Near Field requires about 70 angstroms, and it is really hard to make an air-bearing/lens system that is robust at those distances. Same problem as a hard drive, really, and then what have you gained.
There are real resons why media will top out in a few years. The superparamagnetic limit will be reached relatively soon. However, that will still gie us significantly more storage than we currently have.
This is a statement of basic copyright law. And so, yet again, we have 438 (at current count) people posting in complete and total ignorance. The point of this article is to stop people from using Apogee's trademarks for their own profit. Thus, I cannot start a porn site advertised as "Duke Nukems Sexy Ho's" without their consent. That is all.
Everyone here with a moderation above 2 (all 108 of you) showed a complete disregard for the truth, for the point of the law, and for apogee's explanation, and instead spent lots of time on a "fwck UCITA, and fwck those sell-outs" screed.
It is szd to see that slashdot has become such a monoculture. Stop reacting so much. Christ, the whole world isn't after you or your freedom. Relax.
Read a bit about most of the current laws. The introduction of the european system is a large part of what is going wrong with the patent system. Do you like the idea of first to file as opposed to first to invent. Or, to put in perspective, if you, the little german inventor, work out someting cool and new, but file a patent after BMW, you are screwed, completely, because their lawyer took 2 months to file and it took your little lawyer 8 months. 20 year terms are european. And business law patents stem directly from chemical methods patents. In any case, I have noticed that engineers are usually about as dumb as lawyers. And judging from the contents of these responses, far more close minded.
No shit. Actually, what they need, and agree upon, is a better database. They don't do, and don't have time to, do full searches on all teh potential journals. Get them a better database, and more time to sort through it. I think they need 20-60 hours per patent, not 8.
Well, what bothered me ws that the patent system is effectively a system for lawyers to tell scintists/inventors about the novelty of their field. That is a bit off.
One other question. Where are all the Slashdotters who spend half of each patent discussion criticising Coble? He made a useful, coherent sensible arguement, which is actually the norm. Oh well.
Finally, What is the argument for coputter programs deserving a different sort of protection. If the material is patentable (andI think it should be), the term ought to be the same. If the industry is in flux, so be it. If the system worked properly--obvious patents easily discarded, and novelty truly rewarded, what exactly is wrong with the current system, at least in principle? And why is it so different from other areas
This little screed is exactly the reason I have pretty much given up on slashdot...poor reporting. 1) State Street said there is no absolute reason why a method can't be patented. This wasn't shocking. It was well reasoned and thought ought---barring the implications. The court might have thought that the patent office would continue to offer the same level of scrutiny, and everything would have been ok. Not the epitome of Solomnic wisdom, but not bad. 2) Many lawyers (most I have spoken to) hate the excessive patents. They have to do what their clients want. That is why they are hired. 3) Go read up on Howard Coble. He has tried to make copyright protection of databases work well for businesses and consumers. Databases will need some sort of protection. After all, If I set my computer to download the entire LEXIS database, and then offer it for free, why would useful information aggregators exist. 4) Absurdity (or obviousness) are defenses, always. No new rule would add it because it is already there. Uggh 5) Saying "everyone says" is not acceptable journalism. At least quote someone, as there are obviously lots of them out there.
I agree with teh idea--there are problems. This, however, is not the way to fix them.
Also, I think everyone needs to realize that many of the changes being considered are required because of the WTO. I like the WTO, and I would prefer free trade worldwide, but the European patent system is horrid--easy for lawayers, but bad for everyone else. Many of the proposed changes are there to mesh our system with teh worldwide agreements, and these are mostly bad ideas. It would be nice to read this somewhere, and discuss the relevant advantages and disadvantages. Maybe even talk about what a patent system should be, and how it should work.
ps. go look up what declaratory judgement means. Research is tricky, I know, but really, it will be worth your while. I want to become rich, then get a law degree and go after everyone in the business with declaratory judgements. Who's with me?
