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Comment Re:No more licensing fees :) (Score 5, Interesting) 343

This is why I don't work for a PHB. In fact, he's balding a bit. I have the best boss ever. He just gave me the green light to be early adopters and run this in production (once it passes a few sanity checks). We've been running the alphas and betas with much success. Samba team ftw!! Thanks guys! I've been waiting for this for so long.
Network

Submission + - Increasing wireless network speed by 1000%, by replacing packets with algebra (extremetech.com)

Submitted by
MrSeb
MrSeb writes: "A team of researchers from MIT, Caltech, Harvard, and other universities in Europe, have devised a way of boosting the performance of wireless networks by up to 10 times — without increasing transmission power, adding more base stations, or using more wireless spectrum. The researchers’ creation, coded TCP, is a novel way of transmitting data so that lost packets don’t result in higher latency or re-sent data. With coded TCP, blocks of packets are clumped together and then transformed into algebraic equations that describe the packets. If part of the message is lost, the receiver can solve the equation to derive the missing data. The process of solving the equations is simple and linear, meaning it doesn’t require much processing on behalf of the router/smartphone/laptop. In testing, the coded TCP resulted in some dramatic improvements. MIT found that campus WiFi (2% packet loss) jumped from 1Mbps to 16Mbps. On a fast-moving train (5% packet loss), the connection speed jumped from 0.5Mbps to 13.5Mbps. Moving forward, coded TCP is expected to have huge repercussions on the performance of LTE and WiFi networks — and the technology has already been commercially licensed to several hardware makers."
Patents

Submission + - US Patent Office Invalidates Apple's "Rubber Banding" Patent (appleinsider.com)

Submitted by
bhagwad
bhagwad writes: "The patent that was the cause of so much grief to Samsung in the recently concluded trial with Apple has been tentatively invalidated by the USPTO. The challenge was filed anonymously, but it obviously could have been filed by any smartphone manufacturer. Will this have an effect on further proceedings in the case or perhaps more importantly on the inevitable appeal?"

Submission + - When is it right to enforce a software patent?

Submitted by cadeon
cadeon writes: I work for a small company with a workforce management software product. We brought a fairly unique approach to market in 2004, and have developed the idea continuously since then. Our first of three patents was awarded in 2007.

At the moment we have exactly one customer. And while I can't blame our lack of commercial success on our ideas being copied — "No one ever got fired for buying $established_product" — I find myself wondering if it's time to try and enforce our patents.

Would doing so make us a patent troll, or is this the situation patents were created to help solve? If this isn't the right situation, what is?

Comment Re:Cost? (Score 1) 121

by aquarajustin (#39612071) Attached to: CSIRO Develops 10 Gbps Microwave Backhaul
Agreed. Thought it was interesting nonetheless. Don't even know how this new system's spectral characteristics would play out in the U.S., as I have absolutely no idea how similar/dissimilar the band licensing is to AU.

Looks like the Ubiquitis could be installed by a highly trained monkey with the software they've included.

Comment Cost? (Score 4, Informative) 121

by aquarajustin (#39611113) Attached to: CSIRO Develops 10 Gbps Microwave Backhaul
Ubiquiti just announced their AirFiber product (http://www.ubnt.com/airfiber) which can get 1.4 Gbps symmetric at 13km. It'll be interesting to see the price point of this 10 Gbps system, as Ubiquiti's runs only $3k per endpoint. I was considering getting a pair of the Ubiquitis to connect a branch office to HQ.

10 Gbps would be nice, but I'm guessing the cost of this system would be at least a magnitude greater than the AirFibers.

Comment Re:I hate it when museums do this (Score 4, Informative) 52

by cadeon (#39383067) Attached to: Space Shuttles Discovery and Atlantis Meet One Last Time

The engines, in this case, are due to be used by the Space Launch System. They are planning on using 15 SSMEs from the shuttle program in the first launches of SLS. I'm sure a lot of the other components have similar fates, since the SLS is shuttle derived.

Aside from that, yes, I am totally with you. Seeing the Enterprise in DC was a rather empty experience. It looked like plywood.

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Thus spake the master programmer: "After three days without programming, life becomes meaningless." -- Geoffrey James, "The Tao of Programming"

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