Peer-To-Peer News - The Week In Review - September 17th, ’05

[JackSpratts]

eDonkey - Still a Force to Be Reckoned With
Drew Wilson

It seems that it is all a matter of taste when it comes to what P2P programs people use. Recent statistics couldn't have proved it further.

Equipment maker "Sandvine" has verified an earlier claim by Cache Logic reported by Slyck that eDonkey is the most popular network in France and Germany. Meanwhile, BitTorrent remains a home favorite in the UK and North America.

One thing remains constant in statistical analysis however, P2P (peer-to-peer) networks just are not going to go away with the new Australian ruling on Kazaa. In Europe, for broadband users, upstream traffic represents up to 85% of all bandwidth consumed. As for downstream, the figure is about 60% of total consumed. Meanwhile, in the UK and North America, 76% upstream and 48% downstream is consumed by p2p networks in total.

"P2P file sharing is here to stay," confirms managing director of EMEA marketing and sales Chris Colman. "P2P file sharing is a valuable subscriber application. Broadband service providers need to have visibility into these popular subscriber applications so they can reduce congestion in the network and ensure their subscribers' quality of experience."

So who is the leader in p2p bandwidth? Currently, it is the French transferring an astounding 90% on upload and 85% download on average per day. All the while in Germany, the charts showed 83% upstream and 65% downstream.

eDonkey is the most popular application in France and Germany grabbing 50% of all P2P traffic while BitTorrent sits at 26%. The other networks (which include FastTrack, WinMX, and Direct Connect) soak up less then 10% of the remaining slice of the pie.

eDonkey handles about 72% of all file-sharing traffic in Germany with competing BitTorrent sitting at 16%. In France, EDonkey swallows 80% of all French P2P traffic, leaving BitTorrent behind with FastTrack and Gnutella.

Chris Colman adds, "After the legal claims from the film industry earlier in the year, there was a slight mass market blip in BitTorrent usage, but it's on the rise again as more sites have emerged. We are also seeing an increase in legitimate file sharing with open source software distribution and paid download sites."

BitTorrent continues to lead the way in the UK and North America with 36% and 48% respectively. These two regions see a more diversified mix of P2P protocols including eDonkey, FastTrack, WinMX, Direct Connect, and Ares.

Broadcast access technologist of Yankee Group Lindsay Schroth said, "Broadband service providers need to understand their subscribers' usage behavior to relieve congestion in the network, and meet the needs of their subscribers while enhancing their quality of experience."

The study, which was conducted by Sandvine, gathered data across a select sample of broadband service provider networks and used a 20 million user sample worldwide.

Sandvine intelligent broadband network solutions gives service providers tools to identify threats and emerging applications, reduce network congestion, protect subscribers, their applications, and enhance subscriber quality of experience.
http://www.slyck.com/news.php?story=907





Sometimes It's Fair Game To Shoot The Messenger
By Rebecca Giblin-Chen

In the last five years, file-sharing application Kazaa Media Desktop was downloaded an astonishing 389 million times - mostly for the purposes of copyright infringement.

Its users download billions of files every month, most of which are unauthorised copies of popular music, says the international recording industry.

But the decision handed down last week by the Federal Court may end the Kazaa free-for-all. The court held several defendants liable for authorising the copyright infringements of Kazaa users and ordered them to stop.

The facts are muddied by a complex corporate structure. Kazaa owner Sharman Networks is incorporated in Vanuatu - a country where it is an offence to reveal the controllers behind any Vanuatuan international company. It has no employees but is operated by the staff of Australian company LEF Interactive, who work with US companies Brilliant Digital Entertainment and its subsidiary, Altnet.

Also found liable for authorising copyright infringement were the companies' CEOs - Nicola Hemming (LEF), and former Australian businessman and founder of software distributor Sega Ozisoft, Kevin Bermeister, (Brilliant Digital Entertainment, Altnet).

How much they owe the music industry that brought the civil claim against them will be tallied later but it will be substantial. Meanwhile, they must change the Kazaa software in one of two ways in order to avoid further liability.

The first option is to use keyword filtering - the music industry would compile a list of song titles and artist names that Sharman would have to block from search results.

The second option is what the court called "gold file flood filtering".

Most Kazaa search results are for "blue" files that come free from other users. But some searches return "gold" file results - non-infringing commercial properties to be bought. A user searching for a copyrighted item would receive only gold file results.

Both methods are susceptible to problems with people having similar names. Keywords based on song titles are broader - if you want to use Kazaa to distribute your own music, try to avoid naming your songs using common words such as "love", "angel" or "heart".

False-negatives arise when the keyword filter does not recognise a file name as being likely to contain a copyrighted work. This is likely to give the music industry a serious headache. It is simple to change a file name to one that is similar but not identical. When Napster was ordered by a US court to implement a keyword filtering system four years ago, its enterprising users got around it by using pig-latin. Instead of "Britney Spears", songs could be found by searching for "itneyBray earsSpay".

Despite its problems, filtering significantly reduces Kazaa's attractiveness as a pirate bazaar. Most users will not have the knowhow or inclination to get around it. In the court's view, reduced copyright infringement outweighed the downsides.

The decision need not panic Australian file-sharing developers. In order to fall foul of the copyright laws they would have to authorise their users to infringe copyright. In this case, that meant promoting Kazaa as a file- sharing service (with only token warnings against infringement), knowing it was mainly used for infringement and having increased earnings based on the number of infringing users. For consumers, this decision makes it harder to use Kazaa to download. But it does not affect their legal position. Anybody who shares copyrighted songs over a service such as Kazaa is still liable for infringement.

No matter how effective the filtering turns out to be, this decision won't mean an end to peer-to-peer file sharing. Kazaa's status as the most popular file-sharing application long ago fell to competitors such as eDonkey2000 and BitTorrent.
http://www.smh.com.au/news/platform/...377250493.html





DCIA Addresses Australian Federal Court Decision in Universal v. Sharman Case

Trade Association offers alternatives to litigation.
Press Release

The Distributed Computing Industry Association (www.DCIA.info), a trade organization with fifty-six members representing peer-to-peer (P2P) software providers, content rights holders, and service-and-support companies, responded to last Monday’s Australian Federal Court decision in the Universal v. Sharman case (Universal Music Australia Pty Ltd v Sharman License Holdings Ltd 2005 FCA 1242) by reaffirming its commitment to foster commercial development of the distributed computing industry.

