Posts by Paul Irving

Norton? Bah! Gimme AVG.

I had it some years ago. "Upgraded" it and lost my internet connection. Eventually discovered that the upgrade made it incompatible with my old Win98. Nortons recommended fix was to change my O/S, & Microsoft recommended removing Norton. I followed the latter advice.

My current PC came with another AV pre-installed, which seemed fine for a while, then one day, after it had downloaded an update, it started blocking my internet connection. I reversed the update, & it worked - but wouldn't update its virus database unless I re-installed the update.. Their helpdesk wanted me to do about half a days work collecting evidence before they'd even look at the problem. At any reasonable valuation of my time, I was better off buying something else, so I told them that (they didn't seem to get it) - and while considering what to buy, I installed AVG, on the reccomendation of a friend. Still using it. I occasionally scan my PC with it & other tools, but so far, I've found only the viruses (3 last time) it's caught & quarantined. No false positives, no sign of it clagging up the PC, & nothing has got past it yet.

AVG? I love it.

Misunderstandings about Japan

I've visited Japan several times, & been inside a lot of Japanese homes, having a Japanese partner. Not one of her family or friends has a house or flat with movable walls, even the country cousins with an almost unmodernised traditional house (a lovely building,BTW), & I can't see the level of earthquake proofing demanded by current building standards permitting it. In any case, most rooms are too small to be subdivided by movable partitions.

Among the families I know, every teenager has his or her own room, with a television & computer in it.

My partners family are probably better off than average, & have correspondingly more living space, but even taking that into account, I'm sure the author of the article has a mistaken view of how most Japanese live. I've been in exactly one Japanese dwelling (the aforementioned traditional house) which didn't have at least as many western (chairs, tables, beds etc) as traditionally furnished rooms.

Prior art

It doesn't matter if he invented it before Sony (or anyone else), as long as 1) Sony (or whoever) didn't copy it from him & 2) were in the market before his patent.

1) is evidence of it being obvious, or a logical development of existing technology, & therefore not patentable (see the recent US Supreme Court decision).

2) is evidence of prior art (as long as they didn't copy from him).

A patent must be novel. If it isn't, then it has been wrongly granted & is not valid. If discs were being made using the process, & sold, before the patent application was filed, by other firms, which had arrived at the process independently, then the process is not novel (there is prior art), & the patent has no validity.

Patents are often (in the majority of cases, IMO - especially in the USA)granted wrongly, so I'd take the existence of the patent merely as a starting point for examination, not as significant in itself.

I reckon what's needed is a much more thorough patent examination process, financed by a fat fee for failed applications. But keep the fee low for successful applications. Should discourage time-wasters.