Presumably, Nvidia's side of the agreement is that if Microsoft chooses to match an offer, Nvidia has to accept Microsoft's offer instead of whoever else made an offer.
Prior art only applies to patents, not trade secrets. They are pretty exactly opposite sides of the IP landscape. There could be some algorithms behind the scenes or in any other number of secret locations that would still be secret.
That's true, the specific phrase "prior art" is normally only used when dealing with patents, but you also can't claim something as a trade secret if it's already publicly known. I'm curious about what Paypal is claiming as secret, since I'm sure Google has plenty of people capable of developing this kind of system without stealing any secrets from Paypal (whom I didn't even know had a mobile payment system).
The "Apple never innovates" argument usually requires that you accept that a dozen or more companies over the past decade were sitting on goldmines of profit, and that they let it all slip away because maybe they invented something amazing, but they didn't patent it, didn't actually know what they had, and they had no vision for how people could use it. I just find this scenario very unlikely.
Except that scenario isn't as far from reality as you think. Tablet computers were first created 20+ years ago. Apple didn't invent anything with the iPad, they simply recognized that the hardware had advanced to the point that a tablet could work more or less like a regular desktop computer, decided to take the chance that people would want a such a tablet, developed a good (to some people, at least) user interface for it, and marketed the hell out of it. Whether or not any of that is "innovative" can be reasonably argued from both sides, and Apple should certainly be given credit for recognizing the potential market and acting on it, but it's difficult to claim that any of it was truly inventive.
(where some states are virtually ignored, and others like CALIFORNIA are flooded by campaigning)
At least California represents a significant portion of the country's population and economy. The more disturbing fact is how important New Hampshire and Iowa are.
NO ONE is going to want a plug-in peripheral that needs rebooting to register. So far it looks like that may be the case with eSATA (at least on my machine).
It's your machine. I've plugged eSATA disks into computers running Arch Linux and had them detected just fine.
USB isn't about to go away any time soon. It's too cheap and too ubiquitous.
I heard the same said about 3.5" floppy drives years ago
And how many years after that did 3.5" floppy drives go away? The statement wasn't that USB won't ever go away, but that it will be at least several more years before it does.
I'm sure that there are some less-than-not-evil companies that are using these clauses in order to sell stuff posted by the users, but the reason that it needs to be in the Terms of Service is that without it, you wouldn't be able to see anyone else's comments because Slashdot wouldn't have the legal right to transmit them to other users.
What exactly is the Nintendo 3DS Service, and where does the Terms of Service define "User Content"? That paragraph looks like standard boilerplate for things like web forums, where it's the only way that the forum can legally display stuff that you post to other people.
"In each such case, the submitting user grants [us] the royalty-free, perpetual, irrevocable, non-exclusive, transferable license to use, reproduce, modify, adapt, publish, translate, create derivative works from, distribute, perform, and display such Content (in whole or part) worldwide and/or to incorporate it in other works in any form, media, or technology now known or later developed, all subject to the terms of any applicable license."
Who do you think the "us" is in that text? If you guessed Slashdot, give yourself a cookie.
Well, I'm off to tie up a few loose ends. It's only a matter of time before he gets X running in there. After that someone will try running firefox. Shortly after that someone will direct that copy of firefox to the link posted in the summary and then the universe will end.
Where "only a matter of time" means this Saturday?
Are you sure that you aren't confusing C# with.Net? C# is a programming language that is standardized by ECMA and ISO..Net is a framework that can be used by several programming languages, including C#. I know that there are issues with many patents that have been granted in the United States, but I would still be surprised if Microsoft has patents on a language specification.
Since you read (or at least skimmed) the specification, did you find anything corresponding to the means-plus-function elements in the claim? I'm curious if the reduction to math took those into account, and I don't feel like reading the specification.
Here's what I don't understand. Let's say you do pay full price for a phone... why is your monthly rate the same as someone who buys a subsidized phone?
T-Mobile is cheaper if you don't get a subsidized phone. Too bad that probably won't survive the AT&T purchase.
