Consumers are free to buy any product they want. Companies are not free to copy any idea they want. Patents do not inherently restrict the right to compete. If you want to come up with your own completely different implementation of a concept, go for it. If you can't come up with a different implementation, that's not the patent's fault is it? Maybe the approver for approving a broad patent, but that's been acknowledged as a problem.
If you do X and Y, and X is patented, then you are violating the patent. If Y is X-and-some-other-magic, then you can patent Y, but someone doing Y must license both patents.
That's about right. That's why patents include a list of references. Credit where credit's due. How is that bad?
I define "fair" as a situation where the person that spends resources has an equal chance to recover those losses as either anyone else with the same idea, or himself with any other idea. In other words, no external non-collective influence should alter the chance of recovering losses.
By that definition, it is fair for a bad idea go to market and fail. It is fair to see a good idea go to market and fail because of incompetent management. It is fair for an inventor to license the idea out to anybody free of charge. It is not fair for a good product to be undermined by a competitor copying the product exactly and just spending more on marketing.
The question is whether patents help more or hurt more.
I believe that patents and the current implementation can and should be considered separately. How does a patent itself hurt? Can you provide an example where merely protecting an idea has damaged the ability for an inventor to recoup their investment? How about an example where a patent has stifled innovation, regardless of the current broken implementation (lifespan of a patent, approval of broad patents)?
Patents provide a legal protection for inventors to spread around their ideas. One inventor can say "I'm using system X with method Y to solve problem Z". Another inventor can hear that, and recognize that system X and method Y will work to solve their own problem with some minor but significant changes. Being different from the original patented idea, the new solution can go ahead just fine.
If the second inventor wants to directly copy the original idea, the patent allows the original inventor to license the idea, helping to recover the cost of developing it. The original inventor gets a fair chance to profit from his idea, ideally even starting his own company to manage the invention and innovate further.
That's the goal, at least. Now patents are approved that are too broad, and software patents last far longer than the idea's useful life. The basic existence of patents isn't the problem, though.
I have also been told that patents were invented specifically to promote publishing ideas so that they might be copied.
The idea is to copy them after the inventor has had a chance to recoup the research investment.
With normal physical-device patents, that takes a long time. With software, everything moves faster. Keeping software patents around for decades isn't practical. My personal preference is that software patents be cut back to 5 years or so. It's enough to provide a fighting change for a new company, but not so long as to hinder development.
Correction: If it's useful software, but not quite easy enough to use, or if it's some philosophical proof, or if it's attached to the promise of free money, people will develop for it for free.
If a project's useful, but not fun to work on, nobody will want to work on it.
If a project's useful and easy to use, the majority of observers will consider it "done enough" and move on.
If a project proves some political point, like implementing HDCP in free software, people will work on it until the point is proven.
If a project might win some prize, people are more likely to persevere through significant problems.
A theory, in science, is a system of explanations to describe the observations. As more observations come along, theories change, filling holes that the old theories couldn't explain. New and completely different systems sometimes can describe different circumstances better, so we get conflicting theories.
An example theory, proposed by a child, is that the sky is blue with clouds because the Earth is inside a blue ball with white spots. After flying in an airplane, the new theory is that the clouds are inside the blue ball as well. The theoretical model is still wrong, but it's more complex than it was before, and a little more accurate.
Theoretical research is still research. Possibly-correct models are laid out, and their effects are calculated, with comparisons to all known previous observations and models. If the model's obviously wrong, it's easily abandoned. If the model matches 99% of previous observations, the disagreements are examined, and new theories fill those holes. Eventually, enough rules are established that every significant detail of an experiment can be accounted for - and that's when the really fun experimentsstart.
Seriously... We (speaking for the human race in general) have some rough ideas of how matter behaves. If those ideas are correct, then we can predict how black holes should behave. If those predictions are correct, then we can predict how particles near a black hole should behave. If those predictions are correct, then we can predict how the black hole would radiate energy in response. If those predictions are correct, then we can predict the properties of that radiation.
That takes a lot of redundant language to describe the levels of predictions, which scientists should simply expect. If only we could remove some of those words, and trust that the meaning would be clear to the intended audience, saying something like "we can predict the properties of Hawking radiation..."
