What percentage of the Windows PCs in China are running a licensed copy of Windows?
The reason I ask is someone can buy one of these and "repurpose" it to a non-legal copy of Windows, ending up with a 13% + (the price of Windows on the same machine) savings.
1. The inventor contacts WARF about a possible patentable idea. This might be done to help his/her students, as they get the patent on their resume if they are co-inventors. I believe the patent in question here is 6,658,554, which has one of Dr. Sohi's students as a co-inventor. Note: If you are going to search for Guri Sohi's patents, use his full first name, "Gurindar."
2. WARF decides whether or not to file for a patent.
3. If the patent is infringed, WARF goes for the money. Although, since some patents are in very specialized fields, this might require a quick email from the inventor or some other expert in the field in order to start the investigative process.
I was a graduate student at the University of Wisconsin for 6 years, during which I was able to work with Guri Sohi as his teaching assistant, in addition to having many stimulating technical discussions.
WARF (Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation, warf.org) helps faculty and students patent their ideas and protect the patents. Remember, a patent is only as good as the lawyers who are willing to go to court to defend it--as this WARF v. Intel situation has shown.
WARF was established in 1925, and helped the University of Wisconsin become one of the first academic institutions to take advantage of the patent system. The patent for including vitamin D in milk was the first big money winner for WARF and the university.
The system is driven by the inventor. If a faculty member or student has an idea they want to patent, WARF covers the expenses, provides help with prior-art, etc. efforts, and pledges to defend the patent. For this, WARF gets 80% of the patent revenues, which it puts back into research funding for the university. The inventor(s) receive 20% of the revenues. From what I have heard, this is a larger percentage than that given to the inventor at many other institutions.
The problem of having the data in a single location is probably more of an issue than the type of media because of fire or other physical damage rather than the issue of lifetime.
If you decide to back up the data on writable DVD, you have a lifetime of 2-10 years. With flash, (e.g., a thumb drive,) the general advertised time is 10 years. Even if there is a medium which guarantees a longer period, you still have the problem of multiple secure sites.
You can solve both problems at once by going with an on-line data warehouse who will guarantee data integrity and mirrors data to multiple locations. This leaves the issue of media life to them, and solves the multiple-location issue.
I have known a few architects (buildings and landscapes) and drafters. These people all took a technical drawing course in college in which they had to learn to print nicely.
I *REALLY* like the way these people write. It is stylish and very legible. I have even asked one to write out an invitation (which I had printed) to give it a more individual look.
Maybe we should be teaching this to our children.
Of course, if you do not teach people how to read cursive writing...
What is involved in porting code to a new chip? I've done some programming in my life, but it has mostly been limited to personal interest and school projects. I imagine it can't be as simple as just recompiling. So what does it take to port code?What are the hurdles? Assume (accurately) that I'm a total noob.
The main issue will be handling of virtual page tables in the OS. The code for x86 will not work for ARM.
There will be some other issues with the boot sequence (BIOS), and of course the need to be able to drive the devices attached to the ARM, as some people have noted with respect to getting Linux to run on the ARM-based netbooks.
I expect the code base for Windows has been hacked for so many years by so many different people that moving it to another architecture would not be as easy as it is for Linux. But, a good team should be able to do it. Perhaps Microsoft took this possible future into consideration and cleaned up a lot of the code when they did Windows 7.
While I certaily wasn't at that talk (and I suspect that neither were you), I'm willing to bet that you don't completely understand what the talk was about.... The problem isn't one of ethics, but one of culture. The Chinese don't regard plagiarism the same way we do - in fact, the educational system encourages it in a way as it is an honor, of sorts, to 'plagiarize' your mentor...
I was at the talk. I understood the problem to be what one culture considers ethical, another might not. Thank you for clarifying this. Since I did not grow up in China, I do not understand the issue as well as someone who did, but I now feel I understand it better than I did.
(The following discussion is based on real experiences and is not meant to profile people, but to state facts.)
This is really ridiculous. If the Chinese want to steal our technology, all they have to do is to contact several of the thousands of Chinese nationals who are working in the US until they find someone who needs money or other help for their family back in China.
One company I worked for had a Chinese national who was not allowed to work on part of a project because it was protected technology. The same person could have dropped the entire project onto their iPod and carried it out the door, but did not.
The ethics problem is represented by an experience I had while at an American research university. A Chinese faculty member met with the Chinese students in order to tell them in America, cheating and other ethical breaches are not considered a good way to get ahead. This suggested certain cultural differences which should not be used to discriminate, but need to be recognized because of the risks involved.
