For the record, I'm not a patent attorney or a US citizen. And this isn't legal or business advice.
If your work is going to be a run-of-the-mill patent and never likely to be licensed or litigated, then it will be patented so it can be listed as a financial asset. In that case, the best thing to do is to document it as a piece of trade secret and hold that on file as part of the company's assets. Get a patent attorney to help you write up a "best method" to perform the supposed invention, along with a good description of the concepts involved, but save the money on filing and prosecution of the patent.
Explain to your boss that the monetary costs of prosecuting the patent aren't supported by the licensing availability, and that your company is being shrewd to keep hold of the cash.
Should a rival company come after you for infringement at a later date, you are in a position to invalidate their patent with your documentation -- and perhaps to take the patent from them.
Perhaps you better check this out with an attorney.
Just WTF did you think I said? I'd buy ATI tech today because of the free drivers. As I understand it, the performance of the ATI Linux blobs doesn't completely match that of their Windows ones, where the nVidia drivers pretty much do. Can you educate me with a link to facts?
2005 called and asked for their gripe back. The reputation of the most recent ATI drivers is much enhanced from what it was. And whether someone will buy nVidia, Intel or ATI graphics for Linux depends upon their preference for powerful but proprietary binaries, free software compositing and low power consumption or the choice of reasonable performance in ATI's binaries or high-performance free software from the X.Org drivers.
doom 3 was a bad game, it lacked much of the gameplay associated with the original games. I think that your expectations are out of whack. If you'd never seen either before, you'd rate Doom 3 as way better than Doom. And with so few first-person games around, Doom was pretty impressive. But now, game makers need to do more to distinguish their efforts from the other titles.
Personally, I rate Doom I as the better game because it calls for more imagination to be invested in playing the game. That's where the magic is, and it'll be a long time before we can upgrade our imaginations.
In the UK already, they don't have to be registered but they do have to be disclosed when requested. See the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act, which is a good measure of how 'free' the UK is.
I really appreciate the humour in your use of my comment (which is fully listed below).
I have my own personal theories on this matter. As a writer myself, I repudiate copyright on all I do. I openly ask others to reprint my writings, and even stick their own names on it if they want. Because I write about niche markets, the aid of distribution of my thoughts means more people are attracted to those ideas, which means they'll likely eventually find me. That's a huge benefit for me as I can then sell future newbies to the market on my newsletters, or even hire myself out as a ghost writer or personal writer. My income has surged because I don't copyright my writings, or even ask others to attribute me during the redistribution process.
Do you have numbers that account for the Intel NB and SB power consumption? When you include those numbers, I think that the Nano and Atom will be close for system-level performance/watt.
Summary: A stable API doesn't mean you're weighed down with cruft, and any argument based on that premise is nonsense. Any intelligent person making that argument is really saying that they think all drivers should be GPL.
But the common attitude about software is that, when a new edition breaks the behaviour of old equipment or software, the new edition is at fault -- because "you broke it, so you must fix it". So improvements to the API which break compatibility are seen to be something that the API vendor must avoid -- which results in cruft. It seems plain logic to save yourself the effort required to smooth over the changes in API's by making no guarantees as to the immutability of the API.
GPL-only drivers, that's a funny thing. Most of the Kernel Drivers people would like to have the drivers in-tree and GPL'd. It's a fact of the matter that the people maintaining the kernel will look out for the kernel and its drivers where a company providing one version of the driver for the present product line is burning money providing up-to-date drivers for obsolete hardware. It is better that the drivers are in-tree.
But that's not wholly your point. It's true that GPL'd drivers are a goal to work toward because it permits someone to port the driver to new software projects and to share any improvements made with others so that we might all use our bought equipment in the manner of our own choosing.
I'd figure Intel want to hold on to 30 years of engineers' experience with x86 machine code. Both those at Intel and those at the companies who buy their products. That's an asset not worth throwing away.
The goal is massive numbers of simple x86 cores. No complications with op-decode circuitry. No complications with out-of-order execution. Proper x86 massively-parallel brute force and no more. The complicated bit is the expensive compiler and maths libraries they sell you in the SDK.
