All one can say about that article is that the author is apparently completely unqualified to say anything about the future of user interfaces.
If you want to know what's coming, have a look at recent proceedings of the various computer science publications, in particular human computer interaction conferences. Most of the stuff you see in Macintosh and Windows today was published in that form years ago, and the interfaces you are likely going to see in a decade are among those published today.
I have bought maybe a handful of CDs over the last year compared with about 50/year a few years ago. Why? The CDs I have are most of the classic stuff I want anyway and they last forever. There are more entertainment options and, more importantly, there is plenty of completely free and legal music available on-line, and the free stuff is generally of higher quality than anything the music industry is releasing (new bands, etc.).
They are claiming that NT, XP, and Vista are "innovative". And apparently, they are succeeding at rewriting history, since people like the GGP post seem to believe that NT 3.5 actually was the first to use this design.
It may seem like a "fundamental concept" now, but it was something quite new in the 1980's when X11 introduced it.
I didn't introduce the term "copycat" into this discussion; other people did. I just pointed out that any claims that NT introduced this design are wrong.
In fact, I think "copycat" is the wrong term; the real problem with Microsoft is dishonesty: they are claiming that systems like XP and Vista are "innovative", yet there is almost no new technology in there.
"...I have come up with half a dozen "unique, novel, and useful inventions". The patent system has been useless in benefitting from any of them..." The patent system is not supposed to benefit from them, your fellow man is.
The inventor is supposed to benefit from the disclosure of the invention as a patent in order to create incentives for such disclosures; the current patent system fails to do that in many cases. That's not just a question of policy, that goes to the Constitutional justification for the current patent system.
I'm not sure if you are trying to persuade me or insult me, but I'll give it one more shot.
I am not making an attempt at convincing you personally; you have obviously invested so much time and money in your business method patent that any such attempt would be pointless. I'm pointing out to others that your assertions and inferences are factually wrong.
You were trying to portray yourself as a small inventor whose invention is being properly rewarded through the patent system. But (1) so far, you have received no benefit from your patent at all, so you have no grounds for suggesting that the patent system is working for small inventors, and (2) your patents are in a category that until recently was considered unpatentable at all and that many people still believe ought not to be patented.
X11 was conceived 20 years ago and was an incredibly forward looking design; both Macintosh and Windows have now moved to an architecture very similar to it.
Unfortunately, technical and historical facts won't stop people from making bogus claims about their pet architecture. There are still lots of Mac zealots going around complaining about X11's supposedly inefficient "network transparent architecture" even though the Mac has pretty much the same architecture and is, if anything, less efficient. I imagine it will be the same with Microsoft zealots, although many of them will, in addition, claim that this architecture was invented by Microsoft.
As for the windowing libraries, Swing is now hardware accelerated and totally indistinguishable from 'native' GUIs on MacOS/X and Windows Vista.
I'm not sure why you people feel compelled to lie about this sort of thing. Running Swing on my OS X machines, I can assure you, Swing is very much distinguishable from native OS X applications, both in performance and in platform integration. It's even worse on X11.
Actually, in re-reading your post, you bring up something that is mostly overlooked when talking about patents -- the description in the press of the patent may bear little resemblence to the invention itself.
I usually look at the patent before talking about it, but you don't have one yet, so one can only go by what you say.
I had no desire to play this game of overpatenting -- in my opinion it is unethical. And I have a unique, novel, useful invention which makes it unecessary anyway.
There are lots of "unique, novel, and useful inventions" that aren't, and shouldn't be, patentable.
As far as your description goes, it sounds like you either are applying for a software patent or a business method patent. Both of those are bad public policy and only exist because of extensive corporate lobbying over the last few decades.
By eliminating software patents you make the playing field tilted even worse towards the big guys in the market, and that hurts us all.
I have come up with half a dozen "unique, novel, and useful inventions". The patent system has been useless in benefitting from any of them. Patents do not work for software. And your patent was a waste of money, except that it may serve as a marketing gimmick for you.
