Yeah, but that was competition people cared about, since people cared about the Cold War, and advanced rocket technology was seen as rather relevant to advanced missile technology. Do people in 2010 really care about competition with, say, the European Space Agency? If they don't, as I suspect they don't, might as well just cooperate with them and let them foot some of the bill.
I'd actually prefer that approach--- strengthen review for obviousness instead. But I don't really see anyone on the court advocating for that approach. It's possible that Breyer and Scalia would agree that the patents they list are invalid for reasons other than section 101, but the list comes entirely in a discussion of section 101, and they don't mention 102 or 103 at all, so it seems they're thinking of 101 as the bar as they write that list? If they're thinking of a different section, they surely don't say so, or explain why they thought it relevant to mention those kinds of patents in a case entirely about section 101.
I do think it'd be a better overall approach, but any sort of tooth-having obviousness standard would strike down a lot of existing trivial patents in traditional areas. Intel has dozens of patents on really minor variations of existing processes, for example, and I don't see any likelihood of those being challenged in the near future. It's a guess, but I think instead it's more likely that the courts will distinguish business-method patents at least to some extent, because an obvious business-method patent seems more absurd than an obvious hardware patent, if only because the general public can understand it and see the absurdity.
I agree it's mere dicta, but I think it's a clue to Scalia's sentiment on the subject: it's not the kind of laundry list you'd get from someone who generally feels business method patents are valuable. At the very least, it's suggestive of someone who feels that business-method patents have gone too far.
In practice, it's not clear how much they've cleared the way for business-method patents. Scalia signed the separate Breyer concurrence, which emphasized that the machine-or-transformation test is still the main test to be used, and that huge ranges of supposed business-method patents are absurd and clearly impermissible--- the opinion ended with a list of 4 or 5 such absurd business-method patents, like a dating-system one. So it seems five of the justices (Scalia, Stevens, Breyer, Sotomayor, Ginsburg) have a general presumption against business-method patents, and would probably hold that any specific patent that made it to them was not legit.
(Scalia also didn't join all of the majority/plurality opinion.)
They've basically declined to create a new test. The "majority" opinion, in its strongest parts, which leaned more in favor of business-method patents, only got 4 votes (Scalia didn't join those parts). The main concurring opinion (by Stevens), which leaned more strongly against business-method patents, also only got 4 votes. Scalia joined a separate opinion by Breyer which emphasized the common points between the two opinions, but leaned slightly against business-method patents. It agreed with the majority that the "machine or transformation test" wasn't the sole test, but still thought it was the main useful one. That opinion also ended up with a list of examples of ridiculous business-method patents that are definitely not legit, so it doesn't seem Scalia would actually uphold most specific business-method patents that came across his desk.
The networks were linked, and user names were made cross-compatible in 2002. If you login to AIM, and send a message to a "username" consisting of an ICQ number, it will be delivered.
I agree, but I'd say the same of, say, Turkey. Only they were a bit more genocidal about "solving" their Greek and Armenian problem, so, perversely, they don't get as much shit about it anymore--- Israel was much nicer to its domestic minorities, so gets more shit about it.
Mirabilis, the Israeli firm, was sold to AOL, an American firm, in 1998. Presumably they could have seized it from AOL at the time AOL owned it, if U.S. law permitted doing so, since it was just overseas property of an American firm.
The U.S. Constitution explicitly acknowledges the federal government's authority to seize property for public use, so long as just compensation is paid.
Really depends on how a court interprets obviousness there. The airlines have prior art for predictive pricing of airplane tickets, but that's not precisely predictive pricing of metered computer resources. Predictive pricing of electricity might be another example, if that's used anywhere (as opposed to pricing based on bidding through an exchange). But to use those to invalidate this patent, you'd have to argue basically: given that predictive pricing is well-known, and given that metering computer resources is well known, metering computer resources with predictive pricing, even if novel, is an obvious combination to someone skilled in the art. Typically the USPTO hasn't made the bar to non-obviousness very high, though.
I don't know if the actual patent is a good idea either, but to be fair, it is somewhat narrower than just charging for computer time/resources. It appears to specifically cover only charging for computer time/resources in a dynamic way based on a prediction of their utilization. So e.g. the cost for one CPU-minute would go up or down depending on the system's estimate of current contention for CPU-minutes. It seems that has probably been used in some other markets (e.g. in some electric markets), but it's possible that it's novel when applied to computer resources. Possibly obvious to a practitioner skilled in the art, but invalidation for obviousness seems uncommon these days, at least at the USPTO level.
Veoh won some of the first strong precedents in this area, and the current case cites its cases prominently (see pp. 24-27). The cost of the litigation sent them into bankruptcy soon after winning, though.
