Remember that the abstact is mostly meaningless. If you want to post something, post the relavent claim(s).
For example:
1. A method for running an application program in a computer network environment, comprising:
providing at least one client workstation and one network server coupled to said network environment, wherein said network environment is a distributed hypermedia environment;
executing, at said client workstation, a browser application, that parses a first distributed hypermedia document to identify text formats included in said distributed hypermedia document and for responding to predetermined text formats to initiate processing specified by said text formats; utilizing said browser to display, on said client workstation, at least a portion of a first hypermedia document received over said network from said server, wherein the portion of said first hypermedia document is displayed within a first browser-controlled window on said client workstation, wherein said first distributed hypermedia document includes an embed text format, located at a first location in said first distributed hypermedia document, that specifies the location of at least a portion of an object external to the first distributed hypermedia document, wherein said object has type information associated with it utilized by said browser to identify and locate an executable application external to the first distributed hypermedia document, and wherein said embed text format is parsed by said browser to automatically invoke said executable application to execute on said client workstation in order to display said object and enable interactive processing of said object within a display area created at said first location within the portion of said first distributed hypermedia document being displayed in said first browser-controlled window.
Basically, I see three possible outcomes of any "test" of the GPL:
A. The court rules that the GPL is a valid agreement/contract between the copyright holders and a licencee permitting the licencee to re-distribute the copyrighted work under certain conditions. Everything continues along as normal.
B. The court rules that the GPL is not a licence agreement and that the GPL does not grant any rights in addition to copyright law. GPL3 is created by the FSF to fix any issues and automatically supercedes GPL2. Everything continues as normal after a slight delay.
C. The court rules that some part of the GPL is not valid. Depending on which part, some licencees may gain rights not intended by the copyright holder. GPL3 is drafted to plug the hole and everything continues as normal, except that licenced as GPL2 can now be used in an unintended and/or undesired manner.
Warning, the following assumes that SCO-owned code improperly made it into the linux kernel, an assumption which is far from proven true.
SCO is in deep shit. They continued to offer the linux kernel under the GPL even after they were made aware that some of their copyrighted material made is way into the kernel through improper channels. It's going to be hard to convince a sane judge that they should be allowed to "take back" code that they previously licenced under the GPL. If, however, they can convince the judge that the GPL is invalid in some way, it might nullify any rights granted by the GPL. This would let SCO say "we never released the code under a valid licence, so no rights to use our code were ever granted." The kernel folks would also have a hard time releasing the kernel under another licence (a hastily drafted GPL3, for example) since they don't know which parts of the kernel are theirs and which are SCO's.
Hmm...I've never found this to be a problem in the year-and-a-half that I've used Gentoo.
I call bullshit. (Actually I don't think you read the instructions prior to trying to install Gentoo.) First of all, if qt has been in your USE flags since the start, everything you compile will have QuickTime support, if availaible. The problem might come in if you add qt later. Obviously, adding the qt USE flags doen't magically grant qt support to every package already compiled. The easiest way to find out which packages really need to be compiled is to read the ebuild for the program in question.
Of course, if you are using the ~ARCH option to automatically merge development packages, you probably will run into goofy packing dependecy problems at times.
One trick I use is to read the ebuild before merging a new version (not patch-level/revision) of a major packages such as X or qt. This lets me make sure I have the correct USE variables set for the features I want to use.
My guess is the salesman doesn't know what he's talking about, but I can also think of a few ways to do it:
1. Use a really unusual (for auto. applications) such as 1200 ohms.
2. Install a little circuit in the speaker that leaves the circuit open unitl a code is received from the audio system.
3. Send the data to the speakers digitially, and using a format/protocol which is protected so aftermarket manufacturers can't reimplement the system.
That said, I can't see any automaker actually implementing such a system. In fact, the opposite is happening. Manufacturers are moving towards standard components and interfaces to reduce costs. When the interface between components is standard, it should be even easier to produce/install aftermarket components.
If there is a free market, competitors at each step in production will drive prices back towards where they belong. Think about it: If all the other stores are charging 33% of ones monthly income for a months worth of food, I can charge (33-x)% and still make more profit if the lower prices attract more customers.
On the other hand, when there are only a few firms producing a given product, they can charge pretty much whatever they want (especially if they are allowed to fix prices).
