Interesting, didn't know they were into manufacturing techniques, maybe they license to their own exclusive fab contracts:
FABRICATING AND INTEGRATING DECOUPLING CAPACITORS
PATENT NO.: 7,297,613
This technology provides a method of fabrication and
integration for high quality decoupling capacitors with
high capacitance values, low parasitic losses, good
yield, and long-term reliability. This method enables
high-yielding capacitors and other passive elements to
be placed very close to the processor or other
integrated circuit design and provides improved signal integrity. VALUE
[Value:]
Reduced signal loss and footprint
Reduced cost and increased yields for RF systems
I reject the idea that one should have to pay to license technology developed by a (taxpayer funded) federal agency. If tax dollars funded it, it belongs to all of us anyway.
I believe I'm going to write my Congressional reps later today and suggest pushing for the elimination of licensing fees for tech from NSA, NASA, DOD, etc. I'm sure it won't go anywhere, but what can ya do?
Agreed, it's interesting that they do this. I don't have time to dig in, but I wonder if the $$ goes back to NSA R&D budgets, or to the US's general fund.
Disagree. While the taxpayers funded it, the taxpayers also get the benefit from others paying for it. Charging for the tech gives them information about what others find valuable, so is an important signal as to where they should spend their research time.
It's not just you, though it sounds like his reasoning is based around the ideological context of conflating "democratic choice" with "choice in a market". The role of price is a principal guarantor of democracy, after all. /sardonic
The part about "democratic choice" should be handled by our "democratically elected leaders." But I don't think I really understand your point at all. What does selling the IP v. giving it away have to do with democratic choice?
My point was that selling the IP instead of giving it away is revenue neutral to society (and, in fact, a positive to the taxpayers who are not buying the IP) and so selling it does not decrease welfare and may well improve it if it provides some data to the agency on what the users of their research value. This is entirely unlike what happens with NSF-funded research which is given away to journals who charge a fortune to read it. In this latter case (unless you think that peer-review is incredibly valuable, which no one besides the publishers seem to believe) the overall effect is welfare reducing.
He's saying putting a price on it helps gauge market demand as expressed by willingness to pay, a signal that people find it valuable. What's so unreasonable about that?
He didn't say it is a way to find what's important, he said it is an important signal to find what people value enough to spend their money on.
Why does this matter to the NSA? They're not a for-profit company and their needs are surely different to for-profit companies so why would they optimize anything on sales?
Unfortunately, there just aren't many good metrics for future potential scientific value. It's not like you can just give NSA / DARPA / NIH one impact factor, as weird as that sounds.
> he said it is an important signal to find what people value enough to spend their money on.
No, he didn't, he said:
> is an important signal as to where they should spend their research time
anyone who has looked at basic research knows that immediate commercialization potential is a horrible guide for where to spend time.
As a quick example, would you pay for someone to research the immune systems of sharks and camels? No technology transfer office can sell a description of how the immune systems work. It seems ridiculous. But after years were spent researching these topics, describing them in detail in the publicly available literature, companies have taken features of these systems and built products based on them.
The goal of government-funded research is not to run a business, directing research into immediate commercialization, it is to do basic science that would not be funded by companies because it does not appear prima facie to have commercial application.
Actually, he is saying "what others find valuable is an important signal for research", and I don't see anything obviously wrong with taking into consideration what others find commercially valuable - because NSA is not a "fundamental sciences" research organization. I agree that NSF should pursue what scientists find interesting/important and disregard commercial concerns. NIH will often come ahead doing that as well. On the other hand, let's look at NSA - They develop technologies for spying on people. They write software & do a bunch of other applied work detailed in that PDF. I don't think they should run a business either, but NSAs primary aim is not science. If they go the extra mile beyond publishing a paper and want to license their code / tech to companies for a fee, I don't see why that's a problem. Often some exclusive access or license can spur further investment. I do think open access to all can & often also spurs innovation - but not always. Pharma for instance depends on a government-granted monopoly on the manufacture of a small molecule in the form of a patent, to ensure it can recoup its costs of R&D and indirectly bribing prescribing doctors & paying for ads.
> The goal of government-funded research is not to run a business, directing research into immediate commercialization, it is to do basic science
Sez you.
Basic science/pure research is NOT the goal of all government research spending. There happens to be some funding put in place for basic research by Congress (much of the NSF and NIH budgets, for instance) but there is also purpose-driven research that is not "basic science." The department of defense is one of the largest spenders on research in the US government, but much of their research is not "basic science," and even if you termed it that, they are not doing it for the love of knowledge. I assume the NSA is more like this than it is like the NSF.
