Hmmm...

In an era where press releases are passed off as news stories is it any surprise that the media outlets simply regurgitated Apple's line?

I'm pretty sure that U2/Bono has sold their BRST investment.....

Sorry Bob, Burst is a troll. They are abusing the patent process. My personal opinion is that the patent system is unreformable and should be abolished.

But I thought Bono and Steve were buds..?

Rick, it is clear that you know little about this case (AAPL v. BRST), and even less about the "value" of the patent system.

Think of this scenario: you invent some gee-whiz widget that EVERYONE wants to buy from you. As soon as you sell some, some big manufacturing company (that has a lot more resources than you) starts to churn them out at half-the-cost you can...starts selling them too...and you can no longer sell due to your higher costs.

It doesn't matter whether it's a piece of hardware, or you spent man-years developing new s/w algorithms...you spent the time/money in "inventing" something new...and then someone else can just come along and profit from YOUR ideas!?

The patent system is necessary, and patents need to be enforced. Shame on big companies thinking that they can do what they want against the smaller ones.

Rick - do you even know the definition of a patent troll? If you did then you would know that Burst CLEARLY is not one.

Your invention will be astounding, but only change the world a little bit?

I sure hope it's a way to ditch spam :-)

/readytohelp

My iPod classic sounds fine, after a week of running in, that is. Mind you, I'm going straight from a 2G, so what do I know?

Bob, you bum!
How can I enjoy my weekend now that you built up so much anticipation for your announcement next week! I hope you get a severe case of insomnia!

Can you, at least, publish early...like maybe on Monday? (ok, Thursday will be fine)

--Bill

Maybe we read a different storey here, but didn't Steve actually defend Burst? He clearly stated that they are anything but a patent troll and had a ligitimate fight against Apple since Apple admitted to infringing in the past.

We know that Not Us, Ltd dropped below 'significant shareholder' status. We do not know if Bono personally still holds a position.

"Maybe that's just what lawyers do."

Uhm, yes. And when you keep lawyers on staff, you use them to beat the snot out of anyone who annoys you, right or wrong. There is no such thing as shame for AAPL or any other publicly-traded US company. The only thing that matters is making the quarterlies.

AAPL has a lot to lose in this case. If they are really trying any silly long-shot tactic they can think of, they're in trouble.

Thank you for your efforts to balance what was clearly a slanted series of reports on the hearing. All that "3 guys losing $500K" vs. "100M iPods" stuff was way over the top -- as were the caustic comments of Apple counsel, vs. the milder or, most often, non-existent BRST counsel comments.

Apple must be significantly enough concerned at this point to even bother planting this story in the first place -- and they should be, in my view. Theft is theft, and fear always accompanies the emergence of dark deeds into the light.

These "news" stories definitely had more the ring of PR than news.

I, for once, support the "first to file" rule. Not only does it bring the US into harmony with the rest of Europe and Asia, it reduces a costly legal overhead. Determining who's "first to invent" is hard, whereas it's obvious with "first to file". While it's true that a small inventor may have invented it first but did not get around to filing it, I believe that this scenario will get rarer as people learn the new rule. The overwhelming majority of patents are filed by corporations anyway. I agree that the change is not 100% fair, but it will be a lot more efficient.

"And speaking of clever inventions, I want to give fair warning that next week I will make an announcement in this space so astounding that even my 83-year-old mother may pay attention."

What - Season 2 of of NerdTV will finally start?

How does Bono justify being both an Apple spokesman (U2 iPod, RED iPod, etc.) and a major investor in Burst? Has anyone ever asked him about this? Just curious...

How does Bono justify being both an Apple spokesman (U2 iPod, RED iPod, etc.) and a major investor in Burst? Has anyone ever asked him about this? Just curious...

Its kinda like when you bet a horse to win/place/show in a horse race..your trying to make sure you are in the money some how.

Apple is famous for wanting everything to be in the public domain . . . except for things for which Apple holds patents. Jobs and Wozniak lifted the mouse and the GUI from Xerox's PARC, the kernel of OSX is MACH, and Quicktime is based on Burst. It is funny to hear Jobs tell movie studios they should be giving their product away while Apple went so far as to reneg on contracts allowing other computer manufacturers to manufacture systems that used the Apple OS. Jobs should take a lesson from Lotus, dBase, and WordPerfect: every dollar and minute spent in court on current technology in court is a dollar and minute the competition has to beat you in the technological future. Pay your royalties, there is certainly enough to go around, especially to the actual inventors of the technology.

OK Bob you've written about this a bunch of times, but I still don't really know what your point is.

If you're going to convince people like me that burst is anything other than a pariah, you need to explain what exactly it is that's original about what they did. If they came up with a unique codec that was stolen, then by all means they should get their fair share? But if it’s the idea of navigating, meta tagging and streaming digital files then I think that should be about as patent-able as putting a “home page” button on your web site.

There’s more that’s wrong with the patent system than the need for reform in “first-to-file”. There’s also extreme absurdity around what can be patented. IMO the RIM guys got blackmailed buy a flawed system, this smells the same.

Seeing as the only things in the iPod or iTunes that I'd consider 'innovative' or original are things Burst doesn't even claim to own a patent on I have to say "patent troll."

AAC and MP3 encoding/playback are patent worthy but not owned by Burst.

The scrollwheel isn't what I'd call patentworthy (tis just a touchpad after all) but Burst doesn't own that either.

There is ABSOLUTELY nothing in iTunes patent worthy. I'd sick and damned tired of these patent trolls adding "over the Internet" to the end of everything and filing a patent on it. There is nothing patent worthy in downloading a DRM infested (now you can opt for watermarked) file from a server or the idea of paying for a song over the Internet by billing yer freaking credit card. None.

Streaming MIGHT be different but again, Multicast being in the very earliest RFCs pretty much means the IDEA of sending realtime audio/video over the net isn't new and I really tire of patents on every minor incremental improvement in things. That doesn't 'promote progress in science and the useful arts' it slows progress down as only the mega corps can do anything because only they have the resources to track down the thousands of patents that apply to every possible thought and license them all.

Seeing as the only things in the iPod or iTunes that I'd consider 'innovative' or original are things Burst doesn't even claim to own a patent on I have to say "patent troll."

AAC and MP3 encoding/playback are patent worthy but not owned by Burst.

The scrollwheel isn't what I'd call patentworthy (tis just a touchpad after all) but Burst doesn't own that either.

There is ABSOLUTELY nothing in iTunes patent worthy. I'd sick and damned tired of these patent trolls adding "over the Internet" to the end of everything and filing a patent on it. There is nothing patent worthy in downloading a DRM infested (now you can opt for watermarked) file from a server or the idea of paying for a song over the Internet by billing yer freaking credit card. None.

Streaming MIGHT be different but again, Multicast being in the very earliest RFCs pretty much means the IDEA of sending realtime audio/video over the net isn't new and I really tire of patents on every minor incremental improvement in things. That doesn't 'promote progress in science and the useful arts' it slows progress down as only the mega corps can do anything because only they have the resources to track down the thousands of patents that apply to every possible thought and license them all.

Lee and Dyung,

Often, consequences are not intuitively obvious. As a Free/Open Source software developer, I have no intention of filing patents, even if I had the means. Software patents are not based on an actual product, that is what copyright law handles. Software patents cover a class of application, and specific implementations can infringe on them. This is how real patent trolls (I am not familiar with the specifics of Burst, so I am not calling them trolls), are able to make ridiculous claims such as: anyone who implements HTTP owes them money.

