I'd feel some regret for some of the folks at Microsoft, now that their leaders have started a war they cannot win, but then, if *I* worked there, I'd leave, taking my soul with me.
OK, so even if MS *does* hold software patents that are *actually* valid (or are not declared INvalid for a significant length of time) and that cover significant elements within Linux; what then? Can they seriously expect the rest of the world (like, say, India, China, Brazil, and most of Europe) to stop promoting, developing, and using Linux, or even seriously pause in that effort? Get a life, Redmond, it isn't ever going to happen. Those nations will push Open Source forward even harder precisely in order to escape your grasping digits. You can't stop the Penguin Army(TM).
MS may be able to cause some annoyance and inconvenience to some folks in the US with this attack, but there are several limits on how far that'll go, and it WON'T go far enough. At most, it'll slow Linux uptake slightly while further blackening MS reputation everywhere (invent new category of ultra-darkness here...)
Ultimately, the US' competive position in the world would be what suffers most in the long run even if MS were to succeed. Open Source proponents will simply route around the problem or ignore it, and US efforts to prevent "infringing" Open Source use will be about as effective as the RIAA's effort to stamp out filesharing. (I *was* going to say, "As effective as Prohibition," but that's too high a standard.)
Hmmm, if you'll be wearing it in your pocket while snowboarding, it BETTER be small and cheap -- you don't want a spill to deprive you of either an expensive gadget or un-dented body parts.;-) I suspect that a 6x optical zoom in and of itself will preclude easy pocketability on account of the optics, regardless of the size of the electronics involved...
Anything that gets the word out widely that this is going on, and pretends to be who it isn't, might be worth a try. Can you get the opposing candidate riled enough to deny it in public?
OK, so you have a machine full of money that will be placed out in public, where everyone and his third cousin Fingers McCrackit can play Billy Joel on the keyboard all day, using any information they can guess, beg, borrow, or steal (OK, slight exaggeration, but valid principle.)
Now, just HOW STUPID do you need to be to make it possible in the first place to gain system access from that keyboard without at least one hardware interlock that is NOT accessible without the key to the machine? You KNOW the bad guys will try everything they can think of to fool the machine; you should ASSUME that they have every piece of info on the machine that you do. (Cryptosystems -- good ones, at least -- are designed on this assumption; indeed, they assume that the adversary has a copy of your machine and all its specifications.)
A secure ATM thus REQUIRES that it be made completely IMPOSSIBLE to jigger the machine without physically getting inside its hardware. Password-protection just doesn't cut it for that level of security. Failure to provide this level of protection is SO stupid as to be a failure to exercise due care. And after all, how much does it cost to add that hardware interlock switch? Not much compared to the value of the ATM's contents...
Now for the scary part -- ATMs are, on average, far more secure than voting machines.
Recall that most trash incinerators create rather toxic fly ash containing, among other things, lead and mercury that was in the garbage. No plasma arc, however hot, will destroy that stuff. The best you can do with any incineration process is make it into moderately-toxic bricks or sludge or powder. You'll still have to filter the gaseous effluent (not an easy, clean or totally successful task), and you'll still have a pile of toxic crud to dispose of...
As a nuclear physicist of my acquaintance has said in reference to nuclear waste disposal, uranium eventually decays, but arsenic is forever.
Sad to say, but if you can't run the drive to erase the data, you MUST destroy the platters. Even degaussing them is not reliable -- how will you KNOW the degauss worked? Unless you want to keep a spare drive of each model around with an open top so you can swap in and reformat platters from dead drives (way too much trouble), you're stuck with physical destruction.
So, in keeping the military standards for such things, I suggest you find a way to render the platters unspinnable without creating too mush hazardous waste. Thermite or other pyrotechnics are regrettably messy and pose a fire hazard in use, aside from the regulatory headaches. Acids create too much dangerous waste. Having the platters -- or just the whole drive -- crushed or cut up with a hydraulic shear or press of some sort is likely the best candidate.
