I mean, while it's melting, it will retain a temperature of 0 degrees, at least if I recall my physics/chemistry correctly.
you're neglecting the energy associated with the change of phase from solid to liquid. as ice melts (i.e., changes from solid to liquid) it actually absorbs energy. this is why ice on a lake or river continues to thicken even though the air above it may be above freezing.
what impact this will have on global warming is anyone's guess.
while i have always been skeptical about some of the science surrounding global warming - it appears to be real, carbon dioxiode emissions appear to be the culprit, and there is no world concensus on what to do about it.
least of all from the united states of haliburton.
What's next, banning hand guns because they're primarily useful for shooting people?
tanguyr, you should run for office.
you're on to something.
as you no doubt know, it is illegal in the US to shorten the length of a shotgun barrel because such weapons were once popular among criminals who robbed american banks..
as it is illegal in the US to sell bongs because some people use them to smoke substances which grow naturally in american forests....
other uses? please don't bother me with details.
guilt by association, baby.
all courtesy of your friendly grand old lying party.
they used to call it racial profiling, but they're far more clever than that now....
"...so strict are these statutes that Congress has made mere posession of signal theft equipment an offense under federal law. See 18
U.S.C. 2512(1)b"
really, the united states congress... guardians of freedom who recently supported a war to defend liberty... do you really expect me to believe that the united states congress would pass a law making it a crime for citizens to posess a technical device which could be used for illegal purposes.... even if they do not use the device themselves for illegal purposes.
say it isn't so.
Sec. 2512. - Manufacture, distribution, possession, and advertising of wire, oral, or electronic communication intercepting devices prohibited
(1) Except as otherwise specifically provided in this chapter, any person who intentionally -
(b) manufactures, assembles, possesses , or sells any electronic, mechanical, or other device, knowing or having reason to know that the design of such device renders it primarily useful for the purpose of the surreptitious interception of wire, oral, or electronic communications , and that such device or any component thereof has been or will be sent through the mail or transported in interstate or foreign commerce;
shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than five years, or both.
you kill what you fear and you fear what you do not understand.
what if this were YOUR invention?
should Microsoft be allowed to make profits from the unlicensed and unauthorized use of your inventions?
how is it fair that Bill Gates become richer from your invention while you receive nothing?
remember Lotus 1-2-3, WordPerfect, the Apple II? all of these were groundbreaking products stolen from their inventors (first by Lotus, Corel, and Apple) and then by Microsoft.
where are they now? the technology is dominated by Xcel, Word, and XP.
why? because copyright law was too weak to prevent MS from squashing little people who threaten them - which is what giants do.
software patents are the only tools which exist which enable you to protect YOUR inventions against the giants.
it is irrational that programmers see software patents as a threat and completely fail to see them for the opportunity that they present.
"burn her, she's a witch."
MS lost because they were arrogant. they - like open source developers - refuse to pay for the technology they use and prefer just to take it from the good people who created it.
good for Eolas - like Stac Electronics who sued Microsoft for infringing their stacker technology - it's nice to see the little guy win once and a while.
actually, it seems that the EU is trying to keep up with the US.
it is beyond dispute (even on this board) that the US is the envy of the world when it comes to technology so it makes sense that the EU - and many other countries - will move in the direction of the US when it comes to writing their own intellectual property laws.
despite the anti-IP rhetoric of the "free beer" crowd, the cold hard truth is that the strength and breadth of US IP law are among the prime factors for the technological leadership of the US.
laws like the US DMCA are designed with the intent that the US should maintain this world leadership so it should be no surprise that the rest of the world will follow suit with similar laws of their own.
when north korea becomes the world leader in technology, then the US and ROW can consider the weak IP laws favored by stallman, lessig, perens, and their comrades.
until then, following the lead of the United States of America when it comes to IP would seem to this observer to be the smart thing to do.
you reap what you sow, amigo. FPPs about this company, or that company, choosing Linux hardly seem newsworthy - even on this board.
isn't this just quantity?
where is the quality? is there any technical, social, or political particular significance that Lufthansa is using Linux?
the only remotely interesting item from this article is the conspicuous use of the English words "Open Source", and "Support Know How" in a German language press release.
Das Unternehmen beschaftigt das weltweit groBte Entwicklungsteam fur Open-Source-Losungen und hat sein einzigartiges Projekt- und Support-Know-how in der groBten Linux-Wissensdatenbank uber das Internet zuganglich gemacht.
why can't people respect the german language? if this continues the german language wil disappear very fast.
What really gets me about the RIM patents (and other wireless patents) is that there's nothing there.
well, if you don't read the patent it makes sense that you would conclude there's "nothing there."
here's a novel idea: let's take a look at the patent in question (US 5,625,670) and see what is actually says...
first, look at the filing history (on the first page of the patent)
This application is a Continuation application of U.S. Ser. No. 07/702,939, filed May 20, 1991, now U.S. Pat. No. 5,436,960; Ser. No. 07/702,938, filed May 20, 1991, now U.S. Pat. No. 5,479,472, and Ser. No. 08/247,466, filed May 23, 1994, now U.S. Pat. No. 5,938,611; which is a Continuation of U.S. Ser. No. 07/702,319, filed May 20, 1991 (now abandoned).
without having the text of the correspondence in front of me, it seems that this patent is the progeny of a series of patents filed earlier. more likely, what happened was that NTP realized their original claims were not being infringed and they needed to modify the patent in order to obtain claims which were being infringed.
this is the "trick" used to great success by lemmelson. file a fat application, watch what other people do, and then file a continuation application with some new claims covering this use. as long as there is support in the original application, this is perfectly legal under US law.
note that under current US law, the patent will expire 20 years after the earliest claimed date of priority - or may 20th 2011. (the application filed in 1994 might have an impact on this, but it's hard to say.)
