Obviously the correct thing to do would be treat the emperor like a hostage taker - lure him out on the pretext of a conditional surrender, sign whatever he wants, wait for him to tell his troops to stand down, then try and execute him for war crimes.
But for some reason politicians prefer to keep enemy bigwigs alive, regardless of their crimes or usefulness. Many wars could have been ended early had our government only targeted the tyrant instead of their conscript armies.
For instance, Gulf War 1. Once Saddam had threatened the lives of anyone (the Kuwaitis though in this case) and we decided it was serious enough to mobilize we should have immediately targeted him for personal assassination. Instead we killed how many of his conscripts and subjects?
I loaded the first five. Three failed to go anywhere, two displaying barely illegible messages about needing flash and the third with a graphics splash screen that just didn't work.
Of the remaining two, Lamborghini's site is a square taking up about a third of my browser. It's got flashitis where nothing looks like a link until you shake the mouse over it, the text isn't real text, the relevant controls on every page are in vastly different places, etc. It seems like it'd be quite easy to reproduce in HTML though, with or without existing flaws. Or am I missing a feature?
The Girbaud site - is the result of a mating between QBert and a billboard. I'm not sure how you'd write something like that. Is it just a fancy links page or is there a game element?
Is that what you want though? Precisely aligned movable clickable areas? That's what I'm trying to figure out.
And why would be good too. Are you trying to write a game, or a usable interface for selling stock photos?
Now, can you please point me to HTML5 implementations that emulate completely what this sites are doing?
What parts? And why, just to be feature-complete or to actually perform something that requires that? What would that be?
Similarly, really interested. But all I ever hear is "Yeah, but can new product X do all this gizmoish stuff that's really weighing old product Y down?"
Other than writing a video game, what requires pixel-perfect layout?
Starting at $600, and 2.5h of battery life. I wonder why...
The one shown was too big to take shopping, too short-lived to watch a movie on, etc. Would you take an iPad with 1/3rd the battery and a brick tied to it?
revenue generation features for third-party developers built into the system
You mean a locked-down device whose only purpose is to siphon further money from the user.
Yes, this does make the device more popular with people who clone old shareware games and simple utilities - now instead of people being able to keep using their existing software they're forced to buy it again, but with all new bugs.
It's like how providers cripple phones so they can't use MP3s as ringtones, thus forcing the user to buy ringtones. Except that this is a bit more insidious - as the phone becomes more capable and the user could script it Apple is locking it down tighter to prevent any non-payware methods of doing anything.
So yeah, those third-party developers... Are the ones attracted by that shit the ones you really want anything from?
And watch Microsoft, when it eventually occurs to them that they need to do a tablet version of Windows Phone 7 rather than pushing desktop Windows 7 on tablets.
Why does everyone seem to think you'll need a new OS for this? Most apps just work on a tablet, even our tablet running GNU/Linux, if they're mouse centric and don't rely on rollover effects. (Which thankfully is fairly rare outside of hideous flash apps.)
You need a way to generate other-clicks from a pen if not on a mac, and to do hover mode for any application that requires it. Both of these could be mods on the pen input only and use gestures to turn on and off.
Tablets aren't that hard of a sell - Microsoft just SUCKS at selling (and thinking of what the interested market segment would be). They could turn a parched person off from water but wouldn't be targeting them anyways. By the time Jobs had everyone worked up to a fever pitch they'd have bought his socks, let alone a tablet.
Now that they're out there and developers can see what does and doesn't need changing most desktop apps will become pen friendly. I'm sure MS will come out with a specialized tablet OS, and it will suck, but the x86-tablet platform will quickly get very polished despite them.
If you steal virtual objects in a game they shouldn't do anything outside the game. If you cheat outside the game (phishing) then it seems more reasonable.
That said, those people, ROFL! If you'd pay money for virtual furniture you're shit stupid.
What's the difference between the thief who gave them pictures of furniture for 1000Euros and the thief who took the pictures away? Why are the police only after one of them?