“This was an initial ruling and the case is not yet completed, and while the DCIA is optimistic that its ultimate conclusion will lead to continued expansion of this global industry, we must also re-emphasize the greater importance of achieving long-term commercial solutions based on marketplace and technological realities,” said DCIA CEO Marty Lafferty.

The DCIA urges renewed efforts to develop and deploy market solutions as a more valuable and enduring approach than seeking answers in the courts. Enormous challenges in harnessing digital technologies for the distribution of popular entertainment content still remain, but can best be addressed by parties working together rather than pursuing litigation.

The Distributed Computing Industry Association was formed in 2003 to assist all affected parties – content, P2P, and support interests – in finding common ground and building a robust new digital marketplace.

The hope that these parties would devote at least as much attention to the business of finding new business models as they have devoted to the litigation that was raging in 2003 has not been fully realized. Some parties have refrained from serious pursuit of commercial solutions with the false hope that litigation would solve their problems. Driving Napster out of business did not stop copyright infringement; nor will attempting to drive current leading P2P companies out of business.

The DCIA is not a party to any litigation; nor does it take sides in litigation except to promote its mission, the commercial development of distributed computing. The trade association provides a neutral forum for Members and other industry players to work together to advance new business models.

Of the major lawsuits prosecuted by the content community, the Australian case, once it reaches its conclusion through the completion of an ongoing appeal process, will mark the end of one of the major disputes. And the primary takeaway from Judge Wilcox’s initial ruling was his exhortation of the parties to work together.

The court cited two areas for collaboration as perhaps the most promising, although beyond the scope of this case: “more widespread licensing of copyrighted works” and “making compact discs (CDs) less susceptible to ripping.” The DCIA provides a forum to explore various approaches for implementing such measures on a practical level.

Judge Wilcox committed “not to make an order which the respondents are not able to obey, except at the unacceptable cost of preventing the sharing of files which do not infringe the applicants’ copyright.” Again, the best, if not only way, to accomplish this is through cooperative efforts. As the judge noted, “There needs to be an opportunity for the respondents to modify the Kazaa system in a targeted way, so as to protect the applicants’ copyright interests (as far as possible) but without unnecessarily intruding on others’ freedom of speech and communication.”

The DCIA supports a timely exploration of the feasibility of the court’s prescribed, “keyword filtering and gold-file flood filtering” given that “the injunctive order will be satisfied if the respondents take either of these steps” and that “continuation of the Kazaa Internet file-sharing system shall not be regarded as a contravention if that system is modified so that the software program received by all new users contains” one of these solutions. The DCIA’s interest is in the broader implications of such approaches.

To this end, promptly upon the final conclusion of the judicial proceedings in this case, the DCIA proposes the formation of a working group of voluntary participants with a diversity of interests to develop recommendations for optimal approaches to P2P filtering based on real-world conditions. Alternatives such as Macrovision’s recently announced Hawkeye, Audible Magic’s relevant solutions, and Loudeye’s OverPeer offerings should also be evaluated in this context.

The court acknowledged that “even with the best will in the world, the respondents cannot totally prevent copyright infringement by users.” But by working together with the applicants, certainly much more can be achieved than has been by prolonged estrangement.

As Judge Wilcox stated, “Even an imperfect filter would go far to protect copyright owners, provided they were prepared to go to the trouble of providing and updating a list of keywords (titles, performers etc.)”. Again, this type of collaboration – rather than litigation – is essential to make progress in curtailing online copyright infringement and has always been at the heart of the DCIA’s mission.

Indeed, the cooperative measures needed to implement gold-file flood filtering comprise the major steps required to license content for monetized P2P distribution, and perhaps will pave the way for that ultimate outcome, which would be the most beneficial result for the parties.

It is also worth noting that Judge Wilcox concluded that, “It is not realistic to believe legal action against individual infringers will stamp out, or even significantly reduce, file-sharing infringements of copyright.”

The DCIA questions whether litigation will accomplish the ultimate objectives of the parties here: new business models that leverage technological advancements and respect content owners’ rights. With this ruling, content interests have now taken refuge in the courts in their attempts to drive Napster out of business, taken refuge in the courts to in their attempts to drive Grokster and Morpheus out of business; and taken refuge in the courts in their attempts to drive Kazaa and Altnet out of business.

But the content industry may be farther than ever from reining-in file sharing, according to recent statistics. P2P utilization is now at an all time high, marked by a 41% increase in average simultaneous users in the past year, according to DCIA industry data resource BigChampagne.

The DCIA sees the futility of relying primarily on courts to fashion commercial solutions, and will work to ensure that the content industries’ wins in MGM v. Grokster and Universal v. Sharman do not herald another five years of failure to create viable new business models.
http://www.emediawire.com/releases/2005/9/emw283474.htm





Volkswagen Pioneers Easy Digital Tunes
AP

Leave the CDs at home. With digital music players becoming more ubiquitous, Volkswagen AG is offering a stereo component that lets motorists plug in all manner of portable digital players - not just iPods - and manage their tunes and podcasts on a dashboard display.

Although the in-dash CD player has yet to go the way of the eight-track, digital devices with USB connections - be they fancy iPods or simple keychain drives - seem now to be portable music's future.

Volkswagen, Europe's biggest automaker, is thus making the USB connection an option on its Golf, Golf Plus and Touran models in December and on remaining models next year.

Just plug your device into a built-in console in the center armrest. The option comes in two varieties, one for the iPod, another for other USB-based players. Up to six of the player's folders will be displayed on the car stereo system, and the radio buttons can be used to scan, search or shuffle your mix.

The setup will cost $240.

Also at the International Auto Show this week, Mazda Motor Corp. unveiled its Sassou concept car. Instead of a key, motorists use a special USB drive to lock, unlock or start the car. The drive can also carry your favorite tunes.

Meanwhile, Japan's Denso Corp. has developed a security system that not only honks the horn incessantly when disturbed but also snaps a digital photo of the vehicle's interior and e-mails it to the owner.
http://customwire.ap.org/dynamic/sto...09-14-21-13-42





Singer Waits Files Suit Against GM Unit
Matt Moore

Singer-songwriter Tom Waits said Thursday he has filed a lawsuit against a unit of automaker General Motors Corp. and a German advertising agency for allegedly using a soundalike in a series of European ads.

The 55-year-old singer, whose distinct, gravelly voice has won him two Grammy Awards, filed the civil lawsuit this week with a state court in Frankfurt, listing Adam Opel AG and the advertising firm McCann Erickson as the defendants.

