The point about the corporate desktop is exactly right. Larger corporations will have a small number of standard builds which are rolled out onto large numbers of desktops and laptops. My company makes money out of "desktop refreshes", where a large number of either new or existing machines are brought into the workshop, and a defined image is written onto the disks of 1000's of machines. With this sort of exercise, once the image is defined the users aren't expected to change their desktops - indeed, after this sort of mass rollout the desktops are usually locked down to a) prevent the users breaking them, and b) prevent the users from installing unlicensed software with all the potential corporate liability issues involved.
To date we haven't been asked to do any large GNU/Linux based desktop rollouts, but it would be eminently sensible if we were. And in the process of such a large rollout, the licence costs of all the software included in the defined builds for 1000's of desktops is obvious and evident. This is where GNU/Linux on the desktop will really take off.
No, the patent wouldn't be for the specific method - this is the difference between good patent agents and poor ones.
In UK patents (US ones differ from this) there will be multiple claims for the invention, with claim 1 being the one which is the basic invention, and subsequent claims being addenda to this claim. So, for example, in this case claim 1 might be "A mechanism for transmitting a vibrating sensation to a games user", and claim 2 might be "A mechanism as in claim 1 where the sensation is created by rotating an eccentrically mounted mass" etc.
So often a patent will be filed (and later granted) with a single main claim, and literally dozens of further claims to narrow the thing down - this is done to stop somebody else patenting the more specific version, and essentially locking you out from your own invention.
Note that US patents are different in that there *may* be multiple fundamental claims in a single patent - as in the BT hyperlink patent we were discussing earlier.
And if you were knowingly infringing a patent which was being challenged would you choose a) to license it *before* the case was determined at an agreed price, or b) wait and license it *after* the case was determined at a price of the patent holder's choosing?
Nine years from the priority filing date to grant is pretty normal. Firstly, the priority date will have been set by the UK filing, and the US filing could have been up to a year later yet have the same priority date (patent treaties and all that).
Then it takes a period of time for the patent office to perform its first set of searches. Then the applicant gets a period to respond to the prior art cited in these searches. There might then be another stage of dialogue about these responses, again with a response period. Then the patent goes off for examination/review, and another set of actions are generated... and so on.
When I was working with UK patents it wasn't at all unusual for the patent to actually be granted nearly half way through its life.
The reference to Prestel is irrelevant - what's at issue here is what the patent claims state, not how BT (or at that time the GPO) implemented it.
And the claims quite clearly state "a second portion containing information not for display but including the complete address for each of plural other blocks of information". The claim doesn't state whether that address is for local blocks or remote ones - the only clue is that throughout the claims section the central computer is only ever mentioned in the singular.
The enforceable part of a patent is the claims, and the rest of the text is there only to help explain the claims. That's why most patents have quite specific details in the narrative text, but the claims are couched in very general terms.
This all sounds very like the case of Lemelson and barcodes. Roughly speaking, Lemelson filed a patent on barcodes long before they became widespread, and kept it quiet. Then once they were in widespread use, his lawyers contacted all manner of organisations which used barcodes and issued "Cease and Desist" notices against them. On receiving the notice, each barcode user had to choose between: a) stop using the technology which infringed the patent, b) agree licensing terms with the patent holder, c) carry on using the technology, and risk punitive damages, d) apply for the patent to be overturned and risk punitive damages if they carried on using the techology and then lost.
The benefit to BT from this case is not the royalties which may accrue if they win, it's the royalties they'll hope to take while the case is being prosecuted. For if they issue "Cease and Desist" notices to organisations using hyperlinks, those organisations will either have to settle or accept a possible liability for triple damages at some point in the future. Now, any corporate auditor would be expected to highlight this potential liability to stockholder, or during due diligence audits surrounding a takeover (and I somehow think corporate auditors may be on their toes right now).
No, the benefit to BT won't be royalties if they win, it'll be licensing agreements while the case is in progress, which will be made for the purpose of removing potential liability from balance sheets.
Dunstan
PS, Lemelson got very rich.
BTW, regarding prior art, a recording of a demonstration would almost certainly *not* be admissible as prior art - well not in the UK anyway. A few years ago I was involved in making a decision as to whether to apply for a patent for a bit of technology (a very clever bit of power electronics), and we were looking for ways to protect ourselves *without* filing for a patent. The advice we got was that the only reliable ways of asserting prior art are to either publish your invention, in which case the prior art is deemed to exist from the date of publication, or to file for a patent in which case the prior art exists from the date the patent is filed.
