You can't get a patent on anything that was known in the US before you 'invented' it. 35 U.S.C. 102(a). Claim 1 of the MSFT patent application reads:
A method in a computer system for conjugating verbs in a target language, the method comprising: receiving a verb in a base language; identifying verb forms in the target language using a translation of the received verb from the base language to the target language; and displaying the identified verb forms in the target language.
This claim reads literally on the method for looking up verbs in NJStar Japanese Word Processor 5.01. The program "receiv[es] a verb" in English in the input window; "identif[ies] verb forms" in Japanese using EDICT; and "display[s] the identified verb forms" in Japanese. See here for pretty pictures. That method was definitely invented (and probably documented -- I don't have the manual for that version) before the word processor went on sale in November 2004. MSFT 'invented' the method on their filing date, Feb. 25, 2005, until and unless they prove otherwise. The examiner should reject the application.
MSFT probably did invent something worth patenting. The problem here is that their claims are too broad, or in the alternative, too vague.
NJStar Japanese Word processor 5.01, released in 2004 (before filing date of the application). Note the features marked, respectively, "Instant English-Japanese/Japanese-English dictionary/translation" and "Japanese verb forms generator for Japanese study."
it amazed me that I've never seen OO.o advertised in a campus bookstore.
The purpose of the bookstore is to make money. Every time you convert someone to OO.o, they lose a sale of Office. Therefore, not only will you never see OO.o advertised in a bookstore, but you'll probably get dirty looks from the manager whenever you tell anyone about it.
Disclaimer: I am not expressing an opinion on Google Desktop. I have never used it, nor have I seen anyone else use it.
Google Desktop isn't unsafe in any way. Google fully discloses the fact that they'll be rooting around in your hard drive and mixing data from there, with data from their servers, for the purposes of providing a local Google search to you on your own machine.
I am now fully disclosing that I'm going to shoot you with a handgun. Don't worry, you'll be perfectly safe.
*BANG*
No anti-spyware application I've seen to date has detected Google Desktop (granted, I've only seen 3 machines that actually used GD) but that says something to me.
What, the guys at Google are clever? But we already knew that.
Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. (Props to Carl Sagan)
It allows for a unified international filing system. The US might get concessions on the world stage in exchange for switching.
PTO and inventors would save time and money, through much easier resolution of interferences.
Patent prosecution goes faster.
More certainty in who owns a patent. No danger of someone showing up years later and claiming priority.
Arguments against a switch:
First-to-file fosters premature, less cohesive inventions and applications.
Small entities are disadvantaged in a race to the patent office, due to limited resources. First to invent gives them a way to file later and prove primacy.
Theft of inventions is more likely to succeed under first-to-file.
A switch provides fewer opportunities to explore commercial options prior to filing.
when we tested it to try and determine what was wrong, we didn't find anything wrong with it
Try having the customer use your product, with you looking over their shoulder. I'm sure whatever testing environment you have set up is different from their deployed environment. That means going on-site. When you pay the time and money to take care of your customers, they will notice it, and your relationship will improve. It might even bring you referral business.
How do you deal with a customer who is bent on assuming that you are incompetent, and that he or she could never have unreasonable expectations?
If you aren't solving their problems, then you appear incompetent. Appearances go a long way. Which means, you need to figure out how to solve their problems, rather than do a few tests and throw up your hands in defeat. If it were me, I'd look at this as an opportunity to actually use my problem-solving skills, rather than just grind out code.
We don't need Outlook on Linux. What we need is a decent email/groupware client that will interact seamlessly with MS Exchange
This can never happen. As long as you don't have control over the entire system (which is to say, the MS Exchange codebase), you will never be able to guarantee stability. Just look at OSCAR. And from some of the code I've browsed through (and maintained) over the years, even with complete control, you'll probably still never get there, although that's a separate gripe.