As a side note, patents for 'brick and mortar' type inventions require a schematic. Thus, it is possible to invent a better mousetrap. Software patents only require a description of the algorithms, with no prototype to provide specificity to the 'invention'. Thus, once the 'one-click payment' algorithm has been patented, no other implementation is allowed, even if it is written in a different programming language, uses different inventory storage methods, and/or uses different protocols for user access. In fact, the patent trolls often have no product at all, just a vaporware description that they claim describes the product of their victim.

In the age of the Internet, the 'first to file' rule gives anyone who has the money the capability to steal at will. And the argument that it puts the US in sync with the rest of the world is completely bogus. The rest of the world does not allow software patents--or the patenting of genes--so unless the US disallows those, it is badly out of sync. The concept of prior art at least provides a tiny bit of sanity in the system.

The history of copyrights and patents is full of talk about 'for the betterment of society', but when you get down to individual cases, it is really just about 'gimme the money'. And over time, those who already have the money have been using copyright and patent law to their advantage. The few 'David vs. Goliath' cases are usually backed by venture capitalists, yet they are used as proof that the system works for the little guy. But most of the time, the really little guy never gets his day in court.

Later . . . Jim

RenaissanceCore IDS, check it out at:

http://sourceforge.net/projects/renaissancecore

This story ignores one very important development that Cringely is surely aware of - the recent Supreme Court case that expands the idea of what's obvious.

how do you arrive at a figure of six billion songs ???

Excellent synopsis of this highly technical litigation. Thanks for advocating for more professionalism in reporting. You pointed out issues that have led me to invest in Burst.

It's simple to look backward through nearly 20 years of advancement in digital technology and proclaim what was 'anticipated' given patents and audio/video technology that existed then. Try looking 20 years forward. We cannot pretend to know where today's technology will branch and expand over the next 20 years. This retrospective analysis is what Apple is trying to do in their arguments. It makes for great armchair quarterbacking. It also shows their legal arguments to be invalid.

As you pointed out, Lang and his company spent millions developing their patented technologies. Patents were granted here and internationally. I'm certain Burst will prevail and it will not be because they are "patent trolls". Reform is needed in our patent system. The need is to reign in corporate heavyweights who want to legitimize their theft of the work and investments made by others.

"how do you arrive at a figure of six billion songs ???"

Start counting from one :)

Regardless of the figures burst are clearly adept at defending their turf, taking on and beating MS takes some balls and talent.

It'll be interesting to see whether the "Jobs Reality Distortion Field" (TM) can sway a Judge!

Jimbo

For me, the most revealing thing about the article Cringley just posted here, is that he didn't describe the actual meat of what Burst has done - he's just expected us to believe him when he says that it's all valid, argument by assertion.



The way I see it though, in an ideal world, nothing in software should be patentable, and therefore Burst shouldn't (as far as I understand it) have a reason to exist. Just having invested in developing a technology (no matter how impressive the amount or time) and then sitting on it, doesn't entitle you to a chunk of other people's profits. Ideas are cheap. Execution is what matters. If someone else is able to implement the same concepts without stealing your code (i.e. violating your copyright), good on them - and tough luck to you, buddy, you failed to execute.

David, the problem is that most patents ARE obvious to good engineers in those fields. And the patent office, stripped of resources and funding by the Reagan administration, has thrown up its hands for over 20 years, granted the patents, and said "Let the courts decide". Talk about spinmeisters? Lawyers were the first ones, completely in tune and cohorts of the "Divine Right of Kinds" people.

In viewing thousands of patents over the last 30 years in computer science, I would say there are precious few that were not obvious, not discussed widely, and not committed to paper in some form of prior art.

So, "little" Burst aside, in my opinion, it would be a great idea to see most of those Reagan-tainted patents thrown out.

Cheers!
William

"For me, the most revealing thing about the article Cringley just posted here, is that he didn't describe the actual meat of what Burst has done - he's just expected us to believe him when he says that it's all valid, argument by assertion."
Much of what you request can be found in the court documents:

http://burstingsquidoo.com/DocumentFilings.html

http://www.squidoo.com/apple_vs_burst

I rec you start with Judge Patel's Claim Construction Memorandum (Document 104 Filed 05/08/2007).

See http://playbacktime.com/2002/10/31/burstcoms-streaming-snake-oil/

The original Salon articles that covered this and referenced in the above article seem to be no longer reachable - if anyone can find them, you'll see that they quoted Apple Quicktime personnel who had given the Apple response.

But Cringely conveniently leaves out Apple's earlier response to the Microsoft-Burst suit. Instead he says he spoke to someone at Apple, will he tell us exactly who it was?

Cringely, your bias against Apple is growing week-by-week... Guess Steve still hasn't granted you an interview.

Reading the headline and lead graph, I came to this page expecting a column about Dan Lyons' mea culpa regarding his SCO case reportage. That would have been a bit more interesting facet of journalistic self-reflection, but...

Correction: The Salon articles, which I found, don't quote the Apple personnel. They can be found here: http://dir.salon.com/story/tech/feature/2002/10/29/microsoft_media_one/index.html

So maybe I've misremembered and the playtime article is the only one, but I could swear there was another article with a quote from the Apple staffer buried in it.

>

Maybe the reality is that, like many others of us, Cringely doesn't buy the whole-grain, cute-smart, politically correct, super-cool Apple facade. Instead, he sees what I see as well, "shameless theft." He wrote about that quote too this year. Go back into the archives and puzzle with the rest of us why that Jobs interview was suppressed on YouTube.

Theft is theft, bro -- and it's wrong, even if the thief is one of the coolest innovators in the world.

Gee and I thought apple was all groovy and gravy. Now it looks like they are just another corporate maggot. Sad really.

Good or bad itunes is the only place I found a copy of maggot brain by the funkadelics. Plus many other one hit wonders I have longed for. To me that is a service worthy of 99 cents per hit. You won't find those from any street dealer you betcha. :-)

Hey Bob! The mp3 file is labled Sept. 21 but the file is a copy of the Aug 30th podcast.

Corporations, by definition, are grounded in theft. It is what they do & always has been. Get over it & quit whining about reality. And, of course, software patents are bogus just like the folks that support them so they don`t have to actually produce anything of value. Note -->

"Piracy is the first stage of commerce" - Henri Pirenne

Burst did not invent video compression. But they did invent the best method to deliver it. Charles Goodyear invented to tire but he didn't invent the process to deliver it. The vulcanization process was developed and I believe patented by someone else that made a fortune off it by finding the key to making the tire plyable. This is like Firestone coming up years later and fighting the owners of the tire making process because they are selling more tires and claim obviousness. Charles Goodyear died broke. But his process to make the tire lives on from the help of another pioneer, that fortunately didn't have a large corporation strong arming his technology.

I don't know what patents are being contested, so can't speak to the validity of them. But I have read lots of US patents back in the day when I worked in R&D and I can say definitively that the US patent office is a joke. It will patent just about anything. The standard for "invention" or originality is appalling. Things that any competent person in the discipline would come up with are readily patentable. I laughed out loud at some of the ones I read.

Try patenting some of that rubbish in the Canadian patent office and you'd be in for a rude surprise. The standard for patentability is a lot tougher. If it gets patented here, it's nearly certain that it's safe in court.

So what are the great patent claims of Burst?

Yianni, dude you want me to start by reading a 50 page legal document! You're out of your mind.

Bob, if you're chastising journalists for being lazy. Maybe you can set the example by explaining, in ten sentences or less, what exactly it is that Burst invented that you feel so passionate about. I know you can do it.

