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His point is that there is no evidences that any of t is getting into the water table.

Well, there have been cases where the stuff that is taken out does find its way into the drinking water but the common argument is that it was mishandled. The way I see this, in a very unscientific way, is that we're doing something similar to when we dumped mountains of garbage into the Pacific Ocean because, hey let's face it, there's nothing out there and nobody's ever going to be able to find it, right? And now we just sit there and stare at it wondering if anyone's going to do anything about it saying stupid shit like "Well, it doesn't matter if we stop, Japan will keep dumping out there."

And, you know, this fracking stuff just sounds like more of the same mentality and I feel like it could bite our ass in the future when all of Pennsylvania has pockets of water underneath it that, by themselves pose no risk but added up eventually cause us some discomfort. And yet, all the comments on Slashdot assure me I'm just a fear monger so what are you to do? People seem to get upset when I try to place the burden of proof that this will not harm us in anyway on the companies that are going to make billions of dollars off it and the people that still own mineral rights are telling me to shut the hell up at all costs. These natural gas companies sound like really unsavory types.

DO you even know what chemicals are in there?

Now that's a funny question if you're in PA (and I don't mean "ha-ha" funny).

I listened to a This American Life episode recently where the town of Colorado Springs faced this reality when they voted against a tax increase, and government services like street lights and trash removal started shutting down.

Street lights wold go out, and people would call in to the government to fix it. They were basically told "We don't have the money to pay for that. Remember that tax increase you voted against last month? Yeah, that's why. If you'd like to send us a check for $100 we'd be happy to send someone out to fix it though."

It's just a made up controversy being used to make political hay.

Speaking as a Democrat, I think that's not *entirely* true. There is the question of whether Solyndra received favorable treatment because of its connections to the Obama campaign, something I would not dismiss out of hand. I think it beggars belief that lobbying didn't have something to do with the expedited loan guarantee, although I suspect the proximate cause was the desire to have a photo op of the president encouraging high tech manufacturing jobs.

The problem is that when something like this happens people form up into two groups depending on whether they are in the same party as the person who got caught this time: those who say absolutely nothing improper happened, and those who say it was out-and-out bribery, *but don't want to change anything so they can get their share next time around*.

It all comes down to the absurd notion that "paying for access" is a perfectly benign practice. Nobody pays for "access"; they pay for *results*. Access is simply the means by which they obtain results that others with less money to burn can't get. I'll even grant both Republicans and Democrats who sell "access" the benefit of the doubt and assume they aren't selling favors -- not because I believe that, because it makes no practical difference. Even if all they are selling is access and openness to the buyer's idea, the system is still corrupt and undemocratic.

Here's something to consider: while Congress is in session, your representative spends more time each day lining up donations for his next election than he does working on government business. Listen to this: http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/461/take-the-money-and-run-for-office. A typical representative in a competitive district has to go to *400* fundraisers a year.

Your last idea is too easy to game. The companies would just "sell" the patents to shell companies, but would receive a share of everything earned through litigation. Apparently IP Ventures is already doing this and set up between 1600 and 1800 such companies.

Source: http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/441/when-patents-attack

Which is why I said you would need rules to stop this, which could be done by grouping common major share holders, treating subsiduaries as the same entity, treating licences to the IP as common ownership in some cases. ie make model, try break it, refine model etc. until intent is satisfied.

Your last idea is too easy to game. The companies would just "sell" the patents to shell companies, but would receive a share of everything earned through litigation. Apparently IP Ventures is already doing this and set up between 1600 and 1800 such companies.

Source: http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/441/when-patents-attack

Nathan Myhrvold is the most prominent of all patent trolls.

Drawings like this where pretty common all through the 80s.

There is a ton of evidence. IN fact, they person who make those claims has said they where accurate... of course no he makes the excuse they where just theater stories and not meant to be taken as fact.

The 'Fanboy' group think is pretty alien to me in general.

http://go.bloomberg.com/tech-blog/2012-03-20-now-can-we-start-talking-about-the-real-foxconn/

http://podcast.thisamericanlife.org/podcast/460.mp3

http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/122903-does-daiseys-lie-change-what-we-know-about-apples-manufacturing

http://www.zdnet.com/blog/apple/mike-daisey-caught-lying-about-foxconn-incinerates-credibility/12569

IS Foxconn a place of magic unicornd and pixie dust? no. But it isn't nearly as bad as people like you think.

So, thre are the facts. Lets see if you are truly capable of evaluating and reflecting on your opinion in light of new facts, otr if you are another non thinking excuse making reactionary. i.e. Shitweasel

"Foxconn can now act like there were no problems and ignore them just because the source used was a secondary source reported as a primary source".

