The entire tuition bill is essentially doing what you point out. They set a sticker price they expect only a few % that can afford it to pay; to the rest they give it based on the color of your skin and other factors.
>> Even if colleges hold their total expenditures to the rate of inflation, state support has been declining dramatically over the past decades. As a consequences students are picking up a greater share of the total expenditures through tuition. Clearly that will result in tuition rising at a rate faster than inflation.
It isn't necessarily clear that this must result in tuition rising faster than inflation. The rise in tuition happens for the same fundamental reason the rise in any price does -- supply and demand. Too many subsidies on the demand side in the form of loans and whatnot result in schools being able to charge higher prices So the more dollars out there chasing diplomas, the more prices will rise. Cut back on loans (or otherwise curtail the flow of dollars to colleges) and the prices will go down.
It is indeed very simple. If the government gave a subsidy of $100 to buy a car, guess now much the cost of a car would rise. There are always unintended consequences when Gov't starts meddeling. Home price bubble was from making loan interest tax deductible and keeping interest rates very low; similar thing going on in student loan arena -- stop throwing money at the colleges and the price will then stabilize and go down. *wherever* government meddles to stimulate the demand side, the prices rise. This is econ 101.
Seems it should be pretty simple to just quote where Socrates says "profits are bad"... you're the one asserting it; you carry the burden of proof. The fact is he's never said such a silly thing, and if it takes him 900 pages to say what you think he's saying, you're over-simplifying what he's saying by several orders of magnitude.
Whether the patent system is a net detriment or benefit to society is an interesting debate -- hard to prove either way. At best anybody that looks at it should admit the question is complicated. Anybody that talks in such sweeping terms as you is not thinking.
FYI, Friedman, you know, the guy you are name dropping, supported the idea of patents, but thought they diverted R&D to the realm of the practical machines and away from other types of inventions that could be just as beneficial to mankind. In "Capitalism and Freedom" he references the notion of the supermarket -- no protection for that innovation, but a great service to man. You really should read him if you're going to name drop!
You're the one that's saying Socrates says profits are bad -- if he says it "very clearly" certainly you can easily provide such text to back up your assertion. Please provide.
Do you think any pharma company would develop a new drug without a patent system in place? There are obviously downsides to the patent system, but anybody who just critiques it's downsides without appreciating its upsides is just whining and short-sighted.
You aren't seeing the enormous benefit *your* life has had based on the systems you now seem to be advocating for dismantling of.
I think you agree with me. Unless you can define what a BM patent is, you can't really regulate it. The best def. for BM patents I've heard is they are the ones you're being sued on that you really really hate.
Socrates never says profits are bad, that is you saying that. If you actually read the passage above that you quote, you'd see Socrates is arguing for an incentives system to encourage the artisan to produce... one such incentives system is the pursuit of profits and all of its benefits. In econ 101 you learn that it is competition that drives down profits, and monopolies are discouraged because they harm competition (they are not going after profits... they are going after anti-compeititive activity). There are companies that make money hand over fist because they innovate and you pay for their goods what you think they're worth -- think Apple right now. In the computer biz, there is a ton of competition, yet they make money, and that spurs further investment, and thus further innovation. It is a system that's given us more progress and innovation *in our lifetimes* than all of human history combined. Think about that before you just rattle off silliness. There would be no "Senior System Engineer/Architect" position that you hold without the lure of profit driving innovation.
Your perspective strikes me as deeply naive -- almost to the point that it isn't worth responding to, but I guess I've already started typing. What kind of a fool would say "profits are bad"? Profits are neither good nor bad, obviously.......... You do know that just about every pharmaceutical / computer / technology you rely on has been pursued for the sake of profit. You should read Wealth of Nations.
This is very narrow minded. There's a reason the vast majority of every software company doing cool things is in the USA, which has protection for software innovations. If a new algorithm is novel and unobvious, why should it not be protectable?
the vast majority of patents that "trolls" use to sue companies are not "business methods" -- I know everybody loves to hate business methods but the fact is nobody knows what a business method is, except in the most extreme cases (and such cases are very rare). Recent legislation did away with some kinds of things that might be called business methods (tax strategies being one). This is a fundamental problem -- most that bitch about business methods never define what they're talking about.
