Most good researchers avoid patented areas like the plague.
Geez. Of course they do. Most researchers are trying to do original work. Duh.
The "experimental use exception" you mention is useless
Nah. It's a key provision of patent case law. Established by a Supreme Court decision in 1813 from what I remember.
In addition patent boosters tend to forget that quality research requires the free exchange of ideas. The paperwork and lawyers associated with patents pretty much stops that cold.
Bzzzzrt. Patents require publication. If there were no patents pretty much all research with any commercial value would be kept as trade secret and never published. Patents were instituted for the purpose of encouraging publication. Patents are in fact a contract between the inventor and government in which the inventor get a limited monopoly in exchange for publishing his discovery. The concept that patents hinder technological investment is put to lie by the fact that the institution of the technological patent in Great Britain was immediately followed by a singularity event known as the industrial revolution.
With some honorable exceptions patents are actually a pretty good indication that the research is of little value
Depends on how you judge value. If it's a case of aimless intellectual mumbly-peg being what you consider valuable, sure. If it's a case of the research actually leading to something people can use to improve their lives, then I call bullshit.
I still believe that MySQL is the Access of the OSS dtabases
Perhaps, except that it is n* times better. I've run some pretty intense, badly-written db-abusive e-commerce sites (we are talking $5 million per year in cash flow) using MySQL without problems.
* Footnote: n = number of protons in the universe, around 10^40.
It moves, consumes, grows, reacts to stimuli, and reproduces.
Viruses fail several of these criterea.
Viruses don't reproduce. The mechanism for virus duplication involves the cell replicating the virus. Also viruses do not grow, they remain the same size as they were created for their entire life cycle. Viruses do not consume anything either - they have no metabolic cycle. No ingestion of food or excretion of waste.
There is an experimental use exemption in US patent case law. So long as you don't intend to made money from the work, you can do any R&D you want and be immune from infringement claims.
REAL researchers publish, rather than patent
Have you ever been a researcher? If you had, you would know that just about all researchers file patents before they publish these days. Universities are making so much money from patent licensing that there is no place you can work that doesn't require you patent whatever you can.
Is 'light, crisp, refreshing' taste (I'm looking at a diet Pepsi can here) a novel property?
Maybe, if you can show that it was unexpected or stronger than anticipated (insert your anticipation here) or whatever given the ingredients. And always remember it's ORDINARY skill in the art.
how would you show that it has novel properties (beyond what you would expect a soda to have) and that it was nonobvious to one "skilled in the art?"
When all else failed strawman comparisons with other formulations have generally worked for me when I was going after getting a patent. A big win was always finding some sort of non-linearity. Add 2x as much whatever and find that property X improved 4x. Or adding magic fairy dust, i,e. something in a very small amount that gave a big enhancement.
No. A virus requires a cell to replicate in. A biologist would probably say the cell is the basic unit of life.
No the question is what do you mean as a 'component' of life? All organic compounds? Well, many organics are synthesized in the lab these days. Polyethylene is and organic compound. As is acetic acid, all alcohols, etc.
Clearly 'component' of life is going to be very hard to define.
There are patents for gene sequences, for chrissakes
No, there aren't. Genetic patents cover the gene PLUS some use of the gene.
ssentially is a ban on evolution.
You have no clue.
The bulk of serious research is done in an open environment.
Do you realize what a patent requires you to do? You have to publish your results in order to be granted a patent. Anyone can download your patent and us the results for further reasearch. Without the patent the researcher would have NO incentive to patent.
To the best of my knowledge, the only person known to have successfully learned something from patents was Einstein
Red Herring. In the case cited in your link, Monsanto actually withdrew all charges once they became convinced that the contamination was accidental.
Nobody has been able to show me a case where Monsanto has gone after a farmer after it was shown the contamination was accidental. It just hasn't happened, and is one of those urban legends that the anti-GMO crowd is using, falsely.
