So what does this mean for the patent clauses of the Apache License?
Is Apache okay because they don't actually say 'you can't take us to court'? Rather they say 'taking action terminates this license'. Consequently the patent holder is free to take action, as long as they wear the consequences of their Apache license being cancelled?
Today, such a move is controversial. But then none of us have grown up wearing an RFID tag.
What if we had grown up wearing RFID tags? We probably wouldn't be objecting to today's chidren wearing RFID tags. More likely, the argument would be about something like "Should RFID tags be implanted or worn outside the body?".
That's the real danger of children wearing RFID tags. They will lose the ability to object when their own children are violated.
This week I have been reading news on the WWW, using my computer to simulate a newspaper.
I have also used a CAD package to simualate a drawing board.
I used a word processor to simulate a typewriter (with some improvements).
Pretty well everything we do with computers can be considered a simulation, in that none of it actually exist and the reality is a bunch of electrons. Desktops, images, icons, fonts, etc., they are all simulations.
Of course to keep our tiny brains from exploding, we usually igore the distinction between such simulations and reality, and treat what we see on our computer's screen as real.
Another reason for the initial acceptance of awkwardnesses in the internal form of LISP is that we still expected to switch to writing programs as M-expressions. The project of defining M-expressions precisely and compiling them or at least translating them into S-expressions was neither finalized nor explicitly abandoned. It just receded into the indefinite future, and a new generation of programmers appeared who preferred internal notation to any FORTRAN-like or ALGOL-like notation that could be devised.
So basically, LISP is the generic format you are talking about. LISP is just bunch of list structures in memory.
To allow humans to interact with it, the lists are often mapped to text. We can arbitrarily choose parenthesis as the list separators, resulting in the familiar lists enclosed by parenthesis.
The intention was to write the front ends you describe, but the authors of LISP found it was just as convenient to write in the generic form so didn't bother.
I reckon Scaled Composites could almost make more than the value of the X-Prize if they offered those two empty seats for sale. It's almost worth starting a fake ebay auction just to see what price is reached!
But can't Free Software serve as the means by which independent media is delivered? For example, the Internet is driven by Free (and open source) Software. The Internet can act as the medium by which independent news arrives, thus fighting corruption and helping nations. TuxRacer won't save the world, but BIND, Apache, Linux, freenet, sendmail, and their kind might make a contribution.
As an engineer/programmer, isn't the most efficient use of my time to contribute what I am good at? Those good at writing software can contribute Free Software, while those who cannot write software can contribute something else (not ruling out money). For example, a journalist might contribute Free Media, using Free Software as a delivery method.
I've had discussions with various friends as to whether donating time to writing Free Software is of equal merit to donating money to 'save the children' funds and similar.
At the time my opinion was that Free Software was better than donating money, as it can help third world economies become sustainable, in line with teaching someone to fish rather than just giving them a fish. I couldn't back up my opinion with hard examples though. I think I will be using this story as one of my examples in the future. Does anyone else have similar examples?
I can see that this can be used to prove that you were thinking or knew something on a particular date, but doesn't prior art require that your ideas be disseminated, not just posted to yourself?
To counter the use of registered mail, the patent holder might argue along the lines: "Yes your honour, the mail proves that this person was thinking about my invention on that date, but they did not publish it until later. I claim that any page put on the Internet was different to the page in that envelope."
The problem seems to be that prior art requires not only invention but publication. Registered mail proves the invention part but not publication.
The following relates specifically to Australia, but might also apply to the US?
I'm not sure that it is so simple. I've been looking into this issue and the legal status of online 'publication' seems to be cloudy.
How do you prove that something has been published online? The patent applicant can claim that the date is false and some way is needed to prove the date and contents of publication. Even then, does a court recognise online as being published?
I've been seriously looking into starting an 'open source' journal here in Australia. This journal would publish one paper copy of each issue, complete with an ISSN and would be lodged with the National Library of Australia. By law the National Library of Australia is required to receive one copy of everything published on paper in Australia. This is an eample of the difference in status between paper and online publication, as the NLA requirement does not apply to online publishing.
Is anyone aware of a more straight forward way to establish prior art *beyond all doubt*?
Apart from the above the point is that the examination system is broken, so prior art has every chance of being ignored, requiring an expensive court case to be recognised.
