Heh... It's Year 12 of the Linux Desktop in my case (what took you so long?;-) ) and my "seething" is more reserved for when MS does highly bogus things or when I run into a brick wall on something stupid that MS has inflicted on the world.
For the rest, I roll my eyes, wonder why people would put up with the BS where they don't actually own the computer they think they do, point out I don't have problems like they always seem to- and then go on.
Implementation is not the same as actually infringing on a patent. As an individual, you're allowed to make an implementation of a given protected work for your own personal usages. Where you get into trouble is when you actually start distributing/selling the same.
If they argued the right way on invalidity (in re Bilski...) they would have probably won the case. But the full-court press on invalidity would have hindered their future positioning on other legal fronts forevermore.
Without looking at the patent, you haven't a clue what the patent is. You can't just look at the title and think you understand the patent. The scope of a patent is entirely defined by its claims. Until you have spent hours picking apart the claims, the specification, and the file wrapper, you don't know how broad the claims are or whether you could implement them, or what "basic idea" they cover.
It bears repeating so that people will "get it". I'm not a lawyer, but I am an inventor and I've filed Patents and been an expert witness on some infringement litigation in the recent past. While I'm not an expert, I've got some experience in dealing with stuff of this nature.
Folks, the gent's telling you the God's truth on this. Each claim has to be evaluated separately and combined. The "basic idea" may/may not be sufficient to invalidate the patent as it's written, depending on the nature of what they're claiming. Sometimes it will. Sometimes it won't.
If you've never looked at the body of a Patent, you will not be able to even remotely make a judgement call on the validity thereof.
And if you are able to implement them after you've picked through the patent, that's pretty good evidence that the claims were properly enabled. In fact, in some recent litigation, one of our arguments was that the patent was invalid because after working all the way through the patent, we couldn't implement the invention.
Heh... I'm guessing that many if not a small majority of the software patents out there would fail on those grounds.
IANYourL. This post is my rambling, not legal advice. Do not rely on this post for any reason.
Wrong... If you look at the BUTTONS on the page in question, they give you the option to "Customize with Ubuntu" on the third one over. Spotted the button right away.
That's cheating... You had to plug in "Linux" or "Ubuntu" to find the same. That's part and parcel of his gripe. They're "buried" and you have to "know about Linux" to go find them.
To whit, I've proven that the end result isn't as he claimed without a single mention of either term, only "netbook" or "mini" and following their expected path with three clicks will get you to a page with Ubuntu prominently mentioned in relationship to their Netbooks and a fourth click will get you into the start of the order system, ORDERING one from them with it on there.
I can tell you why Dell isn't having the return issue, even though it will get me modded down by the zealots. Do you want to know why? It is actually quite simple: It is because Dell has the Linux Netbooks hidden, that's why! Are they on the front page? Nope. Are they on the first page you get when you type "Netbook" on their site? Nope again. And there is a REASON for that, and it is pretty damned smart if you ask me. The reason is that the ONLY way you are gonna get a Linux anything from Dell is if you know about them and go hunting for them. That means the customer A-knows EXACTLY what Linux is, and B- Is willing to go out of their way to get it.
Heh... As an exercise, I conducted a little experiment. I wanted to see if your claims were at all true...
Third click: "Choose your mini". At which point you're offered a choice between a blue one or a red one (A 10v or a 10) which lists Linux or Windows XP as the OS.
At which point you're into purchasing. Now... Oddly enough, there was only one choice which was clearly marked "Customize With Ubuntu"- but it's one of the ones you'd really, really want, whether you're doing Ubuntu or XP, unless you're unable to afford the extra $20-50 for the stock config on the price. Seriously.
As an observation, neither "Linux" nor "Ubuntu" was plugged into looking for this ephemeral "buried" netbook you're claiming- just "netbook".
Four. Clicks.
And it was the same number if you were looking for a Linux preinstall or an XP one.
Sorry, you're neither correct nor insightful- and I wish the people that'd modded you up had bothered to do the same little experiment I did and didn't give you the time of day, any more than the discussion threads over at Linux Today gave you an inch on this stuff you're coming up with. Which, I might add, is verbatim what you posted over here.
Considering that the "editorial" staff here missed the fact that the Southern Metropolis Daily article covered a DIFFERENT camp with the same problems and claimed that there was conflicting stories...Heh...
All OnLive brings to the table is that the games aren't on the consumer (yes that'd be the right term for that...) end of the equation- they all reside back on a server farm back at a data center. So it's almost impossible to "pirate" the game.
This is a DRM snake oil play- that isn't even really workable because of bandwidth and latency concerns. And not just on the client side... You're going to need to have multiple OC-192's at any major location just to make the service usable. You can only really service about 6k standard def players with a single OC-192.
