Flooding? Wow - this gives me an idea - why should we all not go and submit (at least weekly) some random shit to USPTO? I wonder - if it gets DoS'ed what will they do then?
Rubber-stamp even more ludicrous patents, just to get through the volume.
Wouldn't it be ironic if we all submitted patents for "A Method of Duplicate Article Submission via the Internet" and it all got rubber-stamped due to volume? We would have dupes of a patent on dupes.
While I disfavor the annoyance, I favor the ruling. Too often courts outlaw based on someone's preference, rather than constitutional law.
If the ruling had gone the OTHER way,/. would be lauding the decision as a blow to pop-up ads, but would also be ranting over the loss of advertiser's rights to conduct business in a free market.
Just because you add features to something beyond a standard, does not make your version the new standard.
Standards, by definition, only exist when ALL interested parties agree to the definition of the standard. (Not to be confused with regulation: where all affected parties are forced to accept a definition of the standard, a la digital TV.)
Having not seen the cartoon, how can there be another Sith?
"Only 2 there are. A master and an apprentice."
The Sith in II are Sidious and Dooku. The Sith in III are Sidious and Vader.
Since the Clone Wars span the period between II and III, how can there be another Sith, since Dooku would be the apprentice through this entire period?
The full story gets too strange for fiction. Here's the summary from local news (Wendy's HQ is here, so we get a lot of coverage).
The finger in the chili was a scam.
The finger came from a friend/co-worker of the woman's husband (the husband happens to be in prison now). The co-worker lost the finger in an industrial accident, had some money problems, and gave the finger to the woman's husband to settle a $50 debt.
The woman stuck it in the chili and tried to take Wendy's to the bank.
The upside is, last weekend Wendy's gave everyone free Frosty's to say "thanks for the support" (and come in and buy our stuff again).
How about spray paint? Care to legislate the use of that material?
Here in Ohio I believe you can get carded to buy spray paint. I'm pretty sure they cut off spray paint sales for minors to reduce vandalism. Don't know for sure - I was already past 18 when it was in the works.
The point of patents (and copyrights) is to guarantee financial gain for the inventor of a product for a certain period of time before the design or material is released to the public domain.
Now, discussions whether that should apply to physical inventions only or software is a topic I'm not getting into here.
I'm not going to touch how long those patents or copyrights should be - that war rages in enough other threads.
The financial gain for the inventor/creator is part of the motivation for inventing/creating. As much as I dislike MS, they are entitled to the rights afforded by their patents. Like it or not software is patentable around here, so we are stuck with the consequences.
Note-taking on the Newton rocked for its time. The bulkiness (for a PDA) was the biggest drawback but the handwriting recognition was generally pretty good. Assuming they have advanced the technology in the last 6 years I would expect an Apple offereing to blow anything else away in this area.
It's CmdrTaco's worm tracker program. If this worm makes it to 500,000 of your friends in an hour then Taco will give everyone it reaches $100 and send us all to DisneyWorld!
My first reaction was to say "Wah! CD's don't play in tape decks, either", then I realized how quickly that would get shot down around here as a bad example - so I tried to think of a reasonable analogy.
VHS-Beta? Maybe there is an analogy here. The media is physically incompatible, but essentially recorded in the same manner. This analogy seems to work for me.
Sony makes a Beta tape with certain dimensions.
Apple encodes files with their DRM.
Everyone else makes VHS tapes, with different physical dimensions.
Everyone else encodes files with MS/RIAA-preferred DRM.
In the Beta-VHS case there is a physical restriction to playing one format in a different- format player.
In the iTunes-Non-iTunes case there is a digital restriction to playing one format in different-format player.
So this is really no different, to me. Let the manufacturers duke it out in the market and may the best format win (oh, wait - VHS won). Keep the content producers out of the format decisions. Apple focuses on delivery and does it pretty well. RIAA focuses on format-litigation-marketing-payola^H^H^H^H^H^H-big parties-and sometimes music. Hmm, I wonder why their product sucks lately?
1. There would be multiple distributors of free cars, though all would be spurned by the commercial auto industry.
2. If you want to change your tires you have to download all the most recent parts and rebuild your engine.
3. Upon building a new car you would find that your new windshield wipers are not yet supported.
4. You could build your own windshield wipers if you really, really wanted to.
5. Sourceforge would release a wrapper to allow you to retrofit Microsoft Windows Wipers (tm) onto your open source car.
6. Sun Motorsystems would make a transmission that was widely accepted and everybody copied, but wouldn't release the original blueprints to the community.
7. The oil, alternator, gas, engine warning lights would be located throughout the car and held on with velcro.
8. People would engage in holy wars over their favorite car distribution, forgetting completely that most people purchase cars and drive them home same-day.
9. We would still be waiting on anyone to finish buiding their gentoo model.
10. We'd all have to make our own gas, which would not be compatible with Microsoft Gas(tm).
11. People would line up to be Linus Torvald's chauffeur.
12. The US government decree that a ciurcular steering controller on any other car violates Microsoft's IP.
13. All components of the open source car would be renamed to begin with "G" or "K".
14. Slashdot posters would imagine Beowulf carpools of anything with wheels.
Slashdot Mirror
What if it were run by /. editors and moderated by intelligence consumers?
Rubber-stamp even more ludicrous patents, just to get through the volume.
Wouldn't it be ironic if we all submitted patents for "A Method of Duplicate Article Submission via the Internet" and it all got rubber-stamped due to volume? We would have dupes of a patent on dupes.
