Congress will pass legislation to encourage companies to share cyber-security data with the government, by exempting such data from disclosure under the Freedom of Information Act and by providing antitrust protection for companies that collaborate on cyber-security matters.
I think this concept will be extended further. Remember that Congress can grant antitrust and other illegal activity protection by law. (Hence the NBA/Baseball franchises). I expect Congress will start granting such exemptions, and protecting the data that tells consumers about these exceptions. Think about it. What wouldn't Microsoft give up for full protection from most laws? They'd happily give away all the Passport data, as well as anything else they can get their hands on. You could easily couch this as "protection of the Internet"... because this permits the Feds to catch "evildoers."
The glaring errors in the glaring differences are obvious...
Patents granted on the basis of first-to-file?
US: Yes
Japan: No
**This is the wrong way around. The U.S. is the ONLY country that is not first-to-file. The independent inventors push quite hard against change on this count. Japanese patent applicants file many small patents, because once you file, you automatically get priority. So the U.S. system certainly helps the small inventors, while the Japanese system favors the large corporations who can afford the filing fees. As a side note, the Japanese filing feels are much higher than U.S. filing fees.
Filing permitted in any language?
US: Yes
Japan: No
**Neither country permits filing in any but their national language. In the US one can file with a "certified translation." This is the same in Japan.
Are patent applications published?
US: No. Kept secret until patent is granted.
Japan: Yes. 18 months after filing.
**U.S. now publishes applications 18 months after filing, unless the applicant specifically requests otherwise and does not file in any other country outside the U.S. This is expected to permit small inventors to maintain the secrecy (permitting them to exploit their invention without having to defend it from the big guys) but force larger corporations that foreign file to publish.
Patent Term:
US: 20 years
Japan: 15 years
**Both countries have 20 years from initial application. Both countries take about 3 years to grant a patent. The U.S. now compensates in time for those applications that take longer than 3 years. The actual term is gauged to 17 years.
Pre-grant opposition?
US: No
Japan: Yes
**Japan changed this, I believe in 1997. Now opposition is after grant. Additionally, the U.S. has added post-publication pre-grant informal opposition. There is no formal opposition procedure in the U.S., however.
**If you ask any small inventor, Japanese or U.S. you will find that they much prefer the U.S. system to the Japanese. Japan very much favors the large corporation that can afford huge filing fees (~$3000 compared to U.S. ~$800 for a large entity and only ~$400 for a small entity).
By the way, you can challenge a patent before the U.S.P.T.O... it's called an Interference.
I've had a goodly amount of discussions with lawyers about the GPL. The GPL only allows you to distribute derivative works if you distribute them under the GPL. If you fail to distribute under the GPL, then you have no right to distribute. The GPL is nicely viral, if a bit vague on the terms about 'the product'. Typically, process or executable boundries are considered sufficient for a second license.
You may be able to offer the EULA in addition to the GPL, though users and derivatives will be bound solely to the GPL. FUD.
Trademarks are one of those forever troublesome topics. Fundamentally, trademark owners have the exclusive right to use it, and often to use it on related products. They also have a duty to defend the trademark from unauthorized use, lest they lose the trademark. The intent of the laws centers around creating a name the manufacturer owns, and cutting confusion in the mind of consumers.
<p>
This begs the question: "What's confusing to a random mass of consumers?" Because the only way to determine for sure is to go to court and to take your chances, trademark law has lots of 'nasty-grams' asking people to change names.
<p>
It's a bit of a problem. Lawyers, generally, are comfortable with settling ambiguities and issues of fact with court proceedings. Non-lawyers feel this is arbitrary and encourages kleptocracy. The attitude appears to be a hazard of the profession, just like developers want to add a little more to the next release.
<p>
We always have trademark law issues show up on Slashdot. Remember Sun Microsystems sending out mass emails to every website with the substring "java" in their names? Or all the fights over ICANN arbitration rules concerning trademarks? Or trying to retake the term "Open Source" as a trademark or servicemark? Because trademarks deal with fuzzy issues like "confusion", there will always be confusion.
<p>
Look a good primer on trademarks, e.g., <a href=http://www.law.cornell.edu/topics/trademark.h tml>Cornell's</a>.
Also, a shameless plug: Check out <a href=http://www.truegift.com>TrueGift Donations</a> to help students turn into smarter people.
The article misses the key technologies of the future summarized as the smoke and mirrors story I came up with over at Sun Microsystems. We used this to talk about honking bandwidth, the need for big servers, and why a portable language like Java makes sense.
DWDM is a start, but there are two major problems:
Smoke:Right now we can throw a lot of bandwidth across a long haul fiber, but these use expensive lasers that run only one or two protocols. There are a lot of seperate networks, HTTP/TCP/IP, SONET, some voice stacks, even Telex. Each of these networks has its own protocol stack right down to some fiber based ethernet standard or hacked up 1990's protocol. The best solution is to make a 'smoke' box that will allow splitting by frequency so that I can run a dozen frequencies as SONET, a dozen as voice, and twenty TCP/IP. The magic 'smoke' box splits the incomming fiber into several seperate fibers, each carrying a distinct set of frequencies that can leverage other equipment. By combining together different inputs, I can use a single long fiber for multiple networks. One order of magnitude.
