No study will ever show that "fracking is always bad" or "fracking is always good" because good and bad are not scientifically defined concepts.
The first question always on my mind and is never, ever addressed... why can't they just use water? Why must it always betremendously poisonous water they like to call "fracking fluid?" What's the downside to not using poisonous water and just using regular fresh water instead? Is there a risk that fresh water might poison wells, too?
Nuclear Security and to resolve the environmental legacy of the cold war
In 1942, during World War II, the United States started the Manhattan Project, a project to develop the atomic bomb, under the eye of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. After the war, the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) was created to control the future of the project.
The AEC was reinstated and gave way to Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which was tasked with regulating the nuclear power industry, and the Energy Research and Development Administration, which was tasked to manage the nuclear weapon, naval reactor, and energy development programs.
The 1973 oil crisis called attention to the need to consolidate energy policy. On August 4, 1977, President Jimmy Carter signed into law The Department of Energy Organization Act of 1977 (Pub.L. 95-91, 91Stat.565, enacted August4, 1977), which created the Department of Energy.The new agency, which began operations on October 1, 1977, assumed the responsibilities of the Federal Energy Administration, the Energy Research and Development Administration, the Federal Power Commission, and programs of various other agencies.
Allow me to retort and prove you a liar and the venerable slashdot post you cite as mistaken. I can't help but notice there is no actual reference to a DEC model number that could be checked... but I did notice there is an "Intel Inside" sticker on the laptop in the picture. Observe the powers of the mighty Google search and the humblest of internet research (my emphasis):
In 1991 Carter launched the Intel Inside® coop marketing program. The heart of the program was an incentive-based cooperative advertising program. Intel would create a co-op fund where it would take a percentage of the purchase price of processors and put it in a pool for advertising funds. Available to all computer makers, it offered to cooperatively share advertising costs for PC print ads that included the Intel logo. The benefits were clear. Adding the Intel logo not only made the OEM's advertising dollar stretch farther, but it also conveyed an assurance that their systems were powered by the latest technology. The program launched in July 1991. By the end of that year, 300 PC OEMs had signed on to support the program.
The PowerBook was launched in October of 1991. I can't see what model laptop that is, nor do you or the cited slashdot poster offer this guarded information. In the late summar of 1991, Intel was scrambling to get their now famous (or infamous) "Intel Inside" campaign off the ground and find computer manufacturers to adopt the campaign and use the sticker. Considering DEC and Intel were invoved in a bitter patent dispute concerining the chips until it was finally settled in 1997, I suspect that the DEC laptop pictured was not released within the three months between July and October of 1991. Suffice to say, it is enough to prove the OP was mistaken... that computer could not have been released in 1990.
Apple indeed was the originator of this wrist-rest laptop design, and the design was very rapidly duplicated by all manufacturers of laptops. It is not cult, attempt at deception or self-delusion. It is a verifiable fact.
No it's not known. It's believed, in spite of its not actually being true.
Apple drones are like Christians. They prefer to believe in fables rather than in reality, because reality isn't nearly so soothing and ego-stroking.
But I'm sure you'll scurry back to your local cult outreach branch and soon be feeling the love again.
You are -flat- wrong. Apple was the first to have this laptop design, and advertised the new idea when they originally released the PowerBook 100, 140 and 170. Apple isn't always first... usually they pick up on a trend and make it better. But in this case, Apple indeed was the first with the wrist-rest laptop design. There were no laptops with this design prior to the PowerBook 100, 140 & 170 released in October of 1991.
The Springboard was new, as well as its penless touch-based interface design... nothing before iPhone was even remotely like it. Tablet computing wasn't new, but Apple's offering is still notable for these changes in interface design, changing the landscape of all tablet computing henceforth.
The privacy violations here are a red herring. What the artist in fact did that is illegal was computer tresspass and computer vandalism. If you are stuck pondering the artist's intent, simply refer to his own account:
I didn’t want to break the law. I was prepared to make people a little uncomfortable, but I didn’t want to do anything illegal. That ruled out using private computers. I tried to think of a busy public space full of computers, and the Apple Store seemed so obvious.
The artist made a grave error in judgement. Any computer's owned by someone else are private computers. Though his violations are clear to most, the artist shows no comprehension of his illegal activity, nor any remorse for what he did, and it seems obvious to me that the artist got off easily... probably because Apple legal acquiesced, and not because the EFF or his attorneys prevented his prosecution.
I'm having a hard time seeing just what exactly he did wrong here
First of all, by his own account, the artist did not ask permission to do what he did. His dishonesty was that of omissions, as he never asked permission to install software on computers that did not belong to him.