So I think this means everyting that this computer does will be video card limited. That is a really big bummer. I would like to see a set of tests run on games. Did anyone notice how games were ignored at this conference. Supposedly, there was a new focus on games at apple. Mostly, I think, because there isn't any other good reason to have a faster computer. Intel knows this. They demo games or game-lijke things all the time. Now, I think apple is giving up that market again (ha, lets screw our loyal customers again!!!--I am sTeve Jobs and I wear black turtlenecks because I am eVil). Forgive me, sCary. Anyway, if apple makes an awesome q3 machine, and then POINTEDLY ignores the game playin mojo this box has, then there is a big problem for those interested in this box as a home machine. Anyway, I would like to see macs succeed, and if I could get IDL and Matlab, I would consider it--but Apple screwed over all the developers, and now I can't even consider their product Doh
Yes, but it is scale that matters. At synchrotrons, electrons hit 5-7 9's or so (.99999-.9999999 c), and protons can be accelated to tremendous rates (a few 9's) as well. Accelerating a kilogram of matter is a vastly, vastly more difficult procedure. Think of it instead of the kinetic energy that the matter has. Each kilogram has a kinetic energy of ~1*10^13 kj. This is equivalent to combusting 10^7 moles of octane, or 6*10^5 kg of gasoline. I think it is about enough to vaporize one olympic size swimming pool of water. Consider, however, that a good fraction of a stars mass is accelerated, this is a number on the order of 10^30th kg, so the total energy is of the order 10^43 kJ. That _is_ alot. That is about enough to vaporize the earths ocean 10^20 times, or the entire solar system 10^10 times, give or take an order of magnitude or two
I think everyone is missing the basic point. Who has $2500+ to blow on a little hobby? It isn't going to be poor folk.
Women don't play because they didn't started to as kids, and there is a minimum level of games understanding that people need to have before they are comfortable playing a new game. I can go pick up any game and play comfortably in minutes. My sister cannot.
My question is, what did game playing replace as far as hobbys went. Was it sports (doubt it)? Or television? Beer brewing? Hardcore drug use? The Simpsons?!!!
This would then be precisely the same effect as GMR in reverse. A spin dependent tunneling junction could act as a memory. How is the current being applied then. My guess would be through an AFM/STM. IBm spent a _lot_ of time and money on spin polarised tunneling, and then it diappeared. A single read write head with an integrated SPSTM and MFM or GMR read head would work. This would integrate well with their work on large scal AFM integration.
Sorry about all of the acronyms. Too use to preaching to the choir. AFM is Atomic Force Microscopy--see http://www.di.com/products/ScanMethods/ScanMain.ht ml STM is scanning tunneling microscopy. see http://www.almaden.ibm.com/vis/stm/ if you want to see some marvelous examples. IBM did invent the STM.
Finally, if this supposition is correct, then this isn't anything new. MRAMs are based on exactly this principle. I think it has been demonstrated with CMR (colossal magneto-resistive) materials, as well as with spin valves. An INSPEC search finds many of them
This can't work. For one, the virus would have to be as big as teh virus checker, and likely bigger. How could a virus see how it was being detected? It is read, and the data is processed in a way that the virus can't see. Mutating viruses would have to be random--no other way works. Self mutation requires intelligence. Just think about evolution--a worm doesn't change itself after a bird eats it. Anyway, I don't think this approach is at all feasible, and I suspect it would help if you didn't use the word see--viri can't see.
Well, probly not. Electron beams are very, very slow. For making templates and lithography masks, they are fine--for anything else, they are way too slow
Well, you could space them 5-10 microns apart, I believe. that would be 100 heads per millimeter. It is possible to do better, but not too much. An array could be made with an effective 1 micron spacing, or 1000 per millimeter. Perhaps smaller. So transfer would be very, very, very large. However, you couldn't write to it. It is a "press only" solution. Can't put your whole life on it
Transfer rate isn't limiting. It is possible (and IBM has done it) to make arays of 1000's of AFM read heads, with integrated electronics. These are lithographically patterned and etched, so don't present terrible difficulties. It is even possible to pattern a LED or laser onto the reader, and then couple an output fibre to that. Rates can be amazing.
divide 70 by percent growth and you get the doubling period. which is currently about 1.2 years. 6 years is then 32 times increase, 9.6 years is 256. But that is the rate for hard drives. Anyway, these sort or dries aren't writeable--ever. And with desktop terrabyte hard drives, why will you care for a non rewritable easily lost CD-ROM?