Mirrors:This is the area where Lucent is making some progress. I need to do some nifty tricks with routing or my gross bandwidth buries my useful bandwidth. All the ATM switch cloth with IP cache in the world won't help if I need to cross over the optical/electrical boundry for every packet. A 'mirror' could be the simple stuff with Lucent using a physical switch to reimplement timesharing (1 cycle for SF to NY, 1 for SF to Boston, 1 for San Jose to NY,...). The mythical mirror solution is to hit a lattice with a signal such that the reflection property reflects to a different destination. You would only need to cross the boundry for the destination part of a packet or routable stream. This 'mirror' magic would be an independent improvement from DWDM or 'smoke'. Most likely, you would use DWDM, split to fibers with smoke, route with mirrors. Another order of magnitude; maybe two.
Finally, give up on rewiring the last mile. The DSP and other signal processing tricks will get faster and cheaper more quickly than any solution that requires rewiring. It makes financial sense to swap end point electronics rather than rip open walls. You may see many more COs making shorter runs to the houses, but either existing coax or twisted pair into the house will carry our future bandwidth. (Thanks to Brent and Richard for convincing me.)
I miss Sun, they had more interesting problems than running a non-profit. See the non-profit at TrueGift Donations.
There's a different solution than bemoaning the lack of education, let's fix the education problem so we have people that can make better decisions.
Yes, it is slow, and often thankless, but it really is better to build one bonfire than to curse the darkness.
One novel approach is TrueGift Donations, a nonprofit trying to get school supplies into classrooms without doing the usual funding games. Check it out.
If you think its better to get bright kids out of schools, rather than just complain about Marching Morons, then moderate this up.
A bulk mailer pays a permit fee, a deposit, and per piece for Business Reply Mail (BRM) or the slightly cheaper Qualified BRM. These range from about $.60 per reply for low volume all the way up down to $.32 per reply for high volume.
For the rates calculations, look here, and for the $.31 QBRM number here
For more information than you possibly want, take a look at the US Post Office's US Post Office's BRM manual. Also, you can go through a process asking for refunds against the charge for mail that came in with stamps. Only really large mailing houses or people with cheap labor bother.
Sigh. Guess I didn't want to start work this morning.
HandSpring, the Palm spinoff, is actively courting this market. They have a hot plug-in system that lets doctors carry several different handspring modules as plug-ins. You can see a demo here.
The books published by Franklin for all the hand top OSs. It's just that the hot swap HandSprings allow people to carry several around.
Logic Bomb is right. Give up on all straight political reporting. Among other problems, the moderation scheme breaks down. I've seen articles in politics rated up 10 points and down 8 points. Moderators in politics usually vote their opinion after ignoring the moderator guidelines.
I went to a public technical presentation of the PlayStation last month. The system programs like a network of special purpose machines with pipeline and cache issues from hell. One disappointment of the PlayStation is the design of its sound. The sound system is not programmable, so your games will probably never get to use 3D effects.
One the other hand, all of the new generation of game consoles rock compared to the old generation. The platforms are getting more tightly controlled and aimed at larger production houses. I laughed at the slide that showed the chart of what NDAs you needed to sign to see the NDAs you needed to sign to see the contracts.:-).
On a final note, a Director of Technology over a Sony candidly told me that Sony prefers to make proprietary standands, open them up to the industry, and get them adopted. They make more money off the licensing streams on a few hits than on misses.
No stock options or ESPP for folks working at Sony.
Probably the first comment would be to step back from your high-end security consultants and go think for a while. You will probably come up with the same thoughts, some better thoughts, and a quite a bit less money. Too many security consultants are stuck in the mindset of drastic measures and models that they know do not work, such as the "Adam/Eve" security model. Most thieves are stupid. They email stuff.
1. Recognize you are stopping casual abuses or last minute abuses. You are trying to stop the fired sales person from taking the entire client list, not the clever system admin from hell. Set your thoughts accordingly.
2. Make written security guidelines for your company. For example, one large company that shall remain nameless, even though it's Sun, makes ever new employee watch a fifteen minute hokey video showing a team talking about a confidential problems in public, leaving notes on white boards, and even letting ex-employees use the system. Also, they make a couple of levels of confidentiality ("MyCo Confidential", etc.). This cuts down on the accidental mistakes.
3. Ignore incomming traffic. You can't do a good job on it anyway.
4. Have your DBAs remove the old "print all to file" type commands in your applications. The only remaining use in most corporations is to take a copy of the client list, account list, or whatever.
5. Log, copy, encrypt all outgoing email that hits matching criteria. Criteria include greps "MyCo Confidential" and size (>2Mb) and time (weekends, midnight to 5 a.m.). Yes, it can be a pain, but you've got to keep those drive makers happy. Email isn't time or space critical but is the first tool of the thief.
6. Close of access to outgoing ftp. Normal mortals can use the browsers. Others should need permission.
7. Page the SysAdmin if any one user sends over 100MB of outbound traffic in a 24 hour period.
Yes, this will be a good due diligence level of protection, and may catch anyone who tries something. No, James Bond wouldn't break a sweat.
Back in the 1980's, HP had some desktops that had pairs of fans that ran exceedingly quietly. They claimed they had patents on them. The basic idea was to run two fans such that they were of sync and destructively interfered for most locations. The fans were mounted directly next to each other and ran exceedingly quietly. Am I imaginging this? Did this technology drop into a black hole?
Slow innovations: summary of others' ideas
on
The End of Unix?
·
· Score: 1
Well, taking a break between jobs (read consulting), I took the time to read all the moderated up comments.
Here's what people are saying.
Where is Unix going? There seem to be three religious sects:
Several argue Unix popularity is growing from its decline in the 70's and 80's. There is no serious high end competitor, and its evolution will continue as long as people care about it.
zlotnick points out, and I concur, that the Unix name will live on, even for an unrelated OS. Like Windows, Ethernet, and Office, the name is so prevalent that new and unrelated operating systems will still be called Unix.