Punching the spindles right out of the drives with 10 tons of force from a hydraulic press at a local garage or machine shop will definitely render the platters warped and unreadable, and is likely the best and simplest way to do the deed. Punch a second big hole through one side of the platters, and the Devil himself would be hard put to recover anything from the drives.
Funny, I've used cdrecord on both Linux and Solaris, and Solaris has always been MUCH more of a PITA; the Linux system "just works." (Now the GUI front ends are a different, smellier kettle of fish entirely...)
The submitter's question is this: having done that, and recognizing that disaster is about to occur anyway, what do I do?
If, indeed, that is the submitter's question and he cannot in fact avert or mitigate the risk on account of willful neglect by management, the only sensible response is to 1) produce a paper trail demonstrating that it is NOT his fault (in the likely event of a lawsuit -- Americans are, statistically, litigious bastards), and 2) get the Hell out of Dodge before the disaster happens.
Staying in place would be like remaining in the path of a hurricane; don't do it unless you are prepared for personal risk and unpleasantness, and have a VERY good reason for remaining.
Bailing in this situation would be both rational and ethical, given that best efforts at warning of the risk have been made and ignored. Of course, if the situation does NOT embody these elements, it's a different matter with, probably, a different answer to the question, but that appears to be the question that's been asked.
If you want an effective way to get the police involved that does NOT include having them put handcuffs on you (as many of the suggestions I see posted here could do), try using a sound level meter to document the sound intensity of the offending device. For extra credit, get an audiologist to help with the documentation of the nuisance. With that evidence, you stand a better chance of convincing the police that the annoying noise they cannot hear is real, and really is an objective nuisance that need to be addressed.
The car companies aren't exactly rolling in dough these days, and a DVD player isn't likely to appear soon anywhere but high-end vehicles. On your standard production automobile, adding a $5 part is a Big Deal, so adding mebbe $50-100 in DVD player hardware will be a tough sell; it just won't push car sales enough to be worth the trouble for the automakers. Car players won't be the killer-app that pushes adoption of this (IMHO pointless for users) format.
I think it is fairly clear that, even if Windows is faster than Linux in a given head-to-head comparison (even assuming its a MEANINGFUL comparison, which appears somewhat questionable in the present case), the overall performance difference is unlikely to be a real-world issue. There's no way the Linux developer community will tolerate a serious performance deficit relative to Windows, so Linux will always be at least close to Windows in performance -- except where it's better.
The important real-world issues are cost of ownership, what terms and conditions are attached to the acquisition and use of the software, and vendor support. Linux clearly wins on all three fronts in the server world. (Besides, what sane sysadmin would tolerate WGA doing whatever the hell it pleases on his servers?)
As a (hypothetical) site visitor, how does simply visiting the site bind me to their terms? Also, if the malware-laden advertiser hits my machine at my first visit, before I have a chance to evaluate the TOS, there's NO way the TOS can be held to protect them.
Moreover, if the malware violates unauthorized-access statutes, the TOS would be well and truly trumped by such legislation.
Overall, they're in a very weak legal position; a reasonable person would conclude that the best course of action is to mitigate the damage to users, FAST and well, rather than take a ho-hum-not-our-fault attitude. Their response speaks volumes about them...
The "problem" here is one of differing philosophies, each of which has, IMHO, something to be said in its favor.
The Linux kernel developers take the view that drivers must be Open Sourced to keep the Open part of the system healthy. I won't go into their argument in detail ('cause I'd do a lousy job of it), but it boils down to there being Bad Consequences of permitting closed-source drivers to get too cozy with the kernel, resulting in a creeping loss of the Open nature of the system if one wants to keep using modern video cards. This argument as presented in the sources I read seemed sensible to me.
The video card folks want to avoid having their chip architectures reverse-engineered from the driver source by cheap Asian clone designers. This, too, makes a certain amount of sense.
I don't really know how to reconcile these opposites, aside from having the players agree on a GPU interface standard that everyone can code to (like that's ever going to happen), which would obviate the need for custom video drivers entirely. But it really isn't a case of one party being evil or greedy or bullheaded...
