Please note that one does not have to prove anything in regards to the actual functionality claimed. The patent office is perfectly happy approving your anti-gravity device if it is novel. Keep this in mind (if you'll excuse the pun) when evaluating designs found there.
I always felt like patents shouldn't exist for ideas, but only for implementations. Having the idea, while sometime novel, is always easier then coming up with the implementation of it.
On the other hand, it can be hard to take an idea into production without some of the protection granted by a patent. Look at all the people who try to get their inventions manufactured in China, only to be beaten to market by a clone (not that a patent would help there, but ideally it would).
An inventor can't develop their idea if they can't talk to manufacturers without fear of getting ripped off.
Well, one could argue that this is how competition works. If someone else can manufacture the same thing at lower cost, they deserve the market advantage.
Of course, this idea doesn't give credit to the inventors and benefits copycats. I just wanted to mention the idea.
It depends if they can manufacture it at a lower cost or if they can just sell it at lower price as they don't have subsidise the time spent doing research and development. Not to mention subsidising past projects that didn't come to fruition.
> Of course, this idea doesn't give credit to the inventors and benefits copycats.
Well, let's take medicine with its huge R&D upfront cost as an example. Of course, given the recipe, the ingredients and the neccessary equipment, anyone can produce a medicine for dead cheap compared to the inventor, as they don't have to invest in R&D beforehand while the original inventor has to recoup the R&D cost and therefore has to call a price with significant markup over the manufacturing cost.
You haven't really addressed gh02t's point. The original (professed) intent of patents was to protect individual inventors.
If some other manufacturer finds a cheaper way to manufacture the same thing, they can get a patent on their improvement, and push for some licensing deal once they have that.
(This doesn't change the fact that the modern de facto practice of patents is pretty messed up. I'm just saying that there's a good idea behind it.)
I disagree. I'm talking about an inventor talking to a manufacturer (or engineering firm), the manufacturer saying "thanks for the idea, don't mind if we do" and then ripping the inventor off and not sharing the profit. That's not competition and it's not good for inventors, because sharing your idea is inherently part of the process of taking it to market.
IMO, fair competition comes into play after the inventor has developed their product into something ready for production, otherwise the incentive to invent will disappear. Whether they then deserve a temporary monopoly to recover their development costs is up for debate I guess, but I'm talking about shielding inventors from getting robbed of their ideas.
If someone else can manufacture the same thing at lower cost, then the inventor / patent holder is going to want to outsource their production to the lowest cost producer.
The lowest cost producer does indeed enjoy a market advantage in the market for manufacturing.
Software patents shouldn't exist, unless the sourcecode that the patent is protecting is released under a permissive license or equivalent. Having both copyright and patent protections at the same time is insane. Patents have a reasonable duration. With copyright the duration is basically infnite for everyone even though only a minority of companies actually care about it.
> is always easier then coming up with the implementation of it.
along that line of reasoning, making claims is easier than proving them, always. It's not always the case though, any given prime factorization is easy to prove but hard to propose.
Is that totally true? I had always heard that for example applications for perpetual motion machines would always be denied. Perhaps that was the U.K. Patent Office? The USPTO really allows on the face impossible inventions??
Proposals for such inoperable machines have become so common that the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) has made an official policy of refusing to grant patents for perpetual motion machines without a working model. The USPTO Manual of Patent Examining Practice states:
> With the exception of cases involving perpetual motion, a model is not ordinarily required by the Office to demonstrate the operability of a device. If operability of a device is questioned, the applicant must establish it to the satisfaction of the examiner, but he or she may choose his or her own way of so doing.[24]
And, further, that:
> A rejection [of a patent application] on the ground of lack of utility includes the more specific grounds of inoperativeness, involving perpetual motion. A rejection under 35 U.S.C. 101 for lack of utility should not be based on grounds that the invention is frivolous, fraudulent or against public policy.[25]
The filing of a patent application is a clerical task, and the USPTO will not refuse filings for perpetual motion machines; the application will be filed and then most probably rejected by the patent examiner, after he has done a formal examination.[26] Even if a patent is granted, it does not mean that the invention actually works, it just means that the examiner believes that it works, or was unable to figure out why it would not work.[26]
The USPTO maintains a collection of Perpetual Motion Gimmicks.
