1. A method in a computer system of a non-participant for starting a discussion relating to an item offered for sale, the method including:
This is the preamble. In most cases, the preamble does not actually limit the claim. So let look at the elements of the claim and see if they have been done before.
providing information describing a plurality of items being offered for sale;
So it is showing a bunch of items.
receiving from an originating participant a selection of one of the items being offered for sale;
The client selects one of the items.
providing to the originating participant information describing the selected item offered for sale and an indicator for starting a discussion relating to the item being offered for sale, the information and the indicator to be displayed to the originating participant;
The client gets information about one of the items and the client is told that he can start a discussion on the item.
in response to selection of the displayed indicator by the originating participant of the discussion, providing to the originating participant an initial discussion thread that includes a description of the item being offered for sale;
If the client "selects the displayed indicator" (clicks on a link) a new discussion thread is created where there is a description of the item for sell.
receiving from the originating participant comments to be added to the discussion thread;
The client adds comments.
receiving from the originating participant an indication of one or more other participants of the discussion;
The client notes that he (and perhaps others) is going to be a participant in the discussion.
providing the discussion thread, with the description of the item and the received comments added along with a link that when selected effects the placing of an order to purchase the item, to the one or more other participants, and
Now other people see a link to the discussion thread.
tracking the discussion thread as one or more of the participants add comments to the discussion.
The discussions thread is "tracked". Sending out emails as it is updated is probably enough.
The first claim is probably easily beaten. You would need to find something published or publically known on or before August 1st, 1998 which satisfies all of the above elements/limitations. Of course, there is the doctrine of obviousness (which this could probably be beaten under), but looking at the claims, it might be hard to find something that actually beats this under anticipation. This is especially true considering how limited some of these claims appear.
You can get access to case law from the courts themselves. Westlaw and Lexis provide a service allowing people to get this case law electronically and indexed very well. Don't we support companies value adding services to free information and charging for it? Isn't that the entire basis of the GNU public license. Some courts are putting their decisions online, where you can get it as well. But Westlaw and Lexis employ people to put all of this information together in a database, index it, and write abstracts. What is wrong with them charging for that?
While normally I would agree with you, you must notice that this show is entertainment, not some actual competitive event. They want a greater diversity of contestants because they want to appeal to a greater diversity of audiences. While I doubt that it will actually work, what is wrong for them wanting to expand their viewership?
Re:It looks like they're patenting database "filte
on
NCR Patents the Internet
·
· Score: 4, Informative
You can submit evidence to the patent office and force the patent into reconsideration. You can also file a declartory judgement action against the Patent holder if they are threatening you with their patents.
Because we know that the Free Software community would never do such a thing as well. The reason that the GPL has never been challenged in court is because of the community pressure against companies and individuals who are thought to be violating it. These companies are doing the same thing that the Free software community does.
As to what you can do, donating to organizations who fight spurious lawsuits is probably a good start. Second, even if you don't want to go to law school, I would recommend doing what you can to actually learn the law. I have seen far too many discussions on Slashdot among people who have no concept about what the actual law is.
The Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit is based in Washington D.C. They hear appeals from all Patent cases, and almost all of the judges are former patent attorneys. Because Patent cases are so rarely litigated, many district court judges make poor decisions on the law (especially in constructing claims) when they actually have to handle a case.
The court overturning the appeal does not necessarily mean that Rambus wins the patent case. The court ruled that, in construing the claims, the judge defined 5 terms wrong. It is still possible to find that Infineon does not infringe the patents.
The court also overturned the fraud charges because they felt that the JEDEC did not uniformly enforce their patent policy. This decision shows why it is important that these standards groups be very strict in composing and enforcing their patent policies so crap like this doesn't happen.
> Just because someone has been on this earth for a > shorter period of time does not mean they should > be denied the rights of every other human being....
> I mean its one thing if a five year old tries to > go to the store to buy GTA 3. It's another thing > if a 16 year old guy has an after school job and > he wants to buy the newest FPS with his own money.
Maybe you should go and check your logic again. Why is it different that a five year old wants to buy something and shouldn't be able to, but a 16 year old can. It is because you are setting an age limit (5 x 16) which you think people should be able to buy video games without a guardian's permission. It is not because you think that people should not be descriminated against because of age, because if you did, then you would think that there would be nothing wrong with the five year old buying GTA:Vice City.
Say it with me You don't know what you are talking about.
