Lately it seems that all I hear about lately is Batman. I think I've seen about 30 articles about Batman over the last few weeks "you too can be a batman", "what would it take for a mortal to be a batman".
Seriously, what the HELL is wrong with Texas and all the stupid laws. The legislature there must have their head firmly injected into their rectal cavities.
I thought the recent Texas law enacted that requires PC repair shops to have PI licenses was the stupidest law I'd heard in a long time but this is about just as stupid (albeit not quite as impacting).
This is a repeat of a post that I made last time the subject of PTT came up, and I will reiterate it just because I think it's so vital and cuts to the heart of the matter at hand. Just because an attorney with a dog in this race is speaking his mind doesn't mean he's wrong. If we're supposed to take sides in this matter I hope we take the side of what is correct and beneficial for society.
To regroup, this statement on PTT's blog that was so insightful and important that I must have read it three times. The commentor on PTT's blog REALLY made an impression on me, especially the parts about how little our law makers understand the issue at hand. All credit goes to the original commentator on the blog, who in my mind left an impression more indelible than PTT himself:
"As a practicing patent attorney with a large corporation, I can see why PTT and other commentators might want not to divulge their name. His anonymity works for me, because the subject of our interest shouldn't be who PTT is, but rather whether the US patent system is functioning effectively and fairly. And PTT's remarks on patent predators aren't any less germane because the sharks are identified by name, and he/she isn't. Forget that it's Niro (or Acacia, or whoever) that PTT comments on, and focus on the fact that they and others are manipulating an imperfect system to the detriment of both the system and its participants.
BTW, there are those who might defend the abuses written of here as nothing more than "arbitrage". I don't agree. Arbitrage smooths out market irregularities caused by assymetrical information or unbalanced supply and demand. It is ethical, and even helpful, where a market is efficient and the market rules are clear and fairly enforced. The swamp of legal, political, technical and economic uncertainties that trolls are rooting around in (and helping muddy up) is more like an armed prospectors' land-grab than what the patent system set out to be: A reward of exclusivity in return for the useful sharing of information. Vigorous enforcement of patents on trivial or useless "inventions", by contingency-fee opportunists, doesn't make them any less trivial and useless. And bundling or accumulating them under shell corporations, the better to leverage them against companies for whom the expected value of a loss at trial (however unlikely) exceeds the price of a settlement, does nothing to better the "market" for IP. It doesn't promote adoption or commercialisation of technology. It doesn't raise capital in support of yet more innovation. It doesn't improve the function of the patent system. It's extortion, pure and simple.
This isn't an abstract, theoretical discussion. It won't be long before Congress, made up of individuals who understand neither the purpose nor the functioning of the US patent system, begins to tinker with it as if it were a tax code with which additional revenues could be extracted and assets could be more equitably redistributed. Trolls cheapen the patent system in a way that makes legislative erosion even more likely. The abuses PTT writes about call the patent monopoly and its proponents into disrepute, and thereby weaken the rights appropriately reserved under other patents to those who really have made a technical contribution to society. As far as I'm concerned, PTT can call the trolls by name. The moneys they've extracted from productive members of society should be enough consolation for them.
A company that would install malware or rootkits on your computer would think nothing of installing bloatware. I hate the "blame the victim" mentality (and I'm not condoning such thinking either) -- however, it's unfortunate that people aren't more discerning about whom they give their hard earned dollars to.
I've said this before on slashdot and I'll just say it again, forgoing all accusations of dispensing flamebait, with the assertion that "I do not buy Sony products anymore". Besides there are plenty of alternatives in the marketplace so it's not like I'm really restricting my options.
I must echo the sentiments of the OP; although my experience has been a bit different. I came from a heavy UNIX/C background, which I enjoyed for many years. I began to experiment with Perl when perl5 was released (must confess I was not a big fan of perl4). One of the aspects of Perl that I always found delightful was the fact that it seemed to literally be a wrapper to C, or at least C-like. Not only does it supports system calls, and similiar C library API functions such as sprintf, et al, but without all the management headaches of C. It has a useful capacity to do extremely complex pattern matching with its NDA regular expression engine. Above all is the massive CPAN code repository that seems to satisfy just about any kind of computing need a developer could imagine.
Since then I have come to the conclusion that (at least for me) Perl can, within reason, satisfy just about any computing requirement I run across in my personal and professional life.
Would the above command make the GNU cat(1) command, or the GNU coreutils package non-GPL compliant? I'm not trolling, just saying that it seems up to the end-user how NDISwrapper is used, although in this case the end user seems to be the kernel.
