Actually, all patents are owned by the inventors - there is no way for the company to own it. You are thinking about the assignment or licensing that is completely locked in.
I own several dozen patents that are assigned/licensed to the companies that I worked for.
This a non-problem. Just charge a dollar per IP per year. Watch the IP blocks be returned quickly.
With so many addresses in use, the money should accumulate quickly. Pretty soon, there will be enough money to design a new IPV6NG that can actually work (as opposed to IPV6 does cannot be deployed).
For people who think IPV6 is the solution - it is an empirically observed fact that IPV6 has not been successfully deployed in any scale in several generations technology.
The Bad Guys (that is, the record labels acting through the government) shut down the site for a year. This is a WIN for the bad guys no matter how you look at it. Why are people celebrating? Heck, the lawyer can't even be sure of getting notices of extensions??? What kind of banana republic is this?
If they (the Bad Guys, see above) can do this at will, and it increasingly looks like they will be buying the laws they want, then USA has a whole new kind of copyright that is completely different from any old ideas of rights and fair use.
Enough lobbying money having been spent - Let the era of CopyWrong begin.
Feel free to pontificate without knowing what the application says. This post is for those few people who want to know of what they speak. The claim 1 says:
A computer-implemented method, comprising: at a portable electronic device with a touch screen display,displaying a set of messages exchanged between a user of the device and another person in a chronological order;detecting a scrolling gesture comprising a substantially vertical movement of a user contact with the touch screen display, wherein the detecting of the scrolling gesture is substantially independent of a horizontal position of the user contact with the touch screen display; and responding to the scrolling gesture by scrolling the display of messages in accordance with a direction of the scrolling gesture.
This means Apple is trying to patent the use of scrolling gestures for IM displays in chronological order.
Some quotes:
"they have demonstrated the Perepiteia to a number of labs and universities across North America, including the University of Virginia, Michigan State University, the University of Toronto and Queens University."
Prof. Habash of University of Ottawa looked at it: "It accelerates, but when it comes to an explanation, there is no backing theory for it. That's why we're consulting MIT. But at this time we can't support any claim."
Prof. Zahn of MIT: "It's an unusual phenomena I wouldn't have predicted in advance. But I saw it. It's real. Now I'm just trying to figure it out."
What I infer from this is that competent people have looked at it in some detail and were surprised, so it is possible that a new more efficient motor has been invented (it is also possible that some old forgotten motor is now more efficient because of new material, or any of a million possible outcomes.)
It is even possible that the professors forgot about magnetic brakes and other basic undergrad stuff; but I would not bet on that. It is also possible that this is a "con" but I also would not bet on that.
Some people seem very sure that this is non-sense. Would any of them like to give me 10-to-1 odds? That is, if turns out to be non-sense, I lose $1; it it turns out to be a more efficient motor, I win $10. (I will ignore the vanishingly small probability that it actually is revolutionary.) This means I am offering free money to people who are 100% sure. Even if you are only 95% sure, you still have positive expected value. On second thought, I have no desire to be jailed by some over-zealous police or DA when I am flying somewhere; so the bet will be for bragging rights only - no money.
Let's see, scholar.google.com shows Markus Zahn wrote a book "Electromagnetic Field Theory: A Problem Solving Approach" in 1979 (the first item in many publications); he is a professor at MIT - part of the Lab of Electromagnets and Electronic Systems. Gee, I wonder if he understands motors and magnetic brakes.
Clearly the professors (Markus Zahn and at least one other) have studied the invention and cannot explain the result. You, on the other hand, based on cursory information, understand every little detail. So typically slashdot: I took a course in university on the subject, so my opinion is better than the professors.
How quaint. You think this particular amendment will hold up better than others? Even in the face of the new statistics on the new Supremes? Even after Number 43 pulls a Musharraf? Remember, they have already wiped out habeas corpus, a little amendment is going to slow them down?
Come on, everybody knows that the people in power won't change the voting systems. Seriously, given that the current politicians were elected via the current system and that their only hope is to keep rigging the election, how can you expect them to change the system?
Oh, it's about the Dutch; that's ok then - those people care about their elections.
