It really depends on when Microsoft claims it came up with the idea. If they have documented evidence showing that the idea behind the patent was created before the iPod was created, then MS has prior art, not Apple. Not that it matters; Sony, Creative and a bunch of other MP3 player producers also have prior art. The whole case seems inherently flawed to me.
From here: Apple's application, filed a year after the iPod was introduced, was rejected July 13. The documents do not identify the iPod by name, a common omission in such petitions. It describes a "portable, pocket-sized multimedia asset player" capable of managing MP3 music files including "a song title, a song artist, a song album, a song length."
Regardless of whether Apple released the iPod before the patent (which they did), Apple failed to secure a patent before Microsoft did. November-ish 2002 would have been too late. Since Apple doesn't own the patent, they still have to pay licensing fees.
When I learned that MS owned a patent for something used in the iPod, but wasn't making money off of it, I posted this:
"That... doesn't make sense. Why would they file a patent for it, but then allow Apple to develop, create, and market the device?"
It simply didn't make sense to me that MS wouldn't try to make a buck off of their patents, as vague as they may be. Now, they've followed the predictable course of action.
There's a guy that goes around to small family-owned businesses in my area. He sells DVDs of still-in-theater movies for $5 a pop. Nobody reports it, because nobody really cares. They just want their movies. Regardless, I think he's a scumbag. Download your movies all you want, but by God, if you want to SELL your illegal junk, you deserve to be punished.
Unfortunately, both the Yahoo! and Google search engines truncate results returned to the user after 1,000 results. Thus, for the purposes of this study, we were forced to restrict our searches to those queries that returned less than 1,000 results on both Yahoo! and Google. Any search result found to have more than 1,000 returned results on either search engine was disregarded from our sample. [3]
So. Let's say that Yahoo! and Google didn't restrict the results to 1000. Let's say that some search returns 1,000,000 results MORE on Yahoo! than on Google. Let's say this happens many, many times.
This entire study would be invalidated.
Since you can't know how many results there actually were for each over-1000-result search, how can you tell which engine has more pages indexed?
If Yahoo! had 20,000,000,000 pages indexed and Google only 9,000,000,000, and one term appeared in every single page, you would get a result of "1000" for each engine, even though the real difference is 11 billion!
Flawed? I think so.
I never said that it was relevant. I'm just wondering how Apple can claim that they created the idea and not Microsoft, when the idea has existed for years. If Apple claims prior art, and then another company (like Creative) claims prior art, then what happens?
If a kid brings a gun to school and shoots people in his classroom, is the teacher responsible?
If a man stabs his wife while visiting his parents, are his parents responsible?
If a police officer shoots an innocent man while in the presence of his superior, is the superior responsible?
None of these make any sense. Why should a head librarian be responsible for something that happened in his or her presence that he or she had no control over whatsoever?
No, it doesn't make sense. If Apple didn't mention that patent when registering their device, then MS didn't make any money off of it. Why would MS let Apple make all that money off of a device that used their patent, as vague as it may have been?
Why would they file a patent for it, but then allow Apple to develop, create, and market the device?
Or am I misreading this? Did they file a patent for something that vaguely described a system of some sort used in the iPod? That wouldn't really surprise me, seeing how they've recently tried to patent a method for highlighting numerical data with a box.
So build a proprietary video format that only plays in one software player. Make it so that there's a DRM scheme with some really-really-hard-to-crack encryption, where the keys are generated from random bytes of information from the player's binary itself. I don't know.
It seems to me that companies that don't provide online content, in an era in which the internet is as powerful a medium as it is, are either too lazy to do so or incapable. It's not implausible to make money off of something like this - just look at iTunes.
I've always been surprised by the fact that most TV networks never allowed consumers to download content. I was especially confused when the cable modem became prominent. We're already watching your shows over cable; why not let us keep them on our computers?
"Clearly, there is no place in modern reporting for this kind of unregulated, unprotected access to readily available facts..."
BUUUUURN.
Actually, this reminds me of a story I read on LiveJournal (flame suit engaged.) Someone's account was deleted because they posted someone's home address without their permission. Funny thing was, the guy's address was readily available on his own web site. Nevertheless, the poster's account was terminated, and he was told that he had violated the TOS for LiveJournal. (He also wasn't refunded the fee for his paid account.)