In that case, shouldn't a label printer be implemented as a print queue filter? That way any application can print to a label, without being aware that it is doing so.
That's a 20th centrury view of the world. In today's world, your quote should read
all your codes are belong to us
Freqency division multiplexing (ie. dividing the spectrum into frequency bands) is the old way of doing things. In the 21st century, radio transmission will be done using spatial, frequency and temporal coding (and maybe others).
Using only frequency division multiplexing is like living in a one dimensional world, not realising that the world has at least three dimensions which you can move around in. Correspondingly, in a multidimensional world, it is possible to avoid collisions that would otherwise occur in a one dimensional world. In other words, combining spatial, temporal and frequency coding allows many more users to use the electromagnetic spectrum.
A consequence of such a move is that it is no longer possible to just talk about radio frequencies. It become a more generalised mish-mash involving frequency, time of transmission and location of transmission. Any of these can be used to differentiate a user. A 'code' is a generalised multidimensional version of a frequency.
Welcome flatlanders, to the multidimensional world.
I'm not sure that still photography will be a 'killer storage app', but home movies, there's a possibility. If distriubuted peer-to-peer networking took off big time that might also be a 'killer app'?
Instead of privately owned disks, perhaps there will be businesses that rent online disk space to consumers instead of people buying their own hard disks? As a plus, they would push the fact that when you run out of space, just rent some more and they would claim that their disks are more secure and backed up better than owning it yourself. On the minus the online disk space would provide little privacy (in the name of homeland security?) and your data would be suceptible to loss when a provider goes bankrupt.
Thoughts? Does anyone think a combination of online storage providers and 'pay per view' will eliminate privately owned data storage. Maybe email providers are aleady moving in this direction with their '1GB' plans?
Perhaps the business case will be that nearly unlimited online storage is provided free on the condition that your data be available for 'market research'? Shades of Google here?
In the future, will there be a place for a "hard" medium that you can touch and store on your shelves? Lieberfarb believes that answer is no. "The future will see video on demand delivered over the Internet, and movies will be just one of the offerings," he says.
Can anyone else see the possibility of large hard disks (or their equivalent newer tech) becoming more difficult to buy retail? The googles and 'distributors' of the world will have bulk deals directly with the manufacturers, the majority will watch 'on demand' and the nerd/geek minority will have to pay more as hard disks are no longer a 'consumer item'. Copyright interests would no doubt see this as improvement, as 'average Joes' would lose the ability to store stuff themselves, having to 'pay per view'.
Thoughts anyone? Will there be a mainstream application that will require privately owned data storage, keeping data storage as a consumer item?
It's interesting to hear this. By my reading, the patent Wi-LAN holds is a valid one. I guess the original inventor must have sold it.
Perhaps the way to resolve the patent mess is to change the rules so a patent holder has to also prove that they made a serious attempt to develop the technology described in the patent? If not, they lose their priority.
I don't claim to have invented it. I used to work for the inventors, so I do claim to have *developed* some of the technology, once the inventors had come up with the idea. (I did do some separate invention as part of the developement process, but that invention was not patented.)
AFAIK, the inventors did *not* claim to have invented OFDM. The patent was on the idea of a high speed WLAN and consequently the *combination* of technologies required to produce such a device.
Anyway, I'm not going to bust a gut defending the inventors, as I wasn't one of them, didn't make any money off it and they can afford to pay someone to do their defending for them!
I happen to know a little about the current situation as I used to work for the inventors of Cisco's technology.
It's interesting to note that when Cisco bought Radiata (the company that developed their OFDM technology), they *didn't* buy Radiata because of their patent! This was told to me by one of the most senior guys in the company.
Radiata's patent covered the baseband digital systems. Cisco bought the company because of the 5GHz radio chip the company had developed.
This radio chip was ahead of anything else available at the time. It was *NOT* patented. The barrier to entry was the high level of R&D and expertise required to reproduce the chip, not a patent.
Whatever the merits of the patent system, OFDM WLAN is not an invention that was a result of the patent system. Rather it was driven by the vision of the inventors, their desire to make great things (and a pile of money) and their desire to stay ahead of the competition.
In this case, the money and rewards followed from being ahead of the competition, not from owning a patent.