Listen up you fucking moron, the man lied, there was no source, either primary or secondary.
--

ref: transcript - audio

Yeah, it's probably a lot more biased than it needs to be.

Thanks, sometimes I wonder if anyone ever notices my efforts.

But as for hating patent trolIs, are there many people who actually like them? Obviously some lawyers because it keeps them employed, but other than that?

Well, that's a tough question. I would imagine that they like themselves but not other patent trolls but I can't be sure if they hate themselves. Perhaps we should investigate if the rate of suicide is higher in patent trolls? On a more serious note, there is one odd person that likes patents: nationalists. Whether you be a member of the US government or just a good ole fashion rah rah USA nutjob, there is a growing intellectual war between the United States and China. Sure, other countries like Japan get a lot of patents but patent trolls translate to "innovation" when it comes to number of patents and, let's face it, it's patent trolls that file for the most patents without actually building anything or licensing anything. I guess you could argue that they hurt the economy when small businesses get blindsided by these lawsuits but they always target the deepest coffers which usually seem to be happy to cough up and settle out of court. I can't think of anyone else really that benefits from this -- even the courtrooms in East Texas are clogged with shitty patent cases while trying to take care of real problems among the local people.

And is there anyone who tries to make a case that they are somehow beneficial to society? (serious questions BTW. I've never heard any argument in support of this practice)

Well, your question could be answered by This American Life's Episode 441 but there's a key problem. First, in that podcast, Intellectual Ventures argues that they help inventors protect their IP by suing the shit out of everyone that tries to implement anything remotely like the patents in question. And they also claim that they constantly license patents to people without involving a painful legal battle. However, as the TAL team asks for a happy license customer, IV can only give them one name of someone whose patent they license. And, gosh darn it, wouldn't you know it, as they tried to contact this individual it turned out that Intellectual Ventures was going around suing people and gathering out of court settlements in the name of that patent without the right to. And IV's response to this? Us normal people don't know what the hell we're talking about.

So there you go, sorry for the bias in my submission and this post but, well, when it warrants it I'm not afraid to call horseshit horseshit.

Actually, it's not explicitly untrue. You act as though "made an effort at fact-checking" is an acceptable counter to "didn't fact check". If you are unable to corroborate a claim with at least one other party you have not fact-checked. When TAL was not able to verify some of the more serious claims they should have not gone forward with the story. But don't take my word for it, even Ira Glass agrees (emphasis mine):

I can say now in retrospect that when Mike Daisey wouldn't give us contact information
for his interpreter we should've killed the story rather than run it. We never should've
broadcast this story without talking to that woman

So, they didn't fact check his story. They admit to not fact-checking his story. And it wasn't hard to find the interpreter. In fact the Marketplace correspondent, Rob Schmitz, claims that he found her on his very first Google search. I absolutely love This American Life, and so it saddens me to see them screw up like this. But they screwed up. Badly.

http://www.thisamericanlife.org/blog/2012/03/retracting-mr-daisey-and-the-apple-factory
http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/460/retraction

I can understand why the professional reporters are horrified. But I keep remembering something a poet once said:

The case was defended on the squarest, most idealistic, and most foolish level imaginable, and on the other side the dirt was so filthy that the defense refused to believe it existed, or, as in my case and probably in others, actually believed it.--Kenneth Rexroth, An Autobiographical Novel, p. 199.

Which is more important: the working conditions of thousands or their sensationalization by one man?

http://www.thisamericanlife.org/blog/2012/03/retracting-mr-daisey-and-the-apple-factory
http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/460/retraction

I can understand why the professional reporters are horrified. But I keep remembering something a poet once said:

The case was defended on the squarest, most idealistic, and most foolish level imaginable, and on the other side the dirt was so filthy that the defense refused to believe it existed, or, as in my case and probably in others, actually believed it.--Kenneth Rexroth, An Autobiographical Novel, p. 199.

Which is more important: the working conditions of thousands or their sensationalization by one man?

At the very bottom of the story on the retraction, there is a link to a sourced New York Times story, which is nearly as damning as the retracted one. This is called "burying the lede," and it is biased reporting.