I confess I'm very likely not comprehending the issue correctly since it doesn't seem possible that it's that simple.
This may be somewhat OT, but eNom are known well in the anti-spam community for being one of the largest registar choices of spammers. They are almost 100% likely to do nothing to discourage spammers from using them as a spammer-safe haven for registrations.
This is further supported by taking a glance at data from the URIBL "Realtime URI" feed for Abused/Abusive Registrars. A glance at their website shows they rank second out of 250 registrars for hosting blacklisted domains.
Dempsey explains that, in order to successfully fight cyber crime, law enforcement officials need to move much faster than average investigators and cooperate with international law:
I call for a second FBI.
Why this is worse than cracking hotmail, et al.
on
Gmail CAPTCHA Cracked
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
Google mail is loved by spammers since gmail does not embed within the SMTP headers any tracking information about the physical client browser's IP address. Hotmail and Yahoo!, with all of their other problems do however by adding X-Originating-Host tags, etc.
By breaking the CAPTCHA the spammers are basically creating the biggest SMTP IP address laundering system available on the net today. Who in their right mind is going to block gmail with the exception of domains that receive small amounts of personal email traffic and temporary IP address repudiation scoring systems like spamcop?
First thing we need to do is require people to pay a license in order to use a compiler, in the same way contractors are licensed! Then we need to pass legislation prohibiting the authorship of software that is given away for nothing!
Then we can get rid of those pesky amendments to the Constitution!
I've noticed my Palm Treo 700 is a lot tougher looking than one would think. I've dropped it on concrete about 10 times and it still works fine. It once even fell out of my truck onto the road while I was driving. The battery compartment flew out and the stylus and blank filler card were ejected but after putting it back together it was fine.
I'm almost willing to believe these things would stop a bullet.
Oh PLEASE! I have ZERO sympathy for any loser that has stayed with SCO this long. In fact, in the history of IT I can't think of any group of employees that deserve to be laid off more.
Anyone who has continued with SCO after all these years of FUD, lies and litigation deserves nothing but heartache. In addition I *highly* recommend they avoid applying where I work, if I see SCO on a resume that continues past 2003 they can take a hike.
In my view they were complacent in a lie. Besides that the writing was on the wall long ago so they shouldn't be shocked that they're out of work.
..how can you say they did a good job of it, when the email in question was not spam?
Point taken, I meant overall a good job for being good net neighbors. Agreed that their system might have some problems, but keep in mind that e-mail is not really considered a realiable medium for important communications. It is, at its own definition a "best effort" delivery mechanism.
You know, I'm getting sick of the prevailing attitude that ISPs and other "institutions" should limit legitimate activities with a technology and filter everybody's behaviour because some customers are bad apples (either intentially or through ignorance).
In principle I agree, except they're not trying to limit legitimate activity but the illegitimate. In this case malware infected computers sending out massive amounts of garbage isn't filtering behavior of a person, but automated abuse. Perhaps as an technological perspectiven this isn't the best way to go about doing it, but from a social perspective I have no issue with it. This isn't about the good customers v. the bad ones, but technical limitations on traffic that exist out of sheer pragmatism. Sorry, I don't see anything wrong with that.
What am I saying? We live in a moddle-coddled world where nobody takes responsibility for they're own actions but instead focuses on fretting and controlling everybody else's actions.
Actually, you are enforcing my point, not conflicting it. That's exactly what Cox is doing, taking responsibility over their servers and their traffic. Their system is imperfect but better than an open sewer pipe going directly to the public lake (if you'll excuse the metaphor). If you want a system that is unchecked I guess you'll have to setup your server in Russia or China.
I would like to first state that I am a Cox cable internet subscriber in the Phoenix area. I also happen to wear the abuse desk hat for Arizona's oldest ISPs.
I can say without question that the amount of spam we get from cox is almost NIL. I constantly see spam coming out of Comscat's network, also Verizon and from time to time Time Warner but RARELY Cox. In fact I can't remember the last spam I received that originated from their network.
I don't mind that my egress SMTP port is blocked forcing me to use a MSA (mine is configured to use SMTP AUTH with TLS, which works nicely). The fact is that Cox has their act together in my opinion. The fact that they are a white hat in the abuse category makes me want to continue doing business with them. I don't think what you're seeing here is intentional censorship. It would actually be irresponsible for Cox not to filter outbound mail traffic, since they are bound to have customers that run malware infected / zombied host computers.
