Seriously, this represents a fairly substantial judicial bitch-slap of the lower court. The ruling not only rebukes the plaintiff but also the court that bought their theory.
Then the phone company trucks arrive, and sell you an ADSL modem which they hook up to the EXACT SAME WIRES, and all of a sudden you are zipping along at 24 Mbit/s.
These companies are using this bandwidth to provide the services we need. Ever heard of a Cell phone?
The government has no need of this specturm. WE the PEOPLE do.
Buy it back from ATT and your cell phone is off the air. In your case this may lead to considerable signal to noise ration improvement. But in the general case its a silly suggestion.
This is a physical problem. There is only so much spectrum available.
Kind of reminds me of the predictions that 9.6, then 14.4, then 28.8 were the fastest possible modem throughput on copper because it was physically impossible to squeeze any more information onto the available bandwidth.
Yet each time someone makes this assertion something else comes along.
With radio, as frequencies increase, building penetration, foliage penetration decreases. With increased cellular handset density the signal to noise floor rises and soon the phones can't hear themselves for all the shouting they have to do to be heard.
This is why the 700Mhz band was so important to wireless applications. Freeing this from television allows use in applications where range and penetration are important, such as cell phones and urban wifi.
Alowing cellular phones to add ranges in the 700Mhz band to the work-horse 850 and 900 bands allows broader coverage with the same towers, and increased building penetration.
Similarly, newer encoding schemes (the way modem speeds were enhanced) will allow faster service in the same bandwidth, or the same service in narrower bandwidth. Some say that the the encoding schemes in GSM are over due for enhancement anyway.
Additionally, different employment strategies can free up a lot of bandwidth over a urban area. We are starting to see many carriers deploying Femtocells, low power wifi and 3G stations that feed direct to the internet, and are no bigger than a book. If deployed widely, you could have a low power cell "tower" on top of a utility pole at every intersection, each with a range of a city block.
That solves a multitude of problems, not the least of which is suppressing the transmit power of every cell phone in range, which greatly improves the signal to noise ratio. There is probably no reason to ever build a cell tower in urban areas.
After all the Prius, embodying virtually ALL of these claims was ON SALE in Japan in 1997, after MANY years in development.
These guys first filed in 1998, and kept re-filing till they were spot on.
How likely is it they were following the published research in this field (or had a mole in Toyota) and cobbled something together and rushed to the patent office? Since Toyota was SELLING it BEFORE they filed you can pretty well assume this is the case given the lead time required to bring a vehicle to market.
The prior patents were not enough to keep Prius out of the US, and this one won't be either.
Start by reading the patent claims and the dates involved. Follow it back to the patents they claim this was based on.
Their earlier patent 6,554,088 did not mention AC-to-DC conversion. Only AFTER Toyota move to AC-DC conversion did this company start inserting that term into their applications. Further, this patent even references the Toyota transmission and the Prius by name.
The current patent is therefore based on a patent which already recognized the Prius.
Last I saw they were still getting gigs in liberal haunts all over the world, and even on American TV.
True, truck drivers might be tempted to launch a beer bottle over their heads should the mistakenly take a gig in some locales, but that hardly counts as censorship, just an opinion. More likely, the bar owner would cancel the gig for lack of an audience.
We could of course expect everyone to continue to pay admission, and sit quietly and listen politely to people they don't like, singing songs that make them angry. That's how its done in the rest of the world, I' sure.
No no, I was worrying about the shingles and damage to the wiring grid to which they are connected when sattelite tv guy stomps up there to screw his dish down.
Over the life of a house, people have to do this more often than you might imagine. The article is thin on details about just how durable and walkable these things are.
Probably not for snow country, but anything that could absorb some of the air conditioning load would be welcome.
A I see the Apple Fanboy Army has shown up to defend their God.
The USB spec also has a high degree of interoperability standards built in.
I note you choose to ignore those.