Reportedly, the TAL correction also confirmed most of what Daisey claimed; he wasn't there, but the stories turn out to be true after all. The TAL broadcast will be available for download on Sunday

Here's the link to the NYT story:
    http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/26/business/ieconomy-apples-ipad-and-the-human-costs-for-workers-in-china.html

This is were the TAL correction will be available:
    http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/460/retraction

Fox News: "The number of factories Daisey visited in China was listed incorrectly, for example, as well as the number of workers he spoke with"

Ira Glass: "Daisey admits to fabricating these characters .. that he met underage workers at Foxconn, and that a man with a mangled hand was injured at Foxconn making iPads (and that Daisey's iPad was the first one he ever saw in operation)"

http://feeds.thisamericanlife.org/~r/talpodcast/~5/CWKogfUb3Us/454.mp3

The page about the retracted episode on the site is not linking to the audio of the show like they do for every other episode.

However, the well-documented trick still works, so if you want to listen to it you can do so here.

I think the URL is supposed to be NPR's way of letting you know they're on to you.

The page about the retracted episode on the site is not linking to the audio of the show like they do for every other episode.

However, the well-documented trick still works, so if you want to listen to it you can do so here.

I think the URL is supposed to be NPR's way of letting you know they're on to you.

As for the origin of the name "patent troll" listen to This American LIfe's coverage on the topic. They talk to the guy that originally coined the term and the reason: fantasy trolls that live under bridges and bully you to pay money if you want to use the bridge. Unlike some users like to think, patent trolls are not named after the forum variety that is there just to bother and annoy.

It does not really matter what the origin of the term is. It's what it means now.

I quoted the first site I found to get out of it quick, but if you need an alternate source here is a link to This American Life's podcast "When Patents Attack!" where they interview the man that originally coined the allegoric patent troll term based off bridge trolls that bully people to pay money to pass.

Have posted the link 3 times already replying to others, and yea I should have posted it on the first post but was not figuring some people would go writhing a thesis on why wikipedia was wrong, or at least figured anyone that would also would google up the term and face many other sources on the origin of the term.

Go listen to "When Patents Attack" by This American Life. They not only talk about the origin of the term "Patent Troll" but also talk to the guy that coined it up and he explains it's an allegory to the bridge trolls in fantasy, that will pop up as soon as you try to cross a bridge and just demand money.

The whole point of the patent system is to encourage cross licensing, sharing, and development of ideas while ensuring that real inventors can be paid for their creations.

I'm sorry but you are living in fantasy land. The whole point of the patent system is to encourage people to invent things and have a legal resort to make sure no one steals their invention, that way they can justify the time and money invested to invent since now they can actually profit from the invention.

I do accept the patent system is broken and sucks, and should be abolished or heavily revamped, but patents were always about roadblocks and restrictions.

As for the origin of the name "patent troll" listen to This American LIfe's coverage on the topic. They talk to the guy that originally coined the term and the reason: fantasy trolls that live under bridges and bully you to pay money if you want to use the bridge. Unlike some users like to think, patent trolls are not named after the forum variety that is there just to bother and annoy.

http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/454/mr-daisey-and-the-apple-factory
An on topic story of working, the factory, what you can have made and the reality of the production lines .
Many cheap hands are cheaper than robots.

Well, you'd have to go there and convince them to talk about it...

In making your point, you failed to mention that patents were 14 years from 1790–1835.

Which doesn't make the current term "ridiculously long". The OP was obviously getting confused between patents and copyrights.

This applies only in the United States, which you assume we are reside in.

Given that the OP was talking about the changes in US law regarding first to file, yes, that's pretty obviously what I', talking about.

Great point about prior art. In theory it should invalidate bogus patent claims. Please listen to: http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/441/when-patents-attack

Yes, the patent office sucks. However, first to file makes to difference in their suckage. They were ignoring prior art when it was first to invent, and they're ignoring it when it's first to file. They shouldn't be in either case.

My 'preconceived' notions are based on the NPR article I cited elsewhere. According to that article Chinese citizens who agitate for real labor changes live in fear and do their organizing in secret.

NPR did an excellent spot on the foxconn factory. There are some shocking aspects to the factory conditions, but this is not slave labor. Please don't confuse slave labor with voluntary labor under horrible conditions by poor and desperate workers in China. Even liberal economists agree that these (terrible) jobs do result in improvements for the inhabitants of China. The alternative is no work -- or the rice paddy. If you are going to make assertions that people are being enslaved and tortured against their will, you have to at least back it up with some sources.

And NO I'm not a Mac fanboy. My phone is Android. My primary desktop is Ubuntu and Windows. I do not own an iPhone or iPad.

Oy vey. Europe spends less then we do on health care —even less than we do on government-paid-for health care; see the OECD data referenced in the comments above. Greece's economy is going down the tubes because they seem to have a cultural problem paying taxes (sound familiar, fellow Americans) and because upon adoption of the euro they borrowed a bunch of money they cannot easily pay back. They didn't obviously borrow it on health care (I'm aware of no data stating that Greek health care spending has gone up significantly sinc etheir economy has tanked); they borrowed it on Mercedes and vacation homes. (Does that sound familiar?) This caused a crisis in confidence in Greek bonds, and later those of other non-German nations (Portugal, Spain, and Italy). Enjoy this recent fascinating episode of WBEZ/Chicago's This American Life for details.

