Another Metal-Tempered Engine on an Alien, Distant Shore

Well, at least they were close (in terms of how they sound) to the word that should have been used.

I'm much more annoyed by the use of words based on what people think they sound like rather than what they actually mean.
For example, I'm especially annoyed by the use of the word "fulsome" because some people think it sounds like it should mean "filled out" and/or "round" instead of what it actually does mean.

Speaking of writing, though, did you, Kerry, Feng, Mr. Rieschl, or Mr. Jennings actually write any part of the description of patent 20080155246?
Enquiring minds and all that.

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I'd probably need a pointer to the patent in question to have any chance of answering the question. Based upon the cast of characters, I'd say it's entirely possible that we did. (I'll further note that the Mr. Jennings threw me, until I realized you weren't referring to Mikey).

Edited Date: 2009-06-04 09:37 pm (UTC)

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Mr. Jennings? Mikey? What a strange thought. ;-)

As for a pointer to the patent in question, I suppose FreePatentsOnline is as good of a way as any to look at it online (sans graphics/flowchart).
I used PAT2PDF to convert the patent to a PDF which I then downloaded to get the whole thing.

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Well, since the FreePatentsOnline link in my last post didn't work as I'd hoped, here's the link spelled out:

http://www.freepatentsonline.com/y2008/0155246.html

Or to get there from here via the PTO:

http://appft1.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=HITOFF&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsearch-adv.html&r=1&p=1&f=G&l=50&d=PG01&S1=20080155246&OS=20080155246&RS=20080155246

Or by a search for scientific documents:

http://www.scirus.com/srsapp/search?q=(author:%22schroth%2C+david%22)

And if you'd like to use PAT2PDF:

http://www.pat2pdf.org/

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The link was good enough - yes, we're responsible for the patent in question.

I am, long after the fact, unhappy that we didn't file on some of the things we did for Mercury. Exposure to the innards of Linux makes me aware of just how advanced we are in some areas, at least compared to what seems to be everyone's current favorite OS...

Edited Date: 2009-06-05 06:22 pm (UTC)

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How many other patents are you involved in? I noted Kerry's name on this one as well.

Mind you, not many of the others would know Mercury from Eagle!

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Mind you, not many of the others would know Mercury from Eagle!

Generally true, although not true for

s6b

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Okay, if you say so - I'll have to go look!

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I notice that Mr. Schroth didn't come out with a number of patents he was/is involved with to the point of being named in.
Perhaps that has something to do with protecting the guilty. ;-)
However, although I haven't finished going over the patent in question, I notice that it makes reference to something else which I assume is a pending patent, not an accepted one, so right now, I'd guess that he's actually named in is greater than or equal to one.

And yes, I know the difference between a Mercury and an Eagle.
I even know the difference between a Centurian and a Cirrus or Chaparral.

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Well, you've got me beat. I know Cirrus and Chaparral, but not Centurian (I think!)

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Centurian was supposed to be a middle-of-the-road C-Series machine between the high-end Cirrus and the low-end Chaparral, but it was canceled before anything other than a few documents (PDs) were produced.
I'm sure that had it gotten very far, you (as an SSP-type) would have heard more about it.

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I started work at Sperry in hardware. I was hired to work with Trilogy on CAD/CAM and worked at Earl Brown until they moved all the hardware people back to building 3. I did write some of the Sperry CAD stuff, but I was never officially a Sperry CAD person. I worked hardware through the beginning of Unisys - writing macros and such for the hardware simulation engine (TSAR) until that was fairly well done.

Then I moved to halfies (I always thought of the control panel as half way between hardware and software - either the best or the worst of both!)

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Mr Schroth actually has no idea/doesn't remember how many patent applications bear his name. He is sure that the work he did on Mercury initialization and dumping was light years ahead of what Linux does, and rather wishes there had been a push to patent the really creative stuff we did.

And I suspect that it may have been spelled Centurion rather than Centurian, although a) I could be mistaken about that, and b) I have no way of proving or disproving this conjecture.

Not that it makes any difference.

You still saving your pennies for an emulated 2200 on a Pee-Cee?

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No doubt you are correct about the spelling of Centurion.
Please accept my deepest, most heartfelt apologies.
Hopefully, that was sufficiently fulsome. ;-)

As for (software) patents, I am ambivalent about them as they often seem counter to what should be patentable as algorithms aren't supposed to be.
I await with bated breath to see what the SCOTUS does with the Bilski case.

Regardless, I'm sure that *ix fanatics often times believe that they have discovered new and exciting stuff that has been known to Big Iron folks for decades as they gradually convert *ix to do what Big Iron OSs have had to for decades.

As for saving my pennies for an emulated 2200, I'll admit that I didn't bother to see what the Company was charging for its new low-end 2200, but at the moment, anything other than free (or nearly so) doesn't interest me ... I think that might have something to do with the current state of the economy in addition to innate cheapness.
Instead, I'm still chewing over my final version of PC2200, tossing in (and trying to figure out how to make work) things I originally decided to leave out, such as a decoded instruction trace cache to try to reduce the effects of host branch misprediction.

Can I assume that the Company is giving its employees emulated 2200s so they can work more efficiently at home?
Do you have a special spot for it already set up in the Manor?
Enquiring minds and all that.

And speaking of Linux, your LJ entries have been awfully quiet with regard to conflicts at work.
I hope that this is a good sign.

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