Advocating this kind of bullshit and defending your patent makes you part of the bad guys as far as I'm concerned.
There should be some ownership for invention itself, outside of marketing and running a business. That's what the patent system is supposed to be doing, right?
There should also be social justice and world peace. But all attempts to try to impose such outcomes by fiat (attempts like communism and imperial rule) make things worse. In the end, inventors benefit more if there are no patents at all, because on balance, the patent system does more harm than good.
and anyone who claims that java is 90's, should call themselves so lampish.
Indeed. Java is more like a 1970's language.
if there's anything in the opensource world that can obsolete java then it's python and it's compiled bytecode.
Java has been obsolete since the day it was created. What Java did achieve is to make morons like you aware that features like garbage collection and runtime safety even exist. That's a great accomplishment, but, in the end, it's not reason to stick with a third rate, obsolete language like Java.
condsidering that when the Western world discovered the "new" world, we pretty much trashed (not even intentionally - just being germ carriers)
Europeans trashed the new world quite intentionally: the Catholic church in particular deliberately and methodically destroyed religious writings, murals, and other records.
One thing I know for certain, Microsoft will never be kind to a F/OSS option in terms of IP licensing... perhaps Visto will.
There is nothing to license; you ought to be able to do push/pull E-mail without licensing anything.
Even if there were anything to license, a patent shark and one of its allies aren't going to be favorably disposed towards FOSS either. However, they may simply not bother to sue FOSS because there is no money tomake.
Neither NTP nor Visto have contributed anything of importance to mobile E-mail technology; they have simply taken out patents on some of the obvious and trivial ways in which devices can get notified of server updates.
Visto's argument that it is good to beat Microsoft with patents because of Microsoft's monopolistic practices is wrong. It is true that Microsoft is behaving monopolistically with Exchange and Windows Mobile, but that's an issue for regulators and the market to worry about. Allowing Visto's and NTP's bogus patents to stand only replaces a big monopolist with a little one.
Although NASA (or the US goverment, it is all politics) does not want to fund Hubble anymore, the telescope proves that it is valuable every time again.
I don't even want to defend NASA's decision (I really don't know the tradeoffs well enough), but merely observing that Hubble is still useful tells you little about whether it makes sense to continue funding it. The real question is whether the cost/benefit calculations work out overall. In particular, is it worth trying to fix Hubble again and again, rather than saving up for a new space-based telescope?
CC, like other such certifications, is a checklist of features: it requires systems to have lots of security features. Satisfying such a checklist doesn't tell you anything about whether a system is actually secure, it supposedly tells you about whether you can or cannot implement complex security procedures. But it doesn't even tell you that because there is no guarantee that the features work and interact as intended, and, on the other hand, systems not formally satisfying the requirements may still support your security procedures.
Companies like Microsoft love standards like CC because they don't have to provide actual security, they just have to add lots of features to their operating system, and Microsoft is great at adding features.
If you want to achieve real security, your best bet is to remove as much unnecessary functionality from a system as possible, and that includes a lot of the junk that CC requires.
NTP's patent is pretty much irrelevant; there are plenty of ways of getting real-time E-mail to your device, with polling and IMAP IDLE being the most obvious choices. RIM is only stuck because NTP zeroed in on them early and because (apparently) their implementation infringes.
RIM could probably have worked around this patent easily. But my impression from using their product a little is that they aren't very good technically anyway.
So, let NTP and RIM destroy each other; hopefully, companies like Palm will benefit from that.
I, for one, welcome our new $100 laptop overlords.
You should, because some of the recipients of these laptops may well found the next Microsoft or Google, and they are a lot more eager to succeed than their US or European counterparts.
because technology with out proper training is utter folley.
First of all, your assumption that there is no training is groundless--these things are going into schools, they aren't being dropped from airplanes.
Second, your assumption that it requires "proper training" to learn technology is also groundless; many geeks are self-taught. Additionally, Linux is enormously well supported by on-line resources at all levels.
They will end up in secondary or used markets and provide litte to no benifit to those that have them due to the reasons listed above.
