[time-nuts] Google Patent Search is Broken

[Mike Monett]

  >Date: Wed, 1 Jul 2009 06:24:38 +0000 (GMT)
  >From: Robert Atkinson <robert8rpi at yahoo.co.uk>
  >Subject: Re: [time-nuts] Google Patent Search is Broken

  >Hi Mike,

  > Try http://ep.espacenet.com/  It's an offical  european  site that
  > also searches  US and World Patents. Very flexible  search options
  > and no registration required. You do have to type in the code from
  > a graphic  image  if you want to download a full  PDF.  That  is a
  > small price to pay to keep the bots out.

  > Robert G8RPI.

  Hi Robert,

  Thanks very  much  for  the reply and the link.  That  looks  like a
  useful site, especially for European and Japanese patents.

  How do you "type in the code from a graphic image"? I guess you mean
  to enter a captcha, but couldn't see any box to enter a code.

  It found US6134065 with no problem, and all I had to do was click on
  the Acrobat symbol to download the file. But only shows the  text on
  the first page. The rest are blank.

  I'm running Win98, which uses old versions of Acrobat and  Foxit. Is
  this a  version  problem, or is there a way to get the  rest  of the
  document?

  I'm hoping  a lot of these problems will soon go away. I  have WinXP
  SP3 running  in VirtualBox 3.0 on Ubuntu 9.04, and  it  works great.
  But it  doesn't like running my old DOS programs. The  screen update
  is so painfully slow it makes the program unusable. I tried  VB 2.1,
  but it was only slightly faster.

  I bought a new graphics card, but it was only marginally  faster. It
  also overwhelmed the cooling in the computer. The case got so  hot I
  couldn't hold my hand on it. I can't upgrade the motherboard since I
  need the parallel and serial IO ports, but they don't exist on newer
  systems.

  I'll try  to get Win98 running in QEMU today, and see if  that helps
  the slow display problem. If so, I'll transfer all my files  over to
  the new box, and that should end these problems with old, down-level
  versions of Acrobat and browsers. The plan is to run Win98 as usual,
  and if there is a problem, bounce over to WinXP.

  If anyone  has other suggestions to speed up the DOS display  in XP,
  I'd be very happy to hear them.

  Thanks,

  Mike