... is that there is no such thing as "blowing off steam", only an endorphin rush associated with displaying anger which rewards feeling anger and displaying it. Warlike sports make us more warlike, they don't produce a pressure relief.
Which is pretty much the argument used by people who want to ban violent video games, yes?
I don't entirely disagree with you, but I do think that you are being too simplistic here.
For a start sports don't have to be explicitly "warlike" to function as sublimated war (Freud's idea, I believe). Of course violent video games, or as you may prefer "violence training simulators," are inherently violent, it is (imagined) violence being reinforced.
Reinforcing shooting balls into a net, or more relevantly watching balls being shot into the net by "your" team, would not seem so obviously to encourage bellicosity. [In fact I doubt that violent video games engender violence in all or even most users. It is quite possible that what encourages behaviour in one individual is actually cathartic in others --but I'm simply disagreeing with you here.]
Secondly your statement that there is "only" and endorphin rush fails to appreciate the pharmacological complexities of the situation. At least as important here is the adrenaline (US: epinephrine) rush. Our sympathetic ("flight or fight") nervous system is but rarely stimulated as it was in our evolutionary past. Driving fast, skydiving and many sports, including I would argue watching team sport (where we have a strong emotional investment in the team), engage it and literally "let off steam" which would otherwise manifest as non-specific anxiety and stress.
Finally my point was not so much about individual physiology or even psychological catharsis, but about the historical and cultural inscriptions which national football bears, especially in post-WWII Europe. To appreciate this requires an examination of C18th nationalist reaction to the Vormärz, the subsequent migration of the ideology of nation from the left to the right of the political spectrum, and how what was originally a movement of liberation led directly to the gates of Auschwitz. It requires an understanding of the role inter alia of sport, and first and foremost football, in containing the European curse, which, especially in the areas placed in suspended animation by Soviet rule, can still show it's destructive face today.
In the face of Srebenica, shooting balls into a net seems rather more harmless to me.
You don't have to worry about the camera angles, the 0-0 games are MORE than enough to keep me from watching.
Last night's (my time) Portugal vs Ivory Coast 0:0 game was one of the most exciting in this cup yet. Uruguay vs France 0:0 was tedious and as exciting as watching paint dry. The fact of being a scoreless draw is not determinative of the quality of the game.
Now I can understand not watching a football code you don't personally enjoy. I don't watch AFL, Rugby only very rarely and for me American football makes even golf look exciting. What I certainly wouldn't do is bother to read articles about games I don't like, let alone comment on them.
What's more, I figure, it's probably me, rather than those games themselves. After all millions of people get excited about the other codes. I guess that American football, for instance, requires an understanding of the strategy and tactics I simply don't possess. It might be a bit like a cross between chess and football for those who dig it. To me it's a series of erratic starts and stops, hardly any time is spent actually playing?! I get as much out of it as I would from a recital of Armenian poetry.
OTHO, anyone who fails to appreciate the beauty of a game like the scoreless draw between Portugal and the Ivory Coast is clearly a deranged philistine!;)
Yeah, when the World Cup was in Germany in 2006, you didn't see anyone try to hinder the traditions of violent neo-nazi hooliganism.
Violent football hooliganism is primarily an English rather than specifically a German tradition. In any case, "hindering" any "traditions" of Nazism, neo- or otherwise, is a constitutional obligation in Germany (imposed by the Allies), not something exclusive to the World Cup or something which would be left to FIFA to decide. Try selling Nazi memorabilia on eBay in Germany.
Look I agree "it's a Sth African tradition" is a terrible argument to justify this DoS attack on the World Cup, but pick a better counter example next time.
Test cricket is about my favourite sport not to watch, and I mean that in the kindest sense. You know the Sunday barbie in Summer, the Test on the tele is droning in the background. You go in to get a beer out of the fridge and look just long enough to see a few runs and get the score. When you get outside someone asks, "What's the score mate."
"We're 312 for 5."
"S'long as we beat the bloody poms.
And think, if by some miracle the Socceroos get out of the group in 2nd place we'll most probably have the opportunity to chuck them out of the World Cup. Sweet! Doesn't look we have the team for it this time round after what my other team did to them (my wife who isn't 1/2 German isn't talking to me at the moment!)
