Re:Glad this wasn't settled out of court
on
RIM - The Whole Story
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· Score: 4, Insightful
This kind of thing has been going on for a century or more... large corporations maintaining huge patent portfolios that they cross-license with other huge companies so that they can a. avoid needless squabbling amonst themselves and b. squeeze individual inventors and smaller companies that don't have similar patent leverage. All that's happening now is that the practice is becoming popular outside the corporate sphere by organizations whose sole raison d'etre is to collect "intellectual property" and litigate for royalties and/or damages. Truly, this is a perversion of the patent system, and it is entirely due to Congress monkeying with said system over the years. The removal of the demonstrable prototype requirement was a big mistake, I think. It was really hard to say you had a patentable idea when you couldn't actually demonstrate it. Nowadays, patents are just pieces of paper with "concepts" spewed from the brain of some erstwhile "inventor", massaged by a patent lawyer (pardon me, "intellectual property attorney") into something the Patent Office can be persuaded to accept, which are then used to bludgeon people and organizations that have actually accomplished something.
You know, if we can't have a properly functioning patent system in the U.S. we'd really be better off with none at all. I mean, we're at the point now where the cost of acquiring and maintaining a patent is prohibitive for smaller inventors, and while some people believe that "innovation" only comes from big companies, they're simply wrong. A hell of a lot of cool stuff comes out of garages, basements and kitchen tables, and those people don't have much of a chance anymore. The system is so skewed towards corporate ownership of "intellectual property" that it is becoming harder and harder for anyone but a big corp to gain any traction.
Lawyers are tools. Dangerous tools to be sure, but still only tools. They do what they're told, and in this case Lazaridis simply did not do what was in the best interests of himself and his company. Maybe his is in the "right", but if NTP puts him out of business in order to make a few people ridiculously rich no real purpose will be served by his stubbornness. But as uncompromising as you want in the development of your products, but when it comes to protecting your investment and the livelihoods of your employees, sometimes you have to make deals with Devils.
Doesn't look good for Research in Motion,
on
RIM - The Whole Story
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· Score: 2, Funny
but you know what they say: "Fill it to the RIM... with Grim!"
Re:Glad this wasn't settled out of court
on
RIM - The Whole Story
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Well, given that their IP might not actually be their IP I think you're being premature. It remains to be seen just who really owns it. The real screwup in this whole saga is the United States Patent and Trademark Office, which apparently granted invalid patents in the first place.
Also, the satellite would not have to be designed so that an astronaut could fix it.
So who will? A communications satellite is one thing... those things have a fixed operational life and are essentially disposable. Nor is there any particular reason to upgrade them: they're cheap enough that you simply launch another. A sophisticated scientific instrument like the Hubble is something entirely different, and is something you may want to be able to modify and improve over time, as the data you receive suggests new avenues of research. NASA makes noises about robot repair missions but is a long way from achieving them, so for the foreseeable future, if you want a piece of spacegoing hardware fixed a trained astronaut is going to have to do it.
Furthremore, many of the Hubble's "repairs" were in fact upgrades. The Hubble would have produced much less useful data had it not been for the Shuttle missions. Heck, the primary mirror fiasco taught us the value of being able to repair what we send up: mistakes get made. I don't want to get into an argument about the value of basic science but we certainly got our money's worth from the Hubble and the Shuttle missions that serviced it. Now, there are plenty of other ways you can justify the retirement and replacement of the Shuttle fleet, but the Hubble Space Telescope really isn't one of them.
But it looks like you'll get your wish... apparently there are no plans to make the James Webb Space Telescope serviceable from orbit. It also isn't exactly a replacement for Hubble, since it is infrared-optimized and the Hubble is primarily a visible-light scope, which is another reason many astronomers don't want to see the Hubble switched off.
Re:Movie sequels almost always dilute the brand
on
Toy Story 3 Scrapped
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· Score: 1
Personally, I think the failure of the later Star Trek series had less to do with interest in Star Trek per se, as it did with the people that were given control of it. A lot of liberties were taken with the original Star Trek universe, to the detriment of the franchise as a whole. Maybe if Roddenberry hadn't died when he did it might have been different, but a lot of the blame can be laid at Rick Berman's feet.
Apple is just as suit-driven as any other big company. One of my old customers manufactured parts used in various Macs (this was a company bigger than Apple by a factor of ten at least.) They had numerous meetings with Apple's people regarding ways to help the manufacturing process, improve production rates, etc. Now, there were a number of free-thinking people that would show up at these meetings, but as soon as they tried to show any initiative some suit would look at his watch and shut them down. At the top Apple may be an autocracy but from the waist down it's middle-manager city.
Pretty much that kind of structure is forced upon any business that goes public. Wall Street comes in and tells you how to structure your business (which, from my experience, seems to involve additional layers of management that weren't needed before but are somehow magically necessary) and if you don't play ball your IPO doesn't happen. Frankly, I think that is driving American manufacturing into the ground by adding overhead that it can ill afford in the days of the Global Economy.
