When a bridge fails, it's the responsibility of the PE who signed off on it. When a software project fails, should it be the fault of the programmer who wrote it? Yes and no.
If there was no pressure from a marketing department to get a product out the door, then this plan might have a chance, but sadly, that's not the case, so ultimately I guess it's not the programmers fault at all if something fails because it was released before it was ready.
Finally, programming is far too much of an art (you don't see licensed artists, do you?) for this kind of thing. Yes engineering is something of an art, but there are a lot of hard and fast rules to go by as well, as well as a huge body of literature. In todays proprietary software climate, programmers are constantly programming the same thing differently, and in non foolproof ways. So no, it's not even feasable.
I guess people in high school are too immature to accept diversity. And the teachers/administrators who work there are probably the very people who enjoyed high school in the first place (You know, the people who spout the line: "The best years of my life"). That isn't true about all teachers. I know I can name some who actually cared about teaching students.
From what I can tell, it's not until the college years that most people realize that diversity is what makes the world go round. Conformity and uniformity are the enemies of creativity, and so on.
I also started with Slackware as my first serious installation of Linux. (I had a brief stint with RedHat 4.2). Slackware teaches you Linux at a very low level. You learn how things fit together and how everything interacts. It's quite a learning experience, but it's definitely too much to maintain.
I had another brief stint with Redhat 5.0 after that (or was it 5.1, it doesn't matter). It was nice. But there was just a feeling of not fitting well. Perhaps its too "one-size fits all", but something about it seems too sanitary.
Then I moved on to debian. I'll never go back. I think most people say it's for experienced users, because dselect (the package installation/management program) can be quite intimidating at first. It took me a good week the first time around to get things installed correctly. Now I can install things in a matter of minutes because I already have a package listing of the packages I like. So if I have to replace my system, or install a new one I can do something like:
dpkg --set-selections filename
and then perhaps a
apt-get upgrade
and it automatically gets the newest version, installs and configures all the packages. All I have to do is hit enter a bunch of times at the end.
Debian is by far the easiest to maintain distro that I've used. Most hard-to-configure programs come with a program called 'programname'config. Just run that and you can reconfigure sendmail, or apache, or squid, or whatever. Very slick.
If people can get beyond the dogma they'll find a very professional, very well packaged, very easy to maintain distrubution.
This along with the whole "NT left a Navy ship dead in the water" fiasco really makes me cringe whenever I hear about NT running mission critical operations.
Free software represents the transition in the software industry from a product based industry to a service based industry. As you all know much of the industrialized world is in this transition as a whole, moving product based economies down to less developed nations. Software is also in this same transition.
Most software companies already realize that the most money is going to be made in support. In fact, whenever I complain to a jounalist about unfair or incorrect coverage, I usually receive a response along the lines of "You don't understand the real world. In the real world, support costs are higher than the software itself, so free software doesn't make a difference."
If this is true, then it would make sense that competition will flourish among companies providing support to free software, simply because more companies can acquire the intimate knowledge required to provide quality support. No longer will you have to go to the "vendor", who has a monopoly on support, but your choice among several. More companies means more competition which will mean higher quality and lower prices.
There is definitely going to be huge resistance to this change. Companies like Microsoft and Apple have so much invested in their proprietary architecture that unless they make major changes they risked being pushed to the wayside. However, given the size of their resource base, this is obviously going to take a long time. This is just the same as the transition of the economy as a whole.
I would imagine that this process could take upwards of 30 years or so. Obviously 30 years is a long time in the world of computers and the internet, so who knows what can happen in the mean time. However to call the free software a "temporary phenomenon" is just completely ridiculous. If anything proprietary software is the temporary phenomenon which took hold due to a certain confluence of factors. The transition to a service based industry is anything but temporary, nay, it is inevitble.
Linux is the fastest growing server OS because there are so few installations. If you add a few more, *poof* you have 100% growth, or even more! Growth has nothing to do with market share or market power. Besides, you say yourself server OS. The market that Microsoft has a monopoly is the intel desktop PC, which sadly, Macintosh doesn't compete in either.
You present an argument, but you have yet to back it up with solid facts. Other than saying "that applies to micrsoft too" please tell me how. Microsoft does not have much, if any at all, competition in the intel desktop market. PLEASE tell me where they're competition is, I would like to be enlightened. If you can't point to specific examples, then perhaps it's time you rethink your argument.