If you look carefully at their web-site (http://www.incits.org/), INCITS is the "InterNational...", not "Internation..."; and it "is the primary U.S. focus of standardization" and has only one vote on the real internationl body.
It is clear that IPv6 made several basic design decisions that, essentially, made IPv6 impossible to deploy. Prof. Bernstein pointed this out many years ago in http://cr.yp.to/djbdns/ipv6mess.html and there seems to have been no changes to make IPv6 deployable. As other people have pointed out, IEFT saying MUST means nothing - if they had the power, you would be reading slashdot over a IPv6 link already.
Basically, the problem is interoperability between IPv4 and IPv6. IPv6 is completely separate and not compatible with IPv4. This means there is no incentive for any server to go v6-only since there are all clients are v4; the most you can hope for is some servers going dual stack. There is no incentive for clients to go v6 since there will be servers that stay v4 and all severs will be at worst dual-stack, so there is no incentive for clients to go even dual-stack. When you figure in the cost of going dual-stack and the troubles that all ISP's will go through; there is huge incentive to stay v4. So it is surprising that the world has stayed IPv4?
You are exactly right! All those privacy nuts just don't understand that only terrorists and pedophiles hide behind anonymous comunications.
In the name of "War on horror-de-jour", we must immediately ban all forms of anonyumous communication:
before you can mail a letter, your identity must be authenticated by biometrics and the complete content of the letter entered into "The System" for later analysis
all telephone calls will also require biometric authentication
all walkie-talkies will have individual serial numbers, and the serial number must be transmitted every second. Since this is serious security, the serial number and the transmission hardware must be tamper-prove - expensive, but no amount of money is too much where security is concerned
Since terrorists can use strings to connect tin cans to make communication devices, possession of any can means life imprisionment at Gitmo.
Historically, many annonymous notes have been written on paper. We must institute a new system where paper is only available to authorised government agents; illegial possession of paper is also grounds for shippment to Gitmo.
The article in Wine Wiki explicitly says, "this page is meant for keeping track of this, without starting legal action or a publicity campaign yet.". (This seems to be dated June 30, the latest change).
Do people think the Wine folks are incompetent? What is the point of going against their explicit request?
It looks like Microsoft has been working on their innovation - after all, they have been talking about it for long enough. This time around, the Microsoft innovation is only a year behind the original.
Re:US military has one too: USAF Cyberspace Comman
on
China Crafts Cyberweapons
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
This is one of those irregular verbs:
By developing cyber weapons, US is defending freedom everywhere.
By developing cyber defenses, China is destablising the world.
By having computers, Iran is sponsoring terrorism.
To be serious about it, how can anyone be surprised that a major country is concerned about cyber-security?
If you read what you quoted, ".. sold... as of..."; what that quote says is that as of the magical "100 days after launch", "nearly 40 million" have been sold. This clearly includes all the pre-launch couples, and probably includes sales to OEM's. (OEM is different from retail sales: the manufacturer buys components, assembles the end-product and sells the end-products. Think resistor, when would a resistor maker count a sale?)
Also, please recall that MS was convicted of many cases of patent infringement as well as anti-trust suits. They are also well known for pumping up the number of XBox[360] sales, where they count shipments to retail channels. Make me wonder how you can justify"never do anything illegal or immoral".
It looks like no one has bothered to read the patent (even the original poster who kindly included a link to it).
The patent is NOT for a "doubly linked list". It is for multiple links to access the list in multiple orders. Note that a doubly linked list allows you to traverse the list forwards and backwards; whilc this patent claims to allow multiple different orders.
This is a non-trivial problem that comes up frequently enough that a general solution would be useful. I have not read the patent in enough to see how they handle insertions and deletions, so I have no way to know if it actually works, and is fast, etc.
It seems to me this loophole is already closed by (all of) the drafts of GPLv3. It does not matter which key owned by whom, the KEY TEST (sorry, can't resist) is whether a modified version will run. If TivoV3 uses Linus' signature as DRM, then TivoV3 must give the user a way to sign using Linus' key; which means TivoV3 would be stuck.
