Actually, it might really be good timing. Retail space is cheap right now, and there are probably a ton of overqualified IT and Engineering folks out of work who would be glad to get any job right now, even in retail.
The time scale GPS uses is basically the UTC timescale that was in effect when the GPS system went first live (1980?). This is the time that GPS broadcasts, forever and ever. Along with that time, there is a broadcast of the current offset between GPS time and the current UTC time. This offset goes up by 1 on every leap second since the GPS system first went live. So as long as the receiver is getting all the GPS broadcasts, it will always know what the correct UTC time is.
I used to work in a Big, Multi-National company. In it's heyday (when they weren't laying people off left and right), the process to actually fire someone for performance reasons took quite a long time -- two to three years of performance reviews and coaching, depending on the department. I heard stories of people who considered themselves in "in-plant retirement", where they physically showed up for work, but did nothing but nap and read books (and more recently, surfed the web). They knew that before they could be fired for cause, they could retire! They can't do that anymore, though, because there's always the risk that a new layoff would happen, and they'd be at the head of the list to get axed, no matter how close they were to that pension....
Not necessarily. The funny thing about the US Senate is that there are plenty of "parliamentary maneuvers" which require 60 votes to overcome. But the Democrats only have a slim 51-49 majority, and that's just because there are two independants that caucus with them. As the Majority party, they have a majority in all the committees and can basically control what gets to the floor in the first place. But once something is on the floor for the full Senate to consider, there's all sorts of mischief that can occur.
Furthermore, if this is the way the domain was obtained, it may make it harder for the IFPI folks to take back. Since the domain was at one time legally owned by them, and then abandoned, the domain name arbitrator could rule that they relinquished any claim to the name when they abandoned it. After all, if they really wanted the domain name, wouldn't they have renewed it?
Am I the only person who thinks that Apple probably does not mind this lawsuit? Apple doesn't seem like the company who would want to sell service tied to one provider anyway, they would either want to sell devices that work with any provider or provide the service themselves. They were likely forced to lock the phones as a condition of getting on anyone's network, and starting their own network is impossible until more spectrum gets auctioned off. I'll bet that Apple was counting on a reaction like this, and has a provision buried in their contract with AT&T that says if a court forces them to unlock the phones, they can do so without invalidating their access to the network and AT&T can't complain.
I know that Voltron on the big screen sounds cool, and that everything piece of creative work borrows from the ones that came before it. But when was the last time a truly original story (that wasn't a remake of a book, TV show, or other form of media) made it out of Hollywood?
I haven't heard of this standard until now, but since it's using a multi-lane high-speed serial protocol, there's probably nothing holding them back from expanding the current 4-lane architecture into a 8-lane or 16-lane architecture (other than redesigning the cable and connector, of course). Just like PCI Express, for instance.
(Disclaimer: IAAEEG, but that doesn't mean I know what I'm talking about.)
One other point (which I haven't seen addressed here yet) is that anytime you do anything with analog or wireless, you're probably going to want a different chip, because (generally speaking, there are always exceptions) all the things in a particular chipmaking process that make digital logic go faster make analog circuits poorer. So, having them be in different chips enables you to use the latest cutting-edge process for your digital chips, and older, more mature processes for your mixed-signal and analog chips.
Plus, devices that actively transmit RF have to go through a re-certification process every time one of their RF-related bits change. By keeping those components separate from the digital logic, if you upgrade some digital components without touching any of the RF components, you can probably get away with a faster re-certification process.
Instead of worrying what type of cable to run in the walls, run PVC pipe from every room down to a room in the basement. As standards change, it will make it a lot easier to re-run new cable to a central point.
You'll also be able to tell people you get your Internet "through a series of tubes" with a straight face!
If the second inventor is infringing the original patent enough to need to negotiate with them, then they're prevented from patenting their second invention by the published, unpatented, prior art.
That is incorrect. Prior Art only prevents someone from getting a patent that duplicated the prior art. It does not prevent someone from patenting a refinement of the prior art.
Example: If you obtain a patent on all chairs with more than four legs, there is nothing preventing me from patenting a system to provide better bracing on a chair with six legs. But to actually sell my new, improved, six-legged chair, I would need to license your basic chair patent. You can continue selling chairs with an arbitrary number of legs, but if you cannot sell chairs with my six-legged bracing system without a license from me. What will likely happen is that we cross-license our patents, with some cash going from me to you since your patent is more valuable.
Disclaimer: I'm no lawyer, I'm an engineer with a few patents in the pipeline. This is the way lawyers explained it to me. I could be wrong.
True, defensive patents don't offer a direct defense against later patents, but they are still valuable protection. If someone is granted a patent that is based on a prior patent that someone else has, the second patentholder needs to either license the first patent, or find a way to work around it, in order for the second patent to have any commercialization value at all. But the primary patent will still hold value, as long as there are other uses for it aside from the secondary patent.