And to anyone who says this stuff wasn't obvious, I suggest Negroponte's "Being Digital" or even Larry Ellison on "Triumph of The Nerds" (sorry shameless I know). Both pre-date 1999 and seem to talk a lot about the absurdity of going to a store to buy digital bits.

NTP got $600M from RIMM even tho their patents were later ruled invalid. Forgent got a bunch of $$ for its JPEG "patent", even tho the Court later ruled in the Markman hearing that it was only a video patent and TOTALLY not enforceable for still images. Burst has been unfairly tarred by many as a troll like NTP and Forgent.

But Burst on the other has a patent suite that prevailed over MSFT and won 90% of the constructions in their Markman hearing against Apple. They spent over $66M and 25 years developing their technology. They were a company with 100+ employees and a market cap of $100M+ before they failed thanks to infringers like Microsoft, Apple, Adobe Google and tons of others using time compressed digital media files and players. They ran a full page color ad in Wired magazine. http://burstingsquidoo.com/Treatises/ad-wired-jun-2000.pdf

Bursts’ failure cost individual investors their life savings and caused 100 people to lose their jobs. Burst is light years away from the above trolls.

Burst’s combination patent was for its time just as revolutionary as the invention of the light bulb – another revolutionary combination patent by somebody named Thomas Edison.

They will win. This is a slam dunk.

So if someone had not discovered the process to vulcanize rubber faster than real time we would all have some sore arses. Riding around on tires made of pixelated wood and steel. Your Corvette's quarter mile time would be, 3.5 streaming minutes.

Switching to a "first-to-file" patent system as exists in most of the rest of the world and taking from inventors the right to force infringers to stop using patented technologies takes the teeth out of the U.S. patent system and places most power with whomever has the largest legal budget.

Not to burst the bubble or anything, but changing the law will only make obvious what is already true. Sometimes the little guy gets through anyway under the current regime, but the majority of the time he (or she) won't regardless of the quality of their claims.

I'm sure all current cases will be under a Grand Father clause. If the Patent law is amended, current cases should be processed under current statues. IMO Apple couldn't get Burst tech cheap so they sued. The key here is that they were negotiating on the mutual acknowledgment of Burst holding key patents but decided to play the pony's and take Burst to court.

Steve Jobs: "We've always been shameless about stealing great ideas."

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=2829706781518555889&q=Burstingsquidoo&total=2&start=0&num=10&so=0&type=search&plindex=0

I'm a software guy, and certainly no patent lawyer, but the idea of patent reform in the US only sounds good to me, especially if it borrows from best practices from around the world.

True, I don't know this space that well, but from where I sit, the US patent system is so incredibly broken and stifling of innovation, that any change seems like it would be an improvement.

The shamelessnessability of it all.

Cringely,
I'm a big fan of you and appreciate all the work and insights coming from you.
But... I'm always on the go and I'm not sure if anyone realized that your link for the podcast of this week is pointing to the "next Killer Application" from Aug.30th....

I too jumped to the conclusion that Burst was another patent troll. Who woulda thought a 20 year old company would have 3 employees, no income, and be called Burst.com?

Thanks for the enlightenment.

Burst is not a patent troll (unlike NTP who never even tried make a product). It developed software to optimize video streaming (remember how badly it sucked in the late 90s?). Burst had an actual commercial product to serve video, and was in the process of licensing its code to MS, who promptly screwed them over. Patent laws are there to protect companies exactly like Burst.

For those claiming Bob is full of crap because he doesn't describe the patents, it's probably for the sake of brevity as he's already written about Burst several times and probably doesn't feel like doing it again:

http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/2002/pulpit_20020620_000736.html
http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/2003/pulpit_20030821_000783.html
http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/2003/pulpit_20030828_000447.html
http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/2005/pulpit_20050317_000846.html

Here's another good overview:
http://dir.salon.com/story/tech/feature/2002/10/29/microsoft_media_one/

"first-to-file" is about concurrently developed inventions, NOT about the first to the post with something that has weeks, or in some cases, months/years, of prior art.

"first-to-file" is about concurrently developed inventions, NOT about the first to the post with something that has weeks, or in some cases, months/years, of prior art.

Haniel-

"Yianni, dude you want me to start by reading a 50 page legal document! You're out of your mind."

I try to avoid posting opinion without first considering available findings - especially if those findings are from an experienced federal judge.

Rob

I think you are too kind on the reporters.
Personally it seems to me they are more interested in appeasing their sponsor, who are generally big business with large advertising budgets.
They dare not say anything to upset them so the just regurgitate the line they are told.

Wow; the only way that this is "reporting" is in the sense that Fox News is "reporting" - not.

It's so painfully clear what you intend the reader to take away, it's sad. That it's consistent in several of your recent articles makes it even worse; a kind of jihad.

Trust erodes quickly and returns very slowly if at all.

If I could borrow an analogy from Andy Griffith's Salt Salesman joke, my thoughts are.... I may not patent a lot of my ideas. But the guy I show my ideas to, he sure has a lot of inventions.

When I grew up I was taught about patents and how they were essential to innovation, and encouraged people to share non-obvious ideas sooner and be justly rewarded for their innovation and their sharing.

But my field is software, and it is clear to me that patents are software are simply a terrible idea. If you sit down as a programmer, you just have to be able to type code without someone coming and saying "you can't type (or sell) that code without paying me". Especially since there is a really clear alternative for software, which is not to reveal the algorithm. If it really is not obvious, no one else will be able to reproduce it, and you'll have a monopoly; if it is obvious really, you won't.

Now of course, there is the argument that it isn't really that the "algorithm" is non-obvious, it's the concept that the raison d'etre for the algorithm, and once the inventor has revealed that reason d'etre it's easy for people to figure out an algorithm; but I think that's nonsense. Whatever else they're there for, patents are not supposed to be to protect the idea of a problem to be solved; they're supposed to protect the solution.

The weird result of all this is that I now seriously question the value of patents in any field. It's not as clear cut as in software, because in physical systems there isn't really the equivalent of source code that doesn't need to be revealed; but I have been strongly disillusioned by seeing the destructive effects of patents on software.

So back to Burst and Apple. I have no idea whether Apple has infringed Burst's patents (and oddly, you haven't really provided any evidence; just assertion, as is pointed out above). But even if they have, if they're patents for algorithms, I don't care.

If someone were to find the cure to cancer today five seconds ago after years of reserch would the recent discovery be obvious or just plain lucky? Some make it sound like there is no longer room for inovation, that a moratorium was placed on it after woodstock. If your job requires you to be creative and read lines of data faster than you can pull milk in a bucket, or write it faster than a hog racing an ant down hill. I think I would be glad for the stacks of awards I get each year until the day I come up with that big idea I can call my own hoping and praying no one steals the idea.

I believe Burst.com will win, some people don't. Reading all of the comments over the years have enlightened me. Even the negative posters have made me dig a little deeper in my thoughs and rationale. To all those information buffs congrats on a job well done. To all the rest, you're doin a heck of a job.

I sincerely hope Burst wins - I would like to see Apple taken to the cleaners, as they are nothing but purveyors of bloatware, using code that other people have written without being paid.

About the NBC showing their TV programs via the web- with the commercials now embedded, how do the local affiliates share in the revenue?
If they are cut of of the money stream, then how likely are they to stay in with NBC?
Stay tuned to find out.

If Apple moved to dismiss its own lawsuit then they know they're losing. The case will be settled out of court, both parties will agree not to discuss, and certain Burst patents will be licensed to Apple for an undisclosed sum. Can't believe nobody here "knows" this already. . .

