You start with Joe Sixpack and the mailserver on his PC; when I advise you that there isn't (and shouldn't) be any mailserver on Joe's Windows PC, you suddenly pull an OSS virus-scanner out of your sleeves and link its existance as scanner for mail servers to a presumed existance of a mail server on a Windows client. You find me out of my wits.
Get a life and port Clamav to Windows; so that Joe can run it against his non-existent mail server.
But more importantly: your post doesn't make kind of sense: "Sure, if you run a mail server in unix that would be great, but most "Average Joe" windows users do not" How's this sentence to close ? The only possible alternative: "... run a mail server at all". And thereby we're out of sense.
It's the *client* that works a vector, not the server. ICYDK.
Mod someone up the parent. If I had a point left, I'd give it as 'Funny'. Not too funny, no, not very funny; but: funny, hei. Surely more funny than troll. Do we have cynical ? Look at the last paragraph: Anonymous Coward doesn't mean what he says. Ah, you modded him down for Anti-Americanism, then ?
So-and-so. It might depend on the region of the world you're in ? [Here: South-East Asia]
I'm using a cheapie Optiplex-240 at work, always on, of course, which has a non-standard motherboard and a very non-standard IDE-Cable-Select setup, which I never managed to get to work even after changing everything to Primary/Secondary and jumpering the harddrives. Both work well, individually, but as CS only. So lala. For the rest: reliable.
My second bugger is an Inspiron 8100 notebook, pretty good value (then !!), and what made me buy it: Three years of warranty for about US$100. Don't do without ! They had the honour during the last 2.5 years to replace: keyboard floppy-drive harddrive CDRW Would have costed me a fortune on my own ! If they 'do it again' with this warranty, I'll buy a DELL notebook again. Otherwise: never. Too expensive to maintain !
Closing note: Here DELL doesn't offer *any* PC without RedMond-Tax. Nor does anyone else. AFAIK.
(hope, the moderator is no FreeBSD-fan. He might damage my good karma...)
Re:OpenBSD is INSECURE, try Cryptech RAP BSD
on
OpenBSD 3.4 Released
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· Score: -1, Offtopic
Damn, why did I write so much instead of getting the first post here, at least !!
Re:OpenBSD is INSECURE, try Cryptech RAP BSD
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OpenBSD 3.4 Released
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· Score: 0, Flamebait
How could someone *ever* mod this to 'informative', with a score of *one* ?
Tastes *are* different; but maximum here might be a 5 for *funny*. And this is what it's supposed to be, 65 years after the Invasion From Mars. Cryptech RAP BAD (in short CRAP BAD) is a possible contender. The best part is the diode for self-destruction and the controversail material.
I cannot argue on scalability. Benchmarking should be more, though.
I had been running a SOHO-server on P75, 128MB, Dial-up/DSL, DHCP, Print-server, Apache, SSH, hylafax, Firewall on Linux for some years. Then I tried OpenBSD for a change. It runs with about 1/3 of the memory (Linux around 100 MB, OpenBSD about 35 MB).
Since I installed it, there were just 8 patches to be added (that is about 1 per month); installed pretty easily. I felt quite safe and the system has been pretty stable.
Though I don't see too much of a future in it, I appreciate its safety considerations and - in my case - stability.
My desktops run Linux, but currently I see no contender as replacement for the OpenBSD-box. I wouldn't mind, though, to go back to Linux if there was anything equivalent.
Let's simply assume that OpenBSD will remain in the niche for small (it will probably never be SMP) servers of security-concious admins with low hardware requirements and low throughput.
(I'll surely be modded down as usual for an un-american comment..)
This *is* actually a difference between the US system and elsewhere. Think about the consequences. Shall I say 'intended consequences' ??
A bright chap makes in invention in - let's say - Egypt and publishes it. Sells it. A clever greedy American visiting Egypt therefore will get a patent for it from USPTO - only in US; see parent. Greedy American reaps royalties but is up for more. Contacts State Department and complains that Egyptian still makes money in utter disrespect of US patent. Egyptian cannot apply for patent, because greedy American holds it. State Department cite Egyptian Embassador and complains with him about Egyptian contravening greedy American's patent. Government of Egypt will blow the whistle on Egyptian to stop manufacturing his invention or pay licence fee to greedy American. For fear of reprisals.
You think this story is an invention ? An accident ? - It is not. It is occurring. Beware, Americans are not utterly stupid !! (but rather up to something; you may guess what... !)
For a hardware patent, as far as I know, you must provide an implementation of the idea.
Wrong. I forgot the classification entry for these, but there is a whole class for Perpetuum Mobiles.
No need to present anything. (Actually discouraged, because it slows down the 'production' of the examiner; the most relevant criteria for promotion)
You seem to be ignorant on this aspect either. Read the complete text. Otherwise you might think I'm tricking you into something. (1)(b) proves you wrong:
(1) The claims shall define the matter for which protection is sought in terms of the technical features of the invention. Wherever appropriate claims shall contain:
(a) a statement indicating the designation of the subject-matter of the invention and those technical features which are necessary for the definition of the claimed subject-matter but which, in combination, are part of the prior art;
(b) a characterising portion - preceded by the expression "characterised in that" or "characterised by" - stating the technical features which, in combination with the features stated in sub-paragraph (a), it is desired to protect.