Bitcoins won't fail due to a bubble. Maybe not even a hack. They will fail for basically the same reason any fledgling currency of any new country fails: instability. And you're seeing it now -- a pizza that cost once 10k bitcoins now costs 1/15th of one. These are MASSIVE stability swings. There is no stability. The buying power of a bitcoin is, and as far as I can tell, will always be, subject to huge swings. Why? Because there is no mechanism by which supply can ever be calibrated to demand. There are a max of 21MM coins -- that's it, can't expand, ever. Bitcoins will always be a type of speculation / bet -- which is interesting, to be sure, but fails the test for a good digital currency because a fundamental tenant of a good currency, a desirable currency, is it has relatively stable buying power.
But it is fascinating to watch. Bitcoin 1.0 just fundamentally lacks any design considration for price stability, that coupled with an artificially set 21MM total bitcoins, and it is like instability is actually baked into the design.
Bitcoin 2.0 should have a mechanism to improve price stability -- this is no trivial task, however, and if there are any econ folks out there I'd love to hear any ideas on this point. Would require approx equaling supply and demand, but evening knowing when you've done this is tricky.
>> The problem is that Bitcoins have very little intrinsic value. The value of national currencies is based on the stability ogf the government backing it, ultimately reflecting the currency's use for paying taxes and other government charges.
There is no intrinsic value to any fiat currency (except maybe as a fuel to burn). The value of national currencies is NOT based on the stability of the government, it is based on supply and demand for the unit of currency. People want dollars because they are rare, simple as that. Gov't reputation can screw with the stability of the currency by not being dependable on the supply side of the currency, but that is different.
According to your view of the world Picasso's paintings should all cost, oh, about $500 bucks. All 1983 Bordeauxs should cost about $7. All circa 2006 mansions in las vegas built for $1MM (now selling for $500k), should always sell for $1MM. You need to take econ 101. Actually, just about everything in your post is incorrect.
While I don't think full code is all that useful (what if hardware-specific, what compiler, what language, etc. etc. -- if you look @ old patents they have this, and it's really not helpful at all), I do think an actual useful comment/.'ers can make to the USPTO would be to bolster examination of whether the description does include sufficient detail. You could develop that further into an some good feedback... In my 10 years of practice I've *never* seen the USPTO challenge whether there was sufficient disclosure.
>> To look at what you are listing - it has been known since the dawn of computers that a signal does not stick at the two voltages selected in the analog circuit for determining what 0 means and what 1 means - typically ~0.0v and ~0.5v, though some use ~0.0v and ~0.33v too.
I think you're focusing on the layman's explanation rather than the claims. Look @ the claims instead... they have survived a first challenge on prior art grounds. It is not as simple as you're suggesting b/c it would be invalid due to prior art.
The Bilski-like patents are the "bad apples" that cause a lot of bad will towards software-type patents (and so-called business method patents). The two should not be lumped together in my mind. There are hugely innovative, wonderful things being done in software, and socially we'd be silly to disincentivize this part -- the largest company in the world is... a computer company... I just don't understand how/.'ers can all just assume the system is broken when they've probably all benefited from it (strong job market, for example).
>> Is Europe such a wasteland of software innovation? I don't uncritically accept that proposition. How do you measure that?
Totally anecdotal on my part. I'm looking at my own desktop, the only software from Europe is Avira. What large, innovative software companies can you name (without resorting to Google) that are from western Europe? I'm sure there's a couple... NOTHING like the huge numbers you see in the USA.
>> I also don't buy the idea that excluding others is the way to profit.
That's not really it -- close, but not it. Consider if you had $100MM and wanted to invest, and you had two scenarios. (1) Company ABC that has 50 patents filed on its core algorithms, 10 granted patents. Some will surely be invalid when issued just because, well, the USPTO is still working on quality in examing the software arts... not a perfect art by any means. But some will be valid. Won't be perfect. (2) Company XYZ, identical product offering to company ABC, but has no patents because all of the developers apparently subscribe to the Slashdot notion that all patents are bad;). The product offering of both companies is quite innovative, but reality as it is, other smart companies could get within 99% of what they're doing by analyzing their product, within about 6 months and with modest investment of about $100k.
Questions: (1) Which would you, as an investor, be more interested in? (2) Which would you, as a developer interested in having a job, be more interested in? (4) Which do you think would be worth more money? Have more profit potential? (5) Which company would have more interest in further developing the product (knowing it can be reverse engineered w/ modest expenditure)?
To 99% of the/.'ers who out of hand dismiss all patents on software, if they answer this honestly, they'll see they're just silly.