What makes you think not having sports would lead to war? That's about the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard of
Team sport as sublimated war --that's a new concept to you? Wow!
Now personally I have little interest in sport, but unlike you I don't begrudge others their entertainment. In any case international football is quite another matter from sport.
Speaking as a German (as I sometimes am) if you don't let us win either the European or World Cup every few decades we start the tanks rolling!;) Seriously though, it is arguable that without the Wunder von Bern of 1954 we would not have witnessed the full blossoming of the Wirtschaftswunder of the late 50s and 60s, (only arguable though, because even by '54 the German economy was growing astoundingly). What is certain is that the euphoria that swept West Germany following Bern invigorated a thoroughly demoralised population and irreversibly affected the ideological complexion of the new country. A demoralised economically crippled Germany has not historically proven a good recipe for peace in Europe.
Fussball, moreover, affords one of the few socially acceptable avenues for expressing national pride. Safely contained within the stadium (hopefully), after the 90 minutes are up everyone goes home and once more become good Europeans. And it is by no means only in Germany that football is central to national idenity.
If you mistake what is happening in South Africa right now for sport, you simply don't grok it.
Well it already is for me. I suffer from tinnitus, and the vuvuzelas ensure that I can't understand the commentary. I've tried watching with mute on, but that sucks too. Hopefully these filters will rapidly be deployed. Not that that will help the players much.
Is there any way their performance can be attributed back to Spain's liberal file sharing attitude?
No that would be to reverse the attribution. You see when countries perform well in international (roundball) football tournaments, the judiciary in those countries begin to favour the rights of the public at large as against the rights of IP holders. I mean just look at Brazil!;)
But no matter what it brings back from Itokawa we can be certain that Godzilla will rise out of the dust of the Australian desert...
Especially as the piece of dust in the Australian desert they are talking about is the Woomera Prohibited Area. It is prohibited because of the high levels of radioactivity remaining from nuclear weapons testing. You couldn't script this better.
It's not the fishing term, but that's beside the point.
It is though (see above), but yes, it's beside the point.
they need to stop patenting the obvious
Before or after you stop beating your wife?;)
You say they do, I think it's clear (just from the concessions of the major companies who made unlicensed use of their technology) that you are mistaken. If it actually gets to court we'll let the expert witnesses have it out and we'll have an answer to that question which is in some measure more informed than your or my opinion. I know you think that patents rarely get overturned for obviousness in court, but since obvious patents rarely get to court (eg. the guys who had a go at our project) that is hardly surprising.
I could spend my days filing for obvious patents, calling it research, and hoping a major company stumbles into my quagmire too. That wouldn't make me not a troll, that would make me the definition of a troll.
Yes I agree and I would add that you have very ably summed up why it is so wrong to call the CSIRO scientists patent trolls. They don't spend their days filing for obvious patents, they spend their days doing ground breaking research. They don't just call it research, it actually is. They don't file patents in the hope that a major company will stumble into the quagmire, they file patents for the new and novel inventions they devise as they are legally required to and in order to further more ground breaking research without unduly impacting on consolidated revenue.
For all the reasons you give they are not patent trolls.
From this I conclude that the results are meaningless.
Not so, they reflect real changes in the programming world. For instance a dramatic improvement in language documentation will result in a language's Tiobe ranking falling.:)
troll, v ...
13. Angling. intr. To angle with a running line (? orig. with the line running on a 'troll' or winch); also (trans.) to fish (water) in this way; spec. a. to fish for pike by working a dead bait (usually on a gorge hook) by a sink-and-draw motion; b. (trans. and intr.), to angle with a spinning bait: = SPIN v. 12a, b; c. in U.S. and Sc. use (perh. through association with trail or trawl), to trail a baited line behind a boat. Also fig.
I suppose that's true. But a corporation is actually independent. Whereas a quango, like NASA, just does what they are told by their leash holders.
But it doesn't work like that in Australia. For a start the independent government-owned (but increasingly partially self-funding, for which see CSIROs patents), organisations are corporations (statutory corporations), and exhibit a large measure of independence from government. For instance the ABC (the public broadcaster) is the only news service that will regularly criticise government of all complexions. State owned media should never be on a leash, rather it should bite the hand that feeds it. I know this isn't always the case, but it is here.
