Okay, maybe. I don't deny that Sandy was bad, but it was mainly bad because of its trajectory. It hit a much large part of the United States than most such storms. So it wasn't so much a local disaster as a distributed one. Still bad, I grant.
Severe, local disasters (e.g., New Orleans) have been where FEMA has pretty much stunk.
"Your point appears to be that you can call other people mentally disabled clueless assholes, and simultaneously complain about being insulted."
Almost. My complaint was about being insulted BY clueless assholes.
Further, I did not call anyone mentally disabled. I repeat what I stated in the comment you are referring to: I stated that I had "accused" other people of NOT being mentally disabled. You were not mentioned at all at the time. If you want to construe that as meaning that you ARE, that's your business. But let's be clear: it's not something I wrote or even implied. It's entirely up to you. If the foo shits, and all that.
"I suppose I am helping you prove that"
Yep.
"but I doubt I'll understand these things even when I grow a pair of (wings/breasts/horns/whatever)."
"These events also seem to happen about every hundred years and that is about how long it has been since the last one."
Yes, in this area developments are supposed to be built to withstand 100-year floods. Some will fail, of course, but at least they try to take it into account.
"People where give 30 minutes warning on flash floods due to sensors"
That's a good thing. I am sympathetic to your plight and I am happy to hear that it has gone relatively well, all things considered.
"FEMA does pretty well on any number of smaller disasters, but more things go wrong in big disasters..."
But see, that's the whole point. Their REASON FOR EXISTENCE is basically big disasters. If they can't do that well (and arguably, they have demonstrated that they can't), they should be disbanded and the money redistributed to the states, which would at least do no worse.
"You mean the time you trolled about the 'AGW religion'?"
If you mean the last time I mentioned comments like yours on Slashdot, the answer would be yes.
Hey! THANKS for giving everyone a good example of what I was talking about!
"It must be horrible to be insulted by so many mentally disabled clueless assholes..."
Nope. First, there aren't many. Just a very few like you, who do it over, and over, and over again. (Not to mention hiding behind sock-puppet AC comments.)
And second, it isn't horrible at all, to me. It just allows me to show others what clueless assholes you are. But I know other people who would not be able to put up with your harassment and bullshit.
Why don't you grow a pair and actually (A) use an account with a name on it, (B) actually refute an argument with some science, or (C) just go away and make everybody's life better?
"The people in Boulder Colorado are feeling global warming rather directly today."
The people in Boulder are experiencing an example of extreme WEATHER, not climate.
This has been a cool year. Record cold weather in much of the southern hemisphere and a cooler summer in the Arctic. Total global cyclonic (hurricane-type) activity is at a near-record low.
Global trends are important. Individual incidents of WEATHER do not equate to "global warming" unless the average over the whole planet does, and for a period of years, not a week or so.
"If we're going to get opinions, can't we at least get them from real scientists?"
Partly because when people post things here from some of those real scientists, they are insulted, harassed, and stuck with the label "denialist".
Just recently someone insulted me, called me a "known denialist", and referenced a comment of mine here on Slashdot (with a link to a peer-reviewed paper) from 5 years ago. Mind you, this was in reply to a comment of mine that was not even about AGW.
Assholes like that don't bother me very overmuch, but I have no doubt that the tactic drives a lot of people away.
"You also focused on the prior-art portion, which seems to be the easier problem. Prior art can always invalidate a patent after the fact. We certainly need to make it cheaper to invalidate patents, but it is possible under the current system."
Well, okay, but I actually mean to include the obviousness test in that argument. While as you say it is possible to invalidate a patent for prior art or obviousness, sometimes it can involve years and many thousands or even millions of dollars. This gives the corporations far too much advantage, since the "little guy" generally does not have the resources.
The One Click patent is a great example. Just about anybody who knows about the history of computer interfaces, or even just web applications, can tell you that it fails both the prior art and obviousness tests. Yet it has somehow mysteriously held up in court. I have little doubt that the application of money (in lawyers, etc... not necessarily illegally) had a lot to do with that.