The point here, which you choose to ignore in your blind devotion to all things Jobs, is that Apple is using its Dominant (monoploy) position with the iTunes store to enforce the use of iTunes software.
They then go out of their way to block other devices from using the full capabilities of itunes.
Then then send armies of stooges out to whine about another company that was fully prepared to assume all costs of development and maintenance of a way to use iTunes, only to have grenades thrown at them.
But hey, that same stooge army has mod points, and anything on slashdot critical of apple will be modded into oblivion in short order.
No, its not a horrible analogy. It very very accurate.
You object to the word borrowed. I'll substitute the word "Stolen".
Apple took a publicly funded OS and took it private. They also took cups, Webkit, IP, and about a dozens other opensource projects and build OSX on the cheap.
To this day, they give virtually nothing back to the community.
For many years, until threatened with a lawsuit, they refused to give anything at all back to the opensource community. Finally when it looked like they would clearly lose in court, and found that they needed to steal even more software to OSX economically viable, they started to contribute back only the minimal patches to things like webkit.
They support no opensource projects monetarily or with paid staff.
They have contributed no significant code base to the community. Even AppleTalk was totally reverse engineered before Apple condescended to provide source to a largely obsolete technology.
They lock everything down with restrictive patents, and have a kennel of Rottweiler Lawyers that they keep very active.
Apple is not a good community member, and never has been.
They take, but give back only the minimal that they have to.
For you to wander in here and say in effect "Apple found BSD laying on they street - It was free for the taking" is at least an honest portrayal of Apple's practices.
My point in the GP post above was that fanboys should not point fingers and scream "Free Ride" when their God of Gods did exactly the same thing.
You are largely correct, that monopoly is NOT the issue here.
Dominant market position is. So is using Dominant Market position in one industry to achieve dominance in another.
This is illegal in the US.
Apple owns 70+% of online music sales world wide. They have long since passed the threshold where regulation is appropriate. They should either open the iTunes store to other software, or open syncing to other devices with the same facility and elegance as their own devices.
As for your statement:
I like Apple, and it seems wrong for Palm to get a free ride on Apple's work
I will refer you to the huge overwhelming percentage of Apple OS software that is "borrowed" from open source.
The only people who spout that line are Apple fanboys. It seems to be a mantra for them.
Note: Apple existed while Microsoft was being (and is still being) dragged thru a knothole. Therefore, Microsoft was not a monopoly either. There is no single manufacturer in any industry that has a monopoly. There is always an alternative).
Abuse of dominant market position is the issue here.
With Apple cornering WELL IN EXCESS of 70% market share of on-line music sales they have a dominant market position with the iTunes store, and the iTunes software.
Allowing you to purchase in the store, but preventing you from syncing the music or playing it on your choice of devices is an attempt to use their dominant market position in one industry to achieve dominance in another industry.
That is illegal in the US.
Monopoly doesn't even come into it. Its not the issue at all. You can only play the underdog if you actually ARE one.
So do give it a rest with the "Apple is not a Monopoly" nonsense ok?
There is no law against one machine lying to another. There is no allegation of theft, or attempt to defraud.
All there is is Apple treating some of their customers like second rate citizens. The black customers forced to sit in the back of the the technological bus.
So yes, Apple will be forced to stop restricting sync to its own devices only. Or they will have to document, license and publish the protocol to purchase from the iTunes store. Its just a matter of time.
You can not hold 70% share and still claim you are exempt from regulation because you have not yet achieved perfect monopoly.
Not to mention they have more of a 'need' for this type of transport.
Really? Why is that?
Why do we want to move so many people so far so fast. What is the point?
The idea that there is that much traffic from one city to the other on a daily basis is an excuse to get the money. (Its 800 miles, people. Nobody drives that daily).
No the real purpose here is to allow people to live outside these two cities and commute in for work. Fleeing the city at night to the smaller towns between.
Why not encourage people to live closer to where they work so that you don't have to build 800 mile commuter lines and then run them at high speeds.
