I've always thought that a great patent should pass the Edison test: "do you think that your patent would impress Edison?" (assuming Edison was up on modern technology etc etc).
Or in other words - "is it a great wonderfull new idea rather than just an incremental change that would be obvious to any engineer faced with the same problem?"
IMHO probably one of the worst problems with the current patent system is the inability of the patent examiners to judge the "obvious to a practioner of ordinary skill in the field" test. A few years back I was engaged on an x86 cloning project.... it's a patent minefield, with the spectre of Intels lawyers looming at every term.... we came up with a wonderfull (though complicated) way to get around one of Intels primary (and IMHO obvious, with prior art) patents.... only to have a patent appear from a 3rd company with exactly the same solution... since both companies had come up with the same solution faced with the same problem boxed in by the same Intel problem patent I would argue that the solution was obvious to "ordinary computer architects" at the time... but there's no way I can see for a patent examiner to know or understand that - and since there's no way to bring these issues up untill after the patent has been granted - which means going to court....
The patent minefield isn't really getting any bigger... it'sm just that the mines keep getting closer together...
the magnet-quack people will probably start quoting this as a wonderfull scientific study that proves what they've been saying for years.... and most people wont read past the headlines....
that Sun thinks that the world thinks that 'Java' is a great brand name.... but in reality a whole bunch of people have been burned by it (at least in part by being flavor of the month for the.com crash) and will automatically associate it with whatever disaster they've suffered thru
you've got him wrong he doesn't want to say "you can't have it" - he wants to say "here it is over here, it's free, and here's some nice documentation and libraries that will make changing a breeze"
Actual question, just like the 60's spy movies. No kidding. Word for word. It was not a forgettable moment, let me assure you.
Yeah - they asked me the same question when I did my green card interview 20 years ago... mind you they also asked me "are you insane" (I'd be crazy to have answered 'yes' - mind you when I went skydiving and had to get a doctor to sign off on the same issue he said 'but you want to jump out of a plane'), "are you or have you ever been a member of the communist party" "are you coming to the US for illegal or immoral purposes" "do you have a venereal disease" etc etc... then they made me fill it out in septupulet (that would be 7 times, probably wanted to see how my handwriting stood up to stress and whether I could keep my story straight)
last year the 9th sent 24 cases to the supremes, 18 were overturned - that was way more than any other appeals court... but only because the 9th carries way more cases... the actual percentage overturn rate was pretty close to the mean for all the appeals courts - I guess you take the numbers that support your political views
I did it for 10 years.... before it was as fashionable (or mostly practical) - I'd go to work one day a week. You have to make sure you get out EVERY day, by lunch time, find a bunch of cafes to go to, bookstores, friends for lunch etc etc.
Working in a cafe's OK but can be kind of distracting. I also found it helpfull to make sure I didn't spend all the morning in my bathrobe - get up, get dressed, read the paper, have coffee then start work.
(this doesn' t apply so much to the consulting situation... but...) Working at home you basicly get to avoid most office politics... the downside - you tend to lose most office politics - unless you have a boss who will really go to bat for you. You also have to make sure you go out of your way to introduce yourself to your coworkers. At one job many people thought I was a consultant, while I had actually designed the main product they sold - I'd go and do trade shows just to get to meet them.
While it was great to do this - going back to a 'real' job was wonderfull I found I really didn't appreciate how important the social side of work
that's the 'Trusted Computing Platform' spec.... not the TCP/IP spec... what they mean is that any TCP hardware you buy now wont work right in the future....
Politicians have to grow and pair and get some thicker skin.
Urgh! you want them to breed? (sounds like slugs or something)
They must realize that a language develops because people make new terms and apply new definitions to existing words based on events with which they are familiar.
This isn't France - no one gets the last word as to what 'correct' english (or in this case 'merkin) is. We all get to throw words against the common wall and see if they stick - some do some don't - everyone gets a chance - you, me, even the guy who wrote the memo. If you want a wonderfull example of this look at what the Bush administration has done to the language since 9-11.
Politicians, I think it is YOU who are offended, not the minority which you claim to represent!
If you had actually read the article you would have realized that it wasn't a politician who had written the memo at all (not unless LA County has started electing Puchassing Managers)
I switched over to only using laptops when my tendonitis became unbearable... as a result I was able to throw away my wrist brace for the first time in 5 years.... for me at least there's no going back.
I buy the biggest, fastest laptop around, beautifull 1600x1200 screen, runs linux like a charm - sure I could get something that's 20% faster... but what would keep my lap warm at night....