I didn’t want to break the law. I was prepared to make people a little uncomfortable
Secondly, what seems obvious to me, is that what he was in fact guilty of is computer tresspass and computer vandalism. The benign nature of what his intent was should not detract from the fact that he intended to make people unconfortable... which I think is fine if the artist had a public exhibit, but to do this in a private commercial business is tremendously naive.
What I find most troubling in the artist's own account is no comprehension that he might have done anything wrong, and with no detectible emotion he shows absolutely no remorse. He premeditated his actions by finding the precise laws, thus he must have known that others might not approve of his actions, that whatever his intent, he was coming very close to something that to him was obviosly illegal.
I must agree with your responses whole-heartedly. Though I think that the particular law sited did not quite apply (I think it has more to do with computer vandalism and trespassing), anyone defending the artist's actions on these points is quite obviously trying to cast Apple in the worst light possible: their reasoning is suspect and intellectually dishonest. After reading the artist's account I can only think that either he is a sociopath (as he indicated no understanding of why Apple or the individuals might have reason to not want him doing that, he expressed absolutely no remorse and in his account shows absolutely no emotion), or comes from a culture where he was never introduced to the concept of privacy or ownership of property. Neither of these things excuses the artist's action, and I think he got off easily... it could have been far worse in today's prosecutorial culture, and Apple legal being very thorough. I think perhaps it must have been Apple that acquiesced in seeking prosecution, and not that the EFF or his attorney's saved him from any litigation.
where the gloves would recognize the (much more complex and spatially oriented) sign for "I"
Actually, the sign for "I" and the sign for the letter "i" are pretty much identical... but your excessively intensified and outrageously exaggerated point is well taken.
C's philosophy doesn't integrate well with Ayn Rand's.
Possibly this is due to incorrect labeling. Objectivism is an ideology, not a philosophy. Although a libertarian might evangelically object to this assessment, a philosopher will always ignore them after pointing out the incompleteness of it's epistemology, the question-begging logical fallacy of the foundation of it's ethical system and the egocentric anarchism underlying it's politics as evidence that Objectivism fails to meet any reasonable standard of a true philosophy– especially if the philosopher has been drinking.
You are ignorant and deceitful, and you are spreading lies, that much is clear. Design patents are not what you say they are... if they were they would be completely worthless, but they are not. Coca-Cola's legitimate design patent for their famous hour glass bottle cannot be infringed upon by an hour glass nor by a rocket made by Goddard, yet by your definition, this is entirely possible. This is, of course, entirely false. Your argument is entirely worthless because your definitions are innaccurate and incomplete. A design patent is only awarded to functional items, thus, the function of these items is entirely relevant to the patent and any claims of infringement. If you'd stop listening to your own bullshit rhetoric and take a look at the actual definition of a design patent, you'd readily find out that a design patent is indeed a type of utility patent. This information is available from countless sources all over the Internet. I'm not sure what you hope to accomplish, but I've outed you as someone who is spreading empty and false propaganda regarding design patents and patents in general. If you actually had any true personal interest in design patents, I would shit kittens. You are not an authority, nearly every argument you've made is fallacious, and your ability to generate endless verbal garbage doesn't serve to help you or your strawman arguments. I recommend you get some psychological help.
Functionality is irrelevant for design patents. They're on ornamental designs, not functionality.
You keep saying this but it doesn't make it any more true. You have the ability to understand what they are, yet you insist on redefining them into something that is completely meaningless. Functionality is not irrellevant to a design patent. A design patent is really a special kind of utility patent. Design patents don't arbitrarily protect ornamental design, but the ornamental design of a functional item. The functionality of that item is absolutely rellevant to the patent. A real car can't infringe on the design of a toy car because NO ONE WOULD MISTAKE THE TWO. Its the same with Apple's iPad: every example of prior art you've used could not be mistaken for the iPad or visa versa. Samsung's tablet was intended to confuse the ordinary consumer into believing that it actually is an iPad.
Samsung may have copied Apple, but it doesn't seem that Apple, whose design was copied in the first place, should be entitled to any protection from copying.
Show me the tablet computer that Apple copied.
Long winded self-gratifying and Irrellevant treatment of monopolies ignored, Apple has no monopoly. Anyone is free to design a tablet computer that doesn't infringe on designs currently protected by a design patent.
I was actually referring to the tablet from this nearly 20 year old video....Also, I'll re-iterate again. A design patent covers a design, not functionality.
Also, I'll reiterate again: YOU ARE MISTAKEN. A design patent is granted for the ornamental design on a functional item. The "tablet" in the video was vaporware, NOT A FUNCTIONAL ITEM. No one would mistake something that doesn't exist for something that does exist. It doesn't meet the standard. This is why Samsungs attempt to use a prop from Kubrick's 2001 failed.
There is, in fact, such a fundamental assumption in the court. It's in 35 U.S.C. 282 presumption of validity. First line: "A patent shall be presumed valid."