Patents are a mixed bag -- they are hugely beneficial to some, but without question they have a social cost. The question is, though, how to encourage innovation? USA has strong patent rights, and the most innovative companies and labs, as a whole, than any other country in the world. As an experiment, USA tech. is a huge success. I think patent rights has a lot to do w/ that, and the scenario above plays out thousands of times / week everywhere in the world... a lot of places outside the US, however, the ABC co. is the norm -- difficult to attract investors!
>> The software that enables all the wonderful things you describe was built by or directly on all of the advancements made without the supposed benefits of software patents.
This is one theory, but let's explore it a bit further. Obviously it is difficult to prove one way or another. Certainly there must be a population of software innovations that would exist even without the patent system. But there's probably another group that wouldn't exist, also. If you were a software company sitting on a new compression algorithm that will change the delivery of video content, would you be more inclined to invest further in the technology knowing you had some patents on it? It's not too hard to conclude that certainly you would... there are countless other examples that happen every day of companies allocating resources to software development *because* they know if the ideas are novel and unobvious, they might be protected. Investment is what drives a lot of the innovation. Ask Google, which started with a Stanford patent.
So, what you're really likely saying is the universe of innovation that happens *because* of the patent system does not outweigh the innovation that would happen anyway or the innovation that is stifled. This is an interesting argument, but not at all unique to software inventions. If we as a society are to protect innovative ideas, that these ideas are embodied in software should not exclude them (in my mind, anyway).
Or, one could ask if there is a positive correlation between those countries having strong software protection laws and the number of people employed by the software industry. What you'd find is there is a very high correlation, I think. Places like Europe, where software innovations are difficult to protect, hare a desert wasteland of software innovation. Sure, a rouge developer might do something cool now and then, but the vast majority of companies are only going to invest in a technology if they know they can monetize it, and this usually means by excluding others. Highly difficult in Europe; Not so difficult in USA.
I'm not sure what you mean by a "good" software patent. There's obviously been a number of software patents that have been upheld by the Federal Circuit as being valid and infringed. There are others that are close calls. The claim below was just ruled valid and infringed at a lower court... (Carnegie Mellon v. Marvel). Why should the underlying invention there not be subject to protection if it if novel and unobvious?
(from PatentlyO.com):
The asserted patent claims are basically signal processing logic algorithms for determining the value of items coming from a computer memory signal. This is necessary because the "0" and "1" that we normally talk about for binary digital signals is not actually accurate. In particular, the invention indicates that you should apply a "signal dependent" function to calculate the value as a way to overcome noise in the signal. Apparently a key distinguishing factor from the prior art is that the decoding functions used are "selected from a set of signal-dependent functions." The asserted claims do not identify the particular functions used, only that functions are used.
The two infringing claims are as follows:
Claim 4 of US Patent 6,201,839:
A method of determining branch metric values for branches of a trellis for a Viterbi-like detector, comprising:
selecting a branch metric function for each of the branches at a certain time index from a set of signal-dependent branch metric functions; and applying each of said selected functions to a plurality of signal samples to determine the metric value corresponding to the branch for which the applied branch metric function was selected, wherein each sample corresponds to a different sampling time instant.
You are incorrect, sir. You do not need to release the source code. This was true back in like the 1980s (or common practice then, anyway). Nobody release code for their software patents these days b/c it is simply not required. You must describe the general algorithm in sufficient detail to enable one of ordinary skill in the art, without undue experimentation.... this is a far cry from source code.
Most of the comments here echo a prevailing view of most software developers: just ban software patents. A lot of rhetoric, not much in the way of thoughtful analysis.
Consider this: In a few milliseconds, you can search just about every web page that exists in the world, while driving your 55 mpg vehicle to get a magnetic imaging scan @ the hospital, and while waiting there you can use your iPhone to call any other person having a cell phone, in the whole world. All brought to you by innovative software...
But those on these boards don't seem to recognize this -- I think it's a case of a few bad patents spoiling the bunch, frankly. It would be nice to at least have the haters concede some of the good points of software patents. If one can think of none, then the intellectual blinders are on, because without question it is a mixed bag -- there is good, and there is bad that comes w/ time-limited monopolies. A better discussion would focus on the pros and cons and the balance.
Also: is it merely coincidence that the most innovative software companies set up shop in countries where there is the most protection available for software innovations? How many tier 1 software companies exist where there's no protection? (I'm sure there are a few, but the VAST majority of tier 1 software companies are in the USA -- think Google, Apple, MS, Adobe, etc. etc. etc.).
Slashdot Mirror
Since when did running to the bathroom after every opponent's chess move get considered unusual behavior?
