Are you serious? Do you really think the US military doesn't have the capability to completely destroy whatever they wish? A few dozen innocent people getting killed every day for years by terrorist attacks has a completely different effect than a hundred thousand killed by a few well aimed nukes, despite the similar death toll. In the first situation, more people are likely to side with the US, so that is the strategy.
Prior art doesn't need to be exact. You can have multiple separate references and a obvious motivation for "one skilled in the art" to combine. Not as great as a killer piece that shows everything, but many a court case have been won by combining prior art. There is obviousness too which is harder to prove.
Not the exact answer to your question, but useful to keep in mind
I'm not sure your example northern countries are really a comparable situation. For example, in Canada the vast majority of the people live in a band along the southern side of the country. A large portion is mostly uninhabited tundra. The US is a different situation because people actually live in most of the area between cities. So you can't really average out the pop. density for the entire country and get an accurate picture. A better metric would be comparing localized areas of similar population density. Has anyone done that? I don't know, so far it seems like a lot of hearsay.
Yes, there is too much corruption, I will heartily agree with that.
Do you have any good links to either software or basic descriptions of algorithms for doing 3d scene reconstruction by any chance? Feeling lazy on the google search front. I did found a few abstracts... but not sure if they are any good. Ideally I'd like to find either demo software or a video, or even a good discussion group would be nice.
That's pretty impressive that you even get the choice with such a wide variety of speeds at reasonable prices. I would love to have 1M down cable for $20 a month! Here the crap speed DSL plans (256k u/d) start at around $30 unless you get the even more useless $40 a month phone package. The next step up is 6M cable, which typically gets about 1M down anyway.
Why not do both? I mean the amount spent on the space program and environmental research and engineering in general is pitiful compared to other government expenditures. Do you really think that money spent on space programs is that much of a waste?? If we can't leave it anytime soon, our solar system is a pretty amazing place to explore and will keep people busy for centuries.
We should be fighting for more money for ALL types of scientific programs, not fighting amongst ourselves for scraps. And not just from the government too.
Not that I'm criticizing you in particular, but it irks me when people think we have to choose between doing cool engineering and science-type things on earth and in space. Why not both? The budgets of space programs and scientific research is pitiful compared to the amount wasted on subsidies, social programs, military spending, and pork projects.
The thing about the bottom of the ocean is that it can already be reached in a matter of minutes (hours?). So there's less of an incentive to actually live there, when it's not that far away. I am somewhat surprised there isn't a manned research station though... I would think there would be a lot of scientists interested in staying there in a relatively comfortable lab for an extended period of time.
I guess it's good that if someone is going to bother to make a law about something, that it's at least enforced and brought to people's attention, even if it's a questionable law. I understand that people feel a need to have someone 'qualified' but what really constitutes that for a public office? Is there really that much to the job that a reasonably intelligent person couldn't pick it up within a month or two? I'll bet no.
What you're talking about reminds me how Tipler came up with some theories for 'time travel' having something to do with the gravitational effects near an infinite cylinder.
Here's a interesting thought I had for a way to observe past events, that doesn't require any new understanding of space/time:
Light can be bent by the gravity of a massive object, which we can observe (e.g. gravitational lensing). Theoretically, a massive enough object can bend light enough so that it travels 180 degrees back to the point of origin. Alternatively a series of massive stars could each bend a light beam a few degrees to accomplish the same thing. So essentially you could observe light from your point of origin in the past. So assuming we can find the right alignment of stars, we can see the entire history of the Earth as it was.
Now, granted, even if we could resolve every individual photon that managed to make it that far, it may be too few to see anything at a very high resolution. But, I think it likely there would be enough to at least make out the atmospheric composition and get some useful data out of the exercise. Kind of cool, I think, if it would work.
What does consciousness have to do with it?? Do you think physicists are just sitting around watching photons and eyeballing the measurements? No, obviously they have computers and lab equipment that is recording that information, and will continue to do so whether a conscious person looks at it or not.
The collapse of the wavefunction is caused by interaction with other particles. After the interaction, the particle has a new modified wavefunction.
The parent poster's analogy is correct in the sense that taking measurements are massively disruptive to a particle. Like measuring where a pool ball is in the dark by throwing things at it. You can know the position almost exactly of a particle at any given time, but then you can't know where it is headed next since the momentum is uncertain.
The thing he didn't elaborate on was that until that physical interaction (and after it), the particle exists like a wave. It has everything to do with interference from other particles... that's why quantum computers are so hard to build. Wavefunctions collapse and get modified by interaction with other particles all the time. All the 'spooky' effects disappear when other particles not in the same quantum state come into play.
