>All software patents must include the FULL SOURCE CODE.
An important part of a patent is that you must teach everything about your invention so that a person can understand the entire invention. I'm sure there are patents that include source code, but many more include flow charts.
If the full invention is not described, then somebody screwed up. I suppose the patent could be invalidated if it was ever litigated.
Most people don't understand how seriously hard GUI programming is... and how much money user testing costs.
It's easy for one person to write a compiler that a bunch of geeks will use. RMS and Linus have shown that the price of a compiler and an OS is darn well close to zero $$$.
But GUIs and user testing costs money. I can ask a few of my friends to look at a design, but next time around I need virgin users I'll have to twist some serious arms or pay for testing. Ouch.
On the other hand, will people pay for good design? The troubles at Apple are a sign that perhaps not.
Ed Felton said at his Stanford talk that the ICASSP paper was a highly condensed version (the Cliff notes version) of the original paper. Still it gives a bit of the flavor of the original work.
I haven't checked to see whether they have put the paper online.
One things that nobody has mentioned.... after you run a gazillion cables to multiple jacks in every room, be sure that you punch down everything onto a block so that any cable can be disconnected by pulling a shorting connector, or unplugging a connector.
If a network link goes bad, or your phone line starts acting up you don't want to be pulling wires apart. Mucb better to just unplug something. Takes a bit more space in your wiring closet. But well worth it.
In my case, I have all the voice lines running to the left side of the punch down block, and the right sides are all tied together (since I don't have a pbx). The two sides are connected together with shorting connectors.
The Ethernet lines come separately on the left and right side of the punch down block, and the center terminals are wired to RJ45s, which then plug into my ethernet hub/switch.
(Thanks to Tom and Peet for teaching me this and other important wiring lessons.)
I was one of the authors of the Video Rewrite work that was mentioned in the article. I sat next to a District Attorney on a plane, described our technology, and asked if it worried her. Without a pause she said no. They don't depend on video (or photographs) in court. Instead they ask a person who is sworn in whether this was an accurate rendition of what they saw.
There is source code that reads and writes QT movies available at http://web.interval.com/papers/1999-066/
You are right.... this doesn't solve the codec problem (it uses JPEG). But this should get people started. (IMHO, it's easier to read this code then the xanim code.)
And it is also in Matlab. But the code is straightfoward enough that it should be easy to translate. The code runs on any platform (PC, Mac, Unix) that runs Matlab.
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>All software patents must include the FULL SOURCE CODE.
An important part of a patent is that you must teach everything about your invention so that a person can understand the entire invention. I'm sure there are patents that include source code, but many more include flow charts.
If the full invention is not described, then somebody screwed up. I suppose the patent could be invalidated if it was ever litigated.
Most people don't understand how seriously hard GUI programming is... and how much money user testing costs.
It's easy for one person to write a compiler that a bunch of geeks will use. RMS and Linus have shown that the price of a compiler and an OS is darn well close to zero $$$.
But GUIs and user testing costs money. I can ask a few of my friends to look at a design, but next time around I need virgin users I'll have to twist some serious arms or pay for testing. Ouch.
On the other hand, will people pay for good design? The troubles at Apple are a sign that perhaps not.
-- Malcolm
I haven't checked to see whether they have put the paper online.
One things that nobody has mentioned.... after you run a gazillion cables to multiple jacks in every room, be sure that you punch down everything onto a block so that any cable can be disconnected by pulling a shorting connector, or unplugging a connector.
If a network link goes bad, or your phone line starts acting up you don't want to be pulling wires apart. Mucb better to just unplug something. Takes a bit more space in your wiring closet. But well worth it.
In my case, I have all the voice lines running to the left side of the punch down block, and the right sides are all tied together (since I don't have a pbx). The two sides are connected together with shorting connectors.
The Ethernet lines come separately on the left and right side of the punch down block, and the center terminals are wired to RJ45s, which then plug into my ethernet hub/switch.
(Thanks to Tom and Peet for teaching me this and other important wiring lessons.)
>but I did submit a complaint via the San Francisco/Oakland BBB. No response yet.
Don't even bother with the BBB. Go straight to the Public Utilities Commission.
Given France's desire to speak only French, why are they upset about something that appears in English? :-)
See
http://www.cs.colorado.edu/~mozer/house/
for the details.
World class application of machine learning.
-- Malcolm
I was one of the authors of the Video Rewrite work that was mentioned in the article. I sat next to a District Attorney on a plane, described our technology, and asked if it worried her. Without a pause she said no. They don't depend on video (or photographs) in court. Instead they ask a person who is sworn in whether this was an accurate rendition of what they saw.
There is source code that reads and writes QT movies available at
http://web.interval.com/papers/1999-066/
You are right.... this doesn't solve the codec problem (it uses JPEG). But this should get people started. (IMHO, it's easier to read this code then the xanim code.)
And it is also in Matlab. But the code is straightfoward enough that it should be easy to translate. The code runs on any platform (PC, Mac, Unix) that runs Matlab.
-- Malcolm