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Christmas gift for someone you hate: Windows 8 - Hmm Win7 but they have hidden the buttons. | 134 comments | Create New Account
Comments belong to whoever posts them. Please notify us of inappropriate comments.
Christmas gift for someone you hate
Authored by: kawabago on Friday, December 07 2012 @ 10:56 PM EST
Why are Microsoft products so weird? That's what you get when
chairs are landing on employees.

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

Leaked: ITU's secret Internet surveillance standard discussion draft
Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, December 07 2012 @ 11:06 PM EST
The Newspick is here , but the paranoid and humor impaired
should not read the comments.

Maybe a working draft has leaked, but when it's finished
it will be found here .

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

Christmas gift for someone you hate: Windows 8 - Hmm Win7 but they have hidden the buttons.
Authored by: SilverWave on Saturday, December 08 2012 @ 06:14 AM EST
Christmas gift for someone you hate: Windows 8

Hmm had my first Win8 case this week looks just like Win7 but they have hidden the buttons.

Win key+X gets anything you need for support purposes.

If you need a quick start this is good:

Learn Windows 8 in 3 minutes (OK, it's really 4)

---
RMS: The 4 Freedoms
0 run the program for any purpose
1 study the source code and change it
2 make copies and distribute them
3 publish modified versions

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

There's absolutely nothing unusual about a patents claims being trimmed ...
Authored by: Anonymous on Saturday, December 08 2012 @ 08:24 PM EST
http://forums.appleinsider.com/t/154874/uspto-invalidates-all-
claims-of-steve-jobs-multi-touch-patent/40#post_2243255

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

News Pick - Society Reaps Enormous Benefits from Software Patents, BSA Argues in Amicus Filing
Authored by: dio gratia on Sunday, December 09 2012 @ 08:20 PM EST

Society Reaps Enormous Benefits from Software Patents, BSA Argues in Amicus Filing.

V. The Form Of The Patent Claim Does Not Affect Patent Eligibility.

Section 101 makes eligible for patent protection “any new and useful process, machine, manufacture, or composition of matter, or any new and useful improvement thereof.” 35 U.S.C. § 101. Whether a software innovation is claimed as a method, system, or storage medium does not alter its patent eligibility. Indeed, the Supreme Court has been careful not to “interpret[] patent statutes in ways that make patent eligibility depend simply on the draftman’s art.” Mayo, 132 S. Ct. at 1294 (quotation omitted).

When software dictates a means for implementation of a specific innovation using computer implementation, it may qualify as a “process” under Section 101. See Diehr, 450 U.S. at 188. Similarly, computer software may qualify as a “machine.” Software that directs a computer to per- form a specific function “creates a new machine, because a general purpose computer in effect becomes a special purpose computer once it is programmed to perform particular functions pursuant to instructions from program software.” In re Alappat, 33 F.3d at 1545. The form of the patent claim does not alter an innovation’s eligibility pursuant to Section 101.

Feel like you've been bait-and-switched? From Gottschalk v. Benson, 409 U.S. 63 (1972) (whence the MPEP 2106 refrain that software per se cannot be patented comes from):

It is conceded that one may not patent an idea. But in practical effect that would be the result if the formula for converting BCD numerals to pure binary numerals were patented in this case. The mathematical formula involved here has no substantial practical application except in connection with a digital computer, which [409 U.S. 63, 72] means that if the judgment below is affirmed, the patent would wholly pre-empt the mathematical formula and in practical effect would be a patent on the algorithm itself.

It may be that the patent laws should be extended to cover these programs, a policy matter to which we are not competent to speak. The President's Commission on the Patent System 4 rejected the proposal that these programs be patentable: 5

"Uncertainty now exists as to whether the statute permits a valid patent to be granted on programs. Direct attempts to patent programs have been rejected on the ground of nonstatutory subject matter. Indirect attempts to obtain patents and avoid the rejection, by drafting claims as a process, or a machine or components thereof programmed in a given manner, rather than as a program itself, have confused the issue further and should not be permitted.

"The Patent Office now cannot examine applications for programs because of a lack of a classification technique and the requisite search files. Even if these were available, reliable searches would not be feasible or economic because of the tremendous volume of prior art being generated. Without this search, the patenting of programs would be tantamount to mere registration and the presumption of validity would be all but nonexistent.

It would seem the BSA agrees with the Federal Circuit, just not in this particular case:

IV. The Software At Issue Here Is Not Patentable. Assessed under this framework, the software at issue here is not patentable.

The claims involve the concept of credit intermediation — an idea that has existed in non-digital form for millennia. See CLS Bank Int’l v. Alice Corp. Pty. Ltd., 685 F.3d 1341, 1344-46 (Fed. Cir. 2012); id. at 1357- 58 (Prost, J., dissenting). It is plain that credit intermediation long pre- existed computer implementation, and that it is a process that can be per- formed in the human mind, or by a human with pencil and paper.

In addition, the computer aspect of the claims here does not add anything of substance to the mental process at issue. The computer implementation of the abstract idea is not limited in any fashion. And there is no suggestion that the process here is in anyway dependent upon computer technology to accomplish the directed end. To the contrary, as Judge Prost indicated in dissent, the patent claims here would have the effect of preempting the abstract idea of credit intermediation in its entirety. CLS 24 Bank Int’l, 685 F.3d at 1359 (Prost, J., dissenting). This is an archetypal example of what the Supreme Court in Mayo identified as an unpatentable usage of an abstract idea or law of nature — “simply stat[ing] the law of nature while adding the words ‘apply it’”; or, as here, “use a computer.”

You could get the distinct impression this patent is being thrown off the sleigh for the wolves to consume. The only colorable distinction between CLS Bank and software as "a “process” under Section 101" is that CLS is a simulation (of an abstract) while say Apple's 7,469,381 patent (claim 1) is a process controlling the display of a document. Said display a transitory signal, not resulting in any transformation of matter. Contrast this with the process from the quoted Diamond v. Diehr, where the software was used to control curing synthetic rubber, reducing a thing to a different state. The rejection of point of novelty also explains why the '381 claim 19 could be considered invalid, software on a substrate over claim 1.

This subtle bending of citation also so seemingly prevalent in adversarial filing in this particular instance reminds me of a quote from the movie The Blues Brothers (the last statement by Elwood in the highlighted section).

Maybe the BSA could get invited to present oral arguments and get allegorically smacked with a ruler?

From the title of the BSA website post, one could do worse than to look up the definition of society in a dictionary. It's a particular word who's meaning defines the BSA's intent with the amicus brief. The intent to embrace one or more societies the BSA considers itself to be a member thereof and with having common cause. As for the rest of us, please don't queer the pitch.

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

Microsoft-Intel tablet sales sputtering
Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, December 10 2012 @ 02:18 AM EST
Given the low availability of these "Surface" machines, how in the
world does anyone expect good sales? This feel like Microsoft setting themselves
up for disappointment :p. The other Windows 8 based tablets on the other hand,
who knows? They will have to wait until January to even see any numbers on
those, though I'm not expecting it to sell well.

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

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