I recall reading some comments on this issue recently, where folks developing accessibility software to work with MS Office mentioned the need to reverse-engineer their interfaces every time MS releases a new version, 'cause the connections to that closed-source monster must be kludged and cobbled.
Now, it should be obvious to the average code monkey that doing accessibility plug-ins ONCE, with OPEN access to the source code, so they can be properly integrated with the office suite (after which one need only do updates for each new release, with the benefits of full integration and full access to the code changes), is a MUCH better option than having to kludge compatibility from a standing start with minimal integration for every release. Long term, an Open Source office suite is clearly superior for this purpose, assuming that it does its primary job well -- a condition clearly met by several FOSS office suites. With ODF in play, the situation just gets better.
Disability activists and the FOSS community are natural allies; we need only recognize this and start to act that way. Perhaps there's some FUD from a Malevolent Source involved in the publishing of this article?
I watch very little TV, go to relatively few movies. One reason for this is that, for example, I've already SEEN King Kong, Casablanca, and War of the Worlds (in two different versions). Endless remakes of old plots and scenarios just don't cut it; there are lots of original stories out there that would make marvellous films or TV series if competently done. (How 'bout the Miles Vorkosigan stories by Lois McMaster Bujold, or the Honor Harrington series by David Weber?)
Of course, that's the problem here, isn't it? Competence and originality are in woefully short supply in Tinseltown. Move along there, 900 channels and nothing to watch.
A few out-of-town geeks complain, sure, nobody will care.
This story, however, has reached the mainstream media (Tulsa NBC affiliate), gone international (The Register, with a *personal response* from the guy), and generated more publicity than Tuttle, OK has ever known before. This will definitely make local folks take notice (especially when some of their out-of-town acquaintances start asking about this), and be some significant embarrassment to the city manager in question. It won't be a MAJOR issue, but it WILL make the local radar screen.
Consider the hypothetical case where YOU were the personal victim of an unconsitutional law, and spent lots of your $$ defeating it in court. Now you're out lots of YOUR money because the state did something illegal. What's to prevent them from doing it again and again 'till you're destitute and can no longer afford to fight and win, or until you give up and accept the unconstitutional law to remain solvent? Either way, the state accomplishes by attrition what they cannot do under law.
As for the obviousness argument, it's irrelevant just how obviously bad the law is -- you either have to sue and spend what it takes to finish the litigation, or shut up and accept the bad law; there's no third option.
The award of attorney's fees paid by the loser makes it untenable to pursue such a win-by-losing strategy -- or at least, it's intended to do that. Think of it as a check on frivolous litigation (and lawmaking, if the principle is, IMHO reasonably, applied to situations like this).
It IS a shame that the state's taxpayers have to pay for their government's folly, but then, they DID elect those folks in the first place. That seems a lesser ill than the above scenario where the victim pays for it. (And no, it DOESN'T matter that the victim is a trade organization and not an individual; the fundamentals don't change.) Out wit da bums...
I was just reading about this (hideously expensive prototype) watch, the
Seiko Spring Drive.
It is a mechanical self-winding watch (an eccentric rotor winds the mainspring as you move about; nothing extraordinary per se), BUT it doesn't have the conventional mechanical escapement and balance wheel of a mechanical watch; instead, it has a tiny generator (a magnetic rotor and a set of stationary coils) that powers a chip with a quartz oscillator; the chip senses the speed of the rotor and varies the load on the coils to regulate the drag on the rotor and thus the rate of the watch.
The result is a batteryless, self-winding quartz-regulated analog mechanical watch. Very cool, and only costs about as much as a low-end SUV... I would not be at all surprised to see a future version with a radio receiver for time signals. In a decade or so, the technology may filter down to where ordinary mortals can afford such a watch. Or possibly not...
