Thank you, we know what a design patent is. How does that make it different such that the objections people have put forward here are not valid?
When an objection is founded on an invalid assumption, the objection itself is invalid. You're essentially saying "I have no idea what a design patent is, but I'm not going to let that stop me from forming a strong opinion about design patents." It's patently (pun intended) absurd.
E.g., does that mean other people are free to design a similar interface? Of course not. In which case, they share the same property of other kinds of patents that people disagree with.
Put it another way - why does putting the word "design" in front make it okay? ("Don't bother, hamburger lady sees the 'd' word, and flips out, there's obviously no valid argument here." - see how invalid that argument is?)
Not really. Again, you are basing your own argument on a foundation of ignorance. A utility patent contains numerous claims that make up the invention, claims which systems or methods that employed by the invention to achieve a stated result. When you write such a patent, you want your claims to be as broad as possible, to allow for maximum protection, but narrow enough to be approved by a patent examiner. The end result is a definition of an invention, and anyone who copies any of the independent claims contained within that definition stands to infringe upon that patent.
Design patents are wholly different. A design patent contains one claim - my [thing] looks like [picture enclosed]. That's it. For example, this is the totality of Google's homepage patent claims: "The ornamental design for a graphical user interface for a display screen of a communications terminal, as shown and described." What they are protecting is the specific design of their homepage. Think of a design patent as putting a stake in the ground where you take ownership of how some thing that performs some function looks. A commonly (overly?) used example is the Coca-Cola bottle (the wavy one). Coca-Cola was granted a design patent (in addition to a trademark) for their distinctive bottle shape. Another example would be the sound that a Harley makes (I know they *tried* to obtain a design patent, but I'm not sure if they ever got one).
The point is, utility and design patents are as different as night and day. I've found on Slashdot that most objections to utility patents are ill-informed. Based on this thread, it appears to be to an even greater degree for design patents.
I've heard about units that get so hot they catch fire. Dear Microsoft: if you're reading this, please send me one of those faulty units. I owe more on my house than it's worth, so you could help me solve some of my problems.
The simple answer is, they won't enforce it. The language that is contained within the non-media ticket holders' terms and conditions is the same as it has always been; you'll find the same language in pretty much every other sports league's Ts/Cs as well.
You seem to be coupling broadcast method and production of the content, which is the root of your argument's fallacy. People may turn to other sources of broadcasting for content in the future, but only if the content is the same at those alternative sources. I may watch Big Bang Theory on my laptop and view it as a reasonable alternative, but I wouldn't want to watch a YouTube video of a bunch of guys re-enacting the episode. Same goes for a sporting event. In no way would I find home video shot of a game from some schmo in the stands a reasonable facsimile of a professionally-produced telecast. Even if technology increases to the point where a guy can stream HD video from his phone in real-time, it will never even come close to the camera work you get from a televised sporting event. "Guy in the stands" doesn't have webcams in the endzones and on the sidelines. He doesn't have the sky cam on the zip line that follows players all over the field. He doesn't have a hot sideline reporter letting us know if we can expect to see a key starter returning to the game or not. We cannot forget that the value is in the content itself, not the media on which it is broadcast. And in this case, multicasting by individuals will never even sniff at the quality of content we get from a sports broadcast.
In that respect, broadcasting rights to (popular) sporting events are about the only thing left worth paying "big bucks" for. Because the utility we get out of watching a game drops dramatically if we don't get to see it as it unfolds, the owner of that broadcast holds a tremendous amount of leverage. That said, I don't know how the SEC thinks UGC would ever compete with their televised games for eyeballs. If anything, it's accretive to overall fan interest, not dilutive.
BS. There are no national security concerns around a publicly-facing website, particularly one dealing with dissemination of budget information. If there are, then they need to seriously rethink their strategies. I can envision certain sensitive information that may be blacked-out, but for a project like this, it would be a rarity. Furthermore, there is absolutely no reason to hide the remuneration details from the public.
It's not unreasonable to ask why this project costs $18 million to implement, when it is mostly a standard CMS with a few extras added on.
