Sooner or later the Wince devices are going to catch up in price, battery life and form factor/weight.
They're nearly there now. Right now, there's a Palm V and a Compaq Aero 1530 side by side on my desk. Both are plugged into my desktop PC, both synchronizing with M$ Outlook (bleah), and both fit comfortably in a shirt pocket. The Aero is a bit taller, but only a half inch or so. The touch-sensitive screens are nearly the same size, but the Aero's has no dedicated input area, so it can all be used for displaying information. (Input is via a pop-up keyboard or character recognizer.) Both have backlit B&W screens.
The Aero has 16 MB of memory, as opposed to the Palm V's 2; OTOH, the Aero needs much more memory due to the space-hogging nature of WinCE and its apps. The Aero can accept CompactFlash cards for data storage, though their use isn't integrated all that well. The Aero includes sound recording as well as playback hardware. The Aero also has three more buttons: the scroll control is a rocker dial that can be pushed in to perform a select or enter function, something I've often wished for on the Palm; there's an exit button, and there's a button to start a voice recording.
The biggest negative for the Aero is battery consumption: I don't ever have to think about the state of the battery on the Palm, while the Aero has me much more conscientious about dropping it in the cradle when I'm at my desk. The Aero's fast MIPS CPU and large amount of memory soak up power. The Aero does have the ability to accept interchangeable batteries, however.
I bought the Palm about 9 months ago, before I went to work at Compaq. I got the Aero at a special employee deal. I'm using 'em both side-by-side, and will keep the one that works better for me. At this point, they're pretty close. --
There was widespread use of the concept of one click shopping before the patent was applied for.
Ah, but was there widespread use of the exact methods of one-click shopping they claimed in the patent application? This is a nontrivial question to answer, and there is legal precedent for the concept that only a patent attorney is competent to have an opinion on the subject.
If Amazon applied for the patent in good faith, then they did not commit fraud. --
And now by careless use of the phrase "fiduciary responsibility" or "fiduciary duty" we are going to subtly insinuate that corporate executives have an obligation to take advantage of any weakness in society (such as the current weak patent office).
I have no intention of "subtly insinuating" anything. What I'm saying is that, in the current legal and business climate, companies that fail to take advantage of such weaknesses (though many would call them opportunities) will find themselves the target of shareholder suits that reach directly into directors' and officers' pockets. Taking the "moral" stand, as so many in this thread have argued should be done, could well impoverish those who make the businesses go. I don't think demanding they do so is any more right than others think patents are.
By using the phrase "intellectual property", we subtly spread the notion that you can "own" the exclusive right to manufacture something, just as you can "own" land.
This passes the duck test: you can buy and sell those rights, just as you can tangible property; therefore, those rights are also property. This is why the government can't just eliminate all patents, or all software patents, with the stroke of a pen, for to do so would run afoul of the taking without compensation clause of the Bill of Rights. --
Im sorry, but the concept of fiduciary duty does not extend to willfully creating fraudulent patents. Nor does it extend to illegal practices of other kinds, no matter how lucruative they may be.
You are quite correct. Now, prove that Amazon's patent was both fraudulent and intended to be so. Be prepared to counter the argument that the patent office did not so find when issuing the patent. --
AT&T held the patent on the Transitor and licensed it for free.
Sure they did...back in the 50s, when the corporate, business, and legal climate was radically different from what it is today. Your example is completely irrelevant.
This is simply a slap on the Open Source community. A lot of Amazon is based Open Source.
Freedom - something the Open Source community (and I) espouse as a high ideal - necessarily includes the freedom to do things that piss you off. --
Simply because you can make money for your shareholders doesn't give you a duty to do so. If Amazon had the oportunity to steal and get away with it, and the company did not, the shareholders have no claim. If Amazon has the oportunity to abuse the legal system or patent system for profit, that opportunity doesn't translate into a duty to do so.
This is indeed the crux of the argument. Amazon's duty is to do everything legally permissible to protect and increase the value of its assets to its shareholders. The issue boils down to a simple question: Is what Amazon did abuse of the patent and legal system? (For the sake of discussion, I'll grant the point that abusing the patent system is indeed illegal...but that's something else that would have to be proven.)