Timing (as it relates to this case) - to divert attention and create public sentiment and resentment. Senario: Hey this war is really going to be bad, people don't care about each other anymore, let's take our chances in court, what have we got to loose.

http://news.zdnet.com/2100-9588_22-6209223.html

SavvyOldTimer, if you are going to bother to quote Pirenne, how about a little more savviness?

"Corporations, by definition, are grounded in theft." Which definition is that? Are you drawing from Henri Pirenne or from Karl Marx? (Or maybe Hugo Chavez?)

The audio portion links to the August 30th edition for some reason.

Einstein pointed out that nothing in the universe that could be viewed as at "absolute rest," nor could any motion be considered an "absolute motion."

All motion was relative to some frame of reference chosen, usually, for its convenience.

His theory, because of the "all motion is relative" (or obvious) idea, is therefore called relativity (or obviousnessvivity). In this particular paper he dealt only with the special case of systems in uniform nonaccelerated motion (non-accelerated motion), so it is called the special theory of relativity. (anything altered to speed the theory would be Faster Than Realtime) IMO

Apple's position... Faith is believing what you know ain't so. - Mark Twain

Rather pot calling the kettle black, isn't this, Robert?

You are telling us (very vaguely) the legal story, but every bit as interesting to readers of this column in the technical story.

(1) What exactly has Burst done in the field of video streaming that is so damn fantastic that it took all this time and money to develop? What EXACTLY have they done. Not the BS you have trotted out for us in ten or so columns now about how they have made it better and shinier and pinker and sparklier --- what EXACTLY? A new codec (not that I am aware of)? A new protocol? A new algorithm on the server end? An algorithm for clients to paper over gaps in the playback?

(2) You claim this is relevant to Apple; except that Apple is not in the streaming video/audio game. They may one day be (god I hope not) but for now they, like me, believe that user quality and flexibility are far better served by downloading content. Downloading a file is a totally different ballgame from streaming content; it's been around since networks were invented. Even more so than for streaming, it seems highly unlikely that Burst have invented anything relevant to downloading a file that anyone gives a damn about.

The bottom line, Bob, is that, for reasons I don't understand (maybe it's your TV background) you have an absolute obsession with streaming that makes absolutely no sense to me. Anything streaming can do, downloading can do with better quality, more flexibility, and using cheaper hardware.

If Burst actually manage to win their lawsuit, this might well be a blessing in disguise. Kill the whole stupid idea of streaming dead dead dead, and get all those lame Real servers and the rather fewer Windows Media and QT streaming servers to switch to just giving us downloadable files. What a glorious day that would be.

Please allow me to interject Mr. Handly

1. It started with Streaming Video but it brokeapart, jerky and inconsistant due to the squeeze on bandwith. Supply at that time was striped by demand.

Yes, to the second question. It all started with the miracle. One day we all woke up and the jerking stopped Mr. Handly. Quicktime was as smooth as butter. But how you might ask were they able to buffer bits of data ahead of the current streaming rate? I tt w as d u e to B u r s. t Fas tttt er th aan Reeee l t ime streaming video.

"For those claiming Bob is full of crap because he doesn't describe the patents, it's probably for the sake of brevity as he's already written about Burst several times and probably doesn't feel like doing it again:
"

Uh, actually Bob is full of crap and these articles don't change it.
They may be satisfactory to rubes and non-engineers, but not to those of us who actually work in this field.
What exactly has Bob told us? Burst apparently have a two pass coding system that distributes bits more evently in time. Woop de doo. In other words they have a way of encoding a video stream at a constant bit rate. You know, the same thing that people have been doing since the original picture phone work in the 60s.

This is not acceptable as an explanation. There is NOTHING original in this idea, so if there is something original it must be in the execution. So once again, what exactly are we talking about here?

Is the magic that Burst did
- a new type of codec?
- a new way of running a generic video encoder?
- a way of running a video server utilizing feedback from the client to vary the speed at which it dumps data down the wire (you know, like standard TCP transfers)

And don't tell us to go to some web site and read 150 legal documents. The point of being a journalist is to do these sorts of summaries for us. Surely, since Bob loves Burst so much, he can find a single person on their team who can explain, for a technical audience, in about five pages, exactly what Burst did that is so fantastic, and why it deserves to be patented. If Bob and Burst cannot produce such a document, I call bullshit.

(And don't tell me how the results of the legal system validate Burst. We all know full well how poorly the legal system has comported itself in certain other high-profile tech cases, from Armstrong and FM, through the ruckus regarding who invented computers, to the laser cases. I'm interested here in the MORAL case of whether what Burst did is of any value, not in the legal issue of whose lawyers can best exploit what everyone agrees is not especially good law.)

The original picture phone was scraped in the early 70's

I will email the Vatican to get their moral take on the case.

Should a person who admits the theft of another persons ideas should be recieved spiritualy as eternally honest?

Is that question moral enough or did our for fathers spell it out clear enough that it lingers in our subconcious daily that we need no reminders or daily affirmation of morality.

now... back to the Burst vs Apple thingy

Listen to the YouTube video of Steve Jobs remarks. I would not work for a person who makes a statement like that. I have worked for some very wealth people that ran their own buisness and they would never boast of theft. It sends the wrong message to your employees. Unless that's the message you want to send. Yup he's a very accomplished person with the most toys.

Great job, Ed. Four comments and not one addressing the TECHNICAL points I raised. Very convincing.

You said (You know, the same thing that people have been doing since the original picture phone work in the 60s.)

I said (The original picture phone was scraped in the early 70's)

When someone talks out of... not knowing stuff
I just sit back and take it all in. Because transmission is something I know a little about from nuts and bolts to PMD testing. So go ahead and bagger Bob for information you could get from www.burst.com it's so easy!

Apple brought several suits against Creative to discredit them but it didn't work. Is that a stradegy? Sue so many times the court is overwhelmed with court cases that they somehow decide to rule in your favor instead of the person your are infringing against like all the sudden filings and threats of more filings should Apple loose the recent summary. They told the judge that they are preparing more papers. Just like the Creative case. IMO

http://www.dailytech.com/Apple+and+Burstcom+Have+a+Day+in+Court/article8967.htm

One last comment that folks I think have missed. Apple has been sued by several companies, Creative, Cisco, Apple London or England, and probally others but IMO they relly don't care. They make their money across the spread. Billions of dollars over a ten or fifteen year period and they are fined two hundred million or so. So they make 20 billion with other companies tech then take their chances in years of litigation where they make billions more and fined 10 million. A famous economist once said, It's the spread stupid.

"You said (You know, the same thing that people have been doing since the original picture phone work in the 60s.)

I said (The original picture phone was scraped in the early 70's)"

Scrapping the picture phone is not the point. The point is that
(a) the sole supposed technical achievement of Burst that Cringely has ever discussed is what boils down to constant bit-rate encoding BUT
(b) constant bit-rate encoding is not an especially new idea, as evidenced by the fact that it was being used in the original picture phone work.

Burst's web site does a fine job of telling us what is so great about what they have to sell. It does a rather less good job of telling us what they have that deserves a patent.
Contrary to what Cringely claims, Burst seem to feel that what they have that is most worth boasting about to the world is a video delivery system that combines the essential idea of streaming with the essential idea of file transfer.
- The idea behind file transfer is to deliver data to the client as fast as it can be accepted
- The idea behind streaming is to deliver data to the client at carefully measured intervals, independent of the speed of the connection to the client.

