Much ink has been spilled about Oracle’s lawsuit against Google for Android’s allegedly unlawful use of Java, and rightfully so, considering Team Ellison’s seeking to take more than a billion dollar chunk out of Google’s bottom line. Just because Oracle’s damage calculations add up to ten figures doesn’t mean that the court will agree with them, however. And, there’s a long legal road to be tread before the court can assign a dollar value to the case — namely it must determine if the patent claims and copyrights are valid and whether Android actually infringes them.

That’s why Google requested the USPTO re-examine the patents asserted by Oracle, as the process gives Google a shot at invalidating them outside the courtroom. It looks like the strategy is paying off, as one of those re-exams recently resulted in a rejection of 17 of the patent’s 21 claims — which reduces the number of claims Oracle can assert in court accordingly. Of course, those four remaining claims plus the 118 contained in the other six asserted patents (should they survive the re-examination process) could still spell doom for the little green bots, but it is a victory, albeit a modest one, for the team in Mountain View. So, Oracle may have a few less IP bullets to fire Google’s way, but it’s still got plenty of other legal ammo left. We’ll keep you posted when next shot’s fired.

Oracle v. Google update: USPTO rejects several patent claims, leaves chinks in Oracle’s IP armor originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 23 Jun 2011 22:59:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink The Register  |  Groklaw  | Email this | Comments
Engadget

Customers can add them to collections and enjoy having another piece of memorabilia from their favorite film. They can even use the gun in target practice if they desire because they shoot blanks and may be employed in that way. Motion picture replica weapons offer customers a chance to grab a bit of film history for themselves. They may never be well placed to have the genuine weapon that was held by the actor in their hands ( unless they are pretty rich or extremely well-connected or just darn fortunate ) but they can get fairly close to recreating that experience with assistance from Replica-Blank Guns and their blank stage guns and movie guns.

Blank movie guns offers a cheaper and safer alternative to real bullets and guns. That doesn’t mean the blanks or the weapons shooting them are not powerful. At close range, even blank movie guns could do some major damage. For many purposes nevertheless, using bullets would be badly considererd. One of the best examples is probably the film blank guns. No actor would like to be looking down the barrel of a genuine handgun capable of firing real bullets when filming a movie. For many weapon enthusiasts, having this kind of ammo widely available is a blessing and one that they can fully appreciate when they purchase that ammo at Replica-BlankGuns.com.

The Best chance on Blank Prop Guns

People searching for their desired blank motion picture gun do not need to travel far to find it because selecting blank stage guns are easy at Replica-BlankGuns.com

In some situations, authentic looking weapons are required but they also must be safe. Because they’ll shot in close quarters and / or around many individuals. No one wants to take that chance of accidentally taking the life of a viewer due to real bullets being fired. That is the reason why movie prop blank firing guns are rather more popular for these purposes. They may be employed in dramatization of important battles and re-enactments of army clashes. They can be consolidated into plays, musicals, and movies without too much risk. The other great feature of blank firing prop guns is they do deliver the sound and explosion wanted to make the spectators feel the shooting is real. That means the weapon not only looks pragmatic and authentic but it produces the required pragmatic and authentic effect for the audience, too.

Movie Guns and Heaps of Decisions
Of course, picking just the right blank weapon might seem tough. Research might be well placed to tell the prop handler which weapons are needed or most appropriate but that doesn’t help them find those guns in stores for sell. That is where Replica-BlankGuns.com can be a huge help. The website offers a giant selection of blank prop guns that can be used for any of these purposes. All the weapons available are of the very best quality and look real so they even be mistaken for the real thing. Besides selection, customers know they can trust the company to supply quality goods and exceptional service each time. That is what keeps folks coming back for more of these fantastic weapons. Check out www.Replica-BlankGuns.com.

***READ(more info)*** Directors Channel: www.youtube.com Subscribe and help this Channel grow(Confirm): www.youtube.com Multiplayer Series Playlist: www.youtube.com Add ME to your friend list in BC2. My nickname is “Assasin301-Gamer” Assas!nat0r’s “Battlefield: Bad Company 2 (PC version of the game, planning to buy a PS3 and get it for that console) – Ownage 1: Engineer Pwnage” Video details / Information: (Engineer) Class Setup: Primary: PP-2000 / UMP-45 / AKS-74U Secondary: WWII M1911 45. Gadget: M2 Carl Gustav AT / M136 AT Spec 1: Ammo Upgrade (Cuz the firerate) Spec 2: Magnum Ammo (For faster kills) Spec 3: Vechicle Alt Fire (mostly for UAV) Server: Justice-Fighter =JF= Team: Defender / Attacker Map: Isla Innocents This is just a SHORT video i recorded yesterday (March 30th). For the 1st time EVER i found an AWESOME server, with amazing good connection. I use to get like 0.5 – 1.5 seconds FPS online. But this time a found a server, running at the same IP Port as me (around 27000). And i gotta say it incrases my skills with atleast 200%, compared to my standard scores. Ownage!? YES, i can call this ownage / pwnage for sure! Anyways enjoy =) .
Video Rating: 4 / 5