Use of XML does not violate this patent. Mapping information to addresses within content in a separate meta data file is what violates the patent (based on my understanding of the patent). It's basically a method of decoupling formatting from data, as opposed to inline (as you would see in HTML). It's not that MS Word saves documents as XML that is inviolate of the patent. It's that it saves the document text in one place, and the formatting maps in another. It just happens to be in XML format, which leads everyone to jump to the conclusion that these cock holsters have somehow patented the use of XML.
However, you're right on your follow-up -- CSS would violate this patent.
A statement that could be applied to more or less all software patents I've seen so far.....
mmm. Not quite.
I can't think of a patent I've seen as generic as this. 20 claims, only 3 of which are independent.
The background of the patent doesn't seem terribly novel to me. FTFP:
"The invention does not use embedded metacoding to differentiate the content of the document, but rather, the metacodes of the document are separated from the content and held in distinct storage in a structure called a metacode map, whereas document content is held in a mapped content area. Raw content is an extreme example of mapped content wherein the latter is totally unstructured and has no embedded metacodes in the data stream.
A metacode, which includes but is not limited to a descriptive code, is an individual instruction which controls the interpretation of the content of the data, i.e., it differentiates the content. A metacode map is a multiplicity of metacodes and their addresses associated with mapped content. An address is the place in the content at which the metacode is to exert its effect. "
Basically, it's a system where I have content like this "The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dogs" stored in one location. In another storage location, I have a map that says "make positions 4-8 bold; make positions 10-14 italicized;"
They really convinced a patent examiner that someone reasonably skilled in the art could not have come up with something like this on his own?
This patent really stinks. In all probability, if I'm reading the claims correctly, CSS violates it. Certain other content markup specifications are probably riding the edge as well.
To hypothesize that the sun and earth may not be the "ideal" situations for life is absurd. There's no way to even qualify a statement like that. It's intellectual masturbation to the point of uselessness.
You're a little mixed up there. The U.S. succeeded in its objective of maintaining South Vietnam's sovereignty in 1972, with full troop withdrawal in 1973. From 1972-1975, the South army was able to keep the NVA out, with minimal support from U.S. ground troops and significant U.S. air support (after all, it's far easier to build up a ground army than an air force).
It wasn't until a couple years AFTER South Vietnam had been established as a sovereign state that Congress voted to turn their backs and cut off U.S. air support. Only then did the NVA overrun the country.
So, yes. The U.S. capitulated. But only after it had won. It was an embarrassing display of betrayal and cowardice.
What's disturbing is how normal "one size fits all" policies are becoming in this country. Anytime you let a large bureaucracy dictate minute details of a policy, this kind of dislocation is a common result. In a system where the best and brightest are well rewarded for their efforts, government jobs tend to be filled by the leftovers -- people who are not employable based on their merits. Unfortunately, "what's left" are often automatons who need every detail of their jobs scripted for them. Do not deviate from script. Do not make waves. Retire with nice pension.
A sound organization hires executors who have the capability to exercise judgment, and empowers them to do just that. Otherwise you strip-search middle school students on suspicion of carrying Advil.
Actually it has EVERYTHING to do with unionized workers.
Look at GM, for example. The reason they marketed their SUVs so heavily is those are the only vehicles that can be manufactured profitably. 2/3 of GM's labor costs go to people who are no longer with the company. Unions with a LOT of leverage at the time negotiated some pretty sweet deals (at the time) which were completely unsustainable. This takes us back to why SUVs were so prevalent in GM's marketing strategy -- an SUV is nothing more than a partsman engineered piece of junk. Slap a different chassis on a truck line that has hardly changed in 20 years, and BOOM - Chevy Tahoe. The company is so upside down on labor costs, R&D must take the hit. They haven't innovated because they cannot afford it. Good economic times masked the problem, but the truth is they've been circling the drain for years.
No matter how good you are at time management, you cannot, by some feat of magic, create more than 24 hours in a day. It is apparent you think quite highly of yourself, which is why you take such offense when someone calls BS on your BS.
