All of these components are well-established elements of modern online gaming, and have been available for PCs for some time. Nintendo's patents focus on "home game video systems"
So how come this patent was awarded? There is no new technology or even new functionality introduced here: it's all existing stuff, done on existing technology... except that Ninento have made a somewhat narrower definition of their platform: "home game video systems". Does that mean that I can patent the same things for "coin-op/web cafe game video systems?".
This is just another one of those patents on existing and obvious functionality, but in a slightly different environment/platform. Nothing new is invented here; it is only marginally more creative than all those patents for "Obvious and millennia-old activity X.... on the Internet"
could be cured for the cost of 1 Nuclear submarine, but as we are not serious about curing blindness we would rather have multiple subs and lots of blind people
Similarly, we could cure hunger and disease for the price of 3 nuclear subs. But next year we'd have to pay even more because all our free food aid has bankrupted the few remaining farmers in Africa (this does actually happen by the way). Then after a few years, when we say 'enough is enough' and ask them to grow their own damn food for a change, they come to our countries instead and take ours. We will not be able to stop them because we have swapped all our submarines for food.
I'm kidding of course. My point is that the defense of our citizens has a higher priority than curing the world's blind, and that one submarine is deemed necessary for the defense.
the right to exlude others from making, using or selling the invention
No, that is merely a means to achieve the purpose I stated. Patents were not invented to merely formalise a 'natural' right exclude others from using your inventions. Patents were recognised to be an artificial construct (and a rather questionable one at that), in which these rights are granted not for your personal benefit, but for the benefit of society as a whole (by encouraging you to share your ideas).
Does a patent force you to disclose your idea? Of course: it's required. But that's not its purpose.
I never said that the purpose of patents is to force you to disclose your idea, it's to encourage its disclosure in exchange for a temporary right to control the use of that idea.
Isn't the fact that Tivo can't (or didn't) get patent protection for its business just as strong an indictment of the patent system as all the lame patents we complain about?
No. The purpose of patents isn't to protect businesses, the purpose is to promote and encourage inventors to share ideas and research rather than keep them to themselves. The incentive to share is in allowing them to recoup some of their efforts from license fees.
The mere fact that Tivo was first does not in any way entitle them to an exclusive market, not even temporarily. There is also no significant research cost for the idea (of a digital video recorder) to be recouped.
For those asking what on earth (R)POW tokens are, here's one possible application (from rpow.com):
POW tokens have been proposed as a form of pseudo-payment in several applications. One example is email. An email message containing a POW token would be relatively costly to send in terms of computing power. A POW token could then be a sign that the message was not spam.
Using RPOW tokens for email would have advantages, as people could then reuse tokens from incoming email in outgoing email. Spammers will have no such advantages since almost all of their email is outgoing. Reuse allows the cost of the POW token to be much higher since most people won't have to generate them, making the system more effective as an anti spam measure.
An interesting scheme...
One potential problem I see with such an anti-spam measure is that I keep hearing about spam runs being done from many regular users' computers by means of a spamming worm infrection. Such a worm could also be adapted to generate the POW tokens... or even steal them from the users' incoming email and re-use them under this scheme! That'll be just great, having your computer not only hijacked to send out spam, but loaded down with the heavy burden of generating POW tokens.
Perhaps it is and perhaps it isn't. I suppose they have looked into the effects, and perhaps we should ask them for the results of that study. This is what happens too often in environmental discussions: whenever a new idea or technology surfaces, the first thing everyone does is label it a Good Thing or a Bad Thing, and then come up with a myriad of uninformed 'facts', opinions and objections to support their point of view.
There is a VERY SIMPLE solution to this! USE LESS AIRCONDITIONING! It annoys me how people in North America overdo it with the air conditioning.
I can attest to that... offices in the US often have the airco on way too high, and you do indeed have to put on extra clothinig sometimes. Not to mention that too large a temperature difference between the inside and outside can be very bad for your health.
However... your comment is the typical environmentalists reaction: their solution to everything is not to do things smarter or better, but simply to do less. They are right in some instances, but it should not be their solution to every single environmental problem.