Depends, is that woodworking plant you go to after you get your hand crushed producing for the domestic market?

And what caused NYT and everyone else to start caring? Mike Daisey's monologue performances, in particular, his episode on This American Life.

You should listen to the This American Life program Mr. Daisey and the Apple Factory?
That's the surprising thing about these huge factories. There is no automation. Full of workers, and totally quiet - no machines. Why pay for automation when you can get super cheap labor to put the damn things together by hand?

It appears from this story that some of the actual workers don't agree with you.

What other station would have risked their ad funding and aired Mr. Daisey and the Apple Factory | This American Life to ignite this whole shit storm.

This American Life did a piece earlier this month on working conditions at Foxconn called "Mr. Daisey and the Apple Factory":

http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/454/mr-daisey-and-the-apple-factory

I don't remember the details, but a couple economists at the end shrug off the horrible conditions because the whole process of industrialization benefits the population overall. It sucks, but they're better off for it. They note that while the manufacturing industry made it over to China, workers rights didn't go with it, but conditions ARE improving. It's a good listen if you have an hour.

Presumably his point was that he wanted to build factories in the US, but regulations and unnecessary costs prevented him. I don't know what regulations those were, but certainly not all regulations are good.

The problem isn't the regulation. It's that corporations are allowed to skirt the regulations by exporting jobs. Listen to this episode of This American Life, and ask yourself if you really want to bring Chinese style industrialism to the US.

Like Daisey says at the end, if we're going to export the jobs, the right thing to do is export the employee protections with them.

Also check out the This American Life story of the General Motors plant in Fremont, CA that adopted Toyota's QA practices in 1984 and how they were not supported by GM in their efforts:
http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/403/nummi

Maybe you misunderstood what I was saying.

This doesn't affect me at all. My job is production based so as long as I do what I need to do, I'm good. While there are bad weeks where I have to put in 60+ hours, a fair number are great and I only need to put in 20-30 so it balances out well. They're also good about time off and vacation so for me there aren't many worries.

I got to this position because I earned my Computer Engineering degree and work as a skilled laborer. There are many people that have jobs that are far less skilled making them more and more expendable. Some people like this are in a position where one of the only things they can get going for them is the knowledge they can be walked all over.

And you can unionize unskilled labor all you want... When it gets to pricey, it'll just be moved away like so many other jobs to governments who give even less of a f**k. Even skilled labor can run into problems if there's decent competition.

Perhaps add this episode of This American Life to your playlist to see how depressing that situation currently is. It talks about Shenzhen and not just worker rights abuses there, but human rights abuses faced by employees.

FWIW, "This American Life #441: When Patents Attack" lays out the problem with patents very clearly. Apple is just ONE company.

...most people who do it are downright bad at it. That they might take more time and care to be good at it without the perpetual axe of publish-publish-publish and grants funding hanging over their heads is another issue all together.

I agree and I can think of something to illustrate your point.

I was listening to a This American Life episode a few weeks back and there was a story done on two people -- one a music professor and the other a respected oncologist -- who were investigating a long defunct theory that certain electromagnetic wavelengths can kill cancer cells and only cancer cells leaving healthy cells completely fine. When left to run the test, the music professor failed to maintain the control correctly and many other things. But after being corrected by the respected researcher they started getting positive sets of preliminary results. The respected researcher requested that the music professor not share this with anyone and not to attach his name to it just yet.

Well, the music professor did not follow this advice because he was so excited about the preliminary results and had, I guess, sort of felt like the respected researcher had short changed him and suppressed him. What the music professor wanted to do was blow the lid off this thing with possibly flawed data and sent it to other oncologists with the original researcher's name attached to it -- possibly misrepresenting it as flawed data. Now I can see why a researcher might fly off the handle when data is released extremely early. They were having problems recreating their own findings (with sham-control) which caused the original researcher to want to keep this very much out of the public's eye. You might claim he was just trying to save himself embarrassment but there's nothing embarrassing about finding out your hypothesis is wrong in science, I just think the best researchers avoid these "failures" and the subsequent investment of resources into them.

I think that scientists figure out how to create the most data and separate the wheat from the shaft in a very lengthy (think decades) long process whereas the first sign of a breakthrough might cause more inexperienced researchers to show the world. And the reason, as you mentioned, is probably the immediate funding they can get with it. But I think it badly neuters scientific news, the reward system and even the direction that research takes. But to release and share early on and often might just make everyone look bad when the whole background of the data is unknown to someone who receives it.

