I'm a pretty staunch critic when it comes to Sci-Fi. However, I have to say that Stargate SG-1 has always been one of the best. They have always had an attention to scientific detail that was far and above other shows, with the possible exception of the Star Trek series' (Gene Roddenbery was a master). However, the real charm of SSG1 has been the clever dialog and witty inside jokes. I knew I was going to love the series from the first episode when, upon finding the first ancient dialing device on another planet, Samantha Carter sez to Jack O'Neill:
> "Amazing. This is what was missing from the dig at Giza. It took > us 15 years and 3 supercomputers to MacGyver a system for the > gate on Earth."
Now I shouldn't have to explain why this is clever and funny, but I often have to clue people in. I appologize to the 99% of you who already get it, but for that 1% who need a little help;
Jack O'Neil is played by actor Richard Dean Anderson. Richard Dean Anderson also played a character named MacGyver on a TV show of the same name. MacGyver's claim-to-fame was using combinations of everyday items to "engineer" solutions to seemingly insurmountable problems...
I doubt that anyone thinks such a lawsuit would be successful. However it might accomplish one important thing. It might raise awareness that what allofmp3 is doing is tantamount to piracy. It might stop people with conscience from using the site...
Seriously, every slash-dotter must be aware that conductive objects on or near the body - jewelery is the obvious and most likely candidate - will act as a focus for energy transmission during a lightning strike. Belt buckles and shoe nails used to be the problem in earlier times.
Seriously, that's complete bunk. A lightning strike can be decomposed into two main components. First there are stepped leaders extending down from a cloud. These leaders excite magnetic fields. Within the fields positive streamers extend up from the ground. The streamers will extend higher from higher ground and with grounded conductive objects (such as a human body or a metal pole). The higher the positive streamer in the vacinity of a stepped leader, the higher the probability of a lightning strike.
Having conductive objects on or near the body have no effect on positive streamers. Contrary to popular myth, conductors aren't like magnets to lightning. Of course, this bit of wisdom assumes that one is not doing something stupid like holding a metal pole in the air. In that case, a conductive object near the body (i.e. the pole) could be said to increase one's probability of being struck.
Contrast this bit of news with the story in the current Scientific American that links stem cells with cancer. The current working theory is that most cancers arise due to stem cell mutations... more stem cells, higher probability of cancer.
For every kid with a balloon, there's always some joker with a needle lurking around the corner...
Whenever I think of AV software I am reminded of the Monty Python skit: "Army Protection Racket". In the skit, Michael Palin and Terry Jones portray a couple of mafiosos and they wander around the office of an army Colonel, casually pushing objects off the desk, the shelves, etc.. All the while they say things like, "You've got a nice army base here, Colonel. We wouldn't want anything to happen to it." They imply that bad things might happen like all the tanks might break or the squad of paratroopers might catch on fire...
"We can guarantee you that not a single armoured division will get done over for fifteen bob a week."
Radio and television operate at frequencies below microwave, while the visible spectrum operates at frequencies above microwave. Why would anyone assume that there is anything magical or mysterious about the microwave spectrum? It's only when you get into the upper portion of the ultraviolet spectrum and above (x-rays and gamma rays) where the effects of radiation become a problem.
This does not mean that microwaves can't or don't cause damage to living cells. If the energy of the microwaves are strong enough, they cause water molecules to become excited (friction causing heat). If you put something in a microwave oven or stand too close to a microwave transmitter, things can heat up. If they heat up enough, this can cause cellular damage (no pun intended). Prolonged exposure to heat could cause cancer... however, the victim would feel physical discomfort long before there would be long term effects.
Ergo, the radio transmitter is one of the least likely causes of this "outbreak".
I don't get it.
First this PC Magazine Editor-in-Chief writes:
Once you've laid out a few kilobucks on your BC system and been frustrated a few times with Windows limitations, what are you going to do? Jobs's bet: You'll start spending more and more time in OS X, until you--too--become one of the pod people.
I read this and think, "What more logical reason to switch OSes than because one is less frustrating than the other"?
Then he writes:
It's sad to see so many of my compatriots being turned into lemmings. Perhaps they'll wake up and smell the Apple pie in the sky--and realize they've been taken for a ride.