It might slip through the USPTO, but it would be a pretty flimsy patent, as it wouldn't pass the test for enablement.
At least, that's my understanding when I was consulting our lawyers for a provisional patent.
> The observed effects include ptosis of the eyelids, relaxation, drowziness, the feeling of pressure at a centered spot on the lower edge of the brow, seeing moving patterns of dark purple and greenish yellow with the eyes closed, a tonic smile, a tense feeling in the stomach, __sudden loose stool__, and sexual excitement, depending on the precise frequency used, and the skin area to which the field is applied. The sharp frequency dependence suggests involvement of a __resonance mechanism__.
After attempting to read that, I'm fairly sure it's not just talking the normal expected effects of watching things on a screen - porn makes you horny, scary things make you shit your pants, PowerPoint puts you to sleep, etc.
But the language is somewhat impenetrable, so I'm not completely sure.
It's referring to humans reacting to what's on a screen but the actual document is using 'legalese' like language to make it seem more amazing than it is. For instance if pornography was displayed on screen sexual arousal would naturally follow. Like I said I'm not sure if this is a joke.
> “All devices are used for Mind Control projects run by CIA or other intelligence agencies. A group of researchers (under the name Dr H Loos) were actually a group of hired professionals for researching and inventing such devices which could be developed and used for mass mind control, PSYOPS, behaviour modification later by CIA.”
> What if someone else invents the same thing before the patent expires?
Government will offer you a nice sum of "keep quiet money" and an NDA, you're getting hit with NSLs, your patent is outright seized by the state, you're getting threats e.g. of tax or immigration checks... the ways government can intimidate you are endless.
It's probably bullshit. If there would be an effect that can be reliable recreated using only a CRT and certain modulations it should not be hard to setup a double blind placebo controlled study and become famous. I presume there was and is a lot of research regarding electromagnetic waves and their influence on the human body and if you exclude effects that are caused by very high energy electromagnet waves like heating tissue or effects on the brain when using a helmet and lot's of energy nothing was ever reliable shown that would work on a CRT.
Hell, if brown note was real don't you think in the last 50 years either bored students would have attempted to implement that on campus or law enforcement would use it to disperse crowds. If this would work reliably every facility that has access to equipment to create such waves would have probably a setup to expose the new guys/students to these effects for the amusement of all.
Maybe I'm naive but extraordinary claims warrant extraordinary evidence. If this works we would have heard about it by now.
But well - if you search for the patent you are pretty much in tinfoil hat land - no amount of scepticism or reason will help there.
I'd love to see the original research just out of curiosity. But it seems to me that even if externally generated electromagnetic energy did have an effect, by the time you had some behavior you could observe, it would be like trying to make a toy sailboat move by dumping water near it from a firefighting plane.
A bit of off-topic but... Does anybody knows about some some good and relatively cheap service to apply for a patent on the US? Something on the line of: You provide the idea/description/explanation and they take care of the rest?
There are a few relevant things this reminds me of. The most interesting thing in this list is actually preventing me from having a job, so if you only read one point, start at the big paragraph halfway down. I would appreciate it.
- Van Eck phreaking has been mentioned elsewhere in here; I also remember a YouTube video of someone showing that it's possible to get something out of an LCD ribbon cable via simple RTLSDR: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5N1C3WB8c0o
- Mythbusters did a thing on the brown note concept. Myth.
- I've put the first thing this article made me think of last: EMR sensitivity. I have this, it drives me nuts. I'm using a laptop with Wi-Fi right now and I'm completely fine, but I can't use PlayStation 2s, and I have absolutely no idea why. My nervous system goes ballistic: I get incredibly anxious, I feel like I've been awake for 3 weeks without a break, I can't focus on anything because I'm so exhausted and everything feels like a chore, and most catastrophically, my cognition falls completely apart. I also have unbelievable amounts of doom/gloom (I feel like I'm dying from the inside out), either triggered from the other effects or as its own thing.