Just a minor point, sodas (or any recipes) are not patentable
Wrong. Mixtures certainly are patentable so long as you can show they have novel properties.
Just because something isn't patented doesn't mean it can't be. In the case of Coke patenting the formula would be a dumb move since the duration of patent coverage is only 20 years. After that 20 years anyone could use the same formula. Trade secret protection has no time limit.
What is the proper format for the program main method?
If I was taking that test this question would annoy me greatly since it is so badly expressed. Strictly speaking you don't describe methods as having a 'format' at all, and if they did, proper for what? If you mean for use in invoking an application then you would state the question as something like "what should the main method signature be in the controlling class in order for the application to be succesfully started".
I would actually like to see evidence to support what you say (an actual report on how much it cost to fund the various phases that led to the availability of the final product), otherwise I can only take it as a mere assumption.
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission requires that every company that issues stock publish exactly this data in an annual report. These reports and data from them are avaiable from company web sites, government sites and various financial data sites.
It is not an assumption. The data is freely available in massive amounts for just about every company of significant size.
You need to improve your knowledge of how the economy and companies work. Get to a library.
while the chip it's self was about $0.02 to produce,
Take a course in economics. Production cost is only a very small fraction of the total cost of the chip. You still have the billion dollars in investment it takes to buld the fab plant, the immense R&D costs for the physics behand these things, the costs for sales, marketing, advertising, distribution, administrative costs to run the company and yes dare I say it PROFIT!!! for the stockholders who have sunk their hard-earned 401K money into the company.
Who needs Harvard? A lot of talented people looking for a really good education that they can use as a springboord for a better life. Get real people, life is not measured soley by whether or not you find a CEO job for chrissakes. It's about doig something that you enjoy and making the lives of people around you better in the process.
Slashdot should know better than to publish an article like this. Life is more than getting a fancy title in corporate america. Criminy.
Reading the comments on this article makes me despair. This farmer is not being sued for patent infringement or any other IP law violation. He is being sued for breach of contract. He bought Monsanto seed, planted it then planted the seeds from the resulting crop. He also agreed to a CONTRACT with Monsanto that he would not do this. It is not a case of wind-blown pollination resulting in a legal action for patent infringement. It is a simple case of somebody breaking a freely entered into contract and getting sued for it.
Come up with a story of a farmer being sued for the results of accidental polination under patent law and then you might have something to complain about. This isn't it.
PLease. "Free speech" does not include the right to make allogations (with no factual basis) for the purposes of spreading FUD.
Please yourself. In the US free speech is limited only in the sense that your speech leads to the actual commision of a crime.
What you are describing as a limitation on free speech in Germany is EXTREMELY scary. A court can take away your right to say something just because you can't show factual evidence to back it up? There can be a million reasons why you don't have this evidence.
but I know that LCD sets have a reputation for dead pixels and that Sony hasn't been particularly good about getting it resolved.
Well, one thing you have to realize that at normal viewing distances on LCD RP sets single dead or hot pixels are not visible to the naked eye. If you get up to within a foot of the set you can see them, but nobody sits that close. Sony warrants againsts clusters etc. that result in a visble defect in the picture under normal viewing conditions.
As far as DLP sets, I don't understand why anyone would buy into something that uses color wheel technology. My brother bought one, and after 3 months his wife started getting headaches and seeing rainbows. Now he has to sell it and try to get into a different type of set.
Slashdot Mirror
Add Linux or Windows.
In either case you are still considerably short of what the Mac comes with in terms of software, and you didn't include a cost for Windows.
Most good researchers avoid patented areas like the plague.
Geez. Of course they do. Most researchers are trying to do original work. Duh.
The "experimental use exception" you mention is useless
Nah. It's a key provision of patent case law. Established by a Supreme Court decision in 1813 from what I remember.
In addition patent boosters tend to forget that quality research requires the free exchange of ideas. The paperwork and lawyers associated with patents pretty much stops that cold.