Discrimination is when someone chooses someone else on some basis other than individual merit. It does not matter whether or not that person is in the majority or the minority (or "on top" as you put it). By advocating a position of selecting one person (a minority) on the basis of his membership in a minority group, as opposed to his individual merit, you are discriminating against the other candidates. Say it with me: Two wrongs do not make a right.
Satistical equality is dumb. This is especially true in the case of sexes because there are some jobs which sex is better at the particular job. Thus, judging by the satistics of how many people are in that particular position, and then allowing for discrimination against the loser, is S-T-U-P-I-D. We should not tolerate any discrimination at all, and we should make sure that equal education are opportunities are available to people no matter their sex/race/religion.
the fact that we let dictators and multinationals run roughshod over the rights of the poor of other countries without doing anything to help achieve real justice
So we should be invading Iraq so we can stop a dictator from running roughshod other the rights of the poor of his country?
THe comparison to Germany is not appropriate. Unlike Poland, Iraq has agreed to a UN resolution that said they would unilatteraly disarm. Did they? No. So we have waited around for 10 years waiting for Iraq to live up to their agreements. How much longer should we wait around? Long enough for him to develop the weapons of mass destruction that he is legally bound to not possess.
If you think that we should not invade Iraq or not get the United Nations to unanomously agree to tell them they have one last chance to follow the UN resolutions, what should we do? I have heard many on the Left decry that the US is going alone, and now that the UN has passed a resolution, that the US controls the UN. I have yet hear what a comprehensive solution as to what should be done.
Of course you know that the Supreme Court has never ruled on the Microsoft case except to deny the appeal by Microsoft from the Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit and to deny the fasttrack from Judge Jackson. The Supreme Court is not flooded with corporate cash at all. The justices are very open about all of their money, and it is stupid to claim that they are corrupt puppets.
The headline and description are totally wrong. The rule says that a Cable company must allow you to buy HBO/Showtime/Cinimax/TMC without signing up for premium cable. So this means if you don't like watching MTV, Discovery Wings, or other non-Basic cable channels, but you watch HBO, you can drop Premium cable, but still keep HBO.
VoIP is just standard IP traffic. The obvious solution is to charge more for Internet access, and more probably charging per amount of volume. If standard voice traffic dies off over time, too bad. The telephone companies are charging for the infrastructure of the net anyways. Let them make their money by charging for that.
It is amazing that the one actual insightful comment on this entire issue is stuck down at the bottom without any moderation at all.
The DOJ sold out on this settlement with Microsoft. I have no doubts that a Gore administration would have done just the same, but Charles James really screwed up on this one. The major indicator of how crappy the settlement was is that none of the career antitrust attorneys at the DOJ signed on the settlement. That is an act that is never done by the DOJ. The Washington Post ran a story that was obviously leaked by the career attorneys talking about how Charles James insisted that he should be the only one negotiating with MS, so he and the MS lawyer were sitting in the room together with the MS lawyer dictating what the settlement should be.
One major question that no one has thought about is how this decision will affect the races for Attorney General that are going on now. The elections are on Tuesday, and three of the resisting AGs are in very tight races. I suspect that the settlement will be rejected, and the judge will state that she thinks there should be a more stringent settlement. Microsoft will then appeal this ruling to the DC Cicuit, where her decision will be upheld. Then, the appeal to the Supreme Court will be VERY interesting.
Maybe you could read the first link on the right side of your screen labelled "FAQ". If you are sure that it has been asked my many others, it probably has, thus it is a "Frequently Asked Question". In case you can't find that link, try clicking here to find out what is powering/.
THey will grant an application because ANYONE can send in an application with a filing fee. Should they reject all applications from particular inventors. It is STUPID to blame the patent office on anything about these patent applications because the patent office, in all likelyhood, has not examined these patents at all. Because of the delay of examining patent applications, almost all patent applications are published before they are even given a first examination.
Amazingly, the lowest end Gateway Profile 4 comes with an integrated ethernet port (with a modem optional) and the other two base models have both standard. Perhaps you should have checked it out yourself.
