You do not get patents for statements like "A system for printing spreadsheets over wifi". You get patents for specific claims made in your patent which describe specific things.
You've fallen for the Slashdot Summary Title Patent Definition.
Yet when you trace down and SSTPD, and actually, Read the Fine Patent, you will find an actual METHOD and perhaps an APPARATUS for doing what the patent claims.
I have qualms about letting any living thing be patented because if it escapes into the biosphere it becomes impossible to commercially control.
Being patented might well be the least of all worries if a "living thing" escapes into the biosphere. Patents have no bearing on such an event, or the potential harm (or good) that might result.
Clear out the super obvious and overly wide "because it's on the internet" and "because it's over wifi" type patents and there would be a lot less patent mines to avoid while developing a product.
Easily said, but just how would you propose to do such a thing? In fact, how do you propose to even DEFINE such a thing?
People always dug in the ground for food. Then a caveman picked up a handy stick and used that to dig with. Does that forever block patents on digging machines of all types, even when new technology comes along?
So when we invent tractor beams, digging with a tractor beam instead of a shovel is not patentable? (after all, its still just digging with a tool).
1) You need to provide clear an concise guidance on exactly what you consider patentable, 2) you need to define what is too broad, and what is too obvious. 3) Then you have to get everyone to agree with you, or at least a majority.
If any part of 1, 2,or 3 were easy, whores would do it. This is a sticky problem, and blithely suggesting clearing out the super obvious and overly wide patents, without defining "super obvious" or:overly wide" isn't going to cut it. Hindsight makes a lot of things "super obvious".
IIPA having childish temper tantrums again, can't we just ignore them? or at least get the US government to ignore them?
Wouldn't putting THEM on a watch list be more effective?
Publishing the home address, email, phone numbers, street view links of the CEO of each company that is a member, as well as each representative they send to these meetings? Maybe outing the meeting locations, and times?
If these bozos think its fair game to try to intimidate entire countries, why is turn-about not fair play?
no no no you got it all wrong. this is the lead fragments of a super massive sized meteor heading our way. You see when it passed through the asteroid belt it pushed a few rocks out in front of it. those are the rocks that are near missing us right now. And since we can't actually see that far into space we can't get together a group of drilling roughnecks and wannabe actors to save us all.
Although you are clearly trying a humor, you are probably more correct than you know.
Not about the Massive sized meteor bit, but about the prevalence of smaller "fellow travelers" following (or preceding) the Asteroid that missed earth on Feb 15. In addition to debris from impacts the asteroid may have suffered in the past, you can add possible small moonlets that might accompany the asteroid, or other random rocks that might have been influenced by the Asteroid over decades.
Much as some astronomers have rushed to say these are not related, (having never actually seen these meteors themselves) the likelihood is there that they accompanied or preceded the asteroid, or had a related origin. None of these meteors were even detected on radar in advance, and no-one knows their orbits. It may be possible to extract their orbits from pre-recorded observations from the past several weeks, but I doubt its anyone's priority.
I went through this same thing with my first start up. You should be worried about how the app or product actually works. Don't do the marketing yourself. If you know how you want to market it, that's fine. If that's the case, hire someone to just take orders from you. If you don't know how you want to market it, hire someone that can utilize personal connections in the field you are in.
On the other hand, putting up a web page and selling it from there for a while won't hurt a thing. You get the time to find all the bugs, address all the end-users issues of understanding, ease of use, desired features, all while dealing with a small user base that you can handle. Most developers vastly over estimate the completeness of their product.
There is such a thing as succeeding yourself to death. Taking in more business than you can possibly handle because some "marketing droids" push too hard, ensnare too many marginal customers, and end up giving a product a bad reputation for poor support.
A year of lower sales volume allows you to build in the quality. As you find yourself answering the same tech support questions over and over again you will find its easier to program around these issues. But none of that will happen when the phone rings non-stop with irate customers because of an over-aggressive marketing campaign by some marking company working on commission.
They say to expect a Tunguska sized one once a century and this one wasn't that big. They mostly ocean explode or strike so there's few signs of them but an ocean strike can be worse than a land one given the water they displace. They've got to wake up and start properly funding the near Earth program. It still won't protect against rouges but at least they can map ones that cross our orbit.
Really?
Just detecting these things can cost billions. Doing anything about them can cost trillions.
And most of these are air-burst, like yesterday's, (and like Tunguska). Since statistically, 3/4 of all are likely to hit ocean, the return on investment is going to be un-measurably small.