(2)46 Without prejudice to Article 82, a European patent application may contain more than one independent claim in the same category (product, process, apparatus or use) only if the subject-matter of the application involves one of the following:
(a) a plurality of inter-related products;
(b) different uses of a product or apparatus;
(c) alternative solutions to a particular problem, where it is not appropriate to cover these alternatives by a single claim.
(3) Any claim stating the essential features of an invention may be followed by one or more claims concerning particular embodiments of that invention.
(4) Any claim which includes all the features of any other claim (dependent claim) shall contain, if possible at the beginning, a reference to the other claim and then state the additional features which it is desired to protect. A dependent claim shall also be admissible where the claim it directly refers to is itself a dependent claim. All dependent claims referring back to a single previous claim, and all dependent claims referring back to several previous claims, shall be grouped together to the extent and in the most appropriate way possible.
(5) The number of the claims shall be reasonable in consideration of the nature of the invention claimed. If there are several claims, they shall be numbered consecutively in Arabic numerals.
(6) Claims shall not, except where absolutely necessary, rely, in respect of the technical features of the invention, on references to the description or drawings. In particular, they shall not rely on such references as: "as described in part... of the description", or "as illustrated in figure... of the drawings".
(7) If the European patent application contains drawings, the technical features mentioned in the claims shall preferably, if the intelligibility of the claim can thereby be increased, be followed by reference signs relating to these features and placed between parentheses. These reference signs shall not be construed as limiting the claim.
Good to point this out. It needs to be stated again, over and over. Otherwise FUD moves in. Ooops, you're not the most competent person, though, neither, since your explanations on the independent versus dependent claims is not valid. Our weird and wonderful world of patents is definitively not distributed in first and last claims, but in dependencies. And an independent first claim is valid on its own !
I didn't try to sell it. You seem to think that either I intended to defend the patent or had any grudges against Ozzie ? No, he has done a good job. Most patent applicants don't.
What I was hinting at: Patents are granted irrespective of the amount of work involved. Irrespective of programming yes or no. They are rather granted on a notion, if someone actually *did* and *documented* this before or not. Which exactly is why Software Patents are so bad ! You are the first to use a diagonal scroll-bar - a million lines of code or zero - and file for it. Diagonal Scroll-Bar is out of reach for anyone else. Let's look at this diagonal scroll-bar: For the grant, the question if this diagonal scroll-bar was created by serious effort is irrelevant. The only thing that counts: Is there any literature publicly available or any program proposing exactly a diagonal scroll-bar or not. Only this would be considered 'destroying' the claim.
Though you might consider this as 'lecture', I add, though, that even a document suggesting a scroll-bar neither horizontally nor vertically oriented would probably not considered sufficient, because 'the individual always destroys the general'. Full stop. If their attorney has some brain left, he'll argue that 'neither horizontally nor vertically' doesn't imply diagonal at all. And this would probably pass. Don't forget, the auspicious 'Man Skilled in the Art' (what a bloody expression !), has zero imagination ! So the patent examiner refusing on these grounds will ultimately fail: Diagonal instead of horizontal or vertical would have to be rejected on grounds of not being expressedly stated in the Prior Art.
And we're getting worse here: "So for them to demonstrate the functionality that they claim in the patent, they would have to go to the same effort as Ozzie did." There is no real need at all to demonstrate that anything that you apply for actually *works* !
To your last paragraph: For sure, "the patent office stating "well you had to create that document to do what was described in the patent, and therefore, it can't be considered" will happen ! As long as you don't find any literature published before the filing date doing something like what Ozzie did, you / we will fail. Ozzie's approach - sorry, I appreciate it, just try to explain ! - is flawed seriously with respect to one aspect: He *proves* that it *could* have been done using R3, Excel 5, etc. This is - sorry again - completely irrelevant. The question: *Has* it been done ?? If we wanted to help the cause, we'd have to find that publicly available document that suggested this before the filing (Priority) date.
Since I have started lecturing, I permit myself to continue. Think of 'Invention of the wheel'. Someone files for it. Granted. Azzie comes about and proves that chisel, hammer, chainsaw, B&D, etc. had been available at date of filing. Only, nobody actually *cut* a tree into slices and drilled a central hole. Could have been done in 15 minutes. Right ! The Patent Office would ask: *Did* someone, actually do it ? No ? Granted !
A last point (sorry, I don't have the material around and am too lazy to look its formulation up on the web): There is one aspect to it that says something like: If you happen to get an unforeseeable, unexpected result from known settings / setups, these will be considered patentable. Only exclusion: 'natural laws', like gravity, etc.
Don't buy this, if you're not convinced. If only I could convince you that the Patent System - specially software patents - is highly debatable, I'll be happy !
Leaving those discussions on Flash aside, what Ozzie did is a great demonstration against Software Patent, not necessarily against the Eolas-Patent.
