In terms of job creation, eliminating the patent system altogether would free up innovators faster and allow the copying and reuse of ideas. You know, like the way life does it. Life has been innovating and copying and reusing ideas for a billion years with no apparent problems until humans came along. We have the technology to surmount secrecy through reverse engineering. Large corporations wouldn't be able to sit on their innovations, they'd have to keep running in order to compete. And millions of people who are otherwise idle, would be able to innovate without fear of a troll.
One thing that can help is to lower the barrier to evidence required to challenge a patent. Currently, it's "clear and convincing evidence" for patents that are likely to get invalidated upon re-examination. That should be lowered to "preponderance of evidence" of invalidity so that people can more easily challenge them in court. Being able to challenge them in court would lower the workload in patent office and provide a check on the power of the patent examiner.
Maybe so, but have you read the business news lately? The VC crowd has turned against patents. They think patents are expensive, slow them down and see them as a necessary evil until the laws are changed. Unfortunately, this new law does little to help anything. If patents were meant to encourage innovation, fine, but we're awash in innovation. The problem is, most of the innovations out there can't be put into practice without risk of a lawsuit.
I'd say we're at the point where we can safely eliminate patents and let innovators run with what they got. The first mover advantage works. Just ask McDonalds, Microsoft, Apple, even Google.
In many jurisdictions, a digital copy is just as good as the original. I know because I used to work for a company that used Laserfiche and relied upon those documents for litigation. After the document was scanned, they shredded the original. Now that's pretty confident. The company was in California in case anyone wanted to know.
So what is the evolutionary pressure of vaccines? I'd think it would be rapid evolution of defenses against vaccines by viruses and bacteria.
I really think we're looking at it from the wrong end. The modern immune system has been around for a long time. The human immune system can create billions and billions of different immunoglobulins, each for a particular antigen, and its constantly adapting.
Given the pollution in the air, water, food, and all sorts of electromagnetic radiation, it's hardly a surprise that some diseases are making a comeback. People who get immunized have nothing to worry about, in theory. But what about the superbugs we see just from antibiotics? Could we see the same thing from immunizations in the form of viruses adapting faster than our immune systems?
When it comes to technical knowledge, I agree with you. I've used Bing on occasion to find Microsoft software related questions, but without the same success as with Google. I've even used Bing from within Microsoft's own knowledgebase and *still* find results better from Google than using Microsoft's own tools on their own sites.
Now *that* is a fascinating observation. Seems like there is a clear difference in who the customer is depending the search engine used. Whereas Bing sees the website owner as the customer ($ for clicks), Google sees the searcher as the customer.
No, I don't assume that they will. But their history makes a very strong indicator that they will. They seem more prone to goodwill than the other players, in my opinion.
That could be. But have you ever seen Google sue anyone for patent infringement? I think that Google just didn't want to hold bloody hands with Apple, Microsoft and Oracle.
I've tried Unity and I hated it. I tried Gnome3 on Fedora and I really enjoyed it (it was the easy access to workspaces that did it there). Yes, it takes a little time to figure where things are, but I found it to be quite usable. For now, I'm trying out AriOS where I'm using Gnome 2.x with the dock and I like it. And yes, I'm one of those people who like the wobbly windows and the desktop workspaces rotating on a cube. That's just me and I found something I liked on AriOS.
For me, it's fast enough. Most things I need load in about a second. If I want a new, separate Chrome browser, I press ctrl-n and I get a new browser that I can drag to another desktop. I added some KDE games because I like them.
By no means am I a power user. I'm still learning linux and I've enjoyed every minute of it except for Unity. Unity broke the compiz effects and I wanted them back and I wanted them to work. As much as I like the way that AriOS works, I'm still thinking of going back to Fedora with Gnome 3.
Now some might find faults with Gnome 3 and I could possibly agree with them, but Gnome 3 is still better than Unity. I liked the way the desktops are setup and that I can add desktop space as needed. It was easy to put the icons where I wanted on the dock. And there is a keyboard shortcut for a new terminal if I wanted another one. I must admit that I missed the use of the desktop for icons, but that can be fixed, too.
Maybe I'm missing something here, but I found that there was a lot to like about Gnome 3 on Fedora. The reason I'm on Linux is because of the multitude of choices available to me that I just didn't see in Windows. Compared to Linux, Windows has become boring and that includes Windows 7.