I'm sure they do but it's obviously not worth much. It's partly why they won't allow an interpreted language - to make the check possible at all - and they still couldn't possibly check one app thoroughly, let alone all the thousands.
Such a check is less than worthless - like WEP - a false sense of security. Sure, it'll catch some trivial malware that's written by someone who didn't expect the examination but such a check will miss any of the code submitted to the Underhanded C Contest.
The only worthwhile security to implement here is capabilities. Very precisely, what can this app do? That way whatever code does sneak by onto the system it's still only going to be able to do what an untrusted app should be able to do.
Not that Apple doesn't also do that, but that code reviews for security are fundamentally flawed and therefore ultimately harmful.
Even if it hurt some people (what changes are beneficial to everyone?) the net benefit to society would likely be so great we could afford to support the people we put out of work when we changed the rules.
Giving out monopolies doesn't help anyone except the guy with the monopoly. Never has, never will. Couldn't.
Without copyright law, what incentive would Microsoft have to continue to spend billions annually on software development and R&D?
With teleporters how would airlines survive?
Who cares. They'd be obsolete.
If your business model is hoping someone won't tell someone else this really long number, you're delusional. Why should we as society waste time trying to prop up an unsupportable business model? Is it too big to fail?
They take their Windows disc and make copies for all their friends, and some company in a Southeast Asian country starts mass-producing it, depriving Microsoft of billions in revenue.
Oh yeah, some company is going to sell them unauthorized copies of windows! Gasp. Err, why? Because Chinese people can't use bittorrent like everyone else?
And if they didn't have billions to spend on software, can Microsoft really be said to have lost it?
Oh, and don't think open source saves you. With no copyright, the GPL is unenforceable. The GPL is a license that gives recipients of a copyright work rights.
Without copyright we wouldn't need the GPL because it wouldn't be protecting against anything. Sure, greedy people wouldn't share but we'd simply copy the parts of their binaries needed and force interoperability, if anyone cared.
Warren buffet shares your views about a company's worth, it's based on it, not some stock. The stock price reflects the investors' confidence it'll be worth as much later.
He already invests like that accountant you mention suggests. To him a high price on a stock he owns is more annoying (he can't buy more as easily) than good, because he buys for derivatives and deeper value, and rarely sells once he's found a good deal.
Yeah, so? Just that you're right, but you can't convince other players in a game to learn the tricks. Eventually they'll get tired of losing and investors whose confidence doesn't waver that much every day will be all who are left.
The investors who get raped as the "value of a company fluctuates wildly" are ones who bought in for an attractive number and didn't get it. The value investors still have what they came for.
Also, discussion about price fluctuations overlooks though that selling a stock for any reason appears the same. It's not that the market responds to everything in blind panic, but that everyone has their own indicators and there are only two actions, hold and sell. If I see a company announce plans to sell ice to Eskimos I'm going to bail before they take me down.
Now, what does all this have to do with manufacturing screws?
Nothing. The screw manufacturing continued all day and night.
Markets allow goods-distribution to be efficient. And futures allow you to provide your own insurance against price fluctuations.
That's all fine.
And high-frequency trading... would it really be better slow? But all players definitely need to get up to speed before they step back into a now much-different exchange.
There are two main areas to blame for our current mess. The first is fiat currency. The government prints more of it at a whim, and in this context makes money as they inflate the currency. The high prices of gold, and Canada's curiously strong dollar? Neither are real. Actually the US dollar is worth less. How could markets ever be useful if all your value can be inflated away and spent on a war?
The second is just plain fraud, merely dressed up in fancy terms. Knowingly bundling "Toxic Mortgages"? Fraud. Recommending one course of action but actually (secretly) investing directly against it? Fraud.
The first will only be solved by moving to a collection of world currencies - some backed by resources, some not, and letting the market handle this. Until then the USA will be able to bleed the world with a little economic manipulation.
The second, rampant fraud, we've already got laws to handle. Simply apply them. We don't need to have a law against the specific thing they did, merely to show that they acted in bad faith.
As long as we don't charge companies for their "externalities" they'll keep doing it.