Jerry,
Thank you for pointing out my omission of the networking requirement. I am not a lawyer, but I have worked on a few patent cases as an expert, so I know to read the patent before talking about it, even if I am not as careful as a lawyer at reading over it.:-)
I believe the networking requirement you mention will be fulfilled by any system which needs to use a network to validate user information from a central source, such as kerberos authentication or Windows Active Directory mechanisms. Of course, LDAP was mentioned in the patent, but these go beyond LDAP.
These thoughts come after less than an hour of investigation. It seems strange Facebook could not come up with something compelling...
Does anyone have a good reason for such a law, other than to protect important people (the ones who can cause laws to be written) who want to be able to deny saying something?
After reading through the '761 patent, any operating system which initiates a user working-space at login, e.g., a shell, will fall under the main claim of this patent.
I do not understand why Facebook's legal team has not been able to invalidate this patent via the presentation of prior art.
This patent should have never been issued and should not be defensible.
I accidentally moderated this incorrectly (troll when I meant informative. So, this note should negate my moderation.
If I remember correctly, "use it or lose it" has been suggested as a solution before and I agree with it. Patents are meant to protect the inventor who wants to recover research costs. If someone is not using a patent, they are not recovering any costs, so what is the point? Note that one way to use a patent is to allow someone else to purchase rights to it, which solves the problem of not having the money to "use" it. If you cannot find any buyers--perhaps because your price is too high--you will lose it and it will become public domain.
I believe some countries have a use it or lose it policy already. Does anyone know?
-Todd
p.s. I have already applied for a patent covering the use of a post as a way to undo Slashdot moderation mistakes. This is an example of using the patent so I don't lose it.
At the Hot Chips symposium last month, Rich Hilleman, Creative Director for Electronic Arts, commented on the 100ms delay inherent in the Wii remote (Wiimote).
I assumed there was an issue in the delay involved in sensing the accelerometers, but this article shows 100ms is not any different from other consoles.
I wonder what Rich Hilleman was really getting at? Maybe people are more sensitive to delays when they are a result of a full-body-type movements rather than a button-press.
This is interesting stuff, and it would be a good thing if some graduate student did a thesis on it. (Free Ph.D. here--no thinking required!)
If Steve Cook's track record is what it takes to get a cushy "executive position," where do I sign up? I can probably lead several failed engineering projects in a row, if I am willing to ignore ethics and I try hard enough.
I used the Google translator to translate "bank" to Swedish. It returned this list of nouns:
1. STRAND
2. VALL
3. DRIVA
4. MOLNBANK
5. BANKNING
6. BRINK
7. BANK
8. SPARBÃ-SSA
9. GRUND
10. DOSERING
Probably not all of these refer to a financial institution, but if the Swedish government is trying to protect the Swedish people, they probably need to address something other than just "bank". So, they probably have another agenda.
The Internet facilitates easy plagiarism. I assume papers for sale on the 'net generally have good grammar. Is it possible an increase in Internet plagiarism caused the increase in literary quality?
We certainly know no-child-left-behind did not help the early stages of the pipeline.
I think you'll find that this was probabaly down to the costs of having the parts made and the maybe one person who was officially on the project. A lot of skilled people gave some serious time to the project. If you included their time, it would be much more.
I agree. I said $10 million (US) or more. I did not want to over-estimate. And, as you say, the machining of the parts was certainly expensive.
Is there any information on what this thing cost to make? Was it in the millions? several tens or hundreds of thousands?
I was at the talk which Nathan Myhrvold gave (he paid for it) at the opening ceremony for the exhibit. He did not give a figure, but my impression was $10 million (US) or more. Nathan did make a comment about the ridiculous cost of shipping it via air from the UK to the US.:-)
The caption on one of the photos (Image 30) reads:
The highlight and centrepiece of the Museum - The Babbage Engine. It's a replica, made in the British Museum using the original as a template.
This is not a replica of an original. The machine in the British museum was built by a team using Babbage's note. No original was ever built, as Babbage could not get funding for the project. The machine at the Computer History Museum (as pictured) is the second built by the same British Museum team who built the first.
If you want to see it, it will be at the CHM until December 2010, at which time it will be moved to the home of Nathan Myhrvold, the person who paid for its construction.
Slashdot Mirror
What percentage of the Windows PCs in China are running a licensed copy of Windows?
The reason I ask is someone can buy one of these and "repurpose" it to a non-legal copy of Windows, ending up with a 13% + (the price of Windows on the same machine) savings.
-Todd
Many of the buyers in the primary demographic will hear, "Google Audio," and not realize Google is selling music. -Todd
Here is how the system works:
1. The inventor contacts WARF about a possible patentable idea. This might be done to help his/her students, as they get the patent on their resume if they are co-inventors. I believe the patent in question here is 6,658,554, which has one of Dr. Sohi's students as a co-inventor. Note: If you are going to search for Guri Sohi's patents, use his full first name, "Gurindar."
