The about section of the website for the lawyer prosecuting this is hillarious... not only has he only graduated law school THIS year, but read this:
The connection between patent law and unique fictional storylines necessary to conceive of Storyline Patents may never have been made if Andrew Knight did not occasionally dabble in fiction.
I guess that seeped into his patent applications themselves too.
He also seems excited about a business model for advertising only a link to a web page in your local classified ads, and posting most of the info on a custom-named website. Prior art is everywhere, including an EXACT implementation of his patent I did a couple years ago to sell my car: www.cazabon.com/car (even the format of the URL is identical!)
Exactly - he's trying to get fees from both ends. What he doesn't realize is that without one of the two ends (consumer / content provider), he has no business to begin with.
This won't fly. Google will tell him to piss off. If he threatens to cut Google's access to "his" pipes, then he's reducing the quality of service he provides to his consumers/customers (even ISP's if he's sub-letting). Eventually his service is useless and he loses his customers.
He can charge ONE of the two parties - not both. Content providers might pay for access if they're given a large audience (advertising / sales supported). Consumers will pay if there is lots of useful content.
Let him own the pipes. They'll be empty, lonely, dark pipes in the very near future.
What could Sony possibly gain from opening up the PSP hardware to homebrew apps? Sure, they may sell a few additional PSP's to the homebrew market, but they don't make any money on those anyways (likely they lose money).
They're much more likely to LOSE game revenue to freely available (or cracked) software than anything else.
Don't expect Sony to be happy or helpful with this. They have no reason to.
There's a difference between cutting your hair in a particular (un-approved) fashion and not being able to grow your hair in the desired fasion in the first place. It'd be just the same as kicking out a bald guy.
In any case, I'd hate to be the headmaster at a school that tried to kick out a cancer-stricken child for violating the haircut policy!:)
But if a non-state school has a "no blogs" rule they are within their rights to exclude you if you have a blog. Likewise with haircuts - some (non-state) schools have short haircut policies. Don't like it, go somewhere else.
You bring your haircut with you to school... it's part of your school life. As long as the kids aren't blogging from school, or perhaps promoting their blog at school, the school doesn't have ANY right to even discuss the subject.
Maybe the school can sue students for slander if they post libelous statements on their blogs about the school... but that's where it stops.
Legally it may be different because a private school is essentially a private business, but I sure hope not.
You can make a rough guess of their capabilities based on HUBBLE imagery, and add some factors for super-secret NSA abilities on top of that.
Last time I was bored, I took a look at some raw Hubble images of Pluto, calculated the distance between Hubble and Earth on the day the picture was supposedly taken, and worked out the angle of view for 1 pixel of uninterpolated data from Hubble. Taking that angle down from Hubble's orbit height to Earth resulted in resolution just slightly better than 1" per pixel.
The NSA supposedly has at LEAST Hubble resolution, if not remarkably better.
But what about the cost/bulk of the supporting electronics? Even if the screen costs $0.10 to put on a box, the electronics to play the video would certainly add much much more. That isn't economical for disposable distribution.
Most people - the overwhelming majority - are not competent to use a general purpose computer. They don't understand about basic things like security and backups. Consequently their machines are crawling with viruses and trojans, and when eventually they have a hardware problem they lose, in many cases, months or even years of work.
For these people, a thin client web appliance using applications hosted remotely on machines maintained by competent people makes a huge amount of sense. And, frankly, that's 90+% of the whole population, so this is potentially a very big market.
Well, two holes in your statements:
1) in a corporate environment, security and virus checking is much tighter than your average home user. Sure, it's not perfect and some companies suck at it, but on the whole these issues SHOULD be manageable by most. Guess what? Companies would be the primary target market for such web apps. From my house, I wouldn't be caught DEAD using a web-based program to do my finances or personal work (due to reliability as much as security).
2) home users would benefit most by offloading security concerns to a web-based server and using a think client, because they're much more likely to have no skills at this and have problems. They also are more likely to install crapware. However, as above - the reliability and security issues for this would be a HUGE concern. Plus - home computers are used extensively for stuff like gaming that isn't (yet) applicable to such a model.
In theory it's a good solution, but in application it's not suitable for the right markets.
You also forget that one of the reasons RIPping files is so common and easy is that it can be done at 50x normal playing speed. RIPping with a line out / line in system can ONLY be done at 1x speed. It'll take you an hour to RIP one CD. This alone would limit the use of such a system, so that it's not a major threat to the copyright holders.
360 degree views using a 180 degree lens are perfectly possible: you're just not looking at it right.