next look at the amount of prior art which was cited. 14 prior art patents and 9 non-patent references. not much... which suggests there wasn't much prior art. Curis Kuntz, the primary examiner at the USPTO for this case, is no pushover - patents with his name on them usually are pretty solid - so let's give him the benefit of the doubt.
now, let's take a quick look at the claims.... of which there are 276.... the poor examiners... this is really abusive. a multiple warhead nuclear bomb... really hard to shoot down all of them. try reading 100 of them, and then try reading 100 more, and then try reading the last 76 and see if your head doesn't explode. remember that examiners don't get paid in 6 minute increments of an hour (as do attorneys) and have a limited amount of time to do their job...
i don't know which of these 276 claims were at issue in the case, but one can certainly feel sorry for RIM... it's hard to avoid a patent claim when new ones are being shot at you all the time... this may have had something to do with the judge not issuing an injunction.
it would probably be a fair assumption that the claim at issue - probabaly only one of the 276 - is valid and infringed.... NTP had all the information they needed from discovery to know what they needed to say... and they probably scoured the earth for prior art during the process... and they had unlimited time to craft just the claims they needed.
what stinks is that an applicant for patent can do this.
while there is no such thing as compulsory licensing in Europe - where on earth did you read this? - there are far stricter limits on the tricks you can play with adding new claims, or filing continutation applications.
a sensible reform of the US patent system would be to make the applicant stick to the original claims as filed... limit the number of claims to give the examiners a chance to properly do their jobs... and not to allow ex post facto modifications like this. if the applicant didn't claim it at the time of filing, then he or she shouldn't be able to claim it later.
congress - once again - is the problem. not the USPTO.
one thing is for certain, we americans do indeed have the best politicians money can buy!
actually, the laws were changed after these patents were issued precisely because of patents such as these....
before 1995, US inventors were allowed to file a continuation application claiming priority to the original patent application, but claiming different subject matter.
inventors, such as jerome lemmelson, used this procedure to file strings of patents covering slightly different aspects of the inventions originally claimed in the application.
as long as an application in the chain was pending, lemmelson would watch what was being done in industry, file a new application with slightly different claims and covering what other people were doing. if he could convince the USPTO that the claims were distinctly different from those of all previous patents, he was granted a new patent valid for 17 years.
ergo the submarine patent.
rhetorically, the argument was that inventors had a "right" to claim at a later date inventions disclosed in the parent application and not claimed in the original patent.
in practice, the process was easily and often exploited by unscrupulous individuals and companies. while legal, it was widely seen as an abuse of public's good will.
in 1995, after enormous pressure from inside and outside the US, the US congress passed a bill whereby US patents filed after 1995 (with some exceptions) would be valid for 20 years from the earliest date of priority. Bill Clinton, the last US president elected by a majority of American voters, signed the bill into law.
the syndia patents are spin-offs of the original lemmelson submarine patents, and since they were filed prior to 1995, they are valid for 17 years from the date of issue - despite the early filing date.
syndia's licensing efforts, while entirely legal, are nothing more than legal extortion. the US district courts should uphold the law, but not allow themselves to be tools of extortion.
an equitable resolution would be for the court to find the patents valid and infringed - because they ostensibly are - and award 1 dollar to syndia in damages.
fortunately, thanks to bill clinton and a democratic congress - who took action to end this particular abuse of the US patent system - this problem will soon disappear as these remaining submarine patents expire.
calling a spade a spade on this board is a waste of time.
this is the alternate universe known as slashdot where stealing (digital) property is not a crime.
to answer your detractors...
technically, no, he didn't rob the bank himself.
he just provided the guns, the get-away car, the combination to the vault, and the map of the exits.
"honest your honor... i had no idea those bad people would use the guns, maps, combination to the bank safe, and the get-away car i gave them to rob a bank."
except for a few, very limited exceptions, copying copyrighted material without the permission of the owner is a violation of the law. simple and plain. it is wrong.
helping people to do it, like your hero who is the subject of this thread, makes you as guilty as they are.
if you don't like the RIAA and their heavy handed tactics - don't listen to the greedy, sell-out bands that sign contracts with them.
at the end of the day, THE MUSICIANS are the source of this problem. no one else. without them there is no RIAA, there is no music industry, there is no copyrighted material to steal.
when bands quit being greedy and quit selling their music to companies who are even more greedy, all of these problems go away.
boycott the sell-out bands. don't go to their concerts, don't listen to their music, and ridicule them.
The more these things creep in...the more they look like vinyl.
speaking of which.... no one was crying and whining about "rights managements" when music was sold on vinyl.
back in the day when vinyl LPs could only be played on "record players" - and file sharing was loaning your copy of dark side of the moon to your friend who just bought a new tape deck - music was cheap and good.
no one was pissing in their beer complaining that they couldn't press their own LPs.
no one was whining that making imperfect copies on tape was an evil plot by the RIAA.
but now that the format is digital - and the possibility exists to make perfect copies and share them with thousands of people you don't even know - somehow people got the strange notion that copyright holders trying to protect themselves from copying is tramping on consumer rights.
bring back vinyl!
cleaning reefer on CD covers never worked very well anyway.....
Hopefully Bush will give more of the radio spectrum to public use..
Not likely since the "public" doesn't seem to be represented.
(a) Membership of the Task Force. The Task Force shall consist exclusively of the heads of the executive branch departments, agencies, and offices listed below:
(1) the Department of State;
(2) the Department of the Treasury;
(3) the Department of Defense;
(4) the Department of Justice;
(5) the Department of the Interior;
(6) the Department of Agriculture;
(7) the Department of Commerce;
(8) the Department of Transportation;
(9) the Department of Energy;
(10) the Department of Homeland Security;
(11) the National Aeronautics and Space Administration;
(12) the Office of Management and Budget;
(13) the Office of Science and Technology Policy;
(14) such other executive branch departments, agencies, or offices as the Chairman of the Task Force may designate
Strangely, or perhaps not at all, missing from this list of intelligence, military, and law enforcement agencies are the Department of Education and Department of Health and Human Services.
