So what? It's an ad. Do you believe even half of what you see/hear advertised? I never even figured Apple used real people in their switcher adverts either, just because I'm generally skeptical about advertising anyway. I've been through advertising in my career. It all pretty much looks like a big fat frankfurter - some meat but mostly crap.
Yes, I get upset when I buy a product I've been mislead about. But I don't think they're making any dishonest or misleading claims about the product itself (you may differ with me on the premise of simple angst toward MS, that's fine), just the way it's advertised - and that definitely does NOT bother me.
I'm really not trolling here, and I'm not advocating MS in any way, but it seems that a lot of otherwise bright people are hung up on this being a Microsoft blunder when this happens everyday in advertising.
When you see an ad on TV for herpes medication, do you think that person really has herpes? Of course not - you couldn't pay anyone enough to do a commercial like that. They are paid actors, and nothing more. They may even hate the product they are selling.
The PR lady is nothing different; she was, in effect, a paid actor. So they made a false testimony, so what? Advertisers do that all the time to drum up business. It seems slimy and under-handed, but it's the way it works most of the time.
I believe it's correctly termed "green" because the manufacturer has clearly put time, effort, and thought into making the machine as reasonably environmentally friendly as possible with the current technology available.
You could say something like "this nuclear power plant is environmentally friendly." Well, true that it may not harm the environment as *much* as other alternatives, but it isn't totally pollution free either; but there really isn't much manufactured that is.
Point being, I think "green" is a term much deserved by manufacturers who are thinking about the environment when building their products. I think it shows responsibility and even has a tint of higher geekdom to it.
Honestly, I don't know shit about Linux. I just wanted to see if my Karma would go up if I could make a post that had the words "Linux" "Red Hat" and "Mandrake" in an ambiguously written sentence. I'm just talkin' out my ass, man.
Oh, by the way, it did make my karma go up like I thought.
With Bero no longer working on KDE, I suggest that Mandrake may become more in the spotlight, especially if they see an opportunity to make emphasized advancements.
Red Hat will have to work a bit harder now or slip behind. Either way, both of these two recent events have interesting dynamics that could fuel competition between perhaps all distros.
I hate to be contradictory, but at one time Windows 95 *was* be a reliable server, believe it or not, and a pretty darn good one.
Just as an experiment to answer this very question, I set up a high-traffic web host as a server.
Zerion.com (a rather interesting phenomenon) was a web host for over 300 web sites, and ran on a single P233. During it's 1.5 year run it regularly transferred over 60-80GB per month, with a peak of 100GB/mo., serving over 1,000,000 requests with minimal downtime for disk maintenance per month.
I doubt anyone will read this, being so late, but here's a thought that occurred to me:
Cliff's Notes seem to be a similar analogy to what this company is doing, in some way. Think about it: you still get the gist of the story, you just don't get every single word. You don't get the inflections, the descriptions, the graphic detail. I don't know really what to do with this analogy.
2nd, let's assume that we never touched the media. No tape is sliced, no DVD is laser-beamed, but instead, let's imagine a viewer (say a DVD viewer) where the original media is inserted, and only certain portions are played as per a predetermined script.
1. Play time sequence 0:00 to 0:30 2. Play time sequence 0:35 to 2:59 3. Play time sequence 3:50 to 10:00
Now... have we committed an infringement? What is the difference between that and having a real person who has seen the movie say.. "Okay, now skip to *this* part" ?
I was the U.S. Patent Paralegal for the #1 Computer Manufacturer several years ago. My job was to conduct Patent Committee meetings, and help company inventors through the patent process, and manage the process with several outside firms who wrote our applications for us.
I can tell you from experience that as far as patents go, you get what you pay for. Don't skimp or you'll be sorry later when you want to use your patent. In general, $5,000 - $6,000 should be a good price for a good patent application to be filed. The broader your claims, the better -- and you can't think like an inventor when your attorney writes them, you have to think like an attorney -- the more your claims can broadly cover, the better. Specific is bad (for you). Ask your attorney to explain this if you have difficulty understanding this.
