You may want to talk to a lawyer. I am not an education law specialist, but I do know there is a federal statute that covers educational information. It is called the Federal Family Educational Right to Privacy Act of 1974 (FERPA) and strictly controls access to educational information such as grades. You can read the statute here
and the regulations here.
I have a Dell lattitude C600 with 512 Mb RAM and an 850 MHz PIII mobile processor. It runs a highly tweaked Win 98 version. I also have a TiBook with an 800 MHz G4 and 512 Mb RAM running OS X 10.2 (Jaguar). Let me say that the TiBook is MUCH more responsive.
I tell people that you don't care about speed benchmarks. The only thing you REALLY care about when using the computer is response time. I define that as the time it takes for the computer to execute the command you just gave it (i.e., file saves, close window, open application, etc.). There are too many other variables that figure into designing a computer too pay attention to, even for engineers.
When I compare the amount of time I spend waiting for my Dell to do something versus my TiBook, I feel it is worth the price difference in saved time (BTW, I am a lawyer and make my living charging for time - less time waiting = more productive lawyer = happier clients). You can always make more money - you can never make more time. I am grateful for the time the TiBook has saved me.
I never mingled with any millionaires (that I know of). Just all regular people from the area or those who chose to vacation in Newport during race season. Maybe it was the beer, but they all seemed pretty interesting to me at the time.
the REAL story is the parties! I grew up near Newport, RI where the race had been held until the Aussies won the Cup with their very controversial hull/keel design. The design gave them the winning edge, but it also caused some major litigation. Anyway, I digress. In a race year, the streets/bars/etc. of Newport were PACKED with people all having a great time partying. The race itself may be boring to many people, but if it still creates the kinds of parties I remember, it is worth all the money spent (so long as I am not footing the bill).
"The system never knows what the viewer is watching since the headend never knows specifics about what the set-top box is doing,' said Anderson. 'And we never associate the set-top box address with a physical home address.'"
If this is true, then not only as someone above wondered how the ads are targeted, how does the headend know WHEN to insert the ad? I predict a LOT of angry consumers missing pieces of their favorite shows.
Your argument fails at one specific point: Google is NOT a "gatekeeper" on the we. It DOES however possess significant market power because as you observed it is the search engine of choice. However, it has become the search engine of choice simply because of the quality of its search results. If that quality diminishes, Google will lose its market power and ability to attract sites that pay to have rankings. As much as I agree that no one entity should have control over the web, Google is not in a position to even threaten that right now. ICANN is a public institution (oversimplification, I admit, but with a truthful underpinning) and has obligations to the public at large. They are a true gatekeeper. Google is just a business providing search services.
How many? Every single one running Mozilla or Netscape 6.0+, or Opera, or even (I think) iCab. Then, you have just about everyone browsing if you include blocking cookies altogether (unless you work in a shop like mine that has seen fit to set Windows policies on the desktop that freeze the cookie setting on for IE - which, besides the fact that I hate IE for other reasons, is why I installed Mozilla to begin with). Just because some people DON'T take the time to learn how things work, doesn't mean they CAN'T.
Re:Google Cookies
on
Mr Anti-Google
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
True, but search quality is measured by the closeness of the match between the search perfomed and the result of that search. If a high-ranked result is an excellent or even good match to the search performed (meaning that it is what the searcher wanted in the first place) then the fact that the high ranking was sold rather than generated by an algorithm that does not account for financial/business relationship factors is completely meaningless. The searcher got what s/he wanted - a quality result. The high-listed site got what it wanted - high placement in Google's result listing. Google got what it wanted too - payment for steering traffic to the site.
As in this example search for snowboard retailers, Google even tags the top results as "Sponsored Links" so even the searchers know that those sites are ranked first because they paid Google to be ranked first. If it is what the searcher wanted, it doesn't matter.
IMO, this is no different from a company purchasing a large ad in the yellow pages of the phone directory. Does/should anyone think that the ads are bigger for certain companies because those companies are better? People know that companies buy those ads. Searchers should also know that "sponsored" = paid. I don't see anything inappropriate. In fact, I credit Google for being above some of the slimy companies on the web and staying above the board with its business practices. Google's ability to charge for ranking will be nil if its search results reduce to the point of being roughly equivalent to random advertising.