You make a good and valid point; the little guy seldom prevails in litigation. Money has always been a powerful ally in patent litigation; often it is more important than the validity of the patent. (I remember reading an engineering magazine from the 1970s with a cartoon of a fellow on the street selling pencils beneath a sign reading, "Tried to defend my patent.")
As I see it, the real issue isn't big guys vs small guys, but a massive and growing number of trivial patents that must be fought in court when they never should have been granted. Patent trolls and litigation ambulance chasers are clearly getting worse, and the phenomenon really does call into question whether the patent system is doing its job of fostering innovation...
Basically, if anyone (the inventor included) publishes the "invention" before the patent is applied for, it becomes "prior art" and is forever excluded from patent protection.
Of course, this is the USPTO we're talking about here; they'll apparently issue a patent on ANYTHING if one is persistent enough...
I must disagree; the patent system IS broken if it results in the granting of large numbers of invalid patents. The USPTO admits that this is the case, and even admits that their examiners are subject to perverse incentives to let stuff through (though they don't explicitly admit the perversity of this.)
Defending against a bogus patent in court is WAY beyond the means of most mortals; justice overpriced is justice denied. Preventing worthless patents in the first place is the way the system is intended to work, and getting it back there is, alas, the only real solution to the present idiot situation.
I've seen flash drives that are just a plastic-coated PC board. The heat generated won't be a problem (the USB spec limits the power you can draw to fairly negligible levels).
Oh, and -- don't trust the washed USB drive with critical data, there may be corrosion that takes a while to manifest itself.
that voids it and returns most of RIM's money in the event that the patents in suit are ruled invalid by the USPTO. If I were RIM, I'd reeeeally want a clause to that effect; then again, NTP is unlikely to be thrilled about that, so it's anyone's guess.
I built the E-Enigma, and it has been a great deal of fun. (The experience of typing in the first encrypted test message and reading out the plaintext, "Der Fuehrer ist tot..." was nothing short of spooky.) I recommend replacing the display LEDs with high-brightness white LEDs, as several builders have done.
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I'd feel some regret for some of the folks at Microsoft, now that their leaders have started a war they cannot win, but then, if *I* worked there, I'd leave, taking my soul with me.
OK, so even if MS *does* hold software patents that are *actually* valid (or are not declared INvalid for a significant length of time) and that cover significant elements within Linux; what then? Can they seriously expect the rest of the world (like, say, India, China, Brazil, and most of Europe) to stop promoting, developing, and using Linux, or even seriously pause in that effort? Get a life, Redmond, it isn't ever going to happen. Those nations will push Open Source forward even harder precisely in order to escape your grasping digits. You can't stop the Penguin Army(TM).
MS may be able to cause some annoyance and inconvenience to some folks in the US with this attack, but there are several limits on how far that'll go, and it WON'T go far enough. At most, it'll slow Linux uptake slightly while further blackening MS reputation everywhere (invent new category of ultra-darkness here...)
Ultimately, the US' competive position in the world would be what suffers most in the long run even if MS were to succeed. Open Source proponents will simply route around the problem or ignore it, and US efforts to prevent "infringing" Open Source use will be about as effective as the RIAA's effort to stamp out filesharing. (I *was* going to say, "As effective as Prohibition," but that's too high a standard.)
Hmmm, if you'll be wearing it in your pocket while snowboarding, it BETTER be small and cheap -- you don't want a spill to deprive you of either an expensive gadget or un-dented body parts. ;-) I suspect that a 6x optical zoom in and of itself will preclude easy pocketability on account of the optics, regardless of the size of the electronics involved...
Anything that gets the word out widely that this is going on, and pretends to be who it isn't, might be worth a try. Can you get the opposing candidate riled enough to deny it in public?
OK, so you have a machine full of money that will be placed out in public, where everyone and his third cousin Fingers McCrackit can play Billy Joel on the keyboard all day, using any information they can guess, beg, borrow, or steal (OK, slight exaggeration, but valid principle.)
