I read this the other day and posted on a comment on the story about NTP signing a patent licensing deal. The small company involved was Visto and Visto has several patents (25 total). It is quite possible the two companies are cross-licensing, but NTP may not have any patents worth sharing when the re-examination process at the PTO is complete.
Basically, Visto and NTP announced their deal Wednesday, the same day Visto filed suit against Microsoft. It also appears that NTP acquired a stake in the company as well, so they seem to have an invested interest in this case now as well. For those who have been hiding for the last while, NTP is the company who has become famous (or infamous) from their suit against RIM.
I was part of one of the SWG beta tests, and as I recall I was pretty excited at first to begin playing. I created a couple of characters and would do a few quests, but I would eventually get bored. Of course this was in the days of the beta and getting around took forever and there is something to be said for having actual character levels and not whatever the hell it was we had.
After the poor experience in the beta, I had absolutely no wish to continue playing the game, especially if I was going to have to pay. Later on, WoW came along. I once again found myself with free time and began to play with several friends. I actually found many of the experiences entertaining and Battlegrounds came around at just the right time to keep me intersted. At present I have two characters on an RP server, a mid-50s Tauren Warrior and a low-30s Troll Priest. My main problem began with the fact that I can hardly do anything in the game with my Tauren Warrior without having to find a large group or raid. I actually enjoyed spending some time questing and fighting in certain areas for levelling, but the experience is greatly lowered.
Many of my friends began spending less time on the servers, and I found myself more entrapped by the real world that comes along after college. I want to be able to sign on and go straight to fighting creatures and doings quests, now that I have less free time then in school; however, the at the higher levels this is almost impossible. I am finding a similar problem with my priest who is sitting a this strange gray area level where I am a bit high for some of the quests and bit too low to do others.
In the end, I think I prefer games where I can get straight into the action without having to spend much time looking for parties or trying to find help when new quests come along. I do enjoy the social aspect, somewhat, because playing single player games the only interaction is with NPCs and that seems hurt in some cases. I am confident that the WoW Expansion might offer some new gameplay that will help with the current state of things and maybe bring things back to a state I will enjoy.
Otherwise, I will sit tight for ES4 and start playing the heck out of it.
On a side note, the company NTP signed a licensing agreement with, Visto, also filed a lawsuit against Microsoft yesterday claiming infringement on the three of the patents they hold. Alas, I have submitted the story and awaiting for approval, but it appears that NTP also acquired a stake in Visto. Interestingly enough, it seems the Visto claims are somewhat similar to the NTP v. RIM, but that could just be the media talking again. It is possible the patents in question actually deal with another part of the wireless e-mail chain and that the media is just getting confused amongst the technology again.
Does the person actually have a viable case here? The prices of Jamdat's stock did go up after the sale announcement to nearly the price per share they were going to pay. I am also wondering if Jamdat was offering themselves up or if EA just came in with an offer at random.
If the latter is true, then he might have a bit more of an argument because it looks like the company saw the dollar signs and took the money and ran. At that point they probably should have started telling some other possibly interested peoples of the offer and see if anyone was going to counter.
If the first is true, then I would imagine that Jamdat fielded a great many offers from different companies and got several figures before settling on EA's. While this does not necessarily mean they accepted the highest offer, it does mean they attempted to find out how much the company was worth to other individuals and not just blindingly accepting EA's offer.
There are methods that are somewhat effective at fixing stuck pixels. The method is similar to removing image persistence in an LCD by running a series of colors across the spectrum to clear the problem. Some people have wrongly stated the need to use "bright" colors. The idea is actually to use a series of colors that effectively use all the sub-pixels to a varying degree so as to "exercise" the sub-pixels. I had to do something like this with a screensaver on my Dell Laptop to remove a persistant image.
This method is not 100% effective on stuck pixels, but I am not sure how many people using videos have done so with a truly effective video. The screensaver I used transistioned from a sort of purple type color to a yellow and on to a more redish color (or maybe it was bluish). It made the transition smoothly and over a periods of a few seconds allowing the pixel to actually receive a variety of colors between each of the "set" colors.
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." -Benjamin Franklin
"I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than to those attending too small a degree of it." -Thomas Jefferson
There you have it. Straight from the words of two founding fathers. The freedoms that have been bestowed upon us should not be infringed upon simply because we need to feel a bit safer or because it is a bit harder for the FBI or CIA to legally do their job.
I have personally had feelings along the lines of Franklin's quote since 9/11. I believe that everyone too quickly and too freely gave up rights and freedoms in the name of safety (and a false safety at that). Every individual has a right to privacy and that right is protected by many laws. There are clauses in the laws of many states that protect people with a "reasonable expectation of privacy."
The government has no business being able to read all my e-mails without a warrant and probably cause. The idea they could read millions of e-mails and find that terrorist A sent an email to terrorist B does not change the fact they invaded the privacy (unlawfully so in my opinion, and probably in the opinion of some judges) of law abiding citizens.
One of the central ideas of the distopia of 1984 was that "Big Brother" was always watching. People were monitored almost constantly and there were very few places anyone could escape to find privacy. Even the words uttered in one's sleep could and would be used against a person, so they could be sent for "re-education". This nation was founded on the principle of small central government. I believe this is pretty evident from the 10th amendment to the bill of rights: "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people."