This is not a "fundamental assumption," of the court, forming some necessary core to how the court works, but an incidental assumption.
You are spewing strawman fallacy after strawman fallacy, confusing concepts, and selectively using definitions that do not apply, and overinflating the importance of what you believe you have uncovered to try to support some underlying argument that may or may not have merit... it is difficult to tell with all your bullshit, and I can only assume that is your intention. You are intellectually dishonest, and your last post proves this. You want to believe something so bad that you are lying about what a design patent protects.
I don't think you're correct. You're comparing apples and oranges, so to speak. By what you're saying, a car manufacturer should not be able to patent the design of a car if there was a toy manufacturer that created the same design 2 decades earlier... on a toy. That's ridiculous.
Why is that ridiculous? I think it's going to be impossible for us to see eye to eye. We don't even seem to live in the same universe. Design patents are on _designs_, not functional elements, otherwise they would be regular patents. If the design existed on a toy car decades earlier, then it should not be possible to get a new design patent on the existing design.
The difference between a car and a toy car is not arbitrary. One is a vehical and one is a toy. Let me make it easier for you to cast off your self-delusion regarding design patents: If you design a HAMBURGER, and patent the design, and 5 years later a car appears that resembles it, according to you the car manufacturer owes you for encroaching on your design patent. The PROBLEM is HAMBURGERS are not CARS. That is why your notion is ridiculous. An etch-a-sketch, or a chalk slate, or a digital picture frame isn't a tablet computer... thus the design of a TABLET can't infringe on the designs of these other products. Simple enough?
Did you read the story the you're commenting on? Case law now does indeed contradict your beliefs. Apple won, Samsung lost and lost the appeal. Its over.
The case law here is just part of a long slippery slope to chaos and madness.
Meaningless dribble. Your responses are just part of a long slippery slope to chaos and madness.
The current intellectual property regime is having an absolutely stifling effect on the world. I don't understand why people need to be reminded again and again and again why monopolies are pretty much always a bad idea.
You're not making any sense. I wish I knew wtf you were talking about, because you are being so vague as to be saying absolutely nothing.
It only seems obvious after Apple releases it. If it was so obvious then, as I said earlier, during the at least TWO AND A HALF YEARS that the technology existed to produce iPad someone would have released it. The reason? None of the other technology manufacturers have the ability to create markets the way Apple can. Apple sells like mad, everyone rushes to mimic their designs to cash in on Apple's work.
As people have demonstrated, the design was clearly obvious over a decade ago when a much larger, but virtually identically designed device appeared in a TV spot. It's also been obvious every time it's been used in a flat screen display, or in an actual tablet or notepad over the last few thousand years.
If you're referring to a picture frame... its not a tablet, not a computer... its a dumb device that merely displays still images. If Apple released a picture frame that resembled it, then they would be encroaching on the design patent... but Apple released something ENTIRELY DIFFERENT, a computing tablet.
This is how the law works. A law isn't even quite The Law until it is questioned and tested in the courts. If it passes muster in the courts, then it becomes true law. This is how it works in America, how the law has always worked here.
The way your mind works is frankly terrifying. You don't seem to grasp the problem here. The problem is that the patent office works under the fundamental assumption that if they screw up, the courts will sort it out.
No, the patent office does not work under any such "fundamental assumption." That's just the way it plays out.
Meanwhile the courts work under the fundamental assumption that the patent filing process did proper due diligence and that defendants must produce extraordinary evidence
Sure, set the bar arbitrarily low and WOW the functionality is just around the corner! 2002 seems an arbitrary limit, why not 1996? Every smartphone on the planet is far more powerful than any desktop of that era, and frankly there's very few smartphone apps that exceed the functionality or graphic capabilities of the time. We just keep finding more uses for additional power (allowing for sloppier, less efficient coding and languages being a big one)
I strongly disagree with your assessment. It is not arbitrary, but 2002 was right about when desktops stopped being annoying. Prior to 2000, with the computers in the 90's, if you wanted to stay busy working on machines all day, you needed more than one, so you could switch to another while waiting on the first (at a job as a prepress operator at a commercial printer in the early-mid 90's, I rememeber several occasions during an evening shift where I had 8 of the most powerful desktop computers of the day working on different tasks, and I was still sitting by waiting for them all, twiddling my thumbs). By 2002, desktops became fast enough to keep up with their applications and the users intentions, leaving little idle time for the user. And if today's smartphones are just as powerful... where are the palm sized desktops, half the size of today's nettops? The Raspberry Pi is intriguing but it is low power to keep it cheap enough for young hobbyists. But there should be a consumer space where reasonably powerful desktops are the same size as an AppleTV.