The idea, I suppose, would be to incapacitate the target but not permanently. Because wars are more frequently being fought by small forces inside cities (as opposed to thousands and thousands in large battlefields), civilians are in constant danger from stray bullets. Of course, no one wants to catch stray fire of any kind, but if I had to take a shot to the leg, I’d rather it was a rubber round going just fast enough to hurt like hell, and not a 7.62mm meant to go straight through me.

It’s still in the early stages right now, but with any luck they’ll be deployed before the next time I take it to the streets.

Brad Nelson, aka my hero for the day, created this amazing homebrew HUD system that provides pretty much all the functionality you’d find in a first-person shooter video game, but for real-life games of capture the flag or paintball. Thanks to a GPS and XBee RF module, as well as a small LCD display, each ZephyrEye unit allows a player to not only see the boundaries of the game field including base stations and flag locations, but also the other players, the direction each one is headed and whether they’re friend or foe. It even includes a microphone which is used to keep track of your ammo count in real-time. Most impressive!

Like in a video game, different gameplay scenarios and settings can be chosen via a basic menu system, like whether to show or hide enemy players, or to facilitate ‘re-spawn’ zones for players who’ve been ‘killed’, and a basic menu-based messaging system allows team leaders to direct their players or send general instructions. I’m not sure if Brad plans to mass produce or sell these units, but so far he’s posted a pretty detailed build history on his blog, including links to the source code if you’re interested in building your own.

[ Brad's Projects Blog - ZephyrEye: Assembly and Testing ] VIA [ Tom's Guide ]

Drool-worthy specs follow:

The two-piece wall consists of a huge LED media facade (at the top), and a multitouch information-wall (at the bottom), and impresses by its physical size, as it totals a surface of about 425 square meters, equaling more than 6000 computer displays.

The interactive interface emerges out of 34 million pixels generated by 15 high definition projectors, supported by sound produced by 30 directional speakers. The multitouch capturing itself is based on laser technology, also called Laser Light Plane Illumination (LLP). This means more than 80 users can simultaneously get informed about news and activities around the ringworld.

What does all that hardware provide? Apparently a dynamic information kiosk for anyone wanting to learn more about what’s up at Nürburgring. To be fair, my source doesn’t conclusively declare the display as the largest multi-touch screen in the world. And I couldn’t find any information on how user-friendly and responsive Nürburgring’s display is. So, for those who were lucky enough to visit the venue, or know of any larger multi-touch display, feel free to hit the comments below.

Source

*As of December 2, 2009

Post from: The Gadget Blog

Take your cubicle wars past the archaic stage of just spitballs and elastic bands with John Austin’s book, Mini Weapons of Mass Destruction. It provides 35 different ways to effectively raid the office supply cabinet at work in order to protect your desk and all the innocent files who call it home.

Toy designer John Austin provides detailed, step-by-step instructions for each project, including materials and ammo lists, clear diagrams, and construction tips, for mayhem-loving MacGyvers. The 35 devices include catapults, slingshots, minibombs, darts, and combustion shooters. Build a tiny trebuchet from paper clips and a D-cell battery. Wrap a penny in a string of paper caps to create a surprisingly impressive “bomb.” Several of the projects even include variations where combatants mount laser pointer sights to their shooters to increase their accuracy.

~$12 from Amazon, office supplies not included.

[ Mini Weapons of Mass Destruction ] VIA [ Make ]

CNET editors Jeff Bakalar and Scott Stein take a look at the highly anticipated Xbox Live Arcade side-scrolling action platformer from Chair Entertainment and Epic Games, Shadow Complex.

Jeff:
Shadow Complex may look like your typical side-scrolling action game, but it does a lot of things that separates it from most platform exploration titles. The unique “2.5D” style takes a bit of getting used to, but you’ll soon realize the genius behind the design.

Shadow Complex takes you through an intricate underground military facility where you must rescue your girlfriend who’s been kidnapped during a camping trip. With a grid map as your only companion, you must explore the complex all while finding secret items and passageways. You’ll also gradually unlock new weapons and ammo and upgrade your character’s health in order to fight the mysterious regime.