As our government gets larger, our freedoms get smaller and you begin to fall down the so called "slippery slope" into a state where the government now wields total power over its people and the only thing you have left is your freedom of thought.
Pricewatch started out specializing in computer equipment and did a poor job of picking up the consumer side, something that pricegrabber has done fairly well. The interface over at pricewatch also does not lend much to the credence of the site. While it is a bad policy, many regular internet users judge the "site by its cover" and pricegrabber just looks "prettier" then pricewatch.
There are also the sorting functionality with PG over PW. Some of the breakdowns on PW leave a lot to be desired and can make finding items really hard. Not to mention a few sites have figured out how to regularly screw up the PW listing for their items. I am not sure how long they have had the rating system for at PW for stores; however, I do not remember it always being there and that is something else your normal consumer is going to want.
Basically, I really avoid both sites all together anymore. More times then not Newegg or ZZF (ZipZoomFly) have the cheapest prices or close enough to it that I am not going to start ordering my computer parts from every little corner of the web. With most consumer items, I usually research stuff through other online sites and then wind up purchasing from a place I regularly shop at so if and when I have to call CS, it looks better then the schmuck who orders once from a site and never again.
I also think that many of these sites begin to lose some of their early patrons for the reason I no longer use them much. People begin to notice the same three or four stores constantly having the lowest prices and they just proceed to go to those stores and cut out the middle man. Along the same vein, people order things a few times from the store they once never heard of and before you know it they trust the store (especially if they have never had a problem) so they continue to go back there instead of using PW or PG.
In the end I basically search a few sites each time I am going to order something. If it is books or DVDs, I will check Amazon, DeepDiscountDVD, Buy.com, Wal-Mart, Costco (because I have a card), and Overstock. Computer stuff is pretty much Newegg and ZZF, but sometimes I will take a trip to Microcenter if I want something now.
All the problems ever had at my former place of employ were always with the Novell servers. It was sometimes the hardware, but there was some weird problems we had when doing backups that I don't think we ever quite explained. We also had some software issues with Novell, but I think that had more to do with the way different servers were setup and how poorly things were managed between in regards to people needing access to servers not administered by our group.
But please, inform us of some of the great things you can do with Novell systems that you cannot do with a Microsoft server setup with AD.
Because it is a per million basis. The real number of importance since both India and China are over 1 billion people and the US has around 300 million. I mean we are the 3rd most populous country (according to wikipedia) and a distant 3rd at that. Divide up those numbers per million people and the US puts out 750 per million, India about 215 and China less then 644 per million.
I mean of course there are more engineers graduated in countries with three times the population of the US.
HPs Jetdirect cards have a pretty solid reputation of failing every few years
Is this really the case? We had several JetDirect enabled PCs at my former place of work and almost none of them had a card failure. We even had a few extra cards just in case. Several of the printers were actually quite old even. The biggest problem we had was with only HP-5P (I think that is the number). Some users departments did not have the money to replace those crappy old printers. On a bit of an aside, we had several JetDirect "boxes" (the external box that connected the printer port to ethernet) that were working great. I believe most everyone in the IT staff had one at home for their printers.
No One Ever Got Fired For Buying Microsoft.
Not really true. There are some shops so enamored with Novell (mostly because of bosses stuck in the stoneage) that the idea of purchasing Exchange or using a full out ActiveDirectory system with a Windows only network storage share were unheard of. I once again reference my previous job.
Not too bad of a list overall. Most of the items are right, and it is quite true. To be honest, the places I have worked there were really only a handful of problem employees, and most of them got handled directly by our SysAdmin or the head of IT because no wanted to worry about what lie they may come up with about the work we were doing.
Next thing you know I am going to start seeing editted episode of Star Trek: TNG.
Worf: Captain, message coming in over *obvious dubbing moment* AT&T.
Picard: Patch it through.
*AT&T logo appears on view screen before person starts talking*
I think that will be when things hit the ultimate low. Well either that, or when they start putting product placement in shows where they should not be.
Especially considering how many households will quickly enough have one player in the kid's must-have PS3.
Well this is of course assuming that the PS3 does not have the compatability issues with DVD and Blu-Ray discs that the PS2 has had with DVDs. And so long as the technology doesn't change much I guess it won't matter either. Early edition PS2's could not support Progressive Scan.
Although, it will only really help so long as BD players come out priced at or above the price of the PS3. Afterall, the fact the PS2 came around the same price that many DVD players were at made it a bit more attractive.
Well, count your blessings, they talked about originally doing it in two movies.
Good book to movie adaptations include: The Godfather (only a few bits and pieces missing, and some of those are in the second movie), Jurassic Park (not missing much, but if I recall there were some "facts" in the book that might have helped a bit), and 2001 (but Arthur C. Clark had a lot to do with the screenplay and the book is what allows the movie to make some degree of sense).
The key thing most film adaptations will always miss is the details and some bits and pieces of the story. As much as we can complain about LotR (and seriously only one, well maybe two things bother me about LotR), it most definitely renewed interest in the books. I actually know a great many people who read the books after the first movie. Like another post of mine, as far as book adaptations go the worst you can really say is LotR is middle of the pack, because there are some downright horribe adaptations out there.