And consider that over 90% of workers using what desktop computers are used for are using them today for the same things: the office worker's tasks have not changed, but the OS and applications have suffered needless feature creep and the desktops are at least 10-100x more powerful today (at the same cost) for no good reason... as the cheap anemic nettop shows its powerful enough to do email and calendaring, web surfing (research), word processing and spreadsheet tasks, and collaboration, and most conspicuously still has the ability to display video that a 2002 desktop would choke on.
I don't know about you, but if I had a high-resolution binocular HMD I'd want to use it for VR applications (games, 3D editing, etc) occasionally, and a 2002 desktop couldn't begin to handle that sort of pixel-pushing power. Nothing today could either.
Yes, it seems the emphasis has been placed on HD playback with cheaper dedicated chips for HD video decompression, which is sufficient for most users, and not on on-the-fly rendering of massive resolution output, which needs both substantial CPU and GPU power.
To put things in perspective: The human eye can resolve detail at about 60 pixels per degree (and still detect "smoothness" changes of even higher resolutions) and has a field of view of ~180 degrees. That's a 10800x10800 resolution to before diminishing returns seriously kick in, or 56 HDTVs per eye (granted, you'd only really need to render the small area you were looking directly at at that resolution, but still, the pixels would need to be there). Nothing out there today could hope to render a detailed 3D environment at that resolution at a smooth framerate, and certainly nothing that would fit in a pair of glasses could. Is that an unrealistic goal for the current-gen glasses? Sure. But then I remember the days when 640k of RAM really was enough for anyone.
Now that "Retina" displays are becoming a competitive space, I hope this envelope will continuously get pushed, the way that audio has been... even though audio resolution for the consumer has stopped pretty much at 16-bit, its fine for most consumers (though I still wish 24-bit would be the adopted standard for audio distribution -- this is the standard on DVD's, but never made it back to the consumer music industry products -- I wish music was sold on DVD's without video!). But co
I don't understand why content providers are so hostile towards the idea of free crowd-sourced backups of their data? Beware, Do-Gooders, no good deed goes unpunished!
Sure, *eventually* your glasses will be able to hold a computer more powerful than you could possibly use, but that's probably decades away yet
Decades away? No, a few years at most. It doesn't need to be more powerful than you can possibly use... it only needs to be as powerful as desktops were in 2002, or smartphones are today (see what I did there?)
Meanwhile, the consumer market was flooded with inexpensive snapshot cameras
yes, the point I keep trying to make... Kodak delved into this market, and that was a mistake-- inexpensive snapshot cameras wouldn't exactly produce the margins Kodak needed to survive unless they were the only manufacturer... but there were literally hundreds of competing companies overseas flooding the domestic market, all after these minuscule margins. While the overseas worker could be exploited, and I think likely still is, most of Kodak's labor force was in the US. No one cares if a cheap camera is made by higher quality (and more expemsive) domestic labor.
Unfortunately they were so worried about cannibalizing their existing film based business that they failed to exploit it. The problem with that logic is that if you don't, someone else will. And boy, did they!
This is a simplistic view and often repeated myth. There is no exploiting technology that is too expensive for the consumer to be interested in, as was the case when Kodak invented digital photography. Kodak didn't bury the technology because they were afraid, but because due to cost it was unmarketable, they shelved it. Certainly, some individuals within Kodak's ranks had this concern, but it's an absurd claim that there was this paralyzing fear of progress. Kodak saw the future and began to make changes, had a plan to completely switch to digital, but competing against much less expensive manufacturing processes for tiny margins was the mistake they made; it wasn't simply "failing to exploit" digital technology. Kodak couldn't make digital camera's as cheaply as new foreign industrialists could with exponentially cheaper labor. That's what killed them... not this ridiculous notion of fear of progress. Kodak's history is filled with breaking ground and changing processes and embracing technology... they didn't have a history of burying their head in the sand, but innovating new fascinating technologies. But once the game becomes who can sell more products with insignificant profit margins, Kodak failed to be nimble enough to take on the new emerging global markets.
By the time any decent HMD's appear and are commoditized, or inexpensive enough for the casual consumer, truely powerful head mounted computers will be possible. Why bother designing a good HMD when you can skip this step and create the first computer built-in to a HMD that looks like nothing more than a pair of Wayfarers?
No, but there's no reason you couldn't use your Mac running Little Snitch as a reverse firewall gateway for all your wifi connected iOS devices... connect your Airport to your Mac via ethernet, turn on Internet Sharing and share your Mac's wifi connection to the ISP wireless router to your Ethernet (and the Airport connected to it), and batten down Little Snitches hatches... and turn on the Application firewall, and enable ipfw for good measure... making sure to never say always when the dialogues start popping up... and keep Console.app running watching everything that hits ipfw... your Mac becomes a NOC.