How does making an intelligent choice turn one into a lemming? Who's taking who for a ride? This logic defies all reason...
For the record, I use PCs and Macs every day (plus Sun workstations). I use PCs at work because my employer says I have to. I use Macs at home because I have a choice.
> Don't get itunes. The PC version is hideous compared to the mac one
Huh? They are virtually identical. I've tried dozens of audio players for Windows and they all bog down when the CPU is cranking away (by "bog down" I mean they stop playing for various intervals), but iTunes tends to bog down less than the other ones I've tried.
All Windows software amazes me... or rather, I'm amazed that we, as consumers, are willing to put up with it. I use Windows, Mac OS, and Solaris every day. I use Windows at work because I have to. I use Mac at home because I have a choice.
The best Windows software? Obviously, that depends on what you do with computers. Here's my list (from an engineer's perspective):
Remote Desktop Client
Lets me drive my Windows PC at work from my Mac at home.
UltraEdit
This is a reasonably useful and powerful text editor. I don't
use it anymore because I decided not to spend money on the
upgrades when I'd rather be using emacs. I try not to edit
software on my PC and Notepad works just fine for simple text
documents. However, if you have to do programming in Windows,
I highly recommend UltraEdit.
ActivePerl
When you absolutuely have to run perl in Windows.
cygwin
When you'd really rather be using unix.
WinZip
The Stuffit Deluxe of the Windows world.
FireFox
Because Internet Explorer is a non standard piece of...
Internet Explorer (sadly)
Because a lot of people do crazy stuff to overcome the
limitations of IE and a lot of this crazy stuff breaks
other browsers...
TightVNC
For connecting to other computers.
iTunes
I've not found anything better for playing mp3's and CDs
on Windows. Everything else seems to suffer from latency
issues when the load goes up. BTW, I hate iTunes; It breaks
nearly every UI rule Apple wrote. However, if all you want
to do is play music, it's adequate. If you like iTunes on
Mac, you'll like it in Windows. It's the same.
Microsoft Office
I hate it, but I use it all the time. There's nothing better
in terms of features and universality.
Documents To Go
If you've got a PalmOS device, this is a must-have. It lets
you share many 'office' documents with your PDA.
3 years ago, I would have agreed with this, however over the last several years I feel Apple's customer service and their attitude towards their customers have degraded seriously. I fault the success of the iPod... It's kind of like when small towns boom because of the success of some business - it doesn't feel like a small, home town anymore.
I guess it was inevitable. 5 Years ago, I couldn't envision buying anything but Apple computers (I have 4 in service now and have been using Macs since 1985-ish). However, with Apple's customer service waning and the switch to Intel processors, which will force me to do a wholesale software switch-over... I'm not so sure my next computer will be a Mac...
This thing was a nightmare, by today's standards, but a marvel at the time. Technically, it wasn't mine. A friend was given this by his dad, but said friend had no interest in it. I on the other hand was a born programmer and was always playing with it. Eventually, the friend told me to take it home and play with it on my own time...
- - - - - - - - -
2nd computer: Radio Shack Color Computer - chicklet keyboard, 4K RAM (I know, you didn't ask, but it seemed notable)
I eventually hacked the CoCo to accept 16K RAM, added a real keyboard and an external floppy drive.
One thing that no one seems to get. If the NTP patents are all ultimately invalidated, this will open a veritable Pandora's box. NTP's patents, by all accounts, follow the form and letter of the law. If they are invalidated, then this will open the door for thousands and thousands of other patents to fall under review for the economic benifit of technology robber barons. Mark my words - only economic chaos can come of this!
The original example of "prior art" never worked.
There was more to the story than was presented in this article.
RIM blatently tried to con the court and got caught at it.
The judge was actually quite generous, all options considered.
Increasing the virtual debt that RIM never intends to pay anyway is a lot better than finding oneself in the pokey!
You obviously have not looked at very many patents.
There are lots and lots of patents that are based only on ideas.
Some of them are just waiting for technologies to be developed before they can be realized.
Some are there for the sole purpose of blocking someone from making a profit on an idea.
As for NTP - no they didn't have a product... but the inventor, Campana, did.