The entire tuition bill is essentially doing what you point out. They set a sticker price they expect only a few % that can afford it to pay; to the rest they give it based on the color of your skin and other factors.
>> Even if colleges hold their total expenditures to the rate of inflation, state support has been declining dramatically over the past decades. As a consequences students are picking up a greater share of the total expenditures through tuition. Clearly that will result in tuition rising at a rate faster than inflation.
It isn't necessarily clear that this must result in tuition rising faster than inflation. The rise in tuition happens for the same fundamental reason the rise in any price does -- supply and demand. Too many subsidies on the demand side in the form of loans and whatnot result in schools being able to charge higher prices So the more dollars out there chasing diplomas, the more prices will rise. Cut back on loans (or otherwise curtail the flow of dollars to colleges) and the prices will go down.
... only if the wife had shaving habits picked up from the USA.
It is indeed very simple. If the government gave a subsidy of $100 to buy a car, guess now much the cost of a car would rise. There are always unintended consequences when Gov't starts meddeling. Home price bubble was from making loan interest tax deductible and keeping interest rates very low; similar thing going on in student loan arena -- stop throwing money at the colleges and the price will then stabilize and go down. *wherever* government meddles to stimulate the demand side, the prices rise. This is econ 101.
Seems it should be pretty simple to just quote where Socrates says "profits are bad"... you're the one asserting it; you carry the burden of proof. The fact is he's never said such a silly thing, and if it takes him 900 pages to say what you think he's saying, you're over-simplifying what he's saying by several orders of magnitude.
Whether the patent system is a net detriment or benefit to society is an interesting debate -- hard to prove either way. At best anybody that looks at it should admit the question is complicated. Anybody that talks in such sweeping terms as you is not thinking.
FYI, Friedman, you know, the guy you are name dropping, supported the idea of patents, but thought they diverted R&D to the realm of the practical machines and away from other types of inventions that could be just as beneficial to mankind. In "Capitalism and Freedom" he references the notion of the supermarket -- no protection for that innovation, but a great service to man. You really should read him if you're going to name drop!
You're the one that's saying Socrates says profits are bad -- if he says it "very clearly" certainly you can easily provide such text to back up your assertion. Please provide.
Do you think any pharma company would develop a new drug without a patent system in place? There are obviously downsides to the patent system, but anybody who just critiques it's downsides without appreciating its upsides is just whining and short-sighted.
You aren't seeing the enormous benefit *your* life has had based on the systems you now seem to be advocating for dismantling of.
I think you agree with me. Unless you can define what a BM patent is, you can't really regulate it. The best def. for BM patents I've heard is they are the ones you're being sued on that you really really hate.
Socrates never says profits are bad, that is you saying that. If you actually read the passage above that you quote, you'd see Socrates is arguing for an incentives system to encourage the artisan to produce... one such incentives system is the pursuit of profits and all of its benefits. In econ 101 you learn that it is competition that drives down profits, and monopolies are discouraged because they harm competition (they are not going after profits... they are going after anti-compeititive activity). There are companies that make money hand over fist because they innovate and you pay for their goods what you think they're worth -- think Apple right now. In the computer biz, there is a ton of competition, yet they make money, and that spurs further investment, and thus further innovation. It is a system that's given us more progress and innovation *in our lifetimes* than all of human history combined. Think about that before you just rattle off silliness. There would be no "Senior System Engineer/Architect" position that you hold without the lure of profit driving innovation.
Your perspective strikes me as deeply naive -- almost to the point that it isn't worth responding to, but I guess I've already started typing. What kind of a fool would say "profits are bad"? Profits are neither good nor bad, obviously.......... You do know that just about every pharmaceutical / computer / technology you rely on has been pursued for the sake of profit. You should read Wealth of Nations.
This is very narrow minded. There's a reason the vast majority of every software company doing cool things is in the USA, which has protection for software innovations. If a new algorithm is novel and unobvious, why should it not be protectable?
the vast majority of patents that "trolls" use to sue companies are not "business methods" -- I know everybody loves to hate business methods but the fact is nobody knows what a business method is, except in the most extreme cases (and such cases are very rare). Recent legislation did away with some kinds of things that might be called business methods (tax strategies being one). This is a fundamental problem -- most that bitch about business methods never define what they're talking about.