And I'll add only that Matrox basically invented (or at least first implemented in commercial product) video ram something like quarter century ago
Bzzzt - wrong - Apple used it for the Mac 2 in about 1987 (pre windows), SuperMac did large screen 8-bit cards aropund the same time (and later 24-bit cards and accelerators). Windows took forever to catch up - largly due to evil address space limitations forcing bank switched displays (VGA et al) and crappy backplane buses. It wasn't really untill VLB and PCI took off that real video cards started to blossom for the PC platform
This is the FCC mandated EAS support (ie emergency alert - the thing those modem like tones on the radio EA messages you hear trigger) - they are legally required to do it
I grew up celebrating Guy Fawkes Night - we built a 'Guy', burned him on a bonfire, and of course bthe main draw to a 10 yr old was being able to buy enormous amounts of fireworks (something I can't do any more as an adult).
Looking back I'm horrified - I was raised to make an effigy of a person and symbolicly burn him at the stake because he's Catholic... what were people thinking (and it's gone on for 300 tears!) - and peopl,e wonder why there are generations long religious wars... it's because people wont let their children forget
err.... trust me the fins will probably fall off.... fin-flutter thru mach has killed many good rockets after their owners thought they'd try "just the next biggest motor"....
Barnes Wallis played with corkscrew fins, to get the benefit of gyroscopic forces.
Well putting a spin on a rocket helps you make it go straight - again cool it you want to make it go up - or aim at something really close in a straight line - if you want a real guidance system it makes it a lot harder in fact ideally you want to take the spin off - rollerons are a cool way to do this.
The big down side of spinning a rocket is drag (think of the dynamic effects as you go thru mach....)
first of all it's from New Zealand and secondly it's not a rocketpowered device - it's pulse jet powered (ie it's a V1 not a V2).
Modern hobby rockets (like I and many others fly) do one thing well (and not even that) - they go up. We have wonderfull guidance devices called 'fins' they make things go straight provided they are fast enough and there's still air around - even then you're at the mercy of the wind, the jet stream as you pass thru it (yes we do) etc etc.
In other words hobby rockets don't have the sort of guidance system you would use when you want to hit a target - if the Congress was actually thinking rather than just reacting "people with rockets must be dangerous and could be terrorists we must do something to show that we are doling something" and they wanted to stop actual attacks on real targets they would: shut down the public GPS, ban RC model planes (or ratehr radio gear) and would never have given those 1000s of stingers to binLaden in the first place.
SCO doesn't just distribute Linux, they distribute lots of other GPL'd code too.... if the KDE and Gnome, XFree86, gcc, etc etc teams (who's code is also being distributed by SCO) withdraw their code SCO can't even pretend to compete with the rest of the world. Yet all this is GPL'd code (or some varient) that SCO is now distributing in violation of the GPL....
First we need a web page with simple instructions on how to send a C&D
Next we need a list of what's being distributed - is the GPLed code I've released thru KDE there? (actually someone should go thru the copyright headers of all the code being distrbuted by SCO and mail everyone)
Slashdot Mirror
Or in other words - "is it a great wonderfull new idea rather than just an incremental change that would be obvious to any engineer faced with the same problem?"
IMHO probably one of the worst problems with the current patent system is the inability of the patent examiners to judge the "obvious to a practioner of ordinary skill in the field" test. A few years back I was engaged on an x86 cloning project .... it's a patent minefield, with the spectre of Intels lawyers looming at every term .... we came up with a wonderfull (though complicated) way to get around one of Intels primary (and IMHO obvious, with prior art) patents .... only to have a patent appear from a 3rd company with exactly the same solution ... since both companies had come up with the same solution faced with the same problem boxed in by the same Intel problem patent I would argue that the solution was obvious to "ordinary computer architects" at the time ... but there's no way I can see for a patent examiner to know or understand that - and since there's no way to bring these issues up untill after the patent has been granted - which means going to court ....
The patent minefield isn't really getting any bigger ... it'sm just that the mines keep getting closer together ...
the magnet-quack people will probably start quoting this as a wonderfull scientific study that proves what they've been saying for years .... and most people wont read past the headlines ....
that Sun thinks that the world thinks that 'Java' is a great brand name .... but in reality a whole bunch of people have been burned by it (at least in part by being flavor of the month for the .com crash) and will automatically associate it with whatever disaster they've suffered thru
you've got him wrong he doesn't want to say "you can't have it" - he wants to say "here it is over here, it's free, and here's some nice documentation and libraries that will make changing a breeze"
Yeah - they asked me the same question when I did my green card interview 20 years ago ... mind you they also asked me "are you insane" (I'd be crazy to have answered 'yes' - mind you when I went skydiving and had to get a doctor to sign off on the same issue he said 'but you want to jump out of a plane'), "are you or have you ever been a member of the communist party" "are you coming to the US for illegal or immoral purposes" "do you have a venereal disease" etc etc ... then they made me fill it out in septupulet (that would be 7 times, probably wanted to see how my handwriting stood up to stress and whether I could keep my story straight)
and here's a somwhat older story about the perils of applying for a security clearance from risks.d http://yarchive.net/risks/mongrel.html
last year the 9th sent 24 cases to the supremes, 18 were overturned - that was way more than any other appeals court ... but only because the 9th carries way more cases ... the actual percentage overturn rate was pretty close to the mean for all the appeals courts - I guess you take the numbers that support your political views
Working in a cafe's OK but can be kind of distracting. I also found it helpfull to make sure I didn't spend all the morning in my bathrobe - get up, get dressed, read the paper, have coffee then start work.