I've just had a look at Wi-LANs patents. It's interesting to note that Fattouche and Zaghloul are both serious researchers, not lawyers, so it is unlikely that their patents were speculative. In my opinion, this is not a case of extortion.
This will be an interesting battle to watch! I think it is unlikely that either patent will be eliminated due to lack of merit. Rather it will be genuine prior art claims that win the day.
I happen to be one of the university team which developed Cisco's OFDM technology.
FYI here is the patent which covers that work. My name is not on it. At the time, it was the concept of a wireless version of Ethernet that was seen to be novel. Others had low speed networks (packet radio). High speed wireless point-to-point links also existed. As far as we knew, noone had yet tried to build something that was a network AND high speed.
Anyway, that was my understanding at the time. As is usual, most parties were playing their cards close to their chest, so there could have been others. The only other one I knew of at the time was the Bereley InfoPad. I'll be as interested as anyone else to see of the patent survives the challenge.
I don't like the current patent mess, but the Cisco patent at least was real in that itwas not speculative. There was a serious R&D effort behind it (as shown by the fact that product was produced).
Sorry about the slashdotting, but I hope it helps your cause.
I've just had an idea. There is an old abandoned heritage listed building on Parammatta Road, Homebush. It's about 300m west of your present location. The building is a grand old art deco ballroom. It is HUGE and on two levels. On the top level is a double height ballroom the size of a large gymnasium. The lower floor is smaller dance floor but still large.
For a while squatters were living in the place and had it open as a social centre called the "Midnight Star". As far as I know the squatters are no loger there.
The building is listed in the NSW heritage register. The owner can be found through Strathfield council. I once followed it up as I was interested to see if the building could be used for a swing dance function. The owner was a company based in Bondi. I can't remember the name, but it started with an "O" and was not in the phone book. I never got around to actually contacting them. The council was only able to give me the registered address of the ompany.
Anyway, given that the building is sitting empty, surely the owner would let you move the collection the there for free or a peppercorn rent? I guess they might be concerned that they end up with a building full of abandoned computer bits in case the museum fails. In that case, perhaps propose a refundable deposit equal to the cost of removing the equipment?
Reply to this if you want me to get in touch via email.
They are the suckers who have to wear the cost of actually policing the DMCA. Receiving take down notics, removing content, dealing with pissed off customers, loosing pissed of customers, deciding whether content really is infringing, etc. Meanwhile it costs the studio's automated web crawler and takedown notice generator $0.00001 to generate each notice.
Notice the similarity between the economics of DMCA take down notices and spam?
This is well before the start of the SCO affair (7th March 2003), so the note is not a belated attempt to bolster Linux's case. The diagram genuinely does not measure source code dependence.
Note 1 : an arrow indicates an inheritance like a compatibility, it is not only a matter of source code.
Emphasis is not mine.
Thus is, an arrow does not imply that Linux's source code is derived from Minix. It only implies that, in some way, the functionality may be compatible with Minix. Source code is not the only criteria for an arrow.
Slashdot Mirror
Is Apache okay because they don't actually say 'you can't take us to court'? Rather they say 'taking action terminates this license'. Consequently the patent holder is free to take action, as long as they wear the consequences of their Apache license being cancelled?
That's an urban myth propagated by Ronald Regan.
What if we had grown up wearing RFID tags? We probably wouldn't be objecting to today's chidren wearing RFID tags. More likely, the argument would be about something like "Should RFID tags be implanted or worn outside the body?".
That's the real danger of children wearing RFID tags. They will lose the ability to object when their own children are violated.
This week I have been reading news on the WWW, using my computer to simulate a newspaper.
I have also used a CAD package to simualate a drawing board.
I used a word processor to simulate a typewriter (with some improvements).
Pretty well everything we do with computers can be considered a simulation, in that none of it actually exist and the reality is a bunch of electrons. Desktops, images, icons, fonts, etc., they are all simulations.
Of course to keep our tiny brains from exploding, we usually igore the distinction between such simulations and reality, and treat what we see on our computer's screen as real.
As the inventor of LISP writes:
also:So basically, LISP is the generic format you are talking about. LISP is just bunch of list structures in memory.
To allow humans to interact with it, the lists are often mapped to text. We can arbitrarily choose parenthesis as the list separators, resulting in the familiar lists enclosed by parenthesis.