Merging these two concepts is an obvious and trivial idea. For example, consider an MPEG decoder that I wrote over ten years ago. This has an inner part (the equivalent of the server) that decodes video to YUV frames as fast as it can, and transfers them to an outer display engine (the equivalent of the client) that displays each of those frames when its time stamp reaches the clock time. This is an obvious architecture for this sort of problem and I wouldn't even pretend I invented it.

The only technical question of interest is how do we couple these two entities, producer and consumer? There are two obvious answers, one relying on feedback from the consumer (ie the consumer somehow notifies the producer that its buffer of material has gone below a certain threshold, and the producer gets to work), and one simply based on timing (the producer knows that the client displays frames at a certain rate, and has a buffer of a certain size, and so goes to sleep until a certain number of timestamps have passed).
My code actually utilized both of these ideas using timing to sleep the producer so as to save CPU, and using notification of the buffer status of the client for finegrained details.
Again none of this is original --- these ideas have been around since the very first work on producer/consumer models, whether on multi-threaded operating systems or networks.

In summary:

(1) I don't see what Burst are doing that qualifies in any way as original. All they have done is take obvious ideas from CS and apply them to media streaming. It's hardly surprising that other people likewise took those same ideas and applied them to the same problem. (And for someone who claims to be so upset by "theft" of ideas, you should be excoriating Burst for stealing ideas that are so obviously part of the the public knowledge of CS engineers.)

(2) Regardless of the merits or otherwise of Burst's claim re streaming, Burst claims that Apple is on the hook because of iTunes downloads, but none of these involve streaming or anything close to it.

To many decoders in the 90's that didn't solve 80 percent of the problem. MPEG1 MPEG4, JPEG, Packet Data, Air Packets, Fiber Optics, T-1, Twisted pair, coax, hybrid, all were fast tracked due to demand because buisness data and video streaming were on a collision coarse for bandwith. Until the market crash and there was a surplus with dark fiber coming out the wazoo. No one or two technologies could keep up with demand. What worse was the quality of video and some audio but there were promise after promise from all the media and buisness enties that a better streaning experience was coming. Then all of a sudden Microsoft had their problem resolved and soon after Quicktime if I remember all the events correctly man... we are going to need a CSI timeline for all this. Where was I ... dark fiber companies were folding lots of shareholder law suits, and let see? oh well im pooped. Oh yea! I just remembered The buffer bar appeared on the media players on playback where you could see the video loading ahead of play sometimes catching up to the arrow im assuming depended on your connection dial up or DSL.

You suggest a reglulator of Bandwith to let the company know by the consumer when they need more or some other technical function. Which im sure is also being lobbied along with the Patent amendment to create more special intrest based companies that can funnel money back to their favorite politican. Not saying that they do just voicing my opinion.

Hey try these guys I read about their cause a few years ago they seem like they invented something or someway to stream faster in a management sort of way.

Streaming Media Group, its StreamOS technology platform, and certain related assets.
StreamOS is a high-performance platform for the management and delivery of streaming content to Internet audiences.

To Maynard:

Thank you for adding the technical context to the discussion!

Tuco

Geez. Got a hard on for the New York Times much? Don't shoot the messenger. A good deal of what you seem to write and describe as "context" these days is considered "bias" in a modern media hamstrung by a litigious society. Unlike Public Broadcasting bloggers, the New York Times and other responsible media outlets strive to report the facts, not the VH1 Back Story. That's because real reporters are constrained by time, money, story space, and accountability. The Times et. al. probably could have reported it your way, but then you'd be dancing on their grave because the "mainstream media" took an extra 24 hours to check its facts and that won't fly in the instant gratification internet age. I don't know much about your background, but your blog entry makes it seem like you were a smalltown newspaper reporter 20, 30, or even 40 years ago. The game has changed, and so have you. You're not a journalist anymore. You're just another blogger.

I strongly disagree with Reaperducer's comments. News reporters are supposed to provide factual context, in a fair and balanced way - and I don't mean fair and balanced as Fox does.

The New York Times is often inaccurate. I have seen stories where, because of their current reporting method - generally, most stories are simply rewritten press releases or statements from official sources - their articles were no more than lies. The Times is hardly unique in this, and I think their editors care more about the truth than those in most papers, but their method of reporting cannot uncover the truth.

The days of reporters who actually understood what they were writing about have, except for columnists, long disappeared. There's no budget for that in modern corporate journalism. Instead, we get people who rewrite press releases or who talk for three minutes to a High Official and copy down whatever they say. If you think that's better than the old system of people knowing when High Officials and press releases were absolute lies, and putting in context, well, I feel sorry for you. In some ways I also envy you, because you can live a happier life believing that this is the best of all possible worlds and that anyone who thinks reporters should actually tell us when Official Sources are lying is living in the past.

Bob Cringely might be a blogger now, but as a blogger, he's still a better journalists than most of the overworked, underpaid hacks who have no time to investigate and no ability to report accurately.

I see the APPLE Basholes are alive and well here.

Spilling the beans video. But not all the beans were spilled. Burst could not at that time say in a interview that they buffered bits of content ahead. But the details came out when they confided in Microsoft. This is a video bit of history like watching the signing of the Declaration of Independance,... enjoy.

(click on the Youtube link)
the author did a fine job

http://www.investorvillage.com/smbd.asp?mb=389&mn=1135&pt=msg&mid=3062872

I should have said in my last post that they didn't disclose the secret sauce until talking to Microsoft. Burst did mention Bursting ahead in the video.

Some really heady stuff man... groovy!

Lang should be listed along side Einstein as an accomplished theorysist.

Einstien discoverd the theory of Relative Motion

Lang found, defined and applied accelerated motion in a daily application. I will dub it... Langs, Burst Applied Accelerated Motion or BAAM! will prosper mankind and generations to come and will be noted along with Newton and Einstien.

I can't blame Apple's lawyers for trying to have the court dismiss the patents. When you go to court, you go with all your guns blazing. You make every claim possible because you may not know which one sticks. It would be a poor lawyer who didn't file a motion to dismiss.

If Apple can get Burst's patents thrown out on a motion, so much the better. If not, they'll show that they don't violate Burst's patents. If that doesn't work, they'll show that they really already compensated Burst for the patents. If that doesn't work, then they'll try to prove that they had to violate the patents for national security reasons.

There's an old joke about a lawyer presenting his case to the jury:

"Ladies and gentlemen, by the time this case has finished, I will prove three things: 1). My client didn't do it. 2). It was in self defense. And, 3). He promises that he'll never do it again."

I've never really used a Windows or Linux machine. I went from .command to mac in '88, and like a pound dog that understands gratitude, I've supported Apple (and happily) ever since. But like the bard said, power corrupts, .... Only the occassional failure really teaches perspective. I hope Burst gets what they deserve.

I've never really used a Windows or Linux machine. I went from .command to mac in '88, and like a pound dog that understands gratitude, I've supported Apple (and happily) ever since. But like the bard said, power corrupts, .... Only the occassional failure really teaches perspective. I hope Burst gets what they deserve.

I've never really used a Windows or Linux machine. I went from .command to mac in '88, and like a pound dog that understands gratitude, I've supported Apple (and happily) ever since. But like the bard said, power corrupts, .... Only the occassional failure really teaches perspective. I hope Burst gets what they deserve.

1985 Walter patent, someone tell me. Was that Multiplex digital ??? signal broadcasted to a VGA or Super VGA computer monitor with a (7 gigahertz) IBM floppy disk computer. Showing movies???
give me a break ...wow ...really? ...wow.

