Apple, Samsung, Google and the smartphone patent wars - everything you need to know | Technology Following Eric Schmidt's remark to Kara Swisher in October that he wouldn't comment on the smartphone patent wars because he "doesn't understand all the details", we'd like to be of service. Yes, Eric Schmidt is far smarter than me, and probably than anyone reading this piece (unless your name is Larry or Sergey and your surname is Page or Brin), but we find that if you break these things down into small pieces, it's easy enough. So here is your comprehensive guide to understanding what's behind the smartphone patent wars. (Note: contains pictures of kittens. Well, one picture.) The legal details in this article were checked by Darren Smyth, patent and design attorney and partner at IP law firm EIP. What is a patent? What is a patent? Yes, let's start here. Let's unpack that. a) novel - so a patent application can be disqualified by "prior art" showing the same concept portrayed elsewhere at or before the application Are all patents the same? Nope. What's a "trade dress" patent? What's FRAND?
Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords survives assassination attempt - National Airlines/Airport United States Member of Congress Gabrielle Giffords, survived a gunshot wound which reportedly passed through her brain on Saturday, January 8, 2011 at about 10:00 a.m. local time. She was attending a "Congress on your Corner" Congressional constituent event at a Safeway supermarket in northwest Tucson, Arizona when she was shot at point blank range. At least nine others who were near her were injured, with one report of a fatality. According to the Associated Press (AP), a suspect in the shooting, Jared Lee Loughner, age 22, from Tucson, AZ, is being held in police custody. Mr. Laughner is alleged to have used a 9mm handgun with an extended magazine. President Obama has sent FBI Director Robert Mueller to Arizona to head the investigation into the shootings, which also took the life of a Federal judge, 64-year-old John McCarthy Roll. Rep. The Congresswoman serves on the Subcommittee on Space and Aeronautics. Media sources noted that Giffords was one of the U.S. Tell us your thoughts.
How Products Are Made Security Flaws in the TSA Pre-Check System and the Boarding Pass Check System. « Puckinflight I’m publishing this because I am seriously concerned with boarding pass security in the United States. The way TSA Pre-Check works is the organizations that participate transmit travel information for passengers who opt-in to the program to the TSA. Then the TSA in a way that randomizes security determines if the passenger is or is not eligible for Pre-Check and sends that information back to the Airline. The Airline then encodes that information in a barcode that is on the boarding pass it issues. The problem is, the passenger and flight information encoded in barcode is not encrypted in any way. So, here you see my flight information for my United flight from PHX to EWR. What terrorists or really anyone can do is use a website to decode the barcode and get the flight information, put it into a text file, change the 1 to a 3, then use another website to re-encode it into a barcode. Pre-Check balances the need to expedite security, and keep it thorough. So, there are two problems here.
Space Shuttle Endeavour Space Shuttle Endeavour (Orbiter Vehicle Designation: OV-105) is one of the retired orbiters of the Space Shuttle program of NASA, the space agency of the United States.[1] Endeavour was the fifth and final spaceworthy NASA space shuttle to be built, and first flew in May 1992 on mission STS-49 with its last mission being STS-134 in May 2011.[2][3] The STS-134 mission was originally planned as the final mission of the Space Shuttle program,[4] but with authorization of the STS-135 mission, Atlantis became the last Space Shuttle to fly. The United States Congress authorized the construction of Endeavour in 1987 to replace Challenger, which was lost in the STS-51-L launch accident where the Space Shuttle Challenger blew up about two minutes into flight in 1986. Structural spares built during the construction of Discovery and Atlantis, two of the previous shuttles, were used in its assembly. History[edit] Endeavour rollout ceremony in May 1991 Service[edit] Early milestones[edit] Flights[edit]