I'm wondering what in the hell the publishers are thinking, myself. They're currently predicated on a quarter million units sold being barely profitable for most of their titles- and a million plus being a good release of something. You're not going to get that level of people taking you up on this, or the level of money from that sort of thing doing this route.
Heh... Even if you had FTTP (I do...it's AWESOME.) the bandwidth and latency concerns you'll have on the SERVER end will kill this idea.
Just how many SD sessions at 1.5Mbits do you think you could handle with the respective links if you were one of these companies?
OC-3 : 100 OC-12 : 400 OC-48 : 1650 OC-192 : 6350
That's presuming no issues with lost traffic, latency, etc. I don't know about you but 10G service is neither cheap, nor is it easy to work with. Moreover, if you're not using OC-192, you're not going to be able to gain enough resources in a given area to be able to sell this. You're going to likely have to roll out 1-2 OC-192's in an area like Oklahoma City in size. You'll have to roll out about 5-8 for a city the size of the DFW metroplex- it goes really downhill from there, as I think you'll see.
And you're going to need top-end ADSL, Cable, or FTTP to make their thing work on top of the other needs I just outlined.
These companies are selling DRM snake oil to the media industry for all intents and purposes. The games industry is worrying about "piracy" when they should actually be looking at the why the piracy is going on and the lost sales are happening (but, like the record industry, they're not going to bother connecting the dots...).
Actually, the bandwith is going to be prohibitive. Do the math...
At 1.5 Mbits/s you can service roughly 100 simultaneous players on an OC-3. (That's 155/1.5- leaving you with 103, call it 100 for margin for error sake- and it's really not a good margin...)
With an OC-12 link you can service 400 players with a bit larger margins for load induced problems (That's 633/1.5...)
With an OC-48 link you can service about 1650 or so players with actually usable margins... (2500/1.5)
With an OC-192 link you can service 6300-6350 players with truly usable margins. (9600/1.5)
This doesn't get into the brutally high requirements to HANDLE the last two or discussing anything other than standard def resolutions- and it doesn't address what sorts of latency issues you'll inject with that many players (which will invariably be worse than your position...). I don't know about you, but I'd ask just about how many people are playing something like WoW at any given time. Handling the data coming out of an OC-192's fun beyond words. My day job's still working on getting a handle on that sort of data and we're used to dealing with anything OC-12 and below and doing a very good job of all of it. And an OC-192's feed per server center is going to be the only thing that will actually make it remotely viable. They're going to pour money on the floor doing this, even if they could make it viable- OC-192's aren't cheap and they don't grow on trees and won't for a while yet to come.
These plays are DRM snake oil- trying to sell a "solution" and get money out of an industry that's losing cash like the record industry....And for all the same reasons the record industry's losing cash...
That's more because there's no economic or military need for things like semi-ballistic flight, etc. We're flying the airframes of old because they're making big payoffs still for the people using them.
As for higher pay for people overall...it has to be earned, like everything else. What? You want to be paid like a Doctor or Lawyer? You need to make yourself WORTH that much- just like the Doctors and Lawyers have.
And many of the "sunflowers" aren't due to really inept people (a' la the secretary for the Principal in Wargames...) it's because of TOO stringent password requirements that insist upon upper AND lower case coupled with at least one, if not several numbers in the password.
It doesn't make it more secure doing that- it tends to make it less os.
Actually, it HAS to be relatively so at the API layer. OpenGL or OpenGL ES, in and of themselves, don't really allow for most of the crap you're talking to- nor do they enable it any more than Javascript already does. Moreover, a shader program can't interact with anything other than the GPU's own memory with current designs.
Considering that the Government has, traditionally, been very poor at doing the deciding... (Medicare's a good portion of why healthcare is screwed up in this country. Insurance only pays 20% over what Medicare typically pays when they pay out. Medicare only pays usually 20-30% of the billed amount. That's what we've had up to this point with what taxes they HAVE taken from all of us in the form of FICA witholding... Unless they can prove beyond a shadow of a doubt they'll do better with what they're planning, you can expect more of the same, actually...)
The US Patent Office examiner staff isn't very good at times- they'll reject things using things they "found" that they thought were relevant and were completely off in left field. It's very arbitrary. I should know, I've filed a couple applications in the past and the back-and-forth that ends up happening more often than not is entertaining.
For example: Mention "RPC" as part of a system hardware description to close off an avenue and then the examiner will, just as likely as not, try to run things up the flagpole that use RPC as prior art exclusions- even though there was absolutely nothing in the exceptions they quoted that would anticipate what was being claimed in the application (and I'm not just saying this, the attorney agreed with it once we did an analysis of what he tried to claim on the initial rejection...). All they were was things that used RPC for their communication method.
