent what the inventor feels is abuse of her invention. She has two choices. One: keep the invention a closely guarded secret until she feels that humanity has sufficently resolved the issue. Two: patent the invention and disallow its use until humanity has sufficently resolved the issue (or only allow scientists or institutions she trusts to continue the research). In the first case, if she dies, or fogets, or her notes are destroyed, we loose access to the invention compleately. In the second case, we know now know how to clone a human, some research can continue, and after 20 years (max.) the process can be implemented.
It would be nicer where after the patent is issued, they do a follow-up check a year or two later to be sure that you've made progress on actually building/using your invention, otherwise it's invalidated.
The problem with that argument is that not every invention which fails to find a market within a year or two is a submarine patent. Submarine patents are where the owner of the patent intentionally delays the issuance of the patent while waiting for a competitor to make it to market.
Let's say that you apply for and receive a patent for your invention. There are a number of things that might prevent you from building/using (or sucessfully marketing) your invention:
1. Lets say that you invented a method for controlling an aircraft travelling faster than the speed of sound, but did so before anybody actually built an aicraft capable for flying faster than the speed of sound. Your invention is based on sound aerodynamic theory and once aircraft exist that fly faster than the speed of sound, your invention is usefull. Should you be denied patent rights simply because nothing exists that can make use of your device the moment it was invented?
2. You invent a device consisting of a complex assembly of very small parts, and did so before the technology existed to assemble the parts automatically. Since the device must be assembled manually, it is very expensive. The increased performance does not justify the increased cost. A few years later, computers and motion control systems advance sufficiently to allow your device to be assembled automatically at a fraction of the cost. I don't think that you should lose you patent rights simply because that the technology to build your invention economically does not exist at the moment you devised your invention.
if you don't actually sue anyone for patent infringement for a period of say, 5 years, you should lose your patent
So lets say I have a competitor who has a product that outperforms my product in every way. I would love to make copies of his invention and sell them as my own, however, his invention is protected by a patent. So what do I (and all the inventor's other competitors) do? We avoid infringing on his patent for 5 years. As soon as the fifth year is up and the inventor has lost his patent for not suing us, we all start making exact copies of the invention.
It wasn't even designed for inventors in the first place, but for the industry.
To quote the US Constitution:
Clause 8: To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;
Notice that it says Authors and Inventors, not Firms, Publishers, Manufacturers, etc. IANAL, but it looks to me like the original intent of the patent system was to protect individuals.
You can deny me the 30 dollar rebate coupon and kick me out of the store, but the damage that my word of mouth is going to do will be 100x the cost of that coupon.
That doesn't make it right if you weren't entitled to the coupon in the first place. Sure, the damage you do by bad-mouthing a retailer for not doing what you wanted may very well cost them more than $30. But what happens if everybody comes in demanding that bogus $30 rebate? If the store gave everybody every rebate the customer falsely believed they were entitield to, the would quickly go bankrupt.
If the $30 rebate is valid, its a different story.
If the code is sufficiently short, it is possible to bypass the rolling code system by simply trying all possible codes.
Yes, but the attacker still gains no real advantage from listening to the signal.
Of course, picking a typical deadbolt lock is also very easy and takes less than a minute, so it's unlikely a thief would bother trying to open the garage door.
In my case, there is a key-switch on door. If the thief doesn't have a key, he can simply pry off the switch and short the terminals together with a coin. This implies that even the 6-bit code is serving it's purpose well: It is easier to break in by physically breaking in than it is to brute-force the access code.
That would only work if the system sends the same code every time (or if the same code can be used twice within a short period of time). IIRC, most current systems use "rolling-codes". In other words, the transmitter and receiver both contain a similar pseudorandom number generator. When you push the button, the transmitter sends the next number from the generator. The receiver then checks to see that the code received is one of the next n numbers in the sequence (this way, it still works if you press the button when out-of-range of the receiver). As a result, simply eavesdropping on the transmission is useless.
A side-effect is that if you take somebody's key-fob and push the buttons lots of times, it may render the system inoperable. Usually there is a procedure that can be used to put the transmitter and receiver back in sync.
IIRC, the key-fobs are part 15 devices. This means they use very low power and are allowed to operate so long as they don't cause interfearance to the licensed users of the spectrum. The flip side is that part 15 devices have no protection from interfearing signals from licensed users: Such as when the local military transmitter prevents your keyless-entry system from working.
Too bad part 15 of the FCC's guidelines can't apply.