We'd bill you for repairs, even to bankruptcy, if you fell a tree on a neighbor's house. BP should face harsher punishment than an individual, not lesser - they can be assumed to have had engineering and legal advice and know the potential repercussions of their actions.
Right, just like Bush hired some crazy foreigners to crash planes into the WTC to boost his ratings.
In your model, are Bush and Obama in it together (like, both in the Illuminati with all the presidential candidates) or did they come up with their strategies independently?
That's because we don't properly acknowledge that there's enough blame to go around ten times over. We let the guilty spin the issue into one of someone else being technically more guilty in some sub area.
If we properly assigned blame, even just enough to bar them from ever participating in politics again, to every politician who took bribes or let themselves be influenced to go against the will of their constituents we'd end up with better politicians. They're out there somewhere, hidden behind the hordes of sell-outs. Instead we get suckered into trying to decide if the republicans or the democrats are more guilty and forget to punish the individuals we caught breaking the law.
Similarly for "the corporations". Punish any attempt to influence a politician or law enforcement officer (or EPA investigator, etc) as you would bribery. Seize all assets related to the transaction and punish the offender for perjury.
If we actually enforced our existing laws so many people are guilty (of real crimes - that you and I would be punished for) that almost our entire governing and financial sector would be gone.
Trying to get the OP to name names so that the local fanatics can get their panties in a wad over something that they know next to nothing about on "principle" is not gonna change anything, nor will it do anything other than cause headaches for a likely 100% compliant company.
What's the problem with being pissed off with tivo, or anyone like them? They certainly violate the spirit of the GPL and their 100% compliance is a technical trick.
They certainly don't need the community good will you'd normally give to a company who was sharing your project and donating back to it.
the FSF doesn't give a flying fig whether or not you can put custom firmware on your router, or install whatever you want in your tivo..
Excepting how that interferes with your ability to modify the GPLed software on those platforms.
[The FSF and the GPL] is about making sure that the CODE is not hidden away from prying eyes, and is there for others to use and expand on/fix/change/whatever..
Ummm, perhaps by listing to me, on Slashdot, saying exactly that, back then.
[Citation needed]. Please provide a link to your saying on Slashdot at the time of filing that application how each and every element of the claims were known to the public domain.
Yeah, sure. Because that whole 26-claim nonsense has been central to my point all along. That would only show if it meets a crazy set of rules, not if those rules make sense or the end result helps society.
I was listing in detail the parts of this that were obvious and explaining how exactly the same thing is done, just not on the internet.
Their only innovation is a bit of UI.
Ah, so there's innovation there! You just don't think it's enough innovation?
No, I don't think it's technical so it's 1) so trivial nobody needs the patent to show them how and 2) beyond the scope of patents, largely because of #1.
Tell me, because no anti-patent person has ever been able to answer this - why would abolishing patents not result in everything possible being kept as trade secrets?
In this case there wouldn't be a trade secret because the customers have to see the UI and there are no technical details. If they said they wanted this to a second company the technical requirements (fulfill immediately instead of storing in a shopping cart) are immediately obvious and trivial.
could have reproduced it in an hour without help, if not for the patent.
So, not only was it innovative, it was nonobvious to everyone else, or they could have done it within an hour.
No, you somehow read that exactly backwards.
The only impediment to implementing an Amazon 1-click system IS the patent. Otherwise it's just a shopping cart with instant fulfillment and anyone who could write one would obviously know how to write the other. That was true from the moment the web was created - it's inherent in the basic RFCs.
Even if you thought Amazon had a point you'd really need to hand that patent off the the W3C because it's a trivial and obvious application of the technology.
So, are you suggesting that the later-inventors should not be able to license or sell their inventions, but maybe they can use them themselves? Otherwise, they're undercutting the earlier-inventor who actually filed for the patent, reducing his ability to exploit his invention.
Obviously that first person's invention isn't worth as much to society, other people reinvented the same thing. How hard could it have been? Why should they get just as large a cut, or any at all, if it's obviously not as valuable to us?