On the other hand the (previous) Australian government was described, with some accuracy, by a senior Murdoch executive as "a wholly owned subsidiary of News Corp." I'm not sure that the change in government has affected that position substantially.
[Getting] a patent overturned for obviousness has happened a handful of times (I believe less than 10, but I'm having difficulty finding an appropriate citation).
I'm not surprised you are having difficulty, as this would seem a difficult thing to quantify. Cases where obviousness is most obvious (sorry), would rarely be appealed or reported. In the cases that do make it into superior courts this question will inherently be more contentious, so you wouldn't expect a high success rate at overturning on obviousness. Perhaps the patents office has a definitive figure?
Be that as it may, the CSIRO is a serious and highly respected research organisation. CSIRO scientists do real development in all sorts of fields. They do not fly patent kites in the hope of trolling (it's a fishing term actually, nothing to do with hairy monsters) actual developers with patents and it is scurrilous, or at best ignorant, to suggest they do. What is more the money the CSIRO does earn from its inventions is ploughed right back into further research. They are pretty much the polar opposite of patent trolls.
The key element of the trolling problem is that the invention is obvious, but got through the patenting process because the patent office is overwhelmed and incompetent.
Yes "originality" as I expressed it is more correctly described as a "non-obvious improvement." In any case the patent would still be invalid (if tested in court) because it lacks the requisite originality/non-obviousness (how ever you want to put it). So I pretty much covered that.
It's not that the patent office is overwhelmed and incompetent, it's that increasingly, and this is the certainly the case in Australia, and I believe in the US also, patents are granted presumptively. The week after this innovation in the patenting process came into effect some engineer in Melbourne patented the wheel.:)
Nobody is stealing CSIROs ideas and commercializing them, they are coming up with the SAME ideas and commercializing them.
I'm not a telecommunications hardware engineer, so I can't judge the originality of CSIROs invention on technical grounds. OTOH it's stretches credibility to imagine Intel, Microsoft, HP, Toshiba et al. simply rolling over and paying up for an invention which so obviously lacked the novel step as to render the patent invalid. If the current defendants, on considering their position don't do the same, we should have a good assessment of how original the invention actually way.
CSIRO are trolls.
That would seem to be an opinion unfounded in reality.
Do you think Microsoft should have a 20 year monopoly on each file format they invent?
Whether or not it is 20 years, or some shorter period, is a matter of debate. But yes, I believe people should be rewarded for the work they do and I believe that technological progress can have some positive benefits and ought to be encouraged.
If a file format is an 'invention' for the purposes of patent law (which falls not to me to "believe," but is a matter of the courts and the legislature); if a particular file format possesses the requisite originality; and if the details of the file format are published with sufficient specificity to allow anyone to reverse engineer it --then why should the person developing it, Microsoft or any other person, be granted protection in return?
Do note that this is not an argument for or against software patents in particular! If you don't think software should be patentable, that's something for you to take up with your lawmakers. Personally I'm more concerned with patents on discoveries (eg in the biological sciences) as opposed to invetions proper.
What I believe is that the patent system is basically a good idea, but one, which if we do not guard against it, is capable of being distorted to serve a purpose contrary to its basic aim --which is to promote innovation by counteracting the "Free Rider" market failure.
Or is the "actually develop" justification limited to CSIRO?
Huh? Do you still not understand what a "patent troll" is?
That's the entire business model of Acacia and Intellectual Ventures. These are the quintessential patent trolls.
My understanding of a patent troll, which seems to be the definition being used in regard to a NPE on the page you cited above also, is someone who floats an idea and lodges a patent which is invalid by reason of their having not specified an actual method or design by which that idea is to be realised.
Remember what a patent actually is. It is an agreement to publish to the world a method for realising some original invention. If a third party cannot from the patent reproduce the invention, it's obviously not a patent, yes?