Well, two years ago the world of technology was heading for the frontier in the dotcom boom. And the frontier mentallity abounded ("I don't care what it costs, I want a man on site now"). Many people spent lots of money stupidly in their race to be first to market. This was the era of "management by shouting at people very loudly". And the dirty secret: most of the people working in the dotcom gold rush, techies and otherwise, weren't actually very good - it was all held together by a small core of people who *were* good at their jobs.
So now the frontier has been reached, the land claimed etc., and those who've staked out their plots are having to cultivate them. And loads of people involved in this goldrush have fallen off, others have grown up. Those involved in contracting in both the private and government sectors are mostly the same people as a couple of years ago, but all of a sudden it's become "the place to be" because there's a steady living to be made there.
Actually the analogy with borrowing CDs from the library is stronger than you think. I have often borrowed a CD from the library, then after I've returned it gone out and bought a copy. This is exactly the same as many people do with downloaded tracks - go and buy a CD after sampling it. If they are so desperate to stop the digital copying of music so that I can no longer try out different stuff, then why don't they outlaw libraries lending out CDs as well?
For somebody in the UK with time to spare, try buying a copy protected music disc from HMV or Virgin or somewhere, then complain to Trading Standards that they were stocking it alongside CDs when it in fact isn't a CD.
Exactly right. The PTO is issuing dubious patents on the basis that they can always be struck down later if they turn out not to be justified. This has a number of problems.
It is far too easy to devise a product which unknowingly infringes an "obvious" patent. The patent holder will issue a "cease and desist" notice on the infringer. At this point the infringer has two options: to comply, and probably go out of business, or to fight. If they choose to fight, they have to engage lawyers, go to court, shell out squillions of dollars etc., and if they lose, they will then be liable for punitive damages for knowingly continuing to infringe, and will go out of business.
Now, if the patent holders are big corporations with deep pockets, and the infringers are small software developers who are coming up with competing products, you can see how the marketplace may end up without competitive products. The patent system is perverted from being a way of protecting inventors from being ripped off by corporations (ala James Dyson) and is instead a legal artifice which corporations can use to crush the little people.
This is exactly right. To assume that "software is generally of poor quality" insults many, many software developers. For example, the team who developed the avionics for the shuttle took huge and justifiable pride in a process which kept the software correct (see http://www.virtualschool.edu/mon/SocialConstructio n/FeynmanChallengerRpt.html and scroll down to the section on avionics).
But much software doesn't have to be written to such a high quality requirement, so it isn't. As, for example, document production isn't safety critical, market forces will decide the level of quality required, and the resulting market profile is a direct result of the care with which purchasing decisions are made.
Sorry to say this, but we get the software we choose, and the poor state of the market now reflect that we will pay loads of money for something which we buy effectively sight unseen, and where we accept licence agreements which take away our rights to complain.
This is the basis of my favourite party trick - booting a Linux system without a kernel. As LILO works pointing to a disc location (rather than a filetable entry), you can boot a system from a kernel which has been deleted as follows:
1) Put/boot into its own disc partition (to stop normal filesystem activity reclaiming the disc blocks)
2) Use lilo etc., to set the machine to boot off a kernel image
3) rm the kernel file
4) reboot the machine
Because nothing in/boot has reclaimed the disc blocks, LILO will still be able to start loading at the the same data location, and will still find disc blocks which constitute a valid kernel. Voila, you've deleted your kernel, but still booted it.
Obviously, Don't Try this out unless you know what you're doing - and even then try it with a spare kernel, not your only one.
And sets Riker up for the later episode where the reappearance of Minuet is the telltale sign that his mind has been ripped and an artificial world created around him.
That's exactly the problem. All the time you make people think that's all they have to do when they publish web content, you'll get stupid security breaches.
I'm not against making things simple, but some things are made dangerous in the process of simplifying them.
Not my experience here in the UK, where every Sun office seems to be MS free. I think there are Windows laptops around, but presentations are given with StarOffice presentations (and a request for a copy of the slides results in a email with SO attachment). At version 5, SO is still a proprietary format, but the version 6 betas render it just fine.
OO is a serious play for Sun - it will be a significant lever in getting SunRay onto desktops in place of PeeSee's. The next couple of years will *finally* see the thin client breakthrough where significant businesses (or significant parts of significant businesses) will become MS free with tarantella (www.tarantella.com) being an important integration tools for "Legacy Windows Applications" (God it feels good typing that).
Widespread adoption of OO over MS Office also has the benefit of starving MS of cash, which for Sun is also A Good Thing. I would call that sound business strategy rather than playing politics.