I digress... By duplicating one of the predicted particle behaviors, the scientists observed radiation. The radiation matches what was expected, and now we have more observations. Time to go double-check all those predictions again! Maybe we can even confirm a model, or better yet, disprove it. After all, that's what we've been doing for the last few hundred years.
Theories change often. Some particularly lucky theories stick around for thousands of years before being shown to be wrong. All of our current theories are actually expected to be wrong, in hopes of finding a unified theory that describes everything. That's the way science works. Science is the pursuit of knowledge. It's not the pursuit of being right.
A while ago, I worked out that a modern processor, running for 60 seconds, can execute as many operations as the AGC could from liftoff to splashdown of Apollo 11.
Now consider that there are people playing World of Warcraft for 8 hours a day.
I wouldn't. I, like many others, don't need encryption, so I'd just be paying $7 for a $3 function. If Wal-Mart has taught us anything, it's that a few dollars price difference makes a lot of extra sales.
With the prices you listed, encryption would have to be needed in 8% of network devices to just break even on price alone. They also must need the exact encryption features offered by the $7 chip, or they'd need the extra equipment anyway. Do 8% of devices really need security? Is my dancing robot (I'm the AC above) or HTCPCP server really that important?
Personally, I'll stick with a cheap insecure shield, and just keep my network secure.
So Ethernet, at layer 2 of the OSI model doesn't offer the security functions of layer 6?
With all those rules regarding collisions, timing, and even the physical wiring, they didn't even throw in the simple requirement for all Ethernet devices to have a powerful processor, memory, persistent storage, keys, and programming to handle security? Or even the ability to update as new encryption becomes standard?
Those lazy bums must have no idea what they're doing!
That's a problem with the USPTO's reviewers, most of whom need to spend a few years in training (but good luck finding the funding for that). It's not an inherent problem with software patents themselves.
The equivalent statements in physical patents would be something like "use a thingy to move the stuff near the gadget, and a widget does something". A reviewer with an IQ over 80 should see the problems, but since they're often unfamiliar with computer science, the ridiculous patent gets approved anyway.
My algorithm, had I patented it, would have been equally broad. Since I have morals, I will not patent such a concept. That's the "cleaning up and formalizing" that I chose not to pursue.
You don't really seem to be presenting an argument for software patents on their own merits, but rather that other patents are accepted and that you don't see too many differences.
The AC's comment was regarding only software patents. I was staying on topic.
You need a considerable sum of money to manufacture a device on an industrial scale. With software, it's quite possible for a single person to do everything themselves, and the distribution network can have virtually no actual cost.
So your argument is that software is easier to steal, so it shouldn't be protected? That seems to miss the fact that research is expensive, regardless of the medium. My whiteboard markers, notebooks, and especially my food still cost money.
Perhaps more importantly, the idea that other non-software patents are good is not self evident.
I'll rephrase my first sentence in simple terms, then:
When greedy people see good ideas, they often copy those ideas. Since they're greedy, they don't pay anything to the inventor. The inventor spent their own resources to research the idea, and I think they deserve to be paid.
I routinely see four-minute red lights at an intersection whose metal detector fails to sense my bike. Can you fit this into your car analogy?
Yes, actually. Occasionally, people get screwed by laws that don't account for them. The best solution is to propose an alternative that works for everybody. If you can invent a detector that works for both cars and bikes, yet still has the lifespan and approximate cost of the current detectors, go suggest it to the appropriate folks.
The major publishers of non-free fictional entertainment own the means that representatives use for communicating to the general public. Can you fit MPAA news into your car analogy?
Yes, actually. Occasionally, there are greedy people who will do bad things that are not actually against the written rules, such as parallel parking in the exact middle of two driveways when there's (unmarked) space for two cars. Sometimes there are laws to prevent such abuses, but those laws may not be worded precisely enough, or they may offer broad exceptions. Either petition to change the laws, or live with them and go make more noise with your free fictional entertainment.
Who write back with a form letter stating that an expansionist position on copyrights and patents is good for America.