The government is not a business. It shouldn't act as a business. There's FAR more value from researching a technology with taxpayer money and then allowing everyone to use the results of that technology, rather than a few select companies (to which they have to give the stamp of approval, meaning there can also be selection bias)
If the government were to release the tech into the public domain, then they would be charged for the use of the technology. This has happened in the past when contractors charged the government for a system that was based on government developed technology that the government failed to patent. If they patent it, they can recoup some revenue, but they can also ensure that any products based on it can be used for free or much more cheaply by the government.
Indeed, the entire mechanism should be available to the general public for use, or in other words - entirely radical thinking - why don't we defeat the NSA by demanding it open-source itself, 100%? After all, it might make all the difference in the world if maximum intelligence was suddenly and irrevocably available to every single living human on the planet .. its actually within our grasp, as a species, to share such a moment. Gimme root, NSA.
I think I might support this, but I'm not done thinking about it.
One thing that would happen immediately: people would stop discussing marital affairs via telephone. (And there'd be a brief spike in murders if the historic data were released!)
The knee jerk reaction is to extend that idea to would-be terrorists, too--to imagine that they'd simply change their communication habits (they already try to avoid monitoring, I presume).
But, let's think a little harder, and let's start with the married folk.
Bob and Mary are married. Eve is Bob's co-worker. Don't you think that Eve-Bob communication is going to contain some tell-tale signs _before_ the affair? Could Mary (or Bob, or Eve) use this information to prevent the affair (or proceed in a less painful manner, depending on their situation)?
I was interrupted and now I've put that line of thought on hold and developed a new one.
Remember IRC? Did you ever choose your stance in a dispute by reviewing the logs? ...Was there anything wrong with that? Wasn't it generally helpful?
Of course in that world, PRIVMSG does exist. In our world, it doesn't.
Too funny... I made very nearly this same suggestion to a co-worker last week (in jest though). My spin was that the NSA should both fund themselves, and justify their existence, by offering valuable services, like the "Is my spouse cheating on me" report, and a "background checks on potential co-founders" service, etc. As well as, of course, providing archived copies of lost email, files, etc.
The thing is, I really was just joking. But somewhere out there, there's probably somebody who thinks this is all actually a good idea.
Then you need to write to the state universities (and even private universities) in your state, as well, as they do the same thing with both state-funded and federally-funded research. It has been going on for decades.
Isn't this why Aaron Swartz risked so much attempting to steal the data, because alternative options of liberating the data were almost entirely futile?
If they give it away for free, that benefits a relatively few people who can make use of it.
If they sell it, they can put that revenue back into their program in place of (or in addition to) more taxpayer money.
This lets them do more with less taxpayer money going forward, so it sounds like a win for the average Joe taxpayer. (In theory.)
> If they give it away for free, that benefits a relatively few people who can make use of it.
If there are relatively few people who benefit the sales will also be meaningless. You'll also have a bunch of losses for things that didn't sell well, liability for when something goes wrong, etc etc. The government isn't a business, it should not try to be one.
Well yeah, but there's a difference between "Let's list all this stuff we've already done for our own purposes and see if we can recoup a little cash" and acting like a business.
As long as they aren't putting too much effort into sales, it probably works out to an easy net positive.
The main motivation of this sort of technology transfer program isn't the license revenue itself. That's insignificant when compared to their operating budget. The point of this program is to provide evidence that the research has commercial applications. With this evidence, they are able to go to Congress and show their research helps the economy, which is used as part of the justification of their research budget.
Another interesting one, I won't post any more. Can anyone think of a current consumer use of a technique like this? Those Garmin GPS/Radios that track each other is the closest I can think of:
DETERMINE RANGE AND VELOCITY OF AN OBJECT
PATENT NOS.: 7,755,536 AND 7,545,325
This method provides the ability to determine the
position and velocity of a transmitter over a wide
range of bandwidths. The second invention models
the Doppler process as a time shift and change of
scale of the original signal. In this process, the
received signal is delayed in time and dilated. In this
invention, the method of performing the resampling function is to
apply a forward Fourier transform of one length to the zero-padded
signal and apply an inverse Fourier transform of a different length to
the results of the first transform. This pair of operations results in a
resampling of the signal at a rational multiple of the original sample
rate. The scale correlation is then computed as the normal
correlation of the transmitted signal and the resampled signal.