So while I admire Linus for his work and his contributions to Linux and the dialog surrounding Linux, on this one issue, I disagree with him.
You want to know why the current administration is not actively investigating Microsoft? I think the answer can be seen in part from Obama's statements about innovation. When he says he wants to "out-innovate" the world, I think he is speaking from the perspective of a president of an intellectual property exporting nation. By many of his statements, he appears to be a patent hawk. He may see the patent wars as a natural outcome of a free market, rather than a burden on a free market.
It is also worth noting that Obama has tapped many people from the RIAA to work in the DOJ. These actions smack of someone who believes in the power of intellectual property.
Given the current state of patent law, the disposition of the current administration and the emphasis on deficit reduction in policy debates, I hold out little hope for any deep probing of Microsoft over their patent posturing and extortion.
Thanks for clarifying the relationship between commitment and benefit. That relationship is the real power of open source software. I also like how you point out that having a selfish motive in open source software can be a good thing.
Looking back at the Nortel patent purchase, every company involved is an entrenched incumbent that has been around for years. They all see the writing on the wall: they can't compete with free. And I don't mean free as in beer, I mean free as in freedom. Every member of the open handset alliance is free to modify their phone as they see fit and that is the single greatest contributor to their success.
Android has proven that money can be made on the First Mover Advantage alone. Every member of the Nortel patent deal knew this when they started and now they have forgotten all that. Now they run to Mommy government for protection because they don't want to work any harder than they do now. And ever dollar pissed away in litigation is being diverted from R&D.
James Bessen has done numerous studies to show that patents tend to substitute for R&D. I say that patents tend to reduce respect for the customer, too. In his most recent study, "A Generation of Software Patents", Bessen also points out that most firms these days don't patent their work and the companies that do patent are larger firms with the cash to do it. We're talking about big players in the market who've been around for a long time. He also points out that despite the small number of firms that actually patent their work, the risk of litigation has been rising dramatically.
If we cut these patents down then everyone can get back to work, innovating. Unfortunately, that will take years to wind through the courts and Congress would rather court a few really big players for contributions than thousands of little innovating companies.
Do you find the same trend to be true just for hard disks? I've got a couple of Acer laptops and my wife uses hers for hours every day. And every day, the hard drive consistently reads >50 degrees C. I'm concerned that the hard drive will have a shorter life because of this.
Any suggestions as to what I can do? Would an SSD be better?
Based on the arguments in the Daughbert motion posted on Groklaw, I think Oracle will have no choice. Google is taking a pretty good shot at Oracle's expert witness, and based on what I'm reading there, I think Google is likely to prevail in their challenge to the witness.
We might need a little help from the Fully Informed Jury Association. "The people have the right to decide the facts and the law." If the jury believes the law is bad, they can refuse to convict.
The parent has identified the problem pretty well. I've seen articles that referred to Monsanto as the "Microsoft of seeds", with little exaggeration. Once we take the patents away, Monsanto will have to send their kids to college using some other scheme. It's worth noting that a lot of this research can be or is funded by governments suckered into the promise of patented food.
If there is anyone who should be called a terrorist, it's Monsanto and their ilk. Why? Take the farmer who is sued by Monsanto, not for using seed without a license, but for growing plants that were pollinated from patented crops planted upwind. Who's fault is that? Should Monsanto be able to take ownership of an entire crop due to upstream pollen? *That* is legal terrorism of the worst kind. To add insult to injury, Monsanto uses government intervention for protection of their "intellectual property" while blathering about the free market with the other face.
The sad part about this is not the destruction of the experiment, but rather, carrying out these experiments and placing GMO's into the food chain without clear and proper labeling and without popular consent.
I see that at least one lawyer from Cravath, Swain & Moore is representing B&N. Based on how they handled the SCO lawsuit, I would think they know what they're doing. They also have a couple of lawyers from Kenyon & Kenyon, LLC. Kenyon seems pretty adept at defending from patent infringement suits, too. I'd say that B&N has enough legal sense about them to defend themselves well.
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I gotta say, your sig has a *very* interesting link. Thanks.
In terms of job creation, eliminating the patent system altogether would free up innovators faster and allow the copying and reuse of ideas. You know, like the way life does it. Life has been innovating and copying and reusing ideas for a billion years with no apparent problems until humans came along. We have the technology to surmount secrecy through reverse engineering. Large corporations wouldn't be able to sit on their innovations, they'd have to keep running in order to compete. And millions of people who are otherwise idle, would be able to innovate without fear of a troll.