Clearly, public use of the radio spectrum is far less a priority to this administration than monitoring the public's use of the radio spectrum.
It doesn't make the products better or less expensive, just cheaper to make. How much in lower prices do you pay for your Nike tennis shoes made in Burma?
It doesn't - it translates into higher profits and (hopefully) higher stock prices.
Corporations are run for the benefit of their owners. It's as simple as that. As long as the owners demand it, greater profits is what management is supposed to deliver.
This patent has a tortured prosecution history as the related cases suggest:
This is a continuation of U.S. patent application Ser. No. 09/179,545, filed Oct. 26, 1998, which is a continuation of U.S. patent application Ser. No. 08/437,096, filed May 5, 1995, which is now U.S. Pat. No. 5,861,906.
Without the prosection history, one can only speculate as to why this is the case, but commonly there is a procedure in the USPTO known as a "file wrapper continuation" where the applicant can continue prosecution of a twice rejected application by simply paying a new filing fee and filing the application all over again. An assumption would be that this is what has happened since there are 40+ US patent prior art references and NO non US patent prior art references. Since US examiners are prone to cite US patents as prior art, I assume that all of the prior art references were dug up by the USPTO.
A reasonable conclusion is that the USPTO worked damn hard to kill this application, or at least reduce the scope of the claims. Hats off to examiners Andrew Faile and Jasom Salce at the USPTO for giving it their best effort.
Let's see what the zealous lawyers at Lee & Hayes PLLC were able to get for their client.
The patent contains only three independent claims (hmmm, MS probably paid at least $25,000 to get this patent and the zealous lawyers at Lee & Hayes didn't even bother to add some dependent claims. tsk, tsk, tsk.)
Three claims: an apparatus, a method, and a method used in an apparatus.
Looks like claim 2 is the broadest one....
2. A method for operating a user interface used in interactive entertainment network system, the interactive entertainment network system having a content provider which is connected to provide video content programs to a plurality of user interface units in individual homes, the user interface being executed on a processor provided at each user interface unit, the method comprising the following steps:
hmmmm nothing new or interesting in the preamble
generating a list of entries pertaining to the video content programs;
displaying a number of entries on the list;
nothing much clever about this element.
scrolling through the list by continually updating the displayed entries, whereby one entry on the list is removed as another entry on the list is added; and
sort of maybe a little novel - deleting one entry as another is added...
enabling a viewer to adjust a rate at which entries are removed and added to thereby modify a rate at which the list visually appears to be scrolling.
sort of maybe even a little bit more novel - adjusting the rate so that it appears to be scrolling...
my guess: probably a valid patent - a narrow, useless, easy to design around patent. but probably a valid patent nonetheless.
it certainly is NOT as the title suggests a patent "covering" VOD - "distantly related to" VOD, perhaps, "covering a minor, unimportant, and irrlelevant feature of" VOD is more accurate.
looks like the USPTO did a good job on this one.
so do as sql*kitten says and "read the claims!"
and please - lay off the examiners and the USPTO and read the bloody claims and try to make a reasonable conclusion about what the patent covers before spouting off with animal food trough water, empty headed wipers of other people's backsides slashdot reactions about patents.
bottom line is that this is a narrow, unimportant, easily avoided, easily designed around patent which adds very little value to MS's portfolio and should give no one cause for concern - except's MS's legal department who paid alot of money for it.
I've been using a Cisco ATA through a cable modem for about a year now and have had no problems with QoS.
Call my New York Telephone number and it rings wherever in the world I've got the ATA connected. It has worked in Tokyo and London with better than cellular voice quality.
I don't have the same mobility as cellular and I have to register the phone with the server everytime I relocate it, but it's a push of a button.
And for $39.95 a month I have unlimited calling within the US (inc. Alaska and Hawaii) and Canada... and real time access to my account, voice mail I can access through my PC anywhere in the world. While the price isn't going down yet, the scope of coverage is. Canada was recently added without any increase in price.
My local Bell can't match this and isn't even trying. In fact, if you have access to cable, you don't even need to be connected to the local loop.
Local telephone service IS dead. It just doesn't know it yet.
FYI The best reference on Internet Telephony is:
Harte, Lawrence 2003: Internet Telephone, How to Select, Setup, Use, and Optimize Telephone Service through the Internet. Althos.
Let's Help Them Out
Yeah right.
At the National Space Symposium in Colorado Springs in early April, Teets proposed that U.S. resources from military, civilian and commercial satellites be combined to provide "persistence in total situational awareness, for the benefit of this nation's war fighters." If allies don't like the new paradigm of space dominance, said Air Force secretary James Roche, they'll just have to learn to accept it. The allies, he told the symposium, will have "no veto power."
http://www.eetimes.com/sys/news/OEG20030522S0050
The Chinese are not stupid. They're going after the high ground before the Pentagon can deny them access to it.
If 9/11 was a wake up call for America, the unprovoked invasion of Iraq was the wake up call for everyone else.
Thanks to Bush and his criminial disregard for international law, the world is a far less safe place for everyone.