As one of the Nader voters, I wonder how many recall all the people who said they were going to move to Canada if Bush got elected and are still sitting around here bitching about it 8 years later? Why don't you blame your own party for not being willing to put forward a candidate that can appeal to the apathetic voters who think both the Republicans and Democrats are full of it? Instead you're trying to attack the people who actually dare to challenge the status quo and vote for a 3rd party... who's votes you desperately need!
The world isn't black and white. 3rd party votes say that if you want our vote stop pushing the same old agenda. It's too bad Obama is losing popularity to the old guard candidates... he looked appealing from this 3rd party standpoint.
Ummm, if filing patent applications was free you might have a case. Alternatively, searching for prior art is free (other than your time) and you have an army of people who might potentially be interested. Granted, someone would still likely have to go to court to challenge it, but I'd wager there are quite a few companies who would love to see these patents go away, and would gladly take the opportunity
That's a very good point! At what layer of abstraction does it start (or stop) being obvious to a "person skilled in the art"? So they are essentially saying writing the code to implement the client or server part is obvious, but what isn't obvious is putting them together to make a one-click system.
Although I might agree with you about any idiot being able to reverse engineer it, the USPTO has to deal with the 20/20 hindsight problem...there's a lot of novel ideas out there that make perfect sense in retrospect. So unless there is some sort of proof that it's been thought of before, what else can they do but grant it?
As far as having a working implementation, you've essentially identified the problem of 'patent trolls' who patent the idea but don't actually do anything with it other than sell it. But the argument there is that well, some things take time to create and market, and that's essentially why there's a patent system; to give the small guy a chance to create his or her idea and sell it without fear of a larger company with more resources outmaneuvering them in the market.
The cost of fighting a "bad" patent is an issue. Searching for arguable prior art takes time and typically $$, fighting a court battle takes $$$$$, and the alternative reexam typically ends up producing a stronger patent. And you are definitely right in that the USPTO really has no incentive to spend the time necessary to do a thorough job, since a questionable patent that anyone actually cared about will probably get taken to court anyway...why waste their money and time when someone else will?
I would however argue that there is an incentive for the inventor to search for prior art to make their patent more solid in a potential court battle (since it's not terribly hard to find prior art for a lot of patents), but it is also true that the more general the claims, the easier it will be to accuse someone of infringement... definitely a balancing act there. I suppose that's why a lot of companies tell their employees not to worry about the legal issues, just invent the product. But it is definitely harder to be a one-man operation and have the money/time/expertise/willingness to stand up to a large patent holder accusing them of infringment.
It's easy to say "look! prior art", but what I'm getting at is to prove it in court it takes a lot more of an argument, since the video game example doesn't specifically show combining all those aspects together.
So essentially you have the uphill battle of showing me as a judge or jury something that proves that the idea of a single click to order something has been published before, all the aspects of the client-server communication have been published before, and that those documents have hinted that they could be combined. Essentially you have to show it should be unpatentable because it has been anticipated these could be combined to make a one click ordering system. Take a look at 35 USC 102 (the best kind of reference) vs. 35 USC 103 (a lot harder to prove in court)
I think it's awesome that people are interested in finding prior art for patents like this... But you have to be careful when doing so that you can demonstrate every single phrase in the claim language of the patent you're trying to kill is covered in your references. In the case of the video game, since it presumably doesn't show all the intermediary steps, you have to demonstrate quite a bit more to be able to use it effectively as prior art, and there are probably better examples out there... it's just a matter of finding them.
I meant a lot harder to prove in court. What I'm getting at is that to be able to point to the video game and call it prior art the video game has to demonstrate a server receiving the request, using it to process the order etc... I doubt they would show that sort of information in a video game. Maybe you could say, ok, it is implied that those things happen behind the scenes. But once you get into ambiguities like that you run into trouble, at least as far as proving it in court, since it requires more of a leap than if the video game had shown all those steps.
You're not completely out of luck...you could still use it as one of many examples to be combined as prior art, but proving that each of your prior art references logically go together like pieces in a puzzle, and that they each anticipate that they can be combined, and cover every single word in the claim language is the sticky part.
The problem with these types of prior art is that you have to prove that it is obvious how a person who is skilled in the art could implement ALL the aspects of the invention that Amazon or whomever is claiming. Yeah, the idea of "one-click to buy" is pretty basic, but the steps they lay out in their claims are more involved:
A method of placing an order for an item comprising:
under control of a client system,
displaying information identifying the item; and
in response to only a single action being performed, sending a request to order the item along with an identifier of a purchaser of the item to a server system;
under control of a single-action ordering component of the server system,
receiving the request;
retrieving additional information previously stored for the purchaser identified by the identifier in the received request; and
generating an order to purchase the requested item for the purchaser identified by the identifier in the received request using the retrieved additional information; and
fulfilling the generated order to complete purchase of the item
whereby the item is ordered without using a shopping cart ordering model.
