Patent owners are given a temporary monopoly in exchange for society at large getting to use (and, more importantly, build on) the patented thing after the monopoly period ends.
That sounds like a fair exchange to me. It's certainly better than the situation that patents are intended to fix: everybody keeping their inventions a secret, preventing society as a whole from benefiting from them.
Now, I'm speaking of the principle behind patents. Patent law as it currently exists in the US is an abomination: things are patented that shouldn't be, patent terms are often too long, etc. But that stuff is a failure of implementation, not a failure of the concept.
instead of finding some "outrage" over something that has nothing to do with anyone, we go back to minding our own business.
I'm not outraged -- this is pretty much standard big business misbehavior. But it deserves to be called out. But I disagree that this sort of thing has nothing to do with anyone but the company and the water source itself. I think that this sort of issue affects us all. It's not even new -- this has been an ongoing problem for a long time.
True -- that's why I said "designer water". In most places that I've been, you can buy filtered water in gallon (or larger) jugs. In my area, a gallon of this costs less than a dollar. From a health and safety point of view -- as well as ecological -- these are better than designer water.
In most areas of the US, the water coming out of the tap is safer than anything coming in a bottle. But if you don't trust the tap water (or don't like its taste -- there are a lot of areas of the country where the water is safe, but doesn't exactly taste or smell good), then a water filter is the way to go. Even one of those pitcher-style ones work well, and they aren't that expensive.
I'll blame the lawmakers and the companies. Just because something is legal doesn't mean it's right, and when someone engages in legal behavior that is wrong, they shouldn't get off the hook just because they didn't break the law.
I hate the idea that a single corporation holds patents covering 99% of open source software. That's an extremely precarious position to be in. It means we not only have to trust the company to be well-behaved, but we have to trust that any future owners of the company or the patent hoard have to be well-behaved.
In other words, it adds quite a lot of uncertainty to working with open source software.
Refusing to use defense patents does not cause patent law to change
True, I didn't claim otherwise. But it does perpetuate patent abuse (since it's a kind of patent abuse in and of itself, in my opinion).
Aside from that, the danger of defensive patents is that those patents are very likely, sooner or later, to fall into the hands of patent trolls themselves. And the more of them you accumulate, the more likely this will happen.
Patents aren't evil. The abuse of patent law, and the inappropriate granting of patents (for instance, software patents) are evil, but there's nothing wrong with the underlying principle of patents.
I don't have a cover, but I almost always have one or two fingers on the back of my phone when I'm holding it. From my point of view, the back of the phone would be the the most convenient place for a fingerprint scanner.
Perhaps it depends on what you mean by "rich". There is an ideal amount of wealth that increases your odds of happiness. However, if you go above that ideal amount, your odds of happiness decrease. It's essentially a bell curve.
In looking at how the system works and what it's doing, I don't see how it poses a privacy risk to me. It's not (and can't) identify everybody it sees. All it's doing is identifying whether the face it sees is the one that it knows or not.
Listen, I'm extremely privacy-oriented (as demonstrated by the number of times I get called "paranoid" in the comments on/.), and I'm hardly naive. But I just don't see the risk here.
Money might make me happier, but I don't need to be rich.
There is a sweet spot of wealth that will facilitate happiness. It's an amount that is high enough that you don't have to worry about how you're going to put a roof over your head and food on the table, but not so high that it becomes a focus of your life.
Have not enough money or too much money increases the likelihood that you will be unhappy.
What the "correct" amount is depends on where you live.
In the US, if you average across the whole nation (which is stupid because there's too much variation, but still), the perfect level of income works out to be a bit under $100,000/yr
While Uber is abusive and socially dubious corporation
You forgot "criminal".
what came before is even worse.
You'll have to provide support for that assertion. At least in my part of the US, this appears to be untrue.
I'm not saying that traditional cab companies are great or anything -- they tend to be pretty awful. But it sure looks like, at best, Uber is no better.
Before Uber days, cabs would charge you outrageous prices AFTER you arrived.
I don't know about in London, but almost everywhere in the US, cabs have their rates printed on the outside of the cab, so you know what the prices are before you even get in.
Slashdot Mirror
What do you mean by "free"? Do you mean "as in beer"? Because if so, being free is not part of the definition of being "open source".
But most of Red Hat's software is free (as in beer.) They make their money essentially by selling support and guarantees to businesses.
Patent owners are given a temporary monopoly in exchange for society at large getting to use (and, more importantly, build on) the patented thing after the monopoly period ends.
That sounds like a fair exchange to me. It's certainly better than the situation that patents are intended to fix: everybody keeping their inventions a secret, preventing society as a whole from benefiting from them.
Now, I'm speaking of the principle behind patents. Patent law as it currently exists in the US is an abomination: things are patented that shouldn't be, patent terms are often too long, etc. But that stuff is a failure of implementation, not a failure of the concept.
Government, that's who.
