Posts by attoman 87 publicly visible posts • joined 7 Mar 2011
It's about lead in ground water. Such poisoned groundwater can be injurious to animals and young children.
Steel is a poor choice both as a penetrant and non-pollutant. The best choice used by U.S. forces is tungsten.
You can eat tungsten all day without the slightest harm except a feeling of sluggishness.
The real question what court did he file in. Federal (where the dollar amount cannot be part of the pleading) or state court (where it can).
In any event it's a matter for the lawyers.
Lawyers who will take between 50% and 70% of any award. The plaintiff (if indeed its an individual) will be exposed to all of Apples costs if his lawyers lose.
Probably a retiree he may keep his house (in Florida bankruptcy law) and lose his life's savings.
Our patent system is specifically designed to protect and enrich (20 years) inventors, not corporations.
You really don't understand patents. This man filed a suit based on having filed a Design Patent it's now a fight between his lawyers and theirs.
You know nothing about Apple or the internal organization nor do you know anything about the Florida inventor.
Picking sides and casting aspersions in a state of ignorance suggests you are working on a new app iASSkisser, good luck with that.
It is not clear that Alan Kay ever patented his design although he may have copyrighted it.
Apple patents every design they have.
It would seem that Florida Phil tried to patent his idea which had it issued would have expired in 2012 making any forward going royalty questionable. The fact that he didn't pay the filing fee (a small amount) makes this an unlikely winner for Phil.
A useful utility patent for Kay's design would be low energy touch screen (which did not exist in 1968), or a low energy high resolution flat screen (also no where around in 1968).
We were inspired by Alan went about inventing Utility Patents most of which were infringed or had expired when in the 90's a long list of companies including Apple began using them. The fact that Apple never acknowledges us suggests a worm in the Apple.
An analogy about the different kinds of patents may be useful.
A Design Patent is how the cloth is cut to style a skirt or shirt.
A Utility Patent is how to make the cloth itself.
When will you ever learn?
When Microsoft and its CEO/Chairman Bill Gates drove small companies into bankruptcy while also breaking the law regarding monopolies MS/Gates became responsible for all crimes their behavior contributed to.
This means that both MS and Gates need to go into the dock concerning the death they helped create. Manslaughter of this type has no Statute of Limitations.
As much as is possible just do not deal with these monsters.
When explaining the "crown" it would appear someone conflates analog and digital with computers.
Specifically "......which reads the spinning of the angular position of a shaft into analog or digital code that computers can understand."
All real world devices (mice, rotary encoders, voltages) are analog and are converted by many schemes into digital information which is all a computer (microprocessor) can accept.
Further there are no analog codes.
As for the iWatch after reading this series of reports iWaiting.
Apple has to the best of my knowledge never introduced a visionary product. Everything is a much better engineered version of other peoples vision at just the right time for the market.
Woz is great guy he saw teaching children as his highest calling and he did that (I gather) very well.
That said I know of no product inside or outside Apple that Woz has shown a visionaries zeal along with the vision itself. Did Woz do the basic cloud patents? Did he do something unique with data in his new start-up?
Woz has taken lately to be a spokesman for Apple and except when he makes the absurd and grossly false claim that Apple and he Woz invented the PC, thats all right with me.
There were better microprocessor based desktop graphics computers being sold a year before Apple was formed in 1976. It wouldn't be until the early 90's that PCs and Apple PCs began to compete with the graphics. As Jobs told me in 1977 in the storefront Apple "Our customers are happy with character graphics." Indeed they were.
Van Leeuwenhoek did better with a water droplet in 1679.
The Aussie discovery of natural formation of curved solids (after drying) is interesting and there may well be some novel aspects to it.
That being said even Leeuwenhoek had means for positioning the sample, focusing the microscope and refocusing on samples with some depth of structure exceeding the depth of focus of the lens. All of which gives Apple, Google or perhaps one of the readers here the opportunity to invent all the elements of microscopy in a cell phone like package.
There are so many opportunities, and so many people waiting for ideas to expropriate.