Andreas Schumacher, Waits' German lawyer, said the singer was approached numerous times about doing the ads last year, but declined, citing a policy of not doing commercials. He said the firm then hired a soundalike and the ads aired earlier this year in Sweden, Finland, Denmark and Norway.

"We have sent copies of the lawsuit to McCann Erickson and Opel," Schumacher said.

Waits is seeking damages and any profits derived from the ads for violating his personality rights, Schumacher said.

"Apparently the highest compliment our culture grants artists nowadays is to be in an ad - ideally naked and purring on the hood of a new car. I have adamantly and repeatedly refused this dubious honor," Waits said in a statement. "While the court can't make me active in radio, I am asking it to make me radioactive to advertisers."

Ralf Specht, the manager of McCann Erickson in Frankfurt, said the agency spoke with Waits in May and had changed the music in the ad campaign. He said the company had not gotten a copy of the lawsuit yet. An Opel spokesman said he couldn't comment because the company had not received a copy of the lawsuit.

Waits' albums include the Grammy-winning "Bone Machine" and "Mule Variations."

As an actor, he has appeared in "The Outsiders," "The Fisher King" and "Bram Stoker's Dracula."
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories...=ENTERTAINMENT





Court Overturns Child Porn Conviction

Md. Ruling Squelches Tactic Used to Find Potential Molesters
Fredrick Kunkle

The increasingly common law enforcement tactic of having adult officers pose as children in Internet chat rooms to arrest potential sex offenders came under legal attack yesterday when Maryland's highest court ruled that the law does not allow the prosecution of people who merely believed they were dealing with children.

The Maryland Court of Appeals unanimously overturned the Frederick County Circuit Court conviction of Richard J. Moore, saying he could not be found guilty of committing a crime with a nonexistent victim.

The head of the Maryland State's Attorneys' Association said the ruling effectively guts efforts to catch people preying on children via the Internet.

"In terms of enforcement, with regard to computers and minors, it's difficult if you can't use undercover officers to root these people out," said Frank M. Kratovil Jr., the association's president and the Queen Anne's County state's attorney. "You could certainly continue to do it in the hopes of catching these people, but in terms of convicting them and holding them accountable for what's happening, it's not going to do it."

But Laura Rhodes, a defense attorney in Rockville, said the ruling demonstrated the court's reluctance to stray beyond the narrow confines of the current law.

"What the court is doing is simply interpreting the legislative will, and the legislature has been unwilling to cross a bright line," Rhodes said. "It's troubling to think of being punished for something that could never happen."

In explaining its reasoning, the court relied heavily on the General Assembly's intent in amending its child pornography laws since 1996. The opinion, written by Judge John C. Eldridge, noted that the legislature has tried but failed six times to broaden the law and make it illegal to proposition an adult who the suspect believes is a minor. When the General Assembly used the word "minor," the ruling said, it specifically meant "an actual person who is under the age of 18 years."

A concurring opinion, written by Judge Lynne A. Battaglia, who is a former U.S. attorney, called on the General Assembly to amend the law, perhaps along the lines of federal law and Florida statutes that have withstood judicial scrutiny.

The ruling came on a case that began in early July 2002, when Moore, a 38- year-old Elkridge man, allegedly arranged a sexual rendezvous with someone he met online who he believed was a 14-year-old girl.

In fact, Moore -- using the screen names Runner5K and Runner10K -- had been communicating with a Frederick County sheriff's deputy assigned to a State Police task force targeting Internet crimes involving children, the opinion says.

During their conversations, Sheriff's Deputy Mike Sabol assumed the identity of a 14-year-old girl and gave a detailed description of the fictitious girl, including her age. The opinion says Moore allegedly engaged in explicit conversations and expressed interest in having sex with the girl and a fictitious 14-year-old friend.

"If we were going to do this, we would have to be very discreet," Moore allegedly messaged the deputy. "The best place to go would be your apartment if your mom isn't there."

Moore allegedly arranged a meeting on July 12, 2002, in Frederick, where he was arrested. He was found guilty of violating the state's child pornography act and attempted third-degree sex offense. The trial court imposed a three-year sentence and suspended all but the time Moore already had served.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...090702067.html





Mistaken Child-Porn Raid Leads To Lawsuit
Ron Sylvester

Brian and Sarah Doom were shocked when police showed up at their Wichita home accusing them of child pornography.

The Dooms had never been in trouble with the law. On Aug. 12, 2004, they found themselves being accused of activity that disgusted them.

But the police had the wrong house, based on mistaken information from the Dooms' Internet service provider, Cox Communications.

Now, Brian and Sarah Doom are suing Cox for invasion of privacy, breach of contract, defamation of character and "outrageous conduct."

The lawsuit emphasizes the tension emerging in recent years between the privacy of Internet customers and the ability of police to chase crimes down the electronic
information highway.

"Cox did make a mistake, and we are sorry for that action," said Sarah Kauffman, Cox spokeswoman. "But due to the pending lawsuit, we are prevented from commenting further."

The suit was filed both in Kansas and in Georgia, where Cox maintains its headquarters.

The Dooms say Cox should have been able to protect their privacy from an unwarranted raid by police. They are asking for unspecified damages, including lawyer fees stemming from their dealings with police and emotional distress.

"These are good people who were accused of crimes that sickened them," their lawyer, Craig Shultz, said. "Their neighbors saw the police show up and take them away. It destroyed their week."

The Dooms, according to the lawsuit, were aggressively interrogated about the child porn accusations for hours. They kept telling police they were innocent. Police confiscated the couple's computer.

"It scared them," Shultz said. "They didn't know what was happening."

The Dooms paid lawyer Dan Monnat to represent them.

Near the end of the week, police told the Dooms of the mistaken information received from Cox.

"Cox apparently had gotten a subpoena, which we haven't seen," Shultz said.

The court order, Shultz said, asked for a home address connected to an Internet address police suspected of receiving child porn. Shultz said that someone at Cox typed in an Internet address different from the one provided by police.

"And the Dooms' home address came up," Shultz said.

Included in the lawsuit is the claim of "outrageous conduct." It's a rarely used legal claim that contends a party suffered damages so severe that it would be "regarded as atrocious and utterly intolerable in a civilized society."

Shultz said that the Dooms aren't blaming Wichita police.

"From all indications," Shultz said, "the police did everything correctly."
http://www.kansas.com/mld/eagle/news...s/12620843.htm





Webcams Watching Walruses to Be Shut Off This Week

Seeking Privacy for Their Fall Hunt, Alaska Natives Worry That Internet Images Could Put the Tradition in Danger
Jeannette J. Lee

Popular Web cameras that allow viewers to watch live video of Pacific walruses will be shut off this week at the request of Alaska Natives.