Several raise the option that Unix is not exempt from the universal truth: "This too shall change." Someday, its concepts will be replaced by a future we cannot see.
Aside from proclamations of adherence to these sects, some interesting comments include:
Mr. Slippery on the other hand, asserts Unix is basically static and optimized, with a few new gizmos now and then.
eries mentions UNIX is a way of organizing operating systems.
dsplat and jetson123 talk of UNIX's evolving features while maintaining backward compatibility.
jabber points out that Unix and other OS's evolve mostly from using each other's features.
Several people point out the ambiguity of "Unix". A philosophy, command line tools, GUIs, appications and even the organization of file system are candidates.
Others take the opportunity to cry to the heavens for mana:
Christopher Thomas argues for iron clad authentification and validation in networks and for users.
Several have asked for more distributed computing capabilities.
Robin Hood mentions about EROS, a GPL without file systems.
My Religion
Now, for some words of my religion. Back in school, I remember reading of a truism from the 50's and 60's: Every time you make working with the computer twice as fast, people become four times more productive. Innovation is risky, and has high costs and profits. I believe in innovation, and am proud to have helped at CenterLine, JavaSoft, and others.
Before making new theology, let us consider our dogma.
Unix Dogma
Installable Software: Several fiction books talk about software existing on physical medium that must be physically attached to your computer, like a rack of PCMIA cards or game cartidges. Sun's JINI works as devices come together to form the environment.
File Systems: Persistent objects are shown to more understandable to users. Hierarchy is only one method of organization. Databases?
WIMP: Windows-Interface-Mouse-Pointer is the accepted standard. Window managers that shrink but do not hide windows are about 50% faster for users. Voice, gesture, pen are having challenges. What else is out there?
Processes: Processes run all on one box with client/server programs each being handcrafted. With LCOS (Liquid Crystal on Silicon) and wireless technologies, can we afford this dogma? Unix made many of its advances from making networking easy, though not transparent. How could a network computer run a distributed task without the application caring?
Progress in computer science moves slowly. My computer science mentor taught me that: a new thing must be ten times better to get others to use it. Being thirty percent better doesn't even raise eyebrows.
So what can we do that is truly amazing?
Charles Merriam Independent Business Consultant Sunnyvale, California
Well, I'm not a lawyer either, though I often discuss this question.
1. Just a quick review, the patent process was originally intended to foster innovation by handing out a limited-time monopoly in return for exposing your secrets. For some times and some industries, this has worked quite well. For current computer science, it may work in a less certain manner. Only the claims, near the end of the patent, are protected. The title or abstract is off little use.
2. Most current patents are used defensively. For example, John Chambers at Cisco makes unequivocal statements that Cisco will never sue someone on a patent; they just patent to defend. A patent costs about $15K + engineer + 2 year wait, while a patent litigation starts at $500K.
3. You can assign a patent to an organization, and you can license it to others. You cannot, to my attorney's knowledge, write a license that requires people to assign new inventions to an organization in return for using that organization's work. You can require to license the patents for a 'reasonable amount'.
4. There are many people who try to make money while still building collaborative software. GPL is one 'open source' viral copyright licensing scheme among many variations. As a devout capitalist, I support schemes where those willing to play by open source rules and philosophies are free, and others pay money. The final decisions in society can be put off as long as both innovation trees continue.
5. There is no standard GPLish license for patents, organization for common licensing, or solution to the posed problems suggested in the first fifty posts. Given the reality as presented, some solution should be found. Unfortunately, only the first fifty posts are ever reviewed.
6. Patents give very specific rights as enumerated in the claims. Always read the claims.
This could be a chance to clean up both the Java implementations and the RedHat problems. IBM has a history of being able to plod through to completion.
RedHat Linux and Java both lose in various benchmarks comparisons. Both are backed by enough money to incent developers to scratch their itches on the outstanding bugs. Remember that $1 Billion dollars in market cap can translate into 1,000,000 $1000 checks to community contributers.
What I suggest is this: RedHat offer shares from its huge marketcap to get bugs fixed in the RedHat installation and other not-quite open source software. Sun and IBM would then offer shares for Java bugs in their not-quite open source software. If only one thousand annoying problems were fixed (0.006% of RedHat market cap) and incorporated into later releases, the popularity of both Java and RedHat would rise enormously.
Disclaimers: I had grevious problems getting Redhat to install and have not been impressed with its ease of use. I have been employed by Sun as the strategic systems engineer liason for Java between Sun and IBM. I own stock and want it to go up.
Academia is mired in fear. The nail that stands up gets hammered. The researcher who discovered that ulcers could be cured is ridiculed. I have had researchers at Fermi and two universities candidly talk about areas they cannot explore; e.g., checking if Saint Einstein's theories would be sufficient with time dialation limited to gravity effects. One had a clear warning that this would put them on "the radical fringe, clearly not tenure material".
So how do we get back to courage?
The obvious part of K-12 science education to cut is the teaching of evolution. Fundamentally, we need more roboticists, computer scientists, physchologists, and geneticists than folks who study evolution, so it is better to cut this class than any math, chemistry, or physics. Let's gut this class in one fell swoop and blow the minds of a couple students. Here's what I propose...
A class that starts with Creationism, Theory of Evolution, and the Prachet giant turtle theory. Compare and contrast the beliefs, examine the evidence and consistency, look at the scientific method and places it falls down, study some famous mistakes and some radical breakthroughs. Explore the accidental discoveries and the effect on society. Get students to think about where they get their information.