Ok. Then please enlighten us all to why Tom is such a quintessential part of the books? Yes they made the journey look quicker, but this is in part to facilitate the movie. Remember, movies are going to top out around 3-4 hrs. I joked with my friend that you could probably make close to a 10 hr movie for each book, the fact is you do not have that sort of time and certain things must happen in order to make it work.
I seriously get sicked and tired of hearing people complain about movies not having everything the book had and leaving out "essential" parts. There are things missing, and I even have a gripe, but it is in relation to the last movie so I will not ruin it for you if you ever watch (trust me you will know what the gripe is when you see it). As far as book adaptation go there are not many that can stay as close as LotR did and definitely not win over as many of the fans or renew interests in the original works.
This can be seen from some of the horrible screen adaptations of books. Some don't even seem to resemble the books at all (seriously wasn't The Lost World finished with the book less than halfway through?). Other movies have had quite varied takes on books, but many of these are once again due to your constraints of time. There are some truly horrid adaptations out there and there are some great adaptations that remains very true. All things considered, the worst you could say is LotR is middle of the pack.
I am sick of novels I love being destroyed by two-bit producers who can't invest the little time and energy it would take to do them right.
Seriously this will never change much, but it is not because of two-bit producers, well not always at least. You have to remember that many books would make a great deal more then just a two hour movie. Look at Lord of the Rings, you have a series of three movies which run over 11 hrs with the extended editions and things still had to be left out.
In the end, LotR is probably a good example of a book being done fairly right. Yes a few things were left out and some were even changed, but when taking work from literature to film you should expect some change to be necessary. There are some example of very true novel-theater adaptations, but many of those include lots of Director and Writer interaction and even screenplays being written by the original authors.
Apart from size a portable media player is a strict subset of the functionality of the average general purpose personal computer and is thus obvious to somebody versed in the art.
Based on your argument a laptop is an obvious subset and shouldn't have any weight in allowability, but there are definitely patents drawn to that narrower model. The fact that it is a subset of the general purpose PC makes the claims further limiting and means you need to match the limitations of the claims. The only way to use the PC system in the handheld unit is if you have a motivation in prior art to do so.
The fact that the USPTO are not competent enough to recognise even that simple fact speaks volumes about their general competence on anything to do with computers. I would've hoped the USPTO has not sunk so low as to award patents on size differences alone.
They are competent enough to know this and quite possibly even made arguments to this effect during the prosecution of the patent application. Undoubtedly, an electrical/computer engineer, possibly a CS major, worked on this case and performed the search for prior art. Since the case took so long to prosecute, I would not be too surprised if an RCE was performed or if an appeal was made to the BPAI. If the latter is the case it is possible they made the examiner consider the patentable weight of a "portable media player".
The bigger picture here is that vast numbers of patents (=monopolies) are being awarded that protect nothing but a lawyer's pay check and are acting as roadblocks to innovation, competition and the free market. You can bullshit all you like about the mechanics of patents but the bottom line is you know it's true.
Patents disclosure is what makes them good for the public and helps drive innovation. There are ways to protect inventions outside the realms of patents, and they can be much worse in some areas then a patent can be. Patents obviously do not kill competition in all fields as plenty of technologies have plenty of competitors and actually help drive those industries because they seek to improve the prior art patents in order to achieve their own patents on the improvements and release their products. As for the Free Market, it is a world of fiction. Certain economies may be closer then others, but in the present day there is no Free Market economy that is true to the idea. It is an economists wet dream, where supply and demand is king and nothing else matters.
but does anyone really care enough about HDTV to fork out huge wads of cash on a new set?
Yes, actually a good many people do. The reason is partly because the number of HD Channels are increasing and because the equipment necessary is getting cheaper and cheaper. There are HDTV ready sets which are available for around $1000 with good quality for HDTV. Most cable companies offer HDTV with their cable boxes for anywhere from $5-$15 and for many it is the same cost as their normal digital cable box.
Perhaps its different in the USA with NTSC but here in the UK we have the PAL system which does a nice 625 lines per picture and a good PAL set does an extremely good picture
As someone else pointed out not all of you 675 lines are visible. It is important to remember that the signal is also still interlaced. Progressive scanned signals alone are almost worth the cost, but improved resolution makes a big difference in the video over its standard definition version with only a few regular digital channels making it even close to looking as good. With more programs having HD formats available it is very much worth it. On a side note, I have a friend with a disability that makes viewing things very difficult. It is not a correctable problem, but the first time he watched something on the HDTV he was actually able to view the television from a reasonable distance. I accredit this to the size and the clarity of the display.
HDTV would be better , but $3000 worth better?
Unless the prices are grossly inflated in the UK, you are not going to have to spend $3000 on an HDTV. I purchased mine for $1300 (Rear Projection), and I have seen many LCD TVs beginning to go for around this price at 32". You can get good LCD projection and DLP TVs for around $1500-$2000 that have very good quality. Trust me it is really worth the experience if you truly enjoy watching television or any shows that are broadcast in HD. Also makes for a rather nice home theater if you have the speakers to add to it, and I have seen even non-tech savvy women who enjoyed the experience and quality, including my mom.