I could be wrong, but I doubt it. Regardless, we in the Slashdot community still love and accept you, no matter how many hours you claim to work.
In an "up or out" organization, employees are also highly inclined to inflate the number of hours they claim to be working. Since a tremendous amount of one-upsmanship is present in these organizations, one person's inflated claims forces a colleague to inflate his hours worked even more, which forces another colleague to top that, and so on. Eventually, an equillibrium is reached, which represents the maximum believable number of hours one can work while still taking time to eat a hot pocket and and grab a couple hours of sleep. This is how one arrives at the mythical 80-hour week.
I don't think anyone here doubts that you work quite a lot. However, your claims of an 80-hour week on a regular basis are most likely false. I've seen you claim in other posts that you work out regularly and read quite a lot of books. There's not a lot of time to do those things when you have a 12-16 hour workday, especially when you tack on additional time for meals and commuting. So you're either lying about how you spend your free time, or you're exaggerating how much time you spend at work. I'm inclined to believe the latter.
But we get it. That's the world in which you live. Many of your peers are likely to read Slashdot as well, so you're forced to perpetuate the illusion here as well as in your workplace. Just don't kid yourself into thinking people believe it.
Among the co-workers in my office, all or most of the major cell phone carriers are represented. The only ones that seem to cause interference in speakers are the AT&T phones. I had a RAZR that caused interference, and my iPhone does as well (although it took a few weeks for it to start). This is (obviously) nothing more than anecdotal evidence, but the only phones I've observed this phenomenon with have all been on AT&T.
That doesn't mean we should have to foot the bill for reconstruction when it's a very bad idea to do so. You want to buck the system and live underwater? Do it on your own dime.
We live on, what, one of the 10 largest land masses in the world? It takes an incredible amount of hubris, when there is so much available land, to push back the sea for a few square miles more.
At the risk of sounding insensitive, your choices as a New Orleans resident should be to move or introduce yourself to your new neighbor, Aquaman.
Jog in place while you masturbate. It'll take you longer to finish, so you should get a good 20-30 minute workout. Plus, the payoff at the end will be awesome.
The reasons behind slowing down piracy of the movie are not as direct as you seem to assume. If you notice, Warner Brothers' stated intent was not to stop piracy of The Dark Knight. Rather, they wanted to mitigate piracy prior to the film's US release. There was a great deal of excitement leading up to the theatrical release. A large number of people seeing the movie over a week beforehand would have been quite a buzzkill for the marketing momentum that was generated.
Concerns over Jobs' health have caused a significant and materially negative impact on AAPL. Apple IS Steve Jobs. Every aspect of the company is reflective of his vision. If some illness were to take him out of the company prematurely, the company would suffer adverse effects. As a result, anyone who went out and bought 1000 shares of AAPL is going to be very interested in the health of its visionary/CEO.
Look, Jobs has every right to say "My health, my business," but freedom of choice does not mean freedom from consequence. If Jobs wishes to maintain the privacy of his health status, he will do so at the cost of shareholder value, and by extension, his own net worth.
Well, that certainly is an opinion you have there. The ability to absolutely remove a revision from a source control repository is not really a positive. If a revision can be conveniently deleted, that means no truths can be gleaned from a code audit.
You can accidentally paste your bank account number on a discussion forum, and there is no technology to make people unremember it. Guess you shouldn't use Slashdot anymore then, huh?
The state of the art is changing pretty rapidly. However, this article is suggesting a looming "crisis" exists, but I fail to see it.
High-level platforms rule the development landscape today, where many of the intricacies that are messy without some kind of standardization are abstracted from the developer. A firm grasp on the founding principles of a modern language means a developer can easily pick up on another language with similar principles. This was not true with low-level languages, which shows how obsolete the writer's mindset has become.
Slashdot Mirror
Thank you, we know what a design patent is. How does that make it different such that the objections people have put forward here are not valid?