If the things aren't traded, they'll stay with students. If the things are traded, they'll end up with people who have sufficient use for them and the necessary training so that they are willing to pay the money.
Creating and distributing a $100 laptop at cost to poorer nations is a win no matter what happens with those laptops. And it's likely a lot better than handing their governments a lot of aid in cash.
Not even if you two are seriouly planning on flying planes into buildings or releasing sarin gas in a subway?
Correct: not even then. If you want a free and democratic society, you have to accept the fact that people can plan to do bad things and that they will sometimes get away with it.
We have a choice: a totalitarian state with perfect security, or a democratic state in which we accept the risk that people can successfully plan and launch terrorist attacks.
The only way to reduce terrorist attacks in a democracy is to behave more justly in the world. 9/11 is a good example of what not to do: 9/11 wasn't a random, unpredictable act of violence by people that picked us for no reason, it was the predictable consequence of decades of wrongheaded foreign policy, and our reaction to it has made the situation worse. In the long run, one cannot pacify the world through miltary action or national security.
You're right that privacy isn't necessary for freedom. But asymmetric information is a huge problem for freedom, because asymmetric information means asymmetric power.
And that's the situation we're facing: the government is hiding more and more information under the mantle of national security, corporations are hiding more and more of their operations as proprietary and trade secret, and at the same time, they are gathering more and more information on individuals that can be used for anything from distorting the market to blackmail.
Secure web servers have certificates. Well, web browsers used to have facilities for client certificates--means by which the browser would identify itself to servers and prove its identity. Yes, you can do that easily and securely in software, no chip required.
Well, apparently users didn't want to bother and web sites didn't start requiring it. It's difficult to see why adding the expense of a special chip into the mix would make it any more likely to succeed.
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All one can say about that article is that the author is apparently completely unqualified to say anything about the future of user interfaces.
If you want to know what's coming, have a look at recent proceedings of the various computer science publications, in particular human computer interaction conferences. Most of the stuff you see in Macintosh and Windows today was published in that form years ago, and the interfaces you are likely going to see in a decade are among those published today.
I have bought maybe a handful of CDs over the last year compared with about 50/year a few years ago. Why? The CDs I have are most of the classic stuff I want anyway and they last forever. There are more entertainment options and, more importantly, there is plenty of completely free and legal music available on-line, and the free stuff is generally of higher quality than anything the music industry is releasing (new bands, etc.).
They are claiming that NT, XP, and Vista are "innovative". And apparently, they are succeeding at rewriting history, since people like the GGP post seem to believe that NT 3.5 actually was the first to use this design.
It may seem like a "fundamental concept" now, but it was something quite new in the 1980's when X11 introduced it.
I didn't introduce the term "copycat" into this discussion; other people did. I just pointed out that any claims that NT introduced this design are wrong.
In fact, I think "copycat" is the wrong term; the real problem with Microsoft is dishonesty: they are claiming that systems like XP and Vista are "innovative", yet there is almost no new technology in there.
"...I have come up with half a dozen "unique, novel, and useful inventions". The patent system has been useless in benefitting from any of them..." The patent system is not supposed to benefit from them, your fellow man is.
The inventor is supposed to benefit from the disclosure of the invention as a patent in order to create incentives for such disclosures; the current patent system fails to do that in many cases. That's not just a question of policy, that goes to the Constitutional justification for the current patent system.
I'm not sure if you are trying to persuade me or insult me, but I'll give it one more shot.
I am not making an attempt at convincing you personally; you have obviously invested so much time and money in your business method patent that any such attempt would be pointless. I'm pointing out to others that your assertions and inferences are factually wrong.
You were trying to portray yourself as a small inventor whose invention is being properly rewarded through the patent system. But (1) so far, you have received no benefit from your patent at all, so you have no grounds for suggesting that the patent system is working for small inventors, and (2) your patents are in a category that until recently was considered unpatentable at all and that many people still believe ought not to be patented.
Yes, it was copycat even wa-a-a-y back in NT 3.5; X11 had this architecture in the mid 1980's.