Google Cookies
on
Mr Anti-Google
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
I have Mozilla set to disallow cookies from Google and I've never noticed any difference in the quality of search results between searches with cookies permitted/denied. Even if it is true that Google tracks searches, at least it isn't REQUIRING cookies to be enabled before you can search.
As for the point made that this guy thinks that Google is "undemocratic," give me a break! Google is not a government - it is a search site! They exist to make a profit. They will make money by providing a quality search result, thereby attracting users. They are not in the business of being the arbiter of democratic principles on the web.
"Famus" is properly spelled f-a-m-o-u-s (omitting the dashes, of course); and
You are misquoting Shakespeare. Yes, that line is said with the completion "kill all the lawyers." However, the reason for killing the lawyers was to create anarchy. Without lawyers, our society and its basis on the rule of law would be in shambles.
Still better, the fact that he could idependantly re-create the patent without prior knowledge of its existance proves that the patent is obvious to a programmer knowledable in the field, and hence, probably invalid.
WRONG! This is NOT the test for obviousness under the patent statute. All that shows is that an invention can be invented twice.
Unless you have a law degree and a specialization in patent law, I STRONGLY suggest that you refrain from making sweeping assertions about legal principles because you are coming to ridiculous conclusions. Heaven forbid that some good natured but legally naieve person actually read and believe statements like yours. You are doing a serious disservice.
For the final point, Linus is CLEARLY wrong. It is ALWAYS better to know of the patent early. Then you can DESIGN AROUND and AVOID an infringement suit entirely -- not just avoid willful infringement. Your argument is totally nonsensical.
What you said about prior art invalidating a patent is true. However, when issued, every patent comes with a presumption of validity (35 U.S.C. sec. 282). That means to show that a patent is invalid you must do so by clear and convincing evidence - a pretty high standard. Witness testimony will not suffice. If you are not being sued, in 99% of cases the logical business choice is to design around, not to sue the patent holder to invalidate the patent.
If there is a valid patent that is infringed by your code AND you knew of the patent's existence AND you went ahead and included the patented features in your code, THEN you are liable for willful infringement. In the United States, you would be liable for treble damages and most likely would have your case declared exceptional, meaning you would have to pay the patentee's attorneys' fees as well.
The solution? DESIGN AROUND! Every patent has a limited scope. There are numerous ways of achieving the same result in non-infringing ways for most functionality. There are relatively few patents that "occupy the field" for important functionality. Get competent legal advice for your design-around efforts.
"Every American relies upon cyberspace and every American has to do something to secure their part of cyberspace," Clarke said of the plan, which will be released September 19 in Silicon Valley. . . Clarke spoke to reporters as well as government and corporate officials to announce government-wide standards for securing Microsoft's Windows 2000, the most commonly used operating system for government and corporate computers.
PS -- The attorney's comments appear to be reasonable, but are reasonable speculation based on the assumption that M$ has enforceable patents that actually cover OpenGL technology. ZDNet did a disservice by the way the quotes were used to give the impression that M$ was lurking out there setting the statge for a patent infringement suit if OpenGL users did not pony up fees.
Not M$ in this case, but ZDNet. The attorney they quoted does not appear to have any special expertise in patent law -- he appears to be more into licensing. He also is not listed as a Registered Patent Attorney in the USPTO database.
Essentially then, M$ stated at an OpenGL meeting that it has some patents related to graphics. The article says NOTHING about any application of those claims to OpenGL technology in use, the validity of the patents, or any other of a host of issues.
The article slants slightly toward the view that M$ can make things really problematic if it wants but that simply may not be true. As far as I am concerned, in my opinion as a registered patent attorney, there is no story here unless and until M$ shows an issued patent and describes how the claim reads on OpenGL. Move along folks -- there's nothing to see here.
and that answer is that there is NO simple answer.
You cannot give legal advice in a vacuum. Each legal problem is highly fact dependent. It is easy sometimes to say what the law is (in the sense that you can simply say it is illegal to do X ) but when you try to apply the law to the facts of a specific situation you need to know which facts are important legally, what the effect of those facts are to the law's application.
Hire a lawyer and let him/her make a determination for you in the form of a legal opinion. If you do get sued, you can defend your actions on the basis of your lawyer's advice. Trust me -- the investment today will be well worth it tomorrow in a lawsuit.
