【每日阅读训练第三期——速度越障1系列】【1-18】经管

whitethelittle

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Meet The 10 Patents Yahoo Is Using To Sue Facebook
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Yes, Yahoo went there today—claiming in a lawsuit that it, not Facebook, is the real king of social networks. The company points to ten patents that it says cover features like messages, advertising and privacy settings.
We’ve provided here abstracts of those patents for your reading pleasure.
You can also click through to see the whole patent yourself or else check out our attempt at a plain English translation of the patent lawyers’ gobbledy-gook. Based on our reading, Yahoo may now own all of Silicon Valley or else the US patent system is even more dysfunctional than we imagined.
And now, without further ado, meet Yahoo’s would-be Facebook killers:
US Patent 7454509 Online playback system with community bias (Filed 2001, Issued 2008)
A method for entertaining individuals according to a community having similar tastes. Information derived from user accounts form the basis of a community and collateral preferences allow other subscribing individuals to enjoy the benefit of wider-ranging tastes according to the preferences expressed by the other members of the community. Additionally, assuming that individuals sharing one preference in common may be likely to share others, the present method allows those who choose to listen to the “fan station” the ability to enjoy similar music or other data streams according to preferences expressed by the fan community as a whole.
【221】【计时2】In plain English: A music station based on what you and your friends listen to
US Patent 7599935 Control for enabling a user to preview display of selected content based on another user’s authorization level (Filed 2005, Issued 2009)
Enabling a first user to preview content as it would be seen by a second user, if the second user had a selected user relationship with the first user. The selected user relationship may include a relationship degree, a relationship category, a relationship rating, and/or other form of relationship. In one embodiment, a user interface enables the first user to assign user relationships to portions of content and to other users. The first user selects a user relationship, which is used to access those portions of content that are associated with the first user and assigned the selected user relationship. The corresponding portions of content are used to generate a preview display for the first user, illustrating the portions of content that would be accessible to other users assigned the same user relationship or assigned a closer user relationship. Preview may be generated by a server or a local client.
In plain English: Share an item only with selected friends
US Patent 5983227 Dynamic Page Generator (Filed 1997, Issued 1999)
An custom page server is provided with user preferences organized into templates stored in compact data structures and the live data used to fill the templates stored local to the page server which is handing user requests for custom pages. One process is executed on the page server for every request. The process is provided a user template for the user making the request, where the user template is either generated from user preferences or retrieved from a cache of recently used user templates. Each user process is provided access to a large region of shared memory which contains all of the live data needed to fill any user template. Typically, the pages served are news pages, giving the user a custom selection of stock quotes, news headlines, sports scores, weather, and the like. With the live data stored in a local, shared memory, any custom page can be built within the page server, eliminating the need to make requests from other servers for portions of the live data.
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In plain English: a customized homepage
US Patent 7747648 World modeling using a relationship network with communication channels to entities (Filed 2005, Issued 2010)
Systems and methods for information retrieval and communication employ a world model. The world model is made up of interrelated entity models, each of which corresponds to an entity in the real world, such as a person, place, business, other tangible thing, community, event, or thought. Each entity model provides a communication channel via which a user can contact a real-world person responsible for that entity model. Entity models also provide feedback information, enabling users to easily share their experiences and opinions of the corresponding real-world entity.
In plain English: messaging your friends
(LIST: The Top Ten Best Brand Extensions)
US Patent 7406501 System and method for instant messaging using an e-mail protocol (Filed 2003, Issued 2008)
Systems and methods allowing an instant messaging user to exchange messages with an e-mail user. To the instant messaging user, the experience is a seamless exchange of instant messages; to the e-mail user, the experience is a seamless exchange of e-mail messages. Conversion of an instant message to an e-mail message includes insertion of a token into the e-mail message, and conversion of an e-mail message to an instant message includes validating a token extracted from the e-mail message.
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In plain English: sending an instant message
US Patent 6907566 US Patent 7100111 and US Patent 7373599 Method and system for optimum placement of advertisements on a webpage (Filed 1999, Issued 2005)
A method and system for placement of graphical objects on a page to optimize the occurrence of an event associated with such objects. The graphical objects might include, for instance, advertisements on a webpage, and the event would include a user clicking on that ad. The page includes positions for receipt of the object material. Data regarding the past performance of the objects is stored and updated as new data is received. A user requests a page from a server associated with system. The server uses the performance data to derive a prioritized arrangement of the objects on the page. The server performs a calculation regarding the likelihood that an event will occur for a given object, as displayed to a particular user. The objects are arranged according to this calculation and returned to the user on the requested page. The likelihood can also be multiplied by a weighting factor and the objects arranged according to this product
In plain English: placing an ad on a webpage based on what users have done before
US Patent 7668861 System and method to determine the validity of an interaction on a network (Filed 2007, Issued 2010)
A system and method are disclosed for classifying a user interaction on a network. A user interaction is identified on a network and user interaction data is collected relating to the user interaction on the network. The user interaction data includes an aggregate measure data and a unique feature data. The user interaction data is processed to generate a value score for the interaction. A classification of the user interaction is determined based on the value score.
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In plain English: Using visitor data to screen for spam or fake users
US Patent 7269590 Method and system for customizing views of information associated with a social network user(Filed 2004, Issued 2007)
A method, apparatus, and system are directed towards managing a view of a social network user’s personal information based, in part, on user-defined criteria. The user-defined criteria may be applied towards a user’s relationship with each prospective viewer. The user-defined criteria may include degrees of separation between members of the social network, a relationship to the prospective viewer, as well as criteria based, in part, on activities, such as dating, employment, hobbies, and the like. The user-defined criteria may also be based on a group membership, a strength of a relationship, and the like. Such user-defined relationship criteria may then be mapped against various categories of information associated with social network user to provide customized views of the social network user.
In plain English: deciding which friends photos to display when a user is logged in
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Private Businesses Fight Federal Prisons for Contracts

