Because it is, which is why so many of us rent tapes/DVDs (although they're putting ads in those now too, the bastards), listen to subscription radio (which they're turning into ads for the CDs, just like the music portion of commercial radio really is, but at least the scope is far greater than top 40. It'll be a cold day in hell before you hear Bizet or Shankar on ClearChannel) and read Consumer Reports (they're holding out, but the downside is that they often lack expertise in the products they're testing and actually give bad advice).
Ok, we're screwed.
We're just product in the pipeline.
I used to work at Sears. One of my jobs there was taking returned and unwanted product, breaking it up, and throwing it in the dumpster. Sound familiar?
The biggest benefit is that you can hand a disk to someone and say, "Here, try Linux." They don't have install 'er nothin', just boot from it.
The next biggest would be that it's an ultra-super rescue disk.
And bit less important, to me at least, but still a virtue, is that you can pop it into any machine, say a friends, one at work, or a clients and run in your prefered enviroment.
My leatherbound volume of the Lord of the Rings Trilogy has to weigh AT LEAST that much.
I just weighed mine (we've all got one, don't we?) and it came up a bit short. 2.33 kg. Call it five pounds. I just straight armed a five pound dumbell and then placed my LOtR on top of it. No problemo.
No one's going to mistake me for Mr. Universe either. My 5'4" (162.5 cm) size 5 (35) wife gave up arm wrestling me because there wasn't enough challenge in it.
I suppose by "many adults" they must mean "at least three."
I certainly hope they dont let the use of underlying systems influence their decisions.
I agree, but I believe the point was that judges are essentially ignorant of Linux and free software in generally, and some greater familiarity will actually allow them to be more impartial.
So far they really only know one side of the "story."
Thanks for the advice, and indeed I've thought of starting the business just for the purpose of licensing the idea.
This is what I meant by starting an "invention business."
I realize my only real hope is partnering with someone and sharing the results (patents, profit, loss?). I just find that unfortunate.
It is unfortunate, but it is what generally has to be done if you're working on an expensive project. Ford had to do it, twice, because the orginal partnership went sour (and ended up being a competitor, Cadillac, which eventually became General Motors), Royce had to do it, The Maserati brothers had to do it, as did the Duesenburg brothers, and they ended up bankrupt anyway when their partner did.
Some things it's just not practical to do single handedly.
What I was suggesting was that you could still sell your patent if you could not make it yourself if you wanted money.
That's what I understood you to mean. It's the very point of my OP. It's the way very many small inventors make their money. They invent. They leave the manufacturing and marketing to manufacturers and marketers.
Then there's Ron Popiel, but he's unusual.
I'm afraid I have no short term solutions for lawyers, and I don't think anyone else does either, although I've heard tell that some think that 500 of them at the bottom of the ocean would at least be a good start.
Tesla's work then shifted to turbines and other projects. Because of a lack of funds, his ideas remained in his notebooks, which are still examined by engineers for unexploited clues.
I'm afraid the idea of inventions remaining in Autocad, even those that could save lives, due to lack of funds is not exactly a unique situation either, even for those established inventors known throughout the world. Changing the patent system won't change that. Eliminating it will simply eliminate virtually all outside funding.
I'm often in the same boat myself. "Small" is a relative term I'm afraid.
I'm also afraid that I really do believe that if you haven't built it it isn't yet an invention. It's just and idea for an invention which is a rather different beastie.
The poor are poor and have the lot of the poor. Always have, always will.
I can only offer a couple bits of advice.
First, go ahead and start a business, an invention business. File the papers, keep books, the works. It'll only take you a few hours and couple hundred bucks, at most, to do so. My last brick and mortar business only cost me ten bucks in government paperwork. It doesn't matter that you don't go after VC, the possible payback down the road is still worth the minimal effort and expense, if only because it will start teaching you the realities of business. Even if all you do is license patents you'll still need that business to do it with, and the experience of business to do it, with because selling patent licenses is a business.