If you point the lens directly UP (or down even), then it will cover 360 degrees around you. You could extract a 360 panorama from that fish-eye image and remove the distortion fairly easily (although it would be processing intensive).
I guess that Apple wasted a lot of time and resources putting a slick, functional user interface on top of a unix/linux kernel then.:)
Photoshop is popular not only because it's powerful... the user interface is pretty darned good too (although not perfect).
GimpShop isn't for everyone, sure - but grow up... if the guy is willing to put in the effort, and people like it, then what's their problem? Why work against someone doing stuff like this?
You also forget that NASA is a "serious" govenment science agency... they're not about to start saying that X is caused by Y until they're SURE about it. Sure, it's likely, but I'd be disappointed if they routinely concluded cause/effect quickly for stuff like this.
(you may argue the statement about seriousness all you want - but the point is the same for any science institution).
WHen a (SCO-shill) reporter published info about the woman that runs Groklaw, everybody slammed the reporter... now that someone is doing the same thing to Google, they're slamming Google for their response...
Wow... I know this is Slashdot, but the triple-standards still surprise me.:)
(Yes, I know the Groklaw story was a more personal and unwarranted attack thank the Google one)
In this case you're wrong... nobody said that the interface wasn't patented, just that APPLE couldn't patent it. It's fully possible that the guy that filed the patent 5 months previously could wave that around a bit.
You're not really comparing apples to apples here... although I'm not disputing the argument that film will be around for a long time (hell, even Black&White film is still around).
>> she says that standard digital SLR is still not high resolution enough to be blown up to 6ft on the wall of an art gallery - for that, you need medium format or at a push 35mm slide film.
Ok... but you wouldn't do that with a 35mm film camera either. There ARE medium-format digital cameras (equivalents) with 20MP or more of resolution that could do this easily. There are even scanning backs for view cameras that can give you 1GB sized image files (I've done photo-quality 4x10 foot posters from this on a photo output device, you can't tell them from the BEST photo prints).
Digital technology is there quality wise... maybe not on a portability/convenience/price level though.
Lastly - your comments about chromatic abberation are not quite accurate... the more likely cause of the issue you mention is due to the fact that standard CCD/CMOS digital cameras have only 1/3 the amount of pixels for each color (Red, Green, Blue), and GUESS at the rest - this interpolation can cause issues. High-end cameras have 3 CCD's (or other cool technology to achieve the same effect, check out Sigma's SLR) so each pixel has real data for EACH of the color channels.
>>So if you have your door open in summer, I'm welcome to walk into your house and help myself to some of the cookies that are on the kitchen table?
Bad analogy - that would involve tresspass; there is a physical boundary of someone else's property that implies private access.
A better analogy would be if those cookies were floating through the air, coming in MY window and out my door, and I happened to eat a few as they went by.
Although it may not reflect the law, I personally believe that unsecured wifi should be public domain. WEP (even 1-bit for god's sake, to show that the intention for it to be private) should be enabled by default on routers, and it should be blatantly clear that you're providing public access (with consent) if you turn it off.
I meant the other way around... in this case, Microsoft would have to pay him for the whole duration of the non-compete, so that Google couldn't hire him.
Google offering to pay him for the period he couldn't work is not necessary - but I guess they're just trying to secure him as an employee at the earliest possible moment, so that he doesn't go elsewhere in the meantime.
However, that's not necessarily true in this case; only my personal experience based on different jurisdictions.
in my experience (based on legal challenges from both sides of the fence) is that in many jurisdictions you cannot prevent someone from earning a living.
The only bullet-proof way to enforce a non-compete is to pay the person severance for the entire period of the non-compete, over and above any legal minimum severance. Expensive, but it works if the value to the company is high enough.
It's not just because people are biased against non-brand-name products, but would you spend $500 on a product from a company you're not sure will be around in 6 months for support?
So: no confidence in small company = slow sales. slow sales = failing company failing company = no sales
Slashdot Mirror
The about section of the website for the lawyer prosecuting this is hillarious... not only has he only graduated law school THIS year, but read this:
:)
The connection between patent law and unique fictional storylines necessary to conceive of Storyline Patents may never have been made if Andrew Knight did not occasionally dabble in fiction.
I guess that seeped into his patent applications themselves too.
He also seems excited about a business model for advertising only a link to a web page in your local classified ads, and posting most of the info on a custom-named website. Prior art is everywhere, including an EXACT implementation of his patent I did a couple years ago to sell my car: www.cazabon.com/car (even the format of the URL is identical!)
How do I submit prior art to bust that one?
MadCow
Exactly - he's trying to get fees from both ends. What he doesn't realize is that without one of the two ends (consumer / content provider), he has no business to begin with.