No, not really. The purpose of Part 15 in this case is to protect the military (or whatever individual/group/organization is assigned the particular frequency(s)) from interfearance that your keyless entry system might produce. It is not meant to protect your keyless entry system from others who may be using their assigned spectrum properly.
First, it will help avoid improperly compleated ballots (i.e. accidental over-votes and undervotes). It also makes it easier those who can't read english, are blind, or have other disabilities to vote.
Secondly, it makes counting much easier. One possibility is that the electronic records are tabulated, and the paper records are made availaible for post-election audits. A second possibility is that the electronic voting machine prints a ballot which is both human and machine readable. These printed ballots are counted by machine after the election. If there needs to be a manual re-count or if an audit is desired, the ballots can still be counted by hand.
I thought almost all quality electronic devices have a conformal coating (non-conducting polymer) applied to PCBs?
Generally, no. Conformal coating is normally only used on circuit boards which will be exposed to extreamly harsh conditions. Unless the designers expect the circuit board to come into contact with liquids or corrosive gasses during typical use, the circuit board will not be conformally coated.
If you are in the Grand Haven, MI area this weekend, come out and visit the North Ottawa Amateur Radio Club's site at the Hofma Preserve. From US-31, take Robbins Road east to Beechtree/168th Street, then take 168th south about 1.5 miles to Sleeper. Follow Sleeper east until you hit the preserve.
73 de KC8DEI
Ok this is a bit off topic, but I don't understand why the poster linked to Kettering's website. During my five years there (graduated March '04, so that includes time both before and after September 11, 2001), I was never aware of any type of rocket club or rocket related research. If there was such an organization, it probably died from lack of interest rather than new laws and regulations!
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Fool? Is his middle initial really R? If so, how is that "fooling" the system?
It may not be "fooling" the system, but it does point out a hole in the system big enough to fly a 777 through. Assuming that someone wants to repeat the 2001 attacks, and is prevented from doing so by the do-not-fly list, all they have to do is obtain ID with a minor variation on their actual name.
Made all the better when they discover that southern hemisphere monitors actually *are* different for exactly the same reason.
A bit off-topic, but can somebody elaborate a bit on this? I know monitors use coils to bend the electron beams in order to scan the beams accross the surface of the monitor, but I don't think this would be affected by the northern vs. southern hemisphere (anymore than turning your monitor to face south instead of north).
Of course, could always make a computer without hard-disks or optical drives.
Use compact flash to hold the os and core applications. CF cards can be connected to an ide port with a simple adapter, so you should be able to boot right off the CF card with any system. I imagine most of the silent PC market will be either purpose-built systems (streaming audio players, dvd/divx players, firewall/router/access-point, etc) or web/e-mail terminals. Both of these should easily fit in a 512MB to 1GB CF card. When a drive is needed, simply plug in a USB or Firewire hard-disk, optical drive or flash drive.
Cable systems are probably (not having worked in TV, I wouldn't know) primaries, based on their viewer numbers and the fact that it'd be easy to use them as a good distribution to a large geographic area with more regularity than a broadcast primary.
It doesn't make much sense for the cable system to be a primary given that no secondary stations can receive their signal. Most radio stations have a much longer range than the franchise of a typical cable system. Both of these factors make a cable operator useless from the standpoint of distributing messages to other broadcasters.
Sure, you can override that 50 kilowatt clear channel (as opposed to Clear Channel) AM station with a 5W transmitter if you can get 5 feet from the antenna. Where's the antenna?
Well, my local cable operator is located in a mixed residential commercial area. Right at the edge of their parking lot, they have a small tower with a number of antennas on it. Most appear to be television receiving antenna to pick up the local channels. There are a couple of dishes and antennas that appear to be for microwave frequencies as well. It is probably a good bet that their EAS receiver is nearby.
I don't mean to make it sound like any idiot with a walkie-talkie can inject a signal. However, with a little work and a little luck (such as discovering the location of the reciever and finding a secondary station that won't do a human check on the message before retransmitting it), it most probably is doable.
So, you know what you need to exploit this? Locally, you need to know which local station(s) is/are primary, and a transmitter big enough to override the monitored signal, or a group of transmitters big enough to override the monitored signal at each of the monitoring antennas.
It's quite a bit simpler than that. Let's assume I want to get a message out to a large (local) audience via EAS. In most areas, the cable TV system will broadcase EAS alerts on all channels (or at least sound an alert tone and advise viewers to switch to a particular channel, which then carries the alert message). This means that all I have to do is inject the message into the system of the local cable provider.