The second draft is very explicit and well thought-out; the question is whether you agree with the intent. On the one side, RMS (and an all-star cast) with a strong philosophical position supported by well thought-out arguments. On the other hand, Linus with some spur of the moment comments opposing RMS (at least I hope Linus' comments are spur of the moment because his position is not well articulated).
Clearly, Microsoft expected a lot of problems - this is why they so severely restricted supply. The beta test will last a few weeks, then the supply will be cranked up when the 360 goes RTM.
I thought Prof. DJB explained it very clearly in his article, so I didn't go into the details. Since you say you read the article, but still don't understand the problem, I will try to expand on the details.
The context of all this is the Networking Effect. For example, if I get a phone, I want to be able to call as many phones as possible; which mean if there are competing disjoint phone networks, I will likely choose the biggest one. Things will quickly evolve to a single network that includes everyone. The history of computing and networking is filled with examples of a single (possibly inferior) technology or product taking over the whole market. Some people don't like this, or object to it for philosophical reasons; but that does not change reality.
In the IPv6 discussion, it is very difficult to upgrade from IPv4 to IPv6. DJB calls it an "Interoperability failure". Since the Internet is the prime example of networking effect, new entrants must be able to talk to the net. Think about it, the point of the internet is to talk to the other systems on the net; why would I do somthing to lessen my reach?
IPv6 is defined a way that an IPv6 client cannot access an IPv4 web server, this means there is strong motivation for client to stay on IPv4 and not move to IPv6. Similarly, there is strong motivation for servers to stay on IPv4. End result is what is happening now - no adoption. Sure, it is possible to run IPv4 and IPv6 side by side; but why should I?
There will be no transition until the definition is changed.
Note that this has nothing to do with the underlying technology. You can say that pure IPv6 is easier/cheaper/faster for the wire/router/switch/stack, that may be true but still irrelevant. You may say upwards compatible mixed IPv4/6 systems are not possible, that still does not change the adoption problem - IPv6 will not be adopted as is. The two facets are independent and any winning solution *must* solve both problems.
The only way these legacy systems (and IPv4 is nothing but legacy) change is by small evolutionary steps.
The problem is simple - there are three groups of people with different demands; the scientist who want really accurate (and predictable) time, the peasants who want to "rise with the sun", and the star gazers who like to know the rotation of earth. It is impossible to reconcille the demands of all three groups.
In the old days, when the sundials were not very accurate, one time systems could keep everyone happy. When clocks got accurate enough, time zones became useful. With atomic clocks, leap second became useful. (I won't mention Daylight Saving Time since changeing the clock don't seem to actually change the rotational dynamics of the solar system, which means the amount of daylight doesn't actually change anywhere.)
The only sensible long term solution is to define multiple standards - the peasants can use local time (with single/double/triple daylight saving), globe trotters use UCT/GMT and scientists should just define an absolute time. We already have the first two and people who have to deal with possible complications already use GMT.
We have the technology to keep multiple times, it is much easier to convert as needed.
Instead of just talking, I looked at the data files. Several points are clear:
OpenOffice loads reasonably fast, so it is not bloated in the classical sense.
The example is 3 megabytes in.sxc and 188 meg in.xml. Interestingly, the file properties say "Patrick W. Jones" modifed Sept 13, 2005.
OpenOffice 2.0 takes a long time to do anything with this example - open, write, anything.
The example is basically a table of 16K rows by 13 columns of data, repeated for several sheets. There is no calcalation that I saw (in a very quick look).
The GUI repaints very slowly on this example. Unclear if this is due to Java, more likely reason is that this is another symptom of the same slowness with large sheets
This example may be unusual, but is not completely artifical.
I think it is clear that for large sheets (at least for this example), OpenOffice 2.0 calc is unusable. I am gusssing that there is a quardratic data-structure/code somewhere (without knowing anything about the source code, I am willing to bet that each time a row is needed, all the rows are scanned; or something like that).
On the other hand, this is a.0 release, so let's wait for the fixes.
A typical response - "we (the USA) paid for it". If that were true, I for one would be happy to leave in US hands. As it is, being Canadian, I pay for my monthly access, which goes to my ISP who built their own network and pay the monthly operating costs.