About one a week, the new spewing Slashdot puts out an 'ohmygod someone patented something' story, and it's getting kind of lame. A patent isn't a license to steal, kill, and maim. A patent is only as good as the claims. And while the patent office makes some attempt at finding prior art they are overworked and fallible. So, now what? Instead of new jerk reactions, one can find out if the company is actually enforcing the patent and under what terms, and maybe one can look at good prior art databases. My apologies for the spew of the spew.
Requiring wiretapping capabilities hurts the national security of our country.
The new threats of encryption and internet manifest new challenges to the NSA and FBI. There have been new challenges emerging every generation since people baked messages into clay envelopes two thousand years ago. We need to sieze creativity to solve the problem, not brute force.
Human nature prefers the easy way of using the advantages we gained from the genius at Bletchy Park, from half a century of great SIGINT, and from one of the largest factories of intelligence operations ever made. Human nature prefers to work with well understood technology and process.
Still, our continued intelligence community lies in countering emerging change by intelligence, guile, and advancement. If we allow our intelligence groups to become lazy, relying on ever great search powers, then they will be useless and clueless when a major threat arises.
If we permit NSA and FBI to have wiretapping capabilities, they will be lazy, useless, and clueless to prevent concerted attacks on the US.
Requiring wiretapping capabilities hurts the national security of our country.
The new threats of encryption and internet manifest new challenges to the NSA and FBI. There have been new challenges emerging every generation since people baked messages into clay envelopes two thousand years ago. We need to sieze creativity to solve the problem, not brute force.
Human nature prefers the easy way of using the advantages we gained from the genius at Bletchy Park, from half a century of great SIGINT, and from one of the largest factories of intelligence operations ever made. Human nature prefers to work with well understood technology and process.
Still.
Our continued survival lies in countering emerging chain by intelligence, guile, and advancement. If we allow our intelligence groups to become lazy, relying on ever great search powers, then they will be useless and clueless when a major threat arises.
If we permit NSA and FBI to have wiretapping capabilities, they will be lazy, useless, and clueless to prevent concerted attacks on the US.
About a half dozen posts take the tact that "Well, all educational technology fails to work, thus this contest is a waste of time."
There were a couple early Java system contests offering reasonable prizes (Sparcs) that were won by ridiculously simple programs. After that, there were a couple of contests that generated pretty good programs. Then an industry arose. Someone had faith at the beginning.
Faith takes risks. Risks make profits. Some slashdotter out there will write the cannonical multiple choice test with a 'beam results to teacher' option and score a new Visor. Maybe someone will get jealous, and make something new and useful.
Berkeley, California had been running a program for a couple years where each student needed to sit in front a computer for a few hours each week to run somewhat silly rote testing problems. Most students found it boring. Still, Berkeley persisted because it 'rescued' some students who could learn basic reading and math skills in a private setting instead of admiting illiteracy in front of a class. The technology did serve a purpose in a school.
Have some faith folks, someone will make a profit here.
"We hope you are comfortable. We intercepted your probe bound for your neighboring planet, used it to understand your physiology and even gastronomical preferences. Please pull up a block of ice and share a kippered herring." -- Early dialog, First Contact, 2009
There seems to much FUD floating around about patents, so I thought I'd toss in a few extra facts. I've filed for ten patents for my previous employer, and keep a close eye on the patent world.
1. $25K/patent. Patents are not cheap. It costs about $10K-$15K to disclose, draft, file, and sheppard a patent to conclusion. Add to this another $10K of time for people in your group to disclose and review the patent. Now, some would view getting ten patents at $25K each better than one engineer at $250K (loaded). Some patent firms are much better than others; mail me for some recommendations.
2. Don't patent it yourself.You can learn a lot from the Patent It Yourself book, but you probably won't make a good patent. You can save money by preparing for the disclosure and by drawing your own diagrams. Never opt for the various 'individual inventor' reduced fees; the clauses bite and kill your patent. Also, there are a bunch of rip-off places that will sign any NDA and talk about 'marketting'.
3. No patents = No Silicon Valley. Silicon valley exists because of patents. Otherwise, MS or Sun would keep a group of engineers on standby just to clone every interesting piece of software. Patents provide reasonable barriers to entry for small firms. Not everything is a matter of time to market.
4. Silly Patents. There are many silly patents out there, and more being filed all the time. The problem is the breakdown at the US Patent Office, mostly by the previous administrator. For a while, patent agents were being reviewed by how many patents they awarded, and so they awarded a lot of trash.
5. Defense. In software, patents are defensive for the most part. Cisco, for example, has publically promised never to sue. Patents keep others from quickly ripping you off, and from others trying to enforce patents against you. Xerox is the notable exception; the idiots keep thinking they can raise money from their portfolio. Remember, nothing a law firm does can keep you from being sued; it can only keep you from losing.
6. Solutions. Thanks to my favorite patent attorney for suggesting this one. The most onerous problem for the patent office and patent attorneys is finding the prior art. The community can go a long way towards solving this problem by coming up with a good, searchable database of prior art. While the patents themselves are searchable at IBM's patent site, prior art is still mostly a matter of luck and money. Only small steps have been taken so far, though there is a rumor that the old Apple research notebooks from the 70's are posted somewhere.
There's a lot more about patents. It's a religious issue, even among patent attorneys. Most feel that the patent office does an inconsistent job, and all patent attorneys I know of cheered when gene sequence patents were tossed.
There seems to much FUD floating around this topic, so I thought I'd toss in a few facts. I've filed for ten patents for my previous employer, and keep a close eye on the patent world.