Second, as a small inventor start inventing small things you can afford to produce. A sewing machine attachment. A game controller. Look at all the innovation available at Sears these days in small hand tools, and the money they're making off of it.
It's easy to dream big. Start working small. You start by running the 5k, not the Ironman, which becomes part of your training for the Ironman.
Copyrights would be more of a "take your house and use it as my own" deal, yes?
Well no, not really. That would be plagiarizing. Taking an idea and claiming it as your own.
. ..if you have a really great and original idea, it also seems like you ought to be able to make money off of it without a bunch of copycats stomping you out of business. At least for an appropriate period of time, at least.
Given that the idea is a thing and not just an idea, like one click shopping, sure. Jefferson pretty much got it right right off the bat. He felt that patents and copyrights were wrong, and he may have been right, but putting him in charge of implimentation was the perfect thing to do, because being the sort of egalitarian thinker he was he was able to draft a nearly perfect compromise between freedom of the people and protection for the individual.
He even forsaw that it was going to be corporations that caused all the trouble, not intellectual property itself.
What also made him apropo for the role is that he wasn't an "outsider", he was a prolific inventor himself.
"Nature intended me for the tranquil pursuits of science, by rendering them my supreme delight." - Thomas Jefferson
He allowed free use of his inventions, considering them having been made for the betterment of mankind.
When Benjamin Franklin was informed that someone in England was making copies of his stoves he declared that since he had invented them to improve the lot of the average human the copier was simply doing his work for him.
The patent on the cotten gin was the last patent that Eli Whitney ever filed, although he went on to many other inventions, declaring that some inventions are too valuable to be owned.
I certainly don't think there's anything wrong with inventors making money, I'm an inventor myself, but we have to be very careful about defining "invention" and "appropriate" period of time.
Even if it "costs" me money. I recognize that I'm not the only person in the universe, nor the only person with rights.
While your idea has merit on its face, one of the results would be to force the small, shed in the yard inventor, and yes, they still exist, into the manufacturing business, which might well prove economically impossible, or, force them into being the sort of corporate holder of patents that is causing so much of the trouble.
Beyond repairing the patent granting system the ultimate solution is to eliminate patents on ideas, and to require that one working model can at least be demonstrated.
I don't know why someone didn't think of this system before.
Even so, the modern kind are generally still cool for those seven years.
Well, looks like I'll have to get me a really old one or a really new one then.
I had an old "monitor top" in an apartment about ten years ago, I should have made an offer on it. I probably could have picked it up for a song. Literally. The landlord liked my singing.
It did kinda make the lights go dim a bit when the compressor kicked in though. Cool it was. Efficient it wasn't.
Slashdot Mirror
A club for school age hi tech farmers? Man, that's obscure!
Yeah, that's it. What's even more obscure is that the robot sheep subject I posit coming back to occured in the robot lawnmower thread.
KFG
Sounds just like TV, radio, magazines, ....
Because it is, which is why so many of us rent tapes/DVDs (although they're putting ads in those now too, the bastards), listen to subscription radio (which they're turning into ads for the CDs, just like the music portion of commercial radio really is, but at least the scope is far greater than top 40. It'll be a cold day in hell before you hear Bizet or Shankar on ClearChannel) and read Consumer Reports (they're holding out, but the downside is that they often lack expertise in the products they're testing and actually give bad advice).
Ok, we're screwed.
We're just product in the pipeline.
I used to work at Sears. One of my jobs there was taking returned and unwanted product, breaking it up, and throwing it in the dumpster. Sound familiar?
KFG
The biggest benefit is that you can hand a disk to someone and say, "Here, try Linux." They don't have install 'er nothin', just boot from it.
The next biggest would be that it's an ultra-super rescue disk.
And bit less important, to me at least, but still a virtue, is that you can pop it into any machine, say a friends, one at work, or a clients and run in your prefered enviroment.