..(actually they claim it never had anything to do with copyrights and patent violations. Yeah right. If it never did, why were they pretending companies other than IBM may be in the firing line and why were they milking a "licence our IP" scheme out of this?
there may not be any inconsistency here. the definition of IP (intellectual property) includes patents, trademarks and copyrights - and trade secrets. from what i can google, SCO appears to be claiming that:
IBM has contaminated the Linux Kernel, GNU/Linux, and/or Linux distribution source code with proprietary, SCO-owned Unix source code, and
IBM has misappropriated and misused proprietary, and/or confidential, SCO-Caldera methods, technology, and know-how to aid in Linux development.
if this is correct then IBM would be guilty of misappropriation of trade secrets.
in any case it appears that novell may be sitting on some valuable patents and copyrights. while slashdotters might be pleased with novell's support of linux, novell shareholders might question why the management apparently allows these properties (which they now claim to own) to be freely infringed by ibm, oracle, and many others.
kogs, yes there are essential differences in GSM and the web, but at the end of the day the question is, what is the best way to provide services to users? this is always the basic economic question.
despite the differences between the economic models for GSM and the Web, i pay more or less the same price today for GSM service as i do for my Web access (using ADSL) - about 35 evros a month. since both are of equal value to me, from a consumer's perspective, this is reasonable.
all i am saying is that there is more than one way to get from point A to point B and the W3C's (recently adopted) patent policy is by no means the only way. i personally believe the W3C's chosen path is the wrong one which will only benefit the giants.
most slashdotters seem to view patents as a big-company squashing the small-company.
cross-licensing is a matter of trading equal value for equal value. big companies with lots of patents AND a large market share trade with other big companies with lots of patents and large market shares. a university, a small company, or even an individual with even one patent and no market share does not have to trade away their patents in a cross-license.
with RAND small companies actually have a hope to be able to profit from their innovations.
but as a result of the W3C's patent policy the giants can use the results of the hard work and innovation of small companies, universities, and individuals without having to compensate them.
HP and IBM are hardly anti-patent, but they support the W3C RF patent policy... ostensibly because they concluded that with RAND they would have to pay more than they would receive.
under RAND, IBM, HP, Oracle, and all the other giants would very likely have to pay royalties to small companies who have no interest, or need, for a cross-license.
the W3C RF policy is a sellout of precisely the people whom W3C claims to support - the small developer.
nor does the W3C RF policy provide any of these small companies protection against the thousands of other patents which IBM, HP, and the other giants hold.
patents are the only defense small companies have against the giants, yet by telling david that all slings are bad, the W3C convinced them to agree to lay down their weapons. to be fair, the W3C also forces the goliaths to lay down their weapons, but the goliaths still have their fists.
it is also a fallacy that one can declare one's self a patent free zone. most governments do not allow so much personal soverignty. patents owned by non-W3C members are not subject to the RF policy.
the result of the W3C policy will be less competitition, higher end-user prices, and none of the benefits which were used to sell the policy.
marx said that communism was not about reforming private property, its goal was abolishing private property. the W3C is using the same "logic" and will probably produce the same results - a few get rich and powerful and the average person gets screwed and exploited.
There is no rationale for the proposed W3C patent policy.
GSM (the European mobile phone standard) is the world's most successful standard, used by 750 million people the world over.
GSM is covered by hundreds, if not thousands of patents, owned by dozens of entities - large, medium, and small. Most of these patents are made available under RAND licensing policies, some are not and are bitterly contested.
And yet, GSM exists. And thrives. And grows.
Any argument that patents would be "death" to W3C either ignore this fact, or is ignorant of it.
Re:Publishing depends on inefficiency
on
Mighty Amazon
·
· Score: 1
Profit margins, as always, are razor thin.
Unless you are writing Harry Potter books, the average author agreement gives the author 15% of list price. The publisher keeps 85%.
So the book that sells for $35 gives 5 and a quarter to the author, and $29.75 to the publisher, minus her publishing and marketing costs.
There are printers who can print out a single copy of a book for a few dollars. If you print a thousand, the production price is far lower.
You do the rest of the math.
I hope you don't try to shave with those "razor thin" profit margins, you'll just be pushing the shaving cream around.
"Given that western societies are wholly dependent upon growth-based economies, it seems to me that the real target for criticisms of unsustainability should be growth-based economics itself."
score: 11, bloody insightful.
how many people gauge their own well-being by the growth of their salary, savings, or possessions, when "growth" can also be expressed in terms of an increase in free time, the ability to not have to travel to an office to work, or other quality of life factors?
western societies are not necessarily wedded to growth in terms of economic production, but as long as we ourselves measure our own growth in these same terms it will be somewhat difficult to escape.
i traded a six figure income (and all of the associated demands) because the money wasn't as worth as much to me as having more time to pursue other things in life. by the Economist's standards, i am suffering a deep recession, but according to my definition, i am enjoying a long period of sustainted growth in satisfaction (even if i am running the risk of inflation from having too much of a good thing.)
saying anything pro-patent on slashdot is like dousing yourself with gasoline and asking for a light. you've shown remarkable restraint.
personal computers, mobile phones, MRI machines, cars, pharmaceuticals all exist - despite the fact that all of these contain hundreds of patented inventions owned by lots of different entities.
GSM, and not the Internet, is arguably the world's most successful standard. a standard developed under RAND licensing terms, covered by thousands of patents owned by dozens of companies. and used today by nearly 700 million people.
patents did not stop GSM - they aided the development of a highly successful standard by making it commercially viable.
why is software so different?
the fears of the Open Source movement are founded on just that - fears - even Perens in his article says that the fact that there haven't been any patent problems is a problem because he can't point to the entrance of the cave and say "look at the bones, man."
so, he and others paint doomsday scenarios to prevent a rational debate from occuring.
fear (or ideology) should not be the basis for public policy debate.
the facts contradict the fears.
viewing "intellectual" property as a special class of property not worthy of the same property protections as "real" property is rather strange actually.
most slashdotters are probably comfortable with the concept of owning land - a resource of fixed size - yet there seems to be a viseral rejection of the ownership of intellectual property whose dimensions are limitless.
knowledge has value. the economies of more and more countries are based on this value. yet knowledge is easily stolen.
it is uniquely easy to steal which is why i advocate stronger protections.
the EU will accept software patents because there are sound economic reasons for so doing. shrill voices yelling that the sky is falling are not likely to change this.
