"Generally, you want to carefully research licenses and copyrights (your contact in Legal and Corporate Affairs can help), and never search, view, or speculate about patents."
The reason why patent attorneys recommend against searching for patents is that once you know about a patent that is relevant to the one that you are filing, you have a duty to disclose it. If you fail to disclose it, there are serious consequences (e.g., invalidity, etc.).
Have you ever heard of a "close corporation" or "piercing the corporate veil?" Call up one of your lawyer friends and ask them how safe you really are...
The doctrine of First Sale would not apply if I let my friends download my copy of a legally-purchased MP3. This is the issue with digital media. You don't lose anything when you "give" it to someone else.
After downloading the High Priority Update, you get this:
"Microsoft recommends installing Internet Explorer 7... blah..."
Buttons on the bottom are "Ask me Later", "Don't Install", "Install"
You still have a choice not to install it.
It sounds like a good plan on paper, but unfortunately, in some technology areas such as computers, it currently takes three (or more) years for a patent application to be examined in the first instance. By the time the patent is issued (maybe in another year or two), the patent would no longer be enforceable.
Two years ago, I did what you did. I left my good paying job as a project manager at a high tech firm to go back to engineering school. It was scary but well worth it! To answer your questions:
1. For graduate admissions, at least at Carnegie Mellon, they send the files over to the professors based on your interests. The professors then look at your background to see if you are a good fit. In my case, they considered both my academic background as well as my industry experience. In fact, my industry experience helped me.
2. Not sure about US vs. UK vs. Canada, but what I can tell you is that a M.S. in engineering is more than sufficient if you only want to work in industry. A Ph.D. is good if you want to teach and if you want to lead a research team.
3. The biggest problem I had was all in the mental realm. I forgot most of what I learned in undergrad (all that funky calculus stuff, physics, etc;). I spent a few months doing a major review of everything I thought would be necessary to get me to the level where I should be if I were just coming out of undergrad. I also found that I wasn't as quick as some of the younger students in my lab, but what I lacked in speed, I made up in discipline and focus.:)
Yup. It's a one day turn around, or in my case, a 5 minute turn around.:-) I got a chance to meet the people at Hondata and they reprogrammed the ECU on my car while I waited.
Hondata (http://www.hondata.com) has been doing this for years on Hondas/Acuras. Ever since Honda started using flashable ECUs in the most recent generation of cars, reprogramming Honda ECUs is a piece of cake. Just connect an OBDII cable to your programmer, press a button and your ECU is reflashed. One caveat is that Hondata spent a year or two decoding the fuel map codes. Unfortunately, they have to decode each model's ECU, but from what I understand, they are fairly similar (plus they have years of experience in hacking ECUs).
Re:Sheesh!
on
TiVo Will Die
·
· Score: 3, Informative
Well, here in Pittsburgh, we didn't get any cheers for the hacking scene, instead, there were people laughing during the sex scene. I can't wait to get back to the Bay Area...
No. HP is an IT company which just happens to make some hardware. If you look at the distribution of people at HP doing real hardware design and compare it to the people in IT, the IT workers greatly out number the hardware designers...
You can already buy pressure monitors for your tires. It's not as cool as an embedded pressure gauge, but it does the job and it's wireless so you can get realtime data.
Actually, if you buy the OBDII reader and a factory service manual you have enough information to understand what the code is and how to fix it. You can buy factory service manuals from www.helminc.com. These two resources are indespensible for a DIY mechanic.
At the core of Intel and AMD's chips is a RISC processor. They just have instruction translators from CISC to RISC. So technically, both AMD and Intel make RISC processors.
I agree with Keebler71. For anything other than IT, you really need to be at a university. When I started college 8 years ago, I studied Physics. Sure, you could pick up some introductory books in physics and teach yourself the basics, but, once you get past the basic freshman and sophomore physics, you WILL need some instruction from sources other than books. Have you ever tried to read a book on statistical thermal dynamics or quantum mechanics? I guarantee that unless you are at the level of Einstein or Feynman, you would not be able to learn these topics on your own for the first time.
Another thing is that many technical fields outside of IT and CS actually require equipment or expensive software in order for you to learn the topics. For instance, when was the last time you bought a spectrum analyzer or a logic synthesis tool like Synopsys Design Compiler?
What people seem to forget is that a college education gives you a broad background to think critically about the world. You don't have to study an area that relates to your current job. You just need a good background to help you through life.
After college, I worked for 2 years in the EE field and whenever we hired people, we only hired people with BS in EE or a BS in CS. We would not even look at a candidate with just certifications. When I went to work for the corporate arm of the company, it was very IT focused, but even then, when we were hiring, we never even called back a candidate unless they had a bachelor's degree.