And eventually they notice that they've sent out 1500 form letters saying that, or their intern (who actually wrote the letter) comments that they're writing an awful lot of those same statements. Your representative isn't there to serve you. They're there to represent you, and the thousands of others in your area. Those thousands of others have expressed interest in keeping businesses running, keeping jobs, and funding engineers. If you want to change the representative's stated position, get your like-minded friends to write as well. You have a right to "petition the government for a redress of grievances". Exercise that right.
Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX) tried this. His campaign got buried by the mainstream media in favor of that of then Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL), whose views more closely aligned with Hollywood's. Look at how little time he was allotted in the Republican primary debates.
Yeah. Maybe if I'd agreed with what he said, I'd have cared more about him. Maybe if his views were popular with anyone other than the conspiracy-loving, irrationally-thinking, anonymous masses on the Internet, the rest of the nation would care. He pushed for positions that I personally don't think are really feasible, and some that I believe to be harmful. He did raise a few good points, though, and his positions were considered by people who were following the election. Notably, that demographic should include Obama, who should now consider Ron Paul's views as representing about 10% of the American opinion. That's how representative democracy works. Even when your chosen candidate loses, you should still get a voice.
My opinion, having looked into patenting my own algorithm recently:
No. Absolutely not.
Patents in general are intended to protect an idea from the time it's conceived until the inventor has had the chance to at least recoup his research investment. Note that I said "chance", not "guarantee". In the world of physical devices, it takes a long time to turn an invention into a commercial success. First there's several rounds of prototyping (beyond what the USPTO has ever required), then manufacturing, distribution, marketing, revision... After a decade, a physical product has barely gained acceptance, let alone actually turned a profit. In a bad economy or with less-than-perfect management skills, 20 years is hardly unreasonable.
Now consider the world of computers, and especially software. Twenty years ago, we were sitting around with our 386's (486 if you were lucky), running MS-DOS 4 and dialing in to BBS's. The successful products of today were unimaginable. Today's ideas will meet their commercial fate within two years. Having patents of several decades only stifles innovation, because interoperability (without high-priced license fees) is stuck in the early 90's (ignoring open source). At the most, I would prefer to see software patents last five years.
Software patents aren't bad. Why should the invention of a software engineer be less protected than the work of a mechanical engineer? Overly-long-lived patents are bad. Why should a software engineer have a longer cycle of protection relative to his industry than a mechanical engineer?
P.S. I decided that my algorithm (boiling down to "do vector algebra on text") wasn't worth the hassle to clean up and formalize. Someday, I'll come back to it, but for now I'm happily getting paid to work with medical data.
That sounds like a great bit of logic there, if you ignore various facts along the way.
Many of those founders owned slaves. Does American society today support slavery?
Women were considered unfit to enter politics. Are American women still kept out of political offices and denied the ability to vote?
Society's observed reflection of its laws is not the result of some poorly-understood natural process, but the intentional result of the society's trust in its governing body. Laws are merely standards for behavior. When citizens follow the standards cooperatively, society as a whole benefits.
To use the infamous car analogy, consider the laws requiring drivers to periodically stop and allow crossing traffic to move. If everyone follows the law, a few people get slowed down by a few seconds. If people are greedy and force their way into an intersection, then many people wait for several minutes, or worse if gridlock develops. By suggesting a single cooperative behavior, traffic laws improve society. Drivers who act against the laws (ideally) face rejection by society, and the simple way to accomplish that is to have society levy a fine.
When adopting a new standard, it's important to have everyone's views included. With a single party/person controlling the standard, the chance of a mistake is very high. That's why American citizens (should) vote for representatives that they believe will support their views. Thus, their opinions are directly represented in the laws that are passed. Believe it or not, we are already creating a new society together, and have been doing so for the last two hundred years.
Want a bigger voice out of the 300 million Americans? Write your representatives! Run for office! Do something following the democratic process, with respect for the opinions of the millions of people who aren't you. Laws will always exist in some form, because there will always be greedy people who act against the society's benefit, and the society will always find a way to reject them. "Fair and equitable" trials are simply a means of determining who's being greedy.