If you look at the total backbone infrastructure, I would be willing be bet that all the bit are moving over fibre paid for during the telecom bubble - none of it US government money.
Even if you look at the investment into the basic science and development, it would be difficult to argue that USA paid for it all. There has been lots of advances done by individuals (in universities and industry), by government organization (USA, Europe and elsewhere). The RFC's were all "free" work by everyone. Hack, the Web (which is what most people know) was invented in Europe.
It is fairly silly to claim the USA paid for the net (it is toally nuts to claim the USA is paying the it now).
Since there seems to be a fairly number people blocking all Chinese IP ranges, does this skew the measurements that are made on the effectiveness of the Great Firewall? Perhaps the Great FIrewall is not as effective as thought?
Taking this a step further, would this not count as a part of the Great Firewall? This would be better that any technical feature added to the wall. Ironic, isn't it.
Slashdot Mirror
Actually, all patents are owned by the inventors - there is no way for the company to own it. You are thinking about the assignment or licensing that is completely locked in. I own several dozen patents that are assigned/licensed to the companies that I worked for.
This a non-problem. Just charge a dollar per IP per year. Watch the IP blocks be returned quickly.
With so many addresses in use, the money should accumulate quickly. Pretty soon, there will be enough money to design a new IPV6NG that can actually work (as opposed to IPV6 does cannot be deployed).
For people who think IPV6 is the solution - it is an empirically observed fact that IPV6 has not been successfully deployed in any scale in several generations technology.
The Bad Guys (that is, the record labels acting through the government) shut down the site for a year. This is a WIN for the bad guys no matter how you look at it. Why are people celebrating? Heck, the lawyer can't even be sure of getting notices of extensions??? What kind of banana republic is this? If they (the Bad Guys, see above) can do this at will, and it increasingly looks like they will be buying the laws they want, then USA has a whole new kind of copyright that is completely different from any old ideas of rights and fair use. Enough lobbying money having been spent - Let the era of CopyWrong begin.
This means Apple is trying to patent the use of scrolling gestures for IM displays in chronological order.
A much more informative article is at http://www.electro-tech-online.com/chit-chat/36096-another-perpetual-motion-machine-mit-professor-stumped-one.html
Some quotes:
"they have demonstrated the Perepiteia to a number of labs and universities across North America, including the University of Virginia, Michigan State University, the University of Toronto and Queens University."
Prof. Habash of University of Ottawa looked at it: "It accelerates, but when it comes to an explanation, there is no backing theory for it. That's why we're consulting MIT. But at this time we can't support any claim."
Prof. Zahn of MIT: "It's an unusual phenomena I wouldn't have predicted in advance. But I saw it. It's real. Now I'm just trying to figure it out."
What I infer from this is that competent people have looked at it in some detail and were surprised, so it is possible that a new more efficient motor has been invented (it is also possible that some old forgotten motor is now more efficient because of new material, or any of a million possible outcomes.)
It is even possible that the professors forgot about magnetic brakes and other basic undergrad stuff; but I would not bet on that. It is also possible that this is a "con" but I also would not bet on that.
Some people seem very sure that this is non-sense. Would any of them like to give me 10-to-1 odds? That is, if turns out to be non-sense, I lose $1; it it turns out to be a more efficient motor, I win $10. (I will ignore the vanishingly small probability that it actually is revolutionary.) This means I am offering free money to people who are 100% sure. Even if you are only 95% sure, you still have positive expected value. On second thought, I have no desire to be jailed by some over-zealous police or DA when I am flying somewhere; so the bet will be for bragging rights only - no money.
Let's see, scholar.google.com shows Markus Zahn wrote a book "Electromagnetic Field Theory: A Problem Solving Approach" in 1979 (the first item in many publications); he is a professor at MIT - part of the Lab of Electromagnets and Electronic Systems. Gee, I wonder if he understands motors and magnetic brakes.
Clearly the professors (Markus Zahn and at least one other) have studied the invention and cannot explain the result. You, on the other hand, based on cursory information, understand every little detail. So typically slashdot: I took a course in university on the subject, so my opinion is better than the professors.