All that needs to be done is to abolish property and the state [...] When the majority of the people reject the concept of property, there is no way to exploit and oppress others.
Of course there is. If the minority who still believe in property simply go around and try to grab as much of it as possible, who's going to stop them, without a state to regulate such affairs? Look what happened to the Indians, who thought the concept of land ownership was useless.
Without a state, society turns into a might-makes-right deal. That doesn't work if there is any conflict of interest at all, however small. Imagine your neighbour playing his stereo at full volume every night, keeping you awake. Reason dictates that you politely ask him to stop, but if he laughs and says no, and he is a 2m20 giant weightlifter while you are a tiny pasty-faced nerd, what are you going to do? Next thing you know, he will 'ask' for the food you planned to eat (not your food after all, since there's no property). Exploiting and oppression happens on all levels, even between individuals. And sometimes it doesn not happen for any 'valid' reason, but simply for the pleasure some people get out of causing misery to others. You are suggesting to replace the tyranny of state with the tyranny of everyone with a need, a grudge or a whim who is stronger than you. Think again if you hope that social pressure will keep such individuals in line: if you have friends to back you up, so have they, and the 2-person argument will just degenerate into a 20-person fistfight.
And once the majority of the people are not coerced to wage slavery or unemployment (as under capitalism) and have most of their time off to do what they want to do in addition to what little is needed to produce the basic essentials of life, everyone will be much better off.
You call just having the basic essentials of life "being better off"? Besides, I doubt that you anarchists will get even those basics. The production of most items, be it food, computers, or houses, involve heavy or dirty work that no one really cares to do. Other jobs are not so physically unpleasant but are still boring, especially when you have do it 8 hours a day. The only reason people put up with such jobs is the reward: a paycheck with which they can buy the things they want or need. If you remove the reward, what incentive is there to do this undesirable work? Work is very rarely its own reward.
Who will toil to build factories or work the production line if there is no reward, no incentive? You provided an answer:
And to make people work, no oppression machinery like the state is needed, just social pressure.
Social pressure can be just as brutal as oppression from the state. In the end, people do not want to work so you (the collective) will have to make them. Ayn Rand (yes, she again) wrote what I think is an accurate prediction of succh a collective: everyone will switch from trying to be the best to trying to be the worst, hiding whatever ability they have, feigning injuries and whatnot, everything to prevent to be pressured into doing all the work while the others get to slack around. I don't think such a society will be able to produce enough of the bare necessities, let alone factories and industry.
Without things like tractors, how do you hope to have any leisure time to be "better off" in, rather than toiling in the fields for much more than the 8 hours a day, simply to scratch the "basic essentials of life" from the soil. That I think, is the anarchists' future. That, and squabbling over what little they do manage to produce.
Or to put it another way EU citizens have traded GDP/capita for leisure time, US citizens work much more and hence buy more stuff
Which is fine by me. However a different wind is starting to blow in Europe. Politicians and companies are already campaining to increase our productivity (per capita), by bringing back the 40 hour workweek. By the way, they are not offering a corresponding increase in pay. It's "Work 40 hours/week for the same pay, which will help keep your job". Strangely, just over a decade ago the government promoted 36 or 32 hour workweeks, to (yes) "create more jobs".
Actually, it's not that funny. I think a tool like this could be useful.
Ads in magazines (like trade magazines as someone else mentioned) are useful for me personally, for two reasons:
- Generic information on products such as specs and prices.
- Information on new, upcoming products.
On the internet, the first form of advertisement is not very useful. When I need such information, I can find it myself on the websites that most shops have these days. But the second one could be rather useful. I'd like to be informed about new developments or stuff that I haven't thought about or didn't know existed. I can't go looking for this kind of products since I won't know what to look for or where to look for it. It needs to be 'pushed' at me, either in a magazine or on-line
The problem with ads on the Internet is that, unlike ads in trade magazines, they often aren't targetted. Google ad links are targetted, and I occasionally find them useful, but it only works when I'm using Google (duh). I'd love a tool that I could make my interests known to, and which would then serve me ads about the stuff I am interested in. This tool attemtps to do that by taking the page you are looking at as a clue about your interests... perhaps that's a good start, and I might give this tool a go myself.