You do say that it need to be made easier, and I agree.
"I honestly can't think of an example where that was done before Crazy Taxi, but if you asked any AI programmer how to write a system where pedestrians jump out of the way of your car, most of them would have come up with this solution. What I'm proposing is that Sega would have had to come up with a published article that describes how difficult it is to make virtual pedestrians jump out of the way of virtual cars, or describes drawbacks to the existing solutions and how the patent solves them."
But DIFFICULTY has nothing whatsoever to do with the current patent system. Again, there is a problem: as long as you say patents can only be assigned to DIFFICULT problems, you will eliminate a lot of the little guys, because lots of little guys just do not have the resources to work on "difficult" problems. You will also eliminate some of the more brilliant but wonderful inventions, because those tend to be in the "Damn! Why didn't I think of that?" category. Are you saying that ideas that are creative and original should not be allowed simply because they don't mean someone else's definition of a "societal" or "difficult" problem?
I see LOTS of problems with this idea. I think it makes things even more corporate-centric, which is already a BIG problem with the system.
"The patent clerk would read the published articles and make a judgement call. This isn't unprecedented; a patent clerks job is to make judgement calls."
But this is a circular argument! You are saying that our current problems, which are largely caused by patent clerks making bad judgment calls, can be fixed by allowing patent clerks to make more judgement calls.
Somehow, I don't think that will work.
"What I'm suggesting is that this kind of judgement call is easier to make than the judgement calls we currently expect patent clerks to make.."
I understand your reasoning, but I disagree. They can't even follow their own rules. So why should we allow them to make judgements on "What is a real societal problem, and what is not?"
"Never see the light of day? Hardly. There's already precedent for making patent applications public after 18 months. The result would be more things in the public domain. It might bias the system toward having too many things in the public domain, but I think that stymies inventors less than the current system where too many things become patented."
So... ??? You're saying then that corporations and politicians should be able to influence what goes into the public domain? Because make no mistake: there would be lobbying and dollars thrown at this.
This would only be true if we accept the validity of your argument that the patent clerks (or somebody else) should decide these things, rather than the inventors and the free market. I do not buy the argument that patent clerks should be given even more power. On the contrary: I assert that they are provably the biggest existing problem right now, for not following their own rules properly.
"If the working of the invention become obvious at the point the invention hits the market, society has no reason to offer the inventor patent protection in exchange for being let in on the secret."
Nonsense. Patents are intended (as it says quite clearly in the Constitution) to promote the progress of science, by allowing inventors to profit for a limited time, before their work was put in the public domain. The idea (which history supports) being that when you don't allow people to profit from their own efforts, things don't get invented. The Founders were familiar with countries that allowed such profit and countries that did not. From the debates, it seems it was pretty obvious to them that the profit motive was effective. So society does, indeed, have very good reason for allowing inventions to be patented. It motivates more people to invent than in places where it doesn't exist. We see the same thing even today.
"Only in cases where the trick wouldn't be obvious to a practitioner skilled in the applicable arts do we have any reason to say "Oh, come on, just tell us how it works and we promise not to compete with you!" -- in other words, grant a patent in exchange for full disclosure."
Really? That's an interesting argument. So why should I, just for example, spend millions of dollars to invent the diode laser, if somebody else could come along and just copy it right after I start selling them? What is my motive for spending the sweat and research and dollars?
Hint: there is none.
"Patents are supposed to be what we grant the inventor in exchange for their revealing a 'trade secret' that we wouldn't have otherwise been able to figure out."
No, it isn't. At all. Patents were intended to motivate people to invent. End of story. Those are not the same things at all.
"simply put: I doubt you have the scientific background to claim soundly that current AGW models do not properly consider convection "
That's fine, because I didn't make that claim. I was quoting others. Maybe you could actually read the papers at the links I gave, or spend a few minutes looking it up on Google. But I already gave citations, so my obligation has been met. I could easily give you more, but I'm not going to bother because I think it's evident that you didn't read the existing ones.