I hope you are just kidding. If you seriously have found this to be the case you have BAD DVDs. There is ONE recorded case of this I know of and it was with the very early releases of the Back to the Future DVD set. I believe it was only the second movie, but there were what the called a few scenes (seemed like more than that to me) where they cut the 4:3 version to make the widescreen format.
I really have never heard of anyone else ever doing this and if a movie was shown in theaters it almost certainly has an original 16:9 (or other widescreen format, and there are a few) which most definitely shows more then the 4:3. One of the worst movies that I ever saw in 4:3 was Star Trek First Contact. There are several scenes where because of the poor video trimming you are missing information that make certain actions by the actors make a heck of a lot more sense.
Your analysis ignores the fact that a portable media player would be a well-defined term. In the specification they define the portable media player which acknowledges they know the limitation of the term for use in the patent. Without seeing the full record of the prosecution, I can only assume the arguments made for the "display screen" are that it that each "display screen" is considered to be the full view of the display on the device.
Something being ignored is the limitation of a portable media player. You construed this into a laptop, but I will still argue that the term would have been defined in the art to exclude such an item. Some of your analyses also slightly misinterpret the claims. For example, claim 2 would be closer to Open Folder, Selecting Folder Two and clicking Play all Files in Folder Two.
I do have to give you some credit though, most people around here usually just yell foul and do not even bother to read the claim, let alone analyze it, but then again most people do not know how to properly analyze a claim.
Thank you for quoting a statute I already know. Now let me quote you two things that do not make it that easy. First is the requirements set forth by Graham v. Deere that you can see in MPEP 2141
Second is the requirement for motivation as determined by the CAFC and viewable in MPEP 2143.01
Because someone else thought up an item at nearly the same time on their own does not make it obvious. There are cases in history (and I am not going to look for them now) where people have discovered the same scientific facts or invented like items who had no knowledge of the other person or their work and the discoveries were made in relative closeness to each other.
Unlike what the people here would have you believe, there is a process to solve this who invented it first idea within the US Patent system. If two parties file for a patent with similar claims to an invention, a Interference is performed where the Board of Patent Appeals and Interferences (wonder where that came from) decide based on the facts available who invented the item first. At that point prosecution would continue on the case. Just be glad the US still has a first to invent system. In pretty much the rest of the world, they use a first to file system where first to the patent office wins.
You obviously did not bother trying to determine what the patent was for. It is not the buttons, but the way you navigate through the successive screens. To put it in simple english for you: the nested menu system used on iPod and like devices.
Have you done much patent litigation? I will assume not since the word trivial is not in any patent lawyers vocabulary, a limitation is a limitation and if it get their client a patent they will fight for it. I also assume this because you mention them as obvious extensions of existing technology; however, you would also know that obviousness is not a simple matter of, oh I did it on element X so surely it is the same on element Y.
The key here is the patent is actually fairly specific and considering the litigation of the patent took four years, it would probably be safe to assume there was a lot of conflict between examiner and attorneys over the originally filed case. You can even view what should be the original listing of claims in the published application 2002/0147728.
While it might seem trivial to you to perform the claimed functions, the prior art obviously did not reflect this. Taking a present invention and further limiting that invention into a form of improvement or into a new or specialized function is what a great many patents are today. The computer mouse has not changed by leaps and bounds, it is still an encoder for movement and two buttons with a possible other encoder for the optional scroll wheel. Does this mean that there should be no patents for optical mice since optical encoders existed before and were used to measure motion? What about keyboards that instead of using physical keys employ a touch only method where there would be no mechanical pieces? A patent surely existed before any such keyboard for a button operating in that manner, does it instantly become obvious for someone to do it with the keyboard? Afterall, there are keys on a keyboard.
I believe the largest problem with people who complain about issued patents or the patent system is they do not understand the terms they use. Many people throw around the words obvious, prior art, and utility like they understand their meaning. The fact is a great many do not and even those who do sometimes find themselves short the information they need to know in order to use them properly. Obviousness is not as easy a devil as it seems, the requirements on the patent office to prove obviousness are quite large. Indeed, a look at the system will show you that the office is setting out to prove you do not deserve a patent placing a great burden on them to find and use prior art, which seems easy enough until you realize not everyone plays nice, especially in the idea of 'Duty to Disclose'.
I do not have the time to analyze the claims right now, but if you people would really enjoy an attempt to explain why this may not be as evil as you think then please let it be known by replying.
Please note the application was filed in Jan. 2001 which pre-dates the iPod's release by about 9 months. It is important to note the claims are limited the device being a portable media player. I would be interested to see, however, if their use of the term track (and keeping it fairly tied to the idea of music) might not limit their idea to only music. It is something that would need to be tested in court at this point, but it could be an "unintended" limitation on them.
The Microsoft Patent in question is totally different then the Creative one. The patent in question there concerns an input method for a device and if you look at the Microsoft patent you will see a device that looks oddly like an iPod. This is of course assuming I remember the patents correctly.