wiseGEEK: clear answers for common questions The shape of things to come: A consumer's guide to 3D printers CES 2013 proved to be something of a coming out party for consumer-facing 3D printers. Sure MakerBot earned a fair amount of attention at last year's show with the announcement of the Replicator, which snagged its share of awards from various press outlets. This year, however, saw a relative deluge in 3D-printing representation, with strong showings from 3D Systems, FormLabs, MakerBot and the cloud-based 3D printer, Sculpteo. Even with so many companies rising to prominence, the dream of truly mainstream 3D printing still feels a ways off -- if that is indeed where we're inevitably heading. These nascent days are an exciting time, with a diverse array of companies and organizations vying to be the first to bring the technology to our homes. In a sense, many roads lead back to RepRap, the open-source, community-fueled project aimed at creating a self-replicating machine. 3D Systems 3D Systems has been in the 3D-printing game since before the term was coined. Bits from Bytes Eventorbot Pwdr
Top 10 Common Faults In Human Thought Humans The human mind is a wonderful thing. Cognition, the act or process of thinking, enables us to process vast amounts of information quickly. The Gambler’s fallacy is the tendency to think that future probabilities are altered by past events, when in reality, they are not. Reactivity is the tendency of people to act or appear differently when they know that they are being observed. Pareidolia is when random images or sounds are perceived as significant. Interesting Fact: the Rorschach Inkblot test was developed to use pareidolia to tap into people’s mental states. Self-fulfilling Prophecy Self-fulfilling prophecy is engaging in behaviors that obtain results that confirm existing attitudes. Interesting Fact: Economic Recessions are self-fulfilling prophecies. The Halo effect is the tendency for an individual’s positive or negative trait to “spill over” to other areas of their personality in others’ perceptions of them. Escalation of Commitment
Is Antibacterial Soap Bad For You? It seems like everything is antibacterial these days, from soaps and lotions to mattress pads and pizza cutters, which really makes you wonder how the world got along before the discovery of Triclosan. Ah, Triclosan, the miracle-working active ingredient in antibacterial soaps, toothpastes, and a galaxy of other consumer products: this unassuming antibacterial compound has infiltrated nearly every aspect of our lives. In my posts for this week and the next I’ll be exploring the profound effects Triclosan has on human health, the environment, and antibiotic resistance, all to answer the (deceptively) simple question: is antibacterial soap bad for you? Bacteria are attacking our pizza? What is Triclosan, and why is it in Pizza cutters? Triclosan was developed as a broad-spectrum antibiotic (that is, to kill a wide range of bacteria) and has been used in clinical settings since the late ‘60s to help prevent nosocomial (that is, hospital-borne) infections. “Out, damn’d spot! Human toxicity?
What do you say? “All modern American literature,” Ernest Hemingway wrote, “comes from one book by Mark Twain called Huckleberry Finn.” Being an iconic classic, however, hasn’t protected Adventures of Huckleberry Finn from being banned, bowdlerized and bleeped. It hasn’t protected the novel from being cleaned up, updated and “improved.” A new effort to sanitize Huckleberry Finn comes from Alan Gribben, a professor of English at Auburn University, at Montgomery, Alabama, who has produced a new edition of Twain’s novel that replaces the word “nigger” with “slave.” Gribben has said he worried that the N-word had resulted in the novel falling off reading lists, and that he thought his edition would be welcomed by schoolteachers and university instructors who wanted to spare “the reader from a racial slur that never seems to lose its vitriol.” Controversies over Huckleberry Finn occur with predictable regularity.
There Goes the Neighborhood: Mobile Victorian House Sets Sail for Desert Burning Man is flipping weird. The annual pilgrimage draws tens of thousands of attendees to the middle of an inhospitable desert where they enjoy a week of delusional mayhem, often in a haze of physical and spiritual intoxication (not to mention the dust clouds that frequently cover the sky). In this wild dimension where fantasy and reality collide, it’s not uncommon to see giant moving sculptures and “art-cars,” often spouting flames and exhibiting all kinds of mechanical wizardry. To compound the madness, contraptions featuring mechanical devices from bygone eras are also added to the mix, none of which are quite so magical as a nomadic 19th-century structure called the Neverwas Haul. Equal parts locomotive engine, steamship, and Victorian house, the Neverwas Haul is home to the “Travelling Academy of UnNatural Science.” “Even though we have ray guns and amazing flying machines, we wear top hats and wool jackets.” Top: The Neverwas Haul in its full glory at Burning Man.