Patent trolls are everywhere

In the vast big buck world of HO model railroading, a patent troll has surfaced. The troll, Real Rail Effects, sent letters to makers of Digital Command Control (DCC) equipment demanding royalties based upon a US patent. The troll used to be in the DCC business but hasn't advertised any product for sale since 1997. Under threat, the other DCC makers rallied behind the banner of the National Model Railroad Association (NMRA) and challenged the troll's patent.
The NMRA pointed out that the system in question had been described in the open literature (Model Railroader magazine, a slick paper hobby magazine with wide national and international circulation) in 1992, two years before the patent was issued.
It's hard to understand the troll's thought process. The model railroad business is small, and the hobbyists are mostly retirement age. There isn't enough money in the business overall to make the trolling pay off. It's not like the Blackberry business which had to pay a troll off with $600 million last year.
It's also hard to understand how the Patent Office granted the patent in the first place. The prior art was plain to see, and the subject matter, an electronic encoding system, was obvious to anyone (like myself) skilled in the art. This patent was the equivalent of patenting the QWERTY keyboard layout.
The US patent system no longer advances the useful arts, it's placing obstacles in the path of advancement. Patents no longer protect inventors, instead the patent system allows parasites to steal money from those who have actually advanced the state of the art.
The model railroad business is tiny and unimportant, the real industries like Blackberry are under constant attack. We would advance the state of the art by abolishing the US patent system. While we are at it, we could repeal the Digital Millenium Copyright Act, and restrict copyright to 17 years.

Aviation Week praises Georgian air defenses

The Russians admit to loosing three jet fighters and a Backfire bomber to Georgian SAM's. The Georgians are claiming fourteen kills. Look at the zero losses suffered by the Israeli air force bombing the Syrian nuclear reactor last fall, and the Georgians look like dead shots. Or, the Russian electronic countermeasures (ECM) isn't as good as Israeli made.

Tanker tinkering

They are about to release the latest Request for Proposal (RFP in Pentagon-speak) for the USAF tanker. This is the bungled Boeing/Airbus competition that they are doing over again. According to Aviation Week, the new RFP will favor the larger Airbus offering. There will be a scoring system giving extra points for more range, cargo capacity, fuel offload capacity and more passenger seats. Translation, for out of touch Boeing suits in need of hearing aids, the Air Force wants a bigger aircraft. If Boeing wants the job, it needs to rebid a tanker based on the bigger Boeing 777 , rather than the smaller, older, going out of production, 767. Or even the brand new, not yet in production, all plastic 787 Dreamliner.
Of course, the Air Force should have decided how big a tanker they want to buy in the first place and put that in the original RFP. That might have prevented the disaster of the previous bid, where the losing Boeing protested and GAO subsequently upheld Boeing.
Aviation week opined that switching from the 767 to the 777 would be too hard for Boeing to do in the time allotted. I don't believe that. The bid paperwork (all 50,000 pages of it) is on a computer. Someone tells the computer to go thru and change 767 to 777. The actual engineering is simple, omit the seats, add some tanks. Bolt a boom on the tail. Keep everything else the same as the civilian version so you can use the same parts, flight simulator, flight trainings and so on.
If Boeing thinks this is too much trouble, Airbus gets the job. That's not the end of the world. Airbus uses American made engines, and engines are half the price of the finished aircraft.

Words of the Weasel Pt 9 Nuanced

After the Obama-McCain show at the Saddleback church last night, the CNN after action commentators repeatedly describe Obama's talk as "nuanced", or "highly nuanced". Doesn't sound that bad does it? Actually, I thought Obama was vague and evasive. McCain on the other hand came right to the point. The audience, gave Obama some polite applause, but the gave McCain a whole lot more. When asked if he believed in the existence of evil and what would he do about it, Obama spoke at length, without getting to the point, McCain's first words were "Defeat it".
So, "nuanced" is a democrat's word for vague and evasive.

Lakes of oil, on Titan

Aviation Week has an image of a 150 mile long lake of liquid hydrocarbons on Titan. It even has a beach. They figure it is oil because it's so smooth and dark that it has to be liquid, and the only thing that stays liquid at Titanian surface temperatures is stuff like ethane. Water would be frozen solid and hence not show up as dark and smooth as this lake does.
Too bad it's on Titan. We could use it here.

Space Shuttle Tank workforce layoffs coming

Aviation Week reports that Lockheed Martin will begin reducing the 2445 man workforce on the Space Shuttle external tank project. That's the big round tank that goes inbetween the two solid rocket boosters. It's just a tank, no engines, avionics, or auxiliary equipment.
2445 men to make a handful of tanks a year? Used to be a whole fighter wing, 90 aircraft, flying 100 combat missions a day, only had 900 men on the ground. That's crew crews, armament men, mechanics and electronics techs. Them tanks must be hand made, and accompanied by a mass of paper work as big as the tank to have 2445 guys charging tank work on their time cards. Can you spell featherbedding?

Tractor Supply, a small box store, opened in Littleton

A small box store going for the guy business. Eclectic mix of hand tools, automobile parts, garden stuff, pet feed, some clothing of the work boot, cowboy hat and blue jean sort. Brand new store building, across the parking lot from Wal Mart. All merchandise marked "China". The marketing dept was live wire enough to mail me a "grand opening" flyer with a $10 discount card.
So I visited them. Walked clean around the store looking at stuff. Despite the discount card, got out again with out buying anything. Didn't need car parts, the hand tools were nicely chromed and polished but I couldn't help wondering if the underlying steel was any good. Didn't have anywhere to stash a 50 pound sack of cat food, and cowboy hats aren't my style. I wish them luck, but they need someone else's money, rather than mine.