Er, someone who wants to be able to look through a book rather than stare into a screen, to scribble in the margin, to read in the bath/loo. Or lend it to a friends, or leave it lying on the coffee table, or read it on the train.
A lot of people will buy a boxed GNU/Linux distribution the first time, and then either download or use Cheapbytes from there on, but that's for something which needs to go on the computer anyway. A book, however, can be read away from the computer.
. Music Industry releasing CDs with Copy Protection for older CD players
. MS promoting WMA as alternative for non-error-tolerant CD readers
. Consumer electronics industry wants to churn DVD players through obsolescence
All of a sudden the music industry tells Joe Public that a 2 CD set, with copy protected CD and WMA "is better than a single CD". And MS catapult their technology into embeded devices without even trying.
So we end up deliberately breaking a standard format with the solution being the use of a proprietary one, with lots of corporations making lots of money out of consumers in the process. Never heard of that happening before, have you?
Dunstan
Explained Irony:My new CD doesn't play under XP
on
Future of Music Summit
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
Irony obviously a little too subtle here. Let's put it another way.
I wonder how many people will blame Microsoft for the fact that their copy-protected CDs won't play on their pee sees. And whether, for example, they will assume that as they used to be able to play (non copy protected) CDs on their Win98 system, they will therefore lay blame for non-playability-on-PC arising from said copy protection wrongly at WinXP's door.
Exactly. Look at some of the technologies which were developed by Sun:
NFS - released for free. Widespread.
NeWS - brilliant Windowing system, far better than X. Kept Proprietary. Died.
Java - released for free (effectively). Widespread
To roughly quote Stallman: making people pay money each time they use a copy of your software is the biggest disincentive you can create for its widespread adoption
Slashdot Mirror
The point about the corporate desktop is exactly right. Larger corporations will have a small number of standard builds which are rolled out onto large numbers of desktops and laptops. My company makes money out of "desktop refreshes", where a large number of either new or existing machines are brought into the workshop, and a defined image is written onto the disks of 1000's of machines. With this sort of exercise, once the image is defined the users aren't expected to change their desktops - indeed, after this sort of mass rollout the desktops are usually locked down to a) prevent the users breaking them, and b) prevent the users from installing unlicensed software with all the potential corporate liability issues involved.
To date we haven't been asked to do any large GNU/Linux based desktop rollouts, but it would be eminently sensible if we were. And in the process of such a large rollout, the licence costs of all the software included in the defined builds for 1000's of desktops is obvious and evident. This is where GNU/Linux on the desktop will really take off.
Dunstan
No, the patent wouldn't be for the specific method - this is the difference between good patent agents and poor ones.
In UK patents (US ones differ from this) there will be multiple claims for the invention, with claim 1 being the one which is the basic invention, and subsequent claims being addenda to this claim. So, for example, in this case claim 1 might be "A mechanism for transmitting a vibrating sensation to a games user", and claim 2 might be "A mechanism as in claim 1 where the sensation is created by rotating an eccentrically mounted mass" etc.
So often a patent will be filed (and later granted) with a single main claim, and literally dozens of further claims to narrow the thing down - this is done to stop somebody else patenting the more specific version, and essentially locking you out from your own invention.
Note that US patents are different in that there *may* be multiple fundamental claims in a single patent - as in the BT hyperlink patent we were discussing earlier.
Dunstan
Exactly.
And if you were knowingly infringing a patent which was being challenged would you choose a) to license it *before* the case was determined at an agreed price, or b) wait and license it *after* the case was determined at a price of the patent holder's choosing?
Dunstan
Was it a good use of the law when Capone was prosecuted for tax evasion?
D.
Nine years from the priority filing date to grant is pretty normal. Firstly, the priority date will have been set by the UK filing, and the US filing could have been up to a year later yet have the same priority date (patent treaties and all that).
... and so on.
Then it takes a period of time for the patent office to perform its first set of searches. Then the applicant gets a period to respond to the prior art cited in these searches. There might then be another stage of dialogue about these responses, again with a response period. Then the patent goes off for examination/review, and another set of actions are generated
When I was working with UK patents it wasn't at all unusual for the patent to actually be granted nearly half way through its life.
Dunstan
The reference to Prestel is irrelevant - what's at issue here is what the patent claims state, not how BT (or at that time the GPO) implemented it.
And the claims quite clearly state "a second portion containing information not for display but including the complete address for each of plural other blocks of information". The claim doesn't state whether that address is for local blocks or remote ones - the only clue is that throughout the claims section the central computer is only ever mentioned in the singular.