Leaders do not want viewers to see the animals shot and butchered during a fall subsistence hunt, fearing widespread Internet images could threaten the tradition.

"They're certainly concerned about anything that could turn that around again and make it so they couldn't hunt out there anymore," said state biologist Joe Meehan.

Helen Chythlook, executive director of the Bristol Bay Native Association's Qayassiq Walrus Commission, said that Alaska Natives have the right to conduct the walrus hunt in privacy.

"When you go deer hunting you don't want a camera shining on you," Chythlook said.

The cameras transmit to a popular Web site where viewers can watch video of walruses snoozing on a rocky beach on Round Island in the Bering Sea. The site has tallied tens of thousands of hits since it went online more than a month ago, and viewer overload often causes it to crash.

The camera focused on the beach used most by the tusked animals will be removed Friday, the day before the hunt begins.

A second camera, on a beach less frequented by walruses, will be turned off Friday and switched back on Oct. 21, the day after the hunt ends. Its images will not be sent to the Web site over the winter because of the high costs, but biologists hope to use the camera to monitor the weather and wildlife populations.

Meehan said state biologists would have disconnected the cameras from the Web site in early September anyway because of limited funding and harsh weather.

The hunt was banned in 1960 after the Walrus Islands, located off Alaska's southwest coast, were designated a wildlife sanctuary by the state. In 1995, Alaska Natives were allowed to resume hunting on the island through an agreement with the state and federal government.

Residents of nine villages near Bristol Bay are allowed to harvest Round Island walruses this season. Native hunters are permitted to take up to 20 walruses.

The meat is a core food source for Alaska Natives in the area, including the coastal Yupik and Inupiaq communities. Walrus ivory and bone are transformed into crafts and artwork. The skins become boat coverings, while intestines can serve as rain gear.

The animals are difficult to count as they slip in and out of the water, but are not considered endangered, threatened or depleted by federal standards, Meehan said.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...090702179.html





Like the old Morpheus forums, but the files aren’t free. Ouch.

Burned By iTunes

My ipod has always worked fine. Then I was out of town for awhile and when I got back iTunes told me I needed to upgrade to itunes 5. I did this and downloaded the new ipod software and docked my ipod to update songs I had just purchased on itunes. I got a message saying software needed to communicate with ipod was missing--please reinstall itunes. I uninstalled and reinstalled itunes and the ipod software about a dozen times and keep getting the same message. I tried all the suggested fixes on the apple help site. Finally, I reinstalled ipod and itunes using the old disk that came with my ipod when I got it last year. This worked and allowed my ipod to communicate with itunes but it made me lose my purchased music. To get that I had to upgrade to itunes 5. Well, I should have been happy with what I had because I tried reinstalling itunes 5 and now I have no music on my ipod and can't even get into itunes now. Every time I try to reinstall it it gets a little more messed up and now it gives me an error message that I can't even get into itunes. I have wasted 3 days of my vacation trying to uninstall (which is a huge pain in itself) and reinstall and now I have nothing. Apple won't help me because my warrantie's up, even though their software is causing the problem and best buy where i got the ipod says they can't help either. At least after reading other postings I know I'm not the only one having this problem. If anyone knows of a number to call for help without spending hundreds of dollars please let me know.
http://discussions.info.apple.com/we...lz.0@.68b968e5


***

I am in the same boat - after a few hours and band aids, I got my system up long enough to offload my important files and start over from a fresh XP install. (this thing even killed my optical drives!)

After the XP reinstall, the Itunes upgrade 5.0 worked until I reinstalled my antivirus package - (Freedom 5.1.3.36337 for you Apple types that are keeping track). It will now work ONLY when the antivirus is turned off - if it is on, we move immediately to the blue screen'o death with the driver_corrupted_mmpool message.

A very buggy product which needs to be fixed ASAP.
http://discussions.info.apple.com/we...0@.68b906fe/19


***

I get the blue screen of death. any suggestions? I have been without iTunes for a few weeks now. unable to install 4.9 now unable to install 5.0. I have shut down my cox security software and turned off the firewall and I am still unable to proceed. Any help would be appreciated.

***

Apple Please Post a FIX for my lame iPod. Three days ago, I had a wonderful Apple Device (iPod)and wonderful software that kept my tunes in order and everything humming along. I had upgraded in the past , by clicking a few buttons and agreeing to a few agreements, waiting a few moments and then enjoying the results.
THEN : I accepted Apple's invitation to upgrade to iTunes 5 and have spent the last few days trying to #1 get my computer to stop crashing, #2 figure out what was causing this problem, #3 find help here at the discussions, #4 try all the remedies that I thought I could without making things worse, #5 finally succeeding in UNINSTALLING iTunes and Quicktime. #6 trying the various suggestions about reinstalling with NO SUCCESS (still crashing if I have my isp's supplied security ie. sympatico.ca and Freedom), #7 giving up on iTunes5 and reinstalling an older version, #8 AFTER two days of frustration , failure and a real sense of fear that by trying to fix this mess , I may have made things worse for my computer I NOW HAVE TO TRY TO FIGURE OUT THE MUCKED UP and MISSING PLAY LISTS AND SONG NAMES.
AAARGHHH please excuse the shouting.
I'm not a Windows expert. I just want to be able to use my now LAMED iTunes and iPod.
Please Apple. Post SOMETHING that works for people who don't understand much more than how to use the simple features of the installer. After all, these are Consumer iTems.

***

I had the same problem, ended up having to uninstall itunes and ipod, lost all music on both, managed to find most of it on pc, but still missing my purchased music, because i need to update to version 5, which is what caused this whole disaster in the first place. this is the 2nd night i've wasted trying to fix this up, i really think apple should reimburse its users who have been affected by their faulty software.
http://discussions.info.apple.com/we...lz.0@.68b956bb

***

I already have installed iTunes5.0 and the same thing continues to occur.

This hang up problem doesn't only occur when importing CD's. It also happens anytime I attempt to copy/backup my iTunes m4a music files to another part of my hard drive. Additionally, my computer freezes when I attempt to convert the m4a files to mp3 using iTunes. My computer also automatically restarts itself when I attempt to copy the entire itunes music folder to back it up on a slave harddrive. Thirdly, when playing media through quicktime and windows media player 10, either streaming or from my harddrive, the same freeze/hang up occurs.