Even patents are just a way to protect the hard-working inventor from the greedy people who will steal his idea and profit from it, without the investment cost to develop the idea on their own. As Moryath said, the problems lie in the implementation of the laws' enforcement, not the laws themselves, and certainly not in the concept of a lawful nation.
For what it's worth, I use Linux primarily, and Wine has no major problems running what I need. A few graphical glitches here and there, but it does its job, which is far more than it did under Windows 7.
Life in prison for every person to whom you give a gift, when that gift is a knife, and you deliver it by leaving it right where they will find it in their chest.
I find Windows 7 to be thoroughly mediocre. Sure, it's got a lot of shine, but it's broken a few of my old programs, and doesn't offer anything new and useful to me.
I find.NET to be thoroughly abominable. It's a forced-standard version of the Windows API, working in the Windows way, and requiring distribution headaches to get applications to run anywhere. Don't even get me started on XNA. C# is a mockery of language design, where the statement "x = x;" can do absolutely anything, and it's not obviously magic.
I guess I just feel that Microsoft was once riding on its high horse, then it got distracted and fell off. Now it's in the process of dusting off, and perhaps someday it'll ride again. Meanwhile, everyone else has gone on ahead.
Remembering login information. I'm not sure if it was an actual cookie or some other form of local storage, but after clearing things out, I had to figure out what was wrong and walk her through the process of logging in without either of us knowing the name and password. It wasn't good.
...or you're doing something that users expect to "just work". My grandmother had a perfectly fine time using GMail, until my uncle heard that cookies should be deleted for privacy. I got a phone call after that where I had to figure out why "email isn't working".
I can see valid uses for this, and I can see malicious uses. I suppose it's good that something's out there making us developers think about these techniques.
Slashdot Mirror
Consumers are free to buy any product they want. Companies are not free to copy any idea they want. Patents do not inherently restrict the right to compete. If you want to come up with your own completely different implementation of a concept, go for it. If you can't come up with a different implementation, that's not the patent's fault is it? Maybe the approver for approving a broad patent, but that's been acknowledged as a problem.
If you do X and Y, and X is patented, then you are violating the patent. If Y is X-and-some-other-magic, then you can patent Y, but someone doing Y must license both patents.
That's about right. That's why patents include a list of references. Credit where credit's due. How is that bad?
Let's argue, then.
I define "fair" as a situation where the person that spends resources has an equal chance to recover those losses as either anyone else with the same idea, or himself with any other idea. In other words, no external non-collective influence should alter the chance of recovering losses.
By that definition, it is fair for a bad idea go to market and fail. It is fair to see a good idea go to market and fail because of incompetent management. It is fair for an inventor to license the idea out to anybody free of charge. It is not fair for a good product to be undermined by a competitor copying the product exactly and just spending more on marketing.
The question is whether patents help more or hurt more.
I believe that patents and the current implementation can and should be considered separately. How does a patent itself hurt? Can you provide an example where merely protecting an idea has damaged the ability for an inventor to recoup their investment? How about an example where a patent has stifled innovation, regardless of the current broken implementation (lifespan of a patent, approval of broad patents)?
Like capitalism? Fairness?
Patents provide a legal protection for inventors to spread around their ideas. One inventor can say "I'm using system X with method Y to solve problem Z". Another inventor can hear that, and recognize that system X and method Y will work to solve their own problem with some minor but significant changes. Being different from the original patented idea, the new solution can go ahead just fine.
If the second inventor wants to directly copy the original idea, the patent allows the original inventor to license the idea, helping to recover the cost of developing it. The original inventor gets a fair chance to profit from his idea, ideally even starting his own company to manage the invention and innovate further.
That's the goal, at least. Now patents are approved that are too broad, and software patents last far longer than the idea's useful life. The basic existence of patents isn't the problem, though.
I have also been told that patents were invented specifically to promote publishing ideas so that they might be copied.
The idea is to copy them after the inventor has had a chance to recoup the research investment.
With normal physical-device patents, that takes a long time. With software, everything moves faster. Keeping software patents around for decades isn't practical. My personal preference is that software patents be cut back to 5 years or so. It's enough to provide a fighting change for a new company, but not so long as to hinder development.