Campana filed for the patents years before RIM even started developing wireless technologies.
It doesn't matter if RIM developed the technology independently, which we don't know for sure.
It also doesn't matter who has a better business model for the application.
When it comes to patents, all that matters is who gets there first.
RIM didn't get there first. Like thousands of other successful companies that never crossed
the finish line in first place, RIM should have just payed the royalties. That's the way the
system works... (OK, that's the way the system is supposed to work...)
The irony of it all is that RIM is trying to get the NTP patents invalidated, but what started
it all was RIM trying to get patents for essentially the same technologies to protect their
intellectual property... What's good for the goose is apparently not good for the gander.
Maybe if you were an inventor with patents, you would feel differently.
I challenge your assertion: there are NOT a lot of apps that are cpu bound (or rather, the percentage of apps and users of those apps is a fraction of a fraction of the general population of users). I acknowledge that there are examples where CPU speed is king, but often, even these are limited by memory access and worse still disk access or even worse still network bandwidth... My point is that the legitimate examples of cpu-bound usage do not represent the mainstream usage of computers.
In the mainstream, most users click a button or hit a key and trigger some cpu event that completes long before they even recognize that it's done. Meanwhile, the cpu blazes away... waiting for the next request for a burst of useful activity. Real performance benefits come not from making the bursts faster and certainly not from making the waits faster, but rather from reducing the cycle time between the bursts. In other words, most users benefit more from smarter user interfaces than faster cpus.
Is there a market for faster cpus? Of course, just not the market that that is being pandered to by the standard benchmarks. If you have a cpu-bound application and your business depends on competitive performance, you're going to do your own benchmark and your performance assessment probably won't agree with everyone else's performance assessment.
> In other words, 39% chose creationism, as there is no discernable difference between creationism and ID
Contrary to popular myth, ID and creationism are not the same thing. They are often equated in order to discredit those that believe in Intelligent Design and to keep ID out of the schools, but they are fundamentally (pun intended) different.
For the record - I personally subscribe, not only to the theory of evolution, but also to the principle of evolution.
Also, just in case there is any confusion about where I stand, I don't approve of ID being taught in schools - not because it's creationism in disguise, but because it's not science (well, not much of it, anyway).
My 2.6GHz Thinkpad smokes my 1.0GHz G4 iMac in CPU benchmarks. I use them both every day for many hours a day and for many common tasks. However, in spite of the CPU performance difference, the iMac seems faster (i.e. it's more responsive AND my productivity/output is higher).
Now I'm sure that there are some applications (that I never use) where the standard benchmarks do give meaningful results... However, for the applications that I use, I find most benchmarks to be a meaningless waste of time (with the possible exception of the old ByteMark).
There's an old saying about standards, but I think it applies equally well to benchmarks, so I'm going to co-opt it...
The nice thing about benchmarks is that there are so many to choose from...
The point being is that everyone has different expectations and different ways of using computers. Alternatively, the point may be that benchmarks are just another way of lying with statistics...
Well, I don't have time or the patience to respond to every point that everyone is trying to make... I suggest that you read the patents, read the arguments on both sides of the story, then see if you hold your opinion.
That being said I will comment on a few points.
Sending email from a wireless computer or handheld device in the traditional way is not what is at stake here. Those devices ultimately tie into a wired hub somewhere and the email is sent via the internet just the same as if they were plugged into the wall. They use standard protocols to establish a communication link between the wireless device and the wired net. The email is not being sent wirelessly. What Campana invented and what RIM is doing is fundamentally different.
Yes, some of the NTP patents have been invalidated. One in particular was invalidated based on so-called prior art, however recent evidence has demonstrated that the prior art example does not do what it claimed. It is likely that this patent will come under review, again. Also, I think Campana tried to files some defensive patents to further protect the concept. It is these that are currently under fire. The main patent that RIM violated has been upheld on multiple reviews. RIM just keeps bringing up the failed patents in hopes that they can sink the big one using a guilt-by-association ploy. It seems to be working with the general public...