You've got a long road ahead of you. It will likely take you a good 1.5 years to 2.5 years to get your patent issued, if it ever does. It is likely to be rejected by the Patent and Trademark office two or three times, and you may even have to re-file the application once. But, if you get a good attorney, you *will* get it issued if you're determined enough. Plan to spend about $12K-$18K getting your patent though (they're expensive), and don't forget your maintenance fees (which are if I recall 7, 11.5, and.. 15? years) and get more expensive each time.
A patent can be a valuable weapon, but it's a business decision. You need to really evaluate whether or not you even need a patent before spending so much money on something that may not be needed. Without me knowing your invention or your business, you'll have to determine that. Also, know that a "patent pending" status doesn't give you exclusivity to your invention - only a fully issued patent does, so there's going to be a long time before you can use your patent (hope your product or idea plans to be around for long).
As far as the beginning process, you're on the right track. Perform the prior art search yourself -- you'll do it much more thoroughly than an attorney will, give your attorney a list of 5 or 10 issued patents that are most relevant (even if they're not very relevant at all), but also don't forget to cite other works as well. Use articles, web sites, professional journals, essays, books, disserations - anything you can muster up will be good prior art to cite. If you do find something very very close, don't give up... point it out to your attorney by calling it "art of particular interest" and he will write claims around it. Remember that when someone wants to invalidate your patent later, all they have to do is find something earlier than your file date. If you didn't cite it, it's trouble for you. If you did cite it, and it gets issued anyway, then you can't get hit with it ever again and it strengthens your patent.
Hope these tips help.
Re:With that last question I ask another
on
Upcoming Cyberwars
·
· Score: 1
If I buy an automobile, I can sell the individual parts a la carte if I want to. Even if the parts can fit another manufacturer's model, I can still do that and there's nothing that says I can't.
I can even make spoilers and wide tires and sell those to be used on another manufacturer's model.
If I buy a book, I can tear the pages out and sell them individually if I want to. I can make notes on them and re-sell the book if I want. I can even tear out the pages, re-order them and glue them back in, and there's nothing the author can do about it.
I can sell information about how to make paper airplanes out of the torn pages of a paperback copy of The Stand, and STEPHEN FUCKING KING can't do SHIT about it!
So, why the HELL can't I modify software the way I see fit to work anyway I want it to? As long as only the one and original copy is involved, if someone gave me the CD and wasn't running it themselves, why can't I mod it how I want? Not to mention, why can't I transfer it's ownership (MicroSoft)?
I don't think software piracy is an issue at all here. We're talking about modifying someone else's app to fit your needs, and/or transferring ownership of that application to another person.
Software licensing (in general) is an unnatural and super-artificial area of IP law.
Funny how none of this concerns me one bit. I don't care if CD's are $1 a peice, I still probably wouldn't buy them. I don't go on file-swapping networks to get music either. I listen to my radio in the car, and that's enough music for me thank you very much.
So does that mean I'm pirating music? The old oldies Rock'n'Roll station plays all the good old stuff I'm interested in. I need nothing more.
I don't care what kind of content-delivery method you can come up with... if I don't want to see the ads... YOU CAN'T MAKE ME!
Look, when I buy a newspaper or magazine, if my eyes "skip" over an ad on a page, am I stealing the magazine? When I go to the movies and decide to "skip" the previews, am I stealing the movie? Well then if I'm not interested in your stinkin' TV commercial, TOO BAD!
The author hasn't put as much thought into this as I have. You want to make it so most likely people will see your ads? Ok, here's what ya do:
1. Make them entertaining. I probably won't watch it if I don't get a chuckle.
2. Have a system similar to a PVR where the commercials are downloaded seperately from the program being recorded.
3. Don't make me watch the stupid commercial over and over and over and over and over and...
4. Don't make it impossible for me to watch the commercial over and over again. I might want to share.
5. Some storage of the commercial might be nice... later when my ass itches, I might go to TiVo to find out what the name of the product is so I can put the fire out. (What was it... Preperation G?..hmmmm)
The best method of advertising that a lot of companies don't realize is "word of mouth." I can be your company's best promoter. I got a big mouth. Make my job easier, and you'll get the benefit.
