Slashback: Transparency, USB, Europatents 327
Now even less than a week ... mpawlo writes "As reported by Greplaw, although I am still looking for further confirmation, it seems like the EU vote on software patentability has been moved from the late fall to June 30, 2003. Yes, that is in one (1) week. If you have more information and another source - please comment on this news item."
Mikael writes: "Personally, I find it somewhat disturbing from a democracy perspective that this proposal seems to be fast-tracked in the middle of the summer, when most Europeans want to focus on whether they should have strawberry or vanilla ice cream. In Sweden, we also got our Swedish version of the DMCA this week. I guess the ice cream will have to wait."
DoSthAboutIt points out that "A 'Petition for a Free Europe without Software Patents' has gained more than 150000 signatures. Among the supporters are more than 2000 company owners and chief executives and 25000 developpers and engineers from all sectors of the European information and telecommunication industries, as well as more than 2000 scientists and 180 lawyers. Companies like Siemens, IBM, Alcatel and Nokia lead the list of those whose researchers and developpers want to protect programming freedom and copyright property against what they see as a 'patent landgrab.' The whole article can be found here, including some statistics like signatories by country"
The story of Peng. mantispraying writes "Looks like the college student who settled with the the RIAA for $12,000, his entire life savings, has recouped all of his money thanks to a very generous file sharing community. Also, the search engine he created that got him in trouble is back online, for demonstration purposes only, of course."
Reader T points out that while one of the students who lost his life savings to RIAA has made it back through PayPal donations, "the other, Dan Peng, is still short about $12,000. Brother, can you spare a dime?"
I'd prefer the garrote and the stick, but hey. Mark Ferguson writes: "I attended the FTC spam forum. It seems I was on their call list :-) I parlayed that into getting several others on the panels as well. While there I spoke with bulk emailers and other industry folks. Some people defined Confirmed OPT-IN to mean you sending a confirmation that the email address was subscribed so they were doing double, confirmed OPT-IN.
My heads spins.
What I figured from what I learned was these folks truly refused to accept real definitions the Service Providers have been using for years so I decided to do a site for just this. ... Anyway, reboot, aka Andrew Cockrell myself and another built The Carrot and the Stick to explain email, define the best practices and to get people to abide by them.
Thoughts, comments and/or suggestions?"
Sooner or later, that DeLorean's going to land someone in jail. hackwrench writes "According to channel WSMV news, Alternate Energy Inventor Carl Tilley's compound was raided. Tilley was previously mentioned on Slashdot here."
Tilley had announced the then-upcoming demonstration of his perpetual-motion DeLorean.
My nanodots can fit inside your nanodots! Rocky Rawstern writes "I recently had the distinct pleasure to interview one of my favorite authors, Wil McCarthy. Upon completing three of his latest books - two sci-fi and one work of non-fiction - I realized that others would probably enjoy his ponderings as much as I. The questions for this interview stem from my own interest in programmable matter, and the awe-inspiring possibilities raised by Wil in his book Hacking Matter."
How to succeed (not necessarily) in business. jameshowison writes "A few months ago Ask Slashdot published Kevin Crowston's question on what makes open source software successful ... well the results are in and the paper typed. We ran the responses through a funky content analyser (called Grad Students). The metrics that academics and the industry have used for years simply don't work for OSS.
More and more it seems that we'll need to survey the number of job offers developers get and the size of the community to get at this one ..."
You sound very familiar to me. Interested Observer writes "Thanks to a slashdot article discussing false positives using Soundex I thought if Soundex can be used for something as important as "no-fly" lists then certainly we should be able to get some entertainment value out of it! See if your Soundex last name-counterparts show up in a Google News search."
A member of the USB-IF Administration writes to dispel the confusion raised by the seeming conflict between many USB products' labels and their actual data-transfer speeds:
"The source of confusion derives from the fact that USB specification revision numbers and data-transfer rates are often being used in place of the logo on consumer packaging, a purpose for which they were not originally intended. The USB-IF's recommended nomenclature for consumers is 'USB' for slower speed products (1.5 Mb/s and 12Mb/s) and "Hi-Speed USB" for high-speed products (480Mb/s), as signified in the USB logos that were introduced in late 2000. In short, consumers wishing to be certain they are getting the performance they paid for in their USB products can use the logo for clarification.
The USB-IF's naming and packaging recommendations for low- or full-speed USB products, as listed at the website http://www.usb.org/developers/packaging, state that such products can carry only the basic version of the USB logo, which simply states "Certified USB." We state clearly that manufacturers should avoid using terminology such as USB 2.0 Full Speed, Full Speed USB or USB 2.0. These formal recommendations were published to the USB-IF membership and posted on the website in August 2002.