Bzzzzrt. Patents require publication. If there were no patents pretty much all research with any commercial value would be kept as trade secret and never published. Patents were instituted for the purpose of encouraging publication. Patents are in fact a contract between the inventor and government in which the inventor get a limited monopoly in exchange for publishing his discovery. The concept that patents hinder technological investment is put to lie by the fact that the institution of the technological patent in Great Britain was immediately followed by a singularity event known as the industrial revolution.
With some honorable exceptions patents are actually a pretty good indication that the research is of little value
Depends on how you judge value. If it's a case of aimless intellectual mumbly-peg being what you consider valuable, sure. If it's a case of the research actually leading to something people can use to improve their lives, then I call bullshit.
I still believe that MySQL is the Access of the OSS dtabases
Perhaps, except that it is n* times better. I've run some pretty intense, badly-written db-abusive e-commerce sites (we are talking $5 million per year in cash flow) using MySQL without problems.
* Footnote: n = number of protons in the universe, around 10^40.
It moves, consumes, grows, reacts to stimuli, and reproduces.
Viruses fail several of these criterea.
Viruses don't reproduce. The mechanism for virus duplication involves the cell replicating the virus. Also viruses do not grow, they remain the same size as they were created for their entire life cycle. Viruses do not consume anything either - they have no metabolic cycle. No ingestion of food or excretion of waste.
No, they can't.
There is an experimental use exemption in US patent case law. So long as you don't intend to made money from the work, you can do any R&D you want and be immune from infringement claims.
REAL researchers publish, rather than patent
Have you ever been a researcher? If you had, you would know that just about all researchers file patents before they publish these days. Universities are making so much money from patent licensing that there is no place you can work that doesn't require you patent whatever you can.
Is 'light, crisp, refreshing' taste (I'm looking at a diet Pepsi can here) a novel property?
Maybe, if you can show that it was unexpected or stronger than anticipated (insert your anticipation here) or whatever given the ingredients. And always remember it's ORDINARY skill in the art.
how would you show that it has novel properties (beyond what you would expect a soda to have) and that it was nonobvious to one "skilled in the art?"
When all else failed strawman comparisons with other formulations have generally worked for me when I was going after getting a patent. A big win was always finding some sort of non-linearity. Add 2x as much whatever and find that property X improved 4x. Or adding magic fairy dust, i,e. something in a very small amount that gave a big enhancement.
Just take your Java code, and with the right XSLT you have C# or VB or COBOL or whatever.
Then with something language agnostic runtime thingummy you can run any of them.
We seem to be approaching a Zen-ish thing where all computer languages are the same, and their names are meaningless/irrelevant.
Is a Virus living?
No. A virus requires a cell to replicate in. A biologist would probably say the cell is the basic unit of life.
No the question is what do you mean as a 'component' of life? All organic compounds? Well, many organics are synthesized in the lab these days. Polyethylene is and organic compound. As is acetic acid, all alcohols, etc.
Clearly 'component' of life is going to be very hard to define.
There are patents for gene sequences, for chrissakes
No, there aren't. Genetic patents cover the gene PLUS some use of the gene.
ssentially is a ban on evolution.
You have no clue.
The bulk of serious research is done in an open environment.
Do you realize what a patent requires you to do? You have to publish your results in order to be granted a patent. Anyone can download your patent and us the results for further reasearch. Without the patent the researcher would have NO incentive to patent.
To the best of my knowledge, the only person known to have successfully learned something from patents was Einstein
Your knowledge of patents is pathetic.
Red Herring. In the case cited in your link, Monsanto actually withdrew all charges once they became convinced that the contamination was accidental.
Nobody has been able to show me a case where Monsanto has gone after a farmer after it was shown the contamination was accidental. It just hasn't happened, and is one of those urban legends that the anti-GMO crowd is using, falsely.
Chemicals cannot be patented.
Wrong. Some of the most famous of all patents are on chemicals. Teflon for example.