The company responds with marketing and by lowering it's price.

Right, but they're not lowering their price as much as the generic. They're negotiating deals with your insurance company so your co-pay for the name brand will be lower than generics, even though the rate the insurance company actually pays for brand-name Lipitor would be higher than the generic, so you save $5 on a copay but the insurance risk pool loses $50, because the drug company is insulating you from the underlying costs and distorting your buying decision.

It's classic drug company tactic- they'll hand out "coupons" or "drug benefit cards" that defray the excess cost of a brand-name copay over a generic copay, so if your brand-name copay on a drug is $40 and the generic is $15, Pfizer will pay you the $25 difference to buy the brand name. They can afford the difference because they're probably profiting over $100 on the bottle, you just don't see the cost to your insurance company at the point-of-sale, it gets turned into higher premiums. It's a big part of why prescription drug insurance is so expensive in the US, several states have banned manufacturer drug coupons and This American Life did a whole episode on it a year or two ago.

The extortionists examined in this episodeof This American Life.

Yours In Novosibirsk,
K. Trout

This American Life did a story on the very thing you mention, although probably in a different city. In Miami, you have to live 2500 feet from a school, park, or daycare if you're a sex offender. Try going half a mile in a major city without running into one of those things. Pretty difficult. So, as in your case, they just move to the corner cases. Specifically, camping under a bridge.

Microsoft is a patent troll and should not be accommodated in their abuses regardless of the what the USPTO has said since the patents which are claimed to apply to software like Linux should never have been granted in the first place.

Based on what exactly? Your word?

My opinions are influenced by those of many smarter and more knowledgeable than I am. If you're not aware of the reasons software patents are harmful, you may have been living under a rock. Here's a good place to start in that case. Though it's not specific to software patents, This American Life has an excellent program about the current patent mess that is accessible to anyone.

In addition, no court has decided that any Microsoft patent applies to Linux, though Microsoft has sued a number of companies claiming that.

Great, I never claimed any court has made such a decision. The point is that these companies aren't just stupidly licensing these patents without having their lawyers look into it. Like I posted above, HTC isn't one that shies away from patent fights so if even they are licensing them it gives lots of credence to the fact that they are most likely valid. Or how else do you explain how they are more than willing to take Apple on in patent suits yet they licensed the ones from Microsoft without any fight?

I won't pretend to know what any of those companies should do to maximize profits in the short term. The fact that Casio, HTC and many others have yielded to patent trolls is a symptom of a deeply broken system. Even if it's in Casio's interest to make this deal with Microsoft right now, it helps keep in place a status quo that is an obstacle to innovation and therefore a financial drain on the entire industry.

If you haven't listen to this podcast from This American Life yet, you should. http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/441/when-patents-attack

This American Life & Planet Money had a good show about this. It is because the East Texas court has a relatively free docket; the other courts are clogged with War on Drugs cases. There are also a lot of home offices for patent troll companies near that court. TAL tried to visit these offices and discovered almost all of them are empty and never used.

Gasland was pretty good, I also recommend a recent This American Life episode on fracking: Game Changer.

I was actually just listening to This American Life a few days ago. Their podcast talking about how much the patent system is abused is extremely enlightening. For example, did you know there is a patent on "Thermally refreshing bread" (IE, toasting)? Not only that, but it was issued in 2000!

http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/441/when-patents-attack

Apparently there are more “This American Life” listeners on Slashdot than I would've expected.

The piece on This American Life is basically the same as the Planet Money piece mentioned in the Economist article - the same Planet Money people did both. When TAL did their award-winning show on sub-prime mortgages, it was a compilation of Planet Money shows from the foregoing months.

They're the go-to guys when it comes to clarifying these financial issues. I've been listening to them for years, and can highly recommend them. I mean, how many other journalists actually went out and bought a toxic asset?

The piece on This American Life is basically the same as the Planet Money piece mentioned in the Economist article - the same Planet Money people did both. When TAL did their award-winning show on sub-prime mortgages, it was a compilation of Planet Money shows from the foregoing months.

They're the go-to guys when it comes to clarifying these financial issues. I've been listening to them for years, and can highly recommend them. I mean, how many other journalists actually went out and bought a toxic asset?

The linked planet Money story is well worth a listen, though it's a bit long. The This American Life that the Planet Money story is based on is even longer, but again fairly entertaining. I actually drove around for an extra 15 minutes Saturday afternoon to continue listening to the whole thing.