One thing that can help is to lower the barrier to evidence required to challenge a patent. Currently, it's "clear and convincing evidence" for patents that are likely to get invalidated upon re-examination. That should be lowered to "preponderance of evidence" of invalidity so that people can more easily challenge them in court. Being able to challenge them in court would lower the workload in patent office and provide a check on the power of the patent examiner.
Maybe so, but have you read the business news lately? The VC crowd has turned against patents. They think patents are expensive, slow them down and see them as a necessary evil until the laws are changed. Unfortunately, this new law does little to help anything. If patents were meant to encourage innovation, fine, but we're awash in innovation. The problem is, most of the innovations out there can't be put into practice without risk of a lawsuit.
I'd say we're at the point where we can safely eliminate patents and let innovators run with what they got. The first mover advantage works. Just ask McDonalds, Microsoft, Apple, even Google.
In many jurisdictions, a digital copy is just as good as the original. I know because I used to work for a company that used Laserfiche and relied upon those documents for litigation. After the document was scanned, they shredded the original. Now that's pretty confident. The company was in California in case anyone wanted to know.
So what is the evolutionary pressure of vaccines? I'd think it would be rapid evolution of defenses against vaccines by viruses and bacteria.
I really think we're looking at it from the wrong end. The modern immune system has been around for a long time. The human immune system can create billions and billions of different immunoglobulins, each for a particular antigen, and its constantly adapting.
Given the pollution in the air, water, food, and all sorts of electromagnetic radiation, it's hardly a surprise that some diseases are making a comeback. People who get immunized have nothing to worry about, in theory. But what about the superbugs we see just from antibiotics? Could we see the same thing from immunizations in the form of viruses adapting faster than our immune systems?
I think so.
I found this site by accident and I've been hooked for years since. I look forward to seeing your next project, CmdrTaco.
Be well.
When it comes to technical knowledge, I agree with you. I've used Bing on occasion to find Microsoft software related questions, but without the same success as with Google. I've even used Bing from within Microsoft's own knowledgebase and *still* find results better from Google than using Microsoft's own tools on their own sites.
Now *that* is a fascinating observation. Seems like there is a clear difference in who the customer is depending the search engine used. Whereas Bing sees the website owner as the customer ($ for clicks), Google sees the searcher as the customer.
Actually, China buys our bonds to keep the dollar strong. See http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2009/mar/30/us-economy-china-debt. That would bankrupt a lot of people who depend on "free trade" with China to maintain their wealth and their profits.
No, I don't assume that they will. But their history makes a very strong indicator that they will. They seem more prone to goodwill than the other players, in my opinion.
That could be. But have you ever seen Google sue anyone for patent infringement? I think that Google just didn't want to hold bloody hands with Apple, Microsoft and Oracle.
I've tried Unity and I hated it. I tried Gnome3 on Fedora and I really enjoyed it (it was the easy access to workspaces that did it there). Yes, it takes a little time to figure where things are, but I found it to be quite usable. For now, I'm trying out AriOS where I'm using Gnome 2.x with the dock and I like it. And yes, I'm one of those people who like the wobbly windows and the desktop workspaces rotating on a cube. That's just me and I found something I liked on AriOS.
For me, it's fast enough. Most things I need load in about a second. If I want a new, separate Chrome browser, I press ctrl-n and I get a new browser that I can drag to another desktop. I added some KDE games because I like them.
By no means am I a power user. I'm still learning linux and I've enjoyed every minute of it except for Unity. Unity broke the compiz effects and I wanted them back and I wanted them to work. As much as I like the way that AriOS works, I'm still thinking of going back to Fedora with Gnome 3.
Now some might find faults with Gnome 3 and I could possibly agree with them, but Gnome 3 is still better than Unity. I liked the way the desktops are setup and that I can add desktop space as needed. It was easy to put the icons where I wanted on the dock. And there is a keyboard shortcut for a new terminal if I wanted another one. I must admit that I missed the use of the desktop for icons, but that can be fixed, too.
Maybe I'm missing something here, but I found that there was a lot to like about Gnome 3 on Fedora. The reason I'm on Linux is because of the multitude of choices available to me that I just didn't see in Windows. Compared to Linux, Windows has become boring and that includes Windows 7.