The intention was to write the front ends you describe, but the authors of LISP found it was just as convenient to write in the generic form so didn't bother.
I reckon Scaled Composites could almost make more than the value of the X-Prize if they offered those two empty seats for sale. It's almost worth starting a fake ebay auction just to see what price is reached!
But can't Free Software serve as the means by which independent media is delivered? For example, the Internet is driven by Free (and open source) Software. The Internet can act as the medium by which independent news arrives, thus fighting corruption and helping nations. TuxRacer won't save the world, but BIND, Apache, Linux, freenet, sendmail, and their kind might make a contribution.
As an engineer/programmer, isn't the most efficient use of my time to contribute what I am good at? Those good at writing software can contribute Free Software, while those who cannot write software can contribute something else (not ruling out money). For example, a journalist might contribute Free Media, using Free Software as a delivery method.
At the time my opinion was that Free Software was better than donating money, as it can help third world economies become sustainable, in line with teaching someone to fish rather than just giving them a fish. I couldn't back up my opinion with hard examples though. I think I will be using this story as one of my examples in the future. Does anyone else have similar examples?
To counter the use of registered mail, the patent holder might argue along the lines: "Yes your honour, the mail proves that this person was thinking about my invention on that date, but they did not publish it until later. I claim that any page put on the Internet was different to the page in that envelope."
The problem seems to be that prior art requires not only invention but publication. Registered mail proves the invention part but not publication.
Have I misunderstood?
I'm not sure that it is so simple. I've been looking into this issue and the legal status of online 'publication' seems to be cloudy.
How do you prove that something has been published online? The patent applicant can claim that the date is false and some way is needed to prove the date and contents of publication. Even then, does a court recognise online as being published?
I've been seriously looking into starting an 'open source' journal here in Australia. This journal would publish one paper copy of each issue, complete with an ISSN and would be lodged with the National Library of Australia. By law the National Library of Australia is required to receive one copy of everything published on paper in Australia. This is an eample of the difference in status between paper and online publication, as the NLA requirement does not apply to online publishing.
Is anyone aware of a more straight forward way to establish prior art *beyond all doubt*?
Apart from the above the point is that the examination system is broken, so prior art has every chance of being ignored, requiring an expensive court case to be recognised.
From the source for each page:
<!-- Copyright (c)2002 Site Meter -->
// numberguess is by Lancer - written 4 Jan 1999
// lancer@kp.planet.gen.nz
No mention of any open or free license.
In that case, shouldn't a label printer be implemented as a print queue filter? That way any application can print to a label, without being aware that it is doing so.
Freqency division multiplexing (ie. dividing the spectrum into frequency bands) is the old way of doing things. In the 21st century, radio transmission will be done using spatial, frequency and temporal coding (and maybe others).
Using only frequency division multiplexing is like living in a one dimensional world, not realising that the world has at least three dimensions which you can move around in. Correspondingly, in a multidimensional world, it is possible to avoid collisions that would otherwise occur in a one dimensional world. In other words, combining spatial, temporal and frequency coding allows many more users to use the electromagnetic spectrum.
A consequence of such a move is that it is no longer possible to just talk about radio frequencies. It become a more generalised mish-mash involving frequency, time of transmission and location of transmission. Any of these can be used to differentiate a user. A 'code' is a generalised multidimensional version of a frequency.
Welcome flatlanders, to the multidimensional world.
Instead of privately owned disks, perhaps there will be businesses that rent online disk space to consumers instead of people buying their own hard disks? As a plus, they would push the fact that when you run out of space, just rent some more and they would claim that their disks are more secure and backed up better than owning it yourself. On the minus the online disk space would provide little privacy (in the name of homeland security?) and your data would be suceptible to loss when a provider goes bankrupt.
Thoughts? Does anyone think a combination of online storage providers and 'pay per view' will eliminate privately owned data storage. Maybe email providers are aleady moving in this direction with their '1GB' plans?
Perhaps the business case will be that nearly unlimited online storage is provided free on the condition that your data be available for 'market research'? Shades of Google here?
I wonder if anyone has tried to write an international online newspaper, or similar, in C? It would be an interesting experiment.
Here's a project for someone: Write a version of the 'swedish chef' filter that translates English to C.