Seanix is the computer manufacturer, CS Series is the model. Seanix is a manufacturer that also produces the Cicero brand for Future Shop here in Canada.

Here is the CD Diagnostic you asked for.

Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition Service Pack 2 (Build 2600)
iTunes 5.0.0.35
CD Driver 2.0.4.3
CD Driver DLL 2.0.3.2
LowerFilters: Pfc (2.5.0.204),
UpperFilters: incdrm (4.0.1.1), InCDPass (4.2.2.3), GEARAspiWDM (2.0.4.3),
Video Driver: Radeon 7000 / Radeon VE\Radeon 7000 / Radeon VE

IDE\DiskWDC_WD1600JB-00GVA0_____________________08.02D08, Bus Type ATA, Bus Address [1,0]
IDE\DiskWDC_WD400EB-00CPF0______________________06.04G06, Bus Type ATA, Bus Address [0,0]
IDE\CdRomLITE-ON_DVDRW_SOHW-1633S________________BS0K____, Bus Type ATA, Bus Address [1,0]
If you have multiple drives on the same IDE or SCSI bus, these drives may interfere with each other.
Some computers need an update to the ATA or IDE bus driver, or Intel chipset. If iTunes has problems recognizing CDs or hanging or crashing while importing or burning CDs, check the support site for the manufacturer of your computer or motherboard.

Current user is administrator.

D: LITE-ON DVDRW SOHW-1633S, Rev BS0K
Audio CD in drive.
Found 11 songs on CD, playing time 48:47 on Audio CD.
Track 1, start time 00:02:00
Track 2, start time 01:44:34
Track 3, start time 04:50:71
Track 4, start time 08:48:11
Track 5, start time 14:23:39
Track 6, start time 18:25:12
Track 7, start time 23:04:27
Track 8, start time 27:38:61
Track 9, start time 32:57:61
Track 10, start time 36:20:74
Track 11, start time 43:21:38
Audio CD reading succeeded.
Get drive speed succeeded.
The drive CDR speeds are: 4 8 10 12 16 24 32 40 48.
The drive CDRW speeds are: 4.
The drive DVDR speeds are: 4.
The drive DVDRW speeds are: 4.
http://discussions.info.apple.com/we...lz.0@.68b8aee7


***

When your back’s against the wall, blame another vendor…

hmmm. i always defer to toonz in these matters, Mark, but are you currently using InCD or Nero? might be worth heading to the Nero site to check up on any information about burning problems you can find there.

i'll go away now.

love, b





Your tax dollars at work – indoctrinating captive toddlers

Patent Official Warns Kids Against Piracy

You're never too young to start learning about intellectual property law--or that's the message the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office sent to a pack of elementary schoolers on Tuesday.

"It is important that people--especially children--show respect for others' property," U.S. Deputy Under Secretary of Commerce for Intellectual Property Stephen Pinkos told more than 80 students in Round Rock, Texas, according to a press release.

"That includes not illegally copying and downloading video games and movies from the Internet," he went on. "This is not okay--it's breaking the law."

Pinkos made the stop as part of a two-day campaign in nearby Austin, Texas, where government officials have been urging small business owners to protect their intellectual property. The students were taking part in a weeklong USPTO-sponsored program known as Camp Invention, which includes sessions on building gadgets and applying for patents.
http://sympatico-msn-ca.com.com/Pate...ubj=ns_5863157





Odd Behavior and Creativity May Go Hand-in-Hand

A quirky or socially awkward approach to life might be the key to becoming a great artist, composer or inventor.

New research in individuals with schizotypal personalities—people characterized by odd behavior and language but who are not psychotic or schizophrenic—offers the first neurological evidence that these individuals are more creative than normal or fully schizophrenic people, and rely more heavily on the right sides of their brains than the general population to access their creativity.

The work by Vanderbilt psychologists Brad Folley and Sohee Park was published online Aug. 26 by the journal Schizophrenia Research.

Psychologists believe famous creative luminaries, including Vincent Van Gogh, Albert Einstein, Emily Dickinson and Isaac Newton, had schizotypal personalities.

“The idea that schizotypes have enhanced creativity has been out there for a long time but no one has investigated the behavioral manifestations and their neural correlates experimentally,” Folley said. “Our paper is unique because we investigated the creative process experimentally and we also looked at the blood flow in the brain while research subjects were undergoing creative tasks.”

Folley and Park conducted two experiments to compare the creative thinking processes of schizotypes, schizophrenics and normal control subjects. In the first experiment, the researchers showed research subjects a variety of household objects and asked them to make up new functions for them. The results showed that the schizotypes were better able to creatively suggest new uses for the objects, while the schizophrenics and average subjects performed similarly to one another.

“Thought processes for individuals with schizophrenia are often very disorganized, almost to the point where they can’t really be creative because they cannot get all of their thoughts coherent enough to do that,” Folley said. “Schizotypes, on the other hand, are free from the severe, debilitating symptoms surrounding schizophrenia and also have an enhanced creative ability.”

In the second experiment, the three groups again were asked to identify new uses for everyday objects as well as to perform a basic control task while the activity in their prefrontal lobes was monitored using a brain scanning techniques called near-infrared optical spectroscopy. The brain scans showed that all groups used both brain hemispheres for creative tasks, but that the activation of the right hemispheres of the schizotypes was dramatically greater than that of the schizophrenic and average subjects, suggesting a positive benefit of schizotypy.

“In the scientific community, the popular idea that creativity exists in the right side of the brain is thought to be ridiculous, because you need both hemispheres of your brain to make novel associations and to perform other creative tasks,” Folley said. “We found that all three groups, schizotypes, schizophrenics and normal controls, did use both hemispheres when performing creative tasks. But the brain scans of the schizotypes showed a hugely increased activation of the right hemisphere compared to the schizophrenics and the normal controls.”

The researchers believe that the results offer support for the idea that schizotypes and other psychoses-prone populations draw on the left and right sides of their brains differently than the average population, and that this bilateral use of the brain for a variety of tasks may be related to their enhanced creativity.

In support of this theory, Folley pointed to research by Swiss neuroscientist Peter Brugger who found that everyday associations, such as recognizing your car key on your keychain, and verbal abilities are controlled by the left hemisphere, and that novel associations, such as finding a new use for a object or navigating a new place, are controlled by the right hemisphere. Brugger hypothesized that schizotypes are better at accessing both hemispheres for novel associations, enabling them to make these associations faster. His theory is supported by research showing that a disproportional number of schizotypes and schizophrenics are neither right nor left hand dominant, but instead use both hands for a variety of tasks, suggesting that they recruit both sides of their brains for a variety of tasks more so than the average person.

