Can't patents be overturned? Pardon my ignorance, but I thought that if prior art can be found a lawsuit can get the patent overturned. Does this happen? Is there a reason/. doesn't cover these lawsuits?
Patents have been overturned previously. In the early 90's, Compton was awarded a patent for what essentially amounted to "Multimedia software." It was later overturned...
This is particularly true when the software and hardware exist to do this on your own PC. I'll spend my own $150 on nearly the same specs (or, more probable, pull them out of my closet) and create my own recorder.
As much as some software may exist to do this on your own PC, TiVo's software is extremely advanced. The number of features that the TiVo software can provide would require numerous man-months of development on your own time should you wish to throw together a $150 unit.
For starters, there's the software to download scheduling information, the software to present said information visually, the elements which allow you to automatically record shows based on cast members, directors, keywords, or any other item included in that schedule information; components that take care of the timed recording of scheduled (and sometimes unscheduled) shows, the components which allow you to watch a program and record up to two others simultaneously (with DirecTiVo).
Were I to develop the software to do everything that my TiVo can on the PC sitting in my closet, I'd probably dedicate a good 9-18 months perfecting it.
> YMMV, but man, I just can't put JW in the same league as
> KS and QT. The latter 2 have a serious gift for dialogue.
Hrmm...I'll try to pay more attention to this--You may be right, but Whedon's dialogue still flows infinitely better than anything that JMS wrote on B5.
One thing I have noticed on both Buffy and Angel is that some of the writers try way too hard to write dialogue like Joss, usually resulting in Willow speaking like a babytalking simpleton or Spike being a little too self-consciously "cool."
Honestly, has Lucas ever had an original idea? I mean Star Wars was "inspired" (AKA stolen) from a Kurasawa movie if I recall.
A New Hope is loosely (and admittedly) based on The Hidden Fortress. Given that Lucas was good friends with Joseph Campbell, the man who wrote The Hero With A Thousand Faces (and rumors I've seen around that Campbell actually consulted on the film), I certainly don't fault Lucas for using existing source material. Hell, Twelfth Night and Romeo and Juliet were both pre-existing stories when Shakespeare wrote his own versions...
People have been borrowing stories from each other for a long, long time--I don't think The Magnificent Seven is any less of a movie simply because it's Seven Samurai set in the old west. And I always laugh my ass off at Strange Brew despite it's ties to Hamlet.
In all honesty, anyone could apply a rehash of the Lancelot/Galahad tale (where a father falls and a son redeems) to practically any situation. It's all in the telling of it.
Lucas is a hack. JMS is God.
I can nary think of any piece of JMS dialogue that doesn't sound like it was written by a erudite speechwriter. The man has some plotting skills, but he can't compete with Joss Whedon, Kevin Smith, nor Quentin Tarantino (What's he been doing lately??) for realistic dialogue and character.
But I would go so far as to define Buffy as more of a drama than sci-fi, mainly due to all of the paranormal involved in the show simply being metaphorical to whats happening in the characters' lives.
Buffy pretty much lost all of its metaphoric subtlety with the titular character's entrance into college. We lost "High School is Hell" and gained "College is where poorly-organized commandoes help you fight Hell."
> The film was made in Mandarin. Guess what
> language the principle actors DIDN'T speak?
> You guessed it - Mandarin. They were all
> speaking in a foreign (to them) language!
> Wow. And I couldn't detect any accents at all
> (grin).
Of the four principals, Chow Yun Fat, Michelle Yeoh, and Chang Chen had detectable accents to native speakers (my parents).
According to my parents, Chang Chen's Mandarin was pretty hard to stomach, as well, although my brother and I had an easier time understanding it (probably because he was speaking slowly and enunciating to an extreme...).
Their opinion of Zhang Ziyi's Mandarin, however, was that it was downright flawless. Given that she's from Beijing, I wouldn't be surprised if she were a native speaker.
According to my father, the story of CTHD is merely the fourth in a five-saga series, each saga having multiple volumes, every one written well before 1960 or so (my dad was reading the sagas as a teenager and he was born in 1937). He said the movie took liberties with the story, but it's mostly intact.
When did people start thinking that corporations had philosophical leanings? Sure, they may have neat corporate culture (as I hesitate to say, Microsoft does), and they may put together some cool sites; but why have we deluded ourselves to thinking that corporations are anything but institutions trying to make money?