CSIRO developed actual working hardware. It specified the design to such an extent that 3rd parties have misappropriated their work and are illegally (facially) making money out of this misapproriation. You are perhaps using this design right now. It's real, it's an original invention, it is most certainly not a troll.
by defintio
As an Australian taxpayer, I find it objectionable that you think I should donate my money to foreign private corporations only to have to buy back what I paid to develop. We invested millions of dollars in this and we would like the return for our investment, thank you very much.
Oh and as far as patents existing, I definitely know they do, because I had a patent (which is was a troll by a looser definition) hanging over the work I did. We were told "you develop that and see what we do." We called their bluff. It was a bullshit patent. That might give some context to "I haven't been sued [or even threatened] by the CSIRO," which was in any case a quip leading into my actual point that they only sue on valid patents they rightfully own. Your logical analysis was supercilious.
how does that differentiate them from any other patent troll
If people actually develop new patentable technology how does enforcing their legal rights over that make them a patent troll? Even if they don't develop, but only acquire a valid patent, how does suing for that make them a troll?
To software developers, CSIRO is an aggressive patent litigator.
I've never been sued by the CSIRO, have you?
They seem to take action only against people who make unlicensed use of the patents they own. No trolling there. Why should CSIRO not be paid for what they develop?
"Gaining"? It's how almost all humans have always "reasoned".
My half century on Earth tells me otherwise.
One of the effects of the social revolution of the late 60s early 70s, imho, has been to undermine traditional sources of authoritative knowledge. This is not itself a bad thing, indeed as I young man I strove ardently towards this goal. My hope that we would replace mere authority with evidence and reason, however, was misplaced. In its place we have this massive sense of entitlement. An entitlement to believe oneself an expert on any matter whatsoever and an almost pathological avoidance anything which might contradict this delusion. We used to be entitled to our opinions. Now we are entitled to the truth of our opinions.
Slashdot Mirror
The problem with your idea ...
It's hardly my idea.
Which is pretty much the argument used by people who want to ban violent video games, yes?
I don't entirely disagree with you, but I do think that you are being too simplistic here.
For a start sports don't have to be explicitly "warlike" to function as sublimated war (Freud's idea, I believe). Of course violent video games, or as you may prefer "violence training simulators," are inherently violent, it is (imagined) violence being reinforced.
Reinforcing shooting balls into a net, or more relevantly watching balls being shot into the net by "your" team, would not seem so obviously to encourage bellicosity. [In fact I doubt that violent video games engender violence in all or even most users. It is quite possible that what encourages behaviour in one individual is actually cathartic in others --but I'm simply disagreeing with you here.]
Secondly your statement that there is "only" and endorphin rush fails to appreciate the pharmacological complexities of the situation. At least as important here is the adrenaline (US: epinephrine) rush. Our sympathetic ("flight or fight") nervous system is but rarely stimulated as it was in our evolutionary past. Driving fast, skydiving and many sports, including I would argue watching team sport (where we have a strong emotional investment in the team), engage it and literally "let off steam" which would otherwise manifest as non-specific anxiety and stress.
Finally my point was not so much about individual physiology or even psychological catharsis, but about the historical and cultural inscriptions which national football bears, especially in post-WWII Europe. To appreciate this requires an examination of C18th nationalist reaction to the Vormärz, the subsequent migration of the ideology of nation from the left to the right of the political spectrum, and how what was originally a movement of liberation led directly to the gates of Auschwitz. It requires an understanding of the role inter alia of sport, and first and foremost football, in containing the European curse, which, especially in the areas placed in suspended animation by Soviet rule, can still show it's destructive face today.
In the face of Srebenica, shooting balls into a net seems rather more harmless to me.
You don't have to worry about the camera angles, the 0-0 games are MORE than enough to keep me from watching.
Last night's (my time) Portugal vs Ivory Coast 0:0 game was one of the most exciting in this cup yet. Uruguay vs France 0:0 was tedious and as exciting as watching paint dry. The fact of being a scoreless draw is not determinative of the quality of the game.
Now I can understand not watching a football code you don't personally enjoy. I don't watch AFL, Rugby only very rarely and for me American football makes even golf look exciting. What I certainly wouldn't do is bother to read articles about games I don't like, let alone comment on them.