This won't fly. Google will tell him to piss off. If he threatens to cut Google's access to "his" pipes, then he's reducing the quality of service he provides to his consumers/customers (even ISP's if he's sub-letting). Eventually his service is useless and he loses his customers.
He can charge ONE of the two parties - not both. Content providers might pay for access if they're given a large audience (advertising / sales supported). Consumers will pay if there is lots of useful content.
Let him own the pipes. They'll be empty, lonely, dark pipes in the very near future.
MadCow.
What could Sony possibly gain from opening up the PSP hardware to homebrew apps? Sure, they may sell a few additional PSP's to the homebrew market, but they don't make any money on those anyways (likely they lose money).
They're much more likely to LOSE game revenue to freely available (or cracked) software than anything else.
Don't expect Sony to be happy or helpful with this. They have no reason to.
MadCow.
There's a difference between cutting your hair in a particular (un-approved) fashion and not being able to grow your hair in the desired fasion in the first place. It'd be just the same as kicking out a bald guy.
:)
In any case, I'd hate to be the headmaster at a school that tried to kick out a cancer-stricken child for violating the haircut policy!
MadCow
But if a non-state school has a "no blogs" rule they are within their rights to exclude you if you have a blog. Likewise with haircuts - some (non-state) schools have short haircut policies. Don't like it, go somewhere else.
You bring your haircut with you to school... it's part of your school life. As long as the kids aren't blogging from school, or perhaps promoting their blog at school, the school doesn't have ANY right to even discuss the subject.
Maybe the school can sue students for slander if they post libelous statements on their blogs about the school... but that's where it stops.
Legally it may be different because a private school is essentially a private business, but I sure hope not.
MadCow.
You can make a rough guess of their capabilities based on HUBBLE imagery, and add some factors for super-secret NSA abilities on top of that.
Last time I was bored, I took a look at some raw Hubble images of Pluto, calculated the distance between Hubble and Earth on the day the picture was supposedly taken, and worked out the angle of view for 1 pixel of uninterpolated data from Hubble. Taking that angle down from Hubble's orbit height to Earth resulted in resolution just slightly better than 1" per pixel.
The NSA supposedly has at LEAST Hubble resolution, if not remarkably better.
(conspiracy theories, here we come...)
MadCow.
But what about the cost/bulk of the supporting electronics? Even if the screen costs $0.10 to put on a box, the electronics to play the video would certainly add much much more. That isn't economical for disposable distribution.
MadCow
Most people - the overwhelming majority - are not competent to use a general purpose computer. They don't understand about basic things like security and backups. Consequently their machines are crawling with viruses and trojans, and when eventually they have a hardware problem they lose, in many cases, months or even years of work.
For these people, a thin client web appliance using applications hosted remotely on machines maintained by competent people makes a huge amount of sense. And, frankly, that's 90+% of the whole population, so this is potentially a very big market.
Well, two holes in your statements:
1) in a corporate environment, security and virus checking is much tighter than your average home user. Sure, it's not perfect and some companies suck at it, but on the whole these issues SHOULD be manageable by most. Guess what? Companies would be the primary target market for such web apps. From my house, I wouldn't be caught DEAD using a web-based program to do my finances or personal work (due to reliability as much as security).
2) home users would benefit most by offloading security concerns to a web-based server and using a think client, because they're much more likely to have no skills at this and have problems. They also are more likely to install crapware. However, as above - the reliability and security issues for this would be a HUGE concern. Plus - home computers are used extensively for stuff like gaming that isn't (yet) applicable to such a model.
In theory it's a good solution, but in application it's not suitable for the right markets.
MadCow.
You also forget that one of the reasons RIPping files is so common and easy is that it can be done at 50x normal playing speed. RIPping with a line out / line in system can ONLY be done at 1x speed. It'll take you an hour to RIP one CD. This alone would limit the use of such a system, so that it's not a major threat to the copyright holders.
MadCow.
360 degree views using a 180 degree lens are perfectly possible: you're just not looking at it right.
If you point the lens directly UP (or down even), then it will cover 360 degrees around you. You could extract a 360 panorama from that fish-eye image and remove the distortion fairly easily (although it would be processing intensive).
MadCow
Why not just project "Copyright 2005 RIAA" in infrared on everything? :)
MadCow.
I guess that Apple wasted a lot of time and resources putting a slick, functional user interface on top of a unix/linux kernel then. :)
Photoshop is popular not only because it's powerful... the user interface is pretty darned good too (although not perfect).
GimpShop isn't for everyone, sure - but grow up... if the guy is willing to put in the effort, and people like it, then what's their problem? Why work against someone doing stuff like this?