Yes the patent system is flawed. Horribly flawed. I have genes in my body that are patented. They were patented by someone, not me, after I was born - should I not be able to claim prior art? There are lots of frivolous patents. there are lots of patents for ideas that were previously patented. I'm in favor of patent reform, but it's a much bigger challenge than I think most people understand. Patent law was not simply created - it evolved. Like any living organism that arose through evolution, radical changes can kill the whole thing - there could be serious collateral damage if that occured. Unfortunately, patents, as with nearly everyting in modern society are governed by one golden rule... he who has the most gold gets to make the rules. As I've already said, Campana has already lost - he's dead. NTP can never win because RIM makes enough money to drag this out until the technology is obsolete. RIM will most definitely come out of this relatively unscathed. That, my friends, is the law of the jungle...
First of all, many ideas take money... lots of money to turn into real products.
If you had your way, only the wealthy would be allowed to patent ideas.
Second of all, there is a very legitimate concept called a defensive patent.
The whole idea behind defensive patents is to prevent someone from using a similar method to make money off of your invention. By design, defensive patents rarely involve products that are brought to market.
The patent system is not there to make life better for consumers, it's there to protect the inventors. In the case of Thomas Capana, the system failed. He died before he could enjoy the benefits of his good idea and a big corporation has thus far gotten away with knowingly and blatently stealing his idea.
"You shouldnt be able to patent something obvious its just taking two common things (email, and wireless) and combining them.. as if that wasnt something that would be done as soon as it become possible/useful anyway..
Shakespeare once wrote, "There is nothing new under the sun."
Of course, Shakespeare shouldn't really get credit for this... he stole it from Moses...
All inventions are combinations of pre-existing ideas.
What is obvious to you today, may not have been so obvious back in 1991, when the patent was first filed. Also, if it was so obvious, why did it take RIM almost 10 years to develop a production solution?
I detect a largely pro-RIM, anti-NTP crowd here. There are a lot of misconceptions being touted on this board, which makes me think few of you have actually bothered to look at the facts...
First, as far as I can tell, the NTP patents are valid. The original inventor Thomas Campana did, indeed invent and demonstrate the first wireless email solution. Campana built prototypes to demonstrate the proof-of-concept and filed for and received patents. He did everything he was supposed to do, from a patent perspective. He was unable to market-ize the solution because there was not sufficient infrastructure, at the time, to support a market. Campana notified a number of companies, including RIM that he held the patents on the invention and was looking for support to product-ize.
RIM, like most companies, ignored this notification. Unlike most others, RIM went on to build a product based on Campana's invention and then refused to pay him royalties. Campana started to try and litigate, however he didn't have enough money or energy because he was suffering from cancer. He co-founded NTP with a lawyer friend to follow through with the litigation.
The reason that the US patent office is reconsidering the patents has nothing to do with the validity of the patents and everything to do with political pressure from the Canadian and US governments, as well as a number of large corporate investors that have a lot to lose. Politics!
Campana has already lost. He died of cancer, never receiving the monies or credit that he was due.
NTP continues to fight the battle as a matter of principle. The are not simply some law firm trying to get rich off of someone else's ideas. They are trying to force RIM to do the right thing and to send out a warning that being big doesn't entitle a company to steal.
People are so eager to believe that it's always the lawyers that that are evil. Unfortunately, in our zeal to blame the lawyers, we sometimes find ourselves on the wrong side of the fight! Sometimes the lawyers do fight real injustices.
ps I'm not a lawyer - I'm an engineer, so my bias is in favor of Thomas Campana and anyone wanting to protect their original inventions!
Slashdot Mirror
I'm a pretty staunch critic when it comes to Sci-Fi.
However, I have to say that Stargate SG-1 has always been one of
the best. They have always had an attention to scientific detail
that was far and above other shows, with the possible exception
of the Star Trek series' (Gene Roddenbery was a master). However,
the real charm of SSG1 has been the clever dialog and witty inside
jokes. I knew I was going to love the series from the first episode
when, upon finding the first ancient dialing device on another
planet, Samantha Carter sez to Jack O'Neill:
> "Amazing. This is what was missing from the dig at Giza. It took
> us 15 years and 3 supercomputers to MacGyver a system for the
> gate on Earth."