"'Fourier's work.' is for this discussion only relevant to the extent that here are still people arguing that CO2 is no greenhouse gas or dos not affect the climate or that humans don't produce CO2 or that the amount we humans produce is to small or what ever."
Maybe YOUR discussion, but based on the other things you are saying here, YOUR discussion is not the same as mine. I frankly don't give the slightest damn about whether ice melts. That is a straw-man argument. Even if we were to accept that the Earth is warming right now, that isn't evidence that it's caused by CO2, which was the REAL discussion here.
"Point is: the question about CO2 and its warming effect is known since ages."
YOUR point is.
Yes, we have known for a long time that a "greenhouse effect" exists... in small, enclosed systems. I can easily demonstrate it myself with an aquarium, a light bulb, a CO2 source, and a thermometer.
But that is a VERY long way from showing that it is a significant driver of global warming. Modern climatalogists did not start making that assertion until the 1990s. Before that, in the 70s and 80s, they were warning us of global cooling. While some younger people have (hilariously) tried to tell me that didn't happen, I WAS THERE, and I had to put up with the seemingly endless BS about it in the news and consumer "science" magazines.
And even now, in order for it to be a theory of any value, it would have to be of some use for predicting actual warming to be worth a damn as a scientific theory, since science says the ability to predict is the whole measure of what a theory is worth.
So while the basic greenhouse effect has been known (for small enclosed systems), it is still very much in question whether it has any significant effect on global climate.
"Most obviously, they (temporarily) solved the problem of having to swap floppies."
Certainly. The question was rhetorical. That falls under my comment that they were "transformative in other ways". The vinyl bit was just one example. But that still doesn't address my point. More on that below.
"And yes, the fact that vinyl wore out was an established problem. Ask any archivist."
But that doesn't address my point, which was: who "establishes" that something is "a problem"? If you left it up to industry, CDs would never have been manufactured.
"It should be fairly trivial to find published articles where authors describe these drawbacks to the then-existing alternatives."
Then your "solution" does pretty much nothing, since at any given time you can find a published article complaining about almost literally everything in existence.
You would have to have some kind of "official" method of establishing what was a "real" problem, which runs into the issue I mentioned above: some people would say it was a problem, some would vehemently deny it (and maybe even back their denial with lobby money). Result: innovative ideas never see the light of day.
"I'm confused, really -- what part of '... On a Computer' do you _not_ understand?"
I think you were probably joking but many people probably take this idea seriously, so I will answer. This is only part of the whole story but the history is illustrative, as it touches on several current issues:
Long, long ago, in a country not so far away (the U.S., late 19th century), composers made money by selling sheet music. But as the player piano became more common the publishing companies (and the composers, via royalties) started making additional money via the sale of paper music rolls for the player pianos.
People started copying the rolls using rolls of common paper, a bit of glue, and a paper punch.
This sparked a lot of lawsuits. The composers and publishers (including John Philip Sousa, who was a prominent figure in the dispute), argued that the rolls should be given protection beyond mere copyright because they weren't just "music", they controlled machines. Perhaps even patent protection.
It's a long story, but the result of all this was that regardless of the physical form of the work (whether sheet music, a novel on paper, or a music roll), the proper law to cover it was copyright law, because no matter what form it appeared in, or whether it controlled a machine, it is still nothing more than a written work. So copyright laws are the proper laws to apply. Definitely not patent laws or other property laws.
It is very interesting to note that over 100 years later, the recent trend of overly-strict protection of "intellectual property" arguably began when Bill Gates lambasted users for copying his BASIC interpreter for the Altair, which came on paper tape. Their tools: a common roll of paper, a bit of glue, and a paper punch.
The upshot: software is not patentable. What companies have been patenting are the business methods embodied in some software. The software itself is a written work covered by copyright but not patent laws. Nevertheless you can violate patent laws by copying what the software does because the methods are patented.