It all depends on how much you're willing to spend and if you're lucky enough to find an examiner that's willing to do little more than a cursory examination and isn't capricious and trying to randomly reject an application.
Actually, they will once in re Bilski gets decided on appeals- and it's likely to be very upheld at the SCOTUS level. If so, the USPTO has to reject on the grounds that most of these don't meet patentability criteria out of the gate.
Considering that the bjorn3d review of the thermal compounds lists a COOLER temp for the OC run than the others for Ceramique, I'd say if you're using that as a metric, you might want to get a second or even a third opinion. Ceramic is not going to be the same class of thermal conductor than silver or diamond (This doesn't lead into the commercial preparations- which may cut corners (Some of the "silver" compounds in the past didn't really have that much in the way of silver in them...) and I'd say it's not going to work as well- properly compounded thermal paste to properly compounded thermal paste.
Unfortunately, I can't see WHEN it will become so. They should have been converted to a 7 filing and the Judge didn't do that much. While appointing an 11 Trustee is a step in the right direction, it's little more than a baby step really.
I can't see WHY the Judge is erring so far on the side of caution here- there won't be any appealing a 7 conversion at this point as SCO's clearly not restructuring to be profitable again. They're still hoping for the **BIG** litigation score- which will never happen as they didn't have a case in that regard to begin with.
Actually, many of those ARM Media-Oriented SoC's (Read: anything from TI, Qualcomm, NVidia, etc...) actually have media DSPs and they're doing the h.264 decode with the DSP core instead of dedicated hardware...
In any case where you see one of the new ARM Cortex-A8/A9 based media chips, you'll be able to implement h.264 or VP3-VP8 in the system with relative ease. Including the iPhone...
In some cases they'll pay out amazing sums of money (Like powered wheelchairs...).
In other cases, they'll pay only as much as 20% of what the billing rate is or deny it outright- just like an HMO.
It's not going to be better in and of itself by just making the Government take over- it'll be as bad or worse. And sad, tragic part is that the insurance companies will only pay 20% over what Medicare will pay out. Seriously. Medicare, the current Government insurance plan for part of the country, is part of the very problem that Obama's bunch is intending on fixing. Unless they can address that issue, then you're going to find that they're only going to make it worse. I've not seen anything from either side of that discussion to come forward and try to propose something that will actually WORK. Neither side has. I strongly doubt that either side will.
Software written for other Linux and OS X CANNOT be worthwhile. Why? That's because Windows is by far the most popular open source operating system; nothing else even comes close.
I can't imagine how hard it was to post that with a straight face...:-D
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Heh... It's Year 12 of the Linux Desktop in my case (what took you so long? ;-) ) and my "seething" is more reserved for when MS does highly bogus things or when I run into a brick wall on something stupid that MS has inflicted on the world.
For the rest, I roll my eyes, wonder why people would put up with the BS where they don't actually own the computer they think they do, point out I don't have problems like they always seem to- and then go on.
Implementation is not the same as actually infringing on a patent. As an individual, you're allowed to make an implementation of a given protected work for your own personal usages. Where you get into trouble is when you actually start distributing/selling the same.
If they argued the right way on invalidity (in re Bilski...) they would have probably won the case. But the full-court press on invalidity would have hindered their future positioning on other legal fronts forevermore.
It bears repeating so that people will "get it". I'm not a lawyer, but I am an inventor and I've filed Patents and been an expert witness on some infringement litigation in the recent past. While I'm not an expert, I've got some experience in dealing with stuff of this nature.
Folks, the gent's telling you the God's truth on this. Each claim has to be evaluated separately and combined. The "basic idea" may/may not be sufficient to invalidate the patent as it's written, depending on the nature of what they're claiming. Sometimes it will. Sometimes it won't.
If you've never looked at the body of a Patent, you will not be able to even remotely make a judgement call on the validity thereof.
Heh... I'm guessing that many if not a small majority of the software patents out there would fail on those grounds.
Cool sig you got there. :-D
Wrong... If you look at the BUTTONS on the page in question, they give you the option to "Customize with Ubuntu" on the third one over. Spotted the button right away.
Ah, but Dell's aren't hidden. See the post below yours that I did, running an experiment to see if his claims were at all true. :-D
That's cheating... You had to plug in "Linux" or "Ubuntu" to find the same. That's part and parcel of his gripe. They're "buried" and you have to "know about Linux" to go find them.