I would describe myself as reasonable, not particularly unhinged, and with no major emotional issues. Probably the most interesting/telling thing that's happened with this issue is that I once told a family member "I don't know what's going on, but I might need to get off the computer" one day - and then a little while later I coincidentally discovered that a DVD player that had not been turned on for years had been accidentally knocked and turned on (it had a push on/off mains switch on the front panel). FWIW, I've tried both the original and slimline PS2s, and the slimline one uses an external PSU brick - which I'm fine with, if it's not connected to the PS2. Hence my great confusion (I thought this was a simple "can't use power supplies" thing).
I had to stop using all technology for 4 years (2008-2012) after using a PS2 for about 3 days and it having a catastrophic impact; it was, of all things, fish oil that made a quantitative difference and let me use computers every day again. I don't get it at all, but the theory I now have is that the myeolin sheathing around my nerves is somehow damaged. (Perhaps tellingly, at one point while writing this text both of my arms twitched upwards. My jaw sometimes twitches as I talk as well.)
I'm reminded of a TV show I saw years ago that was talking about how the repeated lapping of waves against an oil platform's pylons created resonance that caused the pylons to shatter. On a similar note, the wineglass thing also works (even with the human voice) if you use an amplifier.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, I cannot work due to this issue - I have no idea why PS2s, DVD players and other random devices cause this problem, so I can't tell an employer what I unambiguously can and cannot handle.
Unfortunately, I know of nowhere in Sydney, Australia that is interested in digging into it. If anyone wants a guinea pig or test case, I'm in. I'd like to get a job!
Let me be perfectly clear: You most likely have a real medical condition of some kind. I do not question or demean your experience in any way.
With that said... no one has ever shown actual EMR sensitivity in double-blinded trials. Never. Not even once. When you hide the devices behind a curtain people who claim EMR sensitivity can't tell if the thing is on or off. Trials have been done out in the woods, inside faraday cages, and under all kinds of crazy conditions. It never matters. We can definitively say medical science has ruled out EMR sensitivity as a real thing.
You may very well have a nerve degeneration condition. It is even possible that fish oil helps this condition. You may be sensitive to electronic whine from power transformers which is a purely audible phenomenon; plugging in the power brick without the PS2 drawing any power wouldn't induce the same whine.
You might also have a form of epilepsy or similar condition triggered by 3D graphics. It could also be a form of motion sickness that some people get (typically much worse with VR rigs).
Here's the thing: our bodies are evolutionarily tuned to be wary of anything that might be dangerous. Any ancestors without that instinct were killed off long ago. If you hear something better to imagine it is a ghost and run. If it's just the wind, no harm done. If it was a predator sneaking up on you then that reaction might save your life. If you've ever gotten the flu after eating a certain food then felt repulsed by that food for months or even years afterwards: that's the same mechanism at work. Your lizard brain just knows "that food == sick". You can understand all the rational arguments in the world but your lizard brain still says "nope, not taking any chances: barf time". For our ancestors living in the wild this is a sensible reaction. Maybe those berries are poisonous, maybe you just happened to pickup a virus around the same time. Better safe than sorry.
Because you had a bad experience you attributed to EMR (specifically the PS2) your brain now induces those symptoms when you are around a powered-up PS2 even though EMR itself isn't real. I stress again that this is a real physical condition that you have little control over. I have zero doubt that it feels absolutely real to you and causes you huge amounts of stress. Just know that there are therapists who can help. You can learn to overcome that reaction.
I know this will offend some people but we have to face the truth. Eyewitness testimony isn't reliable. Anecdotes aren't data. Just because someone honestly believes EMR is real doesn't mean it is.
I've wanted to do the woods/faraday cage/etc thing for ages, because I want to concretely debunk/prove this whole thing. If I debunk it I can say "look, I have a condition, and there's no link", whereas if I can prove it, I can be one of the few non-kooky testcases :) (as I noted, I used to be crazy kooky myself - it seems that this condition attacks the nervous system itself, so suddenly you have the situation where the "all systems okay" infrastructure itself is being compromised, and pandemonium - paranoia, persecution complexes, etc - ensue.)
I am very very curious how I'd test for nerve degeneration issues.