The Patent Office is moving to use exactly the same guidelines for patenting genes as they use for all other chemicals.
Just a minor point, sodas (or any recipes) are not patentable
Wrong. Mixtures certainly are patentable so long as you can show they have novel properties.
Just because something isn't patented doesn't mean it can't be. In the case of Coke patenting the formula would be a dumb move since the duration of patent coverage is only 20 years. After that 20 years anyone could use the same formula. Trade secret protection has no time limit.
What is the proper format for the program main method?
If I was taking that test this question would annoy me greatly since it is so badly expressed. Strictly speaking you don't describe methods as having a 'format' at all, and if they did, proper for what? If you mean for use in invoking an application then you would state the question as something like "what should the main method signature be in the controlling class in order for the application to be succesfully started".
Slow News Day?
2.0 only offers an additional 10Mbit on the upstream
The big win with Docsis 2 is that it allows for symmetrical traffic. The 10:1 bandwidth profile of Docsis 1.0 just isn't realistic these days.
I would actually like to see evidence to support what you say (an actual report on how much it cost to fund the various phases that led to the availability of the final product), otherwise I can only take it as a mere assumption.
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission requires that every company that issues stock publish exactly this data in an annual report. These reports and data from them are avaiable from company web sites, government sites and various financial data sites.
It is not an assumption. The data is freely available in massive amounts for just about every company of significant size.
You need to improve your knowledge of how the economy and companies work. Get to a library.
while the chip it's self was about $0.02 to produce,
Take a course in economics. Production cost is only a very small fraction of the total cost of the chip. You still have the billion dollars in investment it takes to buld the fab plant, the immense R&D costs for the physics behand these things, the costs for sales, marketing, advertising, distribution, administrative costs to run the company and yes dare I say it PROFIT!!! for the stockholders who have sunk their hard-earned 401K money into the company.
welcome these dumbass articles
Who needs Harvard? A lot of talented people looking for a really good education that they can use as a springboord for a better life. Get real people, life is not measured soley by whether or not you find a CEO job for chrissakes. It's about doig something that you enjoy and making the lives of people around you better in the process.
Slashdot should know better than to publish an article like this. Life is more than getting a fancy title in corporate america. Criminy.
Reading the comments on this article makes me despair. This farmer is not being sued for patent infringement or any other IP law violation. He is being sued for breach of contract. He bought Monsanto seed, planted it then planted the seeds from the resulting crop. He also agreed to a CONTRACT with Monsanto that he would not do this. It is not a case of wind-blown pollination resulting in a legal action for patent infringement. It is a simple case of somebody breaking a freely entered into contract and getting sued for it.
Come up with a story of a farmer being sued for the results of accidental polination under patent law and then you might have something to complain about. This isn't it.
GMail messages are vulnerable to interception.
Can anyone name a form of message that isn't vulnerable to interception?
ebay.
There is a difference between a typo and having the paper catch fire while you are reading it.
PLease. "Free speech" does not include the right to make allogations (with no factual basis) for the purposes of spreading FUD.
Please yourself. In the US free speech is limited only in the sense that your speech leads to the actual commision of a crime.
What you are describing as a limitation on free speech in Germany is EXTREMELY scary. A court can take away your right to say something just because you can't show factual evidence to back it up? There can be a million reasons why you don't have this evidence.
but I know that LCD sets have a reputation for dead pixels and that Sony hasn't been particularly good about getting it resolved.
Well, one thing you have to realize that at normal viewing distances on LCD RP sets single dead or hot pixels are not visible to the naked eye. If you get up to within a foot of the set you can see them, but nobody sits that close. Sony warrants againsts clusters etc. that result in a visble defect in the picture under normal viewing conditions.
As far as DLP sets, I don't understand why anyone would buy into something that uses color wheel technology. My brother bought one, and after 3 months his wife started getting headaches and seeing rainbows. Now he has to sell it and try to get into a different type of set.