MadCow.
I agree 100%... if you buy a system without considering the games available for it FIRST, then you'll be stuck with the next DreamCast.
:)
DreamCast was great technology for it's time - beyond anything the others had then. But it flopped due to lack of titles. I have one if you want it.
MadCow.
You also forget that NASA is a "serious" govenment science agency... they're not about to start saying that X is caused by Y until they're SURE about it. Sure, it's likely, but I'd be disappointed if they routinely concluded cause/effect quickly for stuff like this.
(you may argue the statement about seriousness all you want - but the point is the same for any science institution).
MadCow.
>> the quality of the so-called "translation" spat out by Babelfish make me feel a lot better about my long-term job security...
It don't make me feel so goods about you job security. q:]
Personally, I'd love to use a password with an MD5 hash that came out something like "FyoMamaSysAdmin"... any tools for generating THAT? :)
MadCow.
WHen a (SCO-shill) reporter published info about the woman that runs Groklaw, everybody slammed the reporter... now that someone is doing the same thing to Google, they're slamming Google for their response...
:)
Wow... I know this is Slashdot, but the triple-standards still surprise me.
(Yes, I know the Groklaw story was a more personal and unwarranted attack thank the Google one)
>>competition can easily copy their interface
In this case you're wrong... nobody said that the interface wasn't patented, just that APPLE couldn't patent it. It's fully possible that the guy that filed the patent 5 months previously could wave that around a bit.
MadCow.
You're not really comparing apples to apples here... although I'm not disputing the argument that film will be around for a long time (hell, even Black&White film is still around).
>> she says that standard digital SLR is still not high resolution enough to be blown up to 6ft on the wall of an art gallery - for that, you need medium format or at a push 35mm slide film.
Ok... but you wouldn't do that with a 35mm film camera either. There ARE medium-format digital cameras (equivalents) with 20MP or more of resolution that could do this easily. There are even scanning backs for view cameras that can give you 1GB sized image files (I've done photo-quality 4x10 foot posters from this on a photo output device, you can't tell them from the BEST photo prints).
Digital technology is there quality wise... maybe not on a portability/convenience/price level though.
Lastly - your comments about chromatic abberation are not quite accurate... the more likely cause of the issue you mention is due to the fact that standard CCD/CMOS digital cameras have only 1/3 the amount of pixels for each color (Red, Green, Blue), and GUESS at the rest - this interpolation can cause issues. High-end cameras have 3 CCD's (or other cool technology to achieve the same effect, check out Sigma's SLR) so each pixel has real data for EACH of the color channels.
MadCow.
>>So if you have your door open in summer, I'm welcome to walk into your house and help myself to some of the cookies that are on the kitchen table?
Bad analogy - that would involve tresspass; there is a physical boundary of someone else's property that implies private access.
A better analogy would be if those cookies were floating through the air, coming in MY window and out my door, and I happened to eat a few as they went by.
Although it may not reflect the law, I personally believe that unsecured wifi should be public domain. WEP (even 1-bit for god's sake, to show that the intention for it to be private) should be enabled by default on routers, and it should be blatantly clear that you're providing public access (with consent) if you turn it off.
MadCow.
I just wrote a little script that writes random crap the the hard drives until they're full. Then, it deletes everything and starts over.
Run that a dozen times or so (automated) then do a low level format, and anyone that can reconstruct the data is welcome to it.
My drives undergo this on the free space automatically every night (without the format of course)... just in case.
MadCow.
I meant the other way around... in this case, Microsoft would have to pay him for the whole duration of the non-compete, so that Google couldn't hire him.
Google offering to pay him for the period he couldn't work is not necessary - but I guess they're just trying to secure him as an employee at the earliest possible moment, so that he doesn't go elsewhere in the meantime.
However, that's not necessarily true in this case; only my personal experience based on different jurisdictions.
Kevin.
in my experience (based on legal challenges from both sides of the fence) is that in many jurisdictions you cannot prevent someone from earning a living.
The only bullet-proof way to enforce a non-compete is to pay the person severance for the entire period of the non-compete, over and above any legal minimum severance. Expensive, but it works if the value to the company is high enough.
MadCow.
It's not just because people are biased against non-brand-name products, but would you spend $500 on a product from a company you're not sure will be around in 6 months for support?
So:
no confidence in small company = slow sales.
slow sales = failing company
failing company = no sales
It's not rocket science, it's reality.
MadCow.
>>Windows Vista Beta 1 also includes the Internet Explorer 7 Beta 1 built into the platform
Wouldn't this fly in the face of the US DOJ ruling that they had to separate it from the OS?
MadCow.