You seem to think that patents should only be given out for major inventions. That's not in the statute. Something that's easy to do can still be new, nonobvious, and valuable.
I think patents are only valid for something where the examiner couldn't have just called a pro and asked for a solution to the problem and instantly gotten exactly the same answer the patent provides. That is the statute.
Actually, clerks are skilled in the field. Clerks are engineers, biologists, chemists, etc. They're not minimum-wage government workers.
Even a genius would be overwhelmed by new developments. Hence, necessarily unskilled.
A system like this can't help but fail as actually trying to get enough highly trained examiners to know what was obvious would bankrupt us when they could be doing real productive work instead.
Instead we approximate that by hiring those who aren't even good enough to get snapped up by industry.
Considering how often Slashdot posters say that intellectual property isn't real property, it seems a bit odd to shift the conversation to tangible windows.
This is not an example of commonly shared sloppy language, but of a perfectly clear and distinct meaning that has entirely supplanted the original.
No it isn't, "begs the question" isn't half as clear as "raises a point" or something else. Of course the original meaning isn't very clear either because it's an awkward translation. That's not an excuse to steal it though, it's a reason to totally abandon it.
It's pretentious to use a longer or more complex word or phrase where a simpler pone would do, often better. Quit trying to explain how language evolves and start trying to communicate, not make excuses for choosing less descriptive phrases.
Nobody who hasn't heard that phrase would think to say it - it's not intuitive.
Slashdot Mirror
Obviously the correct thing to do would be treat the emperor like a hostage taker - lure him out on the pretext of a conditional surrender, sign whatever he wants, wait for him to tell his troops to stand down, then try and execute him for war crimes.
But for some reason politicians prefer to keep enemy bigwigs alive, regardless of their crimes or usefulness. Many wars could have been ended early had our government only targeted the tyrant instead of their conscript armies.
For instance, Gulf War 1. Once Saddam had threatened the lives of anyone (the Kuwaitis though in this case) and we decided it was serious enough to mobilize we should have immediately targeted him for personal assassination. Instead we killed how many of his conscripts and subjects?
I loaded the first five. Three failed to go anywhere, two displaying barely illegible messages about needing flash and the third with a graphics splash screen that just didn't work.
Of the remaining two, Lamborghini's site is a square taking up about a third of my browser. It's got flashitis where nothing looks like a link until you shake the mouse over it, the text isn't real text, the relevant controls on every page are in vastly different places, etc. It seems like it'd be quite easy to reproduce in HTML though, with or without existing flaws. Or am I missing a feature?
The Girbaud site - is the result of a mating between QBert and a billboard. I'm not sure how you'd write something like that. Is it just a fancy links page or is there a game element?
Is that what you want though? Precisely aligned movable clickable areas? That's what I'm trying to figure out.
And why would be good too. Are you trying to write a game, or a usable interface for selling stock photos?
Now, can you please point me to HTML5 implementations that emulate completely what this sites are doing?
What parts? And why, just to be feature-complete or to actually perform something that requires that? What would that be?
Similarly, really interested. But all I ever hear is "Yeah, but can new product X do all this gizmoish stuff that's really weighing old product Y down?"
Other than writing a video game, what requires pixel-perfect layout?
Who fucking cares about the stock of the two behemoths doing their damnedest to destroy the industry?
STFU troll.
Starting at $600, and 2.5h of battery life. I wonder why...
The one shown was too big to take shopping, too short-lived to watch a movie on, etc. Would you take an iPad with 1/3rd the battery and a brick tied to it?
Conflate much?
revenue generation features for third-party developers built into the system
You mean a locked-down device whose only purpose is to siphon further money from the user.
Yes, this does make the device more popular with people who clone old shareware games and simple utilities - now instead of people being able to keep using their existing software they're forced to buy it again, but with all new bugs.
It's like how providers cripple phones so they can't use MP3s as ringtones, thus forcing the user to buy ringtones. Except that this is a bit more insidious - as the phone becomes more capable and the user could script it Apple is locking it down tighter to prevent any non-payware methods of doing anything.