2. WARF decides whether or not to file for a patent.
3. If the patent is infringed, WARF goes for the money. Although, since some patents are in very specialized fields, this might require a quick email from the inventor or some other expert in the field in order to start the investigative process.
-Todd
I was a graduate student at the University of Wisconsin for 6 years, during which I was able to work with Guri Sohi as his teaching assistant, in addition to having many stimulating technical discussions.
WARF (Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation, warf.org) helps faculty and students patent their ideas and protect the patents. Remember, a patent is only as good as the lawyers who are willing to go to court to defend it--as this WARF v. Intel situation has shown.
WARF was established in 1925, and helped the University of Wisconsin become one of the first academic institutions to take advantage of the patent system. The patent for including vitamin D in milk was the first big money winner for WARF and the university.
The system is driven by the inventor. If a faculty member or student has an idea they want to patent, WARF covers the expenses, provides help with prior-art, etc. efforts, and pledges to defend the patent. For this, WARF gets 80% of the patent revenues, which it puts back into research funding for the university. The inventor(s) receive 20% of the revenues. From what I have heard, this is a larger percentage than that given to the inventor at many other institutions.
-Todd
The problem of having the data in a single location is probably more of an issue than the type of media because of fire or other physical damage rather than the issue of lifetime.
If you decide to back up the data on writable DVD, you have a lifetime of 2-10 years. With flash, (e.g., a thumb drive,) the general advertised time is 10 years. Even if there is a medium which guarantees a longer period, you still have the problem of multiple secure sites.
You can solve both problems at once by going with an on-line data warehouse who will guarantee data integrity and mirrors data to multiple locations. This leaves the issue of media life to them, and solves the multiple-location issue.
Cheers!
-Todd
I have known a few architects (buildings and landscapes) and drafters. These people all took a technical drawing course in college in which they had to learn to print nicely.
I *REALLY* like the way these people write. It is stylish and very legible. I have even asked one to write out an invitation (which I had printed) to give it a more individual look.
Maybe we should be teaching this to our children.
Of course, if you do not teach people how to read cursive writing...
-Todd
What is involved in porting code to a new chip? I've done some programming in my life, but it has mostly been limited to personal interest and school projects. I imagine it can't be as simple as just recompiling. So what does it take to port code?What are the hurdles? Assume (accurately) that I'm a total noob.
The main issue will be handling of virtual page tables in the OS. The code for x86 will not work for ARM.
There will be some other issues with the boot sequence (BIOS), and of course the need to be able to drive the devices attached to the ARM, as some people have noted with respect to getting Linux to run on the ARM-based netbooks.
I expect the code base for Windows has been hacked for so many years by so many different people that moving it to another architecture would not be as easy as it is for Linux. But, a good team should be able to do it. Perhaps Microsoft took this possible future into consideration and cleaned up a lot of the code when they did Windows 7.
-Todd
While I certaily wasn't at that talk (and I suspect that neither were you), I'm willing to bet that you don't completely understand what the talk was about. ... The problem isn't one of ethics, but one of culture. The Chinese don't regard plagiarism the same way we do - in fact, the educational system encourages it in a way as it is an honor, of sorts, to 'plagiarize' your mentor...
I was at the talk. I understood the problem to be what one culture considers ethical, another might not. Thank you for clarifying this. Since I did not grow up in China, I do not understand the issue as well as someone who did, but I now feel I understand it better than I did.
Thank you,
-Todd
(The following discussion is based on real experiences and is not meant to profile people, but to state facts.)
This is really ridiculous. If the Chinese want to steal our technology, all they have to do is to contact several of the thousands of Chinese nationals who are working in the US until they find someone who needs money or other help for their family back in China.
One company I worked for had a Chinese national who was not allowed to work on part of a project because it was protected technology. The same person could have dropped the entire project onto their iPod and carried it out the door, but did not.
The ethics problem is represented by an experience I had while at an American research university. A Chinese faculty member met with the Chinese students in order to tell them in America, cheating and other ethical breaches are not considered a good way to get ahead. This suggested certain cultural differences which should not be used to discriminate, but need to be recognized because of the risks involved.
-Todd
Jerry, Thank you for pointing out my omission of the networking requirement. I am not a lawyer, but I have worked on a few patent cases as an expert, so I know to read the patent before talking about it, even if I am not as careful as a lawyer at reading over it. :-)
I believe the networking requirement you mention will be fulfilled by any system which needs to use a network to validate user information from a central source, such as kerberos authentication or Windows Active Directory mechanisms. Of course, LDAP was mentioned in the patent, but these go beyond LDAP.