If they grab paper, they have to go through the trouble of forging the signature. Even the most careful tracing can be detected by a good handwriting analyst. A digital signature on the other hand is susceptible to being copied perfectly limitless times.
Even tough this thread started with sniffing wireless transmissions, we both know that these electronic signatures have to be stored somewhere and that storage medium has to be connected to a computer which most likely is attached to a network.... well, you see where this is going. You may recall that a while back a cell phone company here (Verizon) had trouble keeping its customers confidential information confidential. I don't want to find out that in addition to my credit card #, name, address, telephone number, social security number, date of birth, etc. that now someone has an exact, freely reproducible copy of my real signature. My signature is my last line of protection.
He is NOT paranoid and I follow the same practice of always signing on paper. In the US, the federal statutes limit liability for credit card fraud to $50 if you report fraud or a lost card within a reasonable time after its discovery. For debit cards, the statutory protections do not apply but most banks will contractually limit your liability to $50 is the account agreement.
The method may be insecure, but in this case there are external safeguards to mitigate the risk. If you sign on paper, then it is easy to prove a signature is not yours. Good luck proving that digital signature is a copy and that you did not actually sign the pad.
Besides, you know the saying -- If you aren't paranoid, you just don't know what is going on.
If M$ hadn't been greedy and tried to "embrace and extend" Java in violation of its license from Sun, then it wouldn't have been sued by Sun and wouldn't have LOST that lawsuit. THAT is the reason why they are shipping an old version of the JVM.
I think that it is almost exactly what I was trying to describe. (See -- I'm not the first inventor). And I also think this is where I acknowledge I was not even the first to coin the phrase "Open Patent License" the way I thought in my initial post. Someone else steered me here.
I'm yet to see a good software patent. That being the case, it's difficult to be sympathetic with arguments that assume that good patents are the norm, or even likely.
I'm the first to admit that there are problems with many patents, both in software and other technologies. I'll even admit that it is probably more pronounced in software. In the US that is partly because of the lack of good examiners. The USPTO can't hire good people at the rates they paid, especially during the dot-com explosion here recently. To make matters worse, Congress siphons off user fees for pork-barrel projects instead of allowing the PTO to use the money for its intended purpose: to sustain and improve the PTO.
If you live in a region where software is not patentable and you don't care about patents, you are right -- you have no reason to be interested. As long as you aren't doing anything in the United States, that is.
You're thinking like a Patent Lawyer, while I'm thinking like a Computer Scientist. I don't think anyone should have the right to stop me using the best solution to a problem that I can think of, even if they thought of it first, because I consider algorithms to be equivalent to mathematical formulae, and as such discoveries, not inventions.
No, I'm also a Computer Scientist. I'm just a scientist with a legal background as well. Computer algorithms are NOT the same as mathematical formulae. Somewhere you have to acknowledge that software is unique and nothing like it has ever existed before. Mathematical formulae are just ways of communicating ideas. Algorithms are a subset of those ideas that tell you how to make a machine perform a useful function.
Let's say I come up with something very clever, and I don't bother to patent it. Someone in the US downloads my implementation of my idea, writes it up as a patent, and applies for it, and then starts enforcing it, possibly even pursuing people that are using my implementation. Is that a realistic scenario?
Possible, yes. Realistic? I don't know and I tend to think not.
What should I then do to rectify the situation? Attempt to overturn the patent, by showing prior art?
Yes, and no. Yes, you show your code as the prior art. But more than that, you show that you are the actual inventor. The US has a first to invent rule -- only the first inventor can get a patent. If you invented first and did not hide or abandon your invention, YOU are then the one who is entitled to get a patent. If someone stole your code, they are said to have "derived" the invention and the patent is invalid.
Am I right in thinking that overturning a bad patent costs about $1.5M these days? Don't you think that scenario highlights some fundamental problems with the US patent system?