Unfortunately for the plaintiffs, this time they seem to have picked an opponent who is very hard to beat in a war of attrition.
Well, agency decisions interpreting Congressional statutes can't be made for "arbitrary and capricious" reasons. They have to include a reasonable explanation of why the decision was made, and that reason has to be plausibly related to the agency's authority and to the new regulation. That kind of review seems to be what the judge here was issuing the injunction based on: he found that the agency didn't give a reason for this particular moratorium sufficient to justify it, even under the deferential standard of review to which agency decisions are entitled.
It's not clear whether it'll survive on appeal, though. Agency deference is typically quite deferential: something has to be quite bad before it rises to the level of "arbitrary and capricious".
Is that really the case with Google, though? It's not making do with a few employees, or slim margins. They have 20,000 employees on staff. Twenty thousand! Surely with that kind of payroll they can afford to keep their operations group staffed up 24/7?
I suppose I've been pampered, but I've never really worked at or known people who've worked at an organization like that, except at very small startups (and there, you know what you're getting, because you know nobody else is on staff). At big engineering firms, there's generally enough staff that, unless it's a totally anomalous disaster (say, the current BP mess), normal operations staff should be able to handle any reasonable contingency. If you need 24-hour staffing, you hire 24-hour staffing: you have shifts of people set up so that someone is always in the office, on the clock, able to handle any likely scenarios. Occasionally, you do have to page people and wake them up when they're off work, but it had better be a genuine once-in-a-decade emergency if you do that, not some "oh the server is down" BS that happens every other month.
Maybe it's a difference between tech-engineering and real engineering? I know people with 40+ year careers in chemical engineering who've been woken up at night probably twice in their entire careers, and those were genuine emergencies. I think they would've been looking for new jobs, and considered their employers incompetent, if people were being woken up multiple times per year for supposed "emergencies". That's the sign of an engineering firm that doesn't know how to handle routine operations.
Yeah, but it has the benefits of: 1) being in the EU; and 2) already having power cables connecting it to the rest of the EU.
But as long as they're going to be building underwater cables, maybe the EU could kill two birds with one stone, by replacing their Greece bailout with a big package to build solar power plants in Crete?
From what they claim, it sounds like pairing with the desiccants will allow it to work better in humid climates, so presumably that'd have some benefit for places that are hot, humid, and have plentiful water. They do mention being able to improve the usefulness of evaporative coolers in Tucson, though (by allowing for cooling to lower temps), so you might be right about it trading one environmental ill for another.
I think the main problem is that the market for truly artisan-quality, top-end photography has never really been that large: much smaller than the number of professional photographers. They've been able to make up the gap until now, because they also owned the market for more run-of-the-mill photography, which did not really need top-end photography, but did need something better than low-quality 35mm point-and-shoots. Now that amateurs can do that medium-quality work, the people selling themselves as professionals really only have the top-end professional market left, which isn't big enough (i.e. there are too many professional photographers).
Actual recent example: someone's writing an academic book and needs a bunch of 2-by-2-inch stock photos, of things like Parthenon, or an Atari, or clouds. They used to have to license these from a professional photographer, even though the quality they need is not really particularly high. Now they get it free from Wikipedia, or a few bucks from some amateur. Is there any real reason they need a highly paid professional to take these small stock photos? If the photos were the point of the book, say a coffee-table book about architecture, sure. But that's often not the case.
I don't think it's purely time, but something closer to perception of time or difficulty. When Jesper Juul surveyed a bunch of self-described "casual" and "hardcore" gamers for his book, he didn't really find a strong different in hours spent between the two--- there were plenty of casual gamers who put in 40-hour weeks playing their casual games, just like there are full-time FPS players. There seems to somehow be a feeling of less time investment, though, or perhaps more granularity of time investment (you'll never be stuck in a 30-minute sequence you can't save-and-exit from). Perhaps also less attention/effort required to some extent: casual games are more of an unwind-and-relax activity.
Oh, I agree, I'm not arguing any average price. Merely that, given that big-budget films exist, and will probably continue to exist, and continue to depreciate those assets, it's quite possible to make films cheaply by taking advantage of the resulting used market.
And how many know-it-alls do you happen to know that boast how much they know about some stuff but, when we really delve into it, we find out they know jack shit?
I know plenty of those types, but the problem is, I'm in academia, and they/we all have PhDs.:(
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As someone who spent quite a bit of time tending a virtual lemonade stand on an Apple ][, I'd have to say this isn't a new trend!
