Despite competition from Acer and Packard Bell, among others, Alienware won’t be intimidated in the gaming arena and has recently updated its power notebook range with another high-end model.
The new Area 51 m17x offers a 17″ display and a choice of specifications based around Intel’s Core 2 Extreme X9000 processor.
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Thanks to the whole slew of folks who sent this in: TechCrunch has the details on Channel Intelligence, a company that owns a ridiculously broad and obvious patent on creating a list from a database and is now suing a whole bunch of small websites that offer things like wishlists. Read through the claims of the patent and see if you can explain how a single one is possibly new or non-obvious to those in the space. As TechCrunch notes, the lawsuits are all targeted against smaller websites, rather than the big players like eBay or Amazon. There are a variety of reasons why this might be. Channel Intelligence may have approached those companies and actually received a token payout (cheaper than a lawsuit for those companies). Or, perhaps more likely, it’s using these smaller lawsuits to bring in some additional cash and to establish the myth that this patent is valid. That was common a few years back, before people started suing everyone at once for patent infringement. Patent holders would mostly target a few small companies, who wouldn’t be able to launch a strong legal defense — use those “victories” to build up a warchest while also claiming that it showed how the patents are “valid.”
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There’s a growing pile of subnotebooks by the side of my desk, and so far, Hewlett-Packard’s HP2133 Mini-Note is the biggest and the best.
It’s a full-spec ultramobile with a lovely brushed aluminium casing, excellent screen and a keyboard that you can actually touch-type on. As a Wired blog headline put it, it’s “what we really wanted the MacBook Air to be”.
But it’s quite a lot wider and chunkier than an Asus Eee PC900, it’s heavier (from 1.3kg), and it tends to be slow - at least with the Windows Vista running on the version loaned for review. (SuSE Linux is a cheaper option.)
The Mini-Note’s Achilles heel is the 1.2GHz Via C7-M processor, which rates a 1.7 on the Vista Experience Index. In other respects, the machine fares well, with graphics rated 2.9 and the 120GB hard disk scoring 5.2. With the new Via Nano processor, it would be a great machine. An Intel Atom would at least be competitive for its class.
HP knows this, of course. But it’s pitching the machine for educational use (RM is selling it, downgraded to XP), and it had to make deadlines for evaluation purposes.
Waiting for Atom might have meant missing a school year. However, HP may offer an upgraded version when new chips arrive in volume. The Mini-Note is very slow to boot and slow to load programs, but once up and running, the performance is good for its intended uses: word processing, email and web browsing. Vista’s Aero graphics system worked well in 2GB of memory.
The scratch-resistant 8.9 inch screen (same size as the Asus Eee PC900) shows 1280 x 769 pixels, which is in effect the same as the 1280 x 800 you get on the 13.3 inch Dell M1330 or MacBook Air. Everything’s smaller, but that’s fine for younger eyes. The keyboard is a big improvement on rival machines, but should be even better. The Mini-Note keyboard measures 10 x 4 inches, which is only slightly smaller than my IBM ThinkPad X31 (10.2 x 4.2 inches), which has a 12-inch screen. It is far better than the Asus’s 8.3 x 3.1 inch keyboard, but it should be as good as the ThinkPad.
The selection of ports includes ExpressCard (useful for 3G) and SD slots, two USB 2.0 ports, Ethernet and an external monitor port. The Mini-Note also sports Bluetooth 2.0 and Wi-Fi .
HP’s website lists the starting prices as £299 plus VAT for the Linux version, and £349 plus VAT for the Vista Business version tested. Judging by appearances, you’d expect it to cost a lot more.
Pros: High-res screen; good keyboard; big hard drive; well made
Cons: Slow processor; big power brick
View the HP2133 Mini-Note here
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When we talk about intellectual property around here, one of the popular responses from those who disagree with what we say is that “property rights are a central tenant of capitalist economies, and you’re trying to take away property rights.” That’s not quite true. Property rights are indeed an important part of capitalist economies, and we are supporters of property rights — but only for things where property actually makes sense and is necessary. The whole reason why property rights exist in the first place is to manage the efficient allocation of scarce resources — that is to make it clear who controls a specific scarce resource. Property rights don’t make much sense when a resource isn’t scarce, because there need not be any question of how to best allocate it, since anyone who wants it can have it. In those cases, adding property rights actually makes the market less efficient by limiting the allocation.