What's more, I figure, it's probably me, rather than those games themselves. After all millions of people get excited about the other codes. I guess that American football, for instance, requires an understanding of the strategy and tactics I simply don't possess. It might be a bit like a cross between chess and football for those who dig it. To me it's a series of erratic starts and stops, hardly any time is spent actually playing?! I get as much out of it as I would from a recital of Armenian poetry.
OTHO, anyone who fails to appreciate the beauty of a game like the scoreless draw between Portugal and the Ivory Coast is clearly a deranged philistine! ;)
Yeah, when the World Cup was in Germany in 2006, you didn't see anyone try to hinder the traditions of violent neo-nazi hooliganism.
Violent football hooliganism is primarily an English rather than specifically a German tradition. In any case, "hindering" any "traditions" of Nazism, neo- or otherwise, is a constitutional obligation in Germany (imposed by the Allies), not something exclusive to the World Cup or something which would be left to FIFA to decide. Try selling Nazi memorabilia on eBay in Germany.
Look I agree "it's a Sth African tradition" is a terrible argument to justify this DoS attack on the World Cup, but pick a better counter example next time.
You say that as if it were cricket.
Test or that one-day muck?
Test cricket is about my favourite sport not to watch, and I mean that in the kindest sense. You know the Sunday barbie in Summer, the Test on the tele is droning in the background. You go in to get a beer out of the fridge and look just long enough to see a few runs and get the score. When you get outside someone asks, "What's the score mate."
"We're 312 for 5."
"S'long as we beat the bloody poms.
And think, if by some miracle the Socceroos get out of the group in 2nd place we'll most probably have the opportunity to chuck them out of the World Cup. Sweet! Doesn't look we have the team for it this time round after what my other team did to them (my wife who isn't 1/2 German isn't talking to me at the moment!)
What makes you think not having sports would lead to war? That's about the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard of
Team sport as sublimated war --that's a new concept to you? Wow!
Now personally I have little interest in sport, but unlike you I don't begrudge others their entertainment. In any case international football is quite another matter from sport.
Speaking as a German (as I sometimes am) if you don't let us win either the European or World Cup every few decades we start the tanks rolling! ;) Seriously though, it is arguable that without the Wunder von Bern of 1954 we would not have witnessed the full blossoming of the Wirtschaftswunder of the late 50s and 60s, (only arguable though, because even by '54 the German economy was growing astoundingly). What is certain is that the euphoria that swept West Germany following Bern invigorated a thoroughly demoralised population and irreversibly affected the ideological complexion of the new country. A demoralised economically crippled Germany has not historically proven a good recipe for peace in Europe.
Fussball, moreover, affords one of the few socially acceptable avenues for expressing national pride. Safely contained within the stadium (hopefully), after the 90 minutes are up everyone goes home and once more become good Europeans. And it is by no means only in Germany that football is central to national idenity.
If you mistake what is happening in South Africa right now for sport, you simply don't grok it.
This may well go on to be the worst World Cup
Well it already is for me. I suffer from tinnitus, and the vuvuzelas ensure that I can't understand the commentary. I've tried watching with mute on, but that sucks too. Hopefully these filters will rapidly be deployed. Not that that will help the players much.
Spectator sports are a complete waste of time.
Do you seriously prefer war?
just change the channel to a real sport
Sport?! This isn't mere sport, it's the World Cup man!
Some people think football is a matter of life and death. I assure you, it's much more serious than that
-- Bill Shankly
Is there any way their performance can be attributed back to Spain's liberal file sharing attitude?
No that would be to reverse the attribution. You see when countries perform well in international (roundball) football tournaments, the judiciary in those countries begin to favour the rights of the public at large as against the rights of IP holders. I mean just look at Brazil! ;)
But no matter what it brings back from Itokawa we can be certain that Godzilla will rise out of the dust of the Australian desert...
Especially as the piece of dust in the Australian desert they are talking about is the Woomera Prohibited Area. It is prohibited because of the high levels of radioactivity remaining from nuclear weapons testing. You couldn't script this better.
I don't watch soccer, but because of this, I will be rooting for Spain in the world cup...now can anybody tell me if they are a good team?
They are pretty much the favourites this time round.
It's not the fishing term, but that's beside the point.
