Comment Thank heavens for poor service! (Score 1) 572
Thankfully for AT&T, my phone gets utterly crap reception at work. I'll be lucky to have enough bandwidth to sent out a few text messages, let alone cause bandwidth problems for them.
Best Approach To Keeping a Virtual World Protocol Free to All? 163
arkowitz writes "I invented a protocol called CICP for interacting with virtual worlds, and filed a provisional patent application on it March 20 of last year. I have since declared the protocol open and public, and contributed an implementation of it to the Sun Wonderland project, which is GPL; and made public the LSL code and accompanying Java servlet for the Second Life implementation of the protocol. I've been collaborating with a fellow in Finland named Tommi S. E. Laukkanen on a new protocol called MXP: Metaverse Exchange Protocol (here's a full description at cybertechnews.com). MXP is and will always be public domain; we intend it to enable an open and ubiquitous metaverse. My question is this: is there any reason to complete the patent app for CICP, which could potentially cover MXP as well, and release it to the public domain? The full app is due by March 20 and the legal work would probably cost my company $10k. Would finishing the patent protect the open and public protocols from patent trolls, or would it be a waste of money? Also, what kind of document would I need to make official the public-domaining of the app?"
NFL's IT Chief Gears Up For His 25th Super Bowl 82
BobB-nw writes with this excerpt from NetworkWorld:
"NFL IT guru David Port claims he doesn't have a favorite football team, but on Sunday he'll be working his 25th Super Bowl. As the league's vice president of information technology, Port and his IT staff are responsible for building a temporary network to support NFL staff and thousands of journalists during Super Bowl week. Port starts preparing for each Super Bowl two years in advance, working with the city and venues where IT operations and media professionals will be based. More intensive planning starts about 11 months before the big game. Port explained that the NFL essentially built a small data center with IBM blade servers at the temporary headquarters in a local Marriott near the Super Bowl site. 'We built out an infrastructure with approximately 300 computers, PCs and laptops, and wired and wireless networks that are used for NFL core operations, for game production and business operations. Much of it is also for media,' Port said."
CNet is running a related story about the technology behind the Super Bowl, focusing on some of the visual effects viewers will see, as well as the hardware that makes everything happen.
Comment Re:Industrial Espionage... (Score 2, Interesting) 1123
A coworker and I were discussing this at work the other day actually. If I have trade secrets on my laptop, would I be running afoul of Safe Harbor and possibly shareholder interests if I give them my encryption key?
It may be that the SEC is the best avenue to challenge this. We just didn't think that starting a shareholder lawsuit against our company would be helpful to our employment status...
It may be that the SEC is the best avenue to challenge this. We just didn't think that starting a shareholder lawsuit against our company would be helpful to our employment status...
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The computer is to the information industry roughly what the central power station is to the electrical industry. -- Peter Drucker