With that in minds, it’s great to see that there’s apparently a new book that touches on this very subject. Against Monopoly points us to economist Tyler Cowen’s brief review of a new book called: The Gridlock Economy: How Too Much Ownership Wrecks Markets, Stops Innovation, and Costs Lives. The book apparently focuses on the “tragedy of the anti-commons,” which is the situation when too many limitations are placed on how certain goods can be used. Sounds like an interesting book to add to the collection of books recognizing the economic problems that can come with putting property rights where they don’t belong.
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The final details and pricing for the Asus Eee Box PC have just been confirmed and we’re happy to report that this little stunner will set you back just £199.
Available in black and white [no pink yet] it measures just 22.2 x 17.8 x 2.7cm and is powered by Intel’s 1.6GHz Atom N270 chip. It will come with Windows XP to start but a Linux version is planned for later this year. Under the hood, you get an 80GB hard disk drive, 1GB of DDR2 Dram, Ethernet, 802.11n Wi-Fi, a 5-in-1 card reader, 2 or 3 USB 2.0 ports and DVI out. Asus are even throwing in a mouse and keyboard.
One very cool trick for this mini-PC though….
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I was debating whether or not to write anything about this, but William Patry has done a good job discussing how the Heller case may impact copyright, and it’s something I was concerned about, so it should be discussed. No matter what your thoughts on “the right to bear arms” (which was affirmed as an individual right in the Heller decision), it may come back to cause trouble for those of us who believe that intellectual property has gone too far and does not “promote the progress.”
As I’ve pointed out multiple times, one of the big questions concerning whether or not intellectual property law should be strengthened or weakened is based on how you parse the clause in the Constitution that enables Congress to create the IP system:
“The Congress shall have Power… To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;”
By my reading, that means that if the act of securing exclusive rights for a limited time does not promote the progress of science and the useful arts, then it is not covered by the Constitution. That is, the first part of the clause is defining under what conditions (to promote the progress…) it is okay to do certain things (secure exclusive rights). Thus, any intellectual property system that is shown not to promote progress (or worse, to hinder it) is by definition unconstitutional. Others, however, read that first part “promoting the progress” as a sort of “preamble” discussion. Thus, their reading is that securing those exclusive rights for a limited time, by definition, “promotes the progress.”
So, what does the Heller decision on guns have to do with all of this? Well, as some in our comments pointed out way back in March, the key to the Heller decision was how the court interpreted part of the clause: “Because a well regulated Militia is necessary to the security of a free State….” If it interpreted that as meaningless preamble, saying that the right to bear arms had nothing to do with “a well regulated militia” then it opens up some pretty serious questions about constitutional interpretation. As Patry notes, the court can now treat sections of the Constitution it doesn’t like as preamble, rendering them meaningless.
Again, so whether or not you’re happy with the way the court decided the Heller case, the fact that it has no problem deciding that a clause in the Constitution can be ignored as “preamble” could have very bad consequences for those of us pointing out that dangerous innovation-hindering intellectual property systems are against the Constitution. Hopefully, the courts would still recognize that this clause is relevant and not meaningless — but they now have the necessary tools to claim that promoting the progress is meaningless and has no bearing on whether or not a particular intellectual property system is constitutional.
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A few years back, Microsoft decided to shift its strategy on software patents. The contrast in what Microsoft was saying publicly about patents was stark:
Brad Smith, Microsoft general counsel, 2007: “Protection for software patents and other intellectual property is essential to maintaining the incentives that encourage and underwrite technological breakthroughs. In every industry, patents provide the legal foundation for innovation. The ensuing legal disputes may be messy, but protection is no less necessary, even so.”Bill Gates, Microsoft CEO, 1991: “If people had understood how patents would be granted when most of today’s ideas were invented and had taken out patents, the industry would be at a complete standstill today… A future start-up with no patents of its own will be forced to pay whatever price the giants choose to impose.”
If you needed any proof that Microsoft has shifted from a “young company innovates” to an “old company litigates” stance, just take a look at the massive ramp up in patents awarded to Microsoft over the last decade and a half. It’s been steady growth, with a massive leap in the past two years.
Every week, if you follow patents granted to Microsoft you see huge numbers. In the past four weeks alone, Microsoft has been granted 49 patents (June 24), 44 patents (June 17), 42 patents (June 10) and 76 patents (June 3). That’s 211 patents this month alone. Compare that to a company like Google, who was granted a grand total of 7 patents in June.