That can't be done. The resonant frequency is a function of the electrostatics of the surface. There isn't (to my knowledge) anyway of making a non-contact AFM work on multiple layers like that.
With an optical reader, that is possible, but not with a mechanical. This really is just like a needle on an old record player--you don't get to play the record stacked 5 layers below the top one.
I lived in Boulder for a long time, and we had the onion there as well. It was a localized version, too. Also, I think they signed a distribution deal with Borders, so any place that has Borders bookstores should have the Onion as well.
Well, there are a few things everyone here is forgetting. Most importantly, who sifts through teh junk to find the good music. That is what labels have spent years doing, and they will likely contiue to do so. When I get an album, I wnat something produced well, with good songs, and professional recording. I don't care if everyone is going to post their album and sell it. Most of them will really, really suck.
Second, obvious copying (big web sites with illegal mp3's) will be stopped, but even local copying, say, me and my 10 friends sharing MP3's will result in a huge decrease in album purchases. And those purchases are what fund little money losing bands. Big artists fund the little ones in the current system, and without that, lots of little bands and experimental stuff will fall by the wayside. The only things which will get marketed will be superstar acts. Nothing else will make it. The big will get bigger and the small will get screwed. So think a little about the overall economics of the situation. The labels do some bad stuff, but they are pretty useful, too.
Maybe I'm, wrong, and big MP3 review sites will start doing a good job of reviewing all the independent labeled music out there, and selling it. If you think about it though, that is precisely what a big music label does. And they are really experienced.
Anyway, there needs to be some set of intermediaries between teh consumer and the information: Some kind of review, some kind of rankings, something to separate the wheat from the chaff. I suspect the labels will figure out a way to make sure it is them, and thats not such a bad deal
Yes, and the patent office is certainly guilty of not following this one up in any proper way. The problem lies in two main areas. First, lack of responsibility. The patent officer gets paid little, and their job metric is the how many patents they process--so why do them well? It is a shitty job for mediocre pay. And no one get fired for granting poor patents. FOr the company, there is no punishment for a company that gets a bad patent. So why not file anything you can? Second, small IC's and software represent a totally new form of intellectual property--and consequently no one really knows what to do. Is software even patentable? Should it be? Is anything really all that new. What about new implementations of old ideas? If I remake a walkman but use an flash memory as opposed to a tape, is there any important difference? If I write software to implement a known algortithm, or to make a catalog, (or auction!) do I deserve to patent the idea. The same thinking applies to system patents as well--is it possible to patent a way of processing information, or a coporate structure? More critically, is innovation stifled or helped in an environment where patenting is more difficult. I suggest that it is helped, counter to the prevailing aguements of the small investors. Perhaps they are correct, but I don't like this sort of opportunism. There has been some good thiniking done on the subject, but none of it has influenced those in a position to change things. Unfortunately, correcting the patent system isn't high on the national political agenda. I would like to hear anyone elses thoughts on the matter Brennan Brennan.Peterson@stanford.edu
I think the idea of their fiduciary duty is a key one. Consider it this way. You have a great idea , and you spend some time developing it. You get funding, prepare to go public, and then find that as great as your idea was, it wasn't original. Happens all the time, except now, your screwed. So your choice is, go bend over in front of the bankers, or try to put the squeeze on some little guy (relatively speaking) far away. That, I think, is how most of this happens. As for a general change of the patent system, it is incredibly unlikely. The system is self contradictory, drastically underfunded, and almost hopelessly out of date. Time would perhaps be better spent harassing you local congresspeople, rather than IRIX. And for any Europeans, beat your EU ministers with a big knobby stick before you let them make the laws match the system here. You at least have the chance to start from scratch with something reasonable...