I have a serious question -- this isn't supposed to be flae-inciting Microsoft or Ballmer bashing:
I keep thinking that, in the last 5 years, Ballmer has done nothing to extend the profits or grow Microsoft. The company seems trapped like an animal in the headlights of a car. The XBox is a cash-eater; the Zune, too. Office may have become elegant in the 2007 edition, but only if you have a huge computer to run it on. Vista's developmental delays (pun intended) were very costly. None of these have improved the share price value in real terms or in plain dollar value. There's been no dividends. The kindest thing you could say is that it's underperforming -- a state borne from a lack of direction and leadership. I am genuinely surprised that Ballmer and others have not been ousted.
(Perhaps you can't write letters to the Microsoft Board and Shareholders in Word any more -- Clippy's evil DRM twin steps in and says "I see you want to have Ballmer sacked. Reporting your location to the Orbiting Chair-Dropper...")
Which is the better chess piece, the knight or the bishop?
The knight can hit every square on the board; the bishop only half of them. That's a clear advantage to me. Perhaps you made a bad analogy -- stick to cars next time (I suggest: stick shift versus automatic gearbox...)
Considering that ordinary Ethernet makes great speaker cable in a pinch...
In a totally non-audiophile way, I suggest you use something thicker than Cat5 for speaker cable -- the wire may not be thick enough to carry the output of your power amplifier to move the speaker cones and produce the volume of sound you want.
(I do know of a bloke who made speaker cable from Cat5, but it's something like 27 runs in parallel between the amplifier and the speaker terminals. I couldn't work out if using the twisted pairs as positive and negative pairs -- as he did -- produced any advantage or disadvanage.)
If we were the victims of countless recursion, you'd have Woody Allen (as in Love and Death) saying "if it turns out that there IS a Lambda, I don't think that He's evil. I think that the worst you can say about Him is that basically He's an underachiever."
You identify a real need for the gkh's Linux Drivers project to have volunteers maintain older kernels and backport drivers to them. There would have to be limits to the hours spent on older and less-capable kernels, but (again) keeping it upstream and maintaining such a project on kernel.org seems wise to me.
Slashdot Mirror
For the record, I'm not a patent attorney or a US citizen. And this isn't legal or business advice.
If your work is going to be a run-of-the-mill patent and never likely to be licensed or litigated, then it will be patented so it can be listed as a financial asset. In that case, the best thing to do is to document it as a piece of trade secret and hold that on file as part of the company's assets. Get a patent attorney to help you write up a "best method" to perform the supposed invention, along with a good description of the concepts involved, but save the money on filing and prosecution of the patent.
Explain to your boss that the monetary costs of prosecuting the patent aren't supported by the licensing availability, and that your company is being shrewd to keep hold of the cash.
Should a rival company come after you for infringement at a later date, you are in a position to invalidate their patent with your documentation -- and perhaps to take the patent from them.
Perhaps you better check this out with an attorney.
Just WTF did you think I said? I'd buy ATI tech today because of the free drivers. As I understand it, the performance of the ATI Linux blobs doesn't completely match that of their Windows ones, where the nVidia drivers pretty much do. Can you educate me with a link to facts?
2005 called and asked for their gripe back. The reputation of the most recent ATI drivers is much enhanced from what it was. And whether someone will buy nVidia, Intel or ATI graphics for Linux depends upon their preference for powerful but proprietary binaries, free software compositing and low power consumption or the choice of reasonable performance in ATI's binaries or high-performance free software from the X.Org drivers.
It means what the literal sense of the words provide (I suspect you've parsed it wrong): "I swear that I've been turned off from music".
doom 3 was a bad game, it lacked much of the gameplay associated with the original games.
I think that your expectations are out of whack. If you'd never seen either before, you'd rate Doom 3 as way better than Doom. And with so few first-person games around, Doom was pretty impressive. But now, game makers need to do more to distinguish their efforts from the other titles.
Personally, I rate Doom I as the better game because it calls for more imagination to be invested in playing the game. That's where the magic is, and it'll be a long time before we can upgrade our imaginations.
God Bless their cotton socks with Continuations and Continuations-In-Part...
In the UK already, they don't have to be registered but they do have to be disclosed when requested. See the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act, which is a good measure of how 'free' the UK is.
The Man ain't trying to keep you down. It's nothing sinister.
I really appreciate the humour in your use of my comment (which is fully listed below).
Pls not to feed the trolls. lulz.