“The lack of specialization for certain tasks in brain hemispheres could be seen as a liability, but this increased communication between the hemispheres actually could provide added creativity,” Folley said.
http://www.newswise.com/articles/view/514287/?sc=swtn





Techies Weigh In On Patent Bill
Anne Broache

A pending patent reform bill still needs work, tech interests said Thursday at a Congress hearing.

At the session--convened by the House Subcommittee on Courts, the Internet and Intellectual Property--a panel of witnesses aired their views on two sets of proposed changes to the Patent Reform Act of 2005. The panel included people from the software, pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries.

Both sets of changes would pare down the original proposal, introduced in June by Rep. Lamar Smith, a Texas Republican. Notably absent in the latest drafts is a "second window" provision that would have established a system for challenging patents virtually any time after they're granted. That change elicited some concern at the hearing from companies that are members of the Business Software Alliance and from Rep. Howard Berman, a California Democrat.

But many other portions of the bill remain intact and enjoy support.

Namely, under the proposal, a patent for an invention would be awarded to the first person to file for it, as opposed to the current system, which awards the patent to the first person to invent the item or process. The "first to file" standard is common outside the United States.

The measure also outlines an out-of-court "post-grant opposition" process, which would establish a nine-month period after the granting of a patent during which people could dispute it. The goal of that provision is to curb excessive litigation.

In the tech sector, the bill has generated a mix of praise and criticism, a theme that continued in Thursday's hearing.

"Notwithstanding our progress to date, the legislation is at a crossroads," Smith, who chairs the subcommittee, said in his opening remarks.

Smith asked the panelists to focus on the idea of damage apportionment--that is, how to allocate monetary awards to patent holders when infringement has been found. On that topic, software, pharmaceutical and biotech interests continue to clash.

Emery Simon, chief counsel for the Business Software Alliance, said his organization's large member companies--including Microsoft, Apple Computer, Macromedia and Symantec--favor a system that would award damages "based on the proportional value of patented invention(s) alone, not on the cumulative value of all features included on a large product, which, for a computer, can be thousands and thousands of features."

A late-July amendment of Smith's bill meets that standard, Simon said, but the language of the latest version of that amendment, circulated on Sept. 1, raises the possibility that patentees could claim damages based on the value of the entire product.

The latter approach is favored by the pharmaceutical industry, whose companies typically operate under a business model in which they want protection for entire drugs.

A system of giving "only partial credit" to a product in infringement disputes would "trivialize patent damages" and "undermine the patent process as a whole, which is to reward inventors for the entirety" of their inventions, said Philip Johnson, speaking for Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America.

Meanwhile, the biotechnology community is still divided on how to proceed, said Robert Chess, executive chairman of Nektar Therapeutics, speaking on behalf of the Biotechnology Industry Association.

When the 90-minute hearing concluded, it remained unclear when a consensus would be met among the groups. Talks will continue, Smith said.

Hewlett-Packard, which did not testify at the hearings, released a statement Thursday that echoed the stance of the Business Software Alliance, of which it is a member.

"It does not make sense that abusers of the patent system can claim damages beyond the value of the contribution of the invention," John Hassell, the computer maker's director of federal and state government affairs, said in the statement. "In HP's case, our potential liability on a small microprocessor could be extended to the cost of an entire computer system."
http://news.com.com/Techies+weigh+in...3-5867383.html





SCO Source Income: $32,000. Legal bills: $3 Million
Graeme Wearden

SCO has seen a sharp decline in income, as enterprises fail to be tempted by its Linux indemnification program.

The litigious Unix vendor announced this week that revenues for its most recent quarter, which ended July 30, were $9.35 million compared to $11.2 million (5.09 million and 6.10 million pounds, respectively) for the same period in 2004. SCO posted a loss of $2.4 million over the three- month period, compared to a profit of $7.5 million for the same period the year before.

This decline was caused by a drop in income from SCO's Unix products and by legal bills of $3 million. This stemmed from SCO's ongoing court cases against IBM and Novell, among others, over its claim that its intellectual property was unlawfully included in Linux.

Under a much-lambasted licensing program, SCO has been offering a license to companies that use Linux, saying that it will protect them from action by its legal department. But very few companies have acquiesced to what many see as a groundless threat. The program, called SCO Source, brought in revenues of just $32,000 during the quarter, compared to SCO's overall legal costs of $3.1 million.

These figures mirror a similar poor performance in the second quarter of this year, in which revenues dropped to $9.3 million--down from $10.5 million for the same period in 2004.

Analysts at Ovum were scathing about SCO's performance.

"SCO is failing," said Ovum analyst Gary Barnett, who was unimpressed by the performance of SCO Source. "The company's UNIX revenues continue to decline, as the 'continued competitive pressures' cited in the company's earnings release continue a trend that's been running for several years now."

Ovum advises companies not to buy a SCO Source license unless SCO provides a money-back guarantee in the event the company is defeated in the courts.

SCO chief executive Darl McBride tried to put a positive spin on the situation, claiming that the third quarter was "a productive quarter for SCO."

"Our UNIX business operated profitably for the third consecutive quarter and we launched SCO OpenServer 6 which has received many favorable reviews and is showing traction with customers," claimed McBride in a statement.

Ovum, though, offered a more pragmatic overview.

"If you're considering buying OpenServer you need to look at your options. If you need more licenses to support an existing deployment, there is no need to panic--Open Server may change hands in the next couple of years but it won't disappear. Over the longer term you should consider alternatives from both the open-source community (Linux) or from other Unix vendors (notably OpenSolaris on x86)," the analyst group said.
http://news.com.com/SCO+Source+incom...3-5856675.html





Some Claim Inventor Lemelson a Fraud
Adam Goldman

Jerome Lemelson was dying. One of the nation's most prolific and perhaps greatest inventors had been diagnosed with a rare stomach cancer. The disease had spread to his liver, ravaging his body and causing severe pain.

In his final days at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles in 1997, the 74-year- old Lemelson couldn't eat or drink. Jaundiced and bedridden, he did not complain.

He made no special requests. His room was the same as any other patient's.

Nor did he brag about his vast accomplishments. More than 600 patents to his credit. A fortune amassed. Powerful foes toppled.

