You've spent two years on this, and only now getting into the patent? You should be prepared for disappointment. The odds are very high that someone has already patented your exact idea, especially if it's something that you could figure out with no prior RF electronics experience. It's difficult to let go of something that you've put your heart into for so long, but you need to be prepared to do that if you run into problems. Otherwise it could drag you even further down.
Read through some of the tutorials at http://www.fpga4fun.com/ and then head over to the sister site http://www.knjn.com/ to find some FPGA boards. You can get a very good introduction to FPGA concepts for less than $50. The Pluto boards with Altera Cyclone FPGAs are perfect for getting your feet wet.
There is no such thing as "lead fumes" while soldering. Temperatures are NOT high enough to vaporize lead at all. Granted, some of the flux materials used in solder are not so good for you to breathe, but you will not inhale any lead while soldering. Wash your hands after soldering and your lead intake is practically zero.
Identical experience and identical final decision. I hacked around with Joomla for a long time, ultimately unable to do what I really wanted to do: create my own theme. Googling for tutorials all returns the same regurgitated five page tutorial with broken links to the source files, and no actual useful content. Drupal isn't perfect, but I was able to get it running and grok what was necessary to create my own themes. Joomla is great for people who like to use premade themes and similar menu and basic layout as thousands of other sites (a lot of them throwaway copy-paste Adsense farm blogs).
Based on your current situation, $30,000 would now seem cheap if you'd had to pay that for a much better lawyer. But should someone have to pay a small fortune just to get a dose of common sense from the justice system? That's probably what you were thinking at the time.
Regardless, what's done is done. From what you've told us, the situation seems extremely unfair. And this type of thing creates criminals. You're probably walking around thinking you have nothing to lose if you decide to get back some of that money by making off with some public property, or trading some drugs.
If we have cereal boxes with OLEDs on the outside, I imagine we won't even need children to experience this...the products themselves will scream "WHYYYYYY!!!! PLEASE BUY ME!!!" as you walk past them.
I guess it's a difference in the way people approach things. The fact is that no one has to leave the college they decided to attend if they lose a scholarship, no one has to give up on their choice unless they believe their immediate financial situation justifies giving up on their life plans. I did have several merit and need based scholarships, but that left over $25,000 per year to make up. This was accomplished with student loans, pretty standard for nearly any college student who attends out-of-state or private schools. I'm not alone in that I still pay for college six years out. Regardless, I had determined to attend a specific school and blowing one test was not going to catastrophically alter that.
I read through it, and I'm not sure that's actually for The Sims. With messages like "You smell very bad, it's time to take a bath" I think Will was simply encapsulating his own life in code.
Not only is there no confirmation of this beyond what some guy wrote in an email to Slashdot, the Amazon link contains a referral ID which should make someone some money if anyone buys the jazz cd set as a result of clicking on the link. This is pretty dishonest and the complaint could be completely false, and has NO place on Slashdot's front page.
Did anyone read the last discussion about this? I thought it was pretty well established that Ogg Vorbis/Theora has no business being defined as the standard for anything, for the following reasons:
It's comparable to H.261 in performance
No one actually knows what the patent status is
No one even uses Theora for anything
Other containers and encoding formats are better and more popular and open, like x264
Why do we need video requirements for text markup?
Ham radio is the remaining long range communication technology that is only controlled by the government as long as the participants agree. Unlike cellular, POTS, or the Internet, you can't shut down ham radio communications by cutting wires in a few critical spots. It's also only traceable by general physical location, and again the courtesy of those involved taking the extra step of identifying themselves.
Why would you think that a government would take significant steps to preserve such a medium? So that a few thousand citizens might get more help during emergencies? Not the priority here.
Did you hear about the newer DNA reassembly technique? Basically you use standard replication techniques to make a really large number of copies of all the DNA fragments you have. Samples of the mix are distributed to a large number of processors, essentially a DNA analysis supercomputer. The rest involves matching sections of DNA like a big jigsaw puzzle. If many strands of DNA were originally available but have decomposed, at least the strands would not have all broken at the same locations. Matching the first 10% of one fragment with the last 10% of another fragment means you now have a longer continuous fragment. DNA sequences are unique enough that there is little ambiguity when fragments match. With enough redundant overlap, you can build up a complete strand...this is kind of a Bittorrent approach to DNA reassembly. So, even if no complete strands are available, it may still be possible to recover the original DNA of an ancient organism.
Slashdot Mirror
That video wasn't too exciting, but one of the related videos seems to fit the bill for the OP's request: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3atmWmWCwlw
They may be optical, but if you grab one and look underneath you might still find a ball or two.
You've spent two years on this, and only now getting into the patent? You should be prepared for disappointment. The odds are very high that someone has already patented your exact idea, especially if it's something that you could figure out with no prior RF electronics experience. It's difficult to let go of something that you've put your heart into for so long, but you need to be prepared to do that if you run into problems. Otherwise it could drag you even further down.