If you want to push that line to Seattle then you might have a justification, because you could take 50 flights a day out of the sky with a morning and evening run in both directions to handle long distance travel.
But this line is proposed essentially for commuter service in disguise.
The problem is this concept that people should live hundreds of miles from where they work. Its fundamentally unjustified to hack over our economy, both California's and the Countries, hack over our infrastructure, our farm land, and our natural resources to support his model of population distribution which is really based on an elitist idea that the city is a place you go to make money, then get the hell out before dark.
It would be more sustainable in the long run to fix the cities so people didn't feel they had to flee them each evening.
We made this mistake all over the eastern seaboard. Is there any point in repeating the endless lines of cattle car commuter trains on the west coast?
The definition of software covered by this bill includes this exemption:
(B) does not include a program, application, or software designed primarily toâ"
(i) operate as a server that is accessible over the Internet using the Domain Name System;
So this implies that if you installed ssh server software on the machine, it is designed to operate as a server could claim this exemption.
However, then they put in that nonsense about the Domain Name System. Does this imply that a network based ONLY on numeric IP addresses is forbidden?
If you want to claim server status (and be exempt) you have to have a resolvable name?
You have to KNOW about it before you can remove it.
Since its EXEMPTED from even informing you (other than in some fine print in the back of the manual that came with the machine) your average user will not even KNOW about it because all they read (if anything) is the quick start guide.
Even more interesting is the provision right up front in section 2.a.2 exempting preloaded software on new computers as long as somewhere in the 40 pages of tiny print the purchaser is told that a back-door sharing program is installed.
So preloaded sharing programs and spyware installed by Sony is ok then...
You Apple fanboys have to back off a little bit. Apple is a big company, they don't need you to rush to their defense every time some one posts a disparaging word.
And the truth, as the parent posted, can not be a flame.
All electric cars still use transmissions. These have non zero weight.
Motors built into the wheels also have non zero weight, and major maintenance problems, which is why all production electric automobiles choose a single large electrical motor over in-wheel motors at each wheel.
This motor needs a transmission, because the voltage draw at starting would be enormous without it.
Most EVs use some form of continuously variable transmission (CVT), which is lighter, but not unique to electrics. The Nissan Altima also uses a CVT transmission, which allows it to accelerate while keeping engine speed within a vary narrow range.
2008 Honda Accord 6 Cylinder gets 500 miles on 18.5 gallons easily. But then its running on 3 or 4 cylinders most of that time.
Bringing it back on topic, yes, all of that energy can be loaded into the tank in about 2 minutes.
500 miles is about all I care to drive in a day, but I've put in longer days on occasions. So recharge time does matter in a small percentage of trips made in an average sedan.
If you could rapid charge while stopping for lunch you could extend the range. If at least some of the battery pack were quickly replaceable, you could drive into an exchange station and do a swap.
Slashdot Mirror
1,500,000 yen is about equal to $16,000 US.
Or in this case, zero.
Seriously, this represents a fairly substantial judicial bitch-slap of the lower court. The ruling not only rebukes the plaintiff but also the court that bought their theory.
Then the phone company trucks arrive, and sell you an ADSL modem which they hook up to the EXACT SAME WIRES, and all of a sudden you are zipping along at 24 Mbit/s.
So...
What are you talking about "Buy it back"?
These companies are using this bandwidth to provide the services we need. Ever heard of a Cell phone?
The government has no need of this specturm. WE the PEOPLE do.
Buy it back from ATT and your cell phone is off the air.
In your case this may lead to considerable signal to noise ration improvement. But in the general case its a silly suggestion.
This is a physical problem. There is only so much spectrum available.
Kind of reminds me of the predictions that 9.6, then 14.4, then 28.8 were the fastest possible modem throughput on copper because it was physically impossible to squeeze any more information onto the available bandwidth.
Yet each time someone makes this assertion something else comes along.
