There is it's called publication... that is assuming whomever at the patent office examines the application can find your publication and realize that it teaches on the claims of the application. Since in theory all patent applications should be checked against both patent and non-patent literature for prior art sources your publication should in theory exclude anyone from patenting what you disclose.
you forgot one important fact... the publication date of a patent does not establish its priority date... it is the date that the patent is filed... looking the patent up at http://freepatentsonline.com/5838906.html yeilds this data:
Application Number: 324443
Filing Date: 1994-10-17
Publication Date: 1998-11-17
So unfourtnatly your november 1995 document is a post dated publication and as such does not qualify as prior art under any provisions of 35 U.S.C 102, and thusly is unable to be applied as prior art...
Just thought you may want to have some of your patent law straightened out for you...
Even in todays age we do not understand what creates consiousness. True we have a fairly good understanding of how the brain will respond to certain inputs, faces vs. other shapes, words in a language you understand vs. words or other sounds in languages you are unfamiliar with, etc. Yet, even with all of this knowledge no one has any firm ideas about what creates consciousness, we can predict what will happen electrically 9 times out of 10, but we can not figure out what it is that takes all this raw information and turns it into a persons awareness. The best explination I have heard is some kind of overall electrical pattern thing, but this is not such a enlightning explination, as even those who suggest it state. This leads to my question, How can you ever expect to create an aware AI, one that 'sees' all of the things that are around it, and can take all of these inputs and turn them into an awareness of itself and what is going on around it when no one even understands how it is that the human brain does this same task?
There is one fundamental problem with this question... no one fully understands how the human brain works, we know how the impulses travel through the brain and what kind of activities activate certain areas... we can even predict exactally what cells will be stimulated by, for example a horizontal bar that moves across our line of vision from left to right at a 37 degree angle. Yet, even with all this knowledge we have no idea where consciousness comes from... until we can figure out what it is that allows a person to be self aware, what makes the 'soul' so to speak, it will make absoultly no diffrence how fast the chips get... we will never have a 'fully simulated human brain'
The main market for these "coin sized disks" will not be to replace the CD but to be used in places where previously the only storage options were solid state. Think about having 1GB of data storage in your cell phone for example, no more limits on the number of contacts or amount of programs. Also think of the PDA market, now you can port real program over to these things since you will have the space to run them from. Of course all this assumes that these disks will run at decent speeds and not to very movement sensitive. Don't just think of these as a replacement for the standard CD, think of theese as a replacement for those damn flash RAM cards.
Slashdot Mirror
But then this is all theory...and the law...
Application Number: 324443
Filing Date: 1994-10-17
Publication Date: 1998-11-17
So unfourtnatly your november 1995 document is a post dated publication and as such does not qualify as prior art under any provisions of 35 U.S.C 102, and thusly is unable to be applied as prior art...
Just thought you may want to have some of your patent law straightened out for you...
Gives a new meaning to 'my computer died'.
Even in todays age we do not understand what creates consiousness. True we have a fairly good understanding of how the brain will respond to certain inputs, faces vs. other shapes, words in a language you understand vs. words or other sounds in languages you are unfamiliar with, etc. Yet, even with all of this knowledge no one has any firm ideas about what creates consciousness, we can predict what will happen electrically 9 times out of 10, but we can not figure out what it is that takes all this raw information and turns it into a persons awareness. The best explination I have heard is some kind of overall electrical pattern thing, but this is not such a enlightning explination, as even those who suggest it state. This leads to my question, How can you ever expect to create an aware AI, one that 'sees' all of the things that are around it, and can take all of these inputs and turn them into an awareness of itself and what is going on around it when no one even understands how it is that the human brain does this same task?
There is one fundamental problem with this question... no one fully understands how the human brain works, we know how the impulses travel through the brain and what kind of activities activate certain areas... we can even predict exactally what cells will be stimulated by, for example a horizontal bar that moves across our line of vision from left to right at a 37 degree angle. Yet, even with all this knowledge we have no idea where consciousness comes from... until we can figure out what it is that allows a person to be self aware, what makes the 'soul' so to speak, it will make absoultly no diffrence how fast the chips get... we will never have a 'fully simulated human brain'
Kinda makes you wonder to whom these costs are actually profits... I got my money on Microsoft =D
The main market for these "coin sized disks" will not be to replace the CD but to be used in places where previously the only storage options were solid state. Think about having 1GB of data storage in your cell phone for example, no more limits on the number of contacts or amount of programs. Also think of the PDA market, now you can port real program over to these things since you will have the space to run them from. Of course all this assumes that these disks will run at decent speeds and not to very movement sensitive. Don't just think of these as a replacement for the standard CD, think of theese as a replacement for those damn flash RAM cards.