Slashdot Mirror
you're neglecting the energy associated with the change of phase from solid to liquid. as ice melts (i.e., changes from solid to liquid) it actually absorbs energy. this is why ice on a lake or river continues to thicken even though the air above it may be above freezing.
what impact this will have on global warming is anyone's guess.
while i have always been skeptical about some of the science surrounding global warming - it appears to be real, carbon dioxiode emissions appear to be the culprit, and there is no world concensus on what to do about it.
least of all from the united states of haliburton.
this is the real tragedy of the commons...
optimist.
"are you aware that other people use this device to pirate satellite broadcasts?"
"well, i didn't know that when i bought it, but after the letters and lawsuits i guess i do now."
"are you in posession of said items."
"yes. but i use them for peaceful purposes."
"and you are aware that people use them to pirate satellite signals."
"well, i am now that you've told me."
"next witness, your honor."
my advice to the people who received this letter is: settle.
let the other gal sit in jail and defend her principles.
tanguyr, you should run for office.
you're on to something.
as you no doubt know, it is illegal in the US to shorten the length of a shotgun barrel because such weapons were once popular among criminals who robbed american banks..
as it is illegal in the US to sell bongs because some people use them to smoke substances which grow naturally in american forests....
other uses? please don't bother me with details.
guilt by association, baby.
all courtesy of your friendly grand old lying party.
they used to call it racial profiling, but they're far more clever than that now....
"what about individual rights," you say.
"sorry, we're fresh out, sir."
"what about due process," you cry.
"you terrorist."
end of discussion.
"...so strict are these statutes that Congress has made mere posession of signal theft equipment an offense under federal law. See 18 U.S.C. 2512(1)b"
really, the united states congress... guardians of freedom who recently supported a war to defend liberty... do you really expect me to believe that the united states congress would pass a law making it a crime for citizens to posess a technical device which could be used for illegal purposes.... even if they do not use the device themselves for illegal purposes.
say it isn't so.
Sec. 2512. - Manufacture, distribution, possession, and advertising of wire, oral, or electronic communication intercepting devices prohibited (1) Except as otherwise specifically provided in this chapter, any person who intentionally - (b) manufactures, assembles, possesses , or sells any electronic, mechanical, or other device, knowing or having reason to know that the design of such device renders it primarily useful for the purpose of the surreptitious interception of wire, oral, or electronic communications , and that such device or any component thereof has been or will be sent through the mail or transported in interstate or foreign commerce;
shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than five years, or both.
damn. it's true.
keep voting republican and this is what you get.
what if this were YOUR invention?
should Microsoft be allowed to make profits from the unlicensed and unauthorized use of your inventions?
how is it fair that Bill Gates become richer from your invention while you receive nothing?
remember Lotus 1-2-3, WordPerfect, the Apple II? all of these were groundbreaking products stolen from their inventors (first by Lotus, Corel, and Apple) and then by Microsoft.
where are they now? the technology is dominated by Xcel, Word, and XP.
why? because copyright law was too weak to prevent MS from squashing little people who threaten them - which is what giants do.
software patents are the only tools which exist which enable you to protect YOUR inventions against the giants.
it is irrational that programmers see software patents as a threat and completely fail to see them for the opportunity that they present.
"burn her, she's a witch."
MS lost because they were arrogant. they - like open source developers - refuse to pay for the technology they use and prefer just to take it from the good people who created it.
good for Eolas - like Stac Electronics who sued Microsoft for infringing their stacker technology - it's nice to see the little guy win once and a while.
one day, the little guy may be YOU.
The US may try to match...
actually, it seems that the EU is trying to keep up with the US.
it is beyond dispute (even on this board) that the US is the envy of the world when it comes to technology so it makes sense that the EU - and many other countries - will move in the direction of the US when it comes to writing their own intellectual property laws.
despite the anti-IP rhetoric of the "free beer" crowd, the cold hard truth is that the strength and breadth of US IP law are among the prime factors for the technological leadership of the US.
laws like the US DMCA are designed with the intent that the US should maintain this world leadership so it should be no surprise that the rest of the world will follow suit with similar laws of their own.
when north korea becomes the world leader in technology, then the US and ROW can consider the weak IP laws favored by stallman, lessig, perens, and their comrades.
until then, following the lead of the United States of America when it comes to IP would seem to this observer to be the smart thing to do.
isn't this just quantity?
where is the quality? is there any technical, social, or political particular significance that Lufthansa is using Linux?
the only remotely interesting item from this article is the conspicuous use of the English words "Open Source", and "Support Know How" in a German language press release.
Das Unternehmen beschaftigt das weltweit groBte Entwicklungsteam fur Open-Source-Losungen und hat sein einzigartiges Projekt- und Support-Know-how in der groBten Linux-Wissensdatenbank uber das Internet zuganglich gemacht. why can't people respect the german language? if this continues the german language wil disappear very fast.