As death approached, he believed his place in history had been secured, thanks to his most spectacular inventions: machine vision and the bar code scanner, technology that has dramatically altered the way in which we live.

"He was a simple man," said his Houston oncologist, Dr. Giora Mavligit. "A mensch."

But to his many detractors, Lemelson was something else.

They claim Lemelson's patents were in fact worthless. Lemelson, they say, was one of the great frauds of the 20th century.

Critics charge that for decades Lemelson manipulated the U.S. Patent Office. They accuse him of exploiting loopholes that forced 979 companies - including Ford, Dell, Boeing, General Electric, Mitsubishi and Motorola - to pay $1.5 billion in licensing fees.

"Anything he claims to have invented, he didn't. He's a science fiction writer," said Robert Shillman, founder, chairman and chief executive at Cognex Corp., the world's largest maker of machine vision products and one of Lemelson's most truculent opponents.

On his deathbed, Lemelson knew he had enemies. But he believed he had defeated them, that he had built an impregnable machine to protect his inventions after his death, a for-profit foundation that would enforce his patents and collect millions in royalties.

For years, it would do just that. A team of tenacious Lemelson lawyers humbled the giants of business, protecting his name and suing any corporation they accused of using his ideas.

Lemelson was dying, but his legacy was immortal.

Or at least that's the way it seemed.

---

On Christmas Eve in 1954 - the same year he married his wife, Dolly - Lemelson filed a 150-page patent application with the U.S. Patent Office.

The patent spelled out how a robot could perform a variety of fantastic tasks during industrial production, such as riveting, welding and transport. It also showed how a robot, armed with a camera, could serve as a quality control inspector and manage jobs that the human eye could not.

Two years later, Lemelson - a balding, thin man of average height with a prominent nose - submitted another application expanding on the previous one.

Those two applications, Lemelson asserted, contained the genesis of machine vision and computerized automatic identification, later known as bar code scanning - concepts the rest of the world wouldn't come to recognize until decades later.

Lemelson never bothered to construct a model or build a company around the designs. The patent office didn't require it. The lone inventor didn't have time to take his ideas from drawing board to assembly line.

He was too busy, dreaming, doodling and reading technical journals that drove his prodigious imagination. A builder of gas-powered model airplanes from the time he was a boy, he had satiated his intellectual curiosity in the engineering department of the Army Air Corps during World War II.

He later earned two master's degrees in aeronautical and industrial engineering at New York University, and did post-grad work in the military's Project Squid, which was developing jet engines. Then he worked as a safety engineer at a copper smelting company - his last paying job, said Rob Lemelson, his son.

Instead, at his various New Jersey homes, Lemelson toiled away.

Almost everything Lemelson spied had potential. Technical marvels existed everywhere. He put notion after notion onto thousands of legal pads.

Nothing seemed out of reach.

"A lot of the times the ideas that Jerry came up with were practical and a lot of times they were impractical from a commercial point of view," said his younger brother, Howard, 80, a retired electrical engineer.

Many companies rejected his ideas and over time the perceived snubs left Lemelson frustrated and bitter. Eventually, Lemelson came to see himself as a casualty of corporate greed.

But after many lean years, when Dolly, an interior decorator, supported the family, Lemelson did find success. He licensed his automatic warehousing system to a British firm in 1964 for about $100,000, plowing the money back into his inventions and legal struggles.

In the early '70s, he sold his audio cassette drive mechanism to Sony for $2 million, and it became the basis for today's Walkman.

IBM also bought about 20 of his patents for data and word processing systems in 1981, earning him about $5 million.

The deals not only salved Lemelson's ego - they emboldened him. They brought an air of legitimacy to his many patents, and he wanted other companies to recognize their validity.

He wanted them to pay.

---

By 1986, Lemelson had nearly 400 patents, and litigation was his way of enforcing them. Like Thomas Edison, he regarded a patent as a right to sue; if a company developed a product that might in some way resemble one of his patents, Lemelson would take them to court.

His family pleaded with him to ease up, to take his newly found wealth and retire.

"He couldn't just fold and let people walk all over him," said Dolly, a petite 79-year-old woman with an unshakable belief in her husband's genius. "How could he live with himself? He wanted people to respect him and respect his name."

Lemelson sought out Gerald Hosier, a maverick attorney who was quickly becoming a legend in the insulated world of patent law. Hosier gambled and took patent cases on contingency - earning fees only if he won, an unusual arrangement given the complexities and whopping price tags that accompany such litigation.

Lemelson had been awarded a patent in 1962 (No. 3016845) for a toy and track assembly. In 1989, Hosier represented Lemelson in his lawsuit against Mattel Toys; that slender, elastic track that Hot Wheels cars zoomed along was his idea, they insisted.

Yes, the jury said. Lemelson was awarded about $71 million.

An outraged Mattel appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. Still, Mattel was willing to pay to end the nasty dispute, and offered to settle for more than $20 million.

To everybody's disbelief, Lemelson rejected the offer.

"He felt so strongly that he had been wronged," said his son, Eric, a winemaker outside of Portland, Ore.

In June 1992, the appeals court issued a 3-0 decision in Mattel's favor, and the jury award - which had ballooned to more than $80 million thanks to post-judgment interest - evaporated instantly.

Lemelson and Hosier walked away with nothing.

The pair were negotiating with Sony on a series of patents at the Grand Hyatt in San Francisco when word reached them.

Hosier crunched the bitter numbers.

"I wasn't exactly thrilled," he said.

Lemelson took it harder. He cried.

---

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office in Alexandria, Va., is home to the more than 6.7 million patents that have been granted since 1790, when the first patent was issued for a method of making potash fertilizer.

Inside four buildings spanning 2 million square feet, approximately 3,753 patent examiners and 286 trademark attorneys handle the onerous work of vetting the applications, deciding whether an inventor's discovery entitles them to exclusive rights to it.

This is the massive bureaucracy that Lemelson faced when he submitted those two applications in 1954 and 1956 that he considered the basis of machine-vision technology and bar code scanners. The applications ground their way through the patent process until 1963 when a patent with the title "automatic measurement apparatus" was issued.

It was just the beginning. Appeals, continuations and more applications broadened his license of ownership over time.

This maneuvering allowed Lemelson to capture emerging technology that was entering the market, said Bruce Lehman, who was U.S. Patent Commissioner from 1993 to 1998.

Patents were designed to give inventors the opportunity to raise capital and start businesses, Lehman said. At the time, a patent was supposed to be a 17-year contract with society; the inventor benefits during that span, and then his work can be used freely by society.