So while I admire Linus for his work and his contributions to Linux and the dialog surrounding Linux, on this one issue, I disagree with him.
Thank you for pointing that out about laptop drives. I have one at home burning it up at over 50C.
You want to know why the current administration is not actively investigating Microsoft? I think the answer can be seen in part from Obama's statements about innovation. When he says he wants to "out-innovate" the world, I think he is speaking from the perspective of a president of an intellectual property exporting nation. By many of his statements, he appears to be a patent hawk. He may see the patent wars as a natural outcome of a free market, rather than a burden on a free market.
It is also worth noting that Obama has tapped many people from the RIAA to work in the DOJ. These actions smack of someone who believes in the power of intellectual property.
Given the current state of patent law, the disposition of the current administration and the emphasis on deficit reduction in policy debates, I hold out little hope for any deep probing of Microsoft over their patent posturing and extortion.
Thanks for clarifying the relationship between commitment and benefit. That relationship is the real power of open source software. I also like how you point out that having a selfish motive in open source software can be a good thing.
Looking back at the Nortel patent purchase, every company involved is an entrenched incumbent that has been around for years. They all see the writing on the wall: they can't compete with free. And I don't mean free as in beer, I mean free as in freedom. Every member of the open handset alliance is free to modify their phone as they see fit and that is the single greatest contributor to their success.
Android has proven that money can be made on the First Mover Advantage alone. Every member of the Nortel patent deal knew this when they started and now they have forgotten all that. Now they run to Mommy government for protection because they don't want to work any harder than they do now. And ever dollar pissed away in litigation is being diverted from R&D.
James Bessen has done numerous studies to show that patents tend to substitute for R&D. I say that patents tend to reduce respect for the customer, too. In his most recent study, "A Generation of Software Patents", Bessen also points out that most firms these days don't patent their work and the companies that do patent are larger firms with the cash to do it. We're talking about big players in the market who've been around for a long time. He also points out that despite the small number of firms that actually patent their work, the risk of litigation has been rising dramatically.
If we cut these patents down then everyone can get back to work, innovating. Unfortunately, that will take years to wind through the courts and Congress would rather court a few really big players for contributions than thousands of little innovating companies.
Ok, thanks for the tips.
Actually, I want to know more. I've been shopping distros and so far, have been working with Fedora for my laptops. Which one do you like so far?
No flames here. Only curiosity.
Do you find the same trend to be true just for hard disks? I've got a couple of Acer laptops and my wife uses hers for hours every day. And every day, the hard drive consistently reads >50 degrees C. I'm concerned that the hard drive will have a shorter life because of this.
Any suggestions as to what I can do? Would an SSD be better?
Thanks.
Based on the arguments in the Daughbert motion posted on Groklaw, I think Oracle will have no choice. Google is taking a pretty good shot at Oracle's expert witness, and based on what I'm reading there, I think Google is likely to prevail in their challenge to the witness.
I should hope so.
We might need a little help from the Fully Informed Jury Association. "The people have the right to decide the facts and the law." If the jury believes the law is bad, they can refuse to convict.
The parent has identified the problem pretty well. I've seen articles that referred to Monsanto as the "Microsoft of seeds", with little exaggeration. Once we take the patents away, Monsanto will have to send their kids to college using some other scheme. It's worth noting that a lot of this research can be or is funded by governments suckered into the promise of patented food.
If there is anyone who should be called a terrorist, it's Monsanto and their ilk. Why? Take the farmer who is sued by Monsanto, not for using seed without a license, but for growing plants that were pollinated from patented crops planted upwind. Who's fault is that? Should Monsanto be able to take ownership of an entire crop due to upstream pollen? *That* is legal terrorism of the worst kind. To add insult to injury, Monsanto uses government intervention for protection of their "intellectual property" while blathering about the free market with the other face.
The sad part about this is not the destruction of the experiment, but rather, carrying out these experiments and placing GMO's into the food chain without clear and proper labeling and without popular consent.
I see that at least one lawyer from Cravath, Swain & Moore is representing B&N. Based on how they handled the SCO lawsuit, I would think they know what they're doing. They also have a couple of lawyers from Kenyon & Kenyon, LLC. Kenyon seems pretty adept at defending from patent infringement suits, too. I'd say that B&N has enough legal sense about them to defend themselves well.