I stand corrected. USPTO did just reject the last of 8 patents. All the rejections are preliminary so until they are final, they are not formally invalid though. Due to the glacial USPTO pace, this should be resolved in probably a year.
Imagine if you dont have hundreds of millions of dollars to defend against this? I also wonder if it werent for the high addiction factor of Blackberries on Capitol Hill whether the USPTO would have even acted at all.
What patents does NTP actually have? None, it seems. The USPTO has so far indicated that NTP's patents appear to be invalid. So what are they licensing? Pixie dust? What do they actually make? Anything? Have you ever seen their web site?
If you read the link you posted you'll notice that you are stretching it a bit. USPTO rejected 1 of 8 patents they are reviewing. The battle is far from over.
NTP is a company who exists solely to own a 'patent' portfolio. In my opinion its an example of how bad our patent system is. The founder/co-founder of NTP died in 2004 so this is most likely all being handle by the estate and attorneys who will drag this out forever.
Some Microsoft developers post a few icons on their blog. Many blog comments express that they like icon #4 (which is what is already used in Mozilla). Icon #4 is adopted. How does this get spun into collaboration? Geez. Granted they 'met' with some folks at Mozilla, but I'm sure only so MS could get 30 pages of legal documents signed to agree they are allowed to use the icon.
To me there are several levels of expectation. First, I prefer an open source driver. If that is not available and I have to select a proprietary card (which you do in the accelerated graphics arena), then I prefer one which performs on par with their windows driver -- that is where nvidia beats ATI. nVidia uses a unified driver architecture so that a large portion of the code (95%?) is code shared with the windows driver which means it gets more testing, engineering support and performance tweaking.
There's an internet myth that "If you use Linux, you must use nVidia", and it's nonsense.
Well this 'myth' is based on one time fact. ATI was very hostile to linux and refused to support it in the earlier days. If you wanted to run an accelerated video card under linux you needed nVidia who at least provided closed source binary drivers. Also, nVidia drivers under linux are much better than ATI in terms of performance.
From the auction:
Microsoft representatives get 10% off the final price. To qualify, you MUST provide @microsoft.com e-mail address and MUST mention discount code LINUXRULZ during checkout
Of course being beaten is extreme. It sounds like the Taliban in Afghanistan or the religous police in Iran or the Shiite Sadr militiamen in Iraq. It is what happens when a Country fails to honor the principle of Separation of Church and State.
They are using the RIAA math. Theoretical sales * retail price equals large sensational media.
The real gist of the article is this was an IPO, that there was a typo, nothing actually sold that low, but the confusion caused by the low prices probably deflated the opening day IPO pricing--therefore the firm is trying to buy back what did sell so they can fix things. The buyback costs could be around $224m.
Complete Apples and Oranges. A consumer video console is not a 'high end' equipment category. However, even conceding that to you, the Xbox was designed with a separate power supply brick. All power supplys bricks go onto the floor. While you might not expect a High end audio amp to sit on the carpet or a DBD player, a power supply brick belongs on a floor and should be design to work that way. Having to properly ventilate a power supply brick is bad design.
How would you like to be the guy who stopped the Xbox delivery for 2005? How would you like to justify pulling the production line based on a smallish possibility that some units might have overheating problems?
I don't have enough details to know if it is a smallish probability or a common problem. But your comment is probably the same thing the Ford Motor Company said when they decided not to fix the 'smallish probability' Ford Pinto whos gas tank exploded in certain rear collisions. They may have sold more units earlier, but they paid in the end and had a damaged reputation for quite some time.
You did all the calculations that the Engineers should have done. Those calculations should have concluded that there was a heat issue and the power supply should have failed acceptance testing. Perhaps those calculations were done, but it was more important to ship before the holiday season.
The level of testing/cooling you did is not something appropriate for a consumer level mass produced product, in my opinion.
Its not, it just an advertisement for MS disguised as 'news', heading into the holiday season, published by the Wall Street Journal and submitted to Slashdot on a slow news day because it contained the words Xbox-360.
I'm not sure how big the Sony catalog is. But a few that they had that would have been better was 'A Knights Tale', 'Spider-Man', 'Spider-Man 2'. Hell, 'Kermits' Swamp Years' would have been better than Charlies Angels 2. That movie was soooo bad.
First of all any time you want to analyze Google, you have to realize that they've had ten PhDs crunching the problem already for years.
Sorry, but the next step is that you need to realize that there are MILLIONS of people with a vested interest in making money trying to 'game' the system. Over the past year, I have found search engines less and less useful. More often, the top results for many items are 'proxy' sites that come up that aim to make money on ads. Somehow through link sharing or manipulating the google API or something they come up in the tops slots. I imagine it is a constant battle of new measures and counter measures, but the MILLIONS of people have more resources (think power of OSS).
Slashdot unveiled a program to detect article dupes. A Slashdot spokesman, Mr. C. Taco, said "Our dupe detection system has been running for over a year without a dupe".
