The issue of unobviousness is key in that the email application created to perhaps run over 10-base2 ethernet and novell ipx, then later over packet-radio, then later gets deployed on a system running 10-base-t, then later deployed on another system running 100-base-t then later deployed on another system running 1000-base-t, also deployed over cellular wireless is later found to be infringing when:
1. it has not changed
2. it is operating exactly as it had been designed, to exchange email over a network.
3. the network can be demonstrated to have changed many times over the years and yet now this wireless network is somehow special compared to other wireless networks (besides packet radio) that it no doubt has been used with? how can a combination patent be unobvious and valid when many such combinations have occurred over time and yet there are no demonstrated differences?
4. it has not been demonstrated how an application interacting with a NIC necessarily has any relevance with how the NIC interacts at the physical layer.
5. the evidence would seem to indicate that historically, using existing applications over new networking technologies is indeed both obvious and generally cost-saving.
In these cases and in regards to the NTP patent, I have to disagree over who had invented what. I understand what you are saying, I simply disagree with the value of these types of patents and I will contend that they are not moral, useful or unobvious.
It seems to me you could get around the RIM situation by doing the following:
1. find the oldest net-based email-solution you can and use the source without any modifications whatsoever. (better yet use the binary if possible) 2. build a layer on top of it to interact with what is now a local app. It should be possible to use specific screen-grabbing, techniques, etc., that have been in existence for ages to avoid yet more patents. 3. wait for NTP to explain how you infringe their patent using source code that was written back in the dark-ages of the net.
Of course I have not read the actual patent (why should I when it will only give me a headache and someone else here will sum it up eventually), but it should be critical until the patent system changes to find ways to get a JURY to understand what is the difference between one technology and another. If all the patent does is take e-mail and "do it over the cell network", then it should be obvious to everybody (except a JURY it seems) that the application is the SAME (and by actually using an old application you can perhaps make your point), but SOMETHING ELSE is different. The cellular wireless network. And therefore, unless the patent covers the invention of a cellular wireless network, they should perhaps have the book thrown at them for various reasons I will not mention.
An interesting thing is that McNealy and Ballmer were just on CNBC, sitting next to each other discussing the whole deal. It turns out McNealy made the first overture to start the whole thing.
Possibly. But consider that the word is that they had approached VMWare first. Since VMWare does not have a PowerPC-based offering, it would indicate their primary motives are having a solid server-consolidation product. It will be interesting to see how this plays out.
As far as XBox2 goes, I have doubts about the 3 dual-core processor specs. It seems to me that would be pretty expensive.
It will be interesting to find out what his plan actually is wednesday. I would certainly expect that projects like JIMO would be on a priority list for their potential scientific value. Many of the press reports included the quote mentioning scrapping things not part of the new plan. The technology being developed for JIMO would be important for exploration of many outer planets, not to mention potentially more flexibility with additional robotic mars missions. We shall see.
Aside from pointing out one possible interpretation of that quote, it may not even be from a reliable source. When the plan is revealed we will be able to evaluate its merits properly.
Agreed. About stimulating the economy, the article(s) also mention using russian and arianespace after scrapping the shuttle until new vehicles can be built. That part of it at least will not stimulate the U.S. economy. It makes sense to consider arianespace since the russian progress vehicles are too small to carry up any of the larger objects.
I just hope that it doesn't put the station at risk during this time.
here. They have links to other news sites. In particular, the UPI article has a mention about a presidential commission to review Nasa's plans. Interesting...
I am not particularly happy with the statement that all other Nasa programs that do not support the new effort are to be scrapped. Indeed. Perhaps this whole proposal can be amended to include a peer review of top scientists in reign in some of this...
It seems to me if congress is considering a tax on email to counter spam, it should be a tax on bulk email only, to make it cost the same amount as bulk snail-mail. In addition, there should be criminal penalties for companies that forge return addresses or attempt to circumvent the tax by sending spam via millions of different email addresses (real or not).
It is interesting in that during the press conference they mentioned that the boundary may be moving by as much as 15 AU. Also, they expect that we will cross the boundary many times. As it moves we will continue to 'ride the wave' as they put it.