New here? Get off my lawn, you pesky n00b!
Do you have numbers that account for the Intel NB and SB power consumption? When you include those numbers, I think that the Nano and Atom will be close for system-level performance/watt.
But the common attitude about software is that, when a new edition breaks the behaviour of old equipment or software, the new edition is at fault -- because "you broke it, so you must fix it". So improvements to the API which break compatibility are seen to be something that the API vendor must avoid -- which results in cruft. It seems plain logic to save yourself the effort required to smooth over the changes in API's by making no guarantees as to the immutability of the API.
GPL-only drivers, that's a funny thing. Most of the Kernel Drivers people would like to have the drivers in-tree and GPL'd. It's a fact of the matter that the people maintaining the kernel will look out for the kernel and its drivers where a company providing one version of the driver for the present product line is burning money providing up-to-date drivers for obsolete hardware. It is better that the drivers are in-tree.
But that's not wholly your point. It's true that GPL'd drivers are a goal to work toward because it permits someone to port the driver to new software projects and to share any improvements made with others so that we might all use our bought equipment in the manner of our own choosing.
As this post says, there's a thread in the mailing list (http://lists.openmoko.org/pipermail/community/2008-July/021848.html) which says it's a voltage issue, not EMC.
That's spelled 'sequel', no? If not, mea culpa: 'i was so wrong'.
I'd figure Intel want to hold on to 30 years of engineers' experience with x86 machine code. Both those at Intel and those at the companies who buy their products. That's an asset not worth throwing away.
The goal is massive numbers of simple x86 cores. No complications with op-decode circuitry. No complications with out-of-order execution. Proper x86 massively-parallel brute force and no more. The complicated bit is the expensive compiler and maths libraries they sell you in the SDK.
I have a serious question -- this isn't supposed to be flae-inciting Microsoft or Ballmer bashing:
I keep thinking that, in the last 5 years, Ballmer has done nothing to extend the profits or grow Microsoft. The company seems trapped like an animal in the headlights of a car. The XBox is a cash-eater; the Zune, too. Office may have become elegant in the 2007 edition, but only if you have a huge computer to run it on. Vista's developmental delays (pun intended) were very costly. None of these have improved the share price value in real terms or in plain dollar value. There's been no dividends. The kindest thing you could say is that it's underperforming -- a state borne from a lack of direction and leadership. I am genuinely surprised that Ballmer and others have not been ousted.
(Perhaps you can't write letters to the Microsoft Board and Shareholders in Word any more -- Clippy's evil DRM twin steps in and says "I see you want to have Ballmer sacked. Reporting your location to the Orbiting Chair-Dropper...")
The knight can hit every square on the board; the bishop only half of them. That's a clear advantage to me. Perhaps you made a bad analogy -- stick to cars next time (I suggest: stick shift versus automatic gearbox...)
(I do know of a bloke who made speaker cable from Cat5, but it's something like 27 runs in parallel between the amplifier and the speaker terminals. I couldn't work out if using the twisted pairs as positive and negative pairs -- as he did -- produced any advantage or disadvanage.)
I doubt that's the plan either. I heard PA Semi was stopping development of its PPC series: "Apple, however, is said by PA Semi to be uninterested in continuing development of those chips" from http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/08/04/23/apples_pa_semi_buyout_motivated_by_assets_not_products.html. BTW, OSX worked on x86 for as long as five years a before the MacIntel announcement ("every version of OS X had in fact been compiled for Intel processors as well as PowerPC -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Intel_transition). It can be made to work on a number of different platforms if Apple is interested.
The cheaper answer is HTTP 1.2 which mandates MD5 and SHA1 hashes in "hash-md5: " and "hash-sha1: " fields of the header.
If we were the victims of countless recursion, you'd have Woody Allen (as in Love and Death) saying "if it turns out that there IS a Lambda, I don't think that He's evil. I think that the worst you can say about Him is that basically He's an underachiever."
You identify a real need for the gkh's Linux Drivers project to have volunteers maintain older kernels and backport drivers to them. There would have to be limits to the hours spent on older and less-capable kernels, but (again) keeping it upstream and maintaining such a project on kernel.org seems wise to me.
How much of that win was the junior-high kids not knowing how to tackle/block and gather rebounds when playing against a wheelchair basketball team?