The patent system was designed to award incentives in the rarest of circumstances — when the free market alone wouldn’t provide the incentives necessary to bring a technology forward. When a single company is getting over 200 patents a month, the system isn’t functioning as intended. It’s not an incentive to innovation. It’s a tax on innovation.
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It looks like Nick Carr is actually a bit late to the game in blaming the internet for making people dumb these days. Someone else is coming out with an entire book called The Dumbest Generation, which claims that today’s kids are totally screwed up thanks to the internet. This book has received enthusiastic reviews from folks, such as a Chicago Sun Times columnist, trotting out the modern version of the “those young whippersnappers” lines. The evidence? The fact that kids use the internet more to communicate with others, rather than to suck at the teat of the established “authoritative” media.
Romenesko, however, points us to a fantastic response from another reporter, Steve Rhodes, who points out how dumb it is to call this generation dumb thanks to the internet. In fact, he makes the point quite clear, by noting that the idea that the established media, such as the Chicago Sun Times, is somehow a bastion of intelligence is easily debunked:
And I’m not sure where a Sun-Times columnist gets off complaining that the Internet is dumbing down America while the paper is running a “Which Team’s Fans Are Hotter?” contest.
As for all that communication going on? That helps make people smarter:
I’m a Facebook fan. It’s very powerful, and I’ve hardly begun to exploit all of its capabilities…. I feel smarter after spending time on Facebook; I feel dumber after reading the local newspapers….
He then gets the other columnist to admit that he’s never even seen Facebook, despite bashing it as being a terrible thing for kids to be using all the time.
I’m not trying to pick on Lazare - well, actually I am - but he’s emblematic of a newspaper creature that is just beyond me. See, he didn’t want to know what he was talking about. He just didn’t want to know….But newspapers went off the rails at just the moment the Internet flourished as an even better place to do journalism and communicate with people. It should have been a glorious melding of the minds for a better, more creative and fun and civically inspired tomorrow, but all newspaper people could see was the threat, not the opportunity.
So, again, just as with every generation, there will be a group of folks who complain that today is somehow worse, and “back in my day” things were somehow better. None of it’s true. Things change, the world adapts — and if you choose not to, things may seem worse, but it isn’t in any real objective sense. But, in the meantime, for those folks who are scared of change and afraid of actually recognizing how the changing world is full of opportunities, it means there’s an opportunity to sell silly books with provocative headlines. Moral outrage ahead! The kids are using Facebook rather than flipping baseball cards and throwing jacks!
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We’ve written a few times about the rush to patent various tax strategies. That, by itself, should be evidence enough of some of the problems with the patent system. However, rather than deal with those larger problems, it appears that our Congressional Representatives are trying to take the cheap way out: creating a special exemption that would exempt taxpayers and tax preparers from risking infringement should they use any of these “patented” tax strategies. While this bill may be well-intentioned, like the attempt to allow banks to ignore a questionable patent on check scanning, it’s the wrong approach. Rather than dealing with the root causes of problems with the patent system, these bills look to paper over the manifestations of those problems. In the long run, such laws (if they become law) would only make the system worse. It’s nice that Rep. Rick Boucher (who often is on the right side when it comes to intellectual property issues) recognizes that tax preparation patents are a problem — but this isn’t the way to solve them.
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While Nick Carr is getting a lot of attention for his weakly supported conjecture that the internet is making people dumber, perhaps a much more interesting question is how technology is changing the way we think about knowledge and information. Carr’s piece was sort of the modern equivalent of parents from a generation ago worrying about kids using calculators in school and forgetting how to do math. Of course, that didn’t happen. It just allowed individuals to better use the tools at their disposal to do even more interesting and complicated mathematics.
The same thing appears to be happening with modern technologies as well. They’re acting as an extension of what’s available, and changing the way we think about knowledge and what’s important to remember. That lets people “outsource” parts of what they used to need to remember to a backup brain (i.e., technology), and use their primary brain to work on more important things. This becomes even more interesting when you connect it to studies that have shown the real determinant of intelligence isn’t necessarily how much you remember, but what your brain decides to forget. If we can train ourselves to ignore easily accessible data, and leave our brains to focus on more important tasks, then it’s quite possible that technology can enable people to do much more complex thinking.
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