"considering that the available fuel is practically infinite with no fuel from earth being used (except for leaving earth) I'd call it extremely economical. "
It should be obvious, but ion drive propulsion requires ions. DS1 used xenon gas. Not sure what they are using, but they cannot carry an infinite supply of it.
The quoted 42 watts of power dissipation in that article was written in 10/2002 and was based on estimates. I was looking for a recent article. The 970 dis not sample until 2q 2003, however looking into it further it appears the 1.8ghz processor actually comes in at 47 watts typical, so their estimates were not far off.
That certainly is an interesting link. I think IBM has done a great job with the 970 cpu. It does seem that paper was written before they had any samples, and the numbers for power dissipation note that they are only estimates. It would be nice if a paper with actual values were easier to find.
I didn't see anything on apple.com specifying the actual power dissipation, but this article has a blurb at the end saying each G5 processor dissipates 97 watts. I believe it is talking about the 2ghz chip.
Here is a quote from of a historical article written in 1996 discussing what the Voila Browser was, if you are having difficulty finding any information about it. It was released in the 1991-1993 timeframe. I am not sure if the full article mentioned the actual release dates of particular features.
The World Wide Web - past, present and future, July 17, 1996
By Tim Berners-Lee, excerpt from his speech at the British Computer Society
Basically, he had something very like Java, and as he went ahead and wrote something very much like Hot Java, the language was called 'Viola' and the browser was called 'ViolaWWW'. It didn't take off very quickly because you had to first install 'Viola' nobody understood why you should install an interpreter, and then this 'WWW' in a Viola library area. You had to be system administrator to do all that stuff, it wasn't obvious. But in fact what he did was really ahead of his time. He actually had Applets running. He had World Wide Web pages with little things doing somersaults and what have you.
Now it should be clear why it is prior art. Not sure where you can still find copies of Voila to try for yourself.
This article at nytimes.com mentions that microsoft tried to argue that there was prior art, but the judge ruled the jury could not consider it in determining if microsoft violated the patent...
There is an interesting paragraph in the cnet article about this case, pasted below:
Additionally, the judge in the district court case will hear evidence in the coming weeks on a counterclaim from Microsoft. The software giant said that Eolas' patents are invalid and that an inventor name Pei Wei, who worked at O'Reilly and Associates, came up with similar technology, but at an earlier time. A Microsoft representative said that Eolas knew of his work, which makes their lawsuit inequitable.
A quick google groups search shows a number of interesting posts involving Pei Wei.. such as
http://groups.google.com/groups?q=Pei+Wei&hl=en&lr =&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&scoring=r&as_drrb=b&as_mind=12 &as_minm=5&as_miny=1981&as_maxd=11&as_maxm=8&as_ma xy=1994&selm=93020.102722RBNTJC%40rohvm1.rohmhaas. com&rnum=5
fyi,
you can AOT (ahead of time) compile your apps if you like, thereby making it much more difficult to decompile your apps. Otherwise, there are obfuscators available just like Java obfuscators. I had the same concerns with Java when I first started using it (in 1995). There really weren't any obfuscators back then either.
The real benefit of multilanguage support IMHO is not so much writing in whatever language you feel like, but making it easier to migrate existing code. Of course there are other ways to do that, web services for instance...
It does not appear that this paper discusses the actual makeup of "Dark Matter", but a year or so ago Harvard (on open telescope night) had a lecture by a leading Dark Matter expert (his name escapes me at the moment). He theorized that the much of the "Dark Matter" being discussed is not unknown types of matter, but simply matter that is not bright enough to be seen. His team had collected a number of photographs showing what appears to be dark objects visible due to supernova's or bright objects behind them or nearby. It was quite an interesting lecture.
of course, some of the terminology in the paper (relating to dark matter/energy) was difficult to follow, so if someone could clarify...
There are documents on the nasa site (somewhere) that mentioned that towards the end of the Saturn V program they estimated the launch capacity to be closer to 140 tons.
120 or 140 is equally impressive.
Slashdot Mirror
not so fast! Check this out.
Everybody knows computer software is the highest and best art form.
Silly.
