Have you ever actually gone through the patent application process?
three patents granted... one ended up winning my company a $4 million settlement in a patent violation lawsuit. does that count?:-)
I never said anything about frivolous claims. Of course you don't want your patent to include "weak, questionable, or unnecessary" claims... but you do want it to be as broad as possible within the primary scope of the patentable claim.
Poster didn't say anything about the patents in question being software patents. Do you really think that the very concept of patents is hopelessly flawed?
It would be nice if there was a "-1, irrelevant" downmoderation possible for responses like this.
The poster didn't ask "should I help in filing patents?" or "what are the ethical questions involved in patents?" -- you're response is roughly as helpful as offering a good recipe for barbecue (ie, potentially interesting but ultimately irrelevant).
Have you ever actually gone thru a patent application process? All of the above are things that are weeded out very early in the process (assuming you have patent attorneys who have any experience whatsoever). It's not the engineer's job to try to exclude things -- in fact, a good patent attorney will try to include as many things as possible in order to have the broadest reach for the resulting patent.
As for "quality" of patents -- well, they aren't rated like bonds, either they are granted or they aren't. This is why people lament various semi-questionable patents; they're just as valid as the world-changing patents are.
The vast majority of patents (like 99%) have absolutely no value
A lot software patents end up being defensive, so that when Company A threatens Company B with patent violations, Company B can respond in kind. Case in point, from 2002:
Macromedia Inc yesterday said that it won a patent infringement lawsuit it is fighting with rival Adobe Systems Inc, and has been awarded $4.9m damages by the jury, almost twice as much as Adobe was awarded in a related case two weeks ago.
Hard to imagine a more anti-patent site than Slashdot. Most of your answers are likely to be "Patents are evil."
But since you asked...
Cash bonuses are nice. Equity is good too if likely to be comparable.
But don't stop at money -- make a big deal of it, make sure they get recognition among their peers. The current software patent system in the US may be... suboptimal, in terms of bad patents that get thru, but it *shouldn't* be -- in theory, getting a patent granted should be a Big Deal and something that someone can really be proud of. Make sure you treat it that way.
ES4 didn't prevent any of the prototype-based coding techniques used in ES3 (aka "JavaScript") -- in fact, it bent over backwards to preserve them.
Rather, it added an additional, *optional* set of tools for the programmer to use -- classes, namespaces, early binding, optional typing, etc.
I realize most Slashdot readers probably won't have any experience coding in ActionScript 3 -- OMG, a "proprietary" language! -- but it's essentially a subset of the proposed ES4, and being able to use the above tools, in addition to prototypes and completely soft typing, makes for a wonderful coding experience IMHO.
You should learn your history... ActionScript 3 was actually based off of an early proposal for "JavaScript 2", written by Mozilla (or maybe it was Netscape at the time.
The goal was for it to be standards-compliant with the next major revision to JavaScript.
I'm gonna lose tons of karma for this, but yeah, you can, and probably should.
You work creating intellectual property for a private company. (You may have invented it, but you don't own it, the company does: google "work for hire" and learn.)
Obstructing the company from managing that property (whether explicitly or in secret) is clearly anithetical to your job description.
If you find the idea of software patents unethical, may I suggest that you need to find a new employer, as your ethics clearly don't align.
Slashdot Mirror
I find it supremely ironic that I get modded as "offtopic" for point out that another comment is... offtopic.
(Presumably this comment will get modded that way too... oh well)
Have you ever actually gone through the patent application process?
three patents granted... one ended up winning my company a $4 million settlement in a patent violation lawsuit. does that count? :-)
I never said anything about frivolous claims. Of course you don't want your patent to include "weak, questionable, or unnecessary" claims... but you do want it to be as broad as possible within the primary scope of the patentable claim.
Poster didn't say anything about the patents in question being software patents. Do you really think that the very concept of patents is hopelessly flawed?
It would be nice if there was a "-1, irrelevant" downmoderation possible for responses like this.
The poster didn't ask "should I help in filing patents?" or "what are the ethical questions involved in patents?" -- you're response is roughly as helpful as offering a good recipe for barbecue (ie, potentially interesting but ultimately irrelevant).
Have you ever actually gone thru a patent application process? All of the above are things that are weeded out very early in the process (assuming you have patent attorneys who have any experience whatsoever). It's not the engineer's job to try to exclude things -- in fact, a good patent attorney will try to include as many things as possible in order to have the broadest reach for the resulting patent.