We will soon begin fullscale deployment of a system in YRO that will mine posting data to determine whether an article is a dupe. As long as a user's computer is turned on, the slashdot network notes the time of articles from user to user to calculate the location and speed of posting. Researchers say the program will reduce dupes by quickly rejecting articles. The company says they will not track the articles of individual posters. However, a staff attorney for the XYZ says that tracking might violate federal law and 'increases the chances that information will be used for more invasive purposes in the future.'
and maybe we'll stop using the rediculous rhetorical device of "if it saves one life its worth it" to pass bad laws.
This country suffered over 98,000 deaths from medical errors in 1999 alone. We wont force improvements in medical records, pharmacy errors, or poor IT systems in our medical system, but we will slow down the economy by 10 mph for a few lives.
Keep in mind that this is Sony/BMG, where Sony only owns 50%, and where BMG were the ones who brought DRM into the picture.
Isn't this the same Sony who tried to foist their ATRAC proprietary codec on us which locks us into their hardware and requires their Sonicstage crap? I don't think that is the BMG side.
But a lot of people on the consuming end seem to have lost touch with the general notion of "the person selling it is asking more than I want to pay, so I'll buy something cheaper, instead" and have shifted to "so I'll rip it off, instead" without any sense whatsover of causality (when it comes to the consequences).
You contradict yourself. If the consumer feels 'the person selling it is asking more than I want to pay', they are likely not to purchase the item anyhow (if it is a luxury item). The industry loves to declare emphatically that since 1000 people made copies, they lost 1000 x manufacture suggested retail price. Considering that making a digital copy does not deny the original person the use of the item (like theft of a physical item) the only thing denied is a 'potential' sale which was unlikely to happen in the first place.
Look at the recent investigation into Sony which found that instead of embracing the online distribution technology of the Internet to decrease overhead, they jacked up prices to online sellers so that items are just as expensive online versus brick and morter. These guys have no shame.
You must be naive if you think 'EMI' has 'no control over the situation'. Despite my dislike of Apple and their lossy DRM stuff, Apple is at the mercy of the labels if they want access to the label owned music catalog.
I would suspect the 'he believed' wording was a diplomatic way of saying Apple will cooperate with our desire for a 'flexible' price structure in the near future or else.
I'd love to know the secret method of how to submit a bug report to them. From those who do have a support contract I have heard MS are the masters of finger pointing. They always blame an application or a third-party driver. I recall trying to find a link previously and it was a circular route that ended in MS wanting me to create a passport account to get to a step that told me I had had to accept a 'support' Terms and Conditions legal document and eventually that since I bought an OEM version of XP Pro I didn't qualify. I recall something along those lines - it was awhile ago during a fleeting moment of insanity that MS actually gives a crap.
It seems pretty useless to me. I'm on Adelphia. All digital channels are encrypted and require a CableCard. I'm too far from a transmitter to receive over the air too. This immediately locks out my mythtv box from recording HD signals. Looks like MS and their proprietary support will allow them a monopoly on encrypted PVR.
Slashdot Mirror
Imagine if you dont have hundreds of millions of dollars to defend against this? I also wonder if it werent for the high addiction factor of Blackberries on Capitol Hill whether the USPTO would have even acted at all.
If you read the link you posted you'll notice that you are stretching it a bit. USPTO rejected 1 of 8 patents they are reviewing. The battle is far from over.
NTP is a company who exists solely to own a 'patent' portfolio. In my opinion its an example of how bad our patent system is. The founder/co-founder of NTP died in 2004 so this is most likely all being handle by the estate and attorneys who will drag this out forever.
Some Microsoft developers post a few icons on their blog. Many blog comments express that they like icon #4 (which is what is already used in Mozilla). Icon #4 is adopted. How does this get spun into collaboration? Geez. Granted they 'met' with some folks at Mozilla, but I'm sure only so MS could get 30 pages of legal documents signed to agree they are allowed to use the icon.
Hell, I'm still paying off the 22% financing charge on my Compaq 286 with Math Coprocessor (287) option from Computerland!
To me there are several levels of expectation. First, I prefer an open source driver. If that is not available and I have to select a proprietary card (which you do in the accelerated graphics arena), then I prefer one which performs on par with their windows driver -- that is where nvidia beats ATI. nVidia uses a unified driver architecture so that a large portion of the code (95%?) is code shared with the windows driver which means it gets more testing, engineering support and performance tweaking.
Well this 'myth' is based on one time fact. ATI was very hostile to linux and refused to support it in the earlier days. If you wanted to run an accelerated video card under linux you needed nVidia who at least provided closed source binary drivers. Also, nVidia drivers under linux are much better than ATI in terms of performance.