So yeah, those third-party developers... Are the ones attracted by that shit the ones you really want anything from?
And watch Microsoft, when it eventually occurs to them that they need to do a tablet version of Windows Phone 7 rather than pushing desktop Windows 7 on tablets.
Why does everyone seem to think you'll need a new OS for this? Most apps just work on a tablet, even our tablet running GNU/Linux, if they're mouse centric and don't rely on rollover effects. (Which thankfully is fairly rare outside of hideous flash apps.)
You need a way to generate other-clicks from a pen if not on a mac, and to do hover mode for any application that requires it. Both of these could be mods on the pen input only and use gestures to turn on and off.
Tablets aren't that hard of a sell - Microsoft just SUCKS at selling (and thinking of what the interested market segment would be). They could turn a parched person off from water but wouldn't be targeting them anyways. By the time Jobs had everyone worked up to a fever pitch they'd have bought his socks, let alone a tablet.
Now that they're out there and developers can see what does and doesn't need changing most desktop apps will become pen friendly. I'm sure MS will come out with a specialized tablet OS, and it will suck, but the x86-tablet platform will quickly get very polished despite them.
If you steal virtual objects in a game they shouldn't do anything outside the game. If you cheat outside the game (phishing) then it seems more reasonable.
That said, those people, ROFL! If you'd pay money for virtual furniture you're shit stupid.
What's the difference between the thief who gave them pictures of furniture for 1000Euros and the thief who took the pictures away? Why are the police only after one of them?
Only because of laws that don't respect reality.
I'm sure they do but it's obviously not worth much. It's partly why they won't allow an interpreted language - to make the check possible at all - and they still couldn't possibly check one app thoroughly, let alone all the thousands.
Such a check is less than worthless - like WEP - a false sense of security. Sure, it'll catch some trivial malware that's written by someone who didn't expect the examination but such a check will miss any of the code submitted to the Underhanded C Contest.
The only worthwhile security to implement here is capabilities. Very precisely, what can this app do? That way whatever code does sneak by onto the system it's still only going to be able to do what an untrusted app should be able to do.
Not that Apple doesn't also do that, but that code reviews for security are fundamentally flawed and therefore ultimately harmful.
You'd think it'd go after those with tender juicy wifi who aren't sharing.
"Deathbot senses encrypted wifi - switching to password acquisition mode - spoon enabled."
Even if it hurt some people (what changes are beneficial to everyone?) the net benefit to society would likely be so great we could afford to support the people we put out of work when we changed the rules.
Giving out monopolies doesn't help anyone except the guy with the monopoly. Never has, never will. Couldn't.
Is that the exploit? Open your own clothing museum and sell licensed replicas of the art?
Copyright is absolutely necessary for ideas
Proof. Got some?
Without copyright law, what incentive would Microsoft have to continue to spend billions annually on software development and R&D?
With teleporters how would airlines survive?
Who cares. They'd be obsolete.
If your business model is hoping someone won't tell someone else this really long number, you're delusional. Why should we as society waste time trying to prop up an unsupportable business model? Is it too big to fail?
They take their Windows disc and make copies for all their friends, and some company in a Southeast Asian country starts mass-producing it, depriving Microsoft of billions in revenue.
Oh yeah, some company is going to sell them unauthorized copies of windows! Gasp. Err, why? Because Chinese people can't use bittorrent like everyone else?
And if they didn't have billions to spend on software, can Microsoft really be said to have lost it?
Oh, and don't think open source saves you. With no copyright, the GPL is unenforceable. The GPL is a license that gives recipients of a copyright work rights.
Without copyright we wouldn't need the GPL because it wouldn't be protecting against anything. Sure, greedy people wouldn't share but we'd simply copy the parts of their binaries needed and force interoperability, if anyone cared.
Sorry, I got that. I just meant it's not surprising they're that cheap when we don't hold them responsible for their failures.
Ahh, but if nobody was protesting because it was green technology, would the crushed bird really have made any noise at all?
BTW I can't load that link.