The FTC doesn't have that kind of power. Here's what they can do:
If upon such hearing the Commission shall be of the opinion that the method of competition or the act or practice in question is prohibited by this subchapter, it shall make a report in writing in which it shall state its findings as to the facts and shall issue and cause to be served on such person, partnership, or corporation an order requiring such person, partnership, or corporation to cease and desist from using such method of competition or such act or practice.
15 U.S.C. 45(b). The FTC said what Rambus' unfair acts were. FTFA: "Rambus withheld information that would have been highly material to the standard-setting process within JEDEC." "JEDEC members acted reasonably when they relied on Rambus's actions and omissions and adopted the SDRAM and DDR SDRAM standards." "Rambus was able to conceal its patents and patent applications until after the standards were adopted and the market was locked in."
According to the text of the statute, the FTC can order Rambus not to hide their patents any more. That's a pretty hollow victory.
On the other hand, this ruling shows that Rambus violated antitrust law. That means anyone sued by Rambus for patent infringement has a strong patent misuse defense, which should get the case dismissed almost immediately. Head down to your local law school library and look up: Donald S. Chisum, Chisum on Patents 19.04 (2006). Basically, the upshot is that Rambus won't have its patents thrown out (other people besides JEDEC members could be infringing while not implementing the specification), but at least as regards those implementing the JEDEC spec, the patents will be unenforceable.
If you call being a jackass lucky. Yes, you had every right to say what you said, but that doesn't mean you should have said it. Knowing the difference is called maturity.
The police were there to keep the peace and make sure people don't get hurt. This happens a lot when there are large groups of people in one place. When people instigate, it encourages others to do the same, and the situation can get out of control quickly. That's why they arrest instigators. If you want to piss off police officers, fine, that's your right, but you should expect to be arrested if you do. You made a choice to be at that protest, the cop didn't. Don't give him shit.
And don't give me any bogus First Amendment arguments. First Amendment takes a back seat to immediate public safety. If you don't believe me, try yelling 'fire' in a movie theater. I am sick and tired of people using my First Amendment rights as an excuse for their childish behavior.
The police need to be watched. But if you're going to be a dick when you watch them, it's only going to add fuel to the paranoia fire, and that hurts everyone.
Here's an idea: tell companies they could hire your for project and code documentation. There aren't nearly enough good people who can do that, and it's essential. Then, once you're on the inside, get to know the dev team and show them you know your stuff. If you do a good job, they will be your allies when you talk to the boss about moving on to coding work. Once you've done some work for the company, you won't have any problems changing jobs later if you need to, since by that time you'll have references.
I'm pretty sure that I can record a CD, burn it, and sell it, all without involving any major corporation. Hell, why even burn it? Why not just post it on my own webspace?
What if I were to post my self-recorded, self-produced CD online, and charge nothing for it?
Then you'd be doing a lot of things that 'distract from the art', and that many artists would rather pay someone else to do. You know, a lot of people pay someone to do their taxes, mow their yard, buy their groceries, etc ad infinitum. Enter the record labels...
I don't know if you've ever run a business before. I have, and there's a hell of a lot of things that need doing that have nothing to do with 'the product'. I got frustrated a lot, because I'd rather be coding than chasing after a payroll error or looking for health insurance or yelling at the power company. I'm sure a lot of musicians would rather be making music than dealing with the inevitable customer complaints due to some obscure SQL error in the shopping cart database code that they hired some friend of theirs to write who's now on vacation in Tahiti for two weeks. That's why record labels are useful.
Until someone can figure out that problem, there will always be artist demand for outsourcing the niggling details.
I've often said that the only way you can solve most of the issues revolving around the internet today is to make it a sovereign nation. That way one set of laws, one set of taxes, one set of decency can apply to all thus avoiding lawsuits in a million different countries due to your content.
So we legitimize the idea of Internet Police, then we concentrate their power. Terrific. I thought the reason the net was so successful was because it was decentralized.