Maybe I'm slippery sloping but things already are pretty crappy in terms of low-end DVD players.
They are? My crappy low-end Chinese DVD player is all-region, and has way more features than my $350 JVC player. The JVC broke down after a year of light service, while the Chinese player is still going strong. Heh, the thing cost less than a color cartridge for my HP inkjet printer (ok, maybe that isn't saying much...)
Nope... so far I'm quite pleased with the products from China.
Again, there are other [tvlicensing.co.uk] countries [zdnet.fr] in the world where things don't happen that way.
A TV license is a payment against royalties on content, not royalties on TV technology. In contrast to existing TV technology, users of commercial streaming video applications pay a per-viewer/per-hour fee for the technology. That is what the BBC wants to avoid by developing their own streaming solution.
...more banal mediocre games like Shadow Hearts for the PS2.
Ever been in a Japanese arcade? Shadow Hearts is nice and soothingly normal compared to the games sou see there. Think 'Extreme beach volleyball' for the Xbox, only more bizarre (in case you don'tt know this one: it's beach volleyball, but you first have to convince your opponents in the game to play with you, by bribing them with gifts & flowers in your hair). Head-to-head pancake baking (I kid you not), shooting elves with crossbows... and those are the games where you can at least understand the objective.
why isn't the universe like something out of Star TRek with hundreds of alien species flittering about, dropping in to violate the prime directive, establish moonbases, and so forth?
Perhaps because faster-than-light travel (for the nitpickers: by that I also mean things like hyperspace, wormholes and teleportation) is impossible or not practical, and that most sentient races prefer to stay in their own solar system for that reason.
We dump pretty enormous amounts of energy at RADAR wavelengths
Would this energy still be detectable from far (lightyears) off? Conversely, would we ever be able to detect RF signals from alien planetside radar or satellite uplinks? I don't think so, and that's not what we're looking for. From the article blurb: "...intentional signals in the form of high-powered lasers" (Emphasis mine).
If you're trying to say "hi" to beings on another planet, lasers are a much better option than radio... you'd need a pretty big transmitter to get through to the other side. Lasers are directional and thus more effient. (The downside is that you'll have to poke it at different stars in turn, if you don't know which star your pals' planet is orbiting). So it stands to reason that aliens would also use lasers rather than radio to try and contact us.
Hmm... I can't believe it took this long for this 'exploit' to surface. Any geek with a laptop, some boredom and a paperclip should have figured this out already.
Anyhoo: what you need is a pair of scissors and a paperclip. if you have no scissors, a second paperclip will work, if not so well.
Jam one point of the scissors into the rectangular hole on the circumference of the circular key slot. Twist the scissors so that the inner part of the lock turns into the 'open' direction. Keep applying a gentle pressure, and use the paperclip to push in the little pins in the circular groove, one by one. Push down lightly and slowly until you feel the pin 'snap'. If you release the pin, it should be held in place and not spring back up again. If it does, just try first with another pin. Eventually you'll get them all and the lock will turn open. You can close the lock again in the same way.
Some of these locks have a security feature... when you've twisted the cilinder halfway to the 'open' position, it will lock again. In this case you'll need both points of the scissor to apply torque to the lock cilinder.
This isn't hard... with some practice, you can open these locks in a minute or 2. We used to do this at the office, going around during luch break to swap everyone's Kensington locks around, then watch the frustration at the end of the day, as everyone discovered that their key did not fit anymore. I know, it's lame, but we were bored okay?
I don't have any qualms about revealing the 'secret' of Kensington lock picking, as I would have with revealing a hot new exploit. This trick is years old, and asa I said: any bored person with a paper clip can figure this out for himself.
They still write them down, still 'share' [..] Plus normal users forget them after a few days of work anyway
Regular users in a moderately complex corporate environment have to deal with many systems and many passwords. These systems are often administered by different sysadmins who cannot for the life of them fathom why users keep forgetting that single password for their one system. To make things worse, systems differ in their requirements for passwords and the frequency with which they have to be changed. This virtually guarantees that no ordinary person can possibly remember their password without writing them down, or using the usual 'august04' style passwords.