As for "quality" of patents -- well, they aren't rated like bonds, either they are granted or they aren't. This is why people lament various semi-questionable patents; they're just as valid as the world-changing patents are.
The vast majority of patents (like 99%) have absolutely no value
A lot software patents end up being defensive, so that when Company A threatens Company B with patent violations, Company B can respond in kind. Case in point, from 2002:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2002/05/13/macromedia_wins_4_9m/
Macromedia Inc yesterday said that it won a patent infringement lawsuit it is fighting with rival Adobe Systems Inc, and has been awarded $4.9m damages by the jury, almost twice as much as Adobe was awarded in a related case two weeks ago.
Hard to imagine a more anti-patent site than Slashdot. Most of your answers are likely to be "Patents are evil."
But since you asked...
Cash bonuses are nice. Equity is good too if likely to be comparable.
But don't stop at money -- make a big deal of it, make sure they get recognition among their peers. The current software patent system in the US may be... suboptimal, in terms of bad patents that get thru, but it *shouldn't* be -- in theory, getting a patent granted should be a Big Deal and something that someone can really be proud of. Make sure you treat it that way.
It has the same power as Javascript though
This is a content-free statement. Technically, every Turing-complete language does. More detail, please.
wow... Objective-C *and* Smalltalk?
What more could I ask for?
Only the FSF would remove functionality and consider that to be a feature rather than a bug...
I don't know if you meant to misspell "ideology", but somehow "idiology" seems like a more appropriate spelling in this context anyway...
ES4 didn't prevent any of the prototype-based coding techniques used in ES3 (aka "JavaScript") -- in fact, it bent over backwards to preserve them.
Rather, it added an additional, *optional* set of tools for the programmer to use -- classes, namespaces, early binding, optional typing, etc.
I realize most Slashdot readers probably won't have any experience coding in ActionScript 3 -- OMG, a "proprietary" language! -- but it's essentially a subset of the proposed ES4, and being able to use the above tools, in addition to prototypes and completely soft typing, makes for a wonderful coding experience IMHO.
You should learn your history... ActionScript 3 was actually based off of an early proposal for "JavaScript 2", written by Mozilla (or maybe it was Netscape at the time.
The goal was for it to be standards-compliant with the next major revision to JavaScript.
I refuse to downgrade my browser to 32-bit in order to use it.
Wow, you must be browsing some DAMN big pages...
http://linuxhaters.blogspot.com/2008/07/my-browser-needs-16-exabytes.html
Canvas isn't portable across browsers.
Unless of course you add a plugin to IE.
Let's see, a plugin to IE... that lets you render graphics... and control it using a variety of ECMAScript... what a great idea!
Maybe we could call it "Flash..."
AS3 was based on an early draft of the "JavaScript 2", which later morphed into the proposed ES4.
The proposed ES4 is/was mostly a superset of current AS3, delta a few mostly minor points.
I'm gonna lose tons of karma for this, but yeah, you can, and probably should.
You work creating intellectual property for a private company. (You may have invented it, but you don't own it, the company does: google "work for hire" and learn.)
Obstructing the company from managing that property (whether explicitly or in secret) is clearly anithetical to your job description.
If you find the idea of software patents unethical, may I suggest that you need to find a new employer, as your ethics clearly don't align.
"Your browser does not support HTML5.1 video codec. Click here to download an update."
RMS has a decent point there.
Yeah, but they overlook the simple fact that "Linux" is a pretty good name, while "GNU/Linux" is a pretty dreadful name.
Branding may have no part of the technologist's world, but it has a major role in the Mom Acceptance Factor.
If anyone should be modded into the ground, it's the parent poster. Adding to "Foes" list in 3,2,1...
Hmm... yes, that's because they are doing The Black Freighter and Under the Hood as a seperate DVD set to coincide with the movies release.
Shameless self-promotion: see my re-creation of the Tales Of The Black Freighter story here:
http://boredomfestival.wordpress.com/2007/12/11/tales-of-the-black-freighter/
Another Nintendo accessory that will be completely unavailable to those unwilling to wait in long lines.
Seriously, when will Nintendo outsource some production?
No, it's not a pity -- I owned a Sparrow (and invested in Corbin) and it was a piece of shit, hopelessly unreliable and dynamically unstable as well.
The concept was a good one, but they were absolutely clueless about how to make a reliable and safe vehicle.
2 years, fine. I want to know where I can get on the waiting list for one!
The article doesn't say whether they'll be Germany-only... :-(
Dude, I would buy one *tomorrow* if they were available -- it looks freaking cool!