Patent Law doesn't say 'could have been done' (potential), but requires a publicly available disclosure respectively implementation. If Ozzie or someone else had written those lines 10 years ago, or someone had offered the system as described, the case for Eolas would be much worse.
Patent examiners (I was one of them; luckily: was !) are encouraged by Patent Law *and* Case Law to consider a 'Man Skilled in the Art' as underlying actor: He who knows everything (any publication / implementation) and has zero creativity. Unfortunately, Ozzie is creative. Fortunately for him, but this kind of kills the argument.
Plus it shows the ridicule of the prevailing situation: If someone else hasn't done *exactly* the same thing *and* made it public, your patent is supposed to be granted. If you look at European Case Law, the judges have followed the jurisdiction of their Big Brothers across the Atlantic, against the spirit of the European Patent Convention. And the European MPs will follow suit with Software Patents, I'm afraid.
This is - sorry - sensationalistic and thin journalism. Sure, I still enjoy any day since I left the European Patent Office because the whole patent business is getting more monkey by the day. Though: what Hemos writes is utmost thin and most importantly without proper background. I just read the first claim, and find too many comments falling onto wrong ground. Be the patented system shitty or not, the inventive concept has essentially nothing to do with banner ads: "A method in a computer system for allocating display space on a web page,"
- this is the banner ad "the method comprising: receiving multiple bids indicating a bid amount"
- this is e-bay or alike "and an advertisement;"
- it is not any banner but an advertisement "receiving a request to provide the web page to a user;"
- this is superfluous patentwise "selecting,"
- this is surely beyond banner ads "based at least in part on review of bid amounts,"
- so you need an agent to roughly check $$$ "a received bid;"
- selects the received bid "and adding the advertisement of the selected bid to the web page."
- adds not any, but a very specific advertisement to the webpage: that of an article bidded for.
If you compare this to the shoddy text of the news, that text *is* shoddy.
I *don't* say they deserve a patent. Actually, I was notorious for suggesting refusal. But let's stick to reality, otherwise we are attacked and fall too easily.
As I tried to explain, the proposed system is quite a refinement of banner ads, for bidding environment, when you add selectively an ad to an article for which a bid has been made in the proximity (at least web page) of that article. And this even controllable by the amount.
Actually, I still have to see this. *I* couldn't attack the novelty... !
I haven't even bothered to look at the prior art cited. Luckily I am not in this business any more. But in Slashdot we should try some good business !
for the accountancy. The only machine I'd know about to do a user-by-user and site-by-site statistics is the notorious ISA.
Chances are, this is an attempt by their IT-department to justify huge investments into M$. At least here they do likewise. Probably bolstered with arguments by the local M$-rep.
See, you're screwed because you stole my idea. I simply was too slow. What am I gonna write now ??
Oh, yes: this bitch of moderator calls it a Troll; -1; bad for you that you're not precisely a god-fearing American; like Hemos. Nerd, but a patriotic nerd: "... in the wake of the recent incident. Interesting details about the next-generation shuttle..." is worse than you wrote it. What euphemism; this 'recent incident' ! Like paying a ticket for some speeding... !
Your comment is the only decent comment one could ever give to this so-called article. In the end, they/.ers are all decent Americans ? The empire itself ??
Re:I've found Gnome 1.4 to be the best of Gnome ye
on
Has GNOME Become LAME?
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· Score: 0
Oh yeah. Was waiting for this! Still Gnome 1.4 has been and is my preferred Desktop; with Sawfish, of course.
I do agree with many in here that flamewars between KDE and GNOME don't help anyone.
But: we also must be honest about our preferences. With KDE 3.1 this becomes more difficult. It has a lot of beautiful features (and I'm not talking about gadgets), seems to really move into a desktop for enterprise solutions. Beautiful doesn't apply to its icons either. On the contrary: to me this is still the worst aspect of KDE and there is not much of change in sight. Really ugly.
The really good apps are on GNOME, for sure: Evolution, galeon, pan. All three make my day; plus the 'neutral' OpenOffice. I don't start Windoze any more an any of my machines.
So, the apps are on GNOME, KDE 3.1 is better as Desktop, but ugly. What I cannot understand, why do so many people in here tell everyone to 'run whatever you like !' I cannot, because I cannot run KDE with the beautiful icons and apps of GNOME. I cannot run GNOME in the advanced environment KDE 3.1.
GNOME has lost a lot with this metacity-cripple. No idea who ever gave this so-called explanation on 'useability': All my experience points to the contrary: the less 'my' users know about CS, the more they while away their days and weeks fiddling with exotic settings. It seems to give them a feeling of being in command; or so ??
Plus: of course 'Settings' don't belong into easy reach. Plus, the default must make a lot of sense. Also here GNOME sold much worse. GNOME - including 1.4 - used to default to the worst alternatives (Just think of that over-ugly 'cruz').
No solution in sight - qt and gtk don't unify easily; but to me the killer-desktop would be one containing the best of all worlds.
If Linux is ready for the desktop ??: Sure. One proof: my own - everything Linux. If Linux - GNOME *or* KDE - is not ready, how can Windows be ?? And I *mean* it. Just sitting in front of one of those cripples running W2K and IE is the vivid proof !!