I just went back to college (CMU) to get my Masters degree in Electrical Engineering. I can tell you that there is no way that I would have been able to learn what I am learning now without being at a university. I know that when I graduate, I will have more options open to me than if I stayed in my previous job. So all you people who think you can get by with certifications, please keep pushing forward on that path. That will help me get a job more easily after I graduate.;-)
You're confusing the transistor devices with the circuit topology. You can build analog circuits from NMOS and PMOS transistors (CMOS process), in fact, when I took an analog circuits class at Berkeley, we only used NMOS and PMOS transistors, no bipolar transistors at all. We were able to build almost any analog circuit that we wanted. If you put a NMOS and PMOS in an inverter configuration to get a switch, but you can play some tricks to make the same transistors produce a current source or an op-amp.
On a side note, in a CMOS process, you can create crappy NPN and PNP transistors called lateral NPN or lateral PNP. It has horrible gain, but if you needed to build a bandgap voltage source (or some other bipolar-like device), you can use this transistor.
Carly did not get rid of the test and measurement organizations (Agilent). The previous CEO, Lew Platt, spun off Agilent. You can blame her for the rest of the troubles.
I agree. I have one of the DirecTivo boxes and it records the MPEG stream from the satellite straight to the hard disk. Because of this feature, I hope Tivo will not mess with the DirecTivo boxes. But, I have this horrible feeling that some suit might force a Real encoder to be placed between the satellite stream and the hard disk.
I heard a story on NPR about how India trains people for call centers. They can take a $35,000 job from the US and turn it into a $4,000 job in India.
So what happens to the person making $35,000 over here? Should they take a pay cut to $4,000?
How about getting an education so that you don't have to work in a call center? Oh but I forgot, people in the US are lazy and would rather complain about foreigners taking jobs rather than taking responsibility for their future;)
Write once will only be useful for shipping prerecorded songs for the record companies. I like my SmartMedia cards and they cost about $0.50/MB today. When this company started work on these chips, the cost of flash memory was $2/MB or more. I can get a 64MB SmartMedia card for about $35-$40 depending on the brand I buy. The key thing here is that I can keep reusing the chip.
With my 4Mpixel digital camera, I can fit about 80 pictures in high quality JPEG format. I can transfer them to my computer, then I can reuse it again. I can keep doing this over and over again. And after I use it 7 times, my 64MB SmartMedia card will break even with the $5 64MB MatrixSemi card. I don't know about you, but I like the fact that I can rewrite.
And guess what? If DRAM is any example, flash memory cards will keep decreasing in price. MatrixSemi is in a niche market and their product will probably never catch on unless they can make their anti-fuse technology rewritable.
Slashdot Mirror
"Generally, you want to carefully research licenses and copyrights (your contact in Legal and Corporate Affairs can help), and never search, view, or speculate about patents."
The reason why patent attorneys recommend against searching for patents is that once you know about a patent that is relevant to the one that you are filing, you have a duty to disclose it. If you fail to disclose it, there are serious consequences (e.g., invalidity, etc.).
It is not overbroad. Read the claims to the patent cited in a post below. They are claiming something very specific.
Have you ever heard of a "close corporation" or "piercing the corporate veil?" Call up one of your lawyer friends and ask them how safe you really are...
The doctrine of First Sale would not apply if I let my friends download my copy of a legally-purchased MP3. This is the issue with digital media. You don't lose anything when you "give" it to someone else.
I usually pull over to the side if a car is coming up fast behind me (especially on mountain and country roads). The benefit is two fold:
1. I can use the lights of the car in front of me to see even farther ahead
2. No blinding lights in my rear view mirror.
After downloading the High Priority Update, you get this: "Microsoft recommends installing Internet Explorer 7... blah..." Buttons on the bottom are "Ask me Later", "Don't Install", "Install" You still have a choice not to install it.
It sounds like a good plan on paper, but unfortunately, in some technology areas such as computers, it currently takes three (or more) years for a patent application to be examined in the first instance. By the time the patent is issued (maybe in another year or two), the patent would no longer be enforceable.
Two years ago, I did what you did. I left my good paying job as a project manager at a high tech firm to go back to engineering school. It was scary but well worth it! To answer your questions:
;). I spent a few months doing a major review of everything I thought would be necessary to get me to the level where I should be if I were just coming out of undergrad. I also found that I wasn't as quick as some of the younger students in my lab, but what I lacked in speed, I made up in discipline and focus. :)
1. For graduate admissions, at least at Carnegie Mellon, they send the files over to the professors based on your interests. The professors then look at your background to see if you are a good fit. In my case, they considered both my academic background as well as my industry experience. In fact, my industry experience helped me.
2. Not sure about US vs. UK vs. Canada, but what I can tell you is that a M.S. in engineering is more than sufficient if you only want to work in industry. A Ph.D. is good if you want to teach and if you want to lead a research team.
3. The biggest problem I had was all in the mental realm. I forgot most of what I learned in undergrad (all that funky calculus stuff, physics, etc
Yup. It's a one day turn around, or in my case, a 5 minute turn around. :-) I got a chance to meet the people at Hondata and they reprogrammed the ECU on my car while I waited.