Air bursts over water are not likely to generate any significant amount of water displacement, and therefore no ocean wave damage. In fact, if you take the Tunguska event, you learn from wiki "To the explorers' surprise, no crater was to be found. There was instead around ground zero a vast zone (8 kilometres [5.0 mi] across) of trees scorched and devoid of branches, but standing upright.". A similar event over water might generate some local surface waves, but nothing of significance because there would be nothing offering any resistance to the blast wave.
Take something the size of the object that created Meteor Crater (50 meters in diameter), about 3 1/2 times as big as yesterday's object, didn't air-burst, but a substantial portion of it burned up on entry. The crater (3/4 miles in diameter) could have killed at most several million people if it hit down town London or New York city. But the biggest cities on earth are a tiny target.
But its likely it would have never been spotted, not by any technology today, and not by any technology proposed. I suspect the cost of developing the technology and maintaining it year in and year out, upgrading it every so often, shutting it down in periods of austerity, firing it back up when fears are rekindled are simply not worth the effort, especially when you consider the chance of success is minuscule at best. Its most beneficial effect would be as a jobs program, for people who believe the government should be the source of all jobs.
I'm not sure its necessary to postulate melodramatic scenarios involving killing other people and millions of dollars. If there was a point there, is was at best a stretch.
This isn't the first drug that does this very same thing on the market. Look up Antabuse (Disulfiram). It has not been terribly successful. Even among those volunteering for the treatment.
Without vigilance, there might be a widespread problem with people getting these vaccines against their will.
I could easily see it being court mandated, especially upon a DWI conviction. The effect seems to be short lived (30 days for mice), so unless major improvements in longevity of the effect, it would seem to be no more permanent than a jail sentence, but a lot less costly.
With one dose of the vaccine, the mice’s drinking habits diminish by 50% for 30 days.
That would suggest the effect is far shorter than 6 months, and the vaccine far less effective than most here seem to think. Chances are, the occasional, small. glass of wine wouldn't even affect most people.
If the effect only lasts for 30 days, (or, giving the benefit of the doubt, 6 months), the true alcoholic would find excuses to miss that second shot.
As for accidentally getting this shot, don't discount the possibility of a court order, or at the very least, a court ordered choice, the shot or jail. A shot with this short period of efficacy probably isn't likely to be successful in either combating alcoholism or preventing drinking, simply because it appears to be so short acting.
In fact, one wonders if it really qualifies as a vaccine. One of the hallmarks of a vaccine according to wiki is: "[an agent that] stimulates the body's immune system to recognize the agent as foreign, destroy it, and "remember" it, so that the immune system can more easily recognize and destroy any of these microorganisms that it later encounters."
This treatment seems merely to be an agent that suppress the production of a naturally occurring bodily enzyme, but only while the agent is present in quantity sufficient to trigger the suppression. It seems to have no lasting effect.
First thing I noticed was the Insulating Buildings. Glibly thrown out there like it's cheap, quick, or even possible in a city the size of New York with a bazillion buildings of various ages. It takes 6 months on a small two story building, and could take 6 years and hundreds of millions of dollars for any building over 20 floors.
They know exactly what Broder did with the car. It's like your son telling you he didn't visit that porn site when his laptop's IP address is logged by your router as having done so. Seriously, the guy didn't understand the technology he was fucking around with and his lack of credibility is about to be exposed in a big way.
Exactly. Tesla reps told him to drive 80? Tesla told him to undercharge even though the range indicator said he wouldn't make it. Not once, but THREE times? Tesla told him to lie about limping along at 45, even tho the log shows he never drove at 45?
Caught in a latent lie he tries to blame others. But mom, dad said I could....
What do you bet that Renault didn't even test his aftermarket modifications.? They probably used the existing pedals. Would you pronounce some after market add on as "fine"? After all, if you touch them you become responsible for them.
Details Missing from the quoted article is this bit:
The Frenchman, who suffers from epilepsy and drives a specially-modified car that has controls on the steering wheel to operate the throttle and brake, has filed a legal complaint against the vehicle's manufacturer.
They were originally targeting a $50k price tag with the S but rapidly gave up on that idea. Cool car though.
-l
The Model S starts at $52k. That seems pretty close to me.