X11 was conceived 20 years ago and was an incredibly forward looking design; both Macintosh and Windows have now moved to an architecture very similar to it.
Unfortunately, technical and historical facts won't stop people from making bogus claims about their pet architecture. There are still lots of Mac zealots going around complaining about X11's supposedly inefficient "network transparent architecture" even though the Mac has pretty much the same architecture and is, if anything, less efficient. I imagine it will be the same with Microsoft zealots, although many of them will, in addition, claim that this architecture was invented by Microsoft.
As for the windowing libraries, Swing is now hardware accelerated and totally indistinguishable from 'native' GUIs on MacOS/X and Windows Vista.
I'm not sure why you people feel compelled to lie about this sort of thing. Running Swing on my OS X machines, I can assure you, Swing is very much distinguishable from native OS X applications, both in performance and in platform integration. It's even worse on X11.
Actually, in re-reading your post, you bring up something that is mostly overlooked when talking about patents -- the description in the press of the patent may bear little resemblence to the invention itself.
I usually look at the patent before talking about it, but you don't have one yet, so one can only go by what you say.
I had no desire to play this game of overpatenting -- in my opinion it is unethical. And I have a unique, novel, useful invention which makes it unecessary anyway.
There are lots of "unique, novel, and useful inventions" that aren't, and shouldn't be, patentable.
As far as your description goes, it sounds like you either are applying for a software patent or a business method patent. Both of those are bad public policy and only exist because of extensive corporate lobbying over the last few decades.
By eliminating software patents you make the playing field tilted even worse towards the big guys in the market, and that hurts us all.
I have come up with half a dozen "unique, novel, and useful inventions". The patent system has been useless in benefitting from any of them. Patents do not work for software. And your patent was a waste of money, except that it may serve as a marketing gimmick for you.
Advocating this kind of bullshit and defending your patent makes you part of the bad guys as far as I'm concerned.
There should be some ownership for invention itself, outside of marketing and running a business. That's what the patent system is supposed to be doing, right?
There should also be social justice and world peace. But all attempts to try to impose such outcomes by fiat (attempts like communism and imperial rule) make things worse. In the end, inventors benefit more if there are no patents at all, because on balance, the patent system does more harm than good.
and anyone who claims that java is 90's, should call themselves so lampish.
Indeed. Java is more like a 1970's language.
if there's anything in the opensource world that can obsolete java then it's python and it's compiled bytecode.
Java has been obsolete since the day it was created. What Java did achieve is to make morons like you aware that features like garbage collection and runtime safety even exist. That's a great accomplishment, but, in the end, it's not reason to stick with a third rate, obsolete language like Java.
While the system is flawed, there has to be some mechanism to allow creative people rewards from the market.
Well, patents generally don't work for small or independent inventors.
As a "little guy", I've just spent the last two years researching, developing, and filing a patent application.
On a simple survey tool? You look like one of the uncreative, bad guys.
Software patents need to go.
condsidering that when the Western world discovered the "new" world, we pretty much trashed (not even intentionally - just being germ carriers)
Europeans trashed the new world quite intentionally: the Catholic church in particular deliberately and methodically destroyed religious writings, murals, and other records.
I didn't get [repetitive strain injury] by typing, I got it from the mouse.
:-)
Uh, huh, as if we believe that
One thing I know for certain, Microsoft will never be kind to a F/OSS option in terms of IP licensing... perhaps Visto will.
There is nothing to license; you ought to be able to do push/pull E-mail without licensing anything.
Even if there were anything to license, a patent shark and one of its allies aren't going to be favorably disposed towards FOSS either. However, they may simply not bother to sue FOSS because there is no money tomake.
Neither NTP nor Visto have contributed anything of importance to mobile E-mail technology; they have simply taken out patents on some of the obvious and trivial ways in which devices can get notified of server updates.
Visto's argument that it is good to beat Microsoft with patents because of Microsoft's monopolistic practices is wrong. It is true that Microsoft is behaving monopolistically with Exchange and Windows Mobile, but that's an issue for regulators and the market to worry about. Allowing Visto's and NTP's bogus patents to stand only replaces a big monopolist with a little one.