1. $25K/patent. Patents are not cheap. It costs about $10K-$15K to disclose, draft, file, and sheppard a patent to conclusion. Add to this another $10K of time for people in your group to disclose and review the patent. Now, some would view getting ten patents at $25K each better than one engineer at $250K (loaded). Some patent firms are much better than others; mail me for some recommendations.
2. Don't patent it yourself.You can learn a lot from the Patent It Yourself book, but you probably won't make a good patent. You can save money by preparing for the disclosure and by drawing your own diagrams. Never opt for the various 'individual inventor' reduced fees; the clauses bite and kill your patent. Also, there are a bunch of rip-off places that will sign any NDA and talk about 'marketting'.
3. No patents = No Silicon Valley. Silicon valley exists because of patents. Otherwise, MS or Sun would keep a group of engineers on standby just to clone every interesting piece of software. Patents provide reasonable barriers to entry for small firms. Not everything is a matter of time to market.
4. Silly Patents. There are many silly patents out there, and more being filed all the time. The problem is the breakdown at the US Patent Office, mostly by the previous administrator. For a while, patent agents were being reviewed by how many patents they awarded, and so they awarded a lot of trash.
5. Defense. In software, patents are defensive for the most part. Cisco, for example, has publically promised never to sue. Patents keep others from quickly ripping you off, and from others trying to enforce patents against you. Xerox is the notable exception; the idiots keep thinking they can raise money from their portfolio. Remember, nothing a law firm does can keep you from being sued; it can only keep you from losing.
There's a lot more about patents. It's a religious issue, even among patent attorneys. Most feel that the patent office does an inconsistent job, and all patent attorneys I know of cheered when gene sequence patents were tossed.
Slashdot Mirror
The prediction I found most interesting is:
... because this permits the Feds to catch "evildoers."
Congress will pass legislation to encourage companies to share cyber-security data with the government, by exempting such data from disclosure under the Freedom of Information Act and by providing antitrust protection for companies that collaborate on cyber-security matters.
I think this concept will be extended further. Remember that Congress can grant antitrust and other illegal activity protection by law. (Hence the NBA/Baseball franchises). I expect Congress will start granting such exemptions, and protecting the data that tells consumers about these exceptions. Think about it. What wouldn't Microsoft give up for full protection from most laws? They'd happily give away all the Passport data, as well as anything else they can get their hands on. You could easily couch this as "protection of the Internet"
T.
The glaring errors in the glaring differences are obvious...
Patents granted on the basis of first-to-file?
US: Yes
Japan: No
**This is the wrong way around. The U.S. is the ONLY country that is not first-to-file. The independent inventors push quite hard against change on this count. Japanese patent applicants file many small patents, because once you file, you automatically get priority. So the U.S. system certainly helps the small inventors, while the Japanese system favors the large corporations who can afford the filing fees. As a side note, the Japanese filing feels are much higher than U.S. filing fees.
Filing permitted in any language?
US: Yes
Japan: No
**Neither country permits filing in any but their national language. In the US one can file with a "certified translation." This is the same in Japan.
Are patent applications published?
US: No. Kept secret until patent is granted.
Japan: Yes. 18 months after filing.
**U.S. now publishes applications 18 months after filing, unless the applicant specifically requests otherwise and does not file in any other country outside the U.S. This is expected to permit small inventors to maintain the secrecy (permitting them to exploit their invention without having to defend it from the big guys) but force larger corporations that foreign file to publish.
Patent Term:
US: 20 years
Japan: 15 years
**Both countries have 20 years from initial application. Both countries take about 3 years to grant a patent. The U.S. now compensates in time for those applications that take longer than 3 years. The actual term is gauged to 17 years.
Pre-grant opposition?
US: No
Japan: Yes
**Japan changed this, I believe in 1997. Now opposition is after grant. Additionally, the U.S. has added post-publication pre-grant informal opposition. There is no formal opposition procedure in the U.S., however.
**If you ask any small inventor, Japanese or U.S. you will find that they much prefer the U.S. system to the Japanese. Japan very much favors the large corporation that can afford huge filing fees (~$3000 compared to U.S. ~$800 for a large entity and only ~$400 for a small entity).
By the way, you can challenge a patent before the U.S.P.T.O... it's called an Interference.
Yes, I AM an IP attorney, why do you ask...
Sorry, no.
I've had a goodly amount of discussions with lawyers about the GPL. The GPL only allows you to distribute derivative works if you distribute them under the GPL. If you fail to distribute under the GPL, then you have no right to distribute. The GPL is nicely viral, if a bit vague on the terms about 'the product'. Typically, process or executable boundries are considered sufficient for a second license.
You may be able to offer the EULA in addition to the GPL, though users and derivatives will be bound solely to the GPL. FUD.
Trademarks are one of those forever troublesome topics. Fundamentally, trademark owners have the exclusive right to use it, and often to use it on related products. They also have a duty to defend the trademark from unauthorized use, lest they lose the trademark. The intent of the laws centers around creating a name the manufacturer owns, and cutting confusion in the mind of consumers.h tml>Cornell's</a>.
<p>
This begs the question: "What's confusing to a random mass of consumers?" Because the only way to determine for sure is to go to court and to take your chances, trademark law has lots of 'nasty-grams' asking people to change names.
<p>
It's a bit of a problem. Lawyers, generally, are comfortable with settling ambiguities and issues of fact with court proceedings. Non-lawyers feel this is arbitrary and encourages kleptocracy. The attitude appears to be a hazard of the profession, just like developers want to add a little more to the next release.