Well, at least they have the brains to hire industry insiders. That can make all the difference, and if nothing else Google's pockets are deep enough to have an effect in Washington. Hopefully Microsoft (which massively increased its lobbying presence after the antitrust suit) will see things the right way and realize that the telecoms' designs on the network don't bode well for them either, and lend a lobbyist or two to the cause.
Yeah, this kind of thing could pretty well kill off online gaming if it gets popular among ISPs. Oh, well, of course there will be a "gamer package" that will give you low latency to specific servers for a nominal charge. Great if you're a Sony or a Blizzard, although I'm sure they also will have to pay protec^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^ "guaranteed delivery" charges as well. All those folks like me that run a public game server for the fun of it will likely be out of luck.
Problem is, if you don't use the lowest bidder philosophy you end up with the "highest bidder" philosophy, which costs a hell of a lot more and doesn't work any better. I'm not sure what the solution is, but simply opening the purse strings isn't it.
My personal take: the politicians prefer lobbyists to be the ones offering the options, since in that case they are paid to make the right decision instead of having to think.
My personal take: the politicians prefer lobbyists to be the ones offering the options, since in that case they are paid.
Yes, that's absolutely true, and furthermore such observance has been construed to induce direct physiological effects, such as hairy palms and thinning of the wallet.
The first thoughts of racist association did not enter my head until I read your comment.
Me neither. The problem comes in when words (which often have multiple meanings, like "chink") that are offensive in one context are presumed to be unusable in all contexts. And if we went along with that, we'd have to shrink the dictionary by 50% at least. Personally, I think that people should just develop mental armor without any chinks in it and not be so blasted sensitive.
Now, having said that I remember watching a movie with my father, when I was maybe 8 years old, and in it the protagonist (a spy) steals a tank from a Chinese military base to make his escape (apparently he wasn't a very good spy.) In any event, unbeknownst to our hero one of the base solders was clinging to the outside, waiting for an opportunity. My Dad got that gleam in his eye, and said, "uh oh... looks like he's got a chink in his armor." My mother made him apologize for that one. Not that it mattered: I didn't get the joke anyway.
Slashdot Mirror
This kind of thing has been going on for a century or more ... large corporations maintaining huge patent portfolios that they cross-license with other huge companies so that they can a. avoid needless squabbling amonst themselves and b. squeeze individual inventors and smaller companies that don't have similar patent leverage. All that's happening now is that the practice is becoming popular outside the corporate sphere by organizations whose sole raison d'etre is to collect "intellectual property" and litigate for royalties and/or damages. Truly, this is a perversion of the patent system, and it is entirely due to Congress monkeying with said system over the years. The removal of the demonstrable prototype requirement was a big mistake, I think. It was really hard to say you had a patentable idea when you couldn't actually demonstrate it. Nowadays, patents are just pieces of paper with "concepts" spewed from the brain of some erstwhile "inventor", massaged by a patent lawyer (pardon me, "intellectual property attorney") into something the Patent Office can be persuaded to accept, which are then used to bludgeon people and organizations that have actually accomplished something.
You know, if we can't have a properly functioning patent system in the U.S. we'd really be better off with none at all. I mean, we're at the point now where the cost of acquiring and maintaining a patent is prohibitive for smaller inventors, and while some people believe that "innovation" only comes from big companies, they're simply wrong. A hell of a lot of cool stuff comes out of garages, basements and kitchen tables, and those people don't have much of a chance anymore. The system is so skewed towards corporate ownership of "intellectual property" that it is becoming harder and harder for anyone but a big corp to gain any traction.
Well, I'd say given the amount of hot air being expelled by school administrators they're probably trying to make a plama display environment.
Why bother. You're on Slashdot and frankly the most entertaining posts are the ones that have absolutely no clue what they're talking about.
Lawyers are tools. Dangerous tools to be sure, but still only tools. They do what they're told, and in this case Lazaridis simply did not do what was in the best interests of himself and his company. Maybe his is in the "right", but if NTP puts him out of business in order to make a few people ridiculously rich no real purpose will be served by his stubbornness. But as uncompromising as you want in the development of your products, but when it comes to protecting your investment and the livelihoods of your employees, sometimes you have to make deals with Devils.
Damn. You beat me to it.
but you know what they say: "Fill it to the RIM ... with Grim!"
Well, given that their IP might not actually be their IP I think you're being premature. It remains to be seen just who really owns it. The real screwup in this whole saga is the United States Patent and Trademark Office, which apparently granted invalid patents in the first place.
Also, the satellite would not have to be designed so that an astronaut could fix it.
... those things have a fixed operational life and are essentially disposable. Nor is there any particular reason to upgrade them: they're cheap enough that you simply launch another. A sophisticated scientific instrument like the Hubble is something entirely different, and is something you may want to be able to modify and improve over time, as the data you receive suggests new avenues of research. NASA makes noises about robot repair missions but is a long way from achieving them, so for the foreseeable future, if you want a piece of spacegoing hardware fixed a trained astronaut is going to have to do it.