At the client for whom I work, users generally have about 5 passwords, which are hard enough to remember when they need to change them every month. I myself work with many systems and I have over 25 passwords. You can bet that I wrote them down! (they're in a strongly encrypted file accessed with one strong password).
If you want better security, enforce 'good' passwords (letter + numbers), but never let them expire. I used to work in a military, high-security area where we were expressly forbidden to let passwords expire. They wanted us to remember them, not write them down.
Re:Politics will never solve this problem
on
CAN-SPAM Is A Bust
·
· Score: 1
There's just no way that you can solve this problem with politics. [...] Even if I wanted some physical vigialntie justice, I can't afford to track down some spamer in Russia
9 out of 10 times, the goods or services offered are from companies in the US. So track down the purveyor of the articles offered in the spam, and put some manners on him.
In fact, this is what the legislators should be doing as well: make a law against hiring spammers. It's not a complete solution since the plaintiff will still have to offer proof of the transaction, but it might be a reasonable deterrent.
Even hinting that property and commercial enterprise is not going to be possible in space is a sure way to cripple space exploration.
The UN and many nations are not really against commercial enterprise in space, but they are opposed to people, countries or organisations laying claim to space resources. In other words: you are free to build a commercial space hotel or zero-G manufacturing plant, or even build a theme park on the moon. However you cannot, for example, land on an asteroid and mine it for precious metals.
They have a point, kind of. It would be a bit sad if the US, Russia and China could launch a bunch of probes to every planet and asteroid out there, and then claim them by virtue of being there first. They want to make sure that everyone has a shot at claiming part of space, instead of finding 'occupado' signs all over the planets by the time they get there.
The thing that cripples commercial space exploration is the fact that there is no law or rule to handle property in space. If commercial ventures would know up front what to expect from the UN or whomever, they'd be able to assess risk and potential profit, and go for it. But suppose I'd like to mine an asteroid now? I'd have to wait for the UN to get their collective thumb out of their arse and determine if I can do this and under what conditions. That is a dependancy that I think no company would be willing to deal with.
I think commercial exploitation of space will happen nevertheless. I see two ways of this starting out (possibly both at the same time)
1) The UN will grant concessions for exploitation to commercial ventures, much like national governments grant them to oil companies. (An interesting question is: if the UN takes part of the proceeds, what will they do with it? Give each Earth person an equal share, or spend it on misplaced and politically motivated do-goodery?)
2) Companies based in less scrupulous countries (fill in your favorite) will give the UN the proverbial middle finger and go mine the asteroids anyway.
There is a big difference... The point is that it's not just that prices of individual bits of hardware are coming down, but overall prices as well, e.g. the price you can expect to pay for an average system.
My father's first computer was a self-built jobby and (for the time) top of the line. He must have spent $10.000 on that thing. With the advent of personal computers, prices dropped rapidly... and for a long, long time, it seemed that an average computer would cost about $1500 or so. The last 5 years or so, this price has come down. Check out Dell... they're offering a system for as low as $500 (and even throw in a printer). A few $100 more and you'll have a decent home computer suitable even for games (no, not Doom3 at 20 million fps of course).
If all you do is surfing, word processing, spreadsheets, and the occasional game, then you can get something good for about $750. Computers certainly weren't that cheap 5-10 years ago.
You're right, they're not elected, but they're appointed by their respective national governments, which arise as a result of democratic election.
The problem is not really their appointment, but it is the way they operate. They don't have a reputation for honesty because hardly anyone watches them, and they are answerable to hardly anyone. Not enough checks & balances, that is the problem.
I think a lot greater problem with software patents is that the issue is well understood only by a few people.