Dunstan
The enforceable part of a patent is the claims, and the rest of the text is there only to help explain the claims. That's why most patents have quite specific details in the narrative text, but the claims are couched in very general terms.
The claims make no reference to VIEWDATA.
Dunstan
This all sounds very like the case of Lemelson and barcodes. Roughly speaking, Lemelson filed a patent on barcodes long before they became widespread, and kept it quiet. Then once they were in widespread use, his lawyers contacted all manner of organisations which used barcodes and issued "Cease and Desist" notices against them. On receiving the notice, each barcode user had to choose between: a) stop using the technology which infringed the patent, b) agree licensing terms with the patent holder, c) carry on using the technology, and risk punitive damages, d) apply for the patent to be overturned and risk punitive damages if they carried on using the techology and then lost.
The benefit to BT from this case is not the royalties which may accrue if they win, it's the royalties they'll hope to take while the case is being prosecuted. For if they issue "Cease and Desist" notices to organisations using hyperlinks, those organisations will either have to settle or accept a possible liability for triple damages at some point in the future. Now, any corporate auditor would be expected to highlight this potential liability to stockholder, or during due diligence audits surrounding a takeover (and I somehow think corporate auditors may be on their toes right now).
No, the benefit to BT won't be royalties if they win, it'll be licensing agreements while the case is in progress, which will be made for the purpose of removing potential liability from balance sheets.
Dunstan
PS, Lemelson got very rich.
BTW, regarding prior art, a recording of a demonstration would almost certainly *not* be admissible as prior art - well not in the UK anyway. A few years ago I was involved in making a decision as to whether to apply for a patent for a bit of technology (a very clever bit of power electronics), and we were looking for ways to protect ourselves *without* filing for a patent. The advice we got was that the only reliable ways of asserting prior art are to either publish your invention, in which case the prior art is deemed to exist from the date of publication, or to file for a patent in which case the prior art exists from the date the patent is filed.
Read Peopleware by Tom de Marco.
Dunstan
Well, two years ago the world of technology was heading for the frontier in the dotcom boom. And the frontier mentallity abounded ("I don't care what it costs, I want a man on site now"). Many people spent lots of money stupidly in their race to be first to market. This was the era of "management by shouting at people very loudly". And the dirty secret: most of the people working in the dotcom gold rush, techies and otherwise, weren't actually very good - it was all held together by a small core of people who *were* good at their jobs.
So now the frontier has been reached, the land claimed etc., and those who've staked out their plots are having to cultivate them. And loads of people involved in this goldrush have fallen off, others have grown up. Those involved in contracting in both the private and government sectors are mostly the same people as a couple of years ago, but all of a sudden it's become "the place to be" because there's a steady living to be made there.
What's news worthy about that?
Dunstan.
Could somebody answer me this. Is the encoding of the version to play on PCs lossy? Is it of a lower standard than CD encoding?
Dunstan
Actually the analogy with borrowing CDs from the library is stronger than you think. I have often borrowed a CD from the library, then after I've returned it gone out and bought a copy. This is exactly the same as many people do with downloaded tracks - go and buy a CD after sampling it. If they are so desperate to stop the digital copying of music so that I can no longer try out different stuff, then why don't they outlaw libraries lending out CDs as well?
For somebody in the UK with time to spare, try buying a copy protected music disc from HMV or Virgin or somewhere, then complain to Trading Standards that they were stocking it alongside CDs when it in fact isn't a CD.
Dunstan
Exactly right. The PTO is issuing dubious patents on the basis that they can always be struck down later if they turn out not to be justified. This has a number of problems.
It is far too easy to devise a product which unknowingly infringes an "obvious" patent. The patent holder will issue a "cease and desist" notice on the infringer. At this point the infringer has two options: to comply, and probably go out of business, or to fight. If they choose to fight, they have to engage lawyers, go to court, shell out squillions of dollars etc., and if they lose, they will then be liable for punitive damages for knowingly continuing to infringe, and will go out of business.
Now, if the patent holders are big corporations with deep pockets, and the infringers are small software developers who are coming up with competing products, you can see how the marketplace may end up without competitive products. The patent system is perverted from being a way of protecting inventors from being ripped off by corporations (ala James Dyson) and is instead a legal artifice which corporations can use to crush the little people.