We tend to forget Jerry Homeowner alias M$-updater. We tend to forget that 'we' are the Nerds, for whom Stuff matters.
Actually, Office is by far the most important and last stranglehold for M$ in the market!
Back to above: only nerds run operating systems for the sake of running operating systems. Everyone else don't. They don't run OSes on purpose; but for necessity. Nobody out there gives a shit which operating system they run. Their *only* concern is that they can run Office (M$-Office, sure), because this is what they know, and how their files come in. Plus, there are gamers, but we won't consider them in here. So, except of games, everything runs down to the so-called 'Productivity Suite'. Which, for reasons completely unknown to me, must be Office. Even while using it (up to 97), I found it quite buggy w.r.t. its GUI plus un-intuitive. If anybody wanted, I could probably still point out a few basic flaws; relevant options that never ever are found by the user, defying logic, etc. Plus some buggy, tricky things in layouts.
But this is not my topic here, today. Even if it *was* better and much less ugly, or even worse and more ugly: it is the stranglehold of M$ on the market. No Office (including Outlook with its Exchange-connectivity), and M$ goes titsup. Don't forget that *all* of their businesses write red numbers, except Office and OS. W.r.t. OSes: see above.
What remains is the property (properties) of Office: Exchange files / wellknown (though ugly) UI. Monopoly at its best. Addiction.
And M$ is aware of this ! So they have to work on some strange things to make Office a very closed environment; including generous handshakes to all big shots in DMCA; handshakes in any form. To prevent some OpenSource Pirates from re-inventing their formats 100%. The users are therefore "offered" to use a built-in Digital Rights Management. But this is not quite for the perusual of the users, rather to shoot down OpenSource equivalents legally. Of course, John Dumbman will applaud his own dismembering; blinded by the huge tag "security" attached to it.
With a bit of brains that M$ has (and they have quite a lot !!), they know that this won't work on W9X. Plus, you *force* everyone to upgrade simply to exchange a text document. Take your time to digest and disgust this. Meditate thoroughly through it: You need a P500+ with 256MB RAM and a 4GB harddisk running XP (or alike) plus a 500MB 'Office' to write a few steamy lines to your beloved one !!! The younger generation might not really complain, but we elderly types might see the definite end of *any* common sense and sanity. Something that - just 20 years ago - could be sent through a 300 Baud phone adapter and took a few hundred bytes.
Burn some brainware again to follow my logic: if it wasn't for Office and its addicted / enforced fellowship; BillG would have sleepless nights.
Actually, I ask myself at times why not about everyone geek hacker and nerd these days works like hell to produce the sword that will surely cause the deadly blow to Redmond: The greatest Office on Earth, the real M$-Office-killer. The very day that sees Jerry Homeowner switch to this 'great' non-M$-Office, M$ is doomed.
Ah, in the end, Slashdot patriotism is American! A '4' and 'interesting'. While someone else removed my nice good karma for posting my honest conviction that the American public will be cheated by those 3 'independant' inquiries. A few Trolls and Flamebaits could be added with ease here. But I don't. They still cheat you and they will cheat you. Over.
What is so interesting in this comment that not everybody has always known; even untrue, because we could see chunks definitively larger than the size of a fist. A '4': hurray and 'thank-you' to a an American patriot who supports his own disinformation.
Funny you mention this. FreeBSD is no Linux, as everyone knows (was waiting for the *BSDs to *flame* this Anonymous Coward !)
Seems everyone who goes into ACPI is heavily on the downhill track. You might go for Mandrake - bankrupt a few weeks after. You might as well go for FreeBSD - dead only some time later. I'll really cry for FreeBSD, probably the best we could have ever got, but messed up horribly over time.
Right, I'm also kind of waiting to wipe RH. But not with a candidate for the Death Row!
Maybe I'm a bit dumb, but happen to be one of those you address.
Could you specify some real example or a site for what you mean?
I had been under the impression that larger programs not only force to use 'black boxes', but encourage and thrive on 'black boxes'.
Isn't a subroutine or a class a very handy, useful and necessary 'black box'?
Do you want to tell me that embedded something (Windoze, Linux, etc.) can do without API or that you can follow your codes without, straight down from a kernel through all the drivers to the applications? Including a thorough understanding of what your ARM does internally and if I understand your post right, this is what you aspire.
Since this 'know-it-all' is impossible, should we not rather encourage *robust* 'black boxes?? *This* is actually something missed out by students (in my experience). They don't create 'Swiss-Army-Knife boxes' that could perform the task in any circumstances, environments and handle insane input in a sane way.
As far as the embedded security-box of Columbia is concerned, we seem to deal with a hard-coded encryption. At least this is what they want to convince us about. Encryption hard-coded in a single place; otherwise not such an urgent need to recover it. Any other encryption would make it easy to change the distributed keys, which leads us back to the necessity of 'robust' boxes.
Slashdot Mirror
Fantastic ! - eh, /.-ed, btw.
Save your time, don't try
You must be a lawyer; more than a technician.