Slashdot Mirror
I read this the other day and posted on a comment on the story about NTP signing a patent licensing deal. The small company involved was Visto and Visto has several patents (25 total). It is quite possible the two companies are cross-licensing, but NTP may not have any patents worth sharing when the re-examination process at the PTO is complete.
Basically, Visto and NTP announced their deal Wednesday, the same day Visto filed suit against Microsoft. It also appears that NTP acquired a stake in the company as well, so they seem to have an invested interest in this case now as well. For those who have been hiding for the last while, NTP is the company who has become famous (or infamous) from their suit against RIM.
I was part of one of the SWG beta tests, and as I recall I was pretty excited at first to begin playing. I created a couple of characters and would do a few quests, but I would eventually get bored. Of course this was in the days of the beta and getting around took forever and there is something to be said for having actual character levels and not whatever the hell it was we had.
After the poor experience in the beta, I had absolutely no wish to continue playing the game, especially if I was going to have to pay. Later on, WoW came along. I once again found myself with free time and began to play with several friends. I actually found many of the experiences entertaining and Battlegrounds came around at just the right time to keep me intersted. At present I have two characters on an RP server, a mid-50s Tauren Warrior and a low-30s Troll Priest. My main problem began with the fact that I can hardly do anything in the game with my Tauren Warrior without having to find a large group or raid. I actually enjoyed spending some time questing and fighting in certain areas for levelling, but the experience is greatly lowered.
Many of my friends began spending less time on the servers, and I found myself more entrapped by the real world that comes along after college. I want to be able to sign on and go straight to fighting creatures and doings quests, now that I have less free time then in school; however, the at the higher levels this is almost impossible. I am finding a similar problem with my priest who is sitting a this strange gray area level where I am a bit high for some of the quests and bit too low to do others.
In the end, I think I prefer games where I can get straight into the action without having to spend much time looking for parties or trying to find help when new quests come along. I do enjoy the social aspect, somewhat, because playing single player games the only interaction is with NPCs and that seems hurt in some cases. I am confident that the WoW Expansion might offer some new gameplay that will help with the current state of things and maybe bring things back to a state I will enjoy.
Otherwise, I will sit tight for ES4 and start playing the heck out of it.
On a side note, the company NTP signed a licensing agreement with, Visto, also filed a lawsuit against Microsoft yesterday claiming infringement on the three of the patents they hold. Alas, I have submitted the story and awaiting for approval, but it appears that NTP also acquired a stake in Visto. Interestingly enough, it seems the Visto claims are somewhat similar to the NTP v. RIM, but that could just be the media talking again. It is possible the patents in question actually deal with another part of the wireless e-mail chain and that the media is just getting confused amongst the technology again.
Does the person actually have a viable case here? The prices of Jamdat's stock did go up after the sale announcement to nearly the price per share they were going to pay. I am also wondering if Jamdat was offering themselves up or if EA just came in with an offer at random.
If the latter is true, then he might have a bit more of an argument because it looks like the company saw the dollar signs and took the money and ran. At that point they probably should have started telling some other possibly interested peoples of the offer and see if anyone was going to counter.
If the first is true, then I would imagine that Jamdat fielded a great many offers from different companies and got several figures before settling on EA's. While this does not necessarily mean they accepted the highest offer, it does mean they attempted to find out how much the company was worth to other individuals and not just blindingly accepting EA's offer.
There are methods that are somewhat effective at fixing stuck pixels. The method is similar to removing image persistence in an LCD by running a series of colors across the spectrum to clear the problem. Some people have wrongly stated the need to use "bright" colors. The idea is actually to use a series of colors that effectively use all the sub-pixels to a varying degree so as to "exercise" the sub-pixels. I had to do something like this with a screensaver on my Dell Laptop to remove a persistant image.
This method is not 100% effective on stuck pixels, but I am not sure how many people using videos have done so with a truly effective video. The screensaver I used transistioned from a sort of purple type color to a yellow and on to a more redish color (or maybe it was bluish). It made the transition smoothly and over a periods of a few seconds allowing the pixel to actually receive a variety of colors between each of the "set" colors.
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." -Benjamin Franklin
"I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than to those attending too small a degree of it." -Thomas Jefferson
There you have it. Straight from the words of two founding fathers. The freedoms that have been bestowed upon us should not be infringed upon simply because we need to feel a bit safer or because it is a bit harder for the FBI or CIA to legally do their job.
I have personally had feelings along the lines of Franklin's quote since 9/11. I believe that everyone too quickly and too freely gave up rights and freedoms in the name of safety (and a false safety at that). Every individual has a right to privacy and that right is protected by many laws. There are clauses in the laws of many states that protect people with a "reasonable expectation of privacy."
The government has no business being able to read all my e-mails without a warrant and probably cause. The idea they could read millions of e-mails and find that terrorist A sent an email to terrorist B does not change the fact they invaded the privacy (unlawfully so in my opinion, and probably in the opinion of some judges) of law abiding citizens.
One of the central ideas of the distopia of 1984 was that "Big Brother" was always watching. People were monitored almost constantly and there were very few places anyone could escape to find privacy. Even the words uttered in one's sleep could and would be used against a person, so they could be sent for "re-education". This nation was founded on the principle of small central government. I believe this is pretty evident from the 10th amendment to the bill of rights: "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people."