The added benefit of this system I just described is that you could even add some kind of statistics on who is watching the ads, who likes which ads (by placing them in a "favorites" folder) or who deleted them before the end of the commercial. Plus you reduce bandwitdh for showing the same ad to the same user hoping they saw it, and that increases the worth of the ad displayed. And, now I don't have to take a stupid test on commercials.
So tell me what's new? This is just how patent law works, and has always worked. The USPTO has issued real stinkers in the past, but if the claims of the patent are specific enough, then it really doesn't make much difference.
There's nothing stopping an independent inventor from making an improvement on even TiVo's product, patenting it, and preventing TiVo from selling that specific embodiment. And that happens all the time in other industries, too. And I should add that's where the real abuse is.
Did you know that there are "think tanks" of just professors who are paid to think up new technology, patent it, then watch for new products that infringe?
You see, most inventions aren't really all that new. Almost every invention patented is a combination of two ideas or more older ideas to get a new, unique invention.
You may not be able to sell that new invention without infringing some other patent, but no one can sell your specific embodiment either.
Just because one company has a patent doesn't necessarily mean it will put another out of business. (I know what I'm talking about, I was a US patent paralegal for the #1 computer company for several years.)
If either company holds any value to Intellectual Property, they should have a flock of patents coming down the pipeline for any given product. (Don't go looking for them because you won't find them until they're issued.) Patents usually take 2 years to issue and they are typically issued with fairly specific claim language (unless it's something stellar like a time-machine).
Also, many companies have in-house attorneys who handle IP problems like this all day long. It's nothing new. Often times both companies will end up cross-licensing their patents with each other to keep new competitors at bay.
In the computer industry, this kind of thing happens all the time. There is so much cross-licensing going on between the major computer manufacturers you'd think it was a cartel. I'm not even kidding.
Trust me, this is nothing to get worked up about. The only reason that the Amazon one-click patent was so problematic is that their competitors didn't have any patents at all, and business methods (at the time) were thought to be unpatentable. Did it put their competitors out of business? No. It just made things really uncomfortable.
Even in most worst cases, a negligible royalty fee is usually negotiated for - and even then, the damages (royalties) only START since the time the "infringing" company is put on notice from the owner of the patent.
My roommate bought one because it was different, but it's not as easy to use as you'd figure. To get an idea, try writing with a pen like you did when you were in kindergarten (thumb on top).
Incidentally, shortly afterward, it became apparent that I tend to use my fingertips to control a regular mouse with greater precision. Perhaps you may find the same thing.
Allow me to show my infinite technical ignorance and dream for a second as someone with experience in Intellectual Property law:
When you really think about it, all aim.exe really is is just a long sequence of 0's and 1's, right? Unfortunately, copyright law makes it illegal for you to store THAT particular sequence.
But, what if you just did something simple so it isn't exactly the same number sequence anymore... like, XOR the entire aim.exe and store *that* instead?
Legal or not? Ooooh - then you could copyright the XOR'd version, too!
This is a really good idea! Think about it more carefully:
Let's say that I go to a store on the 'Net that I don't know or trust too well. I see a t-shirt or mug or something I want to buy for $12 but don't really want THEM to have access to all my credit on one of my cards.
So... I generate a credit card number with a fixed limit of $17 and give that number to them, and I don't have to worry about my number being stolen: it's only good for 17 bucks!
So you see? This allows you to have more control over your credit cards and relieves the worry that your card will be charged more than you wanted it to be.
Another application are those damn Time-Life CD's they sell on TV. Ever bought one? Of course not! Cause you're not gonna just buy one! They keep sending you CD after CD - the whole set, as long as it will fit on the card you gave them!
So, just give them a disposable card number for the amount they need, and be done. When they run the card again next month, it'll deny and they won't send you any more crap.
Slashdot Mirror
So what? It's an ad. Do you believe even half of what you see/hear advertised? I never even figured Apple used real people in their switcher adverts either, just because I'm generally skeptical about advertising anyway. I've been through advertising in my career. It all pretty much looks like a big fat frankfurter - some meat but mostly crap.