WHY DO YOU HATE WOMEN?
well, if you don't read the patent it makes sense that you would conclude there's "nothing there."
here's a novel idea: let's take a look at the patent in question (US 5,625,670) and see what is actually says...
first, look at the filing history (on the first page of the patent)
This application is a Continuation application of U.S. Ser. No. 07/702,939, filed May 20, 1991, now U.S. Pat. No. 5,436,960; Ser. No. 07/702,938, filed May 20, 1991, now U.S. Pat. No. 5,479,472, and Ser. No. 08/247,466, filed May 23, 1994, now U.S. Pat. No. 5,938,611; which is a Continuation of U.S. Ser. No. 07/702,319, filed May 20, 1991 (now abandoned).
without having the text of the correspondence in front of me, it seems that this patent is the progeny of a series of patents filed earlier. more likely, what happened was that NTP realized their original claims were not being infringed and they needed to modify the patent in order to obtain claims which were being infringed.
this is the "trick" used to great success by lemmelson. file a fat application, watch what other people do, and then file a continuation application with some new claims covering this use. as long as there is support in the original application, this is perfectly legal under US law.
note that under current US law, the patent will expire 20 years after the earliest claimed date of priority - or may 20th 2011. (the application filed in 1994 might have an impact on this, but it's hard to say.)
next look at the amount of prior art which was cited. 14 prior art patents and 9 non-patent references. not much... which suggests there wasn't much prior art. Curis Kuntz, the primary examiner at the USPTO for this case, is no pushover - patents with his name on them usually are pretty solid - so let's give him the benefit of the doubt.
now, let's take a quick look at the claims.... of which there are 276.... the poor examiners... this is really abusive. a multiple warhead nuclear bomb... really hard to shoot down all of them. try reading 100 of them, and then try reading 100 more, and then try reading the last 76 and see if your head doesn't explode. remember that examiners don't get paid in 6 minute increments of an hour (as do attorneys) and have a limited amount of time to do their job...
i don't know which of these 276 claims were at issue in the case, but one can certainly feel sorry for RIM... it's hard to avoid a patent claim when new ones are being shot at you all the time... this may have had something to do with the judge not issuing an injunction.
it would probably be a fair assumption that the claim at issue - probabaly only one of the 276 - is valid and infringed.... NTP had all the information they needed from discovery to know what they needed to say... and they probably scoured the earth for prior art during the process... and they had unlimited time to craft just the claims they needed.
what stinks is that an applicant for patent can do this.
while there is no such thing as compulsory licensing in Europe - where on earth did you read this? - there are far stricter limits on the tricks you can play with adding new claims, or filing continutation applications.
a sensible reform of the US patent system would be to make the applicant stick to the original claims as filed... limit the number of claims to give the examiners a chance to properly do their jobs... and not to allow ex post facto modifications like this. if the applicant didn't claim it at the time of filing, then he or she shouldn't be able to claim it later.
congress - once again - is the problem. not the USPTO.
one thing is for certain, we americans do indeed have the best politicians money can buy!
actually, the laws were changed after these patents were issued precisely because of patents such as these....
before 1995, US inventors were allowed to file a continuation application claiming priority to the original patent application, but claiming different subject matter.
inventors, such as jerome lemmelson, used this procedure to file strings of patents covering slightly different aspects of the inventions originally claimed in the application.
as long as an application in the chain was pending, lemmelson would watch what was being done in industry, file a new application with slightly different claims and covering what other people were doing. if he could convince the USPTO that the claims were distinctly different from those of all previous patents, he was granted a new patent valid for 17 years.
ergo the submarine patent.
rhetorically, the argument was that inventors had a "right" to claim at a later date inventions disclosed in the parent application and not claimed in the original patent.
in practice, the process was easily and often exploited by unscrupulous individuals and companies. while legal, it was widely seen as an abuse of public's good will.
in 1995, after enormous pressure from inside and outside the US, the US congress passed a bill whereby US patents filed after 1995 (with some exceptions) would be valid for 20 years from the earliest date of priority. Bill Clinton, the last US president elected by a majority of American voters, signed the bill into law.
the syndia patents are spin-offs of the original lemmelson submarine patents, and since they were filed prior to 1995, they are valid for 17 years from the date of issue - despite the early filing date.
syndia's licensing efforts, while entirely legal, are nothing more than legal extortion. the US district courts should uphold the law, but not allow themselves to be tools of extortion.
an equitable resolution would be for the court to find the patents valid and infringed - because they ostensibly are - and award 1 dollar to syndia in damages.
fortunately, thanks to bill clinton and a democratic congress - who took action to end this particular abuse of the US patent system - this problem will soon disappear as these remaining submarine patents expire.
calling a spade a spade on this board is a waste of time.
this is the alternate universe known as slashdot where stealing (digital) property is not a crime.
to answer your detractors...
technically, no, he didn't rob the bank himself.
he just provided the guns, the get-away car, the combination to the vault, and the map of the exits.
"honest your honor... i had no idea those bad people would use the guns, maps, combination to the bank safe, and the get-away car i gave them to rob a bank."
except for a few, very limited exceptions, copying copyrighted material without the permission of the owner is a violation of the law. simple and plain. it is wrong.
helping people to do it, like your hero who is the subject of this thread, makes you as guilty as they are.
if you don't like the RIAA and their heavy handed tactics - don't listen to the greedy, sell-out bands that sign contracts with them.
at the end of the day, THE MUSICIANS are the source of this problem. no one else. without them there is no RIAA, there is no music industry, there is no copyrighted material to steal.
when bands quit being greedy and quit selling their music to companies who are even more greedy, all of these problems go away.
boycott the sell-out bands. don't go to their concerts, don't listen to their music, and ridicule them.
they all suck anyway.
speaking of which.... no one was crying and whining about "rights managements" when music was sold on vinyl.
back in the day when vinyl LPs could only be played on "record players" - and file sharing was loaning your copy of dark side of the moon to your friend who just bought a new tape deck - music was cheap and good.
no one was pissing in their beer complaining that they couldn't press their own LPs.
no one was whining that making imperfect copies on tape was an evil plot by the RIAA.
but now that the format is digital - and the possibility exists to make perfect copies and share them with thousands of people you don't even know - somehow people got the strange notion that copyright holders trying to protect themselves from copying is tramping on consumer rights.
bring back vinyl!
cleaning reefer on CD covers never worked very well anyway.....
this was yesterday's news.
it'a all a problem.
anything that gives you a communications alternative to the $10 per minute airphone is going to a problem from the airline's point of view.
Not likely since the "public" doesn't seem to be represented.