<p>
We always have trademark law issues show up on Slashdot. Remember Sun Microsystems sending out mass emails to every website with the substring "java" in their names? Or all the fights over ICANN arbitration rules concerning trademarks? Or trying to retake the term "Open Source" as a trademark or servicemark? Because trademarks deal with fuzzy issues like "confusion", there will always be confusion.
<p>
Look a good primer on trademarks, e.g., <a href=http://www.law.cornell.edu/topics/trademark.
Also, a shameless plug: Check out <a href=http://www.truegift.com>TrueGift Donations</a> to help students turn into smarter people.
DWDM is a start, but there are two major problems:
Finally, give up on rewiring the last mile. The DSP and other signal processing tricks will get faster and cheaper more quickly than any solution that requires rewiring. It makes financial sense to swap end point electronics rather than rip open walls. You may see many more COs making shorter runs to the houses, but either existing coax or twisted pair into the house will carry our future bandwidth. (Thanks to Brent and Richard for convincing me.)
I miss Sun, they had more interesting problems than running a non-profit. See the non-profit at TrueGift Donations.
Cheers!
Charles
Yes, it is slow, and often thankless, but it really is better to build one bonfire than to curse the darkness.
One novel approach is TrueGift Donations, a nonprofit trying to get school supplies into classrooms without doing the usual funding games. Check it out.
If you think its better to get bright kids out of schools, rather than just complain about Marching Morons, then moderate this up.
Besides, wouldn't you like bright coworkers?
For the rates calculations, look here, and for the $.31 QBRM number here
For more information than you possibly want, take a look at the US Post Office's US Post Office's BRM manual. Also, you can go through a process asking for refunds against the charge for mail that came in with stamps. Only really large mailing houses or people with cheap labor bother.
Sigh. Guess I didn't want to start work this morning.
The books published by Franklin for all the hand top OSs. It's just that the hot swap HandSprings allow people to carry several around.
A small piece not mentioned in a good article.
Logic Bomb is right. Give up on all straight political reporting. Among other problems, the moderation scheme breaks down. I've seen articles in politics rated up 10 points and down 8 points. Moderators in politics usually vote their opinion after ignoring the moderator guidelines.
Slay the infidels!
I went to a public technical presentation of the PlayStation last month. The system programs like a network of special purpose machines with pipeline and cache issues from hell. One disappointment of the PlayStation is the design of its sound. The sound system is not programmable, so your games will probably never get to use 3D effects.
One the other hand, all of the new generation of game consoles rock compared to the old generation. The platforms are getting more tightly controlled and aimed at larger production houses. I laughed at the slide that showed the chart of what NDAs you needed to sign to see the NDAs you needed to sign to see the contracts. :-).
On a final note, a Director of Technology over a Sony candidly told me that Sony prefers to make proprietary standands, open them up to the industry, and get them adopted. They make more money off the licensing streams on a few hits than on misses.
No stock options or ESPP for folks working at Sony.
Probably the first comment would be to step back from your high-end security consultants and go think for a while. You will probably come up with the same thoughts, some better thoughts, and a quite a bit less money. Too many security consultants are stuck in the mindset of drastic measures and models that they know do not work, such as the "Adam/Eve" security model. Most thieves are stupid. They email stuff.
1. Recognize you are stopping casual abuses or last minute abuses. You are trying to stop the fired sales person from taking the entire client list, not the clever system admin from hell. Set your thoughts accordingly.
2. Make written security guidelines for your company. For example, one large company that shall remain nameless, even though it's Sun, makes ever new employee watch a fifteen minute hokey video showing a team talking about a confidential problems in public, leaving notes on white boards, and even letting ex-employees use the system. Also, they make a couple of levels of confidentiality ("MyCo Confidential", etc.). This cuts down on the accidental mistakes.
3. Ignore incomming traffic. You can't do a good job on it anyway.
4. Have your DBAs remove the old "print all to file" type commands in your applications. The only remaining use in most corporations is to take a copy of the client list, account list, or whatever.
5. Log, copy, encrypt all outgoing email that hits matching criteria. Criteria include greps "MyCo Confidential" and size (>2Mb) and time (weekends, midnight to 5 a.m.). Yes, it can be a pain, but you've got to keep those drive makers happy. Email isn't time or space critical but is the first tool of the thief.
6. Close of access to outgoing ftp. Normal mortals can use the browsers. Others should need permission.
7. Page the SysAdmin if any one user sends over 100MB of outbound traffic in a 24 hour period.
Yes, this will be a good due diligence level of protection, and may catch anyone who tries something. No, James Bond wouldn't break a sweat.
Cheers!
[shameless plug: Give money at www.truegift.com]
Back in the 1980's, HP had some desktops that had pairs of fans that ran exceedingly quietly. They claimed they had patents on them. The basic idea was to run two fans such that they were of sync and destructively interfered for most locations. The fans were mounted directly next to each other and ran exceedingly quietly. Am I imaginging this? Did this technology drop into a black hole?
Here's what people are saying.
Where is Unix going? There seem to be three religious sects:
Aside from proclamations of adherence to these sects, some interesting comments include:
Mr. Slippery on the other hand, asserts Unix is basically static and optimized, with a few new gizmos now and then.
eries mentions UNIX is a way of organizing operating systems.
dsplat and jetson123 talk of UNIX's evolving features while maintaining backward compatibility.
jabber points out that Unix and other OS's evolve mostly from using each other's features.
Several people point out the ambiguity of "Unix". A philosophy, command line tools, GUIs, appications and even the organization of file system are candidates.
Others take the opportunity to cry to the heavens for mana:
My Religion
Now, for some words of my religion. Back in school, I remember reading of a truism from the 50's and 60's: Every time you make working with the computer twice as fast, people become four times more productive. Innovation is risky, and has high costs and profits. I believe in innovation, and am proud to have helped at CenterLine, JavaSoft, and others.