You'd be surprised. Most people can at least sort of grasp the problem and the effect on the economy and themselves, if it is properly explained to them. The real problem is that no one is doing the explaining. This whole issue, including the backhanded and patently (excusez le mot) undemocratic way in which software patent laws were ushered through the European legislature, has been notoriously absent from the mainstream media. The whole way in which the EC Parliament and the Commission have handled this matter would have been front-page material for any newspaper, if this was a subject that was of any interest to them. But this isn't about farming subsidies, immigrants, social benefits or education, and so the media aren't interested. In contrast, onee MEP commented that she was rather surprised from the interest in this subject she noticed from companies and the general populace. The interest is there, but the coverage is lacking.
The only time I have seen anything about this issue in the newspaper, is when a minister was called to task by our national parliament for lying about how he voted on this matter. Even so, normally this would be cause for a big row in parliament, but the subject of software patents wasn't something to get all worked up about, apparently.
In principle, this sounds like good business practice to me. If choosing a particular product seems to expose you to nasty legal action against you, you naturally want to assess the risk and consequences before making your decision.
Products from Microsoft or Sun are just as likely to contain infringing code as Linux, but if such code is found, it's likely that the producer of the software finds itself at the wrong end of a lawsuit, not the users. The scary bit about the problems with Linux and purported IP infringement, is that the people laying claim to parts of Linux go after the users, since there is no real producing company to sue.
So it is accurate to state that software patents stifle free, open software development specifically. To use software patents against an incorporated competitor isn't very practical. You'll have to actually fight your claim in court, since your competitor's product is their bread and butter, and it'll be worth it to them to defend it. But to fight an OSS competitor, it is enough to threaten potential customers with a lawsuit... to them, the risk of a lawsuit isn't worth it, and they are likely to choose a non-OSS solution (unless they think the claimant has no case whatsoever).
You can be sure that Gates & Balmer are dancing a little jig after hearing this news... I'm not against patent law per se, but lately we see too many examples of corporations threatening to sue over the most outrageous claims on IP, and getting their way by scare tactics, not having to prove their claims or even spending one penny in court. I fail to see how this practice is in the 'publics best interest', as the proponents of software patents claim it is.
Hmm... more eye-candy. Don't get me wrong, I don't mean to troll, and ID's stuff is usually very good eyecandy, but it'd be nice if they would come up with a good game to match their brilliant graphics engines. It's games like Half-life and Unreal that tried to add something new to 1st person shooters. IDs crop of games is really more of the the same 'ol, despite the stunning graphics.
Slashdot Mirror
This is just another one of those patents on existing and obvious functionality, but in a slightly different environment/platform. Nothing new is invented here; it is only marginally more creative than all those patents for "Obvious and millennia-old activity X.... on the Internet"
I'm kidding of course. My point is that the defense of our citizens has a higher priority than curing the world's blind, and that one submarine is deemed necessary for the defense.
The mere fact that Tivo was first does not in any way entitle them to an exclusive market, not even temporarily. There is also no significant research cost for the idea (of a digital video recorder) to be recouped.
An interesting scheme...
One potential problem I see with such an anti-spam measure is that I keep hearing about spam runs being done from many regular users' computers by means of a spamming worm infrection. Such a worm could also be adapted to generate the POW tokens... or even steal them from the users' incoming email and re-use them under this scheme! That'll be just great, having your computer not only hijacked to send out spam, but loaded down with the heavy burden of generating POW tokens.
However... your comment is the typical environmentalists reaction: their solution to everything is not to do things smarter or better, but simply to do less. They are right in some instances, but it should not be their solution to every single environmental problem.
Without a state, society turns into a might-makes-right deal. That doesn't work if there is any conflict of interest at all, however small. Imagine your neighbour playing his stereo at full volume every night, keeping you awake. Reason dictates that you politely ask him to stop, but if he laughs and says no, and he is a 2m20 giant weightlifter while you are a tiny pasty-faced nerd, what are you going to do? Next thing you know, he will 'ask' for the food you planned to eat (not your food after all, since there's no property). Exploiting and oppression happens on all levels, even between individuals. And sometimes it doesn not happen for any 'valid' reason, but simply for the pleasure some people get out of causing misery to others. You are suggesting to replace the tyranny of state with the tyranny of everyone with a need, a grudge or a whim who is stronger than you. Think again if you hope that social pressure will keep such individuals in line: if you have friends to back you up, so have they, and the 2-person argument will just degenerate into a 20-person fistfight.