Yeah, but that was competition people cared about, since people cared about the Cold War, and advanced rocket technology was seen as rather relevant to advanced missile technology. Do people in 2010 really care about competition with, say, the European Space Agency? If they don't, as I suspect they don't, might as well just cooperate with them and let them foot some of the bill.
I'd actually prefer that approach--- strengthen review for obviousness instead. But I don't really see anyone on the court advocating for that approach. It's possible that Breyer and Scalia would agree that the patents they list are invalid for reasons other than section 101, but the list comes entirely in a discussion of section 101, and they don't mention 102 or 103 at all, so it seems they're thinking of 101 as the bar as they write that list? If they're thinking of a different section, they surely don't say so, or explain why they thought it relevant to mention those kinds of patents in a case entirely about section 101.
I do think it'd be a better overall approach, but any sort of tooth-having obviousness standard would strike down a lot of existing trivial patents in traditional areas. Intel has dozens of patents on really minor variations of existing processes, for example, and I don't see any likelihood of those being challenged in the near future. It's a guess, but I think instead it's more likely that the courts will distinguish business-method patents at least to some extent, because an obvious business-method patent seems more absurd than an obvious hardware patent, if only because the general public can understand it and see the absurdity.
I agree it's mere dicta, but I think it's a clue to Scalia's sentiment on the subject: it's not the kind of laundry list you'd get from someone who generally feels business method patents are valuable. At the very least, it's suggestive of someone who feels that business-method patents have gone too far.
In practice, it's not clear how much they've cleared the way for business-method patents. Scalia signed the separate Breyer concurrence, which emphasized that the machine-or-transformation test is still the main test to be used, and that huge ranges of supposed business-method patents are absurd and clearly impermissible--- the opinion ended with a list of 4 or 5 such absurd business-method patents, like a dating-system one. So it seems five of the justices (Scalia, Stevens, Breyer, Sotomayor, Ginsburg) have a general presumption against business-method patents, and would probably hold that any specific patent that made it to them was not legit.
(Scalia also didn't join all of the majority/plurality opinion.)
They've basically declined to create a new test. The "majority" opinion, in its strongest parts, which leaned more in favor of business-method patents, only got 4 votes (Scalia didn't join those parts). The main concurring opinion (by Stevens), which leaned more strongly against business-method patents, also only got 4 votes. Scalia joined a separate opinion by Breyer which emphasized the common points between the two opinions, but leaned slightly against business-method patents. It agreed with the majority that the "machine or transformation test" wasn't the sole test, but still thought it was the main useful one. That opinion also ended up with a list of examples of ridiculous business-method patents that are definitely not legit, so it doesn't seem Scalia would actually uphold most specific business-method patents that came across his desk.
The networks were linked, and user names were made cross-compatible in 2002. If you login to AIM, and send a message to a "username" consisting of an ICQ number, it will be delivered.
I agree, but I'd say the same of, say, Turkey. Only they were a bit more genocidal about "solving" their Greek and Armenian problem, so, perversely, they don't get as much shit about it anymore--- Israel was much nicer to its domestic minorities, so gets more shit about it.
Mirabilis, the Israeli firm, was sold to AOL, an American firm, in 1998. Presumably they could have seized it from AOL at the time AOL owned it, if U.S. law permitted doing so, since it was just overseas property of an American firm.
The U.S. Constitution explicitly acknowledges the federal government's authority to seize property for public use, so long as just compensation is paid.
The Israeli company (ICQ) has been a subsidiary of an American company (AOL) since 1998.
Really depends on how a court interprets obviousness there. The airlines have prior art for predictive pricing of airplane tickets, but that's not precisely predictive pricing of metered computer resources. Predictive pricing of electricity might be another example, if that's used anywhere (as opposed to pricing based on bidding through an exchange). But to use those to invalidate this patent, you'd have to argue basically: given that predictive pricing is well-known, and given that metering computer resources is well known, metering computer resources with predictive pricing, even if novel, is an obvious combination to someone skilled in the art. Typically the USPTO hasn't made the bar to non-obviousness very high, though.
I don't know if the actual patent is a good idea either, but to be fair, it is somewhat narrower than just charging for computer time/resources. It appears to specifically cover only charging for computer time/resources in a dynamic way based on a prediction of their utilization. So e.g. the cost for one CPU-minute would go up or down depending on the system's estimate of current contention for CPU-minutes. It seems that has probably been used in some other markets (e.g. in some electric markets), but it's possible that it's novel when applied to computer resources. Possibly obvious to a practitioner skilled in the art, but invalidation for obviousness seems uncommon these days, at least at the USPTO level.
Veoh won some of the first strong precedents in this area, and the current case cites its cases prominently (see pp. 24-27). The cost of the litigation sent them into bankruptcy soon after winning, though.