Mexicans may be more obese about the middle but leave it to us Americans to be world leaders in fatheads which at the extreme and given the confines of rock hard skulls inevitably results in pea sized brain matter buried in the fat.
Don't believe? Just listen to Congress and Ted Cruz.
Glucose starts in the blood either from the liver or the bowel to reach the eye (either inner eye or outer surface) where it must be transferred across two or more membranes and pass across or through the eye to the sensor. This is a much slower process then that transfer to brain, heart or other muscles, and it is the latter organs that can be compromised unto death by hypoglycemia.
Been there done that. In the late 80's early 90's we found that ocular glucose does not track the blood. A blood track is necessary for both type 1 and 2.
By the way glucose changes very slowly (many minutes) so we simply used near IR LEDs in a pair of glasses to monitor the glucose.
It can also be done directly by smartphone camera with an app and by other simple means WITHOUT putting things in the eye- unless you wear contacts you won't want to.
The general rigid touch screen with speed detection and multi-touch capability was invented in 1976. We invented and developed it and later used the speed detection on the select button based Felix pointer.
This device series corresponded to the contract description:
"The contract describes the development of “an innovative touchscreen technology”, specifically a touchscreen that can detect the speed at which one's fingertip moves across the display and can "capture multiple impacts across a surface area" – multitouch, in other words."
Hearing how difficult it was to reinvent in 2004 is rather sad and suggests that the Fentem and others intensionally avoided looking to see past inventions.
By the way a pair of prototypes running a Pong Game were shown to the Steve's at the Apple storefront in 1977 along with an early GUI and Jobs said their customers would prefer joysticks, Jobs didn't get the GUI at all.
The iPhone is a product using thousands of inventions none of which in any basic way were created by Apple. Apple married these things into an exceedingly delicious dish which is and will remain for 2.6 more years a leading product in its class.
The iPhone is no more an invention then an appealing update to an operating system is an invention. It does qualify for a styling patent also known as a design patent but nothing more.
For most of us who found our inventions in the iPhone series it was a delight that the technology had a life after the patent expired.
Britain has never invented anything, anymore then the US or even California.
Inventions are the product of people known as inventors from 1 to 4 people (any more and its just a B.S. which can and does invalidate some patents because you can't list a non-inventor regardless if his name is Jobs on any US patent).
The inventors can assign their patent rights to any entity including Britain or Apple.
As far as inventors go some very great inventors originated in Britain.
Don Jefe (translation the Chief of the bosses)
You blow hard but not accurately.
Your assessment of TiAl alloys is not too far off the mark.
Pure Ti or some of the higher performance alloys is both strong, heat resistant and corrosion resistant all this while being lighter and stronger then steel.
Note that 60 opinionated lawyers participated but no Inventors were given an opportunity to speak.
The same overabundance of lawyers and lobbyists were to be found in the joke that was committee hearings for Goodlatte in the House and Money-Mouth Leahy the IBM lapdog in the Senate.
No one asked how the inventors would be encouraged or the people's welfare secured.
DIscussions revolved around the needs of large corporations and how they could keep their monopolies via patents even if those useful monopolies were stolen from small start-ups or inventors. And these latter goals were made into a bill and Apple-Google-Cisco saw it, and it was good (for them).
The people pushing the Anti-Troll bill constantly claim small start-ups are attacked and destroyed by Trolls. Yet no one has produced a list by name and a count of the number of such cases.
It's time to see some real data.
In the U.S. cops can lie whenever they like and it is lawful if done as part of an investigation. Thus copslie is a truthful and lawful statement New Hampshire will lose in court and with any luck be heavily sanctioned.
More disturbing is Lawyers lie both prosecutors and defense lawyers. Caught frequently judges condone this behavior by not bringing charges against the attorneys. This is reprehensible and suggests that an honest court and judge is a rare commodity in the U.S.
3D printing has been around since the early 80's, I understand you have not.
A pin hole camera consists of two critical components a light tight box and a pinhole. You can make the box quickly and easily without a 3D printer.
