Comment Re:Chronological (Score 1) 423
So, if you wanna find The Inferno by Dante, you have to know that you bought it for someone in the fall of 1983 and then didn't give it to them for personal reasons.
Comment Waaaaay off! (Score -1, Redundant) 544
I have yet to see a SINGLE intelligent civilization in this galaxy. I would like some empirical evidence of the possibility of intelligent civilizations before someone speculates wildly about their prolificacy.
Submission + - Patent Attorneys Sue Troll Tracker for Defamation
defile39 writes: Patent Troll Tracker (aka: Rick Frenkel, IP Director at Cisco Systems) was just sued for defamation by Johnny Ward, Jr. and Eric Albritton. Johnny Ward Jr. is, of course, the son of esteemed Federal Judge John Ward of the Eastern District of Texas. Patently-O brings us this story, saying:
The whole case seemingly stems from a Patently-O posting on October 16, 2007. That post, titled 'Patent Office Has Stopped Examining Patents with 25+ Claims,' included a short blurb about a seeming 'preemptive strike' by the patent holder ESN:
From Patently-O: In another preemptive strike, on October 15th, ESN sued Cisco for infringing Patent No. 7,283,519. Unfortunately, the patent did not issue until the 16th of October."
A patent holder has no standing to sue until the patent issues. The October 15th suit would have been tossed out of court. Cisco, knowing this, filed a suit for declaratory judgment against ESN in Connecticut. However, all was not well with the ED Texas filing. Somehow the filing date was altered from the 15th to the 16th of October. In another post on Patently-O, Frenkel said:
"I got a couple of anonymous emails this morning, pointing out that the docket in ESN v. Cisco . . . had been altered. One email suggested that ESN's local counsel called the EDTX court clerk and convinced him/her to change the docket to reflect an October 16 filing date, rather than the October 15 filing date. I checked, and sure enough, that's exactly what happened — the docket was altered to reflect an October 16 filing date and the complaint was altered to change the filing date stamp from October 15 to October 16. Only the EDTX Court Clerk could have made such changes. . . . This is yet another example of the abusive nature of litigating patent cases in the Banana Republic of East Texas."
This doesn't seem much like defamation to me, but IANAL. Frenkel, of course, could've been referring to the wardrobe choices of ED Texans.
The whole case seemingly stems from a Patently-O posting on October 16, 2007. That post, titled 'Patent Office Has Stopped Examining Patents with 25+ Claims,' included a short blurb about a seeming 'preemptive strike' by the patent holder ESN:
From Patently-O: In another preemptive strike, on October 15th, ESN sued Cisco for infringing Patent No. 7,283,519. Unfortunately, the patent did not issue until the 16th of October."
A patent holder has no standing to sue until the patent issues. The October 15th suit would have been tossed out of court. Cisco, knowing this, filed a suit for declaratory judgment against ESN in Connecticut. However, all was not well with the ED Texas filing. Somehow the filing date was altered from the 15th to the 16th of October. In another post on Patently-O, Frenkel said:
"I got a couple of anonymous emails this morning, pointing out that the docket in ESN v. Cisco . . . had been altered. One email suggested that ESN's local counsel called the EDTX court clerk and convinced him/her to change the docket to reflect an October 16 filing date, rather than the October 15 filing date. I checked, and sure enough, that's exactly what happened — the docket was altered to reflect an October 16 filing date and the complaint was altered to change the filing date stamp from October 15 to October 16. Only the EDTX Court Clerk could have made such changes. . . . This is yet another example of the abusive nature of litigating patent cases in the Banana Republic of East Texas."
This doesn't seem much like defamation to me, but IANAL. Frenkel, of course, could've been referring to the wardrobe choices of ED Texans.
Submission + - Duke Nukem Forever Teaser Trailer Released
Mayhem178 writes: After all the running jokes and vaporware accusations, is it possible that the release date for Duke Nukem Forever might finally be within sight? A teaser trailer has been released, but as of yet 3d Realms is insistent that no firm release date has been set. Still, anyone who was a fan of the original games may have reason once again to rejoice after years of disappointment.
