cduan

7 ms·

1.
Patent to Human-Readable Text Converter(sbf5.com)
2 points by cduan 12y ago|0 comments
2.
by cduan 13y ago
This will inevitably draw comparisons to Knuth's METAFONT and Computer Modern font family (as it should). It does suggest, to me, one particularly interesting use case: one could automatically measure parameters for an existing font, a
3.
Tell Us Your Patents Horror Story(publicknowledge.org)
1 points by cduan 13y ago|0 comments
4.
White House to act against patent trolls(thehill.com)
2 points by cduan 13y ago|0 comments
5.
Congress takes aim at patent trolls(thehill.com)
37 points by cduan 13y ago|16 comments
6.
by cduan 14y ago
The point of PG's essay is well-taken, but I'm not really sure how the linked article really applies other than at a superficial level. I can't find a recent press release from which this article was derived; the closest one is the cited Ba
7.
by cduan 14y ago
So here's what I gather, after having read the lower court opinion and several of the briefs. Monsanto owns a patent on certain soybean seeds. They sell 1G seeds to farmers, allowing the farmers to grow them into 2G seeds. The farmers are n
8.
by cduan 14y ago
I wonder if this algorithm would still present biases given the fact that large cities tend to vote differently from less densely populated areas. My hypothesis is that this algorithm would favor city voters over rural voters, for the follo
9.
by cduan 14y ago
Here's the patent (7,266,767): http://www.google.com/patents?id=bHeBAAAAEBAJ
10.
by cduan 14y ago
The reason for setting up a DMCA takedown policy is precisely so that the site doesn't have to deal with copyright infringement: by doing a fairly minimal task of responding to takedown notices, the site operator gets freedom from liability
11.
by cduan 14y ago
Interesting--there is an email address listed. Wonder what happens if you email your notification there? Presumably, if you do, you are in compliance with the statute, regardless of the no-email policy, so they would have to do the takedown
12.
by cduan 14y ago
Is this new? Because I can't find a corresponding listing in the Copyright Office's list of service provider agents ( http://www.copyright.gov/onlinesp/list/a_agents.html ). The reason I'm wondering is that the Copyright Office does require
13.
by cduan 14y ago
Here is one summary I found: http://uscfsales.wordpress.com/2011/07/01/an-“easy”-engine-f...
14.
by cduan 14y ago
Here's the solution I came up with: http://sbf5.com/~cduan/technical/turing/
15.
What Does the Google Turing Bunny Doodle Do?(sbf5.com)
46 points by cduan 14y ago|8 comments
16.
by cduan 14y ago
tl;dr: Use \A and \z rather than ^ and $ in regexps, because the latter two match newlines in the middle of strings, whereas the former strictly only match the beginning and end of strings. I thought this was common knowledge, but it's a go
17.
by cduan 15y ago
Here's what I would like to know: has this lack of privacy resulted in the author not doing something he would have liked to do otherwise? Because the real problem with privacy invasion is not the information that is collected (which more o
18.
by cduan 15y ago
I feel like any regular SEO advice book has most of the steps of the claims of this patent. 1. A computer-implemented method comprising: receiving a document containing content for distribution via one or more online media distribution chan
19.
by cduan 15y ago
> A ridiculously broad first claim does no harm That might be true other than the fact that each claim gives rise to an individual legal right. A ridiculously broad first claim can be asserted as in a cease-and-desist, it can be the bas
20.
by cduan 15y ago
So it seems that the "abstract idea" under Bilski has turned into "does it look complicated enough." In Research Techs. Corp. v. Microsoft Corp., from last year, the court said that a method of halftoning was not abstract, because it involv
21.
What Does First to File Mean in the Patent Reform Act?(eecs.harvard.edu)
1 points by cduan 15y ago|0 comments
22.
by cduan 15y ago
I didn't see any science-related words when I took the test. Not sure if this is because of the process by which they made the word lists, or because there truly are not many common science-related words.
23.
by cduan 15y ago
I think that they mean copyright registrations, not patent applications: http://www.copyright.gov/eco/help-deposit.html "In any copy option where portions of the code are blocked out, the blocked-out portions must be proportionately less
24.
by cduan 15y ago
I've always thought that the best response to "Privacy is less important because I've got nothing to hide" is what I call the "privacy lets you pick your nose" argument. There are plenty of things that we like to do in private, that are not
25.
by cduan 15y ago
I've always thought it would be nice if you could cause Ruby to dump its heap and symbol table to a file, which could then be loaded by other instances of Ruby. So, for example, you could run Ruby, load all of the Rails files, and then save
26.
by cduan 15y ago
Here is a link to an article with links to the agreement, the order unsealing it, etc. http://paidcontent.org/article/419-righthavens-secret-contra... Upon a quick read, I notice that the Defendants' brief argues, on page 9, section III,
27.
by cduan 16y ago
Technically, in the days when programs were written directly in machine code, weren't they all "open source"?
28.
by cduan 16y ago
I find it interesting that now both the FTC and a good chunk of the Supreme Court* have warned against vague patents. So far it has been generally hard to challenge patents on grounds of vagueness, as it can only be done in court during an
29.
by cduan 16y ago
There's actually a whole lot more to this patent reform bill than the article lets on. Here is an article listing the proposals: http://www.patentlyo.com/patent/2011/02/patent-reform-act-of... I'm particularly interested in the new third-
30.
by cduan 16y ago
PostScript is another stack-based language based on Forth, but with specialized graphics commands. It also has the delightful property that many printers can interpret it. I always wished I had known this while taking my intro CS courses, s

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