The PSU idea you suggested is compelling, but, the slimine PS2 used an external brick, while the original used an integrated supply. For me to feel exactly the same using both indicates that I'm being exposed to something that is generating the exact same frequency profile. The likelihood that the brick and the original PS2's internal PSU use a design that spit out identical RF/EM profiles is... I won't rule it out, but I'd argue it's low. The slimline PS2 just needs 8.5V (IIRC), testing an alternative supply shouldn't be hard, but it's not on my priority list due to lack of budget :P
About the 3D graphics idea: The PS2 has an on/standby button on the front, and a mains switch on the back. If I put it in standby, I still feel drained; it's the moment I flick the switch at the back I go "WHEW". (And, for completeness, if the PS2 is on but the TV is off, I also feel drained.)
Two things about the evolutionary thing: one, that whole thing is insane; it's responsible for innumerable superstitions, haha. Secondly, your theory is interesting, and I have a very relevant subjective experience - except instead of perceiving my body as going "nope, fight/flight time", I perceive "SOS, this thing is causing you more distress than you have the ability to handle, RUN" - so essentially a 100% flight response, but not only that, it's a "flight with explanation" response, in the sense that I don't just think run, I know why I need to run. I can understand a "RUN AWAY" signal getting through from the lizard brain, but I find it novel that I perceive more than just a basic run signal.
I've tried using the PS2 on exactly one occasion several years after my first experience - incidentally, when I spied a slimline PS2 at a 2nd-hand shop and took it home to test. Different PS2, same response. I turned it off after about half an hour (I didn't try the original as well).
The huge problem I have is that, the whole time I used the first PS2 for a couple days, I could distinctly feel that something in my head was breaking apart or being worn down (????). Also, at some point (around day 2 or so), something hit some kind of threshold, and after that I began getting the same symptoms from my PS2 as from my computers, which was why I had to stop using them. I still feel exactly the same "everything's breaking apart" thing when I turned the 2nd PS2 on. So, yes, my refusal to do extensive testing does create a self-fulfilling prophecy here, BUT, unless a doctor/practitioner can give me something (a drug/device/alternative thing/whatever) to reverse any impact, I can't risk losing access to the computer again.
(About the "something hitting some kind of threshold" thing, that's the doom/gloom I mentioned in my first comment. That reminds me, the "impending thing" sense is huge. I don't know what the impending thing actually is, but it gets really bad.)
I will definitely note that my only exposure to 3D games has been from this PS2, with some minor exposure to things like Doom or Wolfenstein 3D when I was given some ancient DOS machines a few years ago. So I do have a very negative/depressed/pitiful perspective when I see gaming discussed, but that ties mostly into my circumstances (not being able to buy GPUs to test) rather than me seeing the PS2 as entirely at fault.
Another fun story from the 2009-2012 era: I found a Casio 9850GB+ graphing calculator in an op-shop a few years ago. (I since found a TI-83+ in a disposal store, and discovered I hated its interface compared to the Casio, lol.) This thing used a triple-layer dot-matrix LCD that could display three "hues": yellow, green and blue, I think because each film had a thin layer over it for that color. Anyway, after using this calculator one day, I happened to be staring at a wall and noticed all kinds of swirling patterns in front of my eyes. I blinked a few times to best weigh up what I was looking at, and concluded that there was something wrong with my eyes. It went away after a few minutes though.
That also reminds me - I used to have bipolar (I managed to find an alternative therapy product that nuked it completely, even after I stopped taking it) and exposure (if you could call it that) would tend to provoke bipolar manic phases (I had the minor/small kind, I forget what type it was). I don't know why; one theory is that my system would go "we need extra resources to cope with this" and trigger mania (why?!), another theory is that the nerve excitation itself would trigger it. I don't really know.
I suspect it's actually an audio frequency that's causing such effects. Some SMPS emit a rather annoying, and quite loud, squealing sound in normal use --- which some people find annoying, but I wouldn't be surprised if some people find it absolutely unbearable, even if it's not audible; e.g. the typical horizontal frequency of broadcast TV is around 16KHz, and many people can't hear it but still perceive that there is "something" when subjected to that sound.