Warren buffet shares your views about a company's worth, it's based on it, not some stock. The stock price reflects the investors' confidence it'll be worth as much later.
He already invests like that accountant you mention suggests. To him a high price on a stock he owns is more annoying (he can't buy more as easily) than good, because he buys for derivatives and deeper value, and rarely sells once he's found a good deal.
Yeah, so? Just that you're right, but you can't convince other players in a game to learn the tricks. Eventually they'll get tired of losing and investors whose confidence doesn't waver that much every day will be all who are left.
The investors who get raped as the "value of a company fluctuates wildly" are ones who bought in for an attractive number and didn't get it. The value investors still have what they came for.
Also, discussion about price fluctuations overlooks though that selling a stock for any reason appears the same. It's not that the market responds to everything in blind panic, but that everyone has their own indicators and there are only two actions, hold and sell. If I see a company announce plans to sell ice to Eskimos I'm going to bail before they take me down.
Now, what does all this have to do with manufacturing screws?
Nothing. The screw manufacturing continued all day and night.
Markets allow goods-distribution to be efficient. And futures allow you to provide your own insurance against price fluctuations.
That's all fine.
And high-frequency trading... would it really be better slow? But all players definitely need to get up to speed before they step back into a now much-different exchange.
There are two main areas to blame for our current mess. The first is fiat currency. The government prints more of it at a whim, and in this context makes money as they inflate the currency. The high prices of gold, and Canada's curiously strong dollar? Neither are real. Actually the US dollar is worth less. How could markets ever be useful if all your value can be inflated away and spent on a war?
The second is just plain fraud, merely dressed up in fancy terms. Knowingly bundling "Toxic Mortgages"? Fraud. Recommending one course of action but actually (secretly) investing directly against it? Fraud.
The first will only be solved by moving to a collection of world currencies - some backed by resources, some not, and letting the market handle this. Until then the USA will be able to bleed the world with a little economic manipulation.
The second, rampant fraud, we've already got laws to handle. Simply apply them. We don't need to have a law against the specific thing they did, merely to show that they acted in bad faith.
I'm sure they're totally irrelevant to the point, but also that they'd wholeheartedly love to kick BPs ass for making them do all the work.
Snarky comments are part of keeping the political pressure on.
Our beaches vs their wallets. Tough choice.
As long as we don't charge companies for their "externalities" they'll keep doing it.
We'd bill you for repairs, even to bankruptcy, if you fell a tree on a neighbor's house. BP should face harsher punishment than an individual, not lesser - they can be assumed to have had engineering and legal advice and know the potential repercussions of their actions.
Even if he was right (and it was a setup), he's right (oil is more dangerous). If you blew up a windmill it'd just fall over.
Right, just like Bush hired some crazy foreigners to crash planes into the WTC to boost his ratings.
In your model, are Bush and Obama in it together (like, both in the Illuminati with all the presidential candidates) or did they come up with their strategies independently?
That's because we don't properly acknowledge that there's enough blame to go around ten times over. We let the guilty spin the issue into one of someone else being technically more guilty in some sub area.
If we properly assigned blame, even just enough to bar them from ever participating in politics again, to every politician who took bribes or let themselves be influenced to go against the will of their constituents we'd end up with better politicians. They're out there somewhere, hidden behind the hordes of sell-outs. Instead we get suckered into trying to decide if the republicans or the democrats are more guilty and forget to punish the individuals we caught breaking the law.
Similarly for "the corporations". Punish any attempt to influence a politician or law enforcement officer (or EPA investigator, etc) as you would bribery. Seize all assets related to the transaction and punish the offender for perjury.
If we actually enforced our existing laws so many people are guilty (of real crimes - that you and I would be punished for) that almost our entire governing and financial sector would be gone.
I wish we'd stop letting them misdirect us.
Trying to get the OP to name names so that the local fanatics can get their panties in a wad over something that they know next to nothing about on "principle" is not gonna change anything, nor will it do anything other than cause headaches for a likely 100% compliant company.
What's the problem with being pissed off with tivo, or anyone like them? They certainly violate the spirit of the GPL and their 100% compliance is a technical trick.