As our government gets larger, our freedoms get smaller and you begin to fall down the so called "slippery slope" into a state where the government now wields total power over its people and the only thing you have left is your freedom of thought.
Pricewatch started out specializing in computer equipment and did a poor job of picking up the consumer side, something that pricegrabber has done fairly well. The interface over at pricewatch also does not lend much to the credence of the site. While it is a bad policy, many regular internet users judge the "site by its cover" and pricegrabber just looks "prettier" then pricewatch.
There are also the sorting functionality with PG over PW. Some of the breakdowns on PW leave a lot to be desired and can make finding items really hard. Not to mention a few sites have figured out how to regularly screw up the PW listing for their items. I am not sure how long they have had the rating system for at PW for stores; however, I do not remember it always being there and that is something else your normal consumer is going to want.
Basically, I really avoid both sites all together anymore. More times then not Newegg or ZZF (ZipZoomFly) have the cheapest prices or close enough to it that I am not going to start ordering my computer parts from every little corner of the web. With most consumer items, I usually research stuff through other online sites and then wind up purchasing from a place I regularly shop at so if and when I have to call CS, it looks better then the schmuck who orders once from a site and never again.
I also think that many of these sites begin to lose some of their early patrons for the reason I no longer use them much. People begin to notice the same three or four stores constantly having the lowest prices and they just proceed to go to those stores and cut out the middle man. Along the same vein, people order things a few times from the store they once never heard of and before you know it they trust the store (especially if they have never had a problem) so they continue to go back there instead of using PW or PG.
In the end I basically search a few sites each time I am going to order something. If it is books or DVDs, I will check Amazon, DeepDiscountDVD, Buy.com, Wal-Mart, Costco (because I have a card), and Overstock. Computer stuff is pretty much Newegg and ZZF, but sometimes I will take a trip to Microcenter if I want something now.
All the problems ever had at my former place of employ were always with the Novell servers. It was sometimes the hardware, but there was some weird problems we had when doing backups that I don't think we ever quite explained. We also had some software issues with Novell, but I think that had more to do with the way different servers were setup and how poorly things were managed between in regards to people needing access to servers not administered by our group.
But please, inform us of some of the great things you can do with Novell systems that you cannot do with a Microsoft server setup with AD.
Because it is a per million basis. The real number of importance since both India and China are over 1 billion people and the US has around 300 million. I mean we are the 3rd most populous country (according to wikipedia) and a distant 3rd at that. Divide up those numbers per million people and the US puts out 750 per million, India about 215 and China less then 644 per million.
I mean of course there are more engineers graduated in countries with three times the population of the US.
HPs Jetdirect cards have a pretty solid reputation of failing every few years
Is this really the case? We had several JetDirect enabled PCs at my former place of work and almost none of them had a card failure. We even had a few extra cards just in case. Several of the printers were actually quite old even. The biggest problem we had was with only HP-5P (I think that is the number). Some users departments did not have the money to replace those crappy old printers. On a bit of an aside, we had several JetDirect "boxes" (the external box that connected the printer port to ethernet) that were working great. I believe most everyone in the IT staff had one at home for their printers.
No One Ever Got Fired For Buying Microsoft.
Not really true. There are some shops so enamored with Novell (mostly because of bosses stuck in the stoneage) that the idea of purchasing Exchange or using a full out ActiveDirectory system with a Windows only network storage share were unheard of. I once again reference my previous job.
Not too bad of a list overall. Most of the items are right, and it is quite true. To be honest, the places I have worked there were really only a handful of problem employees, and most of them got handled directly by our SysAdmin or the head of IT because no wanted to worry about what lie they may come up with about the work we were doing.
Next thing you know I am going to start seeing editted episode of Star Trek: TNG.
Worf: Captain, message coming in over *obvious dubbing moment* AT&T.
Picard: Patch it through.
*AT&T logo appears on view screen before person starts talking*
I think that will be when things hit the ultimate low. Well either that, or when they start putting product placement in shows where they should not be.
Especially considering how many households will quickly enough have one player in the kid's must-have PS3.
Well this is of course assuming that the PS3 does not have the compatability issues with DVD and Blu-Ray discs that the PS2 has had with DVDs. And so long as the technology doesn't change much I guess it won't matter either. Early edition PS2's could not support Progressive Scan.
Although, it will only really help so long as BD players come out priced at or above the price of the PS3. Afterall, the fact the PS2 came around the same price that many DVD players were at made it a bit more attractive.
Well, count your blessings, they talked about originally doing it in two movies.
Good book to movie adaptations include: The Godfather (only a few bits and pieces missing, and some of those are in the second movie), Jurassic Park (not missing much, but if I recall there were some "facts" in the book that might have helped a bit), and 2001 (but Arthur C. Clark had a lot to do with the screenplay and the book is what allows the movie to make some degree of sense).
The key thing most film adaptations will always miss is the details and some bits and pieces of the story. As much as we can complain about LotR (and seriously only one, well maybe two things bother me about LotR), it most definitely renewed interest in the books. I actually know a great many people who read the books after the first movie. Like another post of mine, as far as book adaptations go the worst you can really say is LotR is middle of the pack, because there are some downright horribe adaptations out there.