(this doesn' t apply so much to the consulting situation ... but ...) Working at home you basicly get to avoid most office politics ... the downside - you tend to lose most office politics - unless you have a boss who will really go to bat for you. You also have to make sure you go out of your way to introduce yourself to your coworkers. At one job many people thought I was a consultant, while I had actually designed the main product they sold - I'd go and do trade shows just to get to meet them.
While it was great to do this - going back to a 'real' job was wonderfull I found I really didn't appreciate how important the social side of work
that's the 'Trusted Computing Platform' spec .... not the TCP/IP spec ... what they mean is that any TCP hardware you buy now wont work right in the future ....
Urgh! you want them to breed? (sounds like slugs or something)
They must realize that a language develops because people make new terms and apply new definitions to existing words based on events with which they are familiar.
This isn't France - no one gets the last word as to what 'correct' english (or in this case 'merkin) is. We all get to throw words against the common wall and see if they stick - some do some don't - everyone gets a chance - you, me, even the guy who wrote the memo. If you want a wonderfull example of this look at what the Bush administration has done to the language since 9-11.
Politicians, I think it is YOU who are offended, not the minority which you claim to represent!
If you had actually read the article you would have realized that it wasn't a politician who had written the memo at all (not unless LA County has started electing Puchassing Managers)
I switched over to only using laptops when my tendonitis became unbearable ... as a result I was able to throw away my wrist brace for the first time in 5 years .... for me at least there's no going back.
I buy the biggest, fastest laptop around, beautifull 1600x1200 screen, runs linux like a charm - sure I could get something that's 20% faster ... but what would keep my lap warm at night ....
We better be carefull and not tell them abot the sexing of plugs and connectors ....
sorry you're right - it was the win3.1 reference you had that confused me - but to be fair SGI were also doing similar stuff back then too.
Bzzzt - wrong - Apple used it for the Mac 2 in about 1987 (pre windows), SuperMac did large screen 8-bit cards aropund the same time (and later 24-bit cards and accelerators). Windows took forever to catch up - largly due to evil address space limitations forcing bank switched displays (VGA et al) and crappy backplane buses. It wasn't really untill VLB and PCI took off that real video cards started to blossom for the PC platform
This is the FCC mandated EAS support (ie emergency alert - the thing those modem like tones on the radio EA messages you hear trigger) - they are legally required to do it
err - I can't type today .... that should be '300 years' though '300 tears' is somehow appropriate (and I guess it's really 400 years)
Looking back I'm horrified - I was raised to make an effigy of a person and symbolicly burn him at the stake because he's Catholic ... what were people thinking (and it's gone on for 300 tears!) - and peopl,e wonder why there are generations long religious wars ... it's because people wont let their children forget
err.... trust me the fins will probably fall off .... fin-flutter thru mach has killed many good rockets after their owners thought they'd try "just the next biggest motor" ....
Well putting a spin on a rocket helps you make it go straight - again cool it you want to make it go up - or aim at something really close in a straight line - if you want a real guidance system it makes it a lot harder in fact ideally you want to take the spin off - rollerons are a cool way to do this.
The big down side of spinning a rocket is drag (think of the dynamic effects as you go thru mach ....)
Modern hobby rockets (like I and many others fly) do one thing well (and not even that) - they go up. We have wonderfull guidance devices called 'fins' they make things go straight provided they are fast enough and there's still air around - even then you're at the mercy of the wind, the jet stream as you pass thru it (yes we do) etc etc.
In other words hobby rockets don't have the sort of guidance system you would use when you want to hit a target - if the Congress was actually thinking rather than just reacting "people with rockets must be dangerous and could be terrorists we must do something to show that we are doling something" and they wanted to stop actual attacks on real targets they would: shut down the public GPS, ban RC model planes (or ratehr radio gear) and would never have given those 1000s of stingers to binLaden in the first place.
not mine - though I did see it fly (not very well, it was underpowered and the upper stage failed to light)
Well to paraphrase a rather sad movie "you call that a rocket, .... this is a rocket
well last time it was tried they did (the american's wimped out :-)
SCO doesn't just distribute Linux, they distribute lots of other GPL'd code too .... if the KDE and Gnome, XFree86, gcc, etc etc teams (who's code is also being distributed by SCO) withdraw their code SCO can't even pretend to compete with the rest of the world. Yet all this is GPL'd code (or some varient) that SCO is now distributing in violation of the GPL ....
First we need a web page with simple instructions on how to send a C&D
Next we need a list of what's being distributed - is the GPLed code I've released thru KDE there? (actually someone should go thru the copyright headers of all the code being distrbuted by SCO and mail everyone)