Anyway, I say "good job Cox":)
P.S. I work for an ISP that is NOT Cox--which one might think after reading my glowing statements (in fact we compete against Cox)
I'm not Filipino, but I've been there a couple times and there are some reasons I can think of which make it a good place to house a data center:
1) Filipinos speak impecibly good English with little or no accent. I have no issue understanding them.
2) Philippines is a very westernized place; it would be easy for a western-based company to work or conduct business there.
3) They love Linux in the Philippines;-) Of course they love Linux all over asia, but a lot of Philippines businesses are warming up to Linux. Also, they love everything about American culture there so it would be a fun place to work.
Mind you, not just the Free Software Foundation, but the likes of the FSF as well? Well, what is the Free Software Foundation about? Freedom in software. So I guess what they're saying is "those that espouse the ideas of Freedom in software confounded our ISO vote". That is, as far as I can see it, actually a correct statement, as well as a tenable one.
If the true goal of a computer program for a school is to ready its students for the workplace, then is linux really the best method of doing so? Isn't the school in some way doing its students a dis-service my training them on a computing method that they will very likely never use again?
Your question is quite valid, and worth consideration. However, the inverse could also possibly be true, and one of the core disputes I have with community colleges and many high schools of today, that being:
How much are we teaching the IT leaders of tomorrow about computer science and technology by making them Windows centric end-users? I fear sometimes that all of the Visual Basic and Java is going to create a layer of abstraction over basic computer science comprehension (this has, of course also been discussed on slashdot).
I think the answer is simple -- don't teach platform specific technology, or cover a few of them. Give a well rounded education but most importantly cover the computer science concepts.
I hate to steal karma, but there's a comment on PTT's blog that was so insightful that I felt it serves as useful food for thought. It was a comment left last thursday by one using the pen name "ipreactionary", all credit goes to him:
"As a practicing patent attorney with a large corporation, I can see why PTT and other commentators might want not to divulge their name. His anonymity works for me, because the subject of our interest shouldn't be who PTT is, but rather whether the US patent system is functioning effectively and fairly. And PTT's remarks on patent predators aren't any less germane because the sharks are identified by name, and he/she isn't. Forget that it's Niro (or Acacia, or whoever) that PTT comments on, and focus on the fact that they and others are manipulating an imperfect system to the detriment of both the system and its participants.
BTW, there are those who might defend the abuses written of here as nothing more than "arbitrage". I don't agree. Arbitrage smooths out market irregularities caused by assymetrical information or unbalanced supply and demand. It is ethical, and even helpful, where a market is efficient and the market rules are clear and fairly enforced. The swamp of legal, political, technical and economic uncertainties that trolls are rooting around in (and helping muddy up) is more like an armed prospectors' land-grab than what the patent system set out to be: A reward of exclusivity in return for the useful sharing of information. Vigorous enforcement of patents on trivial or useless "inventions", by contingency-fee opportunists, doesn't make them any less trivial and useless. And bundling or accumulating them under shell corporations, the better to leverage them against companies for whom the expected value of a loss at trial (however unlikely) exceeds the price of a settlement, does nothing to better the "market" for IP. It doesn't promote adoption or commercialisation of technology. It doesn't raise capital in support of yet more innovation. It doesn't improve the function of the patent system. It's extortion, pure and simple.
This isn't an abstract, theoretical discussion. It won't be long before Congress, made up of individuals who understand neither the purpose nor the functioning of the US patent system, begins to tinker with it as if it were a tax code with which additional revenues could be extracted and assets could be more equitably redistributed. Trolls cheapen the patent system in a way that makes legislative erosion even more likely. The abuses PTT writes about call the patent monopoly and its proponents into disrepute, and thereby weaken the rights appropriately reserved under other patents to those who really have made a technical contribution to society. As far as I'm concerned, PTT can call the trolls by name. The moneys they've extracted from productive members of society should be enough consolation for them.
Slashdot Mirror
He's actually a "Spam Queen"!
Lately it seems that all I hear about lately is Batman. I think I've seen about 30 articles about Batman over the last few weeks "you too can be a batman", "what would it take for a mortal to be a batman".
Jesus HFC, get over it, it's a movie.
Seriously, what the HELL is wrong with Texas and all the stupid laws. The legislature there must have their head firmly injected into their rectal cavities.
I thought the recent Texas law enacted that requires PC repair shops to have PI licenses was the stupidest law I'd heard in a long time but this is about just as stupid (albeit not quite as impacting).