"Over-riding" the signal of whatever station they monitor is not that difficult. All you have to do is be physically close to their receiver and have a reasonable amount of power. I imagine that, at most, 5W-50W is all that would be needed in most cases. 5W is easily provided by a hand-held radio and 50W or more can be found in off-the-shelf mobile transceivers.
If you don't know what station the cable company monitors, or where the receiver is physically located, it might get a bit more difficult, but not much. In this case, simply try every station/location in order of likelyhood.
All this assumes, of course, that the cable provider uses an automated system. If their system involves a real-live human reading the message prior to broadcase, your message would have to be believable enough to pass a cursory sanity check.
Why would an insurance company post such an article?
Interesting point. Most home-owner's (and renter's) insurance policies, at least in the U.S., do not cover damage due to flooding. This makes sense, (even if it makes sense in a twisted way) since most places are either in an area that will definitly flood given a reasonable period of time, or will never flood, except for some disastor of cataclysmic proportions.
Anyway, I doubt there is any negative motive here on the part of the insurance companies. Benfield, however, is probably trying to show how smart they are in order to drum up some more consulting business.
You might save on cost, and it might be marginally lighter, but you won't save on power. The reason being that if you replace the steering wheel with a joystick, that's the ONLY thing you'll be changing.
You might only change the steering wheel to a joy-stick, but that would be a silly way to do it. Most likely, you would replace most of the steering system such that you probably end up with just an electric motor and the rack-and-pinion (or whatever mechanical system you use to actually turn the wheels). In the process, you remove the power steering pump, which saves power since the pump is no longer sucking power from the engine.
However, using a joystick as a control is a BAD idea, above any beyond the problems you mentioned. Most cars have steering ratios of 12:1 to 14:1. Meaning if the front wheels could turn 360 degrees you would have to turn the steering wheel 12-14 times. This gives you very good control for when you want to turn just a little bit, like on a highway that goes around a bend. Now imagine that with a joystick, and how easy it would be to push the stick a little too far and end up swerving out of control. At most you would only have to tilt the stick 35-40 degrees to go full turn in either direction.
This assumes that in your steer-by-joystick system, the relationship between the position of the joystick and the position of the wheels is linear and constant. Most likely, a steer-by-wire system would be neither. At highways speeds, for example, you should never need to turn the wheels very far. Therefor, the steering ratio can increase with increasing speed.
This idea is akin to changing the steering wheel in a car to a joystick; possible, but why change something that is a functional standard?
In the case of the steering-wheel-to-joystick change, there are advantages in the area's of cost, weight, and amount of power required. You could save in all three areas by going to a joystick + steer-by-wire.
The reason why that doesn't happen is not that there is no cry for improvement, simply that drivers are used to the current interface and are unlikely to accept change even if there were large advantages. This is actually one of the major problems with automotive *-by-wire systems: You have to make the electronic system look, act, and feel exactly like the mechanical system, even if it means negating some advantages.
I suspect that keyboards are the same way: No matter what the improvement, computer users are so used to the QWERTY arangement that no other layout will ever achieve a significant portion of the market no matter what the advantages.
I'm an electrical engineer at a relativly small company that designs and manufacturers auto parts. We are not a "software company", but we write a suprising amount of software, for example:
Microcontroller/microprocessor code used in some of our higher-end products
Ladder-Logic style (for simple tests) or LabView software for product validation test stands, end-of-line test stands, portable test systems, etc. for each product. While much of the code can be reused from product to product, there are usually enough differences that software written for previous similar products can't be used as is. (As well as customers who specifiy different, incompatible, test procedures for every project).
Software to automate the process of analyzing the masses of data produced by the previous item.
Various web-based systems for things like project management, purchasing, hours-tracking, etc.
I imagine that this is pretty typical for most companies. While there may only be one or two big projects, there are likely to be numerous small software projects being worked on throughout the company.
Well, ok I must admit that Bin Laden and all those evil musli are ALSO guided by (another) God, but.. well, it's not the same thing at all, is it?
Actually, I'm pretty sure that Judaism, Christianity, and Islam all follow the same god. They simply have differing beliefs as to which individuals in the past had true insight into God.
2 - The convinience of being able to sign up for random websites with a different address on the fly is great. For example, signing up on ebay to buy something and using the address "fromebay@mydomain.com" means you KNOW that only one person in the world has your email address so you know who to blame if spam starts coming in, and it is also a piece of cake to automatically filter those ebay emails straight to an ebay inbox, for example.