The issue of unobviousness is key in that the email application created to perhaps run over 10-base2 ethernet and novell ipx, then later over packet-radio, then later gets deployed on a system running 10-base-t, then later deployed on another system running 100-base-t then later deployed on another system running 1000-base-t, also deployed over cellular wireless is later found to be infringing when:
1. it has not changed
2. it is operating exactly as it had been designed, to exchange email over a network.
3. the network can be demonstrated to have changed many times over the years and yet now this wireless network is somehow special compared to other wireless networks (besides packet radio) that it no doubt has been used with? how can a combination patent be unobvious and valid when many such combinations have occurred over time and yet there are no demonstrated differences?
4. it has not been demonstrated how an application interacting with a NIC necessarily has any relevance with how the NIC interacts at the physical layer.
5. the evidence would seem to indicate that historically, using existing applications over new networking technologies is indeed both obvious and generally cost-saving.
In these cases and in regards to the NTP patent, I have to disagree over who had invented what. I understand what you are saying, I simply disagree with the value of these types of patents and I will contend that they are not moral, useful or unobvious.
It seems to me you could get around the RIM situation by doing the following:
1. find the oldest net-based email-solution you can and use the source without any modifications whatsoever. (better yet use the binary if possible)
2. build a layer on top of it to interact with what is now a local app. It should be possible to use specific screen-grabbing, techniques, etc., that have been in existence for ages to avoid yet more patents.
3. wait for NTP to explain how you infringe their patent using source code that was written back in the dark-ages of the net.
Of course I have not read the actual patent (why should I when it will only give me a headache and someone else here will sum it up eventually), but it should be critical until the patent system changes to find ways to get a JURY to understand what is the difference between one technology and another. If all the patent does is take e-mail and "do it over the cell network", then it should be obvious to everybody (except a JURY it seems) that the application is the SAME (and by actually using an old application you can perhaps make your point), but SOMETHING ELSE is different. The cellular wireless network. And therefore, unless the patent covers the invention of a cellular wireless network, they should perhaps have the book thrown at them for various reasons I will not mention.
An interesting thing is that McNealy and Ballmer were just on CNBC, sitting next to each other discussing the whole deal. It turns out McNealy made the first overture to start the whole thing.
Consider the fact that ISS will also vanish totally not long after it finally gets finished.
Possibly. But consider that the word is that they had approached VMWare first. Since VMWare does not have a PowerPC-based offering, it would indicate their primary motives are having a solid server-consolidation product. It will be interesting to see how this plays out.
As far as XBox2 goes, I have doubts about the 3 dual-core processor specs. It seems to me that would be pretty expensive.
It will be interesting to find out what his plan actually is wednesday. I would certainly expect that projects like JIMO would be on a priority list for their potential scientific value. Many of the press reports included the quote mentioning scrapping things not part of the new plan. The technology being developed for JIMO would be important for exploration of many outer planets, not to mention potentially more flexibility with additional robotic mars missions. We shall see.
Aside from pointing out one possible interpretation of that quote, it may not even be from a reliable source. When the plan is revealed we will be able to evaluate its merits properly.
Have a great day!
Agreed. About stimulating the economy, the article(s) also mention using russian and arianespace after scrapping the shuttle until new vehicles can be built. That part of it at least will not stimulate the U.S. economy. It makes sense to consider arianespace since the russian progress vehicles are too small to carry up any of the larger objects.
I just hope that it doesn't put the station at risk during this time.
here. They have links to other news sites. In particular, the UPI article has a mention about a presidential commission to review Nasa's plans. Interesting...
I am not particularly happy with the statement that all other Nasa programs that do not support the new effort are to be scrapped. Indeed. Perhaps this whole proposal can be amended to include a peer review of top scientists in reign in some of this...
It seems to me if congress is considering a tax on email to counter spam, it should be a tax on bulk email only, to make it cost the same amount as bulk snail-mail. In addition, there should be criminal penalties for companies that forge return addresses or attempt to circumvent the tax by sending spam via millions of different email addresses (real or not).
It is interesting in that during the press conference they mentioned that the boundary may be moving by as much as 15 AU. Also, they expect that we will cross the boundary many times. As it moves we will continue to 'ride the wave' as they put it.