Dunstan
This is exactly right. To assume that "software is generally of poor quality" insults many, many software developers. For example, the team who developed the avionics for the shuttle took huge and justifiable pride in a process which kept the software correct (see http://www.virtualschool.edu/mon/SocialConstructio n/FeynmanChallengerRpt.html and scroll down to the section on avionics).
But much software doesn't have to be written to such a high quality requirement, so it isn't. As, for example, document production isn't safety critical, market forces will decide the level of quality required, and the resulting market profile is a direct result of the care with which purchasing decisions are made.
Sorry to say this, but we get the software we choose, and the poor state of the market now reflect that we will pay loads of money for something which we buy effectively sight unseen, and where we accept licence agreements which take away our rights to complain.
Dunstan
This is the basis of my favourite party trick - booting a Linux system without a kernel. As LILO works pointing to a disc location (rather than a filetable entry), you can boot a system from a kernel which has been deleted as follows:
/boot into its own disc partition (to stop normal filesystem activity reclaiming the disc blocks)
/boot has reclaimed the disc blocks, LILO will still be able to start loading at the the same data location, and will still find disc blocks which constitute a valid kernel. Voila, you've deleted your kernel, but still booted it.
1) Put
2) Use lilo etc., to set the machine to boot off a kernel image
3) rm the kernel file
4) reboot the machine
Because nothing in
Obviously, Don't Try this out unless you know what you're doing - and even then try it with a spare kernel, not your only one.
Dunstan
And sets Riker up for the later episode where the reappearance of Minuet is the telltale sign that his mind has been ripped and an artificial world created around him.
Dunstan
That's exactly the problem. All the time you make people think that's all they have to do when they publish web content, you'll get stupid security breaches.
I'm not against making things simple, but some things are made dangerous in the process of simplifying them.
Dunstan
Not my experience here in the UK, where every Sun office seems to be MS free. I think there are Windows laptops around, but presentations are given with StarOffice presentations (and a request for a copy of the slides results in a email with SO attachment). At version 5, SO is still a proprietary format, but the version 6 betas render it just fine.
OO is a serious play for Sun - it will be a significant lever in getting SunRay onto desktops in place of PeeSee's. The next couple of years will *finally* see the thin client breakthrough where significant businesses (or significant parts of significant businesses) will become MS free with tarantella (www.tarantella.com) being an important integration tools for "Legacy Windows Applications" (God it feels good typing that).
Widespread adoption of OO over MS Office also has the benefit of starving MS of cash, which for Sun is also A Good Thing. I would call that sound business strategy rather than playing politics.
Dunstan
Er, someone who wants to be able to look through a book rather than stare into a screen, to scribble in the margin, to read in the bath/loo. Or lend it to a friends, or leave it lying on the coffee table, or read it on the train.
A lot of people will buy a boxed GNU/Linux distribution the first time, and then either download or use Cheapbytes from there on, but that's for something which needs to go on the computer anyway. A book, however, can be read away from the computer.
Dunstan
Big problem. Put these components together:
. Music Industry releasing CDs with Copy Protection for older CD players
. MS promoting WMA as alternative for non-error-tolerant CD readers
. Consumer electronics industry wants to churn DVD players through obsolescence
All of a sudden the music industry tells Joe Public that a 2 CD set, with copy protected CD and WMA "is better than a single CD". And MS catapult their technology into embeded devices without even trying.
So we end up deliberately breaking a standard format with the solution being the use of a proprietary one, with lots of corporations making lots of money out of consumers in the process. Never heard of that happening before, have you?
Dunstan
Irony obviously a little too subtle here. Let's put it another way.
I wonder how many people will blame Microsoft for the fact that their copy-protected CDs won't play on their pee sees. And whether, for example, they will assume that as they used to be able to play (non copy protected) CDs on their Win98 system, they will therefore lay blame for non-playability-on-PC arising from said copy protection wrongly at WinXP's door.
Perhaps Microsoft themselves will take on RIAA.
Dunstan
I just bought a new CD, and it doesn't play on my XP machine. Aren't Microsoft shite.
Piracy is rife in the South China Sea, and many of the victims are murdered. On the mainland it's illegal copying which is rampant.
Dunstan - fighting a losing battle against misuse of "piracy"
To me it says a lot that the money levied on blank media goes to the music companies, not to the artists.
Dunstan
Exactly. Look at some of the technologies which were developed by Sun:
NFS - released for free. Widespread.
NeWS - brilliant Windowing system, far better than X. Kept Proprietary. Died.
Java - released for free (effectively). Widespread
To roughly quote Stallman: making people pay money each time they use a copy of your software is the biggest disincentive you can create for its widespread adoption
Dunstan