To come back to the original point: "on a computer" means NOTHING. Patent law does not cover software at all. Software is a written work, covered by copyright law. The fact that it controls a computer is completely irrelevant, according to long-standing legal precedent.
"There seems to be a lot of software patents where the only reason there's no prior art is because nobody has bothered to try yet. If we only accepted solutions to established problems, then it guarantees that anybody who thinks a solution is obvious has had time to prove that it's obvious, instead of relying on patent clerks to decide what's obvious."
First, "software patents" are actually patents on "business methods". It is the method or algorithm that gets patented, not the software itself. But that doesn't change the point you make.
The problem of software patents not being disallowed due to prior art is a problem with proper enforcement of the rules; the rules still say that prior art disqualifies a patent. It is a problem of following the rules; it isn't a problem with the rules themselves.
If you had a problem with the police knocking down your door without a warrant, you would say it was a problem with the police, not a problem with the Fourth Amendment. So it is with the USPTO. It is a problem of them not following the rules, not a problem with the rules.
"I think that patent system could be vastly improved if we only accepted patents on established problems, and forced patent applicants to provide citations showing that the problem is established."
If you did that, you would probably eliminate most innovative patents. What "established problem" did the digital CD solve? You might argue that it "solved" the problem of vinyl albums that wear out, but it was in fact transformative in several other ways.
And I would still have to ask: where would it be "established" that vinyl records that wear out are a "problem"? The music industry certainly did not think so. They wanted records to wear out so people would buy more, and so they could not make endless copies. They actually fought the introduction of the CD, tooth and nail, because they were terrified of digital copies. Which was arguably stupid, since they made more money from CDs than they ever had before, but that just reinforces my point: who "establishes" what constitutes a "problem"?
"If modern glues had been available then he could have glued the thing in place and tried to patent it."
That's still not the point. It doesn't have to BE something new, it has to DO something new or different. A glued eraser is STILL just a pencil + eraser. It's still just two common things stuck together.
"I don't see anything in the patent rules that says sticking a couple of common things together isn't new."
That's because there isn't any. You have misunderstood.
The issue is that when you stick those things together, they have to DO something new or different. In the case of pencil + eraser, it might be a new thing, but it doesn't DO anything new or significantly different. It's still a plain old pencil, plus a plain old eraser.
This is the "transformative" part of the patent. As someone mentioned above, it is like making a good fruit salad: it is made by throwing together a bunch of different, individual fruits. But the flavor of a good fruit salad is more than the sum of its parts. A pencil + eraser or can opener + crowbar is not. It is the sum of its parts, and no more. It does nothing significantly new or different.
An inkjet printer is an example of a legitimate (if complex) invention. A digital controller chip was not new. A positionable head was not new. A paper feed was not new. A cartridge of ink was not new. But those things and more were all put together into a thing that did something new: it sprayed text onto a page.
"But then he did the same with all his other "inventions", like the cyclonic vacuum cleaner which was modelled after the cyclonic separator in the corner of his shop."
If I were a judge, I would not say those were the same things at all. I am not aware of anyone prior to Dyson who used a cyclonic separator in vacuum cleaners. If in fact nobody did, that means it is probably a legitimate invention. The big thing there, I would say, is the obviousness question. Since I make neither cyclonic separators or vacuum cleaners, I am probably not a good judge of that.
But as for the trial-and-error, so what? You don't have to be an engineer in a particular field to be an inventor. And thank Grid for that, because while some engineers are creative and innovative, the majority of them are staunch defenders of the status quo.
Slashdot Mirror
Okay, maybe. I don't deny that Sandy was bad, but it was mainly bad because of its trajectory. It hit a much large part of the United States than most such storms. So it wasn't so much a local disaster as a distributed one. Still bad, I grant.
Severe, local disasters (e.g., New Orleans) have been where FEMA has pretty much stunk.