Sedna and Quaoar?
Although I've heard that Quaoar has been classified as a non-planet, I'm not sure about Sedna.
Besides, according to New Scientist, there could be many, many more planets out there.
With a sufficient number of bad programmers, and an infinite number of monkeys, you can create any program... perfectly. Just have the infinite monkeys get to work on fixing the bugs. You'll have a few copies of the program that are absolute crap, but eventually a winner will pop up.
Did you even read that page?
"For those speculating that the name proposed is 'Lila' based on the web site name I must warn you that that is really just a sentimental dad's early morning naming of a web site for his three week old daughter and one should not take it too seriously!"
I have noticed a big difference between LCD and Phosphor TVs. I have very sensitive eyes, though; I notice a flicker in the image on a theater-sized movie screen.
Yes, but how much of a price hike will this mean? I mean, you'll have Phillips making its TVs that are entirely based on their technology; then you'll have its competitors, that have to add $100 to the cost of an identical TV so they can license Phillips' technology. This is what I'm really worried about.
This is the primary reason I would never buy an LCD TV. If they can fix the ghosting problem, I'd really appreciate it if they license their solution to other companies, rather than hoard it for themselves and pump up the prices, claiming that it's some sort of "XHDTV" or some such crap.
Actually, I'd be willing to guess that there are more computers running illegal copies of Windows "in the wild" than there are running legal ones. If every MS product on a computer is pirated, MS is not making any money from that computer.
True, "immoral" businesses do tend to be a driving force. Pornographers were, after all, the single greatest group in support of the development of a way to package images and videos for distribution across the net.
The article didn't mention whether it applied to every version - professional, corporate, home, server, 64-bit, etc. Anyone have the inside info about this?
Slashdot Mirror
It really depends on when Microsoft claims it came up with the idea. If they have documented evidence showing that the idea behind the patent was created before the iPod was created, then MS has prior art, not Apple. Not that it matters; Sony, Creative and a bunch of other MP3 player producers also have prior art. The whole case seems inherently flawed to me.
From here:
Apple's application, filed a year after the iPod was introduced, was rejected July 13. The documents do not identify the iPod by name, a common omission in such petitions. It describes a "portable, pocket-sized multimedia asset player" capable of managing MP3 music files including "a song title, a song artist, a song album, a song length."
Regardless of whether Apple released the iPod before the patent (which they did), Apple failed to secure a patent before Microsoft did. November-ish 2002 would have been too late. Since Apple doesn't own the patent, they still have to pay licensing fees.
Our legal/IP system at work.
When I learned that MS owned a patent for something used in the iPod, but wasn't making money off of it, I posted this:
"That... doesn't make sense. Why would they file a patent for it, but then allow Apple to develop, create, and market the device?"
It simply didn't make sense to me that MS wouldn't try to make a buck off of their patents, as vague as they may be. Now, they've followed the predictable course of action.
There's a guy that goes around to small family-owned businesses in my area. He sells DVDs of still-in-theater movies for $5 a pop. Nobody reports it, because nobody really cares. They just want their movies. Regardless, I think he's a scumbag. Download your movies all you want, but by God, if you want to SELL your illegal junk, you deserve to be punished.
Unfortunately, both the Yahoo! and Google search engines truncate results returned to the user after 1,000 results. Thus, for the purposes of this study, we were forced to restrict our searches to those queries that returned less than 1,000 results on both Yahoo! and Google. Any search result found to have more than 1,000 returned results on either search engine was disregarded from our sample. [3]
So. Let's say that Yahoo! and Google didn't restrict the results to 1000. Let's say that some search returns 1,000,000 results MORE on Yahoo! than on Google. Let's say this happens many, many times.
This entire study would be invalidated.
Since you can't know how many results there actually were for each over-1000-result search, how can you tell which engine has more pages indexed?
If Yahoo! had 20,000,000,000 pages indexed and Google only 9,000,000,000, and one term appeared in every single page, you would get a result of "1000" for each engine, even though the real difference is 11 billion!
Flawed? I think so.
