It is a time-limit on damages, which is not the same thing as a time limit on lawsuits. There is still the potential to restrain an infringer who started 6 or more years ago from further infringement through the courts - and totally kill their business - even though damages for the infringement can not be recovered. And you can sue any other infringer.
Check out My Gate Array Project if you haven't already done so. The EE work is done by Chris Testa KD2BMH, I mostly do systems programming and business but do a lot of design checks, etc.
No problem. I wouldn't want to discourage anyone from pointing that out, I actually don't sit at my keyboard waiting for Slashdot stories all day and count on the rest of you folks to set people straight:-)
Repeating the AC because he's posted at karma 0. That's "University of California at Berkeley", AC, but the rest of this is spot on:
Berkeley University is pushing really hard to get universities to adopt RISC-V (an Open ISA and set of cores) as a basis for future processor and architecture research. The motivation behind RISC-V was to have a stable ISA that isn't patent encumbered, isn't owned by one company, and is easily extensible (OpenRISC didn't fit the bill here).
I can see that ARM and MIPS would have a problem with this, especially as there is nothing particularly innovative or performance gaining about either ISA, and some recent RISC-V cores have demonstrated similar performance to some recent ARM cores in half the area. This is there way of fighting back against something open that stands to lose them significant marketshare.
I get paid to train EEs within large companies on intellectual property issues, and to help the companies and their attorneys navigate those issues. Infringement is rife within software companies. Not because anyone wants to infringe, but because of a total lack of due diligence driven by ignorance.
And any informed patent holder knows that any violation must be prosecuted, or the validity of the patent evaporates.
No, that's just the ignorance of the uninformed that "everybody knows", but it's wrong. You don't lose your patent from failing to enforce it. You might be confusing it with trademarks, which can go into the public domain if you allow them to become generic terms rather than specific brands. And you can sometimes lose the capability of being able to enforce against a specific infringer if you hold back until the market develops, that's the Doctrine of Laches. But you don't lose your patent. Nor would you lose your copyright due to failure to enforce.
OK. Can we see your agreements, please? Because that did sound very much like trolling for additional intellectual property to add to your portfolio.
People who read this article have pointed out three open CPU designs in addition to the one that I remembered.
While your product might be "production ready", please keep in mind that open projects are very often written to a higher standard than commercial ones, and the researchers involved are no less professional than your own developers. And their projects come with fewer intellectual property issues than yours.
Not even them. This is a lure for universities to create tech that they are not allowed to produce in hardware, but the company that provided the original tech can monetize.
The patent terms are whatever they want them to be. In general "reasonable" and "patent" don't happen together much. And "tiny", well I really doubt it.
Having a company provide funds for a research grant and then reap the patent royalties isn't in general a good thing for society. The student researchers get paid like slave labor (if they get paid at all) and put what may be the best idea of their lives in some company's pockets.
It's very common these days for companies to allow universities to use their technology at the cost of tying the company into the university's patent revenue. And of course this is often publicly-funded research, so not only is the taxpayer paying for the development of patents used to sue that same taxpayer, the patents go directly to a company from academia.
The net effect is to feed intellectual property centered companies at the expense of the technology sector in general and small technology companies in particular.
If the end of the coil that is hanging is grounded (earthed), it becomes an autotransformer. As it's shown, it's a variable inductor and the disconnected end is irrelevant and has no meaningful physical effect at the frequency a spark transmitter could have reached.
This comment seems to get closer to what they actually mean in their scientific paper. But the article about it is garble and the paper might suffer from second-language issues, and a lack of familiarity with the terms used in RF engineering.
The point they're missing is grounding of the "asymmetric" half of the antenna, and that's to keep a static charge from building in the antenna that'll zap through your electronics (or you) for safety reasons.
Sometimes. But you're missing what a Counterpoise does.
Damn, I wish I would have patented that and all its quantum magic...
I noticed that my vertical transmitting antenna often works better if I connect a horizontal wire about the same length as the antenna to ground at its base! The wire isn't connected to the transmitting side of the circuit at all! And how well it works varies depending on the length! Obviously there is some deus ex machina at work here...
Clearly you missed the bit where they invoked quantum mechanics, surely that explains away all the inaccuracies, like the fact you can already buy chip scale dielectric antennas
The thing that I really hate about Innovation Stories is that the reporter invariably doesn't understand what's going on, and invariably is easily convinced that The Obviiously Very Technical People have some very valuable invention.
Marconi's connection to the center tap of a coil with one end not connected worked by broken symmetry? Really? It wasn't just a method of tuning a coil to the correct reactance for a particular frequency?
They can carry about 110kg to LEO, compared to the Falcon 9's 13150kg. That's 0.84% of the payload capacity. A launch is estimated to cost $4 900 000, compared to the Falcon 9's $61 200 000. That's 8.01%. That means cost per mass to orbit is nearly an order of magnitude worse.
Yes, this is a really small rocket. If you are a government or some other entity that needs to put something small in orbit right away, the USD$5 Million price might not deter you, even though you could potentially launch a lot of small satellites on a Falcon 9 for less.
And it's a missile affordable by most small countries, if your payload can handle the re-entry on its own. Uh-oh.:-)
Microminiature accelerometers are really cheap and very very light, and you don't have to wait for them to spin up or deal with their mechanical issues. I doubt you will see a gyro used as a sensor any longer.
Similarly, computers make good active stabilization possible and steering your engine to stabilize is a lot lighter than having to add a big rotating mass.