Never mind I think I found what it might have been used for. Possibly dedticated lines within a broadcast studio transmiting on T-1 lines, editing and streaming for buildings and offices in a skyscraper maybe. For sound and broadcast video replayed on mono black and white monitors possibly for studio use prior to broadcast. Just a guess. Im lost on this one I didn't have a computer in 1985 that I could get home movies on downloaded by phone from my local video store.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betamax

I new a guy back in the 80's that worked at a place that made data buffers. The buisness was hot for a few years but technology closed then almost as fast as they buisness got started. External data buffers wern't needed anymore. This was around 1989. I found a link that has other reference links to data multiplexers.

http://www.patentstorm.us/patents/6388999-description.html

FLASH BACK

http://aroundcny.com/technofile/texts/2400modem88.html

Fast modems were bad... characters would scroll across the screen to quickly to follow as the article states so the 1200 Hayes modem was better. hummmm? 1985 speed had to be controlled by a buffer, .... thats until Burst came along, ok that maybe a stretch but it's my first :-)

http://aroundcny.com/technofile/texts/2400modem88.html

Separating color broadcast signals in 1989

http://aroundcny.com/technofile/texts/bye2ntsc89.html

another pictures were jerky comment found

http://aroundcny.com/technofile/texts/tec041397.html

More on Real Video April 20, 1997

http://aroundcny.com/technofile/texts/tec042097.html

If anyone lives in a major city that has a large central library. Those large central librarys have old periodicals (Video Review, Audio Visual, PC Magazine, etc.)that you might find user complaints or editors comments of video players like quicktime, windows or winap video media players that were printed around 1985 thru 1990. Any articles that talk about the poor video quality with info on companies with solutions that didn't work send a copy to the guy that made that fantastic YouTube video. BurstingSquidoo on Youtube and on his website. Im sure he would apreciate the info to add to his website. Bob Cringely might even like a copy if the article is juicy enough. Unfortunately the www (world wide web didn't archive periodicals back then). http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mxQ_d-AT280

There's an old joke.

An antique dealer was looking over a customers cabnet and was impressed by how solid the piece was after being used for storage the past 100 years in a barn. The dealer commented out loud as he walked around inspecting the piece. The top and sides still have nice grains showing, the hindges are original he adds, the antique dealer looks at the integrity of the seams but was taken aback, ... what the @&$#, is that Gorrila Glue? (ok, maybe it is a 3 minute old joke:-)

If you were to build an audio player back in the 80's to keep cost down you would'nt design it for audio and video which would bring the cost up, when all you were going to play back was alblums from a record store. The device back then to process video and audio would have had to have had a Math co processor which would have brought the cost up. Sony walkmans back then were not that small. And recording on a card I think was a a slow rate and the hundred times faster reference would just be bringing it up to play speed. This I think is the Kramer patent where the speed is in question. Look at it like a copy machine you copy the image is at 20% to save space on the paper and enlarge it later to 100% for viewing. Apple is trying to turn this case into a zoo. The Kramer drawing back in 1979 looks like it even had USB ports and LCD display mini toggles like the new cell phones. man that guy sold a lot of salt.

I also think the Apple defense Kramer or Walter patent might be referencing items used by mobile broadcasting stations where they had tons of equiptment that they could move on site in a van back in the 70's and 80's but the digital wireless world made it easy to leave all that equiptment at the station im not for certain but I think that is what the missing elements are on the walter patent, I could be wrong,... hey! who knows.

Back in the day didn't TV studios have to edit live transmissions with a delay before "live" broadcast? Back then it might have been a 30 second delay today I think it's down to 7 seconds or at least I remember them saying 7 seconds a few years ago when watching a football game on the tube.

The thing missing is that this company never invented anything. Nor did any of the people currently working there. Most of the patents were filed by people then purchased by Burst so they could sue Microsoft and now apple.

Reading the summarys from the recent court papers ... "converted back to optical" This is starting to sound like a test bed loop. Did real people recieve this optical video on demand?

Slowly the duck turns, step by step

Here's more stuff on transmission systems

United States Patent 5003617 Link to this page:http://www.freepatentsonline.com/5003617.html Abstract:A simulcast broadcast system wherein two signals (103 and 106) intended for simultaneous broadcast are transmitted from a source site (100) to remote sites (200) discrete from one another. At the remote sites, the two signals are separately processed, including the introduction of appropriate delay (305 and 312), prior to combining them for broadcast in conjunction with other remote sites. One or more monitoring sites (400) can also be provided to monitor reception coherence within the system and to provide operating measurement information to allow automatic control of various simulcast system parameters, including delay.

http://www.freepatentsonline.com/5003617.html

scott: the thing missing is your research. Lang is the inventor of record of the patents, and founder of the company that morphed over time into Burst. Put out of the SW business by Microsoft dirty tricks, they are now litigating against Apple (and eventually other companies) who is infringing their IP. Please read up more at www.squidoo.com/bursting and elsewhere. If your opinion changes, I would love to see you comment to such.

Bob,

You've made some statements here that don't, on the surface, add up to the conclusion. The fact that someone spent $66 million developing something does not necessarily imply it is non-obvious. And given the recent supreme court ruling on patents and obviousness, I suspect we'll see more suits like this in the next year or two.

So is Apple violating the patents? Probably, at least several of them.

Are they good, novel patents, or were the inventions obvious? From this article, at least, I can't tell.

Bob

Your podcast for this article has a big error
it is about another article - Telepresence -
please make a correction I like to listen to
the podcast version

regards
JV

Have you read the relevant patents?

1) 4,963,995 -- Audio/video transceiver apparatus including compression means

Digitize and store video. Replay video to tape. Allows duplicating video with only one tape drive.

OK ... to the extent that this isn't obvious, how is it related to QuickTime? They didn't invent compression or digitization or playback. Right?

2) 5,995,705: Burst transmission apparatus and method for audio/video information

Again, overlaps with QuickTime in the areas that they didn't invent.

3) 5,057,932: Audio/video transceiver apparatus including compression means, random access.

Basically, imagine QuickTime Player as a piece of hardware. Kind of the whole point of QuickTime is that it isn't a piece of hardware. Oh yeah, and Apple had the hardware versions of all this stuff out in Apple storefronts a couple of years earlier.

4) 5,164,839: Method for handling audio/video source information

Updated version of item 2, above. Oh and this was filed in late 1991 after Apple released QuickTime to the public, complete with all of this functionality and more.

It's also worth mentioning that Apple had displayed tech demos of QuickTime precursor technology two years before releasing the beta. It seems to me that Apple's prior art defense would be pretty much unbeatable, even if patenting a piece of hardware to do something has much to do with the software. It's like someone who builds enlargers suing Adobe over Photoshop.

Are you saying that the first Quicktime player, Quicktime 1.0 had the same buffer functions as Quicktime 4.0 or later Quicktime players that improved viewing after Apple upgraded the player to streaming in 1999, had the same interuption proof technology? It might even be later that Apple started buffering. I will search some periodicals and narrow down the point of infraction that should clearly show the user complaints of jerky video to finally praise of a smooth viewing experience.

Patent law is an absurd thing, especially in the U.S.. History records that Edison invented the light bulb but that ignores that the scientific community, at that time, was obsessed with solving the problem of electric light. Alternate patents were filed, most notably in the UK (where Edison lost). If Edison hadn’t come along, do we seriously believe that the light bulb wouldn’t have been invented? Do we think that the other inventors such as Swan, Woodward or Evans were not decent people who wanted to run legitimate businesses?