From the auction: Microsoft representatives get 10% off the final price. To qualify, you MUST provide @microsoft.com e-mail address and MUST mention discount code LINUXRULZ during checkout
Of course being beaten is extreme. It sounds like the Taliban in Afghanistan or the religous police in Iran or the Shiite Sadr militiamen in Iraq. It is what happens when a Country fails to honor the principle of Separation of Church and State.
The real gist of the article is this was an IPO, that there was a typo, nothing actually sold that low, but the confusion caused by the low prices probably deflated the opening day IPO pricing--therefore the firm is trying to buy back what did sell so they can fix things. The buyback costs could be around $224m.
Complete Apples and Oranges. A consumer video console is not a 'high end' equipment category. However, even conceding that to you, the Xbox was designed with a separate power supply brick. All power supplys bricks go onto the floor. While you might not expect a High end audio amp to sit on the carpet or a DBD player, a power supply brick belongs on a floor and should be design to work that way. Having to properly ventilate a power supply brick is bad design.
I don't have enough details to know if it is a smallish probability or a common problem. But your comment is probably the same thing the Ford Motor Company said when they decided not to fix the 'smallish probability' Ford Pinto whos gas tank exploded in certain rear collisions. They may have sold more units earlier, but they paid in the end and had a damaged reputation for quite some time.
Funny, I posted something similar and get modded flamebait. http://developers.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=168 693&cid=14071694
The level of testing/cooling you did is not something appropriate for a consumer level mass produced product, in my opinion.
Its not, it just an advertisement for MS disguised as 'news', heading into the holiday season, published by the Wall Street Journal and submitted to Slashdot on a slow news day because it contained the words Xbox-360.
I'm not sure how big the Sony catalog is. But a few that they had that would have been better was 'A Knights Tale', 'Spider-Man', 'Spider-Man 2'. Hell, 'Kermits' Swamp Years' would have been better than Charlies Angels 2. That movie was soooo bad.
http://slashdot.org/subscribe.pl
Sorry, but the next step is that you need to realize that there are MILLIONS of people with a vested interest in making money trying to 'game' the system. Over the past year, I have found search engines less and less useful. More often, the top results for many items are 'proxy' sites that come up that aim to make money on ads. Somehow through link sharing or manipulating the google API or something they come up in the tops slots. I imagine it is a constant battle of new measures and counter measures, but the MILLIONS of people have more resources (think power of OSS).
Slashdot unveiled a program to detect article dupes. A Slashdot spokesman, Mr. C. Taco, said "Our dupe detection system has been running for over a year without a dupe".
We will soon begin fullscale deployment of a system in YRO that will mine posting data to determine whether an article is a dupe. As long as a user's computer is turned on, the slashdot network notes the time of articles from user to user to calculate the location and speed of posting. Researchers say the program will reduce dupes by quickly rejecting articles. The company says they will not track the articles of individual posters. However, a staff attorney for the XYZ says that tracking might violate federal law and 'increases the chances that information will be used for more invasive purposes in the future.'
This country suffered over 98,000 deaths from medical errors in 1999 alone. We wont force improvements in medical records, pharmacy errors, or poor IT systems in our medical system, but we will slow down the economy by 10 mph for a few lives.
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=168404&cid=140 40211
Isn't this the same Sony who tried to foist their ATRAC proprietary codec on us which locks us into their hardware and requires their Sonicstage crap? I don't think that is the BMG side.
I assume you mean Bobcat Goldthwait. I'd rather sound like him than look like him! http://music.msn.com/album/?album=10608927
You contradict yourself. If the consumer feels 'the person selling it is asking more than I want to pay', they are likely not to purchase the item anyhow (if it is a luxury item). The industry loves to declare emphatically that since 1000 people made copies, they lost 1000 x manufacture suggested retail price. Considering that making a digital copy does not deny the original person the use of the item (like theft of a physical item) the only thing denied is a 'potential' sale which was unlikely to happen in the first place.
Look at the recent investigation into Sony which found that instead of embracing the online distribution technology of the Internet to decrease overhead, they jacked up prices to online sellers so that items are just as expensive online versus brick and morter. These guys have no shame.
I would suspect the 'he believed' wording was a diplomatic way of saying Apple will cooperate with our desire for a 'flexible' price structure in the near future or else.
I'd love to know the secret method of how to submit a bug report to them. From those who do have a support contract I have heard MS are the masters of finger pointing. They always blame an application or a third-party driver. I recall trying to find a link previously and it was a circular route that ended in MS wanting me to create a passport account to get to a step that told me I had had to accept a 'support' Terms and Conditions legal document and eventually that since I bought an OEM version of XP Pro I didn't qualify. I recall something along those lines - it was awhile ago during a fleeting moment of insanity that MS actually gives a crap.
It seems pretty useless to me. I'm on Adelphia. All digital channels are encrypted and require a CableCard. I'm too far from a transmitter to receive over the air too. This immediately locks out my mythtv box from recording HD signals. Looks like MS and their proprietary support will allow them a monopoly on encrypted PVR.