You call just having the basic essentials of life "being better off"? Besides, I doubt that you anarchists will get even those basics. The production of most items, be it food, computers, or houses, involve heavy or dirty work that no one really cares to do. Other jobs are not so physically unpleasant but are still boring, especially when you have do it 8 hours a day. The only reason people put up with such jobs is the reward: a paycheck with which they can buy the things they want or need. If you remove the reward, what incentive is there to do this undesirable work? Work is very rarely its own reward.
Who will toil to build factories or work the production line if there is no reward, no incentive? You provided an answer: Social pressure can be just as brutal as oppression from the state. In the end, people do not want to work so you (the collective) will have to make them. Ayn Rand (yes, she again) wrote what I think is an accurate prediction of succh a collective: everyone will switch from trying to be the best to trying to be the worst, hiding whatever ability they have, feigning injuries and whatnot, everything to prevent to be pressured into doing all the work while the others get to slack around. I don't think such a society will be able to produce enough of the bare necessities, let alone factories and industry.
Without things like tractors, how do you hope to have any leisure time to be "better off" in, rather than toiling in the fields for much more than the 8 hours a day, simply to scratch the "basic essentials of life" from the soil. That I think, is the anarchists' future. That, and squabbling over what little they do manage to produce.
Ads in magazines (like trade magazines as someone else mentioned) are useful for me personally, for two reasons:
- Generic information on products such as specs and prices.
- Information on new, upcoming products.
On the internet, the first form of advertisement is not very useful. When I need such information, I can find it myself on the websites that most shops have these days. But the second one could be rather useful. I'd like to be informed about new developments or stuff that I haven't thought about or didn't know existed. I can't go looking for this kind of products since I won't know what to look for or where to look for it. It needs to be 'pushed' at me, either in a magazine or on-line
The problem with ads on the Internet is that, unlike ads in trade magazines, they often aren't targetted. Google ad links are targetted, and I occasionally find them useful, but it only works when I'm using Google (duh). I'd love a tool that I could make my interests known to, and which would then serve me ads about the stuff I am interested in. This tool attemtps to do that by taking the page you are looking at as a clue about your interests... perhaps that's a good start, and I might give this tool a go myself.
As for picture and sound, it'll do. I'm not into high-end stuff, and a reasonable picture and audio quality is good enough for me.
Nope... so far I'm quite pleased with the products from China.
If you're trying to say "hi" to beings on another planet, lasers are a much better option than radio... you'd need a pretty big transmitter to get through to the other side. Lasers are directional and thus more effient. (The downside is that you'll have to poke it at different stars in turn, if you don't know which star your pals' planet is orbiting). So it stands to reason that aliens would also use lasers rather than radio to try and contact us.
Hmm... I can't believe it took this long for this 'exploit' to surface. Any geek with a laptop, some boredom and a paperclip should have figured this out already.
Anyhoo: what you need is a pair of scissors and a paperclip. if you have no scissors, a second paperclip will work, if not so well.
Jam one point of the scissors into the rectangular hole on the circumference of the circular key slot. Twist the scissors so that the inner part of the lock turns into the 'open' direction. Keep applying a gentle pressure, and use the paperclip to push in the little pins in the circular groove, one by one. Push down lightly and slowly until you feel the pin 'snap'. If you release the pin, it should be held in place and not spring back up again. If it does, just try first with another pin. Eventually you'll get them all and the lock will turn open. You can close the lock again in the same way.
Some of these locks have a security feature... when you've twisted the cilinder halfway to the 'open' position, it will lock again. In this case you'll need both points of the scissor to apply torque to the lock cilinder.
This isn't hard... with some practice, you can open these locks in a minute or 2. We used to do this at the office, going around during luch break to swap everyone's Kensington locks around, then watch the frustration at the end of the day, as everyone discovered that their key did not fit anymore. I know, it's lame, but we were bored okay?