"Your point appears to be that you can call other people mentally disabled clueless assholes, and simultaneously complain about being insulted."
Almost. My complaint was about being insulted BY clueless assholes.
Further, I did not call anyone mentally disabled. I repeat what I stated in the comment you are referring to: I stated that I had "accused" other people of NOT being mentally disabled. You were not mentioned at all at the time. If you want to construe that as meaning that you ARE, that's your business. But let's be clear: it's not something I wrote or even implied. It's entirely up to you. If the foo shits, and all that.
"I suppose I am helping you prove that"
Yep.
"but I doubt I'll understand these things even when I grow a pair of (wings/breasts/horns/whatever)."
Okay. I'll take your word for it.
"These events also seem to happen about every hundred years and that is about how long it has been since the last one."
Yes, in this area developments are supposed to be built to withstand 100-year floods. Some will fail, of course, but at least they try to take it into account.
"People where give 30 minutes warning on flash floods due to sensors"
That's a good thing. I am sympathetic to your plight and I am happy to hear that it has gone relatively well, all things considered.
"FEMA does pretty well on any number of smaller disasters, but more things go wrong in big disasters..."
But see, that's the whole point. Their REASON FOR EXISTENCE is basically big disasters. If they can't do that well (and arguably, they have demonstrated that they can't), they should be disbanded and the money redistributed to the states, which would at least do no worse.
"Grow a pair of what?"
Hey, I really appreciate you helping me to prove my point.
Never mind what. One of these days you'll be a grownup, and understand these things.
"You mean the time you trolled about the 'AGW religion'?"
If you mean the last time I mentioned comments like yours on Slashdot, the answer would be yes.
Hey! THANKS for giving everyone a good example of what I was talking about!
"It must be horrible to be insulted by so many mentally disabled clueless assholes..."
Nope. First, there aren't many. Just a very few like you, who do it over, and over, and over again. (Not to mention hiding behind sock-puppet AC comments.)
And second, it isn't horrible at all, to me. It just allows me to show others what clueless assholes you are. But I know other people who would not be able to put up with your harassment and bullshit.
Why don't you grow a pair and actually (A) use an account with a name on it, (B) actually refute an argument with some science, or (C) just go away and make everybody's life better?
Now that you mention it, I think that's right. But that's the only one I actually remember.
Hurricane responses have been abysmal. New Orleans was nothing short of tragedy. Etc.
I don't remember when FEMA last responded promptly and appropriately to a disaster.
Wait... yes I do. Never.
It's no coincidence that it's called "cork taint". All that trichloroanusol makes the wine taste like shit.
"The people in Boulder Colorado are feeling global warming rather directly today."
The people in Boulder are experiencing an example of extreme WEATHER, not climate.
This has been a cool year. Record cold weather in much of the southern hemisphere and a cooler summer in the Arctic. Total global cyclonic (hurricane-type) activity is at a near-record low.
Global trends are important. Individual incidents of WEATHER do not equate to "global warming" unless the average over the whole planet does, and for a period of years, not a week or so.
"If we're going to get opinions, can't we at least get them from real scientists?"
Partly because when people post things here from some of those real scientists, they are insulted, harassed, and stuck with the label "denialist".
Just recently someone insulted me, called me a "known denialist", and referenced a comment of mine here on Slashdot (with a link to a peer-reviewed paper) from 5 years ago. Mind you, this was in reply to a comment of mine that was not even about AGW.
Assholes like that don't bother me very overmuch, but I have no doubt that the tactic drives a lot of people away.
"You also focused on the prior-art portion, which seems to be the easier problem. Prior art can always invalidate a patent after the fact. We certainly need to make it cheaper to invalidate patents, but it is possible under the current system."
Well, okay, but I actually mean to include the obviousness test in that argument. While as you say it is possible to invalidate a patent for prior art or obviousness, sometimes it can involve years and many thousands or even millions of dollars. This gives the corporations far too much advantage, since the "little guy" generally does not have the resources.