As chief financial officer of a military clothing manufacturer, Steven W. Eisen was accustomed to winning contracts to make garments for the Defense Department.
But in December, Mr. Eisen received surprising news. His company, Tennier Industries, which is in a depressed corner of Tennessee, would not receive a new $45 million contract.
Tennier lost the deal not to a private sector competitor, but to a corporation owned by the federal government, Federal Prison Industries.
Federal Prison Industries, also known as Unicor, does not have to worry much about its overhead. It uses prisoners for labor, paying them 23 cents to $1.15 an hour. Although the company is not allowed to sell to the private sector, the law generally requires federal agencies to buy its products, even if they are not the cheapest.
Mr. Eisen, who laid off about 100 workers after losing out on the new contract, said the system took sorely needed jobs from law-abiding citizens. “Our government screams, howls and yells how the rest of the world is using prisoners or slave labor to manufacture items, and here we take the items right out of the mouths of people who need it,” he said.
Although Federal Prison Industries has been around for decades, its critics are gaining more sympathy this year as jobs, competition and the role of government have become potent political issues. Recently, a clothing company complained that the government company had expressed interest in making Air Force windbreakers like one worn by the president. Last month, amid negative news reports and pressure from the Senate minority leader, Mitch McConnell, F.P.I. said it would stop competing for the contract because it could damage the private company that makes the jackets, Ashland Sales and Service.
In addition, a bipartisan coalition of lawmakers is resuscitating a bill to overhaul the way the prison manufacturing company does business, proposing to eliminate its preferential status.
Under current practice — governed by intricate laws, regulations and policies — an agency must buy prisoner-made goods if the company offers an item that is comparable in price, quality and time of delivery to that of the private sector, with certain exceptions. The company’s prices are not always the lowest, but it frequently has been able to underbid private companies, Congressional aides say.
The bill seeks to limit those advantages by putting a limit on F.P.I.’s sales to the federal government, opening more product areas to private companies and strengthening requirements that the prices for prisoner-made products be competitive. The legislation would also impose federal work-safety standards and higher wages, starting at $2.50 an hour.
Separately, Senator McConnell has introduced a bill that would subject the Bureau of Prisons, including its manufacturing company, to greater Congressional oversight.
F.P.I. has traditionally relied on office furniture, electronics and clothing manufacturing for the bulk of its business, but it has been moving into new industries like renewable energy. The company already has one factory each in New York and Oregon to build solar panels and is looking into making energy-efficient lighting and small wind turbines.
“This is a threat to not just established industries; it’s a threat to emerging industries,” said Representative Bill Huizenga, a Michigan Republican who is the lead sponsor of the proposed overhaul legislation. “If China did this — having their prisoners work at subpar wages in prisons — we would be screaming bloody murder.”
Begun in 1934 as a way to teach inmates useful skills and help supply federal agencies with needed products, Federal Prison Industries is something of an anachronism. Its operations are patterned after a “mass-production, low-skilled labor economy of the 1930s,” according to a report last year from the Congressional Research Service. It is at root a correctional program intended to keep inmates busy (and therefore less likely to become violent), reinforce the value of work and the sense of self-worth work can provide, and reduce recidivism. It is inefficient by design, employing as many inmates as possible, which diminishes the advantage of its low wages.
“The program has been important to the Federal Bureau of Prisons for a long time,” said George Keiser, a consultant and former official at the National Institute of Corrections in the Justice Department. “It’s one of the areas where they can demonstrate a high correlation between people who work in prison industries and who eventually, as they return to their communities, have a higher-than-average success rate at not being rearrested, not being reconvicted and not returning to prison.”
According to the Bureau of Prisons, inmates who go through the program are 24 percent less likely to return to jail and 14 percent more likely to find employment upon release because of the skills and experience they receive. The program operates in a range of industries — including fleet management and data services — to lessen the effect on any particular one. Over the years, its board has adopted various resolutions to reduce competition with small businesses, like raising the threshold for buying the prisoner-made goods to $3,000, from $25, and eliminating its preferential status for products when the prison share of the federal market rises above certain levels.
“F.P.I. supplies only a small fraction of the government’s goods and services,” Traci Billingsley, a spokeswoman for the Bureau of Prisons, said in a prepared statement. “F.P.I. also helps support American jobs as it often partners with private American companies as a supplier.” (Mr. Eisen said Tennier once received a contract to provide precut fabric for military gear to the government company so it could avoid having inmates use cutting equipment.)
With a tight economy, dwindling agency budgets and past Congressional moves to weaken its preferential status, the prison manufacturing company has faced its own business pressures, closing down some factories and employing fewer inmates. Its overall sales fell to about $745 million in fiscal 2011 from about $772 million the year before, according to its annual report to Congress. Its net loss narrowed to $1.8 million from $56.3 million the year before, when it took $35 million in write-offs for defective helmets recalled by the military — still the subject of a Justice Department investigation — and for solar cells.
“F.P.I. continues to face the negative impact of economic and legislative forces,” the report says. “F.P.I. continues to address these external challenges through aggressively pursuing new customers and new products, involvement in legislative initiatives, capacity reductions and strict measures to control cash.”
The move into solar panels and other energy technologies is meant to help government agencies meet mandates for using energy from renewable sources and to “provide inmates with job skills in a new and growing market,” according to Julie Rozier, a spokeswoman for the company.
Across the country, some correctional facilities have begun preparing inmates for the green economy, offering training in solar panel installation and energy-efficient heating, ventilation and cooling systems. Inmates do not install solar panels, but assemble them; when fully operational, the plants in Otisville, N.Y., and Sheridan, Ore., can employ about 400 inmates and produce 75 megawatts’ worth of panels a year, Ms. Rozier said.
So far, response from the solar industry has been measured, with representatives saying that production is too small to pose a serious threat. A pool of trained solar workers might even be beneficial, the Solar Energy Industries Association says.
But industries that have long been competing against the federal company, like the clothing and furniture industries, are leaning on lawmakers to do something.
Chris Reynolds, president of Campbellsville Apparel in Kentucky, said he had contacted Senator McConnell, a Kentucky Republican, to express concern about possible competition for his military T-shirt contract, a move that inspired Mr. McConnell’s bill.
“My employees just cannot believe the fact that a prisoner who should be paying a debt to society is being promoted through the federal government to take a job from an American taxpaying citizen,” he said.