Actually, Tom, JonKatz's been doing it for some time now. He stopped for a while with his article on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, but it looks like it's happenning again. Sigh...
"better examples of web design" is probably the opinion of graphic designers who don't know a single thing about interactive design for websites.
That single page is hideous, and whoever decided that centered text down the middle of a column was a good way for users to read a long article, needs to read a text on typographic style.
Sorry, have to disagree--cracking would be malicious. Installing Apache in IIS4.0's place would be a boon to both the company and server (it'd be even better if the hacker could install some ASP support so the applications don't choke). Either way, it's better;)
Perhaps I was a little too excessive with my hyperbole, but I'm simply suggesting that this is a big assumption and that using voice recognition as the only means of input is a spurious prospect--I'm reminded of Steve Martin wrestling with his voice recog phone in L.A. Story.
I'm not against voice recognition in this or other applications--I actually think future applications could work quite well with voice recog.--but I would include an alternative input interface for more complex applications.
Voice recognition is only ok to me as an input interface--the novelty wears off quickly, and having to say "Pearl dash eeh single-quote print double-quote Hello comma world backslash enh double-quote semicolon single-quote" would be infinitely annoying.
Having to use keyboard gloves to interface with a device the size of the credit card, as well, rather defeats the purpose of having a device that size, IMHO.
But taking the keyboard glove idea and running with it: what I can envision as the future of the Itsy could be the primary controller for a wearable computer--input could be based upon eye movement or keyboard gloves or voice recognition. But until these input interfaces provide a facile means of input, I'd go with a larger pad thing.
I'll grant you that voice recognition is a valid means of input, but doesn't anyone else think it would be cumbersome to be sitting on a plane or bus or office saying,
see dee dot dot. el ess dash el. see dee slash. dee eff dot.
IMHO, a pen/keyboard is a far easier (and less public) means of utilizing a computer than speech.
Slashdot Mirror
Companies like IBM and Microsoft likely have large groups dedicated to the research and acquisition of existing patents...
Can't patents be overturned? Pardon my ignorance, but I thought that if prior art can be found a lawsuit can get the patent overturned. Does this happen? Is there a reason /. doesn't cover these lawsuits?
Patents have been overturned previously. In the early 90's, Compton was awarded a patent for what essentially amounted to "Multimedia software." It was later overturned...
As much as some software may exist to do this on your own PC, TiVo's software is extremely advanced. The number of features that the TiVo software can provide would require numerous man-months of development on your own time should you wish to throw together a $150 unit.
For starters, there's the software to download scheduling information, the software to present said information visually, the elements which allow you to automatically record shows based on cast members, directors, keywords, or any other item included in that schedule information; components that take care of the timed recording of scheduled (and sometimes unscheduled) shows, the components which allow you to watch a program and record up to two others simultaneously (with DirecTiVo).
Were I to develop the software to do everything that my TiVo can on the PC sitting in my closet, I'd probably dedicate a good 9-18 months perfecting it.
PLEASE, if there is a $90 Tivo out there at Circuit City or a competitor, post it by all means.
TiVo's Special Offers page has numerous units ranging from $49.99 (for new DirecTV subscribers--or $79.99 for existing subscribers) to $299.99.
If you look at the dashpc.com site, he mentions that he's running VMWare for Windows 98 access to the GPS software.
> YMMV, but man, I just can't put JW in the same league as
> KS and QT. The latter 2 have a serious gift for dialogue.
Hrmm...I'll try to pay more attention to this--You may be right, but Whedon's dialogue still flows infinitely better than anything that JMS wrote on B5.
One thing I have noticed on both Buffy and Angel is that some of the writers try way too hard to write dialogue like Joss, usually resulting in Willow speaking like a babytalking simpleton or Spike being a little too self-consciously "cool."
A New Hope is loosely (and admittedly) based on The Hidden Fortress. Given that Lucas was good friends with Joseph Campbell, the man who wrote The Hero With A Thousand Faces (and rumors I've seen around that Campbell actually consulted on the film), I certainly don't fault Lucas for using existing source material. Hell, Twelfth Night and Romeo and Juliet were both pre-existing stories when Shakespeare wrote his own versions...
