A question for the fen.

[kengr]

You are wandering through the dealer room at a medium to large convention (Westercon, Baycon, that sort of thing).

There's a table with a couple of people wearing some pretty good spacesuit outfits, complete with mirrored helmets. Even have "translators" with an appropriately "computer" voice.

They're selling toy radio controlled flying saucers. They zip around nicely, making a humming noise much like the cars in the Jetsons.

They want $50 for them.

What do you do?

Comments

Re: Hmm.

[seawasp]

I'm not sure that even that will prevent patent. There are some interesting twists to patent law in that regard. We'd certainly find some lawyers to look into it, although as long as we're first to market it won't necessarily make a HUGE difference, especially if we get in with sufficiently broadly written patents on various USES for the things. (I also don't believe that it could have worked that way; with the number of people crawling the Web and looking for Kook Science, at least a couple of them would have tried that book, and since it DOES work, would have caused the stir *I* am about to at least a year ago).

On the"gotcha", you're saying... someone set up us the bomb?!

Not a hard Gotcha to get around, though; just an equivalent of a safety valve for charging. The same problem, albeit less destructive, exists for a number of batteries used today.

That's a LOT of energy storage. By themselves those little gadgets will change the face of technology.

Re: Hmm.

[kengr]

Well, it's my uinderstanding that a patent can be easily overturned (or denied) if evidence can be shown that the idea was made openly available (ie published) more than a year prior to filing. Especially if said publication was by someone other than the person filing. :-)

Oh yeah, you don't seriously think that you're the *only* folks trying to reverse engineer one of these do you?

As for the power cells, yeah, they'd make an interesting bomb, but the cirrcuits do try to avoid that. Stil, I'd not want to be around if you hit even a "D cell" sized one with a sledgehammer. :-)

Lots of things about this will change the world. "anti grav", "reactionless" drive, *truly* secure com links. That last will screw things up for a lot of folks, all by itself.

Think we ought to summarize/condense this thread and dump it on the Bar somewhere, just to stir things up?

Re: Hmm.

[seawasp]

Well, it's my uinderstanding that a patent can be easily overturned (or denied) if evidence can be shown that the idea was made openly available (ie published) more than a year prior to filing. Especially if said publication was by someone other than the person filing. :-)

Patent law is complex, and a lot of it depends on things other than the strict letter of the law, especially if you throw in "National Security", etc.

Oh yeah, you don't seriously think that you're the *only* folks trying to reverse engineer one of these do you?

Judging by the statistics on your board so far, actually, YES.

More seriously, no, but given the reactions here I may WELL be the only one who buys a couple AND happens to work at a firm connected to Homeland Security, the US Military, and various state research agencies, AND which has NDT research capabilities, immediate access to machinists and engineers used to prototyping small units, and so on.


Lots of things about this will change the world. "anti grav", "reactionless" drive, *truly* secure com links. That last will screw things up for a lot of folks, all by itself.

Truly secure? Are you saying the control methodology isn't detectable? Or that there's some method of encryption beyond what we currently understand?

You still didn't give me the load-bearing in hover mode. And does it consume energy hovering -- or will it literally stay there forever (or at least until one of the components fails)? And the maximum speed achievable with the device both vertically and laterally? No emissions aside from heat at all?


Think we ought to summarize/condense this thread and dump it on the Bar somewhere, just to stir things up?

That's up to you. :)