Yes, I get upset when I buy a product I've been mislead about. But I don't think they're making any dishonest or misleading claims about the product itself (you may differ with me on the premise of simple angst toward MS, that's fine), just the way it's advertised - and that definitely does NOT bother me.
I'm really not trolling here, and I'm not advocating MS in any way, but it seems that a lot of otherwise bright people are hung up on this being a Microsoft blunder when this happens everyday in advertising.
When you see an ad on TV for herpes medication, do you think that person really has herpes? Of course not - you couldn't pay anyone enough to do a commercial like that. They are paid actors, and nothing more. They may even hate the product they are selling.
The PR lady is nothing different; she was, in effect, a paid actor. So they made a false testimony, so what? Advertisers do that all the time to drum up business. It seems slimy and under-handed, but it's the way it works most of the time.
I believe it's correctly termed "green" because the manufacturer has clearly put time, effort, and thought into making the machine as reasonably environmentally friendly as possible with the current technology available.
You could say something like "this nuclear power plant is environmentally friendly." Well, true that it may not harm the environment as *much* as other alternatives, but it isn't totally pollution free either; but there really isn't much manufactured that is.
Point being, I think "green" is a term much deserved by manufacturers who are thinking about the environment when building their products. I think it shows responsibility and even has a tint of higher geekdom to it.
Honestly, I don't know shit about Linux. I just wanted to see if my Karma would go up if I could make a post that had the words "Linux" "Red Hat" and "Mandrake" in an ambiguously written sentence. I'm just talkin' out my ass, man.
Oh, by the way, it did make my karma go up like I thought.
Probably get modded down for this, but I just *can't* resist imagining a Beowulf cluster of THESE.
With Bero no longer working on KDE, I suggest that Mandrake may become more in the spotlight, especially if they see an opportunity to make emphasized advancements.
Red Hat will have to work a bit harder now or slip behind. Either way, both of these two recent events have interesting dynamics that could fuel competition between perhaps all distros.
I hate to be contradictory, but at one time Windows 95 *was* be a reliable server, believe it or not, and a pretty darn good one.
Just as an experiment to answer this very question, I set up a high-traffic web host as a server.
Zerion.com (a rather interesting phenomenon) was a web host for over 300 web sites, and ran on a single P233. During it's 1.5 year run it regularly transferred over 60-80GB per month, with a peak of 100GB/mo., serving over 1,000,000 requests with minimal downtime for disk maintenance per month.
Here's a typical report for February, 20001 for your perusal: http://www.zerion.com/logs/February/REPORT.HTML
It ran a router, email server, web server, ftp server, telnet daemon, VNC, and a watchdog. And, it ran in a remote area.
I doubt anyone will read this, being so late, but here's a thought that occurred to me:
Cliff's Notes seem to be a similar analogy to what this company is doing, in some way. Think about it: you still get the gist of the story, you just don't get every single word. You don't get the inflections, the descriptions, the graphic detail. I don't know really what to do with this analogy.
2nd, let's assume that we never touched the media. No tape is sliced, no DVD is laser-beamed, but instead, let's imagine a viewer (say a DVD viewer) where the original media is inserted, and only certain portions are played as per a predetermined script.
1. Play time sequence 0:00 to 0:30
2. Play time sequence 0:35 to 2:59
3. Play time sequence 3:50 to 10:00
Now... have we committed an infringement? What is the difference between that and having a real person who has seen the movie say.. "Okay, now skip to *this* part" ?
I don't know.
Imagine a Beowulf cluster of these...
I was the U.S. Patent Paralegal for the #1 Computer Manufacturer several years ago. My job was to conduct Patent Committee meetings, and help company inventors through the patent process, and manage the process with several outside firms who wrote our applications for us.
I can tell you from experience that as far as patents go, you get what you pay for. Don't skimp or you'll be sorry later when you want to use your patent. In general, $5,000 - $6,000 should be a good price for a good patent application to be filed. The broader your claims, the better -- and you can't think like an inventor when your attorney writes them, you have to think like an attorney -- the more your claims can broadly cover, the better. Specific is bad (for you). Ask your attorney to explain this if you have difficulty understanding this.