No, the generic term for "app" is "application", which has been used to describe computer programs for a very long time, e.g. Application Programmer Interface.
If SuSe or Red Hat goes belly up tomorrow, or it's announced it will no longer be supported, you seriously expect that someone will *100% for sure* support it to the level required by an enterprise customer?
Replace "SuSe or Red Hat" with "Microsoft", then explain the difference.
I didn't say that I think it's a bad idea, only that I don't think it would be supported by many Republicans. I will leave the connection between the two as an exercise for the reader.
You're right, the standards of proof can make it a little fuzzy. I'd have to check and see exactly how that fits in. I do know that the process is the same to show both prior art and infringement; to show that something is invalidating prior art, you show that it would infringe the patent, and then point to the publication date.
Any subject matter that's close enough to infringe a patent AFTER it's been filed should be likewise close enough to count as prior art BEFORE it's filed.
Are you trying to say that that should be the rule? If so, you're too late, because that already is how it works. The only difference between something infringing and something being prior art is the publication date.
Even still, it's ridiculous that you can patent the look of things. It's not at all revolutionary in any way, just aesthetically pleasing for this decade.
Design patents and utility patents are different things. Design patents are more similar to trademarks than they are to utility patents.
Under the USA's first to invent system, some other company can still claim they invented whatever product before Google announced it even though they only filed the application after Google announced it. I'm sure there's lots of incentive to lie and make the invention date earlier in order to defeat prior art, or even steal prior art.
You can't simply lie to get an earlier date of invention, you have to be able to show some evidence to support your claim. There may be incentive to fabricate such evidence, but the penalty for getting caught would be pretty substantial.
Slashdot Mirror
Presumably, Nvidia's side of the agreement is that if Microsoft chooses to match an offer, Nvidia has to accept Microsoft's offer instead of whoever else made an offer.
Prior art only applies to patents, not trade secrets. They are pretty exactly opposite sides of the IP landscape. There could be some algorithms behind the scenes or in any other number of secret locations that would still be secret.
That's true, the specific phrase "prior art" is normally only used when dealing with patents, but you also can't claim something as a trade secret if it's already publicly known. I'm curious about what Paypal is claiming as secret, since I'm sure Google has plenty of people capable of developing this kind of system without stealing any secrets from Paypal (whom I didn't even know had a mobile payment system).
The "Apple never innovates" argument usually requires that you accept that a dozen or more companies over the past decade were sitting on goldmines of profit, and that they let it all slip away because maybe they invented something amazing, but they didn't patent it, didn't actually know what they had, and they had no vision for how people could use it. I just find this scenario very unlikely.
Except that scenario isn't as far from reality as you think. Tablet computers were first created 20+ years ago. Apple didn't invent anything with the iPad, they simply recognized that the hardware had advanced to the point that a tablet could work more or less like a regular desktop computer, decided to take the chance that people would want a such a tablet, developed a good (to some people, at least) user interface for it, and marketed the hell out of it. Whether or not any of that is "innovative" can be reasonably argued from both sides, and Apple should certainly be given credit for recognizing the potential market and acting on it, but it's difficult to claim that any of it was truly inventive.
(where some states are virtually ignored, and others like CALIFORNIA are flooded by campaigning)
At least California represents a significant portion of the country's population and economy. The more disturbing fact is how important New Hampshire and Iowa are.
I'd like to point out, that it's laws such as Sarbanes–Oxley that say you have to store e-mail for 5 years (well if you're a public company).
Can government agencies access that email without a warrant? I honestly don't know the answer, but I would hope that they can't.
I've long been in favor of the tag "punctuationpunditry"
NO ONE is going to want a plug-in peripheral that needs rebooting to register. So far it looks like that may be the case with eSATA (at least on my machine).
It's your machine. I've plugged eSATA disks into computers running Arch Linux and had them detected just fine.
USB isn't about to go away any time soon. It's too cheap and too ubiquitous.
I heard the same said about 3.5" floppy drives years ago
And how many years after that did 3.5" floppy drives go away? The statement wasn't that USB won't ever go away, but that it will be at least several more years before it does.