No. It can cost that much in intense litigation, but it is not necessarily so. Anyone can submit prior art to the USPTO and request that an examiner consider the submission. Cost: whatever it costs you to photocopy the submission materials and postage. Or telephone fees if you fax it. By the way, if you think the US system is flawed, try one of your Euro counterparts -- Belgium. They have NO EXAMINATION -- the patent just issues essentially. As for litigation, try another Euro nation, Germany. There, you have to bring infringement suits, opposition proceedings and nullification proceedings in THREE DIFFERENT COURTS. Imagine having to defend an infringement action in one court for a patent that you know is invalid while bringing a separate nullification (invalidity) proceeding. It is possible to be declared a patent infringer months before you find out if the patent is even valid. Talk about wasted time and money....
I certainly don't want to think of something only to discover I'm not allowed to use it because some government decided to issue a patent on it. I REALLY don't want to have to cross-check every idea I have and then have to choose between licensing the patent or producing a (possibly technically inferior) alternative solution, just because someone else thinks like me, but was quicker at getting to the patent office.
People usually hate this answer, but I still give it: Every other industry in the world has had to do exactly this. The software industry is no different. In software, people are up in arms because there are so many independent developers who write code people actually use. They are the equivalent to mom and pop shops in other industries. But even small manufacturing shops get sued for patent infringement.
What nobody has succeeded in explaining to me is why we should contemplate allowing Software Patents at all.
In the US, the law is that "anything under the sun created by man" is patentable. That includes software. Other nations have to make their own policy decisions.
Slashdot Mirror
You may want to talk to a lawyer. I am not an education law specialist, but I do know there is a federal statute that covers educational information. It is called the Federal Family Educational Right to Privacy Act of 1974 (FERPA) and strictly controls access to educational information such as grades. You can read the statute here and the regulations here.
I tell people that you don't care about speed benchmarks. The only thing you REALLY care about when using the computer is response time. I define that as the time it takes for the computer to execute the command you just gave it (i.e., file saves, close window, open application, etc.). There are too many other variables that figure into designing a computer too pay attention to, even for engineers.
When I compare the amount of time I spend waiting for my Dell to do something versus my TiBook, I feel it is worth the price difference in saved time (BTW, I am a lawyer and make my living charging for time - less time waiting = more productive lawyer = happier clients). You can always make more money - you can never make more time. I am grateful for the time the TiBook has saved me.
I never mingled with any millionaires (that I know of). Just all regular people from the area or those who chose to vacation in Newport during race season. Maybe it was the beer, but they all seemed pretty interesting to me at the time.
the REAL story is the parties! I grew up near Newport, RI where the race had been held until the Aussies won the Cup with their very controversial hull/keel design. The design gave them the winning edge, but it also caused some major litigation. Anyway, I digress. In a race year, the streets/bars/etc. of Newport were PACKED with people all having a great time partying. The race itself may be boring to many people, but if it still creates the kinds of parties I remember, it is worth all the money spent (so long as I am not footing the bill).
If this is true, then not only as someone above wondered how the ads are targeted, how does the headend know WHEN to insert the ad? I predict a LOT of angry consumers missing pieces of their favorite shows.
Your argument fails at one specific point: Google is NOT a "gatekeeper" on the we. It DOES however possess significant market power because as you observed it is the search engine of choice. However, it has become the search engine of choice simply because of the quality of its search results. If that quality diminishes, Google will lose its market power and ability to attract sites that pay to have rankings. As much as I agree that no one entity should have control over the web, Google is not in a position to even threaten that right now. ICANN is a public institution (oversimplification, I admit, but with a truthful underpinning) and has obligations to the public at large. They are a true gatekeeper. Google is just a business providing search services.
How many? Every single one running Mozilla or Netscape 6.0+, or Opera, or even (I think) iCab. Then, you have just about everyone browsing if you include blocking cookies altogether (unless you work in a shop like mine that has seen fit to set Windows policies on the desktop that freeze the cookie setting on for IE - which, besides the fact that I hate IE for other reasons, is why I installed Mozilla to begin with). Just because some people DON'T take the time to learn how things work, doesn't mean they CAN'T.
As in this example search for snowboard retailers, Google even tags the top results as "Sponsored Links" so even the searchers know that those sites are ranked first because they paid Google to be ranked first. If it is what the searcher wanted, it doesn't matter.
IMO, this is no different from a company purchasing a large ad in the yellow pages of the phone directory. Does/should anyone think that the ads are bigger for certain companies because those companies are better? People know that companies buy those ads. Searchers should also know that "sponsored" = paid. I don't see anything inappropriate. In fact, I credit Google for being above some of the slimy companies on the web and staying above the board with its business practices. Google's ability to charge for ranking will be nil if its search results reduce to the point of being roughly equivalent to random advertising.