Every car is currently custom built. This makes it pretty much impossible to meet production volumes that would easily allow it to get under $50K. It also makes it pretty much impossible to quote a realistic price. The highest end model comes in at $87.4k before the buyer adds options. And some of what Tesla sells as an option are pretty much standard equipment on most 50K cars.
They are selling them faster than they can make them and it has received spectacular reviews from the automotive press--or at least any automotive press that hadn't already made up their minds that "electric cars suck". This is a car which is more than competitive within its segment (luxury sports sedan). It's just a matter of time until the technology becomes more affordable and trickles down into mass market segments.
Hold on there....
They are purposely holding production down to just under what the market will absorb, because its important not to have a "sale" on a $87,000 car. With only a few charging stations around, they had to grow that network before they could possibly expect to sell cars in any volume.
Musk has already stated this is company policy for the first few years:
"To produce a vehicle that meets our quality standards requires us to carefully analyse each step of our production ramp, improve the efficiency of our manufacturing processes and continue to train our employees,"
Further, the car under review, Model S Performance isn't price competitive with the vary same car that Tesla's own website prefers to compare it with (the BMW 535i).
True, the car is well within the range of a wealthy owner. And the range has finally reached an acceptable level (265 miles on the largest available battery). And the promised (but not likely to be met) 20,000 vehicles in 2013 should see the car gain some traction in the market.
But to say they are selling them faster than they can make them is a bit of a twist on the fact that they are making them only as fast as they are selling. Read their sales page. Every car is bespoke. They are not producing ahead of a confirmed ($5000 minimum) reservation order.
Slashdot Mirror
You do not get patents for statements like "A system for printing spreadsheets over wifi".
You get patents for specific claims made in your patent which describe specific things.
You've fallen for the Slashdot Summary Title Patent Definition.
Yet when you trace down and SSTPD, and actually, Read the Fine Patent, you will find an actual METHOD and perhaps an APPARATUS for doing what the patent claims.
I have qualms about letting any living thing be patented because if it escapes into the biosphere it becomes impossible to commercially control.
Being patented might well be the least of all worries if a "living thing" escapes into the biosphere. Patents have no bearing on such an event, or the potential harm (or good) that might result.
Clear out the super obvious and overly wide "because it's on the internet" and "because it's over wifi" type patents and there would be a lot less patent mines to avoid while developing a product.
Easily said, but just how would you propose to do such a thing?
In fact, how do you propose to even DEFINE such a thing?
People always dug in the ground for food.
Then a caveman picked up a handy stick and used that to dig with.
Does that forever block patents on digging machines of all types, even when new technology comes along?
So when we invent tractor beams, digging with a tractor beam instead of a shovel is not patentable?
(after all, its still just digging with a tool).
1) You need to provide clear an concise guidance on exactly what you consider patentable,
2) you need to define what is too broad, and what is too obvious.
3) Then you have to get everyone to agree with you, or at least a majority.
If any part of 1, 2,or 3 were easy, whores would do it. This is a sticky problem, and blithely suggesting clearing out the super obvious and overly wide patents, without defining "super obvious" or :overly wide" isn't going to cut it. Hindsight makes a lot of things "super obvious".
Not sure pam gets a chance if your sshd_config specifies
PasswordAuthentication = no
ChallengeResponseAuthentication = no
Most installations default to UsePAM = no, or turn both of the above off.
IIPA having childish temper tantrums again, can't we just ignore them? or at least get the US government to ignore them?
Wouldn't putting THEM on a watch list be more effective?
Publishing the home address, email, phone numbers, street view links of the CEO of each company that is a member, as well as each representative they send to these meetings? Maybe outing the meeting locations, and times?
If these bozos think its fair game to try to intimidate entire countries, why is turn-about not fair play?
The Emacs operating system has always had a great text editor.
It just now has a horrible painful torture device to make you want to take a sledge hammer to your computer.
Sledge hammer. Spot on.
Emacs = The computing world's proof that, when the only tool you know is a hammer, you tend to look at every problem as if it were a nail.
no no no you got it all wrong. this is the lead fragments of a super massive sized meteor heading our way. You see when it passed through the asteroid belt it pushed a few rocks out in front of it. those are the rocks that are near missing us right now. And since we can't actually see that far into space we can't get together a group of drilling roughnecks and wannabe actors to save us all.
Although you are clearly trying a humor, you are probably more correct than you know.