Umm, no. Government decides what's legal and illegal. Society decides what's right and wrong.
instead of finding some "outrage" over something that has nothing to do with anyone, we go back to minding our own business.
I'm not outraged -- this is pretty much standard big business misbehavior. But it deserves to be called out. But I disagree that this sort of thing has nothing to do with anyone but the company and the water source itself. I think that this sort of issue affects us all. It's not even new -- this has been an ongoing problem for a long time.
True -- that's why I said "designer water". In most places that I've been, you can buy filtered water in gallon (or larger) jugs. In my area, a gallon of this costs less than a dollar. From a health and safety point of view -- as well as ecological -- these are better than designer water.
In most areas of the US, the water coming out of the tap is safer than anything coming in a bottle. But if you don't trust the tap water (or don't like its taste -- there are a lot of areas of the country where the water is safe, but doesn't exactly taste or smell good), then a water filter is the way to go. Even one of those pitcher-style ones work well, and they aren't that expensive.
So the people doing the terrible things have no responsibility for their terrible actions if government doesn't stop them?
Bullshit.
Pretty much everyone should be aware by now that designer bottled water is an enormous, expensive scam that is harmful in pretty much every respect.
so blame the governments for this.
I'll blame the lawmakers and the companies. Just because something is legal doesn't mean it's right, and when someone engages in legal behavior that is wrong, they shouldn't get off the hook just because they didn't break the law.
I hate the idea that a single corporation holds patents covering 99% of open source software. That's an extremely precarious position to be in. It means we not only have to trust the company to be well-behaved, but we have to trust that any future owners of the company or the patent hoard have to be well-behaved.
In other words, it adds quite a lot of uncertainty to working with open source software.
It's a telephone.
I view and use my smartphone as a highly portable computer that happens to have a phone included, not the other way around.
My bad -- I had assumed that you were defending the iPhone in terms of privacy, since that was the thrust of the comment you replied to.
If the "onboarding" does involve sending your data to Apple, that's pretty harsh and should be called out in these discussions.
Refusing to use defense patents does not cause patent law to change
True, I didn't claim otherwise. But it does perpetuate patent abuse (since it's a kind of patent abuse in and of itself, in my opinion).
Aside from that, the danger of defensive patents is that those patents are very likely, sooner or later, to fall into the hands of patent trolls themselves. And the more of them you accumulate, the more likely this will happen.
I know patents are evil.
Patents aren't evil. The abuse of patent law, and the inappropriate granting of patents (for instance, software patents) are evil, but there's nothing wrong with the underlying principle of patents.
I agree. Red Hat is not entirely evil, but I also wouldn't call them particularly good.
They are pretty much just a company like most others.
"Defensive patents" are a terrible idea that increases the risk of patent abuse in the future and perpetuates the broken nature of the patent system.
I don't have a cover, but I almost always have one or two fingers on the back of my phone when I'm holding it. From my point of view, the back of the phone would be the the most convenient place for a fingerprint scanner.
Different strokes and all that.
Perhaps it depends on what you mean by "rich". There is an ideal amount of wealth that increases your odds of happiness. However, if you go above that ideal amount, your odds of happiness decrease. It's essentially a bell curve.
In looking at how the system works and what it's doing, I don't see how it poses a privacy risk to me. It's not (and can't) identify everybody it sees. All it's doing is identifying whether the face it sees is the one that it knows or not.
Listen, I'm extremely privacy-oriented (as demonstrated by the number of times I get called "paranoid" in the comments on /.), and I'm hardly naive. But I just don't see the risk here.
Money might make me happier, but I don't need to be rich.
There is a sweet spot of wealth that will facilitate happiness. It's an amount that is high enough that you don't have to worry about how you're going to put a roof over your head and food on the table, but not so high that it becomes a focus of your life.
Have not enough money or too much money increases the likelihood that you will be unhappy.
What the "correct" amount is depends on where you live.
In the US, if you average across the whole nation (which is stupid because there's too much variation, but still), the perfect level of income works out to be a bit under $100,000/yr
Because, as a life goal, it's empty and pointless. Worse than that, if achieved, it is likely to make you unhappy.
I find people who have a life goal of "being rich" pitiable.
While Uber is abusive and socially dubious corporation
You forgot "criminal".
what came before is even worse.
You'll have to provide support for that assertion. At least in my part of the US, this appears to be untrue.
I'm not saying that traditional cab companies are great or anything -- they tend to be pretty awful. But it sure looks like, at best, Uber is no better.
Before Uber days, cabs would charge you outrageous prices AFTER you arrived.
I don't know about in London, but almost everywhere in the US, cabs have their rates printed on the outside of the cab, so you know what the prices are before you even get in.
You mean aside from the X being insanely expensive?
I will pay for content when I can access it without use of closed-source executables.
I'll take that even further -- I will (and do) pay for content, but only if it's available in a standard format and without any DRM.