Everything old is new again :-) Admittedly, the mechanism is somewhat more advanced going by TFA (the MS version uses doppler shift rather than triangulation per se, so it can use a single mic) :

From TFA:
"In the case of SoundWave, your computerâ(TM)s built-in speaker is used to emit ultrasonic (18-22KHz) sound waves, which change frequency depending on where your hand (or body) is in relation to the computer. This change in frequency is measured by your computerâ(TM)s built-in microphone, and then some fairly complex software works out your motion/gesture."

From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_Glove
"There are two ultrasonic speakers (transmitters) in the glove and three ultrasonic microphones (receivers) around the TV monitor. The ultrasonic speakers take turns transmitting a short burst (a few pulses) of 40 kHz sound and the system measures the time it takes for the sound to reach the microphones. A triangulation calculation is performed to determine the X, Y, Z location of each of the two speakers, which specifies the yaw and roll of the hand."

Ice cube trays are also killer for this. I like that they are ubiquitous and stack well, which comes in handy for complex teardowns or when multiple items / assemblies have to be taken apart concurrently.

Let the arms race begin :-) If the OS shuts down because the adserver is unreachable, 2 weeks until the next tomato firmware comes with "fake adserver mode' that spoofs the server and serves up clear GIFs. (This oldie-but-goodie works great with a binary resource editor and crippleware that displays a watermark...) Cryptographic nuclear option? If history is any guide, there's a hack for that too.

Looking at the various email threads, it reads to me like Google decided a Java-compatible platform was their best option, and licensing one from Sun (they already had one, called Java) was the easiest path to getting the job done. Another email in the exhibit mentions the possibility of clean-rooming their own Java-compatible platform, but basically saying it would be a giant PITA and not cost-effective vs. just licensing Sun's existing one. I don't see the Java license discussions as construing "proof of knowledge of infringement" (etc.), or belief that it was the only legal path forward, only that at least one guy believed it was the easiest path forward.

This sounds very similar to Digital Solid State Propulsion, a states-side company that has been testing electrically-fired chemical microthrusters for at least the last several years. The DSSP thrusters (at least the ones I've seen so far) ranged from about the size of a .22 shell casing to an "AA" battery, and produce a controlled jet of ionized gas when electricity is applied (a gelled fuel inside is slowly consumed in the process). They're intended for propulsion and micropositioning (e.g. long-term station-keeping) on small satellites... although there are probably other sizes for other applications.

I hear this custom Android build is pretty secure, if you can get your hands on it of course.

Or for the /. crowd, Kimberly-Clark.

I'm far more interested in why G+ has been unblocked, while FB/Twitter/etc. are still firewalled. Did the Chinese gov't realize every post having a real / potentially verified name attached is more convenient than the site being inaccessible?

The difference being that on a reality show, even if you're not crazy about any of the contestants, voting for one and having them win is mostly harmless...

...is a Mechanical Turk / crowdsourcing engine for distributedly nuking crap patents with prior art. Occasionally, specific bad tech patents reach notoriety on /. and elsewhere and the comment threads fill up with posts from geeks who have potentially credible examples of prior art. Some 80% of those don't really understand how to read a patent (not really their fault; they don't exactly teach this in school), but overall there's a good chance the discussion turned up something that would narrow the patent in question. However, that leaves many, many other bad patents lurking below the notoriety threshold.

How many here would sign up to a service where you could subscribe to feeds for your fields / areas of expertise (e.g. "video compression algorithms" or "input devices", etc.), see an individual top-level claim and filing date, and get paid to point out examples of prior art that you are aware of?

Prior Art databases exist, but with some issues. EFF's Patent Busting project is a good start, but there are relatively few patents to bust, and no one with the incentive (other than ideological) to finance a specific action. I bet a lot of companies would be willing to pay a more than fair bounty for information that nukes a specific problematic claim in a competitor's overbroad patent.

Wishlist features:
* A quickstart guide for laymen / "non-lawyer professionals" on how to parse patent claim constructions, how to determine if prior work exactly matches ("prior art"), or "teaches" (alone or in combination with some other pieces) or "renders obvious" a claim, even if not an exact match. It can't make participants into patent lawyers overnight, but many do not even know the basics, and those basics would improve the quality of prior art submitted.

* Advice/tools for determining effective priority date. There are plenty of things (provisionals, continuations, filings across various countries, etc.) that will bamboozle many casual patent-busters in deciding if a piece of art is "prior" or not.

* Random / Rainy day browse modes. Claim-a-day sent to your mobile?

(Before anyone thinks this would just create another tool that could be used for evil, remember that the patent office - presumably in any country - is not supposed to be granting patents for things that already exist in the first place... so correcting such a mistake is not really foul play.)

Saw the following from a semi-famous developer in my twitter feed today:

Microsoft Store in Santa Clara apparently not selling Kinect for Windows unless customer can "prove it will be used for commercial purposes"

(later...)

Wow. You actually have to BRING BUSINESS DOCUMENTATION to the MS Santa Clara store to get a Kinect for Windows. Also sign licenses.

IIRC Toyota innovated in this area recently. Specifically, in products that move forward of their own accord.

The battery lifetime for any cellphone depends heavily on the network provider's coverage as well. Unfortunately no amount of efficiency hacks can correct for this. Things like radio scheme (CDMA/GSM), 2G/3G/etc., and especially the distance to the tower matter. Virtually all are smart enough to dynamically adjust their transmit strength to not-much-more than necessary, but if the coverage is poor (active tower is far away), the phone must spend a LOT of energy keeping in contact with it. For any phone spending most of its time in standby (smart and dumb alike), the cellular radio will dominate power consumption. (With the cell radio out of the picture, my middle-road Android phone will go 2 weeks of light usage when in airplane mode.)

I have a feeling most of the 1-2 week battery life claims (for any phone) come from city dwellers - they'll be in for a shock when they visit the boonies!

This case sounds more like they are claiming copyright on a particular dish itself based on the inclusion of a couple key ingredients, regardless of the actual recipe steps, text or ingredient proportions.

The actual claims (1 and 8 were found to infringe) are even vaguer than that - not only "phone numbers"; it covers ANY findable data structure in ANY data:

What is claimed is:

1. A computer-based system for detecting structures in data and performing actions on detected structures, comprising:

an input device for receiving data;

an output device for presenting the data;

a memory storing information including program routines including

an analyzer server for detecting structures in the data, and for linking actions to the detected structures;

a user interface enabling the selection of a detected structure and a linked action; and

an action processor for performing the selected action linked to the selected structure; and

a processing unit coupled to the input device, the output device, and the memory for controlling the execution of the program routines.

[...non-infringed claims...]

8. The system recited in claim 1, wherein the user interface highlights detected structures.

This patent appears to cover the entire internet without even having to add "...on the internet" as a claim.