I don't have any qualms about revealing the 'secret' of Kensington lock picking, as I would have with revealing a hot new exploit. This trick is years old, and asa I said: any bored person with a paper clip can figure this out for himself.
At the client for whom I work, users generally have about 5 passwords, which are hard enough to remember when they need to change them every month. I myself work with many systems and I have over 25 passwords. You can bet that I wrote them down! (they're in a strongly encrypted file accessed with one strong password).
If you want better security, enforce 'good' passwords (letter + numbers), but never let them expire. I used to work in a military, high-security area where we were expressly forbidden to let passwords expire. They wanted us to remember them, not write them down.
In fact, this is what the legislators should be doing as well: make a law against hiring spammers. It's not a complete solution since the plaintiff will still have to offer proof of the transaction, but it might be a reasonable deterrent.
They have a point, kind of. It would be a bit sad if the US, Russia and China could launch a bunch of probes to every planet and asteroid out there, and then claim them by virtue of being there first. They want to make sure that everyone has a shot at claiming part of space, instead of finding 'occupado' signs all over the planets by the time they get there.
The thing that cripples commercial space exploration is the fact that there is no law or rule to handle property in space. If commercial ventures would know up front what to expect from the UN or whomever, they'd be able to assess risk and potential profit, and go for it. But suppose I'd like to mine an asteroid now? I'd have to wait for the UN to get their collective thumb out of their arse and determine if I can do this and under what conditions. That is a dependancy that I think no company would be willing to deal with.
I think commercial exploitation of space will happen nevertheless. I see two ways of this starting out (possibly both at the same time)
1) The UN will grant concessions for exploitation to commercial ventures, much like national governments grant them to oil companies. (An interesting question is: if the UN takes part of the proceeds, what will they do with it? Give each Earth person an equal share, or spend it on misplaced and politically motivated do-goodery?)
2) Companies based in less scrupulous countries (fill in your favorite) will give the UN the proverbial middle finger and go mine the asteroids anyway.
My father's first computer was a self-built jobby and (for the time) top of the line. He must have spent $10.000 on that thing. With the advent of personal computers, prices dropped rapidly... and for a long, long time, it seemed that an average computer would cost about $1500 or so. The last 5 years or so, this price has come down. Check out Dell... they're offering a system for as low as $500 (and even throw in a printer). A few $100 more and you'll have a decent home computer suitable even for games (no, not Doom3 at 20 million fps of course).
If all you do is surfing, word processing, spreadsheets, and the occasional game, then you can get something good for about $750. Computers certainly weren't that cheap 5-10 years ago.
The only time I have seen anything about this issue in the newspaper, is when a minister was called to task by our national parliament for lying about how he voted on this matter. Even so, normally this would be cause for a big row in parliament, but the subject of software patents wasn't something to get all worked up about, apparently.
In principle, this sounds like good business practice to me. If choosing a particular product seems to expose you to nasty legal action against you, you naturally want to assess the risk and consequences before making your decision.
Products from Microsoft or Sun are just as likely to contain infringing code as Linux, but if such code is found, it's likely that the producer of the software finds itself at the wrong end of a lawsuit, not the users. The scary bit about the problems with Linux and purported IP infringement, is that the people laying claim to parts of Linux go after the users, since there is no real producing company to sue.
So it is accurate to state that software patents stifle free, open software development specifically. To use software patents against an incorporated competitor isn't very practical. You'll have to actually fight your claim in court, since your competitor's product is their bread and butter, and it'll be worth it to them to defend it. But to fight an OSS competitor, it is enough to threaten potential customers with a lawsuit... to them, the risk of a lawsuit isn't worth it, and they are likely to choose a non-OSS solution (unless they think the claimant has no case whatsoever).
You can be sure that Gates & Balmer are dancing a little jig after hearing this news... I'm not against patent law per se, but lately we see too many examples of corporations threatening to sue over the most outrageous claims on IP, and getting their way by scare tactics, not having to prove their claims or even spending one penny in court. I fail to see how this practice is in the 'publics best interest', as the proponents of software patents claim it is.
They've got a torrent going now, and the link is alive again.