Wouldn't the story make Joseph Reckendorfer (the investor who bought the patent for $100,000 and then couldn't use it) a classical patent troll - only stopped by the Supreme Court?:-) Or would modern patent trolls be simply investors like Joseph?
SCI conferences series is a well-known scam in academia that accepts *any paper*, gets registration money from "happy authors" and does nothing. You can send a blank page there and it will get accepted, so this is not a big story.:-(
I would like to point out that in Moscow subway system, a fully computerised line (grey line) was introduced in early 80's. The rest of the subway stayed with proper drivers. In early 90's there were two crashes (within several months of each other) on the computerised line.
The reason was that due to technical problems one train stopped, and the train behind it slammed into it. The curious thing is that the traffic lights in the tunnels correctly lighted red (since they are redundant, in case of such emergency to display red just behind the train), but the computerised train (without a driver) carried on. If the driver was there to stop it, it wouldn't have happenned.
I beleive that grey line is still the only one that is computerised and they have drivers on every other line.
For more information on Moscow Metro see photos here:
Metro map
Cheers,
Alex.
I don't know if it is possible in US, but Down Under (New Zealand and Australia) most cell phones purchased are on pre-paid plans. The latter means than unless you specifically contact the mobile phone provider - they have no idea of who owns the cell phone. You never sign anything - just buy the phone in the shop and keep buying prepay cards in the petrol stations. On the contract, of course, they learn your name, and possibly credit card. Hence, with pre-paid cell phones, they can be tracked, but they have no idea who the people using them are, as opposed to the contract plans.
I was subscribed to FlashMob mailing list (in NZ) for a while, until around two months ago, a subscription script update caused every new subscriber's information to be forwarded to the entire FlashMob announcement list. The list didn't have moderation and everything could get through. A massive flood of email followed with three kinds of topics: (1) people's subscription information (including their mobile phone numbers!), (2) replies from people asking to be unsubscribed, (3) people asking others to stop abusing their cell phone numbers and stop texting or phoning them. Because many of these emails were people's work addresses, quite quickly the FlashMob distribution list and associated domain (flashmob.co.nz at the time) got added to the official block lists for programs like Spam Assassin. This information could have easily flowed up to the official spam block lists and a more general FlashMob or SmartMob web site could have been "identified" as a potential cause of troubles like this one, cause it to be officially blocked.
Slashdot Mirror
Wouldn't the story make Joseph Reckendorfer (the investor who bought the patent for $100,000 and then couldn't use it) a classical patent troll - only stopped by the Supreme Court? :-) Or would modern patent trolls be simply investors like Joseph?
SCI conferences series is a well-known scam in academia that accepts *any paper*, gets registration money from "happy authors" and does nothing. You can send a blank page there and it will get accepted, so this is not a big story. :-(
Here is a link describing the scam:
SCI conferences scam
Cheers,
Alex.
I would like to point out that in Moscow subway system, a fully computerised line (grey line) was introduced in early 80's. The rest of the subway stayed with proper drivers. In early 90's there were two crashes (within several months of each other) on the computerised line. The reason was that due to technical problems one train stopped, and the train behind it slammed into it. The curious thing is that the traffic lights in the tunnels correctly lighted red (since they are redundant, in case of such emergency to display red just behind the train), but the computerised train (without a driver) carried on. If the driver was there to stop it, it wouldn't have happenned. I beleive that grey line is still the only one that is computerised and they have drivers on every other line. For more information on Moscow Metro see photos here: Metro map Cheers, Alex.
I don't know if it is possible in US, but Down Under (New Zealand and Australia) most cell phones purchased are on pre-paid plans. The latter means than unless you specifically contact the mobile phone provider - they have no idea of who owns the cell phone. You never sign anything - just buy the phone in the shop and keep buying prepay cards in the petrol stations. On the contract, of course, they learn your name, and possibly credit card. Hence, with pre-paid cell phones, they can be tracked, but they have no idea who the people using them are, as opposed to the contract plans.
I was subscribed to FlashMob mailing list (in NZ) for a while, until around two months ago, a subscription script update caused every new subscriber's information to be forwarded to the entire FlashMob announcement list. The list didn't have moderation and everything could get through. A massive flood of email followed with three kinds of topics: (1) people's subscription information (including their mobile phone numbers!), (2) replies from people asking to be unsubscribed, (3) people asking others to stop abusing their cell phone numbers and stop texting or phoning them. Because many of these emails were people's work addresses, quite quickly the FlashMob distribution list and associated domain (flashmob.co.nz at the time) got added to the official block lists for programs like Spam Assassin. This information could have easily flowed up to the official spam block lists and a more general FlashMob or SmartMob web site could have been "identified" as a potential cause of troubles like this one, cause it to be officially blocked.
Cheers,
Alex.