... apparently there are no plans to make the James Webb Space Telescope serviceable from orbit. It also isn't exactly a replacement for Hubble, since it is infrared-optimized and the Hubble is primarily a visible-light scope, which is another reason many astronomers don't want to see the Hubble switched off.
So who will? A communications satellite is one thing
Furthremore, many of the Hubble's "repairs" were in fact upgrades. The Hubble would have produced much less useful data had it not been for the Shuttle missions. Heck, the primary mirror fiasco taught us the value of being able to repair what we send up: mistakes get made. I don't want to get into an argument about the value of basic science but we certainly got our money's worth from the Hubble and the Shuttle missions that serviced it. Now, there are plenty of other ways you can justify the retirement and replacement of the Shuttle fleet, but the Hubble Space Telescope really isn't one of them.
But it looks like you'll get your wish
Personally, I think the failure of the later Star Trek series had less to do with interest in Star Trek per se, as it did with the people that were given control of it. A lot of liberties were taken with the original Star Trek universe, to the detriment of the franchise as a whole. Maybe if Roddenberry hadn't died when he did it might have been different, but a lot of the blame can be laid at Rick Berman's feet.
Apple is just as suit-driven as any other big company. One of my old customers manufactured parts used in various Macs (this was a company bigger than Apple by a factor of ten at least.) They had numerous meetings with Apple's people regarding ways to help the manufacturing process, improve production rates, etc. Now, there were a number of free-thinking people that would show up at these meetings, but as soon as they tried to show any initiative some suit would look at his watch and shut them down. At the top Apple may be an autocracy but from the waist down it's middle-manager city.
Pretty much that kind of structure is forced upon any business that goes public. Wall Street comes in and tells you how to structure your business (which, from my experience, seems to involve additional layers of management that weren't needed before but are somehow magically necessary) and if you don't play ball your IPO doesn't happen. Frankly, I think that is driving American manufacturing into the ground by adding overhead that it can ill afford in the days of the Global Economy.
Well, at least they have the brains to hire industry insiders. That can make all the difference, and if nothing else Google's pockets are deep enough to have an effect in Washington. Hopefully Microsoft (which massively increased its lobbying presence after the antitrust suit) will see things the right way and realize that the telecoms' designs on the network don't bode well for them either, and lend a lobbyist or two to the cause.
Yeah, this kind of thing could pretty well kill off online gaming if it gets popular among ISPs. Oh, well, of course there will be a "gamer package" that will give you low latency to specific servers for a nominal charge. Great if you're a Sony or a Blizzard, although I'm sure they also will have to pay protec^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^ "guaranteed delivery" charges as well. All those folks like me that run a public game server for the fun of it will likely be out of luck.
I'm still trying to figure out what a "rouge state" is, exactly.
Problem is, if you don't use the lowest bidder philosophy you end up with the "highest bidder" philosophy, which costs a hell of a lot more and doesn't work any better. I'm not sure what the solution is, but simply opening the purse strings isn't it.
That term, as used to describe either event, refers to the media fiasco that occurred immediately following the accidents, as in "PR disaster".
ScrewMaster to Anonymous Coward: we don't give a rat's ass about you either.
My personal take: the politicians prefer lobbyists to be the ones offering the options, since in that case they are paid to make the right decision instead of having to think.
My personal take: the politicians prefer lobbyists to be the ones offering the options, since in that case they are paid.
once they've reaped that market
You misspelled "raped".
Hey! Since when did an informed opinion become a requirement for posting on Slashdot?
One of the quality assurance guys at work claims to receive "bugasms" when he finds a particularly juicy one.
Yes, that's absolutely true, and furthermore such observance has been construed to induce direct physiological effects, such as hairy palms and thinning of the wallet.
Dude, that's "G" String Theory, which is easily observable at the macro scale, the only detector needed being an eyeball.
So...if your ads are on crack then you're a good CEO?
... if they work.
Yes
Not as funny as the title, "Redefining the SEO".
The first thoughts of racist association did not enter my head until I read your comment.
... looks like he's got a chink in his armor." My mother made him apologize for that one. Not that it mattered: I didn't get the joke anyway.
Me neither. The problem comes in when words (which often have multiple meanings, like "chink") that are offensive in one context are presumed to be unusable in all contexts. And if we went along with that, we'd have to shrink the dictionary by 50% at least. Personally, I think that people should just develop mental armor without any chinks in it and not be so blasted sensitive.
Now, having said that I remember watching a movie with my father, when I was maybe 8 years old, and in it the protagonist (a spy) steals a tank from a Chinese military base to make his escape (apparently he wasn't a very good spy.) In any event, unbeknownst to our hero one of the base solders was clinging to the outside, waiting for an opportunity. My Dad got that gleam in his eye, and said, "uh oh