Something else to remember: If your DSL service has a bandwidth cap, your latency may shoot up once you exceed the cap. A DSL modem I had in college based the cap on the number of bytes sent/received per second. Once the threshold for the download cap was reached, it would not pass through any more downstream data for the remainder of the second.
One thing that must be kept in mind is that patent applications are initially kept confidential. That way if the pto denies the patent application, the inventor is not required to publish their ideas with no form of compensation.
First of all, I don't see the various rapid-prototyping technogogies becoming a threat to manufacturers anytime soon, simply because it is not possible to produce parts with a rapid prototyping machine as inexpensivly as they can be made using traditional manufacturing processes.
A related problem, though, already does occur. Lets say you are a designer and manufacturer of a product which takes lots of resources to properly design and validate, but is simple to produce. There is very little to stop a competitor from buying one of your design, building the tools, and then making a large number of exact copies of your design. They can then undercut you in price due to the fact that they do not have the overhead of designing and validating the design prior to production.
I hope that companies protecting themselves in this type of situation are not what you refer to as attempting to "buck the free market". There is a big difference between the knowledge, which allows an indiviual to design and make a part that suits their needs, and outright copying of somebody else' design.
Your standard run-of-the-mill IC's in the black plastic/cases are not well sealed against moisture. Over time, moisture seeps in and can damage the chips. This problem is accelerated by high temperatures and humidities.
Humidity and temperature changes can cause plastic parts to change in size (think of all the plastic moving bits in a typical CD-R*/DVD/etc. drive).
Condensataion when the device moves from a cool envronment to a warm humid environment (where the dew point of the humid environment is higher than the temperature in the cool environment).
Humidity will have a minor effect on cooling, but can kill the laptop in other ways.
Although generally desirable, there is no requirement that third-party kernel modules (which I assume would be the primary form your driver the driver would assume) be released under the GPL. Thus, being forced to GPL IP you consider valuable is not an issue.
One thing you have to remember is the only part of the patent that matters from an infringment standpoint are the claims. The rest of the patent broadly describes the invention, provides background information to help the examiner(s) understand the invention, and and provides information to the public so that they can easily make use of the invention once the patent expires.
If you want to complain about the broadness or lack of novelty in a patent, please cite examples from the cliams.
I think the reason why he couldn't patent the waterbed was because that the concept of a waterbed already existed. Now if there was some new invention that made waterbeds possible, that probably would be patentable.
Also, I'm pretty sure that you don't need a working implementation/model to get a patent. If you read through a patent, you will see lots of: "the method of claim N where X" type cliams. Often, these dependant claims are the result of the engineers/inventors brainstorming all the other ways something might possibly be done, even if they know they have no clue how to do it that way themselves.
Good point. I'll be much more impressed when/if when a chip design is introduced that can decode MP3 and OGG.
Yes I know there are licencing issues with MP3, but it is still the de facto standard for lossy audio compression.
If somebody is doing random searches of a hospital database, they are most likely doing something wrong, as most medical records are confidential and subject to strict controls. In this case, each time "John F. Kennedy's" record is accessed, somebody needs to find out why. Perhaps it was a typo or data-entry error, perhaps it was a script that was mistakenly pulling records due to a bug, or perhaps its an intruder on the network or an employee up to no good. In any case, it would be important to find and correct the cause.
Would an intelligent consumer buy white flour from a cocaine dealer? I think not.
Possibly, if some favorable combination of the following occurs:
The cocaine dealer is selling flour for less than supermarkets. (Not likely IMHO)
The cocaine dealer's convienient location and no-questions-asked policy makes his higher price worth paying. (More likely, since the sites that sell readers for DirecTV cracking use probably accept on-line orders 24x7).
The buyer is not aware of any other retailers who sell flour. (Very possible, if the buyer runs accross a site selling the DirecTV marked version before finding a more legitimate site)
Each channel on the FM broadcast band is seperated by 200kHz from the next higher and next lower frequency. Within any given market you will not have two stations on adjacent channels (they can't because as the previous posted pointed out, the channels overlap a bit). The problem comes in when you are in an area that can receive stations from more than one market equally well.