Obtaining the defensive patent (especially for something that can't be worked around very easily) forces any secondary patent holders to negotiate with the primary patent holder, quite often on the terms that the primary patent holder sets. From the perspective of a primary patent holder who wants to distribute a potentially life-saving invention widely for the greater good of all, this is a good thing. They can force the secondary patent holder to license their invention just as widely, or else not grant the license.
As long as the current system exists, avoiding it is a recipe for disaster: the secondary patent holder in my scenario, without the burden of negotiating for a primary patent, could do all sorts of things that were not intended by the primary researchers.
The concept of Intellectual Property is all about control of ideas, after all. Even if your primary motive is free and unfettered exchange of knowledge, that is still a decision about how to control an idea. Unfortunately, the way our society is structured, an idea can't be freely distributed unless it is claimed by an owner first, and then set free -- otherwise, if an idea is set free with no owner, someone else will claim it!
I understand your line of thought, but like I said in my prior post, even if the information gets published (and is therefore unpatentable), someone else can come along and start filing patents for every conceivable extension or modification they can think of, in the hopes that one of those extensions becomes critical to the progress of the research. Then, the researchers will be put in the unfortunate position of having to pay royalties to commercialize their own research. At least, if the initial research team goes ahead and secures a patent on the procedure, then they have something they can use in negotiations with the second party.
I agree with all your points regarding how broken the patent system is. In the meantime, though, we have to live with this broken system. If the goal is to distribute any sucessful treatments that are a result of this research as widely as possible, then I contend that will be easier to do if the initial researchers secure a patent on it (provided they are ethical, of course).
I am not against making money on medical inventions, either. But I think it is crass to value medical inventions solely on the basis of money, which is what patent trolls are likely to do. Since monetizing IP is all they understand, then short of overhauling the patent office, you need to go through the process to turn your work into IP if you're going to deal with them.
There's another way to look at this, though. Even after doing all this research and publishing it (which should render it impossible to get a patent on whatever they publish), there's the chance that someone will start patenting all the minor improvements on this technique they can think of in hopes that at least one will be part of the magic Cure For Cancer. Plus, with our patent office so screwed up, there's always the chance that someone else could patent the basic research even though it has been published, and become an annoying troll until someone with big bucks somes along to fight the patent.
Even if I wasn't planning on making a dime off the treatment, I would try and patent whatever I developed as a defensive measure against patent trolls. It simply needs to be done in this day and age. You and I may think it is crass to put a monetary value on this treatment, but I guarantee someone has, and they value their profit over people's lives.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm seriously asking who came up with the name. I always want to read it "cornfucker"....
You can be a bad engineer or IT professional and still be overqualified for retail....
Actually, it might really be good timing. Retail space is cheap right now, and there are probably a ton of overqualified IT and Engineering folks out of work who would be glad to get any job right now, even in retail.
The time scale GPS uses is basically the UTC timescale that was in effect when the GPS system went first live (1980?). This is the time that GPS broadcasts, forever and ever.
Along with that time, there is a broadcast of the current offset between GPS time and the current UTC time. This offset goes up by 1 on every leap second since the GPS system first went live.
So as long as the receiver is getting all the GPS broadcasts, it will always know what the correct UTC time is.
I used to work in a Big, Multi-National company. In it's heyday (when they weren't laying people off left and right), the process to actually fire someone for performance reasons took quite a long time -- two to three years of performance reviews and coaching, depending on the department. I heard stories of people who considered themselves in "in-plant retirement", where they physically showed up for work, but did nothing but nap and read books (and more recently, surfed the web). They knew that before they could be fired for cause, they could retire! They can't do that anymore, though, because there's always the risk that a new layoff would happen, and they'd be at the head of the list to get axed, no matter how close they were to that pension....
Thank you! I thought I was the only person who realized that The DaVinci Code is poo....
billg is still chairman of the board.
Citizens are human beings, born with certain inailenable rights. Corporations are not.
Do you think corporations ought to have the same First Amendment rights as citizens?
Not necessarily. The funny thing about the US Senate is that there are plenty of "parliamentary maneuvers" which require 60 votes to overcome. But the Democrats only have a slim 51-49 majority, and that's just because there are two independants that caucus with them. As the Majority party, they have a majority in all the committees and can basically control what gets to the floor in the first place. But once something is on the floor for the full Senate to consider, there's all sorts of mischief that can occur.
Furthermore, if this is the way the domain was obtained, it may make it harder for the IFPI folks to take back. Since the domain was at one time legally owned by them, and then abandoned, the domain name arbitrator could rule that they relinquished any claim to the name when they abandoned it. After all, if they really wanted the domain name, wouldn't they have renewed it?
Am I the only person who thinks that Apple probably does not mind this lawsuit? Apple doesn't seem like the company who would want to sell service tied to one provider anyway, they would either want to sell devices that work with any provider or provide the service themselves. They were likely forced to lock the phones as a condition of getting on anyone's network, and starting their own network is impossible until more spectrum gets auctioned off. I'll bet that Apple was counting on a reaction like this, and has a provision buried in their contract with AT&T that says if a court forces them to unlock the phones, they can do so without invalidating their access to the network and AT&T can't complain.
Give us time, we're only up to the I's.
