NNSquad - Network Neutrality Squad
[ NNSquad ] Re: USPTO grants (inappropriate) patent to Amazon's Bezos
This was standard fare in timesharing companies back in the 60's and 70's such as Interactive Data. We went a step further to create virtual cycles to make up for any improvements wrought by better interfaces. My Master's thesis was a reaction to resource charging arguing that end users should see charges in meaningful terms not the machine resources measurements common in those days. The idea was that a "solution provider" would get raw charges but would be able to charge the user in application terms. What was novel, perhaps, is that the same system services that would be used for billing for CPU cycles would be used by the applications providers for their billing. Maybe I should patent value-based pricing as an improvement of Amazon's cycle-based pricing? -----Original Message----- From: nnsquad-bounces+nnsquad=bobf.frankston.com@nnsquad.org [mailto:nnsquad-bounces+nnsquad=bobf.frankston.com@nnsquad.org] On Behalf Of Lauren Weinstein Sent: Saturday, June 26, 2010 18:34 To: nnsquad@nnsquad.org Subject: [ NNSquad ] USPTO grants (inappropriate) patent to Amazon's Bezos USPTO grants (inappropriate) patent to Amazon's Bezos http://bit.ly/cviLdZ (Slashdot) They've got to be kidding with this one. In ancient times, before the empire, at UCLA's Campus Computing Network (CCN -- c'mon, don't type "CNN") both intramural and external accounts were charged in terms of "MUS" - Machine Unit Seconds, which included a variety of system resources factors. MUS mapped to dollars and cents via various algorithms, leading to the movement of both "virtual" and real money between accounts. In fact, the UCLA Computer Club sold punched cards (yes, in the early days we were using 'em by the box) emblazoned with a moose image. I'm positive I've got a bunch of these around somewhere. Another patently silly patent. --Lauren-- NNSquad Moderator