I never said that it was relevant. I'm just wondering how Apple can claim that they created the idea and not Microsoft, when the idea has existed for years. If Apple claims prior art, and then another company (like Creative) claims prior art, then what happens?
If a kid brings a gun to school and shoots people in his classroom, is the teacher responsible?
If a man stabs his wife while visiting his parents, are his parents responsible?
If a police officer shoots an innocent man while in the presence of his superior, is the superior responsible?
None of these make any sense. Why should a head librarian be responsible for something that happened in his or her presence that he or she had no control over whatsoever?
No, it doesn't make sense. If Apple didn't mention that patent when registering their device, then MS didn't make any money off of it. Why would MS let Apple make all that money off of a device that used their patent, as vague as it may have been?
But since Apple didn't quote that patent when designing the device, Microsoft got no money from it.
Now that I've RTFA... how can Apple claim to have prior work here, when portable MP3 players have existed for several years?
Why would they file a patent for it, but then allow Apple to develop, create, and market the device?
Or am I misreading this? Did they file a patent for something that vaguely described a system of some sort used in the iPod? That wouldn't really surprise me, seeing how they've recently tried to patent a method for highlighting numerical data with a box.
So build a proprietary video format that only plays in one software player. Make it so that there's a DRM scheme with some really-really-hard-to-crack encryption, where the keys are generated from random bytes of information from the player's binary itself. I don't know.
It seems to me that companies that don't provide online content, in an era in which the internet is as powerful a medium as it is, are either too lazy to do so or incapable. It's not implausible to make money off of something like this - just look at iTunes.
I've always been surprised by the fact that most TV networks never allowed consumers to download content. I was especially confused when the cable modem became prominent. We're already watching your shows over cable; why not let us keep them on our computers?
"Clearly, there is no place in modern reporting for this kind of unregulated, unprotected access to readily available facts..."
BUUUUURN.
Actually, this reminds me of a story I read on LiveJournal (flame suit engaged.) Someone's account was deleted because they posted someone's home address without their permission. Funny thing was, the guy's address was readily available on his own web site. Nevertheless, the poster's account was terminated, and he was told that he had violated the TOS for LiveJournal. (He also wasn't refunded the fee for his paid account.)
Found it! Where's Meta?
Sedna and Quaoar?
Although I've heard that Quaoar has been classified as a non-planet, I'm not sure about Sedna.
Besides, according to New Scientist, there could be many, many more planets out there.
With a sufficient number of bad programmers, and an infinite number of monkeys, you can create any program... perfectly. Just have the infinite monkeys get to work on fixing the bugs. You'll have a few copies of the program that are absolute crap, but eventually a winner will pop up.
For this summary, you need approximately 1.5 rooms full of infinite numbers of monkeys, but only 10% of infinite time. It's just that brief.
Your excellent attention to semantics aside, you people are freaking me out.
Did you even read that page?
"For those speculating that the name proposed is 'Lila' based on the web site name I must warn you that that is really just a sentimental dad's early morning naming of a web site for his three week old daughter and one should not take it too seriously!"
I have noticed a big difference between LCD and Phosphor TVs. I have very sensitive eyes, though; I notice a flicker in the image on a theater-sized movie screen.
Yes, but how much of a price hike will this mean? I mean, you'll have Phillips making its TVs that are entirely based on their technology; then you'll have its competitors, that have to add $100 to the cost of an identical TV so they can license Phillips' technology. This is what I'm really worried about.
This is the primary reason I would never buy an LCD TV. If they can fix the ghosting problem, I'd really appreciate it if they license their solution to other companies, rather than hoard it for themselves and pump up the prices, claiming that it's some sort of "XHDTV" or some such crap.
Actually, I'd be willing to guess that there are more computers running illegal copies of Windows "in the wild" than there are running legal ones. If every MS product on a computer is pirated, MS is not making any money from that computer.
True, "immoral" businesses do tend to be a driving force. Pornographers were, after all, the single greatest group in support of the development of a way to package images and videos for distribution across the net.
Of course it is. People with pirated copies of XP need MS Office, don't they?
/torrent
Oh, wait... never mind.
The article didn't mention whether it applied to every version - professional, corporate, home, server, 64-bit, etc. Anyone have the inside info about this?