Now I shouldn't have to explain why this is clever and funny, but I
often have to clue people in. I appologize to the 99% of you who already
get it, but for that 1% who need a little help;
Jack O'Neil is played by actor Richard Dean Anderson.
Richard Dean Anderson also played a character named MacGyver on a TV show of the same name.
MacGyver's claim-to-fame was using combinations of everyday items to "engineer" solutions to seemingly insurmountable problems...
Actually, I thought he was being rather clever... given the overlap in actors between Farscape and Stargate SG-1...
I doubt that anyone thinks such a lawsuit would be successful. However it might accomplish one important thing. It might raise awareness that what allofmp3 is doing is tantamount to piracy. It might stop people with conscience from using the site...
Having conductive objects on or near the body have no effect on positive streamers. Contrary to popular myth, conductors aren't like magnets to lightning. Of course, this bit of wisdom assumes that one is not doing something stupid like holding a metal pole in the air. In that case, a conductive object near the body (i.e. the pole) could be said to increase one's probability of being struck.
Contrast this bit of news with the story in the current Scientific American that links stem cells with cancer. The current working theory is that most cancers arise due to stem cell mutations... more stem cells, higher probability of cancer.
For every kid with a balloon, there's always some joker with a needle lurking around the corner...
Whenever I think of AV software I am reminded of the Monty Python skit: "Army Protection Racket". In the skit, Michael Palin and Terry Jones portray a couple of mafiosos and they wander around the office of an army Colonel, casually pushing objects off the desk, the shelves, etc.. All the while they say things like, "You've got a nice army base here, Colonel. We wouldn't want anything to happen to it." They imply that bad things might happen like all the tanks might break or the squad of paratroopers might catch on fire...
"We can guarantee you that not a single armoured division will get done over for fifteen bob a week."
http://orangecow.org/pythonet/sketches/racket.htm
Do I trust the anti-malware companies??? Of course not...
Do I pay the protection money??? Of course I do...
Radio and television operate at frequencies below microwave, while the visible spectrum operates at frequencies above microwave. Why would anyone assume that there is anything magical or mysterious about the microwave spectrum? It's only when you get into the upper portion of the ultraviolet spectrum and above (x-rays and gamma rays) where the effects of radiation become a problem.
This does not mean that microwaves can't or don't cause damage to living cells. If the energy of the microwaves are strong enough, they cause water molecules to become excited (friction causing heat). If you put something in a microwave oven or stand too close to a microwave transmitter, things can heat up. If they heat up enough, this can cause cellular damage (no pun intended). Prolonged exposure to heat could cause cancer... however, the victim would feel physical discomfort long before there would be long term effects.
Ergo, the radio transmitter is one of the least likely causes of this "outbreak".
Then he writes:
How does making an intelligent choice turn one into a lemming? Who's taking who for a ride? This logic defies all reason...For the record, I use PCs and Macs every day (plus Sun workstations). I use PCs at work because my employer says I have to. I use Macs at home because I have a choice.
> Don't get itunes. The PC version is hideous compared to the mac one
Huh? They are virtually identical.
I've tried dozens of audio players for Windows and they all bog down when the CPU is cranking away (by "bog down" I mean they stop playing for various intervals), but iTunes tends to bog down less than the other ones I've tried.
All Windows software amazes me... or rather, I'm amazed that we, as consumers, are willing to put up with it. I use Windows, Mac OS, and Solaris every day. I use Windows at work because I have to. I use Mac at home because I have a choice.
The best Windows software? Obviously, that depends on what you do with computers. Here's my list (from an engineer's perspective):
Remote Desktop Client
Lets me drive my Windows PC at work from my Mac at home.
UltraEdit
This is a reasonably useful and powerful text editor. I don't
use it anymore because I decided not to spend money on the
upgrades when I'd rather be using emacs. I try not to edit
software on my PC and Notepad works just fine for simple text
documents. However, if you have to do programming in Windows,
I highly recommend UltraEdit.
ActivePerl
When you absolutuely have to run perl in Windows.
cygwin
When you'd really rather be using unix.
WinZip
The Stuffit Deluxe of the Windows world.
FireFox
Because Internet Explorer is a non standard piece of...