There are a whole host of problems with this "development." First, producing a chip is not a small money venture. IT requires long term investements, support, and lots of people. This may be a great design, but there are billions of dollars between the chip design as it stands and full scale commercial production. At the very least a hundred million or so. That brings up the second point. Russia is very poor, and politically troubled. The support for this program comes from Moscows mayor, who is just one of many fomer communist hacks\business moguls who run russia today. Why trust someone who is so tied up in politics. If this was such a super chip, why didn't AMD buy it, or National Semi, or intel for that matter? Perhpas nobody from Elbrus is selling. But there are certainly enought large buyers out there. Anyway, that pretty much sums up my concerns. I think the elbrus chip may indeed be great. But I have significant doubts, and those are only increased by the adition of funding from moscow.
Actually, you are really close to correct. This technology is essentially a means of focusing light beyond the wavelength limit. The spot size of a focused beam is limited to the wavelenth of the light in question. this means that optical spots are forced to be fairly big. If you plkay some tricks with teh head design, though, you can overfocus the light. If you want to learn more, there's lots of neat information on the subject. Look up near field scanning optical microscopy. Unless I am really confused, the two techniques are essentially the same. As for data limitations, I thought terrastor's process was essentially temperatuer enhanced magnetic field recording. As far as I ever heard (and I admit, I didn't pay too much attention) there was no proof, ever, that what they did was really near field R/W. Perhaps it got fixed. As for the long term use, I think hard-drives still have a few years. There are some technical limits (namely the paramagnetic limit), but terrabyte high speed drives are certainly doable. Anyway, thats my two cents
Slashdot Mirror
Near Field requires about 70 angstroms, and it is really hard to make an air-bearing/lens system that is robust at those distances. Same problem as a hard drive, really, and then what have you gained.
There are real resons why media will top out in a few years. The superparamagnetic limit will be reached relatively soon. However, that will still gie us significantly more storage than we currently have.
ps Look in this thread for a replay from apogee. Then, if you have the balls, apologize on this forum for being a tool
http://www.shugashack.com/news_reply.x/6866/
This is a statement of basic copyright law. And so, yet again, we have 438 (at current count) people posting in complete and total ignorance. The point of this article is to stop people from using Apogee's trademarks for their own profit. Thus, I cannot start a porn site advertised as "Duke Nukems Sexy Ho's" without their consent. That is all.
Everyone here with a moderation above 2 (all 108 of you) showed a complete disregard for the truth, for the point of the law, and for apogee's explanation, and instead spent lots of time on a "fwck UCITA, and fwck those sell-outs" screed.
It is szd to see that slashdot has become such a monoculture. Stop reacting so much. Christ, the whole world isn't after you or your freedom. Relax.
Read a bit about most of the current laws. The introduction of the european system is a large part of what is going wrong with the patent system. Do you like the idea of first to file as opposed to first to invent. Or, to put in perspective, if you, the little german inventor, work out someting cool and new, but file a patent after BMW, you are screwed, completely, because their lawyer took 2 months to file and it took your little lawyer 8 months. 20 year terms are european. And business law patents stem directly from chemical methods patents.
In any case, I have noticed that engineers are usually about as dumb as lawyers. And judging from the contents of these responses, far more close minded.
No shit. Actually, what they need, and agree upon, is a better database. They don't do, and don't have time to, do full searches on all teh potential journals. Get them a better database, and more time to sort through it. I think they need 20-60 hours per patent, not 8.
And anyway, whats your better idea?
Well, what bothered me ws that the patent system is effectively a system for lawyers to tell scintists/inventors about the novelty of their field. That is a bit off.
One other question. Where are all the Slashdotters who spend half of each patent discussion criticising Coble? He made a useful, coherent sensible arguement, which is actually the norm. Oh well.