I'm sure that there are some less-than-not-evil companies that are using these clauses in order to sell stuff posted by the users, but the reason that it needs to be in the Terms of Service is that without it, you wouldn't be able to see anyone else's comments because Slashdot wouldn't have the legal right to transmit them to other users.
Yes, it pretty much is boilerplate. A very similar clause is in Slashdot's Terms of Service.
What exactly is the Nintendo 3DS Service, and where does the Terms of Service define "User Content"? That paragraph looks like standard boilerplate for things like web forums, where it's the only way that the forum can legally display stuff that you post to other people.
"In each such case, the submitting user grants [us] the royalty-free, perpetual, irrevocable, non-exclusive, transferable license to use, reproduce, modify, adapt, publish, translate, create derivative works from, distribute, perform, and display such Content (in whole or part) worldwide and/or to incorporate it in other works in any form, media, or technology now known or later developed, all subject to the terms of any applicable license."
Who do you think the "us" is in that text? If you guessed Slashdot, give yourself a cookie.
Well, I'm off to tie up a few loose ends. It's only a matter of time before he gets X running in there. After that someone will try running firefox. Shortly after that someone will direct that copy of firefox to the link posted in the summary and then the universe will end.
Where "only a matter of time" means this Saturday?
Are you sure that you aren't confusing C# with .Net? C# is a programming language that is standardized by ECMA and ISO. .Net is a framework that can be used by several programming languages, including C#. I know that there are issues with many patents that have been granted in the United States, but I would still be surprised if Microsoft has patents on a language specification.
Oh man, I loved Freelancer. I never could find a Linux equivalent (suggestions are welcome).
Since you read (or at least skimmed) the specification, did you find anything corresponding to the means-plus-function elements in the claim? I'm curious if the reduction to math took those into account, and I don't feel like reading the specification.
You can't patent atoms. A physical device is just a collection of atoms. Therefore, you can't patent a physical device.
Here's what I don't understand. Let's say you do pay full price for a phone... why is your monthly rate the same as someone who buys a subsidized phone?
T-Mobile is cheaper if you don't get a subsidized phone. Too bad that probably won't survive the AT&T purchase.
...the generic term for "app" is software
No, the generic term for "app" is "application", which has been used to describe computer programs for a very long time, e.g. Application Programmer Interface.
If SuSe or Red Hat goes belly up tomorrow, or it's announced it will no longer be supported, you seriously expect that someone will *100% for sure* support it to the level required by an enterprise customer?
Replace "SuSe or Red Hat" with "Microsoft", then explain the difference.
I didn't say that I think it's a bad idea, only that I don't think it would be supported by many Republicans. I will leave the connection between the two as an exercise for the reader.
I much rather see government funds going to infrastructure upgrades and fixes.
I doubt that many Republicans support the idea of the government spending money to keep people employed by improving infrastructure.
You're right, the standards of proof can make it a little fuzzy. I'd have to check and see exactly how that fits in. I do know that the process is the same to show both prior art and infringement; to show that something is invalidating prior art, you show that it would infringe the patent, and then point to the publication date.
Any subject matter that's close enough to infringe a patent AFTER it's been filed should be likewise close enough to count as prior art BEFORE it's filed.
Are you trying to say that that should be the rule? If so, you're too late, because that already is how it works. The only difference between something infringing and something being prior art is the publication date.
Even still, it's ridiculous that you can patent the look of things. It's not at all revolutionary in any way, just aesthetically pleasing for this decade.
Design patents and utility patents are different things. Design patents are more similar to trademarks than they are to utility patents.
Under the USA's first to invent system, some other company can still claim they invented whatever product before Google announced it even though they only filed the application after Google announced it. I'm sure there's lots of incentive to lie and make the invention date earlier in order to defeat prior art, or even steal prior art.
You can't simply lie to get an earlier date of invention, you have to be able to show some evidence to support your claim. There may be incentive to fabricate such evidence, but the penalty for getting caught would be pretty substantial.