Then there's the problem of the intangible 'location' of the internet. Suppose you have a case which involves fraud over the internet (419, anyone?). So you want to sue in California, but the scammer gets the case removed to Internet Court, which happens to be in, let's say, Switzerland. That would be frustrating beyond bounds. This won't be practical unless you get the other sovereign nations to allow courts of foreign jurisdiction ('Internet courts') to start erecting courthouses in their backyards. Good luck with that.
You want better FX?? You realize that the show is over 10 years old now, right? The kind of weekly FX they did for that show blew everything else the hell out of the water, and opened the door for the kind of modern FX today that seems to have spoiled you with some sort of hindsight bias disease. Heck, that show had better weekly FX than some of the feature length movies of the day, with much a smaller budget.
As for "Comes the Inquisitor," JMS acknowledged that he had a braino. His words:
What happened is...basically...Joe is a moron.
I did my research. I called up the info on the encyclopedia, got all the dates right, and my eyes saw East End and for whatever stupid, idiotic reason, my fingers typed West instead of East, and nobody, NObody, caught it until now. I'd loop it, but alas the line is on his face, and it'd look real stupid, and the delivery is *so* perfect as it is; if we looped it, we'd destroy it.
So I content myself with the notion that it's west...of B5.
Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go shoot myself.
That kind of commitment is what made B5 great. Not to mention the fact that JMS essentially blogged about the show long before that word could have been invented, since there wasn't even a WWW yet. He took fan feedback from the blog, and incorporated it into the show. That's a rarity, even today. Voting people off a TV show doesn't even come close to the level of interaction JMS had with the B5 fanbase.
See Executive Order 13292, signed into law by George Bush, which governs classified information. For the changes he made to Clinton's classification policies, see here.
Big media wants to cripple technology so they can make more money? Say it ain't so! Next thing, you'll be telling me they can't figure out how to do it, so they're lobbying Congress to make it illegal.
Unless you've been living under a rock for the last ten years, this announcement should come as no surprise. Nothing to see here folks, move along.
Actually, you could probably ask for a "fifty center" in your change, and be perfectly understood. They obviously don't have this problem in England, where everyone just asks for "fifty pencres" and all is peachy.
As my dad is fond of saying, "there are two metres between those two two-metre meters." Or was it "two meters between those two two-meter metres"? Or was it...
And don't forget:
'vain', 'vein', and 'vane';
'their', 'they're', and 'there';
'cite', 'sight', and 'site';
'rays', 'raise', and 'raze'; or
'feign', 'fain', and 'fane'. (Bonus points if you knew the meaning of the last word without googling it.)
the natural OCD-like nature of kids make the details easy for them, as long as their having fun, and have a good healthy diet that's conducive to a reasonable attention span
I count no fewer than nine grammatical mistakes in that sentence:
failure to capitalize the first word of the sentence;
failure to properly punctuate the end of the sentence;
redundancy ("natural nature");
extraneous comma after "fun" (conjunctive commas only allowed when joining three or more clauses);
missing comma after "natural" (multiple adjectives require commas separating them);
missing comma after "good" (same);
subject-verb number disagreement (should be "nature makes" not "nature make");
tense disagreement in subordinate clauses ('they are having' = present progressive, 'they have' = present); and
improper contraction (should be "they're" not "their").
The sentence is also arguably a run-on. I'm not sure how your mention of a "healthy diet conducive to a reasonable attention span" supports your proposition that "the details are easy for" children because of their OCD-like nature. However, that's a logical objection, not a grammatical one. I'll give you points on a proper use of the word "conducive"; however, the word "good" is frequently overused, and in your sentence can be elided as an expletive. Finally, use of a formal term (OCD) with an informal one (kids) is a bit awkward.
Your sentence might read more clearly as
The OCD-like nature of children makes the details easy for them, as long as they have both fun and a healthy diet that's conducive to a reasonable attention span.
Cheers!
[I am such a grammar nazi and karma whore. I guess that makes me a nazi whore with grammar karma.]