It is though (see above), but yes, it's beside the point.
they need to stop patenting the obvious
Before or after you stop beating your wife? ;)
You say they do, I think it's clear (just from the concessions of the major companies who made unlicensed use of their technology) that you are mistaken. If it actually gets to court we'll let the expert witnesses have it out and we'll have an answer to that question which is in some measure more informed than your or my opinion. I know you think that patents rarely get overturned for obviousness in court, but since obvious patents rarely get to court (eg. the guys who had a go at our project) that is hardly surprising.
I could spend my days filing for obvious patents, calling it research, and hoping a major company stumbles into my quagmire too. That wouldn't make me not a troll, that would make me the definition of a troll.
Yes I agree and I would add that you have very ably summed up why it is so wrong to call the CSIRO scientists patent trolls. They don't spend their days filing for obvious patents, they spend their days doing ground breaking research. They don't just call it research, it actually is. They don't file patents in the hope that a major company will stumble into the quagmire, they file patents for the new and novel inventions they devise as they are legally required to and in order to further more ground breaking research without unduly impacting on consolidated revenue.
For all the reasons you give they are not patent trolls.
From this I conclude that the results are meaningless.
Not so, they reflect real changes in the programming world. For instance a dramatic improvement in language documentation will result in a language's Tiobe ranking falling. :)
From the OED
troll, v
...
13. Angling. intr. To angle with a running line (? orig. with the line running on a 'troll' or winch); also (trans.) to fish (water) in this way; spec. a. to fish for pike by working a dead bait (usually on a gorge hook) by a sink-and-draw motion; b. (trans. and intr.), to angle with a spinning bait: = SPIN v. 12a, b; c. in U.S. and Sc. use (perh. through association with trail or trawl), to trail a baited line behind a boat. Also fig.
I suppose that's true. But a corporation is actually independent. Whereas a quango, like NASA, just does what they are told by their leash holders.
But it doesn't work like that in Australia. For a start the independent government-owned (but increasingly partially self-funding, for which see CSIROs patents), organisations are corporations (statutory corporations), and exhibit a large measure of independence from government. For instance the ABC (the public broadcaster) is the only news service that will regularly criticise government of all complexions. State owned media should never be on a leash, rather it should bite the hand that feeds it. I know this isn't always the case, but it is here.
On the other hand the (previous) Australian government was described, with some accuracy, by a senior Murdoch executive as "a wholly owned subsidiary of News Corp." I'm not sure that the change in government has affected that position substantially.
[Getting] a patent overturned for obviousness has happened a handful of times (I believe less than 10, but I'm having difficulty finding an appropriate citation).
I'm not surprised you are having difficulty, as this would seem a difficult thing to quantify. Cases where obviousness is most obvious (sorry), would rarely be appealed or reported. In the cases that do make it into superior courts this question will inherently be more contentious, so you wouldn't expect a high success rate at overturning on obviousness. Perhaps the patents office has a definitive figure?
Be that as it may, the CSIRO is a serious and highly respected research organisation. CSIRO scientists do real development in all sorts of fields. They do not fly patent kites in the hope of trolling (it's a fishing term actually, nothing to do with hairy monsters) actual developers with patents and it is scurrilous, or at best ignorant, to suggest they do. What is more the money the CSIRO does earn from its inventions is ploughed right back into further research. They are pretty much the polar opposite of patent trolls.
The key element of the trolling problem is that the invention is obvious, but got through the patenting process because the patent office is overwhelmed and incompetent.
Yes "originality" as I expressed it is more correctly described as a "non-obvious improvement." In any case the patent would still be invalid (if tested in court) because it lacks the requisite originality/non-obviousness (how ever you want to put it). So I pretty much covered that.
It's not that the patent office is overwhelmed and incompetent, it's that increasingly, and this is the certainly the case in Australia, and I believe in the US also, patents are granted presumptively. The week after this innovation in the patenting process came into effect some engineer in Melbourne patented the wheel. :)
Nobody is stealing CSIROs ideas and commercializing them, they are coming up with the SAME ideas and commercializing them.