(a) Membership of the Task Force. The Task Force shall consist exclusively of the heads of the executive branch departments, agencies, and offices listed below:
(1) the Department of State;
(2) the Department of the Treasury;
(3) the Department of Defense;
(4) the Department of Justice;
(5) the Department of the Interior;
(6) the Department of Agriculture;
(7) the Department of Commerce;
(8) the Department of Transportation;
(9) the Department of Energy;
(10) the Department of Homeland Security;
(11) the National Aeronautics and Space Administration;
(12) the Office of Management and Budget;
(13) the Office of Science and Technology Policy;
(14) such other executive branch departments, agencies, or offices as the Chairman of the Task Force may designate
Strangely, or perhaps not at all, missing from this list of intelligence, military, and law enforcement agencies are the Department of Education and Department of Health and Human Services.
Clearly, public use of the radio spectrum is far less a priority to this administration than monitoring the public's use of the radio spectrum.
It doesn't - it translates into higher profits and (hopefully) higher stock prices.
Corporations are run for the benefit of their owners. It's as simple as that. As long as the owners demand it, greater profits is what management is supposed to deliver.
Yours truly,
Martha Stewart
But first some general notes about the patent.
This patent has a tortured prosecution history as the related cases suggest:
This is a continuation of U.S. patent application Ser. No. 09/179,545, filed Oct. 26, 1998, which is a continuation of U.S. patent application Ser. No. 08/437,096, filed May 5, 1995, which is now U.S. Pat. No. 5,861,906.
Without the prosection history, one can only speculate as to why this is the case, but commonly there is a procedure in the USPTO known as a "file wrapper continuation" where the applicant can continue prosecution of a twice rejected application by simply paying a new filing fee and filing the application all over again. An assumption would be that this is what has happened since there are 40+ US patent prior art references and NO non US patent prior art references. Since US examiners are prone to cite US patents as prior art, I assume that all of the prior art references were dug up by the USPTO.
A reasonable conclusion is that the USPTO worked damn hard to kill this application, or at least reduce the scope of the claims. Hats off to examiners Andrew Faile and Jasom Salce at the USPTO for giving it their best effort.
Let's see what the zealous lawyers at Lee & Hayes PLLC were able to get for their client.
The patent contains only three independent claims (hmmm, MS probably paid at least $25,000 to get this patent and the zealous lawyers at Lee & Hayes didn't even bother to add some dependent claims. tsk, tsk, tsk.)
Three claims: an apparatus, a method, and a method used in an apparatus.
Looks like claim 2 is the broadest one....
2. A method for operating a user interface used in interactive entertainment network system, the interactive entertainment network system having a content provider which is connected to provide video content programs to a plurality of user interface units in individual homes, the user interface being executed on a processor provided at each user interface unit, the method comprising the following steps:
hmmmm nothing new or interesting in the preamble
generating a list of entries pertaining to the video content programs;
displaying a number of entries on the list; nothing much clever about this element.
scrolling through the list by continually updating the displayed entries, whereby one entry on the list is removed as another entry on the list is added; and
sort of maybe a little novel - deleting one entry as another is added...
enabling a viewer to adjust a rate at which entries are removed and added to thereby modify a rate at which the list visually appears to be scrolling.
sort of maybe even a little bit more novel - adjusting the rate so that it appears to be scrolling...
my guess: probably a valid patent - a narrow, useless, easy to design around patent. but probably a valid patent nonetheless.
it certainly is NOT as the title suggests a patent "covering" VOD - "distantly related to" VOD, perhaps, "covering a minor, unimportant, and irrlelevant feature of" VOD is more accurate.
looks like the USPTO did a good job on this one.
so do as sql*kitten says and "read the claims!"
and please - lay off the examiners and the USPTO and read the bloody claims and try to make a reasonable conclusion about what the patent covers before spouting off with animal food trough water, empty headed wipers of other people's backsides slashdot reactions about patents.
bottom line is that this is a narrow, unimportant, easily avoided, easily designed around patent which adds very little value to MS's portfolio and should give no one cause for concern - except's MS's legal department who paid alot of money for it.
happy now?
Call my New York Telephone number and it rings wherever in the world I've got the ATA connected. It has worked in Tokyo and London with better than cellular voice quality.
I don't have the same mobility as cellular and I have to register the phone with the server everytime I relocate it, but it's a push of a button.
And for $39.95 a month I have unlimited calling within the US (inc. Alaska and Hawaii) and Canada... and real time access to my account, voice mail I can access through my PC anywhere in the world. While the price isn't going down yet, the scope of coverage is. Canada was recently added without any increase in price.
My local Bell can't match this and isn't even trying. In fact, if you have access to cable, you don't even need to be connected to the local loop.
Local telephone service IS dead. It just doesn't know it yet.
FYI The best reference on Internet Telephony is:
Harte, Lawrence 2003: Internet Telephone, How to Select, Setup, Use, and Optimize Telephone Service through the Internet. Althos.
Let's Help Them Out Yeah right. At the National Space Symposium in Colorado Springs in early April, Teets proposed that U.S. resources from military, civilian and commercial satellites be combined to provide "persistence in total situational awareness, for the benefit of this nation's war fighters." If allies don't like the new paradigm of space dominance, said Air Force secretary James Roche, they'll just have to learn to accept it. The allies, he told the symposium, will have "no veto power." http://www.eetimes.com/sys/news/OEG20030522S0050 The Chinese are not stupid. They're going after the high ground before the Pentagon can deny them access to it. If 9/11 was a wake up call for America, the unprovoked invasion of Iraq was the wake up call for everyone else. Thanks to Bush and his criminial disregard for international law, the world is a far less safe place for everyone.