You start with Joe Sixpack and the mailserver on his PC; when I advise you that there isn't (and shouldn't) be any mailserver on Joe's Windows PC, you suddenly pull an OSS virus-scanner out of your sleeves and link its existance as scanner for mail servers to a presumed existance of a mail server on a Windows client.
You find me out of my wits.
Get a life and port Clamav to Windows; so that Joe can run it against his non-existent mail server.
Firstly, there are.
But more importantly: your post doesn't make kind of sense:
"Sure, if you run a mail server in unix that would be great, but most "Average Joe" windows users do not"
How's this sentence to close ? The only possible alternative: "... run a mail server at all".
And thereby we're out of sense.
It's the *client* that works a vector, not the server. ICYDK.
Oh, wei !
Mod someone up the parent. If I had a point left, I'd give it as 'Funny'. Not too funny, no, not very funny; but: funny, hei.
Surely more funny than troll. Do we have cynical ?
Look at the last paragraph: Anonymous Coward doesn't mean what he says.
Ah, you modded him down for Anti-Americanism, then ?
So-and-so. It might depend on the region of the world you're in ? [Here: South-East Asia]
I'm using a cheapie Optiplex-240 at work, always on, of course, which has a non-standard motherboard and a very non-standard IDE-Cable-Select setup, which I never managed to get to work even after changing everything to Primary/Secondary and jumpering the harddrives. Both work well, individually, but as CS only.
So lala. For the rest: reliable.
My second bugger is an Inspiron 8100 notebook, pretty good value (then !!), and what made me buy it: Three years of warranty for about US$100. Don't do without ! They had the honour during the last 2.5 years to replace:
keyboard
floppy-drive
harddrive
CDRW
Would have costed me a fortune on my own !
If they 'do it again' with this warranty, I'll buy a DELL notebook again. Otherwise: never. Too expensive to maintain !
Closing note: Here DELL doesn't offer *any* PC without RedMond-Tax. Nor does anyone else. AFAIK.
Yes, well, funny !
...)
Flame me, but netcraft is of another opinion:
FreeBSD Apache/1.3.29 7-Dec-2003
unknown Zeus/3.4 4-Mar-2003
(hope, the moderator is no FreeBSD-fan. He might damage my good karma
Damn, why did I write so much instead of getting the first post here, at least !!
How could someone *ever* mod this to 'informative', with a score of *one* ?
Tastes *are* different; but maximum here might be a 5 for *funny*. And this is what it's supposed to be, 65 years after the Invasion From Mars.
Cryptech RAP BAD (in short CRAP BAD) is a possible contender. The best part is the diode for self-destruction and the controversail material.
Seems, CRAP BSD comes without spell-checker !?
I cannot argue on scalability. Benchmarking should be more, though.
I had been running a SOHO-server on P75, 128MB, Dial-up/DSL, DHCP, Print-server, Apache, SSH, hylafax, Firewall on Linux for some years. Then I tried OpenBSD for a change. It runs with about 1/3 of the memory (Linux around 100 MB, OpenBSD about 35 MB).
Since I installed it, there were just 8 patches to be added (that is about 1 per month); installed pretty easily. I felt quite safe and the system has been pretty stable.
Though I don't see too much of a future in it, I appreciate its safety considerations and - in my case - stability.
My desktops run Linux, but currently I see no contender as replacement for the OpenBSD-box. I wouldn't mind, though, to go back to Linux if there was anything equivalent.
Let's simply assume that OpenBSD will remain in the niche for small (it will probably never be SMP) servers of security-concious admins with low hardware requirements and low throughput.
(I'll surely be modded down as usual for an un-american comment ..)
... !)
This *is* actually a difference between the US system and elsewhere. Think about the consequences. Shall I say 'intended consequences' ??
A bright chap makes in invention in - let's say - Egypt and publishes it. Sells it. A clever greedy American visiting Egypt therefore will get a patent for it from USPTO - only in US; see parent. Greedy American reaps royalties but is up for more. Contacts State Department and complains that Egyptian still makes money in utter disrespect of US patent. Egyptian cannot apply for patent, because greedy American holds it. State Department cite Egyptian Embassador and complains with him about Egyptian contravening greedy American's patent. Government of Egypt will blow the whistle on Egyptian to stop manufacturing his invention or pay licence fee to greedy American. For fear of reprisals.
You think this story is an invention ? An accident ? - It is not. It is occurring.
Beware, Americans are not utterly stupid !! (but rather up to something; you may guess what
Wrong. I forgot the classification entry for these, but there is a whole class for Perpetuum Mobiles. No need to present anything. (Actually discouraged, because it slows down the 'production' of the examiner; the most relevant criteria for promotion)
You seem to be ignorant on this aspect either.
... of the description", or "as illustrated in figure ... of the drawings".
Read the complete text. Otherwise you might think I'm tricking you into something. (1)(b) proves you wrong:
(1) The claims shall define the matter for which protection is sought in terms of the technical features of the invention. Wherever appropriate claims shall contain:
(a) a statement indicating the designation of the subject-matter of the invention and those technical features which are necessary for the definition of the claimed subject-matter but which, in combination, are part of the prior art;
(b) a characterising portion - preceded by the expression "characterised in that" or "characterised by" - stating the technical features which, in combination with the features stated in sub-paragraph (a), it is desired to protect.