How quaint. You think this particular amendment will hold up better than others? Even in the face of the new statistics on the new Supremes? Even after Number 43 pulls a Musharraf? Remember, they have already wiped out habeas corpus, a little amendment is going to slow them down?
Oh, it's about the Dutch; that's ok then - those people care about their elections.
My canonical reference for these things is Andy Updegrove's blog (http://consortiuminfo.org/standardsblog/).
It is clear that IPv6 made several basic design decisions that, essentially, made IPv6 impossible to deploy. Prof. Bernstein pointed this out many years ago in http://cr.yp.to/djbdns/ipv6mess.html and there seems to have been no changes to make IPv6 deployable. As other people have pointed out, IEFT saying MUST means nothing - if they had the power, you would be reading slashdot over a IPv6 link already.
Basically, the problem is interoperability between IPv4 and IPv6. IPv6 is completely separate and not compatible with IPv4. This means there is no incentive for any server to go v6-only since there are all clients are v4; the most you can hope for is some servers going dual stack. There is no incentive for clients to go v6 since there will be servers that stay v4 and all severs will be at worst dual-stack, so there is no incentive for clients to go even dual-stack. When you figure in the cost of going dual-stack and the troubles that all ISP's will go through; there is huge incentive to stay v4. So it is surprising that the world has stayed IPv4?
The article in Wine Wiki explicitly says, "this page is meant for keeping track of this, without starting legal action or a publicity campaign yet.". (This seems to be dated June 30, the latest change).
Do people think the Wine folks are incompetent? What is the point of going against their explicit request?
It looks like Microsoft has been working on their innovation - after all, they have been talking about it for long enough. This time around, the Microsoft innovation is only a year behind the original.
This is one of those irregular verbs:
By developing cyber weapons, US is defending freedom everywhere.
By developing cyber defenses, China is destablising the world.
By having computers, Iran is sponsoring terrorism.
To be serious about it, how can anyone be surprised that a major country is concerned about cyber-security?
If you read what you quoted, ".. sold ... as of ..."; what that quote says is that as of the magical "100 days after launch", "nearly 40 million" have been sold. This clearly includes all the pre-launch couples, and probably includes sales to OEM's. (OEM is different from retail sales: the manufacturer buys components, assembles the end-product and sells the end-products. Think resistor, when would a resistor maker count a sale?)
Also, please recall that MS was convicted of many cases of patent infringement as well as anti-trust suits. They are also well known for pumping up the number of XBox[360] sales, where they count shipments to retail channels. Make me wonder how you can justify"never do anything illegal or immoral".
It looks like no one has bothered to read the patent (even the original poster who kindly included a link to it).
The patent is NOT for a "doubly linked list". It is for multiple links to access the list in multiple orders. Note that a doubly linked list allows you to traverse the list forwards and backwards; whilc this patent claims to allow multiple different orders.
This is a non-trivial problem that comes up frequently enough that a general solution would be useful. I have not read the patent in enough to see how they handle insertions and deletions, so I have no way to know if it actually works, and is fast, etc.
It seems to me this loophole is already closed by (all of) the drafts of GPLv3. It does not matter which key owned by whom, the KEY TEST (sorry, can't resist) is whether a modified version will run. If TivoV3 uses Linus' signature as DRM, then TivoV3 must give the user a way to sign using Linus' key; which means TivoV3 would be stuck.
The second draft is very explicit and well thought-out; the question is whether you agree with the intent. On the one side, RMS (and an all-star cast) with a strong philosophical position supported by well thought-out arguments. On the other hand, Linus with some spur of the moment comments opposing RMS (at least I hope Linus' comments are spur of the moment because his position is not well articulated).
Clearly, Microsoft expected a lot of problems - this is why they so severely restricted supply. The beta test will last a few weeks, then the supply will be cranked up when the 360 goes RTM.
I thought Prof. DJB explained it very clearly in his article, so I didn't go into the details. Since you say you read the article, but still don't understand the problem, I will try to expand on the details.