Finally, What is the argument for coputter programs deserving a different sort of protection. If the material is patentable (andI think it should be), the term ought to be the same. If the industry is in flux, so be it. If the system worked properly--obvious patents easily discarded, and novelty truly rewarded, what exactly is wrong with the current system, at least in principle? And why is it so different from other areas
You say the patent tax would go to the owner of the patent. That would be Amazon. That would be pointless.
You might mean a tax, so that every patented item gets taxed extra. Well, the point of patents is to encourage innovation, not discourage it.
So what you advocate is, in short, no patents. It has been tried, and failed miserably. Look up the history of drug development in India.
Finally, you can improve a patented idea. That is why patents require disclosure. THAT IS WHY THERE ARE PATENTS.
This little screed is exactly the reason I have pretty much given up on slashdot...poor reporting.
1) State Street said there is no absolute reason why a method can't be patented. This wasn't shocking. It was well reasoned and thought ought---barring the implications. The court might have thought that the patent office would continue to offer the same level of scrutiny, and everything would have been ok. Not the epitome of Solomnic wisdom, but not bad.
2) Many lawyers (most I have spoken to) hate the excessive patents. They have to do what their clients want. That is why they are hired.
3) Go read up on Howard Coble. He has tried to make copyright protection of databases work well for businesses and consumers. Databases will need some sort of protection. After all, If I set my computer to download the entire LEXIS database, and then offer it for free, why would useful information aggregators exist.
4) Absurdity (or obviousness) are defenses, always. No new rule would add it because it is already there. Uggh
5) Saying "everyone says" is not acceptable journalism. At least quote someone, as there are obviously lots of them out there.
I agree with teh idea--there are problems. This, however, is not the way to fix them.
Also, I think everyone needs to realize that many of the changes being considered are required because of the WTO. I like the WTO, and I would prefer free trade worldwide, but the European patent system is horrid--easy for lawayers, but bad for everyone else. Many of the proposed changes are there to mesh our system with teh worldwide agreements, and these are mostly bad ideas. It would be nice to read this somewhere, and discuss the relevant advantages and disadvantages. Maybe even talk about what a patent system should be, and how it should work.
ps. go look up what declaratory judgement means. Research is tricky, I know, but really, it will be worth your while. I want to become rich, then get a law degree and go after everyone in the business with declaratory judgements. Who's with me?
So I think this means everyting that this computer does will be video card limited. That is a really big bummer.
I would like to see a set of tests run on games. Did anyone notice how games were ignored at this conference. Supposedly, there was a new focus on games at apple. Mostly, I think, because there isn't any other good reason to have a faster computer. Intel knows this. They demo games or game-lijke things all the time. Now, I think apple is giving up that market again (ha, lets screw our loyal customers again!!!--I am sTeve Jobs and I wear black turtlenecks because I am eVil). Forgive me, sCary. Anyway, if apple makes an awesome q3 machine, and then POINTEDLY ignores the game playin mojo this box has, then there is a big problem for those interested in this box as a home machine.
Anyway, I would like to see macs succeed, and if I could get IDL and Matlab, I would consider it--but Apple screwed over all the developers, and now I can't even consider their product
Doh
Yes, but it is scale that matters. At synchrotrons, electrons hit 5-7 9's or so (.99999-.9999999 c), and protons can be accelated to tremendous rates (a few 9's) as well. Accelerating a kilogram of matter is a vastly, vastly more difficult procedure. Think of it instead of the kinetic energy that the matter has. Each kilogram has a kinetic energy of ~1*10^13 kj. This is equivalent to combusting 10^7 moles of octane, or 6*10^5 kg of gasoline.
I think it is about enough to vaporize one olympic size swimming pool of water. Consider, however, that a good fraction of a stars mass is accelerated, this is a number on the order of 10^30th kg, so the total energy is of the order 10^43 kJ. That _is_ alot. That is about enough to vaporize the earths ocean 10^20 times, or the entire solar system 10^10 times, give or take an order of magnitude or two
I think everyone is missing the basic point. Who has $2500+ to blow on a little hobby? It isn't going to be poor folk.