I know that Voltron on the big screen sounds cool, and that everything piece of creative work borrows from the ones that came before it. But when was the last time a truly original story (that wasn't a remake of a book, TV show, or other form of media) made it out of Hollywood?
I haven't heard of this standard until now, but since it's using a multi-lane high-speed serial protocol, there's probably nothing holding them back from expanding the current 4-lane architecture into a 8-lane or 16-lane architecture (other than redesigning the cable and connector, of course). Just like PCI Express, for instance.
There's been other offers besides the first one? Where can we find out about these?
One other point (which I haven't seen addressed here yet) is that anytime you do anything with analog or wireless, you're probably going to want a different chip, because (generally speaking, there are always exceptions) all the things in a particular chipmaking process that make digital logic go faster make analog circuits poorer. So, having them be in different chips enables you to use the latest cutting-edge process for your digital chips, and older, more mature processes for your mixed-signal and analog chips.
Plus, devices that actively transmit RF have to go through a re-certification process every time one of their RF-related bits change. By keeping those components separate from the digital logic, if you upgrade some digital components without touching any of the RF components, you can probably get away with a faster re-certification process.
And I'll bet they've already filed a patent on it....
Studies show that 79.746% of statistics are made up.
You'll also be able to tell people you get your Internet "through a series of tubes" with a straight face!
None of these clips would have existed if it weren't for Viacom....
If the second inventor is infringing the original patent enough to need to negotiate with them, then they're prevented from patenting their second invention by the published, unpatented, prior art.
That is incorrect. Prior Art only prevents someone from getting a patent that duplicated the prior art. It does not prevent someone from patenting a refinement of the prior art.
Example: If you obtain a patent on all chairs with more than four legs, there is nothing preventing me from patenting a system to provide better bracing on a chair with six legs. But to actually sell my new, improved, six-legged chair, I would need to license your basic chair patent. You can continue selling chairs with an arbitrary number of legs, but if you cannot sell chairs with my six-legged bracing system without a license from me. What will likely happen is that we cross-license our patents, with some cash going from me to you since your patent is more valuable.
Disclaimer: I'm no lawyer, I'm an engineer with a few patents in the pipeline. This is the way lawyers explained it to me. I could be wrong.
True, defensive patents don't offer a direct defense against later patents, but they are still valuable protection. If someone is granted a patent that is based on a prior patent that someone else has, the second patentholder needs to either license the first patent, or find a way to work around it, in order for the second patent to have any commercialization value at all. But the primary patent will still hold value, as long as there are other uses for it aside from the secondary patent.
Obtaining the defensive patent (especially for something that can't be worked around very easily) forces any secondary patent holders to negotiate with the primary patent holder, quite often on the terms that the primary patent holder sets. From the perspective of a primary patent holder who wants to distribute a potentially life-saving invention widely for the greater good of all, this is a good thing. They can force the secondary patent holder to license their invention just as widely, or else not grant the license.
As long as the current system exists, avoiding it is a recipe for disaster: the secondary patent holder in my scenario, without the burden of negotiating for a primary patent, could do all sorts of things that were not intended by the primary researchers.
The concept of Intellectual Property is all about control of ideas, after all. Even if your primary motive is free and unfettered exchange of knowledge, that is still a decision about how to control an idea. Unfortunately, the way our society is structured, an idea can't be freely distributed unless it is claimed by an owner first, and then set free -- otherwise, if an idea is set free with no owner, someone else will claim it!
I understand your line of thought, but like I said in my prior post, even if the information gets published (and is therefore unpatentable), someone else can come along and start filing patents for every conceivable extension or modification they can think of, in the hopes that one of those extensions becomes critical to the progress of the research. Then, the researchers will be put in the unfortunate position of having to pay royalties to commercialize their own research. At least, if the initial research team goes ahead and secures a patent on the procedure, then they have something they can use in negotiations with the second party.
I agree with all your points regarding how broken the patent system is. In the meantime, though, we have to live with this broken system. If the goal is to distribute any sucessful treatments that are a result of this research as widely as possible, then I contend that will be easier to do if the initial researchers secure a patent on it (provided they are ethical, of course).
I am not against making money on medical inventions, either. But I think it is crass to value medical inventions solely on the basis of money, which is what patent trolls are likely to do. Since monetizing IP is all they understand, then short of overhauling the patent office, you need to go through the process to turn your work into IP if you're going to deal with them.
There's another way to look at this, though. Even after doing all this research and publishing it (which should render it impossible to get a patent on whatever they publish), there's the chance that someone will start patenting all the minor improvements on this technique they can think of in hopes that at least one will be part of the magic Cure For Cancer. Plus, with our patent office so screwed up, there's always the chance that someone else could patent the basic research even though it has been published, and become an annoying troll until someone with big bucks somes along to fight the patent.
Even if I wasn't planning on making a dime off the treatment, I would try and patent whatever I developed as a defensive measure against patent trolls. It simply needs to be done in this day and age. You and I may think it is crass to put a monetary value on this treatment, but I guarantee someone has, and they value their profit over people's lives.