Now, just HOW STUPID do you need to be to make it possible in the first place to gain system access from that keyboard without at least one hardware interlock that is NOT accessible without the key to the machine? You KNOW the bad guys will try everything they can think of to fool the machine; you should ASSUME that they have every piece of info on the machine that you do. (Cryptosystems -- good ones, at least -- are designed on this assumption; indeed, they assume that the adversary has a copy of your machine and all its specifications.)
A secure ATM thus REQUIRES that it be made completely IMPOSSIBLE to jigger the machine without physically getting inside its hardware. Password-protection just doesn't cut it for that level of security. Failure to provide this level of protection is SO stupid as to be a failure to exercise due care. And after all, how much does it cost to add that hardware interlock switch? Not much compared to the value of the ATM's contents...
Now for the scary part -- ATMs are, on average, far more secure than voting machines.
Recall that most trash incinerators create rather toxic fly ash containing, among other things, lead and mercury that was in the garbage. No plasma arc, however hot, will destroy that stuff. The best you can do with any incineration process is make it into moderately-toxic bricks or sludge or powder. You'll still have to filter the gaseous effluent (not an easy, clean or totally successful task), and you'll still have a pile of toxic crud to dispose of...
As a nuclear physicist of my acquaintance has said in reference to nuclear waste disposal, uranium eventually decays, but arsenic is forever.
Sad to say, but if you can't run the drive to erase the data, you MUST destroy the platters. Even degaussing them is not reliable -- how will you KNOW the degauss worked? Unless you want to keep a spare drive of each model around with an open top so you can swap in and reformat platters from dead drives (way too much trouble), you're stuck with physical destruction.
So, in keeping the military standards for such things, I suggest you find a way to render the platters unspinnable without creating too mush hazardous waste. Thermite or other pyrotechnics are regrettably messy and pose a fire hazard in use, aside from the regulatory headaches. Acids create too much dangerous waste. Having the platters -- or just the whole drive -- crushed or cut up with a hydraulic shear or press of some sort is likely the best candidate.
Punching the spindles right out of the drives with 10 tons of force from a hydraulic press at a local garage or machine shop will definitely render the platters warped and unreadable, and is likely the best and simplest way to do the deed. Punch a second big hole through one side of the platters, and the Devil himself would be hard put to recover anything from the drives.
Funny, I've used cdrecord on both Linux and Solaris, and Solaris has always been MUCH more of a PITA; the Linux system "just works." (Now the GUI front ends are a different, smellier kettle of fish entirely...)
The submitter's question is this: having done that, and recognizing that disaster is about to occur anyway, what do I do?
If, indeed, that is the submitter's question and he cannot in fact avert or mitigate the risk on account of willful neglect by management, the only sensible response is to 1) produce a paper trail demonstrating that it is NOT his fault (in the likely event of a lawsuit -- Americans are, statistically, litigious bastards), and 2) get the Hell out of Dodge before the disaster happens.
Staying in place would be like remaining in the path of a hurricane; don't do it unless you are prepared for personal risk and unpleasantness, and have a VERY good reason for remaining.
Bailing in this situation would be both rational and ethical, given that best efforts at warning of the risk have been made and ignored. Of course, if the situation does NOT embody these elements, it's a different matter with, probably, a different answer to the question, but that appears to be the question that's been asked.
Or maybe Dark-Brown Matter, or Gray Matter, or possibly Doesn't Matter. ;-)
If you want an effective way to get the police involved that does NOT include having them put handcuffs on you (as many of the suggestions I see posted here could do), try using a sound level meter to document the sound intensity of the offending device. For extra credit, get an audiologist to help with the documentation of the nuisance. With that evidence, you stand a better chance of convincing the police that the annoying noise they cannot hear is real, and really is an objective nuisance that need to be addressed.
The car companies aren't exactly rolling in dough these days, and a DVD player isn't likely to appear soon anywhere but high-end vehicles. On your standard production automobile, adding a $5 part is a Big Deal, so adding mebbe $50-100 in DVD player hardware will be a tough sell; it just won't push car sales enough to be worth the trouble for the automakers. Car players won't be the killer-app that pushes adoption of this (IMHO pointless for users) format.