Yes, they are monopolists in their own little world. And no, they can't raise prices at will. There will be a point that it will be cheaper to rewrite everything over the long term than to stick with a vendor that is gouging you. So no, they cannot change prices at will.
The fact of the matter is, if Microsoft decided to charge $200 for the upgrade, most people would pay for it rather than explore alternatives, simply because there aren't really any alternatives.
Okay, if you have looked at all the graphs of OS use, tell us what Microsoft's competition is on Intel PCs in the home. Or on Intel PC desktops in corporate use?
Lets see. Linux? Hardly. BeOS? Again, I really don't think so. OS/2? Whatever. Where's the so-called competition?
People who insist that Microsoft doesn't have a monopoly are just fooling themselves to believe whatever comes out of Microsoft's mouth. The fact of the matter, Microsoft soft wields tremendous market power. Regardless of whether Microsoft has a literal monopoly, they are abusing their market power to the detriment of society. That is why they must be stopped. The reason people say that Microsoft is a monopoly, is because it's alot easier to say than "The wield near-monopoly market power." (Like the whole Linux, GNU/Linux thing).
Even AT&T had competition, as did standard oil, and they were monopolies by every sense of the word.
Earlier today I found that I was defaulting at 2, and I thought to myself, "Hmm...that's strange, I guess I'll have to make sure all my comments are worth that two."
Let me tell you all, right before I hit the submit button I think really hard if what I'm writing needs to be said. Perhaps it has already been said, or it's flamebait, or I'm coming down a little hard on somebody. Usually about half the time I write out an entire comment, think about it for 30 seconds and hit the back button. I'm sure that if a lot of people do this (and they might, who can tell?) then the overall comment quality will rise.
Speaking of which, I want to voice my support for the alignment system. I figure it can have two effects. One: People will abuse the system and use their Alignment to boost up bad comments. These comments will get moderated down and you will lose alignment points. Two: People will tend to write comments that deserve their default rating. I know that's my reaction to the whole thing. Perhaps Bruce Perens shouldn't be posting things that aren't worth the 3 default points? Just maybe we all don't need to see his latest tidbit of humor.
Time can only tell, but in the past week, I'd say the overall quality of the posts that I see has definitely risen. I think it only aspires people to think originally and creatively so that their comments get moderated up and their voices get heard.
If anybody has a case against the gov't for due process it's Mitnick. He says he won't be able to get a job when he gets out, but I'm sure he can live off settlement money from the very large lawsuit he should bring on.
Once you get Debian installed, it behaves in much the way you describe above. It knows what you have installed and can get all the updates from a central ftp server. Heck upgrading can be as easy as typing 'apt-get upgrade'.
Every computer system has it's learning curve, although I do agree Linux does have moments when it's endearingly frustrating, but in general the only thing holding back newcomers is the sheer newness of it all. That and having to actually know something about your hardware.
I'm not sure what people's obsession is with outlining the "future of open source". I was tempted to do it at one point myself, because I'm interested in the economics of it all myself. And then I started working on my very own open source project, as well as contributing to a few others.
As a result of these experiences I've come to the conclusion that I was thinking about it all wrong. The current way of doing things has already evolved into a highly efficient means of production. Things that need to be done get done. Things that aren't important fall by the wayside. (As an aside, this is why Gates' comment about no roadmap is totally irrelevant. By not having a roadmap, we are ultimately free to do whatever needs to be done, and we aren't overcommitting ourselves to a project that nobody wants). There's no need to change the way people write software, things will happen on their own, after all that's the beauty of a market economy, is it not?
Lots of people have said something in these forums. The real economy in OSS development is the economy of time and talent. The projects that are the most interesting, or are needed the most (etc.) are the ones who will receive the most developer time. There is alot more to this, and I'm sure it'll make a good masters thesis for somebody, but to really understand open source software you have to shed all your preconceptions and intuitions about commercial software. The two are fundamentally at odds with eachother.
Commercial development corps generally see software as a product, something which can be sold for money. Open source developers see software as a tool. A tool which they can use in their lives. Of course, I'm just speaking in vague generalities here, but in general this is the case. (Case in point: how many developers of OSS applications are writing the package for money? none that I know of.)
That same argument can be used against the MS GUID. Even worse, some people explicitly stated they didn't want their data transmitted and it was anyway.
In alot of states there are laws against purposely damaging computer equipment (probably from way back when computers were still curiosities, to protect them from tech-fearing luddites).