When an objection is founded on an invalid assumption, the objection itself is invalid. You're essentially saying "I have no idea what a design patent is, but I'm not going to let that stop me from forming a strong opinion about design patents." It's patently (pun intended) absurd.
E.g., does that mean other people are free to design a similar interface? Of course not. In which case, they share the same property of other kinds of patents that people disagree with.
Put it another way - why does putting the word "design" in front make it okay? ("Don't bother, hamburger lady sees the 'd' word, and flips out, there's obviously no valid argument here." - see how invalid that argument is?)
Not really. Again, you are basing your own argument on a foundation of ignorance. A utility patent contains numerous claims that make up the invention, claims which systems or methods that employed by the invention to achieve a stated result. When you write such a patent, you want your claims to be as broad as possible, to allow for maximum protection, but narrow enough to be approved by a patent examiner. The end result is a definition of an invention, and anyone who copies any of the independent claims contained within that definition stands to infringe upon that patent.
Design patents are wholly different. A design patent contains one claim - my [thing] looks like [picture enclosed]. That's it. For example, this is the totality of Google's homepage patent claims: "The ornamental design for a graphical user interface for a display screen of a communications terminal, as shown and described." What they are protecting is the specific design of their homepage. Think of a design patent as putting a stake in the ground where you take ownership of how some thing that performs some function looks. A commonly (overly?) used example is the Coca-Cola bottle (the wavy one). Coca-Cola was granted a design patent (in addition to a trademark) for their distinctive bottle shape. Another example would be the sound that a Harley makes (I know they *tried* to obtain a design patent, but I'm not sure if they ever got one).
The point is, utility and design patents are as different as night and day. I've found on Slashdot that most objections to utility patents are ill-informed. Based on this thread, it appears to be to an even greater degree for design patents.
I've heard about units that get so hot they catch fire. Dear Microsoft: if you're reading this, please send me one of those faulty units. I owe more on my house than it's worth, so you could help me solve some of my problems.
The simple answer is, they won't enforce it. The language that is contained within the non-media ticket holders' terms and conditions is the same as it has always been; you'll find the same language in pretty much every other sports league's Ts/Cs as well.
You seem to be coupling broadcast method and production of the content, which is the root of your argument's fallacy. People may turn to other sources of broadcasting for content in the future, but only if the content is the same at those alternative sources. I may watch Big Bang Theory on my laptop and view it as a reasonable alternative, but I wouldn't want to watch a YouTube video of a bunch of guys re-enacting the episode. Same goes for a sporting event. In no way would I find home video shot of a game from some schmo in the stands a reasonable facsimile of a professionally-produced telecast. Even if technology increases to the point where a guy can stream HD video from his phone in real-time, it will never even come close to the camera work you get from a televised sporting event. "Guy in the stands" doesn't have webcams in the endzones and on the sidelines. He doesn't have the sky cam on the zip line that follows players all over the field. He doesn't have a hot sideline reporter letting us know if we can expect to see a key starter returning to the game or not. We cannot forget that the value is in the content itself, not the media on which it is broadcast. And in this case, multicasting by individuals will never even sniff at the quality of content we get from a sports broadcast.
In that respect, broadcasting rights to (popular) sporting events are about the only thing left worth paying "big bucks" for. Because the utility we get out of watching a game drops dramatically if we don't get to see it as it unfolds, the owner of that broadcast holds a tremendous amount of leverage. That said, I don't know how the SEC thinks UGC would ever compete with their televised games for eyeballs. If anything, it's accretive to overall fan interest, not dilutive.
Um, I think you didn't quite get the joke...
BS. There are no national security concerns around a publicly-facing website, particularly one dealing with dissemination of budget information. If there are, then they need to seriously rethink their strategies. I can envision certain sensitive information that may be blacked-out, but for a project like this, it would be a rarity. Furthermore, there is absolutely no reason to hide the remuneration details from the public.
It's not unreasonable to ask why this project costs $18 million to implement, when it is mostly a standard CMS with a few extras added on.