Beyond that, I agree with what you said.
Correction: If it's useful software, but not quite easy enough to use, or if it's some philosophical proof, or if it's attached to the promise of free money, people will develop for it for free.
If a project's useful, but not fun to work on, nobody will want to work on it.
If a project's useful and easy to use, the majority of observers will consider it "done enough" and move on.
If a project proves some political point, like implementing HDCP in free software, people will work on it until the point is proven.
If a project might win some prize, people are more likely to persevere through significant problems.
Sadly, being useful isn't quite enough.
I just want a few LEDs...
Blue is monkeys!
...theory.
You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means. More precisely, you're using the wrong definition.
A theory, in science, is a system of explanations to describe the observations. As more observations come along, theories change, filling holes that the old theories couldn't explain. New and completely different systems sometimes can describe different circumstances better, so we get conflicting theories.
An example theory, proposed by a child, is that the sky is blue with clouds because the Earth is inside a blue ball with white spots. After flying in an airplane, the new theory is that the clouds are inside the blue ball as well. The theoretical model is still wrong, but it's more complex than it was before, and a little more accurate.
Theoretical research is still research. Possibly-correct models are laid out, and their effects are calculated, with comparisons to all known previous observations and models. If the model's obviously wrong, it's easily abandoned. If the model matches 99% of previous observations, the disagreements are examined, and new theories fill those holes. Eventually, enough rules are established that every significant detail of an experiment can be accounted for - and that's when the really fun experiments start.
Seriously... We (speaking for the human race in general) have some rough ideas of how matter behaves. If those ideas are correct, then we can predict how black holes should behave. If those predictions are correct, then we can predict how particles near a black hole should behave. If those predictions are correct, then we can predict how the black hole would radiate energy in response. If those predictions are correct, then we can predict the properties of that radiation.
That takes a lot of redundant language to describe the levels of predictions, which scientists should simply expect. If only we could remove some of those words, and trust that the meaning would be clear to the intended audience, saying something like "we can predict the properties of Hawking radiation..."
I digress... By duplicating one of the predicted particle behaviors, the scientists observed radiation. The radiation matches what was expected, and now we have more observations. Time to go double-check all those predictions again! Maybe we can even confirm a model, or better yet, disprove it. After all, that's what we've been doing for the last few hundred years.
Theories change often. Some particularly lucky theories stick around for thousands of years before being shown to be wrong. All of our current theories are actually expected to be wrong, in hopes of finding a unified theory that describes everything. That's the way science works. Science is the pursuit of knowledge. It's not the pursuit of being right.
A while ago, I worked out that a modern processor, running for 60 seconds, can execute as many operations as the AGC could from liftoff to splashdown of Apollo 11.
Now consider that there are people playing World of Warcraft for 8 hours a day.
Now abandon all hope for humanity.
My best answer for that yet, said while staring in the direction of what the dress hides: I'm sorry, dear, I was distracted for a minute.
Second-best: The word I was thinking of was "stunning".
I wouldn't. I, like many others, don't need encryption, so I'd just be paying $7 for a $3 function. If Wal-Mart has taught us anything, it's that a few dollars price difference makes a lot of extra sales.
With the prices you listed, encryption would have to be needed in 8% of network devices to just break even on price alone. They also must need the exact encryption features offered by the $7 chip, or they'd need the extra equipment anyway. Do 8% of devices really need security? Is my dancing robot (I'm the AC above) or HTCPCP server really that important?
Personally, I'll stick with a cheap insecure shield, and just keep my network secure.
So Ethernet, at layer 2 of the OSI model doesn't offer the security functions of layer 6?
With all those rules regarding collisions, timing, and even the physical wiring, they didn't even throw in the simple requirement for all Ethernet devices to have a powerful processor, memory, persistent storage, keys, and programming to handle security? Or even the ability to update as new encryption becomes standard?
Those lazy bums must have no idea what they're doing!
They also make calculators, small calendars, address books, dictionaries, and alarm clocks, but I don't like having 15 items in my pocket.
That's a problem with the USPTO's reviewers, most of whom need to spend a few years in training (but good luck finding the funding for that). It's not an inherent problem with software patents themselves.