Bitcoins won't fail due to a bubble. Maybe not even a hack. They will fail for basically the same reason any fledgling currency of any new country fails: instability. And you're seeing it now -- a pizza that cost once 10k bitcoins now costs 1/15th of one. These are MASSIVE stability swings. There is no stability. The buying power of a bitcoin is, and as far as I can tell, will always be, subject to huge swings. Why? Because there is no mechanism by which supply can ever be calibrated to demand. There are a max of 21MM coins -- that's it, can't expand, ever. Bitcoins will always be a type of speculation / bet -- which is interesting, to be sure, but fails the test for a good digital currency because a fundamental tenant of a good currency, a desirable currency, is it has relatively stable buying power.
But it is fascinating to watch. Bitcoin 1.0 just fundamentally lacks any design considration for price stability, that coupled with an artificially set 21MM total bitcoins, and it is like instability is actually baked into the design.
Bitcoin 2.0 should have a mechanism to improve price stability -- this is no trivial task, however, and if there are any econ folks out there I'd love to hear any ideas on this point. Would require approx equaling supply and demand, but evening knowing when you've done this is tricky.
>> The problem is that Bitcoins have very little intrinsic value. The value of national currencies is based on the stability ogf the government backing it, ultimately reflecting the currency's use for paying taxes and other government charges.
There is no intrinsic value to any fiat currency (except maybe as a fuel to burn). The value of national currencies is NOT based on the stability of the government, it is based on supply and demand for the unit of currency. People want dollars because they are rare, simple as that. Gov't reputation can screw with the stability of the currency by not being dependable on the supply side of the currency, but that is different.
According to your view of the world Picasso's paintings should all cost, oh, about $500 bucks. All 1983 Bordeauxs should cost about $7. All circa 2006 mansions in las vegas built for $1MM (now selling for $500k), should always sell for $1MM. You need to take econ 101. Actually, just about everything in your post is incorrect.
While I don't think full code is all that useful (what if hardware-specific, what compiler, what language, etc. etc. -- if you look @ old patents they have this, and it's really not helpful at all), I do think an actual useful comment /.'ers can make to the USPTO would be to bolster examination of whether the description does include sufficient detail. You could develop that further into an some good feedback... In my 10 years of practice I've *never* seen the USPTO challenge whether there was sufficient disclosure.
>> To look at what you are listing - it has been known since the dawn of computers that a signal does not stick at the two voltages selected in the analog circuit for determining what 0 means and what 1 means - typically ~0.0v and ~0.5v, though some use ~0.0v and ~0.33v too.
I think you're focusing on the layman's explanation rather than the claims. Look @ the claims instead... they have survived a first challenge on prior art grounds. It is not as simple as you're suggesting b/c it would be invalid due to prior art.
The Bilski-like patents are the "bad apples" that cause a lot of bad will towards software-type patents (and so-called business method patents). The two should not be lumped together in my mind. There are hugely innovative, wonderful things being done in software, and socially we'd be silly to disincentivize this part -- the largest company in the world is ... a computer company... I just don't understand how /.'ers can all just assume the system is broken when they've probably all benefited from it (strong job market, for example).
>> Is Europe such a wasteland of software innovation? I don't uncritically accept that proposition. How do you measure that?
Totally anecdotal on my part. I'm looking at my own desktop, the only software from Europe is Avira. What large, innovative software companies can you name (without resorting to Google) that are from western Europe? I'm sure there's a couple... NOTHING like the huge numbers you see in the USA.
>> I also don't buy the idea that excluding others is the way to profit.
That's not really it -- close, but not it. Consider if you had $100MM and wanted to invest, and you had two scenarios. (1) Company ABC that has 50 patents filed on its core algorithms, 10 granted patents. Some will surely be invalid when issued just because, well, the USPTO is still working on quality in examing the software arts... not a perfect art by any means. But some will be valid. Won't be perfect. (2) Company XYZ, identical product offering to company ABC, but has no patents because all of the developers apparently subscribe to the Slashdot notion that all patents are bad ;). The product offering of both companies is quite innovative, but reality as it is, other smart companies could get within 99% of what they're doing by analyzing their product, within about 6 months and with modest investment of about $100k.
Questions:
(1) Which would you, as an investor, be more interested in?
(2) Which would you, as a developer interested in having a job, be more interested in?
(4) Which do you think would be worth more money? Have more profit potential?
(5) Which company would have more interest in further developing the product (knowing it can be reverse engineered w/ modest expenditure)?
To 99% of the /.'ers who out of hand dismiss all patents on software, if they answer this honestly, they'll see they're just silly.