Geez, all I'm seeing here is criticism of one of the most important people in free software. For a community that supposed to be all about peer recognition, we certainly aren't giving Stallman his fair share.
Without FSF and GNU there simply wouldn't be any Linux system to speak of. Linus most likely wouldn't have even started if gcc wasn't available. In fact, Linus himself (I believe) said that the most important thing on any platform is it's compiler, and nothing beats a free compiler.
The only reason I don't call my system GNU/Linux is because I call it Debian (or Debian GNU/Linux). However I think that RMS definitely has a point when he asks people to acknowledge the FSF contribution to Linux. (After all, Linux by itself wouldn't be very interesting at all).
Of course, then comes the obvious question of "If we're going to call it GNU/Linux, then why not BSD/GNU/Apache/Artistic/Linux?" I think the real reason is because those other groups haven't asked for the recognition, whether they deserve it or not.
I think by calling RMS a crackpot or a crazy only serves to demean our community as a whole. May tend towards outspokenness, but he is still created some of the most important software that we all use everyday, and I for one thing we should give him the recognition he deserves.
You have to admit, TV and Radio are high bandwidth communications. With the proliferation of TV channels and radio stations we even have more bandwidth. The real question is, who is listening. You can't really watch/listen to more than 1 station at a time, (and I'm sure most people don't browse with more than one browser either).
I think the only thing to change in the past few years is the way we communicate. Not the amount. I do agree that the amount of communication has risen over time (over thousands of years), but only because there are more people on the planet.
Recently more and more people have been suggesting to me that I go straight into grad school and get a masters in CS. Bachelor's degrees are worth about as much as a high school diploma was 20 years ago. Kinda sad that I have to spend an extra 2 years of my life in school. Damn good thing I enjoy my classes...:)
(URI still hasn't dumbed down their CS curriculum, thank god, that's what MIS is for *smirk*)
I agree *completely*, however the readership of/. are mostly hackers themselves so it seems kind of silly. Essays he writes for/. should be fundamentally different than those for mainstream journalism. Something like this doesn't belong here, but something like Time or Newsweek (not that Katz writes for those magazines.)
I just think if Jon is going to write for/. he should pick more pertinent topics.
You write extremely well Jon, but you seem to be preaching to the choir. We all pretty much already know this stuff, although some of us may not be able to express it so eloquently.
Keep up the good work. Don't be afraid to lead this band of rogues.
This is true, you can't photocopy phonebooks, but you can take the data in the phone book, and make a new compilation yourself. A guy did this, took all the phone books in the US and put them on a CD and sold it for thousands of dollars. As far as I know the phone companies tried to stop him, but couldn't.
The information in the database is something we might call "common knowledge" (IANAL). You can't own common knowledge, because it's pretty much public domain. Think of compiling huge lists of email addresses and putting a copyright on it. If the database were copyrightable it would only be if they put significant investment into it. And as far as I'm concerned asking members of the community to enter in data, or buying an established database does not constitute significant investment.
Althought IANAL, I think it would be perfectly legal to mine the CDDB for data. Escient does *not* own the data in the database. In fact, they cannot even make a case that they spent the time entering the data in, because they didn't even do that. For the database to be copyrighted there must be some original/novel way of arranging the data. As far as I know the data is not even arranged. (This is the same reason why the phone book is not copyrighted.)
So I say we mine CDDB, or at least start with the last time we could download the contents of the CDDB (anybody?). Then if Escient decides to pull some legal crap we can pound them into the ground.
You're right, there is a thin line. I don't think *all* patents are bad. And I must admit I don't really know as much about patents as I should to argue about them.
I think things that should be patented are things that are: 1) Novel and 2) Arbitrary. If the USPTO didn't grant patents for things that didn't match those categories, I'm sure alot of people would be alot happier, and the people who really deserve patents, the inventors of the world, would still be happy.
I think there is something arbitrary about a plow, even though it can be reduced to a lever. However I would certainly endorse a patent on a plow as opposed to a patent on a lever.
I'm not sure I have this idea completely fleshed out, but I think I can almost make an essay out of it.
Slashdot Mirror
When a bridge fails, it's the responsibility of the PE who signed off on it. When a software project fails, should it be the fault of the programmer who wrote it? Yes and no.
If there was no pressure from a marketing department to get a product out the door, then this plan might have a chance, but sadly, that's not the case, so ultimately I guess it's not the programmers fault at all if something fails because it was released before it was ready.