They certainly don't need the community good will you'd normally give to a company who was sharing your project and donating back to it.
the FSF doesn't give a flying fig whether or not you can put custom firmware on your router, or install whatever you want in your tivo..
Excepting how that interferes with your ability to modify the GPLed software on those platforms.
[The FSF and the GPL] is about making sure that the CODE is not hidden away from prying eyes, and is there for others to use and expand on/fix/change/whatever..
Yeah. I get that. Read the last paragraph of this post of mine.
I can assure you they care very much, despite RMS probably not caring about TV shows and thus tivos specifically.
Ummm, perhaps by listing to me, on Slashdot, saying exactly that, back then.
[Citation needed]. Please provide a link to your saying on Slashdot at the time of filing that application how each and every element of the claims were known to the public domain.
Yeah, sure. Because that whole 26-claim nonsense has been central to my point all along. That would only show if it meets a crazy set of rules, not if those rules make sense or the end result helps society.
I was listing in detail the parts of this that were obvious and explaining how exactly the same thing is done, just not on the internet.
Their only innovation is a bit of UI.
Ah, so there's innovation there! You just don't think it's enough innovation?
No, I don't think it's technical so it's 1) so trivial nobody needs the patent to show them how and 2) beyond the scope of patents, largely because of #1.
Tell me, because no anti-patent person has ever been able to answer this - why would abolishing patents not result in everything possible being kept as trade secrets?
In this case there wouldn't be a trade secret because the customers have to see the UI and there are no technical details. If they said they wanted this to a second company the technical requirements (fulfill immediately instead of storing in a shopping cart) are immediately obvious and trivial.
could have reproduced it in an hour without help, if not for the patent.
So, not only was it innovative, it was nonobvious to everyone else, or they could have done it within an hour.
No, you somehow read that exactly backwards.
The only impediment to implementing an Amazon 1-click system IS the patent. Otherwise it's just a shopping cart with instant fulfillment and anyone who could write one would obviously know how to write the other. That was true from the moment the web was created - it's inherent in the basic RFCs.
Even if you thought Amazon had a point you'd really need to hand that patent off the the W3C because it's a trivial and obvious application of the technology.
So, are you suggesting that the later-inventors should not be able to license or sell their inventions, but maybe they can use them themselves? Otherwise, they're undercutting the earlier-inventor who actually filed for the patent, reducing his ability to exploit his invention.
Obviously that first person's invention isn't worth as much to society, other people reinvented the same thing. How hard could it have been? Why should they get just as large a cut, or any at all, if it's obviously not as valuable to us?
You seem to think that patents should only be given out for major inventions. That's not in the statute. Something that's easy to do can still be new, nonobvious, and valuable.
I think patents are only valid for something where the examiner couldn't have just called a pro and asked for a solution to the problem and instantly gotten exactly the same answer the patent provides. That is the statute.
Actually, clerks are skilled in the field. Clerks are engineers, biologists, chemists, etc. They're not minimum-wage government workers.
Even a genius would be overwhelmed by new developments. Hence, necessarily unskilled.
A system like this can't help but fail as actually trying to get enough highly trained examiners to know what was obvious would bankrupt us when they could be doing real productive work instead.
Instead we approximate that by hiring those who aren't even good enough to get snapped up by industry.
Considering how often Slashdot posters say that intellectual property isn't real property, it seems a bit odd to shift the conversation to tangible windows.
Only if you respond without t
This is not an example of commonly shared sloppy language, but of a perfectly clear and distinct meaning that has entirely supplanted the original.
No it isn't, "begs the question" isn't half as clear as "raises a point" or something else. Of course the original meaning isn't very clear either because it's an awkward translation. That's not an excuse to steal it though, it's a reason to totally abandon it.
It's pretentious to use a longer or more complex word or phrase where a simpler pone would do, often better. Quit trying to explain how language evolves and start trying to communicate, not make excuses for choosing less descriptive phrases.
Nobody who hasn't heard that phrase would think to say it - it's not intuitive.