Lehman said Lemelson abused the system.

"The purpose of the patent system isn't to sit there in the weeds and let someone else go out and do all the work and sue them," he said. "That's not the way the patent system is supposed to work."

But the system worked for Lemelson, especially after the Process Patent Amendments Act was enacted in 1988, declaring a foreign company could no longer infringe on a patent without consequences, which included damages and a ban on U.S. sales. It also enabled Lemelson to threaten the Japanese with complex and expensive jury trials.

The significance of the new law was not lost on Lemelson's shrewd patent lawyer. He capitalized quickly.

"You have to understand how lucky they were. That saved his butt. That meant he could sue the Japanese," said professor Martin J. Adelman, who testified in the Mattel trial and directs the Dean Dinwoodey Center for Intellectual Property Studies at George Washington University.

Lemelson believed Toyota, Nissan, Honda and Mazda, among others, were infringing on his machine-vision patents. If Hosier asserted the Lemelson patents, he might stop them from exporting their cars to the United States.

The Japanese couldn't let the case go to trial.

"In the setting of that time they probably would have gotten an injunction," said Frederick Michaud, a patent lawyer who represented Japanese automakers.

The companies signed an agreement worth about $100 million.

"You weigh your risks," Michaud said. "That is the difficulty with all patent litigation. How much is it going to cost to get out of it?"

---

Many in the industry denounced the settlement because it increased the exposure of U.S. automakers. They considered Lemelson and Hosier nothing more than predators.

"Ford, GM and Chrysler and Motorola desperately wanted to stop that trend, to stop the flow of money to Lemelson before it got started. They didn't want to see me get money to fight them," Hosier said.

While battling the Japanese, Hosier had also started sending form letters to hundreds of companies in 1989, accusing them of infringing Lemelson's machine vision and bar code patents. It was, said Hosier, the single-greatest patent licensing campaign by an individual in history.

Many, such as Cognex in Natick, Mass., the world's largest maker of machine vision, ignored the letters initially, thinking Lemelson's claims were baseless.

But Hosier soon wrapped up other deals worth $350 million. Forbes declared him one of the highest-paid lawyers in the country and The American Lawyer put him on the cover.

The money didn't change Lemelson, said Rob Lemelson. He still drove that old Mercury Marquis and wore the same ratty wool sweater.

"He was intensely frugal," the son said.

With the licensing campaign in full swing, Hosier and Lemelson decided not to go after the smaller companies that produced the equipment, such as Cognex or Symbol Technologies, of Holtsville, N.Y., which made the bar code scanner.

Instead, they focused on the large corporations with deep pockets, customers of Cognex and Symbol that made use of the technology.

Getting them to pay, Hosier said, was based on a simple premise.

"This business is not based on what's right or what's wrong," Hosier said. "It's based on fear. Nobody would pay you for a patent unless they feared that the consequences of not paying you vastly exceeded the consequences of paying."

Not everyone relented. Ford Motor Co., Chrysler, General Motors and Motorola believed Lemelson had to be stopped and filed suit in September 1992.

Other Fortune 500 titans also joined the fight. Mitsubishi Electric Corp. and Mitsubishi Electronic America, Inc. struck back in a February 1993 lawsuit.

"When his applications are questioned by the patent examiners, as they often are, Lemelson delays, continues, retracts, supersedes, redrafts and churns the applications," Mitsubishi alleged. He "has become adept at fraudulently manipulating the ... patent application process and the overworked or inexperienced patent examiners to cause various patents to wrongfully issue to him."

These accusations stuck to Lemelson for the rest of his life. Still, despite his family's pleas, Lemelson carried on. He believed he was right, and did not fear any court's verdict.

But Hosier saw it differently. Even if he didn't let on, Hosier knew he was in trouble. If these behemoths pooled their resources they could drown his small team of lawyers. The legal costs were unthinkable, the paperwork unimaginable.

Something had to be done. One of Hosier's must trusted lawyers, Steve Lisa, persuaded GM to sit out the litigation after a craps game one night in Reno, Nev. Chrysler later snapped up the same deal.

The ramifications were enormous. It meant Hosier would only face Ford at trial. GM and Chrysler would save millions of dollars in legals fees and let Ford do all the work.

"It was what enabled us to continue on," Lisa said. "It enabled us to go toe-to-toe with the staff we had."

---

Ford soon found itself isolated. Motorola settled in 1994. Mitsubishi bailed out the next year and handed over another royalty check to Hosier.

But Ford pressed forward, asking a federal court in Nevada for an immediate judgment, and the company scored a huge victory in June 1995.

"Lemelson's use of continuing applications has been abusive and he should be barred from enforcing his asserted patent rights," U.S. Magistrate Judge Phyllis Atkins wrote.

Her opinion wasn't a ruling, merely a recommendation to U.S. District Judge Lloyd George in Las Vegas, who was responsible for making the decision. It appeared George would side with Ford.

Lemelson, who had by then been diagnosed with cancer, lectured about tangling with Ford. He seemed somber and tired, almost frail. He spoke softly.

The car companies had put Lemelson through the wringer, subjecting him to hundreds of hours - 60-odd days - of brutal depositions. "I just hope no other inventor has to go through what I went through with these people," he said on April 8, 1996.

A week later, George accepted Atkins' conclusions and effectively eliminated all the machine vision and bar code patents.

The Lemelson freight train had been derailed. "A dark chapter in the history of the American patent system" had come to a close, said Roger May, Ford's lawyer.

But then, a final twist.

George reversed his own decision. He ruled in Lemelson's favor on April 28, 1997, stunning Ford and the patent world.

Lemelson, in his hospital bed, raised an emaciated arm in victory.

He died on Oct. 1, 1997, convinced his reputation as an inventor was secure.

"I think you will find his legend will grow," Hosier said at Lemelson's memorial service. "I predict he will be recognized as one of the greatest minds of the 20th century and of all time."

---

But Robert Shillman disagreed, vehemently. Head of the machine vision company that Lemelson's legal juggernaut had ignored in favor of bigger fish, Shillman had had enough of the great inventor.

Crediting Lemelson with machine vision is like "saying Jules Verne invented space travel," he said. "For Lemelson to get the credit for inventing machine vision and to add insult to injury, to sue people for using our machine vision is just too bitter a pill to swallow.

"We ain't swallowing that pill. We invented machine vision."

And so, he went after Lemelson's ghost.
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories... ustomwire.htm
















Until next week,

- js.


















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