As for the point made that this guy thinks that Google is "undemocratic," give me a break! Google is not a government - it is a search site! They exist to make a profit. They will make money by providing a quality search result, thereby attracting users. They are not in the business of being the arbiter of democratic principles on the web.
... Right next to "oxygen is necessary to sustain human life" and "enough beer makes ugly people attractive."
WRONG! This is NOT the test for obviousness under the patent statute. All that shows is that an invention can be invented twice.
Unless you have a law degree and a specialization in patent law, I STRONGLY suggest that you refrain from making sweeping assertions about legal principles because you are coming to ridiculous conclusions. Heaven forbid that some good natured but legally naieve person actually read and believe statements like yours. You are doing a serious disservice.
For the final point, Linus is CLEARLY wrong. It is ALWAYS better to know of the patent early. Then you can DESIGN AROUND and AVOID an infringement suit entirely -- not just avoid willful infringement. Your argument is totally nonsensical.
What you said about prior art invalidating a patent is true. However, when issued, every patent comes with a presumption of validity (35 U.S.C. sec. 282). That means to show that a patent is invalid you must do so by clear and convincing evidence - a pretty high standard. Witness testimony will not suffice. If you are not being sued, in 99% of cases the logical business choice is to design around, not to sue the patent holder to invalidate the patent.
- Register a name on Slashdot;
- Post under that name instead of an AC
Don't bother me with insipid postings until you do. Then again, if you PAY me to do a patent search for you, I'd be happy to do what you suggest.The solution? DESIGN AROUND! Every patent has a limited scope. There are numerous ways of achieving the same result in non-infringing ways for most functionality. There are relatively few patents that "occupy the field" for important functionality. Get competent legal advice for your design-around efforts.
"Every American relies upon cyberspace and every American has to do something to secure their part of cyberspace," Clarke said of the plan, which will be released September 19 in Silicon Valley. . . Clarke spoke to reporters as well as government and corporate officials to announce government-wide standards for securing Microsoft's Windows 2000, the most commonly used operating system for government and corporate computers.
I'm doing my part. I'm using a Macintosh.
PS -- The attorney's comments appear to be reasonable, but are reasonable speculation based on the assumption that M$ has enforceable patents that actually cover OpenGL technology. ZDNet did a disservice by the way the quotes were used to give the impression that M$ was lurking out there setting the statge for a patent infringement suit if OpenGL users did not pony up fees.
Essentially then, M$ stated at an OpenGL meeting that it has some patents related to graphics. The article says NOTHING about any application of those claims to OpenGL technology in use, the validity of the patents, or any other of a host of issues.
The article slants slightly toward the view that M$ can make things really problematic if it wants but that simply may not be true. As far as I am concerned, in my opinion as a registered patent attorney, there is no story here unless and until M$ shows an issued patent and describes how the claim reads on OpenGL. Move along folks -- there's nothing to see here.
You cannot give legal advice in a vacuum. Each legal problem is highly fact dependent. It is easy sometimes to say what the law is (in the sense that you can simply say it is illegal to do X ) but when you try to apply the law to the facts of a specific situation you need to know which facts are important legally, what the effect of those facts are to the law's application.
Hire a lawyer and let him/her make a determination for you in the form of a legal opinion. If you do get sued, you can defend your actions on the basis of your lawyer's advice. Trust me -- the investment today will be well worth it tomorrow in a lawsuit.
Even tough this thread started with sniffing wireless transmissions, we both know that these electronic signatures have to be stored somewhere and that storage medium has to be connected to a computer which most likely is attached to a network .... well, you see where this is going. You may recall that a while back a cell phone company here (Verizon) had trouble keeping its customers confidential information confidential. I don't want to find out that in addition to my credit card #, name, address, telephone number, social security number, date of birth, etc. that now someone has an exact, freely reproducible copy of my real signature. My signature is my last line of protection.
The method may be insecure, but in this case there are external safeguards to mitigate the risk. If you sign on paper, then it is easy to prove a signature is not yours. Good luck proving that digital signature is a copy and that you did not actually sign the pad.
