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Comment Re:Just how would this work? (Score 1) 257

by dlapine (#41856675) Attached to: Richard Stallman: Limit the Effect of Software Patents

If the purpose of patents is "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries" then no, I don't see how restricting patents to physical implementations (not software on a general purpose computing device) utterly defeats that purpose. Nothing restricts the author from enforcing his patent on physical reproductions, he just can't claim that a non-physical implementation is a violation.

Can you give any examples where this change would stop or slow scientific progress?
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 Ex-NASA employees (Score 5, Insightful) 616

by dlapine (#39661689) Attached to: Ex-NASA Employees Accuse Agency of 'Extreme Position' On Climate Change

I take some relief in noting that these are "ex-NASA" employees.

Per the article, it seems that these guys mostly worked at the Texas-based Johnson space center:

"Keith Cowing, editor of the website NASA Watch, noted that the undersigners, most of whom have engineering backgrounds, worked almost exclusively at the Houston-based Johnson Space Centre, a facility almost entirely removed from NASA's climate change arm."

Figures.

Why is it that there are so many amateur climatologists in Texas who know so much, but publish so little? I wonder if these gentlemen even bothered to visit the site of the "Plants Need CO2" sponsor, Leighton Steward, to see who also agreed with their opinions. I'm not linking to that site, and I'd surely want to avoid association with anyone with ideas like that.

Maybe Steward just punked them. Yep, that's go to be it.

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.

Submission + - Large Solar Flare To Glance Off Earth (spaceweather.com) 1

Submitted by JoeRobe
JoeRobe writes: According to spaceweather.com, a major X5 solar flare is on it's way to deliver a glancing blow to the Earth's magnetic field. This is the second x-class flare to be released by the same sunspot in the past few days, the first being an X1. In both cases, the sunspot (spot 1429) was not directly facing Earth, but it is still active, and poses a threat for a large, Earth-directed flare in the next few days.
Security

Submission + - How To Get Anything Past TSA's Body Scanners (wordpress.com)

Submitted by OverTheGeicoE
OverTheGeicoE writes: Blogger and anti-TSA activist Jonathan Corbett has just published a video showing how to bring any object through any type of TSA body scanner without it being detected. In his demonstration he places a small metal case in a side pocket of his shirt he sewed on himself. He then proceeds through two different body scanners, one millimeter-wave and one X-ray, while his video camera records through the X-ray carry on inspection process. When he returns to his bin to collect his items, he drops his metal case next to the video camera, showing that it made it through the scanner undetected. Corbett's demonstration seems to confirm the 2010 conclusions of Kaufman and Carlson, who wrote that 'an object such as a wire or a boxcutter blade, taped to the side of the body, or even a small gun in the same location, will be invisible.'

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