Submission + - Mathematicians solve the mystery of traffic jams (physorg.com)
mlimber writes: Do you ever find yourself in a traffic jam, thinking, "Man, there must be a bad accident up ahead," but as you plod along, you see no evidence of any crash? Some mathematicians have solved the mystery by developing a mathematical model that shows how one driver hitting the brakes a little too hard can cascade into a backup miles behind. The mathematicians' future research will investigate how automatic braking systems may alleviate the problem.
Submission + - Apple Censors iMac Complaints (tomshardware.com)
arakis writes: Tomshardware is running a story [www.tomshardware.com] about Apple censoring an ongoing complaints thread about the new iMacs having faded screens. The complaints appear to have attracted attention:
"From August 7 to November 18, a 95 day period, the thread chalked up an impressive 15,000+ hits, an average of about 158 hits per day. However, in the time since then, November 19 to December 10, a period of only 21 days, the thread gained an additional 9000 hits, an average of about 429 hits per day."
Apple is responding to the issue by replacing posts with error messages and not acknowledging the issue.
Submission + - Cosmic explosion detonates in empty space (newscientist.com)
mlimber writes: According to an article in NewScientist, "Astronomers are puzzling over a powerful cosmic explosion that seems to have detonated in a region of empty space, far away from any nearby galaxy." The leading theory is that the explosion was a star exploding in the gas trail that is yanked out of a galaxy when it passes or begins merging with another. Said the lead author of the study, "Even if the galaxies have stopped forming stars, in the tidal tails you can trigger new episodes of star formation [not to mention detonation]," and indeed the authors have identified two candidate galaxies that give weight to their theory.
Submission + - Van Wyk aims to transform Red Hat for future growt
Kurtz'sKompund writes: Having established itself as the leading enterprise Linux vendor, Red Hat is in a pivotal phase of reinventing itself as a broader open-source software provider and a long-term technology leader a la Microsoft and Oracle. It's a tall order, and among other things it will take a business plan that lets the company move smoothly through this make-or-break stage.
http://www.computerworlduk.com/toolbox/open-source/applications/news-analysis/index.cfm?articleid=877
Submission + - Researchers Create Self-Cleaning Materials
Ponca City, We Love You writes: "Researchers are developing materials that are able to clean themselves without the help of soap and water which could lead to a range of applications including fingerprint-shedding self-cleaning displays — something that cell-phone manufacturers have been working on for years. Super water-repellant materials cause water to bead up and form near-spherical droplets that easily roll off surfaces but oil has much lower surface tension than water does, so it has a greater tendency to cling to surfaces. It's been possible to make oil bead up on a surface, but the oil remained stuck. Now researchers at MIT have learned how to change the microscopic structure of the material to trap air near the surface which prevents oil droplets from sticking (video). "Before now, superoleophobic materials have been a pipe dream," says Jeffery Youngblood, a professor of materials engineering at Purdue University. "As far as I know, no one has seen this type of oleophobicity before.""
Submission + - Marcus Ranum's Wild Ride
ancientribe writes: Security industry icon Marcus Ranum says he didn't really invent the firewall. In this article in Dark Reading, Ranum also talks about his working relationship with Bruce Schneier, and how he feels vulnerability research has basically skewed security such that customers are made to feel grateful for disclosures while all vulnerability research does is make software more expensive for them. He also talks about his little-known passion — Medieval horsemanship.
http://www.darkreading.com/document.asp?doc_id=140640&WT.svl=news1_4
http://www.darkreading.com/document.asp?doc_id=140640&WT.svl=news1_4
Feed news.com: Microsoft bringing ads to mobile devices (news.com)
Beginning Monday, company is set to offer ads through its mobile portal, joining the likes of Yahoo and Google in the mobile ad space.
Feed The Register: Got a supercomputer in the closet? (theregister.com)
Mini-poll
When we think of supercomputing we think of water-cooled Crays and Deep Thought, but features that once used to be reserved for lab-coated researchers are today often found in the most unexpected of places.