Ok. Then please enlighten us all to why Tom is such a quintessential part of the books? Yes they made the journey look quicker, but this is in part to facilitate the movie. Remember, movies are going to top out around 3-4 hrs. I joked with my friend that you could probably make close to a 10 hr movie for each book, the fact is you do not have that sort of time and certain things must happen in order to make it work.
I seriously get sicked and tired of hearing people complain about movies not having everything the book had and leaving out "essential" parts. There are things missing, and I even have a gripe, but it is in relation to the last movie so I will not ruin it for you if you ever watch (trust me you will know what the gripe is when you see it). As far as book adaptation go there are not many that can stay as close as LotR did and definitely not win over as many of the fans or renew interests in the original works.
This can be seen from some of the horrible screen adaptations of books. Some don't even seem to resemble the books at all (seriously wasn't The Lost World finished with the book less than halfway through?). Other movies have had quite varied takes on books, but many of these are once again due to your constraints of time. There are some truly horrid adaptations out there and there are some great adaptations that remains very true. All things considered, the worst you could say is LotR is middle of the pack.
I am sick of novels I love being destroyed by two-bit producers who can't invest the little time and energy it would take to do them right.
Seriously this will never change much, but it is not because of two-bit producers, well not always at least. You have to remember that many books would make a great deal more then just a two hour movie. Look at Lord of the Rings, you have a series of three movies which run over 11 hrs with the extended editions and things still had to be left out.
In the end, LotR is probably a good example of a book being done fairly right. Yes a few things were left out and some were even changed, but when taking work from literature to film you should expect some change to be necessary. There are some example of very true novel-theater adaptations, but many of those include lots of Director and Writer interaction and even screenplays being written by the original authors.
Apart from size a portable media player is a strict subset of the functionality of the average general purpose personal computer and is thus obvious to somebody versed in the art.
Based on your argument a laptop is an obvious subset and shouldn't have any weight in allowability, but there are definitely patents drawn to that narrower model. The fact that it is a subset of the general purpose PC makes the claims further limiting and means you need to match the limitations of the claims. The only way to use the PC system in the handheld unit is if you have a motivation in prior art to do so.
The fact that the USPTO are not competent enough to recognise even that simple fact speaks volumes about their general competence on anything to do with computers. I would've hoped the USPTO has not sunk so low as to award patents on size differences alone.
They are competent enough to know this and quite possibly even made arguments to this effect during the prosecution of the patent application. Undoubtedly, an electrical/computer engineer, possibly a CS major, worked on this case and performed the search for prior art. Since the case took so long to prosecute, I would not be too surprised if an RCE was performed or if an appeal was made to the BPAI. If the latter is the case it is possible they made the examiner consider the patentable weight of a "portable media player".
The bigger picture here is that vast numbers of patents (=monopolies) are being awarded that protect nothing but a lawyer's pay check and are acting as roadblocks to innovation, competition and the free market. You can bullshit all you like about the mechanics of patents but the bottom line is you know it's true.
Patents disclosure is what makes them good for the public and helps drive innovation. There are ways to protect inventions outside the realms of patents, and they can be much worse in some areas then a patent can be. Patents obviously do not kill competition in all fields as plenty of technologies have plenty of competitors and actually help drive those industries because they seek to improve the prior art patents in order to achieve their own patents on the improvements and release their products. As for the Free Market, it is a world of fiction. Certain economies may be closer then others, but in the present day there is no Free Market economy that is true to the idea. It is an economists wet dream, where supply and demand is king and nothing else matters.
but does anyone really care enough about HDTV to fork out huge wads of cash on a new set?
Yes, actually a good many people do. The reason is partly because the number of HD Channels are increasing and because the equipment necessary is getting cheaper and cheaper. There are HDTV ready sets which are available for around $1000 with good quality for HDTV. Most cable companies offer HDTV with their cable boxes for anywhere from $5-$15 and for many it is the same cost as their normal digital cable box.
Perhaps its different in the USA with NTSC but here in the UK we have the PAL system which does a nice 625 lines per picture and a good PAL set does an extremely good picture
As someone else pointed out not all of you 675 lines are visible. It is important to remember that the signal is also still interlaced. Progressive scanned signals alone are almost worth the cost, but improved resolution makes a big difference in the video over its standard definition version with only a few regular digital channels making it even close to looking as good. With more programs having HD formats available it is very much worth it. On a side note, I have a friend with a disability that makes viewing things very difficult. It is not a correctable problem, but the first time he watched something on the HDTV he was actually able to view the television from a reasonable distance. I accredit this to the size and the clarity of the display.
HDTV would be better , but $3000 worth better?
Unless the prices are grossly inflated in the UK, you are not going to have to spend $3000 on an HDTV. I purchased mine for $1300 (Rear Projection), and I have seen many LCD TVs beginning to go for around this price at 32". You can get good LCD projection and DLP TVs for around $1500-$2000 that have very good quality. Trust me it is really worth the experience if you truly enjoy watching television or any shows that are broadcast in HD. Also makes for a rather nice home theater if you have the speakers to add to it, and I have seen even non-tech savvy women who enjoyed the experience and quality, including my mom.