Slashdot Mirror
1. A method in a computer system of a non-participant for starting a discussion relating to an item offered for sale, the method including:
This is the preamble. In most cases, the preamble does not actually limit the claim. So let look at the elements of the claim and see if they have been done before.
providing information describing a plurality of items being offered for sale;
So it is showing a bunch of items.
receiving from an originating participant a selection of one of the items being offered for sale;
The client selects one of the items.
providing to the originating participant information describing the selected item offered for sale and an indicator for starting a discussion relating to the item being offered for sale, the information and the indicator to be displayed to the originating participant;
The client gets information about one of the items and the client is told that he can start a discussion on the item.
in response to selection of the displayed indicator by the originating participant of the discussion, providing to the originating participant an initial discussion thread that includes a description of the item being offered for sale;
If the client "selects the displayed indicator" (clicks on a link) a new discussion thread is created where there is a description of the item for sell.
receiving from the originating participant comments to be added to the discussion thread;
The client adds comments.
receiving from the originating participant an indication of one or more other participants of the discussion;
The client notes that he (and perhaps others) is going to be a participant in the discussion.
providing the discussion thread, with the description of the item and the received comments added along with a link that when selected effects the placing of an order to purchase the item, to the one or more other participants, and
Now other people see a link to the discussion thread.
tracking the discussion thread as one or more of the participants add comments to the discussion.
The discussions thread is "tracked". Sending out emails as it is updated is probably enough.
The first claim is probably easily beaten. You would need to find something published or publically known on or before August 1st, 1998 which satisfies all of the above elements/limitations. Of course, there is the doctrine of obviousness (which this could probably be beaten under), but looking at the claims, it might be hard to find something that actually beats this under anticipation. This is especially true considering how limited some of these claims appear.
You can get access to case law from the courts themselves. Westlaw and Lexis provide a service allowing people to get this case law electronically and indexed very well. Don't we support companies value adding services to free information and charging for it? Isn't that the entire basis of the GNU public license. Some courts are putting their decisions online, where you can get it as well. But Westlaw and Lexis employ people to put all of this information together in a database, index it, and write abstracts. What is wrong with them charging for that?
While normally I would agree with you, you must notice that this show is entertainment, not some actual competitive event. They want a greater diversity of contestants because they want to appeal to a greater diversity of audiences. While I doubt that it will actually work, what is wrong for them wanting to expand their viewership?
You can submit evidence to the patent office and force the patent into reconsideration. You can also file a declartory judgement action against the Patent holder if they are threatening you with their patents.
Because we know that the Free Software community would never do such a thing as well. The reason that the GPL has never been challenged in court is because of the community pressure against companies and individuals who are thought to be violating it. These companies are doing the same thing that the Free software community does. As to what you can do, donating to organizations who fight spurious lawsuits is probably a good start. Second, even if you don't want to go to law school, I would recommend doing what you can to actually learn the law. I have seen far too many discussions on Slashdot among people who have no concept about what the actual law is.
The Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit is based in Washington D.C. They hear appeals from all Patent cases, and almost all of the judges are former patent attorneys. Because Patent cases are so rarely litigated, many district court judges make poor decisions on the law (especially in constructing claims) when they actually have to handle a case. The court overturning the appeal does not necessarily mean that Rambus wins the patent case. The court ruled that, in construing the claims, the judge defined 5 terms wrong. It is still possible to find that Infineon does not infringe the patents. The court also overturned the fraud charges because they felt that the JEDEC did not uniformly enforce their patent policy. This decision shows why it is important that these standards groups be very strict in composing and enforcing their patent policies so crap like this doesn't happen.
The important word there is story, considering this is false. Snopes
Or they could just traidmarc it.
> Just because someone has been on this earth for a ...
> shorter period of time does not mean they should
> be denied the rights of every other human being.
> I mean its one thing if a five year old tries to
> go to the store to buy GTA 3. It's another thing
> if a 16 year old guy has an after school job and
> he wants to buy the newest FPS with his own money.
Maybe you should go and check your logic again. Why is it different that a five year old wants to buy something and shouldn't be able to, but a 16 year old can. It is because you are setting an age limit (5 x 16) which you think people should be able to buy video games without a guardian's permission. It is not because you think that people should not be descriminated against because of age, because if you did, then you would think that there would be nothing wrong with the five year old buying GTA:Vice City.
Say it with me You don't know what you are talking about. Discrimination is when someone chooses someone else on some basis other than individual merit. It does not matter whether or not that person is in the majority or the minority (or "on top" as you put it). By advocating a position of selecting one person (a minority) on the basis of his membership in a minority group, as opposed to his individual merit, you are discriminating against the other candidates. Say it with me: Two wrongs do not make a right. Satistical equality is dumb. This is especially true in the case of sexes because there are some jobs which sex is better at the particular job. Thus, judging by the satistics of how many people are in that particular position, and then allowing for discrimination against the loser, is S-T-U-P-I-D. We should not tolerate any discrimination at all, and we should make sure that equal education are opportunities are available to people no matter their sex/race/religion.