For example, a station on 97.7MHz 50 miles south of you may come in as well as a station on 97.5MHz 50 miles north of you. In this case when you tune to the 97.5MHz station, you will also occasionally hear the 97.7MHz station as its signal is partially in the passband of your receiver. One of the advantages to FM is that you normally only hear the strongest station on a given channel. In the case of the 97.5 and 97.7MHz stations, however, this means that your receiver may rapidly switch between the 97.5 and 97.7MHz stations as their relitive signal levels at your receiver fluctuate.
You don't even have to be in a country. Nothing would stop you from doing this from a boat in international waters. It really wouldn't have to be that big of a boat either.
There are two main differences between the proposed use of RFID tags by manufacturers/retailers and current barcode/inventory control tag use. First, a barcode (as commonly used in retail stores) does not uniquely idenitify an individual object. This makes it impossible to identify the purchaser of a particular can of peas by scanning the bar-code. Second, barcodes and current anti-theft tags can usually be removed by the purchaser. If an RFID tag is molded into a tire, for example, there is no way for me to remove the tag without destroying the tire. Worse yet, there is no easy way for me to even know if there is an RFID tag embedded in the tire. Finally, barcodes generally require a good optical view of the barcode by the reader. I have the ability, if I so choose, to conceal the barcodes/datamatrices of items I own.
Yes, RFID tags are a very good solution to many inventory control problems. No, RFID tags will not automatically cause a loss of privacy. My problem is that I do not trust most retailers or the government not to abuse the RFID tags. There is simply too much to gain, I fear, for many organizations to resist the misuse of the 1-1 identification RFID tags provide.
Yes, gnome and kde use different widget libraries. Applications designed for the gnome desktop rely (IIRC) on the gtk libraries and KDE apps rely on the qt libraries. However, the kde and gtk libraries co-exists, so as long as you have the underlying libraries installed, gnome apps should run under a kde desktop and kde apps should run under a gnome desktop. In fact, I use gnumeric as my spreadsheet program and evolution as my e-mail client despite the fact that I use KDE as my window manager.
For a while, the Amateur Radio, Electronics, and Computer club at my college would host a couple of prsentations per quarter on various tech topics. The best way to get topics was to talk to the faculty and find out what types of interesting work they were involved in, whether it was as research or an outside hobby project. If the school of engineering at your university is large enough, you should be able to find a faculty member knowledgable and more than happy to lead a discussion on almost any topic imaginable.
Ahhh, but there are some Honda parts only Honda can make (depending upon patents, trade secrets, etc.)
Patents are a government grant of monopoly, so using patent rights to prevent others from making a competing product is perfectly ok. Trade secrets provide no such protection, because competitors can either reverse engineer or independantly discover the secret. Neither trade secrets nor patents are at issue here. The problem is that Lexmark is trying to use copyright law to reduce competition in the lexmark printer ink carteridge market. As the EFF's brief points out, the courts have previously taked a very dim view on using trademark or copyright law as an anti-competitive measure.
If Lexmark wants to be the dominant suppleir of ink for their printers, they need to do so legally and either incorporate a novel and patent-worthy invention, or compete fairly on the basis of cost, quality, etc.
While I disagree that a website should have to provide accomodation for every condition possible, it seems that a high-traffic website would be responsible enough to have an "opt-around" policy for their turing-tests. Basically when you sign up for an account (before any turing test is presented) you should be able to choose to have your identity verified manually. Basically, you would be sent your pass-code through some sort of out-of-band communication such as:
Postal Mail
Telephone Call-back
$0.01 Bank-Account/Credit Card debit or credit.
Once you are verified through an out-of-band method, your account is exempt from any type of turing test at log in time. Each of the methods above is impracticle or costly to obtain in large numbers, so spammers should find it difficult to abuse the system. Although this does force someone to go through an extra step, the telephone or debit methods would be nearly instant, and the postal method would be nearly universally availaible.
P.S: I wish the poster of the parent message and his wife the best of luck in finding better ways to experiance what many take for granted.
Air conditioners do remove moisture from the air. In every air conditioner I've seen, this results in water dripping out of the air conditioner. I've never, however, seen a working refigerator dripping water out onto the floor. This implies that all the moisture which can't be held by the chilled air must remain inside the fridge. Most likely, this means that moisture will condense on anything you put into the fridge, which is a generally big no-no for most electronics.
Slashdot Mirror
From the abstract:
Remember that the abstact is mostly meaningless. If you want to post something, post the relavent claim(s).