Finally, programming is far too much of an art (you don't see licensed artists, do you?) for this kind of thing. Yes engineering is something of an art, but there are a lot of hard and fast rules to go by as well, as well as a huge body of literature. In todays proprietary software climate, programmers are constantly programming the same thing differently, and in non foolproof ways. So no, it's not even feasable.
I guess people in high school are too immature to accept diversity. And the teachers/administrators who work there are probably the very people who enjoyed high school in the first place (You know, the people who spout the line: "The best years of my life"). That isn't true about all teachers. I know I can name some who actually cared about teaching students.
From what I can tell, it's not until the college years that most people realize that diversity is what makes the world go round. Conformity and uniformity are the enemies of creativity, and so on.
I also started with Slackware as my first serious installation of Linux. (I had a brief stint with RedHat 4.2). Slackware teaches you Linux at a very low level. You learn how things fit together and how everything interacts. It's quite a learning experience, but it's definitely too much to maintain.
I had another brief stint with Redhat 5.0 after that (or was it 5.1, it doesn't matter). It was nice. But there was just a feeling of not fitting well. Perhaps its too "one-size fits all", but something about it seems too sanitary.
Then I moved on to debian. I'll never go back. I think most people say it's for experienced users, because dselect (the package installation/management program) can be quite intimidating at first. It took me a good week the first time around to get things installed correctly. Now I can install things in a matter of minutes because I already have a package listing of the packages I like. So if I have to replace my system, or install a new one I can do something like:
dpkg --set-selections filename
and then perhaps a
apt-get upgrade
and it automatically gets the newest version, installs and configures all the packages. All I have to do is hit enter a bunch of times at the end.
Debian is by far the easiest to maintain distro that I've used. Most hard-to-configure programs come with a program called 'programname'config. Just run that and you can reconfigure sendmail, or apache, or squid, or whatever. Very slick.
If people can get beyond the dogma they'll find a very professional, very well packaged, very easy to maintain distrubution.
This along with the whole "NT left a Navy ship dead in the water" fiasco really makes me cringe whenever I hear about NT running mission critical operations.
Maybe when I run my own company...
This is my latest theory about free software.
Free software represents the transition in the software industry from a product based industry to a service based industry. As you all know much of the industrialized world is in this transition as a whole, moving product based economies down to less developed nations. Software is also in this same transition.
Most software companies already realize that the most money is going to be made in support. In fact, whenever I complain to a jounalist about unfair or incorrect coverage, I usually receive a response along the lines of "You don't understand the real world. In the real world, support costs are higher than the software itself, so free software doesn't make a difference."
If this is true, then it would make sense that competition will flourish among companies providing support to free software, simply because more companies can acquire the intimate knowledge required to provide quality support. No longer will you have to go to the "vendor", who has a monopoly on support, but your choice among several. More companies means more competition which will mean higher quality and lower prices.
There is definitely going to be huge resistance to this change. Companies like Microsoft and Apple have so much invested in their proprietary architecture that unless they make major changes they risked being pushed to the wayside. However, given the size of their resource base, this is obviously going to take a long time. This is just the same as the transition of the economy as a whole.
I would imagine that this process could take upwards of 30 years or so. Obviously 30 years is a long time in the world of computers and the internet, so who knows what can happen in the mean time. However to call the free software a "temporary phenomenon" is just completely ridiculous. If anything proprietary software is the temporary phenomenon which took hold due to a certain confluence of factors. The transition to a service based industry is anything but temporary, nay, it is inevitble.
Linux is the fastest growing server OS because there are so few installations. If you add a few more, *poof* you have 100% growth, or even more! Growth has nothing to do with market share or market power. Besides, you say yourself server OS. The market that Microsoft has a monopoly is the intel desktop PC, which sadly, Macintosh doesn't compete in either.
Try again?
You present an argument, but you have yet to back it up with solid facts. Other than saying "that applies to micrsoft too" please tell me how. Microsoft does not have much, if any at all, competition in the intel desktop market. PLEASE tell me where they're competition is, I would like to be enlightened. If you can't point to specific examples, then perhaps it's time you rethink your argument.
Yes, they are monopolists in their own little world. And no, they can't raise prices at will. There will be a point that it will be cheaper to rewrite everything over the long term than to stick with a vendor that is gouging you. So no, they cannot change prices at will.