Unfortunately you can't make the pin hole at all with the 3D printer. There are ways well known to solve this problem and none of the money driven 3D printer manufacturers have bothered to make such improvements.
Come back in a few years when 3D printers have grown up and can deliver real world needs and materials.
Robert Grant thanks for question.
I agree that Konstantin came first but the liquid fueled steered nozzle rocket and nozzle design technology came from Goddard, as did the gimbaled gyroscope. The V2 simply improved on his work.
The modern maglev vacuum transport system started in the 1940's with the inventions of Robert Goddard the father of modern rocketry. For the last few years the basic concept of combining vacuum maglev with an advanced grid has been firing up power company conferences across the continent.
For three years Terraspan an all volunteer group has put forward a method for safe and certain survival for transport vehicles moving at 3,000 mph in the event of a complete loss of power or loss of vacuum. A method that conserves power by accelerating and decelerating from the same electrical grid
Hopefully Elon will consider our approach. We are not overly proud and if its viable we would be happy to embrace Hyperloop. Our survival technique and our special method for overcoming land use issues may well benefit Hyperloop whatever it is.
A slightly dated version of Terraspan can be seen at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zKXbx9ssONo
I've encountered some of Martin's works and he was a very literate and clear writer. I accept the plaudits here for his skill as a speaker, although I never heard him speak.
None of this explains 200 million plus of his "earnings". Was he an inventor too? Did he start or participate in a successful start-up? Even with 100 books he is not going to earn 2 million per book. No it just doesn't hold together and something is being held back from his story.
This quantum transistor is already bigger then transistors in circuits being made at Intel and IBM. There is nothing new about room temperature tunneling the Zener Diodes been doing it for 40 years commercially.
The article says it can get down to single atoms- but the nanotube is inherently limited to tens of atoms or more so the sketch made is very flawed at delivering the solutions promised.
How about the details of why this is special?
Styli are older then man, witness the use of pointing sticks as tools by chimpanzees. We have every reason to believe that such use predates Homo Sapiens .
Artists, and scholars have used styli, pens and brushes from the dawn of history down to today. The combination of control via the opposed thumb and forefinger represent some of the finest human motion control possible.
Although the Samsung device fails to fully accommodate the real possibilities of styli at least the desirability is supported and the user world is not led to believe the stylus somehow died with the introduction of the iPad.
I agree completely. After 30 YEARS of development no one has even come close to using a printer type technology to make high strength, high temperature materials sufficient to sustain even a poor ball bearing or a gun barrel.
Never say never, but do say WHY. Why with perfectly good systems for machining high grade materials like steel, scandium-aluminum, titanium, ceramics and other materials all capable of making high performance weapons would any but the brain dead waste a lifetime trying to make a rabbit into bear.
So we are left with the likelihood that these little minds are afraid of real and suitable material.
Now for the first two comments:
EddieD says they just started WRONG! Apparently he just heard about it. Over 30 year history this isn't the first try to make a high force bearing, close tolerance object. They are a long ways away from achieving that goal.
Next up is JDX who thinks that a machine like the 3D printer with an accuracy and resolution of (at best) .003 inch can match a simple lathe bored and threaded (which is what rifling is) steel tube easily accurate to better then .001 (such accuracy has been available everywhere in the world for centuries).
And in a final act of ignorance this fellow JDX states that a 3D printer will be building up the ultimate high strength material diamond! Perhaps he means diamond in a thermoplastic matrix- essentially worthless for this purpose or he means a contiguous diamond structure. Diamond can be grown to conform to any shape at 900 C the temperature of molten lava. JDX please hold your breath until these miracles arrive.
I'll leave the other idiot comments to rational and knowledgeable folk.
Finally like many English and Aussies with little regard for the USA's Second Amendment to the Bill of Rights, the basic desire to obtain and hold weapons for all freemen seems unreasonable. The author of this piece tells us that weapons will be easily confiscated. He fails to understand that when doing improper acts the police and military are subject to the justice of the people and are as likely to revolt against tyranny as obey their leaders.