People have been borrowing stories from each other for a long, long time--I don't think The Magnificent Seven is any less of a movie simply because it's Seven Samurai set in the old west. And I always laugh my ass off at Strange Brew despite it's ties to Hamlet.
In all honesty, anyone could apply a rehash of the Lancelot/Galahad tale (where a father falls and a son redeems) to practically any situation. It's all in the telling of it.
I can nary think of any piece of JMS dialogue that doesn't sound like it was written by a erudite speechwriter. The man has some plotting skills, but he can't compete with Joss Whedon, Kevin Smith, nor Quentin Tarantino (What's he been doing lately??) for realistic dialogue and character.
> For MIME processing, mhn isn't that great,
> so I just bounce copies to Yahoo or
> Mail.com mailboxes so I can view them
try munpack. It's bliss.
> The film was made in Mandarin. Guess what
> language the principle actors DIDN'T speak?
> You guessed it - Mandarin. They were all
> speaking in a foreign (to them) language!
> Wow. And I couldn't detect any accents at all
> (grin).
Of the four principals, Chow Yun Fat, Michelle Yeoh, and Chang Chen had detectable accents to native speakers (my parents).
According to my parents, Chang Chen's Mandarin was pretty hard to stomach, as well, although my brother and I had an easier time understanding it (probably because he was speaking slowly and enunciating to an extreme...).
Their opinion of Zhang Ziyi's Mandarin, however, was that it was downright flawless. Given that she's from Beijing, I wouldn't be surprised if she were a native speaker.
According to my father, the story of CTHD is merely the fourth in a five-saga series, each saga having multiple volumes, every one written well before 1960 or so (my dad was reading the sagas as a teenager and he was born in 1937). He said the movie took liberties with the story, but it's mostly intact.
;)
And your final supposition is wrong...
But that's all I'm gonna say
If you only have seven (or less) machines, you could go for Gaiman's Endless:
Death, Destiny, Dream, Destruction,
Desire, Despair, Delirium
Or Buffy Characters:
Buffy, Cordelia, Giles, Willow, Xander,
Angel, Doyle, Anya, Oz, etc.
Or something a little more frivilous:
Gilligan, Skipper, MaryAnne, Professor,
MrHowell, MrsHowell, Ginger
My current hostname (which I got to choose myself) is based on a climbing term...thus:
biner, grigri, bight, belay, ascender,
boulder, bomber, crimper, sloper...
http://www.mew.org/mgp/
Friend used it for his thesis presentation.
James
Can't wait until some antiviral/immunity heuristic recognizes that things like Windows Update are inherently viral or wormlike in nature...
When did people start thinking that corporations had philosophical leanings? Sure, they may have neat corporate culture (as I hesitate to say, Microsoft does), and they may put together some cool sites; but why have we deluded ourselves to thinking that corporations are anything but institutions trying to make money?
Actually, Tom, JonKatz's been doing it for some time now. He stopped for a while with his article on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, but it looks like it's happenning again. Sigh...
Cause everybody wants prosthetics,
four heads on their real heads...
"better examples of web design" is probably the opinion of graphic designers who don't know a single thing about interactive design for websites.
That single page is hideous, and whoever decided that centered text down the middle of a column was a good way for users to read a long article, needs to read a text on typographic style.
Sorry, have to disagree--cracking would be malicious. Installing Apache in IIS4.0's place would be a boon to both the company and server (it'd be even better if the hacker could install some ASP support so the applications don't choke). Either way, it's better ;)
s/root/Administrator/;
And you can rename "Administrator" to "root."
Grand Moff Tarkin ordered the destruction of Alderaan--Lucas may have intentionally crafted this plot element to allow for the redemption of Vader...
I'm not against voice recognition in this or other applications--I actually think future applications could work quite well with voice recog.--but I would include an alternative input interface for more complex applications.
Having to use keyboard gloves to interface with a device the size of the credit card, as well, rather defeats the purpose of having a device that size, IMHO.
But taking the keyboard glove idea and running with it: what I can envision as the future of the Itsy could be the primary controller for a wearable computer--input could be based upon eye movement or keyboard gloves or voice recognition. But until these input interfaces provide a facile means of input, I'd go with a larger pad thing.
IMHO, a pen/keyboard is a far easier (and less public) means of utilizing a computer than speech.