The One Click patent is a great example. Just about anybody who knows about the history of computer interfaces, or even just web applications, can tell you that it fails both the prior art and obviousness tests. Yet it has somehow mysteriously held up in court. I have little doubt that the application of money (in lawyers, etc... not necessarily illegally) had a lot to do with that.
You do say that it need to be made easier, and I agree.
"I honestly can't think of an example where that was done before Crazy Taxi, but if you asked any AI programmer how to write a system where pedestrians jump out of the way of your car, most of them would have come up with this solution. What I'm proposing is that Sega would have had to come up with a published article that describes how difficult it is to make virtual pedestrians jump out of the way of virtual cars, or describes drawbacks to the existing solutions and how the patent solves them."
But DIFFICULTY has nothing whatsoever to do with the current patent system. Again, there is a problem: as long as you say patents can only be assigned to DIFFICULT problems, you will eliminate a lot of the little guys, because lots of little guys just do not have the resources to work on "difficult" problems. You will also eliminate some of the more brilliant but wonderful inventions, because those tend to be in the "Damn! Why didn't I think of that?" category. Are you saying that ideas that are creative and original should not be allowed simply because they don't mean someone else's definition of a "societal" or "difficult" problem?
I see LOTS of problems with this idea. I think it makes things even more corporate-centric, which is already a BIG problem with the system.
"The patent clerk would read the published articles and make a judgement call. This isn't unprecedented; a patent clerks job is to make judgement calls."
But this is a circular argument! You are saying that our current problems, which are largely caused by patent clerks making bad judgment calls, can be fixed by allowing patent clerks to make more judgement calls.
Somehow, I don't think that will work.
"What I'm suggesting is that this kind of judgement call is easier to make than the judgement calls we currently expect patent clerks to make.."
I understand your reasoning, but I disagree. They can't even follow their own rules. So why should we allow them to make judgements on "What is a real societal problem, and what is not?"
"Never see the light of day? Hardly. There's already precedent for making patent applications public after 18 months. The result would be more things in the public domain. It might bias the system toward having too many things in the public domain, but I think that stymies inventors less than the current system where too many things become patented."
So... ??? You're saying then that corporations and politicians should be able to influence what goes into the public domain? Because make no mistake: there would be lobbying and dollars thrown at this.
This would only be true if we accept the validity of your argument that the patent clerks (or somebody else) should decide these things, rather than the inventors and the free market. I do not buy the argument that patent clerks should be given even more power. On the contrary: I assert that they are provably the biggest existing problem right now, for not following their own rules properly.
"If the working of the invention become obvious at the point the invention hits the market, society has no reason to offer the inventor patent protection in exchange for being let in on the secret."
Nonsense. Patents are intended (as it says quite clearly in the Constitution) to promote the progress of science , by allowing inventors to profit for a limited time, before their work was put in the public domain. The idea (which history supports) being that when you don't allow people to profit from their own efforts, things don't get invented. The Founders were familiar with countries that allowed such profit and countries that did not. From the debates, it seems it was pretty obvious to them that the profit motive was effective. So society does, indeed, have very good reason for allowing inventions to be patented. It motivates more people to invent than in places where it doesn't exist. We see the same thing even today.
"Only in cases where the trick wouldn't be obvious to a practitioner skilled in the applicable arts do we have any reason to say "Oh, come on, just tell us how it works and we promise not to compete with you!" -- in other words, grant a patent in exchange for full disclosure."
Really? That's an interesting argument. So why should I, just for example, spend millions of dollars to invent the diode laser, if somebody else could come along and just copy it right after I start selling them? What is my motive for spending the sweat and research and dollars?
Hint: there is none.
"Patents are supposed to be what we grant the inventor in exchange for their revealing a 'trade secret' that we wouldn't have otherwise been able to figure out."
No, it isn't. At all. Patents were intended to motivate people to invent. End of story. Those are not the same things at all.