Use of XML does not violate this patent. Mapping information to addresses within content in a separate meta data file is what violates the patent (based on my understanding of the patent). It's basically a method of decoupling formatting from data, as opposed to inline (as you would see in HTML). It's not that MS Word saves documents as XML that is inviolate of the patent. It's that it saves the document text in one place, and the formatting maps in another. It just happens to be in XML format, which leads everyone to jump to the conclusion that these cock holsters have somehow patented the use of XML.
However, you're right on your follow-up -- CSS would violate this patent.
A statement that could be applied to more or less all software patents I've seen so far.....
mmm. Not quite.
I can't think of a patent I've seen as generic as this. 20 claims, only 3 of which are independent.
The background of the patent doesn't seem terribly novel to me. FTFP:
"The invention does not use embedded metacoding to differentiate the content of the document, but rather, the metacodes of the document are separated from the content and held in distinct storage in a structure called a metacode map, whereas document content is held in a mapped content area. Raw content is an extreme example of mapped content wherein the latter is totally unstructured and has no embedded metacodes in the data stream.
A metacode, which includes but is not limited to a descriptive code, is an individual instruction which controls the interpretation of the content of the data, i.e., it differentiates the content. A metacode map is a multiplicity of metacodes and their addresses associated with mapped content. An address is the place in the content at which the metacode is to exert its effect. "
Basically, it's a system where I have content like this "The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dogs" stored in one location. In another storage location, I have a map that says "make positions 4-8 bold; make positions 10-14 italicized;"
They really convinced a patent examiner that someone reasonably skilled in the art could not have come up with something like this on his own?
This patent really stinks. In all probability, if I'm reading the claims correctly, CSS violates it. Certain other content markup specifications are probably riding the edge as well.
Thank you!
To hypothesize that the sun and earth may not be the "ideal" situations for life is absurd. There's no way to even qualify a statement like that. It's intellectual masturbation to the point of uselessness.
Those requirements would wholly discredit about 90% of public school teachers. Those who can, do. Those who can't, teach.
You're a little mixed up there. The U.S. succeeded in its objective of maintaining South Vietnam's sovereignty in 1972, with full troop withdrawal in 1973. From 1972-1975, the South army was able to keep the NVA out, with minimal support from U.S. ground troops and significant U.S. air support (after all, it's far easier to build up a ground army than an air force).
It wasn't until a couple years AFTER South Vietnam had been established as a sovereign state that Congress voted to turn their backs and cut off U.S. air support. Only then did the NVA overrun the country.
So, yes. The U.S. capitulated. But only after it had won. It was an embarrassing display of betrayal and cowardice.
What's disturbing is how normal "one size fits all" policies are becoming in this country. Anytime you let a large bureaucracy dictate minute details of a policy, this kind of dislocation is a common result. In a system where the best and brightest are well rewarded for their efforts, government jobs tend to be filled by the leftovers -- people who are not employable based on their merits. Unfortunately, "what's left" are often automatons who need every detail of their jobs scripted for them. Do not deviate from script. Do not make waves. Retire with nice pension.
A sound organization hires executors who have the capability to exercise judgment, and empowers them to do just that. Otherwise you strip-search middle school students on suspicion of carrying Advil.
Actually it has EVERYTHING to do with unionized workers.
Look at GM, for example. The reason they marketed their SUVs so heavily is those are the only vehicles that can be manufactured profitably. 2/3 of GM's labor costs go to people who are no longer with the company. Unions with a LOT of leverage at the time negotiated some pretty sweet deals (at the time) which were completely unsustainable. This takes us back to why SUVs were so prevalent in GM's marketing strategy -- an SUV is nothing more than a partsman engineered piece of junk. Slap a different chassis on a truck line that has hardly changed in 20 years, and BOOM - Chevy Tahoe. The company is so upside down on labor costs, R&D must take the hit. They haven't innovated because they cannot afford it. Good economic times masked the problem, but the truth is they've been circling the drain for years.
No matter how good you are at time management, you cannot, by some feat of magic, create more than 24 hours in a day. It is apparent you think quite highly of yourself, which is why you take such offense when someone calls BS on your BS.