Women don't play because they didn't started to as kids, and there is a minimum level of games understanding that people need to have before they are comfortable playing a new game. I can go pick up any game and play comfortably in minutes. My sister cannot.
My question is, what did game playing replace as far as hobbys went. Was it sports (doubt it)? Or television? Beer brewing? Hardcore drug use? The Simpsons?!!!
This would then be precisely the same effect as GMR in reverse. A spin dependent tunneling junction could act as a memory. How is the current being applied then. My guess would be through an AFM/STM. IBm spent a _lot_ of time and money on spin polarised tunneling, and then it diappeared. A single read write head with an integrated SPSTM and MFM or GMR read head would work. This would integrate well with their work on large scal AFM integration.
t ml
Sorry about all of the acronyms. Too use to preaching to the choir. AFM is Atomic Force Microscopy--see http://www.di.com/products/ScanMethods/ScanMain.h
STM is scanning tunneling microscopy. see
http://www.almaden.ibm.com/vis/stm/ if you want to see some marvelous examples. IBM did invent the STM.
Finally, if this supposition is correct, then this isn't anything new. MRAMs are based on exactly this principle. I think it has been demonstrated with CMR (colossal magneto-resistive) materials, as well as with spin valves. An INSPEC search finds many of them
This can't work. For one, the virus would have to be as big as teh virus checker, and likely bigger. How could a virus see how it was being detected? It is read, and the data is processed in a way that the virus can't see. Mutating viruses would have to be random--no other way works. Self mutation requires intelligence. Just think about evolution--a worm doesn't change itself after a bird eats it.
Anyway, I don't think this approach is at all feasible, and I suspect it would help if you didn't use the word see--viri can't see.
Well, probly not. Electron beams are very, very slow. For making templates and lithography masks, they are fine--for anything else, they are way too slow
Well, you could space them 5-10 microns apart, I believe. that would be 100 heads per millimeter. It is possible to do better, but not too much. An array could be made with an effective 1 micron spacing, or 1000 per millimeter. Perhaps smaller. So transfer would be very, very, very large. However, you couldn't write to it. It is a "press only" solution.
Can't put your whole life on it
Transfer rate isn't limiting. It is possible (and IBM has done it) to make arays of 1000's of AFM read heads, with integrated electronics. These are lithographically patterned and etched, so don't present terrible difficulties. It is even possible to pattern a LED or laser onto the reader, and then couple an output fibre to that. Rates can be amazing.
divide 70 by percent growth and you get the doubling period. which is currently about 1.2 years. 6 years is then 32 times increase, 9.6 years is 256. But that is the rate for hard drives. Anyway, these sort or dries aren't writeable--ever. And with desktop terrabyte hard drives, why will you care for a non rewritable easily lost CD-ROM?
That can't be done. The resonant frequency is a function of the electrostatics of the surface. There isn't (to my knowledge) anyway of making a non-contact AFM work on multiple layers like that.
With an optical reader, that is possible, but not with a mechanical. This really is just like a needle on an old record player--you don't get to play the record stacked 5 layers below the top one.
I lived in Boulder for a long time, and we had the onion there as well. It was a localized version, too. Also, I think they signed a distribution deal with Borders, so any place that has Borders bookstores should have the Onion as well.
Well, there are a few things everyone here is forgetting. Most importantly, who sifts through teh junk to find the good music. That is what labels have spent years doing, and they will likely contiue to do so. When I get an album, I wnat something produced well, with good songs, and professional recording. I don't care if everyone is going to post their album and sell it. Most of them will really, really suck.
Second, obvious copying (big web sites with illegal mp3's) will be stopped, but even local copying, say, me and my 10 friends sharing MP3's will result in a huge decrease in album purchases. And those purchases are what fund little money losing bands. Big artists fund the little ones in the current system, and without that, lots of little bands and experimental stuff will fall by the wayside. The only things which will get marketed will be superstar acts. Nothing else will make it. The big will get bigger and the small will get screwed. So think a little about the overall economics of the situation. The labels do some bad stuff, but they are pretty useful, too.