At least Edison never tried to lay claim to the “idea of electric light” and it still smells to me like Burst is trying to lay claim to the “idea of streaming video” (OK fast streaming video, but that it requires that clarification seems obvious with a capital O). You can paint this as David vs. Goliath all you want but unless you can show me exactly where Apple, Adobe, Google et al stole Burst’s source code (the equivalent of Edison’s carbon filament) you still haven't convinced me... no matter how many times Ed posts ;-)

Microsoft is different because it appears they actually did stuff to prevent Burst software from working, which to my non-lawyer mind sounds more like anti-trust than patent.

You guys that got MYspace pages could get your buds to search periodicals at their library's from 1979 to 1999.

http://docs.hp.com/en/7893/OCMPVideo10-SDK-ReleaseNotes.pdf (page 13)

http://nowthis.com/log/1999/06/01.html

http://www.asktog.com/readerMail/1999-06ReaderMail.html#Apple

Here's another interesting blog post

http://64.233.167.104/search?q=cache:ps2CYRMklzIJ:www.nyu.edu/tisch/preservation/program/student_work/2006fall/06f_1805_resnick_a3.doc+IT+poor+quality+quicktime+player+1996&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=5&gl=us

Check out page 13

http://docs.hp.com/en/7893/OCMPVideo10-SDK-ReleaseNotes.pdf

Sorry if I offend anyone by posting so often. Ill take a break.

Ok it's break time

http://www.asktog.com/readerMail/1999-06ReaderMail.html#Apple

Man that break felt good. I think I will join the Burst message board over at Investorvillage.com does anyone know if it cost anything to join? Maybe I will look into it later in the week. It looks like the Tribe has spoken. Burst is the Survivor champion!

No worries Ed it's all good. Just because I disagree with you (and Bob) doesn't mean I don't admire your tenacity and passion for the subject. Jefferson would be proud.

Ed, no-one is offended by your multiple posts. Most of us, however, are absolutely baffled as to what exactly is the great white whale you are pursuing.
However they may disagree in the details, Bob and Burst's web site agree that Burst is all about streaming media. You, on the other hand, are wildy flailing at any and everything ever related to video compression and/or quicktime. Perhaps you might enlighten us as to where you are going with all this.

Consider, for example:
"Are you saying that the first Quicktime player, Quicktime 1.0 had the same buffer functions as Quicktime 4.0 or later Quicktime players that improved viewing after Apple upgraded the player to streaming in 1999, had the same interuption proof technology?"

It would be immensely helpful if you actually took some time to consider the history of QT, and exactly what these random people you have complaining about QT were dealing with.
Consider. for example, the following exceptionally important points, all of which you have completely ignored:

(1) Remember the MacOS then was polling based (WaitNextEvent()) not interrupt based. This naturally leads to problems with any system service that wants to deliver data in a timely fashion. The very first version of QT was well aware of this, but shipped in a wholly poll dependent fashion to get something out the door and into the hands of developers. The next rev of QT made it possible to decode and display frames at interrupt time, and this naturally led to substantially smoother playback.

(2) The first rev of QT shipped with codecs that, even for decode, were too CPU intensive for the chips of the time. It was immensely helpful to QT when Cinepak was developed. Recall that Cinepak is based on VQ so, as you'd expect, plays back very rapidly (it's mostly table lookups) but is incredibly slow to encode. A second part of increased satisfaction from QT came from the rise of Cinepak, first as a proprietary codec (from Radius I believe), and then licensed by Apple, included in QT, and utilized widely.

(3) A third issue is better CD-ROM support. In those early days few people had LANs, let alone WAN connections, and hard drives were tiny. Video was about CD-ROMs and CD-ROM drives were 1x. The QT team spent substantial effort in successive releases in boosting CD-ROM performance through techniques like asynchronous read-ahead (ie buffering), hardly a novel technique.

To the extent that people became happier with QT, another part of this was simply the hardware ramp. As CPUs, memories and CD-ROM speeds all doubled then doubled again, QT became that much more tolerable. In other words it's hard using your bizarre metric of "satisfaction with QT" to figure out any sort of split between QT SW issues and raw HW issues.

(4) QT naturally, from day one, could play material over a network --- just play off an AFP mounted volume.
The extent to which this would be satisfactory would, of course, depend primarily on the bandwidth available, and secondarily on the packet loss rate and retransmit latencies.
Later versions of QT added to the generic abstraction for streaming in data (the DataHandler component), as I mentioned already with CD ROMs, asynchronous loading of this data which, naturally acts, as a buffer.
Even later versions added a technically minor change that was operationally very significant, the so-called fast-start movies which shifted the movie metadata from the end of the file to the beginning thus making playback (over lossless FILE transport channels, not streaming channels) much easier because seeking was not an essential part of the playback process.
Again an innovation that might appear to the ignorant outsider to have something to do with better buffering and thus "stolen" from Burst, but in fact a purely internal innovation driven by the rise of the internet along with protocols (specifically HTTP 1.0) that did not support seeking.

In other words, dude, regardless of how much you might hate Apple, please try to put some sort of coherence, and some sort of connection with real world history into your stream of posts.

For example what does this even mean?
"Are you saying that the first Quicktime player, Quicktime 1.0 had the same buffer functions as Quicktime 4.0 or later Quicktime players that improved viewing after Apple upgraded the player to streaming in 1999, had the same interuption proof technology"
WTF are you trying to say here? QT 4.0 was the first version of QT streaming. QT streaming is a technology that handles transport of material over RTP; it has nothing to do with the performance of QT in situations that don't involve RTP, whether this is playback off disk, off CD-ROM, via AFP, or over HTTP. It has nothing to do with "interrupt proof" technology.

Also you seem to be claiming that QT 4.0 was the great leap forward in QT technology. This kinda undercuts your argument, since it was only with later versions of QT that Instant On technology was added (faster than real-time streaming) which is supposedly what this whol argument is about in the first place.

You had me at white whale, but after you posted my same points twice and mixing in a few assumtions. It woke me up to that fact you left out about ten years of jerky video from the time Quicktime 1.0 was released to the time Quicktime 4.0 was upgraded. Now are you going to tell me with all the ISP's that had jerky video up to the collaboration with Burst and Microsoft and Apple on this new technology that Quicktime was running smooth and uninterupted since it's conception... of coarse you're not. Bandwith cost money per user nobody back then was that stupid to spend more than they were taking in when the ISP's were crying for more bandwith from the bells and companies were fighting over control over the wires or optic lines which they recently resolved. Hey, thanks for the confirmation.

Maynard, You said I hate Apple. That is not true.
I never said it so please don't imply it. Leave your suggestive inuendos for surmations. That's why I have links in some of my post to show what other people were saying. works for me.

"In other words, dude, regardless of how much you might hate Apple, please try to put some sort of coherence, and some sort of connection with real world history into your stream of posts."

For all those who dig where im coming from. Were looking for articles in periodicals, IT or consumer magizines, video media player complaint foot prints from 1979. Have your Facebook buddies check their central library periodicals for any articles that references "Jerky video" on media players from 1979 up to 1999. You might want to hurry I hear there is a guy in blue jeans and a black silk t-shirt leaving local librarys with stacks of magazines so no one else can research them. :-) just kidding on the latter.

...meanwhile, more interesting things are developing in Voipville, with Vonage getting punked. The timing couldn't be better for TNBT to hit that market and Magicjack could very well be it.

http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/09/25/amazon-launches-a-music-store-not-a-service/?em&ex=1190865600&en=adc936eb063f4531&ei=5087%0A

How long before Amazon takes the wind out of Apple's ITMS? I'd say twelve months ought to do it. Their download service is about to be scuppered. You can't beat ease of use, ability to do what you want with your file and price.
Then again, Jobs may not care. As long everyone buys his hardware, he'll be happy.