Internet Explorer (sadly)
Because a lot of people do crazy stuff to overcome the
limitations of IE and a lot of this crazy stuff breaks
other browsers...
TightVNC
For connecting to other computers.
iTunes
I've not found anything better for playing mp3's and CDs
on Windows. Everything else seems to suffer from latency
issues when the load goes up. BTW, I hate iTunes; It breaks
nearly every UI rule Apple wrote. However, if all you want
to do is play music, it's adequate. If you like iTunes on
Mac, you'll like it in Windows. It's the same.
Microsoft Office
I hate it, but I use it all the time. There's nothing better
in terms of features and universality.
Documents To Go
If you've got a PalmOS device, this is a must-have. It lets
you share many 'office' documents with your PDA.
I guess it was inevitable. 5 Years ago, I couldn't envision buying anything but Apple computers (I have 4 in service now and have been using Macs since 1985-ish). However, with Apple's customer service waning and the switch to Intel processors, which will force me to do a wholesale software switch-over... I'm not so sure my next computer will be a Mac...
1st computer: Timex Sinclair ZX80 - membrane keyboard, 1K RAM
This thing was a nightmare, by today's standards, but a marvel at the time. Technically, it wasn't mine. A friend was given this by his dad, but said friend had no interest in it. I on the other hand was a born programmer and was always playing with it. Eventually, the friend told me to take it home and play with it on my own time...
- - - - - - - - -
2nd computer: Radio Shack Color Computer - chicklet keyboard, 4K RAM
(I know, you didn't ask, but it seemed notable)
I eventually hacked the CoCo to accept 16K RAM, added a real keyboard and an external floppy drive.
One thing that no one seems to get. If the NTP patents are all ultimately invalidated, this will open a veritable Pandora's box. NTP's patents, by all accounts, follow the form and letter of the law. If they are invalidated, then this will open the door for thousands and thousands of other patents to fall under review for the economic benifit of technology robber barons. Mark my words - only economic chaos can come of this!
The original example of "prior art" never worked.
There was more to the story than was presented in this article.
RIM blatently tried to con the court and got caught at it.
The judge was actually quite generous, all options considered.
Increasing the virtual debt that RIM never intends to pay anyway is a lot better than finding oneself in the pokey!
You obviously have not looked at very many patents. There are lots and lots of patents that are based only on ideas. Some of them are just waiting for technologies to be developed before they can be realized. Some are there for the sole purpose of blocking someone from making a profit on an idea.
As for NTP - no they didn't have a product... but the inventor, Campana, did.
Pay attention, man. The truth is out there...
It doesn't matter if RIM developed the technology independently, which we don't know for sure.
It also doesn't matter who has a better business model for the application.
When it comes to patents, all that matters is who gets there first.
RIM didn't get there first. Like thousands of other successful companies that never crossed the finish line in first place, RIM should have just payed the royalties. That's the way the system works... (OK, that's the way the system is supposed to work...)
The irony of it all is that RIM is trying to get the NTP patents invalidated, but what started it all was RIM trying to get patents for essentially the same technologies to protect their intellectual property... What's good for the goose is apparently not good for the gander.
Maybe if you were an inventor with patents, you would feel differently.
You missed my point - perhaps I was too subtle.
I challenge your assertion: there are NOT a lot of apps that are cpu bound (or rather, the percentage of apps and users of those apps is a fraction of a fraction of the general population of users). I acknowledge that there are examples where CPU speed is king, but often, even these are limited by memory access and worse still disk access or even worse still network bandwidth... My point is that the legitimate examples of cpu-bound usage do not represent the mainstream usage of computers.
In the mainstream, most users click a button or hit a key and trigger some cpu event that completes long before they even recognize that it's done. Meanwhile, the cpu blazes away... waiting for the next request for a burst of useful activity. Real performance benefits come not from making the bursts faster and certainly not from making the waits faster, but rather from reducing the cycle time between the bursts. In other words, most users benefit more from smarter user interfaces than faster cpus.
Is there a market for faster cpus? Of course, just not the market that that is being pandered to by the standard benchmarks. If you have a cpu-bound application and your business depends on competitive performance, you're going to do your own benchmark and your performance assessment probably won't agree with everyone else's performance assessment.
