I won't support a monopoly, especially one that's bought its way out of being properly disciplined, even if their product turns out being better - which is very unlikely given MS' product history
And does 'easier' mean that Canadian have to pay extra duties on electronics, etc. that gets shipped to them, while American receiving stuff from Canada do not? Because it is certainly 'easier' in this sense.
Mind you American do pay something I believe, but a heck of a lot less than Canadians do.
Seems to me we got the bad end of the deal. I guess we have Mulroney to thank for all this...
Until we see the Patent Office being sued by someone/company that suffered financially or otherwise because of a bogus patent that the PTO granted, we won't see any significant changes to the way things work now. After a lawsuit or two they might finally get the hint to stop granting such bogus patents and maybe even (gasp!) start reviewing past ones once they realize those might become a liability.
And for those that say such lawsuits would be a burden on the taxpayers, well, I'd say these bogus patent infrigment cases are taking away needed resources to convict criminals.
And besides, the taxpayers might finally take action once they see the PTO's bogus-patent-granting actions is raising their taxes, instead of only bitching and whining all the time.
Really? And when a MS-Liked size bohemoth of a company comes and infringes on your patent, will the system *really* protect you, or will you simply get sued out of existence (in terms of fighting the patent infringment, not you physically)?
I see a lot of comments with "so what? we're all gonna die someday anyways"-type arguments
Yeah, we will all die someday; maybe tomorrow, maybe 50,60 or 70 years from now. Could die of a heart attack, could die of a disease, could die in car crash. So those arguments are pretty moot I feel.
The *important* thing is how you're going to die, and especially how it came about. I sure as hell don't want to die at the hands of someone that keeps me as a ransom for 3 days only to be beheaded in the end. And the last thing I want is for my family to live through such a thing.
I'd much rather die from a disease, car crash, or other more 'natural' things than to have someone else take my life in such a horrible way.
And then when they limit on what equipment you can listen that CD on, or some other absurd limitation designed to make you buy new equipment every 3 years (and it will happen), they'll start wondering "when did this happen?" and "why?" and "how come" and "who the fuck let this happen".
If noone raises a stink, everyone will get walked over.
the product is not being made available in a legal way when there is a clear demand for it. Copyright holders should not claim 'lost sales' because of copying of the product, because they didn't 'lose' the sale since they no longer made it available!
Not making it available when there is a demand is unacceptable, especially given the ease of making works available in digital format now.
And no, I don't believe that it's paying for the 'infrastruture' - afterall radio stations don't make their listeners pay to get a bigger antenna so they can reach even more listeners, which they could then use as a selling point to advertisers.
How about the money the PTO has been stealing from the tax payers by not doing their job in the first place.
Besides, I doubt after one or two they would keep granting bogus patents and maybe even start reviewing old ones once they realize they are a liability....
"Therefore, there is no economic incentive for the Patent Office to deny patents, no matter how dubious they are."
That's why I've been saying that the PTO should be sued everytime an invalid patent is found that caused financial loss to a defendant having to prove it invalid.
True! But thankfully (I guess, only for these things), crappy IE has the most market share so most ad producers don't bother coding for 'real' standards (which other browsers support well).
They can use floater ads all they want, but if it covers up content of the site, then this tells me they don't care about their content. If they don't care about their content, then the site is useless to me.
Besides, a lot of floaters only work on IE. I'm mostly safe w/ Sarafi or Mozilla.
Basically the same concept as copyright - you are recongnized as having "ownership" (for lack of a more appropriate word) of the invention without having to jump through loops to get it, and it gets documentated in that point in time. I'm not sure what you mean when you reference Usenet.
The idea here is that the 'filter' process would only be initiated on a need-to basis, and the finding would determine if a court case could move forward.
This whole 'copyright concept' I propose would go along with another thing I'd like to see changed: that you can't release/discuss/outline/etc any patented products/etc. until the patent gets approved; of course this means to approval process would need to be really quick, but the idea is that if someone else comes up with a similar product by themselves, then that idea is not so "unobvious" or "unique" (though I realize that those aren't the only conditions, an that they're probably not so 'clear-cut').
Slashdot Mirror
Well they certainly won't grow that market if they keep ignoring it...
Mind you American do pay something I believe, but a heck of a lot less than Canadians do.
Seems to me we got the bad end of the deal. I guess we have Mulroney to thank for all this...
And for those that say such lawsuits would be a burden on the taxpayers, well, I'd say these bogus patent infrigment cases are taking away needed resources to convict criminals.
And besides, the taxpayers might finally take action once they see the PTO's bogus-patent-granting actions is raising their taxes, instead of only bitching and whining all the time.
I'll leave it up to you to decide to take the hit or not should they decline the raise
So I guess they really have no real counter-arguments.
Interesting...
It's rather clear: corporations.
Now as what it's really meant to protect, well, the PTO has clearly lost sense of that!
Yeah, we will all die someday; maybe tomorrow, maybe 50,60 or 70 years from now. Could die of a heart attack, could die of a disease, could die in car crash. So those arguments are pretty moot I feel.
The *important* thing is how you're going to die, and especially how it came about. I sure as hell don't want to die at the hands of someone that keeps me as a ransom for 3 days only to be beheaded in the end. And the last thing I want is for my family to live through such a thing.
I'd much rather die from a disease, car crash, or other more 'natural' things than to have someone else take my life in such a horrible way.
If noone raises a stink, everyone will get walked over.
Not making it available when there is a demand is unacceptable, especially given the ease of making works available in digital format now.
And no, I don't believe that it's paying for the 'infrastruture' - afterall radio stations don't make their listeners pay to get a bigger antenna so they can reach even more listeners, which they could then use as a selling point to advertisers.
(I'm not talking about digital radio of course.)
Besides, I doubt after one or two they would keep granting bogus patents and maybe even start reviewing old ones once they realize they are a liability....
That's why I've been saying that the PTO should be sued everytime an invalid patent is found that caused financial loss to a defendant having to prove it invalid.
Besides, a lot of floaters only work on IE. I'm mostly safe w/ Sarafi or Mozilla.
Basically the same concept as copyright - you are recongnized as having "ownership" (for lack of a more appropriate word) of the invention without having to jump through loops to get it, and it gets documentated in that point in time. I'm not sure what you mean when you reference Usenet.
The idea here is that the 'filter' process would only be initiated on a need-to basis, and the finding would determine if a court case could move forward.
This whole 'copyright concept' I propose would go along with another thing I'd like to see changed: that you can't release/discuss/outline/etc any patented products/etc. until the patent gets approved; of course this means to approval process would need to be really quick, but the idea is that if someone else comes up with a similar product by themselves, then that idea is not so "unobvious" or "unique" (though I realize that those aren't the only conditions, an that they're probably not so 'clear-cut').