If the service allows you to set up an alias file, its even easier. Whenever I need to enter an e-mail address into a web-form, I simply add an alias, typically the website name. If I start getting spam to address, I remove it from the alias file.
I'd like to see you play defense in bowling. Or golf. I'll bring the camera, you bring the ambulance
I think golf would be much more interesting with defensemen. Take a bunch of players and place them at various position around the hole, with a requirement that no two defensemen can be within a 20ft radius of each other or the hole. Give each defenseman a long pole with a large net-like apparatus at one end and a hockey-stick-like blade at the other end. Let them take a swat at any ball that comes within their reach.
First, let me say that I may have been bit unclear in my original post, I was not defending submarine patents, but trying to counter the previous poster's claim that patents should expire automatically if not used immediately.
In both your cases it really should be "Too bad".
Case 1: So someone invents the super-sonic aircraft, and needs to steer it. So they figure out a mechanism to steer it, only to get sued for infringing on a patent.
Well, the purpose of the patent system is to that the inventor of the super-sonic plane would not have to spend lots of time and effort figuring out how to control the aircraft. Instead, he can look through the patent record to find out what others have already done. After all, that is the purpose of a patent: To encourage inventors to publish their inventions rather than to keep them secret. This all does assume that the patent was on a worthy invention to begin with (seems to be less and less true now), and that the inventor of the control system hasn't pulled any stunts to delay issuance of the patent. If either is the case, I recommend tarring-and-feathering in addition to revoking the patent.
Case 2: Again, tough for you. You patended a device, there's no market for it due to the manufacture price. By the time you can produce it cheaply, your patent expires. Oh well, should have kept quiet about it until production was feasible, but now people can make better widgets, or you can make a better widget and patent *that*.
I agree 100%. What the original poster suggested. was that the patent term still last 20 years, but the patent be invalidated if I do not find a use for my invention within a few years. If the natrural term of the patent expires before I find my invention useful, too bad for me.
The patent system isn't supposed to mean your patent is good until you can make money off it. It's for making money off it for a fixed period of time so you can recoup your costs and make a tidy profit. This encourages you to make new things, which you can then patent, and charge people more for since there isn't anyone else making said invention.
On this we agree.
I also think that you should have to *use* the damn patent for something or lose it.
On this we disagree. An inventor should have the right to prevent anyone from using her invention, if she so chooses, just as a writer has the right to prevent completely publication of their book. Lets look at a current issue: Human cloning. Let's say an inventor comes up with a way to clone a human. Let's also assume that the inventors work is worth of a patent. The inventor, however, does not feel that humanity has taken appropriate steps to prevent what the inventor feels is abuse of her invention. She has two choices. One: keep the invention a closely guarded secret until she feels that humanity has sufficently resolved the issue. Two: patent the invention and disallow its use until humanity has sufficently resolved the issue (or only allow scientists or institutions she trusts to continue the research). In the first case, if she dies, or fogets, or her notes are destroyed, we loose access to the invention compleately. In the second case, we know now know how to clone a human, some research can continue, and after 20 years (max.) the process can be implemented.
0100
It would be nicer where after the patent is issued, they do a follow-up check a year or two later to be sure that you've made progress on actually building/using your invention, otherwise it's invalidated.
The problem with that argument is that not every invention which fails to find a market within a year or two is a submarine patent. Submarine patents are where the owner of the patent intentionally delays the issuance of the patent while waiting for a competitor to make it to market.
Let's say that you apply for and receive a patent for your invention. There are a number of things that might prevent you from building/using (or sucessfully marketing) your invention:
1. Lets say that you invented a method for controlling an aircraft travelling faster than the speed of sound, but did so before anybody actually built an aicraft capable for flying faster than the speed of sound. Your invention is based on sound aerodynamic theory and once aircraft exist that fly faster than the speed of sound, your invention is usefull. Should you be denied patent rights simply because nothing exists that can make use of your device the moment it was invented?