As long as we see visual and aural proof on CNN (in Boston recently) that squads of police armed with machine guns can freely move through a major city and begin firing in peaceful neighborhoods with out regard to public safety even though no fire of any kind was directed to them. The police chief lied about the action for days.
We saw for ourselves that over reaction and improper acts by government are very possible in our society.
Your comment fails to note that only particles with zero mass like the photon, gluon, perhaps a flavor of neutrino and the graviton could in theory be used for speed of light measures. Of course none of the later except photons and (barely) neutrino's have been measured at all.
So for all practical purposes special relativity is still the realm of photons and "c" is still vulnerable.
Although if we could set up and measure only massless neutrino's they would be immune from the effects of Quantum foam and give us a precise and nearly perfect vacuum measure. Sadly their nearly zero interaction cross section builds a terrible wall for their detection.
Particle pair creation is happening all the time in space/time that is what the Cassimir experiments prove.
Of course we have a measure of c in almost vacuum but that is not the same unless someone will do the quantum mechanics to PROVE that an arbitrary number of charged particles in the measurement beam can be offset or made to have a modest upper bound (less then or equal to the present uncertainty of c).
As far as pair creation due to the measure beam it is by definition (in a properly arranged experiment) of negligible effect.
However we are not asking you Schultz as a celebrity, and member of the Hogan's Heroes TV show to make the quantum electrodynamics calculations. Oh no for after all your famous line puts you above such things if I may quote you:
"I know nothing, nothing.."
Cassimir Experiments have clearly shown that all of space is permeated by quantum foam. Therefor no measurement has ever been made of c, because it turns out up to now no true vacuum has ever existed where it could be measured and the speed of light measured in it.
Now let's hear some suggestions for how to make a true vacuum in space/time.
The example of the platter include the resonant antenna and is about 150 microns square. It's visible to the naked eye!
Without going to plasmons (surface electrons that can transform from and to photons (with a loss of linked quantum uncertainty-entanglement) it is difficult to see this system getting smaller and therefor sets serious limits on the performance of a quantum computer using this form of storage.
the Standard Model is beautiful. One should also appreciate the purpose of naming unique mathematical characterizations charm, and color. How sad that we have up and down, top and bottom, for these words impart to the mind a familiar behavior with no connection to their use in the SM.
What is amusing is that we are told that only "serious physicists" etc. No one in their right mind will accept the results of the LHC as proven until the Higgs has shown by further yet to be defined experimentation that it has the right "stuff".
ANd how can anyone be satisfied with this years accelerator energies when Dark Matter and Dark Energy rule the Universe and are untamed by "serious physicists".
I predict the way forward will be through the DARKness and into the light of Beyond the Standard Model.
Please don't take me seriously.
President Obama does not seem to realize how his approval of a deeply flawed patent reform act, the America Invents Act, has injured start-ups and individual inventors.
An indiscriminate attack on all who might fit the simplistic description of "troll" used by the President in this forum would further reduce the new inventions being filed and most importantly the really new and disruptive ideas that have powered our economy since the founding of the Republic.
No small inventors were asked or allowed to comment on the bill President Obama signed into law. This fact alone speaks more eloquently then I about the problems now plaguing our Patent System.
It would appear that this person has never applied for or been granted a patent. 7 years? I have one software application that is in its 8th year of consideration by the US Patent Office. I've another hardware application that was filed 9 years ago with no end in sight.
It is completely and utterly impossible to have a system which grants coverage for N years after filing and which also takes longer then N to grant the patent.
By the way a basic piece of software does not go stale in a couple decades. On the other hand some of the stuff granted starts out stale on application.
The lack of surface water and air to conduct away heat is a great advantage. Solar collectors on the moon or in synchronous orbit can turn the loose rock and rock outcroppings into lava.
Lava can line pits dug into the surface to form components which then can assembled into surface structures. Subsurface areas can be coated with lava.
More surface regolith can be refined to make glass.