The fact of the matter is, if Microsoft decided to charge $200 for the upgrade, most people would pay for it rather than explore alternatives, simply because there aren't really any alternatives.
Okay, if you have looked at all the graphs of OS use, tell us what Microsoft's competition is on Intel PCs in the home. Or on Intel PC desktops in corporate use?
Lets see. Linux? Hardly. BeOS? Again, I really don't think so. OS/2? Whatever. Where's the so-called competition?
People who insist that Microsoft doesn't have a monopoly are just fooling themselves to believe whatever comes out of Microsoft's mouth. The fact of the matter, Microsoft soft wields tremendous market power. Regardless of whether Microsoft has a literal monopoly, they are abusing their market power to the detriment of society. That is why they must be stopped. The reason people say that Microsoft is a monopoly, is because it's alot easier to say than "The wield near-monopoly market power." (Like the whole Linux, GNU/Linux thing).
Even AT&T had competition, as did standard oil, and they were monopolies by every sense of the word.
Earlier today I found that I was defaulting at 2, and I thought to myself, "Hmm...that's strange, I guess I'll have to make sure all my comments are worth that two."
Let me tell you all, right before I hit the submit button I think really hard if what I'm writing needs to be said. Perhaps it has already been said, or it's flamebait, or I'm coming down a little hard on somebody. Usually about half the time I write out an entire comment, think about it for 30 seconds and hit the back button. I'm sure that if a lot of people do this (and they might, who can tell?) then the overall comment quality will rise.
Speaking of which, I want to voice my support for the alignment system. I figure it can have two effects. One: People will abuse the system and use their Alignment to boost up bad comments. These comments will get moderated down and you will lose alignment points. Two: People will tend to write comments that deserve their default rating. I know that's my reaction to the whole thing. Perhaps Bruce Perens shouldn't be posting things that aren't worth the 3 default points? Just maybe we all don't need to see his latest tidbit of humor.
Time can only tell, but in the past week, I'd say the overall quality of the posts that I see has definitely risen. I think it only aspires people to think originally and creatively so that their comments get moderated up and their voices get heard.
--Peter
I had no idea. Oh well. Either way. It could easily turn into a libel case, if he is in fact innocent, or if the facts were grossly misportrayed.
If anybody has a case against the gov't for due process it's Mitnick. He says he won't be able to get a job when he gets out, but I'm sure he can live off settlement money from the very large lawsuit he should bring on.
Oh well. Here's to hoping it never happens again.
Once you get Debian installed, it behaves in much the way you describe above. It knows what you have installed and can get all the updates from a central ftp server. Heck upgrading can be as easy as typing 'apt-get upgrade'.
Every computer system has it's learning curve, although I do agree Linux does have moments when it's endearingly frustrating, but in general the only thing holding back newcomers is the sheer newness of it all. That and having to actually know something about your hardware.
I'm not sure what people's obsession is with outlining the "future of open source". I was tempted to do it at one point myself, because I'm interested in the economics of it all myself. And then I started working on my very own open source project, as well as contributing to a few others.
As a result of these experiences I've come to the conclusion that I was thinking about it all wrong. The current way of doing things has already evolved into a highly efficient means of production. Things that need to be done get done. Things that aren't important fall by the wayside. (As an aside, this is why Gates' comment about no roadmap is totally irrelevant. By not having a roadmap, we are ultimately free to do whatever needs to be done, and we aren't overcommitting ourselves to a project that nobody wants). There's no need to change the way people write software, things will happen on their own, after all that's the beauty of a market economy, is it not?
Lots of people have said something in these forums. The real economy in OSS development is the economy of time and talent. The projects that are the most interesting, or are needed the most (etc.) are the ones who will receive the most developer time. There is alot more to this, and I'm sure it'll make a good masters thesis for somebody, but to really understand open source software you have to shed all your preconceptions and intuitions about commercial software. The two are fundamentally at odds with eachother.
Commercial development corps generally see software as a product, something which can be sold for money. Open source developers see software as a tool. A tool which they can use in their lives. Of course, I'm just speaking in vague generalities here, but in general this is the case. (Case in point: how many developers of OSS applications are writing the package for money? none that I know of.)
That same argument can be used against the MS GUID. Even worse, some people explicitly stated they didn't want their data transmitted and it was anyway.
In alot of states there are laws against purposely damaging computer equipment (probably from way back when computers were still curiosities, to protect them from tech-fearing luddites).