It's going to be very hard to win this argument in court, which is the only place it matters. To win requires proving that not only is what Amazon did abuse of the patent system - and that the patent office granted the patent is a very strong argument that it is not - but that they knew it was such an abuse and they did it anyway. I don't see that happening. --
If prior art exists and the patent officer ignores it, then did it really ever exist?
Common misconseption here: It is *NOT* the patent officer's job to go looking for prior art. It is the applicant's duty to notify the patent office of any prior art that may bear on the subject of the patent, and the patent office proceeds on the assumption that the applicant has fulfilled that duty.
If the applicant has failed to disclose relevant prior art to the patent office, then that may be grounds for revocation of the patent - but that only happens in court, as part of a lawsuit. Unless you're materially affected by a patent (read: liable for infringement) and have both lots of time and lots of money to fight such a suit, having all the prior art in the world doesn't do a damned thing. --
We must publish to establish prior art. Not patent. We are in a different game...
Like it or not, you are in the same game as long as you operate in the United States. You can't just opt out.
Prior art is only useful to invalidate a patent if 1) it's really prior art for all of the important claims of a particular patent - something only a patent attorney is competent to render an opinion on, and 2) in court as part of a lawsuit to invalidate that patent. Got a few spare megabucks to go pick patent fights? --
If it is the case that these patents cost more business then they generate it revenue
Good luck. I sincerely doubt that the fraction of potential customers Amazon is running off by this action has even the slightest chance of being enough to outweigh the value of that patent, should it be upheld in court...and if they didn't think it would be upheld, they wouldn't have pursued it in the first place. --
I know it sucks, but the heat should be primarily on the patent office for allowing such patents.
Exactly. Note that my original post said "in the current legal and business climate". The solution is to change that climate. Boycotting Amazon won't do a damned thing in that regard.
The only way out of this mess is to overhaul the patent system - but even that won't work immediately, as we'll have to wait for the current crop of patents to expire. They can't be invalidated by legislation, for that would be a government taking of private property without compensation and therefore unConstitutional. --
Once again, I have to bring up the concept of fiduciary duty. Not only does Amazon have a legal, enforceable duty to its shareholders to protect its corporate assets from misappropriation, they also have that same duty to maximize their value. Like it or not, in today's business and legal climate, Amazon had to not only patent a patentable invention, but also enforce its patent legally, or else their shareholders could have held the company and its directors personally liable for not doing so. --
I think that perhaps the/. crowd is a bit closed-minded about other licenses.
Amen to that. The fastest way to kill your karma on here is to take a stand against the GPV. Calling it exactly what it is - a viral tool for RMS to promote and enforce his utopian worldview - is enough to send GPV zealots into a frenzy of seek-and-destroy moderation. --
I can't remember who, but one guy commented in the news that it sounded like a birth defect. "I'm sorry, ma'am, but your son was born with a unisys." "*GASP!*" --
Hey, I drive a RAV4. It's an acronym: Recreational Active Vehicle, 4-wheel-drive. (Although not all of 'em are...but mine is.) I don't know where they came up with ProLiant though....yes, properly spelled, it's BiCapitalized. --
sorry to interrupt, but isn't HP's v-2500 a MUCH more substantial computing platform than either of the above mentioned, io not withstanding?
Perhaps, but this misses the point: S/390s are, above all, superb engines for I/O processing. Most commercial data processing - including the kinds of things that businesses would love to put on the web - is far more dependent on I/O speed than CPU power; very little actual computation goes on. --
The Linux inside a VM is a go, the bare metal is pretty close to impossible. Both from a technical and social aspects.
I wouldn't be so sure. As many others have pointed out, the step from running under VM to running on the bare metal is a small one, at least for the basic architecture. Yeah, you don't take advantage of the fancy features, but you don't have to, either.