Unfortunately for the plaintiffs, this time they seem to have picked an opponent who is very hard to beat in a war of attrition.
Well, agency decisions interpreting Congressional statutes can't be made for "arbitrary and capricious" reasons. They have to include a reasonable explanation of why the decision was made, and that reason has to be plausibly related to the agency's authority and to the new regulation. That kind of review seems to be what the judge here was issuing the injunction based on: he found that the agency didn't give a reason for this particular moratorium sufficient to justify it, even under the deferential standard of review to which agency decisions are entitled.
It's not clear whether it'll survive on appeal, though. Agency deference is typically quite deferential: something has to be quite bad before it rises to the level of "arbitrary and capricious".
Is that really the case with Google, though? It's not making do with a few employees, or slim margins. They have 20,000 employees on staff. Twenty thousand! Surely with that kind of payroll they can afford to keep their operations group staffed up 24/7?
I suppose I've been pampered, but I've never really worked at or known people who've worked at an organization like that, except at very small startups (and there, you know what you're getting, because you know nobody else is on staff). At big engineering firms, there's generally enough staff that, unless it's a totally anomalous disaster (say, the current BP mess), normal operations staff should be able to handle any reasonable contingency. If you need 24-hour staffing, you hire 24-hour staffing: you have shifts of people set up so that someone is always in the office, on the clock, able to handle any likely scenarios. Occasionally, you do have to page people and wake them up when they're off work, but it had better be a genuine once-in-a-decade emergency if you do that, not some "oh the server is down" BS that happens every other month.
Maybe it's a difference between tech-engineering and real engineering? I know people with 40+ year careers in chemical engineering who've been woken up at night probably twice in their entire careers, and those were genuine emergencies. I think they would've been looking for new jobs, and considered their employers incompetent, if people were being woken up multiple times per year for supposed "emergencies". That's the sign of an engineering firm that doesn't know how to handle routine operations.
I dunno man, that description sounds like a crap job to me. But maybe Google manages to only hire masochists, so nobody dislikes it?
If nothing else, I think I would put "employer woke me up at 3am four nights in a row" somewhere on my list of: how you know you need a new job.
Yeah, but it has the benefits of: 1) being in the EU; and 2) already having power cables connecting it to the rest of the EU.
But as long as they're going to be building underwater cables, maybe the EU could kill two birds with one stone, by replacing their Greece bailout with a big package to build solar power plants in Crete?
From what they claim, it sounds like pairing with the desiccants will allow it to work better in humid climates, so presumably that'd have some benefit for places that are hot, humid, and have plentiful water. They do mention being able to improve the usefulness of evaporative coolers in Tucson, though (by allowing for cooling to lower temps), so you might be right about it trading one environmental ill for another.
I think the main problem is that the market for truly artisan-quality, top-end photography has never really been that large: much smaller than the number of professional photographers. They've been able to make up the gap until now, because they also owned the market for more run-of-the-mill photography, which did not really need top-end photography, but did need something better than low-quality 35mm point-and-shoots. Now that amateurs can do that medium-quality work, the people selling themselves as professionals really only have the top-end professional market left, which isn't big enough (i.e. there are too many professional photographers).
Actual recent example: someone's writing an academic book and needs a bunch of 2-by-2-inch stock photos, of things like Parthenon, or an Atari, or clouds. They used to have to license these from a professional photographer, even though the quality they need is not really particularly high. Now they get it free from Wikipedia, or a few bucks from some amateur. Is there any real reason they need a highly paid professional to take these small stock photos? If the photos were the point of the book, say a coffee-table book about architecture, sure. But that's often not the case.
I don't think it's purely time, but something closer to perception of time or difficulty. When Jesper Juul surveyed a bunch of self-described "casual" and "hardcore" gamers for his book, he didn't really find a strong different in hours spent between the two--- there were plenty of casual gamers who put in 40-hour weeks playing their casual games, just like there are full-time FPS players. There seems to somehow be a feeling of less time investment, though, or perhaps more granularity of time investment (you'll never be stuck in a 30-minute sequence you can't save-and-exit from). Perhaps also less attention/effort required to some extent: casual games are more of an unwind-and-relax activity.
He actually believed that Lamo was an ordained minister, and that his chat with him constituted a confession?
Oh, I agree, I'm not arguing any average price. Merely that, given that big-budget films exist, and will probably continue to exist, and continue to depreciate those assets, it's quite possible to make films cheaply by taking advantage of the resulting used market.
I know plenty of those types, but the problem is, I'm in academia, and they/we all have PhDs. :(