I think it is fairly clear that, even if Windows is faster than Linux in a given head-to-head comparison (even assuming its a MEANINGFUL comparison, which appears somewhat questionable in the present case), the overall performance difference is unlikely to be a real-world issue. There's no way the Linux developer community will tolerate a serious performance deficit relative to Windows, so Linux will always be at least close to Windows in performance -- except where it's better.
The important real-world issues are cost of ownership, what terms and conditions are attached to the acquisition and use of the software, and vendor support. Linux clearly wins on all three fronts in the server world. (Besides, what sane sysadmin would tolerate WGA doing whatever the hell it pleases on his servers?)
As a (hypothetical) site visitor, how does simply visiting the site bind me to their terms? Also, if the malware-laden advertiser hits my machine at my first visit, before I have a chance to evaluate the TOS, there's NO way the TOS can be held to protect them.
Moreover, if the malware violates unauthorized-access statutes, the TOS would be well and truly trumped by such legislation.
Overall, they're in a very weak legal position; a reasonable person would conclude that the best course of action is to mitigate the damage to users, FAST and well, rather than take a ho-hum-not-our-fault attitude. Their response speaks volumes about them...
The "problem" here is one of differing philosophies, each of which has, IMHO, something to be said in its favor.
The Linux kernel developers take the view that drivers must be Open Sourced to keep the Open part of the system healthy. I won't go into their argument in detail ('cause I'd do a lousy job of it), but it boils down to there being Bad Consequences of permitting closed-source drivers to get too cozy with the kernel, resulting in a creeping loss of the Open nature of the system if one wants to keep using modern video cards. This argument as presented in the sources I read seemed sensible to me.
The video card folks want to avoid having their chip architectures reverse-engineered from the driver source by cheap Asian clone designers. This, too, makes a certain amount of sense.
I don't really know how to reconcile these opposites, aside from having the players agree on a GPU interface standard that everyone can code to (like that's ever going to happen), which would obviate the need for custom video drivers entirely. But it really isn't a case of one party being evil or greedy or bullheaded...
I recall reading some comments on this issue recently, where folks developing accessibility software to work with MS Office mentioned the need to reverse-engineer their interfaces every time MS releases a new version, 'cause the connections to that closed-source monster must be kludged and cobbled.
Now, it should be obvious to the average code monkey that doing accessibility plug-ins ONCE, with OPEN access to the source code, so they can be properly integrated with the office suite (after which one need only do updates for each new release, with the benefits of full integration and full access to the code changes), is a MUCH better option than having to kludge compatibility from a standing start with minimal integration for every release. Long term, an Open Source office suite is clearly superior for this purpose, assuming that it does its primary job well -- a condition clearly met by several FOSS office suites. With ODF in play, the situation just gets better.
Disability activists and the FOSS community are natural allies; we need only recognize this and start to act that way. Perhaps there's some FUD from a Malevolent Source involved in the publishing of this article?
I watch very little TV, go to relatively few movies. One reason for this is that, for example, I've already SEEN King Kong, Casablanca, and War of the Worlds (in two different versions). Endless remakes of old plots and scenarios just don't cut it; there are lots of original stories out there that would make marvellous films or TV series if competently done. (How 'bout the Miles Vorkosigan stories by Lois McMaster Bujold, or the Honor Harrington series by David Weber?)
Of course, that's the problem here, isn't it? Competence and originality are in woefully short supply in Tinseltown. Move along there, 900 channels and nothing to watch.
A few out-of-town geeks complain, sure, nobody will care.
This story, however, has reached the mainstream media (Tulsa NBC affiliate), gone international (The Register, with a *personal response* from the guy), and generated more publicity than Tuttle, OK has ever known before. This will definitely make local folks take notice (especially when some of their out-of-town acquaintances start asking about this), and be some significant embarrassment to the city manager in question. It won't be a MAJOR issue, but it WILL make the local radar screen.
