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Networking

Submission + - How do slashdotters manage email on their laptops?

Submitted by
dotancohen
dotancohen writes: "I'll soon be getting a new Dell laptop that'll be running Fedora Core 5 or 6. I need to access the email stored on my home box from the laptop, and also to read new email sent to me while I'm not home (and the home box is shut down). If I run an IMAP server at home, then I can't read the mail when the home box is down. But if I pull from the POP3 server (and leave the mail on the server) then I won't be able to sort and file the mail while on the go. Is there anyway to sync the mail accounts between two linux boxen, assuming that I'm using the same mail client? I currently use Kmail, but I might switch to Eudora in April/March when it becomes available for Linux.

Thanks in advance."
Patents

Submission + - Supreme Court Set to Change to US Patent Law

Submitted by
missinformationtx
missinformationtx writes: "http://www.intellectualpropertylawblog.com/archive s/67362-print.html
Intellectual Property Law Blog
The Supreme Court Set to Make a Change to U.S. Patent Law
12 | 26 | 2006 Posted By Sheppard Mullin

U.S. patent law is set to undergo a change, the scope of which remains to be seen. The Supreme Court heard oral arguments on November 28, 2006 in KSR Int'l Co. v. Teleflex, Inc. (04-1350), the much anticipated Supreme Court case that considers whether the Federal Circuit's "teaching, suggestion or motivation" test should be the sole test for whether an invention is obvious, and therefore precluded from patent protection.

Section 103 of the U.S. Patent Act provides that "[a] patent may not be obtained...if the differences between the subject matter sought to be patented and the prior art are such that the subject matter as a whole would have been obvious at the time the invention was made to a person having ordinary skill in the art to which said subject matter pertains."

The statute is designed to award patent protection to truly innovative, "nonobvious" inventions, and not just "obvious" improvements of what inventors have come up with in the past, i.e., the "prior art." The Supreme Court held in the seminal case Graham v. John Deere Co., 383 U.S. 1 (1966) that the question of obviousness is a factual inquiry. Relevant considerations include the scope and content of the prior art, the differences between the prior art and what is claimed as a new invention, and the level of ordinary skill of individuals practicing in the pertinent art.

For over two decades, the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (the special appeals court that hears patent cases) has ruled that obviousness cannot be established by combining the teachings of the prior art to produce the claimed invention, absent some evidence of a "teaching, suggestion or motivation to do so." ACS Hosp. Systems, Inc. v. Montefiore Hosp., 732 F.2d 1572 (Fed. Cir. 1984); Ashland Oil, Inc. v. Delta Resins & Refractories, Inc., 776 F.2d 281 (Fed. Cir. 1985). The Federal Circuit's objective behind the test, also known as the TSM test, is to prevent the benefit of hindsight, that is, it is often easy to say, "I could have thought of that" about an invention after the fact. The Federal Circuit's test attempts to structure the obviousness inquiry into an objective framework.

Opponents of the TSM test argue that the test makes it too easy for patent owners to obtain patents, because even though an invention might to them seem obvious, documented evidence of a "teaching, suggestion or motivation" proving such obviousness often does not exist. That in turn, opponents argue, leads to a large number of frivolous law suits by patent holders on patents that should not have been issued in the first place. Proponents of the TSM test argue, however, that weakening patent protection would lead to loss of innovation and design.

These arguments are at the forefront in KSR Int'l Co. v. Teleflex, Inc. In this case, the patent at issue involves a gas pedal that is adjustable for the driver's height and that controls acceleration through electronic signals rather than a mechanical cable. KSR manufactured gas pedals having those two features, and Teleflex sued KSR asserting patent infringement. KSR defended on the ground that the combination of the two features of the gas pedal was obvious and that Teleflex's patent was therefore invalid under Section 103 of the Patent Act. The District Court rules in favor of KSR, but the Federal Circuit reversed, explaining that the District Court failed to make specific findings as to whether there was a suggestion or motivation to combine the teachings of the prior art. KSR appealed.

The Supreme Court granted a writ of certiorari in June 2006 to consider whether the Federal Circuit had erred in holding that a claimed invention cannot be held obvious, and thus unpatentable under 35 U.S.C. 103(a), in the absence of some proven teaching, suggestion or motivation that would have led a person of ordinary skill in the art to combine the relevant prior art teachings in the manner claimed.