Patents are a mixed bag -- they are hugely beneficial to some, but without question they have a social cost. The question is, though, how to encourage innovation? USA has strong patent rights, and the most innovative companies and labs, as a whole, than any other country in the world. As an experiment, USA tech. is a huge success. I think patent rights has a lot to do w/ that, and the scenario above plays out thousands of times / week everywhere in the world... a lot of places outside the US, however, the ABC co. is the norm -- difficult to attract investors!
>> The software that enables all the wonderful things you describe was built by or directly on all of the advancements made without the supposed benefits of software patents.
This is one theory, but let's explore it a bit further. Obviously it is difficult to prove one way or another. Certainly there must be a population of software innovations that would exist even without the patent system. But there's probably another group that wouldn't exist, also. If you were a software company sitting on a new compression algorithm that will change the delivery of video content, would you be more inclined to invest further in the technology knowing you had some patents on it? It's not too hard to conclude that certainly you would... there are countless other examples that happen every day of companies allocating resources to software development *because* they know if the ideas are novel and unobvious, they might be protected. Investment is what drives a lot of the innovation. Ask Google, which started with a Stanford patent.
So, what you're really likely saying is the universe of innovation that happens *because* of the patent system does not outweigh the innovation that would happen anyway or the innovation that is stifled. This is an interesting argument, but not at all unique to software inventions. If we as a society are to protect innovative ideas, that these ideas are embodied in software should not exclude them (in my mind, anyway).
Or, one could ask if there is a positive correlation between those countries having strong software protection laws and the number of people employed by the software industry. What you'd find is there is a very high correlation, I think. Places like Europe, where software innovations are difficult to protect, hare a desert wasteland of software innovation. Sure, a rouge developer might do something cool now and then, but the vast majority of companies are only going to invest in a technology if they know they can monetize it, and this usually means by excluding others. Highly difficult in Europe; Not so difficult in USA.
I'm not sure what you mean by a "good" software patent. There's obviously been a number of software patents that have been upheld by the Federal Circuit as being valid and infringed. There are others that are close calls. The claim below was just ruled valid and infringed at a lower court... (Carnegie Mellon v. Marvel). Why should the underlying invention there not be subject to protection if it if novel and unobvious?
(from PatentlyO.com):
The asserted patent claims are basically signal processing logic algorithms for determining the value of items coming from a computer memory signal. This is necessary because the "0" and "1" that we normally talk about for binary digital signals is not actually accurate. In particular, the invention indicates that you should apply a "signal dependent" function to calculate the value as a way to overcome noise in the signal. Apparently a key distinguishing factor from the prior art is that the decoding functions used are "selected from a set of signal-dependent functions." The asserted claims do not identify the particular functions used, only that functions are used.
The two infringing claims are as follows:
Claim 4 of US Patent 6,201,839:
A method of determining branch metric values for branches of a trellis for a Viterbi-like detector, comprising:
selecting a branch metric function for each of the branches at a certain time index from a set of signal-dependent branch metric functions; and applying each of said selected functions to a plurality of signal samples to determine the metric value corresponding to the branch for which the applied branch metric function was selected, wherein each sample corresponds to a different sampling time instant.
Depends, is the novel novel?
You are incorrect, sir. You do not need to release the source code. This was true back in like the 1980s (or common practice then, anyway). Nobody release code for their software patents these days b/c it is simply not required. You must describe the general algorithm in sufficient detail to enable one of ordinary skill in the art, without undue experimentation.... this is a far cry from source code.
If they did this they'd get a lot of unhelpful rhetoric.
Most of the comments here echo a prevailing view of most software developers: just ban software patents. A lot of rhetoric, not much in the way of thoughtful analysis.
Consider this: In a few milliseconds, you can search just about every web page that exists in the world, while driving your 55 mpg vehicle to get a magnetic imaging scan @ the hospital, and while waiting there you can use your iPhone to call any other person having a cell phone, in the whole world. All brought to you by innovative software...
But those on these boards don't seem to recognize this -- I think it's a case of a few bad patents spoiling the bunch, frankly. It would be nice to at least have the haters concede some of the good points of software patents. If one can think of none, then the intellectual blinders are on, because without question it is a mixed bag -- there is good, and there is bad that comes w/ time-limited monopolies. A better discussion would focus on the pros and cons and the balance.
Also: is it merely coincidence that the most innovative software companies set up shop in countries where there is the most protection available for software innovations? How many tier 1 software companies exist where there's no protection? (I'm sure there are a few, but the VAST majority of tier 1 software companies are in the USA -- think Google, Apple, MS, Adobe, etc. etc. etc.).