Not about the Massive sized meteor bit, but about the prevalence of smaller "fellow travelers" following (or preceding) the Asteroid that missed earth on Feb 15. In addition to debris from impacts the asteroid may have suffered in the past, you can add possible small moonlets that might accompany the asteroid, or other random rocks that might have been influenced by the Asteroid over decades.
Much as some astronomers have rushed to say these are not related, (having never actually seen these meteors themselves) the likelihood is there that they accompanied or preceded the asteroid, or had a related origin. None of these meteors were even detected on radar in advance, and no-one knows their orbits. It may be possible to extract their orbits from pre-recorded observations from the past several weeks, but I doubt its anyone's priority.
I went through this same thing with my first start up.
You should be worried about how the app or product actually works. Don't do the marketing yourself. If you know how you want to market it, that's fine. If that's the case, hire someone to just take orders from you. If you don't know how you want to market it, hire someone that can utilize personal connections in the field you are in.
On the other hand, putting up a web page and selling it from there for a while won't hurt a thing.
You get the time to find all the bugs, address all the end-users issues of understanding, ease of use, desired features, all while dealing with a small user base that you can handle. Most developers vastly over estimate the completeness of their product.
There is such a thing as succeeding yourself to death. Taking in more business than you can possibly handle because some "marketing droids" push too hard, ensnare too many marginal customers, and end up giving a product a bad reputation for poor support.
A year of lower sales volume allows you to build in the quality. As you find yourself answering the same tech support questions over and over again you will find its easier to program around these issues. But none of that will happen when the phone rings non-stop with irate customers
because of an over-aggressive marketing campaign by some marking company working on commission.
Learn to walk before you try to run.
Ok, so apparently you are willing to work for the rest of your life for zero pay building a meteor detection system.
Great. Now go find several thousand people who think like you, and get to work.
They say to expect a Tunguska sized one once a century and this one wasn't that big. They mostly ocean explode or strike so there's few signs of them but an ocean strike can be worse than a land one given the water they displace. They've got to wake up and start properly funding the near Earth program. It still won't protect against rouges but at least they can map ones that cross our orbit.
Really?
Just detecting these things can cost billions. Doing anything about them can cost trillions.
And most of these are air-burst, like yesterday's, (and like Tunguska). Since statistically, 3/4 of all are likely to hit ocean, the return on investment is going to be un-measurably small.
Air bursts over water are not likely to generate any significant amount of water displacement, and therefore no ocean wave damage.
In fact, if you take the Tunguska event, you learn from wiki "To the explorers' surprise, no crater was to be found. There was instead around ground zero a vast zone (8 kilometres [5.0 mi] across) of trees scorched and devoid of branches, but standing upright.". A similar event over water might generate some local surface waves, but nothing of significance because there would be nothing offering any resistance to the blast wave.
Take something the size of the object that created Meteor Crater (50 meters in diameter), about 3 1/2 times as big as yesterday's object, didn't air-burst, but a substantial portion of it burned up on entry. The crater (3/4 miles in diameter) could have killed at most several million people if it hit down town London or New York city. But the biggest cities on earth are a tiny target.
But its likely it would have never been spotted, not by any technology today, and not by any technology proposed. I suspect the cost of developing the technology and maintaining it year in and year out, upgrading it every so often, shutting it down in periods of austerity, firing it back up when fears are rekindled are simply not worth the effort, especially when you consider the chance of success is minuscule at best. Its most beneficial effect would be as a jobs program, for people who believe the government should be the source of all jobs.
I'm not sure its necessary to postulate melodramatic scenarios involving killing other people and millions of dollars.
If there was a point there, is was at best a stretch.
This isn't the first drug that does this very same thing on the market. Look up Antabuse (Disulfiram). It has not been terribly successful. Even among those volunteering for the treatment.
For an even greater effect, use hot water. Very effective at unmasking all the hidden flavors.
You probably need more than a few drops of scotch.
Without vigilance, there might be a widespread problem with people getting these vaccines against their will.
I could easily see it being court mandated, especially upon a DWI conviction. The effect seems to be short lived (30 days for mice), so unless major improvements in longevity of the effect, it would seem to be no more permanent than a jail sentence, but a lot less costly.
Worst case it would be ruined for 6 months.
When you read TFA, is says:
With one dose of the vaccine, the mice’s drinking habits diminish by 50% for 30 days.
That would suggest the effect is far shorter than 6 months, and the vaccine far less effective than most here seem to think.
Chances are, the occasional, small. glass of wine wouldn't even affect most people.