Besides, you know the saying -- If you aren't paranoid, you just don't know what is going on.
If M$ hadn't been greedy and tried to "embrace and extend" Java in violation of its license from Sun, then it wouldn't have been sued by Sun and wouldn't have LOST that lawsuit. THAT is the reason why they are shipping an old version of the JVM.
I think that it is almost exactly what I was trying to describe. (See -- I'm not the first inventor). And I also think this is where I acknowledge I was not even the first to coin the phrase "Open Patent License" the way I thought in my initial post. Someone else steered me here.
How about actually READING THE POST so you don't have to post as an AC? That is NOT what I said.
I'm yet to see a good software patent. That being the case, it's difficult to be sympathetic with arguments that assume that good patents are the norm, or even likely.
I'm the first to admit that there are problems with many patents, both in software and other technologies. I'll even admit that it is probably more pronounced in software. In the US that is partly because of the lack of good examiners. The USPTO can't hire good people at the rates they paid, especially during the dot-com explosion here recently. To make matters worse, Congress siphons off user fees for pork-barrel projects instead of allowing the PTO to use the money for its intended purpose: to sustain and improve the PTO.
If you live in a region where software is not patentable and you don't care about patents, you are right -- you have no reason to be interested. As long as you aren't doing anything in the United States, that is.
You're thinking like a Patent Lawyer, while I'm thinking like a Computer Scientist. I don't think anyone should have the right to stop me using the best solution to a problem that I can think of, even if they thought of it first, because I consider algorithms to be equivalent to mathematical formulae, and as such discoveries, not inventions.
No, I'm also a Computer Scientist. I'm just a scientist with a legal background as well. Computer algorithms are NOT the same as mathematical formulae. Somewhere you have to acknowledge that software is unique and nothing like it has ever existed before. Mathematical formulae are just ways of communicating ideas. Algorithms are a subset of those ideas that tell you how to make a machine perform a useful function.
Let's say I come up with something very clever, and I don't bother to patent it. Someone in the US downloads my implementation of my idea, writes it up as a patent, and applies for it, and then starts enforcing it, possibly even pursuing people that are using my implementation. Is that a realistic scenario?
Possible, yes. Realistic? I don't know and I tend to think not.
What should I then do to rectify the situation? Attempt to overturn the patent, by showing prior art?
Yes, and no. Yes, you show your code as the prior art. But more than that, you show that you are the actual inventor. The US has a first to invent rule -- only the first inventor can get a patent. If you invented first and did not hide or abandon your invention, YOU are then the one who is entitled to get a patent. If someone stole your code, they are said to have "derived" the invention and the patent is invalid.
Am I right in thinking that overturning a bad patent costs about $1.5M these days? Don't you think that scenario highlights some fundamental problems with the US patent system?
No. It can cost that much in intense litigation, but it is not necessarily so. Anyone can submit prior art to the USPTO and request that an examiner consider the submission. Cost: whatever it costs you to photocopy the submission materials and postage. Or telephone fees if you fax it. By the way, if you think the US system is flawed, try one of your Euro counterparts -- Belgium. They have NO EXAMINATION -- the patent just issues essentially. As for litigation, try another Euro nation, Germany. There, you have to bring infringement suits, opposition proceedings and nullification proceedings in THREE DIFFERENT COURTS. Imagine having to defend an infringement action in one court for a patent that you know is invalid while bringing a separate nullification (invalidity) proceeding. It is possible to be declared a patent infringer months before you find out if the patent is even valid. Talk about wasted time and money....
I certainly don't want to think of something only to discover I'm not allowed to use it because some government decided to issue a patent on it. I REALLY don't want to have to cross-check every idea I have and then have to choose between licensing the patent or producing a (possibly technically inferior) alternative solution, just because someone else thinks like me, but was quicker at getting to the patent office.
People usually hate this answer, but I still give it: Every other industry in the world has had to do exactly this. The software industry is no different. In software, people are up in arms because there are so many independent developers who write code people actually use. They are the equivalent to mom and pop shops in other industries. But even small manufacturing shops get sued for patent infringement.
What nobody has succeeded in explaining to me is why we should contemplate allowing Software Patents at all.
In the US, the law is that "anything under the sun created by man" is patentable. That includes software. Other nations have to make their own policy decisions.