I'm not a telecommunications hardware engineer, so I can't judge the originality of CSIROs invention on technical grounds. OTOH it's stretches credibility to imagine Intel, Microsoft, HP, Toshiba et al. simply rolling over and paying up for an invention which so obviously lacked the novel step as to render the patent invalid. If the current defendants, on considering their position don't do the same, we should have a good assessment of how original the invention actually way.
CSIRO are trolls.
That would seem to be an opinion unfounded in reality.
s/why should the person/why shouldn't the person/
Do you think Microsoft should have a 20 year monopoly on each file format they invent?
Whether or not it is 20 years, or some shorter period, is a matter of debate. But yes, I believe people should be rewarded for the work they do and I believe that technological progress can have some positive benefits and ought to be encouraged.
If a file format is an 'invention' for the purposes of patent law (which falls not to me to "believe," but is a matter of the courts and the legislature); if a particular file format possesses the requisite originality; and if the details of the file format are published with sufficient specificity to allow anyone to reverse engineer it --then why should the person developing it, Microsoft or any other person, be granted protection in return?
Do note that this is not an argument for or against software patents in particular! If you don't think software should be patentable, that's something for you to take up with your lawmakers. Personally I'm more concerned with patents on discoveries (eg in the biological sciences) as opposed to invetions proper.
What I believe is that the patent system is basically a good idea, but one, which if we do not guard against it, is capable of being distorted to serve a purpose contrary to its basic aim --which is to promote innovation by counteracting the "Free Rider" market failure.
Or is the "actually develop" justification limited to CSIRO?
Huh? Do you still not understand what a "patent troll" is?
That's the entire business model of Acacia and Intellectual Ventures. These are the quintessential patent trolls.
My understanding of a patent troll, which seems to be the definition being used in regard to a NPE on the page you cited above also, is someone who floats an idea and lodges a patent which is invalid by reason of their having not specified an actual method or design by which that idea is to be realised.
Remember what a patent actually is. It is an agreement to publish to the world a method for realising some original invention. If a third party cannot from the patent reproduce the invention, it's obviously not a patent, yes?
CSIRO developed actual working hardware. It specified the design to such an extent that 3rd parties have misappropriated their work and are illegally (facially) making money out of this misapproriation. You are perhaps using this design right now. It's real, it's an original invention, it is most certainly not a troll.
by defintio
As an Australian taxpayer, I find it objectionable that you think I should donate my money to foreign private corporations only to have to buy back what I paid to develop. We invested millions of dollars in this and we would like the return for our investment, thank you very much.
Oh and as far as patents existing, I definitely know they do, because I had a patent (which is was a troll by a looser definition) hanging over the work I did. We were told "you develop that and see what we do." We called their bluff. It was a bullshit patent. That might give some context to "I haven't been sued [or even threatened] by the CSIRO," which was in any case a quip leading into my actual point that they only sue on valid patents they rightfully own. Your logical analysis was supercilious.
how does that differentiate them from any other patent troll
If people actually develop new patentable technology how does enforcing their legal rights over that make them a patent troll? Even if they don't develop, but only acquire a valid patent, how does suing for that make them a troll?
[I]f it walks like a duck, talks like a duck, then it must be a duck. Patent trolls love to litigate, so these guys appear to like to litigate...
Ducks breathe. You breathe, therefore you are a duck. Nicely reasoned dude!
To software developers, CSIRO is an aggressive patent litigator.
I've never been sued by the CSIRO, have you?
They seem to take action only against people who make unlicensed use of the patents they own. No trolling there. Why should CSIRO not be paid for what they develop?
"Gaining"? It's how almost all humans have always "reasoned".
My half century on Earth tells me otherwise.
One of the effects of the social revolution of the late 60s early 70s, imho, has been to undermine traditional sources of authoritative knowledge. This is not itself a bad thing, indeed as I young man I strove ardently towards this goal. My hope that we would replace mere authority with evidence and reason, however, was misplaced. In its place we have this massive sense of entitlement. An entitlement to believe oneself an expert on any matter whatsoever and an almost pathological avoidance anything which might contradict this delusion. We used to be entitled to our opinions. Now we are entitled to the truth of our opinions.
Well that's my opinion anyway :)
err.. uncontrolled stimuli, that is. The uncontrolled (dependant) variable is the number of eggs, of course.