During oral arguments, the Supreme Court made it clear that it is skeptical of the TSM test. In fact, a good portion of oral arguments was taken up by the Justices' attempts to understand the TSM test. Even after reading the briefs "15 or 20 times," Justice Breyer puzzled, "I just don't understand what is meant by the term 'motivation.'" Chief Justice Roberts referred to the test as "Federal Circuit jargon" that is "worse than meaningless." Justice Scalia called the test "meaningless," "irrational," and furthermore, "gobbledygook."

The Justices pressed counsel supporting Teleflex's position to explain why the question of obviousness should be filtered through the TSM test, including the requirement that hard evidence be presented. Counsel countered that, under current Federal Circuit cases, documented evidence is not necessary. Justice Alito remarked, "Well, once you define the teaching, suggestion and motivation test that way so that it can be implicit, it can be based on common sense, I don't quite understand the difference between that and simply asking whether it's obvious. Could you just explain what [the TSM test] adds?"

However, the Justices appeared hesitant to discard the TSM test altogether. One key concern was validity of the millions of patents issued or upheld in the past twenty years under the TSM standard. Justice Souter wondered whether there were "going to be 100,000 cases filed tomorrow morning" if the Supreme Court overturns the TSM test.

Justice Bader Ginsberg and Justice Kennedy voiced the possibility of keeping the TSM test as a valid inquiry on obviousness, but not as the exclusive test.

Based on oral arguments, it appears that the TSM test will be modified, or at least further explained, by the Justices, rather than scrapped altogether, and preserved as one possible, but not exclusive, standard for obviousness. The Supreme Court is expected to issue a decision in February."
The Internet

Submission + - Expired domain name search

Submitted by
An anonymous reader writes: Expired Domain Name Search Beta was just released, making it possible to find domains that people forgot to renew. To find the best ones factors such as Google Trends are used to narrow down the list. The site has been making the rounds on Digg and del.icio.us hotlist and is clearly the best such list available.

An Inconvenient Truth 1033

Posted by jamie from the conveniently-packaged dept.

There's a movie teaser line that you may have seen recently, that goes like this: "What if you had to tell someone the most important thing in the world, but you knew they'd never believe you?" The answer is "I'd try." The teaser's actually for another movie, but that's the story that's told in the documentary "An Inconvenient Truth": it starts with a man who, after talking with scientists and senators, can't get anyone to listen to what he thinks is the most important thing in the world. It comes out on DVD today.

Here Come the Leonids 2006 80

Posted by CowboyNeal from the eye-in-the-sky dept.
yukk writes "The nights and early morning hours of November 17-19 mark the return of the Leonid meteor shower to the skies of Earth. Viewers along the northeastern coast of the United States and Canada, as well as people in Europe and western Africa might get to see a possible 'outburst' of as many as 100-600 meteors per hour. This spike in activity is predicted for 11:45 p.m. — 1:33 a.m. EST on November 18-19 (4:45 — 6:33 UT on November 19)."

Guitar Hero Is Big Hit With Bands 225

Posted by Zonk from the always-hard-to-rock-hard dept.
Carl Bialik from WSJ writes "An unlikely but growing group of rock stars are also avid players of Guitar Hero, a PlayStation title that uses a miniature plastic guitar to let gamers pretend to be, well, rock stars, the Wall Street Journal reports. From the article: 'Michael Einziger, the 30-year-old guitarist for the hard-rock band Incubus, says he was "shocked at how hard it was" to play the videogame's version of his song "Stellar." He admits he was handily beaten by his then-14-year-old sister, Ruby Aldridge, when the two of them squared off earlier this year. "It doesn't have anything to do with playing guitar," Mr. Einziger says. "It's all rhythmic." When the four members of the punk-pop band the Donnas got together to play Guitar Hero last week, guitarist Allison Robertson took some good-natured ribbing from her bandmates, says drummer Torry Castellano. That's because Ms. Robertson had a hard time playing along with the band's own song "Take It Off." "Expectations for her are pretty high because she's the guitar player and because she's so good at videogames in general," says Ms. Castellano.'"

Yet Another Violent Games Ban 257

Posted by Zonk from the don't-play-stuff-that's-bad-for-you dept.
Gamespot reports on a proposed Tennessee bill banning extremely violent games. From the article: "The bill defines the phrase 'extremely violent video game' as 'a video game in which the range of options available to a player includes killing, maiming, dismembering, or sexually assaulting an image of a human being," with a number of clauses specifying that a game would have to be patently offensive to prevailing community standards, among other things, to be considered extremely violent.'"

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I tell them to turn to the study of mathematics, for it is only there that they might escape the lusts of the flesh. -- Thomas Mann, "The Magic Mountain"

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