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qiuhua01234567

zhan

CandanceYY

fox0923

板凳的板凳~

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有趣的article，喜欢~~
M.I: The argument of business competition and opportunity between the American private company and the federal prison industry company, but the problem is remained unsolved eventually.
- Case: a private American garment company complains that the FPI has taken over the contract from itself, and this is a threat esp. during the economic recession period.
- Many FPI get contracts from the federal government to make the garments for military and make the helmets, etc. These industries are spread mainly in NewYork and Oregon, and these companies employ prisoners.
- Advantage of FPI: a. In order to help the prisoners to have more skills so that the possibility of their returning to prison will be reduced. b. To boost the local or domestic economy by providing a cheaper price as compared to the price offered by private company.
- Disadvantage: a. such lower price offered by the company will lower the competition of private company.  b. many people are opposed to the FPI. For instance, if China's prisoners make such a competition with the private chinese company, the situation will be even worse.
- Upon the opposition, an official stated that FPI hasn't really made a big threat to the private company, since FPI's net gross only occupies a small portion, and FPI starts to hire fewer prisoners and put less budget on the development.  So he supports the FPI's business development.
- However, there are some people who just don't believe a prisoner can take over a taxpayer's work.

dengly

1.54
2.27
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越障9.21

qiuhua01234567

惨，打的快多占了一楼，亲们要理解我。。。
1:21
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越障：7：:2

cynthia1230

速度还是很凄凉
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越障 10’17

phoebe0624

速度

1'10"
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778879

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美国中小企业与监狱的工厂竞争，失去了政府订单。
首先用一个例子开头，讲虽然监狱工厂的产品价格不是最低的，但政府可以优先选择监狱工厂生产的产品。然后小工厂的老板很不满意，他认为那些监狱里曾经犯过错的人正在跟他们普通的良好市民争工作机会
中间好像说是要立法来限制监狱工厂，提高监狱工厂产品的价格什么的
然后从监狱的角度来讲，在监狱开办工厂是有好处的，参加到工厂的犯人less likely再回来，并且出去后更容易被雇佣。列了数据表明由于经济不好，工厂的订单数已经下降了等等。还说政府只是从监狱工厂买了少部分的东西，监狱工厂还可以促进中小企业因为监狱工厂是他们的supplier。
现在有个解决办法是试图让工厂涉足太阳能业。已有的太阳能公司表示监狱工厂的涉足不会对他们有过多影响，甚至还能促进他们的发展

很邻家

1.    The private sectors making clothes lost big deals to the corporate owned by federal government, which use prisoners as its workers and pay them low wages but sell the products not in a cheap price. Fatally, relative products, such as military clothes, are forced to be brought from the state-owned sector, FPI.
2.    FPI began as a positive method to help the inmates learn a skill and make their life busy. According to some investigation, the inmates who have worked for the FPI have a lower rate of recidivism than that of inmates without doing this work.
3.    However, it’s unfair for the employees who seem to have to compete with the prisoners, especially in today’s depressing economic condition.