In the future, will there be a place for a "hard" medium that you can touch and store on your shelves? Lieberfarb believes that answer is no. "The future will see video on demand delivered over the Internet, and movies will be just one of the offerings," he says.
Can anyone else see the possibility of large hard disks (or their equivalent newer tech) becoming more difficult to buy retail? The googles and 'distributors' of the world will have bulk deals directly with the manufacturers, the majority will watch 'on demand' and the nerd/geek minority will have to pay more as hard disks are no longer a 'consumer item'. Copyright interests would no doubt see this as improvement, as 'average Joes' would lose the ability to store stuff themselves, having to 'pay per view'.
Thoughts anyone? Will there be a mainstream application that will require privately owned data storage, keeping data storage as a consumer item?
Perhaps the way to resolve the patent mess is to change the rules so a patent holder has to also prove that they made a serious attempt to develop the technology described in the patent? If not, they lose their priority.
AFAIK, the inventors did *not* claim to have invented OFDM. The patent was on the idea of a high speed WLAN and consequently the *combination* of technologies required to produce such a device.
Anyway, I'm not going to bust a gut defending the inventors, as I wasn't one of them, didn't make any money off it and they can afford to pay someone to do their defending for them!
It's interesting to note that when Cisco bought Radiata (the company that developed their OFDM technology), they *didn't* buy Radiata because of their patent! This was told to me by one of the most senior guys in the company.
Radiata's patent covered the baseband digital systems. Cisco bought the company because of the 5GHz radio chip the company had developed.
This radio chip was ahead of anything else available at the time. It was *NOT* patented. The barrier to entry was the high level of R&D and expertise required to reproduce the chip, not a patent.
Whatever the merits of the patent system, OFDM WLAN is not an invention that was a result of the patent system. Rather it was driven by the vision of the inventors, their desire to make great things (and a pile of money) and their desire to stay ahead of the competition.
In this case, the money and rewards followed from being ahead of the competition, not from owning a patent.
This will be an interesting battle to watch! I think it is unlikely that either patent will be eliminated due to lack of merit. Rather it will be genuine prior art claims that win the day.
BTW. I'm not employed by either party anymore.
FYI here is the patent which covers that work. My name is not on it. At the time, it was the concept of a wireless version of Ethernet that was seen to be novel. Others had low speed networks (packet radio). High speed wireless point-to-point links also existed. As far as we knew, noone had yet tried to build something that was a network AND high speed.
Anyway, that was my understanding at the time. As is usual, most parties were playing their cards close to their chest, so there could have been others. The only other one I knew of at the time was the Bereley InfoPad. I'll be as interested as anyone else to see of the patent survives the challenge.
I don't like the current patent mess, but the Cisco patent at least was real in that itwas not speculative. There was a serious R&D effort behind it (as shown by the fact that product was produced).
I've just had an idea. There is an old abandoned heritage listed building on Parammatta Road, Homebush. It's about 300m west of your present location. The building is a grand old art deco ballroom. It is HUGE and on two levels. On the top level is a double height ballroom the size of a large gymnasium. The lower floor is smaller dance floor but still large.
For a while squatters were living in the place and had it open as a social centre called the "Midnight Star". As far as I know the squatters are no loger there.
The building is listed in the NSW heritage register. The owner can be found through Strathfield council. I once followed it up as I was interested to see if the building could be used for a swing dance function. The owner was a company based in Bondi. I can't remember the name, but it started with an "O" and was not in the phone book. I never got around to actually contacting them. The council was only able to give me the registered address of the ompany.
Anyway, given that the building is sitting empty, surely the owner would let you move the collection the there for free or a peppercorn rent? I guess they might be concerned that they end up with a building full of abandoned computer bits in case the museum fails. In that case, perhaps propose a refundable deposit equal to the cost of removing the equipment?
Reply to this if you want me to get in touch via email.
Notice the similarity between the economics of DMCA take down notices and spam?
The Wayback Machine indicates that "Note 1" was added in the period 2nd August 2002 to 14th October 2002.
This is well before the start of the SCO affair (7th March 2003), so the note is not a belated attempt to bolster Linux's case. The diagram genuinely does not measure source code dependence.
Emphasis is not mine.
Thus is, an arrow does not imply that Linux's source code is derived from Minix. It only implies that, in some way, the functionality may be compatible with Minix. Source code is not the only criteria for an arrow.