2. You invent a device consisting of a complex assembly of very small parts, and did so before the technology existed to assemble the parts automatically. Since the device must be assembled manually, it is very expensive. The increased performance does not justify the increased cost. A few years later, computers and motion control systems advance sufficiently to allow your device to be assembled automatically at a fraction of the cost. I don't think that you should lose you patent rights simply because that the technology to build your invention economically does not exist at the moment you devised your invention.
if you don't actually sue anyone for patent infringement for a period of say, 5 years, you should lose your patent
So lets say I have a competitor who has a product that outperforms my product in every way. I would love to make copies of his invention and sell them as my own, however, his invention is protected by a patent. So what do I (and all the inventor's other competitors) do? We avoid infringing on his patent for 5 years. As soon as the fifth year is up and the inventor has lost his patent for not suing us, we all start making exact copies of the invention.
It wasn't even designed for inventors in the first place, but for the industry.
To quote the US Constitution:
Clause 8: To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;
Notice that it says Authors and Inventors, not Firms, Publishers, Manufacturers, etc. IANAL, but it looks to me like the original intent of the patent system was to protect individuals.
You can deny me the 30 dollar rebate coupon and kick me out of the store, but the damage that my word of mouth is going to do will be 100x the cost of that coupon.
That doesn't make it right if you weren't entitled to the coupon in the first place. Sure, the damage you do by bad-mouthing a retailer for not doing what you wanted may very well cost them more than $30. But what happens if everybody comes in demanding that bogus $30 rebate? If the store gave everybody every rebate the customer falsely believed they were entitield to, the would quickly go bankrupt.
If the $30 rebate is valid, its a different story.
If the code is sufficiently short, it is possible to bypass the rolling code system by simply trying all possible codes.
Yes, but the attacker still gains no real advantage from listening to the signal.
Of course, picking a typical deadbolt lock is also very easy and takes less than a minute, so it's unlikely a thief would bother trying to open the garage door.
In my case, there is a key-switch on door. If the thief doesn't have a key, he can simply pry off the switch and short the terminals together with a coin. This implies that even the 6-bit code is serving it's purpose well: It is easier to break in by physically breaking in than it is to brute-force the access code.
That would only work if the system sends the same code every time (or if the same code can be used twice within a short period of time). IIRC, most current systems use "rolling-codes". In other words, the transmitter and receiver both contain a similar pseudorandom number generator. When you push the button, the transmitter sends the next number from the generator. The receiver then checks to see that the code received is one of the next n numbers in the sequence (this way, it still works if you press the button when out-of-range of the receiver). As a result, simply eavesdropping on the transmission is useless.
A side-effect is that if you take somebody's key-fob and push the buttons lots of times, it may render the system inoperable. Usually there is a procedure that can be used to put the transmitter and receiver back in sync.
IIRC, the key-fobs are part 15 devices. This means they use very low power and are allowed to operate so long as they don't cause interfearance to the licensed users of the spectrum. The flip side is that part 15 devices have no protection from interfearing signals from licensed users: Such as when the local military transmitter prevents your keyless-entry system from working.
Too bad part 15 of the FCC's guidelines can't apply.
No, not really. The purpose of Part 15 in this case is to protect the military (or whatever individual/group/organization is assigned the particular frequency(s)) from interfearance that your keyless entry system might produce. It is not meant to protect your keyless entry system from others who may be using their assigned spectrum properly.
Actually, there still are advantages.
First, it will help avoid improperly compleated ballots (i.e. accidental over-votes and undervotes). It also makes it easier those who can't read english, are blind, or have other disabilities to vote.
Secondly, it makes counting much easier. One possibility is that the electronic records are tabulated, and the paper records are made availaible for post-election audits. A second possibility is that the electronic voting machine prints a ballot which is both human and machine readable. These printed ballots are counted by machine after the election. If there needs to be a manual re-count or if an audit is desired, the ballots can still be counted by hand.
I thought almost all quality electronic devices have a conformal coating (non-conducting polymer) applied to PCBs?
Generally, no. Conformal coating is normally only used on circuit boards which will be exposed to extreamly harsh conditions. Unless the designers expect the circuit board to come into contact with liquids or corrosive gasses during typical use, the circuit board will not be conformally coated.
If you are in the Grand Haven, MI area this weekend, come out and visit the North Ottawa Amateur Radio Club's site at the Hofma Preserve. From US-31, take Robbins Road east to Beechtree/168th Street, then take 168th south about 1.5 miles to Sleeper. Follow Sleeper east until you hit the preserve. 73 de KC8DEI
Ok this is a bit off topic, but I don't understand why the poster linked to Kettering's website. During my five years there (graduated March '04, so that includes time both before and after September 11, 2001), I was never aware of any type of rocket club or rocket related research. If there was such an organization, it probably died from lack of interest rather than new laws and regulations!