For example:
1. A method for running an application program in a computer network environment, comprising:
providing at least one client workstation and one network server coupled to said network environment, wherein said network environment is a distributed hypermedia environment;
executing, at said client workstation, a browser application, that parses a first distributed hypermedia document to identify text formats included in said distributed hypermedia document and for responding to predetermined text formats to initiate processing specified by said text formats; utilizing said browser to display, on said client workstation, at least a portion of a first hypermedia document received over said network from said server, wherein the portion of said first hypermedia document is displayed within a first browser-controlled window on said client workstation, wherein said first distributed hypermedia document includes an embed text format, located at a first location in said first distributed hypermedia document, that specifies the location of at least a portion of an object external to the first distributed hypermedia document, wherein said object has type information associated with it utilized by said browser to identify and locate an executable application external to the first distributed hypermedia document, and wherein said embed text format is parsed by said browser to automatically invoke said executable application to execute on said client workstation in order to display said object and enable interactive processing of said object within a display area created at said first location within the portion of said first distributed hypermedia document being displayed in said first browser-controlled window.
Basically, I see three possible outcomes of any "test" of the GPL:
A. The court rules that the GPL is a valid agreement/contract between the copyright holders and a licencee permitting the licencee to re-distribute the copyrighted work under certain conditions. Everything continues along as normal.
B. The court rules that the GPL is not a licence agreement and that the GPL does not grant any rights in addition to copyright law. GPL3 is created by the FSF to fix any issues and automatically supercedes GPL2. Everything continues as normal after a slight delay.
C. The court rules that some part of the GPL is not valid. Depending on which part, some licencees may gain rights not intended by the copyright holder. GPL3 is drafted to plug the hole and everything continues as normal, except that licenced as GPL2 can now be used in an unintended and/or undesired manner.
Warning, the following assumes that SCO-owned code improperly made it into the linux kernel, an assumption which is far from proven true.
SCO is in deep shit. They continued to offer the linux kernel under the GPL even after they were made aware that some of their copyrighted material made is way into the kernel through improper channels. It's going to be hard to convince a sane judge that they should be allowed to "take back" code that they previously licenced under the GPL. If, however, they can convince the judge that the GPL is invalid in some way, it might nullify any rights granted by the GPL. This would let SCO say "we never released the code under a valid licence, so no rights to use our code were ever granted." The kernel folks would also have a hard time releasing the kernel under another licence (a hastily drafted GPL3, for example) since they don't know which parts of the kernel are theirs and which are SCO's.
That was exactly the point, an impedance so large as to be impractical except with a system specially designed to drive it.
Hmm...I've never found this to be a problem in the year-and-a-half that I've used Gentoo.
I call bullshit. (Actually I don't think you read the instructions prior to trying to install Gentoo.) First of all, if qt has been in your USE flags since the start, everything you compile will have QuickTime support, if availaible. The problem might come in if you add qt later. Obviously, adding the qt USE flags doen't magically grant qt support to every package already compiled. The easiest way to find out which packages really need to be compiled is to read the ebuild for the program in question.
Of course, if you are using the ~ARCH option to automatically merge development packages, you probably will run into goofy packing dependecy problems at times.
One trick I use is to read the ebuild before merging a new version (not patch-level/revision) of a major packages such as X or qt. This lets me make sure I have the correct USE variables set for the features I want to use.
My guess is the salesman doesn't know what he's talking about, but I can also think of a few ways to do it:
1. Use a really unusual (for auto. applications) such as 1200 ohms.
2. Install a little circuit in the speaker that leaves the circuit open unitl a code is received from the audio system.
3. Send the data to the speakers digitially, and using a format/protocol which is protected so aftermarket manufacturers can't reimplement the system.
That said, I can't see any automaker actually implementing such a system. In fact, the opposite is happening. Manufacturers are moving towards standard components and interfaces to reduce costs. When the interface between components is standard, it should be even easier to produce/install aftermarket components.
If there is a free market, competitors at each step in production will drive prices back towards where they belong. Think about it: If all the other stores are charging 33% of ones monthly income for a months worth of food, I can charge (33-x)% and still make more profit if the lower prices attract more customers.
On the other hand, when there are only a few firms producing a given product, they can charge pretty much whatever they want (especially if they are allowed to fix prices).