..(actually they claim it never had anything to do with copyrights and patent violations. Yeah right. If it never did, why were they pretending companies other than IBM may be in the firing line and why were they milking a "licence our IP" scheme out of this?
there may not be any inconsistency here. the definition of IP (intellectual property) includes patents, trademarks and copyrights - and trade secrets. from what i can google, SCO appears to be claiming that:
IBM has contaminated the Linux Kernel, GNU/Linux, and/or Linux distribution source code with proprietary, SCO-owned Unix source code, and
IBM has misappropriated and misused proprietary, and/or confidential, SCO-Caldera methods, technology, and know-how to aid in Linux development.
if this is correct then IBM would be guilty of misappropriation of trade secrets.
in any case it appears that novell may be sitting on some valuable patents and copyrights. while slashdotters might be pleased with novell's support of linux, novell shareholders might question why the management apparently allows these properties (which they now claim to own) to be freely infringed by ibm, oracle, and many others.
despite the differences between the economic models for GSM and the Web, i pay more or less the same price today for GSM service as i do for my Web access (using ADSL) - about 35 evros a month. since both are of equal value to me, from a consumer's perspective, this is reasonable.
all i am saying is that there is more than one way to get from point A to point B and the W3C's (recently adopted) patent policy is by no means the only way. i personally believe the W3C's chosen path is the wrong one which will only benefit the giants.
most slashdotters seem to view patents as a big-company squashing the small-company.
cross-licensing is a matter of trading equal value for equal value. big companies with lots of patents AND a large market share trade with other big companies with lots of patents and large market shares. a university, a small company, or even an individual with even one patent and no market share does not have to trade away their patents in a cross-license.
with RAND small companies actually have a hope to be able to profit from their innovations.
but as a result of the W3C's patent policy the giants can use the results of the hard work and innovation of small companies, universities, and individuals without having to compensate them.
HP and IBM are hardly anti-patent, but they support the W3C RF patent policy... ostensibly because they concluded that with RAND they would have to pay more than they would receive.
under RAND, IBM, HP, Oracle, and all the other giants would very likely have to pay royalties to small companies who have no interest, or need, for a cross-license.
the W3C RF policy is a sellout of precisely the people whom W3C claims to support - the small developer.
nor does the W3C RF policy provide any of these small companies protection against the thousands of other patents which IBM, HP, and the other giants hold.
patents are the only defense small companies have against the giants, yet by telling david that all slings are bad, the W3C convinced them to agree to lay down their weapons. to be fair, the W3C also forces the goliaths to lay down their weapons, but the goliaths still have their fists.
it is also a fallacy that one can declare one's self a patent free zone. most governments do not allow so much personal soverignty. patents owned by non-W3C members are not subject to the RF policy.
the result of the W3C policy will be less competitition, higher end-user prices, and none of the benefits which were used to sell the policy.
marx said that communism was not about reforming private property, its goal was abolishing private property. the W3C is using the same "logic" and will probably produce the same results - a few get rich and powerful and the average person gets screwed and exploited.
GSM (the European mobile phone standard) is the world's most successful standard, used by 750 million people the world over.
GSM is covered by hundreds, if not thousands of patents, owned by dozens of entities - large, medium, and small. Most of these patents are made available under RAND licensing policies, some are not and are bitterly contested.
And yet, GSM exists. And thrives. And grows.
Any argument that patents would be "death" to W3C either ignore this fact, or is ignorant of it.
Unless you are writing Harry Potter books, the average author agreement gives the author 15% of list price. The publisher keeps 85%.
So the book that sells for $35 gives 5 and a quarter to the author, and $29.75 to the publisher, minus her publishing and marketing costs.
There are printers who can print out a single copy of a book for a few dollars. If you print a thousand, the production price is far lower.
You do the rest of the math.
I hope you don't try to shave with those "razor thin" profit margins, you'll just be pushing the shaving cream around.
score: 11, bloody insightful.
how many people gauge their own well-being by the growth of their salary, savings, or possessions, when "growth" can also be expressed in terms of an increase in free time, the ability to not have to travel to an office to work, or other quality of life factors?
western societies are not necessarily wedded to growth in terms of economic production, but as long as we ourselves measure our own growth in these same terms it will be somewhat difficult to escape.
i traded a six figure income (and all of the associated demands) because the money wasn't as worth as much to me as having more time to pursue other things in life. by the Economist's standards, i am suffering a deep recession, but according to my definition, i am enjoying a long period of sustainted growth in satisfaction (even if i am running the risk of inflation from having too much of a good thing.)
saying anything pro-patent on slashdot is like dousing yourself with gasoline and asking for a light. you've shown remarkable restraint.
personal computers, mobile phones, MRI machines, cars, pharmaceuticals all exist - despite the fact that all of these contain hundreds of patented inventions owned by lots of different entities.
GSM, and not the Internet, is arguably the world's most successful standard. a standard developed under RAND licensing terms, covered by thousands of patents owned by dozens of companies. and used today by nearly 700 million people.
patents did not stop GSM - they aided the development of a highly successful standard by making it commercially viable.
why is software so different?
the fears of the Open Source movement are founded on just that - fears - even Perens in his article says that the fact that there haven't been any patent problems is a problem because he can't point to the entrance of the cave and say "look at the bones, man."
so, he and others paint doomsday scenarios to prevent a rational debate from occuring.
fear (or ideology) should not be the basis for public policy debate.
the facts contradict the fears.
viewing "intellectual" property as a special class of property not worthy of the same property protections as "real" property is rather strange actually.
most slashdotters are probably comfortable with the concept of owning land - a resource of fixed size - yet there seems to be a viseral rejection of the ownership of intellectual property whose dimensions are limitless.
knowledge has value. the economies of more and more countries are based on this value. yet knowledge is easily stolen.
it is uniquely easy to steal which is why i advocate stronger protections.
the EU will accept software patents because there are sound economic reasons for so doing. shrill voices yelling that the sky is falling are not likely to change this.