"simply put: I doubt you have the scientific background to claim soundly that current AGW models do not properly consider convection "
That's fine, because I didn't make that claim. I was quoting others. Maybe you could actually read the papers at the links I gave, or spend a few minutes looking it up on Google. But I already gave citations, so my obligation has been met. I could easily give you more, but I'm not going to bother because I think it's evident that you didn't read the existing ones.
"'Fourier's work.' is for this discussion only relevant to the extent that here are still people arguing that CO2 is no greenhouse gas or dos not affect the climate or that humans don't produce CO2 or that the amount we humans produce is to small or what ever."
Maybe YOUR discussion, but based on the other things you are saying here, YOUR discussion is not the same as mine. I frankly don't give the slightest damn about whether ice melts. That is a straw-man argument. Even if we were to accept that the Earth is warming right now, that isn't evidence that it's caused by CO2, which was the REAL discussion here.
"Point is: the question about CO2 and its warming effect is known since ages."
YOUR point is.
Yes, we have known for a long time that a "greenhouse effect" exists... in small, enclosed systems. I can easily demonstrate it myself with an aquarium, a light bulb, a CO2 source, and a thermometer.
But that is a VERY long way from showing that it is a significant driver of global warming. Modern climatalogists did not start making that assertion until the 1990s. Before that, in the 70s and 80s, they were warning us of global cooling. While some younger people have (hilariously) tried to tell me that didn't happen, I WAS THERE, and I had to put up with the seemingly endless BS about it in the news and consumer "science" magazines.
And even now, in order for it to be a theory of any value, it would have to be of some use for predicting actual warming to be worth a damn as a scientific theory, since science says the ability to predict is the whole measure of what a theory is worth.
Yet AGW has actually been terrible at predicting .
So while the basic greenhouse effect has been known (for small enclosed systems), it is still very much in question whether it has any significant effect on global climate.
"Most obviously, they (temporarily) solved the problem of having to swap floppies."
Certainly. The question was rhetorical. That falls under my comment that they were "transformative in other ways". The vinyl bit was just one example. But that still doesn't address my point. More on that below.
"And yes, the fact that vinyl wore out was an established problem. Ask any archivist."
But that doesn't address my point, which was: who "establishes" that something is "a problem"? If you left it up to industry, CDs would never have been manufactured.
"It should be fairly trivial to find published articles where authors describe these drawbacks to the then-existing alternatives."
Then your "solution" does pretty much nothing, since at any given time you can find a published article complaining about almost literally everything in existence.
You would have to have some kind of "official" method of establishing what was a "real" problem, which runs into the issue I mentioned above: some people would say it was a problem, some would vehemently deny it (and maybe even back their denial with lobby money). Result: innovative ideas never see the light of day.
I see. I misunderstood.
"I'm confused, really -- what part of '... On a Computer' do you _not_ understand?"
I think you were probably joking but many people probably take this idea seriously, so I will answer. This is only part of the whole story but the history is illustrative, as it touches on several current issues:
Long, long ago, in a country not so far away (the U.S., late 19th century), composers made money by selling sheet music. But as the player piano became more common the publishing companies (and the composers, via royalties) started making additional money via the sale of paper music rolls for the player pianos.
People started copying the rolls using rolls of common paper, a bit of glue, and a paper punch.
This sparked a lot of lawsuits. The composers and publishers (including John Philip Sousa, who was a prominent figure in the dispute), argued that the rolls should be given protection beyond mere copyright because they weren't just "music", they controlled machines. Perhaps even patent protection.
It's a long story, but the result of all this was that regardless of the physical form of the work (whether sheet music, a novel on paper, or a music roll), the proper law to cover it was copyright law, because no matter what form it appeared in, or whether it controlled a machine, it is still nothing more than a written work. So copyright laws are the proper laws to apply. Definitely not patent laws or other property laws.
It is very interesting to note that over 100 years later, the recent trend of overly-strict protection of "intellectual property" arguably began when Bill Gates lambasted users for copying his BASIC interpreter for the Altair, which came on paper tape. Their tools: a common roll of paper, a bit of glue, and a paper punch.