I agree that no bank is going to dedicate a whole mainframe system to Linux. I don't see carving out a small LPAR and a few devices to run a Linux server system on a big machine as soemthing they would blanch at, however, and there could well be real advantages there - if nothing else, saving the cost of a VM/ESA license. --
IBM's most lucrative proprietary technology is thoroughly documented and available without even a NDA. This is a result of IBM's own antitrust lawsuit many years ago, where they agreed to document all of their interfaces in order to allow competitors to sell compatible systems. If it wasn't all documented, how do you think Hitachi and Amdahl/Fujitsu could sell machines that run IBM OSes essentially unmodified? --
I dunno if there's a full 390 out there in PC form, but there were both XT and AT-bus boards that did a fair job of the 370 architecture - or at least enough to run a version of VM/370, which could fake the rest. I don't know if they were ever used for more than hacking around, but they do exist.
OTOH, if they don't depend on the latest S/390 architectural features, there are lots of slow, but cheap, machines - 9370-class, for example - that hackers could probably pick up for a song. Until now, they haven't been interesting because there was no freely available/cheap OS for them, but if Linux/390 can run on them, perhaps with some hacking, then they might be worth grabbing. --
This may be a neat hack; I am quite unconvinced that it will lead to a commercially viable product, and in order for it to be of any importance, it has to be commercially viable.
I have the feeling that this is a real case of a self-fulfilling prophecy: it'll be commercially viable because people think it will be. After all, it puts that powerhouse of networking OSes, Linux, on that powerhouse of raw computer strength, S/390.
Web servers, and DB/2 or Oracle servers, and Samba servers, and other server-side tasks where you're gonna beat hell out of disk drives and not do a lot of interactive computing, are what I was thinking of. Consider an Apache plugin that lets it talk via MQ/Series to, say, a CICS backend app to get its data...especially with IBM's support for Apache. Consider, especially, that this CICS app may well exist already, having been written in 1982 for a vital corporate function and maintained and enhanced since. Written in COBOL, even. Can you say "leverage"?
The implementation of all this is likely to make Unix weenies turn various shades of green, but IBM is pretty good at hooking things together and making them play. Not quickly, and not well at first, but they do eventually get it right. --
The S/390 would make a very, very nice server platform for Linux. It's optimized for lots and lots of I/O, all going on at the same time to huge farms of disk and tape and other mass storage. Even a mid-sized 390 can sustain I/O rates that Alphas and SPARCs and PIIIs can only dream of.
The bad news is that it's strictly a server platform. I don't even know of a natively attached device that can serve as an X display; the 3270 display system is very much screen-oriented and block-structured, designed to have the user fill in a form and hit the ENTER key to have it all processed. They also don't handle async serial I/O worth a damn, necessitating a channel interrupt and transfer for every input keystroke. The upshot of this is that you'll run the system by telnetting into it, and if your IP configuration is hosed, you'll get to use some really horrendous tools to edit the necessary files. --
(I don't know why I'm posting this...every time I point out the GPV's true viral nature, I get moderated down by the usual gang of zealots. The surest way to destroy one's karma on Slashdot is to not toe the GPV party line.)
I use GPVd software. I try very hard not to keep its source code on my system any longer than I absolutely have to in order to prevent its contaminating the truly free software I try to contribute to. --
You have been decieved by the corp. fallicy that there is some sort of natural right to own ideas. This is untrue.
Whether you believe this or not is immaterial. Under US law, a patent is indeed a thing of value - it can be bought and sold, and its owner derives monetary and other benefits from the ownership - and therefore cannot be taken by the government without just compensation. Further, that compensation must be fair and equitable under the laws as they now stand, not as you would like them to be changed. Europeans are used to governments stealing their property without just compensation. That's why there's a Constitution in the US that prohibits the government from trampling its citizens' rights in that manner. Both the right to patent ideas and the right to be secure in one's property rights from government theft are guaranteed in the Constitution.
The practical upshot of all this is that the patent system, if it is changed as you and others advocate, will not do so retroactively, and existing patents will be left unchanged in the process. --
Oh, and one other note: changes in the patent system in the US cannot be made retroactive in any way that would result in doing away with existing patents. That would be a government taking of private property, and would require just compensation. How would YOU define just compensation?...and no, zero dollars will not fly. A patent is a thing of value, and the US Constitution prohibits the government from taking or destroying anything of value without compensating the owner for the full value of the loss. Even if it were possible to do so, the resulting litigation would take decades to resolve.