To whit, I've proven that the end result isn't as he claimed without a single mention of either term, only "netbook" or "mini" and following their expected path with three clicks will get you to a page with Ubuntu prominently mentioned in relationship to their Netbooks and a fourth click will get you into the start of the order system, ORDERING one from them with it on there.
There...fixed that for you...
Heh... As an exercise, I conducted a little experiment. I wanted to see if your claims were at all true...
First click: A search for "netbook" on dell's main page
Second click: The netbook product lineup main page
Third click: "Choose your mini". At which point you're offered a choice between a blue one or a red one (A 10v or a 10) which lists Linux or Windows XP as the OS.
At which point you're into purchasing. Now... Oddly enough, there was only one choice which was clearly marked "Customize With Ubuntu"- but it's one of the ones you'd really, really want, whether you're doing Ubuntu or XP, unless you're unable to afford the extra $20-50 for the stock config on the price. Seriously.
As an observation, neither "Linux" nor "Ubuntu" was plugged into looking for this ephemeral "buried" netbook you're claiming- just "netbook".
Four.
Clicks.
And it was the same number if you were looking for a Linux preinstall or an XP one.
Sorry, you're neither correct nor insightful- and I wish the people that'd modded you up had bothered to do the same little experiment I did and didn't give you the time of day, any more than the discussion threads over at Linux Today gave you an inch on this stuff you're coming up with. Which, I might add, is verbatim what you posted over here.
Considering that the "editorial" staff here missed the fact that the Southern Metropolis Daily article covered a DIFFERENT camp with the same problems and claimed that there was conflicting stories...Heh...
All OnLive brings to the table is that the games aren't on the consumer (yes that'd be the right term for that...) end of the equation- they all reside back on a server farm back at a data center. So it's almost impossible to "pirate" the game.
This is a DRM snake oil play- that isn't even really workable because of bandwidth and latency concerns. And not just on the client side... You're going to need to have multiple OC-192's at any major location just to make the service usable. You can only really service about 6k standard def players with a single OC-192.
I'm wondering what in the hell the publishers are thinking, myself. They're currently predicated on a quarter million units sold being barely profitable for most of their titles- and a million plus being a good release of something. You're not going to get that level of people taking you up on this, or the level of money from that sort of thing doing this route.
Heh... Even if you had FTTP (I do...it's AWESOME.) the bandwidth and latency concerns you'll have on the SERVER end will kill this idea.
Just how many SD sessions at 1.5Mbits do you think you could handle with the respective links if you were one of these companies?
OC-3 : 100
OC-12 : 400
OC-48 : 1650
OC-192 : 6350
That's presuming no issues with lost traffic, latency, etc. I don't know about you but 10G service is neither cheap, nor is it easy to work with. Moreover, if you're not using OC-192, you're not going to be able to gain enough resources in a given area to be able to sell this. You're going to likely have to roll out 1-2 OC-192's in an area like Oklahoma City in size. You'll have to roll out about 5-8 for a city the size of the DFW metroplex- it goes really downhill from there, as I think you'll see.
And you're going to need top-end ADSL, Cable, or FTTP to make their thing work on top of the other needs I just outlined.
These companies are selling DRM snake oil to the media industry for all intents and purposes. The games industry is worrying about "piracy" when they should actually be looking at the why the piracy is going on and the lost sales are happening (but, like the record industry, they're not going to bother connecting the dots...).
Actually, the bandwith is going to be prohibitive. Do the math...
At 1.5 Mbits/s you can service roughly 100 simultaneous players on an OC-3. (That's 155/1.5- leaving you with 103, call it 100 for margin for error sake- and it's really not a good margin...)
With an OC-12 link you can service 400 players with a bit larger margins for load induced problems (That's 633/1.5...)
With an OC-48 link you can service about 1650 or so players with actually usable margins... (2500/1.5)
With an OC-192 link you can service 6300-6350 players with truly usable margins. (9600/1.5)
This doesn't get into the brutally high requirements to HANDLE the last two or discussing anything other than standard def resolutions- and it doesn't address what sorts of latency issues you'll inject with that many players (which will invariably be worse than your position...). I don't know about you, but I'd ask just about how many people are playing something like WoW at any given time. Handling the data coming out of an OC-192's fun beyond words. My day job's still working on getting a handle on that sort of data and we're used to dealing with anything OC-12 and below and doing a very good job of all of it. And an OC-192's feed per server center is going to be the only thing that will actually make it remotely viable. They're going to pour money on the floor doing this, even if they could make it viable- OC-192's aren't cheap and they don't grow on trees and won't for a while yet to come.