(2)46 Without prejudice to Article 82, a European patent application may contain more than one independent claim in the same category (product, process, apparatus or use) only if the subject-matter of the application involves one of the following:
(a) a plurality of inter-related products;
(b) different uses of a product or apparatus;
(c) alternative solutions to a particular problem, where it is not appropriate to cover these alternatives by a single claim.
(3) Any claim stating the essential features of an invention may be followed by one or more claims concerning particular embodiments of that invention.
(4) Any claim which includes all the features of any other claim (dependent claim) shall contain, if possible at the beginning, a reference to the other claim and then state the additional features which it is desired to protect. A dependent claim shall also be admissible where the claim it directly refers to is itself a dependent claim. All dependent claims referring back to a single previous claim, and all dependent claims referring back to several previous claims, shall be grouped together to the extent and in the most appropriate way possible.
(5) The number of the claims shall be reasonable in consideration of the nature of the invention claimed. If there are several claims, they shall be numbered consecutively in Arabic numerals.
(6) Claims shall not, except where absolutely necessary, rely, in respect of the technical features of the invention, on references to the description or drawings. In particular, they shall not rely on such references as: "as described in part
(7) If the European patent application contains drawings, the technical features mentioned in the claims shall preferably, if the intelligibility of the claim can thereby be increased, be followed by reference signs relating to these features and placed between parentheses. These reference signs shall not be construed as limiting the claim.
Good to point this out. It needs to be stated again, over and over. Otherwise FUD moves in.
Ooops, you're not the most competent person, though, neither, since your explanations on the independent versus dependent claims is not valid.
Our weird and wonderful world of patents is definitively not distributed in first and last claims, but in dependencies. And an independent first claim is valid on its own !
I didn't try to sell it. You seem to think that either I intended to defend the patent or had any grudges against Ozzie ? No, he has done a good job. Most patent applicants don't.
What I was hinting at: Patents are granted irrespective of the amount of work involved. Irrespective of programming yes or no. They are rather granted on a notion, if someone actually *did* and *documented* this before or not.
Which exactly is why Software Patents are so bad ! You are the first to use a diagonal scroll-bar - a million lines of code or zero - and file for it. Diagonal Scroll-Bar is out of reach for anyone else.
Let's look at this diagonal scroll-bar: For the grant, the question if this diagonal scroll-bar was created by serious effort is irrelevant. The only thing that counts: Is there any literature publicly available or any program proposing exactly a diagonal scroll-bar or not. Only this would be considered 'destroying' the claim.
Though you might consider this as 'lecture', I add, though, that even a document suggesting a scroll-bar neither horizontally nor vertically oriented would probably not considered sufficient, because 'the individual always destroys the general'. Full stop. If their attorney has some brain left, he'll argue that 'neither horizontally nor vertically' doesn't imply diagonal at all. And this would probably pass.
Don't forget, the auspicious 'Man Skilled in the Art' (what a bloody expression !), has zero imagination ! So the patent examiner refusing on these grounds will ultimately fail: Diagonal instead of horizontal or vertical would have to be rejected on grounds of not being expressedly stated in the Prior Art.
And we're getting worse here: "So for them to demonstrate the functionality that they claim in the patent, they would have to go to the same effort as Ozzie did." There is no real need at all to demonstrate that anything that you apply for actually *works* !
To your last paragraph: For sure, "the patent office stating "well you had to create that document to do what was described in the patent, and therefore, it can't be considered" will happen ! As long as you don't find any literature published before the filing date doing something like what Ozzie did, you / we will fail.
Ozzie's approach - sorry, I appreciate it, just try to explain ! - is flawed seriously with respect to one aspect: He *proves* that it *could* have been done using R3, Excel 5, etc. This is - sorry again - completely irrelevant. The question: *Has* it been done ?? If we wanted to help the cause, we'd have to find that publicly available document that suggested this before the filing (Priority) date.
Since I have started lecturing, I permit myself to continue. Think of 'Invention of the wheel'. Someone files for it. Granted. Azzie comes about and proves that chisel, hammer, chainsaw, B&D, etc. had been available at date of filing. Only, nobody actually *cut* a tree into slices and drilled a central hole. Could have been done in 15 minutes. Right ! The Patent Office would ask: *Did* someone, actually do it ? No ? Granted !
A last point (sorry, I don't have the material around and am too lazy to look its formulation up on the web): There is one aspect to it that says something like: If you happen to get an unforeseeable, unexpected result from known settings / setups, these will be considered patentable. Only exclusion: 'natural laws', like gravity, etc.
Don't buy this, if you're not convinced. If only I could convince you that the Patent System - specially software patents - is highly debatable, I'll be happy !
Have a nice day !
Leaving those discussions on Flash aside, what Ozzie did is a great demonstration against Software Patent, not necessarily against the Eolas-Patent.