CNC router in common usage means a supported head and translating table, one axis translation on the table (x) and two on the head (y and z) or fully translating head over a table. Great ideas in a shop environment where the material handling is left to other machines and people. A really bad idea along with the 3D printer to build any large structure on the moon.
What is needed on the moon, or the Atlas Mountains in Moroco is a fully translating head on a tripod or similar mount with active telescoping legs and a capability to lift and move the material.
When a team creates an invention as is true here in 5,597,520 and then tries directly or even indirectly to enforce that patent it is absolutely honorable and correct for them to try to do so.
It may not be wise or good business, but they have the high moral ground.
Every yahoo who bleats on this and other blogs about the evil of patents in general rather a specific patent or specific players actions, and who implies some vague moral failing of people who frequently give their lives for their visions for mens futures is the voice of powerful companies who would like nothing better then that juries favor the wealthy and powerful over the EVIL INVENTOR and PATENT OWNER.
The patent at issue was partially complete and filed in 1990 and therefor expired at least in part in 2010. Other parts expire in 2013. Formlabs certainly has only the most modest of sales now (one presumes) and had none at all in 2010.
Such a suit at best can collect damages based on lost revenues etc. Hard to see much damages.
I certainly believe 3D has done the world a service working in the late 80's on 3D printing issues when much of the crew at Formlabs were still in diapers still there is little here and 3D should not waste many hundreds of thousands of dollars to chase an empty cup.
In two years their patent 5,597,520 will be completely in the public domain.
For the same reason Formlabs should avoid paying lawyers and just make a deal that provides something to 3D for the max time they have left. Understanding that the time depends on exactly what is infringing and which of the continuations it became part of the patent. Could be anything from 0 to 2 years but not more.
There is one possible nasty bug in ointment Dennis R. Smalley put himnself as principal inventor and as PATENT COUNSEL!
This could mean he is a great genius or that Formlabs was so poor he had to do the patent attorney duty or (God save Formlabs) he could be an ego maniacal Lawyer who intrudes on the engineers domain and uber pugnacious... a schmuck who must win at all cost and one who has no cost of suit to moderate the choices of 3D's governing counsel.
I certainly could find out more about Smalley and maybe even offer a work around to Formlabs but I've got to focus on the paying tasks. Hopefully this will help.
Of course that has not stopped the Apple history rewriters from trying to assert this unacceptable lie.
It's too bad since the truth is actually even better then the lie. The truth is that the Steve's made a product that for it's day was focused on the everyday person rather then a computer literate clientele.
And the biggest, most important truth that the combination of Apple II and Visicalc MADE A TURN KEY SOLUTION< AND IT MADE APPLE"S FORTUNE. Too bad Visicalc got screwed but then no one said Jobs wasn't greedy.
What I find amazing is that no one wants to give credit for the first desk top graphics PC which was being shipped before Apple was formed as a company. This million point display complete computer with integrated display, keyboard, digital tape drive, and ROM packs included a RS232C or high speed GPIB bus also was combined with one of if not the first PC board, and Mechanical design software applications years before autocad existed. The magic turnkey solution included a 48 inch digital roll plotter and small flatbed plotter (to prototype PCBs up to 8 inches). Could not sell enough of them in 1978 so the plotter company bought out the little Berkeley start-up and history was then written by autocad.
The Graphics computer Tektronix, the software company iCorp. iCorp also had a touch screen, touch pad pointing product it called the joypad or ipad which it tried to sell to the major pointing device user of the day Atari and all the small little start-ups, kentucky fried computers, and many others including a LATE comer named Apple. The guy in the front part of the little store front Steve Jobs said that he and his partner could not see any real use for such a pointing device or why anyone would need more then the character graphics offered by Apple that very day. Anyway, said Steve, their customers could always buy a real joystick.
So let's get it straight there was a visionary at Apple his name is Alan Kay and he left a long time ago.
Jobs could drive a mean team to completion in a mean way.
Woz is a great guy not a visionary then or now. However in no way am I saying he could not prove me wrong tomorrow and I really hope he does.
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