The equivalent statements in physical patents would be something like "use a thingy to move the stuff near the gadget, and a widget does something". A reviewer with an IQ over 80 should see the problems, but since they're often unfamiliar with computer science, the ridiculous patent gets approved anyway.
My algorithm, had I patented it, would have been equally broad. Since I have morals, I will not patent such a concept. That's the "cleaning up and formalizing" that I chose not to pursue.
You don't really seem to be presenting an argument for software patents on their own merits, but rather that other patents are accepted and that you don't see too many differences.
The AC's comment was regarding only software patents. I was staying on topic.
You need a considerable sum of money to manufacture a device on an industrial scale. With software, it's quite possible for a single person to do everything themselves, and the distribution network can have virtually no actual cost.
So your argument is that software is easier to steal, so it shouldn't be protected? That seems to miss the fact that research is expensive, regardless of the medium. My whiteboard markers, notebooks, and especially my food still cost money.
Perhaps more importantly, the idea that other non-software patents are good is not self evident.
I'll rephrase my first sentence in simple terms, then:
When greedy people see good ideas, they often copy those ideas. Since they're greedy, they don't pay anything to the inventor. The inventor spent their own resources to research the idea, and I think they deserve to be paid.
I routinely see four-minute red lights at an intersection whose metal detector fails to sense my bike. Can you fit this into your car analogy?
Yes, actually. Occasionally, people get screwed by laws that don't account for them. The best solution is to propose an alternative that works for everybody. If you can invent a detector that works for both cars and bikes, yet still has the lifespan and approximate cost of the current detectors, go suggest it to the appropriate folks.
The major publishers of non-free fictional entertainment own the means that representatives use for communicating to the general public. Can you fit MPAA news into your car analogy?
Yes, actually. Occasionally, there are greedy people who will do bad things that are not actually against the written rules, such as parallel parking in the exact middle of two driveways when there's (unmarked) space for two cars. Sometimes there are laws to prevent such abuses, but those laws may not be worded precisely enough, or they may offer broad exceptions. Either petition to change the laws, or live with them and go make more noise with your free fictional entertainment.
Who write back with a form letter stating that an expansionist position on copyrights and patents is good for America.
And eventually they notice that they've sent out 1500 form letters saying that, or their intern (who actually wrote the letter) comments that they're writing an awful lot of those same statements. Your representative isn't there to serve you. They're there to represent you, and the thousands of others in your area. Those thousands of others have expressed interest in keeping businesses running, keeping jobs, and funding engineers. If you want to change the representative's stated position, get your like-minded friends to write as well. You have a right to "petition the government for a redress of grievances". Exercise that right.
Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX) tried this. His campaign got buried by the mainstream media in favor of that of then Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL), whose views more closely aligned with Hollywood's. Look at how little time he was allotted in the Republican primary debates.
Yeah. Maybe if I'd agreed with what he said, I'd have cared more about him. Maybe if his views were popular with anyone other than the conspiracy-loving, irrationally-thinking, anonymous masses on the Internet, the rest of the nation would care. He pushed for positions that I personally don't think are really feasible, and some that I believe to be harmful. He did raise a few good points, though, and his positions were considered by people who were following the election. Notably, that demographic should include Obama, who should now consider Ron Paul's views as representing about 10% of the American opinion. That's how representative democracy works. Even when your chosen candidate loses, you should still get a voice.
My opinion, having looked into patenting my own algorithm recently:
No. Absolutely not.
Patents in general are intended to protect an idea from the time it's conceived until the inventor has had the chance to at least recoup his research investment. Note that I said "chance", not "guarantee". In the world of physical devices, it takes a long time to turn an invention into a commercial success. First there's several rounds of prototyping (beyond what the USPTO has ever required), then manufacturing, distribution, marketing, revision... After a decade, a physical product has barely gained acceptance, let alone actually turned a profit. In a bad economy or with less-than-perfect management skills, 20 years is hardly unreasonable.