Slashdot Mirror
No study will ever show that "fracking is always bad" or "fracking is always good" because good and bad are not scientifically defined concepts.
The first question always on my mind and is never, ever addressed... why can't they just use water? Why must it always be tremendously poisonous water they like to call "fracking fluid?" What's the downside to not using poisonous water and just using regular fresh water instead? Is there a risk that fresh water might poison wells, too?
Nuclear Security and to resolve the environmental legacy of the cold war
wiki
TL;DR, make sure we have enough bomb fuel for the nukes...
http://hardware.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2982693&cid=40667911 (Exactly one post up from yours in response to the very same thread question).
http://archive.computerhistory.org/resources/physical-object/digital_equipment_corporation_dec/102624005.lg.jpg
But thanks for playing.
Allow me to retort and prove you a liar and the venerable slashdot post you cite as mistaken. I can't help but notice there is no actual reference to a DEC model number that could be checked... but I did notice there is an "Intel Inside" sticker on the laptop in the picture. Observe the powers of the mighty Google search and the humblest of internet research (my emphasis):
Source: 11th paragraph down
The PowerBook was launched in October of 1991. I can't see what model laptop that is, nor do you or the cited slashdot poster offer this guarded information. In the late summar of 1991, Intel was scrambling to get their now famous (or infamous) "Intel Inside" campaign off the ground and find computer manufacturers to adopt the campaign and use the sticker. Considering DEC and Intel were invoved in a bitter patent dispute concerining the chips until it was finally settled in 1997, I suspect that the DEC laptop pictured was not released within the three months between July and October of 1991. Suffice to say, it is enough to prove the OP was mistaken... that computer could not have been released in 1990.
Apple indeed was the originator of this wrist-rest laptop design, and the design was very rapidly duplicated by all manufacturers of laptops. It is not cult, attempt at deception or self-delusion. It is a verifiable fact.
Thanks for playing.
Yes, it is known.
No it's not known. It's believed, in spite of its not actually being true.
Apple drones are like Christians. They prefer to believe in fables rather than in reality, because reality isn't nearly so soothing and ego-stroking.
But I'm sure you'll scurry back to your local cult outreach branch and soon be feeling the love again.
You are -flat- wrong. Apple was the first to have this laptop design, and advertised the new idea when they originally released the PowerBook 100, 140 and 170. Apple isn't always first... usually they pick up on a trend and make it better. But in this case, Apple indeed was the first with the wrist-rest laptop design. There were no laptops with this design prior to the PowerBook 100, 140 & 170 released in October of 1991.
Was Apple really the first to place the keys at the top of the open clamshell, and the pointing device on the lower half under your thumbs?
Yes, it is known. Subsequently, every other laptop manufacturer came up with and utilized this design... all on their own, apparently.
iPad is not a new idea
The Springboard was new, as well as its penless touch-based interface design... nothing before iPhone was even remotely like it. Tablet computing wasn't new, but Apple's offering is still notable for these changes in interface design, changing the landscape of all tablet computing henceforth.
The privacy violations here are a red herring. What the artist in fact did that is illegal was computer tresspass and computer vandalism. If you are stuck pondering the artist's intent, simply refer to his own account:
The artist made a grave error in judgement. Any computer's owned by someone else are private computers. Though his violations are clear to most, the artist shows no comprehension of his illegal activity, nor any remorse for what he did, and it seems obvious to me that the artist got off easily... probably because Apple legal acquiesced, and not because the EFF or his attorneys prevented his prosecution.
I'm having a hard time seeing just what exactly he did wrong here
First of all, by his own account, the artist did not ask permission to do what he did. His dishonesty was that of omissions, as he never asked permission to install software on computers that did not belong to him.
Secondly, what seems obvious to me, is that what he was in fact guilty of is computer tresspass and computer vandalism. The benign nature of what his intent was should not detract from the fact that he intended to make people unconfortable... which I think is fine if the artist had a public exhibit, but to do this in a private commercial business is tremendously naive.
What I find most troubling in the artist's own account is no comprehension that he might have done anything wrong, and with no detectible emotion he shows absolutely no remorse. He premeditated his actions by finding the precise laws, thus he must have known that others might not approve of his actions, that whatever his intent, he was coming very close to something that to him was obviosly illegal.