Hondata (http://www.hondata.com) has been doing this for years on Hondas/Acuras. Ever since Honda started using flashable ECUs in the most recent generation of cars, reprogramming Honda ECUs is a piece of cake. Just connect an OBDII cable to your programmer, press a button and your ECU is reflashed. One caveat is that Hondata spent a year or two decoding the fuel map codes. Unfortunately, they have to decode each model's ECU, but from what I understand, they are fairly similar (plus they have years of experience in hacking ECUs).
Actually, DirecTiVo service is $4.99.
I'm sure it'd be much easier to just shoot down the satellites instead. ;-)
Well, here in Pittsburgh, we didn't get any cheers for the hacking scene, instead, there were people laughing during the sex scene. I can't wait to get back to the Bay Area...
No. HP is an IT company which just happens to make some hardware. If you look at the distribution of people at HP doing real hardware design and compare it to the people in IT, the IT workers greatly out number the hardware designers...
George Bush did not kill 100 people while he was governor, Texas did.
You can already buy pressure monitors for your tires. It's not as cool as an embedded pressure gauge, but it does the job and it's wireless so you can get realtime data.
a rt ire_all.jsp
http://www.tirerack.com/accessories/smartire/sm
Actually, if you buy the OBDII reader and a factory service manual you have enough information to understand what the code is and how to fix it. You can buy factory service manuals from www.helminc.com. These two resources are indespensible for a DIY mechanic.
At the core of Intel and AMD's chips is a RISC processor. They just have instruction translators from CISC to RISC. So technically, both AMD and Intel make RISC processors.
I agree with Keebler71. For anything other than IT, you really need to be at a university. When I started college 8 years ago, I studied Physics. Sure, you could pick up some introductory books in physics and teach yourself the basics, but, once you get past the basic freshman and sophomore physics, you WILL need some instruction from sources other than books. Have you ever tried to read a book on statistical thermal dynamics or quantum mechanics? I guarantee that unless you are at the level of Einstein or Feynman, you would not be able to learn these topics on your own for the first time.
;-)
Another thing is that many technical fields outside of IT and CS actually require equipment or expensive software in order for you to learn the topics. For instance, when was the last time you bought a spectrum analyzer or a logic synthesis tool like Synopsys Design Compiler?
What people seem to forget is that a college education gives you a broad background to think critically about the world. You don't have to study an area that relates to your current job. You just need a good background to help you through life.
After college, I worked for 2 years in the EE field and whenever we hired people, we only hired people with BS in EE or a BS in CS. We would not even look at a candidate with just certifications. When I went to work for the corporate arm of the company, it was very IT focused, but even then, when we were hiring, we never even called back a candidate unless they had a bachelor's degree.
I just went back to college (CMU) to get my Masters degree in Electrical Engineering. I can tell you that there is no way that I would have been able to learn what I am learning now without being at a university. I know that when I graduate, I will have more options open to me than if I stayed in my previous job. So all you people who think you can get by with certifications, please keep pushing forward on that path. That will help me get a job more easily after I graduate.
You're confusing the transistor devices with the circuit topology. You can build analog circuits from NMOS and PMOS transistors (CMOS process), in fact, when I took an analog circuits class at Berkeley, we only used NMOS and PMOS transistors, no bipolar transistors at all. We were able to build almost any analog circuit that we wanted. If you put a NMOS and PMOS in an inverter configuration to get a switch, but you can play some tricks to make the same transistors produce a current source or an op-amp.
On a side note, in a CMOS process, you can create crappy NPN and PNP transistors called lateral NPN or lateral PNP. It has horrible gain, but if you needed to build a bandgap voltage source (or some other bipolar-like device), you can use this transistor.
If you are interested in MIPS you can get an assembler here. I used this assembler in my intro to computer architecture class.
Carly did not get rid of the test and measurement organizations (Agilent). The previous CEO, Lew Platt, spun off Agilent. You can blame her for the rest of the troubles.
I agree. I have one of the DirecTivo boxes and it records the MPEG stream from the satellite straight to the hard disk. Because of this feature, I hope Tivo will not mess with the DirecTivo boxes. But, I have this horrible feeling that some suit might force a Real encoder to be placed between the satellite stream and the hard disk.
Write once will only be useful for shipping prerecorded songs for the record companies. I like my SmartMedia cards and they cost about $0.50/MB today. When this company started work on these chips, the cost of flash memory was $2/MB or more. I can get a 64MB SmartMedia card for about $35-$40 depending on the brand I buy. The key thing here is that I can keep reusing the chip.
With my 4Mpixel digital camera, I can fit about 80 pictures in high quality JPEG format. I can transfer them to my computer, then I can reuse it again. I can keep doing this over and over again. And after I use it 7 times, my 64MB SmartMedia card will break even with the $5 64MB MatrixSemi card. I don't know about you, but I like the fact that I can rewrite.
And guess what? If DRAM is any example, flash memory cards will keep decreasing in price. MatrixSemi is in a niche market and their product will probably never catch on unless they can make their anti-fuse technology rewritable.