KFG
What the hell is wrong with people?
They write dumb shit.
My leatherbound volume of the Lord of the Rings Trilogy has to weigh AT LEAST that much.
I just weighed mine (we've all got one, don't we?) and it came up a bit short. 2.33 kg. Call it five pounds. I just straight armed a five pound dumbell and then placed my LOtR on top of it. No problemo.
No one's going to mistake me for Mr. Universe either. My 5'4" (162.5 cm) size 5 (35) wife gave up arm wrestling me because there wasn't enough challenge in it.
I suppose by "many adults" they must mean "at least three."
KFG
I'll let him build and SELL ones just like it.
Well sure. He built it. It's his. He can do as he likes with it.
He can either try to figure out how to build it by looking at mine, or I'll sell him plans to make it easier on him.
KFG
I certainly hope they dont let the use of underlying systems influence their decisions.
I agree, but I believe the point was that judges are essentially ignorant of Linux and free software in generally, and some greater familiarity will actually allow them to be more impartial.
So far they really only know one side of the "story."
KFG
Now SCO owns the Judicial System..... what next, the Senate? ;)
Nah! Lockheed Martin's got "dibs."
KFG
Thanks for the advice, and indeed I've thought of starting the business just for the purpose of licensing the idea.
This is what I meant by starting an "invention business."
I realize my only real hope is partnering with someone and sharing the results (patents, profit, loss?). I just find that unfortunate.
It is unfortunate, but it is what generally has to be done if you're working on an expensive project. Ford had to do it, twice, because the orginal partnership went sour (and ended up being a competitor, Cadillac, which eventually became General Motors), Royce had to do it, The Maserati brothers had to do it, as did the Duesenburg brothers, and they ended up bankrupt anyway when their partner did.
Some things it's just not practical to do single handedly.
KFG
What I was suggesting was that you could still sell your patent if you could not make it yourself if you wanted money.
That's what I understood you to mean. It's the very point of my OP. It's the way very many small inventors make their money. They invent. They leave the manufacturing and marketing to manufacturers and marketers.
Then there's Ron Popiel, but he's unusual.
I'm afraid I have no short term solutions for lawyers, and I don't think anyone else does either, although I've heard tell that some think that 500 of them at the bottom of the ocean would at least be a good start.
Tesla's work then shifted to turbines and other projects. Because of a lack of funds, his ideas remained in his notebooks, which are still examined by engineers for unexploited clues.
I'm afraid the idea of inventions remaining in Autocad, even those that could save lives, due to lack of funds is not exactly a unique situation either, even for those established inventors known throughout the world. Changing the patent system won't change that. Eliminating it will simply eliminate virtually all outside funding.
KFG
Turn about is fair play. I'll have to check him out.
KFG
You're a Chomsky fan too ?
Q.E.D.
KFG
You sure she didn't jump off rather than listen to you?
Yup. It's actually pretty easy to shut me up. Just put me on an RD400.
KFG
Whether or not you directly pay them do not forget you are still their source of income as their advertisers will pay nothing without you.
However, bear in mind that this makes you their product which they are selling to their customers, the advertisers.
And it's the customer who is always right.
KFG
I don't think I've ever seen you lacking for words.
I have run smack up against Date's Incoherence Principle hard enough that I'm afraid it's going to leave a mark.
KFG
One of the flaws inherent in patenting, as opposed to copyright, is that you can violate a patent even if you didn't copy it.
You're not a songwriter, are you? We live in daily mortal terror of that very thing.
And it is the very crux of my "build your own house" example.
KFG
I'm often in the same boat myself. "Small" is a relative term I'm afraid.
I'm also afraid that I really do believe that if you haven't built it it isn't yet an invention. It's just and idea for an invention which is a rather different beastie.
The poor are poor and have the lot of the poor. Always have, always will.
I can only offer a couple bits of advice.