Something else to remember: If your DSL service has a bandwidth cap, your latency may shoot up once you exceed the cap. A DSL modem I had in college based the cap on the number of bytes sent/received per second. Once the threshold for the download cap was reached, it would not pass through any more downstream data for the remainder of the second.
One thing that must be kept in mind is that patent applications are initially kept confidential. That way if the pto denies the patent application, the inventor is not required to publish their ideas with no form of compensation.
First of all, I don't see the various rapid-prototyping technogogies becoming a threat to manufacturers anytime soon, simply because it is not possible to produce parts with a rapid prototyping machine as inexpensivly as they can be made using traditional manufacturing processes.
A related problem, though, already does occur. Lets say you are a designer and manufacturer of a product which takes lots of resources to properly design and validate, but is simple to produce. There is very little to stop a competitor from buying one of your design, building the tools, and then making a large number of exact copies of your design. They can then undercut you in price due to the fact that they do not have the overhead of designing and validating the design prior to production.
I hope that companies protecting themselves in this type of situation are not what you refer to as attempting to "buck the free market". There is a big difference between the knowledge, which allows an indiviual to design and make a part that suits their needs, and outright copying of somebody else' design.
Humidity can case several problems for laptops:
Your standard run-of-the-mill IC's in the black plastic/cases are not well sealed against moisture. Over time, moisture seeps in and can damage the chips. This problem is accelerated by high temperatures and humidities.
Humidity and temperature changes can cause plastic parts to change in size (think of all the plastic moving bits in a typical CD-R*/DVD/etc. drive).
Condensataion when the device moves from a cool envronment to a warm humid environment (where the dew point of the humid environment is higher than the temperature in the cool environment).
Humidity will have a minor effect on cooling, but can kill the laptop in other ways.
Although generally desirable, there is no requirement that third-party kernel modules (which I assume would be the primary form your driver the driver would assume) be released under the GPL. Thus, being forced to GPL IP you consider valuable is not an issue.
One thing you have to remember is the only part of the patent that matters from an infringment standpoint are the claims. The rest of the patent broadly describes the invention, provides background information to help the examiner(s) understand the invention, and and provides information to the public so that they can easily make use of the invention once the patent expires.
If you want to complain about the broadness or lack of novelty in a patent, please cite examples from the cliams.
IANAL either, but...
I think the reason why he couldn't patent the waterbed was because that the concept of a waterbed already existed. Now if there was some new invention that made waterbeds possible, that probably would be patentable.
Also, I'm pretty sure that you don't need a working implementation/model to get a patent. If you read through a patent, you will see lots of: "the method of claim N where X" type cliams. Often, these dependant claims are the result of the engineers/inventors brainstorming all the other ways something might possibly be done, even if they know they have no clue how to do it that way themselves.
Good point. I'll be much more impressed when/if when a chip design is introduced that can decode MP3 and OGG. Yes I know there are licencing issues with MP3, but it is still the de facto standard for lossy audio compression.
If somebody is doing random searches of a hospital database, they are most likely doing something wrong, as most medical records are confidential and subject to strict controls. In this case, each time "John F. Kennedy's" record is accessed, somebody needs to find out why. Perhaps it was a typo or data-entry error, perhaps it was a script that was mistakenly pulling records due to a bug, or perhaps its an intruder on the network or an employee up to no good. In any case, it would be important to find and correct the cause.
Possibly, if some favorable combination of the following occurs:
The cocaine dealer is selling flour for less than supermarkets. (Not likely IMHO)
The cocaine dealer's convienient location and no-questions-asked policy makes his higher price worth paying. (More likely, since the sites that sell readers for DirecTV cracking use probably accept on-line orders 24x7).
The buyer is not aware of any other retailers who sell flour. (Very possible, if the buyer runs accross a site selling the DirecTV marked version before finding a more legitimate site)
Each channel on the FM broadcast band is seperated by 200kHz from the next higher and next lower frequency. Within any given market you will not have two stations on adjacent channels (they can't because as the previous posted pointed out, the channels overlap a bit). The problem comes in when you are in an area that can receive stations from more than one market equally well.