I don't expect the Europeans to understand this concept, but it's very real, and very important, to us Americans. --
Slashdot Mirror
Sooner or later the Wince devices are going to catch up in price, battery life and form factor/weight.
They're nearly there now. Right now, there's a Palm V and a Compaq Aero 1530 side by side on my desk. Both are plugged into my desktop PC, both synchronizing with M$ Outlook (bleah), and both fit comfortably in a shirt pocket. The Aero is a bit taller, but only a half inch or so. The touch-sensitive screens are nearly the same size, but the Aero's has no dedicated input area, so it can all be used for displaying information. (Input is via a pop-up keyboard or character recognizer.) Both have backlit B&W screens.
The Aero has 16 MB of memory, as opposed to the Palm V's 2; OTOH, the Aero needs much more memory due to the space-hogging nature of WinCE and its apps. The Aero can accept CompactFlash cards for data storage, though their use isn't integrated all that well. The Aero includes sound recording as well as playback hardware. The Aero also has three more buttons: the scroll control is a rocker dial that can be pushed in to perform a select or enter function, something I've often wished for on the Palm; there's an exit button, and there's a button to start a voice recording.
The biggest negative for the Aero is battery consumption: I don't ever have to think about the state of the battery on the Palm, while the Aero has me much more conscientious about dropping it in the cradle when I'm at my desk. The Aero's fast MIPS CPU and large amount of memory soak up power. The Aero does have the ability to accept interchangeable batteries, however.
I bought the Palm about 9 months ago, before I went to work at Compaq. I got the Aero at a special employee deal. I'm using 'em both side-by-side, and will keep the one that works better for me. At this point, they're pretty close.
--
There was widespread use of the concept of one click shopping before the patent was applied for.
Ah, but was there widespread use of the exact methods of one-click shopping they claimed in the patent application? This is a nontrivial question to answer, and there is legal precedent for the concept that only a patent attorney is competent to have an opinion on the subject.
If Amazon applied for the patent in good faith, then they did not commit fraud.
--
I have no intention of "subtly insinuating" anything. What I'm saying is that, in the current legal and business climate, companies that fail to take advantage of such weaknesses (though many would call them opportunities) will find themselves the target of shareholder suits that reach directly into directors' and officers' pockets. Taking the "moral" stand, as so many in this thread have argued should be done, could well impoverish those who make the businesses go. I don't think demanding they do so is any more right than others think patents are.
By using the phrase "intellectual property", we subtly spread the notion that you can "own" the exclusive right to manufacture something, just as you can "own" land.
This passes the duck test: you can buy and sell those rights, just as you can tangible property; therefore, those rights are also property. This is why the government can't just eliminate all patents, or all software patents, with the stroke of a pen, for to do so would run afoul of the taking without compensation clause of the Bill of Rights.
--
Im sorry, but the concept of fiduciary duty does not extend to willfully creating fraudulent patents. Nor does it extend to illegal practices of other kinds, no matter how lucruative they may be.
You are quite correct. Now, prove that Amazon's patent was both fraudulent and intended to be so. Be prepared to counter the argument that the patent office did not so find when issuing the patent.
--
Sure they did...back in the 50s, when the corporate, business, and legal climate was radically different from what it is today. Your example is completely irrelevant.
This is simply a slap on the Open Source community. A lot of Amazon is based Open Source.
Freedom - something the Open Source community (and I) espouse as a high ideal - necessarily includes the freedom to do things that piss you off.
--
Simply because you can make money for your shareholders doesn't give you a duty to do so. If Amazon had the oportunity to steal and get away with it, and the company did not, the shareholders have no claim. If Amazon has the oportunity to abuse the legal system or patent system for profit, that opportunity doesn't translate into a duty to do so.
This is indeed the crux of the argument. Amazon's duty is to do everything legally permissible to protect and increase the value of its assets to its shareholders. The issue boils down to a simple question: Is what Amazon did abuse of the patent and legal system? (For the sake of discussion, I'll grant the point that abusing the patent system is indeed illegal...but that's something else that would have to be proven.)