Patent Law doesn't say 'could have been done' (potential), but requires a publicly available disclosure respectively implementation. If Ozzie or someone else had written those lines 10 years ago, or someone had offered the system as described, the case for Eolas would be much worse.
Patent examiners (I was one of them; luckily: was !) are encouraged by Patent Law *and* Case Law to consider a 'Man Skilled in the Art' as underlying actor: He who knows everything (any publication / implementation) and has zero creativity. Unfortunately, Ozzie is creative. Fortunately for him, but this kind of kills the argument.
Plus it shows the ridicule of the prevailing situation: If someone else hasn't done *exactly* the same thing *and* made it public, your patent is supposed to be granted. If you look at European Case Law, the judges have followed the jurisdiction of their Big Brothers across the Atlantic, against the spirit of the European Patent Convention. And the European MPs will follow suit with Software Patents, I'm afraid.
This mother of all comments deserves more than the 1. Surely a moderator who is a strict believer of Donald R.
This is - sorry - sensationalistic and thin journalism.
... !
Sure, I still enjoy any day since I left the European Patent Office because the whole patent business is getting more monkey by the day.
Though: what Hemos writes is utmost thin and most importantly without proper background.
I just read the first claim, and find too many comments falling onto wrong ground. Be the patented system shitty or not, the inventive concept has essentially nothing to do with banner ads:
"A method in a computer system for allocating display space on a web page,"
- this is the banner ad
"the method comprising: receiving multiple bids indicating a bid amount"
- this is e-bay or alike
"and an advertisement;"
- it is not any banner but an advertisement
"receiving a request to provide the web page to a user;"
- this is superfluous patentwise
"selecting,"
- this is surely beyond banner ads
"based at least in part on review of bid amounts,"
- so you need an agent to roughly check $$$
"a received bid;"
- selects the received bid
"and adding the advertisement of the selected bid to the web page."
- adds not any, but a very specific advertisement to the webpage: that of an article bidded for.
If you compare this to the shoddy text of the news, that text *is* shoddy.
I *don't* say they deserve a patent. Actually, I was notorious for suggesting refusal. But let's stick to reality, otherwise we are attacked and fall too easily.
As I tried to explain, the proposed system is quite a refinement of banner ads, for bidding environment, when you add selectively an ad to an article for which a bid has been made in the proximity (at least web page) of that article. And this even controllable by the amount.
Actually, I still have to see this. *I* couldn't attack the novelty
I haven't even bothered to look at the prior art cited. Luckily I am not in this business any more.
But in Slashdot we should try some good business !
for the accountancy. The only machine I'd know about to do a user-by-user and site-by-site statistics is the notorious ISA. Chances are, this is an attempt by their IT-department to justify huge investments into M$. At least here they do likewise. Probably bolstered with arguments by the local M$-rep.
See, you're screwed because you stole my idea. I simply was too slow. What am I gonna write now ??
..." is worse than you wrote it. What euphemism; this 'recent incident' ! Like paying a ticket for some speeding ... !
/.ers are all decent Americans ? The empire itself ??
Oh, yes: this bitch of moderator calls it a Troll; -1; bad for you that you're not precisely a god-fearing American; like Hemos. Nerd, but a patriotic nerd: "... in the wake of the recent incident. Interesting details about the next-generation shuttle
Your comment is the only decent comment one could ever give to this so-called article.
In the end, they
Oh yeah. Was waiting for this! Still Gnome 1.4 has been and is my preferred Desktop; with Sawfish, of course.
I do agree with many in here that flamewars between KDE and GNOME don't help anyone.
But: we also must be honest about our preferences. With KDE 3.1 this becomes more difficult. It has a lot of beautiful features (and I'm not talking about gadgets), seems to really move into a desktop for enterprise solutions.
Beautiful doesn't apply to its icons either. On the contrary: to me this is still the worst aspect of KDE and there is not much of change in sight. Really ugly.
The really good apps are on GNOME, for sure: Evolution, galeon, pan. All three make my day; plus the 'neutral' OpenOffice. I don't start Windoze any more an any of my machines.
So, the apps are on GNOME, KDE 3.1 is better as Desktop, but ugly.
What I cannot understand, why do so many people in here tell everyone to 'run whatever you like !'
I cannot, because I cannot run KDE with the beautiful icons and apps of GNOME. I cannot run GNOME in the advanced environment KDE 3.1.
GNOME has lost a lot with this metacity-cripple. No idea who ever gave this so-called explanation on 'useability':
All my experience points to the contrary: the less 'my' users know about CS, the more they while away their days and weeks fiddling with exotic settings. It seems to give them a feeling of being in command; or so ??
Plus: of course 'Settings' don't belong into easy reach. Plus, the default must make a lot of sense. Also here GNOME sold much worse. GNOME - including 1.4 - used to default to the worst alternatives (Just think of that over-ugly 'cruz').
No solution in sight - qt and gtk don't unify easily; but to me the killer-desktop would be one containing the best of all worlds.
If Linux is ready for the desktop ??: Sure. One proof: my own - everything Linux.
If Linux - GNOME *or* KDE - is not ready, how can Windows be ?? And I *mean* it. Just sitting in front of one of those cripples running W2K and IE is the vivid proof !!
