customerservant.com » Technology

IBM Wants To Control Your Car

Amanda — Fri, 28 May 2010 00:28:44 +0000

IBM has recently taken a step forward towards throwing privacy out the window by submitting a patent application for “A System and Method
for Controlling Vehicle Engine Running State at Busy Intersections for
Increased Fuel Consumption Efficiency”.
This system would operate via traffic lights.

It goes without saying that this is a bad thing. As Ariel Schwartz points out, hackers could get ahold of this, which means very bad things could happen, and let’s not even get into what would happen if GovCo got control of a system like this. I don’t believe for a second that something like this would be used solely for fule efficiency. I suspect, however, that the patent will be granted. Brave New World, here we come.

Silicon Israel

Amanda — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 21:09:58 +0000

George Gilder’s essay over at City Journal is well worth the time it will take to read it. It chronicles Israel’s rise from a technological and economic backwater to a center of innovation,
second in absolute achievement only to the United States, and on a per-capita basis dwarfing the contributions of all other nations, America included. What I loke most about it though is the hope it expresses for this technological development to serve as a bridge between Arabs and Jews, and that if both sides concentrate on the technological development possible in the region, the entire Middle East could be raised up out of the situation it currently finds itself in. Go read the whole thing. Hat-tip: Michael J. Totten.

Lawsuit Leads to Reconsideration of Patent

Amanda — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 21:22:14 +0000

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has re-examined a patent held by the developer of a screen reader for blind computer users in connection with an infringement lawsuit filed against a competing company. The Document Placemarker patent, held by Freedom Scientific, Inc., covers a specialized screen reading capability that allows a blind person to save their position on a Web page and return to the same place at a later time. The company’s Job Access With Speech (JAWS) screen reading software incorporates this feature. In a “world’s leading manufacturer of assistive technology products for those who are vision impaired” accused GW Micro, the developer of the competing Window-Eyes screen reader, of deliberate patent infringement, claiming their placemarker technology is the same as that described in the patent. (See here for a complete analysis of both place marker methods). According to court documents, Freedom Scientific is seeking an injunction requiring GW Micro to stop including the placemarker feature in their product, asks for significant unspecified financial compensation for the infringement and requests recovery of legal fees. “I believe that this technology shouldn’t have been patented to begin with,” said Doug Geoffray, Vice President of Development with GW Micro, Inc. “It obviously was around way before what they’ve done. We have stated that our version, Window-Eyes 3.1 back in 1999, had previous position capability.” The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office agreed. In a re-examination of Freedom Scientific’s patent, at the request of GW Micro’s attorneys, the office rejected all claims to the invention. “A person shall be entitled to a patent unless the invention was patented or described in a printed publication in this or a foreign country or in public use or on sale in this country, more than one year prior to the date of application for patent in the United States,” stated a published document describing the re-examination as the basis for the patent’s rejection on the grounds that the technology had already been invented.
As further justification for the determination of the Patent Office, the examiner cited Patent 6085161 describing the invention of a system for assigning and playing specific sounds when a Web page changes or the user encounters a specific Web page element such as a header or list. All of the claims in Freedom Scientific’s patent were rejected based on the positioning techniques described in this “sonification” system. The examiner also cited Patent 7058887 describing a means of determining the position on a Web page according to user-defined settings, including the page’s domain. This IBM patent was referenced in the re-examination as clarification for the rejection of the sixth claim in Freedom Scientific’s complaint.
Also cited was the availability of IBM’s Home Page Reader, a product employing place marker technology prior to the Freedom Scientific patent. “We take that as a positive sign,” Geoffray said. “It’s a victory,” said Dennis Karjala, Jack E. Brown Professor of Law, Faculty Fellow, Center for the Study of Law, Science, & Technology at Arizona State University’s Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law. “There’s no question that, if the re-examination decision is upheld, that’s the end of it. There is no patent.” He said Freedom Scientific may still have some cards to play in this case. “The patent owner in a re-examination proceeding may appeal,” Karjala said. “It goes to an appeals board within the Patent Office and then they can later seek judicial review. This thing could go on for awhile.” According to the re-examination document, the Patent Office must receive a response from Freedom Scientific by Oct. 28 if it wishes to appeal the decision. Karjala said the legal trend points to a probable GW Micro victory. “Because the Supreme Court has been reviewing so many of their cases with an obvious eye to overturning them, the Patent Office is pretty sensitive now that they’re being accused of being too patent friendly,” said Karjala. “My guess is once you got a ruling by the examiner that the patent is invalid, I’d say the chances are pretty good it will be upheld by the board in the Patent Office. If it’s upheld by the board, the chances that a court would overturn it in this atmosphere are pretty slim.” Freedom Scientific representatives declined to comment, citing the ongoing litigation.

IDF Developing Sabbath-Friendly Keyboard, Computer Screen

Amanda — Sun, 07 Jun 2009 01:30:46 +0000

(IsraelNN.com) The IDF Rabbinate is hard at work on the development of a special touch screen that would make it possible to use vital computer systems without violating Sabbath, reports IDF magazine BaMachaneh (In the Camp).

Operational considerations mandate the use of computer systems like ‘Masua’ or ‘Sheder Cham 400’ during the Sabbath. These systems inform their operators of the location of IDF units during operations and battles. Other systems, like the IDF’s medical information system, named CPR, must also be used on Sabbath.

Rabbis Oppose Use Of Internet During Study For Conversion

Amanda — Thu, 21 May 2009 17:21:40 +0000

Here’s another anti-tech alert. Why doesn’t this surprise me?

Rabbinic Conversion Court judges are more likely to reject prospective converts who were partially trained via the Internet, a senior source in the Conversion Authority said Sunday.
According to the source, about 70% of prospective converts who are interviewed by the conversion court are accepted. However, among prospective converts who were trained in part via the Internet, only about half are accepted, said the source.
The issue of conversions comes to the forefront ahead of Shavuot, which is celebrated with the reading of the biblical story of Ruth, the archetypical convert to Judaism.

According to the above-referenced conversion court source, the court can tell the difference between people who study partially using the internet, and those who study using only books and a face-to-face teacher. I maintain, however, that this isn’t a matter of the internet producing lower-quality students, or the internet providing lower-quality material, but students either not utilizing it properly, or students finding alternative oppinions of rabbis who don’t necessarily hold like the rabbis sitting on the conversion panel, and thus these students are disqualified. During my conversion studies in 1999/2000, if it hadn’t been for the internet, I would have never gotten the information I needed. I devoured JewFaq, and to this day I use it as a partial reference, along with Project Genesis and Aish Hatorah due to the almost complete inavailability of seforim in any sort of accessible format. And until this complete inavailability is changed, I’ll continue to do so, or I’ll have to buy print seforim and then scan them, correct the mistakes that creep in through OCR, and then, finally, read it. So in my eyes, this annti-tech decree strikes me as a luddite one at best.
Hat-tip.