Slashdot Mirror
And for those persons who may not have gotten the reference, see the parable of the broken window.
MSFT probably did invent something worth patenting. The problem here is that their claims are too broad, or in the alternative, too vague.
NJStar Japanese Word processor 5.01, released in 2004 (before filing date of the application). Note the features marked, respectively, "Instant English-Japanese/Japanese-English dictionary/translation" and "Japanese verb forms generator for Japanese study."
We need laws favoring carbon neutrality. Because carbon is made of tubes.
Is that why he only has 6 posts on the TiVo forums? And joined in September 2006 (i.e., yesterday)?
The purpose of the bookstore is to make money. Every time you convert someone to OO.o, they lose a sale of Office. Therefore, not only will you never see OO.o advertised in a bookstore, but you'll probably get dirty looks from the manager whenever you tell anyone about it.
*BANG*
What, the guys at Google are clever? But we already knew that.
Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. (Props to Carl Sagan)
Or, proxies have been the solution for years and years. Depends on which side of the table you sit.
- First to file is virtually de facto now.
- It allows for a unified international filing system. The US might get concessions on the world stage in exchange for switching.
- PTO and inventors would save time and money, through much easier resolution of interferences.
- Patent prosecution goes faster.
- More certainty in who owns a patent. No danger of someone showing up years later and claiming priority.
Arguments against a switch:- First-to-file fosters premature, less cohesive inventions and applications.
- Small entities are disadvantaged in a race to the patent office, due to limited resources. First to invent gives them a way to file later and prove primacy.
- Theft of inventions is more likely to succeed under first-to-file.
- A switch provides fewer opportunities to explore commercial options prior to filing.
- PTO would be swamped by defensive filings.
Discuss amongst yourselves.Reality check: the people with the best lawyers and most money already win all the patents.
If you aren't solving their problems, then you appear incompetent. Appearances go a long way. Which means, you need to figure out how to solve their problems, rather than do a few tests and throw up your hands in defeat. If it were me, I'd look at this as an opportunity to actually use my problem-solving skills, rather than just grind out code.
This can never happen. As long as you don't have control over the entire system (which is to say, the MS Exchange codebase), you will never be able to guarantee stability. Just look at OSCAR. And from some of the code I've browsed through (and maintained) over the years, even with complete control, you'll probably still never get there, although that's a separate gripe.
The FTC doesn't have that kind of power. Here's what they can do:
15 U.S.C. 45(b). The FTC said what Rambus' unfair acts were. FTFA: "Rambus withheld information that would have been highly material to the standard-setting process within JEDEC." "JEDEC members acted reasonably when they relied on Rambus's actions and omissions and adopted the SDRAM and DDR SDRAM standards." "Rambus was able to conceal its patents and patent applications until after the standards were adopted and the market was locked in."
According to the text of the statute, the FTC can order Rambus not to hide their patents any more. That's a pretty hollow victory.
On the other hand, this ruling shows that Rambus violated antitrust law. That means anyone sued by Rambus for patent infringement has a strong patent misuse defense, which should get the case dismissed almost immediately. Head down to your local law school library and look up: Donald S. Chisum, Chisum on Patents 19.04 (2006). Basically, the upshot is that Rambus won't have its patents thrown out (other people besides JEDEC members could be infringing while not implementing the specification), but at least as regards those implementing the JEDEC spec, the patents will be unenforceable.
The police were there to keep the peace and make sure people don't get hurt. This happens a lot when there are large groups of people in one place. When people instigate, it encourages others to do the same, and the situation can get out of control quickly. That's why they arrest instigators. If you want to piss off police officers, fine, that's your right, but you should expect to be arrested if you do. You made a choice to be at that protest, the cop didn't. Don't give him shit.
And don't give me any bogus First Amendment arguments. First Amendment takes a back seat to immediate public safety. If you don't believe me, try yelling 'fire' in a movie theater. I am sick and tired of people using my First Amendment rights as an excuse for their childish behavior.