VALUE
Accurate model of Doppler process
Rational signal resampling
Technology Transfer Program
S
ecurity
|
Page
63
P
ROVIDING A
C
OMPUTER
U
SER WITH
H
IGH
-L
EVEL
P
RIVILEDGES
P
ATENT
N
O
.:
7,945,947
This invention monitors all terminal sessions i
n
an operating system, su
ch as Microsoft’
s
Windows
®
, for a special key sequence and if
found, launches a command shell running with
high privileges for use by the logged-on user,
regardless of which user it was and without requiring
subsequent authenticati
on.
The advantage of this method is that it allows any user to launch a
command shell with high privileges even though the user may only
have few privileges, and does not require a login with a username
and password to be entered each time.
VALUE
Allows
user to launch privileged command shells
Simple command for authentication reduces user input
I was confused about this one. It appears that it may be for systems only where an authorized server with admin rights is running. I'll have to read more to be sure.
It appears to be non-specific, but an admin computer is needed.
[A] user-definable process is associated to the terminal services session. The user-definable process is selected so that the process can interact with the user connected to that terminal services session and can identify all the desktops registered in the terminal services session that the user-definable process is running in.
[...]
Again, by example, once a process has registered a low-level keyboard hook on a desktop, it is notified of all keystrokes that occur when the input for the keyboard would go to that desktop. Each Vista system prompt service process examines the keystrokes and if the user-definable key sequence (such as CTRL-F10) was pressed, the system performs the action of creating a command shell running as the LocalSystem account.
One of their offering under technology is converting computer programs with loops to ones without loops. Can anyone help me understand what the point of that is?
To make it easier to reason about whether the program will terminate. This is an important part of writing high-assurance software.
From the actual patent text (https://www.google.com/patents/US7788659): "Because of the possibility of looping and branching within loops, a brute force attempt to enumerate the paths through a computer program will most likely fail. Therefore, there is a need for a method of converting a computer program that contains loops to one that does not."
If your government isn't going to engage in commercial espionage on your business or employers behalf (as does China) then it darn well better do technology transfer. If you can't explain your mission value to the American public - whom you happen to be spying on - you could at least articulate this kind of value that can impact citizens in a positive way. IMHO they should double down on this and allocate funds for start-ups ala inQtel.
I'm confused, either you are claiming France and China don't conduct commercial espionage or that the US doesn't, in either case I disagree. All three conduct commercial espionage for the "right" corporate clients.
"Digital Transcription System" (that can handle foreign languages). This would be awesome to release OSS. Finally the tech giants wouldn't have a monopoly on good voice recognition.
"All Fiber Optically-Controlled Optical Switch" So they have all they need to make optical processors/routers. If this is the declassified tech, it's time to start paying attention to http://pqcrypto.org/
"Port Protector Assembly for D-Sub Connectors" I haven't heard of much spying happening by someone hooking something up to an unused DVI port. Good to know.
54 comments
[ 2.8 ms ] story [ 74.8 ms ] threadFABRICATING AND INTEGRATING DECOUPLING CAPACITORS PATENT NO.: 7,297,613 This technology provides a method of fabrication and integration for high quality decoupling capacitors with high capacitance values, low parasitic losses, good yield, and long-term reliability. This method enables high-yielding capacitors and other passive elements to be placed very close to the processor or other integrated circuit design and provides improved signal integrity. VALUE
[Value:] Reduced signal loss and footprint Reduced cost and increased yields for RF systems
This could help improve performance for data stores in general.
I believe I'm going to write my Congressional reps later today and suggest pushing for the elimination of licensing fees for tech from NSA, NASA, DOD, etc. I'm sure it won't go anywhere, but what can ya do?
There are other ways to find out the what is important, ways that are less prone to errors, ESPECIALLY for research...
My point was that selling the IP instead of giving it away is revenue neutral to society (and, in fact, a positive to the taxpayers who are not buying the IP) and so selling it does not decrease welfare and may well improve it if it provides some data to the agency on what the users of their research value. This is entirely unlike what happens with NSF-funded research which is given away to journals who charge a fortune to read it. In this latter case (unless you think that peer-review is incredibly valuable, which no one besides the publishers seem to believe) the overall effect is welfare reducing.
He didn't say it is a way to find what's important, he said it is an important signal to find what people value enough to spend their money on.
No, he didn't, he said:
> is an important signal as to where they should spend their research time
anyone who has looked at basic research knows that immediate commercialization potential is a horrible guide for where to spend time.