Yes. That's why they won't do it without a release.
The Apple I was built in a wooden case.
Mod or Comment? - gotta comment.
While I disfavor the annoyance, I favor the ruling. Too often courts outlaw based on someone's preference, rather than constitutional law.
If the ruling had gone the OTHER way, /. would be lauding the decision as a blow to pop-up ads, but would also be ranting over the loss of advertiser's rights to conduct business in a free market.
Note to BillG:
Just because you add features to something beyond a standard, does not make your version the new standard.
Standards, by definition, only exist when ALL interested parties agree to the definition of the standard. (Not to be confused with regulation: where all affected parties are forced to accept a definition of the standard, a la digital TV.)
OK, the trickle-down budget impacts make sense.
I don't see how the oil crisis would have any effect on launching a Saturn V. Unless oxygen and hydrogen are considered fossil fuels.
"Only 2 there are. A master and an apprentice."
The Sith in II are Sidious and Dooku. The Sith in III are Sidious and Vader. Since the Clone Wars span the period between II and III, how can there be another Sith, since Dooku would be the apprentice through this entire period?
Wow! 70 people can extinct multiple species over a 6 million-square-mile continent. Humans are Amazing !
Can they export to SimCity format?
Dammit now I can lose the game. I hope I forget before it annoys the crap out of me.
2) It's called a database.
The finger in the chili was a scam.
The finger came from a friend/co-worker of the woman's husband (the husband happens to be in prison now). The co-worker lost the finger in an industrial accident, had some money problems, and gave the finger to the woman's husband to settle a $50 debt.
The woman stuck it in the chili and tried to take Wendy's to the bank.
The upside is, last weekend Wendy's gave everyone free Frosty's to say "thanks for the support" (and come in and buy our stuff again).
By the same logic, they could also produce a secure version of Longhorn (maybe that's why it is taking so long - not breeding monkeys fast enough).
Of course, they would also produce the complete body of SCO code, so the monkeys would be fined and jailed before they could complete the other works.
I wonder what an infinite number of penguins would produce?
That should have a positive effect on movie-going.
Here in Ohio I believe you can get carded to buy spray paint. I'm pretty sure they cut off spray paint sales for minors to reduce vandalism. Don't know for sure - I was already past 18 when it was in the works.
Like pacemakers, self-dosing chemotherapy, robotic artificial limbs, hearing aids?
I think we're well on our way. But how far do we go?
Darth Vader
The 6 Million Dollar Man
Bicentennial Man
Picard-Borg?
...Welcome our Zoolander-phone-sized iPods!
Now, discussions whether that should apply to physical inventions only or software is a topic I'm not getting into here.
I'm not going to touch how long those patents or copyrights should be - that war rages in enough other threads.
The financial gain for the inventor/creator is part of the motivation for inventing/creating. As much as I dislike MS, they are entitled to the rights afforded by their patents. Like it or not software is patentable around here, so we are stuck with the consequences.
-2, unpopular concept
Note-taking on the Newton rocked for its time. The bulkiness (for a PDA) was the biggest drawback but the handwriting recognition was generally pretty good. Assuming they have advanced the technology in the last 6 years I would expect an Apple offereing to blow anything else away in this area.
It's CmdrTaco's worm tracker program. If this worm makes it to 500,000 of your friends in an hour then Taco will give everyone it reaches $100 and send us all to DisneyWorld!
VHS-Beta? Maybe there is an analogy here. The media is physically incompatible, but essentially recorded in the same manner. This analogy seems to work for me.
Sony makes a Beta tape with certain dimensions.
Apple encodes files with their DRM.
Everyone else makes VHS tapes, with different physical dimensions.
Everyone else encodes files with MS/RIAA-preferred DRM.
In the Beta-VHS case there is a physical restriction to playing one format in a different- format player.
In the iTunes-Non-iTunes case there is a digital restriction to playing one format in different-format player.
So this is really no different, to me. Let the manufacturers duke it out in the market and may the best format win (oh, wait - VHS won). Keep the content producers out of the format decisions. Apple focuses on delivery and does it pretty well. RIAA focuses on format-litigation-marketing-payola^H^H^H^H^H^H-big parties-and sometimes music. Hmm, I wonder why their product sucks lately?
And re-use for all those ActiMates toys
1. There would be multiple distributors of free cars, though all would be spurned by the commercial auto industry.
2. If you want to change your tires you have to download all the most recent parts and rebuild your engine.
3. Upon building a new car you would find that your new windshield wipers are not yet supported.
4. You could build your own windshield wipers if you really, really wanted to.
5. Sourceforge would release a wrapper to allow you to retrofit Microsoft Windows Wipers (tm) onto your open source car.
6. Sun Motorsystems would make a transmission that was widely accepted and everybody copied, but wouldn't release the original blueprints to the community.
7. The oil, alternator, gas, engine warning lights would be located throughout the car and held on with velcro.
8. People would engage in holy wars over their favorite car distribution, forgetting completely that most people purchase cars and drive them home same-day.
9. We would still be waiting on anyone to finish buiding their gentoo model.
10. We'd all have to make our own gas, which would not be compatible with Microsoft Gas(tm).
11. People would line up to be Linus Torvald's chauffeur.
12. The US government decree that a ciurcular steering controller on any other car violates Microsoft's IP.
13. All components of the open source car would be renamed to begin with "G" or "K".
14. Slashdot posters would imagine Beowulf carpools of anything with wheels.