These plays are DRM snake oil- trying to sell a "solution" and get money out of an industry that's losing cash like the record industry. ...And for all the same reasons the record industry's losing cash...
That's more because there's no economic or military need for things like semi-ballistic flight, etc. We're flying the airframes of old because they're making big payoffs still for the people using them.
As for higher pay for people overall...it has to be earned, like everything else. What? You want to be paid like a Doctor or Lawyer? You need to make yourself WORTH that much- just like the Doctors and Lawyers have.
And many of the "sunflowers" aren't due to really inept people (a' la the secretary for the Principal in Wargames...) it's because of TOO stringent password requirements that insist upon upper AND lower case coupled with at least one, if not several numbers in the password.
It doesn't make it more secure doing that- it tends to make it less os.
Actually, it HAS to be relatively so at the API layer. OpenGL or OpenGL ES, in and of themselves, don't really allow for most of the crap you're talking to- nor do they enable it any more than Javascript already does. Moreover, a shader program can't interact with anything other than the GPU's own memory with current designs.
Which does nicely explain what Google was on about when they bought On2 if that's the case...
Considering that the Government has, traditionally, been very poor at doing the deciding... (Medicare's a good portion of why healthcare is screwed up in this country. Insurance only pays 20% over what Medicare typically pays when they pay out. Medicare only pays usually 20-30% of the billed amount. That's what we've had up to this point with what taxes they HAVE taken from all of us in the form of FICA witholding... Unless they can prove beyond a shadow of a doubt they'll do better with what they're planning, you can expect more of the same, actually...)
The US Patent Office examiner staff isn't very good at times- they'll reject things using things they "found" that they thought were relevant and were completely off in left field. It's very arbitrary. I should know, I've filed a couple applications in the past and the back-and-forth that ends up happening more often than not is entertaining.
For example: Mention "RPC" as part of a system hardware description to close off an avenue and then the examiner will, just as likely as not, try to run things up the flagpole that use RPC as prior art exclusions- even though there was absolutely nothing in the exceptions they quoted that would anticipate what was being claimed in the application (and I'm not just saying this, the attorney agreed with it once we did an analysis of what he tried to claim on the initial rejection...). All they were was things that used RPC for their communication method.
It all depends on how much you're willing to spend and if you're lucky enough to find an examiner that's willing to do little more than a cursory examination and isn't capricious and trying to randomly reject an application.
Actually, they will once in re Bilski gets decided on appeals- and it's likely to be very upheld at the SCOTUS level. If so, the USPTO has to reject on the grounds that most of these don't meet patentability criteria out of the gate.
Considering that the bjorn3d review of the thermal compounds lists a COOLER temp for the OC run than the others for Ceramique, I'd say if you're using that as a metric, you might want to get a second or even a third opinion. Ceramic is not going to be the same class of thermal conductor than silver or diamond (This doesn't lead into the commercial preparations- which may cut corners (Some of the "silver" compounds in the past didn't really have that much in the way of silver in them...) and I'd say it's not going to work as well- properly compounded thermal paste to properly compounded thermal paste.
Unfortunately, I can't see WHEN it will become so. They should have been converted to a 7 filing and the Judge didn't do that much. While appointing an 11 Trustee is a step in the right direction, it's little more than a baby step really.
I can't see WHY the Judge is erring so far on the side of caution here- there won't be any appealing a 7 conversion at this point as SCO's clearly not restructuring to be profitable again. They're still hoping for the **BIG** litigation score- which will never happen as they didn't have a case in that regard to begin with.
Actually, many of those ARM Media-Oriented SoC's (Read: anything from TI, Qualcomm, NVidia, etc...) actually have media DSPs and they're doing the h.264 decode with the DSP core instead of dedicated hardware...
In any case where you see one of the new ARM Cortex-A8/A9 based media chips, you'll be able to implement h.264 or VP3-VP8 in the system with relative ease. Including the iPhone...
Actually... It's been proven quite a bit.
MEDICARE does this sort of thing all the time.
In some cases they'll pay out amazing sums of money (Like powered wheelchairs...).
In other cases, they'll pay only as much as 20% of what the billing rate is or deny it outright- just like an HMO.
It's not going to be better in and of itself by just making the Government take over- it'll be as bad or worse. And sad, tragic part is that the insurance companies will only pay 20% over what Medicare will pay out. Seriously. Medicare, the current Government insurance plan for part of the country, is part of the very problem that Obama's bunch is intending on fixing. Unless they can address that issue, then you're going to find that they're only going to make it worse. I've not seen anything from either side of that discussion to come forward and try to propose something that will actually WORK. Neither side has. I strongly doubt that either side will.
I can't imagine how hard it was to post that with a straight face... :-D