We fully embrace the developer’s choice to build Shadow Complex in such a way. Not only is it a tip of the hat to classic 2D games like the Metroid and Castlevania franchises, but introduces the genre to an entire generation of gamers who may not have been fortunate to play such titles.

With this 3D twist on a classic 2D genre, you’re able to shoot at enemies in the background and foreground even though you cannot physically go there. The 360-degree aiming mechanic will automatically target your enemies who aren’t necessarily in the same plane that your character is only able to navigate through.

Shadow Complex is truly a unique take on an older genre that will appeal to gamers young and old. It’s available now for 1,200 MS Points (or $15) exclusively on Xbox Live Arcade.

Scott:
One of the best trends in all of gaming has to be the rise of low-cost original downloadables, and Shadow Complex is a great example of why it works. …

El Seedee

The screen itself is good. It’s 320×240, nice and sharp, and color is vibrant. It’s basically like your average mid-range cell phone screen. Viewing angle is pretty dismal, but you’re usually right in front of it and it swivels vertically anyway. So what’s on it?

Well, the screen has a few basic “channels.” YouTube, RSS Feed, song display, “my videos,” a clock, a performance monitor, a picture viewer, and a timer. Of these, the performance monitor is really the only useful one, because I can’t think of a reason you’d want or need to navigate YouTube or your pictures and videos via this tiny screen. The only situation I can think you’d do it is while in a full-screen app or game that doesn’t minimize or alt-tab well. The RSS reader is adequate, but only displays one story at a time. You’d really have to try hard to make use of this thing.

It works with some games and apps, but not many that I found. FRAPS and Neverwinter Nights 2 were the only ones that showed anything, and they were plain little displays with little information.

Squandered potential, plus it’s annoying

Where’s my bandwidth monitor for uTorrent? Where’s my ammo readout in Counter-Strike or my mini-map in Assassin’s Creed? Of course, it’s on the game and app developers to make that happen, but it’s on Logitech to press them on it. If Logitech is going to roll something like this out, they needed to roll out big or customers are going to see that they’re paying for a fantasy device.

Lastly, the LCD screen is not some self-contained little thing. It runs a bunch of processes in the background all the time, and on XP at least also had an item (or two) in the taskbar all the damn time. Come on, that’s unforgivable.

So unfortunately, that’s the G19’s primary selling point, and it’s not very convincing. Maybe in a year there will be more support for it, or a touchscreen, or what have you, but at the moment it’s just not worth it. But what about the rest of the keyboard?

Solid otherwise

The G19 is, aside from the screen, a very competent keyboard. The keys are big, well-spaced, and have a pleasant resistance to them. They seem to project further from the base than other keyboards, but I have been using the very flat Lycosa for months, so that could just be a bad comparator. The backlighting is the best I’ve seen, and covers the entire rainbow; you can set colors to profiles so you know which you’re in. All illumination turns off with the touch of a button so you don’t have to fiddle with anything if you want a blackout while you watch a movie.

Like the G19’s predecessor, the G15, you’ve got macro keys on the left side and a hard profile switcher — work, play, movie editing, or what have you. Plus, like most gaming keyboards, it detects games you start and will automatically launch a macro/key profile. The macro editor worked well and I use it for blogging shortcuts (inserting image code, signatures, etc) and that sort of thing. I’m not a big macro user but if you are I think you’d enjoy this. The macro keys themselves (G1-G12) are easily available and organized into little blocks of four, excellent for finding without looking (the F-keys are also blocked, thank god).

The other features on the keyboard include a (thank you Jesus) Windows key disabler and the usual media controls. The media buttons worked perfectly for me, although it would have been nice to have them be able to launch the player instead of just control it. The big mute button and volume wheel are responsive and feel good.

Killer app kills the keyboard

So what we’ve got here is a failure to launch. The LCD screen has a lot of potential but is only used for mundane tasks which have no real reason to be on there, or at least don’t justify the cost. Other than that, it’s a great keyboard. I enjoy typing on it, the macros are handy and responsive, and everything works perfectly well. It’s just not worth dropping $200 on because it has a screen. Logitech makes great keyboards, and you’d be better off going with another one, at least until this one has adequate support from the community and industry.

The PSP Go will have some company on launch day.

(Credit: CNET)

Gran Turismo, launching October 1 with the PSP Go, was the headlining PSP game during Tuesday’s E3 Sony press conference. It wasn’t the only ammo Sony had. However, it seems like the biggest in terms of …