With radio, as frequencies increase, building penetration, foliage penetration decreases. With increased cellular handset density the signal to noise floor rises and soon the phones can't hear themselves for all the shouting they have to do to be heard.
This is why the 700Mhz band was so important to wireless applications. Freeing this from television allows use in applications where range and penetration are important, such as cell phones and urban wifi.
Alowing cellular phones to add ranges in the 700Mhz band to the work-horse 850 and 900 bands allows broader coverage with the same towers, and increased building penetration.
Similarly, newer encoding schemes (the way modem speeds were enhanced) will allow faster service in the same bandwidth, or the same service in narrower bandwidth. Some say that the the encoding schemes in GSM are over due for enhancement anyway.
Additionally, different employment strategies can free up a lot of bandwidth over a urban area. We are starting to see many carriers deploying Femtocells, low power wifi and 3G stations that feed direct to the internet, and are no bigger than a book. If deployed widely, you could have a low power cell "tower" on top of a utility pole at every intersection, each with a range of a city block.
That solves a multitude of problems, not the least of which is suppressing the transmit power of every cell phone in range, which greatly improves the signal to noise ratio. There is probably no reason to ever build a cell tower in urban areas.
Lets not predict the end of time just yet.
I suspect they were formed to troll patents.
After all the Prius, embodying virtually ALL of these claims was ON SALE in Japan in 1997, after MANY years in development.
These guys first filed in 1998, and kept re-filing till they were spot on.
How likely is it they were following the published research in this field (or had a mole in Toyota) and cobbled something together and rushed to the patent office? Since Toyota was SELLING it BEFORE they filed you can pretty well assume this is the case given the lead time required to bring a vehicle to market.
The prior patents were not enough to keep Prius out of the US, and this one won't be either.
Start by reading the patent claims and the dates involved. Follow it back to the patents they claim this was based on.
Their earlier patent 6,554,088 did not mention AC-to-DC conversion. Only AFTER Toyota move to AC-DC conversion did this company start inserting that term into their applications. Further, this patent even references the Toyota transmission and the Prius by name.
The current patent is therefore based on a patent which already recognized the Prius.
So, Troll, or non-applicable, take your choice.
Ok, I see your point. We don't run out and buy the records of people we don't like, we don't go to their movies so that's censorship?
You sir are a raving loon!
Since when were the Dixi Chicks censored?
Last I saw they were still getting gigs in liberal haunts all over the world, and even on American TV.
True, truck drivers might be tempted to launch a beer bottle over their heads should the mistakenly take a gig in some locales, but that hardly counts as censorship, just an opinion. More likely, the bar owner would cancel the gig for lack of an audience.
We could of course expect everyone to continue to pay admission, and sit quietly and listen politely to people they don't like, singing songs that make them angry. That's how its done in the rest of the world, I' sure.
Traction?
No no, I was worrying about the shingles and damage to the wiring grid to which they are connected when sattelite tv guy stomps up there to screw his dish down.
By the time your roof is on fire, toxicity is the furthest thing from your mind.
Asphalt shingles burn well, once lit. The graduals really only protect it from flying embers. And the smoke is fairly nasty.
Disposal is a larger issue. Even you average wood shingle is will last 100 years in a land fill. Asphalt is anyone's guess.
The point about walking on roofs is a key issue.
Over the life of a house, people have to do this more often than you might imagine. The article is thin on details about just how durable and walkable these things are.
Probably not for snow country, but anything that could absorb some of the air conditioning load would be welcome.
Typical Apple mentality.
That is exactly what they were FORCED into providing by threat of lawsuit.
Everything you see there are those opensource projects that Apple has "borrowed" and must, by the terms of the license provide source for.
Yet for years they stonewalled this. They were finally forced to put this up
Have you been to:
http://www.pcworld.com/article/163909/apple_is_sued_after_pressuring_opensource_itunes_project.html
http://www.eff.org/cases/odioworks-v-apple
A I see the Apple Fanboy Army has shown up to defend their God.