Now consider the world of computers, and especially software. Twenty years ago, we were sitting around with our 386's (486 if you were lucky), running MS-DOS 4 and dialing in to BBS's. The successful products of today were unimaginable. Today's ideas will meet their commercial fate within two years. Having patents of several decades only stifles innovation, because interoperability (without high-priced license fees) is stuck in the early 90's (ignoring open source). At the most, I would prefer to see software patents last five years.
Software patents aren't bad. Why should the invention of a software engineer be less protected than the work of a mechanical engineer? Overly-long-lived patents are bad. Why should a software engineer have a longer cycle of protection relative to his industry than a mechanical engineer?
P.S. I decided that my algorithm (boiling down to "do vector algebra on text") wasn't worth the hassle to clean up and formalize. Someday, I'll come back to it, but for now I'm happily getting paid to work with medical data.
That sounds like a great bit of logic there, if you ignore various facts along the way.
Many of those founders owned slaves. Does American society today support slavery?
Women were considered unfit to enter politics. Are American women still kept out of political offices and denied the ability to vote?
Society's observed reflection of its laws is not the result of some poorly-understood natural process, but the intentional result of the society's trust in its governing body. Laws are merely standards for behavior. When citizens follow the standards cooperatively, society as a whole benefits.
To use the infamous car analogy, consider the laws requiring drivers to periodically stop and allow crossing traffic to move. If everyone follows the law, a few people get slowed down by a few seconds. If people are greedy and force their way into an intersection, then many people wait for several minutes, or worse if gridlock develops. By suggesting a single cooperative behavior, traffic laws improve society. Drivers who act against the laws (ideally) face rejection by society, and the simple way to accomplish that is to have society levy a fine.
When adopting a new standard, it's important to have everyone's views included. With a single party/person controlling the standard, the chance of a mistake is very high. That's why American citizens (should) vote for representatives that they believe will support their views. Thus, their opinions are directly represented in the laws that are passed. Believe it or not, we are already creating a new society together, and have been doing so for the last two hundred years.
Want a bigger voice out of the 300 million Americans? Write your representatives! Run for office! Do something following the democratic process, with respect for the opinions of the millions of people who aren't you. Laws will always exist in some form, because there will always be greedy people who act against the society's benefit, and the society will always find a way to reject them. "Fair and equitable" trials are simply a means of determining who's being greedy.
Even patents are just a way to protect the hard-working inventor from the greedy people who will steal his idea and profit from it, without the investment cost to develop the idea on their own. As Moryath said, the problems lie in the implementation of the laws' enforcement, not the laws themselves, and certainly not in the concept of a lawful nation.
Sounds to me like it's bias. Personally, I can't stand the thought that "x = y" might actually do anything at all.
For what it's worth, I use Linux primarily, and Wine has no major problems running what I need. A few graphical glitches here and there, but it does its job, which is far more than it did under Windows 7.
Life in prison for every person to whom you give a gift, when that gift is a knife, and you deliver it by leaving it right where they will find it in their chest.
XP mode caused the application (an old thing that I think dates back to Windows 98) to crash even more violently.
I'll admit it when it's true.
I find Windows 7 to be thoroughly mediocre. Sure, it's got a lot of shine, but it's broken a few of my old programs, and doesn't offer anything new and useful to me.
I find .NET to be thoroughly abominable. It's a forced-standard version of the Windows API, working in the Windows way, and requiring distribution headaches to get applications to run anywhere. Don't even get me started on XNA. C# is a mockery of language design, where the statement "x = x;" can do absolutely anything, and it's not obviously magic.
I guess I just feel that Microsoft was once riding on its high horse, then it got distracted and fell off. Now it's in the process of dusting off, and perhaps someday it'll ride again. Meanwhile, everyone else has gone on ahead.
Remembering login information. I'm not sure if it was an actual cookie or some other form of local storage, but after clearing things out, I had to figure out what was wrong and walk her through the process of logging in without either of us knowing the name and password. It wasn't good.
...or you're doing something that users expect to "just work". My grandmother had a perfectly fine time using GMail, until my uncle heard that cookies should be deleted for privacy. I got a phone call after that where I had to figure out why "email isn't working".
I can see valid uses for this, and I can see malicious uses. I suppose it's good that something's out there making us developers think about these techniques.