I must agree with your responses whole-heartedly. Though I think that the particular law sited did not quite apply (I think it has more to do with computer vandalism and trespassing), anyone defending the artist's actions on these points is quite obviously trying to cast Apple in the worst light possible: their reasoning is suspect and intellectually dishonest. After reading the artist's account I can only think that either he is a sociopath (as he indicated no understanding of why Apple or the individuals might have reason to not want him doing that, he expressed absolutely no remorse and in his account shows absolutely no emotion), or comes from a culture where he was never introduced to the concept of privacy or ownership of property. Neither of these things excuses the artist's action, and I think he got off easily... it could have been far worse in today's prosecutorial culture, and Apple legal being very thorough. I think perhaps it must have been Apple that acquiesced in seeking prosecution, and not that the EFF or his attorney's saved him from any litigation.
where the gloves would recognize the (much more complex and spatially oriented) sign for "I"
Actually, the sign for "I" and the sign for the letter "i" are pretty much identical... but your excessively intensified and outrageously exaggerated point is well taken.
predict where Apple is going and beat them there, we end up with Windows 8 + Metro
When was Windows 8 released? No one tells me anything anymore.
It's Microsoft's long established development culture – watch what Apple does... then implement whatever that is in Windows.
Ballmer's previous failed plan for beyond the OS was " last to cool, first to profit." That didn't go over so well.
Microsoft is not entirely unlike the relentless Joshua from WarGames, but unlike Joshua, Microsoft doesn't seem to be able to learn.
C's philosophy doesn't integrate well with Ayn Rand's.
Possibly this is due to incorrect labeling. Objectivism is an ideology, not a philosophy. Although a libertarian might evangelically object to this assessment, a philosopher will always ignore them after pointing out the incompleteness of it's epistemology, the question-begging logical fallacy of the foundation of it's ethical system and the egocentric anarchism underlying it's politics as evidence that Objectivism fails to meet any reasonable standard of a true philosophy– especially if the philosopher has been drinking.
You are ignorant and deceitful, and you are spreading lies, that much is clear. Design patents are not what you say they are... if they were they would be completely worthless, but they are not. Coca-Cola's legitimate design patent for their famous hour glass bottle cannot be infringed upon by an hour glass nor by a rocket made by Goddard, yet by your definition, this is entirely possible. This is, of course, entirely false. Your argument is entirely worthless because your definitions are innaccurate and incomplete. A design patent is only awarded to functional items, thus, the function of these items is entirely relevant to the patent and any claims of infringement. If you'd stop listening to your own bullshit rhetoric and take a look at the actual definition of a design patent, you'd readily find out that a design patent is indeed a type of utility patent. This information is available from countless sources all over the Internet. I'm not sure what you hope to accomplish, but I've outed you as someone who is spreading empty and false propaganda regarding design patents and patents in general. If you actually had any true personal interest in design patents, I would shit kittens. You are not an authority, nearly every argument you've made is fallacious, and your ability to generate endless verbal garbage doesn't serve to help you or your strawman arguments. I recommend you get some psychological help.
That a company can be forced...
In other news...
Samsung Forces Slashdot Poster walterbyrd To Submit Controversial Summary
Slashdot Poster walterbyrd Forces Slashdot Editor timothy To Post Summary Under Sensationalist Headline on Slashdot Front Page
Apple Forces Samsung To Force walterbyrd To Force Timothy To Degrade Slashdot Content and Insult Intelligence of Readership
Will the madness ever end? Will the Earth survive this onslaught of yellow technology journalism??
Stay tuned, Slashdot readers!
Functionality is irrelevant for design patents. They're on ornamental designs, not functionality.
You keep saying this but it doesn't make it any more true. You have the ability to understand what they are, yet you insist on redefining them into something that is completely meaningless. Functionality is not irrellevant to a design patent. A design patent is really a special kind of utility patent. Design patents don't arbitrarily protect ornamental design, but the ornamental design of a functional item . The functionality of that item is absolutely rellevant to the patent. A real car can't infringe on the design of a toy car because NO ONE WOULD MISTAKE THE TWO. Its the same with Apple's iPad: every example of prior art you've used could not be mistaken for the iPad or visa versa. Samsung's tablet was intended to confuse the ordinary consumer into believing that it actually is an iPad.
Samsung may have copied Apple, but it doesn't seem that Apple, whose design was copied in the first place, should be entitled to any protection from copying.
Show me the tablet computer that Apple copied.
Long winded self-gratifying and Irrellevant treatment of monopolies ignored, Apple has no monopoly. Anyone is free to design a tablet computer that doesn't infringe on designs currently protected by a design patent.
I was actually referring to the tablet from this nearly 20 year old video ....Also, I'll re-iterate again. A design patent covers a design, not functionality.
Also, I'll reiterate again: YOU ARE MISTAKEN. A design patent is granted for the ornamental design on a functional item. The "tablet" in the video was vaporware, NOT A FUNCTIONAL ITEM. No one would mistake something that doesn't exist for something that does exist. It doesn't meet the standard. This is why Samsungs attempt to use a prop from Kubrick's 2001 failed.
There is, in fact, such a fundamental assumption in the court. It's in 35 U.S.C. 282 presumption of validity. First line: "A patent shall be presumed valid."