The USB spec also has a high degree of interoperability standards built in.
I note you choose to ignore those.
The point here, which you choose to ignore in your blind devotion to all things Jobs, is that Apple is using its Dominant (monoploy) position with the iTunes store to enforce the use of iTunes software.
They then go out of their way to block other devices from using the full capabilities of itunes.
Then then send armies of stooges out to whine about another company that was fully prepared to assume all costs of development and maintenance of a way to use iTunes, only to have grenades thrown at them.
But hey, that same stooge army has mod points, and anything on slashdot critical of apple will be modded into oblivion in short order.
No, its not a horrible analogy. It very very accurate.
You object to the word borrowed. I'll substitute the word "Stolen".
Apple took a publicly funded OS and took it private. They also took cups, Webkit, IP, and about a dozens other opensource projects and build OSX on the cheap.
To this day, they give virtually nothing back to the community.
For many years, until threatened with a lawsuit, they refused to give anything at all back to the opensource community. Finally when it looked like they would clearly lose in court, and found that they needed to steal even more software to OSX economically viable, they started to contribute back only the minimal patches to things like webkit.
They support no opensource projects monetarily or with paid staff.
They have contributed no significant code base to the community. Even AppleTalk was totally reverse engineered before Apple condescended to provide source to a largely obsolete technology.
They lock everything down with restrictive patents, and have a kennel of Rottweiler Lawyers that they keep very active.
Apple is not a good community member, and never has been.
They take, but give back only the minimal that they have to.
For you to wander in here and say in effect "Apple found BSD laying on they street - It was free for the taking" is at least an honest portrayal of Apple's practices.
My point in the GP post above was that fanboys should not point fingers and scream "Free Ride" when their God of Gods did exactly the same thing.
But again, Apple does offer interoperability, in a documented and supported way.
In a second class, highly crippled way. There is no Sync capability. No playlist support.
The fact that they can not prevent you from drag-and-drop using your computer's operating system hardly constitutes a level playing field.
You are largely correct, that monopoly is NOT the issue here.
Dominant market position is. So is using Dominant Market position in one industry to achieve dominance in another.
This is illegal in the US.
Apple owns 70+% of online music sales world wide. They have long since passed the threshold where regulation is appropriate. They should either open the iTunes store to other software, or open syncing to other devices with the same facility and elegance as their own devices.
As for your statement:
I like Apple, and it seems wrong for Palm to get a free ride on Apple's work
I will refer you to the huge overwhelming percentage of Apple OS software that is "borrowed" from open source.
Who is getting a free ride?
Oh, stop with that Apple is not a monopoly issue.
The only people who spout that line are Apple fanboys. It seems to be a mantra for them.
Note: Apple existed while Microsoft was being (and is still being) dragged thru a knothole. Therefore, Microsoft was not a monopoly either. There is no single manufacturer in any industry that has a monopoly. There is always an alternative).
Abuse of dominant market position is the issue here.
With Apple cornering WELL IN EXCESS of 70% market share of on-line music sales they have a dominant market position with the iTunes store, and the iTunes software.
Allowing you to purchase in the store, but preventing you from syncing the music or playing it on your choice of devices is an attempt to use their dominant market position in one industry to achieve dominance in another industry.
That is illegal in the US.
Monopoly doesn't even come into it. Its not the issue at all. You can only play the underdog if you actually ARE one.
So do give it a rest with the "Apple is not a Monopoly" nonsense ok?
There is no law against one machine lying to another. There is no allegation of theft, or attempt to defraud.
All there is is Apple treating some of their customers like second rate citizens. The black customers forced to sit in the back of the the technological bus.
So yes, Apple will be forced to stop restricting sync to its own devices only. Or they will have to document, license and publish the protocol to purchase from the iTunes store. Its just a matter of time.