These thoughts come after less than an hour of investigation. It seems strange Facebook could not come up with something compelling...
-Todd
...for audio recording equipment. How odd.
Does anyone have a good reason for such a law, other than to protect important people (the ones who can cause laws to be written) who want to be able to deny saying something?
-Todd
After reading through the '761 patent, any operating system which initiates a user working-space at login, e.g., a shell, will fall under the main claim of this patent.
I do not understand why Facebook's legal team has not been able to invalidate this patent via the presentation of prior art.
This patent should have never been issued and should not be defensible.
-Todd
I accidentally moderated this incorrectly (troll when I meant informative. So, this note should negate my moderation.
If I remember correctly, "use it or lose it" has been suggested as a solution before and I agree with it. Patents are meant to protect the inventor who wants to recover research costs. If someone is not using a patent, they are not recovering any costs, so what is the point? Note that one way to use a patent is to allow someone else to purchase rights to it, which solves the problem of not having the money to "use" it. If you cannot find any buyers--perhaps because your price is too high--you will lose it and it will become public domain.
I believe some countries have a use it or lose it policy already. Does anyone know?
-Todd
p.s. I have already applied for a patent covering the use of a post as a way to undo Slashdot moderation mistakes. This is an example of using the patent so I don't lose it.
At the Hot Chips symposium last month, Rich Hilleman, Creative Director for Electronic Arts, commented on the 100ms delay inherent in the Wii remote (Wiimote). I assumed there was an issue in the delay involved in sensing the accelerometers, but this article shows 100ms is not any different from other consoles.
I wonder what Rich Hilleman was really getting at? Maybe people are more sensitive to delays when they are a result of a full-body-type movements rather than a button-press.
This is interesting stuff, and it would be a good thing if some graduate student did a thesis on it. (Free Ph.D. here--no thinking required!)
-Todd
After you have cured your cancer, you can use leftover nanobees to cool your Cray-2 supercomputer.
The Cray-2 was immersed in perfluorocarbon to improve heat dissipation.
-Todd
If Steve Cook's track record is what it takes to get a cushy "executive position," where do I sign up? I can probably lead several failed engineering projects in a row, if I am willing to ignore ethics and I try hard enough.
-Todd
I used the Google translator to translate "bank" to Swedish. It returned this list of nouns:
1. STRAND 2. VALL 3. DRIVA 4. MOLNBANK 5. BANKNING 6. BRINK 7. BANK 8. SPARBÃ-SSA 9. GRUND 10. DOSERING
Probably not all of these refer to a financial institution, but if the Swedish government is trying to protect the Swedish people, they probably need to address something other than just "bank". So, they probably have another agenda.
-Todd
Yes, there were many media. But, I expect the focus was on term papers as that is what academics care about. I might be incorrect.
Inquiring minds want to know.
-Todd
Awesome! But, are you sure my grammar was correct? :-)
-Todd
Or maybe the spell checking [and grammar checking] software is getting better and better.
Excellent point!
-Todd
The Internet facilitates easy plagiarism. I assume papers for sale on the 'net generally have good grammar. Is it possible an increase in Internet plagiarism caused the increase in literary quality?
We certainly know no-child-left-behind did not help the early stages of the pipeline.
Just a thought...
-Todd
I think you'll find that this was probabaly down to the costs of having the parts made and the maybe one person who was officially on the project. A lot of skilled people gave some serious time to the project. If you included their time, it would be much more.
I agree. I said $10 million (US) or more. I did not want to over-estimate. And, as you say, the machining of the parts was certainly expensive.
-Todd
Good point. You are correct. Thank you for your comment.
-Todd
Is there any information on what this thing cost to make? Was it in the millions? several tens or hundreds of thousands?
I was at the talk which Nathan Myhrvold gave (he paid for it) at the opening ceremony for the exhibit. He did not give a figure, but my impression was $10 million (US) or more. Nathan did make a comment about the ridiculous cost of shipping it via air from the UK to the US. :-)
-Todd
The highlight and centrepiece of the Museum - The Babbage Engine. It's a replica, made in the British Museum using the original as a template.
This is not a replica of an original. The machine in the British museum was built by a team using Babbage's note. No original was ever built, as Babbage could not get funding for the project. The machine at the Computer History Museum (as pictured) is the second built by the same British Museum team who built the first.
If you want to see it, it will be at the CHM until December 2010, at which time it will be moved to the home of Nathan Myhrvold, the person who paid for its construction.
-Todd