You've got a long road ahead of you. It will likely take you a good 1.5 years to 2.5 years to get your patent issued, if it ever does. It is likely to be rejected by the Patent and Trademark office two or three times, and you may even have to re-file the application once. But, if you get a good attorney, you *will* get it issued if you're determined enough. Plan to spend about $12K-$18K getting your patent though (they're expensive), and don't forget your maintenance fees (which are if I recall 7, 11.5, and.. 15? years) and get more expensive each time.
A patent can be a valuable weapon, but it's a business decision. You need to really evaluate whether or not you even need a patent before spending so much money on something that may not be needed. Without me knowing your invention or your business, you'll have to determine that. Also, know that a "patent pending" status doesn't give you exclusivity to your invention - only a fully issued patent does, so there's going to be a long time before you can use your patent (hope your product or idea plans to be around for long).
As far as the beginning process, you're on the right track. Perform the prior art search yourself -- you'll do it much more thoroughly than an attorney will, give your attorney a list of 5 or 10 issued patents that are most relevant (even if they're not very relevant at all), but also don't forget to cite other works as well. Use articles, web sites, professional journals, essays, books, disserations - anything you can muster up will be good prior art to cite. If you do find something very very close, don't give up... point it out to your attorney by calling it "art of particular interest" and he will write claims around it. Remember that when someone wants to invalidate your patent later, all they have to do is find something earlier than your file date. If you didn't cite it, it's trouble for you. If you did cite it, and it gets issued anyway, then you can't get hit with it ever again and it strengthens your patent.
Hope these tips help.
Hornets make honey???
If I buy an automobile, I can sell the individual parts a la carte if I want to. Even if the parts can fit another manufacturer's model, I can still do that and there's nothing that says I can't.
I can even make spoilers and wide tires and sell those to be used on another manufacturer's model.
If I buy a book, I can tear the pages out and sell them individually if I want to. I can make notes on them and re-sell the book if I want. I can even tear out the pages, re-order them and glue them back in, and there's nothing the author can do about it.
I can sell information about how to make paper airplanes out of the torn pages of a paperback copy of The Stand, and STEPHEN FUCKING KING can't do SHIT about it!
So, why the HELL can't I modify software the way I see fit to work anyway I want it to? As long as only the one and original copy is involved, if someone gave me the CD and wasn't running it themselves, why can't I mod it how I want? Not to mention, why can't I transfer it's ownership (MicroSoft)?
I don't think software piracy is an issue at all here. We're talking about modifying someone else's app to fit your needs, and/or transferring ownership of that application to another person.
Software licensing (in general) is an unnatural and super-artificial area of IP law.
Funny how none of this concerns me one bit. I don't care if CD's are $1 a peice, I still probably wouldn't buy them. I don't go on file-swapping networks to get music either. I listen to my radio in the car, and that's enough music for me thank you very much.
So does that mean I'm pirating music? The old oldies Rock'n'Roll station plays all the good old stuff I'm interested in. I need nothing more.
I don't care what kind of content-delivery method you can come up with... if I don't want to see the ads... YOU CAN'T MAKE ME!
Look, when I buy a newspaper or magazine, if my eyes "skip" over an ad on a page, am I stealing the magazine? When I go to the movies and decide to "skip" the previews, am I stealing the movie? Well then if I'm not interested in your stinkin' TV commercial, TOO BAD!
The author hasn't put as much thought into this as I have. You want to make it so most likely people will see your ads? Ok, here's what ya do:
1. Make them entertaining. I probably won't watch it if I don't get a chuckle.
2. Have a system similar to a PVR where the commercials are downloaded seperately from the program being recorded.
3. Don't make me watch the stupid commercial over and over and over and over and over and...
4. Don't make it impossible for me to watch the commercial over and over again. I might want to share.
5. Some storage of the commercial might be nice... later when my ass itches, I might go to TiVo to find out what the name of the product is so I can put the fire out. (What was it... Preperation G?..hmmmm)
The best method of advertising that a lot of companies don't realize is "word of mouth." I can be your company's best promoter. I got a big mouth. Make my job easier, and you'll get the benefit.