The problem you have, Mr. Dada, is that you tend to assume that people care about how a company acts enough to influence their choices.
I was going to say "That's Mr. Dada to you", but you already had that covered.
The ex-Googler recently stated it is a 'poor business model to sue your customers.
Darl McBride was not immediately available for comments.
This is a repeat of a post that I made last time the subject of PTT came up, and I will reiterate it just because I think it's so vital and cuts to the heart of the matter at hand. Just because an attorney with a dog in this race is speaking his mind doesn't mean he's wrong. If we're supposed to take sides in this matter I hope we take the side of what is correct and beneficial for society.
To regroup, this statement on PTT's blog that was so insightful and important that I must have read it three times. The commentor on PTT's blog REALLY made an impression on me, especially the parts about how little our law makers understand the issue at hand. All credit goes to the original commentator on the blog, who in my mind left an impression more indelible than PTT himself:
[http://trolltracker.blogspot.com/2008/01/j-carl-cooper-and-technology-licensing.html]:
"As a practicing patent attorney with a large corporation, I can see why PTT and other commentators might want not to divulge their name. His anonymity works for me, because the subject of our interest shouldn't be who PTT is, but rather whether the US patent system is functioning effectively and fairly. And PTT's remarks on patent predators aren't any less germane because the sharks are identified by name, and he/she isn't. Forget that it's Niro (or Acacia, or whoever) that PTT comments on, and focus on the fact that they and others are manipulating an imperfect system to the detriment of both the system and its participants.
BTW, there are those who might defend the abuses written of here as nothing more than "arbitrage". I don't agree. Arbitrage smooths out market irregularities caused by assymetrical information or unbalanced supply and demand. It is ethical, and even helpful, where a market is efficient and the market rules are clear and fairly enforced. The swamp of legal, political, technical and economic uncertainties that trolls are rooting around in (and helping muddy up) is more like an armed prospectors' land-grab than what the patent system set out to be: A reward of exclusivity in return for the useful sharing of information. Vigorous enforcement of patents on trivial or useless "inventions", by contingency-fee opportunists, doesn't make them any less trivial and useless. And bundling or accumulating them under shell corporations, the better to leverage them against companies for whom the expected value of a loss at trial (however unlikely) exceeds the price of a settlement, does nothing to better the "market" for IP. It doesn't promote adoption or commercialisation of technology. It doesn't raise capital in support of yet more innovation. It doesn't improve the function of the patent system. It's extortion, pure and simple.
This isn't an abstract, theoretical discussion. It won't be long before Congress, made up of individuals who understand neither the purpose nor the functioning of the US patent system, begins to tinker with it as if it were a tax code with which additional revenues could be extracted and assets could be more equitably redistributed. Trolls cheapen the patent system in a way that makes legislative erosion even more likely. The abuses PTT writes about call the patent monopoly and its proponents into disrepute, and thereby weaken the rights appropriately reserved under other patents to those who really have made a technical contribution to society. As far as I'm concerned, PTT can call the trolls by name. The moneys they've extracted from productive members of society should be enough consolation for them.
Blog on, PTT!
"
A company that would install malware or rootkits on your computer would think nothing of installing bloatware. I hate the "blame the victim" mentality (and I'm not condoning such thinking either) -- however, it's unfortunate that people aren't more discerning about whom they give their hard earned dollars to.
I've said this before on slashdot and I'll just say it again, forgoing all accusations of dispensing flamebait, with the assertion that "I do not buy Sony products anymore". Besides there are plenty of alternatives in the marketplace so it's not like I'm really restricting my options.
I must echo the sentiments of the OP; although my experience has been a bit different. I came from a heavy UNIX/C background, which I enjoyed for many years. I began to experiment with Perl when perl5 was released (must confess I was not a big fan of perl4). One of the aspects of Perl that I always found delightful was the fact that it seemed to literally be a wrapper to C, or at least C-like. Not only does it supports system calls, and similiar C library API functions such as sprintf, et al, but without all the management headaches of C. It has a useful capacity to do extremely complex pattern matching with its NDA regular expression engine. Above all is the massive CPAN code repository that seems to satisfy just about any kind of computing need a developer could imagine.
Since then I have come to the conclusion that (at least for me) Perl can, within reason, satisfy just about any computing requirement I run across in my personal and professional life.
Would the above command make the GNU cat(1) command, or the GNU coreutils package non-GPL compliant? I'm not trolling, just saying that it seems up to the end-user how NDISwrapper is used, although in this case the end user seems to be the kernel.