I once saw a TV documentary several years ago that noted how wind farms were affecting people from resonation, with affected individuals getting headaches and crying fits.
These wind farms were absolutely massive (tens of feet wide), and installed on gigantic concrete bases. This served as a natural amplifier for the vibrations generated by the gearbox and motor.
None of this was audible, but it is still technically frequency-related.
As an aside, I've heard my computers make noises on a couple of occasions, and the only thing it's caused in my case is concern that the computer was okay :) - on one occasion I discovered if I held my head right that I could hear the whine of a CRT flyback transformer, and on another occasion I discovered (again if I held my head right) that if I ran a certain graphic demo program (the Xtacy linux screensaver) on a certain graphics card (a Matrix G450), a whine could be heard emanating from the PC tower. Someone I shared this with (I think on here) reckoned that this was due to overdriven power MOSFETs.
Have you looked into hyperacusis? I have it and there are many noises I can't deal with that most people don't hear at all. This includes pretty much every computer I've come across since developing the problem. Other noises like electric meters, electric mains, fan motors, wind noise, locations with lots of echoes, and strangly the noises crickets make. All these noises cause cognitive and attention issues as well as dizziness and nausea. Many noises are just plain painful even though they are far less than 80 decibels. I've seen countless neurologists and audiologists and have made a small amount of progress with tinnitus retraining therapy and clonazepam. A simple test to eliminate hyperacusis is to buy some cheap foam 33db earplugs and see if that helps you handle the situation better.
For the computer, have you tried putting it in a different room and running a long display cable and using Bluetooth keyboard and mouse? This setup allows me to use my computer for up to an hour compared to less than five minutes with it in the same room.
No, thanks for the new term to make a note of. I do have a very mild form of misophonia but I believe that's a psychological glitch, not a neurological breakdown, so there are no noises or frequencies I physically can't handle (and particularly not in the sense of the EMR issues). I do very occasionally use earmuffs and seriously appreciate the quiet, but it's more "yay no sounds I need to decode" more than anything else.
Ambulance/police sirens are merely annoying, but due to some ear issues from when I was younger I learned about how my ear canal works and somewhere along the way I figured out how to use the muscles near my ears to apply pressure to make sharp noises 0.1% less sharp, so that deals with that.
If you want to keep in touch (via throwaway or non-throwaway email), I'm gmail@asmqb7 (decipher as per obvious). I'm curious about frequency-based health issues in general, because I wonder whether everything has similar root causes and the solution(s) for one are widely applicable to the others. FWIW I'm absolutely tragic with email (backlog months (!) long :P) but occasional back and forth of news etc may be interesting.
I'm fascinated that you have zero issues with RF (Bluetooth). How long can you use a tablet (= fanless thing with a screen in it)? Try seeing if your computer has Wi-Di (Wi-Fi Display) - it's a low-latency Wi-Fi-based display solution built into newer Intel chips. I don't have a new PC so I have no idea how it works, but if you have it it'd likely be the simplest way to solve the "can't watch YouTube over VNC/RDP" problem.
Thank you for sharing your story. If you want to dig deeper into the "why" I would recommend researching spectrum analyzers and how to use them to characterize electromagnetic interference. Example: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ctynv2klT6Q
You could ask a friend to generate plots for you of the emissions of your laptop, PS2, and the DVD player then figure out if there are specific frequencies that may be causing you problems.
If you are feeling brave you could purchase an RF signal generator and a wideband antenna, and generate pure signals at different frequencies and see which ones cause you problems. A regular function generator may be a cheaper method too as I'm inclined to believe any fields that may be affecting you would be under 1MHz.
It would also be interesting to investigate whether alternating electric fields or magnetic fields affect you more.
I've actually wanted to do this for a very long time, and have been keeping an eye out for anybody with access to an RF chamber.
I know that FCC testing requires both measurement and exposure, so there are many facilities that both sense and generate EM/RF fields. These facilities would quite possibly have access to the kind of things made by eg https://www.gauss-instruments.com/en/, and could produce some really interesting results.