It's going to be very hard to win this argument in court, which is the only place it matters. To win requires proving that not only is what Amazon did abuse of the patent system - and that the patent office granted the patent is a very strong argument that it is not - but that they knew it was such an abuse and they did it anyway. I don't see that happening.
--
If prior art exists and the patent officer ignores it, then did it really ever exist?
Common misconseption here: It is *NOT* the patent officer's job to go looking for prior art. It is the applicant's duty to notify the patent office of any prior art that may bear on the subject of the patent, and the patent office proceeds on the assumption that the applicant has fulfilled that duty.
If the applicant has failed to disclose relevant prior art to the patent office, then that may be grounds for revocation of the patent - but that only happens in court, as part of a lawsuit. Unless you're materially affected by a patent (read: liable for infringement) and have both lots of time and lots of money to fight such a suit, having all the prior art in the world doesn't do a damned thing.
--
We must publish to establish prior art. Not patent. We are in a different game...
Like it or not, you are in the same game as long as you operate in the United States. You can't just opt out.
Prior art is only useful to invalidate a patent if 1) it's really prior art for all of the important claims of a particular patent - something only a patent attorney is competent to render an opinion on, and 2) in court as part of a lawsuit to invalidate that patent. Got a few spare megabucks to go pick patent fights?
--
If it is the case that these patents cost more business then they generate it revenue
Good luck. I sincerely doubt that the fraction of potential customers Amazon is running off by this action has even the slightest chance of being enough to outweigh the value of that patent, should it be upheld in court...and if they didn't think it would be upheld, they wouldn't have pursued it in the first place.
--
Exactly. Note that my original post said "in the current legal and business climate". The solution is to change that climate. Boycotting Amazon won't do a damned thing in that regard.
The only way out of this mess is to overhaul the patent system - but even that won't work immediately, as we'll have to wait for the current crop of patents to expire. They can't be invalidated by legislation, for that would be a government taking of private property without compensation and therefore unConstitutional.
--
Once again, I have to bring up the concept of fiduciary duty. Not only does Amazon have a legal, enforceable duty to its shareholders to protect its corporate assets from misappropriation, they also have that same duty to maximize their value. Like it or not, in today's business and legal climate, Amazon had to not only patent a patentable invention, but also enforce its patent legally, or else their shareholders could have held the company and its directors personally liable for not doing so.
--
I think that perhaps the /. crowd is a bit closed-minded about other licenses.
Amen to that. The fastest way to kill your karma on here is to take a stand against the GPV. Calling it exactly what it is - a viral tool for RMS to promote and enforce his utopian worldview - is enough to send GPV zealots into a frenzy of seek-and-destroy moderation.
--
I can't remember who, but one guy commented in the news that it sounded like a birth defect. "I'm sorry, ma'am, but your son was born with a unisys." "*GASP!*"
--
She let him live.
--
Hey, I drive a RAV4. It's an acronym: Recreational Active Vehicle, 4-wheel-drive. (Although not all of 'em are...but mine is.) I don't know where they came up with ProLiant though. ...yes, properly spelled, it's BiCapitalized.
--
Actually, what they found was that enteron refers not to the alimentary canal itself, but the contents thereof...
--
sorry to interrupt, but isn't HP's v-2500 a MUCH more substantial computing platform than either of the above mentioned, io not withstanding?
Perhaps, but this misses the point: S/390s are, above all, superb engines for I/O processing. Most commercial data processing - including the kinds of things that businesses would love to put on the web - is far more dependent on I/O speed than CPU power; very little actual computation goes on.
--
The Linux inside a VM is a go, the bare metal is pretty close to impossible. Both from a technical and social aspects.
I wouldn't be so sure. As many others have pointed out, the step from running under VM to running on the bare metal is a small one, at least for the basic architecture. Yeah, you don't take advantage of the fancy features, but you don't have to, either.
I agree that no bank is going to dedicate a whole mainframe system to Linux. I don't see carving out a small LPAR and a few devices to run a Linux server system on a big machine as soemthing they would blanch at, however, and there could well be real advantages there - if nothing else, saving the cost of a VM/ESA license.