Question #9 was written by Wil Wheaton a.k.a. Wesley Crusher from Star Trek: the Next Generation.
Space.com is now reporting that the entire launch was a success. It made it through the last 37 minutes and deployed the satellite.
or anyone who violates the terms of the cease-fire agreement that they made.
Of course they do. Please name one binding UN Security Council Resolution that the US has violated (given a reasonable reading of the resolution).
the fact that we let dictators and multinationals run roughshod over the rights of the poor of other countries without doing anything to help achieve real justice
So we should be invading Iraq so we can stop a dictator from running roughshod other the rights of the poor of his country?
THe comparison to Germany is not appropriate. Unlike Poland, Iraq has agreed to a UN resolution that said they would unilatteraly disarm. Did they? No. So we have waited around for 10 years waiting for Iraq to live up to their agreements. How much longer should we wait around? Long enough for him to develop the weapons of mass destruction that he is legally bound to not possess.
If you think that we should not invade Iraq or not get the United Nations to unanomously agree to tell them they have one last chance to follow the UN resolutions, what should we do? I have heard many on the Left decry that the US is going alone, and now that the UN has passed a resolution, that the US controls the UN. I have yet hear what a comprehensive solution as to what should be done.
Of course you know that the Supreme Court has never ruled on the Microsoft case except to deny the appeal by Microsoft from the Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit and to deny the fasttrack from Judge Jackson. The Supreme Court is not flooded with corporate cash at all. The justices are very open about all of their money, and it is stupid to claim that they are corrupt puppets.
The headline and description are totally wrong. The rule says that a Cable company must allow you to buy HBO/Showtime/Cinimax/TMC without signing up for premium cable. So this means if you don't like watching MTV, Discovery Wings, or other non-Basic cable channels, but you watch HBO, you can drop Premium cable, but still keep HBO.
VoIP is just standard IP traffic. The obvious solution is to charge more for Internet access, and more probably charging per amount of volume. If standard voice traffic dies off over time, too bad. The telephone companies are charging for the infrastructure of the net anyways. Let them make their money by charging for that.
It is amazing that the one actual insightful comment on this entire issue is stuck down at the bottom without any moderation at all.
The DOJ sold out on this settlement with Microsoft. I have no doubts that a Gore administration would have done just the same, but Charles James really screwed up on this one. The major indicator of how crappy the settlement was is that none of the career antitrust attorneys at the DOJ signed on the settlement. That is an act that is never done by the DOJ. The Washington Post ran a story that was obviously leaked by the career attorneys talking about how Charles James insisted that he should be the only one negotiating with MS, so he and the MS lawyer were sitting in the room together with the MS lawyer dictating what the settlement should be.
One major question that no one has thought about is how this decision will affect the races for Attorney General that are going on now. The elections are on Tuesday, and three of the resisting AGs are in very tight races. I suspect that the settlement will be rejected, and the judge will state that she thinks there should be a more stringent settlement. Microsoft will then appeal this ruling to the DC Cicuit, where her decision will be upheld. Then, the appeal to the Supreme Court will be VERY interesting.
Wow...my link did not work. Let me try that again. Click here. That is what you get for not previewing.
Maybe you could read the first link on the right side of your screen labelled "FAQ". If you are sure that it has been asked my many others, it probably has, thus it is a "Frequently Asked Question". In case you can't find that link, try clicking here to find out what is powering /.
Second half of 2003.
And then for 99% of a REAL operating systems programs...
Double click.
Yes.
Next.
Next.
Next.
wait...
Next.
Finnish.
So after clicking "Next" we turn into Linus? GREAT!
THey will grant an application because ANYONE can send in an application with a filing fee. Should they reject all applications from particular inventors. It is STUPID to blame the patent office on anything about these patent applications because the patent office, in all likelyhood, has not examined these patents at all. Because of the delay of examining patent applications, almost all patent applications are published before they are even given a first examination.
Amazingly, the lowest end Gateway Profile 4 comes with an integrated ethernet port (with a modem optional) and the other two base models have both standard. Perhaps you should have checked it out yourself.