This is not a "fundamental assumption," of the court, forming some necessary core to how the court works, but an incidental assumption.
You are spewing strawman fallacy after strawman fallacy, confusing concepts, and selectively using definitions that do not apply, and overinflating the importance of what you believe you have uncovered to try to support some underlying argument that may or may not have merit... it is difficult to tell with all your bullshit, and I can only assume that is your intention. You are intellectually dishonest, and your last post proves this. You want to believe something so bad that you are lying about what a design patent protects.
I don't think you're correct. You're comparing apples and oranges, so to speak. By what you're saying, a car manufacturer should not be able to patent the design of a car if there was a toy manufacturer that created the same design 2 decades earlier... on a toy. That's ridiculous.
Why is that ridiculous? I think it's going to be impossible for us to see eye to eye. We don't even seem to live in the same universe. Design patents are on _designs_, not functional elements, otherwise they would be regular patents. If the design existed on a toy car decades earlier, then it should not be possible to get a new design patent on the existing design.
The difference between a car and a toy car is not arbitrary. One is a vehical and one is a toy. Let me make it easier for you to cast off your self-delusion regarding design patents: If you design a HAMBURGER, and patent the design, and 5 years later a car appears that resembles it, according to you the car manufacturer owes you for encroaching on your design patent. The PROBLEM is HAMBURGERS are not CARS. That is why your notion is ridiculous. An etch-a-sketch, or a chalk slate, or a digital picture frame isn't a tablet computer... thus the design of a TABLET can't infringe on the designs of these other products. Simple enough?
Did you read the story the you're commenting on? Case law now does indeed contradict your beliefs. Apple won, Samsung lost and lost the appeal. Its over.
The case law here is just part of a long slippery slope to chaos and madness.
Meaningless dribble. Your responses are just part of a long slippery slope to chaos and madness.
The current intellectual property regime is having an absolutely stifling effect on the world. I don't understand why people need to be reminded again and again and again why monopolies are pretty much always a bad idea.
You're not making any sense. I wish I knew wtf you were talking about, because you are being so vague as to be saying absolutely nothing.
It only seems obvious after Apple releases it. If it was so obvious then, as I said earlier, during the at least TWO AND A HALF YEARS that the technology existed to produce iPad someone would have released it. The reason? None of the other technology manufacturers have the ability to create markets the way Apple can. Apple sells like mad, everyone rushes to mimic their designs to cash in on Apple's work.
As people have demonstrated, the design was clearly obvious over a decade ago when a much larger, but virtually identically designed device appeared in a TV spot. It's also been obvious every time it's been used in a flat screen display, or in an actual tablet or notepad over the last few thousand years.
If you're referring to a picture frame... its not a tablet, not a computer... its a dumb device that merely displays still images. If Apple released a picture frame that resembled it, then they would be encroaching on the design patent... but Apple released something ENTIRELY DIFFERENT, a computing tablet.
This is how the law works. A law isn't even quite The Law until it is questioned and tested in the courts. If it passes muster in the courts, then it becomes true law. This is how it works in America, how the law has always worked here.
The way your mind works is frankly terrifying. You don't seem to grasp the problem here. The problem is that the patent office works under the fundamental assumption that if they screw up, the courts will sort it out.
No, the patent office does not work under any such "fundamental assumption." That's just the way it plays out.
Meanwhile the courts work under the fundamental assumption that the patent filing process did proper due diligence and that defendants must produce extraordinary evidence
Sure, set the bar arbitrarily low and WOW the functionality is just around the corner! 2002 seems an arbitrary limit, why not 1996? Every smartphone on the planet is far more powerful than any desktop of that era, and frankly there's very few smartphone apps that exceed the functionality or graphic capabilities of the time. We just keep finding more uses for additional power (allowing for sloppier, less efficient coding and languages being a big one)
I strongly disagree with your assessment. It is not arbitrary, but 2002 was right about when desktops stopped being annoying. Prior to 2000, with the computers in the 90's, if you wanted to stay busy working on machines all day, you needed more than one, so you could switch to another while waiting on the first (at a job as a prepress operator at a commercial printer in the early-mid 90's, I rememeber several occasions during an evening shift where I had 8 of the most powerful desktop computers of the day working on different tasks, and I was still sitting by waiting for them all, twiddling my thumbs). By 2002, desktops became fast enough to keep up with their applications and the users intentions, leaving little idle time for the user. And if today's smartphones are just as powerful... where are the palm sized desktops, half the size of today's nettops? The Raspberry Pi is intriguing but it is low power to keep it cheap enough for young hobbyists. But there should be a consumer space where reasonably powerful desktops are the same size as an AppleTV.