"considering that the available fuel is practically infinite with no fuel from earth being used (except for leaving earth) I'd call it extremely economical. "
It should be obvious, but ion drive propulsion requires ions. DS1 used xenon gas. Not sure what they are using, but they cannot carry an infinite supply of it.
The quoted 42 watts of power dissipation in that article was written in 10/2002 and was based on estimates. I was looking for a recent article. The 970 dis not sample until 2q 2003, however looking into it further it appears the 1.8ghz processor actually comes in at 47 watts typical, so their estimates were not far off.
That certainly is an interesting link. I think IBM has done a great job with the 970 cpu. It does seem that paper was written before they had any samples, and the numbers for power dissipation note that they are only estimates. It would be nice if a paper with actual values were easier to find.
I didn't see anything on apple.com specifying the actual power dissipation, but this article has a blurb at the end saying each G5 processor dissipates 97 watts. I believe it is talking about the 2ghz chip.
Here is a quote from of a historical article written in 1996 discussing what the Voila Browser was, if you are having difficulty finding any information about it. It was released in the 1991-1993 timeframe. I am not sure if the full article mentioned the actual release dates of particular features.
The World Wide Web - past, present and future, July 17, 1996 By Tim Berners-Lee, excerpt from his speech at the British Computer Society Basically, he had something very like Java, and as he went ahead and wrote something very much like Hot Java, the language was called 'Viola' and the browser was called 'ViolaWWW'. It didn't take off very quickly because you had to first install 'Viola' nobody understood why you should install an interpreter, and then this 'WWW' in a Viola library area. You had to be system administrator to do all that stuff, it wasn't obvious. But in fact what he did was really ahead of his time. He actually had Applets running. He had World Wide Web pages with little things doing somersaults and what have you.
Now it should be clear why it is prior art. Not sure where you can still find copies of Voila to try for yourself.
Perhaps you should take another look at Voila as it is much more than that.
This article at nytimes.com mentions that microsoft tried to argue that there was prior art, but the judge ruled the jury could not consider it in determining if microsoft violated the patent...
how rediculous.
Take a look at this PRIOR ART Here on google
There is an interesting paragraph in the cnet article about this case, pasted below: Additionally, the judge in the district court case will hear evidence in the coming weeks on a counterclaim from Microsoft. The software giant said that Eolas' patents are invalid and that an inventor name Pei Wei, who worked at O'Reilly and Associates, came up with similar technology, but at an earlier time. A Microsoft representative said that Eolas knew of his work, which makes their lawsuit inequitable. A quick google groups search shows a number of interesting posts involving Pei Wei.. such as http://groups.google.com/groups?q=Pei+Wei&hl=en&lr =&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&scoring=r&as_drrb=b&as_mind=12 &as_minm=5&as_miny=1981&as_maxd=11&as_maxm=8&as_ma xy=1994&selm=93020.102722RBNTJC%40rohvm1.rohmhaas. com&rnum=5
fyi,
...
you can AOT (ahead of time) compile your apps if you like, thereby making it much more difficult to decompile your apps. Otherwise, there are obfuscators available just like Java obfuscators. I had the same concerns with Java when I first started using it (in 1995). There really weren't any obfuscators back then either.
The real benefit of multilanguage support IMHO is not so much writing in whatever language you feel like, but making it easier to migrate existing code. Of course there are other ways to do that, web services for instance
Actually, it seems Lawyers seem to have built themselves a sustainable growth industry. And nobody is in any position to be able to slow it down.
It does not appear that this paper discusses the actual makeup of "Dark Matter", but a year or so ago Harvard (on open telescope night) had a lecture by a leading Dark Matter expert (his name escapes me at the moment). He theorized that the much of the "Dark Matter" being discussed is not unknown types of matter, but simply matter that is not bright enough to be seen. His team had collected a number of photographs showing what appears to be dark objects visible due to supernova's or bright objects behind them or nearby. It was quite an interesting lecture.
of course, some of the terminology in the paper (relating to dark matter/energy) was difficult to follow, so if someone could clarify...
There are documents on the nasa site (somewhere) that mentioned that towards the end of the Saturn V program they estimated the launch capacity to be closer to 140 tons. 120 or 140 is equally impressive.