Before making new theology, let us consider our dogma.
Unix Dogma
Progress in computer science moves slowly. My computer science mentor taught me that: a new thing must be ten times better to get others to use it. Being thirty percent better doesn't even raise eyebrows.
So what can we do that is truly amazing?
Charles Merriam
Independent Business Consultant
Sunnyvale, California
This is more likely to be a serious attempt than a hack.
Due to Slashdot's odd rating method. You probably aren't reading this.
Well, I'm not a lawyer either, though I often discuss this question.
1. Just a quick review, the patent process was originally intended to foster innovation by handing out a limited-time monopoly in return for exposing your secrets. For some times and some industries, this has worked quite well. For current computer science, it may work in a less certain manner. Only the claims, near the end of the patent, are protected. The title or abstract is off little use.
2. Most current patents are used defensively. For example, John Chambers at Cisco makes unequivocal statements that Cisco will never sue someone on a patent; they just patent to defend. A patent costs about $15K + engineer + 2 year wait, while a patent litigation starts at $500K.
3. You can assign a patent to an organization, and you can license it to others. You cannot, to my attorney's knowledge, write a license that requires people to assign new inventions to an organization in return for using that organization's work. You can require to license the patents for a 'reasonable amount'.
4. There are many people who try to make money while still building collaborative software. GPL is one 'open source' viral copyright licensing scheme among many variations. As a devout capitalist, I support schemes where those willing to play by open source rules and philosophies are free, and others pay money. The final decisions in society can be put off as long as both innovation trees continue.
5. There is no standard GPLish license for patents, organization for common licensing, or solution to the posed problems suggested in the first fifty posts. Given the reality as presented, some solution should be found. Unfortunately, only the first fifty posts are ever reviewed.
6. Patents give very specific rights as enumerated in the claims. Always read the claims.
Cheers.
RedHat Linux and Java both lose in various benchmarks comparisons. Both are backed by enough money to incent developers to scratch their itches on the outstanding bugs. Remember that $1 Billion dollars in market cap can translate into 1,000,000 $1000 checks to community contributers.
What I suggest is this: RedHat offer shares from its huge marketcap to get bugs fixed in the RedHat installation and other not-quite open source software. Sun and IBM would then offer shares for Java bugs in their not-quite open source software. If only one thousand annoying problems were fixed (0.006% of RedHat market cap) and incorporated into later releases, the popularity of both Java and RedHat would rise enormously.
Disclaimers: I had grevious problems getting Redhat to install and have not been impressed with its ease of use. I have been employed by Sun as the strategic systems engineer liason for Java between Sun and IBM. I own stock and want it to go up.
Cheers,
Charles Merriam
merriam @ world.std.com
Academia is mired in fear. The nail that stands up gets hammered. The researcher who discovered that ulcers could be cured is ridiculed. I have had researchers at Fermi and two universities candidly talk about areas they cannot explore; e.g., checking if Saint Einstein's theories would be sufficient with time dialation limited to gravity effects. One had a clear warning that this would put them on "the radical fringe, clearly not tenure material".
So how do we get back to courage?
The obvious part of K-12 science education to cut is the teaching of evolution. Fundamentally, we need more roboticists, computer scientists, physchologists, and geneticists than folks who study evolution, so it is better to cut this class than any math, chemistry, or physics. Let's gut this class in one fell swoop and blow the minds of a couple students. Here's what I propose...
A class that starts with Creationism, Theory of Evolution, and the Prachet giant turtle theory. Compare and contrast the beliefs, examine the evidence and consistency, look at the scientific method and places it falls down, study some famous mistakes and some radical breakthroughs. Explore the accidental discoveries and the effect on society. Get students to think about where they get their information.
Maybe we could get our courage back.
About one a week, the new spewing Slashdot puts out an 'ohmygod someone patented something' story, and it's getting kind of lame. A patent isn't a license to steal, kill, and maim. A patent is only as good as the claims. And while the patent office makes some attempt at finding prior art they are overworked and fallible. So, now what? Instead of new jerk reactions, one can find out if the company is actually enforcing the patent and under what terms, and maybe one can look at good prior art databases. My apologies for the spew of the spew.
Requiring wiretapping capabilities hurts the national security of our country.
The new threats of encryption and internet manifest new challenges to the NSA and FBI. There have been new challenges emerging every generation since people baked messages into clay envelopes two thousand years ago. We need to sieze creativity to solve the problem, not brute force.
Human nature prefers the easy way of using the advantages we gained from the genius at Bletchy Park, from half a century of great SIGINT, and from one of the largest factories of intelligence
operations ever made. Human nature prefers to work with well understood technology and process.
Still, our continued intelligence community lies in countering emerging change by intelligence, guile, and advancement. If we allow our intelligence groups to become lazy, relying on ever great search powers, then they will be useless and clueless when a major threat arises.
If we permit NSA and FBI to have wiretapping capabilities, they will be lazy, useless, and clueless to prevent concerted attacks on the US.
A Devout Capitalist
Profit motivates invention
Requiring wiretapping capabilities hurts the national security of our country.
The new threats of encryption and internet manifest new challenges to the NSA and FBI. There have been new challenges emerging every generation since people baked messages into clay envelopes two thousand years ago. We need to sieze creativity to solve the problem, not brute force.
Human nature prefers the easy way of using the advantages we gained from the genius at Bletchy Park, from half a century of great SIGINT, and from one of the largest factories of intelligence operations ever made. Human nature prefers to work with well understood technology and process.