The USB-IF is a nonprofit industry organization. We do not and cannot control how manufacturers label their products. We do work continuously with system and peripheral manufacturers, striving to provide consistency in the use of this nomenclature and the logos. The logo indicates that a product's performance against and conformance with the standard have been tested, and that the product has passed the USB compliance program.
Anyone having questions about the performance of a product should contact the manufacturer for clarification.
For a brief Q & A on this topic, please visit our website at http://www.usb.org/info/usb_nomenclature."
Arg... (Score:5, Insightful)
But how much did you PAY the politicians to vote the way you want them to. Yea... I thought so...
Geeks just don't get it.
Re:A perpetual motion car? (Score:3, Insightful)
Okay, here's the first thing newly hired patent reviewers of all patent offices in the world are told
If it says "perpetual motion" or "endless source of energy" anywhere in the patent application, grab the red stamp labelled "crackpot idea", stamp the patent application, send the application down the "rejected" chute and move to the next one. If you know nothing else, know how to do that.
Perpetual motion is proven impossible. That's why the feds raided this guy, because asking investment money to fund research on perpetual motion is like screaming "I've got this great scam for you".
Re:A perpetual motion car? (Score:3, Insightful)
>Submarines, airplanes and rockets were all thought to be impossible at one time too.
There is a big difference between "thought to be impossible" and "proven imposible". And the specific cases you mentioned, the "imposisbility" referred to practical engineering rather than theory. Just as I could say that it is impossible to make a battery that runs a car for a week -- it is impossible now, but that implies nothing about future technology.
Re:Yeah freakin right (Score:2, Insightful)
As to the bit about him being made out as a 'crackpot', I'm not sure if that worked very well - Tesla is well known for his research and innovations to this day ( like, the, er, practical alternating current motor he designed in ~1888 ) - and a general education in physics or electronics will bring you into contact with the man and his ideas ( at least in my experience ).
IMHO, the real crackpots are the ones who keep claiming they have discovered the 'lost weird science of Tesla' and 'Teslas unfinished overunity generator', usually right up the back of the 'new age' magazine along with the guy selling crystals from atlantis. Bleah.
Magic Box? (Score:2, Insightful)
Finally, he was convicted, but the ironic thing is, it was drug-related. In this nation, is it really that hard to convict someone of fraud, even when it's that apparent?
Moreover, when do people ever learn? I didn't read Tilly's website real carefully, but he seems to claim that this is a car that generates electricity, but takes no electricity OR gasoline. Something about that is very hard to believe, yet, many people have invested. Apparently, they didn't bother asking for a fuel source, and just went on, hoping that the laws of thermodynamics would not hold true or something. Instead of a lawyer, these people should hire a physicist before investing in such things.
Sure, there are "trade secrets", but then again, sometimes it's a curtain for a scheme to take place. That's what patents are for. If you have a brilliant idea, patent it. Then, you have nothing to fear as you reveal your brilliant idea to the world.
Usually perpetual motion scams just explode... (Score:4, Insightful)
Most of these schemes end with the Device mysteriously exploding on the big demo day just about the time the battery woulda run out. (The 'bad wheel bearing' thing on the race track demo seems to coincide with this pattern nicely. I recall one such demo where an onlooker got hurt or killed by the mandatory demo day explosion.
Anyway, it's interesting that he had more than one vehicle. If he was intending to demo them all at the same time, that would have seemed to preclude a plausible demo day explosion unless the whole fucking garage was supposed to blow...
It stands to reason that a genuine free energy invention would be a monumental world-changing discovery. Why tinker on a silly little gadget car in the garage, funded only by petty donations by smalltime individual investors? Think big! Nikola Tesla partnered with Westinghouse and demo'ed his monumental, world-changing Alternating Current system by harnessing the hydro power of the Niagara Falls, powering thousands of homes.
Only a fool throws a dollar after a black box.
Tesla had a system that actually worked, with both theories, engineering drawings and elaborate patent papers to back them up. At no point were Westinghouse and other corporate investors required to just believe his word when he claimed that his system worked. He let anyone visit his lab and play with his machines, none of which were black boxes.
Patents, obnoxious such as they are, provide adequate protection against asset hijacking, the 'big secret' can be out in the open and well known, and you can still be the one who makes all the money from it.
Which is the way progress is achieved. (Score:3, Insightful)
But patenting ideas is just plain stupid. You should be able to patent physical things, but patenting software is akin to patenting mathematics, i.i plain stupid.
Re:RTFA:Of course his "compound" was raided (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Software patent report postponed (Score:3, Insightful)
It isn't just academics that recognise the harmful effects of software patents. Who would know more about this issue than Bill Gates who said:
The basic issue is that the software industry has thrived without software patents, and where they have been applied - they have only served to slow innovation and inhibit competition. European software developers need to be protected from software patents, not protected by them.