Consider the hypothetical case where YOU were the personal victim of an unconsitutional law, and spent lots of your $$ defeating it in court. Now you're out lots of YOUR money because the state did something illegal. What's to prevent them from doing it again and again 'till you're destitute and can no longer afford to fight and win, or until you give up and accept the unconstitutional law to remain solvent? Either way, the state accomplishes by attrition what they cannot do under law.
As for the obviousness argument, it's irrelevant just how obviously bad the law is -- you either have to sue and spend what it takes to finish the litigation, or shut up and accept the bad law; there's no third option.
The award of attorney's fees paid by the loser makes it untenable to pursue such a win-by-losing strategy -- or at least, it's intended to do that. Think of it as a check on frivolous litigation (and lawmaking, if the principle is, IMHO reasonably, applied to situations like this).
It IS a shame that the state's taxpayers have to pay for their government's folly, but then, they DID elect those folks in the first place. That seems a lesser ill than the above scenario where the victim pays for it. (And no, it DOESN'T matter that the victim is a trade organization and not an individual; the fundamentals don't change.) Out wit da bums...
I was just reading about this (hideously expensive prototype) watch, the Seiko Spring Drive.
It is a mechanical self-winding watch (an eccentric rotor winds the mainspring as you move about; nothing extraordinary per se), BUT it doesn't have the conventional mechanical escapement and balance wheel of a mechanical watch; instead, it has a tiny generator (a magnetic rotor and a set of stationary coils) that powers a chip with a quartz oscillator; the chip senses the speed of the rotor and varies the load on the coils to regulate the drag on the rotor and thus the rate of the watch.
The result is a batteryless, self-winding quartz-regulated analog mechanical watch. Very cool, and only costs about as much as a low-end SUV... I would not be at all surprised to see a future version with a radio receiver for time signals. In a decade or so, the technology may filter down to where ordinary mortals can afford such a watch. Or possibly not...
You make a good and valid point; the little guy seldom prevails in litigation. Money has always been a powerful ally in patent litigation; often it is more important than the validity of the patent. (I remember reading an engineering magazine from the 1970s with a cartoon of a fellow on the street selling pencils beneath a sign reading, "Tried to defend my patent.")
As I see it, the real issue isn't big guys vs small guys, but a massive and growing number of trivial patents that must be fought in court when they never should have been granted. Patent trolls and litigation ambulance chasers are clearly getting worse, and the phenomenon really does call into question whether the patent system is doing its job of fostering innovation...
Basically, if anyone (the inventor included) publishes the "invention" before the patent is applied for, it becomes "prior art" and is forever excluded from patent protection.
Of course, this is the USPTO we're talking about here; they'll apparently issue a patent on ANYTHING if one is persistent enough...
I must disagree; the patent system IS broken if it results in the granting of large numbers of invalid patents. The USPTO admits that this is the case, and even admits that their examiners are subject to perverse incentives to let stuff through (though they don't explicitly admit the perversity of this.)
Defending against a bogus patent in court is WAY beyond the means of most mortals; justice overpriced is justice denied. Preventing worthless patents in the first place is the way the system is intended to work, and getting it back there is, alas, the only real solution to the present idiot situation.
I've seen flash drives that are just a plastic-coated PC board. The heat generated won't be a problem (the USB spec limits the power you can draw to fairly negligible levels).
Oh, and -- don't trust the washed USB drive with critical data, there may be corrosion that takes a while to manifest itself.
that voids it and returns most of RIM's money in the event that the patents in suit are ruled invalid by the USPTO. If I were RIM, I'd reeeeally want a clause to that effect; then again, NTP is unlikely to be thrilled about that, so it's anyone's guess.
I built the E-Enigma, and it has been a great deal of fun. (The experience of typing in the first encrypted test message and reading out the plaintext, "Der Fuehrer ist tot..." was nothing short of spooky.) I recommend replacing the display LEDs with high-brightness white LEDs, as several builders have done.