If the effect only lasts for 30 days, (or, giving the benefit of the doubt, 6 months), the true alcoholic would find excuses
to miss that second shot.
As for accidentally getting this shot, don't discount the possibility of a court order, or at the very least, a court
ordered choice, the shot or jail. A shot with this short period of efficacy probably isn't likely to be successful
in either combating alcoholism or preventing drinking, simply because it appears to be so short acting.
In fact, one wonders if it really qualifies as a vaccine. One of the hallmarks of a vaccine according to wiki is: "[an agent that] stimulates the body's immune system to recognize the agent as foreign, destroy it, and "remember" it, so that the immune system can more easily recognize and destroy any of these microorganisms that it later encounters."
This treatment seems merely to be an agent that suppress the production of a naturally occurring bodily enzyme, but only while the agent is present in quantity sufficient to trigger the suppression. It seems to have no lasting effect.
I drank plenty of water and fluids (both before and fact the fact)
Last night too, I see.
House != NYC building.
Facade?
What about all four walls, and the roof?
Are you talking about a quick spray foam, or real insulation?
Agreed.
First thing I noticed was the Insulating Buildings.
Glibly thrown out there like it's cheap, quick, or even possible in a city the size of New York with a bazillion buildings of various ages.
It takes 6 months on a small two story building, and could take 6 years and hundreds of millions of dollars for any building over 20 floors.
They know exactly what Broder did with the car. It's like your son telling you he didn't visit that porn site when his laptop's IP address is logged by your router as having done so. Seriously, the guy didn't understand the technology he was fucking around with and his lack of credibility is about to be exposed in a big way.
Exactly.
Tesla reps told him to drive 80?
Tesla told him to undercharge even though the range indicator said he wouldn't make it. Not once, but THREE times?
Tesla told him to lie about limping along at 45, even tho the log shows he never drove at 45?
Caught in a latent lie he tries to blame others. But mom, dad said I could....
What do you bet that Renault didn't even test his aftermarket modifications.? They probably used the existing pedals.
Would you pronounce some after market add on as "fine"?
After all, if you touch them you become responsible for them.
Well, if you've seen drivers in Paris, Epilepsy would seem to be something of the norm.
Details Missing from the quoted article is this bit:
The Frenchman, who suffers from epilepsy and drives a specially-modified car that has controls on the steering wheel to operate the throttle and brake, has filed a legal complaint against the vehicle's manufacturer.
Source here.
Unless Renault did these modifications for him, I doubt he has a chance in hell of winning his suit.
I've never seen a car you couldn't force into Neutral even under heavy acceleration.
A $100,000 car is "mass market"?
They were originally targeting a $50k price tag with the S but rapidly gave up on that idea. Cool car though.
-l
The Model S starts at $52k. That seems pretty close to me.
Every car is currently custom built. This makes it pretty much impossible to meet production volumes that would easily allow it to get under $50K. It also makes it pretty much impossible to quote a realistic price. The highest end model comes in at $87.4k before the buyer adds options. And some of what Tesla sells as an option are pretty much standard equipment on most 50K cars.
One can not expect internal consistency in any situation where they accept the presence of magic.
They are selling them faster than they can make them and it has received spectacular reviews from the automotive press--or at least any automotive press that hadn't already made up their minds that "electric cars suck". This is a car which is more than competitive within its segment (luxury sports sedan). It's just a matter of time until the technology becomes more affordable and trickles down into mass market segments.
Hold on there....
They are purposely holding production down to just under what the market will absorb, because its important not to have a "sale" on a $87,000 car. With only a few charging stations around, they had to grow that network before they could possibly expect to sell cars in any volume.
Musk has already stated this is company policy for the first few years:
"To produce a vehicle that meets our quality standards requires us to carefully analyse each step of our production ramp, improve the efficiency of our manufacturing processes and continue to train our employees,"
Further, the car under review, Model S Performance isn't price competitive with the vary same car that Tesla's own website prefers to compare it with (the BMW 535i).
True, the car is well within the range of a wealthy owner. And the range has finally reached an acceptable level (265 miles on the largest available battery). And the promised (but not likely to be met) 20,000 vehicles in 2013 should see the car gain some traction in the market.
But to say they are selling them faster than they can make them is a bit of a twist on the fact that they are making them only as fast as they are selling. Read their sales page. Every car is bespoke. They are not producing ahead of a confirmed ($5000 minimum) reservation order.