You can not hold 70% share and still claim you are exempt from regulation because you have not yet achieved perfect monopoly.
Not to mention they have more of a 'need' for this type of transport.
Really? Why is that?
Why do we want to move so many people so far so fast. What is the point?
The idea that there is that much traffic from one city to the other on a daily basis is an excuse to get the money.
(Its 800 miles, people. Nobody drives that daily).
No the real purpose here is to allow people to live outside these two cities and commute in for work. Fleeing the city at night to the smaller towns between.
Why not encourage people to live closer to where they work so that you don't have to build 800 mile commuter lines and then run them at high speeds.
If you want to push that line to Seattle then you might have a justification, because you could take 50 flights a day out of the sky with a morning and evening run in both directions to handle long distance travel.
But this line is proposed essentially for commuter service in disguise.
The problem is this concept that people should live hundreds of miles from where they work. Its fundamentally unjustified to hack over our economy, both California's and the Countries, hack over our infrastructure, our farm land, and our natural resources to support his model of population distribution which is really based on an elitist idea that the city is a place you go to make money, then get the hell out before dark.
It would be more sustainable in the long run to fix the cities so people didn't feel they had to flee them each evening.
We made this mistake all over the eastern seaboard. Is there any point in repeating the endless lines of cattle car commuter trains on the west coast?
Hard to say.
The definition of software covered by this bill includes this exemption:
(B) does not include a program, application, or software designed primarily toâ"
(i) operate as a server that is accessible over the Internet using the Domain Name System;
So this implies that if you installed ssh server software on the machine, it is designed to operate as a server could claim this exemption.
However, then they put in that nonsense about the Domain Name System. Does this imply that a network based ONLY on numeric IP addresses is forbidden?
If you want to claim server status (and be exempt) you have to have a resolvable name?
Baffling!
You have to KNOW about it before you can remove it.
Since its EXEMPTED from even informing you (other than in some fine print in the back of the manual that came with the machine) your average user will not even KNOW about it because all they read (if anything) is the quick start guide.
I read the entire bill. Have you?
Even more interesting is the provision right up front in section 2.a.2 exempting preloaded software on new computers as long as somewhere in the 40 pages of tiny print the purchaser is told that a back-door sharing program is installed.
So preloaded sharing programs and spyware installed by Sony is ok then...
The bill is 7 pages, people. READ IT.
http://energycommerce.house.gov/Press_111/20090930/hr1319_ains.pdf
Seriously, how did parent get modded flamebate?
You Apple fanboys have to back off a little bit. Apple is a big company, they don't need you to rush to their defense every time some one posts a disparaging word.
And the truth, as the parent posted, can not be a flame.
No outlets in Los Angeles?
When plug in cars even reach 3% of the running stock there will be outlets in parking lots everywhere.
These are already seen in frosty places like Fairbanks Alaska for headbolt heaters, and are usually free.
Hotels will be the first to add these for there paying guests, activated by your kercard.
All electric cars still use transmissions. These have non zero weight.
Motors built into the wheels also have non zero weight, and major maintenance problems, which is why all production electric automobiles choose a single large electrical motor over in-wheel motors at each wheel.
This motor needs a transmission, because the voltage draw at starting would be enormous without it.
Most EVs use some form of continuously variable transmission (CVT), which is lighter, but not unique to electrics. The Nissan Altima also uses a CVT transmission, which allows it to accelerate while keeping engine speed within a vary narrow range.
2008 Honda Accord 6 Cylinder gets 500 miles on 18.5 gallons easily. But then its running on 3 or 4 cylinders most of that time.
Bringing it back on topic, yes, all of that energy can be loaded into the tank in about 2 minutes.
500 miles is about all I care to drive in a day, but I've put in longer days on occasions. So recharge time does matter in
a small percentage of trips made in an average sedan.
If you could rapid charge while stopping for lunch you could extend the range. If at least some of the battery pack were quickly replaceable, you could drive into an exchange station and do a swap.