I could be wrong, but I doubt it. Regardless, we in the Slashdot community still love and accept you, no matter how many hours you claim to work.
In an "up or out" organization, employees are also highly inclined to inflate the number of hours they claim to be working. Since a tremendous amount of one-upsmanship is present in these organizations, one person's inflated claims forces a colleague to inflate his hours worked even more, which forces another colleague to top that, and so on. Eventually, an equillibrium is reached, which represents the maximum believable number of hours one can work while still taking time to eat a hot pocket and and grab a couple hours of sleep. This is how one arrives at the mythical 80-hour week.
I don't think anyone here doubts that you work quite a lot. However, your claims of an 80-hour week on a regular basis are most likely false. I've seen you claim in other posts that you work out regularly and read quite a lot of books. There's not a lot of time to do those things when you have a 12-16 hour workday, especially when you tack on additional time for meals and commuting. So you're either lying about how you spend your free time, or you're exaggerating how much time you spend at work. I'm inclined to believe the latter.
But we get it. That's the world in which you live. Many of your peers are likely to read Slashdot as well, so you're forced to perpetuate the illusion here as well as in your workplace. Just don't kid yourself into thinking people believe it.
Among the co-workers in my office, all or most of the major cell phone carriers are represented. The only ones that seem to cause interference in speakers are the AT&T phones. I had a RAZR that caused interference, and my iPhone does as well (although it took a few weeks for it to start). This is (obviously) nothing more than anecdotal evidence, but the only phones I've observed this phenomenon with have all been on AT&T.
That doesn't mean we should have to foot the bill for reconstruction when it's a very bad idea to do so. You want to buck the system and live underwater? Do it on your own dime.
We live on, what, one of the 10 largest land masses in the world? It takes an incredible amount of hubris, when there is so much available land, to push back the sea for a few square miles more.
At the risk of sounding insensitive, your choices as a New Orleans resident should be to move or introduce yourself to your new neighbor, Aquaman.
"Usenet was what the Web is missing nowadays: a genuinely public space, with unclear ownership."
Apparently, he's never heard of 4chan.
Jog in place while you masturbate. It'll take you longer to finish, so you should get a good 20-30 minute workout. Plus, the payoff at the end will be awesome.
The reasons behind slowing down piracy of the movie are not as direct as you seem to assume. If you notice, Warner Brothers' stated intent was not to stop piracy of The Dark Knight. Rather, they wanted to mitigate piracy prior to the film's US release. There was a great deal of excitement leading up to the theatrical release. A large number of people seeing the movie over a week beforehand would have been quite a buzzkill for the marketing momentum that was generated.
I'm not sure how you equate those two scenarios.
Concerns over Jobs' health have caused a significant and materially negative impact on AAPL. Apple IS Steve Jobs. Every aspect of the company is reflective of his vision. If some illness were to take him out of the company prematurely, the company would suffer adverse effects. As a result, anyone who went out and bought 1000 shares of AAPL is going to be very interested in the health of its visionary/CEO.
Look, Jobs has every right to say "My health, my business," but freedom of choice does not mean freedom from consequence. If Jobs wishes to maintain the privacy of his health status, he will do so at the cost of shareholder value, and by extension, his own net worth.
Well, that certainly is an opinion you have there. The ability to absolutely remove a revision from a source control repository is not really a positive. If a revision can be conveniently deleted, that means no truths can be gleaned from a code audit.
You can accidentally paste your bank account number on a discussion forum, and there is no technology to make people unremember it. Guess you shouldn't use Slashdot anymore then, huh?
You get what you pay for.
The state of the art is changing pretty rapidly. However, this article is suggesting a looming "crisis" exists, but I fail to see it.
High-level platforms rule the development landscape today, where many of the intricacies that are messy without some kind of standardization are abstracted from the developer. A firm grasp on the founding principles of a modern language means a developer can easily pick up on another language with similar principles. This was not true with low-level languages, which shows how obsolete the writer's mindset has become.
How else would they grow their moonajuana?