I confess I'm very likely not comprehending the issue correctly since it doesn't seem possible that it's that simple.
This may be somewhat OT, but eNom are known well in the anti-spam community for being one of the largest registar choices of spammers. They are almost 100% likely to do nothing to discourage spammers from using them as a spammer-safe haven for registrations.
This is further supported by taking a glance at data from the URIBL "Realtime URI" feed for Abused/Abusive Registrars. A glance at their website shows they rank second out of 250 registrars for hosting blacklisted domains.
Dempsey explains that, in order to successfully fight cyber crime, law enforcement officials need to move much faster than average investigators and cooperate with international law:
I call for a second FBI.
Google mail is loved by spammers since gmail does not embed within the SMTP headers any tracking information about the physical client browser's IP address. Hotmail and Yahoo!, with all of their other problems do however by adding X-Originating-Host tags, etc.
By breaking the CAPTCHA the spammers are basically creating the biggest SMTP IP address laundering system available on the net today. Who in their right mind is going to block gmail with the exception of domains that receive small amounts of personal email traffic and temporary IP address repudiation scoring systems like spamcop?
I for one welcome our conference-room-encroaching net-neutrality-astroturfing chair-sleeping overlords.
Just a good thing Ballmer wasn't there, they wouldn't have been any chairs for THEM to sit on!
First thing we need to do is require people to pay a license in order to use a compiler, in the same way contractors are licensed! Then we need to pass legislation prohibiting the authorship of software that is given away for nothing!
Then we can get rid of those pesky amendments to the Constitution!
*blinks*
(troll is over, go home)
Their company, their rules. If you find this objectionable (and, certainly I do) then stop doing business on or with eBay.
I've noticed my Palm Treo 700 is a lot tougher looking than one would think. I've dropped it on concrete about 10 times and it still works fine. It once even fell out of my truck onto the road while I was driving. The battery compartment flew out and the stylus and blank filler card were ejected but after putting it back together it was fine.
I'm almost willing to believe these things would stop a bullet.
Oh PLEASE! I have ZERO sympathy for any loser that has stayed with SCO this long. In fact, in the history of IT I can't think of any group of employees that deserve to be laid off more.
Anyone who has continued with SCO after all these years of FUD, lies and litigation deserves nothing but heartache. In addition I *highly* recommend they avoid applying where I work, if I see SCO on a resume that continues past 2003 they can take a hike.
In my view they were complacent in a lie. Besides that the writing was on the wall long ago so they shouldn't be shocked that they're out of work.
..how can you say they did a good job of it, when the email in question was not spam?
Point taken, I meant overall a good job for being good net neighbors. Agreed that their system might have some problems, but keep in mind that e-mail is not really considered a realiable medium for important communications. It is, at its own definition a "best effort" delivery mechanism.
You know, I'm getting sick of the prevailing attitude that ISPs and other "institutions" should limit legitimate activities with a technology and filter everybody's behaviour because some customers are bad apples (either intentially or through ignorance).
In principle I agree, except they're not trying to limit legitimate activity but the illegitimate. In this case malware infected computers sending out massive amounts of garbage isn't filtering behavior of a person, but automated abuse. Perhaps as an technological perspectiven this isn't the best way to go about doing it, but from a social perspective I have no issue with it. This isn't about the good customers v. the bad ones, but technical limitations on traffic that exist out of sheer pragmatism. Sorry, I don't see anything wrong with that.
What am I saying? We live in a moddle-coddled world where nobody takes responsibility for they're own actions but instead focuses on fretting and controlling everybody else's actions.
Actually, you are enforcing my point, not conflicting it. That's exactly what Cox is doing, taking responsibility over their servers and their traffic. Their system is imperfect but better than an open sewer pipe going directly to the public lake (if you'll excuse the metaphor). If you want a system that is unchecked I guess you'll have to setup your server in Russia or China.
I would like to first state that I am a Cox cable internet subscriber in the Phoenix area. I also happen to wear the abuse desk hat for Arizona's oldest ISPs.
:)
I can say without question that the amount of spam we get from cox is almost NIL. I constantly see spam coming out of Comscat's network, also Verizon and from time to time Time Warner but RARELY Cox. In fact I can't remember the last spam I received that originated from their network.