The police need to be watched. But if you're going to be a dick when you watch them, it's only going to add fuel to the paranoia fire, and that hurts everyone.
Here's an idea: tell companies they could hire your for project and code documentation. There aren't nearly enough good people who can do that, and it's essential. Then, once you're on the inside, get to know the dev team and show them you know your stuff. If you do a good job, they will be your allies when you talk to the boss about moving on to coding work. Once you've done some work for the company, you won't have any problems changing jobs later if you need to, since by that time you'll have references.
Then you'd be doing a lot of things that 'distract from the art', and that many artists would rather pay someone else to do. You know, a lot of people pay someone to do their taxes, mow their yard, buy their groceries, etc ad infinitum. Enter the record labels...
I don't know if you've ever run a business before. I have, and there's a hell of a lot of things that need doing that have nothing to do with 'the product'. I got frustrated a lot, because I'd rather be coding than chasing after a payroll error or looking for health insurance or yelling at the power company. I'm sure a lot of musicians would rather be making music than dealing with the inevitable customer complaints due to some obscure SQL error in the shopping cart database code that they hired some friend of theirs to write who's now on vacation in Tahiti for two weeks. That's why record labels are useful.
Until someone can figure out that problem, there will always be artist demand for outsourcing the niggling details.
So we legitimize the idea of Internet Police, then we concentrate their power. Terrific. I thought the reason the net was so successful was because it was decentralized.
Then there's the problem of the intangible 'location' of the internet. Suppose you have a case which involves fraud over the internet (419, anyone?). So you want to sue in California, but the scammer gets the case removed to Internet Court, which happens to be in, let's say, Switzerland. That would be frustrating beyond bounds. This won't be practical unless you get the other sovereign nations to allow courts of foreign jurisdiction ('Internet courts') to start erecting courthouses in their backyards. Good luck with that.
As for "Comes the Inquisitor," JMS acknowledged that he had a braino. His words:
That kind of commitment is what made B5 great. Not to mention the fact that JMS essentially blogged about the show long before that word could have been invented, since there wasn't even a WWW yet. He took fan feedback from the blog, and incorporated it into the show. That's a rarity, even today. Voting people off a TV show doesn't even come close to the level of interaction JMS had with the B5 fanbase.See Executive Order 13292, signed into law by George Bush, which governs classified information. For the changes he made to Clinton's classification policies, see here.
Mod parent up. This is exactly what happened.
Unless you've been living under a rock for the last ten years, this announcement should come as no surprise. Nothing to see here folks, move along.
Holy cow, somebody reads Playboy for the articles?!
Actually, you could probably ask for a "fifty center" in your change, and be perfectly understood. They obviously don't have this problem in England, where everyone just asks for "fifty pencres" and all is peachy.
And don't forget:
I count no fewer than nine grammatical mistakes in that sentence:
- failure to capitalize the first word of the sentence;
- failure to properly punctuate the end of the sentence;
- redundancy ("natural nature");
- extraneous comma after "fun" (conjunctive commas only allowed when joining three or more clauses);
- missing comma after "natural" (multiple adjectives require commas separating them);
- missing comma after "good" (same);
- subject-verb number disagreement (should be "nature makes" not "nature make");
- tense disagreement in subordinate clauses ('they are having' = present progressive, 'they have' = present); and
- improper contraction (should be "they're" not "their").
The sentence is also arguably a run-on. I'm not sure how your mention of a "healthy diet conducive to a reasonable attention span" supports your proposition that "the details are easy for" children because of their OCD-like nature. However, that's a logical objection, not a grammatical one. I'll give you points on a proper use of the word "conducive"; however, the word "good" is frequently overused, and in your sentence can be elided as an expletive. Finally, use of a formal term (OCD) with an informal one (kids) is a bit awkward.Your sentence might read more clearly as
Cheers!
[I am such a grammar nazi and karma whore. I guess that makes me a nazi whore with grammar karma.]