Geez, all I'm seeing here is criticism of one of the most important people in free software. For a community that supposed to be all about peer recognition, we certainly aren't giving Stallman his fair share.
Without FSF and GNU there simply wouldn't be any Linux system to speak of. Linus most likely wouldn't have even started if gcc wasn't available. In fact, Linus himself (I believe) said that the most important thing on any platform is it's compiler, and nothing beats a free compiler.
The only reason I don't call my system GNU/Linux is because I call it Debian (or Debian GNU/Linux). However I think that RMS definitely has a point when he asks people to acknowledge the FSF contribution to Linux. (After all, Linux by itself wouldn't be very interesting at all).
Of course, then comes the obvious question of "If we're going to call it GNU/Linux, then why not BSD/GNU/Apache/Artistic/Linux?" I think the real reason is because those other groups haven't asked for the recognition, whether they deserve it or not.
I think by calling RMS a crackpot or a crazy only serves to demean our community as a whole. May tend towards outspokenness, but he is still created some of the most important software that we all use everyday, and I for one thing we should give him the recognition he deserves.
I'm sure alot of /. readers browse that way (myself included). I'm comparing that to the people who watch banks of TVs to get alot of info at once.
You have to admit, TV and Radio are high bandwidth communications. With the proliferation of TV channels and radio stations we even have more bandwidth. The real question is, who is listening. You can't really watch/listen to more than 1 station at a time, (and I'm sure most people don't browse with more than one browser either).
I think the only thing to change in the past few years is the way we communicate. Not the amount. I do agree that the amount of communication has risen over time (over thousands of years), but only because there are more people on the planet.
Recently more and more people have been suggesting to me that I go straight into grad school and get a masters in CS. Bachelor's degrees are worth about as much as a high school diploma was 20 years ago. Kinda sad that I have to spend an extra 2 years of my life in school. Damn good thing I enjoy my classes...:)
(URI still hasn't dumbed down their CS curriculum, thank god, that's what MIS is for *smirk*)
TBL applied hypertext to the internet and invented the Web at CERN. He did actually invent it. He didn't invent the internet, that was DoD.
I agree *completely*, however the readership of /. are mostly hackers themselves so it seems kind of silly. Essays he writes for /. should be fundamentally different than those for mainstream journalism. Something like this doesn't belong here, but something like Time or Newsweek (not that Katz writes for those magazines.)
/. he should pick more pertinent topics.
I just think if Jon is going to write for
You write extremely well Jon, but you seem to be preaching to the choir. We all pretty much already know this stuff, although some of us may not be able to express it so eloquently.
Keep up the good work. Don't be afraid to lead this band of rogues.
This is true, you can't photocopy phonebooks, but you can take the data in the phone book, and make a new compilation yourself. A guy did this, took all the phone books in the US and put them on a CD and sold it for thousands of dollars. As far as I know the phone companies tried to stop him, but couldn't.
The information in the database is something we might call "common knowledge" (IANAL). You can't own common knowledge, because it's pretty much public domain. Think of compiling huge lists of email addresses and putting a copyright on it. If the database were copyrightable it would only be if they put significant investment into it. And as far as I'm concerned asking members of the community to enter in data, or buying an established database does not constitute significant investment.
Althought IANAL, I think it would be perfectly legal to mine the CDDB for data. Escient does *not* own the data in the database. In fact, they cannot even make a case that they spent the time entering the data in, because they didn't even do that. For the database to be copyrighted there must be some original/novel way of arranging the data. As far as I know the data is not even arranged. (This is the same reason why the phone book is not copyrighted.)
So I say we mine CDDB, or at least start with the last time we could download the contents of the CDDB (anybody?). Then if Escient decides to pull some legal crap we can pound them into the ground.
You're right, there is a thin line. I don't think *all* patents are bad. And I must admit I don't really know as much about patents as I should to argue about them.
I think things that should be patented are things that are: 1) Novel and 2) Arbitrary. If the USPTO didn't grant patents for things that didn't match those categories, I'm sure alot of people would be alot happier, and the people who really deserve patents, the inventors of the world, would still be happy.
I think there is something arbitrary about a plow, even though it can be reduced to a lever. However I would certainly endorse a patent on a plow as opposed to a patent on a lever.
I'm not sure I have this idea completely fleshed out, but I think I can almost make an essay out of it.