For example, a station on 97.7MHz 50 miles south of you may come in as well as a station on 97.5MHz 50 miles north of you. In this case when you tune to the 97.5MHz station, you will also occasionally hear the 97.7MHz station as its signal is partially in the passband of your receiver. One of the advantages to FM is that you normally only hear the strongest station on a given channel. In the case of the 97.5 and 97.7MHz stations, however, this means that your receiver may rapidly switch between the 97.5 and 97.7MHz stations as their relitive signal levels at your receiver fluctuate.
You don't even have to be in a country. Nothing would stop you from doing this from a boat in international waters. It really wouldn't have to be that big of a boat either.
a grassroots movement of antigravity fans
Somehow I get the feeling that these geeks will be remainging close to grass roots for a very long time.
There are two main differences between the proposed use of RFID tags by manufacturers/retailers and current barcode/inventory control tag use. First, a barcode (as commonly used in retail stores) does not uniquely idenitify an individual object. This makes it impossible to identify the purchaser of a particular can of peas by scanning the bar-code. Second, barcodes and current anti-theft tags can usually be removed by the purchaser. If an RFID tag is molded into a tire, for example, there is no way for me to remove the tag without destroying the tire. Worse yet, there is no easy way for me to even know if there is an RFID tag embedded in the tire. Finally, barcodes generally require a good optical view of the barcode by the reader. I have the ability, if I so choose, to conceal the barcodes/datamatrices of items I own.
Yes, RFID tags are a very good solution to many inventory control problems. No, RFID tags will not automatically cause a loss of privacy. My problem is that I do not trust most retailers or the government not to abuse the RFID tags. There is simply too much to gain, I fear, for many organizations to resist the misuse of the 1-1 identification RFID tags provide.
Bullshit. Pure, simple, bullshit.
Yes, gnome and kde use different widget libraries. Applications designed for the gnome desktop rely (IIRC) on the gtk libraries and KDE apps rely on the qt libraries. However, the kde and gtk libraries co-exists, so as long as you have the underlying libraries installed, gnome apps should run under a kde desktop and kde apps should run under a gnome desktop. In fact, I use gnumeric as my spreadsheet program and evolution as my e-mail client despite the fact that I use KDE as my window manager.
For a while, the Amateur Radio, Electronics, and Computer club at my college would host a couple of prsentations per quarter on various tech topics. The best way to get topics was to talk to the faculty and find out what types of interesting work they were involved in, whether it was as research or an outside hobby project. If the school of engineering at your university is large enough, you should be able to find a faculty member knowledgable and more than happy to lead a discussion on almost any topic imaginable.
Ahhh, but there are some Honda parts only Honda can make (depending upon patents, trade secrets, etc.)
Patents are a government grant of monopoly, so using patent rights to prevent others from making a competing product is perfectly ok. Trade secrets provide no such protection, because competitors can either reverse engineer or independantly discover the secret. Neither trade secrets nor patents are at issue here. The problem is that Lexmark is trying to use copyright law to reduce competition in the lexmark printer ink carteridge market. As the EFF's brief points out, the courts have previously taked a very dim view on using trademark or copyright law as an anti-competitive measure.
If Lexmark wants to be the dominant suppleir of ink for their printers, they need to do so legally and either incorporate a novel and patent-worthy invention, or compete fairly on the basis of cost, quality, etc.
While I disagree that a website should have to provide accomodation for every condition possible, it seems that a high-traffic website would be responsible enough to have an "opt-around" policy for their turing-tests. Basically when you sign up for an account (before any turing test is presented) you should be able to choose to have your identity verified manually. Basically, you would be sent your pass-code through some sort of out-of-band communication such as:
Postal Mail
Telephone Call-back
$0.01 Bank-Account/Credit Card debit or credit.
Once you are verified through an out-of-band method, your account is exempt from any type of turing test at log in time. Each of the methods above is impracticle or costly to obtain in large numbers, so spammers should find it difficult to abuse the system. Although this does force someone to go through an extra step, the telephone or debit methods would be nearly instant, and the postal method would be nearly universally availaible.
P.S: I wish the poster of the parent message and his wife the best of luck in finding better ways to experiance what many take for granted.
Air conditioners do remove moisture from the air. In every air conditioner I've seen, this results in water dripping out of the air conditioner. I've never, however, seen a working refigerator dripping water out onto the floor. This implies that all the moisture which can't be held by the chilled air must remain inside the fridge. Most likely, this means that moisture will condense on anything you put into the fridge, which is a generally big no-no for most electronics.