Well the guys over at Investors Village are hitting the head right on the nail. I think they should do a little more work on the optical capabilities of one thin as a hair optical fiber line. I have read that a metro area can service from just one fiber. But maybe not in the 80's Yogi, I think you got something there Boo Boo!

The Card Reader

In the diagram the illusive "Card Reader" has been found :-)

http://www.answers.com/topic/atanasoff-berry-computer

"Are you saying that the first Quicktime player, Quicktime 1.0 had the same buffer functions as Quicktime 4.0 or later Quicktime players that improved viewing after Apple upgraded the player to streaming in 1999, had the same interuption proof technology? It might even be later that Apple started buffering."

No. I'm saying that QuickTime had pretty much all the core functionality that anyone cares about* at least as early as 1991. Anything beyond that was essentially "plug-ins" (e.g. codecs, capture devices) or "obvious" (e.g. buffering). QuickTime 4 added Flash and a complete Virtual Machine. QuickTime 2.x "buffered" the entire video before it started playing in a browser. I guess that doesn't count, even though the next step is obvious.

* Yes, this is astonishing. It had support for multiple audio, video, and custom tracks out of the box. Pretty much everything since then has simply been fleshing out what was, right from the start, an incredibly robust architecture.

Apple demonstrated videos copied and pasted into MacWrite documents to developers at least as early as 1989.

If the entire video is transfered before play it is call a DOWNLOAD not buffering. If the video is being "downloaded" ahead of play that is called buffering. All that was debated and pondered back years ago when the question arose which is faster downloading then click play? (Everyone cried,) No! that would take forever for a movie to download. (end of cry) Get your facts straight. If Quicktime was buffering ahead they would not have had so many complaints of jerky video to all of the ISP's that utilized dial up and not T-1 lines which is somehow sneaking into the court debate. Back the the phone companies even tried to sell T-1 to home users for around $125.00 per month DSL was $75.00 but few were interested so they ended the promotion. The problem was supply and demand during that time period only. Burst solved the buffering problem. Of coarse those that were not born yet would not remember. I think when you read my previous post and saw the court case of individuals trying to do what Apple is doing now it promted you to debate point that have already been answered. Apple did not invent buffering or Faster Than Real Time Transmission, Burst.com did. Look up what all the "experts" were saying back them when Burst first showed them the invention. Then read the court ruling in the post tittled 'The Card Reader" and then get back with me.

The experts were also saying if you downloaded a movie and there were interuptions or static you would have to download it a second time. In other words you would be taking your chances with a download back in the 80's and 90's. And please... The biggest problem with downloading was downloading. (what happened to my download I was only gone to the bathroom five minutes) With buffering faster than realtime the user experience is cached after bits are buffered ahead of other bits after the start up buffer that gets the movie started. Like cranking your car engine with a hand crank then once the engine is going the capacitors or battery charges enought to run the vehicle. New tech are using innovative concepts for the new electric hybrids. Hey maybe they are using Burst theories for the electric hybrids.
Motion to strike the last sentence. Motion granted.

... and no, if you want to download a movie and leave the house and comeback thanks to FTRT bufering it buffers and downloads while youre gone. It does download but it has a FTRT buffer that prevents interuptions from running the download if there is a pause 'the buffer adjust' unlike the claim we just download before it plays. Of coarse they do but they didn't prior to Microsoft getting the ole heads up from Burst. Remember Jobs said we will just wait and see what happens. If Apple had invented e ta 'a buffer that takes out the trash' they would have released it at a world media event.

Joke of the day

... and the guy said, if it downloads first before play. What does it need with a buffer?

LOL ROTF LOL hee, hee, oh my side LOL oh ha! ha! ooooo hu, hee aaaah, that was funny.

Kudo's to all the fine news media writers out there. You have kept the Internet interning. In an continual effort to inform us. Maybe Burst will move up on it's over due merit someday. I have immerse myself in the Internet for the past ten years through it's integrity of it's information moving from news of Eco system unbalances, wars on foreign lands, the latest nano technology, to solar, and wind, green energy, but the chi has been thrown off coarse. The scales of balance has tilted. Burst will see it's day in court. To all of us who believe in the first to publish and invest in a share of the Bursting technology, good luck all. But it is up to those with level minds and hearts to decide. Clearly my opinions are that, opinions of my own. Those who have different opinions I truly respect. I think Apple has some of the finest products on the market. I have looked and compared their technology with others for years. I even own an 1986 Mac SE with apple printer and accessories. I have it carefully rapped and stored. I can't look at it while this trial is going on and won't buy the Mac laptop or that new aluminum and glass TV and monitors that they just came out with. Those products are truly the best I have seen, but I'm a man of principle. IMO Apple is doing Burst wrong. I will prolong future purchases until Burst gets treated like a real company, with real technology as it truly is, another technology company for the ages. Write on.

Bob, I just noticed you have a 'new' photo of you posted on the /cringely/ main page. Bob, that is a scary photo. Put the old one back on there or drop the keyboard or something.... make yourself appear hip again. Well, maybe I'm still imagining the younger energetic image you portrayed in the PBS 'nerds' tapes. To this day, I pop those tapes in the VCR at least once per year. They are outstanding documentary tapes. I'm almost ready to upgrade to DVDs.

Just found this on a search. I was reading up on Mark Twains compaints when it came to copyrights.
He in so many words claim that there's 'The Writer and there's the Pirate.' Twain was concerned with getting credit for his innovative writings without someone later copying his works. I feel you Mark Twain, I feel you Bro.

http://news.justia.com/cases/296905/

Looks like Skip Protection is a mystery.

One web search says its Patent Pending. Another is using it in Streaming Servers like it is a holy grail.

But finding the info on what is in the patent is like pulling teeth out of a June bug.

Check out the remarks on page three of the article below link.

http://www.streamingmedia.com/article.asp?id=7705&c=6

It's amazing how there are so many different ways to say Faster Than Real Time.
http://www.freepatentsonline.com/6278645.html?highlight=video,skip,protect,buffer&stemming=on

Ignore that other guy, Bob - I think your new picture makes you look mature and dignified, even sophisticated. One might almost say presidential! Definitely classy.

Maybe you could lose the keyboard, though... Or at least use one of Apple's new iMac numbers.

And stop beating up on Apple! ;-)

Details on Skip Protection.

http://www.videomaker.com/video-news/2000/10/448-apple-releases-quicktime-5-and-quicktime-streaming-server-3-previews

It appears and this is just a guess, that the skip protection the apple is using was meant to be used in MP3 players and smoozed it's way over to video while no one was looking... well almost no one. I can't find anything on patent pending white papers. Unless it is an amendment to make the MP3 audio chip download a video FTRT adaptable patent to be approved years later or it would work out much better for apple if it always remained patent pending. Theres that spread again. Hey is that apple butter? Ill pass

http://64.233.167.104/search?q=cache:we0A0krmkrYJ:www.answers.com/topic/electronic-skip-protection+skip+protection+patent&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=7&gl=us

1998 Bit Rate Projections

http://www.useit.com/alertbox/980405.html

New report on Streaming video out. The BBC reports on Video Cache and Peel a Pear technology.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/player/nol/newsid_7010000/newsid_7019000/7019041.stm?bw=bb&mp=wm&asb=1&news=1#

Logic? File motion after motion to drag out the current court case and at the same time the Quicktime/Mp3/skip protection audio/skip protection video/patent pending, remains patent pending. Forever? While it's infringing? wow ... really? ... wow ... forever? ... really? ...wow