Pic 2 is the greatest. How to throw out on the spot.
Probably there is something big behind it; to me it's but very ugly
We tend to forget Jerry Homeowner alias M$-updater.
We tend to forget that 'we' are the Nerds, for whom Stuff matters.
Actually, Office is by far the most important and last stranglehold for M$ in the market!
Back to above: only nerds run operating systems for the sake of running operating systems. Everyone else don't. They don't run OSes on purpose; but for necessity.
Nobody out there gives a shit which operating system they run. Their *only* concern is that they can run Office (M$-Office, sure), because this is what they know, and how their files come in. Plus, there are gamers, but we won't consider them in here. So, except of games, everything runs down to the so-called 'Productivity Suite'. Which, for reasons completely unknown to me, must be Office. Even while using it (up to 97), I found it quite buggy w.r.t. its GUI plus un-intuitive. If anybody wanted, I could probably still point out a few basic flaws; relevant options that never ever are found by the user, defying logic, etc. Plus some buggy, tricky things in layouts.
But this is not my topic here, today. Even if it *was* better and much less ugly, or even worse and more ugly: it is the stranglehold of M$ on the market. No Office (including Outlook with its Exchange-connectivity), and M$ goes titsup.
Don't forget that *all* of their businesses write red numbers, except Office and OS.
W.r.t. OSes: see above.
What remains is the property (properties) of Office: Exchange files / wellknown (though ugly) UI. Monopoly at its best. Addiction.
And M$ is aware of this ! So they have to work on some strange things to make Office a very closed environment; including generous handshakes to all big shots in DMCA; handshakes in any form. To prevent some OpenSource Pirates from re-inventing their formats 100%.
The users are therefore "offered" to use a built-in Digital Rights Management. But this is not quite for the perusual of the users, rather to shoot down OpenSource equivalents legally. Of course, John Dumbman will applaud his own dismembering; blinded by the huge tag "security" attached to it.
With a bit of brains that M$ has (and they have quite a lot !!), they know that this won't work on W9X. Plus, you *force* everyone to upgrade simply to exchange a text document.
Take your time to digest and disgust this. Meditate thoroughly through it: You need a P500+ with 256MB RAM and a 4GB harddisk running XP (or alike) plus a 500MB 'Office' to write a few steamy lines to your beloved one !!! The younger generation might not really complain, but we elderly types might see the definite end of *any* common sense and sanity. Something that - just 20 years ago - could be sent through a 300 Baud phone adapter and took a few hundred bytes.
Burn some brainware again to follow my logic: if it wasn't for Office and its addicted / enforced fellowship; BillG would have sleepless nights.
Actually, I ask myself at times why not about everyone geek hacker and nerd these days works like hell to produce the sword that will surely cause the deadly blow to Redmond: The greatest Office on Earth, the real M$-Office-killer.
The very day that sees Jerry Homeowner switch to this 'great' non-M$-Office, M$ is doomed.
Ah, in the end, Slashdot patriotism is American!
A '4' and 'interesting'.
While someone else removed my nice good karma for posting my honest conviction that the American public will be cheated by those 3 'independant' inquiries. A few Trolls and Flamebaits could be added with ease here. But I don't.
They still cheat you and they will cheat you. Over.
What is so interesting in this comment that not everybody has always known; even untrue, because we could see chunks definitively larger than the size of a fist.
A '4': hurray and 'thank-you' to a an American patriot who supports his own disinformation.
Funny you mention this. FreeBSD is no Linux, as everyone knows (was waiting for the *BSDs to *flame* this Anonymous Coward !)
Seems everyone who goes into ACPI is heavily on the downhill track.
You might go for Mandrake - bankrupt a few weeks after.
You might as well go for FreeBSD - dead only some time later. I'll really cry for FreeBSD, probably the best we could have ever got, but messed up horribly over time.
Right, I'm also kind of waiting to wipe RH. But not with a candidate for the Death Row!
Maybe I'm a bit dumb, but happen to be one of those you address.
Could you specify some real example or a site for what you mean?
I had been under the impression that larger programs not only force to use 'black boxes', but encourage and thrive on 'black boxes'.
Isn't a subroutine or a class a very handy, useful and necessary 'black box'?
Do you want to tell me that embedded something (Windoze, Linux, etc.) can do without API or that you can follow your codes without, straight down from a kernel through all the drivers to the applications? Including a thorough understanding of what your ARM does internally and if I understand your post right, this is what you aspire.
Since this 'know-it-all' is impossible, should we not rather encourage *robust* 'black boxes??
*This* is actually something missed out by students (in my experience). They don't create 'Swiss-Army-Knife boxes' that could perform the task in any circumstances, environments and handle insane input in a sane way.
As far as the embedded security-box of Columbia is concerned, we seem to deal with a hard-coded encryption. At least this is what they want to convince us about. Encryption hard-coded in a single place; otherwise not such an urgent need to recover it. Any other encryption would make it easy to change the distributed keys, which leads us back to the necessity of 'robust' boxes.
Hope I got you right !?