Maybe I'm, wrong, and big MP3 review sites will start doing a good job of reviewing all the independent labeled music out there, and selling it. If you think about it though, that is precisely what a big music label does. And they are really experienced.
Anyway, there needs to be some set of intermediaries between teh consumer and the information: Some kind of review, some kind of rankings, something to separate the wheat from the chaff. I suspect the labels will figure out a way to make sure it is them, and thats not such a bad deal
Yes, and the patent office is certainly guilty of not following this one up in any proper way. The problem lies in two main areas. First, lack of responsibility. The patent officer gets paid little, and their job metric is the how many patents they process--so why do them well? It is a shitty job for mediocre pay. And no one get fired for granting poor patents. FOr the company, there is no punishment for a company that gets a bad patent. So why not file anything you can?
Second, small IC's and software represent a totally new form of intellectual property--and consequently no one really knows what to do. Is software even patentable? Should it be? Is anything really all that new. What about new implementations of old ideas? If I remake a walkman but use an flash memory as opposed to a tape, is there any important difference? If I write software to implement a known algortithm, or to make a catalog, (or auction!) do I deserve to patent the idea. The same thinking applies to system patents as well--is it possible to patent a way of processing information, or a coporate structure? More critically, is innovation stifled or helped in an environment where patenting is more difficult. I suggest that it is helped, counter to the prevailing aguements of the small investors. Perhaps they are correct, but I don't like this sort of opportunism.
There has been some good thiniking done on the subject, but none of it has influenced those in a position to change things. Unfortunately, correcting the patent system isn't high on the national political agenda. I would like to hear anyone elses thoughts on the matter
Brennan
Brennan.Peterson@stanford.edu
I think the idea of their fiduciary duty is a key one. Consider it this way. You have a great idea , and you spend some time developing it. You get funding, prepare to go public, and then find that as great as your idea was, it wasn't original. Happens all the time, except now, your screwed. So your choice is, go bend over in front of the bankers, or try to put the squeeze on some little guy (relatively speaking) far away. That, I think, is how most of this happens.
As for a general change of the patent system, it is incredibly unlikely. The system is self contradictory, drastically underfunded, and almost hopelessly out of date. Time would perhaps be better spent harassing you local congresspeople, rather than IRIX. And for any Europeans, beat your EU ministers with a big knobby stick before you let them make the laws match the system here. You at least have the chance to start from scratch with something reasonable...
There are a whole host of problems with this "development." First, producing a chip is not a small money venture. IT requires long term investements, support, and lots of people. This may be a great design, but there are billions of dollars between the chip design as it stands and full scale commercial production. At the very least a hundred million or so.
That brings up the second point. Russia is very poor, and politically troubled. The support for this program comes from Moscows mayor, who is just one of many fomer communist hacks\business moguls who run russia today. Why trust someone who is so tied up in politics. If this was such a super chip, why didn't AMD buy it, or National Semi, or intel for that matter? Perhpas nobody from Elbrus is selling. But there are certainly enought large buyers out there.
Anyway, that pretty much sums up my concerns. I think the elbrus chip may indeed be great. But I have significant doubts, and those are only increased by the adition of funding from moscow.
Actually, you are really close to correct. This technology is essentially a means of focusing light beyond the wavelength limit. The spot size of a focused beam is limited to the wavelenth of the light in question. this means that optical spots are forced to be fairly big. If you plkay some tricks with teh head design, though, you can overfocus the light. If you want to learn more, there's lots of neat information on the subject. Look up near field scanning optical microscopy. Unless I am really confused, the two techniques are essentially the same.
As for data limitations, I thought terrastor's process was essentially temperatuer enhanced magnetic field recording. As far as I ever heard (and I admit, I didn't pay too much attention) there was no proof, ever, that what they did was really near field R/W. Perhaps it got fixed. As for the long term use, I think hard-drives still have a few years. There are some technical limits (namely the paramagnetic limit), but terrabyte high speed drives are certainly doable. Anyway, thats my two cents