The way you described the game doesn't teach how to do the client-server part of the claims and proving that it's obvious an engineer skilled in the art could just throw together a system like that from seeing what you descibed is a LOT harder.
A good example: say I invent a warp drive or a phaser or what have you. The fact that it's been shown on Star Trek for the last 40 years doesn't count as prior art because from watching the show it's not obvious how to construct one. But if I tried to patent say a LCARS-style layout of buttons, then you might have a good argument for unpatentability since those layouts are shown all the time.
Why is the website called wikipedia on dvd, and yet they only have an option to download a 420mb CD image? Where is the 4+GB DVD image their name implies?
So what you are saying is that UHF channels come in fine, but you have some problems with VHF, namely channel 2 your PBS station.
I think your options are 1. Limited basic cable (usally around $10 a month) 2. Get a better VHF antenna (or a roof mounted one) and wait for the govt. to extend the deadline yet again, which they will. or 3. Ask for a standalone digital tuner box rather than a "downconverter". As many other people in this thread have suggested, your terminology is confusing at best. If they don't have it at the store, just point your "silcon-based internet receiver" to an electronics site and buy one online.
Yeah I have to second this comment about terminology. When I read "downconverter", suddenly visions of wireless cable and ham radio started popping into my head. My understanding in the electronics world, "downconverting" generally refers to shifting broadcast frequencies around rather than doing a D-A conversion. No wonder they were confused. Definitely a fun topic, but in the parent's case I think "Digital tuner" is more suitable.
that people might respect your opinion more if you didn't call them "bitches" before they even get to the content of your message?
Which segues into the point of end-user attitude. Essentially I think it comes down to the question: "If you screw up your computer with 3rd party software are you going to blame me or yourself when something doesn't work right?" If they say me, they're getting sandboxed. Otherwise they can do what they want as long as it's not negatively affecting other people or against company policy. If they know they only have themselves to blame when they lose data when we have to reimage their machine, or are without computer for a day or two, they'll be a lot more careful.
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Are you serious? Do you really think the US military doesn't have the capability to completely destroy whatever they wish? A few dozen innocent people getting killed every day for years by terrorist attacks has a completely different effect than a hundred thousand killed by a few well aimed nukes, despite the similar death toll. In the first situation, more people are likely to side with the US, so that is the strategy.
Prior art doesn't need to be exact. You can have multiple separate references and a obvious motivation for "one skilled in the art" to combine. Not as great as a killer piece that shows everything, but many a court case have been won by combining prior art. There is obviousness too which is harder to prove.
Not the exact answer to your question, but useful to keep in mind
I'm not sure your example northern countries are really a comparable situation. For example, in Canada the vast majority of the people live in a band along the southern side of the country. A large portion is mostly uninhabited tundra. The US is a different situation because people actually live in most of the area between cities. So you can't really average out the pop. density for the entire country and get an accurate picture. A better metric would be comparing localized areas of similar population density. Has anyone done that? I don't know, so far it seems like a lot of hearsay.
Yes, there is too much corruption, I will heartily agree with that.
Do you have any good links to either software or basic descriptions of algorithms for doing 3d scene reconstruction by any chance? Feeling lazy on the google search front. I did found a few abstracts... but not sure if they are any good. Ideally I'd like to find either demo software or a video, or even a good discussion group would be nice.
That's pretty impressive that you even get the choice with such a wide variety of speeds at reasonable prices. I would love to have 1M down cable for $20 a month! Here the crap speed DSL plans (256k u/d) start at around $30 unless you get the even more useless $40 a month phone package. The next step up is 6M cable, which typically gets about 1M down anyway.
Why not do both? I mean the amount spent on the space program and environmental research and engineering in general is pitiful compared to other government expenditures. Do you really think that money spent on space programs is that much of a waste?? If we can't leave it anytime soon, our solar system is a pretty amazing place to explore and will keep people busy for centuries.
We should be fighting for more money for ALL types of scientific programs, not fighting amongst ourselves for scraps. And not just from the government too.
Not that I'm criticizing you in particular, but it irks me when people think we have to choose between doing cool engineering and science-type things on earth and in space. Why not both? The budgets of space programs and scientific research is pitiful compared to the amount wasted on subsidies, social programs, military spending, and pork projects.