I don't mind that my egress SMTP port is blocked forcing me to use a MSA (mine is configured to use SMTP AUTH with TLS, which works nicely). The fact is that Cox has their act together in my opinion. The fact that they are a white hat in the abuse category makes me want to continue doing business with them. I don't think what you're seeing here is intentional censorship. It would actually be irresponsible for Cox not to filter outbound mail traffic, since they are bound to have customers that run malware infected / zombied host computers.
Anyway, I say "good job Cox"
P.S. I work for an ISP that is NOT Cox--which one might think after reading my glowing statements (in fact we compete against Cox)
I'm not Filipino, but I've been there a couple times and there are some reasons I can think of which make it a good place to house a data center:
;-) Of course they love Linux all over asia, but a lot of Philippines businesses are warming up to Linux. Also, they love everything about American culture there so it would be a fun place to work.
1) Filipinos speak impecibly good English with little or no accent. I have no issue understanding them.
2) Philippines is a very westernized place; it would be easy for a western-based company to work or conduct business there.
3) They love Linux in the Philippines
Mind you, not just the Free Software Foundation, but the likes of the FSF as well? Well, what is the Free Software Foundation about? Freedom in software. So I guess what they're saying is "those that espouse the ideas of Freedom in software confounded our ISO vote". That is, as far as I can see it, actually a correct statement, as well as a tenable one.
Not trolling, but I think MAME and MESS are the best gaming platform via emulation :-)
http://mamedev.org/
http://mess.org/
If the true goal of a computer program for a school is to ready its students for the workplace, then is linux really the best method of doing so? Isn't the school in some way doing its students a dis-service my training them on a computing method that they will very likely never use again?
Your question is quite valid, and worth consideration. However, the inverse could also possibly be true, and one of the core disputes I have with community colleges and many high schools of today, that being:
How much are we teaching the IT leaders of tomorrow about computer science and technology by making them Windows centric end-users? I fear sometimes that all of the Visual Basic and Java is going to create a layer of abstraction over basic computer science comprehension (this has, of course also been discussed on slashdot).
I think the answer is simple -- don't teach platform specific technology, or cover a few of them.
Give a well rounded education but most importantly cover the computer science concepts.
I hate to steal karma, but there's a comment on PTT's blog that was so insightful that I felt it serves as useful food for thought. It was a comment left last thursday by one using the pen name "ipreactionary", all credit goes to him:
[http://trolltracker.blogspot.com/2008/01/j-carl-cooper-and-technology-licensing.html]:
"As a practicing patent attorney with a large corporation, I can see why PTT and other commentators might want not to divulge their name. His anonymity works for me, because the subject of our interest shouldn't be who PTT is, but rather whether the US patent system is functioning effectively and fairly. And PTT's remarks on patent predators aren't any less germane because the sharks are identified by name, and he/she isn't. Forget that it's Niro (or Acacia, or whoever) that PTT comments on, and focus on the fact that they and others are manipulating an imperfect system to the detriment of both the system and its participants.
BTW, there are those who might defend the abuses written of here as nothing more than "arbitrage". I don't agree. Arbitrage smooths out market irregularities caused by assymetrical information or unbalanced supply and demand. It is ethical, and even helpful, where a market is efficient and the market rules are clear and fairly enforced. The swamp of legal, political, technical and economic uncertainties that trolls are rooting around in (and helping muddy up) is more like an armed prospectors' land-grab than what the patent system set out to be: A reward of exclusivity in return for the useful sharing of information. Vigorous enforcement of patents on trivial or useless "inventions", by contingency-fee opportunists, doesn't make them any less trivial and useless. And bundling or accumulating them under shell corporations, the better to leverage them against companies for whom the expected value of a loss at trial (however unlikely) exceeds the price of a settlement, does nothing to better the "market" for IP. It doesn't promote adoption or commercialisation of technology. It doesn't raise capital in support of yet more innovation. It doesn't improve the function of the patent system. It's extortion, pure and simple.
This isn't an abstract, theoretical discussion. It won't be long before Congress, made up of individuals who understand neither the purpose nor the functioning of the US patent system, begins to tinker with it as if it were a tax code with which additional revenues could be extracted and assets could be more equitably redistributed. Trolls cheapen the patent system in a way that makes legislative erosion even more likely. The abuses PTT writes about call the patent monopoly and its proponents into disrepute, and thereby weaken the rights appropriately reserved under other patents to those who really have made a technical contribution to society. As far as I'm concerned, PTT can call the trolls by name. The moneys they've extracted from productive members of society should be enough consolation for them.
Blog on, PTT!
"