I hope you are just kidding. If you seriously have found this to be the case you have BAD DVDs. There is ONE recorded case of this I know of and it was with the very early releases of the Back to the Future DVD set. I believe it was only the second movie, but there were what the called a few scenes (seemed like more than that to me) where they cut the 4:3 version to make the widescreen format.
I really have never heard of anyone else ever doing this and if a movie was shown in theaters it almost certainly has an original 16:9 (or other widescreen format, and there are a few) which most definitely shows more then the 4:3. One of the worst movies that I ever saw in 4:3 was Star Trek First Contact. There are several scenes where because of the poor video trimming you are missing information that make certain actions by the actors make a heck of a lot more sense.
Your analysis ignores the fact that a portable media player would be a well-defined term. In the specification they define the portable media player which acknowledges they know the limitation of the term for use in the patent. Without seeing the full record of the prosecution, I can only assume the arguments made for the "display screen" are that it that each "display screen" is considered to be the full view of the display on the device.
Something being ignored is the limitation of a portable media player. You construed this into a laptop, but I will still argue that the term would have been defined in the art to exclude such an item. Some of your analyses also slightly misinterpret the claims. For example, claim 2 would be closer to Open Folder, Selecting Folder Two and clicking Play all Files in Folder Two.
I do have to give you some credit though, most people around here usually just yell foul and do not even bother to read the claim, let alone analyze it, but then again most people do not know how to properly analyze a claim.
Thank you for quoting a statute I already know. Now let me quote you two things that do not make it that easy. First is the requirements set forth by Graham v. Deere that you can see in MPEP 2141
Second is the requirement for motivation as determined by the CAFC and viewable in MPEP 2143.01
Not as easy as you would think huh?
Because someone else thought up an item at nearly the same time on their own does not make it obvious. There are cases in history (and I am not going to look for them now) where people have discovered the same scientific facts or invented like items who had no knowledge of the other person or their work and the discoveries were made in relative closeness to each other.
Unlike what the people here would have you believe, there is a process to solve this who invented it first idea within the US Patent system. If two parties file for a patent with similar claims to an invention, a Interference is performed where the Board of Patent Appeals and Interferences (wonder where that came from) decide based on the facts available who invented the item first. At that point prosecution would continue on the case. Just be glad the US still has a first to invent system. In pretty much the rest of the world, they use a first to file system where first to the patent office wins.
You obviously did not bother trying to determine what the patent was for. It is not the buttons, but the way you navigate through the successive screens. To put it in simple english for you: the nested menu system used on iPod and like devices.
Have you done much patent litigation? I will assume not since the word trivial is not in any patent lawyers vocabulary, a limitation is a limitation and if it get their client a patent they will fight for it. I also assume this because you mention them as obvious extensions of existing technology; however, you would also know that obviousness is not a simple matter of, oh I did it on element X so surely it is the same on element Y.
The key here is the patent is actually fairly specific and considering the litigation of the patent took four years, it would probably be safe to assume there was a lot of conflict between examiner and attorneys over the originally filed case. You can even view what should be the original listing of claims in the published application 2002/0147728.
While it might seem trivial to you to perform the claimed functions, the prior art obviously did not reflect this. Taking a present invention and further limiting that invention into a form of improvement or into a new or specialized function is what a great many patents are today. The computer mouse has not changed by leaps and bounds, it is still an encoder for movement and two buttons with a possible other encoder for the optional scroll wheel. Does this mean that there should be no patents for optical mice since optical encoders existed before and were used to measure motion? What about keyboards that instead of using physical keys employ a touch only method where there would be no mechanical pieces? A patent surely existed before any such keyboard for a button operating in that manner, does it instantly become obvious for someone to do it with the keyboard? Afterall, there are keys on a keyboard.
I believe the largest problem with people who complain about issued patents or the patent system is they do not understand the terms they use. Many people throw around the words obvious, prior art, and utility like they understand their meaning. The fact is a great many do not and even those who do sometimes find themselves short the information they need to know in order to use them properly. Obviousness is not as easy a devil as it seems, the requirements on the patent office to prove obviousness are quite large. Indeed, a look at the system will show you that the office is setting out to prove you do not deserve a patent placing a great burden on them to find and use prior art, which seems easy enough until you realize not everyone plays nice, especially in the idea of 'Duty to Disclose'.
US Patent Number 6,928,433
I do not have the time to analyze the claims right now, but if you people would really enjoy an attempt to explain why this may not be as evil as you think then please let it be known by replying.
Please note the application was filed in Jan. 2001 which pre-dates the iPod's release by about 9 months. It is important to note the claims are limited the device being a portable media player. I would be interested to see, however, if their use of the term track (and keeping it fairly tied to the idea of music) might not limit their idea to only music. It is something that would need to be tested in court at this point, but it could be an "unintended" limitation on them.
The Microsoft Patent in question is totally different then the Creative one. The patent in question there concerns an input method for a device and if you look at the Microsoft patent you will see a device that looks oddly like an iPod. This is of course assuming I remember the patents correctly.