The thing about the bottom of the ocean is that it can already be reached in a matter of minutes (hours?). So there's less of an incentive to actually live there, when it's not that far away. I am somewhat surprised there isn't a manned research station though... I would think there would be a lot of scientists interested in staying there in a relatively comfortable lab for an extended period of time.
I guess it's good that if someone is going to bother to make a law about something, that it's at least enforced and brought to people's attention, even if it's a questionable law. I understand that people feel a need to have someone 'qualified' but what really constitutes that for a public office? Is there really that much to the job that a reasonably intelligent person couldn't pick it up within a month or two? I'll bet no.
What you're talking about reminds me how Tipler came up with some theories for 'time travel' having something to do with the gravitational effects near an infinite cylinder.
Here's a interesting thought I had for a way to observe past events, that doesn't require any new understanding of space/time:
Light can be bent by the gravity of a massive object, which we can observe (e.g. gravitational lensing). Theoretically, a massive enough object can bend light enough so that it travels 180 degrees back to the point of origin. Alternatively a series of massive stars could each bend a light beam a few degrees to accomplish the same thing. So essentially you could observe light from your point of origin in the past. So assuming we can find the right alignment of stars, we can see the entire history of the Earth as it was.
Now, granted, even if we could resolve every individual photon that managed to make it that far, it may be too few to see anything at a very high resolution. But, I think it likely there would be enough to at least make out the atmospheric composition and get some useful data out of the exercise. Kind of cool, I think, if it would work.
What does consciousness have to do with it?? Do you think physicists are just sitting around watching photons and eyeballing the measurements? No, obviously they have computers and lab equipment that is recording that information, and will continue to do so whether a conscious person looks at it or not.
The collapse of the wavefunction is caused by interaction with other particles. After the interaction, the particle has a new modified wavefunction.
The parent poster's analogy is correct in the sense that taking measurements are massively disruptive to a particle. Like measuring where a pool ball is in the dark by throwing things at it. You can know the position almost exactly of a particle at any given time, but then you can't know where it is headed next since the momentum is uncertain.
The thing he didn't elaborate on was that until that physical interaction (and after it), the particle exists like a wave. It has everything to do with interference from other particles... that's why quantum computers are so hard to build. Wavefunctions collapse and get modified by interaction with other particles all the time. All the 'spooky' effects disappear when other particles not in the same quantum state come into play.
As one of the Nader voters, I wonder how many recall all the people who said they were going to move to Canada if Bush got elected and are still sitting around here bitching about it 8 years later? Why don't you blame your own party for not being willing to put forward a candidate that can appeal to the apathetic voters who think both the Republicans and Democrats are full of it? Instead you're trying to attack the people who actually dare to challenge the status quo and vote for a 3rd party... who's votes you desperately need!
The world isn't black and white. 3rd party votes say that if you want our vote stop pushing the same old agenda. It's too bad Obama is losing popularity to the old guard candidates... he looked appealing from this 3rd party standpoint.
You can patent an element!
Ummm, if filing patent applications was free you might have a case. Alternatively, searching for prior art is free (other than your time) and you have an army of people who might potentially be interested. Granted, someone would still likely have to go to court to challenge it, but I'd wager there are quite a few companies who would love to see these patents go away, and would gladly take the opportunity
That's a very good point! At what layer of abstraction does it start (or stop) being obvious to a "person skilled in the art"? So they are essentially saying writing the code to implement the client or server part is obvious, but what isn't obvious is putting them together to make a one-click system.
Although I might agree with you about any idiot being able to reverse engineer it, the USPTO has to deal with the 20/20 hindsight problem...there's a lot of novel ideas out there that make perfect sense in retrospect. So unless there is some sort of proof that it's been thought of before, what else can they do but grant it?
As far as having a working implementation, you've essentially identified the problem of 'patent trolls' who patent the idea but don't actually do anything with it other than sell it. But the argument there is that well, some things take time to create and market, and that's essentially why there's a patent system; to give the small guy a chance to create his or her idea and sell it without fear of a larger company with more resources outmaneuvering them in the market.
The cost of fighting a "bad" patent is an issue. Searching for arguable prior art takes time and typically $$, fighting a court battle takes $$$$$, and the alternative reexam typically ends up producing a stronger patent. And you are definitely right in that the USPTO really has no incentive to spend the time necessary to do a thorough job, since a questionable patent that anyone actually cared about will probably get taken to court anyway...why waste their money and time when someone else will?