And consider that over 90% of workers using what desktop computers are used for are using them today for the same things: the office worker's tasks have not changed, but the OS and applications have suffered needless feature creep and the desktops are at least 10-100x more powerful today (at the same cost) for no good reason... as the cheap anemic nettop shows its powerful enough to do email and calendaring, web surfing (research), word processing and spreadsheet tasks, and collaboration, and most conspicuously still has the ability to display video that a 2002 desktop would choke on.
I don't know about you, but if I had a high-resolution binocular HMD I'd want to use it for VR applications (games, 3D editing, etc) occasionally, and a 2002 desktop couldn't begin to handle that sort of pixel-pushing power. Nothing today could either.
Yes, it seems the emphasis has been placed on HD playback with cheaper dedicated chips for HD video decompression, which is sufficient for most users, and not on on-the-fly rendering of massive resolution output, which needs both substantial CPU and GPU power.
To put things in perspective: The human eye can resolve detail at about 60 pixels per degree (and still detect "smoothness" changes of even higher resolutions) and has a field of view of ~180 degrees. That's a 10800x10800 resolution to before diminishing returns seriously kick in, or 56 HDTVs per eye (granted, you'd only really need to render the small area you were looking directly at at that resolution, but still, the pixels would need to be there). Nothing out there today could hope to render a detailed 3D environment at that resolution at a smooth framerate, and certainly nothing that would fit in a pair of glasses could. Is that an unrealistic goal for the current-gen glasses? Sure. But then I remember the days when 640k of RAM really was enough for anyone.
Now that "Retina" displays are becoming a competitive space, I hope this envelope will continuously get pushed, the way that audio has been... even though audio resolution for the consumer has stopped pretty much at 16-bit, its fine for most consumers (though I still wish 24-bit would be the adopted standard for audio distribution -- this is the standard on DVD's, but never made it back to the consumer music industry products -- I wish music was sold on DVD's without video!). But co
I don't understand why content providers are so hostile towards the idea of free crowd-sourced backups of their data? Beware, Do-Gooders, no good deed goes unpunished!
yep... there it is... the head mounted computer: Golden-i.
Sure, *eventually* your glasses will be able to hold a computer more powerful than you could possibly use, but that's probably decades away yet
Decades away? No, a few years at most. It doesn't need to be more powerful than you can possibly use... it only needs to be as powerful as desktops were in 2002, or smartphones are today (see what I did there?)
Meanwhile, the consumer market was flooded with inexpensive snapshot cameras
yes, the point I keep trying to make... Kodak delved into this market, and that was a mistake-- inexpensive snapshot cameras wouldn't exactly produce the margins Kodak needed to survive unless they were the only manufacturer... but there were literally hundreds of competing companies overseas flooding the domestic market, all after these minuscule margins. While the overseas worker could be exploited, and I think likely still is, most of Kodak's labor force was in the US. No one cares if a cheap camera is made by higher quality (and more expemsive) domestic labor.
Unfortunately they were so worried about cannibalizing their existing film based business that they failed to exploit it. The problem with that logic is that if you don't, someone else will. And boy, did they!
This is a simplistic view and often repeated myth. There is no exploiting technology that is too expensive for the consumer to be interested in, as was the case when Kodak invented digital photography. Kodak didn't bury the technology because they were afraid, but because due to cost it was unmarketable, they shelved it. Certainly, some individuals within Kodak's ranks had this concern, but it's an absurd claim that there was this paralyzing fear of progress. Kodak saw the future and began to make changes, had a plan to completely switch to digital, but competing against much less expensive manufacturing processes for tiny margins was the mistake they made; it wasn't simply "failing to exploit" digital technology. Kodak couldn't make digital camera's as cheaply as new foreign industrialists could with exponentially cheaper labor. That's what killed them... not this ridiculous notion of fear of progress. Kodak's history is filled with breaking ground and changing processes and embracing technology... they didn't have a history of burying their head in the sand, but innovating new fascinating technologies. But once the game becomes who can sell more products with insignificant profit margins, Kodak failed to be nimble enough to take on the new emerging global markets.
By the time any decent HMD's appear and are commoditized, or inexpensive enough for the casual consumer, truely powerful head mounted computers will be possible. Why bother designing a good HMD when you can skip this step and create the first computer built-in to a HMD that looks like nothing more than a pair of Wayfarers?
Is there no "Little Snitch" app out there?
No, but there's no reason you couldn't use your Mac running Little Snitch as a reverse firewall gateway for all your wifi connected iOS devices... connect your Airport to your Mac via ethernet, turn on Internet Sharing and share your Mac's wifi connection to the ISP wireless router to your Ethernet (and the Airport connected to it), and batten down Little Snitches hatches... and turn on the Application firewall, and enable ipfw for good measure... making sure to never say always when the dialogues start popping up... and keep Console.app running watching everything that hits ipfw... your Mac becomes a NOC.