--
IBM's most lucrative proprietary technology is thoroughly documented and available without even a NDA. This is a result of IBM's own antitrust lawsuit many years ago, where they agreed to document all of their interfaces in order to allow competitors to sell compatible systems. If it wasn't all documented, how do you think Hitachi and Amdahl/Fujitsu could sell machines that run IBM OSes essentially unmodified?
--
I dunno if there's a full 390 out there in PC form, but there were both XT and AT-bus boards that did a fair job of the 370 architecture - or at least enough to run a version of VM/370, which could fake the rest. I don't know if they were ever used for more than hacking around, but they do exist.
OTOH, if they don't depend on the latest S/390 architectural features, there are lots of slow, but cheap, machines - 9370-class, for example - that hackers could probably pick up for a song. Until now, they haven't been interesting because there was no freely available/cheap OS for them, but if Linux/390 can run on them, perhaps with some hacking, then they might be worth grabbing.
--
This may be a neat hack; I am quite unconvinced that it will lead to a commercially viable product, and in order for it to be of any importance, it has to be commercially viable.
I have the feeling that this is a real case of a self-fulfilling prophecy: it'll be commercially viable because people think it will be. After all, it puts that powerhouse of networking OSes, Linux, on that powerhouse of raw computer strength, S/390.
Web servers, and DB/2 or Oracle servers, and Samba servers, and other server-side tasks where you're gonna beat hell out of disk drives and not do a lot of interactive computing, are what I was thinking of. Consider an Apache plugin that lets it talk via MQ/Series to, say, a CICS backend app to get its data...especially with IBM's support for Apache. Consider, especially, that this CICS app may well exist already, having been written in 1982 for a vital corporate function and maintained and enhanced since. Written in COBOL, even. Can you say "leverage"?
The implementation of all this is likely to make Unix weenies turn various shades of green, but IBM is pretty good at hooking things together and making them play. Not quickly, and not well at first, but they do eventually get it right.
--
The bad news is that it's strictly a server platform. I don't even know of a natively attached device that can serve as an X display; the 3270 display system is very much screen-oriented and block-structured, designed to have the user fill in a form and hit the ENTER key to have it all processed. They also don't handle async serial I/O worth a damn, necessitating a channel interrupt and transfer for every input keystroke. The upshot of this is that you'll run the system by telnetting into it, and if your IP configuration is hosed, you'll get to use some really horrendous tools to edit the necessary files.
--
(I don't know why I'm posting this...every time I point out the GPV's true viral nature, I get moderated down by the usual gang of zealots. The surest way to destroy one's karma on Slashdot is to not toe the GPV party line.)
I use GPVd software. I try very hard not to keep its source code on my system any longer than I absolutely have to in order to prevent its contaminating the truly free software I try to contribute to.
--
You have been decieved by the corp. fallicy that there is some sort of natural right to own ideas. This is untrue.
Whether you believe this or not is immaterial. Under US law, a patent is indeed a thing of value - it can be bought and sold, and its owner derives monetary and other benefits from the ownership - and therefore cannot be taken by the government without just compensation. Further, that compensation must be fair and equitable under the laws as they now stand, not as you would like them to be changed. Europeans are used to governments stealing their property without just compensation. That's why there's a Constitution in the US that prohibits the government from trampling its citizens' rights in that manner. Both the right to patent ideas and the right to be secure in one's property rights from government theft are guaranteed in the Constitution.
The practical upshot of all this is that the patent system, if it is changed as you and others advocate, will not do so retroactively, and existing patents will be left unchanged in the process.
--
Oh, and one other note: changes in the patent system in the US cannot be made retroactive in any way that would result in doing away with existing patents. That would be a government taking of private property, and would require just compensation. How would YOU define just compensation? ...and no, zero dollars will not fly. A patent is a thing of value, and the US Constitution prohibits the government from taking or destroying anything of value without compensating the owner for the full value of the loss. Even if it were possible to do so, the resulting litigation would take decades to resolve.
I don't expect the Europeans to understand this concept, but it's very real, and very important, to us Americans.
--