I would however argue that there is an incentive for the inventor to search for prior art to make their patent more solid in a potential court battle (since it's not terribly hard to find prior art for a lot of patents), but it is also true that the more general the claims, the easier it will be to accuse someone of infringement... definitely a balancing act there. I suppose that's why a lot of companies tell their employees not to worry about the legal issues, just invent the product. But it is definitely harder to be a one-man operation and have the money/time/expertise/willingness to stand up to a large patent holder accusing them of infringment.
It's easy to say "look! prior art", but what I'm getting at is to prove it in court it takes a lot more of an argument, since the video game example doesn't specifically show combining all those aspects together.
So essentially you have the uphill battle of showing me as a judge or jury something that proves that the idea of a single click to order something has been published before, all the aspects of the client-server communication have been published before, and that those documents have hinted that they could be combined. Essentially you have to show it should be unpatentable because it has been anticipated these could be combined to make a one click ordering system. Take a look at 35 USC 102 (the best kind of reference) vs. 35 USC 103 (a lot harder to prove in court)
I think it's awesome that people are interested in finding prior art for patents like this... But you have to be careful when doing so that you can demonstrate every single phrase in the claim language of the patent you're trying to kill is covered in your references. In the case of the video game, since it presumably doesn't show all the intermediary steps, you have to demonstrate quite a bit more to be able to use it effectively as prior art, and there are probably better examples out there... it's just a matter of finding them.
I meant a lot harder to prove in court. What I'm getting at is that to be able to point to the video game and call it prior art the video game has to demonstrate a server receiving the request, using it to process the order etc... I doubt they would show that sort of information in a video game. Maybe you could say, ok, it is implied that those things happen behind the scenes. But once you get into ambiguities like that you run into trouble, at least as far as proving it in court, since it requires more of a leap than if the video game had shown all those steps.
You're not completely out of luck...you could still use it as one of many examples to be combined as prior art, but proving that each of your prior art references logically go together like pieces in a puzzle, and that they each anticipate that they can be combined, and cover every single word in the claim language is the sticky part.
A method of placing an order for an item comprising: under control of a client system, displaying information identifying the item; and in response to only a single action being performed, sending a request to order the item along with an identifier of a purchaser of the item to a server system; under control of a single-action ordering component of the server system, receiving the request; retrieving additional information previously stored for the purchaser identified by the identifier in the received request; and generating an order to purchase the requested item for the purchaser identified by the identifier in the received request using the retrieved additional information; and fulfilling the generated order to complete purchase of the item whereby the item is ordered without using a shopping cart ordering model.
The way you described the game doesn't teach how to do the client-server part of the claims and proving that it's obvious an engineer skilled in the art could just throw together a system like that from seeing what you descibed is a LOT harder.
A good example: say I invent a warp drive or a phaser or what have you. The fact that it's been shown on Star Trek for the last 40 years doesn't count as prior art because from watching the show it's not obvious how to construct one. But if I tried to patent say a LCARS-style layout of buttons, then you might have a good argument for unpatentability since those layouts are shown all the time.
Stanford's "budding lawyers" are quite likely hoping to get jobs with firms that would represent the *AA's and similar big-money interests.
On the other hand, being able to successfully take on the RIAA would likely result in a myriad of job offers....
Why is the website called wikipedia on dvd, and yet they only have an option to download a 420mb CD image? Where is the 4+GB DVD image their name implies?
So what you are saying is that UHF channels come in fine, but you have some problems with VHF, namely channel 2 your PBS station.
I think your options are
1. Limited basic cable (usally around $10 a month)
2. Get a better VHF antenna (or a roof mounted one) and wait for the govt. to extend the deadline yet again, which they will.
or
3. Ask for a standalone digital tuner box rather than a "downconverter". As many other people in this thread have suggested, your terminology is confusing at best. If they don't have it at the store, just point your "silcon-based internet receiver" to an electronics site and buy one online.
Yeah I have to second this comment about terminology. When I read "downconverter", suddenly visions of wireless cable and ham radio started popping into my head. My understanding in the electronics world, "downconverting" generally refers to shifting broadcast frequencies around rather than doing a D-A conversion. No wonder they were confused. Definitely a fun topic, but in the parent's case I think "Digital tuner" is more suitable.
that people might respect your opinion more if you didn't call them "bitches" before they even get to the content of your message?
Which segues into the point of end-user attitude. Essentially I think it comes down to the question: "If you screw up your computer with 3rd party software are you going to blame me or yourself when something doesn't work right?" If they say me, they're getting sandboxed. Otherwise they can do what they want as long as it's not negatively affecting other people or against company policy. If they know they only have themselves to blame when they lose data when we have to reimage their machine, or are without computer for a day or two, they'll be a lot more careful.