Apple's Ridiculous Patent

 

Apple's Ridiculous Patent

As if you needed more evidence that the US patent system is broken Apple has just been awarded one of the most ridiculous patents ever. The title? “Method for providing human input to a computer”

Here’s the Abstract from the filing:

The invention provides a method for providing human input to a computer which allows a user to interact with a display connected to the computer. The method includes the steps of placing a first target on a first portion of the user’s body, using an electro-optical sensing means, sensing data related to the location of the first target and data related to the location of a second portion of the user’s body, the first and second portions of the user’s body being movable relative to each other, providing an output of the electro-optical sensing means to the input of the computer, determining the location of the first target and the location of the second portion of the user’s body, and varying the output of the computer to the display based upon the determined locations for contemporaneous viewing by the user.

It gets better; the patent claims …

1. The invention can provide a 3, 4, and 5 dimensional touch screen or graphics tablet. In other words, the x,y location of the touch, the force or depth of the touch, and the vector direction of the touch (2 angles).

Of course, there’s no actual demonstration of this “5D” system and like so many modern patents this one amounts to a hand-waving (literally) exercise more along the lines of “what if” than anything concrete. Those issues aside, where’s the novelty?

I wonder how this patent will stand up to challenges and, should Apple try to exert what has become its intellectual property, how well might they fare in court?

it’s a mad mad mad mad world and getting madder

Facebook shares drop below flotation price (shock horror)

 

Shares in Facebook have fallen in early trading on Wall Street to below the price at which they were floated.

Now I am not a stock market expert but I am good at maths.

So let’s look at the numbers.

1. Facebook has never made a profit.

End of calculation 0 profit = 0 worth.

Even if they made 1 billion dollar this year it would take 100 years to break even and at those odds anybody who brought shares will be dead and their children and even grand children.

Or a more amazing is that Greece will be making money before Facebook so I am going to start buying share in Greece, sorry getting caught up in my own hype.

If you brought share please look at what you did and think very carefully so far you have lost 12% it time to sell and break loose before it goes down further.

Now, on Friday, Facebook debuted on the Nasdaq stock exchange at $38 a share.

Today, despite the wider market being in a buoyant mood, Facebook slid 12% immediately at the opening bell. They are currently around the $33-34 range.

Analysts suggested the shares would have fallen on Friday, had it not been for underwriters stepping in to buy up stock.

The offer price valued the site at $104bn (£66bn).

"It's early days yet but it doesn't look good," said BBC business correspondent Mark Gregory in New York.

"There's talk that Facebook's advisers set the price too high. And there are doubts about whether the firm can produce the revenues and profits required to justify its enormous valuation," he said.

 

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For other technology firms hoping to follow Facebook on the road to IPO riches, any sign that the bubble may burst is deeply worrying”

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One US-based analyst told the BBC that Facebook's flotation price had been too high.

"The market is just not valuing what Facebook has to bring to the table," said Patrick Moorhead, analyst at Moor Insights & Strategy.