The upshot: software is not patentable. What companies have been patenting are the business methods embodied in some software. The software itself is a written work covered by copyright but not patent laws. Nevertheless you can violate patent laws by copying what the software does because the methods are patented.
To come back to the original point: "on a computer" means NOTHING. Patent law does not cover software at all. Software is a written work, covered by copyright law. The fact that it controls a computer is completely irrelevant, according to long-standing legal precedent.
"There seems to be a lot of software patents where the only reason there's no prior art is because nobody has bothered to try yet. If we only accepted solutions to established problems, then it guarantees that anybody who thinks a solution is obvious has had time to prove that it's obvious, instead of relying on patent clerks to decide what's obvious."
First, "software patents" are actually patents on "business methods". It is the method or algorithm that gets patented, not the software itself. But that doesn't change the point you make.
The problem of software patents not being disallowed due to prior art is a problem with proper enforcement of the rules; the rules still say that prior art disqualifies a patent. It is a problem of following the rules; it isn't a problem with the rules themselves.
If you had a problem with the police knocking down your door without a warrant, you would say it was a problem with the police, not a problem with the Fourth Amendment. So it is with the USPTO. It is a problem of them not following the rules, not a problem with the rules.
"I think that patent system could be vastly improved if we only accepted patents on established problems, and forced patent applicants to provide citations showing that the problem is established."
If you did that, you would probably eliminate most innovative patents. What "established problem" did the digital CD solve? You might argue that it "solved" the problem of vinyl albums that wear out, but it was in fact transformative in several other ways.
And I would still have to ask: where would it be "established" that vinyl records that wear out are a "problem"? The music industry certainly did not think so. They wanted records to wear out so people would buy more, and so they could not make endless copies. They actually fought the introduction of the CD, tooth and nail, because they were terrified of digital copies. Which was arguably stupid, since they made more money from CDs than they ever had before, but that just reinforces my point: who "establishes" what constitutes a "problem"?
Exactly. Thank you. They ARE supposed to use it, but they often haven't done it well or properly.
"If modern glues had been available then he could have glued the thing in place and tried to patent it."
That's still not the point. It doesn't have to BE something new, it has to DO something new or different. A glued eraser is STILL just a pencil + eraser. It's still just two common things stuck together.
"I don't see anything in the patent rules that says sticking a couple of common things together isn't new."
That's because there isn't any. You have misunderstood.
The issue is that when you stick those things together, they have to DO something new or different. In the case of pencil + eraser, it might be a new thing, but it doesn't DO anything new or significantly different. It's still a plain old pencil, plus a plain old eraser.
This is the "transformative" part of the patent. As someone mentioned above, it is like making a good fruit salad: it is made by throwing together a bunch of different, individual fruits. But the flavor of a good fruit salad is more than the sum of its parts. A pencil + eraser or can opener + crowbar is not. It is the sum of its parts, and no more. It does nothing significantly new or different.
An inkjet printer is an example of a legitimate (if complex) invention. A digital controller chip was not new. A positionable head was not new. A paper feed was not new. A cartridge of ink was not new. But those things and more were all put together into a thing that did something new: it sprayed text onto a page.
"But then he did the same with all his other "inventions", like the cyclonic vacuum cleaner which was modelled after the cyclonic separator in the corner of his shop."
If I were a judge, I would not say those were the same things at all. I am not aware of anyone prior to Dyson who used a cyclonic separator in vacuum cleaners. If in fact nobody did, that means it is probably a legitimate invention. The big thing there, I would say, is the obviousness question. Since I make neither cyclonic separators or vacuum cleaners, I am probably not a good judge of that.
But as for the trial-and-error, so what? You don't have to be an engineer in a particular field to be an inventor. And thank Grid for that, because while some engineers are creative and innovative, the majority of them are staunch defenders of the status quo.