The booster can indeed make it back uprange to Kennedy Space Center, and they've leased a landing pad for it there. Besides the turn-around burn, they tilt the booster against the airstream and let aerodynamics push it back uprange during that 78 mile descent.
If there's one thing they should work on, it's not thrusters but having the capability to throttle to hover. That would potentially change the entire low approach. It is complicated by the fact that engine performance goes nonlinear in the low range.
Slashdot Mirror
It is a time-limit on damages, which is not the same thing as a time limit on lawsuits. There is still the potential to restrain an infringer who started 6 or more years ago from further infringement through the courts - and totally kill their business - even though damages for the infringement can not be recovered. And you can sue any other infringer.
Check out My Gate Array Project if you haven't already done so. The EE work is done by Chris Testa KD2BMH, I mostly do systems programming and business but do a lot of design checks, etc.
No problem. I wouldn't want to discourage anyone from pointing that out, I actually don't sit at my keyboard waiting for Slashdot stories all day and count on the rest of you folks to set people straight :-)
Repeating the AC because he's posted at karma 0. That's "University of California at Berkeley", AC, but the rest of this is spot on:
Cool. Someone found us the agenda!
I get paid to train EEs within large companies on intellectual property issues, and to help the companies and their attorneys navigate those issues. Infringement is rife within software companies. Not because anyone wants to infringe, but because of a total lack of due diligence driven by ignorance.
You've made my point for me.
No, that's just the ignorance of the uninformed that "everybody knows", but it's wrong. You don't lose your patent from failing to enforce it. You might be confusing it with trademarks, which can go into the public domain if you allow them to become generic terms rather than specific brands. And you can sometimes lose the capability of being able to enforce against a specific infringer if you hold back until the market develops, that's the Doctrine of Laches. But you don't lose your patent. Nor would you lose your copyright due to failure to enforce.
Yes. And what happens then?
I haven't in general met many professors (or EEs) who understand much about intellectual property.
OK. Can we see your agreements, please? Because that did sound very much like trolling for additional intellectual property to add to your portfolio.
People who read this article have pointed out three open CPU designs in addition to the one that I remembered.
While your product might be "production ready", please keep in mind that open projects are very often written to a higher standard than commercial ones, and the researchers involved are no less professional than your own developers. And their projects come with fewer intellectual property issues than yours.
Not even them. This is a lure for universities to create tech that they are not allowed to produce in hardware, but the company that provided the original tech can monetize.
The patent terms are whatever they want them to be. In general "reasonable" and "patent" don't happen together much. And "tiny", well I really doubt it.
Having a company provide funds for a research grant and then reap the patent royalties isn't in general a good thing for society. The student researchers get paid like slave labor (if they get paid at all) and put what may be the best idea of their lives in some company's pockets.
See OpenRISC, which IMO provides a better path for academia.
It's very common these days for companies to allow universities to use their technology at the cost of tying the company into the university's patent revenue. And of course this is often publicly-funded research, so not only is the taxpayer paying for the development of patents used to sue that same taxpayer, the patents go directly to a company from academia.
The net effect is to feed intellectual property centered companies at the expense of the technology sector in general and small technology companies in particular.
Yep. A physicist trying to explain a balanced line to other physicists, without knowing the word for it.
Haldane would be spinning in his grave.
If the end of the coil that is hanging is grounded (earthed), it becomes an autotransformer. As it's shown, it's a variable inductor and the disconnected end is irrelevant and has no meaningful physical effect at the frequency a spark transmitter could have reached.
This comment seems to get closer to what they actually mean in their scientific paper. But the article about it is garble and the paper might suffer from second-language issues, and a lack of familiarity with the terms used in RF engineering.
Sorry, I was being sarcastic. I happen have built more than one counterpoise.
Sometimes. But you're missing what a Counterpoise does.
I noticed that my vertical transmitting antenna often works better if I connect a horizontal wire about the same length as the antenna to ground at its base! The wire isn't connected to the transmitting side of the circuit at all! And how well it works varies depending on the length! Obviously there is some deus ex machina at work here...
The thing that I really hate about Innovation Stories is that the reporter invariably doesn't understand what's going on, and invariably is easily convinced that The Obviiously Very Technical People have some very valuable invention.
Marconi's connection to the center tap of a coil with one end not connected worked by broken symmetry? Really? It wasn't just a method of tuning a coil to the correct reactance for a particular frequency?
They don't have nearly as much to offer if they can't do launches quickly. I'm sure they would make that a feature of their offering.
Yes, this is a really small rocket. If you are a government or some other entity that needs to put something small in orbit right away, the USD$5 Million price might not deter you, even though you could potentially launch a lot of small satellites on a Falcon 9 for less.
And it's a missile affordable by most small countries, if your payload can handle the re-entry on its own. Uh-oh. :-)
Microminiature accelerometers are really cheap and very very light, and you don't have to wait for them to spin up or deal with their mechanical issues. I doubt you will see a gyro used as a sensor any longer.
Similarly, computers make good active stabilization possible and steering your engine to stabilize is a lot lighter than having to add a big rotating mass.
When you last flew a jet somewhere, why wasn't it a seaplane? Surely such things would be an easier problem to solve than building airports.
Short of giving you the starter course in rocket engineering, I can only say no, it's not easier.
The booster can indeed make it back uprange to Kennedy Space Center, and they've leased a landing pad for it there. Besides the turn-around burn, they tilt the booster against the airstream and let aerodynamics push it back uprange during that 78 mile descent.
If there's one thing they should work on, it's not thrusters but having the capability to throttle to hover. That would potentially change the entire low approach. It is complicated by the fact that engine performance goes nonlinear in the low range.