Read through some of the tutorials at http://www.fpga4fun.com/ and then head over to the sister site http://www.knjn.com/ to find some FPGA boards. You can get a very good introduction to FPGA concepts for less than $50. The Pluto boards with Altera Cyclone FPGAs are perfect for getting your feet wet.
Maybe quantum computers will be really good at doing this.
There is no such thing as "lead fumes" while soldering. Temperatures are NOT high enough to vaporize lead at all. Granted, some of the flux materials used in solder are not so good for you to breathe, but you will not inhale any lead while soldering. Wash your hands after soldering and your lead intake is practically zero.
Your employer is Tanya Harding?
Identical experience and identical final decision. I hacked around with Joomla for a long time, ultimately unable to do what I really wanted to do: create my own theme. Googling for tutorials all returns the same regurgitated five page tutorial with broken links to the source files, and no actual useful content. Drupal isn't perfect, but I was able to get it running and grok what was necessary to create my own themes. Joomla is great for people who like to use premade themes and similar menu and basic layout as thousands of other sites (a lot of them throwaway copy-paste Adsense farm blogs).
I see you've attended math-nerd parties before.
Slow motion
(.)(.)
(')(')
(.)(.)
Much faster
(:)(:)
So fast they're a blur
(|){|)
Based on your current situation, $30,000 would now seem cheap if you'd had to pay that for a much better lawyer. But should someone have to pay a small fortune just to get a dose of common sense from the justice system? That's probably what you were thinking at the time.
Regardless, what's done is done. From what you've told us, the situation seems extremely unfair. And this type of thing creates criminals. You're probably walking around thinking you have nothing to lose if you decide to get back some of that money by making off with some public property, or trading some drugs.
I think this device might be evidence to support the article's viewpoint. Engineers sometimes like to see other people suffer untold agonies.
If we have cereal boxes with OLEDs on the outside, I imagine we won't even need children to experience this...the products themselves will scream "WHYYYYYY!!!! PLEASE BUY ME!!!" as you walk past them.
I guess it's a difference in the way people approach things. The fact is that no one has to leave the college they decided to attend if they lose a scholarship, no one has to give up on their choice unless they believe their immediate financial situation justifies giving up on their life plans. I did have several merit and need based scholarships, but that left over $25,000 per year to make up. This was accomplished with student loans, pretty standard for nearly any college student who attends out-of-state or private schools. I'm not alone in that I still pay for college six years out. Regardless, I had determined to attend a specific school and blowing one test was not going to catastrophically alter that.
There are already two.
More like, problem exists between front and back covers of wallet.
I read through it, and I'm not sure that's actually for The Sims. With messages like "You smell very bad, it's time to take a bath" I think Will was simply encapsulating his own life in code.
I googled some more and it might not be a referral ID. But the other reasons still stand...
Not only is there no confirmation of this beyond what some guy wrote in an email to Slashdot, the Amazon link contains a referral ID which should make someone some money if anyone buys the jazz cd set as a result of clicking on the link. This is pretty dishonest and the complaint could be completely false, and has NO place on Slashdot's front page.
Too bad most commenters, and apparently the mods, haven't read enough of your post to realize how incredibly funny it is.
"Chuck Norris will pile-drive you into a human fence post surrounding his expansive fortress in the north pole if you don't agree."
Finally, the extraordinary abilities of this fellow we call "Santa" begin to make sense....
Apparently the value of Vista is not readily apparent
Neither is the value of used cat litter.
You'll find even more similarities as you dig and sift through everything, too.
Ham radio is the remaining long range communication technology that is only controlled by the government as long as the participants agree. Unlike cellular, POTS, or the Internet, you can't shut down ham radio communications by cutting wires in a few critical spots. It's also only traceable by general physical location, and again the courtesy of those involved taking the extra step of identifying themselves.
Why would you think that a government would take significant steps to preserve such a medium? So that a few thousand citizens might get more help during emergencies? Not the priority here.
Did you hear about the newer DNA reassembly technique? Basically you use standard replication techniques to make a really large number of copies of all the DNA fragments you have. Samples of the mix are distributed to a large number of processors, essentially a DNA analysis supercomputer. The rest involves matching sections of DNA like a big jigsaw puzzle. If many strands of DNA were originally available but have decomposed, at least the strands would not have all broken at the same locations. Matching the first 10% of one fragment with the last 10% of another fragment means you now have a longer continuous fragment. DNA sequences are unique enough that there is little ambiguity when fragments match. With enough redundant overlap, you can build up a complete strand...this is kind of a Bittorrent approach to DNA reassembly. So, even if no complete strands are available, it may still be possible to recover the original DNA of an ancient organism.