Contrary to popular myth, ID and creationism are not the same thing. They are often equated in order to discredit those that believe in Intelligent Design and to keep ID out of the schools, but they are fundamentally (pun intended) different.
For the record - I personally subscribe, not only to the theory of evolution, but also to the principle of evolution. Also, just in case there is any confusion about where I stand, I don't approve of ID being taught in schools - not because it's creationism in disguise, but because it's not science (well, not much of it, anyway).
Yes, but who really cares about CPU benchmarks?
My 2.6GHz Thinkpad smokes my 1.0GHz G4 iMac in CPU benchmarks. I use them both every day for many hours a day and for many common tasks. However, in spite of the CPU performance difference, the iMac seems faster (i.e. it's more responsive AND my productivity/output is higher).
Now I'm sure that there are some applications (that I never use) where the standard benchmarks do give meaningful results... However, for the applications that I use, I find most benchmarks to be a meaningless waste of time (with the possible exception of the old ByteMark).
There's an old saying about standards, but I think it applies equally well to benchmarks, so I'm going to co-opt it...
The nice thing about benchmarks is that there are so many to choose from...
The point being is that everyone has different expectations and different ways of using computers. Alternatively, the point may be that benchmarks are just another way of lying with statistics...
That being said I will comment on a few points.
First of all, many ideas take money... lots of money to turn into real products.
If you had your way, only the wealthy would be allowed to patent ideas.
Second of all, there is a very legitimate concept called a defensive patent.
The whole idea behind defensive patents is to prevent someone from using a similar method to make money off of your invention. By design, defensive patents rarely involve products that are brought to market.
The patent system is not there to make life better for consumers, it's there to protect the inventors. In the case of Thomas Capana, the system failed. He died before he could enjoy the benefits of his good idea and a big corporation has thus far gotten away with knowingly and blatently stealing his idea.
Of course, Shakespeare shouldn't really get credit for this... he stole it from Moses...
All inventions are combinations of pre-existing ideas.
What is obvious to you today, may not have been so obvious back in 1991, when the patent was first filed. Also, if it was so obvious, why did it take RIM almost 10 years to develop a production solution?
I detect a largely pro-RIM, anti-NTP crowd here. There are a lot of misconceptions being touted on this board, which makes me think few of you have actually bothered to look at the facts...
First, as far as I can tell, the NTP patents are valid. The original inventor Thomas Campana did, indeed invent and demonstrate the first wireless email solution. Campana built prototypes to demonstrate the proof-of-concept and filed for and received patents. He did everything he was supposed to do, from a patent perspective. He was unable to market-ize the solution because there was not sufficient infrastructure, at the time, to support a market. Campana notified a number of companies, including RIM that he held the patents on the invention and was looking for support to product-ize.
RIM, like most companies, ignored this notification. Unlike most others, RIM went on to build a product based on Campana's invention and then refused to pay him royalties. Campana started to try and litigate, however he didn't have enough money or energy because he was suffering from cancer. He co-founded NTP with a lawyer friend to follow through with the litigation.
The reason that the US patent office is reconsidering the patents has nothing to do with the validity of the patents and everything to do with political pressure from the Canadian and US governments, as well as a number of large corporate investors that have a lot to lose. Politics!
Campana has already lost. He died of cancer, never receiving the monies or credit that he was due.
NTP continues to fight the battle as a matter of principle. The are not simply some law firm trying to get rich off of someone else's ideas. They are trying to force RIM to do the right thing and to send out a warning that being big doesn't entitle a company to steal.
People are so eager to believe that it's always the lawyers that that are evil. Unfortunately, in our zeal to blame the lawyers, we sometimes find ourselves on the wrong side of the fight! Sometimes the lawyers do fight real injustices.
ps
I'm not a lawyer - I'm an engineer, so my bias is in favor of Thomas Campana and anyone wanting to protect their original inventions!
A joke? I'm not sure I get it...
Running Windows on a Mac is a bit like buying a Delorean and spray painting it with Rust-Oleum...
Oh yeah. I almost forgot. All those Windows geeks think Mac users have OS-envy...
The geek doth protest too much, methinks...