The context of all this is the Networking Effect. For example, if I get a phone, I want to be able to call as many phones as possible; which mean if there are competing disjoint phone networks, I will likely choose the biggest one. Things will quickly evolve to a single network that includes everyone. The history of computing and networking is filled with examples of a single (possibly inferior) technology or product taking over the whole market. Some people don't like this, or object to it for philosophical reasons; but that does not change reality.
In the IPv6 discussion, it is very difficult to upgrade from IPv4 to IPv6. DJB calls it an "Interoperability failure". Since the Internet is the prime example of networking effect, new entrants must be able to talk to the net. Think about it, the point of the internet is to talk to the other systems on the net; why would I do somthing to lessen my reach?
IPv6 is defined a way that an IPv6 client cannot access an IPv4 web server, this means there is strong motivation for client to stay on IPv4 and not move to IPv6. Similarly, there is strong motivation for servers to stay on IPv4. End result is what is happening now - no adoption. Sure, it is possible to run IPv4 and IPv6 side by side; but why should I?
There will be no transition until the definition is changed.
Note that this has nothing to do with the underlying technology. You can say that pure IPv6 is easier/cheaper/faster for the wire/router/switch/stack, that may be true but still irrelevant. You may say upwards compatible mixed IPv4/6 systems are not possible, that still does not change the adoption problem - IPv6 will not be adopted as is. The two facets are independent and any winning solution *must* solve both problems.
The only way these legacy systems (and IPv4 is nothing but legacy) change is by small evolutionary steps.
Prof. D. J. Bernstein has an excellent summary of why he is
not changing his programs to use IPv6.
http://cr.yp.to/djbdns/ipv6mess.html
Basically, IPv6 is *not* compatible with IPv4, it requires a
whole new parallel system *everywhere* so it will never happen.
The problem is simple - there are three groups of people with different demands; the scientist who want really accurate (and predictable) time, the peasants who want to "rise with the sun", and the star gazers who like to know the rotation of earth. It is impossible to reconcille the demands of all three groups.
In the old days, when the sundials were not very accurate, one time systems could keep everyone happy. When clocks got accurate enough, time zones became useful. With atomic clocks, leap second became useful. (I won't mention Daylight Saving Time since changeing the clock don't seem to actually change the rotational dynamics of the solar system, which means the amount of daylight doesn't actually change anywhere.)
The only sensible long term solution is to define multiple standards - the peasants can use local time (with single/double/triple daylight saving), globe trotters use UCT/GMT and scientists should just define an absolute time. We already have the first two and people who have to deal with possible complications already use GMT.
We have the technology to keep multiple times, it is much easier to convert as needed.
Your math is wrong. The *growth* is from 8.7% to 11.5%; so the correct calculation is (2.8/8.7) * 100 = 32%.
Your calculation would be right for: the old number is 24% lower. This busines of growth catches a lot of people.
I think it is clear that for large sheets (at least for this example), OpenOffice 2.0 calc is unusable. I am gusssing that there is a quardratic data-structure/code somewhere (without knowing anything about the source code, I am willing to bet that each time a row is needed, all the rows are scanned; or something like that).
On the other hand, this is a
A typical response - "we (the USA) paid for it". If that were true, I for one would be happy to leave in US hands. As it is, being Canadian, I pay for my monthly access, which goes to my ISP who built their own network and pay the monthly operating costs.
If you look at the total backbone infrastructure, I would be willing be bet that all the bit are moving over fibre paid for during the telecom bubble - none of it US government money.
Even if you look at the investment into the basic science and development, it would be difficult to argue that USA paid for it all. There has been lots of advances done by individuals (in universities and industry), by government organization (USA, Europe and elsewhere). The RFC's were all "free" work by everyone. Hack, the Web (which is what most people know) was invented in Europe.
It is fairly silly to claim the USA paid for the net (it is toally nuts to claim the USA is paying the it now).
Since there seems to be a fairly number people blocking all Chinese IP ranges, does this skew the measurements that are made on the effectiveness of the Great Firewall? Perhaps the Great FIrewall is not as effective as thought?
Taking this a step further, would this not count as a part of the Great Firewall? This would be better that any technical feature added to the wall. Ironic, isn't it.