As a quick example, would you pay for someone to research the immune systems of sharks and camels? No technology transfer office can sell a description of how the immune systems work. It seems ridiculous. But after years were spent researching these topics, describing them in detail in the publicly available literature, companies have taken features of these systems and built products based on them.
The goal of government-funded research is not to run a business, directing research into immediate commercialization, it is to do basic science that would not be funded by companies because it does not appear prima facie to have commercial application.
Sez you. Basic science/pure research is NOT the goal of all government research spending. There happens to be some funding put in place for basic research by Congress (much of the NSF and NIH budgets, for instance) but there is also purpose-driven research that is not "basic science." The department of defense is one of the largest spenders on research in the US government, but much of their research is not "basic science," and even if you termed it that, they are not doing it for the love of knowledge. I assume the NSA is more like this than it is like the NSF.
Can you explain this part? I don't understand why anyone would have to pay for public domain technology.
One thing that would happen immediately: people would stop discussing marital affairs via telephone. (And there'd be a brief spike in murders if the historic data were released!)
The knee jerk reaction is to extend that idea to would-be terrorists, too--to imagine that they'd simply change their communication habits (they already try to avoid monitoring, I presume).
But, let's think a little harder, and let's start with the married folk.
Bob and Mary are married. Eve is Bob's co-worker. Don't you think that Eve-Bob communication is going to contain some tell-tale signs _before_ the affair? Could Mary (or Bob, or Eve) use this information to prevent the affair (or proceed in a less painful manner, depending on their situation)?
I was interrupted and now I've put that line of thought on hold and developed a new one.
Remember IRC? Did you ever choose your stance in a dispute by reviewing the logs? ...Was there anything wrong with that? Wasn't it generally helpful?
Of course in that world, PRIVMSG does exist. In our world, it doesn't.
I dunno.
The thing is, I really was just joking. But somewhere out there, there's probably somebody who thinks this is all actually a good idea.
If there are relatively few people who benefit the sales will also be meaningless. You'll also have a bunch of losses for things that didn't sell well, liability for when something goes wrong, etc etc. The government isn't a business, it should not try to be one.
DETERMINE RANGE AND VELOCITY OF AN OBJECT PATENT NOS.: 7,755,536 AND 7,545,325
This method provides the ability to determine the position and velocity of a transmitter over a wide range of bandwidths. The second invention models the Doppler process as a time shift and change of scale of the original signal. In this process, the received signal is delayed in time and dilated. In this invention, the method of performing the resampling function is to apply a forward Fourier transform of one length to the zero-padded signal and apply an inverse Fourier transform of a different length to the results of the first transform. This pair of operations results in a resampling of the signal at a rational multiple of the original sample rate. The scale correlation is then computed as the normal correlation of the transmitted signal and the resampled signal.
VALUE Accurate model of Doppler process Rational signal resampling
lol, they patented a privilege escalation rootkit
Edit: Upon more reading from (https://www.google.com/patents/US7945947?dq=7,945,947&hl=en&...)
It appears to be non-specific, but an admin computer is needed.
[A] user-definable process is associated to the terminal services session. The user-definable process is selected so that the process can interact with the user connected to that terminal services session and can identify all the desktops registered in the terminal services session that the user-definable process is running in.
[...]
Again, by example, once a process has registered a low-level keyboard hook on a desktop, it is notified of all keystrokes that occur when the input for the keyboard would go to that desktop. Each Vista system prompt service process examines the keystrokes and if the user-definable key sequence (such as CTRL-F10) was pressed, the system performs the action of creating a command shell running as the LocalSystem account.
From the actual patent text (https://www.google.com/patents/US7788659): "Because of the possibility of looping and branching within loops, a brute force attempt to enumerate the paths through a computer program will most likely fail. Therefore, there is a need for a method of converting a computer program that contains loops to one that does not."
More info: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Termination_analysis
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loop_unrolling
The Wikipedia article on it is quite good with examples: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loop_unrolling
"Digital Transcription System" (that can handle foreign languages). This would be awesome to release OSS. Finally the tech giants wouldn't have a monopoly on good voice recognition.
"All Fiber Optically-Controlled Optical Switch" So they have all they need to make optical processors/routers. If this is the declassified tech, it's time to start paying attention to http://pqcrypto.org/
"Port Protector Assembly for D-Sub Connectors" I haven't heard of much spying happening by someone hooking something up to an unused DVI port. Good to know.