The added benefit of this system I just described is that you could even add some kind of statistics on who is watching the ads, who likes which ads (by placing them in a "favorites" folder) or who deleted them before the end of the commercial. Plus you reduce bandwitdh for showing the same ad to the same user hoping they saw it, and that increases the worth of the ad displayed. And, now I don't have to take a stupid test on commercials.
Oh, fuck you; it was funny and you know it!
Off topic indeed.
547-9510?!?
How did you know my phone number?!? I am so... freaked out... Is this Jonathan playing a trick on me?
Can you back that up? It's not on the AP, it's not on CNN, it's not on Yahoo News... ? I think you are mistaken.
So tell me what's new? This is just how patent law works, and has always worked. The USPTO has issued real stinkers in the past, but if the claims of the patent are specific enough, then it really doesn't make much difference.
There's nothing stopping an independent inventor from making an improvement on even TiVo's product, patenting it, and preventing TiVo from selling that specific embodiment. And that happens all the time in other industries, too. And I should add that's where the real abuse is.
Did you know that there are "think tanks" of just professors who are paid to think up new technology, patent it, then watch for new products that infringe?
You see, most inventions aren't really all that new. Almost every invention patented is a combination of two ideas or more older ideas to get a new, unique invention.
You may not be able to sell that new invention without infringing some other patent, but no one can sell your specific embodiment either.
Just because one company has a patent doesn't necessarily mean it will put another out of business. (I know what I'm talking about, I was a US patent paralegal for the #1 computer company for several years.)
If either company holds any value to Intellectual Property, they should have a flock of patents coming down the pipeline for any given product. (Don't go looking for them because you won't find them until they're issued.) Patents usually take 2 years to issue and they are typically issued with fairly specific claim language (unless it's something stellar like a time-machine).
Also, many companies have in-house attorneys who handle IP problems like this all day long. It's nothing new. Often times both companies will end up cross-licensing their patents with each other to keep new competitors at bay.
In the computer industry, this kind of thing happens all the time. There is so much cross-licensing going on between the major computer manufacturers you'd think it was a cartel. I'm not even kidding.
Trust me, this is nothing to get worked up about. The only reason that the Amazon one-click patent was so problematic is that their competitors didn't have any patents at all, and business methods (at the time) were thought to be unpatentable. Did it put their competitors out of business? No. It just made things really uncomfortable.
Even in most worst cases, a negligible royalty fee is usually negotiated for - and even then, the damages (royalties) only START since the time the "infringing" company is put on notice from the owner of the patent.
*yawn*
My roommate bought one because it was different, but it's not as easy to use as you'd figure. To get an idea, try writing with a pen like you did when you were in kindergarten (thumb on top).
Incidentally, shortly afterward, it became apparent that I tend to use my fingertips to control a regular mouse with greater precision. Perhaps you may find the same thing.
Am I the only one who thinks that "XP" looks like a grimacing smiley with it's toungue sticking out at the world?
Allow me to show my infinite technical ignorance and dream for a second as someone with experience in Intellectual Property law:
When you really think about it, all aim.exe really is is just a long sequence of 0's and 1's, right? Unfortunately, copyright law makes it illegal for you to store THAT particular sequence.
But, what if you just did something simple so it isn't exactly the same number sequence anymore... like, XOR the entire aim.exe and store *that* instead?
Legal or not? Ooooh - then you could copyright the XOR'd version, too!
This is a really good idea! Think about it more carefully:
Let's say that I go to a store on the 'Net that I don't know or trust too well. I see a t-shirt or mug or something I want to buy for $12 but don't really want THEM to have access to all my credit on one of my cards.
So... I generate a credit card number with a fixed limit of $17 and give that number to them, and I don't have to worry about my number being stolen: it's only good for 17 bucks!
So you see? This allows you to have more control over your credit cards and relieves the worry that your card will be charged more than you wanted it to be.
Another application are those damn Time-Life CD's they sell on TV. Ever bought one? Of course not! Cause you're not gonna just buy one! They keep sending you CD after CD - the whole set, as long as it will fit on the card you gave them!
So, just give them a disposable card number for the amount they need, and be done. When they run the card again next month, it'll deny and they won't send you any more crap.