First, go ahead and start a business, an invention business. File the papers, keep books, the works. It'll only take you a few hours and couple hundred bucks, at most, to do so. My last brick and mortar business only cost me ten bucks in government paperwork. It doesn't matter that you don't go after VC, the possible payback down the road is still worth the minimal effort and expense, if only because it will start teaching you the realities of business. Even if all you do is license patents you'll still need that business to do it with, and the experience of business to do it, with because selling patent licenses is a business.
Second, as a small inventor start inventing small things you can afford to produce. A sewing machine attachment. A game controller. Look at all the innovation available at Sears these days in small hand tools, and the money they're making off of it.
It's easy to dream big. Start working small. You start by running the 5k, not the Ironman, which becomes part of your training for the Ironman.
KFG
Copyrights would be more of a "take your house and use it as my own" deal, yes?
.if you have a really great and original idea, it also seems like you ought to be able to make money off of it without a bunch of copycats stomping you out of business. At least for an appropriate period of time, at least.
Well no, not really. That would be plagiarizing. Taking an idea and claiming it as your own.
. .
Given that the idea is a thing and not just an idea, like one click shopping, sure. Jefferson pretty much got it right right off the bat. He felt that patents and copyrights were wrong, and he may have been right, but putting him in charge of implimentation was the perfect thing to do, because being the sort of egalitarian thinker he was he was able to draft a nearly perfect compromise between freedom of the people and protection for the individual.
He even forsaw that it was going to be corporations that caused all the trouble, not intellectual property itself.
What also made him apropo for the role is that he wasn't an "outsider", he was a prolific inventor himself.
"Nature intended me for the tranquil pursuits of science, by rendering them my supreme delight." - Thomas Jefferson
He allowed free use of his inventions, considering them having been made for the betterment of mankind.
When Benjamin Franklin was informed that someone in England was making copies of his stoves he declared that since he had invented them to improve the lot of the average human the copier was simply doing his work for him.
The patent on the cotten gin was the last patent that Eli Whitney ever filed, although he went on to many other inventions, declaring that some inventions are too valuable to be owned.
I certainly don't think there's anything wrong with inventors making money, I'm an inventor myself, but we have to be very careful about defining "invention" and "appropriate" period of time.
Even if it "costs" me money. I recognize that I'm not the only person in the universe, nor the only person with rights.
KFG
I'm not going to defend patents here.
After taking a few stabs at formulating a reply I find that you have left me with only enough speech to say that I'm speechless.
KFG
While your idea has merit on its face, one of the results would be to force the small, shed in the yard inventor, and yes, they still exist, into the manufacturing business, which might well prove economically impossible, or, force them into being the sort of corporate holder of patents that is causing so much of the trouble.
Beyond repairing the patent granting system the ultimate solution is to eliminate patents on ideas, and to require that one working model can at least be demonstrated.
I don't know why someone didn't think of this system before.
KFG
I actually think your house would make for a good party zone, so me and the boys will be around next Saturday night.
No thank you, but if you'd like to build yourself a house just like it I'd have no particular objections.
KFG
Jello Biafra bio
KFG
name n.
1. A word or words by which an entity is designated and distinguished from others.
I think it would be hard to claim that the words Jello Biafra do not distinguish Eric from others.
KFG
Great - a hippie, a hacker, and a heretic.
Just one "H" short of bringing the discussion back to robot sheep.
KFG
Even so, the modern kind are generally still cool for those seven years.
Well, looks like I'll have to get me a really old one or a really new one then.
I had an old "monitor top" in an apartment about ten years ago, I should have made an offer on it. I probably could have picked it up for a song. Literally. The landlord liked my singing.
It did kinda make the lights go dim a bit when the compressor kicked in though. Cool it was. Efficient it wasn't.
KFG
Oh, wait. I remember posting as an AC not too long ago
Oh, wait. I now remember that the joke was that I "forgot" to hit the Post Anonymously button, so I didn't actually make the post as an AC after all.
KFG