Still.
Our continued survival lies in countering emerging chain by intelligence, guile, and advancement. If we allow our intelligence groups to become lazy, relying on ever great search powers, then they will be useless and clueless when a major threat arises.
If we permit NSA and FBI to have wiretapping capabilities, they will be lazy, useless, and clueless to prevent concerted attacks on the US.
A Devout Capitalist
About a half dozen posts take the tact that "Well, all educational technology fails to work, thus this contest is a waste of time."
There were a couple early Java system contests offering reasonable prizes (Sparcs) that were won by ridiculously simple programs. After that, there were a couple of contests that generated pretty good programs. Then an industry arose. Someone had faith at the beginning.
Faith takes risks. Risks make profits. Some slashdotter out there will write the cannonical multiple choice test with a 'beam results to teacher' option and score a new Visor. Maybe someone will get jealous, and make something new and useful.
Berkeley, California had been running a program for a couple years where each student needed to sit in front a computer for a few hours each week to run somewhat silly rote testing problems. Most students found it boring. Still, Berkeley persisted because it 'rescued' some students who could learn basic reading and math skills in a private setting instead of admiting illiteracy in front of a class. The technology did serve a purpose in a school.
Have some faith folks, someone will make a profit here.
"We hope you are comfortable. We intercepted your probe bound for your neighboring planet, used it to understand your physiology and even gastronomical preferences. Please pull up a block of ice and share a kippered herring." -- Early dialog, First Contact, 2009
There seems to much FUD floating around about patents, so I thought I'd toss in a few extra facts. I've filed for ten patents for my previous employer, and keep a close eye on the patent world.
1. $25K/patent. Patents are not cheap. It costs about $10K-$15K to disclose, draft, file, and sheppard a patent to conclusion. Add to this another $10K of time for people in your group to disclose and review the patent. Now, some would view getting ten patents at $25K each better than one engineer at $250K (loaded). Some patent firms are much better than others; mail me for some recommendations.
2. Don't patent it yourself.You can learn a lot from the Patent It Yourself book, but you probably won't make a good patent. You can save money by preparing for the disclosure and by drawing your own diagrams. Never opt for the various 'individual inventor' reduced fees; the clauses bite and kill your patent. Also, there are a bunch of rip-off places that will sign any NDA and talk about 'marketting'.
3. No patents = No Silicon Valley. Silicon valley exists because of patents. Otherwise, MS or Sun would keep a group of engineers on standby just to clone every interesting piece of software. Patents provide reasonable barriers to entry for small firms. Not everything is a matter of time to market.
4. Silly Patents. There are many silly patents out there, and more being filed all the time. The problem is the breakdown at the US Patent Office, mostly by the previous administrator. For a while, patent agents were being reviewed by how many patents they awarded, and so they awarded a lot of trash.
5. Defense. In software, patents are defensive for the most part. Cisco, for example, has publically promised never to sue. Patents keep others from quickly ripping you off, and from others trying to enforce patents against you. Xerox is the notable exception; the idiots keep thinking they can raise money from their portfolio. Remember, nothing a law firm does can keep you from being sued; it can only keep you from losing.
6. Solutions. Thanks to my favorite patent attorney for suggesting this one. The most onerous problem for the patent office and patent attorneys is finding the prior art. The community can go a long way towards solving this problem by coming up with a good, searchable database of prior art. While the patents themselves are searchable at IBM's patent site, prior art is still mostly a matter of luck and money. Only small steps have been taken so far, though there is a rumor that the old Apple research notebooks from the 70's are posted somewhere.
There's a lot more about patents. It's a religious issue, even among patent attorneys. Most feel that the patent office does an inconsistent job, and all patent attorneys I know of cheered when gene sequence patents were tossed.
There seems to much FUD floating around this topic, so I thought I'd toss in a few facts. I've filed for ten patents for my previous employer, and keep a close eye on the patent world.
1. $25K/patent. Patents are not cheap. It costs about $10K-$15K to disclose, draft, file, and sheppard a patent to conclusion. Add to this another $10K of time for people in your group to disclose and review the patent. Now, some would view getting ten patents at $25K each better than one engineer at $250K (loaded). Some patent firms are much better than others; mail me for some recommendations.
2. Don't patent it yourself.You can learn a lot from the Patent It Yourself book, but you probably won't make a good patent. You can save money by preparing for the disclosure and by drawing your own diagrams. Never opt for the various 'individual inventor' reduced fees; the clauses bite and kill your patent. Also, there are a bunch of rip-off places that will sign any NDA and talk about 'marketting'.
3. No patents = No Silicon Valley. Silicon valley exists because of patents. Otherwise, MS or Sun would keep a group of engineers on standby just to clone every interesting piece of software. Patents provide reasonable barriers to entry for small firms. Not everything is a matter of time to market.
4. Silly Patents. There are many silly patents out there, and more being filed all the time. The problem is the breakdown at the US Patent Office, mostly by the previous administrator. For a while, patent agents were being reviewed by how many patents they awarded, and so they awarded a lot of trash.
5. Defense. In software, patents are defensive for the most part. Cisco, for example, has publically promised never to sue. Patents keep others from quickly ripping you off, and from others trying to enforce patents against you. Xerox is the notable exception; the idiots keep thinking they can raise money from their portfolio. Remember, nothing a law firm does can keep you from being sued; it can only keep you from losing.
There's a lot more about patents. It's a religious issue, even among patent attorneys. Most feel that the patent office does an inconsistent job, and all patent attorneys I know of cheered when gene sequence patents were tossed.