I'm sorry, but I don't get it. In what way does Wikipedia need to be updated in light of this result?
Although NASA (or the US goverment, it is all politics) does not want to fund Hubble anymore, the telescope proves that it is valuable every time again.
I don't even want to defend NASA's decision (I really don't know the tradeoffs well enough), but merely observing that Hubble is still useful tells you little about whether it makes sense to continue funding it. The real question is whether the cost/benefit calculations work out overall. In particular, is it worth trying to fix Hubble again and again, rather than saving up for a new space-based telescope?
CC, like other such certifications, is a checklist of features: it requires systems to have lots of security features. Satisfying such a checklist doesn't tell you anything about whether a system is actually secure, it supposedly tells you about whether you can or cannot implement complex security procedures. But it doesn't even tell you that because there is no guarantee that the features work and interact as intended, and, on the other hand, systems not formally satisfying the requirements may still support your security procedures.
Companies like Microsoft love standards like CC because they don't have to provide actual security, they just have to add lots of features to their operating system, and Microsoft is great at adding features.
If you want to achieve real security, your best bet is to remove as much unnecessary functionality from a system as possible, and that includes a lot of the junk that CC requires.
NTP's patent is pretty much irrelevant; there are plenty of ways of getting real-time E-mail to your device, with polling and IMAP IDLE being the most obvious choices. RIM is only stuck because NTP zeroed in on them early and because (apparently) their implementation infringes.
RIM could probably have worked around this patent easily. But my impression from using their product a little is that they aren't very good technically anyway.
So, let NTP and RIM destroy each other; hopefully, companies like Palm will benefit from that.
I, for one, welcome our new $100 laptop overlords.
You should, because some of the recipients of these laptops may well found the next Microsoft or Google, and they are a lot more eager to succeed than their US or European counterparts.
because technology with out proper training is utter folley.
First of all, your assumption that there is no training is groundless--these things are going into schools, they aren't being dropped from airplanes.
Second, your assumption that it requires "proper training" to learn technology is also groundless; many geeks are self-taught. Additionally, Linux is enormously well supported by on-line resources at all levels.
They will end up in secondary or used markets and provide litte to no benifit to those that have them due to the reasons listed above.
If the things aren't traded, they'll stay with students. If the things are traded, they'll end up with people who have sufficient use for them and the necessary training so that they are willing to pay the money.
Creating and distributing a $100 laptop at cost to poorer nations is a win no matter what happens with those laptops. And it's likely a lot better than handing their governments a lot of aid in cash.
Not even if you two are seriouly planning on flying planes into buildings or releasing sarin gas in a subway?
Correct: not even then. If you want a free and democratic society, you have to accept the fact that people can plan to do bad things and that they will sometimes get away with it.
We have a choice: a totalitarian state with perfect security, or a democratic state in which we accept the risk that people can successfully plan and launch terrorist attacks.
The only way to reduce terrorist attacks in a democracy is to behave more justly in the world. 9/11 is a good example of what not to do: 9/11 wasn't a random, unpredictable act of violence by people that picked us for no reason, it was the predictable consequence of decades of wrongheaded foreign policy, and our reaction to it has made the situation worse. In the long run, one cannot pacify the world through miltary action or national security.
You're right that privacy isn't necessary for freedom. But asymmetric information is a huge problem for freedom, because asymmetric information means asymmetric power.
And that's the situation we're facing: the government is hiding more and more information under the mantle of national security, corporations are hiding more and more of their operations as proprietary and trade secret, and at the same time, they are gathering more and more information on individuals that can be used for anything from distorting the market to blackmail.
Secure web servers have certificates. Well, web browsers used to have facilities for client certificates--means by which the browser would identify itself to servers and prove its identity. Yes, you can do that easily and securely in software, no chip required.
Well, apparently users didn't want to bother and web sites didn't start requiring it. It's difficult to see why adding the expense of a special chip into the mix would make it any more likely to succeed.