The reason why I've wanted to use pro lab equipment to test this is because I'd be able to hold up the results as scientific proof. That would be awesome, both because it would validate the condition (which is recognized in Germany but not the rest of the world), and also because many of the people who have this are pathologically affected, and seem like they're bonkers as a result. Between '08-12 I was ridiculously paranoid, for example I refused to go to the local shopping center just because I could see cell towers nearby. Unfortunately the most vocal sufferers of this issue are going to have that level of paranoia. Now that I can be a bit more reasonable (because I don't feel like I'm dying :P) that makes it a bit more constructive.
And yeah, I am very curious whether it's the electrical or magnetic field that does more damage.
That's actually an extremely fascinating experience. I only have two comments, both of which you've probably already considered:
1. Become a freelance web developer
2. If fish oil helped you, then avoid consuming vegetable oil (which is sadly used for 99% of takeaway/restaurant meals) and eat lots of salmon. It's possible that chronic inflammation and Omega 3/6 are related. I wouldn't be saying this if fish oil didn't help -- the fact that it helped says a lot.
- I'm on disability support (for high-functioning autism), which means that...
- Working is tricky (income cap), and as a result...
- I'm on 10 year old hardware that doesn't like Chrome too much. (I also have insufficient disk space to do anything useful. While scrambling to move some stuff around I hit 800KB free on / and I had to SIGSTOP chromium so it wouldn't crash. xD)
I've learned a lot about the benefits of designing stuff on older hardware from the get-go, but nobody really does that sadly.
Along with the autism are some cognitive and attention-span issues that mean that, while I try to emphasize as much on practically implementable ideas, I'm a lot better at starting stuff than finishing it - and most of the ideas I do have are limited by my hardware.
--
Regarding vegetable oil, I completely agree - but in my case, because I'm a blood-type O, my body can break down canola (!) oil really well, so taking into account the quality levels used by at-scale manufacturing, provided the oil is properly extracted/stored/used/etc, I can actually use (break down) stuff made with canola oil quite well.
I can agree with eating tons of salmon (which is also okay for blood type O), but actually finding good quality sources of fish in general is quite hard: I don't know about salmon in particular, but I've heard that deep-sea fish are generally healthier. I'm not sure if this is because less toxins sink to lower depths, because the toxns can't survive at those depths, or what.
Farmed fisheries are tricky, both because of rampant inbreeding†, and also because of the food made artificially available to the fish in the farm may be... interesting.
(† Cheetahs had some kind of major event many thousands of years ago that wiped almost all of them out. They rebounded, but if you take any two cheetahs from anywhere in the world, they're so identical it's almost confusing.)
Omega3 and Omega6 oils bind to the same receptors and compete for the same processes, with the optimal ratio (supposedly) 1:1, but western diet closer to 1:10; Canola oil, as almost any seed or vegetable oil, is almost pure Omega6.
Fish oil is mostly Omega3 in the most readily available form; Flax oil is mostly Omega3 in a less available form; Almost every other oil (including rapeseed, aka canola) is mostly Omega6.
Some credible research on the influence of magnetic fields on migraines is being done, iirc by Markus Dahlem. So while this may sound rather fanciful, I suppose it's not impossible?
You need to watch the film, "Kingsman: The Secret Service" starring Colin Firth. Something very similar to this was used to induce people to murder others.
From what I understand, its the actual magnetic field produced by the monitor that when pulsated at various frequencies causes these effects. I don't think its related to epilepsy, but I don't know if the reasons why it works are known.
No, this is about the EM field. The magnetic field of CRTs is very weak (so weak that it is dwarfed by nearby rail power lines which have a rather weak M field as well; so weak that you have to recalibrate for monitor movement relative to earth's M field).
I doubt this works, at all, for a variety of reasons.
We haven't made sufficient "progress" until we have Blipverts. As "Bryce Lynch" said in that Max Headroom episode: "It's not my problem. My brief was to find a way to stop channel switching. I mean, you know, I only invent the bomb, I don't drop it. Ha ha." [he gives that quick shrugging grin of an uncertain adolescent]
The thing about going out with a bang vs. a whimper.. come to think of it, I'm pretty sure it will be a shrug.
